Sunday, December 11, 2005

No money for basic services

County government has some very specific functions: public safety, infrastructure maintainence, declaring thousands of years of traditional marriage void... oh wait, scratch that last one.

My point is, we pay taxes to the county to get some important things done. The problem is, they don't do them. Instead they spend the money on whatever feels good to the county commisioners. Nothing is off limits. Nothing.

Case in point:

ORDER 05-6-22-15 Making a One-Time Grant in the Amount of $15,100 from General Fund Operational Contingency Funds to Centro Latino/Americano to Provide Additional Resources to Funds Its Administrative Budget. (PASSED)

So for you Lane County taxpayers, are you glad that money from the general fund went to this group whose main clientele are probably criminals? (Now before you liberals start with your 3rd grade "prove it" nonsense let me show how you can infer this)

Head of Centro says:
While the 2000 census reports approximately 15,000 Latinos in Lane County, unofficially, the generally accepted number is closer to 30,000, according to Carmen Urbina, Executive Director at Centro LatinoAmericano.

Of Centro's clients "ninety-five percent are Mexican monolingual speakers"
SOURCE

Tell me, if you were born here and you are over the age of 7 then you speak English. If you came here legally I'm sure that you are a hardworking person who values what America has to offer and you bothered to learn at least some English.

But regarless, this is an organization that helps members of only one race. I have no problem with a non-profit doing that but they should not get tax dollars.

"This Eugene nonprofit provides the Latino community in Lane County with services..."

7 comments:

Gunslinger said...

Is this even legal? All of the racism crap aside. Is it not illegal for a government agency to support or promote discrimination of any kind? If an agency that is designed to support one race of people, one religious background, one gender type, then it is discriminitory. If I lived in Lane county, I would be talking to the powers that be about this.

Oh yeah, good to be back on your site Dan, finals and work have kept me pretty much non-bloggin of late.

Robin said...

and did you notice that it was signed by the "lane county BOAR of commissioners... I suppose it's also like saying we have a exceptionally high theft rate here in and we should give money to the unity of thieves as well and screw everybody else.

this just makes me sick since I live in Eugene how they are constantly clamoring for money... you know the drill.

Anonymous said...

New immigration report today says, nearly 1 in 4 who live in poverty are immigrants and 30% w/out insurance are immigrants. so this is good for whose economy, not ours!

Anonymous said...

First of all, the mapping of the human genome has proven that "races" don't exist. They are, like cultures and ethnicities, social constructions.

Second, you all are confusing the assistance of an in-need population with racism, when in actuality, the group that is targeted for assistance all share the same characteristic of being recently arrived in the U.S., and therefore, non-English speakers. That they're from Mexico, really, is immaterial, just a correlated factor. This group is in the business of helping newcomers learn the ropes in a new setting. Many of the services are those available to you and me through government agencies. The way that I look at it, is rather than doing it themselves, the county outsourced the services to a group that can do it better. I think it's unwarranted to cry racism, when what is being offered is something everyone already has access to anyway. Likely we'll disagree on whether we want our government in the business of providing services to people, but that's a different discussion. My point is that your opposing these benefits as "racist" is unwarranted.

Daniel your logic seems flimsy to me (I'm not even sure what you were implying with the language stuff), but what I find so often on this blog are people willing to assume things uncritically. For example, there seems to be this universal assumption that Mexican immigrants are different than the immigrants of yore because they "hang onto their culture" and "don't want to learn English" or to "assimilate".

Since Daniel seemed to be making some odd assumptions regarding Latinos in Lane County, I looked at same 2000 census data that he cited. I found indeed that the Census reported about 15,000 Latinos in Lane county for that year. 75% are native-born, and among the native-born, only 2.3% were limited english proficient (i.e. either did not speak English well, or were monolingual Spanish). Therefore, since the agency's clientele is 95% monolingual, it must be dealing with the 25% of the Latinos that are foreign-born (about 3,750 people). 40% (about 1500) of these reported being LEP in 2000, a pretty small number.

What I found even more interesting are numbers based on English proficiency by length of U.S. residence. Among foreign-born Latinos in Lane County during the 2000 Census who had arrived on U.S. soil for the first time between 1995 and 2000, 51% were LEP (25% monolingual). Among those with 6-10 years of US experience, 43% were LEP and only 7% were monolingual). For those with between 11 and 15 years in the US: 46% LEP, 0% Monolingual. For 16-20 years: 22% LEP, 0% Monolingual. And for those with 21+ years in the U.S., 5% LEP, 0% Monolingual. How is this evidence of a group that doesn't want to learn English or assimilate?

Gunslinger said...

For the love of God! It is about people entering our country illegally! Nothing more. Other junk stems from that, but the issue here is dealing with the some 4000 invaders per day that illegally enter our nation. Our government does nothing to stop it, and Oregon's government seems to welcome it with our tax dollars.

Races, classes, religions, and sexual preferences are all secondary to the fact that the mere presence of these people is violation of law.

Anonymous said...

So let's change the laws/system to allow more of the flow to come here legally, work above the boards, pay taxes, contribute to our economy, etc. etc.

It's not the immigrants that need changing, it's the laws.

Don't scream at me with regards to taking up the issue of assimilation. I think that it was strongly implied in Daniel's original post.

Anonymous said...

SOP ...

If you run out of funds, ask for more money.

If the voters geek, punish them by cutting basic services.