California’s descent into becoming the backward society of Mexifornia is forecast most sharply in the failing school system, largely because so many children are foreign born (particularly from Hispanic countries) or live in households where English is not spoken and scholarship is not valued. According to California’s Legislative Analyst Office, 25 percent of the state’s K-12 students are English language learners.

(In the US as a whole, approximately 5.5 million students, nearly one-tenth of the total, are ESL students, who speak English as a second language if at all.)

Each year, about 120,000 students fail to get a diploma by age 20, according to the California Dropout Research Project, which on Wednesday released detailed recommendations for state lawmakers and educators.

Each annual wave of dropouts costs the state $46.4 billion over their lifetimes because people without a high school diploma are the most likely to be unemployed, turn to crime, need state-funded medical care, get welfare and pay no taxes, according to the report.
[High school dropouts cost state billions, San Francisco Chronicle, Feb 29, 2008]

But instead of slowing the entrance of millions of foreign students (many from Mexico, which has one of the world’s most anti-education cultures), the report suggests that standards be lowered.

The state should instead require schools to improve at a faster rate, the report says.

One way to do that would be for schools to change their graduation requirements and spend less time on academics alone; they should teach more “soft skills” such as how to be punctual, persistent and work well in groups - all valuable “if California wants to truly prepare its students for life beyond high school,” says the report.

Dumbing down schools to thwart genuine education is an effective strategy for implanting the third world within the first — pronto!

Update to Important Element Missing From The Description Here:

The words Black or African-American don’t appear in this story,but now the suspect is described as “The suspect is described as a male with a medium-to-dark complexion…” which is useful, as long as you know that they’re talking about an African-American, rather than George Hamilton.

At the upper right of the two sketches, you’ll find a little note by the police artist saying “B/M,” meaning “Black/Male. “ That’s because the first question a police artist asks is “What color is the suspect?”

Police Searching for SW Houston Sexual Assault Suspect
Last Edited: Wednesday, 27 Feb 2008, 2:57 PM CST
Created: Wednesday, 27 Feb 2008, 2:22 PM CST
Houston police release composite sketches of a serial sexual assault suspect on Feb. 27.
FOX 26 News

Houston Police has released composite sketches of a man suspected of several sexual assault cases in southwest Houston dating back to Sept. 27.

Three of the four reported assaults took place at the 9300 block of Dairy View Lane. The first incident at that location took place on Sept. 27 while the second incident took place on Jan. 20. The most recent incident at the Dairy View location took place Feb. 19.

Another sexual assault was reported on Dec. 26 at the 9400 block of Dairy Ashford on Dec. 26.

In all the reported incidents, adult women were assaulted in the parking lot of an apartment complex.

The Feb. 19 assault took place inside the apartment of the victim as she was sleeping. The woman was awakened by an unknown male intruder who smothered her face with a pillow. She tried to escape but was overpowered by the suspect who punched her in the face. The man ran out of the apartment after the alleged assault took place.

The suspect is described as a male with a medium-to-dark complexion between 24 and 30 years of age, standing approximately 6-0 and weighing between 150 and 180 pounds.

The man has a slender build, is clean-shaven. He was dressed in a dark-colored hooded sweatshirt with dark pants.

Bill Gates is doing a speaking tour of college campuses in order to get naive students interested in Computer/IT careers, and to push his immigration agenda. As part of that tour he went to the University of Waterloo in Canada where he gave a speech to an audience of high school and college students.

The university has a web page where you can find out more about the Bill Gates visit. They even have a video of the entire presentation.

I made a short 2 minute clip of the video (at about 52 minutes into the 1 hour presentation) where he criticized the H-1B program because he thinks it’s too restrictive. He praised Canada for its loose immigration policies that make it easy for foreigners to get work visas. Bill Gates said that there must be a “free flow of talent” between the U.S. and Canada but never mentioned how that large labor pool enriches his portfolio.

The articles below have a few comments by Gates that are worth mentioning. This explains why it’s so difficult for anyone over the age of 35 to find jobs at Microsoft:

“Why do young people play such an important role in innovation, even though older people have greater breadth of knowledge and a deeper understanding of their field? [snipped] It’s not unusual to have the best solution to a tough problem come from one of the youngest people working to solve it. Often, our first reaction is that what they are suggesting is crazy, until we understand that they have come at the problem in a creative, new way.”

Lots of brouhaha was published in the media when Microsoft set up a development center in Vancouver, Canada. Bill Gates said that the Canadian office was necessary because it was so difficult and expensive to import H-1Bs into the U.S. Gates praised Canada because: “The Canadian government makes it easier to bring in smart people from various countries.”.

You might wonder where all the smart people are coming from to work in Vancouver. Buried in the Financial Post article below the truth is revealed. The smart people Gates adores so much are coming from China, although Gates also mentioned “other countries”, which probably means India. I doubt that Gates includes Canadians on his list of smart people anymore than he includes Americans.

He said Microsoft has looked to other countries such as China to help fill “a pretty significant shortage” of IT workers and has set up development centres, including one in Vancouver, to develop new talent.

The following statement by Gates needs some discussion because there is far more to it than meets the eye:

“There should be a free-flow of talent from the U.S. to Canada and Canada to the U.S. There’s bright person who wants a job - it shouldn’t be hard to go across the border and do that. We should make it as seamless as possible.”

Gates is only telling half the truth, because it is very easy for Canadians to cross the border to work in the U.S. Microsoft or any other employer can obtain TN (Trade NAFTA) visas for anyone that they need to transfer between the Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. TN visas are unlimited and quick and easy to obtain, so Microsoft should have no problem moving as many people as they want to the U.S. [Microsoft looks for talent in developing countries, Microsoft founder Bill Gates speaks to university and high school students during a stop in Waterloo, Ont. on Thursday, Feb. 21, 2008. ( The Canadian Press Updated: Thu. Feb. 21 2008]

So what is Bill Gates complaining about?

Moving Canadians into the U.S. isn’t an issue for Gates, but moving foreigners who work in Canada is. In order to get a TN visa Microsoft’s Chinese and Indian employees must become naturalized citizens of Canada, otherwise they have to get H-1B visas which are in short supply. Getting naturalized in Canada isn’t a big deal for those who have jobs but Bill Gates probably doesn’t want to use Vancouver as a drop house for non-Canadians any longer than he has too.

I have contended since the opening of that Vancouver office that Gates intended to use it as a backdoor to get foreign workers into the U.S. Apparently he is having some trouble getting as many TN visas as he would like, so now he is on another lobbying campaign to increase the H-1B cap.

See also ‘Pretty significant shortage’ of IT workers alarms Gates | Touts opportunity to work on ’sexy products’, By Jordana Huber, Financial Post, February 22, 2008 and What’s Right With Young People Today, By Bill Gates, Globe And Mail, February 25, 2008

There’s a new Rand Corporation report out, “Education and the Asian Surge,” comparing the educational systems in the two giga-countries, China and India. The report doesn’t have much on actual outcomes (e.g., internationally normed achievement test scores) so it relies on nominal outputs (# of graduates) and inputs (spending), but it’s still interesting because, well, because it’s about China and India and they’re important.

Many of the findings on schooling are paradoxical. For example, China’s schools are almost all public, but they are heavily paid for privately (by parents paying tuition), while India’s schools tend to be more private, but they’re almost all paid for by the government.

As I wrote in VDARE.com in 2004 in “Interesting India, Competitive China,” India’s system was long more elitist, with higher illiteracy rates but more top colleges, while China’s was more egalitarian, with schooling being more widespread, but not much in the way of higher education. (Of course, the Chinese didn’t have much schooling at all in 1966-1976 due to Mao’s Cultural Revolution, so it’s amazing that they’ve been able to overcome that.)

Both countries are now trying to backfill their weaknesses, and it looks like China has a sturdier base to build on. China now has a higher percentage of its young adults in college than India does. Lower level schooling in India is sapped by teacher absenteeism — on any given day, 25% of the school teachers don’t show up for work. India seems to be very erratic — excellence and slipshodness side by side.

In general, I suspect that 21st Century China’s consistency and India’s inconsistency are tied back to ancient marriage patterns that increased the homogeneity of the Chinese while the Indian caste system split the subcontinent up into tens of thousands of endogamous groups.

This is a rapist who’s been climbing balconies and assaulting women in the Houston area:

Madden said workers at his complex posted letters after the attack warning tenants to lock their doors and windows and to contact the leasing office if they had questions.Police said victims the describe the man as 24- to 30-year-old, about 6 feet tall and 150 to 180 pounds, slender and clean-shaven. He usually wore dark-colored clothing, including a hooded sweatshirt or a turtleneck.

Do you think that if they could see that he was clean-shaven, they could tell what color he was? And do you think that that might help women know who to watch out for, and police who to suspect? I’m pretty sure the victims noticed, and I’m pretty sure they told the police. (There’s always a space for it on the form.) It’s even likely that the police told the Houston Chronicle, but that’s where it stopped.

Perhaps we should send the Houston Chronicle a copy of the Hardy Boys Detective Handbook, which included, when I read it in 1968, the technique of describing a suspect, starting from the top down, and not omitting any vital details like this. If the Hardy Boys could explain it to a ten-year-old, perhaps the J-school graduates on the Chronicle staff can grasp it without too much difficulty.

Police said the man, who may live in the area, is apparently motivated by the sexual assault. The only reported theft occurred during the Sept. 27 attack when he took a few small items.

“There’s enough there that we’re looking at that it could possibly be the same person,” Lt. Mike Waterwall, with the Houston Police Department’s sex assault unit.

The victims are 22 to 32, police said, and included an Anglo woman, a Hispanic woman and two black women.[Houston apartments tighten security after sexual attacks | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle, February 28, 2008]

I suppose they were willing to identify the races of the various victims, if not the suspect, as a way of showing that even if he was a vicious rapist, at least he wasn’t racially profiling.

Huey Long - He was a controversial governor and senator with plans for running for President against FDR on a populist platform before being gunned down in 1935 by a doctor (or perhaps by one of his own security guards trying to shoot the doctor who was brandishing a gun at Long) for reasons that still remain murky. Nobody cares.

Martin Luther King - After being arrested in London for the murder of MLK, career criminal James Earl Ray plea-bargained his way out of trial, accepting life in prison, where he eventually died. He eventually tried to recant his plea, spinning various theories about a man named Raoul (Duke?), although admitting to have at least some involvement. Ray certainly shot King, but did Ray act completely alone? Was there any offer of money from someone? Who knows? I would imagine there remains active interest in the black community in this case, but the mainstream media is totally apathetic after a flurry of stories in the 1990s.

Watergate - All along, it looked like the FBI and/or CIA was more heavily involved in the end of the Nixon presidency than in the end of the Kennedy presidency, but nobody cared. J. Edgar Hoover’s left hand man, Mark Felt, eventually came forward as Deep Throat, but nobody bought Bob Woodward’s book about it.

Pim Fortuyn - The Dutch immigration restrictionist politician was murdered by environmental lawyer Volkert van der Graaf in 2002, the day after Chirac defeated Le Pen in the runoff for the French presidency, the climax of a “two-week hate” in which all right-thinking people in Europe virulently denounced anti-immigrationism. The initial general opinion of Europe’s great and good was that Fortuyn had it coming. The consensus later changed to blaming it all on the gunman being one of those animal rights crazies, and that it didn’t actually have anything to do with immigration, a position that was debunked by the killer himself in court testimony. Outside of Holland, Fortuyn has largely been forgotten, with Americans more familiar with the subsequent murder of a less important figure, Theo van Gogh by a radical Muslim.

Remember how the New Republic made this big stink about how Ron Paul should give back $500 from Jon White or somebody with a name like that who was an evil racist?

From The Scientist:

In an intriguing election-year twist, James Watson, the renowned biologist who made headlines last October when he told the Sunday Times that people of African descent were less intelligent than white people, has supported a person of African descent for President of the United States, according to the website opensecrets.org. Watson contributed $2,300 to the Barack Obama campaign this January.

In reality, Watson has always been a Democrat, as was, according to his autobiography, his father before him.

In a previous blog entry I wrote about a scheduled referendum in San Nicolas (suburb of Monterrey, Mexico) over whether or not to install a fence on the border with neighboring suburb Guadalupe (see map here ).

Well, they held the referendum on the 24th, and 70% of those who came to the polls voted in favor of the fence.
A Feb. 27th article reported that on Feb. 26th, San Nicolas mayor Zeferino “Chefo” Salgado, who promoted the fence proposal, said he wouldn’t discuss the topic anymore, until after meeting with the mayor of Guadalupe, who wasn’t pleased with the referendum.

Meanwhile, in San Nicolas, there are already two colonias (neighborhoods) in San Nicolas that have fencing around them.

Sometimes, a fence is just what’s needed.

We knew it was coming, and now the press assures us that a massive makeover is underway.

Sen McAmnesty is doing the tapdance and counting on Americans’ famous short attention span. He regularly recites that he “got the message” about immigration and now supports border enforcement — yeah, right — but will promise nothing beyond that. An appearance of crackdown on the border will only be a prelude and excuse for widespread forgiveness for tens of millions of illegal aliens residing in this country.

John McCain faces a dilemma on immigration as he works to persuade conservatives he’s tough enough on the issue without erasing his historic appeal to Hispanic voters. Once a crusader for offering the nation’s roughly 12 million undocumented immigrants a way to get legal status, McCain now says his first priority is fortifying U.S. borders.

The metamorphosis reflects McCain’s intensifying effort to consolidate his support among conservatives, who deride the Arizona senator’s past proposals on immigration as offering amnesty to lawbreakers, and bitterly resent his work with Democrats, including Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, on the issue.

Coming off a primary season where his immigration stance was seen as a major liability and GOP opponents hammered him for having an overly permissive approach, McCain is remaking his image with an eye toward the general election.
[McCain Retools Immigration Stance, Google AP. Feb 27, 2008]

The Jon Entine book that John Derbyshire reviewed last night, Abraham’s Children: Race, Identity, and the DNA of the Chosen People, has its own website at AbrahamsChildren.net.

It has reviews and supporting material, somewhat like the section that we have of Alien Nation Reviews on VDARE.com.