I just got an email from a group calling itself “America’s Voice calling attention to a spoof Lou Dobbs for Governor site they’ve put up because Dobbs is ostensibly “contemplating a run for Governor of New Jersey next year.”

Lou Dobbs for Governor: Because Nothing Says “Welcome to the Garden State” Like “Show Me Your Papers Amigo!”

Joe Carter, in an interesting reflection on his 30 days working for the Huckabee campaign, makes this observation:

The Ron Paul Phenomenon is Not About Ron Paul — It will take a more astute political mind than I possess to comprehend this Ron Paul phenomenon. All I know is that it has less to do with the candidate than about people’s desire for something different. When Rod Dreher, Andrew Sullivan, Vox Day, John Derbyshire, and the 9/11 Truthers all agree on a candidate its safe to say that they aren’t all seeing the same thing.

On last night’s episode of OTB Radio, I likened it to the Ross Perot phenomenon in 1992, which was also more about “Something Different” than about Perot. There, though, there was also a minor cult of personality going on; Paul can’t be accused of that.

The bottom line is that there are a huge number of people simply fed up with the major parties, a trend that has been visible at least since George Wallace’s 1968 campaign when he famously asserted that “there’s not a dime’s worth of difference” between the national Democrat and Republican parties. While that feeling is, in my view, exaggerated it’s certainly true that there’s far less choice in American politics than in most Western democracies. Both of our parties would fit comfortably within the British Conservative Party, for example.

Both Micah Sifry and Matt Yglesias point to this political polarization network visualization which shows that books by Pat Buchanan and Lou Dobbs occupy the center in American political thought, not the extreme fringe that they do in terms of elected officials.

Matt gets it just right:

[I]nsofar as there’s some kind of excluded middle in our current political situation it’s not the brand of Bloomberg-style “centrism” that the bemoaners of partisanship tend to favor. Instead, it’s something akin to Dobbs-style populist nationalism. It’s not a point of view I favor, but unlike Bloombergism it is a point of view that has a lot of support and only a little representation.

A lot of those folks are gravitating to Paul, not because he’s necessarily one of them, but because he’s as close as they’re likely to find in a respectable candidate. Given that the presidential nominating processes of both parties favor the activist Right/Left base, though, there’s virtually no chance that a Paul (or Buchanan) would get the nomination.

Nativist windbag Lou Dobbs seems to be running a stealth campaign for president, writes Political Insider’s Cicero.

Is populist CNN broadcaster Lou Dobbs mulling a political future? Writing at CNN.com last week, Dobbs said, “One year from now, we will have elected a new president. As eager as I am for that reality, I can’t imagine any one of the current candidates for their party’s nomination being chosen by the American people to lead this nation for the next four years. I believe the person elected a year from now will be an Independent populist, a man or woman who understands the genius of this country lies in the hearts and minds of its people and not in the prerogatives and power of its elites.”

Dobbs continued, “As I travel around the country, my feeling about the lack of true candidates is validated by those I talk with: They are not excited about the candidates seeking their party’s nomination.” He concluded by saying, “I believe next November’s surprise will be the election of a man or woman of great character, vision and accomplishment, a candidate who has not yet entered the race.”

He goes on to note that Dobbs is about to go on a nationwide book tour touting “himself as America’s premier critic of globalization, free trade accords, and loose immigration policies.”

My guess is that Dobbs wouldn’t want to give up his lucrative gig at CNN to run a futile independent run. Certainly, though, he wouldn’t have trouble getting the nomination of one or more existing small parties and thus have a relatively easy path to the ballot.

Lou Dobbs that is. Daniel Drezner points to New York Times op-ed that looks at some of Lou Dobbs claims, and the results aren’t pretty.

The [60 Minutes] segment was a profile of Mr. Dobbs, and while doing background research for it, a “60 Minutes” producer came across a 2005 news report from Mr. Dobbs’s CNN program on contagious diseases. In the report, one of Mr. Dobbs’s correspondents said there had been 7,000 cases of leprosy in this country over the previous three years, far more than in the past.

When Lesley Stahl of “60 Minutes” sat down to interview Mr. Dobbs on camera, she mentioned the report and told him that there didn’t seem to be much evidence for it.

“Well, I can tell you this,” he replied. “If we reported it, it’s a fact.”

Paging George Orwell, would Mr. Orwell please pick up the white courtesy phone?

But despite the Orwellian nature of that final comment by Dobbs is the claim that there have been 7,000 cases of leprosy in the last three years accurate? No.

To sort through all this, I called James L. Krahenbuhl, the director of the National Hansen’s Disease Program, an arm of the federal government. Leprosy in the United States is indeed largely a disease of immigrants who have come from Asia and Latin America. And the official leprosy statistics do show about 7,000 diagnosed cases — but that’s over the last 30 years, not the last three.

The peak year was 1983, when there were 456 cases. After that, reported cases dropped steadily, falling to just 76 in 2000. Last year, there were 137.

Whoopsies. But more importantly what did Dobbs do with this new information? Not much really.

So Mr. Dobbs was flat-out wrong. And when I spoke to him yesterday, he admitted as much, sort of. I read him Ms. Romans’s comment — the one with the word “suddenly” in it — and he replied, “I think that is wrong.” He then went on to say that as far as he was concerned, he had corrected the mistake by later broadcasting another report, on the same night as his on-air confrontation with the Southern Poverty Law Center officials. This report mentioned that leprosy had peaked in 1983.

Of course, he has never acknowledged on the air that his program presented false information twice. Instead, he lambasted the officials from the law center for saying he had. Even yesterday, he spent much of our conversation emphasizing that there really were 7,000 cases in the leprosy registry, the government’s 30-year database. Mr. Dobbs is trying to have it both ways.

In other words, he did mention there was a peak (which is true) but he never admitted that the 3 year claim was false and that the 7,000 number comes from over a 30 year time period. Owning up to one’s mistakes is a sign of good character, running away from them and pretending to have already owned up to them is not. And it doesn’t stop there.

For one thing, Mr. Dobbs has a somewhat flexible relationship with reality. He has said, for example, that one-third of the inmates in the federal prison system are illegal immigrants. That’s wrong, too. According to the Justice Department, 6 percent of prisoners in this country are noncitizens (compared with 7 percent of the population). For a variety of reasons, the crime rate is actually lower among immigrants than natives.

Gee, what a shock. And apparently his guest list isn’t…well all that appealing.

Second, Mr. Dobbs really does give airtime to white supremacy sympathizers. Ms. Cosman, who is now deceased, was a lawyer and Renaissance studies scholar, never a medical doctor or a leprosy expert. She gave speeches in which she said that Mexican immigrants had a habit of molesting children. Back in their home villages, she would explain, rape was not as serious a crime as cow stealing. The Southern Poverty Law Center keeps a list of other such guests from “Lou Dobbs Tonight.”

Hmmm, seems like there are quite a few people who spend quite a bit of time giving speeches to the Council of Conservative Citizens. Not exactly a good thing to put on one’s resume when one is trying to dodge the claim of being…well…a racist.

The most common complaint about him [Dobbs], at least from other journalists, is that his program combines factual reporting with editorializing. But I think this misses the point. Americans, as a rule, are smart enough to handle a program that mixes opinion and facts. The problem with Mr. Dobbs is that he mixes opinion and untruths. He is the heir to the nativist tradition that has long used fiction and conspiracy theories as a weapon against the Irish, the Italians, the Chinese, the Jews and, now, the Mexicans.

There is no denying that this country’s immigration system is broken. But it defies belief — and a whole lot of economic research — to suggest that the problems of the middle class stem from illegal immigrants. Those immigrants, remember, are largely non-English speakers without a high school diploma. They have probably hurt the wages of native-born high school dropouts and made everyone else better off.

More to the point, if Mr. Dobbs’s arguments were really so good, don’t you think he would be able to stick to the facts? And if CNN were serious about being “the most trusted name in news,” as it claims to be, don’t you think it would be big enough to issue an actual correction?

That pretty much sums it up. If the claims that immigration is a grave threat to the American Way of Life then why resort to such bogus numbers? Why not stick with just the facts? Could it be that the facts just aren’t on Mr. Dobbs’ side?

Dobbs provides a response here.

Now, no one hates making a mistake, I assure you, more than I do. And on this broadcast, we do make mistakes — not often, mind you — but certainly enough to frustrate me mightily, and with barely tolerable frequency.

Well so much for the “if we reported it, then its a fact,” claim. I guess the new standard is, “if we reported it, then it could be fact, it could be opinion, or it could be complete bullsh*t.”

Dobbs tries to defend his claim about illegal immigrants in the federal prison system,

He wrote that I said that “One third of the inmates in the federal prison system are illegal immigrants.” That isn’t what I said. I didn’t say anything close to it.

We reported that one-third of the federal prison population three and a half years ago were “non-citizens.” The columnist said the number was 6 percent. The exact number of the year in question was 29.3 percent for fiscal year 2001. And by the way, we’re putting up links on our Web site, loudobbs.com, so you can check the numbers for yourself.

To an extent this is the truth. However, it is a bit misleading in that it doesn’t give a complete picture. Federal prisoners don’t amount to a very large part of the population residing in some sort of prison. Further, one of the reasons you end up in Federal prison is immigration violations, it isn’t the only way to end up in a Federal prision, but it is indeed one way. So the number of non-citizens in Federal prison are going to probably be higher based on this alone. Further, the number has been declining, as is the number of non-citizens who are in prison in general. And Dobb’s claim that illegals are causing an increasing problem in terms of prison populations is dubious since non-citizens incorporates both legal and illegal aliens.

Daniel Drezner also points to this article at Reason’s Hit & Run by David Weigel. The title is pretty good, “Lou Dobbs Cures Leprosy”.

Cross-posted from PoliBlog:

While there are very important and legitimate issues that need debating and resolution in the immigration arena, one of the major problems that has stymied such debate is the clear presence of xenophobia (meaning the irrational fear of foreign persons or foreign things in general) that infuses the discussion.

A case in point is Lou Dobbs and his anti-immigrant stance which has become a staple of his CNN program. There are numerous examples one could cite in regards to Dobbs and xenophobia, whether from Dobbs’ own lips or from his guests, however let’s focus on leprosy (yes, leprosy).

A few weeks ago my family and I were grabbing dinner out and I noted Dobb’s show on one of the TV’s in the restaurant where we were eating (Moe’s, an excellent fast-foodish Mexican food place, in fact–ah, the irony…). I only caught part of the discussion, but it was about some claims that Dobbs had made about leprosy cases in the US and the inference that the disease had spiked in the US because of illegal immigrants.

The whole story is fully discussed in a piece in today’s NYT: Truth, Fiction and Lou Dobbs:

In the report, one of Mr. Dobbs’s correspondents said there had been 7,000 cases of leprosy in this country over the previous three years, far more than in the past.

When Lesley Stahl of “60 Minutes” sat down to interview Mr. Dobbs on camera, she mentioned the report and told him that there didn’t seem to be much evidence for it.

“Well, I can tell you this,” he replied. “If we reported it, it’s a fact.”

However, the bottom line is, it isn’t:

To sort through all this, I called James L. Krahenbuhl, the director of the National Hansen’s Disease Program, an arm of the federal government. Leprosy in the United States is indeed largely a disease of immigrants who have come from Asia and Latin America. And the official leprosy statistics do show about 7,000 diagnosed cases — but that’s over the last 30 years, not the last three.

The peak year was 1983, when there were 456 cases. After that, reported cases dropped steadily, falling to just 76 in 2000. Last year, there were 137.

Three, thirty: who’s counting anyway?

Here’s an example of Dobbs defending his numbers on May 9, 2007, and this was after he had been directly challenged on the figures by more than one source:

A couple of things, according to the NYT piece, Dobbs did back off the original report, but downplayed the timeframe question, but focused on the 7,000 number–and has not corrected the original report on air:

Of course, he has never acknowledged on the air that his program presented false information twice. Instead, he lambasted the officials from the law center for saying he had. Even yesterday, he spent much of our conversation emphasizing that there really were 7,000 cases in the leprosy registry, the government’s 30-year database. Mr. Dobbs is trying to have it both ways.

There are two amazing things about the video clip above. First, the facts in question could have been checked by Dobbs’ reporter, as the NYT reporter did. Instead, the reporter for Lou Dobbs stuck with the original source. Indeed, Dobbs was confronted with the right numbers by Leslie Stahl on 60 Minutes on May 6.

Second, the source for the video clip was the late Madeleine Cosman, a lawyer whose Ph.D. was in English and comparative literature. As such, presenting her as an expert on a medical issue and referring to her as “Dr.” is misleading. Further, a medical journal presented as a authoritative source yet that takes articles from lawyers/English Ph.D.s is a questionable authority at best.

Ms. Cosman appears to have been somewhat obsessed with Mexican immigrants. Here’s some video:

Cosman’s article in question can be found here [PDF]. The leprosy reference is one paragraph, quoted about in its entirety in the video clip above. If one bothered to look at the piece, one would find out that the source for Cosman’s leprosy data (and therefore the source for Dobbs’ program) was a Village Voice piece called “Living with Leprosy” and a NYT piece-neither of which are especially definitive sources for such numbers.

In terms of journalism and sources, I found the Village Voice piece via Google after one search and I looked in the NYT archive and after two searches could not find the February 20, 2003 article that Cosman cited, but did find a February 18, 2003 piece that noted:

While there were some 900 recorded cases in the United States 40 years ago, today more than 7,000 people have leprosy, or Hansen’s disease, as it is now called.

I assume that is what she was referring to.

The VV piece had these numbers:

Yet leprosy is emerging—burgeoning, even—as a modern problem. While there were some 900 cases of leprosy in the U.S. 35 years ago, today 10,000 are on record, 500 of them in the tristate area.

Neither of the stories stated that the numbers had ballooned in the last three years, as Cosman and Dobbs insisted was the case.

Indeed, in terms of research, the fact that the two news stories had differing numbers and timeframes should have meant that Cosman should have done more research–and certainly the Dobbs’ reporters should have looked into this. If I, your humble blogger, could have found all this whilst eating lunch, surely paid reporters could have looked it all up.

So, what we have with this leprosy stuff is nothing more than fear begetting more fear, and hence the xenophobia reference that started this post.

Further, the NYT piece that I cited at the start of the post notes more “facts” from Dobbs that underscores the fact that he is selling fear to his audience:

He has said, for example, that one-third of the inmates in the federal prison system are illegal immigrants. That’s wrong, too. According to the Justice Department, 6 percent of prisoners in this country are noncitizens (compared with 7 percent of the population). For a variety of reasons, the crime rate is actually lower among immigrants than natives.

Also:

Mr. Dobbs is fond of darkly hinting that this country is under attack. He suggested last week that the new immigration bill in Congress could be the first step toward a new nation — a “North American union” — that combines the United States, Canada and Mexico.

I wrote about the “North American Union” canard a while back in the following post from just over a year ago: PoliBlog ™: A Rough Draft of my Thoughts » When Swift Boaters Come Home to Roost (Immigration Edition)–with a follow-up here.

Well, one of the problems anyways, is highlighted (WSJ, subscription required) by Nobel laureate, Edward Prescott.

Of all the thankless jobs that economists set for themselves when it comes to educating people about economics, the notion that society is better off if some industries are allowed to wither, their workers lose their jobs, and investors lose their capital — all in the name of the greater glory of globalization — surely ranks near the top.

Yep, it is right up there with mechanization which leads to “onshore” outsourcing. People in a given industry will lose their jobs and go through the difficult period of looking for a new one. What jobs will these people find? Beats me, which makes it so hard to argue that things like offshore outsourcing and mechanization so difficult to support from a populist/political point of view. Nevermind that in the past when these kinds of things happen, people do find new jobs, and things don’t, generally, become worse, but instead better. This is one reason why I despise that flaming hypocrite Lou Dobbs.¹

Via Greg Mankiw who has a unique perspective on this issue.
_____
¹Dobbs is a hypocrite, or if you want an outright liar, because when it comes to financial advice Dobbs will recommend companies that engage in offshore outsourcing and will point to the offshore outsourcing as a reason to invest (lower cost => higher profits => greater share holder value).

Dobbs devoted a column in the March issue to touting the prospects of the Minnesota-based Toro Company, which makes outdoor landscaping-maintenance equipment. He told subscribers that Toro was a “long-term wealth-builder,” and praised Toro’s “formal code of ethics, something I think is sorely needed at more of America’s companies,” and its “…exemplary corporate governance structure, which aligns the interests of shareholders, employees, and customers.” He concluded his interview with Toro CEO Kendrick Melrose by frankly telling him, “I like the way you treat your shareholders, employees, and customers.”

One wonders whether Dobbs’ admiration extends to Toro’s 2002 decision to move 15% of its workforce — about 800 jobs — to Juarez, Mexico. Indeed, CEO Kendrick Melrose might be interested to know that Toro appears on Dobbs’ own list of companies that are “exporting America.”

So says Columbia professor of economics Jagdish Bhagwati. And when it comes to understand the economis of international trade and finance you’d be hard pressed to find somebody more qualified than Prof. Bhagwati. And even better he takes a swipe at that sanctimonious boob Lou Dobbs,

Lou Dobbs of CNN, the labour groups’ think-tank Economic Policy Institute and nearly all the Democrats newly elected to Congress believe that globalisation has much to do with the economic distress of the working and middle classes. Therefore they have coherence on their side when they want to lean on the door – even to close it – on trade with poor countries and occasionally on unskilled immigration from them.

Proponents of globalisation, however, find themselves in a politically implausible position: they typically skirt around and hence accept this “distributional” critique of globalisation – yet nonetheless propose that those adversely affected should accept globalisation but be aided so as to cope with their affliction in other ways.

[snip]

First, all empirical studies, including those done by some of today’s top trade economists (such as Paul Krugman of Princeton and Robert Feenstra of the University of California, Davis), show that the adverse effect of trade on wages is not substantial. My own empirical investigation concludes that the effect of trade with poor countries may even have been to moderate the downward pressure on wages that rapid unskilled labour-saving technical change would have caused.

Second, the same goes for the econometric studies by the best labour economists regarding the effects of the influx of unskilled illegal immigrants into the US. The latest study by George Borjas and Larry Katz of Harvard also shows a virtually negligible impact on workers’ wages, once necessary adjustments are made.

In short, the great fear that many of these anti-free traders use to gain support for their policies have little to no empirical support. Note that this cuts across political/partisan lines in that the EPI and many of the incoming Democrats are opposed to things like off-shoring/outsourcing and yet many on the right are opposed to allowing unskilled immigration (legal or illegal) into the the U.S.

But the article doesn’t stop there, it keeps hammering away at some of the typical arguments. Such as the claim that globalization and free trade are weakening unions and that is why wages have declined.

Can it be that globalisation has reduced the bargaining ability of workers and thus put a downward pressure on wages? I strongly doubt this. First, the argument is not relevant when employers and workers are in a competitive market and workers must be paid the going wage.

As it happens, fewer than 10 per cent of workers in the private sector in the US are now unionised.

Second, if it is claimed that acceleration in globalisation has decimated union membership, that is dubious. The decline in unionisation has been going on for longer than the past two decades of globalisation, shows no dramatic acceleration in the past two decades and is to be attributed to the union-unfriendly provisions of the half-century-old Taft-Hartley provisions that crippled the ability to strike.

So why have wages declined on average? Well Bhagwati points to technology,

The culprit is not globalisation but labour-saving technical change that puts pressure on the wages of the unskilled. Technical change prompts continual economies in the use of unskilled labour. Much empirical argumentation and evidence exists on this. But a telling example comes from Charlie Chaplin’s film, Modern Times. Recall how he goes berserk on the assembly line, the mechanical motion of turning the spanner finally getting to him. There are assembly lines today, but they are without workers; they are managed by computers in a glass cage above, with highly skilled engineers in charge.

Sound bad, but there is more,

Such technical change is quickly spreading through the system. This naturally creates, in the short-run, pressure on the jobs and wages of the workers being displaced.

But we know from past experience that we usually get a J-curve where, as increased productivity takes hold, it will (except in cases where macroeconomic difficulties occur and are not addressed by macroeconomic remedies) lead to higher wages.

Historically this has happened before. When mechanization first appeared one of the first things it did was displace many American farmers. Basically capital displaced labor.

Now there is a potential problem here. If technological advancement is increasing then it is possible that the “J-curve” the Bhagwati mentioned becomes a sequence of J-curves where the workers are stuck on the downward portion and never really get to the upward sloping portion. But the problem is technology and the speed of its advancement not globalization, immigration of unskilled workers, or the other stuff that many like the wring their hands about.

Via Mark Thoma.

With all the focus on off-shoring, out-sourcing, and now this article in the Washington Post by Senators Byron Dorgan and Sherrod Brown I can’t help but think we might be looking at a new era in which the idea of free trade takes a big hit.

The thing is that free trade doesn’t hurt, it helps. Sure free trade makes jobs in formerly protected industries more vulnerable, but that doesn’t mean that the people working in those industries become permanently un-employed. We’ve heard this kind of rhetoric before. Ross Perot claimed that NAFTA would result in a giant sucking sound as jobs fled south to Mexico. In reality, the reverse is the current problem: illegal immigration. More and more Mexicans and other latinos are coming into the U.S. looking for work. And oddly enough, the economic arguments against illegal immigration are themselves very similar to protectionist arguments. Then there is the idea of the “race to the bottom” in terms of wages and labor as put forward by Lou Dobbs (by the way, check out the link to see what an amazing hypocrite Dobbs really is),

“The fact is that we are seeing hundreds of jobs being outsourced on the basis purely of a corporation’s interest in achieving the lowest possible price for labor. Does that make sense to you?”

However, this is highly misleading. It isn’t solely the price of labor that firms look at. There is also the workforces skill set as productivity. Wages in developing countries are low in large part because productivity is so low.

But the thing is that we can’t prosper and protect jobs from competition overseas. It is like trying to prosper by moving to an isolated location and producing everything you need. While you might be able to do it, you lose out on specialization that comes with market economies. In international trade the idea of specialization is called comparative advantage and is the driving idea behind why free trade is a good idea. Think of it this way. If protectionism is a good thing for a country why isn’t a good thing inside that country? Why not give a specific firm in a given industry protected status in that it does not face tariffs that all of its competitors face? Why not create a single firm in each industry that way it can hire people and pay them lots of money in terms of wages which in turn will stimulate demand and thus bring about economic nirvana. If you’ve found the flaw in this domestic economic policy, you’ve also found the flaw for international economic policy.

Some new research at the NBER points towards service offshoring having positive effect on U.S. manufacturing productivity.

Amiti and Shang-Jin find that from 1992 to 2000, “service offshoring” accounted for around 11 percent of the productivity growth in U.S. manufacturing industries compared to the 3 to 6 percent gain attributable to imported material inputs.” Their analysis is the first comprehensive study to find a link between service offshoring and productivity. “Sourcing service outputs from abroad by U.S. firms is growing rapidly,” they observe. “Although the level of service offshoring is still low compared to material offshoring, this business practice is expected to grow as new technologies make it possible to access cheaper foreign labor and different skills.”

As for the significant effect on productivity, the authors observe, outsourcing in general — whether it involves material goods or services — can usher in new levels of efficiency. But, they view purchasing services from abroad as offering the greatest potential for gain. “When firms decide to outsource materials or services to overseas locations they relocate the less efficient parts of their production stage, so average productivity increases,” they write. “The remaining workers may become more efficient if offshoring makes it possible for firms to restructure in a way that pushes out the technology frontier. This is more likely to arise from offshoring service inputs, such as computing and information, rather than offshoring material inputs.”

Don’t tell Lou Dobbs.

Snarkiness aside, this is an interesting result. I wonder home much of the increase is due simply to removing the least productive aspects of production stage and how much is due to changes in the firms technology frontier.

I find the post rather humorous, but then again I’m an economics geek. If you are too lazy to read the post here is the short version:

• Mercantilist thinking holds that exports are good, imports are bad.
• Hence the loss of 5,000 Japanese cars on their way to Canada is nothing but a net benefit for global society.
• Conclusion: More goods need to be lost at sea.

Well, if you are Lou Dobbs you might come to that conclusion.

LiberalOasis reports that CNN’s Lou Dobbs ran the graphic at right, which was “sourced to the Council of Conservative Citizens, a group deemed to have a ‘white supremacy’ ideology according to the Anti-Defamation League.” Further, “During a piece about illegal immigrants in Utah, reporter Casey Wian said, ‘Utah is also part of the territory some militant Latino activists refer to as Aztlan, the portion of the southwest United States they claim rightfully belongs to Mexico.’”

Digby has more on the CCC and posits, “The fact that they are touting the ridiculous Aztlan ‘threat’ puts the lie to any claims that this immigration debate isn’t being fueled by racism.”

The fact that a neo-Confederate group is touting a policy, however, is hardly evidence that others on their side are racists. Further, while the Reconquista and Aztlán memes are wildly overhyped by those advocating a crackdown on illegal immigration, that does not mean the underlying movements do not exist.

Wikipedia notes that,

Due to the association of Aztlan with Mexican national identity and an indeterminate northern location, the name Aztlán was taken up by Chicano activists of the 1960s and 1970s to refer to the area of the Southwestern United States ceded to the United States after the Mexican-American War. This is reflected in the title of the 1968 manifesto issued by the Chicano youth movement, the Plan Espiritual de Aztlán, as well as the names of several organizations, such as MEChA.

Indeed, the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center has published Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies since 1970.

I agree with Digby that Dobbs should have used a more legitimate source than the CCC for his chart, if he was going to use it at all. My guess, though, is that Dobbs doesn’t do his own research and some intern found it on the Web. Given the ability of most college students to differentiate the quality of various sources on the Internet, it would hardly surprise me that they didn’t do some pick and shovel work to figure out whose map they were using.

The ratings at Fox News are down among viewers aged 25 to 54, leading Scott Collins of the LAT to speculate on the cause.

Some recent ratings news no doubt gladdened the hearts of Fox News Channel haters. First, Nielsen Media Research reported that Fox News’ overall prime-time lineup dropped 17% last month compared with a year ago (MSNBC grew 16% during the same period, while CNN plummeted by 38%). Late last week, a reliable television industry website, TVNewser.com, reported that in April, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly had his worst month in nearly five years among viewers age 25 to 54, the most coveted audience in TV news.

Although the network still churns out ratings light-years ahead of competitors’ and O’Reilly remains cable news’ No. 1 host, Fox News’ explosive growth appears to be, like the president’s 90% approval rating in the days following Sept. 11, a relic from the first Bush term. That’s the elephant in the room, of course — the broadly assumed, and occasionally documented, affinity between Fox News and the current administration (Vice President Dick Cheney’s office prepared a hotel checklist, recently posted on TheSmokingGun.com, that ordered “all televisions tuned to Fox News” during Cheney visits). Could it be mere coincidence that O’Reilly, populist scourge of both Clintons and countless left-wing causes, is seeing his still-formidable nightly audience of 2.1 million or so start to shrink in tandem with the Bush/GOP’s rapidly fading grip on the electorate?

Except that CNN’s ratings are down more than twice Fox’s decline, despite starting from a lower base. If Fox were going to decline along with the Bush administration, wouldn’t we expect CNN to go up?

O’Reilly’s thoroughly delighted rivals think not. “When the stock market was through the roof in the ’90s, people used to sit around and watch CNBC and slap high fives and say, ‘I made another hundred bucks today!’ ” said MSNBC host and O’Reilly foe Keith Olbermann, adding that CNBC’s ratings quickly went south when the tech bubble burst. “I think the same psychology applies to Fox. They’ll always have their hard-core audience that wants to hear, ‘Everything’s great! [Bush is] doing a great job.’ ” But less-partisan viewers are drifting away, Olbermann argued.

Jonathan Klein, president of CNN/US, agrees. “Maybe this is part of the deal with the devil you make when a supposed news network allies itself so closely with one point of view,” he said.

To be fair and balanced here: Olbermann’s “Countdown” competes head to head with “The O’Reilly Factor” and the two hosts have been engaged in a months-long feud. Although Olbermann’s ratings climbed 35% last month, his total audience remains less than one-fourth the size of O’Reilly’s.

As for CNN, its lineup showed far greater erosion last month than Fox’s. “We’re down because we had such a phenomenal year last year,” Klein said. The one major growth story at CNN is Lou Dobbs, whose program seems to add viewers in direct proportion to its host’s fiercely expressed views against illegal immigration.

So, we have a guy who goes head to head with O’Reilly and gets a quarter of his ratings analyzing O’Reilly’s dropoff? Based on a one month trend? During a month when O’Reilly was on vacation for seven days?

And CNN remains light years behind Fox in the ratings despite a huge initial lead and a “phenomenal” 2005? And their only growth industry is a guy expressing populist conservative views?

Fox’s argument that there has just been a natural lull in the news lately with no stories riveting the public is dismissed with several paragraphs around the unsupported thesis, “Perhaps it’s that the network isn’t thoroughly engaging the issues that are giving the administration so many troubles.” Again, though, unless CNN is also ignoring these issues, this would not seem to account for the plummeting ratings there.

Patrick Frey also weighs in on this story, wondering why his favorite paper pays so much attention to Fox’s fall while treating CNN’s as a parenthetical. While I understand the focus on Fox, which is both the ratings leader and the symbol of a new style in news hated by many in the business, one would think that Collins’ editor would have at least done a logical comparison of Fox and CNN vis-a-vis the analysis made in the piece.

An estimated one million illegal immigrants, supporters, and professional protestors showed up at rallies across the country yesterday protesting the fact that people who are in the country in violation of our laws are being subjected to unfair conditions, such as having to hide from immigration officials.* They took the day off work to demonstrate how vital they are to the American economy. The results were mixed.

AP:

More than 1 million mostly Hispanic immigrants and their supporters skipped work and took to the streets Monday, flexing their economic muscle in a nationwide boycott that succeeded in slowing or shutting many farms, factories, markets and restaurants. From Los Angeles to Chicago, Houston to Miami, the “Day Without Immigrants” attracted widespread participation despite divisions among activists over whether a boycott would send the right message to Washington lawmakers considering sweeping immigration reform.

[...]

Two major rallies in Los Angeles attracted an estimated 400,000, according to the mayor’s office. Police in Chicago estimated 400,000 people marched through the downtown business district. Tens of thousands more marched in New York, along with about 15,000 in Houston, 50,000 in San Jose and 30,000 more across Florida. Smaller rallies in cities from Pennsylvania and Connecticut to Arizona and South Dakota attracted hundreds not thousands. In all, police departments in more than two dozen U.S. cities contacted by The Associated Press gave crowd estimates that totaled about 1.1 million marchers.

The mood was jubilant. Marchers standing shoulder-to-shoulder filmed themselves on home video and families sang and chanted and danced in the streets wearing American flags as capes and bandanas. In most cities, those who rallied wore white to signify peace and solidarity.

NYT:

The impact of the call for a boycott was difficult to measure this afternoon. Some businesses in New York and Los Angeles that are run by immigrants or that cater largely to immigrants were closed, but many others remained open. Casino industry representatives in Las Vegas said few workers stayed out, and most of them had asked for the time off earlier. Chamber of Commerce officials in Washington and its Maryland and Virginia suburbs said they knew of no disruptions. But while it was still too early to gauge the economic effect, it was clear that the marches were attracting huge numbers of workers and students. The police in Chicago said the crowd at the rally had exceeded 400,000 by late afternoon.

LAT:

The normally bustling downtown Los Angeles produce and garment districts were virtually shut down today, and truck traffic at the ports was down sharply after many employees protesting the nation’s immigration policy’s did not show up for work. The dearth of activity in the produce and garment districts, both heavily dependent on immigrant labor, was so far the most dramatic sign of the impact of today’s organized immigration protests on local commerce. Only sporadic business closures and staffing shortages reported across the remainder of Southern California.

CNN:

It is unclear what impact the walkouts and demonstrations will have on the U.S. economy. The turnout was lower than predicted. Participants were likely to buy extra food and supplies before or after Monday. And absent employees will return to their jobs with extra work awaiting them.

WaPo:

The action may have been stronger had the coalition of grass-roots organizations that advises immigrants not been deeply conflicted over whether to endorse a boycott. Some supported the effort to demonstrate immigrant power, but others discouraged it, saying it was premature because Congress has not taken action since the first demonstrations, and because the strike might induce a backlash by those born in the United States.
[...]

More than half of the 1,147 construction workers on projects at Dulles International Airport did not show up, said airports spokeswoman Tara Hamilton. Work on an underground tunnel linking airport terminals continued, but at a slower pace, she said.

Several businesses in the District, such as the Corner Bakery on Vermont Avenue downtown and La Chaumiere in Georgetown, shut their doors because their workers chose to boycott. “Unfortunately, most of our kitchen staff is Spanish and they decided to be part of the movement,” said La Chaumiere night manager Marielle Minges.

While the economic impact was limited and sporadic, the political impact is even less clear. The civil rights marches of the 1960s galvanized public opinion because of the obvious justness of the cause. Dignified Americans wearing their Sunday best, led by clergy preaching words familiar to most Americans, shamed the country for mistreatment. By contrast, the mixed messages and lack of discipline of the immigration rallies may well harm their cause.

This message is the essence of the argument that could carry the day:

“We are the backbone of what America is, legal or illegal, it doesn’t matter,” said Melanie Lugo, who with her husband and their third-grade daughter joined a rally of some 75,000 in Denver. “We butter each other’s bread. They need us as much as we need them.” (AP)

This one, not so much:

Many carried signs in Spanish that translated to “We are America” and “Today we march, tomorrow we vote.” Others waved Mexican flags or wore hats and scarves from their native countries. Some chanted “USA” while others shouted slogans, such as “Si se puede!” Spanish for “Yes, it can be done!” Others were more irreverent, wearing T-shirts that read “I’m illegal. So what?” (AP)

Unfortunately, too, protests have lost much of their persuasive appeal because of their ubiquity and the participation of a cadre of people who show up to protest everything:

The combination of the two is also less effective than the first alone:

As protesters marched through the Windy City’s business district, some waved Mexican and American flags and carried signs that read, “We’re not terrorists” and “We build your homes.” (CNN)

Even some immigrants and Americans of Latino descent were less than pleased with the protests:

Retired Col. Albert F. Rodriguez, a war veteran, said he understands the contribution immigrants have made to the United States, “but the difference is that we and millions of others like us did it legally. We’re all here today to tell all those illegal protesters, ‘You do not speak for me.’ ”

[...]

Despite the turnout across the nation, some who typically support immigrants questioned the effectiveness of a day without them. One of those was New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a Latino, who said he was concerned about sending the message that immigrants “come to America to work, yet they’re not working.” “I’d rather see the individuals, all these demonstrations, going to congressional offices, pushing the Congress to act on immigration reform,” Richardson said. (CNN)

The other problem is that protests generally have less impact than they once did because of their ubiquity and the existence of a class of professional protestors who show up for anything:

In some cases, the rallies took on a broader tone of social action, as gay rights advocates, opponents of the war in Iraq and others without a direct stake in the immigration debate took to the streets. (NYT)

It doesn’t take too many fringe elements, who tend to draw more attention to themselves, to change the visual impact of a rally.

Lou Dobbs contends that this is not simply some “me too” types joining in but an indication of the changing character of the movement.

The Washington Post, alone among national papers, reported that ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) has become an active promoter of the national boycott.

Some illegal immigration and open borders activists in the Hispanic community are deeply concerned about the involvement of the left-wing radical group. But others, like Juan Jose Gutierrez, whom I’ve interviewed a number of times over the past several months, manages to be both director of Latino Movement USA and a representative of ANSWER. As Gutierrez told us on my show, “The time has come…where we need to stand up and make a statement. We need to do what the American people did when they pulled away from the British crown. And I am sure that back in those days many people were concerned that was radical action.”

Just how significant is the impact of leftists within the illegal immigration movement? It is no accident that they chose May 1 as their day of demonstration and boycott. It is the worldwide day of commemorative demonstrations by various socialist, communist, and even anarchic organizations.

[...]

Radicalism is not confined to Gutierrez and Latino Movement USA. Ernesto Nevarez of the L.A. Port Collective is promising to shut down the Port of Los Angeles today: “[Transportation and commerce] will come to a grinding halt. …They are going to put a wall along the border with Mexico. We’re going to put a wall between us and the ocean. And those containers ain’t going to move.”

No matter which flag demonstrators and protesters carry today, their leadership is showing its true colors to all who will see.

The “May Day” choice struck me as symbolically strange as well. Others, too. Still, my inclination is that the radicals comprise a pretty small element of the larger movement.

Further, I disagree with Dobbs that a one day demonstration of our dependency on illegal workers constitutes “radicalism.” It is quite reasonable for people whose existence here is criminal and potentially about to be subjected to harsher penalties to demonstrate that the issue is somewhat more complicated than many think. Of course, it could backfire, too. Dobbs:

“The meat packers are confirming what we know,” says University of Maryland economics professor Peter Morici, “and that is that this large group of illegal aliens in the United States is lowering the wage rate of semiskilled workers, people who are high school dropouts or high school graduates with minimal training.” In fact, a meat-packing job paid $19 an hour in 1980, but today that same job pays closer to $9 an hour, according to the Labor Department. That’s entirely consistent with what we’ve been reporting — that illegal aliens depress wages for U.S. workers by as much as $200 billion a year in addition to placing a tremendous burden on hospitals, schools and other social services.

Now, presumably, that has to do with the globalization of the economy and the decline of union power as much as illegal immigration. But it is confirmation of what many people believe. They may also do the kind of math Ed Morrissey is doing in terms of social services.

*A woman on NPR this morning actually cited that complaint.

Well, it looks like the high gasoline prices are not upsetting consumers all that much.

Consumers shrugged off higher gasoline prices in April and sent a widely watched barometer of consumer confidence to its highest level in almost four years, a private research group said Tuesday.

Why? Probably because we have seen prices go even higher in the past and our economy is more fuel efficient now. In short, oil prices would have to go higher than they did in 1980 to have a similar impact. Back in 1980, when gasoline prices were $38/barrel, the equivalent price would be a little over $92/barrel. While our consumption of oil gasoline has gone up by about 28% since 1981 (using 2005 as the final full year for comparison), the U.S. GDP has more than doubled over the same time period. The implication is that we use less oil than we did before per dollar of GDP.

Still, this doesn’t mean that gasoline prices are irrelevant. After all, a price increase in any good entails both an income effect (part of the price increase has a similar effect to lowering income) as well as a substitution effect. Too bad Lou Dobbs just doesn’t seem to understand any of this though.

Update (4/26/2006): I edited the part about consumption of oil to gasoline and changed the final sentence to include the “per dollar of GDP” portion. That is our economy is more fuel efficient.

I also looked at crude oil data from 1991 and 2005 and there is a similar relationship between oil and GDP as well. Oil consumption went up 27%, but GDP increased by 57%. That is we use less oil per dollar of GDP now than we did in 1991.

There are a number of comments to my post on off shoring/outsourcing and most of them highlight the emotional type of response vs. a more thoughtout response.

For example is this comment,

It is sad when people get in the way of the economy. One should be excited about losing one’s job to a foreign work force because it offers so much more to others and perhaps even an opportunity for you.

People are the problem, I see it now.

This is a classic strawman argument. I nowhere implied that people who are adversly effected by off shoring/outsourcing should be ignored or thought of as part of the problem. The thing is that people become unemployed everyday. Becoming unemployed is something that is happening right now, but where is this commenter right now? Where is his outrage at the guy who became unemployed yesterday? Nowhere. He is curiously AWOL. But if somebody is unemployed because a company moves its operations over seas, well that is somehow different than the company that simply decideds to shut down permanently or cut back on employment due to modernization.

The next comment is amazing in its level of nonsense.

This is Free Market Extremism carried to it’s horrifying logical end-point. Complete with Regurgitated Rush Limbaugh “zero-sum” platitudes.

Errr…what? It must be nice to be the type of person who can divide the world into two groups: those that agree with me, and the Regurgitating Rush Limbaugh crowd. Amazingly it seems to have never dawned on poor Mac here that perhaps the term “zero-sum” isn’t something that is unique to Rush Limbaugh, but is known to every economist who has studied game theory.

But it doesn’t end there,

In every paragraph above there is the admission that outsourcing is, in fact, costing Americans their jobs, followed by a big bucket of “But – but – but’s”

Apparently it didn’t dawn on Mac that the point of my post was that the impact of outsourcing/off shorring is basically and empirical one. We don’t know what the ultimate costs are going to be until we get the data. Further, it is highly unlikely that impoverishing the rest of the world will be good for the United States. As the incomes and wealth in other countries increase their demand for goods will increase. Many of those goods will be domestically produced, and some will be produced in other countries.

Excuse me… but Lou Dobbs IS an Economist. A HARVARD EDUCATED Economist. Are you? Did you get your degree in Economics from Harvard? Yet you feel at peace running down someone who has.

In addition he writes for Money Magazine, US News and World Report, and owns his own Financial News Report as well as a Financial Radio Show broadcast on over 700 stations.

Yes, but Rush Limbaugh has a very successful radio show, writes or has written for magazines (which ones I don’t know and frankly don’t care) and we know what Mac thinks of Rush Limbaugh, but apparently the success of Lou Dobbs is an indicator that he is right. Have I got this argument from authority right?

And it just keeps going.

Mr. Dobbs has most certainly done his research, and you would have known this if you had taken the time do do YOURS.

His 2004 book “Exporting America” painstakingly details the research you callously accuse him of NOT doing.

It also explains that it isn’t just “call center” jobs that are being “off-shored” (use the right word at least). It’s jobs in the MEDICAL and LEGAL and FINANCIAL professions too. Prestigious WHITE COLLAR jobs are being off-shored at a frightening rate in Corporate America’s rush to catch the last boat to China. But you don’t seem inclined to mention those.

This is just wonderful. Notice what Mac calls “research”. All of the above is nothing more than the costs of off shoring/outsourcing. There is no attempt to try and measure the benefits. Not that I expect Mac to even have the intellectual honesty to admit that things like increased corporate profits are a benefit. When economists, yes even those Harvard trained ones, measure the impact of something like off shoring/outsourcing they look at the net cost/net benefit. And something awful like corporate profits are indeed part of the benefit column. Further, there are the new jobs that might be created by increased trade which could very well include off shoring/outsourcing.

And Mac’s list of sources to get better informed on this topic is also telling,

• “Exporting America” By Lou Dobbs
• “The Great Betrayal” By Pat Buchanan
• “The Myth Of Free Trade” By Dr. Ravi Batra

Pat Buchanan? Is he a trained Harvard economist too? (By the way, that was sarcasm for those who missed it.) And Dr. Ravi Batra…say isn’t this the same guy who predicted a great depression in 1990? Why yes it is! (Oh and get a load of the used price for Dr. Batra’s book: $0.01. I think that pretty much sums it up.) Let me see…two kooks and a television show host. Yep, that is a stellar list of academics who plough through gigabytes of data and do peer reviewed research. Yep. Okay then.

I also find it amusing that somebody who claims to be a “libertarian/true conservative” also promotes a book that calls for “a five-year plan for economic“. Guess as a libertarian I’m just not up on the latest libertarian ideas.

Commenter Dave Schuler is always good for a rational comment though,

My sole concern in the outsourcing debate, Steve, is that more and more jobs here are relying on what’s being referred to as “IP production”. Most engineering jobs in the States these days, for example, aren’t producing stuff they’re producing designs for stuff or (in many cases) software. The reason for my concern is that in China and India and much of the rest of the world there isn’t robust support for the protection of intellectual property nor is there the legal or social infrastructure for doing so. Well, so what?

The so what is that there isn’t enough R&D spending in the U. S. as it is. Check the stats on business investment. They’re still lagging.

Also check where the increases in jobs have been here: government, health care (60% of every health care dollar comes from taxes), and retailing. No, the economy isn’t frozen in amber. But current managers make their hiring decisions based on current trends and, as I see it, the current trends leave us pretty darned vulnerable.

Frankly, I hate the U.S. approach to intellectual property. I think it is massively over-protected if anything and that could be one reason why there is less investment in R&D/intellectual property than there otherwise would be. Think about, the U.S. approach basically creates a temporary monopoly for the firm that discovers something useful. What do we know about monopolies? They increase their profits by restricting output. Is it a big leap from this observation to the conclusion that firms that engage in R&D might not want to produce as much new R&D lest they reduce their profits from past investments? A massive re-thinking of how the U.S. (and other countries) handle intellectual property needs to take place. Not that I expect this to happen.

Rick DeMent also usually comes through with good comments.

While I agree with Mr. Vardon that the economy is not a zero-sum game, it is also not “bandwidth on demand” and this is a point that no one ever talks about. Outsourcing displaces many workers who may or may not be in a place in their life where they can quickly replace the income they were receiving by a job that has been outsource.

This is quite true, but it is true of any and all unemployment. So why not simply rail against unemployment in general? Probably because it wouldn’t have the same appeal/draw that railing against off shoring/outsourcing has. Oh and Rick, its Verdon. :-)

There is a concern with off shoring/outsourcing. It does displace people and cause them to suffer, and if something can be done to reduce/eliminate it great. However, making laws to simply prohibit off shoring/outsourcing aren’t going to work in the long run. The market is an impersonal and unfeeling place. Money goes where the profit is and no laws will change this. A law that prevents off shoring/outsourcing will only work in the short run, and will likely not prevent unemployment even in short run. Firms will always have the option of shutting down permanently. So unless commenters like Dale and Mac can come up with a way of suspending the laws of supply and demand, they are basically pissing up a rope.