Illegal immigration

I was thinking about Illegal immigration for a while. I find it interesting, the Solow growth model, indeed every growth model, states that "more people is better." So from a purely economic standpoint I'd argue that more people will help out. Now I know the first critique to come at this will be the "welfare argument" they come here for health care and welfare from the state.... Well you're kind of right, but I submit to you that argument does not hold up entirely.

Part of what makes illegal immigration so economically effective is the (Note: this is especially true before 1986 and the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act) illegal nature of it. By virtue of which these people may get a social security card to work, but only a precious few of them will actually be able to claim their SS and Medicare benefits. So you see it is precisely due to the illegal nature of this that we benefit the most. The immigrants that come across have to work, which benefits us because we have a great many sectors where we do not have large labor pools willing to work for cheap.

And then there is the higher education component, so popular here in Oregon right now. More skilled labor.... yeah ..... that's a problem. I've heard the "they're criminals here illegally" argument so much and read it in the Op-Ed section so many times my ears and eyes bleed. My question is simple "Do you consider the Louisiana Purchase in accordance with the laws at the time?" Hell even now? Hell no it wasn't a legal move, but it was damn sure a smart one. So why are we trying to ostracize talent? Because they broke a law? Well hell I shatter the speed limit laws, I broke under-age drinking laws, I even like to fight, I am therefore a criminal. I did most of this by choice, most immigrants are victims of circumstance as far as their illegality goes.

Now as for using your tax dollars to do this the Q&A is really simple: do you gain more than you lose? One would be hard pressed to successfully demonstrate that higher education subsidies do not replace the loss of revenue.

Abortion does affect crime rates

Levitt's Abortion paper I am known to hate unicorns. If I found one I'd consider sawing off the horn should it not produce any magical results. I believe that people will sell out their principles faster than Charlie Sheen makes cocaine disappear, if the price (sex, drugs, whatever you value) is right. Its simply cost-benefit analysis of crime.

Corporate relationships

Should the President of the United States be close to US corporations? Perhaps that question is too loaded. How far should the President of the United States be pushing American business?

The CEO of 3M, George Buckley, is accusing Pres. Obama of being anti-business. One quick note, 3M's arch competitor is GE and the CEO of GE is on Pres. Obama's business board.

Anti-business or impartial leadership ?

Fat, the new battle of the bulge

Bitching about being judged

Measuring BMI accurately is purely a matter of a dunk tank. Hook a person up to a respirator, submerge them (partially) in a basket with some sensors. And you get the readout for an individuals Body composition or Body Mass Index.

The issue I have with the right on this is plain and simple. They don't seem to like people judging food quality. And consistently whine about any attempt to steer diet in any direction. Which would be fine, if we as Americans didn't seem to find a way to eat ourselves into a grave. The simple truth is this: we're fat. Why? Because we don't do enough and we fail to control our diet. And diet is where our biggest issues lie. We eat horribly. Go check a grocery store, and look at the top sellers. I promise you, meat is the least of the problem.

Truth is people are pounding down pre-made deserts, high sodium canned foods, snacks, crap cereal, etc. And even with all of that, we wouldn't be as bad off as we are without the massive quantity of these items that are ingested.

Simplified, its not about eating a s'more, it's about eating a dozen s'mores. And people complain. Well you should complain. It is your health, and it is what goes into your body. But simply put: when you are making poor choices I don't much care about your complaints. Because from my experience the best way to rid people of poor decision making is a swift kick in the ass. And yeah they're gonna whine, but it gets the job done.

And we can fight all day and night about the proper role of government, but obesity is more that everyone looks into a mirror and goes... yeah this ain't pretty and it is certainly not right.

Wisconsin's governors head is really made of cheese

This is why I know Republicans are doomed to fail. This is just amazingly stupid, amazing.
Walker crank called...and bought it.

Disgusting

William Kristol is the greatest tick on the planet Earth. His passionate interest in the Middle East leads him into unfavorable positions. The tick fails to understand is that Israel will suffer a lot from this, and other Middle Eastern developments. The tick has latched on to 4 here-to-for unannounced ideas about the Middle East. For your edification.

• The key to any progress anywhere was near-term progress on Israel-Palestine.
• Near-term progress on Israel-Palestine was possible because the chief impediment was Israeli intransigence which was itself due to a failure of the Bush Administration to lean on Israel.
• Since Obama was willing to administer much tougher love to Israel and since Israel's concerns could be shown to be exaggerated, the Israeli "impediment" could be quickly lifted and progress quickly achieved.
• Bush's preoccupation with democracy was naïve and thoroughly discredited by Iraq and so nothing was likely to happen on that front in the region, perhaps for a generation but for sure until Obama had made progress on the Israel-Palestine issue.citation

Here's a dirty little secret for you. Mubarak is out. After that, who the hell is in the Government? Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the ElBaradei secular leaning crew. We shall see how that bodes for the United States and Israel. Hell Bill, your own writers are seriously comparing this to the 79 Iranian revolution. And you don't even listen! The Middle East has been due for a shakeup for over 200 years.

What makes this kind of panting that Kristol does whenever he discusses the Middle East so disgusting, is that people are dying, and he's just happy that his idea is advancing. And that is some impressive cognitive dissonance in itself. "Iraq was just the beginning, soon the entire Arab world will love us and Israel" What I find funny? A Democratic Middle East will be less inclined towards dealing with Israel constructively. You poll Middle Eastern Arabs on what they want done with Israel, I bet that "Israeli extinction" comes out on top.

Veritas and Balderdash

This is pretty damn special : Republican solutions committee . I'm gonna go ahead and call NO BALLS right now. Attempting to treat this as a serious proposal to trim spending is an insult to Republicans and Libertarians I consider friends. They're not pussies, which clearly the RSC must be comprised of. 2.5 trillion over 10 years is only 250 Billion in savings per year, with a budget that baselines somewhere along the 2.5-3.2 trillion dollars right now. And I did take it back to 2008 2006 type numbers before stimulus.

Glenn Beck going crazy from a while ago

I would make some wise ass remarks. But even I think Glenn Beck brought up the right points albeit as vicious as possible.....Glenn Beck was right to bring the pain on this Dumbass.... yeah, I said it, I mean it too. On this occasion Glenn was right to bring the pain.

10-year TIPS Bond trend line....

I love a good trend line. Here is data from the treasury pertaining to TIPS bond auction over the past decade. The inflation premium is ridiculous and trending lower.

Bad news for Corvallis NuScale

For those of you who don't know GT article on NuScale and their problems they've hit a financing issue since their hedge fund manager daddy is being sued by Uncle Sam for misappropriating government dollars (bailout money) for private investment. So NuScale needs a new daddy.

NuScale specializes in scalable nuclear power. That's right modular constructed nuclear power to fit any size. As such being in a highly regulated market makes it very difficult to expand. On the plus side if some kind of energy deal can happen this year, they could profit immensely.

Yeah our rhetoric has toned down.... I am sceptical

Glenn Beck is saying we need to shoot people in the head again
1.) This came from dailykos, is it an accurate portrayal of context?

2.) Amazing Glenn, simply awe inspiring attention span. Ohhhh look at the kitty pop-up.

I bet Oregonians will pay more Hasso

For the simple reason that voters don't like to deal with this. When I read something like this my first response is always this Hasso Herring's mastery of dumb suggestions: Are you sure? Because I bet that if you give Oregonians a vote on their state contracts with SEIU and OEA, the wage increase will go up. This kind of thing only makes sense if you're so disfranchised to be desperate. Which Oregon Republicans have good cause to feel. It's not going there way in this state. And yeah it may be Multnomah county's fault, but that doesn't change the outcome now does it? Look I get it Republicans in the state are frustrated.
1.) They're not San Francisco or Massachusetts Republicans, they are conservative.
2.) They feel desperate, because as the population size increases they lose more and  more ground.

But this is not going to work. Empowering the people will not drive down the wage, if only because hard fought negotiating is required. The idea that a majority of Oregonians will somehow be unaffected should state services shut down is flat out ignorant. And ironically with the passage of Measure 5 directly altering school funding from county to the State, the Republicans tied their own noose with this. Everyone would feel a state shut down now. Every service is extremely dependent on State funding over county funding.

Somebody tell Hasso Herring he will always be the fat kid in school. And to quit trying to be anything else.

Do a little dance.... Make a little love..... Get down tonight...

Dancing the Health Care Show to a stage near you .
I love a good ol' fashioned song and dance routine.

92 problems

Right now the US Government owns 92% of AIG.... 92% of stock in a private companyAIG selloff. Now we can get into the why's and shoulds of the argument, but for our purposes we should just deal with reality as we find it. The Federal Reserve is planning to divest itself of these holdings over two years so as not to depress the stock value too much. Will this work? Probably and then some, we'll probably make money on the deal. Which poses a very different and dangerous problem. Government ownership positions in private business is not a standard practice. Mostly because the last thing you want is explicit government ownership of the means of production. It goes one of two ways:

1.) Government sucks at running a business and its a failure.

2.) Government and business collude very well, are highly successful, and the consumer pays for the whole thing.

Now if you want to want to make some grandiose argument about purposes, you may feel completely free to do so. I don't care. The long term issues of this are simple: once we start making money off the private sector will we stop?

Especially in light of our financial sector. These banks have become massive kernels of investment coordination. And industrial firms, like GE, Boeing, DuPont,etc. they like this because these banks have the scale necessary to finance their expansion. Finance likes it because the more money you can offer the more you make in interest. And the rest of us? Well some would be indifferent. Me for example, my tax dollars are on the line because if these finance firms fail, well they drag down the entire setup. On the flip side I like making money faster (growth). And for government it's one big headache.

Now why do I care? Because I am gonna make some money on this AIG stock :) .

The Loughner Love

RCP making it really clear they have a lot of jackass writers out there: Headline dumbasses . So Jared Loughner is crazy, we can all agree to that. Now we have a lot of this one side blaming the other stuff, which is fair, Rep. Giffords sure wasn't targeted for being a stay-at-home-Mom. Explicitly stated, you can't go around calling one half the debate communists, socialists, death-panel advocates etc. without inciting violence that's just not going to happen. If you say reload enough, somebody will reload.

Yeah, you could use the heavy metal defense, music inspires the madness. Video games and Movies are in that vein too, but you'd be ignoring one key observation. Real-world politics are not viewed as imaginary worlds except by the most hardened political observers. In a movie you can stab a girl in the heart with an adrenaline needle, get shot by a boxer, and then the boxer discovers a racist cop sodomizing a criminal mastermind. That can happen in a movie because movies are imaginary. It is designed and presented as an imaginary situation. Same with music, Drowning Pool's bodies is based off the lead singer's observation of mosh pits (deceased). The lyrics are his poetic (stretching poetry for many) expression of the visual. Then you add a little Thrash guitar and some double-foot pedal drumming. Voila a song is created that for my own personal experience I use to piss myself off extra hard when I go to the gym. With the understanding that it's not about going out back and shooting people in the head.

Enter Jared Loughner or really garden variety disturbed person. Jared may have done what he did regardless of political inclinations, but he probably would not have targeted who he did without them either.

Now we have a real problem though, because in this instance I don't want to be right. I want the Right to be right on this. The reason you may ask? Because if I'm right, unless the tone of the debate changes after this tragedy, more people will die. It is that simple, if this is endemic due to the civic discourse then we will see a continuation of violence. High correlation is never the same as causation, but it is an accurate predictor.

Gun Rights: btw to the anti-gun folks out there, this guy did nothing wrong to merit any kind of weapons purchasing block. Suspicion is never good enough for preemption.

A thought on Rationality

Rationality: the quality or state of being rational.

            Rational: having reason or understanding.

            We have a situation where the definition is in need of a definition. I would define rationality as the state of evaluating choices based upon their merits and faults, ultimately deciding which choice to make in accordance with what will make the individual the best off. The merits and faults are determined by somewhat subjective preferences and beliefs.

            The other question, do people make choices rationally when it comes to beliefs and are these choices maximizing their utility. Rationality by its very nature is a complete entity, so what is an irrational decision by an otherwise rational person? Is it gambling with a lot of money at a Casino? Is it supporting a deadbeat child or parent? Or is it sinking more money into a failing business? What about faith?

            Faith I would argue is a very simple rationality for Christianity, Islam, and Judaism: I believe in God because he is real and if I do not believe in him correctly I will suffer eternally. Indeed the entire core of Evangelism in Christianity rests on the effort to convince someone they are currently wrong and their only path to salvation is another path. Other faiths I am too unfamiliar with to make any claim to, but I can imagine that Buddhism's concept of Karma offers a similar incentive.

            These other particular situations seem irrational. Upon inspection they are not. A person gambling with large amounts of money simply values entertainment more (absent gambling addiction of course). People who prop up noncontributing family members either strongly value the relationship or value duty towards their family members more heavily. It is also quite possible that people are rationalizing their current situation to match their own beliefs. To truly decide what is occurring we need complete information on each case, there could be no aggregate in this method to answer the question.

            So let's ask different questions, what would the world be like if people were not rational? If individuals did not make choices to do the best with the resources available what would the world look like? Probably a lot like the world we live in now, minus people. For many years we had a persistent situation where two vast nuclear arsenals stood in opposition to each other. If people did not seek to do the best with what they had, then what is survival, what is the motive to survive?

            Rational behavior is a creation of a being that desires to survive. We behave rationally in order to maximize our ability and desire to survive. What is the best way to survive? Thrive. How do people thrive? They optimize their decisions to create situations of abundance. 

          There is one very large problem with ultra-rational approaches to reality: other people. We must keep in mind that this is a very selfish entity and not very concerned with others outside of our sphere. Abundance  is a relative view, and the more people you have in that view the less abundant things are.