“Laredo sits on the border with Mexico. It’s a poor city filled with immigrants who don’t speak English, let alone read.” That’s from an article published in the Wall Street Journal about our bookstore, B. Dalton, closing.

I’m not saying it doesn’t hold water, we do hold a high illiteracy rate and a healthy part of our economy and city is made up of immigrants, predominately from Mexico.

But something about that statement still offends me as a citizen of this city. It’s faintly reminiscent of the stereotypes that our fellow Americans up north fed on during the countless generations of attempted assimilation and rejection based on culture or race.

The projected spending boost at Christmas, Hannukah and Kwanza won't come from more or more expensive gifts, but rather from spending on items like entertainment and home decoration, which traditionally account for a smaller portion of the holiday budget, said the annual Deloitte holiday survey of retail spending and trends.

More than half -- 54 percent -- of the 10,878 consumers surveyed for Deloitte's poll said they expect the economy will improve in 2010, and nearly a quarter thought the United States was already in the early stages of recovery from the downturn.

"We have had stabilization in the housing market; the tax burden on the consumer is less, real wages are higher and the combination of all that is what's leading to consumer's intent to spend a little more on the holidays than they did last year," Stacy Janiak, head of Deloitte's retail group, which conducted the survey, told AFP.

WASHINGTON, November 24, 2009 (AFP) - Three-quarters of US women disagree with a high-level panel's recommendations to raise the age of breast cancer screening and even more plan to ignore the guidelines, a poll showed Tuesday.

Of 1,136 women aged 35 and 75 interviewed over three days last week, 76 percent disagreed with the findings of the United States Preventive Services Task Force, which said most women should have their first screening mammogram at 50, not 40, and have follow-up checks every two years instead of annually.

Eighty-four percent of women in the 35 to 49 year age group, which is most affected by the decision, said they had no intention of heeding the panel's advice and would go ahead and have screening mammograms before they reached 50, the USA Today/Gallup poll showed.

WASHINGTON, October 14, 2009 (AFP) - Nearly two-thirds of Americans support the death penalty, showing little change over the past decade, and half say it should be used more often, Gallup's annual survey showed Tuesday.

Around 65 percent of the 1,013 adults surveyed said they were in favor of capital punishment, compared to 31 percent who opposed it, the poll found. Pro-death penalty numbers have remained relatively steady since Gallup began surveying US public opinion on this issue in 1936, when 59 percent supported capital punishment.

In 1994, when crime was a major concern, the number reached 80 percent. The Gallup poll found this year that 49 percent of Americans said the death penalty is not imposed often enough, even though 59 percent agreed that at least one innocent person was put to death in the past five years.