A Texas law supported by Republican presidential candidate and Texas Governor Rick Perry to provide in-state tuition for children of illegal immigrants when they attend college has gotten a lot of attention recently. It was the primary focus of several heated exchanges at last night’s debate and was widely criticized on Twitter as well, but Perry’s opponents and the media are giving an inaccurate picture of the law and its effects. First of all, here’s a review of what the law actually entails. Texas law permits a child who has lived in the state of Texas for at least three years and graduated from a state high school to qualify for in-state tuition at a Texas college or university, on the condition that the child agrees to pursue full citizenship. Now let’s look at how many students qualified under this rule. According to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, in FY2010, 16,476 students qualified for in-state tuition under TEC 54.052(a)(3), the Texas statue governing this program. That number represents only one percent of total enrollment in Texas public universities; community, technical, and state colleges; and public health-related institutions. Only one-percent. One-percent. The likes of Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and others would have you believe it was a program run amok where these students were defrauding a system, unfairly taking advantage of this status, and ruining higher education for every other Texan. In a state with more than a million students in public institutions of higher learning, 16,476 students is a drop in the bucket. Despite what you may be lead to believe, this was not a highly partisan bill that narrowly squeaked by on a tight party-line vote in the Texas legislature. In fact, only four legislators voted against the measure. The national media, and those politicians from outside the state of Texas may be quick to criticize this law and label it as extremist, but in reality it’s not. This program makes a difference by offering these kids a helping hand to a quality education they may not receive otherwise. It does not destroy the ability of other Texas to get into school. In the end, it doesn’t even make a significant impact on the budgets of these colleges and universities. For instance, the Permanent University Fund that supports the flagship universities in Texas gets a substantial portion of its money from oil. They own an immense amount of land in West Texas and that land happens to be rich in black gold, pumping reliable dollars into the coffers of these schools. Tuition only makes up about a quarter of their overall funding. These students have lived in Texas, some the required three years, some nearly their entire lives. As part of this program students must have graduated from a Texas high school, most likely a public one, paid for in part by the state. Shouldn’t they have the chance to receive the same services at the rate that other students who graduated from a Texas high school do? These children should not be punished for the illegal acts of their parents. Many families risk life and limb to get to America so their children can have the opportunity to attend college and achieve the American dream. It may not be true in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, or Minnesota, but in Texas there are a high number of Hispanic immigrants, some of whom are illegal. The means by which they’re allowed to slip past a border all but neglected by the federal government is for another conversation, but the fact remains that they are here and serve as valued members of the community, and are an integral part of the Texas culture. Hispanics are not political pawns to be thrown around by candidates seeking to score cheap political points by demagoguing an entire race. Besides the fact that Republicans will be shut out of power for ages to come if they alienate Hispanics, it’s entirely inappropriate and un-American to punish the children of immigrants who may have fled their dysfunctional, failing, or dangerous homeland for a better life here in America. These are students who only get this in-state tuition rate if they commit to becoming legal citizens. Their tuition isn’t waived altogether, it’s just provided at the rate that every other Texas resident pays. Now I’m not lobbying for blanket amnesty, and neither was Rick Perry – he’s on record opposing the federal DREAM Act – but the picture of this legislation painted by his opponents in this election is entirely inaccurate. I’m sure someone from the Romney camp will read this and use his favorite line these days, “nice try,” but the statistics show this for what it truly is, a program that does not punish these students, these future citizens, whose parents came to this country illegally. Instead it helps them become educated, productive citizens of these United States. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.
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Rick Perry Is Right on In-State Tuition for Immigrants in Texas
[Guest post by Lee Stranahan] There’s been a lot of media fallout from Andrew Breitbart’s appearance last week on the Fox Business News show Stossel where he confronted Pigford mastermind Al Pires. I’ve already pointed out how Media Matters prevaricator Adam Shah deceptively edited the piece by removing any reference to the black farmers who have been trying to expose Pigford fraud for over a decade. It seems like MMFA actually helped give the story more exposure. Two things happened that I consider fairly significant. First, the story was covered last night on The O’Reilly Factor, bringing the story of the Pigford fraud to Bill O’Reilly large audience for the first time. O’Reilly seems to understand that there’s a real story here and although there are certainly points I would’ve made differently had I been a guest (hint hint) the exposure is great. The other thing is happened is that some large liberal sites have begun to pick up on the story. I’d already mentioned Raw Story but now add Crooks and Liars to the mix . Looking at the statistics on the site it seems that about 8000 people over there watched the C&L edit of the original John Stossel piece. Now, Crooks and Liars is a site whether readers really hate Andrew Breitbart. The headline of their story was ” Breitbart gets pwned by ‘Pigford’ attorney, targeted in his latest smear campaign” so they don’t even pretend to be objective in any way. But a funny thing happened. The performance by Al Pires was so bad that a number of commenters on C&L were actually forced to look beyond their Breitbart hate and realize that Al Pires was actually the one who was ‘pwned’ in this appearance. Here are a few of examples of comments… It looked like Breitbart did the slapping at the end and I hate the the guy. The lawyer had to sit there and take a beating at the end and that is just a fact. And How do you get that Pires came out looking good here? He answers serious questions with insults and when the subject of whether he lied about his compensation comes up he ends the interview. he made Breitbart look sane and reasonable. No mean feat. And I’m all for watching Breitbart get the hell knocked out of him, but honestly It looked like they won to me. I see these kinds of posts quite a bit. There are always claims that someone got pwned or really showed them what was what. Really, Stossel and Breitbart won that. That lawyer was effectively set up to look like a money grubbing, snake oil salesman. I want to see the left beat the lies, but really… this was a huge loss. He presented no real facts and always looked like he was desperately trying to deflect accusations of fraud by Breitbart. I just don’t understand how anyone saw that clip as a “win for the left.” If the right is good at anything, it’s making us look like exactly what they want the narrative to be. They are masters of that. I consider this a turning point that might actually make a few people on the left start to notice the story and realize that there’s more to it than the lies they are being spoon fed by the USDA and left-wing media. – Lee Stranahan
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Is Pigford At A Media Turning Point?
[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here . Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.] So as you might have noticed the Donald has moved from demanding Obama’s birth certificate to demanding Obama’s transcripts, saying at one point that he wanted to know how Obama got into these good school given he was allegedly not a great student. Now bear in mind, Combover also claimed that the long-form birth certificate was missing or destroyed, so whatever his sources are, they are unreliable. But as Ace pointed out , Chris Matthews sees racism in all of this. From his transcript last night: MATTHEWS: Here‘s Trump yesterday. Let him talk. We will let him talk from New Hampshire. It won‘t be too informative, but here he is. Let‘s listen to Donald Trump. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DONALD TRUMP, TRUMP ORGANIZATION: I think if he wants to release it, that‘s fine. And if he doesn‘t want to release it, that‘s fine, too. But the word is—you know, you think you‘d want to release it, actually, because the word is he wasn‘t a good student and he ended up getting into Columbia and Harvard. QUESTION: Whose word? TRUMP: And I‘d like to know—I‘d like to know—well, this is what I read written by some of the people in this room. I‘d like to know, how does he get into Harvard, how does he get into Columbia if he isn‘t a good student? It‘s an interesting thing. (END VIDEO CLIP) MATTHEWS: How do you take that, Clarence? PAGE: I think he‘s got his presidents mixed up. He‘s talking about George Bush. (LAUGHTER) MATTHEWS: The legacy (INAUDIBLE) PAGE: But no, I‘ll tell you how black folks feel about it. It sounds like he‘s saying he‘s an Affirmative Action baby. MATTHEWS: Yes. And they go on. But not fifteen minutes later, he says this, when talking with Jonathan Alter: MATTHEWS: Well, what about Trump? What about—Trump… (CROSSTALK) MATTHEWS: … saying now, Donald Trump is now questioning his application to Harvard… ALTER: Well, of course. MATTHEWS: … and Harvard Law and to Columbia, that he didn‘t really deserve to get in. You would never say that about a white person. Right off the street, you wouldn‘t say it. ALTER: Right. This is race. This is race, Chris. You got that? No one would ever question how a white president got into a good school. I mean besides Clarence Page and Chris Matthews earlier that evening. Hey do you want to see Matthews do this? Click on the image and it will take you to the Right Scoop, which put together the video: And indeed, Chris Matthews wasn’t alone. Aa google search would reveal a lot more examples of accusing Bush of not deserving admission to Yale or Harvard. For instance, Michael Kinsley, writing in Cnn accused Bush of receiving “ Affirmative Action ” in 2003: They may not have had an explicit point system at Yale in 1964, but Bush clearly got in because of affirmative action. Affirmative action for the son and grandson of alumni. Affirmative action for a member of a politically influential family. Affirmative action for a boy from a fancy prep school. These forms of affirmative action still go on. And I can say having gone to Yale Law that they explicitly had a legacy policy, and an affirmative action policy. If memory serves, so did Harvard (no, I didn’t get in there). Now obviously a person who is white, male, straight, non-disabled and protestant is not likely to ever be accused of receiving affirmative action, except as a tongue-in-cheek word for “legacy.” But that is because of the simple reality that affirmative action is not available to them. So if there is racial discrimination there, it is in the affirmative action program itself. And I do support, in a limited sense, affirmative action. But before I delve into that, let me take a moment to make a full disclosure because it really shows where I am coming from on this. First, I have no legacy or “blue blood” to speak of. Indeed, when my grandfather, whose parents had “crossed the pond” from Scotland before he was born, learned I was going to Yale, he could hardly believe it. It was unimaginable when he was young. On the other hand, I might have benefitted from affirmative action. It’s a little uncomfortable to talk about because I have complicated feelings about achievement. If you spend almost a third of your life having hidden learning disabilities that you don’t even know about, it does a serious number on your self-esteem. For instance, I usually don’t talk about my grades in college, and wouldn’t here, except it’s about to be really relevant. As I have said before, because of my disabilities I faced severe discrimination in high school. I’m not talking about a failure to accommodate, but active discrimination. I dropped out and didn’t try to get an education for years later. As a result I had to go to a lower tier state school. So then I discover that my LSAT score (more or less the SAT of law schools) was higher than the average for students at every law school in America , and my GPA was a perfect 4.0, I saw that I was literally in the running to be any school I might apply to. (Which with my messed up self-esteem really threw me for a loop.) The only thing that was a black mark on my transcript was the lack of prestige in my undergraduate school. I was concerned they would hold that against me. But especially when it came to the big three—Yale, Harvard and Stanford–I didn’t want to disclose the fact I had these disabilities. It wasn’t the pride of avoiding affirmative action so much as fear of discrimination. But long story short, I had no choice but to reveal the fact I had those disabilities and therefore I tried to take that lemon and make lemonade. So I said, diplomatically, that yes, my undergraduate school was not the most prestigious, but countered that concern in three ways. First, I pointed out that given that discrimination I faced, I didn’t have many options. Second, I pointed out that given all that discrimination what I had achieved was more impressive than you would normally think. And third, I pointed out that given I had that perfect GPA, I literally couldn’t have done better at my undergraduate school. So literally they had no idea what I could have achieved a “better” school.* So that is asking for a “plus,” a bonus, based on the fact I was disabled. That is affirmative action. And I am fine with that. And I was definitely thinking of my own life experience when I wrote this when talking about affirmative action in regards to a police department: Now one of the ways I am center-right, instead of being right wing down the line is that I support, in a limited sense, affirmative action. I think that a little affirmative action in providing opportunities is just fine. The problem I have is when it is applied to outcomes. So if a law school wants to use affirmative action to provide a person an opportunity they otherwise wouldn’t have had, I am fine with that (within reason). But on the other hand, when its time to choose who is going to be given a gun and the right to shoot people, I am not such a fan of affirmative action. And to sketch it out a little more, here’s what I said about DeStaphano v. Ricci, where New Haven was about to throw out test schools because too many white people passed. After arguing that more than likely the black firefighters scored lower because of reasons that might have been related to racial discrimination in society as a whole, I write: Now, in all of those possibilities it is still the case that as of this day, the best scorers on the test are likely the best firefighters, and if there is any discrimination to blame, it is not the test itself, but forces outside of the test itself. And however much we might lament those outside forces (and I do) and the wasted potential, the fact is if your house is burning down, do you want the guy who would have been a great firefighter but for discrimination that keeps him from acquiring the knowledge to be a great firefighter, or the guy who is right now a great firefighter? The question answers itself. It also suggests that rather than taking the easy way out by quotas and the like that New Haven can and probably should engage in an aggressive program of developing African American firefighters to their fullest potential. So the affirmative action should be there, in the form of affirmatively finding black potential and developing it. Rather than ignoring what are more likely than not real differences in knowledge and ability, New Haven should instead work to erase those actual differences. Which is indeed what is so pernicious about the de facto quota they tried to establish here—it would have allowed New Haven to ignore the underlying reasons for the disparity, rather than address and correct them. It doesn’t do the people of New Haven or the black firefighters themselves any favors if they are promoted when they don’t deserve it. Feel free to disagree with me, but that’s where I think affirmative action is justified. And so I can see a very real possibility that if Obama received affirmative action, it might have been justified. Or it might have been just a crude band aid ignoring the real problems. And you might rationally disagree with me. You might even feel that it was justified in my case because it was based on very specific facts, but it wouldn’t be when they just apply a blanket “bonus” to all black people without any attempt to determine if they personally faced discrimination. But what Matthews and his ilk want to do is say that affirmative action is so self-evidently good and right that only a bigot would question it. But in fact even when supporting it there are questions. Like for instance, do hispanics get affirmative action? How about gay people? How about Jews? How about Asian Americans? Some of the biggest opponents of affirmative action I know are Asian Americans, in part certainly because it often favors black people and hispanics and not them. And it’s worth noting that Asian Americans have cause to be pissed. I don’t believe anyone in this day and age would claim that Asian Americans are dumber or lazier than white people, on average. If anything people stereotype them as smart and industrious (and thus some kind of yellow menace). But as Frank Wu documented in his book “Yellow”… …Asian Americans have to work harder and have more degrees to achieve the same pay as a similarly situated white person.** When confronting the statistics in Wu’s book (the first few chapters are the only ones really worth reading), it is impossible to escape the conclusion that bigotry against Asian Americans exists and has a serious financial (if not emotional) impact. So they are right to be mad if affirmative action is granted to black people and hispanics and not them. And you might even rationally think that all this racial discrimination is just too poisonous, even if well intentioned, to justify it. It certainly can’t be denied that it is rancorous. And this is what Mickey Kaus wrote recently on Al Sharpton’s attempt to shut down debate over Obama’s affirmative action: What’s wrong with having a debate over affirmative action? Is Sharpton saying African-Americans don’t get into Ivy League schools because of affirmative action? If not, then what’s the point of having it? The biggest problem with race preferences is that they taint the achievements, not just of those who benefit from them, but of everyone in the beneficiary group–even those who would have gotten into the college or gotten the job, etc., without the preference. That is an unfairness Obama may acutely feel. Race preferences are a big reason blacks feel they have to be twice as good as everyone else to measure up in society’s eyes–which is a powerful argument for ending the preferences. The amazing thing isn’t that we would have a debate on this divisive issue now but that Obama’s been able to duck it for so long[.] So reasonable minds can disagree on this, and we should be free to discuss it freely. But like with many topics, that’s not how many on the left want to deal with it. Their approach is shut up, they explained. And the apparent way to do so is to claim that to even hint that Obama might have received affirmative action is racist. So when Trump said that Obama “undoubtedly benefited from affirmative action” in his academic career, that was supposedly racist in the eyes of Chris Matthews and pals. Oh, except Trump didn’t say that. Obama did . Which exposes just how silly all of this really is. But then again, I have said before that Matthews’ real problem is that he himself is race-obsessed and he can’t imagine anyone thinking differently from him. Of course in the end it’s all over a silly thing. Yes, three years ago the press should have hectored Obama into releasing his transcript, but that was because we were trying at that point to estimate how good a president he would be. Now we have seen how good a president he has been for the past couple years, and really, we don’t need to guess anymore. A couple people criticized me for giving the birth certificate any attention at all, on the theory that we should focus solely on his work as president. I will respectfully disagree when the subject is his constitutional eligibility to be president (noting again, I believe he is in fact constitutionally eligible). But when the subject is about purely whether he should keep his job, it’s absolutely correct to say the most important information is what he has done on the job so far. Seriously, unless he took a course in college called “How to Win the Presidency and then Drive America into the Ground in Eight Years” I doubt anything in his transcripts will be particularly relevant. Then again, if he did take that course it would explain a lot . [Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]
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Chris Matthews: No One Would Ever Question How a White President Got Into Harvard (Besides Matthews)
Leftist-propaganda hardest hit. (JPost) — Palestinians who work in settlements in the West Bank are paid twice as much as those who are employed by other Palestinians, according to figures released on Thursday by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. The figures showed that although the Palestinian Authority has banned Palestinians from working in settlements, 14.2 percent of employed Arabs from the West Bank worked in settlements in 2010, an increase by 1 percentage point from the previous year. According to the Statistics Bureau, the nominal daily median net wage of Palestinians who worked in the West Bank was NIS 76.9 in 2010, while those who were employed in settlements received NIS 150 per day. The bureau’s Labor Force Survey showed that the Palestinian unemployment rate in the West Bank last year stood at more than 17%, while in the Gaza Strip it reached almost 38%.
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Evil Joooo Alert: Palestinians Working in West Bank Settlements Earn Double…
It what may make for significant changes in investments foreign for the Chinese, property holdings in Beijing drop 27% in one month – Could the Chinese monetary tightening be working? The National Bureau of Statistics has released its latest food price update for the period April 1-10, which shows that while most foods continue to rise
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Chinese RE Bubble Pops
