September 29, 2007

Saturday Forum

A Texas Reader Asks If Mychal Bell Is The Next Allen Iverson; etc.

From: Mary Leverett (e-mail her)

Re: Steve Sailer’s Column: The Jena Six Through The Looking Glass

Mychal Bell is set to become the NFL's future version of NBA basketball star Allen Iverson.

According to the following account on Wikipedia:[Acessed Saturday, September 29, 2007]

“As a junior, Iverson quarterbacked Bethel High School's football team to the state championship, which they won.

“Iverson was later involved in a highly publicized incident on Valentine's Day that almost jeopardized his college career. On February 14, 1993, Iverson and several of his friends became involved in an altercation with a group of white teenagers at a Hampton, Virginia bowling alley. Allen's crowd was raucous and had to be asked to quiet down several times, and eventually something of a shouting duel began with another group of youths (all white). Then shortly thereafter, a huge fight erupted, pitting the white crowd against the blacks.

“During the fight, Iverson was accused of hitting a woman in the head with a chair. He and three of his friends, also African American, were the only people arrested. Iverson, who was 17 at the time, was convicted as an adult of the felony charge of ‘maiming-by-mob’. [See ESPN - Iverson's rise to stardom remarkable, May 4, 2007]

“Iverson and his supporters maintain his innocence, claiming that he had left the alley as soon as the trouble began. ‘For me to be in a bowling alley where everybody in the whole place know who I am and be crackin' people upside the head with chairs and think nothin' gonna happen?’ asks Iverson. ‘That's crazy! And what kind of a man would I be to hit a girl in the head with a damn chair? I wish at least they'd said I hit some damn man.’ [See here.]

“This incident was profiled on the television news magazine 60 Minutes due to claims of racial bias in the adjudication of the case. Douglas Wilder, at the time Governor of Virginia, became convinced that Iverson had been treated unfairly and controversially granted Iverson clemency, releasing him from his sentence. Iverson's conviction was later overturned on appeal.”

I was living in the Portsmouth area of VA at the time of the Iverson incident—from the initial “riot” to his eventual pardon.

Since then, Iverson has had numerous run-ins with law enforcement, for driving under the influence, carrying an unlicensed weapon, and possession of controlled substances.

Nobody calls Iverson on it. The same is happening with Bell in Jena.

Leverett is a former Marine. Read her thoughts about General Peter Pace and his disingenuous immigration comments here.

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A Nebraska Reader Explains How Illegal Immigration Pushed Him Out Of California

From: Scott Kelley

Re: Joe Guzzardi’s Column: Leaving California: Is It Inevitable?

I left California in1993 and wish I had done it much earlier.

As a blue collar worker who had to compete with a horde of illegal aliens for jobs

I have fond memories of my California days—the mountains and beaches at Santa Cruz, Napa Valley, the gold country.

But now too much traffic and diversity have changed the state forever.

Some don’t mind the crowds and others “embrace” diversity.

I’m not one of them. I fled California for what by comparison is a cultural backwater. But as far as I am concerned, the positives of Nebraska life outweigh the negatives.

Send Kelley mail at witan@vdare.com

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A CA Reader Has A Solution To The State’s Traffic Problem…And It Isn’t Ending Immigration (Although We Support That Idea!)

From: Michael Axelrod (e-mail him)

I have lived in the Bay Area more than 30 years except for a one-year sojourn to Northern Virginia about 20 miles from DC. I found the traffic there to be generally worse than in the Bay Area. Often times, side street congestion can keep you in traffic jams right up to your front door.

Nevertheless, I agree that California is fading fast and the best strategy for most people is to leave it.

One drastic solution for California would be to fix the number of automobile registrations so it can't grow any further. You could grandfather in everyone who already has car and thus you would create a market in auto registrations. People who want to leave California could "cash out" their entitlement to drive.

No one wants to face up to the fact that the CA road system is a finite resource that ultimately has to be rationed in some manner.

Of course, my idea is anathema to most Californians and the business community would fight it. However, once the average trip speed in LA falls below 8 mph, it will become painfully obvious that the transportation system is dysfunctional and worthless.

Look for migration back to the heartland in the near future as history reverses itself.

Axelrod was born in New York and is an engineer/statistician by profession.

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A North Carolina Reader Left Florida Because It Was Too Much Like California

From: C. MacKinlay (e-mail her)

My husband and I fled South Florida ten years ago when the endless waves of foreign-born residents caused a steadily deteriorating quality of life.

Roads were jammed, schools were among the worst in the nation, water rations became a year round reality and every day another patch of open space disappeared.

Florida’s warm weather was no longer enough to hold us.

We have friends in North Carolina who are from Cuba. Like most Cuban expatriates, they had settled first in Florida. They left, they explained, because Florida was overcrowded.

Before I became a working mother, I did volunteer work with anti-hunger organizations. We wanted to provide people worldwide with a better quality of life. However, we recognized that the answer to world hunger is not mass immigration from over-populated countries into the US.

The programs we supported followed the "teaching to fish rather than giving a fish" philosophy. We helped people find prosperity in their native countries.

While living in Florida, MacKinlay lived less than a mile from the beach which she walked to because, as she wrote, no parking could be found.

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A Mississippi Reader Says CA Residents Brought It On Themselves

From: Paul Caston (e-mail him)

This is an observation on behalf of those of us who will probably find ourselves as neighbors with former Californians as they spread out across the U.S.

The mess in California is a direct result of the political and social leanings of Californians. We sincerely hope (but seriously doubt) that they have learned their lesson.

Upon joining us, we trust they will leave their socialist inclinations behind. The problems Californians are fleeing are of their own making.

Caston is an attorney who is married with two children.

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A California Reader Says It Is Time To End “White Guilt”

From: Clair Winston (e-mail her)

People always talk about "white guilt."  

I am white, and I don't feel guilty for anything my relatives (who include Holocaust victims, American Indians, and poor farmers) have done.

But for white guilt sufferers who find it necessary to wrap themselves up in the warm Marxist ideals of multiculturalism, here is a disconcerting thought. “Why don't white guilt sufferers feel the urge to increase wages and improve education for African Americans?”

The best way to do that is ending illegal immigration—something liberals are reluctant to do.

Instead, white elitist government officials fill black inner city schools with foreign children who can't speak English, thus leaving fewer resources available for black children. Then they allow illegal immigrants to steal jobs from lower income African American parents.

If whites have something to feel guilty about it's allowing the scourge of illegal immigration to help destroy black Americans.

Winston’s previous letter about the Arabic Yellow Pages in San Diego is here.

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A Montana Reader Notes Three Presidential Candidates—And A Long List Of Other Immigration Cheerleaders—Are Council of Foreign Relations Members

From: Gail Adams

I am interested in the YouTube video showing presidential candidate Fred Thompson snapping when pressed about his membership in the Council on Foreign Relations. (See it here.)

Thompson is not the only presidential hopeful who belongs to the CFR. Arizona Senator John McCain and New Mexico governor Bill Richardson do as well. And another CFR member who may yet get into the race is former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Republicans and Democrat administrations have been loaded with members of CFR.

Present cabinet members:  

Elaine Chao - Labor, Henry Paulson - Treasury, Robert Gates - Defense, Condoleezza Rice,  State,

Other notables:

Susan Schwab, U.S. Trade Representative , Dick Cheney. Vice President., Scooter Libby, former Chief of Staff to Dick Cheney, John Bolton, former US Ambassador to U.N.,  And David Gergen, former advisor to presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan and currently a professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government

Billionaires:

George Soros and  Rupert Murdoch,

Craven Media Types:

Katie Couric, Barbara Walters, Tony Snow (got his White House press secretary job because of his Bush fawning at Fox News)

Supreme Court Justices:

Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg

U.S. Senators and Governors:

Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), and Janet Napolitano, Governor of Arizona

Former U.S. Presidents:

Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton

Political “Notables”:

Alan Greenspan, Larry Eagleburger, Jim Baker, Henry Kissinger, and Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Black “Leaders”:

Jesse Jackson and Vernon Jordan

Military Types:

Colin Powell, General David Petraeus, John M. Shalikashvili, (former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), and General Michael Hayden (head of the CIA)

Undisguised subversives:

Nadine Strossen, President of the ACLU and John Sweeney, President AFL-CIO, on record as saying that no difference exists between and US citizen and an illegal alien.

How interesting that one organization has placed so many of its members in the highest positions in our country. Both Republicans and Democrats are represented here, so they all must be working toward the common goal of abolishing America. They all have terrible positions on immigration.

The origin of Security and Prosperity Partnership, which is being more commonly called the North American Union, can be found in the CFR.

Send Adams mail c/o witan@vdare.com

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