A6 TUESDAY, AUGUST 8, 2006 1 S T THE INDIANAPOLIS STAR } WWW.INDYSTAR.COM
Dennis R. RyersonEditor and Vice President
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EUGENE C. PULLIAM 1889-1975, Publisher 1944-1975EUGENE S. PULLIAM 1914-1999, Publisher 1975-1999
THE INDIANAPOLIS STARA GANNETT NEWSPAPER
Barbara A. HenryPresident and Publisher
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Tim SwarensEditor of the Editorial [email protected]
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Pamela B. FineManaging Editor
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OPINION&COMMENTARY
EDITORIAL
A ll this month, members ofCongress will be holdinghearings around the countryon immigration. They’ll be
hearing undoubtedly from some ofthe extremists on the issue — peoplewho suppose that we can easily expeland do without the services of the 12million or so illegal immigrants in ourmidst, people who suppose we shouldjust give amnesty to those who arehere in a blink of the eye. It’s an issueI’m especially interested in, as the pa-perback edition of my book “The NewAmericans: How the Melting Pot CanWork Again” is out this week. Theconsensus around Washington is thatmembers of Congress will not be ableto reconcile the border-security-onlymeasure passed by the House last De-cember and the bill with border se-curity, guest-worker and legalizationprovisions passed by the Senate inMay.
That may be right — but itshouldn’t be. America needs immigra-tion legislation to regularize the flowof immigrants in tandem with our la-bor markets and to promote assimila-tion and Americanization, which, inthe past, enabled immigrants andtheir children to become interwoveninto the American fabric and workedto make our country more prosper-ous, productive and creative.
Regularize the flow of immigration.Opponents of legalization and guest-worker programs talk as if the onlymoral blame for illegal immigrationshould fall on the illegals themselves.But we are all complicit. Politiciansand officeholders, Democrats and Re-publicans, voters of all stripes havefor a long time failed to insist on ef-fective enforcement of the law.
There are different ways to changethis situation. Some would requirepeople to return to their countries oforigin; others would let them payfines and back taxes and apply for le-galization without leaving the U.S. Butthe governing principle should be tofind a way for immigrants to comehere legally in response to the de-mand for their labor that obviouslyexists. Shutting off the flow of immi-gration would severely damage oureconomy. Legalizing it would improveour security. We need to do the latter.
Which gets me to assimilation. WeAmericans have proven much betterat assimilating immigrants than havemost other nations. But some of ourelites have soured on, in TheodoreRoosevelt’s word, Americanization.Education elites have produced bilin-gual education, which too often isneither bilingual nor education. Im-migrants’ children need to learn tospeak, read and write in English. Po-litical and judicial elites have man-dated bilingual ballots — even thoughapplicants for citizenship need toshow they’ve mastered English.Transnational elites, to use ProfessorSamuel Huntington’s word, havetaught a version of American historythat treats the Founding Fatherssolely as slaveholders and tells usnothing about World War II but theinternment of Japanese Americans.They want to encourage immigrantsto remain in separate and opposition-al cultural enclaves.
I still have hopes that Congress willbe able to pass a compromise immi-gration bill that will regularize immi-gration in tandem with the labor mar-ket, with border security measuresand with a later phase-in of some-thing like the free-market guest-worker bill sponsored by Rep. MikePence and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison.But that’s not the whole task. Largemajorities of both the American peo-ple and of immigrants themselves fa-vor assimilation and Americanization.We need to overcome the efforts byelites to undermine it. Americanshave dealt with immigration construc-tively before. We can do so again.✭ Barone is a senior writer for U.S. News &World Report and a syndicated columnist forCreators Syndicate. Contact him [email protected].
MICHAEL BARONE
A waveof new
Americans
“Soaring revenues areproof that tax cutshelp the economy,”a Star editorial de-
clared July 19. Indeed, tax rev-enues have run well above ex-pectations in the past year andthe federal government budgetdeficit will be less than $300billion this year — below pro-jections of just six months agoand more than $100 billionlower than analysts’ predic-tions of a year ago. Tax rev-enues, The Star claimed, wereup $616 billion because of thetax cuts.
Though I will mark myselfas one of the “naysayers” theeditorial chided, let me suggestthat the Bush tax cuts did notand could not have had suchan impressive impact. Tax rev-enues are indeed up, but theyaren’t up solely or even mainlybecause of the tax cuts. More-over, cutting the deficit to only$300 billion three years intoan economic expansion ishardly a cause for celebration.
Let’s be clear about the taxcuts: Tax cuts of some sortwere almost certainly war-ranted back in 2001. The
economy was weak and put-ting money in consumers’hands is one way to stimulatean economy that has stagnat-ed.
But contrary to the implica-tion of the Star editorial andthe belief of some opinionmakers, tax cuts do not gener-ally pay for themselves, muchless produce vast additionalrevenues; even the Bush ad-ministration acknowledgesthat its tax cuts won’t pay forthemselves. The White Housemidsession review of budgettrends noted that the long runbenefit of current tax cutswould be an annual increasein U.S. gross domestic product(the main measure of eco-nomic performance) of about0.7 percent. That means that
by 2016, for example, the Bushadministration expects that thetax cuts will have led to $146billion in extra GDP, whichwill add about $30 billion inadditional tax revenues. Butthe report admits the Bush taxcuts will reduce governmentrevenue by $314 billion.
In fact, Republican econo-mists have always maintainedthat the benefits of these taxcuts were going to occur onlyif they were accompanied byreductions in governmentspending. But this administra-tion and Congress have beenperhaps the most recklessspending bunch in Americanhistory. Without spending cuts,eventual tax increases are in-evitable.
But what about that extra$616 billion in revenues?Weren’t they the result of taxcuts? Actually, no. These rev-enues are due to economic ex-pansion, especially increases incorporate profits. As I’ve said,the economy benefited initiallyfrom tax cuts. But it is absurdto say that our economy isgrowing largely because of thetax cuts. Indeed, it has gener-
ally grown for the past 200years. During the 1990s, theeconomy and tax revenuessoared even though we hadtax increases. No one believesthat the Clinton tax hikescaused all or most of the eco-nomic growth of the 1990s; theBush tax cuts certainly didn’tcause most of the economicgrowth in the last few years.
In fact, since much of theincreases in revenue are dueto rising corporate profits, onehas to wonder whether the taxcuts are currently playing anyrole. Corporate tax rates didnot fall along with individualrates; yet companies are theones filling the government’scoffers.
I’m also a skeptic when itcomes to deficit projections,and what “beating them”means. Yes, some experts wereexpecting deficits in the $400billion range this year and wecan all be thankful that theywere wrong. But in 2004 theBush administration projecteda deficit of $201 billion for thisfiscal year. By that reckoningthe administration has pro-duced a deficit almost $100
billion higher than what isnow expected. Any projectionof government revenues isbased on expectations of eco-nomic growth, stock marketperformance, and corporateprofits — none of which iseasily judged more than sixmonths in advance.
A number of critics alsohave pointed to the problemsthat lie ahead. Social Securityand Medicare costs, the largestcomponent of the federalbudget, will be rising as babyboomers age and retire. As theStar editorial noted, we needan “overhaul” of all entitle-ment programs as well as realtax reform — two suggestionsI wholeheartedly endorse.
But tax cuts, especiallywithout spending cuts, provideno economic magic potion. Weare doing well now not be-cause of the policies of Wash-ington’s leaders but in spite ofthem. ✭ Grossman is the Efroymson Pro-fessor of Economics at ButlerUniversity. His column appears thesecond Tuesday of the month.Contact him at: [email protected]
Tax cuts play little role in economic growth
PETER Z. GROSSMAN
Overheard
“We can’t solvethe crime problemin Indianapolis. Wecan deal justly withthe persons whoare before us justlyand as quickly as possible.”
Marion Superior Court Presiding JudgeCale Bradford
“The issue here isnot jailovercrowding. . . .The issue is twothings: Kidsdropping out ofschool. And guns.”
Defense attorney Robert Hammerle
“People have no fearof consequences,and what are wetalking about? Jailovercrowding.”
Olgen Williams of Christamore House
Marion County Sheriff ’s deputiesGrady Copeland Jr. and RobertHatch expected to find a body atForest Hills Apartments onthe Westside that Februarynight. But what they dis-covered when they gotthere was shocking.
Neighbors were tendingto the head wounds ofJalen, Kristopher and Ron-ald, ages 5, 9 and 10, afterthey were found wander-ing around the complex. Attheir apartment, the bodiesof their mothers, a preg-nant 20-year-old KeyoniaDunn and Erika Thornton,31, shot and killed in theirrespective bedrooms.Dunn’s 2-year-old son, Desean, ly-ing in front of Thornton’s bedroom,had been shot in the neck but wasstill alive.
It didn’t take long for deputies to
learn the identities of the men theysay were responsible for such car-nage. An alert officer heard Dunn’s
grandmother say thatKeyonia’s ex-boyfriend,Royal Amos, was respon-sible for the shootings. Af-ter his name and that of al-leged co-conspiratorHoward Harris werebroadcast to the public, po-lice picked them up inBloomington sitting in acar in a Kroger parking lot.Both Amos and Harris nowsit in Marion County Jail,facing a lengthy list ofcharges, including twocounts of murder and fourcounts of attempted mur-
der. Their capture, however, won’t
bring Keyonia and Erika back tolife or return to their children themothers who loved them.
Our position:Local leaders have at least
90 reasons why they must doa better job of confronting crime.
Last weekend’s spree of ninemurders, along with themurder of Gary “Chip”Hoosier earlier in theweek, are reminders thatblood is being shed sense-
lessly as a result of the community’slong-term neglect of public safety.
The year’s first victim was David“Slim” Twitty, gunned down in an East-side auto-body shop early New Year’sDay, allegedly by Jarvis Brown, laterlinked to five other shootings. Thencame 35-year-old Edward Yelley, struckdown in January on the Southside.
In February, Tiffany Farral and herboyfriend, Donsha Jones, were slain asthey slept in their bed, Farral’s childrenin the next room. Earlier that month,Erika Thornton and the pregnantKeyonia Dunn were killed in theirWestside apartment, allegedly byDunn’s boyfriend, who also tried to killtheir children. At month’s end, WilliamBerry was shot to death as he stood be-side his truck.
In April, the body count within Indi-anapolis Police Department’s jurisdic-tion was double the same month lastyear. Deandre Gaines, 15, was ripped bya bullet that pierced the window of hisfriend’s duplex. Days later, AngelicSanders; her boyfriend, MartinRichardson; and her mother, DeloresTaylor, were found dead inside theirWestside home, hands tied behind theirbacks.
In May, seven members of the Val-dez-Covarrubias and Albarran familywere brutally murdered in their Hamil-ton Avenue home.
And now, Chip Hoosier, whose bodywas found in his cab Wednesday night,has joined at least 89 other men,women and children who have diedthis year.
Through it all, city leaders havepointed fingers and undercut each
other’s proposals. Save for the plan torent 200 beds at the privately run JailII and Saturday’s summit on dealingwith the carnage, there’s been little bi-partisanship in a search for solutions.
Some moves are helpful, such as theextension of the IPD’s middle and late-night patrols by two hours and the ad-dition of 18 sheriff ’s detectives to pa-trols. But they don’t address underlyingfactors, notably the state’s dropout cri-sis and low educational achievement.
David, Edward, Tiffany and Donshadeserved better. So did Keyonia, Erika,Angelic, Martin, Delores — and allhomicide victims. The casualties of In-dianapolis’ crime wave have piled upfor too long. It’s time for serious,thoughtful, broad, bipartisan action.
Casualties of neglect
CHARIE NYE / The Star
STANDING TOGETHER: Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson spoke last week at the Community Peace Celebration at St. Philip NeriCatholic Church during a National Night Out event. Other gatherings were held across the city to focus on fighting crime.
AS HOMICIDES CLIMB, IT’S TIME FOR SERIOUS, BIPARTISAN ACTION ON PUBLIC SAFETY
Crime scene horror
Royal Amoswas charged inthe killings ofhis ex-girl-friend and an-other woman.
from January through April 2006, plus thepercentage of increase from the same pe-riod a year before:
Robbery: 740, up 38%Aggravated assault: 1,053, unchangedLarceny: 5,085, up 28%Residential burglaries: 1,598, up 20%Non-residence burglaries: 440, up 52%Vehicle theft: 1,256, up 11%Source: Indianapolis Police Department
The rising body counts obscure the factthat the city’s crime wave goes beyondthe spike in murders. Robberies, larceniesand burglaries have been on the rise forthe past few years, while the percentageof cases being solved by the IndianapolisPolice Department in the first fourmonths of this year has fallen to 24 per-cent from 27 percent a year earlier.
The following numbers show varioustypes of crime and the number committed
BEYOND HOMICIDE
