Free Trade Meets Immigration?

The Washington Post describes the peculiar state of U.S. immigration laws, and the hurdles they place in front of a German physician who wishes to work in the United States. We seem to make it easy to come to the U.S. to harvest vegetables, and are on the verge of creating a "guest worker" program presumably so we can expand that immigration largesse to nannies, gardeners, construction workers, and similar occupations. Many of these workers and their families will pay substantially less in taxes than they consume in government services. Our President supposedly believes in free trade, and favors this liberalized immigration policy, so why is he advocating for immigration reform only at the bottom of the labor market?

Flint Passes a Budget

I read in the news today that Flint has passed a budget - $305.5 million for the next fiscal year. Less than $600 per minute? That seems kind of low....

Are Elections Won? Or Are They Lost?

In today's era, or perhaps in any era, how often does a challenger to an incumbent truly winan election? Controlling for an unexpected skeleton dancing out of a closet, how often does the challenger truly persuade the electorate that "The incumbent is good, but you should elect me because I'm better?"

Isn't it actually the case that where an incumbent loses an election, and even more the case when there is a statewide or national movement toward one party over another, that the incumbent politician or party is perceived as having somehow proved himself unfit to govern? And it's not so much that the challenger is necessarily better, but that the challenger is the only other realistic option?

I'm not trying to indict democracy or gerrymandering. I'm just having a hard time thinking of a political campaign where an incumbent lost, let alone where a party lost control of Congress or a Parliament, despite being viewed as effective on election day. Isn't this why negative campaigning is so effective? Why it is now preferred to have a Karl Rove secretly open his bag of dirty tricks rather than actually debating the issues?

The Filthy Rich? Propagandists? The Ignorant?

Playing an "us" versus "them" game, Senator Jeff Sessions states,

The estate tax -- or, as many of us prefer to call it, the death tax -- is a tax imposed on the transfer of assets or property from a deceased person to his or her heirs.

But for some reason he fails to define just who he means by "us".

A Flint Minute....

Okay... perhaps I'm beating a dead horse (or popping bubble wrap), but....

Leaving aside for the moment the fact that I didn't know that in "Chronicling the high cost of our legal system" Walter Olson had become a Canadian, I find his math to be interesting:

Federal Express drivers Edgar Rizkallah and Kamil Issa, both of Lebanese descent, say the nasty epithets from their manager went on for two years, which means the award works out to $15 million per epithet-year, $290,000 per slur-week, or $40,000 per imprecation-day.

Well, let's see... Michael Moore is being sued for $85 million over a ten second clip. That's $510 million per Flint minute, more than $30 billion per Flint hour, almost three quarters of a trillion dollars per Flint day, $268 trillion per Flint year.... All for the pain of having people think you're "from the same background as the people in Flint"?

Oh, I know.... It's different".

He's Going After Hillary?

Walter Olson is apparently so preoccupied with Hillary Clinton that the suit against Michael Moore somehow escaped his notice.

Online Debate

It's been said before, but I like the way this guy put it. Explaining why he chose not to participate in an online dissection of one of his columns, Charlie Brooker describes the mechanism of much online debate,

Stumble in, take umbrage with someone, trade a few blows, and within about two or three exchanges, the subject itself goes out the window. Suddenly you're simply arguing about arguing. Eventually, one side gets bored, comes to its senses, or dies, and the row fizzles out: just another needless belch in the swirling online guffstorm.

But not for long, because online quarrelling is also addictive, in precisely the same way Tetris is addictive. It appeals to the "lab rat" part of your brain; the annoying, irrepressible part that adores repetitive pointlessness and would gleefully make you pop bubblewrap till Doomsday if it ever got its way. An unfortunate few, hooked on the futile thrill of online debate, devote their lives to its cause. They roam the internet, actively seeking out viewpoints they disagree with, or squat on messageboards, whining, needling, sneering, over-analysing each new proclamation - joylessly fiddling, like unhappy gorillas doomed to pick lice from one another's fur for all eternity

Oooh. Lice picking.... Yummy!