It has been one year since Prince William County, Virginia began its crackdown on illegals. Many have fled to Maryland, a very Blue sanctuary state. Though Marylanders don’t like it, their lawmakers refuse to respond to the problem. The self-deportation by Hispanics from the “Devil’s County,” or as they call it in Spanish, Condado del Diablo, was noted back in March by the Washington Post in a series of stories.

Today’s Washington Post gives us an update in an article entitled “A Hispanic Population in Decline.” Gotta love this first part. It seems not all people fully appreciate the great multi-cultural influences that diversity brings to a neighborhood.

The family that planted corn in the front yard of their $500,000 home is gone from Carrie Oliver’s street. So are the neighbors who drilled holes into the trees to string up a hammock.

Oliver’s list goes on: The loud music. The beer bottles. The littered diapers. All gone. When she and her husband, Ron, went for walks in their Manassas area neighborhood, she would take a trash bag and he would carry a handgun. No more. “So much has changed,” she said in a gush of relief, standing with her husband on a warm summer evening recently outside a Costco store.

Corn stalks and handguns. What a neat blending of cultures.

One thing is clear though, Hispanics are leaving.

Anecdotes of the trend outstrip hard statistical evidence, yet there are clear signs that the county’s Latino population has reversed its pace of rapid growth. County officials said there are 4,000 to 7,000 vacant homes in the county. Trustee notices fill the classified section of area newspapers, chronicling the steady, staggering forfeiture of properties by homeowners with Hispanic surnames such as Mendez, Lozano, Medina and Rodriguez.

While this is causing a drop in home values, some people think that quality of life is paramount to home values. After all, no home is worth its former value after the neighborhood goes to hell in a handbasket.

That decrease — home prices in some areas have fallen by half — is well worth the improvement in quality of life, according to the most ardent supporters of the county’s get-tough approach.

“We have far less residential overcrowding, and that was driving people crazy,” said Greg Letiecq, a blogger and president of Help Save Manassas. He helped write the county’s policy and has been its most vocal champion. “We’d much rather live next door to a vacant house,” he said, speaking for his members at a recent Help Save Manassas meeting.

“With an empty house, there’s hope that the house is going to have somebody move into it that’s going to be a good neighbor, rather than an overcrowded house that is a neighbor from hell,” Letiecq said, adding that his Manassas area home has dropped $100,000 in value in the past year.

Another big factor is law enforcement’s focus on catching illegal immigrant criminals.

While some Hispanic immigrants have walked away from their homes, others have left the county in the custody of federal agents. County jail officials have turned over 757 illegal immigrant inmates to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in the past year through an agreement that county supervisors approved as part of the crackdown.

Police have referred more than 300 additional suspects to the immigration and customs branch since March, when the county’s patrol officers began screening for residency status.

Catching illegal immigrants has made Prince William safer, said Corey A. Stewart (R-At-Large), chairman of the board of county supervisors said. Stewart also said the county’s policies have led to “a plummeting of the crime rate.”

When Prince William County’s program levels off, and the illegals have largely relocated to Fairfax, Arlington, and Alexandria, or to Maryland (all controlled by Democrats), the quality of life will improve, property values will rebound, and maybe folks won’t have to watch their neighbors harvest corn from the front yard.

Also find Bill Dupray at The Patriot Room

Independence Day approaches and it is clear that, especially in an election year, all politicians must profess to be patriotic. Some are, and some are not. The thing about patriotism is that it is either in you or it isn’t. Patriots who have it, can spot it in others. Patriots live, breathe, and exude patriotism because it is part of their fiber. It becomes part of your fiber when you are taught, beginning as a child, that the root of America’s greatness is our freedom. You learn that America has freed millions of people from the grip of tyranny and oppression over our long and storied history. You learn that American freedom still serves as a beacon of hope for billions of people around the world. And while some people may not be proud of our country, Patriots are proud.

Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the U.S.A. (Proud to be an American) as sung by 5, 6, and 7 year olds at an elementary school in Virginia. They sing a patriotic song every day, right after the Pledge of Allegiance. This is how you make Patriots. Happy Independence Day.

Also find Bill Dupray at The Patriot Room.

The Democrats have placed a big bulls-eye on Virginia this year. The Senate seat held by the retiring Republican John Warner is in grave danger of being flipped by Democrat Mark Warner. The Democrat Party loves its new Senator Jim Webb, mentioned as possible Vice-Presidential material, mainly because the guy has balls, something conspicuously missing on the left.

The current Democrat governor, Tim Kaine, has handed Republicans one of the few things with which they may be able to beat Warner and/or Obama this year. Democrats simply cannot keep their hands out of the cookie jar. From The Washington Post.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) and several Democratic lawmakers yesterday urged Republicans to get behind the governor’s proposal to raise taxes by $1 billion to build more roads and maintain the state’s aging transportation infrastructure. [snip]

Kaine’s plan includes a 1 percent increase in the sales tax in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads; food and medicine would be exempt. He also proposed a statewide 1 percent increase in the sales tax on automobiles, which would be phased in over a year, starting in January, and a $10 increase in annual vehicle registration fees.

To raise more money for public transportation, Kaine proposed a statewide 25-cent increase in the grantors tax — paid by people who sell their homes — which is now 10 cents per $100 of assessed value.

And it seems that the governor thinks that only irresponsible children would oppose such a tax hike. Thus some condescension is in order.

“Adult leadership means taking adult responsibility to solve challenges,” Kaine said.

Republicans (adults all), who control the House, vowed to defeat the plan. But even if Kaine’s plan goes down, Senate Democrats think they have an even better idea: Raise the gas tax.

Kaine also faces a hurdle in the Senate, where Majority Leader Richard L. Saslaw (D-Fairfax) is vowing to push his own proposal.

Saslaw wants increases of one-quarter percent in the sales tax and one-half percent in the car titling tax. He also is proposing a 5- or 6-cent increase in the state’s 17.5 cent-a-gallon gas tax, which would be phased in over five or six years.

And hey, Kaine’s not going to be territorial about it. If his buddy wants a hike in the gas tax, Kaine will play ball. Money is money, right?

In the past, Kaine has resisted calls to increase the gas tax, but he said yesterday there is a “high likelihood” he would sign one if approved by the General Assembly.

One Billion Dollars is a nice round number. And when you soak it in gasoline, it makes for a great political weapon.

Also find Bill Dupray at The Patriot Room

So much for the 50 State Strategy, announced just one week ago. The Obama camp spins this as outlining several different paths to victory, but it sure looks like they are already on Plan B.

In a private pitch late last week to donors and former supporters of Hillary Rodham Clinton, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe outlined several alternatives to reaching the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House that runs counter to the conventional wisdom of recent elections.

At a fundraiser held at a Washington brewery Friday, Plouffe told a largely young crowd that the electoral map would be fundamentally different from the one in 2004. Wins in Ohio and Florida would guarantee Obama the presidency if he holds onto the states won by Democrat John Kerry, Plouffe said, but those two battlegrounds aren’t required for victory.

Florida, which has 27 electoral votes this year, gave the presidency to George W. Bush in the disputed election of 2000. Ohio, with its 20 electoral votes, ensured Bush of re-election in 2004 in his race against Kerry. Neither state was hospitable to Obama this year. Clinton handily won in Ohio and she prevailed in Florida although the national party had punished the state and the candidates didn’t campaign there.

Have the bitter clingers in Ohio and the Israel-loving Jews in Florida found something to dislike about Obama?

But George W. Bush won Florida and Ohio in 2000 and in 2004, so Obama starts by looking at the states Kerry won in 2004 and looks for pick-ups. But Obama’s guys see trouble even with those states, with McCain looking tough to beat in three of them.

The presumed Democratic nominee’s electoral math counts on holding onto the states Kerry won, among them Michigan (17 electoral votes), where Obama campaigns on Monday and Tuesday. Plouffe said most of the Kerry states should be reliable for Obama, but three currently look relatively competitive with Republican rival John McCain — Pennsylvania, Michigan and particularly New Hampshire.

Plouffe’s assessment isn’t exactly oozing confidence. Most Kerry states should be reliable? Sounds like they are trying to make it back to Kerry’s states and they are having trouble with the math.

So they will have to go after the Leaning-Republican states.

Plouffe and his aides are weighing where to contest, and where chances are too slim to marshal a large effort. A win in Virginia (13 electoral votes) or Georgia (15 votes) could give Obama a shot if he, like Kerry, loses Ohio or Florida.

Plouffe also has been touting Obama’s appeal in once Republican-leaning states where Democrats have made gains in recent gubernatorial and congressional races, such as Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Montana, Alaska and North Dakota.

Even if Obama were to win Virginia’s 13 electoral votes, a feat not achieved by a Democrat since 1964, if he loses Pennsylvania (21), they still under the gun. Add to McCain’s column Michigan (17) and New Hampshire (4), and Obama is in deep trouble.

One could argue Obama is lowering expectations, but frankly Plouffe is conceding that Obama may be the underdog in this Year of the Democrat.

From the Liberals Hurt Our Kids File.

Via the Washington Post.

Fairfax County School Board members said they are likely to abandon a staff report that showed racial and ethnic gaps in some measures of student behavior, including in the demonstration of “sound moral character and ethical judgment.”

The board had delayed an April vote to approve the report after concerns were raised that findings were based on subjective measures, such as elementary report card data, and that they would fuel negative stereotypes.

~~~

The school system’s report was an early attempt to measure progress on a host of goals the board considers “essential” for success in the workplace. It identified disparities among groups of students in several skills, including the ability to contribute effectively in a group, resolve conflicts and make healthy choices, and in the demonstration of moral character and ethical judgment.

Such a target-rich environment.

The School Board asked for the report, which was paid for by the taxpayers. When normal people ask for a report measuring student behavior, they are usually interested in, well, measuring student behavior. If they already knew the answers, they wouldn’t waste the time or money on the study. Democrats (who run Fairfax County) request a study and apparently demand that the outcome comport with their liberal world-view, which should never be confused with reality. If they don’t like the results, the report goes right into the shredder.

So rather than addressing the problem (the purpose of the study), they attack it as flawed. They are concerned “that findings were based on subjective measures, such as elementary report card data, and that they would fuel negative stereotypes.” So now the teachers, whose judgment we are supposed to trust (they are members of the vaunted NEA), are suspect because their assessments are too subjective (they are, of course, subjective by definition). I guess those subjective assessments were what? Racist? Stereotypical?

But while any kid can get a bad teacher who dislikes him more than other teachers, the sum total of all of the teachers’ evaluations over the years, turns one subjective assessment into an objective picture of the student. The School Board had objective findings and chose to define them as subjective in order to torpedo the report.

But the board’s real issue is the second one: the results might fuel negative stereotypes. And that is Political Correctness. The actual results must be ignored, to the detriment of the very students they were studying, because somebody might be offended.

Here is the offended guy.

The staff report on student behavior recently drew criticism from the chairman of the Minority Student Achievement Oversight Committee.

In a letter to School Board Chairman Daniel G. Storck (Mount Vernon) last month, Ralph Cooper wrote that the report and some recent school system budget decisions had “damaged any credibility [the School Board] may have had in improving minority student achievement.”

Umm, wasn’t the purpose of the report to see if students needed help in reaching these “goals the board considers ‘essential’ for success in the workplace.”

Then we have this substantive and logical critique by one of the geniuses on the board.

Board member Martina A. Hone (At Large) said that the original report is “fatally flawed” and that it doesn’t make sense “to work on fixing it.” She said she is pleased with the way the board is rethinking it. “I think we have come out a stronger school board,” she said.

Translation from the Liberal Dictionary: The results offend us and are, therefore, fatally flawed. Since you can’t “fix” results, don’t bother trying. By burying this offensive report and taking no action to help the students, we can feel better about ourselves because we protected the students from being offended. After all, nothing must come in the way of the goal of phony, unearned student self-esteem.

Unfortunately for the kids, the real world couldn’t give a rat’s rear-end about their self-esteem. What the real world cares about are “the ability to contribute effectively in a group, resolve conflicts and make healthy choices, and in the demonstration of moral character and ethical judgment,” the very attributes with which the Fairfax County School Board has declined to help them.

Also find Bill Dupray at The Patriot Room