Hate/Fear/Xenophobia/Racism

The worst sin of our age - the display of Hate/Fear/Xenophobia/Racism - will be wiped from our souls with the enactment of Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CIR). Yes, that's right - eradicated, as it were. You see, right now, deporting illegal undocumented immigrants, denial of work permits to people unfortunate enough to happen to be living outside our borders, erecting border fences, and increasing border enforcement are all driven by Hate/Fear/Xenophobia/Racism. Which is why we need CIR, and to oppose CIR is to engage in H/F/X/R. But one key facet of CIR - the part that's supposed to make it all OK, is that it includes - nay, requires - strict enforcement of our immigration laws. That would include deporting illegal undocumented immigrants, denial of work permits to people unfortunate enough to happen to be living outside our borders, erecting border fences, and increasing border enforcement. But since those things require H/F/X/R, which CIR is supposed to eliminate. So clearly, then, Hate/Fear/Racism/Xenophobia will no longer be bad, at least when applied to enforcing our immigration laws.

The Real Tragedy

As tragic as the killing of an eight year old boy, two young women in the prime of their lives, and the horrific maiming of dozens might be, it would be an even worse tragedy if this terrorist attack derailed Comprehensive Immigration Reform. - The Gang of Eight.

Are Putin's Wheels Spinning?

These Boston bomber knuckleheads could have been Vladinir's headache, but instead they're ours . He's got too be thinking maybe he could get rid of a lot me of them  and send them over here. Why the hell, Castro did it with the Mariel boatlift, the Saudi's have been sending their troublemakers abroad for years - so why not send America some of his tired, poor Chechens?

The Chronically Unemployed

The plight of the chronically unemployed has been making the rounds these days, with all kinds of deep explanations. A recent study which sent out fake resumes shows that being out of work for 6 months or longer is worse than not having relevant industry experience as far as employers are concerned. When you're out of work, your skills erode, and you're no longer employable. So it's hopeless. Or so the narrative goes.

Of course that's silly. During recessions, it's just plain tough to get a job. Employers have their pick of the litter, and they're going to aggressively filter their piles of applicants. If you've been out of work for more than 6 months, that means others have already rejected you. That's an easy way to screen people out - you need to start somewhere.

When the economy recovers, that all changes. Interest in jobs suddenly wanes - no more piles of resumes, and the few who do apply aren't so qualified. Hmmm...this guy seems to have se experience - he's been out of work awhile...but times were tough, after all - let's give him a try!

Same thing happens with people who have criminal records. When times are tough, their applications are thrown right in the trash. But when the economy is booming...Hmmm, aggravated assault...ah, the bastard probably had it coming...let's give him a try!

And as far as skills eroding, that assumes that the average employ's abilities continuously improve. But that can't be the case, otherwise our productivity would be skyrocketing and average incomes would be rising much faster than inflation. Typically people rapidly reach their limitations on a given job.  Improvement, if noticeable, is very gradual. A few continue to develop, and are promoted or leave for greener pastures. "Skill erosion" is a handy excuse for the screening, but not an actual phenomenon.

The problem of the unemployed is cured by economic recovery. But of course that assumes that there is an actual recovery. What we have now is a continuation of a recession that happened to rebound from its lowest depths, not a real recovery. We are now in the fifth year of economic doldrums with little hope of sustaining winds to fill our sails. We can take steps to force the hiring of the chronically unemployed, but this will just displace those who would otherwise get those jobs.

As an aside, this fits the phenomenon of the rapidly shifting memes we find on the left. It reminds me of the performance gap, which is due to inequities in school funding...no wait, it's due to pre-school inequities...no wait, it's parents not talking to their kids before age 3...

With the chronically unemployed, it's lack of aggregate demand...no wait, it's lack of skills (let's provide retraining)...no wait, it's just the fact of not working that makes their skills erode...

Bombing Prediction

UPDATE: I guess I was wrong about Part 1 - or at least this specific individual.

• Part 1: This is the easy part - the Saudi national who is currently a person of interest will in fact be found to be the guilty party, with possibly other Saudi national co-conspirators.
• Part 2: This part is even easier - the fact that the bomber(s) is/are Saudi nationals will have no impact on any proposed counter-measures, on the immigration debate, and will not in fact be deemed to be relevant in any discussions about the bombing whatsoever (except of course on disreputable and hateful blogs) - regardless of his/their immigration status. Bonus prediction: John McCain will be particularly solicitous of Saudi forgiveness for any slights any of his countrymen might be perceived to have meekly emitted.

Maggie, RIP

Margaret Thatcher was the linchpin among a remarkable troika of leaders who led the West out of the wilderness of the 70's. With Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II, she relentlessly rang the bell of freedom and stood firm against the Soviets and their agents in our midst to slay the beast once and for all. But Maggie had the tougher challenge. Her's was a nation that had embraced socialism after WWII. Its unions were led not by blue-collar traditionalists or mob-corrupted connivers like in the U.S. but by full-on apparatchiks - true believers. And England was economically a much worse than the U.S. - one of the poorest performing economies in western Europe.

And, unusual for a woman, she was a gifted leader - in Britain's rough-and-tumble parliamentary democracy, it's a pretty much required trait. Those who merely bubble-up through technocratic infighting - the Gordon Browns - are doomed to fail. In the U.S., perhaps only Sarah Palin has that quality - but her native talents are too meager to sustain her - but otherwise our female "leaders" are nepotistic pretenders (as are many of our male leaders, as well - a disturbing trend in the "land of opportunity." While Thatcher took the reins in 1979, her influence as opposition leader since the mid-70's was already laying the ground work for the Troika's triumph in the next decade. (See this amusing WFB column about Mrs. Thatcher from as early as 1975).

But still she lacked Reagan's charm and warmth. And few men have ever possessed the other-wordly magnetism and aura of JP2 - at least until that Soviet hitman's bullets ruptured it. That was only in his papacy's fourth year - but the damage was already done - the Kremlin's days were already numbered, so long as Margaret and Ron stayed the course, which of course they did. But to lead in Britain you need to be a top-notch debater, and no one was more relentless an advocate than Mrs. Thatcher. She simply overwhelmed her opposition with cold, implacable reality of the facts, reducing them to blubbering and unhinged invective. (As an example of the latter, there's the notorious Elvis Costello song, which is actually a pretty good number despite its hateful tone).

Their legacy has been tarnished of late, in a sense victims of their success. Both Thatcher and Reagan tirelessly promoted the free market against all manner of government interference as an antidote to socialist inroads. While they won that war, the triumphalism of the capitalists has left a bitter taste in the mouth. Worse, their disciples confused the misbehavior and bluster of assorted dictators for the same existential threat the Soviets presented and led us into one misadventure after another.

But we shouldn't let the excesses of her followers, or even the subsequent abuses of her free-market ideology, detract from her great achievement of reinvigorating a once-great nation that seemed to be slipping ineluctably into decrepitude and standing fast with Reagan and John-Paul against the encroachment of tyranny.

The Boy Who Cried Wolf - A Fable of Victimhood

There was a boy playing in the woods outside of town when he saw a wolf. At least he thought it was a wolf. It might have been a wolf. Anyway, he'd heard stories of wolves eating children in the old days, and he thought that seemed exciting, so he shouted "Wolf - Wolf!!" All the men from town came running with their guns and torches. They set up search parties and looked and looked but didn't find a wolf.

Still, they agreed that it was better to be safe than sorry, and the Chief Constable patted the boy on the head and they all went home. No one had actually seen a wolf in decades around these parts, but some of the old timers were kind of energized by the whole thing, and spoke quite approvingly of the boys vigilance.

A few weeks later, the boy got to missing all the attention, and so he managed to see another wolf, and again shouted out his warning. And again all the men came down and searched the woods thoroughly but found no wolf. This time there was some grumbling and the Chief Constable even gave the boy an annoyed look. The boy didn't like that and complained to his mother, who became most indignant at the disrespect shown her son. A lot of the old timers who liked searching for wolves also told the mother how pleased they were that the boy was reminding people how scary wolves were.

Then a few weeks went by and again the boy cried "Wolf!", but this time he had a wound to back up his claim. However, no wolf was found.

The Chief Constable though was a little concerned that valuable resources were being diverted to wild-goose chases [sic] and expressed his hope that this recent wolf-hysteria would soon end. Well, that did not sit well with the boy or his mother, nor with the old timers who wanted to keep the wolf-threat real.The Chief was denounced for his insensitivity. A protest was organized, and pictures of the boy crying with his bloody leg were circulated. The protesters demanded the Chief Constable's resignation.

A doctor pointed out that the wound was straight and clean and not very deep, not resembling a wolf bite at all, and a few others pointed out the boy's clothing wasn't even ripped, but their voices were easily drowned out by the loud protesters, and even the reporters weren't interested in a few boring details when there were people marching making demands. The Chief Constable soon resigned. The new Constable learned quickly, and promised to spend thousands on wolf-awareness seminars, child-victim sensitivity training sessions, and other such measures that gave a lot of people jobs at the taxpayers expense. But no taxpayers dare complain, lest they be protested as well.

Other boys soon began reporting wolf sightings, even with gory wounds that would later be found to be more likely ketchup than blood. But no wolves were ever found. Still, each sighting would be accompanied by candle-light vigils, denunciations of insensitive officials, and pledges to spend more on combating the wolf scourge.

Discoveries of wolf costumes, obviously staged mutilations of small animals, and other evidence of fabricated wolf activity had no effect. Each sighting was followed by the same ritual of protest. The newspapers were unanimous in supporting the presumed victims, denouncing the non-existent wolves, and demanding that officials act. The rare codger who complained about his tactics was shunned. And every official remembered the fate of the first Chief Constable, and so each took each sighting seriously, no matter how preposterous, and always pledged to devote more resources to combating insidious wolfness.

And no boy was ever punished or ever suffered any consequences for falsely crying "Wolf!". The wolf-sightings continued. And no wolf ever actually appeared.

Do Deficits Matter?

Maybe not. Back when the deep 1981-82 recession along with Reagan's tax cuts combined with increased military led to big budget deficits, his apologists claimed deficits didn't matter. Now, it's the Obama supporters making this claim. The argument is that deficit spending is critical to economic growth right now, and that low interest rates prove it's not much of a problem anyway. But if we need deficits to promote growth, we're not getting much bang for the buck right now. Compare the growth in GDP to the deficit for each quarter of this recovery:

With the exception of Q1 2011 and Q3 2012, the deficit has actually exceeded the growth in GDP - usually by a huge margin. So the deficit isn't encouraging economic growth, but instead masking economic contraction. But is this normal in a recovery? Not hardly! Compare this recovery to the one following the very deep 19821-82 recession:

Despite it's reputation for historic deficits, the Reagan deficits were were typically well below GDP growth and only exceeded it in two quarters. The Reagan apologists certainly were on much firmer ground than Obama's. In the 14 months of this recovery, each $1 of deficit spending has purchased only 45 cents of economic growth. In comparison, in the 80's recovery, we got $1.63 of additional GDP for each dollar of additional debt.

I would say that the term "unsustainable" is a fair assessment of our current fiscal situation. The deficit apologists are basically making the novel argument that doing something that provides merely short-term relief of pain can't really present a long-term problem because it hasn't hurt us yet!

Sources:
Deficits: U.S. Treasury - http://www.fms.treas.gov/mts/index.html
GDP: Bureau of Economic Analysis - http://bea.gov/national/index.htm#gdp

Democrats to Republicans: Watch What We Do, Not What We Say

Republicans have been taking advice from Democrats and New-York-Times types on how to improve their electoral prospects by embracing amnesty for illegal immigrants. Of course following this advice will positively doom the party to permanent minority status, as Latinos vote overwhelmingly Democrat. But Republicans are pretty stupid, so they anointed the lightweight Marco Rubio to lead their surrender on immigration reform and to deliver the State-of-the-Union reply.

And of course the Left has been mocking Rubio mercilessly ever since. Can Republicans possibly see what's going on here, how they've been duped? Doesn't look like it. O'Reilly is now "investigating" how the Democrats are out to smear Rubio over a silly water-bottle gaffe. The real investigation should be into how a dope like Rubio came to be thought of as a party leader. They should look at what's being done to their choice to lead their Hispanic-outreach efforts and realize that there's no way to win that game. Instead we just hear whining: "Hey, we did what you said, we're reaching out to Hispanics, and then you slam us - No Fair!"

Meanwhile, Rubio is on a high-profile trip to the Mideast, where he will meet with Netanyahu! Now that's gravitas!

Taking advise from your deadly rival doesn't make much sense, obviously. When has it happened before? Arguably, that's what Gorbachev did - he listened to "advice" from the West that unless the Soviet Union opened up more, allowed more dissent, they were doomed. And guess what happened? He opened up, allowed more dissent, and in 3 years the Soviet Union was no more. The Chinese authorities, on the other hand, so the folly in that appoach and harshly cracked down on any protests, despite much "advice" from the  West. They remain in charge today, stronger than ever, even though Tom Friedman advises them every other week that they need to allow more dissent.

More on Pre-School

Why would anyone think pre-school is so damn important, anyway? Alright, I confess I know little about the history of education, but as a concept that's been around since like forever, its formulation and structure must have more-or-less evolved through trial and error. Over time people presumably settled on a sweet spot for when it makes sense to start teaching kids reading and arithmetic. If teaching kids younger than 6 were a fruitful enterprise, why wouldn't that have been common. Sure, not teaching kids at all would be easier, but if you're going to bother to start teaching them at age 6, why not earlier?

And how often do you hear about parents pushing to get their children into classes early? Red-shirting, on the other had, is very common - why? Because an older child is able to learn more than a younger child. If learning at an earlier age were such a tremendous advantage, parents would be jockeying left-and-right to have their allegedly precocious child entered into kindergarten a year early. But this rarely happens.

Of course it makes sense that whatever additional education can be provided at age 3 or 4 or 5 will help the child read and add faster when he does get to first grade. But then the improvement should be immediately obvious. But how is that supposed to lead to significant, measurable improvements at age 30? Common sense tells you that whatever the advantage pre-school provides would be most magnified in first grade and then dissipate over time. But if the advantage is supposed to be evident at age 30, then it must be absolutely overwhelming in the early grades - and surely jump out at you as early as 4th grade.

But, as I pointed out in yesterday's posting, no such obvious advantage is observable among 4th graders. And if we can't see any clear advantage among 4th graders, how in God's name can we expect there to be any lasting mpact into adulthood? Yet David Brooks and President Obama are both certain that early-childhood education is the golden road to future prosperity. We are being led by insane people.

Is Early Childhood Education a Good Investment?

Lots of folks are debating the merits of President Obama's proposal to build "high quality" universal pre-school programs nationwide. The suggested price is $10b per year, which doesn't really sound all that bad. We already dump well over $20b a year on Pell Grants, which go to people well past their educational prime and is surely a big waste of money, so half that on 4 year olds doesn't sound so terrible.

But Obama and other proponents are touting it as some miracle investment that pays off its investment 7 fold. The claim seems preposterous on its face. Is there any good evidence of such a payoff?

Obama praised Georgia and Oklahoma, the latter in particular, for establishing such high-quality, universal pre-school. Oklahoma's went into effect in the 2000-2001 school year. So how'd they do? The NAEP tracks state performance every couple years or so. Those bragging about the program go on-and-on about how these pre-school students do far better than their peers in word recognition in first grade. Critics contend that whatever advantages might exist in first grade dissipate in later grades.

Since this is mostly intended to help "disadvantaged" students, lets look at the performance of black 4th grade students on reading. We'll look at Oklahoma, its neighbor Arkansas that does not have universal pre-school, the nation as a whole, and a large-city composite.

 Oklahoma had a large increase in scores in 2007, but it's not clear that this would have included the first class of universal pre-schoolers (presumably that first class would have still been in 3rd grade in 2007). and this cohort would have been the in the second class of universal pre-schoolers. But that year appears to have been a fluke, as the scores for 2009 and 2011 do not show any clear advantage for Oklahoma students.

How about Math - Obama's always going on about how we need to better our STEM performance in order to compete internationally. Surely we must expect this awesome investment to demonstrate improved math performance among 4th graders. Here are the math results:

Again, there clearly improvements in Oklahoma scores, but not clearly any more than the comparison groups. Oklahoma students do indeed do better than their pre-school-less Arkansas neighbors, but that was the case 10 years ago, and over that period Arkansas scores have improved even more dramatically than Oklahoma's.

If universal pre-school is going to have such a powerful effect that it results in measurable performance improvements in adulthood, then surely this power should be clearly evident just 5 years later in 4th grade. Yet no such obvious improvement is visible for the much praised Oklahoma system.

Universal pre-school might be desirable for other reasons - like for working mothers - although for welfare mothers we hardly need any more incentives for them to have more kids. But it seems highly unlikely it will amount to much of an "investment." Perhaps in a few years we'll see some dramatic improvements - but until then there's no evidence it is any such thing. It would make sense to wait at least a few years to see if anything substantive develops.

Update (2/15 8:10am EST):
Looking at 8th grade reading, again there is a bit of a spike, but no clear positive trend that differs from either neighboring state Arkansas or national trends. In fact, the 2009 spike we see would pre-date the first univesal-pre-school class, which would have been in 7th grade at the time. Of course that means only one such class is visible among 8th grade NAEP assessments - the 2011 assessment. But no increase is notable.

The Minimum Wage and Immigration

Ron Unz has proposed a large increase in the minimum wage, for various reasons, but among them their presumed salutary effect on our illegal immigration woes. He argues:

After all, the primary force which originally drew those 11 million illegals to America was the attractive availability of so many millions of low-wage jobs in our country, and unless this suction force at the bottom of the economy is eliminated, more border crossers will eventually come to take their places once the current ones are legalized...Raising our minimum wage to $12 per hour as part of the proposed amnesty legislation would probably do more to solve future immigration problems than would any sort of electronic fence or national ID card.

While this appears to make a lot of sense, I don't think raising the minimum wage to even the $12 Unz proposes will deter illegal immigration. It certainly won't discourage the immigrants themselves, for whom the resulting higher wage base will be an even stronger lure. But will it discourage employers from seeking out the illegals? I don't think so.

First of all, regardless of what the minimum wage is, many will still be paid less than minimum wage since they will be paid under the table. Illegal immigrants and off-the-books employment are a perfect combination as the employee likes it (cash right up front, no un-redeemable deductions) and the employer likes it of course (usually a below-minimum wage, no forms and other regulatory hassles, and with an illegal immigrant no fear of the employee reporting the violation). So there will still be a strong incentive for hiring illegal immigrants. It's just not clear how many now work under the table vs. are on the books with a phony SSN.

But more important, employers simply like the Mexican workers. (They're probably generally from Central America and  Mayan - many of these workers I see look like they could have stepped right off a frieze at Chichen-Itza -but for simplicity we can say Mexican). I have talked to a number of employers about this, and without exception they extol the virtues of this class of workers - hard working, competent, compliant. In particular, they highlight how much better they are compared to the alternative - spoiled part-time high-school students and - well, you know, we needn't go into who that other disfavored group is, do we?

Certainly part of their effectiveness as workers is their illegal status itself - constantly living on the edge of deportation is an encouragement to keep one's head down, nose to the grindstone and to do what one's told. But they do seem generally quite competent from my observation, and I wonder if there isn't some stronger cultural or even deeper factor that makes these folks just plain good workers? After all, their ancestors did build some impressive structures away back when.

Overall, I support Unz's proposal. It will cause some unemployment, but the current minimum wage is so preposterously low I can't imagine the dislocation will be that great a loss to already marginal workers. But I have strong doubts it will do much to deter illegal immigration. We still need stronger border security (Build that wall!) and in particular strong employer sanctions and verification (to clamp down on the meat-packing factory-type frauds). But, at pretty much any wage, low-skill employers will still prefer the Central-American illegal worker  to - well, you know who.

Why It Sucks to be Poor

As has been pointed out elsewhere, the worst part about being poor is having to live among other poor people. The obvious concern is that you'll become a crime victim, but what will more certainly happen is that you'll just have to suffer through their dreadful behavior and in the worst case this behavior will become so intolerable that you'll lose control and end up being the victimizer and then find yourself in the worst neighborhood of all - prison.

That's more-or-less what happened to George Zimmerman down in Florida (though there's a chance he might get off, depending on how intimidated the jurors are by the circus around them). Just the other day, an elderly Korean man reached the end of his tether. He was living at the Sable Ridge Condos in Dallas (see reviews here) in an apartment beneath what I presume to be Section 8 tenants (an unmarried couple, 5 kids, mother had non-paying jobs at non-profits). Their dog defecated and urinated on their balcony - the pee dripped down onto Chung's balcony and the poop was tossed off the balcony, landing on his balcony or in front of his doorway. Plus, the dogs and kids ran around constantly. His complaints fell on deaf ears. He apparently couldn't take it any longer, and ended up shooting and killing the mother and boyfriend - and now will, at the age of 75, be going to prison for the rest of his life where the clientele will no doubt make him long for his old neighbors.

I'm wondering if he had foolishly bought the apartment and was thus stuck there. Or else he was just too poor to move anywhere else or break his lease. If you don't have much money, you've still got to figure out ways to find a civilized place to live. But buying a place anywhere but in a stable, well governed neighborhood is just foolhardy.

Obama's Dreadful Speech

Obama's second inaugural address was just dreadful - a tacky pastiche of postmodern politics surreally delivered in weighty, florid words. Obama has never really demonstrated a particularly light touch with his prose, but at least in his 2008 acceptance speech, for example, the ongoing death toll in Iraq and evident doom overhanging the economy lent his message an urgency to match the fussiness. But today, the frivolity of his agenda renders what he thought to be weighty words downright ponderous.

For example, back in 1865 - and 1965 for that matter - momentous words rightly implored us to fulfill the words of our Declaration that all men are created  equal. But what is Obama's scolding all about today? "It is now our generation’s task to carry on what those pioneers began. For our journey is not complete" the President intoned - until...we have yet another Federal law to monitor how company's pay men and women? Until we have gay marriage?? Until lines on election day can be cut-down a bit??? Until illegal immigrants feel welcome??? And illegal immigrant engineering students (!?!?!) can get green cards?????

And the whole speech is like that - grandiloquent oratory floating along a sea of banality. "The patriots of 1776 did not fight to replace the tyranny of a king with the privileges of a few or the rule of a mob. They gave to us a Republic, a government of, and by, and for the people, entrusting each generation to keep safe our founding creed." Why such ornate phrasing just to argue for higher marginal tax rate? "We are true to our creed when a little girl born into the bleakest poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anybody else, because she is an American, she is free, and she is equal, not just in the eyes of God but also in our own." What's that all about? - increased federal aid to education, presumably.

He wants to make a distinction between the all-out war-mongering of Republicans vs. the more situational war-making he's been doing. But where's the fun in just saying that? So instead we get: "Our brave men and women in uniform, tempered by the flames of battle, are unmatched in skill and courage. Our citizens, seared by the memory of those we have lost, know too well the price that is paid for liberty."

The prose is becoming most tiresome. That young man's silly poem that followed was a breath of fresh air - clear and simple. It doesn't work anymore, Barack. Your dense formulations had their usefulness - a feature, not a bug, as they say - but now it's just weighing on you, and boring us. Sure, your sycophants like Chris Matthews will gush and drool - but you're not changing any minds with your bombast.

'They've Got the Devil in Them'

How is it that creeps look like creeps? Look at these hideous people charged with a bizarre double slaying in Joliet, Il:

The victims were both black men in their 20's. Acquaintances of the accused, they were lured to an apartment by the females then strangled and robbed and partially dismembered. The guys played video games for a couple days while they dithered over disposal of the bodies.  That's when the cops caught them.  Authorities claim there was no racial angle.That's hard to believe looking at them, but I suppose the whole situation is such a low-life, loser, f-up mess, following up on any associated hate-crime aspects is just too depressing for the investigators to even look into.

I was on a jury about a year ago. Before even entering the jury selection room and not yet knowing anything about the case, I noted a well-groomed man in a suit walking about in the hallway and thought "Ugh - what a creepy-looking guy." Turns out he was the defendant - accused (and eventually convicted) of raping his 13-year old daughter.

So what makes creeps look creepy? My wife's Occam's-razor explanation is that they have devil eyes - they've got the devil in them. Well, sure. But perhaps their lack of social graces makes them neglect their own appearance, or take on a purposefully menacing look? I tend to think that their ghastly behavior is part of a "syndrome", and such syndromes tend to also manifest themselves in facial appearance. The at-first-blush most non-menacing looking of the above four -  the one on the left - has those odd, asymmetric ears and eyes. The others are just - hoo boy, they just shout "keep your distance." Perhaps the young black men - assuming they weren't just as bad as this crew - didn't have that sense because they're not so tuned in to white faces?