President George W. Bush says our economy can’t function without immigrants. The President’s conclusion is that we need more immigration. He also says that America is addicted to oil. His conclusion is that we need less oil.

The President’s guestworker proposal, his way of fixing the economy’s alleged inability to function without immigrants, a plan that has repeatedly been stalled by Congress already, will add another worry to your work life: If your job can’t be offshored, it can surely be guestworkered.

Other than that, not much to say about the speech. Typical Bush stuff, a mixed bag of good, bad and some in between. Bush deserves credit for having cut back a lot on pointing out invited guests in the audience, as Bil Clinton spent seemingly half his speeches doing.

Amerika.Nu is a mostly Swedish-language sister site of Internet128.com, an older-sister site, actually, that I have neglected for a good long time because, well, I’ve grown bored with Swedes and their rabid, ignorant, and unreasonable anti-Americanism (I have it on good authority that a high ranking Labor Department official had no idea that there’s such a thing as unemployment insurance in America, just to take one small example). But every now and then I get an email from some kid who thanks me for Amerika.Nu’s page on Boston, which apparently has been used in various class assignments in the Old Country, and every time I feel slightly ashamed since I’ve barely touched that page since 2001. One of the things that have bothered me, all Lutheran Swede that I am, is that the circulation numbers for the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald have changed significantly over the years, changes that have gone unnoticed on Amerika.Nu.

So today I decided to update those number, along with some other stuff - like Howard Stern leaving ‘BCN and the Red Sox winning the World Series and the Patriots winning the Super Bowl and the Patriots winning the Super Bowl and the Patriots winning the Super Bowl. Like so many other people, I headed over to Wikipedia. There I found this surprising claim for the Boston Globe:

“daily circulation of 474,845 as of October 2005″

That seemed counter inutitive, since the number I had on my website was from 2001 and pegged the broadsheet’s circulation at 470,000. The Wikipedia number comes from this page on the Boston Globe’s corporate site. That page offers no source, but links to a pdf file from 2003, in which the Globe’s circulation is said to 458,000 daily and 693,000 on Sundays for March 2003.

But if I know my Professional Media Critic and Professor Media Critic right, the Globe’s circulation has fallen still more over the past two years. According to this page on New York Times’ corporate site, the March 2005 circulation for the Globe was 434,000 daily, 673,000 Sundays (I’m rounding these numbers). This source for the September 2005 numbers is a little sketchy, so take it with a grain of salt, like the Globe’s marketing people do, but it pegs the newspaper’s numbers at 414,000 and 652,000.

What’s funny is that the numbers on the Globe’s marketing site are from 2001, just like the outdated ones on Amerika.Nu.

What’s also funny is that the Wikipedia article on the Globe contains this sentence:

The broadsheet Globe’s local print rival is the tabloid Boston Herald (daily circulation 230,543)

Wow! That really is the Herald’s September 2005 circulation! And the ‘Pedia entry’s source? A Boston Globe article, the very same that I’m sarcastically linking to a couple of pararaphs above, that has the current Boston Globe numbers.

Two different users added the circulation numbers. A Rex071404 probably meant to update the Globe numbers in October 2005, but apparently assumed the Globe marketing page to be current, which, again, it isn’t. The Herald circulation number was added by Wikipedia user Archaic in December last year, but the incorrect Globe circulation data was left untouched.

You’re probably thinking, “dude, chill the fuck out, hit the bong and get laid,” and while that may be good advice, I still think it’s at least somewhat non-trivial that Wikipedia misstates the Globe’s circulation on the basis of an unsourced source when more accurate numbers are readily available.

(Before you bring it up: Yes, “March” and “September” refer to the six months prior blah blah).

De-Meehan-izing Wikipedia is no small task (although I am not accusing Rex071404 of anything other than having made an honest mistake).

(An unsourced source? I’m starting to sound like Donald Rumsfeld: ” There are sources we know are sourced, and then there are sources we know are unsourced, but there are also unsourced sources that we don’t know are unsourced, or even sources.” Or something like that).

The Boston Globe’s excellent immigration reporter Yvonne Abraham provides a terrific primer on the vapidity of pro-immigrationism in an article on the planned new citizenship test that aims to check whether immigrants actually grasp anything about American values.

Here are some quotes from the article:

”If you’ve vetted them already to give them a green card, you’ve already decided you want them in the country,” said Marylou Leung, who helps prepare immigrants for citizenship at the International Institute of Boston, a nonprofit immigrant assistance organization. ”They go through quite a bit of understanding to learn the answers to those 100 questions. Don’t make the next step harder. Besides, how many Americans understand these concepts?”

”Let’s live up to our heritage as a nation of immigrants [that] helps people through the process,” [Jeff Chenoweth, national programs director at the Catholic Legal Immigration Network Inc.] said. ”So that we don’t see, as the years go by, a disparity between the haves and have-nots, where some obtain citizenship because of financial ability, or language ability, or access to assistance.”

”I think all of us . . . support the idea that if you want to become a citizen, you should know what America is about,” [Lynne] Weintraub said. ”But whether you can address content like that in simple words in ordinary usage is the big question.”

Weintraub suggested one way to truly gauge immigrants’ understanding of American principles would be to administer the history and politics quiz in their native languages.

Language barriers, inadequate education, and financial constraints hold immigrants back, [Michael Fix, vice president of the Migration Policy Institute] said. According to a 2003 study by Fix and other immigration specialists, about 60 percent of eligible, noncitizen immigrants had limited English skills, one in four had less than a ninth-grade education, and at least 40 percent earned incomes of less than $40,000 a year for a family of four.

”That makes it problematic to tinker with the test in a way that will make it more difficult for a substantial number of people,” Fix said. ”Some of the core concepts of American governance are fairly hard to get. Do we want this to be a barrier they have to climb in order to become citizens, given how much is at stake?“

In other words, a mish mash of Ellis Island mythology and nostalgia, English last-ism, distortion, and profiteering.

Profiteering? Oh, yeah. Besides Weintraub - author of Citizenship: Passing the Test, a “Best-selling citizenship textbook and teacher’s guide and workbook for preparing newly literate adults taking the standardized citizenship test. Companion text for INS naturalization interview preparation.” - there’s the Church.

Abraham is a great reporter, but what she didn’t mention is that the Catholic Church makes tons of federal tax dollars on bringing over foreigners or assisting immigrants.

Radley Balko comments on the brewing War on Coffee. Being a good Lutheran, I’m of course open to all arguments for restraint and moderation. Being a good Swede, I’m not at all open to attacks on coffee, the Beverage That God Made For Us To Enjoy At Will. And this even though I stopped drinking coffee a few years ago (I make the very rare exception once or twice a year). Coffee spans generations and classes and can be used for relaxation, flirting, late-night fuel, early morning jolts, mid-day boosts, afternoon energizers, and a lot of other socially and personally good things.

I think it’s important to be polite, but it’s also important to tell purist activists to go fuck themselves.

The Boston Globe reports that Massachusetts is no longer going to pick whatever cost overruns local officials manage to come up with for building new schools. According to the article, the State picks up an average of 72% of the tab, a system that probably begs towns and cities to spend like sailors on shore leave.

This quote is rather telling, it seems to me:

‘Do I think the state can handle [an increase of] 13 or 14 percent? Probably not. But there has to be some recognition of this. They can’t put their heads in the sand,” Mayor [Robert] Dolan of Melrose said. ”I would totally agree that this program was out of control. But how can cities and towns be held responsible? It was a state-owned and managed program. The state created their own problem because they allowed it to get out of control.”

Local accountability just oozes out of there, doesn’t it?

When A orders the meal and B picks up most of the tab, you’ll probably see more lobster than meatloaf coming out of the kitchen. Indeed:

Katherine Craven, who is executive director of the School Building Authority, said there are plenty of ways that Newton and other cities could cut costs, and her agency is eager to help them do it. She said, for example, that while Newton is planning a roughly 400,000 square-foot high school for 1,750 students, Everett is building a 325,000 square-foot high school for 1,800 students.

In addition to constructing buildings that are too large, Craven said, many communities tend to include expensive flourishes that are not absolutely necessary. In November, an audit of new schools in Springfield highlighted expensive ornamental columns and glazed brick tile in hallways, for example.

A recent audit of the new Chicopee High School, near Springfield, found that officials had tried to bill the state for more than $1 million in ”ineligible” costs, including two golf carts, dumbbells, and the repair of a kiln.

Now, philosphically speaking, it’s a little unfair to pitch Everett against Newton like that. If I lived in Newton - which, God willing, will never happen - I’d expect students to have more space per student than does that town, Everett. However, as a third-party tax payer, I expect Newtonians to pay for their excess. But then again, don’t they anyway? I mean, state revenue per capita, I’m just making a wild guess here, but surely it’s substantially higher for Newton than for Everett?

Regardless, the way out of this mess is not to increase state spending across the board, but rather to limit state revenue and send it where it is need the most. The very most. Then Newton can keep its left-over money and spend it on the freaking Taj-Mahal of high schools, with an olympic-size swimming pool per 30 students, if the town’s comrades so desire.

Under no circumstances should state tax money be used to fund an irresponsible and fundamentally unnecessary local school-house bubble.

A couple of days ago I noted that the Boston Globe misstated Springfield’s estimated population by using a figure from the American Community Survey rather than the U.S. Census Bureau population estimate. The following day, I pointed out that Boston’s population declined significantly (to 569,000 in 2004 from 589,000 in 2000), while Springfield’s was practically unchanged during that same time period.

It’s hard to believe that Springfield’s population would remain unchanged while Boston’s decreased, but when you compare the 2004 American Community Survey with the 2000 Census, it actually seems plausible.

Comparing data from the ACS to data from the Census is tricky, but I think it is meaningful when there is an increase in the number of a certain population group, rather in its share of the overall population. Why the trickiness? To quote the Census Bureau’s website:

The 2004 American Community Survey universe is limited to the household population and excludes the population living in institutions, college dormitories, and other group quarters.

What further complicates the situation somewhat is that the Census Bureau also makes full-population estimates, along with the ACS. In other words, for 2004, we have both the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey and the Bureau’s populaion estimate.

I don’t know about you, but that’s pretty much a brainful for me.

In 2000, Springfield’s population was 152,000. In 2004, the city’s estimated population was, again, 152,000. It’s ACS population in 2004 was 144,000. While the city’s population level was unchanged, the ACS shows us that its population composition had changed:

The ACS indicates that there 43,000 Latinos in Springfield in 2004, about 2,000 more than the 2000 Census found.

The number of foreign-born people in Springfield was 15,000 in 2004, and 12,000 in 2000.

The number of Asians increased to just under 4,500 from just under 3,000.

The growth in foreign born, Latinos, and Asians from 2000 to 2004 help explain why Springfield’s population remained more or less unchanged from 2000 to 2004.

So who left the city?

Native-born whites, is my guess.

The number of whites declined from 74,000 in the 2000 Census to 63,000 in 2004 ACS. Again, keep in mind that the ACS surveys a narrower part of the population than do the Census counts and estimates, so a lower number is to be expected in the ACS than in the Census. Even so, the difference between the ACS Springfield population and the Census 2004 estimate for Springfield’s population is 8,000, substantially less than the loss of whites.

The loss of whites is seemingly supported by enrollment statistics in Springfield’s public schools, where the share of white students declined to 19.5% in “2004-05″ from 21.8% in “2003″ (I’m quoting the somewhat inconsistent No Child Left Behind report cards for Springfield Public Schools). During the same period, the share of Latino students increased to 49.9%, from 47.2%.

Overall student enrollment in SPS declined to 25,975 from 26,594, with the loss of white students exceeding the total loss.

What is somewhat disturbing is that the number of poor people also increased, to 38,800 in the 2004 ACS from 33,700 in the 2000 Census - again, the ACS measures a smaller part of the population..

The corresponding numbers for Boston indicates that the Hub of the Universe may in fact be experiencing a decline in population. While the ACS for Springfield finds increases in the number of Latinos, Asians, and foreign-born compared to the 2000 Census, the numbers are down for Latinos and foreign-born in Boston, while the numbers of Asians surprisingly is up in the ACS. The number of whites is down 44,000, covering almost the entire gap between the ACS and the 2004 Census estimate, twice the gap between the 2000 Census and the 2004 Census estimate, but only two-thirds of the gap between the 2000 Census and the 2004 ACS. According to Boston Public Schools’ website, Boston also has a somewhat declining number of students (for example, 60,000 in 2004, 58,000 in 2005, continuing an already existing trend).

On the other hand, the ACS recorded some 10,000 fewer poor people in 2004 than the Census did in 2000.

Judging from the ACS and Census numbers, it does seem as if Boston indeed is losing population, and while that loss is concentrated to whites, there may also be some population losses among other races in the Hub of the Universe.

I shall hopefully do another post on the Springfield and Boston populations this weekend, one with fewer numbers and more opinions.

I noted yesterday that Springfield’s population has declined by some 5,000 people over the last 15 years, not 13,000 as the Boston Globe wrote (based on a small misunderstanding). However, since 2000, when the last actual population count was undertaken, Springfield’s population has remained more or less flat, according to Census Bureau estimates. During those same years, Boston’s population declined by some 20,000 people, to 569,000 in 2004, from 589,000 in 2000.

New slogan for Boston: Boston - Now Less Attractive Than Springfield!

Which seems impossible.

The estimates for Boston and Springfield use the 2000 headcounts as baselines. Is it possible that census takers in Springfield cooked the population numbers in 2000? Is the Census Bureau underestimating Boston’s population? If the numbers for Springfield are correct, why the heck aren’t people there moving to more promising cities and states? Are subsidies from the Commonwealth locking in Springfieldians in stagnation?

Things are dire in de-industrialized Springfield, Massachusetts, as the Boston Globe’s Stephanie Ebbert reports today. The city is once again running out of cash. However, the city’s population loss isn’t quite as dramatic as Ms. Ebbert has it:

Between the 1990 Census and the 2004 Census update, Springfield’s population declined from 157,000 to an estimated 144,000

The 144,000 number is actually from the 2004 American Community Survey, which isn’t as broad as the Census, or, as the United States Census Bureau puts it:

The 2004 American Community Survey universe is limited to the household population and excludes the population living in institutions, college dormitories, and other group quarters.

Apples to apples, Springfield’s population has declined to 152,000 in 2004 from 157,000 in 1990. Of course, the 2004 figure is an estimate, the 1990 an actual head count.

Anyway, before you start tarring and feathering Ms. Ebbert for her mistake, let me point that it is an easily made one, as in, I’ve done it myself.

And the bottom line remains the same: Springfield is a deeply troubled city.

Boston Herald scribe Jay Fitzgerald doesn’t take kindly to snark, but his employer does.

(As I’ve noted before, the Todd Gross cult is an entertaining spectacle, but for chrissake, the man’s trying to make a living! Cut him some bleeping slack, will ya, you wenches of vitriol. I agree with the above indirectly linked-to Johnny Bag of Donuts that the Herald’s super-tabloid frontpage strategy creates too many dumb di-dumb dumb dumb frontpages. And I say that as guy who drops like two bucks a week on our nefarious narrowsheet. Good thing Cosmo, Douchebag, Howie, Crittenden, McPhee et al make up for that shortcoming. Heck, I even like the wenches. A little.)

(My original headline for this post was a play on a famous insult hurled at an NHL referee, but since I’m a man with good manners…)

The New England Patriots had a great game plan, great play calling and a defense that played great. But those parts didn’t add up to victory as the offense and special teams broke down at highly inopportune moments, and Denver Broncos walked off the field with a 27 - 13 triumph in the AFC divisonal playoff game, ending the Patriots’ streak of play-off victories at 10.

Four plays turned the game in Denver’s favor: Kevin Faulk’s fumble at the end of the first half, just as it looked like the Patriots were taking control of the game. That fumble was followed by an awful pass-interference call, setting up a yard touchdown run by the Broncos. On the ensuing kick-off, Ellis Hobbs fumbled the return, setting up a Denver field goal.

The game-deciding error, however, was made by Patriots’ superstar quarterback Tom Brady, when he threw a horrible interception on 3rd & goal late in the third quarter, with New England trailing, 10-6, but again in charge of the game’s flow. The interception was returned to the Patriots’ one-yard line, setting up Denver’s second dirt-cheap touchdown.

Brady’s interception must be ranked as of the worst-ever plays in Patriots’ mostly less than glorious history. On first and goal I felt that the important thing was to get a field goal, not pushing for a touchdown. As Denver’s pass-rush closed in on Brady on the fateful third down play, all I could thing was “get rid of it! Get rid of it!” But this was the one play-off game where Brady’s normally close to impeccable instincts failed him. Instead of tossing the ball out of bounds, he tried to throw it to well-covered Troy Brown, resulting in the goodnight interception.