Sunday Readings: 3 August 2008

You are not alone.

Jay Tolsen writes in the Los Angeles Times on the estimated 3 million United States citizens who expatriate themselves every year:

…In his recent book Bad Money, political commentator Kevin Phillips warns that an unprecedented number of citizens, fed up with failed politics and a souring economy, have already departed for other countries, with even larger numbers planning to do so soon. But that may be putting too negative a reading on this little-noticed trend. In fact, most of today’s expats are not part of a new Lost Generation, moving to Paris or other European haunts to nurse their disillusionment and write their novels. Some may be artists and bohemians, but many more are entrepreneurs, teachers, or skilled knowledge workers in the globalized high-tech economy. Others are members of a retirement bulge that is stretching pensions and IRAs by living abroad. And while a high percentage of expats are unhappy with the rightward tilt of George Bush’s America, most don’t see their decision to move overseas as a political statement.

Europe still draws many of these American emigrants, but even more have relocated in Canada and Mexico. Others are trying out Australia, New Zealand, or one of the new economies of Asia, while a growing stream flows southward to Central and South America….

Meanwhile, back in the USA:

The Mesa (Arizona) East Valley Tribune has a five-part series on Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpio and his crusade against “illegal” aliens.  Arpio (who is always in a heap o’ trouble) thinks it’s a compliment when he — and his admirer Lou Dobbs — are compared to the KKK.

The newspaper also found:

• Deputies are failing to meet the county’s standard for response times on life-threatening emergencies. In 2006 and 2007, patrol cars arrived late two-thirds of the time on more than 6,000 of the most serious calls for service.

• MCSO’s arrest rate has plunged the past two years even as the number of criminal investigations has soared.

• The sheriff’s “saturation” patrols and “crime suppression/anti-illegal immigration” sweeps in Hispanic neighborhoods are done without any evidence of criminal activity, violating federal regulations intended to prevent racial profiling.

• Rampant overtime spending on immigration operations drove the agency into financial crisis and forced it to close facilities across the county. Although MCSO officials have said state and federal grants covered all the expense, illegal immigration arrests actually are costing county taxpayers millions of dollars.

• Despite the money and manpower expended, the sheriff’s office has arrested only low-level participants in human smuggling rings: drop house guards, drivers and the immigrants they ferry.

• Deputies regularly make traffic stops based only on their suspicion that illegal immigrants are inside vehicles. They figure out probable cause after deciding whom to pull over.

Arpaio, who’s campaigning for a fifth term as county sheriff, has garnered international media attention for his tough stance on illegal immigration.

Thank goodness for a free press… but is it free?

Diana Barahona, in an article by-lined from La Habana, wonders about that:

The current definition of freedom of the press was developed by the monopoly press, with the support of the state, and the tortuous logic goes like this:

• Governments, although they are well intentioned, tend towards corruption and abuse.

• An independent press is necessary to inform the public about this corruption and abuse.

• Independence is assured by not receiving any money or subsidies from the government.

• To maintain this independence, the press must be commercially successful.

• Therefore, the more commercially successful the press is, the freer it is.

A communications text written by professors at Cal State Long Beach defines democracy in an equally crass way when it proposes this argument: If democracy means distributing the greatest amount of goods to the greatest number of people, and advertising facilitates this distribution, then advertising is democracy (yes, the text actually says this).

Here’s the reality of the situation