There's a line, and they cut in front, unlike my ancestors. It's only fair that we send them home, wherever that is.
The differences between these people and DREAMers is \_(ツ)_/. Lots of people were brought here as children by their parents (biological or adoptive) and were, for whatever reason, never able to become citizens. I'd bet the people in this article are generally more sympathetic cases to the population broadly, though I'm not sure why. If you grew up here and have never known anywhere else, it is your home. You don't have another one. There's no place for you to go back to, and likely no one you know waiting for you there. Of course, it isn't so different for people who came here as adults and have been here for awhile, either. Home is here.
Saturday, September 03, 2016
The Worst People in the World
There is some stiff competition, but the clear winner of the Worst University Administration Ever Award has to go to the dangerous cretins who run Long Island University, Brooklyn.
That link up there goes to the Long Island paper Newsday's website, and is behind a paywall. The LIU Faculty Federation explains this mess succinctly:
The reason this is so unusual, which is a nice way of saying "so goddamn crazy," is that most institutions of higher education are aware that it is impossible to function as an institution of higher education if you don't actually have a faculty.
LIU administration is telling all of their students that their tuition money entitles them to be taught by hastily hired replacements.
Thus, on the one hand, any LIU student who demands an immediate tuition refund is absolutely correct. On the other hand, the can of worms LIU has just opened up as regards federal regulations regarding financial aid is a very big can full of very big worms. On the third hand, LIU has essentially told its regional accrediting body, Middle States, to piss up a rope.
If the LIU administration had decided instead to simply set fire to its Brooklyn campus, that would have been a more comprehensible course of action.
Disclosure, a good friend of mine teaches at LIU. But I can honestly say that this is the most utter and disgusting garbage thrown at college and university faculty that I can recall. For more on this trainwreck, follow LIU's Emily Drabinsky, and the LIU Faculty Federation site.
This cannot stand.
That link up there goes to the Long Island paper Newsday's website, and is behind a paywall. The LIU Faculty Federation explains this mess succinctly:
Long Island University informed the LIU Faculty Federation (LIUFF) that it plans to lock out faculty at midnight on Friday, September 2, on the eve of a no confidence vote in President Kimberly L Cline. The faculty contract expired on August 31. Picketing to protest the lockout and use of replacement workers will take place on Flatbush and DeKalb Avenues at 10 a.m., Wednesday, September 7, the first day of classes. The LIU Faculty Federation/NYSUT/AFT represents fulltime and adjunct faculty.I've never heard of a lockout of university faculty before, especially one announced the week before classes start.
The lockout is the culmination of a series of actions taken by the administration over the summer that include advertising for replacement workers, unilaterally canceling classes, and uploading erroneous materials to course management websites.
The reason this is so unusual, which is a nice way of saying "so goddamn crazy," is that most institutions of higher education are aware that it is impossible to function as an institution of higher education if you don't actually have a faculty.
LIU administration is telling all of their students that their tuition money entitles them to be taught by hastily hired replacements.
Thus, on the one hand, any LIU student who demands an immediate tuition refund is absolutely correct. On the other hand, the can of worms LIU has just opened up as regards federal regulations regarding financial aid is a very big can full of very big worms. On the third hand, LIU has essentially told its regional accrediting body, Middle States, to piss up a rope.
If the LIU administration had decided instead to simply set fire to its Brooklyn campus, that would have been a more comprehensible course of action.
Disclosure, a good friend of mine teaches at LIU. But I can honestly say that this is the most utter and disgusting garbage thrown at college and university faculty that I can recall. For more on this trainwreck, follow LIU's Emily Drabinsky, and the LIU Faculty Federation site.
This cannot stand.
Friday, September 02, 2016
No Matter Where You Go, There They Are
There's just so little stranger danger of this type these days. Few people, aside from some in custody disputes, are really interested in kidnapping children. In a country of 325+ million there are going to be stories of bad things happening, but people always "follow" me around the supermarket, too, because if you enter at about the same time as other people you're probably going to be following roughly the same route through the market...
The Clinton Rules
I'm open to the idea that there are some problems with the relationship between the Clinton Foundation and Hillary Clinton's role as Secretary of State. Some of it's a bit unseemly in that way that the sausage factory is a bit gross, but it basically seems to fall in "this is how things work" territory as far as I can tell. Meaning, standard practices that for some reason are scandalous when they involve the Clintons. Anyway, litigating all of that is too much for this blog post to get into, but the press is desperate to come up with scandals that involve some sort of abuse of power at State in relation to the Foundation, so much so that things are scandalous even when the attempt to find a scandal, which would barely be a scandal anyway, finds nothing.
This one has the added bonus of an entirely new genre: journalists unhappy with attempts to free journalists who have been taken prisoner. When journalists in such situations are people friendly with the national press corps, they're generally ready to advocate nuclear war to free them.
This one has the added bonus of an entirely new genre: journalists unhappy with attempts to free journalists who have been taken prisoner. When journalists in such situations are people friendly with the national press corps, they're generally ready to advocate nuclear war to free them.
No More Public Spaces
When I was a kid (teen) we sometimes hung out at the mall because there was nowhere else to go. Increasingly it isn't even an option for The Kids Today. Well let's mock them for not doing anything but playing videogames and texting on their phones, because they have so many other welcoming places to be social.
Thursday, September 01, 2016
Everybody's Gotta Eat I Guess
The eventheliberal career path has long been lucrative.
Old news, but somehow I'd missed that...
In what seemed timed as a preemptive strike, two of Ailes’s attorneys—Susan Estrich, a law professor and a partner in the blue-chip Los Angeles law firm Quinn, Emanuel, and Mark Mukasey, a top litigator in the well-connected New York firm Greenberg, Traurig—contacted The Daily Beast in the past day to attack the journalist in slashing, nasty, and deeply personal terms.
Old news, but somehow I'd missed that...
Always Five Years Away
As I wrote before, if they don't work 100% then it's not clear what good they are. Again, I don't mean safety. Safety's the easy part. If they work as promised, they'll be safe enough.
But, hey, let's shut down all the mass transit systems tomorrow. Because the self-driving cars will be here! Tommorrow, tomorrow...
BMW, Ford, and Uber have all recently said they plan to have “fully autonomous” cars ready to drive themselves on the road in 2021 (see “2021 May Be the Year of the Fully Autonomous Car”). Ford says its fleet of vehicles will lack steering wheels and offer a robotic taxi service.
But don’t expect to toss out your driver's license in 2021. Five years isn’t long enough to create vehicles good enough at driving to roam extensively without human input, say researchers working on autonomous cars. They predict that Ford and others will meet their targets by creating small fleets of vehicles limited to small, controlled areas.
“Probably what Ford would do to meet their 2021 milestone is have something that provides low-speed taxi service limited to certain roads—and don’t expect it to come in the rain,” says Steven Shladover of the University of California, Berkeley, who has worked on automated driving for more than 20 years.
Shladover says many media outlets and members of the public are overinterpreting statements from Ford and other companies that are less specific than they appear. The dream of being able to have a car drive you wherever you want to go in the city, country, or continent remains distant, he says. “It ain’t going to be five years,” says Shladover. “The hype has gotten totally out of sync with reality.”
But, hey, let's shut down all the mass transit systems tomorrow. Because the self-driving cars will be here! Tommorrow, tomorrow...
We Would've Won This Election If Not For Those Meddling Kids
I know this is mostly online only bullshit, but one of the narratives out there is how The Kids Today, who fell under the spell of that evil Warlock Bernie Sanders, are all going to vote for Jill Stein and throw the election to Trump because no one can do any math.
Anyway, a higher percentage The Kids Today are going to vote for Hillary Clinton than any other age group, even if a few of them aren't as wise as their elders. Oh, wait, those elders who are going to be voting for Republicans. My generation was born Republican. The generation before mine became Republican. It ain't The Kids Today who are responsible for Trump being where he is. The Kids Today are actually left-leaning Democrats. Yes they're all irresponsible slackers who don't show up for midterms, but at least they don't show up and vote for Republicans like every other generation.
Anyway, a higher percentage The Kids Today are going to vote for Hillary Clinton than any other age group, even if a few of them aren't as wise as their elders. Oh, wait, those elders who are going to be voting for Republicans. My generation was born Republican. The generation before mine became Republican. It ain't The Kids Today who are responsible for Trump being where he is. The Kids Today are actually left-leaning Democrats. Yes they're all irresponsible slackers who don't show up for midterms, but at least they don't show up and vote for Republicans like every other generation.
A Kindler, Gentler Donald
That was basically the NYT writeup of his speech last night, posted on the site, before it got a few edits. It really was "This is how we, the press corps, expect Donald to act. Here is the script we keep writing for him. Pivot! Soccer Moms! Softer! Presidential! Won't murder quite all the immigrants!" reality be damned.
Wednesday, August 31, 2016
Build It And I Will Pay For It
Pretty sure if I promise to pay for the wall on completion I'll never have to pay.
Suggestions
I spent the early afternoon consulting with the Evil League of Evil Labor Economists, and here were their suggestions for how to attract workers if you're having some trouble doing so.
a) Offer a higher wage. Yes, yes, wages, are so 20th century, but The Kids Today have a strange affinity for them. Maybe it's nostalgia. They even want dollars, and not Bitcoins or Applebucks.
b) Good health insurance. Weirdly, even though President Kenyan Muslim Socialist nationalized the health care industry, some Kids Today just aren't happy with their death panels and want their companies to buy redundant policies for them. Silly Kids Today.
c) Retirement benefits. Yes, yes, they've been watching too many old movies. Silent movies, starring Steve Simels mostly. But The Kids Today have these romantic notions that come retirement they won't have to do a Logan's Run or face their prescribed destiny. They've been told their whole lives that Social Security just won't be there for them so they need an alternative. Blame whoever keeps telling them that (shhh!!!!).
d) On the job training. It's true The Kids Today don't major in anything useful, unlike the Greatest Generation and the Second Greatest Generation and the Pretty Good Generation After That who all had degrees in Physics or Engineering before going on to work in opinion journalism, but that's the labor force you have to deal with. Might have to show them a thing or two.
e) Job Security. The Kids Today would like some assurances that their jobs might be around a few months hence. Yes that goes against everything the Washington Post opinion page has been telling you. Tenure of any kind is anathema to them. The job turnover there is brutal. It seems that every 20 or 30 years or so there's a new columnist!
It's going to take a lot to lure them from their parents' basements. But, sadly, that pesky 13th Amendment was ratified, or so they claim, so if you want The Kids Today to come work for you, sacrifices must be made.
a) Offer a higher wage. Yes, yes, wages, are so 20th century, but The Kids Today have a strange affinity for them. Maybe it's nostalgia. They even want dollars, and not Bitcoins or Applebucks.
b) Good health insurance. Weirdly, even though President Kenyan Muslim Socialist nationalized the health care industry, some Kids Today just aren't happy with their death panels and want their companies to buy redundant policies for them. Silly Kids Today.
c) Retirement benefits. Yes, yes, they've been watching too many old movies. Silent movies, starring Steve Simels mostly. But The Kids Today have these romantic notions that come retirement they won't have to do a Logan's Run or face their prescribed destiny. They've been told their whole lives that Social Security just won't be there for them so they need an alternative. Blame whoever keeps telling them that (shhh!!!!).
d) On the job training. It's true The Kids Today don't major in anything useful, unlike the Greatest Generation and the Second Greatest Generation and the Pretty Good Generation After That who all had degrees in Physics or Engineering before going on to work in opinion journalism, but that's the labor force you have to deal with. Might have to show them a thing or two.
e) Job Security. The Kids Today would like some assurances that their jobs might be around a few months hence. Yes that goes against everything the Washington Post opinion page has been telling you. Tenure of any kind is anathema to them. The job turnover there is brutal. It seems that every 20 or 30 years or so there's a new columnist!
It's going to take a lot to lure them from their parents' basements. But, sadly, that pesky 13th Amendment was ratified, or so they claim, so if you want The Kids Today to come work for you, sacrifices must be made.
I Wonder What They Didn't Think Of
Economists aren't right about everything, but they do have some pretty groundbreaking ideas about what employers can do to attract new workers into their professions/companies if they are having a difficult time hiring people. Maybe some economists should talk to these employers, because they apparently are unaware, as is the person who wrote the story.
They do have some cunning plans. Maybe they'll even work!
They do have some cunning plans. Maybe they'll even work!
But, he said, manufacturers need to romance them - to show them how their work on a product makes a difference, maybe keeping a jetliner aloft or a heart beating.
Mismatch
One of the phenomenon studied due to the suburbanization of employment was spatial mismatch, that there was a mismatch between where people lived and where jobs they were qualified to get were located. Roughly, for various reasons, less educated people lived in cities, without cars, and the jobs they would be able to get were in the suburbs, requiring either a car they didn't have or a nightmarish public transit commute to places with horrible public transit.(It was more complicated than this, of course, with enforced residential segregation and other types of racial discrimination having a large impact on location patterns).
As poverty moves to the suburbs, people are going to be in worst-of-both-worlds territory. They'll need a car for jobs, and for everything else, and cars are expensive things. And while there is no secret welfare system, it is the case that there are often more readily available social services and similar support systems - private and public - in some urban areas.
As poverty moves to the suburbs, people are going to be in worst-of-both-worlds territory. They'll need a car for jobs, and for everything else, and cars are expensive things. And while there is no secret welfare system, it is the case that there are often more readily available social services and similar support systems - private and public - in some urban areas.
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