What We Need is an IDIOT tax

In their effort to improve border security, the Obama admin / Dem Congress has seen fit to find new sources of funding.

So, to finance enforcement efforts against ILLEGAL aliens....

...these half-wits are going to tax LEGAL aliens.

Makes perfect sense, right? Well, except that:

1. These are people with PhDs, advanced skills, highly trained and motivated. In short, exactly the people that even the most xenophobic Americans would likely still admit into the country.
2. These are the people who are trying to do things LEGALLY. They are paying their fees, filling out their paperwork, and standing in line.
3. Could anyone actually believe that raising the cost, and extending the wait time, for legal immigration will discourage illegal immigration?

As always, we make it more difficult to immigrate legally, so that we can continue to encourage illegal immigration, thereby enslaving tens of thousands for the benefit of meat-packing, construction, and agricultural interests. The so-called "border enforcement" will have no impact, because the Dems have no interest in a border control policy.

An idiot tax, even a small one, would raise BILLIIONS, I tell you, BILLIONS. Taxing members of Congress alone would pay for a lot of new border guards.

Mr. Greene: Howl and Wail

Alvin Greene howls and wails during interview, upset over indictment.

Dave Weigel asks (on Twitter): "At this point, how is this different from making fun of the mentally disabled kid in junior high?"

Well, golly. This guy is the Dem nominee for US Senate. In the primary, no one in the media pointed out that he is a bit erratic, and he..... WON the primary.

At some point, don't you have to give a U.S. Senate candidate a chance to explain? The whole "he's too pathetic, leave him alone" thing would only work if he withdraws from the race. Until then, the man is fair game.

(And I thought it sounded more like singing than wailing. NOOOOOOOOO and GOOOOOOOOO. At least they rhyme).

The General Will in "Catch 22"

A letter from a "fan"

I nearly posted a sarcastic comment re: Rousseau on your blog but decided against it last minute....

"Too bad, I was just getting into this book I haven't read in awhile called "Analytical Politics" but the authors can't seem to stop talking about Rousseau beginning on page 7, so I guess I'll just toss it - since it must be an epic fail."

Sarcasm often doesn't translate well on the 'nets... so I decided against. Anyway, I haven't figured out your conclusions on the "majority will" so it might have made me look like an idiot anyway... and I doubt I'll find out in the very-near future since I'm reading catch-22 for the first time in a decade and i'm laughing so hard it hurts. some quotes on majority will, slightly different than Rousseau:

Yossarian: "I don't want to fly milk runs. I don't want to be in the war any more."
"Would you like to see our country lose?" Major Major asked.
"We won't lose. We've got more men, more money and more material. There are ten million men in uniform who could replace me. Some people are getting killed and a lot more are making money and having fun. Let somebody else get killed."
"But suppose everybody on our side felt that way."
"Then I'd certainly be a damned fool to feel any other way. Wouldn't I?" ch 9

and as for how to direct the general will (if it exists) :

Milo: "But how will I get the government to [buy all my Egyptian cotton]?"
"Bribe it," Yossarian said.
"Bribe it!" Milo was outraged and almost lost his balance and broke his neck again. "Shame on you!.... Bribery is against the law, and you know it. But it's not against the law to make a profit, is it? So it can't be against the law for me to bribe someone in order to make a fair profit, can it? No, of course not!"
.....
"I wish you'd come with me," Milo remarked. "I won't feel safe among people who take bribes. They're no better than a bunch of crooks."
"You'll be all right," Yossarian assured him with confidence. "If you run into trouble, just tell everybody that the security of the country requires a strong domestic Egyptian-cotton speculating industry."
"It does," Milo informed him solemnly. "A strong Egyptian-cotton speculating industry means a much stronger America."
"Of course it does. And if that doesn't work, point out the great number of American families that depend on it for income."
"A great many American families do depend on it for income."
"You see?" said Yossarian. "You're much better at it than I am. You almost make it sound true.".....
"I wish you'd put your uniform on instead of going around naked that way," [Milo] confided pensively before he climbed back down again and hurried away. "You might start a trend, and then I'll never get rid of all this goldarned cotton." ch 24

(As the old saw goes: Countries that want to be ruled by the general will, will generally be ruled by the will of a general)

NYTimes Articles on the Academy

Tenure? Mandatory retirement? Surgically targeted airstrikes on the Soc dept?

An interesting set of articles

Big Country, Big Message

A gentleman writes a really big message.

Perhaps using a GPS tracker. Perhaps using a freehand white line in "paint."

Since there is no way to tell, I would have used the freehand white line, I think.

Anyway, here's why, according to the guy.

(Nod to Barb H., who drives quite a bit herself)

The culture that is Japan

Great article in Sunday's NY Times about how a lot of Japan's alleged centenarians are actually long dead. One 73 year old man claimed his father was out of town and that he was merely still collecting dad's pension "just in case" he came back!

Money quote:

“Living until 150 years old is impossible in the natural world,” said Akira Nemoto, director of the elderly services section of the Adachi ward office. “But it is not impossible in the world of Japanese public administration.”

Amen!

I got your uncertainty right here!

In the blogoscopic debate about the importance of policy uncertainty for the weak recovery, not so much attention has been directed to monetary policy uncertainty.

In a great post over at Carpe Diem, Mark Perry shows that inflation has become much less predictable in the recent past. Here's a chart from his post:

GARCH is "generalized auto-regressive conditional heteroskedasticity". I can't tell from the graph though if MP is plotting the conditional variance or the conditional standard deviation.

In addition, I have written papers with Mark and others showing that inflation uncertainty lowers output growth.

Makes you think, no?

He was only 5'2" but girls could not resist his stare

Great article featuring Kevin Durant in the NY Times.

Excerpt:

“He’s 7 feet tall and maybe one of the best shooters in the world,” Knicks Coach Mike D’Antoni said of Durant, listed at 6 feet 9 inches. “I don’t think they’ve invented a game of basketball yet that he wouldn’t be perfect for.”

Yikes!

It's a funny old world

Pundits on the left decry the evil "deficit hawks" and demand more stimulus. They however are in favor of raising taxes on "the rich" because somehow it won't hurt economic activity and hey, we gotta start on that deficit sometime, right?

Pundits on the right decry deficits but also oppose raising taxes on "the rich".

(I am sorry for the quotation marks but a two earner family of 4 or 5 whose parents' combined income is $250,001 is not really rich!!)

Intellectual consistency is apparently far too heavy of a burden to impose on our chattering classes.

me & 2T

Now just 2T: