Cloward and Piven may have been Americans, but their plan has metastasized across the western world

chicagoans protest their displacement by illegal aliens

Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud

DAVID STROM 3:20 PM | May 10, 2024

I once angered a friend by suggesting that one reason that the United States has a housing crisis is that we are importing millions of people and have no place to put them.

They were furious. It was such a xenophobic thing to say. 

Of course, I was merely pointing out that supply and demand are a thing. Even if unlimited immigration were otherwise a good thing, you can't dump millions of people into a constrained market and not expect price increases. 

… Ever since Tony Blair decided to remake Britain into a multicultural utopia, Britain has imported millions of migrants, forever changing its demographics. For instance, in 2022, Britain's net migration was 725,000, with about 2/3rds coming from outside the European Union. 

Aside from the cultural implications--all those videos of London's streets filled with antisemites protesting Israel speak volumes--are the merely practical issues, such as answering the simple question of where you put everyone. 

Building new housing in Britain is pretty difficult--think Portland or San Francisco rather than Texas or Florida and you will get the idea--and not enough is getting built to house everybody. I've written about Brits being kicked out of their homes to house migrants (yes, that is a thing), but there is a more common problem: rents are skyrocketing even faster than baseline inflation, which is a key part of why inflation is so high in Britain. 

So says the Chief Economist for the Bank of England, and he is right. Further, he says about 90% of the shortage is caused by importing more migrants than the country can house. 

…. [T]here has been a belief that immigration is good for the economy. It boosts GDP, or at least it should. 

However, a new study that was just released seems to contradict that assumption. As the percent of Britain's foreign-born population has increased, economic growth has slowed quite considerably. This may seem counterintuitive, but the statistics show it pretty plainly. 

While illegal immigration recently hit record highs in the United States, legal immigration poses a significant issue for the U.K., where legal migration levels are more than 25 times the level of illegal levels, according to a report Wednesday from the Centre for Policy Studies, a U.K. think tank and advocacy group.

The percentage of foreign-born people in the U.K. nearly doubled over two decades, with 9% of the population being foreign-born in 2001 to 17% in 2021, which is even higher than the U.S., where 14% of people are foreign-born. 

We can speculate as to why the inflow of migrants has suppressed economic growth, but the data is there. I suspect that the explanation is pretty simple: non-European migrants are undereducated and have values that are dramatically different from the average Briton's. They don't appear to integrate well, either. 

A Dutch study shows the difference is pretty stark. When measuring the net economic impact of migrants from different regions it's pretty clear that immigrants from the Anglo-Saxon and East Asian countries bring the most benefit, and those from underdeveloped countries the most cost. 

This was not an anti-immigration group that concluded this; it was the University of Amsterdam's School of Economics. 

Related:

POSTED ON MAY 8, 2024 BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN IMMIGRATION, SWEDEN

SWEDEN SHAKEN BY CRISIS OF VIOLENCE

The Financial Times headlines: “The violent gang crisis shaking Sweden.” Spoiler alert: it all has to do with immigration.

Sweden has suffered an extraordinary spate of violence in recent months, particularly in Uppsala and its neighbour to the south, capital Stockholm. At its worst in September and October, barely a day went by without a shooting, bombing or hand grenade attack — sometimes several.

The Nordic country has gone from having one of the lowest levels of fatal shootings in Europe to one of the highest in just a decade. …

In a televised addressed at the end of September, Ulf Kristersson, the prime minister of Sweden, offered his diagnosis for the unprecedented violence, directly blaming “irresponsible immigration policy and failed integration”.

“I cannot over-emphasise the seriousness of the situation,” added the leader of the centre-right Moderate party. “Sweden has never seen anything like it before. No other country in Europe is seeing anything like it.”

The issue has shaken the full strata of society in the Nordic country. “This is a social earthquake in Sweden,” says Jesper Brodin, chief executive of furniture giant Ikea’s retail arm and one of the country’s most high-profile business leaders.

“If this continues for the next two decades, Sweden is lost. It’s tearing us apart,” says Richard Jomshof, head of the Swedish parliament’s justice committee and an MP from far-right Sweden Democrats.

Hinderaker: "As always, ‘far right’ means ‘not crazy about mass immigration from third-world countries.’ So most people are, in fact, ‘far right,’and the Sweden Democrats are now one of Sweden’s largest parties.

Sweden currently has a rate of homicide committed with a firearm that is nearly twice that of any other EU country. That is a brand-new phenomenon, attributable entirely to Sweden’s welcoming attitude toward “refugees,” of which it has imported two million. The Financial Times article quotes Swedes who attribute the problem to a lack of assimilation of immigrants:

[T]he nearest thing to agreement across the political spectrum is that Sweden itself has not done enough to integrate its immigrant communities.

Almost all Swedish cities have at least one so-called vulnerable area, where immigrants often make up a majority of the population. Crime rates there tend to be high and schools struggle to keep students or maintain discipline.

“I don’t want to say migration is what went wrong; I would rather say integration [went wrong],” says Jens Lapidus, a criminal defence lawyer turned crime author…

Hinderker: “That is almost a tautology. But hasn’t it become obvious that some groups of people are easier to assimilate than others? And wouldn’t a sane immigration policy, such as the U.S. formerly had, prioritize immigration from countries that are culturally compatible? The answer obviously is Yes, and yet posing the question, let alone answering it, is anathema on the American Left, as on the Swedish Left. But at least in Sweden, they are having an intelligent debate.”

And this:

Joe Biden's border crisis and the 'shadow system' that makes it easier for migrants to get into the U.S.

Yet another little-known policy implemented by President Joe Biden last year allows migrants in the U.S. on parole to serve as sponsors for other parolees – and border hawks are not happy with the revelation.

While the number of migrants in the country who are only allowed in because they are being supported by other parolees is unknown, it's thought at least hundreds of thousands could be utilizing this policy.

Any migrants on Temporary Protected Status (TPS) or in the U.S. on asylum claims, as well as parolees, refugees and recipients of deferred action, Deferred Enforced Departure or DACA are all able to serve as the support for other migrant parolees, according to policies implemented in January 2023. 

This creates a 'chain parolee' system where parolees are able to bring into the U.S. other parolees by promising to financially support and sponsor them.

House Homeland Security Committee Chair Mark Green told DailyMail.com that the policy 'makes a mockery' of immigration laws as well as national and border security in the U.S. 

The policy is part of a push by the Biden administration to prevent former President Donald Trump from removing illegal immigrants if he gets back in the White House next year, NumbersUSA Director of Research Eric Ruark claimed in an interview with DailyMail.com 

'He's doing it in a very smart way. He knows what he's doing. This isn't incompetence. This is deliberate and willful.'

Well, the Royal Navy used the same concept and conquered the world, so maybe ….

Rum, Buggery and the lash: San Francisco is handing out free drinks to its winos, 4X a day

The City of San Francisco is handing out bottles of beer, glasses of wine and shots of vodka to homeless alcoholics - and spending $5m a year on the program. 

The alcoholic drinks are served by nurses as part of the city's 'managed alcohol program', which has been running for four years, as a way of taking care of vulnerable homeless people. 

The program is designed to curb the amount of alcohol homeless people drink. It still allows them some, but in a more managed way, in the hope of curbing their addiction in a controlled manner. 

I know quite a few alcoholics, active and recovering, and I don’t think either group would say that 4 shots of vodka a day was (a) adequate for active alcoholics; or (b) do anything except keep the home fires burning, and spur them to go out looking for more fuel.

Then again, I’m no scientist, and can’t even grasp the San Francisco science that tells us there are 363 different sexes, so what do I know?

any port in a storm — the high life on san francisco bay

Nicely done

When the city of Seaside, Calif., ordered resident Etienne Constable to build a fence to cover the boat parked in his driveway, he complied. But the puckish way he did it — hiring his artist neighbor to paint a realistic mural of the same exact boat on his fence — has brought him viral attention.

“We kind of hit the sweet spot between following the rules and making an elegant statement to the contrary,” says Constable.

Constable, who works in business development, has lived in the same house in Seaside for 29 years. For most of that time, his boat trailer — often with a boat attached — has sat in his driveway without issue. But in July 2023, he received a letter from the city, asserting that the municipal code requires that boats and trailers be “screened on the side and front by a six-foot-high fence,” and threatening him with a citation and a $100 fine if he failed to comply. (The Washington Post has reviewed the letter.)

Pending on (Greenwich) Shore Road

215 Shore Road, $3.250 million, 9 days to pending status, so we can assume there were multiple bids. The listing describes it as “located in the heart of downtown” which strikes me as a tad generous; I might have said, convenient to I-95 and the municipal sewage plant, but, obviously, at least several people didn’t care who its neighbors are, and that should provide encouragement to other sellers of homes in compromised locations.

Antique on Taconic Road has sold, and at a very good price

264 Taconic Road, built in 1848, has sold for $3,.7 million on an initial asking price of $3.9. Beautifully restored, and owned by two great people, so what a pleasing result. I had worried that the slender market for truly old houses would drive the price much lower than this, but buyers from LA’s Pacific Palisades stepped up an paid what it was worth. It’s nice when that happens.

Pending in Cos Cob after 8 days

7 Meadow Drive, priced at but going for more than $1.9 million. This was a rehab/rebuild job a few years ago: the original house, built in 1915 and very much showing its age, was put up for sale in January 2021, for $665,000 sold via bidding war for $685,877 to the eponymous Flippin Ct LLC, who expanded it from its original 1,118 sq. ft. to 3,024 and resold it in October 2023 for $1.825 million. Is six months the new normal for home ownership in town? It’s beginning to seem that way.

Original

I think their troubles really began in 1964, when they erected the Boy Scout statue on the D.C. Ellipse

at the very least, it sent the wrong signal to aspiring scoutmasters

(or, “hey, little boy, wanna see the puppy i’ve got under my tent?”)

Perhaps we should just say that its erection came prematurely,

The organization began allowing gay youth in 2013 and ended a blanket ban on gay adult leaders in 2015. In 2017, it made the historic announcement that girls would be accepted as Cub Scouts as of 2018 and into the flagship Boy Scout program — renamed Scouts BSA — in 2019.

This could be fun, once I learn how to use it

John Tierney posted this on Instapundit yesterday:

FOLLOW THE MONEY: Brown, Harvard, and Indiana University of Pa. Received Gifts from the “State of Palestine.”  The grants were spotted by the watchdogs at OpenThe Books, which has also just launched a free tool for members of the public to do their own searches of how money is being spent by governments at the local, state and federal levels. It’s called Benjamin the Chatbot (in honor of Benjamin Franklin.)

I went to the site and looked up “Greenwich” — I supplied my email address and within seconds I was sent a summary showing a list or recipients of money paid by the state to Greenwich entities, ranging from Garden Catering to the YMCA. Can I narrow that further, to see payments made directly by town of Greenwich? I think so, but haven’t yet experimented.

(The links are active in the email ; those in the pictures below are not)

The first picture below is a sample of the overall payment list, the second shows the results of clicking on a particular payees’ highlighted link. Only the dollar amount is shown, not the specific purpose for the payment — for instance, we can probably presume that Garden Catering was paid for, duh, catering a town event — but the tool should be useful for seeing where are tax dollars: federal; state; and local are being spent, and thus opening an avenue for further inquiry.

It may take a couple of months before anyone notices your plight, honey

pray for the tigresses

Princeton University Hunger Striker for Hamas Is 'Literally Shaking'

Apparently feeling they weren't getting enough attention, a group of Princeton student protesters for Hamas announced a hunger strike, but it sounds like it's been rough. They said it was "shameful and cruel" that Princeton wouldn't let them set up tents, leaving them "vulnerable and unsafe." Now they're complaining that the school administration isn't monitoring their vitals. "They are not at all taking care of us," they said.

This plus-size participant read her list of demands off of her iPhone a few days ago.

Now the hunger strikers are "literally shaking," which has us literally shaking.