Hispanic influx gives Liberal, Kan., a new face

The Wichita Eagle ^ | 09/02/07 | Brent D. Wistrom

[Sig Sauer P220]

LIBERAL - Ignacio Rivas stands at his paletas cart chatting with another guy who also pushes frozen fruit treats on a three-wheel cart. It's about 7 p.m. in downtown Liberal, a town proud of its Yellow Brick Road and annual Fat Tuesday pancake race.

But as Rivas tilts his straw cowboy hat down and pushes across the city's main drag before sundown, the scene looks like one out of Mexico.

Perhaps a third to half of the independent business storefronts advertise in Spanish. Most others note that they habla español.

This snapshot reflects what's happening in Liberal -- the heart of the first county in Kansas to officially become more than 50 percent Hispanic.

But Liberal's story is about more than percentages -- and nearly everyone believes the town is 60 or 70 percent Hispanic anyway.

[Theodore R.]

Is Liberal, KS, a “liberal” town politically? Or are they just Dole-style voters?

[SoldierMedic]

Lifelong Liberal resident Jesse Russell doesn't like what his town has turned into. "We spent 10 billion dollars on Iraq, we should spend 10 billion sending them home," he said about the illegal immigrants there.

Couldn't agree more.

[hershey]

Side bar: Will Liberal’s Hispanic kids graduate from high school, or will fifty per cent or more drop out, which is the sad and terrible statistic across the country. In other words, will they achieve prosperity, decent jobs, the America dream, or will they be doomed to poverty...leading to demands for more and more entitlements. (I’m not even discussing the illegal alien aspect in all this.)

[Sig Sauer P220]

Nope. But the governor is a lib. I don’t know how a so called conservative state let her get in office. There won’t be a fumigation done while she’s in office and our representatives lack a spine.

[SoldierMedic]

Can somebody explain this to me, because I can't wrap my brain around this:



Mexican men get off the daily bus from Juarez, Mexico, in Liberal during the early morning hours.

[Sybeck1]

Wheat doesn’t need to be picked from the vine. What industry brought them there?

[sausageseller]

Liberal, Kansas? Meat packers!

[3AngelaD]

How Long Do We Have? About the time our original thirteen states adopted their new constitution in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years earlier:

"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government."

"A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury."

"From that moment on, the majority always vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship."

"The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years.

"During those 200 years, those nations always progressed through the following sequence:

1. from bondage to spiritual faith;

2. from spiritual faith to great courage;

3. from courage to liberty;

4. from liberty to abundance;

5. from abundance to complacency;

6. from complacency to apathy;

7. from apathy to dependence;

8. from dependence back into bondage."

Professor Joseph Olson of Hemline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota , points out some interesting facts concerning the 2000 Presidential election: Number of States won by: Gore: 19 Bush: 29

Square miles of land won by: Gore: 580,000 Bush: 2,427,000

Population of counties won by: Gore: 127 million Bush: 143 million

Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by: Gore: 13.2 Bush: 2.1

Professor Olson adds: "In aggregate, the map of the territory Bush won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of this great country. Gore's territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in government-owned tenements and living off various forms of government welfare..."

Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the "complacency and apathy" phase of Professor Tyler’s definition of democracy, with some forty percent of the nation’s population already having reached the "governmental dependency" phase.

If Congress grants amnesty and citizenship to the 12-20 million criminal invaders called illegals and they vote, then we can say goodbye to the USA in fewer than five years. We have become the garbage can where other countries deposit their waste; uneducated un-American vagabonds residing illegally and supported by hard working, over-taxed, fiscally abused legal residence of a country with long standing laws that were supposed to protect those legal residence from the criminal actions of the current “complacency and apathy” Administration and Congress. Our own elected representatives have refused to support our nations “legal rights”, failed to use “our” public treasury responsibly and failed to uphold the laws that were created to protect “us”.

[Sig Sauer P220]

Actually let me clarify: Northeast Kansas (Johnson county, etc.) is highly liberal, and thats the most populated part of the state. Thats how we get a governor like Kathleen Sebelius.

[sheana]

This article could be about my hometown in California. It is now 97% Hispanic and is a place you definitely do NOT want to live. IT is filthy and crime ridden.
Doesn’t take long for this to happen, save yourselves.

[3AngelaD]

She is a Socialist shrew.

In May: "President Bush plans to tour the tornado devastation in Greensburg, Kan., tomorrow, amidst a delicate debate with the Democratic governor of Kansas about the readiness of the National Guard for the disaster in the face of guard deployments for the war in Iraq. Gov. Kathleen Sebelius insists that Kansas has been left in short supply of needed trucks, loaders and other vehicles for disaster response....

But the White House maintains that something else is missing: A formal request from the governor for trucks.

And a panderer, on Friday: "Kansas now protects state employees from job discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, under an executive order signed Friday by Gov. Kathleen Sebelius.

The new order applies to about 25,000 employees in agencies that directly report to the governor. With the change in effect immediately, employees in those agencies cannot be fired, nor overlooked for hiring, because they are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender.

“We need to make sure in Kansas that all of our employees are treated with dignity and respect and that the doors to state employment are open to all,” Sebelius said. “It was just clear we were behind the times.”

Notice this is not a legislative initiative, but a one-person order by the governor.

[puroresu]

Excellent post!

[raybbr]

"A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury."

Exactly. What do you think is going to happen when millions of anchor babies start to vote?

"Oh, I think we should give you reparations for the years your madre and padre struggled under capitalist oppression." said George P. Bush presidential candidate.

"I promise you that your hispanic heritage will take us to great heights. Viva La Raza!" he continued.

[Jabba the Nutt]

Hmmm, was Kansas part of the land stolen from the poor Mexicanos by the evil, violent, power-mad Gringos? Does the Reconquista include Kansas? Does that mean that Mexicans, legal and illegal, will focus on integration an assimilation into the legitimate part of American society and not push for annexation to Mexico? I’m just wondering, what our future is supposed to look like for a tolerant, progressive, liberal guy like myself.

[Rome2000]

which is always followed by a dictatorship."

Can't wait, I nominate myself for the position.

[angkor]

The Usual Suspects: National Beef Packing Company LLC, 3,000 employees, the largest employer in town, followed by three major feedlots.

From Yahoo Finance:

A leading US meatpacker, National Beef Packing pays close attention to what Americans eat for dinner. The company produces boxed, case-ready, portion-controlled, and branded fresh beef products for domestic and export customers. Its refrigerated trucking unit, National Carriers, transports beef within the US. To woo the natural foods consumer, the company has introduced its Naturewell Natural Beef and NatureSource brands of corn-fed, naturally raised beef products for sale through retail grocers. Unlike other big meatpackers (Tyson Fresh Meats, Cargill Meat Solutions, and JBS Swift & Company), National Beef is owned by beef producers, who control the company through their ownership of U.S. Premium Beef.

Note the three other major employers of illegals above, all four together (and a couple hundred other meatpacking firms) were ardent and vocal supporters of the 2006 and 2007 Shamnesties, through their DC lobbying arm, The American Meat Institute: http://www.meatami.org.

[MarkL]

Liberal, Kansas main industry is meat packing. It seems that illegal aliens provide much of the labor for many of the meat packing plants in the US... BTW, if you look at the clustering of contagious diseases, you'll often see the clusters in those meat packing plant towns. Just within the last few years, there have been major outbreaks of measles and mumps, and TB is back on the rise.

Mark

[MarkL]

I'm currently listening to the audiobook version of Robert Heinlein's "Friday," a book I read many years ago. A major part of the book is where the signs of a declining society are enumerated, and the signs of a dying society are discussed. It's time to migrate off-planet...

Mark