Letters to the Editor
DLF
Published Letters: 267 Editor's Choice: 24
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Ok, I give up...
[Read the article: Kansas O'Flaherty ... Secret Agent]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...is this supposed to suck?
Are no copyeditors available? Do you just like run-on sentences, or do you not know how to punctuate? (Even cartoons follow some conventions.) Is Photoshop cut-n-paste the accepted way to "draw" cartoons today?
I admit I'll keep reading it, but I'm beginning to mystify even myself when I wonder WHY. (Sob, sigh.)
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Plenty of Fat (take 2)
[Read the article: The Bush legacy: No fat for the lean years]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]There is lots and lots of wealth stored up from the Bush years. It's all in the hands of the hyper-wealthy, who did so well with the Bush tax cuts. Wealth can be taxed, you know, even in the lean years.
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Immigration and US fertility rates
[Read the article: Baby boomlet]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]John Vinson of the American Immigration Control Foundation is not wrong to focus on immigration from Mexico as an important factor in the upswing in US births. But he neglects to give himself and his movement the credit they deserve for this trend.
Until the 1990s, migration from Mexico to the US was almost entirely made up of young men in search of work, a temporary source of income that they would bring back to Mexico within a few years to set up their family. (This has, in fact, been the typical labor migration pattern around the world for many years if not centuries; the Italian immigration to the US in the early 1900s was quite similar, and most unattached Italian immigrants eventually returned to their country.)
Increasingly stringent border controls in the 1990s led the typical immigrant (young, male, in search of temporary work) to give up on what had been the pattern in Mexico-US migration for the previous century or so, i.e. staying in the US for short times and returning home frequently to reintegrate with the family there, then crossing back to the US to resume the temporary work. As crossing back-and-forth became more difficult, more and more elected to stay longer and longer in the US; more and more young women began crossing from Mexico (both to be with their boyfriends/husbands and to look for work themselves, as the economy of rural Mexico collapsed), and soon entire families began to cross and to stay for extended periods.
When young, unattached workers achieve the financial goals that led them to migrate (e.g. saving up enough to buy a house or start a business), the great majority return. When young families have children who start school in the US, learn English to the exclusion of Spanish, and assimilate to US culture, the great majority are very reluctant to return.
So, thanks to anti-immigration activists, we have now permanently enlarged the immigrant community in the US. Most immigrants are still young people, which means that they will quite naturally have more children/larger families than the more demographically diverse "non-Hispanic" population of the US.
Regarding the higher birth rate of Mexican-American women: many people assume that a high birth rate is a characteristic of Mexican women in general. False. Mexican census figures show that the fertility rate in Mexico itself has fallen dramatically over the past three decades, from 5.7 births per woman in 1976 to 2.2 today (just a shade above the US average, and still falling). The increased birth rate among Mexican migrants in the US (to 3.2 births/woman, according to this article) probably reflects a number of trends: the youth of the migrants involved; the liberating effect of having enough work and income to raise several children; and separation from the tempering effect of the older generations, who have generally remained in Mexico.
The John Vinsons surely fear that these trends will shortly lead to the "Mexicanization" of the US or some such nonsense. Instead, what will most likely happen is what has occurred in every wave of immigration to the US so far: significant contributions to general US culture from the magnificent Mexican culture, which has already given us so much; and in tandem, the "Americanization" (like it or not) of Mexican families in the US. Within a few years, the birth rates of "Hispanic" families in the US will be almost indistinguishable from everyone elses, and hopefully we will all calm down a little.
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Epic!
[Read the article: Tom the Dancing Bug]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I don't think I've laughed so much at anything this week as I did at "the Evolution of Animal Neckwear." The sad thing about is, I remember almost all of those tie-clad characters. Brutal!
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2 + 2 = 4
[Read the article: Abortion rates in the U.S. are falling]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]On Thursday, Lynn Harris reported in Broadsheet that births in the U.S. climbed last year by 3% to a near-record 4.3 million. That is an increase of roughly 120,000 more births.
Today you report that abortions fell by 8% to 1.2 million. That is a decrease of roughly 100,000 abortions -- or an increase of roughly 100,000 births.
It would seem, on the face of it (and if both figures are supported by later research), that the decline in abortions is almost entirely responsible for the increase in births.
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Oops
[Read the article: Abortion rates in the U.S. are falling]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Just noticed, the increase in births was reported for 2006; the decrease in abortions, for 2005. Still, both figures represent trends.
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Committed vs Leader
[Read the article: Barack Obama: "Committed Christian -- Called to Bring Change"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Glenn, I enjoy all your posts and usually agree at least somewhat with almost all of them. On this one, you are totally off. (Please note, I am NOT a definite Obama supporter -- not that it maters here in Michigan, where only Clinton and Kucinich appeared on the primary ballot).
Just look at the phrasing. Huckabee runs as a "Christian LEADER." Message: you are my flock. If you call yourself a Christian, you must vote for me.
Obama runs (in SC only) as a "Committed Christian." Message: I'm one of you. I'll listen to you. We can talk with each other.
Sorry, the messages are completely different, one authoritative (if not authoritarian), the other democratic with a small-d, at least in the SC context. It would be nice if someone could run in SC as an "Uncommitted Secular Humanist" but that ain't gonna happen any time soon.
If you think this is just obscure parsing of basically indistinguishable messages, then you haven't spent enough time deciphering coded Christian messages that anyone who lives in that world will recognize and understand instantly.