Washington D.C. - Squalor on the Potomac

For decades, Washington D.C. has been notorious as a city devoid of functioning government and awash in poverty and every attendant social ill. But because the city's population, like its government, is majority black, the very white U.S. Congress, which nominally is responsible for the city, has been unwilling to do anything substantive to bail the city out of its festering decline. Indeed, the other American city Washington D.C. most resembles is New Orleans. Another, corrupt city whose demography makes it immune to criticism or reform. Thus, the revelation that the capital's population is hugely illiterate will come as no surprise whatsoever.

WASHINGTON - About one-third of the people living in the national's capital are functionally illiterate, compared with about one-fifth nationally, according to a report on the District of Columbia.

Adults are considered functionally illiterate if they have trouble doing such things as comprehending bus schedules, reading maps and filling out job applications.

The study by the State Education Agency, a quasi-governmental office created by the U.S. Department of Education to distribute federal funds for literacy services, was ordered by Mayor Anthony A. Williams in 2003 as part of his four-year, $4 million adult literacy initiative.

Naturally, the U.S. government, not content to spawn disasters abroad, is working incredibly hard to make things even worse at home. That effort is working especially well in D.C.

The growing number of Hispanic and Ethiopian immigrants who aren't proficient in English contributed to the city's high functional illiteracy level, which translated to 170,000 people, said Connie Spinner, director of the State Education Agency. The report says the district's functional illiteracy rate is 36 percent and the nation's 21 percent.

By all means, let's import hundreds of thousands of aliens who cannot speak our language and do not understand our culture, so that they can congregate in slums in such numbers they will never feel the need to assimilate. Brilliant thinking. Much the same as that of Europe when they began importing thousands of Middle Easterners back in the 60's. Nothing could ever go wrong with that. Did anyone mention that almost half of Ethiopians are Muslim? Or that Ethiopia is rife with highly infectious diseases like meningococcal meningitis, protozoal diarrhea, hepatitis A and E, and typhoid fever? No worries. What could ever go wrong?