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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (366563)	1/11/2008 8:31:39 PM
From: bentway	Respond to of 1571272

Asian voters in US 'got raw deal' By Brajesh Upadhyay BBC News, Washington Asian Americans make up 3.6% of the US population Many Asian American voters faced discrimination from voting officials during 2006 mid-term elections in the US, a civil rights group has alleged. The report is based on a multilingual exit poll conducted among 4,700 Asian American voters in 25 US cities. It documents alleged violations of the Voting Rights Act and Help America Vote Act and cases of "anti-Asian attitude". According to a 2000 census, the US has more than 10 million Asian Americans, comprising 3.6% of its population. 'Rude behaviour' The report by the Asian American Legal Defence and Education Fund (AALDEF), a 34-year-old civil rights organisation, comes as presidential primaries are in full swing in the United States. They must learn English if they want to realise their American dream Saghir Tahir, New Hampshire legislator The group alleges that poll workers were hostile towards Asian American voters, particularly those not fluent in English, during voting in 2006. Many voters complained of "rude or hostile behaviour" and an "unhelpful attitude about election procedures", the report said. It said 59 Asian American voters had complained. In New York, 83% of voters who were asked to show identification were not legally required to do so, the report says. It says English-speaking voters were not asked for ID. The discrimination was "racially motivated and at the same time also demonstrated a bureaucratic approach", AALDEF lawyer Glenn D Magpantay told the BBC. The survey found 40% of Pakistani-origin, 38% of Bangladeshi-origin and 17% of Indian origin-voters could not speak English well. One-third of Urdu speakers and the same number of Bengali speakers said they needed the assistance of interpreters in order to vote. The report says some poll workers made disparaging remarks about such assistance. "One poll worker in New York said she thought it was a waste of the taxpayers' money to pay for so many interpreters. "Another poll worker commented that she did not think they should be required to provide multilingual material and voters should learn English," the report says. It also said Chinese American voters had been given Spanish-language ballots in New York. No response Many Asian Americans' names were missing or misspelt in voter lists at polling stations, the report found. Copies of the report and letters of complaint have been sent to the US Department of Justice for investigation, the AALDEF says. The BBC contacted the voting section of the department, both by phone and e-mail. There was no immediate response to the allegations. However, a Republican state representative of South Asian origin, Saghir "Saggy" Tahir, said he was not aware of such discrimination in his community. "I am in my fourth term in the state legislature but I have never heard of any such complaint," says Mr Tahir, who was the first Asian American Muslim elected to this level in the Republican Party. He says the easiest thing for people is to blame others for their inconvenience. "I can only advise that they must learn English if they want to realise their American dream," says the New Hampshire legislator, who arrived in the US in 1972 from Lahore.

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (366563)	1/12/2008 1:28:57 PM
From: bentway	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1571272

Bush tanked the U.S. economy By BONNIE ERBE GUEST COLUMNIST Recession, like menopause, is a retrospective diagnosis. You don't know you're in one until you've been in it for at least two quarters (referring to a recession) or a year (for menopause). The question for me is not: Are we hitting a recession in 2008? It is: What has made the economy so buoyant that we didn't submerge into a recession several years ago? Wall Street giant and billion-dollar bank Merrill Lynch announced last week that the United States had entered a recession for the first time in 16 years. It was a controversial call denied by a chorus of economists who do not think we're there yet. But the announcement comes from the bank's chief American economist, David Rosenberg -- widely respected on Wall Street. The largest factor driving this country's economy into recession has been the Bush administration's profligate spending. Please read the following quote from the conservative/libertarian think tank Cato Institute's Web site: "George Bush is mired in a fiscal policy crisis worse than anyone could have envisioned when he entered the Oval Office ... This crisis is the resurgence of record federal deficits ... The deterioration of America's fiscal health cannot be blamed on ... pro-spending coalitions in the Democrat-controlled Congress -- although certainly some of the blame lies there. It is almost exclusively the creation of the Bush administration itself." Sound familiar? The article, which I edited heavily (taking out references that would have dated it immediately, such as the use of the term "Reaganomics"), is about George H.W. Bush, not George W. But it might as well have been about the son. Forget about the $127 billion surplus that President Clinton left the nation after he moved out of the White House or the fact that Clinton paid down hundreds of billions of dollars in federal debt. President George W. Bush has produced nothing but deficits since he's been in office. Last year's, at $163 billion, was the lowest in five years. But it probably would not have been if his trillion-dollar war in Iraq hadn't been paid for "off budget." That little budgetary trick by the administration means that cost isn't tallied in the deficit and debt figures. Then, of course, there's Bush's multitrillion-dollar tax cut. Here's a lesson Bush never learned and one that probably could have kept this country out of recession: You can't fight an expensive war AND cut taxes simultaneously without sending the U.S. economy into the tank. That is just what Bush has done. There are other contributing factors, of course. The housing bust has hurt this consumer-driven economy mightily. Americans felt richer and borrowed heavily against home equity at the height of the boom. These factors kept corporate profits and the economy growing. But the bust that has now followed was highly predictable. Real estate always runs in cycles. The last real-estate boom lasted an incredibly long five years. The president should not have been piling up irresponsible debt, knowing the crash would come at some point. Then there is oil. Prices have been high since Hurricane Katrina, more than two years ago. When you consider that early in Bush's first term oil was selling for about $25 per barrel, and we're now paying about four times that much, it's incredible that fact alone didn't drive us into recession territory much sooner. What has kept our economy growing these past few years? My theory is: immigration. When millions of people flood into this country with few possessions, buy homes and fill them with consumer goods, of course our consumer economy is pumped. But that artificial pump-up won't last forever. Unfortunately, the overdevelopment they prompt and the environmental degradation they create will. What's the solution? It won't be resolved with this guy in the White House. Cut defense spending. Use a pay-go system for all future domestic spending programs and tax cuts. Get the deficit down and bring the surplus back. And while we're at it, pay down the national debt. seattlepi.nwsource.com