Quote of the Day

from Steven Hayward @ powerline.com:

Well, how to begin?  What’s on your mind this week?  Perhaps we should start with H.L. Mencken, who once wrote that democracy is the theory that the people know what they want—and deserve to get it good and hard.

Or as New York Mayor Ed Koch put it, “The people have spoken . . . and they must be punished.”  I think that’s just been arranged.

Hispanics Vote Welfare - Not Immigration - Policy

Immigration policy isn't the key issue for Hispanics, explains Heather Macdonald at NRO. Welfare policy is. And conservatives can thank 'official and defacto immigration policy favoring low-skilled over high-skilled immigrants' for setting in motion a large wave of liberal voters seeking 'a more generous safety net, strong government intervention in the economy, and progressive taxation'.

MacDonald warns that the call for conservatives to 'discard their opposition to immigration amnesty' to enhance their electoral prospects is very misguided. She argues that California—a state undergoing a demographic revolution—is the wave of the future of the U.S., and it does not bode well for those who favor limited government and individual responsibility:

• U.S.-born Hispanic households in California use welfare programs at twice the rate of native-born non-Hispanic households;
• 1/4th of all Hispanics are poor in California, compared to a little over 1/10th of non-Hispanics;
• nearly 7 in 10 poor children in the state are Hispanic;
• 1 in 3 Hispanic children is poor, compared to less than 1 in 6 non-Hispanic children; and
• the idea of the “social issues” Hispanic voter is a mirage. A majority of Hispanics now support gay marriage, a Pew Research Center poll from last month found. The Hispanic out-of-wedlock birth rate is 53 percent, about twice that of whites.

In Immigration: Turning the Tide, Dr. Barry R. Chiswick explains how the demographic revolution began:

The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) was sold to the American public as having two major features—amnesty which was to “wipe the slate clean” of undocumented workers, and employer sanctions which was to “keep the slate clean”—along with some increased border enforcement of the immigration law. Employer sanctions were intended to cut off the “jobs magnet” that attracted undocumented workers to the United States. Half of the political bargain was fulfilled.

Under its two major amnesty provisions legal status was granted to nearly 3 million undocumented individuals, nearly all of whom were low-skilled workers, and millions more have subsequently been able to immigrate as their relatives. It is noteworthy that while in 1986 the word “amnesty” was used outright, in the current political debate the “A” word is anathema to the proponents of what is euphemistically called “earned legalization.” This by itself is testimony to public perception of the failures of the 1986 Act.

Can the 'snowball effect' of low-skilled immigrants be reversed? Yes, but only with substantial change in immigration policy. In testimony before a previous Congress, Dr. Chiswick — a University of Illinois at Chicago economist with international expertise in researching the economics of immigration and minorities — argued that the 'current legal immigration system is not serving the best economic interests of the United States', and recommended these among several changes to legal immigration policies:

• end the "nepotism" immigration policy system that encourages low-skilled workers to bring extended family to the U.S.; and
• replace it with "skills-based" immigration policies, such as those adopted by Canada, Australia and New Zealand, that give preference to immigrants who are most likely — by their age, schooling, technical training and proficiency — to add value and strength to the U.S. economy and tax revenues (rather than drain from them).

Don't expect such economy-boosting policy changes to be made in the next four years, however.

What will Mainstream Media Do Now?

With the election over, MSM will now be forced to report serious issues they largely covered up during the campaign. IBD lists a few of the stories MSM will soon "discover."

The economy really does stink.

The press studiously ignored the ongoing economic catastrophe under Obama, while parading any "green shoot" they could find that suggested growth was around the corner.

Don't be surprised if, after the election, they start to notice that three years of subpar growth have left the middle class further behind and more mired in poverty, and created a vast pool of long-term unemployed.

Massive debt and entitlement crisis loom.

Despite four straight years of $1 trillion-plus deficits and a national debt that now exceeds total GDP, the media largely treated the debt crisis with a collective yawn.

Ditto the looming bankruptcy of Medicare and Social Security. These crises are nevertheless real and will have to be dealt with soon, a fact the press will almost certainly acknowledge after Nov. 6.

The debt ceiling is fast approaching.

The Treasury Dept. warned last week that it expects the government to reach its borrowing limit before the end of the year. Congress and the White House will have to deal with that just as they're trying to avoid the fiscal cliff.

ObamaCare is fundamentally flawed.

Reports are sure to appear pointing out the law's lack of cost controls, its adverse impact on doctors and hospitals, and the fact that, after spending $1.76 trillion, it will still leave 30 million uninsured.

Obama's deficit cutting plan won't work.

The press let the president get away with one of the biggest whoppers yet — that his tax hikes on "the rich" would be enough to pay for his spending binge and bring down the deficit $4 trillion. Obama's own budget proved this wasn't the case. And after the election, you can bet the media will be "shocked" to find that his numbers didn't add up.

Questions about Benghazi still remain.

After almost two full months spent burying the Benghazi story, expect the mainstream press to wake up and notice that, as the Washington Post admitted in an editorial last Friday, "a host of unanswered questions" remains. So far, only Fox News has bothered to pursue this story, but we expect that other outlets will pick up on it after the elections.

Conservatives: Don't Panic

After Mitt Romney's loss, there's been plenty of talk about how demographic trends will require Republicans to move to the center if they want to capture the White House, writes John Merline at IBD. What's missing from all this handwringing is the fact that conservatives today account for a bigger share of voters than they did when Reagan won his 1980 landslide.

He uses exit polling data to make these points:

• The country remains center-right:  In 1980, 32% of voters were conservative, according to exit polls at the time. By 1996, when Clinton won reelection, that share had risen to 33%. This year, exit polls show that 35% of voters are conservative, far more than 25% who identify themselves as liberal. The share of moderates has remained relatively steady at 40% to 45%.
• Voters haven't suddenly decided they love big government. Voters who say government is doing too much climbed from 43% in 2008 to 51% in 2012. 
• This election exposed a glaring disconnect between voters' ideology and the person they picked to run the country.  51% say the federal government is too big and does too much, 52% said the country is seriously off track; 63% said taxes should not be raised to help cut the deficit; and almost half want ObamaCare repealed either in whole or in part. Yet substantial portions of these conservative-leaning voters actually cast their ballots for Obama, the one candidate who opposes them on each of these issues.

Concludes Merline:

All this suggests that if conservatives want to win presidential elections, they don't need to dust off their "compassionate conservative" hats, or make peace with high taxes and an intrusive federal state.

They do, however, need to learn how to communicate with today's voters and help them understand how a limited federal government and a thriving private sector will deliver unmatched prosperity to everyone.

Read the full article here, and bookmark Investor's Business Daily for always reliably insightful articles.

Forbes: Can 'Feminine' Women Make it To The Top?

Caroline Turner at Forbes explores the three forms of being feminine—looking feminine; acting girlish or seductive; and working and leading in feminine ways—and how each may or may not contribute to success in the business world.  She also links to a Stanford study with interesting insights...
 

"English Majors Are Exactly Who I'm Looking For"

Michael Moore's article in the WSJ will bring a smile to humanities majors.

A few months back I invited a friend to speak in front of my professional writing class. Santosh Jayaram is the quintessential Silicon Valley high-tech entrepreneur: tech-savvy, empirical, ferociously competitive, and a veteran of Google, Twitter and a new start-up, Dabble. Afraid that he would simply run over my writing students, telling them to switch majors before it was too late, I asked him not to crush the kids' hopes any more than they already were.

Santosh said, "Are you kidding? English majors are exactly the people I'm looking for."

Planned Parenthood Does Not Offer Mammograms

"Operating mammogram machines without a license is a violation of federal law," writes Senior Counsel Casey Mattox of the Alliance Defending Freedom, "and in response to an Alliance Defending Freedom request, the Department of Health and Human Services verified that Planned Parenthood has no such licenses."

DHHS verification here.