Forbes has come out with its latest list of billionaires.

The 2009 list includes nine Mexican billionaires.

Mexican telecoms tycoon Carlos Slim is currently rated as the world’s third-wealthiest man, with a net worth of $35 billion. Slim’s net worth dropped $25 billion in the past year. The world’s wealthiest man is Bill Gates, in the #2 slot is Warren Buffet, and both of their net worths dropped also.

A year ago, after the 2008 Forbes list came out, I wrote an article about the Mexican billionaires on that list. There were 10 on the list last year. On the 2009 list, two of them have dropped off, while a new billionaire has been added.

Who was this year’s addition? This list attracted a lot of attention for including, for the first time, none other than Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, chief of the Sinaloa drug cartel. El Chapo (whose nickname translates to “Shorty”) has an estimated worth of $1 billion dollars.

A reader writes:

The recent Rivermark (Santa Clara) family murder suicide involved Indian
nationals. Ethnic details only available in foreign sources. See here:Indian in US Kills Six Relatives, Self

This story from Modesto doesn’t use the expression “Hispanic mob” because that would be wrong:

Tuesday, Mar. 31, 2009
Officer, dog square off against Modesto mob of 60
By Leslie Albrecht
lalbrecht@modbee.com
Modesto Bee

A Modesto police officer had to pull his gun to keep a hostile crowd at bay early Sunday.

The officer sustained minor injuries in the southwest Modesto incident, said police spokesman Sgt. Brian Findlen. Police are not releasing the officer’s name. The officer’s dog was assaulted but not seriously injured, Findlen said. Police arrested several suspects in connection with the incident. A loaded assault rifle was found later at the scene of the struggle, which unfolded about 2 a.m.

Findlen said the officer pulled his gun only after other deterrents, including his police dog, failed to keep the crowd under control. “In a situation where you really feel that your life is in imminent danger, your options become very few,” Findlen said.

Some members of the crowd told the officer that “he was not going to leave the scene alive,” according to police.

The crowd of as many as 60 people included some known gang members, Findlen said. Police believe the group was gathered for a party in the 1700 block of Pelton Avenue. The officer happened upon the group when he was responding to another call in the area.

It doesn’t say that it was a Hispanic mob, but almost all the people mentioned by name are Hispanic:

The officer saw several people assaulting one man, Findlen said. As the officer tried to break up the fight, the crowd’s attention shifted from the assault victim to the officer. The crowd surrounded the officer. The officer sent his dog into the crowd in an attempt to stop the group.

The dog apprehended one suspect, who police later identified as 18-year-old Alfredo Espinoza of Modesto. As the officer tried to arrest Espinoza, the crowd pulled Espinoza away from the officer.

According to police, some in the crowd then challenged the officer to a fight. One suspect attacked the officer, police said.

Other arrestees included 20-year-old Modesto resident Andrew Mitchell, 19-year-old Modesto resident Matthew Reyes, William Rodriguez, 29, of Modesto, and Junior Suarez, 19, of Modesto. (Andrew Mitchell would be what’s called an “outlier.”) But unless Modesto’s police decided to arrest only Hispanics at the scene, I’ll assume it was a Hispanic mob. Which reminds me that large sections of French cities are “no-go” areas for French police and government, and that it can happen in American cities too.

Here’s the opening of my review from The American Conservative of the film opening this Friday:

Mid-20th Century American writers competed on their dust flaps to list the most jobs held. The more proletarian occupations an author enumerated, such as short order cook, hod carrier, and lobsterman, the more legitimate was his assault on the Great American Novel.

Today, however, a generation of the well-educated has grown up assuming “there are jobs Americans just won’t do.” “Adventureland,” a witty, nostalgic love story is set in the summer of 1987, about the time when tuition started being inflated so high by competitive elitism and unskilled wages pounded so low by illegal immigration that “summer job” was increasingly replaced in the upper middle class vocabulary by “unpaid internship.” (By now, a few parents are paying fashionable employers to let their kids make photocopies and fetch coffee.)

(more…)

Here’s the picture that accompanies Senator Jim Webb’s Parade article Why We Must Fix Our Prisons, [March 29, 2009] mentioned by Randall Burns, below.

Inmates at a facility in California, a state that spent almost $10 billion on corrections last year.

Never mind the statistics, look at the picture.

Sen. Jim Webb writes in Parade:

In 1984, Japan had a population half the size of ours and was incarcerating 40,000 sentenced offenders, compared with 580,000 in the United States. As shocking as that disparity was, the difference between the countries now is even more astounding–and profoundly disturbing. Since then, Japan’s prison population has not quite doubled to 71,000, while ours has quadrupled to 2.3 million.[Why We Must Fix Our Prisons, March 29, 2009]

Japan of course, has a more sane immigration policy than the US.

This chart shows the time line more graphically:

Webb goes on:

law-enforcement officials in many parts of the U.S. have been overwhelmed and unable to address a dangerous wave of organized, frequently violent gang activity, much of it run by leaders who are based in other countries

It is more than importation of criminals. Since 1967, the US has steadily become a less economically equal society-and economic equality stagnated even between 1958 and 1967. Economics problems accompanying mass immigration are driving Americans into escapism and criminality.

Mexican cartels are now reported to be running operations in some 230 American cities. Other gang activity–much of it directed from Latin America, Asia, and Europe–has permeated our country to the point that no area is immune. As one example, several thousand members of the Central American gang MS-13 now operate in northern Virginia, only a stone’s throw from our nation’s capital.

Post-1965 mass immigration was a huge mistake. How do we humanely address this tragedy?

Dr. Norm Matloff writes:

Just when you had thought you’d heard everything–IBM has filed a patent on methods to optimize offshoring.

Norm

IBM files for patent on offshoring jobs
Seeks to protect tax incentives

Christine Young
By Christine Young
Times Herald-Record
Posted: March 30, 2009

As IBM was firing thousands of American workers last week, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published Big Blue’s application to copyright a computerized system that calculates how to offshore jobs while maximizing government tax breaks. [METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR STRATEGIC GLOBAL RESOURCE SOURCING, March 30 2009.]

In their application to patent a “method and system for strategic global resource sourcing,” five Hudson Valley IBMers describe how it weighs such plans as “50 percent of resources in China by 2010,” against such factors as labor costs, infrastructure and the “minimum head count to qualify for incentives.”

The Washington Post story about Filipino-American accused John Balasta Napa, pictured at right, says

“He’s a pretty intense individual,” said Seda, who participated in the search of Napa’s house. He said people who knew Napa described him as a loner who idolized Cho and cheered for Cho when he watched TV news reports about the Virginia Tech shooting.

Seda said that Napa’s intensity, small frame and close-cropped hair caused him to “resemble the Virginia Tech shooter.” [Man Said to Idolize Va. Tech Shooter Faces Trial Defendant | Allegedly Owned the Same Type of Guns as Cho and Sent Threatening E-Mails By Allison Klein Washington Post, March 30, 2009]

Actually, what makes him physically resemble the Virginia Tech shooter is that he’s Asian, a fact not mentioned anywhere in the story. That may have something to do with his alleged cheering for Cho Seung Hui.

In one of Joe Guzzardi’s two columns on 3/27/09, he raised the familiar subject of “illegal alien” as a technically correct term that the delicate souls of the no-borders lobby can’t abide. Joe cited Title 8, Section 1325 ["8 USC 1325"] of the U.S. Code as an example of where “illegal alien” appears in official government documents.

However, 8 USC 1325 doesn’t actually use “illegal alien.” Nevertheless, a search of the entire U.S Code at the Cornell University Law School’s website yields 59 hits. So “illegal alien” is certainly there, copiously, within the Code.

Here’s one example, with the disputed-by-the-ninnies phrase italicized throughout:

Title 8, Section 1365. Reimbursement of States for costs of incarcerating illegal aliens and certain Cuban nationals

(a) Reimbursement of States
Subject to the amounts provided in advance in appropriation Acts, the Attorney General shall reimburse a State for the costs incurred by the State for the imprisonment of any illegal alien or Cuban national who is convicted of a felony by such State.
(b) Illegal aliens convicted of a felony
An illegal alien referred to in subsection (a) of this section is any alien who is any alien convicted of a felony who is in the United States unlawfully and—
(1) whose most recent entry into the United States was without inspection, or
(2) whose most recent admission to the United States was as a nonimmigrant and—
(A) whose period of authorized stay as a nonimmigrant expired, or
(B) whose unlawful status was known to the Government,
before the date of the commission of the crime for which the alien is convicted.

[I omit parts c, d, and e of 8 USC 1365.]

Links to most of the immigration-related sections of the U.S. Code, along with some commentary, are at this page of the Montanans for Immigration Law Enforcement website.

“GOP must call Obama’s bluff on immigration“ [Houston Chronicle, March 29] seemed like an interesting headline. But the article, by Jacob Monty, was just the usual once-more-into the breach boosterism about how the GOP’s only option is to focus on Hispanics, with no attempt to meet the counter arguments presented here many times. Yawn.

Heather MacDonald and I make an appearance because we are examples of

the extreme anti-immigrant rhetoric of many in the so-called Republican “base” [that] has created a huge obstacle to the party’s appeals

In my case, it’s because I recently told Michael Ruhl of the University of New Mexico’s Talk Radio News Service that “the issue in the immigration debate is not racism or xenophobia, it’s treason.”

I certainly do think this blatant attempt to import Hispanic and other ethnic Fifth Columns into the U.S. is a species of treason. Analogously, it will be fascinating to see how Avigdor Lieberman implements his proposal that the Arab minority take loyalty oaths as he enters the government of our Israeli ally, and how this innovative policy is reported in the U.S.

Far more interesting than Monty’s maundering is the comment thread. Not for the first time, it’s clear that a lot of Americans really get the immigration issue. For example:

Monty infers that Heather Mac Donald is an extremist based on this quote- “National Review Online contributor Heather MacDonald writes of “the growing underclass culture among second- and third-generation Hispanic Americans.”
This is extremism? It is the honest truth - backed by hard facts and diligent research. Ms Mac Donald is a well-respected scholar and author. With illiteracy, illegitimate teen pregnancy, 60-70% school drop out rates, high crime stats, coupled with no or limited English skills prevalent among the Hispanic community, it is undeniable that the underclass is there and growing. At least Republicans are honest.

and

If Monty’s analysis were correct, Hispanic voters would have voted overwhelmingly for McCain…the most pro immigration candidate ever nominated by either political party.

and

Funny how the Chronicle does not identify Jacob Monty, as they usually give attribution to outside opinionators. A very curious omission. Who is he? - A Hispanic immigration attorney in Houston - who makes money off illegal aliens. Getting immigration policy advice from this guy is like getting financial advice from Bernie Madoff. No thanks.

I checked, and Jacob Monty is indeed an immigration attorney. Email, other contact info here. (Be polite!) Comment to Houston Chronicle here.