Copyright © 2006 Joseph George Caldwell. All rights reserved. Posted at Internet website http://www.foundationwebsite.org. May be copied or reposted for non-commercial use, with attribution to author and website. (14 December 2006)
Contents
Miscellany: Commentary on Recent Events and Reading. 2
Hormone Therapy Causes Breast Cancer 2
US Leaders Are Proclaimed Idiots. 10
Medical Insurance for Zero Cost! 11
The Cost of a Border Fence?. 16
Illegal Aliens Kill More Americans than Die in Iraq War 19
Partition Iraq – An Idea Whose Time Has Come. 21
Does Anyone Remember the Gillette Blue-Blades Theme Song?. 22
The December 15, 2006, issue of the Spartanburg Herald Journal presented an article (by Marilynn Marchione of the Associated Press) entitled, “Breast cancer rate plummets.” It seems that in 2002, a medical study reported that taking menopause hormones, such as estrogen, raised the risk of breast tumors. In 2003, one year later, US breast cancer rates dropped by a remarkable seven percent. The study does not prove a link between hormone therapy and breast cancer, but strongly suggests it (just as the higher risk of lung cancer for cigarette smokers does not “prove” that smoking causes lung cancer).
The real tragedy in this is that, in most cases, the hormone therapy was intended simply to delay the effects of aging, or to ameliorate the “hot flashes” associated with the onset of menopause. It was elective and discretionary, for cosmetic purposes. Not at all worth dying for.
This is not the first time that medical science has made a terrible mistake. When I was young, women were encouraged to have regular breast X-rays, or “mammograms,” as a means of detecting breast cancer. After several years, it was determined that the X-rays had caused more cancer than they had detected.
Everyone is going to grow old, and everyone is going to die. You can’t cheat Death, and you can’t fool Mother Nature.
The Public Broadcasting System’s Frontline television program last week aired a segment about Wal-Mart, and its practice of buying cheap goods from China. This is the same firm, believe it or not, that just a little while ago had a major ad campaign based on “Buy American.”
The program was very informative. One thing that seemed a little strange, however, is that people seem to be blaming Wal-Mart, because of its large-scale buying and selling of foreign goods, for the destruction of American manufacturing and loss of high-paying jobs for middle-class American workers. Wal-Mart is not at all to blame for either of these events. They are a direct cause of the US policy of massive international free trade. With this policy, American workers are forced to compete with Third-World workers earning about 30-50 cents per hour, compared to their 10-20 dollars per hour.
America could pay its workers a good wage fifty years ago, when it was virtually the world’s sole modern manufacturing country. With its machines, it could produce many goods that no one else could, at very low cost (its productivity was very high because of the machines). Now that this technology has been given to the rest of the world, it is no longer possible, under a program of massive international free trade, for US workers to earn any more than foreign workers. The only way that US workers may continue to earn high wages is if the US would impose tariffs to offset the low wage rates of Third-World countries.
Economists decry doing this, because it is “inefficient.” More goods can be produced for the same cost, or the same amount of goods can be produced for less cost, under free trade. Economists say that everyone is therefore better off. This, however, is a lie. Everyone is not better off. Some are better off (e.g., workers in Third-World countries), and some are much worse off (e.g., American workers). On average, there are more goods per person under free trade, but the high-wage earners cannot continue to earn more than the low-wage earners, once the low-wage earners have access to the same machines of production, ceteris paribus. So, under free trade, the wages of middle-class American workers will fall, and their quality of life will decrease.
This has already happened to a great degree. When I was young, in the 1950s, a typical US worker could support his family, earning sufficient wages to purchase a home and car, educate his children, provide for their health care, and have his wife stay at home. Today, that lifestyle is no longer possible for the typical US wage earner. Now, because of massive international free trade, it is necessary for both spouses to work, and it is likely that many of today’s families will never own their own home. Real wages of US workers are falling. If you divide the median family income by the number of working people in the family, you will see that US income is in fact about half of what it is reported to be.
Why would America adopt a policy that is destroying the quality of life for its middle class? Because it is very profitable for the wealthy elite, who own the country. Under massive international free trade, US business owners have a market of six billion people, instead of a few hundred million. They do not care that the wages of US workers are being gradually driven to the wage levels of Third World countries. They do not care that American manufacturing capacity is being destroyed, and that American jobs are being outsourced to foreign countries. Under massive international free trade, there can be many more billionaires than otherwise would be possible, because the global economy is larger (since, on average, economic activity is stimulated, global wages improve – on average – and people are able to buy more goods), and the US has unimpeded access to these markets. The only way to protect US middle-class wages in a global economy is to impose tariffs that offset the low wages of Third-World countries. Whenever workers ask for this, economists blast away that “everyone will be worse off.” What a lie! American workers would be much better off. True, the cost of consumer goods would be higher than it would otherwise have to be (because of the included tariffs), but the American worker would be able to retain his high wages – and he buys more than cheap consumer goods!
The only segments of our economy that are immune from decreasing wages because of massive international free trade are service industries in which the service must be provided locally, such as the medical industry, the legal industry, the construction industry, and other local personal services. Under the US system of medical insurance, the US government assures doctors of million-dollar salaries, much of it paid for by tax dollars (Medicare, Medicaid). This insidious system has driven the cost of medical care to such astronomical levels that most US workers can no longer afford coverage (costing an average family about a thousand dollars a month), unless their employer pays for the insurance. Under massive international free trade, however, many firms cannot afford to pay a thousand dollars a month for workers’ medical insurance and compete with foreign firms in low-wage countries. As a result, many US firms have dropped medical insurance as a benefit, and, at the present time 47 million US workers no longer have medical insurance.
Some firms are trying to stay alive by hiring illegal aliens, who are willing to work for very low wages. This approach works mainly for firms engaged in low-wage activities, such as agriculture, construction or fast-food stores, and, once again, only for services that are provided locally and cannot be outsourced to foreign countries.
So, the next time you hear people criticizing Wal-Mart for destroying American manufacturing and depressing the wages of the American middle class, please correct them. This is indeed happening, but it is not Wal-Mart that is causing it. Wal-Mart is simply trying to operate as efficiently as it can, completely legally, in the massive-international-free-trade environment that the US government has imposed on the country. It is not Wal-Mart that has sold the American worker down the river – it is his own plutocratic government, that has sold its soul to the wealthy-elite oligarchs who own the country.
Also, the next time you hear someone say that massive international free trade is good for everyone, take him to task. Tell him that it is not good for everyone. It is good on average, but it is very bad for the high-wage worker in the US who is now placed in direct competition with low-wage-earning workers in foreign countries. NAFTA and CAFTA may have been “good for everyone,” in the sense that they increase economic efficiency and total economic production, but they are very bad for the US worker whose income ultimately must fall to the levels of the workers in Mexico and Central America with whom he must now compete. Most workers would rather continue to pay what they did in previous years for consumer goods (which are just one component of expenditures), and keep their high wages, than to be made dirt-poor and be offered low-priced consumer goods that they cannot now afford, even at their lower levels.
The PBS Frontline program discussed a business practice of Wal-Mart’s in which it buys in large quantities from a supplier, and then, after the supplier has scaled up his operations and is very dependent on Wal-Mart and vulnerable, Wal-Mart dictates a lower price, sometimes so low that the supplier is driven out of business. The example given on the program was the case of Rubbermaid.
But this is nothing new. My late father-in-law was vice president of a department-store chain that competed with Sears & Roebuck. He described how Sears would do exactly the same thing as Wal-Mart is now accused of doing – giving much business to a supplier, motivating his to expand, and then forcing him to lower his prices or go out of business. That was in the 1950s and 1960s. Once again, this practice was and is perfectly legal, even if it is not admirable. If the supplier firm chooses to expand so fast that it becomes crucially dependent on Sears’ or Wal-Mart’s business, that is its decision.
Massive international free trade is destroying American manufacturing capacity, and is destroying the good quality of life of the American middle class. To see how dramatic this effect is, it is interesting to cite some figures presented by the Frontline program. A reporter was interviewing an official at the Port of Long Beach, in California. The official observed that last year, China imported 36 billion dollars worth of goods through Long Beach, whereas the US exported only three billion dollars worth. What was far worse, however, was the nature of the imports and exports. China’s imports to the US were manufactured goods, whereas the US’ exports to China were raw materials, such as cotton. This is incredible! The hallmark of an underdeveloped country is that it exports raw materials and imports finished products. The US has a 230 billion dollar trade deficit with China this year, and we have lost one million manufacturing jobs to China recently.
The US is finished! And why? Because its leaders are venal, greedy men, who care nothing for their country or their fellow countrymen. They have adopted the policy of massive international free trade and put our workers, making 10-20 dollars per hour, in direct competition with Third-World workers making 20-50 cents per hour. Economists told them that everyone would be better off on average, but they did not bother to emphasize, because it did not matter to them, that some people – namely, American middle-class workers – would be much worse off. The only Americans who would be better off would be the wealthy elite, who own the factories in foreign countries.
By its policy of massive international free trade, the US government has converted the US into a Third-World country. It has lost much manufacturing capacity, and is heavy into export of basic commodities, such as agricultural products. It is knowingly destroying the quality of life for its middle class – not just in terms of a decline in real wages, but by having brought about the necessity of both spouses having to work in the competitive labor market. When King George III of England ignored the plight of American workers, they rebelled and staged a revolution. The US government and its controllers should take heed.
When I was young, many things were of much better quality than they are today.
When I purchased my first two new homes, in the 1960s, both had hardwood floors throughout. If a house was carpeted, it still had hardwood floors underneath the carpet. In today’s homes, carpeted area is over cheap plywood, not hardwood.
One of these two homes had wet plaster walls. Now, all but the most expensive homes have drywall construction. If you have ever lived in a home with wet plaster walls, you will be amazed at how quiet each room is.
The quality of furniture has plummeted. When I was first married (1950s, 1960s), we bought only walnut furniture. Our favorite was Benbow Reproductions. Mrs. Benbow operated a small, family-owned furniture factory in North Carolina. She had a single carpenter who coordinated everything, with help from apprentices. The cost of the items was reasonable, e.g., $300 for a corner cabinet or bureau. We also bought from E. A. Clore Sons furniture in Madison, Virginia, another small family-owned and operated business.
Because of mass immigration, it was soon not possible for everyone to have quality furniture at a reasonable price. Soon, all of the walnut was gone, and so the furniture manufacturers switched to cherry. Then, all of the cherry was gone, and the manufacturers switched to mahogany – a wood previously scorned as an unacceptable foreign product. Then, there was a massive increase in the amount of veneer – a thin layer of an expensive hardwood, such as mahogany or rosewood or teak, over a “base” wood.
Economists say that this is fine. That is does not matter if mass demand causes the exhaustion of a resource. As the resource is exhausted, continuing demand will cause the price to go up, stimulating more production of the resource. But this never happens. All that happens is that the first resource is exterminated, and society moves on to consume all of the next one, of lesser quality.
The same thing happens with fish. After all of the redfish are gone (after the “blackened redfish” fad), there is simply no more blackened redfish on the menu, at any price. It is gone, period.
When I was young, many working-class families could afford to have a farm, or a vacation home nearby, in the mountains on a river or lake or the ocean. Now, with so many people in the US, having a home on a nearby lake is a privilege reserved for the wealthy. Through its policy of mass immigration, the US government has pushed the US population to extreme levels, so that the quality of life has been severely degraded. Long commute times, overcrowding, smog, and loss of nature have been a direct result of the government’s perverse population policies, which degrade the quality of life for the average person, while benefiting only the wealthy. Overcrowding and traffic are now so severe that Americans are no longer civil, and “road rage” is common.
Perhaps there is a millionaire somewhere who can maintain his own private stand of walnut trees and still have solid walnut furniture. But for the average person, such as I was at one time, it is no longer possible to have quality furniture for a reasonable price. This loss of quality is a direct result of there being far too many people in the US and on the planet.
I heard an interesting report on the news the other day, that many electronic goods are now being imported from China with fake Underwriters Laboratory (UL) certification labels on them. That’s hardly surprising behavior from the Chinese, and it is just one more example of how low quality has fallen.
On CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight program, host Lou Dobbs is becoming more and more frustrated with the US government’s policies on immigration, free trade, and the war in Iraq. He now routinely refers to US government leaders as idiots. To some extent, he is on the mark – many of them are very stupid.
But many of them are not as stupid, however, as they appear to be. Lou Dobbs criticizes them for taking actions that hurt the middle class, and he calls their behavior idiotic with respect to the goal of maintaining a good quality of life for the middle class. But that is not at all their goal. The US government is a plutocracy, dedicated to generating income and wealth for the wealthy oligarchs who own and run the country. Those people – the wealthy elite – do not care if two million illegal aliens enter the country each year, because that is good for business. They do not care if New Orleans is destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, because reconstructing New Orleans means lots of fat construction contracts. They do not care that the World Trade Center is destroyed by Moslem terrorists, because they will be given large construction projects to rebuild. They do not care that we are losing a thousand young men and women each year in the war in Iraq, because they can sell a billion dollars worth of military supplies and equipment to the government each year, in support of the war.
No, Lou, those people are not the idiots that they appear to be. They are venal, evil men, doing what works for them and for the wealthy elite to whom they are beholden, and it is not what works for the American middle class – or for the preservation of the biosphere!
I was approached a short while ago by an offer that really surprised me. The offer was that if I would purchase a Medicare supplement insurance package for my wife, the premiums would be zero! Initially, this sounded too good to be true. But it is true! The Medicare business is now so lucrative that the medical providers are now willing to absorb the cost of your premiums, just in order to bill the government their wildly inflated fees and expenses for their services and pharmaceuticals. (The insurance company makes its fees from processing claims, which are now wildly inflated.)
The September 4, 2006, issue of Time magazine contains an article by Claudia Wallis, entitled, “The Myth about Homework: Think hours of slogging are helping your child make the grade” Think again.” Here is an excerpt from that article.
Sachem was the last straw. Or was it kiva? My 12-year-old daughter and I had been drilling social-studies key Words for more than an hour. It was 11 p.m. Our entire evening had, as usual, consisted of homework and conversations (a.k.a. nagging) about homework. She was tired and fed up. I was tired and fed up. The words wouldn't stick. They meant nothing to her. They didn't mean much to me either. After all, when have I ever used sachem in a sentence-until just now?
As the summer winds down, I'm dreading scenes like that one from seventh grade. Already the carefree August nights have given way to meaningful conversations (a.k.a. nagging) about the summer reading that didn't get done. So what could be more welcome than two new books assailing this bane of modern bane of modern life: The Homework Myth (Da Capo Press; 243 pages), by Alfie Kohn, the prolific, perpetual critic of today's test-driven scbools, and The Case Against Homework (Crown; 290 pages) a cri de coeur by two moms, lawyer Sara Bennett and journalist Nancy Kalish.
Both books cite studies, surveys, statistics, along with some hair-raising anecdotes, on how a rising tide of dull, useless assignments is oppressing families and making kids hate learning. A few highlights from the books and my own investigation:
· According to a 2004 national survey of 2,900 American children conducted by the University of Michigan, the amount of time spent on homework is up 51% since 1981.
· Most of that increase reflects bigger loads for little kids. An academic study found that whereas students ages 6 to 8 did an average of 52 min. of homework a week in 1981, they were toiling 138 min. weekly by 1997. And that's before No Child Left Behind kicked in. An admittedly less scientific poll of parents conducted this vear for AOL and the Associated Press found that elementary school students were averaging 78 min. a night.
· The onslaught comes despite the fact the an exhaustive review by the nation's top homework scholar, Duke University's Harris Cooper, concluded that homework does not measurably improve academic achievement for kids in grade school. That's right: all the sweat and tears do not make Johnny a better reader or mathematician.
· Too much homework brings diminishing returns. Cooper's analysis of dozens of studies found that kids who do some homework in middle and high school score somewhat better on standardized tests, but doing more than 60 to 90 min. a night in middle school and more than 2 hr. in high school is associated with, gulp, lower scores.
· Teachers in many of the nations that outperform the U. S. on student achievement tests-such as Japan, Denmark and the Czech Republic-tend to assign less homework than American teachers, but instructors in low-scoring countries like Greece, Thailand and Iran tend to pile it on.
Success on standardized tests is, of course, only one measure of learning – and only one purported goal of homework. Educators, including Cooper, tend to defend homework by saying it builds study habits, self-discipline and time-management skills. But there's also evidence that homework sours kids' attitudes toward school. "It's one thing to say we are wasting kids' time and straining parent-kid relationships," Kohn told me, "but what's unforgivable is if homework is damaging our kids' interest in learning, undermining their curiosity:'
Kohn's solution is radical: he wants a no-homework policy to become the default, with exceptions for tasks like interviewing parents on family history, kitchen chemistry and family reading.
Or, in a nation in which 71% of mothers of kids under 18 are in the workforce, how about extending the school day or year beyond its agrarian-era calendar? Let students do more work at school and save evenings for family and serendipity.
Bennett and Kalish have a more modest proposal. Parents should demand a sensible homework policy, perhaps one based on Cooper's rule of thumb: 10 min. a night per grade level. They offer lessons from their own battle to rein in the workload at their kids' private middle school in Brooklyn, N.Y. Among their victories: a nightly time limit, a policy of no homework over vacations, no more than two major tests a week, fewer weekend assignments and no Monday tests.
Why don't more parents in homework-heavy districts take such actions? Do too many of us
think it's just our child who is, struggling, so who are we to lead a revolt? Yup, when it comes to
the battle of homework mountain, we've got too many Indians and not enough sachems.
[End of Wallis article.]
The following article was presented on Yahoo! News on November 30, 2006.
Seven Million in US Jails, on Probation or Parole, by Kasie Hunt, Associated Press Writer.
A record 7 million people — or one in every 32 American adults — were behind bars, on probation or on parole by the end of last year, according to the Justice Department. Of those, 2.2 million were in prison or jail, an increase of 2.7 percent over the previous year, according to a report released Wednesday.
More than 4.1 million people were on probation and 784,208 were on parole at the end of 2005. Prison releases are increasing, but admissions are increasing more.
Men still far outnumber women in prisons and jails, but the female population is growing faster. Over the past year, the female population in state or federal prison increased 2.6 percent while the number of male inmates rose 1.9 percent. By year's end, 7 percent of all inmates were women. The gender figures do not include inmates in local jails.
"Today's figures fail to capture incarceration's impact on the thousands of children left behind by mothers in prison," Marc Mauer, the executive director of the Sentencing Project, a Washington-based group supporting criminal justice reform, said in a statement. "Misguided policies that create harsher sentences for nonviolent drug offenses are disproportionately responsible for the increasing rates of women in prisons and jails."
From 1995 to 2003, inmates in federal prison for drug offenses have accounted for 49 percent of total prison population growth.
The numbers are from the annual report from the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics. The report breaks down inmate populations for state and federal prisons and local jails.
Racial disparities among prisoners persist. In the 25-29 age group, 8.1 percent of black men — about one in 13 — are incarcerated, compared with 2.6 percent of Hispanic men and 1.1 percent of white men. And it's not much different among women. By the end of 2005, black women were more than twice as likely as Hispanics and over three times as likely as white women to be in prison.
Certain states saw more significant changes in prison population. In South Dakota, the number of inmates increased 11 percent over the past year, more than any other state. Montana and Kentucky were next in line with increases of 10.4 percent and 7.9 percent, respectively. Georgia had the biggest decrease, losing 4.6 percent, followed by Maryland with a 2.4 percent decrease and Louisiana with a 2.3 percent drop.
[End of Hunt article.]
Here is a copy of the plank of my draft American Independence Movement platform, dealing with prison policy:
Prison Reform. No incarcerations will last longer than ten years, with hard labor as a rule. As an incentive to behavior modification, sentences will be shortened for good behavior (e.g., one month commutation for each month of good behavior, such as active participation in approved training or education programs). Public short-term punishments (stocks, pillories, caning) will be authorized for lesser offenses. The death penalty will be used as a punishment, not as a deterrent. (The goal of prison sentences of not more than ten years is not that radical a suggestion: sentences exceeding ten years are very rare in most countries of the world.) There will be a reaffirmation of the concept of English common law, which served this country so well for so long, as the basis for our judicial system.
The following was presented on the November 16, 2006, edition of CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight.
DOBBS: Your Homeland Security
Department at work again. It turns out a new virtual fence that's been proposed
along the U.S.- Mexican border could cost actually 15 times more than
originally projected, that according to the Homeland Security Department.
The cost of that virtual fence, which excites a lot of people who don't want to
have real border security – well, the cost of electronic monitoring, as it
turns out, along the border, originally estimated at $2 billion. Well, it turns
out the true cost, or at least as the truth is now available, could be anywhere
between $8 billion and $30 billion for a virtual fence.
The first part of that program is planned for a 28-mile stretch of the border
near Tucson. It's being -- the contractor on that is Boeing, and that little
28-mile deal cost about $2 billion. It is due to be completed in June and, yes,
that part is funded.
[End of Lou Dobbs segment.]
If the US/Mexican border is 1,951 miles long, we could place a machine-gun post every mile, and have very effective border control. The cost of this would be substantially less than the amounts being touted for the “virtual” fence. Moreover, it would be very real and very effective.
On a recent edition of CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight, it was reported that, according to the US Department of Homeland Security, only 14 percent of the US/Mexico border was “under effective control.” The DHS was contacted to determine the definition of “effective control,” and it was unable to provide a definition. The comment was made that one million apprehensions of illegal aliens are made each year, and it is estimated that 1-2 million illegal aliens get through, unapprehended.
The December 14, 2006, edition contains the following remarks:
DOBBS: Homeland Security
Secretary Michael Chertoff today gave a bleak assessment of our ability to
secure our southern border. Secretary Chertoff said illegal immigration so far
has defeated all the enforcement measures this government has been able to
muster. Jeanne Meserve has the report.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JEANNE MESERVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Every day and every night,
there is ample evidence that U.S. borders are not secure. Secretary Chertoff
says there will be no solution until Congress passes a temporary worker
program.
MICHAEL CHERTOFF, HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: Only a temporary worker program
will give us the ability to deal with that tremendous economic draw which has
time and again over the years defeated all of the enforcement measures that the
government has placed on the border to try to get security for this country.
MESERVE: But some argue that a guest worker program could in fact make the
problem of illegal immigration worse.
DAN STEIN, FEDERATIOIN FOR AMERICAN IMMIGRATION REFORM: If we're not prepared
to put in place the resources needed to make sure aliens leave when they're
supposed to, to ensure employers can only hire lawfully authorized workers, to
make the law have credibility again, nothing about a guest worker amnesty plan
is going to make that a reality. Our borders will be out of control and our
national security and our communities will be in jeopardy.
MESERVE: Chertoff contends that in the past year there has been measurable
progress in stanching the flood of migrants pouring illegally over the borders.
He credits the end of so-called catch and release, under which non-Mexicans
caught by the border patrol were simply let go.
[End of Dobbs report.]
It is noted that the “catch and release” program has been ended only for nonMexicans caught within a few miles of the Mexican border, not for the 12-20 million illegal aliens who are already here. That works out to stopping the catch and release program for about 168 thousand illegal aliens, not for the 12-20 million already here. The government should stop saying that it has ended its catch and release program. This statement is false. It does not even try to catch the vast majority of illegal aliens, and it still releases most of those who are caught.
Each year, illegal aliens are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans, by murder and by motor vehicle deaths. Here is an excerpt from one of my earlier articles (Miscellany28):
Immigrants murder many US residents. The murder rate in the United States is about six per 100,000 per year. The number is about 20,000 per year. About half of the murders each year are caused by immigrants since 1950 and their progeny. This means that about 10,000 US residents are killed each year by immigrants since 1950 and their offspring. If the murder rate is the same for illegal immigrants as the general population – and it is reasonable to believe that it is not any less, since these people are in fact criminals – then the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the US kill about 660 US residents each year.
It is an unavoidable aspect of human life that murders occur. When they occur at the hands of a fellow countryman, that is bad enough. But when they occur at the hands of an illegal alien who is allowed to stay in our country because our government – the government of the most powerful nation on earth – does not have the will to keep them out, that is an entirely different matter. Ask any mother whose child has been murdered by an illegal alien what she thinks of the US government position on immigration. By failing to act to repel the alien invasion, President Bush has willfully chosen to break his oath of office to uphold the US Constitution – which explicitly requires the President to defend the country from invasion. By his actions, he – along with any other government official who has taken an oath to uphold the Constitution – is guilty of gross dereliction of duty and high treason. Ask any mother whose child has been murdered by an illegal alien what she thinks should be done to traitors whose actions have led directly to the death of her child. By its policy of allowing 11 million illegal aliens to remain in this country, the US government has committed itself to a policy of slaughter of 1,430 US residents per year. All done for money.
Immigrants kill many US residents through automobile accidents. The death rate from automobile accidents is about 42,000 per year, or about 14 per 100,000 per year. If we assume that half of these accidents involve someone other than the driver of the car causing the accident (e.g., pedestrians, passengers, or occupants of other vehicles), then the rate at which “other people” are killed by drivers is about 7 per 100,000. Let us assume once again that immigrants have about the same accident rate as all residents – a really “optimistic” assumption, in view of the sorry drunk-driving record of Mexican immigrants! This means that immigrants since 1950 and their offspring kill about 21,000 US residents per year, by means of automobile accidents. This year’s crop of immigrants (three million people) will kill about 210 US residents via automobile accidents, and the 11 million illegal immigrants already in the country will kill about 770 people in this way. This is not counting at all the number of people who are injured from automobile accidents, some of them very seriously (e.g., spinal-cord injuries).
In the preceding, I have tallied the cost of immigration attributed just to murder and automobile deaths caused by immigrants. In addition, there are countless other crimes perpetrated against US residents by immigrants, such as rape, robbery, assault, identity theft, fraud and arson. America’s policies of mass immigration, open borders and massive international free trade have caused a dramatic decline in personal safety and security. When I was a child, we rarely locked our house or car, and children could safely walk downtown to the theater, library, park, or almost anywhere else. Vagrancy was nonexistent in the places I lived as a child – “no loitering” signs were posted, enforced, and obeyed. All of that is gone, and mainly because of mass immigration, through the overcrowding and disintegration of American culture that it has caused.
[End of excerpt.]
In all, counting both murders and automobile deaths, the 11 million illegal immigrants currently in the US will continue to murder or kill about 1,400 US residents every year they remain here. In the war in Iraq, less than one thousand US soldiers are being killed each year.
It is amazing that 10-20 million illegal aliens have invaded the US, and are killing about 1,400 Americans each year, and no one wants to take effective action against them. The US government is using machine guns to slaughter Iraqis, who have not even invaded this country, but they refuse to set up a single machine-gun post on the Mexican border to repel the alien invasion that is killing 1,400 Americans every year!
In my May 8, 2004, article, “How to Win the War in Iraq” (http://www.foundationwebsite.org/HowToWinTheWarInIraq.htm ), I argued, based on the long-established principles of war and politics, that the way to end the war in Iraq, and “win the peace,” was to partition the country into three parts, reflecting the three dominant ethnic groups – Sunnistan, Shiastan, and Kurdistan. From recent new reports, it appears that people are finally coming around to this point of view. A recent article on this subject appeared in the November 13, 2006, issue of Time magazine: “The Case For Dividing Iraq,” by Peter W. Galbraith. On the evening television news, Delaware’s Senator Joseph Biden is frequently arguing for this action. Apart from my original strategic reasons for partition, the strongest reason for doing so now is that partition is already an established fact.
One thing that is being talked about now that I strongly disagree with is the suggestion that an attempt be made to share the country’s oil, which occurs mainly in the north (“Kurdistan”) and south (“Shiastan”) with the people in the east (“Sunnistan”). There is no rational basis for sharing any of a region’s oil with any other region.
When I was a boy in the late 1940s and early 1950s, I would visit my grandparents, who lived in Belleville, Ontario, Canada. Every morning, my grandfather would listen to the BBC world news on his shortwave radio, and every afternoon my grandmother would listen to radio “soap operas,” such as Helen Trent; Backstage Wife; Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons; and the Second Mrs. Burton. This was in the early days of television, and every Friday night, my grandparents would turn on the TV he hear the Gillette Cavalcade of Sports / Friday Night Fights, broadcast from Madison Square Gardens. I was usually in bed by that time, but I could hear the show. The television screen was very small – 13 inches, I would imagine, and the picture (black and white was all there was) was very “snowy.”
The show had many Gillette commercials, and I must have heard the Gillette Blue-Blade commercial a thousand times, but the other day, when I tried to recall it, I could not. So, I checked the Internet, and here is what I found:
To look sharp every time you shave.
To feel sharp and be on the ball.
To be sharp, use Gillette Blue Blades.
It's the quickest, slickest shave of all!
Now, this sounds correct until half-way through the third line. The end of this line involved many more syllables than “use Gillette Blue Blades.” I am not sure of the last line.
If anyone recalls the original words to this song, I would appreciate knowing them. My e-mail address is jcaldwell9@yahoo.com .
Those were fascinating times. The Sunday edition of the paper contained comics that featured mainly adventures. Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan was at the top of the first page, and Superman was at the bottom. National Geographic magazines were only in black and white. Coca-colas cost five cents (six cents in some stores), as did other soft drinks. Coke contained six fluid ounces, whereas Pepsi contained 12. Chestnut trees were everywhere, and the boys would play “knockers,” in which shoelaces were laced through a chestnut and one boy would smash his chestnut against the other boy’s chestnut, in an attempt to break it.
Update 18 October 2020
How times change! In 2006, when I wrote this note, I could not find a single reference to the Gillette theme song on the Internet. This morning, October 18,2020, a Google search of the phrase “Gillette Blue Blade 1950s theme song” listed the following link at the top of the first search page: https://gillettehistory.wordpress.com/tag/look-sharp-march/ . The page has the title tag, Look Sharp March, and has the captions GilletteCo History and Sharpie, the Gillette Parrot Spokesbird. Here follows some of the page.
Sharpie’s Song
Look sharp, feel sharp, be sharp …
And listen mister!
How are you fixed for blades? (do you have many?)
How are you fixed for blades? (you’d better check!)
Please make sure you have enough –
‘cos a worn-out blade makes shaving mighty tough!
How are you fixed for blades? (you’d better look!)
Gillette Blue blades are neat!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9KVfn2-EEU
Meet Sharpie! This raucous cartoon parrot was popular for nearly two decades as Gillette spokesbird on The Friday Night Fights. He first took to the “air” for Gillette in 1952 World Series television broadcasts (Dodgers vs. Yankees).
Over the next twenty-some years, this colorful bird became one of the most effective commercial characters of all time, squawking his way through thousands of commercial spots on the immensely popular Gillette Cavalcade of Sports broadcasts.
Sharpie’s introduction to a nation of sports fans was concurrent with the first use of one of the most memorable and effective commercial jingles of all time – The Look Sharp March, composed by Mahlon Merrick, musical director of The Jack Benny Show. Merrick also composed Sharpie’s vocal debut – “How’re Ya Fixed for Blades?”
Armed with a new tune and a fresh mission from Gillette, Sharpie seeded his question in the minds of American men at their shaving mirrors. His musical query practically demanded they check their supply and then stock up on popular Gillette brand blades.
Riding on the wave of America’s love affair with sports, Sharpie became as well known as any sports hero and also took his place alongside a certain big-eared mouse in red shorts as one of the most recognizable cartoon characters on the landscape of popular culture.
©1999 The Gillette Company
The Look Sharp March became the most played march at high- school and college football game halftime shows in America, throughout the 1950s and 1960s.
In the history of television advertising Sharpie holds no equal.
Since he got his start as a fight promoter, he was not always the cute band conductor… sometimes he was rough….
The web page shows images of the music words and lyrics, which follow:
To Look Sharp, by Mahlon Merrick
Look sharp! Feel sharp! Be sharp!
To look sharp, ev’ry time you shave,
To feel sharp, And be on the ball,
Just be sharp, use Gillette Blue Blades,
For the quickest, slickest shaves of all.
Copyright © 1953 by The Gillette Company and Mahlon Merrick.
Portion extracted under the Copyright Fair Use Doctrine.
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