By Brandon Darby, Brietbart

The IRS’s targeting of Tea Party groups went even further than has been revealed. A conservative Hispanic outreach group that educates Spanish-speaking and English-speaking Hispanic communities on the US Constitution was also targeted after applying for 501(c3) status, according to the group’s founder and president, Adryana Boyne.

Boyne’s organization, named Voces Action, also applied for 501(c4) status. Boyne said she abandoned her 501(c3) efforts due to the IRS’s treatment of her. “I spent thousands of dollars on attorneys and hundreds of hours dealing with the IRS on this. Our groups had separate boards and followed all of the laws,” said Boyne.

Click HERE or on the picture to read the full story.

[Photo by afagen]

The post IRS Targeted Consevative Latino Outreach Group appeared first on NewsTaco.

By Arthur C. Brooks, Wall Street Journal

Half the Hispanics eligible to vote don’t. They are the ones most likely to call themselves ‘political conservatives.’

Before Washington was rocked in recent days by an assortment of brewing scandals, immigration reform was at center stage. And immigration reform will surely return shortly to the heart of Washington debates as Congress considers legislation proposed by Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio and his bipartisan “Gang of 8″ colleagues.

Their bill would normalize the status of millions of illegal, mostly Hispanic immigrants. This has stimulated a vigorous debate among conservatives over the cost of reform, mostly in the form of public services for those with low skills and high needs.

Click HERE or on the picture to read the full story.

[Photo by valentinapowers]

The post Arthur Brooks: The GOP’s Hispanic Opening appeared first on NewsTaco.

By Sandy Close and Raj Jayadev, New America Media

BAKERSFIELD, CA. — Abusive behavior by law enforcement officers in towns across Kern County and neighboring Tulare County has generated distrust and resignation, especially among Latinos who make up the majority of the region’s population.

But national media coverage of the alleged beating death by deputies of David Silva, a 33 year old Latino father of four, in downtown Bakersfield may finally break community apathy, according to some two dozen attendees at a health care fair here interviewed by New America Media.

Less than a week after Silva was beaten allegedly by eight or nine deputies and highway patrol officers, the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, MSNBC and Fox News had all reported on the incident as well as on an apparent attempt to cover it up when Bakersfield police confiscated the cell phones of several bystanders who had videotaped it.

So had the Spanish-language news outlet Univision, which ran a segment titled “Worst Police Beatings of Latinos.”

“This is a really conservative community. Most people will think something like this was bound to happen — it’s been happening in other places. But the country’s eye is now on Bakersfield and that could make the difference,” said Amy Lopez, 22, a student of dental hygiene at Cal StateBakersfield.

Bill Phelps, who works with South Kern’s low-income health plan program HMC, said news of the beatings had “accelerated a huge mistrust of law enforcement across all sectors of the community. Thanks to national media coverage, Kern County is now on the public radar.”

Hilary Meeks, a reporter for the Visalia Times, noted that the incident hadn’t occurred in a vacuum. “There’ve been five shootings over the last four years in neighboring Tulare County … A sheriff’s deputy ran over someone two years ago and nothing was done about it. We had a guy killed in Porterville. The court case ended in a hung jury. That was one or two years ago.”

At least a third of those interviewed by NAM at the fair, held at the Kern County Fair Grounds on Saturday, had not heard about the Silva incident, although it’s been front page news for the Bakersfield Californian’s daily website, and on local TV. But recession-related closures of all but one Spanish language news weekly, along with Univision’s Bakersfield bureau, has turned the city into something of a media desert, especially for non-English speakers.

“Local awareness will build with more local, state and national media coverage,” said El Popular publisher George Comacho, who plans to report on the story next week, especially in the wake of Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood’s request on May 14 for an FBI probe into Silva’s death.

Linda Vasquez, a 27 year old Cal State Bakersfield student, was as agitated by the cover up as the beating itself. “The part that makes me angry is how they took the phones, because they’ve done that before.” She told a story of how her brother was harassed, and the phone of another family member who recorded the incident was taken by law enforcement. She was not sure whether it was city police or the sheriff’s department.

Ali Morris, CEO of the local Black Chamber of Commerce, thinks that even if public pressure mounts over the Silva case it’s going to take a lot of time and education to change things for the better. “We have a broken system. In theory everything should work right. We can start attacking it here or there, but it’s the system that’s broke. It should have never gotten to this point.”

The solution, Morris says, has to come with changes in perception on both law enforcement’s side and on the public’s side.

“I think both sides are responsible,” Morris observed. “The whole police force is at the mercy of one bad officer. At the same time, the police officer wonders why he is putting his life in jeopardy when the people here don’t want him there…

“We have to go at this whole thing piece by piece,” Morris concluded. “If I didn’t have a spiritual foundation I couldn’t get through it.”

Pablo, another Cal State Bakersfield student who is studying to become a police officer and didn’t give his last name, learned about the Silva incident from his criminal justice professor. “There have been a lot of shootings and beatings by law enforcement officials. They should train the police to use non violence or non lethal force,” he commented.

Cal State student Amy Lopez said she was frustrated that there hadn’t been more public reaction like a student protest. “Something’s got to give. I shouldn’t leave it up to another group to say something. I should step up and do something.”

This article was first published in New America Media.

[Photo courtesy New America Media]

The post Kern Residents — Fatal Police Beating Didn’t Happen in a Vacuum appeared first on NewsTaco.

By Hope Gillette, Saludify

As the world we live in continues to diversify and becomes increasingly connected, individuals who are bilingual or who speak multiple languages seem to have an obvious advantage. But while the ability to communicate with people from different cultures is a huge asset, bilingual children and adults experience some significant health benefits as well.

“From the perspective of brain development, [growing up bilingual] is very beneficial,” Azadeh Aalai, Ph.D., professor of psychology at Montgomery College in Maryland, and author of Understanding Aggression: Psychological Origins & Approaches to Aggressive Behavior, told Saludify. “Our brain has structural plasticity, meaning it changes and adapts based on what we are exposed to in the environment, so learning multiple languages actually serves as an enriching experience that optimizes the capacity of the brain.”

Research on bilingual children

The American Psychiatric Association indicates children who grow up bilingual have an enhanced ability to process sounds and therefore are more likely to pay attention in a learning situation.

The benefits, outlined in a study from Northwestern University, supported previous findings that demonstrated bilingual children showed reduced levels of anxiety, loneliness, and poor self-esteem, as well as a reduction of negative externalizing behaviors such as arguing, fighting, or acting impulsively. According to the experts, part of the reason for lower levels of social stress among bilingual children had to do with the ability to understand and accept the multiple cultures which came along with learning multiple languages.

This ability to have a multicultural understanding—not just an understanding of multiple languages—is what sets bilingual children apart from someone who has learned a second language just to learn it.

“It is hard to quantify mental reward,” explained Aalai, “as this is a subjective concept which likely varies significantly from person to person; however, certainly the experience of exposure to multiple cultures in addition to multiple languages would likely be more enriching than learning multiple languages without exposure to multiple cultures as well.”

But social skills and the ability to accept others are not the only mental health benefits for bilingual children. In fact, growing up bilingual is beneficial well into an individual’s senior years.

Erlanger Turner, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine, explained to Saludify that bilingual people have been found to have enhanced “working memory,” which is a process responsible for manipulating current information so it can be used in active thought.

“Research has consistently shown that bilingual children typically have improved working memory (WM) and executive functioning abilities. These are important cognitive processes involved in learning, comprehension, and planning,” explained Turner. “Declines in WM are typical for many clinical conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and schizophrenia.”

Turner explained that in a recent study in Psychology and Aging by Luo, Craik, and Moreno, they found that bilingual individuals performed better on spatial working memory tasks than monolinguals.

“However, findings were reversed for verbal memory,” he said. “Given this research one might wonder if becoming bilingual might serve as a protective factor against cognitive decline as an older adult.”

Other studies have supported the theory that being bilingual helps prevent cognitive decline. According to a new study published in the January issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, seniors between the ages of 60 and 68 who had spoken two languages for the majority of their lives were faster at switching from one mental task to another compared to monolingual seniors.

“Being bilingual has certain cognitive benefits and boosts the performance of the brain, especially one of the most important areas known as the executive control system,” Ellen Bialystok, a psychologist at York University in Toronto, said at the time of the research.

Brain benefits of being bilingual

“To maintain the relative balance between two languages, the bilingual brain relies on executive functions, a regulatory system of general cognitive abilities that includes processes such as attention and inhibition,” statesThe DANA Foundation. “Because both of a bilingual person’s language systems are always active and competing, that person uses these control mechanisms every time she or he speaks or listens. This constant practice strengthens the control mechanisms and changes the associated brain regions.”

In addition to providing continual exercise for the brain, being bilingual causes physical changes to the brain, increasing grey matter in the left inferior parietal cortex. White matter, the part of the brain known better known as myelin, also has shown physical changes in bilingual children and adults, suggesting being bilingual not only changes how the brain sends signals but its physical attributes as well.

Health benefits of growing up bilingual

The health benefits of growing up bilingual extend beyond just improved cognitive function into the areas of wellbeing, as bilingual children who experience less social stress are less likely to become involved in dangerous health habits such as alcohol use, drug use, overeating, and risky behavior.

At the root of the benefits, however, is the brain, and the direct cognitive benefits of being bilingual include:

• Improved attention to detail
• Ability to focus on important details
• Early onset of conflict management skills
• Improved memory
• Improved executive control
• Protection against certain illnesses such as Alzheimer’s disease
• Lessening of symptoms associated with cognitive decline
• Improved social skills
• Reduced stress
• Reduced risk for depression

“The cognitive and neurological benefits of bilingualism extend from early childhood to old age as the brain more efficiently processes information and staves off cognitive decline,” explained The DANA Foundation. “What’s more, the attention and aging benefits discussed above aren’t exclusive to people who were raised bilingual; they are also seen in people who learn a second language later in life.”

Aalai told Saludify learning a second language as an adult keeps certain neurons in the brain stimulated, which makes an individual less susceptible to cognitive decline as he or she ages.

Is there a negative side of growing up bilingual?

“From the perspective of identity, what we find is that individuals who are bilingual are actually navigating multiple identities,” said Aalai. “What I mean by this is you may actually see individuals respond differently to personality measures or other psychological test based on what language the tests are in. Individual responses tend to conform to the values of the larger culture that language endorses.”

Aalai adds the finding is not necessarily considered negative, but it does offer a look at how language affects an individual’s world perception. She points out previous research has linked Americans’ ethnocentrism (the perception their culture is superior to others’) to being monolingual. Based on that finding, the ability to speak multiple languages may actually lessen reliance on stereotypes; another benefit.

This article was first published in Saludify.

Hope Gillette is an award winning author and novelist. She has been active in the veterinary industry for over 10 years, and her experience extends from exotic animal care to equine sports massage.

[Photo by hcplebranch]

The post Growing Up Bilingual is So Good For You! appeared first on NewsTaco.

By Melissa del Bosque, Texas Observer

In early May, Ruben Villarreal, Mayor of Rio Grande City, channeled the frustration of many residents in Starr and Hidalgo counties, where a proposed 14-mile border fence is slated to be built through the middle of his community. “I think it’s going to happen but they have us in limbo,” he said. “The federal government needs to give us the facts so we can be prepared. So if it is coming we can make a plan.”

A fence was first proposed in 2008. As the federal government served condemnations to Rio Grande Valley residents up and down the border, some residents in Rio Grande City, Los Ebanos and Roma were also taken to court but told the fence wouldn’t be built any time soon. U.S. Congressman Henry Cuellar told the McAllen Monitor at the time that it was due to “engineering and hydraulic” problems. “Realistically and practically, they’re basically passing this decision to the next administration,” he said. “Certainly, for my constituents, we have a victory.”

The “engineering and hydraulic problems” the Congressman alluded to was the vexing problem of reality – and how to ignore it so that the Department of Homeland Security can sign off on the construction of an 18-foot fence in the middle of a floodplain. Building a fence that costs an estimated $4.5 million a mile in a floodplain sounds like a joke. It would be funny, too, if we weren’t paying for it, and if it wasn’t common practice for DHS to defy common sense and build fences in washes, floodplains and riverbeds just to fulfill its border fence quota with Congress.

As I noted back in 2011, at least 40 feet of steel border fence washed away during a flash flood in the Arizona desert. Arizona park officials warned the Department of Homeland Security that the fence would be washed away during the summer monsoon season. Despite their warnings, Border Patrol issued an environmental assessment saying that the fence “would not impede the natural flow of water or cause flooding.”

Scott Nicol, chair of the Sierra Club Borderlands Team, has been following the issue closely since he saw mention of the fence in a 2010 government report. “I had thought they’d given up,” he told me back in 2011. “But apparently they were really pushing to get it done.”

After filing several FOIA requests, Nicol received several documents showing plans to move businesses and homes in the path of the fence. In Rio Grande City, the government’s proposed route would go right through a nursing home. Mayor Villarreal says there are only two nursing homes in the rural border county so it will be extremely difficult to find another facility for the displaced residents.

In September 2012, a representative from DHS and another from the International Boundary and Water Commission held a community meeting but failed to tell residents anything of substance, said Villarreal. The meeting was barely advertised, but even so, he said, at least 80 people showed up from the various small border towns that will be affected.

But the government meeting only created more confusion and frustration. “I would describe the meeting as the most shoddy, unorganized and insensitive meeting of that type that has ever been organized in my 13 years as a public official,” he said. “They were not forthcoming with information. They talked about hydrology studies in jargon nobody could understand and wouldn’t talk directly to the people about their concerns.”

Villarreal said after five years, city leaders and residents need the federal government to advise them on what they have planned for the communities. The Observer asked for an interview with Congressman Henry Cuellar about plans for the proposed fence. The Congressman sent a written response that he had spoken with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, an agency within DHS, and they had “advised that due to the lack of funding in Fiscal Year (FY) 2013, there will be no additional construction of a border fence at this time. CBP plans to execute the fencing project should funding become available at a later date.”

Congress has already proposed $1.5 billion for a “Southern Border Fencing Strategy” as part of its immigration reform bill, which is making its way through Congress. Conservatives have demanded more border fence as a contingency for any type of immigration reform. Villarreal is frustrated by how little Washington listens to people who actually live on the border. Increasing the number of Border Patrol agents would be much better than a fence in a floodplain, he said. “When we had a flood in 2010 my resources as a city were strained and Border Patrol helped us. People help solve problems in emergencies. An inanimate object like the fence just sits there.”

This article was first published in The Texas Observer.

Melissa del Bosque joined The Texas Observer staff in 2008. She specializes in reporting on immigration and the U.S.-Mexico border. Her work has been published in national and international publications including TIME magazine and the Mexico City-basedNexos magazine. She has a master’s in public health from Texas A&M University and a master’s in journalism from the University of Texas at Austin.

[Photo courtesy Texas Observer]

The post Border Communities Living in Limbo While Congress Dithers appeared first on NewsTaco.

By Carol D. Leonnig and Peter Wallsten, Washington Post

A pair of FBI agents met on a recent weekday morning with brothers Alfonso “Alfy” and Jose “Pepe” Fanjul in the Palm Beach headquarters of their sugar and real estate empire.

The investigators’ questions struck a discordant note in the Fanjuls’ sunlit offices overlooking a yacht-filled waterway, according to three people familiar with the meeting: Were the brothers or any of their associates familiar with a plot to bring down a United States senator?

Months after the FBI began probing allegations against Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), investigators are looking at whether someone set out to smear him while he was running for reelection last year and then ascending to his new post as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, according to four people briefed on the inquiry.

Click HERE or on the picture to read the full story.

The post FBI seeks source of prostitution, corruption allegations against Sen. Robert Menendez appeared first on NewsTaco.

By Victor Landa, NewsTaco

I’ve been waiting for this all week!

Friday, Jazz de México day at NesTaco. It’s here!

It’s time…

Click back, click below, and listen.

It’s the best Latino jazz musicians and composers, brought to you by San Antonio KRTU 91.7′s Jorge Canavati, recorded in the studios at Trinity University.

This program was first broadcast on KRTU.

[Photo by malojavio. El Saucejo]

The post Jazz de México appeared first on NewsTaco.

By Rocio Gonzalez, Voxxi

Third time’s the charm. President Barack Obama’s nominee to head the Labor Department, Thomas Perez, was finally approved by the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, after this vote was postponed two other times.

Republican opposition was not enough to stop Perez’s nomination. This was the third time a vote had been scheduled, since the first time the vote was postponed at the request of Republicans, who said they needed more time to evaluate the candidate, or else. The second time, a Republican member of the Senate invoked an infrequently used procedural tactic that prevents committees from meeting on days when the Senate meets, a rule that is usually ignored.

This time around, the committee approved Perez while sticking to party lines in a 12 -10 vote. All Republicans voted against the Dominican’s appointment. That’s enough indication that this won’t go smoothly when it is time for the entire Senate to vote, especially with the controversy the Department of Justice is currently involved in. Perez is currently the assistant attorney general for the department’s Civil Rights Division, and would become the first Hispanic to join the Obama cabinet for the president’s second term, after Hilda Solis left her post at the Labor Department and Ken Salazar stepped down at the Interior Department.

“Republicans have accused Perez of making decisions guided by left-wing ideology rather than the pursuit of justice,” writes Sam Hananel for the Associated Press. “His supporters call Perez a consensus builder who is the target of politically motivated attacks.”

A small victory for Obama to fill the Labor Department post

For now, it’s a small victory for the majority. Sen. Bob Menendez released a statement saying he was pleased with today’s development, although not with the fact that there wasn’t a bi-partisan effort to pass Perez.

“Republicans continue to try and block Mr. Perez’s confirmation for no reason, without any real objection — only an ideological objection to allowing this President or this Congress to govern, or at least to select a Cabinet that will help us do so.

“At a time when Republicans should be reaching out to Hispanic Americans rather than reverting back to the same-old political strategies that failed them during the last election, it is unfortunate that the President’s first Hispanic choice for his second-term cabinet continues to be under attack. I urge my Republican colleagues to stop the obstructionism and do what’s right for the country: vote to confirm Tom Perez as the next Secretary of Labor when his nomination comes before the full Senate for consideration.”

This article was first published in Voxxi.

Rocio Gonzalez is a multimedia editor for VOXXI. Born and raised in Puerto Rico, she is an avid reader, amateur baker and a journalism graduate from American University in Washington, D.C.

[Photo by Center for American Progress]

The post Thomas Perez Finally Backed for Labor Department by Senate Committee appeared first on NewsTaco.

By Ashley Parker, New York Times

A bipartisan group in the House working on an overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws reached a deal in principle Thursday evening, aides said. The group plans to introduce its bill in June.

Details of the compromise were not released, but, much like a bill introduced in the Senate, the House legislation will include a path to legalization for the 11 million undocumented workers already in the country, as well as increased border security measures. The House version, though, is expected to be more conservative in its approach to granting illegal immigrants a path to citizenship, among a number of central issues.

Click HERE or on the picture to read the full story.

[Photo by Glyn Lowe Photoworks]

The post House Immigration Group Reaches Deal appeared first on NewsTaco.

By Sandra Lilley, NBCLatino

A group of Texas Democrats say the state could turn blue sooner than many think, since the voters are already there, and they are mostly Latinos – the issue is no one is paying attention to them.

“The biggest problem is we are not asking them for their vote,” said Dr. Julie Martinez Ortega, vice president of  policy and advocacy for PowerPac, a progressive political action committee.  Ortega conducted a poll of over 2,600 randomly selected Hispanic registered voters.  According to the poll, 57 percent of Latino registered voters said Democrats best represent their views on social issues like same-sex marriage, religion and abortion, and 57 percent say Democrats best represent their views on jobs, economy and immigration.

And though Texas is considered a “red” state, only 23 percent of Latinos said they generally vote Republican, whereas 52 percent said they generally vote Democrat and 16 percent say they vote Independent.

One of the reasons why Republicans are still winning elections by about a million votes is that there are over 3 million Latinos “sitting on the sidelines,” according to Democratic state representative Trey Martinez Fischer and founder of One Texas PAC.   There are over 2 million Latinos in Texas not registered to vote, he says, and another million mostly Hispanic registered voters who are not voting.

Yet one of the poll’s findings was that only 54 percent of Latinos recall being contacted by a campaign in the last presidential election. “When pretty much half of Latinos didn’t even get a piece of mail, we have a problem,” said Martinez Ortega.  She added that while a third of Texas Latinos who voted for Obama also voted for conservative Republican Senator Ted Cruz, about a third of Latinos who voted for Senator Cruz did not know he was a Republican, according to the poll’s findings.  ”Here in Texas we didn’t make a concerted effort to educate Latinos on who Ted Cruz really is,” said Martinez Ortega.

Texas Republican Joshua Treviño takes issue with the Democrats’ contention that more Latino voters would turn Texas blue. “This is the old trope that gets trotted out, that demographic change in the state will go Democrat, and you hear this a lot these days from them,” says Treviño, who was a speechwriter for George W. Bush and is currently vice president of communications at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. “While there are partisan tendencies among groups, the fact is that as affluence and social integration occurs, political pluralism increases,” he says.

Treviño adds it is not a “safe assumption” that more Latino voters will translate to increased Democratic numbers and Democratic elected officials, though he does say current Hispanic voter participation does not represent the proportion of Latinos in Texas.

But Texas Democrats say a focus on 6 key counties in the state where the majority of Latinos reside can make a big difference in increased voter registration, turnout – and future Democratic victories.

“Some look at my district and think it should be functioning as a Republican district,” says Senator Wendy Davis, who represents an area that is 29 percent Latino, 19 percent African American and 47.6 percent non-Hispanic white.  ”But we’ve demonstrated that by talking and connecting with these voters – it will happen,” Davis said.  She adds that while many areas have been redistricted as “purely Democrat” or “purely Republican,” the strategy is to take a district approach and apply it statewide – “focus on places where you have the biggest potential gain,” says Davis.

Democrat Martinez Fischer stated he is not concerned whether Texas turns blue in 2016 or 2020 – “the key is not to be fast, but to be right,” he said.

This article was first published in NBCLatino.

Sandra Lilley loves being an active part of our “national conversation”, on everything from politics, education and the economy to the latest books and people in the news. Sandra started out in Telemundo-NY as a general assignment reporter and later News Director. She was also a Dayside Managing Editor at MSNBC and a Planning Editor for the NBC Domestic Desk. Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Sandra studied history at Brown University, and currently lives in New Jersey with her family. Sandra hopes our site inspires and informs Latinos as they work toward their family’s “American Dream.”

[Photo by deege@fermentarium.com]

The post Texas Can be Blue – But it’s Up to Latinos, Says Democratic Group appeared first on NewsTaco.