Columnist.
At a time when many state and local governments cannot afford even necessary government programs, the Obama administration is about to force hundreds of jurisdictions to waste millions of dollars printing ballots in Spanish and other languages for voters who don't need them. Worse, some of these bilingual ballots may be used fraudulently to encourage people who are not citizens to vote illegally in next year's election. A perverse element of the Voting Rights Act makes the whole scheme possible, and, unfortunately, not even Republicans have been willing to challenge it.
The riots that have wracked England in the last week should be a sober warning to the United States: This is what happens when a country breeds a generation of welfare dependents who are happy to bite the hand that feeds them. For days, roaming gangs of young people have engaged in looting, setting fires, intimidating citizens, even killing innocents. Speaking to a special session of Parliament, Prime Minister David Cameron said, "This is not about poverty, it's about culture, a culture that glorifies violence, shows disrespect to authority, and says everything about rights but nothing about responsibilities."
In a revealing interview this week with The Wall Street Journal, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor addressed the division that will make compromise in the budget fights ahead nearly impossible. In describing the negotiations leading up to the debt-ceiling deal, Cantor said the talks were made difficult because of a major clash of visions between the parties. "It's almost as if the president and his party really are bent on promoting a welfare state and then thinking about ... our free enterprise system second," Cantor said. "And their emphasis ... has been in trying to promote programs of economic redistribution. And if you hear them speak, it's always about 'everybody should pay their fair share.' And I think the difference is, we believe everyone should have a fair shot."
When the history of the debt limit fight is written, the failure of presidential leadership will constitute a major chapter. Once again, President Obama has proven himself lacking in the most fundamental attribute necessary to the office he occupies: leadership. His idea of leading his party and the American people in a crisis is to give a speech, as he did earlier this week in prime time. But when it comes to fashioning a concrete plan or rallying support of his own troops, he's missing in action.
There is no question that many people who lost their jobs during the worst of the recession have been unable to find work that paid as well. Nearly one in 10 workers today is unemployed, and the economy is creating jobs at a painfully slow rate. But there are jobs available -- and not just those offered at minimum wage -- that go unfilled every day. Several studies show that about one-third of those receiving unemployment benefits get a job immediately after their eligibility expires. And a quick survey of help-wanted signs and classified ads in most areas suggest that businesses are looking for workers. In 2009, when the economy was in worse shape, 3 million jobs went begging, while 13 million Americans were unemployed.
With unemployment rising and a U.S. debt-crisis looming, Americans haven't had much good news lately. But there is one bright spot on the policy front: Illegal immigration from Mexico has virtually stopped. Less than a decade ago, a half-million Mexicans were coming to the U.S. illegally every year, accounting for 60 percent of all illegal immigration. But last year, fewer than 100,000 Mexicans crossed the border illegally or overstayed their visas. And it appears that an even greater number of Mexican illegal immigrants left the U.S., resulting in a net reduction in the number of Mexican illegal immigrants living here.
After nearly 40 years in Washington, I'm leaving the nation's capital pretty much as I found it when I arrived. The players have changed, but the problems haven't. Richard Nixon occupied the White House then, and the United States was involved in a long and unpopular war and faced economic problems at home. In 1971, to combat nearly 6 percent inflation, and a trade and balance-of-payments deficit, and to protect the value of the dollar, Nixon imposed a 90-day freeze on wages and prices, and a 10 percent import surcharge, and ended the convertibility of dollars into gold. He also launched the war on drugs -- a 'war' we still haven't won.
The Supreme Court handed down a big win for American consumers this week, though the case had nothing to do with consumer protection. The court's decision involved the rules for determining what constitutes a proper class of plaintiffs, representing not just those individuals who have come forward to allege illegal behavior but others who have been similarly harmed. These so-called class-action lawsuits reward plaintiffs' lawyers handsomely if they succeed -- resulting in millions of dollars in attorneys' fees in some cases. What's more, the mere threat of a large class-action suit often forces a company into negotiating a generous settlement, even if it's undeserved, just to avoid the costs of having to defend itself in court. And we all end up paying for it in higher prices.
Anthony Weiner's bizarre saga appears to be at an end. The seven-term congressman announced Thursday that he is resigning his congressional seat 10 days after admitting that he "sexted" at least a half-dozen women from his Twitter account and almost three weeks after the scandal broke. But what have we actually learned from this weird spectacle that has dominated the front pages of the country's leading newspapers and aired 'round-the-clock on cable news? People were fascinated by the Weiner story because his behavior was so reckless. How could a member of Congress think he could get away with sending lewd pictures to total strangers and not be caught? It says something about the hubris of politicians. But it also says something more about our culture.
And you thought things couldn't get worse on the housing front. The U.S. housing market is in the worst shape since the Great Depression, and now the Obama administration's solution is to impose new rules that would banish 60 percent of current homebuyers from the market. The proposed Mortgage Qualification Rules are the result of legislation passed in the wake of the financial meltdown to ensure that mortgage-backed securities are based on high-quality loans. But the effect will be to disqualify millions of potential homebuyers.
For the first time in history, less than half of Americans now live in married-couple households. The new finding by the Census Bureau reflects the most profound change in the nature of American society ever to have occurred, yet practically no one talks about it. Only 48 percent of American households are made up of married couples. These numbers reflect a sea change in living arrangements. In 1950, married couples were 78 percent of all households. Some of these figures reflect our aging population: We have more widows and widowers than at any time in the past. But they also reflect changing mores. People are marrying at older ages, and larger numbers are choosing not to marry at all, not to stay married, and to have children outside of marriage. A new Gallup poll shows that more people now approve of both out-of-wedlock births and divorce. Only 41 percent of Americans believe it is morally wrong to bear a child outside marriage, and a mere 23 percent think divorce is morally wrong.
The Democrats' victory Tuesday in a special election in New York's 26th Congressional District is being touted as proof that Republicans have overreached on Medicare reform. But the facts are more complicated. Many analysts considered the victor, Democrat Kathy Hochul, a better candidate than Republican Jane Corwin. Hochul had a longer track record in the district and more connection with voters. Plus, a third-party candidate -- former Democrat and faux tea party representative Jack Davis -- spent millions on his campaign and pulled 9 percent of the vote. But excuses notwithstanding, Republicans should learn a few lessons from their loss.
President Obama's major speech on the Middle East Thursday will come back to haunt him. He said nothing that will have any impact in deterring Syrian government violence against pro-democracy protestors, but the president did make pronouncements that threaten another state in the Middle East: Israel, America's strongest ally in the region. In his speech Thursday, the president paid lip service to Israeli security but laid down dangerous markers for restarting peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. With this speech, Obama became the first American president to require that Israel accept its pre-1967 borders as a starting point to negotiations with the Palestinians.
President Obama invoked immigrant assimilation this week in a speech in El Paso, Texas, praising the notion embodied in the motto E pluribus unum: out of many, one. But it wasn't all that long ago when many liberals eschewed the idea of America as having one language, one culture, and one people. Ironically, it has taken an anti-immigrant backlash to awaken at least some liberals to the dangers of multiculturalism, which they pushed aggressively for decades. It was liberals -- not conservatives -- who originally claimed that today's immigrants couldn't assimilate, or, in their view, shouldn't even try. Liberals insisted that Hispanic kids, even those who were born here, be taught in Spanish and learn to revere their ancestral culture rather than to take pride in being Americans. The bilingual, multicultural approach became deeply imbedded in the public school curriculum, thanks to the efforts mostly of white liberals, with help from some college-educated, fully assimilated Hispanic activists.
While the Obama administration deservedly revels in the success of the U.S. operation to kill Osama bin Laden this week, one question remains: Why is the Justice Department threatening criminal prosecution of the men who made the mission possible? CIA Director Leon Panetta has acknowledged that the initial information that led to the discovery of bin Laden's hideout in Abbottabad came, in part, from information obtained by "enhanced interrogation techniques against some of those detainees." Yet, Attorney General Holder persists in what appears to be a vendetta against these very CIA interrogators.
Among the challenges facing the Democrats in the 2012 election is the prospect that President Barack Obama will not be able to re-energize his base -- which included record numbers of Hispanic voters in 2008. Hispanics gave Obama 67 percent of their votes, but just as importantly, Hispanic turnout was higher than usual. More than 10 million Hispanics cast 9 percent of the total vote, the largest ever. But many Hispanics have soured on Obama -- and not just because he failed to deliver on his promise of comprehensive immigration reform. Like most other Americans, Hispanics care most about the economy. High unemployment, which is at 11 percent among Hispanics, rising gas prices and a depressed housing market hurt President Obama's chances to repeat his 2008 performance among Hispanic voters.
Is Donald Trump a closet Obama supporter? That's the only logical conclusion to draw from the Donald's recent foray into presidential politics. If he keeps up his kooky bid for the GOP nomination, he'll damage the party and its chances to win the White House in 2012. And if he's seriously considering running as an Independent -- as he's hinted he would if he fails to win the Republican nomination -- he virtually guarantees Barack Obama's re-election. Trump may be entertaining -- millions of fans of his reality television shows seem to think so, though the appeal eludes me. But it's one thing for Trump to play rich bully for ratings and another to use his celebrity status to peddle wacky conspiracy theories that harm political discourse.
President Obama offered few concrete suggestions for spending cuts this week in his much-anticipated speech on reducing the federal debt, but he had lots to say about raising taxes. "As a country that values fairness, wealthier individuals have traditionally borne a greater share of this burden than the middle class or those less fortunate. Everybody pays, but the wealthier have borne a little more," the president said. So he wants to raise the top marginal tax rate to 39.6 percent and eliminate itemized deductions for the top 2 percent of earners.
The president's speech on Libya this week raised more questions than it answered. And with fighting there escalating, as Gadhafi's troops battle poorly trained and armed rebels driving them back from strategic territory they had gained, it seems likely that circumstances will force a more expansive role than President Obama outlined. We are already under pressure from our allies to provide arms to the rebels, directly or indirectly. But we are not positioned to make an informed decision unless we have a better understanding of what is happening on the ground. In his speech, the president stated U.S. goals as narrowly as possible -- to protect civilian populations from slaughter at the hands of Gadhafi's forces. He has demurred on the larger issue of whether it is the goal of the military operation to remove Gadhafi from power, though clearly, any outcome short of Gadhafi's departure would harm U.S. interests. But the problem in Libya, as it was in Iraq, is that we have too little idea what will happen after we achieve our declared military aims.
New Census figures out this week show that the Hispanic population in the U.S. has increased dramatically over the last decade. Hispanics now number roughly 50 million nationwide, up from 35 million in 2000. They also are no longer concentrated in just a handful of Southwestern states, as they were for decades, but have spread out across the country. Some of the largest percentage increases have incurred in Southern states, with the Hispanic population more than doubling in Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina and Tennessee. Both higher Hispanic birthrates and immigration have driven this trend. But what will this demographic shift in the American population mean in the long term? I've documented the rapid assimilation of Hispanics into the social and economic mainstream for years, starting with my 1991 book, "Out of the Barrio: Towards a New Politics of Hispanic Assimilation."
