Brain Fertilizer

Interestingly, today's installment comes from (centrist?) Democrat Mickey Kaus. (scroll down to the 1:16am entry----does this guy have cool working hours, or what?)

Mickey quotes this article* written by Robert Samuelson that asserts "the increase in poverty in recent decades stems mainly from immigration." :

Compared with 1990, there were actually 700,000 fewer non-Hispanic whites in poverty last year. Among blacks, the drop since 1990 is between 700,000 and 1 million, and the poverty rate—though still appallingly high—has declined from 32 percent to 24 percent. ... Meanwhile, the number of poor Hispanics is up by 3 million since 1990.

So let me get this straight: Democrats encourage Hispanic immigration, as well as encouraging illegal immigration and even voting by illegal immigrants (via the "Motor Voter" laws and attempting to make it easier for illegal immigrants to get identification ("Matricula Consular") and driver's licences) because Hispanic immigrants tend to repay such largess with votes for Democrats. They need the votes to be able to gather power to aid the poverty-stricken. They point to the rise in poverty as evidence that America needs the Democrats in power to deal with the rise in poverty...except the rise in poverty is apparently solely due to the enacting of Democrat immigration principles.

To be fair, Republicans aren't much better. I don't really like Karl Rove and George W. Bush's pandering to Hispanics to increase their support, although I can understand it, with such high Hispanic populations in both Texas and Florida, where the Bush brothers were/are governors. At least the Republican Party has one sub-group that strongly opposes the tacit and overt encouragement of illegal immigration, even if this group (led by Michelle Malkin, et al) doesn't have enough power to influence the Republican Party as a whole.

Something needs to be done. The short-term political jockeying is certainly adversely affecting the long-term welfare of current U.S. citizens.

* I wasn't able to access the article at all