Ethnic Household Income

This is a surprising chart:



Now there is a lot wrong with this this chart. But if a perceived difference in pay between men and women is prima facie evidence of discrimination, do white guys have a legitimate complaint over this chart? And does a chart like this make you rethink the constant talk about discrimination in America?

The Power Goddess

We are not worthy!

 From CBS' 60 Minutes:

Anderson Cooper: You’re talking about zero carbon emissions — no use of fossil fuels within 12 years.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: That is the goal. It’s ambitious. And…

Anderson Cooper: How is that possible? Are you talking about everybody having to drive an electric car?

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: It’s going to require a lot of rapid change that we don’t even conceive as possible right now. What is the problem with trying to push our technological capacities to the furthest extent possible?

It is reassuring that, though Trump has raised silliness to an art form, there will always be idiocy, even when he is gone, to brighten our lives. Here Cooper stands before the latest--and always new and improved--government power goddess and imagines how we will be able to extract enough electricity from the magic electricity trees. And the toothy goddess replies that we simply have to squeeze harder, get more out of the technology we do not have and no one uses. We are limited only by our imaginations. Or fantasies, if you prefer.

Remember, the goddess says: "I think there’s a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually, and semantically correct than about being morally right.” 

We are never going to miss Trump. These people are all the same. We live in privileged times. Our great grandchildren will envy us our comedic political environment.

Immigrants and Criminality

The Libertarian literature is intense in their analysis of immigration. Their emphasis is upon crime--because the esteemed President gives people terrific straw men to bind and burn. The stats are pretty obvious, and obviously flawed. For example, are illegal immigrants--essentially criminals inherently--fairly compared to their legal relatives who are not criminals? With the errors inherent in these evaluations, here are the statistics that can only be generalities.

American Community Survey used data from the U.S. Census Bureau to analyze incarcerated immigrants according to their citizenship and legal status for 2016. The data show that all immigrants—legal and illegal—are less likely to be incarcerated than native-born Americans relative to their shares of the population. By themselves, illegal immigrants are less likely to be incarcerated than native-born Americans.
From 2009 to February 2017, only about half of ICE’s removals were of people who had committed any crime at all. Even of those who committed a crime, the most serious offense for 60 percent of them was a victimless crime—most commonly an immigration offense, traffic infraction, or vice crimes like illicit drugs.
ICE data published in response to a Freedom of Information Act request is now available online. The data breaks down all ICE removals from 2009 to February 2017 by the most serious criminal conviction committed by the immigrant. The criminal categories are broad, but the general trend is clear: ICE primarily removed criminals who committed crimes without a private victim (i.e. not the government or “society”). Just 12 percent committed violent crimes—and just 0.6 percent were convicted of murder. In addition, 47.7 percent of those ICE removed had no criminal conviction at all.
Of course, if the illegal had never come to the U.S., none of them would have committed a crime.

Behind this argument is the Libertarian belief that borders are arbitrary and unjust. That, regardless of the statistics, is another very different question regardless of how ill-informed the President is.

Fair vs Free Trade

Fairness is a heavy burden.

"The myth of fair trade is that politicians and bureaucrats are fairer than markets – that government coercion and restriction can create a fairer result than voluntary agreement – and that prosperity is best achieved by arbitrary political manipulation, rather than allowing each individual and company to pursue their own interest." Bovard wrote that.

Williams asks, "At first blush, the mercantilists’ call for “free trade but fair trade” sounds reasonable. After all, who can be against fairness? Giving the idea just a bit of thought suggests that fairness as a guide for public policy lays the groundwork for tyranny. How supportive would you be to a person who argued that he was for free religion but fair religion, or he was for free speech but fair speech? Would you be supportive of government efforts to limit unfair religion and unfair speech? How might life look under a regime of fairness of religion, speech and the press?"

Fairer than free? Moderated by Trump and Pelosi? How could anyone take such a proposition seriously?

Immigrants, Sexual Crimes and Government

On March 6, 2017, President Trump issued Executive Order 13780.  The order was mostly concerned with reducing the number of immigrants and travelers from certain countries that his administration thought could pose a terror risk.  One portion of that Executive Order called for the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to investigate the number of terrorist threats and, little noticed at the time, “information regarding the number and types of acts of gender-based violence against women, including so-called ‘honor killings,’ in the United States by foreign nationals.”
This is an interesting twist; it makes suspicion of immigrants an effort to protect women.

The DOJ-DHS released their report in January 2018 and  it is now clear that it made an absolutely false statement about the number of foreign-born people arrested for sex offenses.  The DOJ-DHS report says:

Regarding sex offenses, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in 2011 produced an estimate regarding the population of criminal aliens incarcerated in state prisons and local jails from fiscal years 2003 through 2009. In that report, GAO estimated that over that period, aliens were convicted for 69,929 sex offenses—which, although not explicitly stated in the report, in most instances constitutes gender-based violence against women.

The DOJ-DHS authors of the report made two errors that others have made in interpreting that exact GAO report. First, 69,929 is the number of arrests for sex offenses where the arrestees were criminal aliens, not the number of sex offenses for which criminal aliens were convicted as the DOJ-DHS claimed. Second, those arrests occurred from 1955 through 2010, not from 2003 through 2009.

Oh, well.

Sunday/Epiphany

Shakespeare is famous for encapsulating the essence of a play in his opening scene. And there are many examples in literature where a scene or chapter is a concentration of the larger vision. The Epiphany is such a scene in the New Testament. The Magi--astrologers and dream interpreters--follow thin scientific promptings to Jerusalem and ask Herod for help in their final leg to find the Christ child. Herod asks his priests to explain who they are seeking. The priests use the Old Testament to explain the Christ prophesies. Then the Magi leave for Bethlehem and Herod .plans to find the child and kill him.

So Christ is born, is sought and adored by Gentiles from a metaphysical caste and is stalked by killers trying to protect their worldly power and position. So far, so good. But the priests are the stunner: They are the academic resource, the intellectuals who know the connection between the Old Testament and the evolving New, the students and teachers of the question. They explain why the Magi are there and explain where they likely are bound. The Messiah may be at stake. And then they, the intellectuals,....do nothing.

Ethnicity and SATs

This chart shows the racial differences in average scores for the SAT Math test from 1996 to 2016.  The Asian-White mean test score gap has roughly doubled from 35 points in 1996 (558 vs. 523) to 69 points in 2016 (602 vs. 533), while the Asian-Black test score gap has increased over that period from 136 points in 1996 (558 vs. 422) to 177 points in 2016 (602 vs. 425).
The significance of this is uncertain and there are a myriad of explanations but it is interesting and worth thinking about though. Open discussion, of course, is not allowed.