Two stories.
Wednesday 05-20-09: A racist attack on Arbitron’s PPM?
NOTE: PPM measuring of this market will begin this Summer.
What everybody is afraid to say out loud:
PPM does, in fact, record accurate radio listening and previous numbers may have been affected by illegal manipulation of the hand-written radio diaries. Stations have been known to make paper diary suggestions to respondents, asking them to extend their listening time, sometimes going so far as to offer them gifts.
The meters are pager-sized devices meant to be worn on the respondent’s person. They listen and record which radio stations they hear, based on encoding in station signals.
Capturing the signals is foolproof. But the system only works if the PPM is worn through the day and placed in the supplied cradle for recharging and call-back reporting. That requires a land-line phone and that requirement is clearly established up front.
Use in many PPM-implemented markets has radically shifted the balance of formats, showing urban stations much lower and talk station much higher than before in results.
Some stations in those markets, because of their ratings slide, have suggested that the decrease in listeners is because of fewer land-based phone lines among minority listeners (in which case they should never had accepted the PPM’s offer, because they would not have been able to send the results back as needed).
Another reason is that wearing a PPM might be considered a monitoring device and therefore unacceptable socially.
This is in spite of the fact that Arbitron has recently implemented affirmative action “race norming” when it comes to minority radio stations. Therefore, the ratings for “urban” stations are even lower than the official stats suggest.
Expanding Immigration Law Enforcement
I am generally unhappy with local and state efforts to enforce immigration laws. Too often, these efforts are mean, piecemeal, expensive, and ineffective. I believe it is the federal government’s job to set and enforce immigration policy – which may, or may not, be equally stupid, but has the virtue of being uniformly so.
I believe that illegal immigrants who have been convicted of serious crimes here should be deported. I also believe that there should be a path to citizenship for every other immigrant.
Except that almost no illegal alien who has been convicted of a serious crime gets deported. “Margaret” made a comment to American Renaissance several days ago that I will blockquote for eternity:
“He says illegal immigrants who haven’t had contact with the immigration system may not be flagged, but the goal is to deport the ones convicted of serious crimes.”
Lots of luck.
There is a book out, “The Deporter” by Ames Holbrook. Holbrook was an INS agent who had the job of actually physically deporting illegal alien felons when they finished their prison terms. Most of them stayed in America.
Here are the reasons they remained in America:
(1) The supreme court, led by Darth Vader Ginsburg ruled that if the illegal felons were not actually out of the country within 6 months of their release from prison they could stay.
(2) The Supreme court led by Ginsburg also ruled that INS agents could not simply pick them up at the prison and put them on a plane for their native country. They could not be physically deported until an immigration INS Judge ordered them to be deported.
(3) If the illegal felon was ordered deported, he had the right to not one but several appeals.
(4) The immigration Judges are liberals who see themselves not as impartial Judges but as illegal alien felon’s advocates.
(5) Federally funded attorneys and pro immigration groups managed to continue the hearings for more than 6 months. Thus the illegal felons had to be released.
(6) It was not just the immigration attorneys who worked for the tax payer funded non profit law firms. It was also the tax payer funded immigration advocate groups, usually connected with churches who kept appealing and appealing until the 6 months was up and the illegal felon was released on the street.
(7) On the few occasions when it was possible to deport the illegal felon there were more obstacles.
(A) His own country had to accept him back. Sometimes his happened, sometimes not. The acceptance had of course to be within the 6 month time frame. These were terrible felons, murders, rapists etc. Many countries are happy to dump them on America.
(B) The airline had to accept him as a passenger. The illegal felons would cause a huge scene at the airport, screaming, threatening, rolling on the ground etc. Their friends and relatives and even tax payer funded immigration advocates would come to the airport and join in the screeching and howling. So he would not be allowed on the plane.
Because of this the Deporters kept the date and place of departure secret to avoid the family and friends riot at the departure gate. At one time the Deporters sedated the illegal felon.
(C) The federal Judiciary agreed with a joint ACLU ADL lawsuit that the illegal felons should not be sedated to get them through the airport and on the plane.
That’s how it works folks. No matter what laws the people manage to pass, the federal Judiciary and the federally funded immigration lawyers, immigration advocates and ACLU, ADL etc will manage to get around it.
We are taxed to pay for our own destruction.
Are we dumb or not?
Holbrook worked in New Orleans for a long time. He thinks that part of the enormous crime rate in New Orleans is due to the large amount of illegal alien felons the New Orleans INS hearing Judges release into New Orleans.
The INS houses these illegal felons waiting to be deported in city and county jails and sometimes state prisons if the prisons are within reasonable distance of the INS deportation hearing offices.
The cost of housing these prisoners is substantially cheaper in the south than the midwest and northeast. Louisianna is the cheapest of all the states. So the feds send as many as possible to Southern Louisianna to be near the New Orleans hearing offices.
With the help of taxpayer funded non profits such as ACLU, they are not deported, but released into the streets of New Orleans to continue their criminal careers.
***
[...] By “deportation,” they mean that the Federal courts asks them nicely with a cherry on top to return from whence they came. Any resemblance to that and their actually leaving the U.S. is purely coincidental. [...]
[...] He might get prison time, but after that, he will be “deported.” What that means is that the Federal courts will ask him nicely to return to his native country. Any resemblance to that and his actually leaving is purely coincidental. [...]
[...] As far as the part after the last semicolon, a question I have had in my mind, one that I have never had answered with any credibility, is this: Why are we to think that we somehow have an obligation to give a “path to citizenship” to people who sneak into the country? If I sneak into Mexico, nobody with any real authority is going to think that I deserve a “path to citizenship,” I would get my ass jailed and then deported. And by “deported,” I mean actually returned to the United States, not the flimsy American definition. [...]
[...] Even if they’re caught for a crime other than their being here illegally, or for that alone, it is virtually impossible to deport them physically. And if they’ve had children in the process, they’ve got an [...]
[...] Then again, you already knew why a “deportation order” is a sad joke. [...]
[...] will probably get to stay after his criminal case is disposed and any sentence is served, because criminal illegal aliens are rarely physically deported, in spite of the [...]
[...] the state can’t physically deport them. And even if the Feds take up deportation, deportation orders are usually worth no more than the paper they’re written on, for a myriad of [...]
[...] the Mexicanization of Arizona, especially considering that ICE won’t do its part, and most “deportation” orders are hollow promises, and many if not most Mexican- or Hispanic-Americans in Arizona are citizens (naturalized or 14th [...]
[...] Illinois to be part of Secure Communities is that supposedly a third of “deported” (I use that word in quotes for a reason) illegals have never committed a crime, except that 100% of all illegal aliens have committed [...]
[...] says “deportation,” they mean beginning the bureaucratic process for deportation. There are many many hurdles in the way between that and actual physical deportation such that actual physical deportation rarely happens. * It may be tempting to dismiss this study [...]
[...] cut the crap, Illinois — We already know that next to nobody actually gets “deported” in the physical sense of the [...]