My personal web site had long passed its expiration date since most of the content is now hosted in content-specific places: photos on Flickr, my thoughts in my blog, etc. So, I’ve put it all in WordPress and integrated the blog directly into the personal web site. I’m in the process of (finally) uploading all the old photos that I originally published here into Flickr.
My dad’s first cousin is a now semi-retired sheriff’s deputy in a rural county in Kansas. He emails out a weekly report of his work. I’ve written about him before.
This act of kindness was in his latest email:
I was dispatched to [Redacted], KS to check on a homeless woman. She had about worn out her welcome in [Redacted]. She told me that she was traveling to Huntsville, Alabama from Decatur, Alabama, but got side tracked . . . The woman was barefoot, was wearing warm up slacks with draw strings to hold it up. She had not bathed lately and the weather was hot. She told me she was waiting for a truck to come by that was going to Huntsville, Alabama so I told her about a bigger truck stop in [Redacted], KS. She danced across the hot concrete at the convenience store to get to my patrol truck. We stopped in [Redacted] at the Law Enforcement Center long enough for the Detention Officer to bring me out a pair of rubber shoes that are issued to prisoners. We then proceeded to the truck stop at [Redacted]. She really liked the rubber sandals. When we got to [Redacted], I pointed out McDonalds Restaurant and gave her a $5.00 bill. The woman thanked me and then took my hand and said a prayer for me and my safety. I drove away feeling like I might have transported an Angel unaware. It was quite a surprise.
I happened to read a little of today’s Austin American-Statesman while I was eating breakfast this morning. Today, the paper’s Politifact Texas column examined the following claim by Rep. Lamar Smith:
“Illegal immigration and unemployment are directly linked,” Smith said on the House floor July 1. “There are 15 million unemployed Americans in the United States and 8 million illegal immigrants in the labor force. We could cut unemployment in half simply by reclaiming the jobs taken by illegal workers.”
Smith later said his assessment reflects “simple logic.”
“If our immigration laws were enforced, illegal immigrants will not be able to get or hold jobs,” he told us in an e-mail, “and they would be available for citizens and legal immigrants.”
I’m always skeptical of appeals to common sense, as they are often oversimplified at best. This claim is a good example. The Politifact journalist talked to several people who are knowledgeable in applicable fields, including some from conservative think-tanks. The consensus is that deporting illegal workers would result in more legal jobs over the long term, but would not result in a short-term one-to-one replacement, thus reducing unemployment as Rep. Smith claims. Factors include:
From How facts backfire on boston.com, this is not surprising, but depressing nonetheless:
In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger.
If you’ve read this blog for any period of time, you know that I hold very pessimistic views of the economy. I worried about the housing bubble long before it burst–though I admit I knew nothing about the financial instruments that Wall Street was creating that enabled the bubble and made its bursting a bigger economic event.
Lately, I’ve been concerned that the cycle where the US issues government bonds to essentially enable our lifestyle that allows us to buy lots of imports from places like China, and China buys those bonds to ensure that there continues to be a market for their goods. That cycle can’t go on forever.
Today, I was listening to a recent Planet Money podcast about Greece’s current debt problems. One of the people interviewed on the podcast made the following statement which seems to say the same thing I’ve worried about (emphasis added):
Most of the developed world is screwed . . and that makes this crisis particularly different than anything we’ve seen in our lifetimes. . . The countries that aren’t screwed are the emerging market countries. They have very low levels of debt, both public and private sector. So, they’re not impacted to the same extent. It’s been a complete flip-flop. The developing world is now where the rich world was 30 years ago. . . The world has been turned on its head, so now the emerging market is lending money to the rich world, so the rich world has continued to spend more than they’ve made for decades.
What we’re talking about here is an adjustment that’s going to happen not just in Greece, around the rest of Europe. It’s going to have to happen in the UK, it’s going to have to happen in the US as well. People at some point are going to have to develop a better connection with what government spending means for them personally. We’ve had the better part of a couple of decades where people have lost that connection. It’s viewed as manna from heaven and it’s just an entitlement, something that everyone has deserved that has no impace, or should have no impact, ever on them. They should be able to borrow unlimited amounts, get unlimited amounts of government services and benefits with no repercussions. It’s not all free money. The money has to be paid back.
Everything You Need to Know About Fast Food
Of all the interesting stats in this infographic, this one caught my attention the most (emphasis added): “Super heavy users,” [are] those customers who visit the store at least ten times a month, making up 75% of McDonald’s sales.”
Yesterday’s Fresh Air* featured an interview with Richard Phillips, the merchant marine captain whose ship was intercepted by Somali pirates. Capt. Phillips was taken hostage by the pirates and was freed after several days when US Navy sharpshooters killed the pirates.
I love Capt. Phillips’ no-nonsense description of the affair, especially this part (emphasis added):
DAVIES: How did you react emotionally to the experience in those first few days?
Capt. PHILLIPS: I did have problems. The first two nights, I would find myself waking up at five o’clock in the morning and just be crying my eyes out, bawling – something a New England sea captain doesn’t do too much. It was sort of strange to me. So I would, you know, throw some water in my face, and I was just going, what are you a wimp? I’m alive. What do you got to be complaining about? I was able to talk to -actually, one of the SEALs insisted I talk to a psychologist, and I did. And he really broke it down into chemicals that are excreted by your various glands and what happens, and he would ask me questions about things I had.
And the only problem I had was I would wake up, at that time – it happened twice to me, the first two nights I was off the life raft. After talking to him after the second morning, he gave me – he asked me, what did I do? And I said, well, I told you, just what I said. I’d throw water on my face. I’d go take a shower. I’d say what are you a wimp? What’s your problem? And he said, well, don’t do that. Don’t fight it. Let it flow. Let it flow as long as it goes. And so I followed his advice and I let it flow. I just sat there in my bed and I probably cried, bawled like a little kid for, I’m going to say two minutes. And then it ran its course, I dried up. Then I threw water on my face, I took a shower and started my day with my coffee, and I never had a problem after that.
That’s hard core.
* Dave Davies was filling in for Terri Gross, so I was able to listen without scratching my ears off. Did I mention that I love Fresh Air but hate Terri Gross’ interview style?
Sent to Consumerist: Buy Matzo ball soup mix (during Passover, no less), get a coupon/ad for a ham!
I saw several incredible sales like this yesterday at HEB:
From a recent New York Times article, With No Jobs, Plenty of Time for Tea Party:
When Tom Grimes lost his job as a financial consultant 15 months ago, he called his congressman, a Democrat, for help getting government health care.
. . .
Mr. Grimes, who receives Social Security, has filled the back seat of his Mercury Grand Marquis with the literature of the movement, including Glenn Beck’s “Arguing With Idiots†and Frederic Bastiat’s “The Law,†which denounces public benefits as “false philanthropy.â€
“If you quit giving people that stuff, they would figure out how to do it on their own,†Mr. Grimes said.
Or this guy:
[Jeff McQueen] blames the government for his unemployment. “Government is absolutely responsible, not because of what they did recently with the car companies, but what they’ve done since the 1980s,†he said. “The government has allowed free trade and never set up any rules.â€
He and others do not see any contradictions in their arguments for smaller government even as they argue that it should do more to prevent job loss or cuts to Medicare.
This just makes my head hurt.
