Filed under: Domestic Policy, Economy, Energy, Environment, Free Markets, Free Speech, Freedom, Global Warming, Humor, Junk Science, National Security, Politics, Progressives, Science/Technology, STEM Graduates, The United States | Tags: Audience Reaction, Climate, Dr. Jordan Peterson
I always enjoy Jordan Peterson, because he’s so opinionated. He thinks deeply about matters, and sorts out the pluses and minuses and decides what’s important and what is not, and talks with his hands as well.
This one is great fun.
Filed under: Bureaucracy, Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Domestic Policy, Education, England, Europe, Freedom, Health Care, Immigration, Islam, Latin America, Law, Media Bias, Mexico, National Security, Police, Politics, Regulation, STEM Graduates, Technology, Terrorism, The Constitution, The United States | Tags: Illegal Immigration, Lady Liberty's Poem is Not Law, We Want a Border Wall
The Caravans have apparently gotten rides and around 7,000 to 10,000 of them are at the border in Tijuana. The residents of that city are up in arms with thousands of unwanted migrants on their streets. The Migrants are admitting that they are not after asylum, but just want American jobs. President Trump asked why are they waving flags of their native countries? They do not want asylum, they do not want to become Americans, they want jobs and the benefits our generous aid systems provide.
The military has been busy setting out razor wire all along the border. Tijuana has appealed to the Mexican military for help. The migrants know they are not eligible for asylum. They apparently intend to mass at the border and see what President Trump will do about it.
Homeland Security claims there are at least 500 criminals traveling with the caravans. Authorities have closed four lanes of traffic at the San Ysidro and Otay Mesa crossings in response to intelligence that groups of migrants planned to rush the border through automotive lanes. That led to closure of eight more lanes at the busy border crossings. There were already many Mexicans camped near the border waiting their turn to apply for asylum. The asylum rules are complex, but as I understand it, they have to apply in the first country they come to, which for the Hondurans, Guatemalans, and Salvadorians was Mexico – who offered jobs, but only 1,800 or so took them up on it.
Australia’s Prime Minister has promised a major cut in their migrant intake. Prime Minister Scott Morrison says the country’s major cities have buses, trains and schools that “are full.” The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Mr. Morrison will ask state leaders to create their own population plans and will address the issue at the next Council of Australian Governments meeting on December 12.
His plan is to move away from top-down discussions about population to set specific migration caps to how many can enter. In Sydney, Mr. Morrison said, that migrants accounted for about 70% of the population growth last year. Australians want an end to mass migration.
And then there is Europe. Angela Merkel has, for whatever reason, perhaps German guilt, encouraged the European Union to welcome refugees, and they have come from all the troubled countries of the Middle East and Africa. But swallowing this massive influx is something else again. Initially they were greeted with flowers and food and song. (Really) But the immigrants have had a habit of burning cars, complaining about the housing arranged for them, raping women and girls, and killing innocent Europeans.
Some of the Eastern Europeans, more familiar with being invaded by violent armies, have built walls or fences to keep the migrants out, and are castigated for it. In England, it was reported that the most popular baby’s name was Mohammed. It is hard for the Europeans who also believe in Freedom of Religion, having had a reformation and many wars over religion, to accept criticism of the Moslem religion. There is, however. a major problem in that religious Muslims believe that infidels (us) must discard our religion and submit fully to Allah, which is a different matter.
Canada is helped immeasurably by their geographic location. On three sides they have ocean – the Pacific, the Arctic, and the Atlantic – and you can’t get there easily unless you have a boat and crew. Their southern border with America, the world’s leading economy, has been a magnet for immigration rather than the reverse. At some times in their history they worried more about the volume of emigrants from Canada to the U.S. to such an extent that Canadians feared for the future of their country. Generally, the movement of people into Canada has been law abiding and orderly. Most arrivals come through the front door. Canadians have a high commitment to policing, and you could call their fifth border “bureaucratic”. Visitors have to apply in advance for a visa, and if they are coming from a place that has recently sent more than a certain number of asylum applicants (or vacation overstayers) they are not admitted. Canada has some of the world’s most restrictive visa rules. Most applicants from countries such as Somalia, Yemen, Afghanistan and Syria are turned down. And since the U.S. is not considered a threat, claiming asylum in Canada doesn’t work.
Illegal aliens often demonstrate here, bearing signs that say things like “No human is illegal” but dictionaries explain that “Illegal” simply means not according to the law. An alien is a person who owes allegiance to a country other than this. The Left favors massive immigration because new immigrants are likely to vote Democrat, and they are happy to sign up illegals to vote, as in California where anyone can get a driver’s license, and along with the driver’s license, you register to vote. and then they have sanctuary cities and states as well.
Then you have the inflow of various categories of temporary tech workers, who are apparently cheaper to hire than our own tech graduates. Farm workers, exchange students, and some foreign students sent here to learn our technology to take back home again, and just plain old tourists who overstay. It’s a very complicated mess even without migrants clamoring at the border and climbing the walls. The Center for Immigration Studies has told us that a wall would actually pay for itself in the reduced cost of welfare and emergency health care and policing that are involved with illegal immigration. So there you are.
Filed under: Bureaucracy, Capitalism, Crime, Democrat Corruption, Domestic Policy, Economy, Election 2016, Freedom, Immigration, Law, Liberalism, Media Bias, National Security, Politics, STEM Graduates, The United States, Unemployment | Tags: Cost American Jobs, Obama's Illegal Amnesty, Three "Caravans"
Jessica Vaughn from the Center for Immigration Studies (cis.org) discusses the “caravan” on the Neil Cavuto Show, and tries to get across some of the immense problems involved.
CIS identifies themselves as being pro-legal immigrants, and anti-illegals. It’s a good site for learning about what’s going on with immigration and what the problems we face are. Careful research by authorities.
President Obama spiked legal and illegal immigration to a record level of 1.75 million in 2017—by accepting one migrant for every two young Americans who entered the workforce in 2017. That huge inflow matched the record set by Bill Clinton in 1999. Obama’s wave of legal immigrants, illegal migrants and visa workers rose from 1.1 million in 2009 to 1.75 million in 2017.
That same year roughly four million Americans turned 18 and entered the workforce. That four million included the children of immigrants as well as the children of illegal migrants. Many of Obama’s migrants went home when their work visas ended or when they were deported, but the total inflow added more than 5.2 million migrants to the US population from 2010 to 2017, according to federal data prepared by the Center for Immigration Studies.
The inflow included 1.1 million Asians, 1.1 million Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, 680,000 people from the Caribbean, and 480,000 people from South America. From 2010 to 2017 Obama also imported 680,000 people from Muslim-majority nations, even though Islamic theology urges believers to attack Americans. That inflow enlarged the Islamic population of the United States by 31 percent, CIS says.
The inflow includes many temporary workers. This keeps roughly 1.5 million white-collar, multi-year, visa-workers in U.S. jobs formerly held by graduates of American universities. President Donald Trump has blocked business pressure for expansion of the H-2B visa-worker program and directed the H4 EAD visa-worker program be ended.
Obama’s inflow also helped elect Donald Trump.
The 2014 border crisis was triggered by Obama’s encouragement of Central American illegal migration. The crisis wrecked bipartisan plans to push an amnesty through Congress.
Obama’s pro-migration policies helped stagnate Americans’ wages in a depressed economy while providing windfall gains to the real-estate owners, retails, and investors who gained from the extra workers and consumers.
President Trump’s pro-American stance has resulted in employers hiring more Americans at higher wages, with the highest wage-gains going to those Americans hit hardest by Obama’s surge. Newly released data show 2016 tied with 1999 as the highest single year of immigration in U.S. history with the arrival of 1.75 million new immigrants, both legal and illegal.We are seeing what is happening to Europe with the massive flow of illegal migrants and the crime brought by them.
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Filed under: Capitalism, Economics, Free Markets, History, Science/Technology, STEM Graduates, Technology, The United States | Tags: Blockchain Technology, Cloud Computing, Technology of the Future
Uncommon Knowledge, from the Hoover Institution. 9/24/18
Is blockchain the technology of the future? George Gilder, author of Life After Google, argues that bitcoin and blockchain technology is revolutionizing the Internet. He sits down with Peter Robinson to discuss technology, cloud computing, big data, and the growing role of blockchain in innovating new technologies.
Gilder argues that cloud computing, while it was the hot new technology ten years ago, has reached its limits as the physical limitations of big data storage centers maxes out. Improvements in parsing big data are incremental at this point, and it’s time for the next big technology to take its place. Gilder points to blockchain as the technology of the future, with its ability to prevent corruption and manipulation of transaction data and the infinite uses it could have in third world countries.
Gilder also discusses the history of technology, artificial intelligence, and the revolutionary bitcoin. He argues that artificial intelligence can never replace human intelligence and creativity and that in principle, it is impossible for machines to take over.
For the full transcript go to:
https://www.hoover.org/research/georg…
Filed under: Bureaucracy, Domestic Policy, Education, Free Speech, Law, National Security, Progressives, Science/Technology, STEM Graduates, The United States | Tags: American Education, Cracks in the System, Who Me Worry?
I am deeply interested in the education situation in our country. The uproar and hooplah on our college campuses proves not only that our college students don’t know much of anything, but that the administrators and professors do not know how to maintain order, nor do they understand why they should bother. Then every once in a while someone adds to an article the cost of a semester at that university, and you can see that they whole mess is collapsing.
If you have student loans for the whole amount, you’d better be a leading STEM scholar. Even those who have high paying Silicon Valley jobs can’t afford to live in San Francisco and environs. They’re crowded in, sharing a room with four or more others. Real estate prices are incredibly high, rental costs are through the roof. Here in Seattle, there is a big motor home parked across from my veterinarian; clinic, obviously someone’s home, and there are several campers apparently permanently parked on adjacent streets. What happens to the Socialism major or the English major, let alone the majors in gender studies or women’s studies? Do they need to buy a camper to have a place to live? Can they find employment?
Paul Mirengoff at Powerline just noted a story from the New York Times reporting that the New York Board of Regents eliminated the requirement that aspiring teachers in the state pass a literacy test to become certified. The Board eliminated the requirement because Black and Hispanic candidates for teaching jobs passed the literacy test at significantly lower rates than white candidates.
An analysis done in 2014, the year the test was first administered, found that 64 percent of white candidates passed the test on the first try, while only 46 percent of Hispanic candidates and 41 percent of black candidates did. That’s disparate impact, but it isn’t discrimination as long as the test measures skills teachers need to be effective in their job.
I just wrote about Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos speaking here, with large numbers of protesters turning out to protest her interest in promoting charter schools, although charter schools are publicly funded public schools. The assumption is that the protesters were teacher’s union members or Democrats who are conscious of Union donations to Democrat coffers.
Instapundit regularly posts a notice about teachers who were caught having sex with their students, and going to jail. It seems like it’s once a week, but it may not be that frequent.
People are making fun of the campus protests and outrages, but I’m not sure its funny, It seems to me the alarm sirens should be going off. Attendance at the schools in question is way down. Donations are off. At Mizzou they have had to close some dorms. The schools that had national attention for their protests have all had declining enrollment. Is this enough to act as a major warning signal that all is not well? Dunno.
Filed under: Bureaucracy, Democrat Corruption, Domestic Policy, Education, Free Speech, Immigration, Junk Science, Law, Politics, Regulation, STEM Graduates | Tags: Charters Are Public Schools, Fully Accountable, Publicly Funded
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos was here last Friday to speak to the annual dinner of the Washington Policy Center at the Hyatt Regency. Protesters (read teacher’s unions) turned out to protest along with some local politicians. King County Executive Dow Constantine, Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson, and Bellevue Mayor John Stokes all joined the protesters. Constantine stated that he was the proud son of two public school teachers, a proud graduate of public schools and his daughter would be in public school in two years. The protest crowd had giant balloons — a cat to represent “corporate fat cats” and a man in a hard hat who represented something or other.
All very strange. Betsy DeVos is advocating more charter schools—which are public schools. Charter Schools are opposed by the American Federation of Teachers. The Democratic Party depends on union money for their campaigns and union workers for their demonstrations. Some charter schools are run by businesses who have developed different organization and different programs for their particular kind of charter school. In North Dakota there is a charter school that prepares kids who don’t want to attend college for jobs in the oil and gas industry. Last year, a charity gala raised $35 million for Success Academy charter schools which will benefit thousands of underprivileged kids. But charter schools are publicly-funded public schools.
At Success Academy schools in New York, three quarters of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch and nearly all are minorities. In 2015 68% of their students scored proficient in reading and 93% ranked proficient in math. In contrast only 35% of New York City students scored proficient in math and their reading abilities were even worse.
Minnesota passed the first charter-school law 25 years ago. Today nearly 3,000,000 students attend about 7,000 charter schools in 43 states and the District of Columbia. New Orleans all-charter district has raised graduation rates by 10 percentage points over the past decade. Charter enrollment is at record highs in New Orleans, Detroit, Washington DC, Kansas City, Philadelphia, Indianapolis, New York City, Los Angeles, Miami and Huston.
We should work to make traditional public schools as good as they can possibly be—but where layers of rules and regulations have made reform difficult, charters offer the chance of a clean slate. As taxpayer-funded public schools, charters are open to all students and subject to the same accountability systems as traditional public schools. What makes charters unique is their freedom from the unnecessary, outdated, and counterproductive work rules vigorously defended by the teachers’ unions….
Many regular-enrollment students in charters would have been placed into special education had they gone to a traditional public school. Charters are serving these kids; they just don’t classify them as disabled. The most plausible explanation for why: students attending charters do better academically than they would have done otherwise, thus eliminating the need for extra services.
The American cities that have most improved their schools are those that have wholeheartedly embraced charters. Their success suggests that policy makers should stop listening to the unions and thinking of charters are an innovation around the edges of the public school system and realize they are a better way to organize public education.
College professors across the country are complaining about their incoming students, saying they don’t know anything, can’t write, and are unprepared for college work. There is seldom a week that goes by without a report of a public school teacher arrested for having sex with a student. In some schools the idea that one can choose their sexual identity is accepted. It is school policy in some European countries, notably Sweden, and it remains scientific nonsense. Many schools have encouraged protest against the President as part of the curriculum. There are some real problems with our public schools, and parents need to be very clear about what is being taught if they care about their kids.
Filed under: Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Domestic Policy, Education, History, Politics, Socialism, STEM Graduates, The United States | Tags: Campus Solidarity, Community Organizers, Mobilizing Mobs
The campus hooplah has died down, as it’s time for Thanksgiving break. Even the community organizers have to take time off for turkey. It becomes clearer and clearer that that’s what’s up. Organizing for Action and Americorps community organizers are hard at work stirring up discontent. An outgrowth of the 2012 death of Trayvon Martin, Ferguson, and Baltimore, they are mobilizing mobs against “biased cops,” “climate change deniers,” “Wall Street predators,” and other assorted crimes against social justice.
They’ve had their power demonstrated as they get administrators to resign and faculty members admonished or fired or disgraced. But they don’t really have anything real to protest about. The hate crimes against blacks turn out to be fake, the fists held up in solidarity are unsure about just what they are in solidarity about. When those supposedly in charge want to know what the fuss is all about — somebody used the n-word, except there is no evidence. What do they want? More black studies courses! But there is declining interest in black studies courses because nobody wants to enroll. In today’s difficult job market, there is no demand for black studies, nor ethnic studies.
At Princeton the mob called for eliminating Woodrow Wilson’s name from campus buildings. He was a president of the University, and yes he was a bigot, and went on to become a president of the United States. History is simply what happened in the past. You can’t change it , or make it go away by disapproving of it in the present.
At Yale it was about Halloween costumes. At the University of Missouri, Jonathan Butler, the son of a wealthy railroad executive, went on a hunger strike to protest “revolting” acts of racism. Except the supposed acts of racism never seem to have occurred, or at least there was no evidence that they did.
Like the “campus rape culture” that never happened, Emma Sulkowitz has carried her mattress around in protest, but that seemed to be second thoughts about consensual sex.
At Amherst College, there are nonnegotiable demands from a student group that the president apologize for Amherst’s institutional legacy of white supremacy, colonialism, anti-black racism, anti-Latinx racism, anti-Native American racism, anti-Native indigenous racism, heterosexism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, ableism, mental health stigma and classism.” Oh please. The community organizers may have got the mob all stirred up, but once stirred, they don’t really know what to do with it nor do they have any clear idea about just what they are excited about.
The safe spaces, microaggressions, trigger warnings, are all nonsense promulgated by faculty more interested in social justice — whatever that is — than in scholarship and substance. No wonder some companies are looking abroad for STEM employees. Who needs a new employee who needs a safe space and no microaggressions? Every workplace on this planet has microaggressions daily. Roger Kimball has long investigated campus trends, notably in his book Tenured Radicals: How Politics Has Corrupted Higher Education. (2008). Take a look at his other books too. They are directly applicable today.
Mr. Kimball’s article in the Wall Street Journal was accompanied with a photo of a girl with a bullhorn (You can’t have a protest without a bullhorn) in the Odegaard Library at the University of Washington in Seattle. The rally was in support of black students at the University of Missouri where Jonathan Butler, son of a multimillionaire railroad executive was conducting a hunger strike because someone drove by in a pickup with confederate flags shouting the n-word— except no one could be found who saw such a pickup. But the football team threatened to strike in solidarity with Mr. Butler, because of other racist utterances, also unproven. Forfeiting the football game would have cost Mizzou $1 million, so the students got what they wanted, but they weren’t too sure of what it was. Lots of solidarity though.
But everybody across the campuses of America was in solidarity with whatever it was. I hope the parents of the unruly offspring have a word with their kids over Thanksgiving and return them to campus suitably cowed or don’t return them and suggest they get a job instead.
This is going to reverberate across academia. It is an ideological fantasy, and it’s going to get much worse. A lot of parents aren’t going to be willing to pay the freight at elite schools if this is the result. Universities have gotten way too greedy on the governmental push on student loans to back an ever expanding tuition bill. The American people are firm believers in freedom of speech and the Bill of Rights, even if the faculty isn’t, and they won’t put up with much of this.
Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Employer Bonuses, Immigration, Politics, STEM Graduates | Tags: Foreign Students, Homeland Security, STEM Graduates
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is expanding a program that allows foreign students with degrees in science, technology, engineering or mathematics (STEM) to extend their stay in the U.S to work after graduation. Since, unlike native Americans, they are still defined as “students” they are not required to pay social security and Medicare taxes. The bonus given to employers for hiring a foreign STEM graduate will increase from $10,000 to $12,000. So an employer is more apt to hire a foreign graduate to work in their field of study, than to hire a new American STEM graduate.
Our nation will benefit from keeping international students here, educated in U.S. colleges and universities here while they receive additional training, rather than sending them out of the country,” Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Sarah Saldaña said in a statement Friday. “At the same time, U.S. employers will benefit from the increased ability to rely on the skills acquired by U.S. educated-STEM students, as well as their knowledge of markets in their home countries.”
And proud parents of new STEM graduates might wonder why their kids can’t seem to find a job? It was recently reported that Disney tech employees were let go, but required to train the foreign workers hired to replace them. There have been many cases of our high-tech companies hiring cheaper foreign workers, who because they are only here because of the H1-B program, are not likely to complain or be difficult for fear of losing their visas.
I don’t understand how this makes sense. Some say that Obama is attempting to change the electoral college which is based on population at the time of the election, so more immigrants can skew the vote. He is clearly trying to get more immigrants, legal and illegal, through a simplified citizenship process so they can vote in the 2016 election. Apparently we are to be troubled by this petty tyrant for years and years to come.
American Elephants 