Immigration
 

Puerto Rico votes on this somewhat regularly. Last time they voted, they could choose to become a state, a separate entity, maintain status quo, various permutations of the above, or none of the above. None of the above won. Seriously.

"In December 1998, a non-binding plebiscite on status was held in Puerto Rico, but due to the alternatives presented the voters, little in the way of definite conclusions can be drawn. In addition to the normal alternatives, of statehood, commonwealth, and independence, voters were given the alternatives of “None of The Above” and “Free Association.” Because of the confusion on the ballot with definitions of status provided, the “None of The Above” alternative won the majority (50.2%) votes cast. Statehood won the plurality of votes cast for the actual alternatives decisively (46.5%), followed by Independence (2.5%); Free Association (0.2%; and Commonwealth (0.1%). "

http://www.prstatehood.com/issues/index.asp

Guess where's all da good schools?
 

I know they used the proportion of kids receiving subsidized lunches as one of the factors in their ranking because my wife, being in the education biz, sts, had access to some of the background material on the study.

Occasionally, information comes from more than one source. And not every information source includes all available facts. Something to ponder while you're in the crapper once you've run out of Virginia tourist brochures to choke your chicken over.

I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment of a Western Hemisphere union, but I felt the need to point out that there is phenomenal racism in Latin America. Costa Rica's unbelievable literacy rate has more to do with killing off the indigenous population than a superior education system. My Texican grandfather's main criteria in finding a mate was "looks gringa but was raised Hispanic (with requisite deference to all things macho)*." Being Mestizo in Mexico doesn't exactly put you on equal footing with the rest of the population.

I'm all for importing Orgasm Day from Brazil, though.

*The traits in the paren didn't pass down, so ya'll will have to look elsewhere if you're interested in a similar woman.

Guess where's all da good schools?
 

Really? Well my sister is in the education biz, and she says your wife is full of shit. Now show me a cite or go back to the hell that you were consigned to by your USNWR 4th tier hellhole!

When you come up with information from a source that is, you know, credible, let alone citable, be sure to come back here, hear now?

Brazil is an unbelievably racist country. But my experience is that the whole world is racist. As much as the liberals have tried to screw it up with affirmative action and "diversity" programs the US is by far the most tolerant country in the world. Europe used to try and claim they were more open, but once they got large minority populations their true colors have come out. The true test of toleration comes when a minority group, especially of a different race, reaches five percent of the population. There are many problems with so called political correctness, but one part of it I do appreciate is the fact that it is socially unaceptible to make racist remarks in groups of strangers and we let ethnicities choose how they want to be called. Living overseas, I always got teased for using terms like African American, or Asian instead of Oriental, but the social pressure here makes the atmosphere a lot less toxic. Things were really toxic in France and Japan. Once a certain ethnic group left the room it was open season. And no one thought twice about it. I don't support government censorship, but the social pressure has its benefits no matter how annoying people find it.

Immigration
 

I think they do this for tax reasons. As a territory they pay less income tax which would be lost if they became a state. I am sure if they had the option of leavin the union or becoming a state they would become a state.

Immigration
 

True--they've never been faced with an in-or-out vote. They prefer the creamy middle.

ETA: BTW, on DC, instead of moving to Maryland, I'd have Maryland move to the district. Virginia got its piece back 160 years ago. Now it's MD's turn. Happy compromise, too. No need for new senators, one new rep. as DC has the pop'n to get about one.

You say this having lived in every country in the world? Look to the north, O blanket-statement-making poster. Having lived there and here, I think there's much more tolerance there than here. I never cease to be shocked at the crap I hear here, and that rarely happened there.

Sush, gwinky. Spanky had just solved California's schooling problem. With the annexation of Mexico, we were just gathering some momentum.

Yes, if only we could return to the idyllic land of total tolerance that was the U.S.A. before those meddling liberals poisoned the love and respect we all used to feel for each other. I'm thinking like 1957.

Mebbe, but how do you explain French Canada?

The Canadians do not have any significant group of minorities so it is not fair to compare. They only diversity they have is the fact that people of the same ethnic group speak two different languages. And we all know how well these two groups get along. My experience is that Anglo-Canadians are pretty open about their prejudice against French Canadians and visa versa. You do not see the USA about to split into two countries because of bigotry.

schools
 

Sorry to have been absent all day. Both club and Spanky seem to be misconstruing what I am saying about education funding. To anyone familiar with what has happened in this state, it is undeniable that public education in California used to be much better, and has suffered as funding has been cut. I'm not saying that spending more money will magically transform things, but it's a prerequisite for real change. There's a staunch conservative on a bus I sometimes take -- always reading National Review and proselytizing with libertarian readings -- and I have talked to him from time to time. His pet issue is education reform, and he says he's completely frustrated because any change involves spending money -- e.g., if you want new curriculum, you need to pay to replace books -- but the GOP insists on blaming the unions for everything and won't spend money, and the Democrats won't hold the unions to anything and insist on spending money. This may be satisfying for partisans, since it lets them blame everything on the other side, but it's frustrating for us parents.

I don't have any particular sympathy for teachers unions, but blaming them is like blaming government contractors for waste in defense spending. They're acting out of self-interest, just like many, many actors in other policy areas. Get over it. Blaming the unions is a useful crutch for failing to have fresh ideas about what should be done.

Improving schools is difficult. Cutting their funding, and preventing localities from taxing themselves to try new things makes it even harder.

My Canadian pals tell Newfie jokes.

But they're really nice about it.

The Canadians are an obedient people. they'll do what they're told to do, especially when its an American talking. It makes them great as clients, and makes almost any woman in the Canadian nightclubs available. Their governemnt has told them not to be prejudiced, so they aren't. mostly they're like sheep without the bleating. It was all good until the Terrorists realized the goldmine the great white north provided.

schools
 

I don't agree with much of the above, but given that I haven't slept in about 35 hours, I don't have the capacity to argue, so instead I'll be productive. What do you think about that proposal in AZ I posted a few weeks ago - It mandates that 65% of education funding go to educating rather than administration. Apparently, the national average is about 61.5%, and making that adjustment would free up literally billions.

I don't get it.
 

I didn't get it either, but FWIW Anne Applebaum at WaPo makes the argument that the comment wasn't so bad.

• Both left and right would do better to stand back and think harder about how important it is for American diplomacy, and even Americans' understanding of their own past, when U.S. presidents, Republican or Democrat, admit that not every past U.S. policy was successful -- which, by any measure, Yalta was not. Since the end of the Cold War, historical honesty has become more normal everywhere in the West, and rightly so: We aren't, after all, trying to withstand a Soviet propaganda onslaught, and we've grown more used to thinking, at least some of the time, of our national disputes as evidence of the authenticity of our democracy. To put it differently, apologies are something that democracies can do, at least occasionally, but that the Chinese or the Syrians always find impossible. Infallibility nowadays is something that only dictatorships claim.
  
  Both left and right should also consider contexts more carefully. Certainly the president's speech last weekend did not sound personal, as if he were apologizing to feel good about himself. It did not mention Roosevelt by name or wallow in Cold War rhetoric. On the contrary, Bush went on afterward to talk about the democratic values that had replaced Yalta, and to draw contemporary lessons. The tone was right -- and it contrasted sharply with the behavior of Russian president Vladimir Putin, as perhaps it was intended to. Asked again last week why he hadn't made his own apology for the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe, Putin pointed out that the Soviet parliament did so in 1989. "What," he asked, "we have to do this every day, every year?"
  
  The answer is no, the Russian president doesn't have to talk about the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe every day -- but during a major, international anniversary of the end of the war, he clearly should. And no, the U.S. president does not have to talk about Yalta every year, but when he goes to Latvia to mark the anniversary of the end of the war he should -- just as any American president visiting Africa for the first time should speak of slavery. No American or Russian leader should appear unpatriotic when abroad, but at the right time, in the right place, it is useful for statesmen to tell the truth, even if just to acknowledge that some stretches of our history were more ambiguous, and some of our victories more bittersweet, than they once seemed.

Ahem
 

http://biz.yahoo.com/special/bestplaces05.html

Forbes best places to live (or something like that).

Ahem
 

Man, Spanky, you're lucky to have a job.

If you do. I'm not clear on that. For all I know, you're independently wealthy and just pull levers from behind a curtain to keep from getting bored.

Ahem
 

Have fun hanging with Mark Furman in Boise.

48% of Toronto is minorities. How is that not significant?

Ahem
 

So pick one and go, already.

He has not been to Vancouver either, apparently.

I believe Windsor has one of the largest Asian communities (as a %) in NA. Maybe his perception is from the ketchup capitol of the world, and the impression of white bread that this creates?

Ty and his boys on the threat
 

http://www.democraticunderground.com...ss=104x3634589

• Poll question: What do you believe Al Qeada is?
  
  Poll result (135 votes)
  A real terrorist organization (25 votes, 19%) Vote
  A once real terrorist organization that the administration is now using to get what they want (30 votes, 22%) Vote
  A completely fictional organization (80 votes, 59%) Vote

Ty and his boys on the threat
 

It's like the mafia, right? It doesn't really exist, but is merely an invention by bigots bent on defaming an ethnic group.

Toronto is significantly more diverse than most US cities of comparable size. (Though I think to get to 48% you need to include non-hispanic white minorities, like the Portuguese and Italians, who generally wouldn't count as "minorities" in the US.)

Toronto seems, on my sporadic acquaintance, more tolerant than NYC. (Montreal seems less so.) But then I'm not a native NYer, and I find NY and the NE in general to be noticably more racist than other areas of the US I've lived, so my view of the US may be weird. That said, I've found (without living there) Canada to be about as racist overall (including the boonies, not just the major cities) as the US, though the targets are somewhat different. Incidentally, Canada in the boonies can be a weird place.

No racism I have seen anywhere in north america compares at all to what I saw living in Europe. Holy crap, the stuff that was screamed by passers by while I would walk down the street with non-white friends ... and the really scary thing was they were so used to it they often didn't even notice.

BR(I remember a long chat with a Turkish cabbie in Copenhagen who had worked in 7 or 8 European countries, including the UK, France & Germany, about being non-white in Europe. He claimed that Sweden was the most racist place he had ever lived.)C

eta: actually I think I'm wrong about the visible vs. non-visible minority in Toronto thing -

I don't get it.
 

As the dinasour pointed out, at Yalta we did not have the bomb yet. I was confusing Yalta with Potsdam. The red army was already sitting or about to be sitting in those countrys. What the hell were we supposed to to about it. Maybe we should have complained more but at that point the red army had about fifty division in eastern Europe.

Because we haven't argued about climate change in a while....
 

The fraternal twin of Intelligent Design...

http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/...ch_of_the.html

According to my encyclopaedia of world Geography Canada is British 40%, French 29% and other European 22%. All other races combined are less that ten percent. To say that Canadians are more tolerant is a joke. If you are not Anglo American you are considered a minority. If we followed that system in the US you could say the US is like 70% minorities.

1) The Caucasians in Canada can't even get along. The are openly hostile to eachother and the country is very close to splitting apart.

2) In Vancouver the hostility towards Asians is intense. I have spent a great deal of time in Vancouver and have seen it first hand. A lawyer in my old firm, who was Asian, left British Columbia just for that reason.

3) The true test of a country is when an ethnic group reaches five percent of the total population. In France, the North Africans gave rise to Le Pen. In Germany the turks gave rise to the SDP. In Holland and Belgium overtly racists parties are very strong. There is quite a strong party in Western Canada, whose name escapes me, is also overtly racist - expecially against Asians.

4) In the US is 13% African American, 12% Hispanic, 4% Asian and 69% percent Caucasians. Before any European nation, or Canada got close to these numbers you can bet your bottom dollar a national racist party would come to power.

What are their thoughts on mules?

I have no problem believing Toronto is more tolerant than NYC, but what other areas in the US have you found to be noticably less racist? I thought we were doing pretty well here -- it's been a while since our last race riot.

Toronto = more diverse than American cities of equal size. Isn't Detroit of equal size? What is the African American population of Detroit? How about the African American population of Oakland?
What are these huge minority populations in Toronto that make it so diverse?

Interesting. I don't think you really understand the way Canada works. First off, it's not going to split apart because there are aboriginal land claims to most of Quebec. If Quebec were to try to secede, it would have to litigate all the land claims and that would take forever. It just ain't gonna happen.

Also, I have no idea if your encyclopedia is correct, but it could be, but in Canada you have to look at the cities. As DS pointed out, the boonies are a strange place. Most people live in the big cities, and they are probably more ethnically diverse than the cities here. Canada is, by and large, a liberal-leaning country with a strong left-wing. People there can disagree with concepts like gay marriage and legalization of marijuana and RU-486 in their head, but will not oppose them politically. It's a different mindset than here. I haven't found too many Americans that are uncomfortable with something personally, but would vote for a party that advocated it.

I think the same thing occurs with tolerance of other minorities. I am not trying to say there is no racism. I just think that even if people think racist thoughts, their actions don't tend to reflect those thoughts and so by and large, people act in a more tolerant manner than they do here.

I'm not sure of the Western Canadian fringe party you speak of, but it is possible. The interior of BC is notorious for whackos.

In my experience, at least in the cities where I have lived and worked there, the people seem to be more tolerant than they do here. I never heard the slurs or the strong identification of a person as a certain way because of the ethnic group to which he/she belongs. Here, I hear it frequently, and it seems to be more widely accepted.

This is from this government website: http://www.gov.on.ca/FIN/english/dem...cs/cenhi6e.htm

Toronto is by far the most diverse Census Metropolitan Area (CMA) in Ontario. In 2001, 1.7 million people were visible minorities in this CMA, representing 36.8% of its population, 80% of the province’s visible minorities, and 15% of the total population of Ontario. In Canada, only Vancouver (36.9%) had the same high proportion of visible minorities.


When I got the 48% figure, they must have included non-visible minorities. I guess it is only 36.8 visible. Still, I would call that "significant."

I spend a lot of time in Quebec, and you are simply full of shit.

The idea that French Canadians and Anglo-Canadians are the same ethnic group is just silly - their language and history are different. There is some friction between them, but less than any other bi-national state I can think of, and at this point most Canadians view the succession issue as settled.

But within French Canada, even excluding the Anglos, there are significant minorities. 13% of the people in Montreal are "visibile minorities", ranging from ancestors of blacks who were escaping slavery in the US to immigrants from the Carribean. There are many other strong ethnic groups, and in the north the aboriginal groups (themselves diverse) constitute a very large percentage of the population.

As a whole, my sense is that there is greater diversity north of border, and that it is more harmonious. I cannot recall see a Canadian "hate crime" on the news up there, yet I've seen many here.

OK, please continue bashing Europe. That's OK.

I believe visible minorities don't include all hispanics, who are significant in Toronto (esp. from the Carribean). They also don't include aboriginals, but that's more significant in the boonies.

If Canada is so accepting of minorities, where are the ethnic minority governors of Canada? Where are the ethnic minority entrepenurs? How many ethnic minorities sit in Parliament?

Take it to the Canada Board
 

Just a suggestion . . .

As of 1993, , minorities (defined as those of origins other than French, British, Canadian or Aboriginal) made up 26% of the population in the study area and 24.7% of the elected officials.

Not bad for a group that includes many recent immigrants.

On minority entrepreneurs, many. I work with Canadian entrepreneurs of Chinese, South Asian, and Iranian extraction in the biotech area.