Chaos Manor View, Wednesday, September 7, 2016

Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for the West as it commits suicide.

James Burnham

If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.

Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983

Deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

The immigration discussion continues.

It should be understood, I am attempting a rational discussion of the immigration question. That means, among other things, that I am not considering outrageous policies likely to provoke civil war, such as mass murder or mass sterilization, nor physically or financially impossible measures such as instant deportation of eleven million persons. Even were we all agreed that the eleven million illegals already present must all go – and certainly that is not universally agreed – we could not do it. Even if all eleven million decided they wanted to go back to their former homes, it would take considerable time for them to get there.

It is unlikely that all of them will ever leave or be deported whatever we do, just as it is unlikely that we will ever build an impenetrable Wall along the southern border. Some – many – may want that, but the cost will be high and even then some will slip through. After all, people do get out of Cuba, and North Korea; they did escape the former Soviet Union; and I doubt we will ever enforce our border controls as vigorously as the Soviet Union once did and North Korea still does.

To berate Mr. Trump as flip=flopping when he says he will not deport them all in his first year, or even his first term, is meaningless; he can’t do it, he knows he can’t do it, he knew he couldn’t do it when he said he wanted to (if he ever explicitly said that); and he knew his listeners knew he couldn’t do it. You knew he couldn’t do it. He said he wanted to do it, perhaps, but a political promise obviously impossible of fulfillment is not real, it is said for its emotional effects. We all know that, so let us act like adults in these matters.

Previously I have said it is reasonable to deport any illegal alien convicted of a felony upon completion of his sentence. No new trial is needed. It is reasonable to require all state officials to inform the Federal authorities when any illegal alien is convicted of a felony, and to require that they detain him until he – or she – is in the custody of a suitable Federal officer. We may haggle over details, but surely the principle is agreed to?

It is reasonable to make strenuous efforts to regain control of the borders, and devote new efforts to that purpose.

This enough to allow a clear distinction between the candidates and parties. There is a candidate who would find all these propositions reasonable and would devote efferent to fulfilling them. There is another who doesn’t even find them worth discussing, and when they do come up rejects them.

Dear Dr. Pournelle,
It seems the last few lines of your September 6, 2016 View regarding the enforcement of laws against hiring illegal immigrants point to a much simpler and more cost effective strategy.
A primary impetus for most of the immigration to the US is economic. Which means employers who illegally hire these non-citizens are should be at least one focus of a solution, if not the primary focus. The President could easily and lawfully direct the IRS to use greater scrutiny to businesses in trades where illegal labor is customarily employed (construction, landscaping, etc.).
The IRS regulations already have a “duck test” rule, meaning that if something walks like a taxable duck and talks like a taxable duck they can tax it as a duck. It is often used for determining the difference between independent contractors and employees which allows the IRS to assess payroll taxes for persons claimed as contractors who are actually employees. This could be very easily and quite legally be applied to companies whose tax returns tend to strongly indicate the use of off-book illegal labor. For example, a landscaping company that generates $500K per year but claims only 2 employees is almost certainly using unreported illegal labor. The IRS can then estimate the amount of legal labor required to do the work and present a tax bill at that amount based on American wage scales and minimum wages.
Since it appears that the main advantages of using illegal labor are avoidance of payroll taxes, minimum wage and other labor laws, more serious enforcement of taxation would eliminate many of these advantages. And to the extent violation of labor standards and minimum wage laws incentivize the use of illegal labor the IRS can easily pass along notifications to local authorities where they suspect these issues. Even very liberal local governments are likely to frown upon violation of labor protection laws, and they certainly support minimum wage laws.
And to the extent the IRS needs any additional funding to enforce these employment tax laws, it does seem that the increased tax revenue from opening the previously blind eye given to employers of illegal aliens would cover the cost. In fact, it might prove to be a short term revenue source and help budgetary matters a little.
And since the enforcement mechanism is using existing IRS laws and regulations, protections for persons falsely accused are already in place. The appeal of tax bills in the tax court is a standard procedure with legal protections for the appellant are already built in.
I admit this is an off the cuff idea rather than a detailed policy and procedure proposal, however it does seem that for all the talk of immigration issues being related to jobs, nobody really wants to talk about the jobs side much less the significant tax revenue lost to this grey economy.
Thank you for your time, and please know I greatly appreciate your thought provoking web journal.
Sincerely,
Chris Reichman

Any discussion of immigration beyond my two points above is likely to be off the cuff and subject to wild debate; but surely we can do something immediately without endless talk?

Deportations

You make an excellent case for easy does it on the deportations / illegals problem.

But consider the following scenario which is actually lower cost than our existing legal costs for illegals.

First: Declare a state of emergency because of an existing invasion and plot to overthrow the existing government of the various states. ( what else would you call the various Reconquista movements in the Southwest. They openly declare their aim is to restore California, Arizona, New Mexico, and  Texas to Mexico .)

Second: Deploy the Army along the border with the Rules of Engagement specifying shoot to kill anyone crossing at an non designated Point of Entry.

Third: Kill Sanctuary Cities by having Federal Grand Juries indict the Mayor, City Councilmen, Police Chiefs, and Sheriffs of communities that harbour illegals for any subsequent crimes committed by a criminal illegal alien under various laws regarding Deprivation of Civil Rights. Hauling them off in chains to another community to stand trials for aiding and abetting in the further depravations of the criminals is the proper reward for their actions. Acts have Consequences. In most states being convicted of a felony will end any political careers.

Third: Announce a very short, Run for the Border immunity in which illegals can keep their assets and reapply for legal entry based on date they departed. Basically on 21 January make the announcement with final date of 15 March (Beware the Ides of March).

Fourth: After that date Illegal aliens found in the United States who have not committed any other criminal act would be tried and on conviction deported (with permanent bar to re-entry)  with all their (meagre) assets confiscated through Criminal Forfeiture.

Fifth: (and this is the wild part!!) Following the example of FDR during ww2 turn criminal aliens over to the Army for drum head court and execution on charges if sabotaging the American economy. German saboteurs were landed on Long Island during the war. They subsequently turned themselves in to the FBI which in turn turned them over to the Army which held courts and ordered the imprisonment of US citizens and  execution of Germans. The interesting aspect of this procedure is that it has already been reviewed and found constitutional by the US Supreme Court. In this case a criminal alien is one who has committed any other crime beyond mere illegal entry such as identity theft, use of false ID papers, welfare fraud, as well as the normal rape, murder, ad pillaging.

Because of the reduced legal costs we would actually spend less money than we are currently using for law enforcement. And the prospect of execution would serve to incentivize all criminals to flee.

Net cost of removing 11 –30 million illegals beyond what we are already spending  – ZERO

Yes, the Liberals would howl and challenge this but since their hero ordered these procedures they have less room to stand. And would you as a criminal be willing to bet your life that the Supreme Court would be willing to overturn its own decision in a few years? Safer to just Run for the Border.

Earl

This is more like science fiction than a serious proposal, is it not? If we could get national agreement on doing that, we would have done some of it already. Perhaps I overestimate the difficulties and underestimate the rising sense of panic.

In any event, I have a more modest goal: to get started on doing things we can all agree on.

But it might make a great sf story.

Illegal Immigration

The answer is to dispense with the oppressive regulations companies are strangled with.

Once that is done the economy will take off and there will be jobs for everyone.

At that point anyone breathing can get a job and who cares if there are illegals mowing lawns and gardening.

Utterly sensible. Let’s do it.

Death for hiring legal foreigners?

Dear Doctor Pournelle,

When you agreed with correspondent “Mark” that Mark Zuckerberg should be treated, for hiring legal immigrant programmers, the same as the rich man in the passage from scripture quoted by Mark, you do realize that means executing mark Zuckerberg, as well as fining his estate six times the cost of Mr. Zuckerberg’s “crime”, such cost probably to be estimated by the same goons that kill him. I imagine they will be quite reasonable in their calculations. Perhaps they will leave Zickerberg’s widow and orphans a home and small stipend, once Marks goons have finished looting Mr. Zuckerberg’s corpse?

I will leave to your imagination where this policy would lead, and in short order at that.

I suppose this is no problem for correspondent ” Mark”, since Mr.Zuckerberg is not a member of Mark’s tribe, clan or faith.

It is for me. As with Zuckerberg, I am an American, and if you seek to harm one of MY tribe, I will take umbrage at that, and protect my tribe, the citizens of the United States of America.

I take it that you agreed with the notion of some punishment for those who profit from illegal immigrants, and not with the literal sense of “Mark’s” rant? As would I. However, I believe that Mark meant to be taken quite literally.

Petronius

You take it that I agree with everything he said and all the implications that you draw from your reading? You give me more credit than I deserve in assuming I read it that closely, and considerable disservice in assuming that I would find that interpretation reasonable. So far as I know I have never agreed to punishment for all those profiting from the assistance of illegals.

Good luck on protecting all of the members of your tribe. While I might share that goal, I am unlikely to be of much use in achieving it at my age.

I do believe in Bill Buckley’s observation that one can successfully study and learn to be an American, in contrast to becoming a Swiss, or a German, or a Swede by intellectual effort. I suspect the Swedes are learning more about that proposition than they wanted to know. To that extent St Paul’s letters seem to be on firm ground. It is becoming more popular to reject the concept of the American Melting Pot than it was in my high school days when it was thought self=evident that the Melting Pot worked. We had assimilated Irish, Italian, Hungarian, English, Scots, Welsh, and other immigrants. Britain managed fusion of Britons, Angles, Saxons and Danes; they had merged with the Normans; yet Scotland and Wales and Ireland remained in a way that “Little Italy” did not.

Of course assimilation takes incentives, considerable adaptation and determination, and other factors we don’t have room to discuss here; but visibly it worked in America until there was a determined effort to prevent it. This is not the place for that discussion. I do repeat that migration without assimilation is invasion.

Immigration

Labor VOTES. You can’t think of the 11 to 30 million Illegals as merely a present day economic issue. That’s short sided. We have a moral responsibility to think about future generations.
All those tens of millions of new immigrants – legal and illegal – are going to vote Leftist. That’s the whole reasons they’ve were brought here!
And please, don’t give us the old cop out about “assimilation” taking care of everything. There are poor Hispanics families living in New Mexico that go back 300 years!
The eight million square miles under Hispanic control isn’t exactly a paradise.
It shocks me that grown men can think of themselves as moral while stabbing their own children and grandchildren in the back by NOT kicking the illegals out.

Rob King

While your frustration is obvious, I do not see why an attempt at rational discussion is impossible. Incidentally, I reject the validity of “copout” as an unanswerable argument. There are poor families in many countries that go back 300 years. In the 21^st Century it may be common to think of the permanent underclass as Hispanic in origin, but the people sterilized by the eugenicists on the grounds that three generations of morons is enough were more likely to be named Jeeter or Jukes or Kalikak than Sanchez. Then there are Faulkner’s Snopes boys…

I don’t recall proclaiming anyplace a paradise.

Reading Nero Wolfe
“I admit to doing a lot of funking out and reading old Nero Wolfe stories.”
I have them all packed onto my Kindle, and binge on them now and then. It’s intellectual comfort food. I’ve been doing the past couple of weeks, and right now I’m up to “Homicide Trinity.”
Terry Pratchett, Sherlock Holmes, Kipling, Heinlein, and several other authors fall into this category, too.

Tom Brosz

I find old quiet action novels I have already read a good distraction when I don’t seem to be writing anything but I have to do something I can stop instantly when I do get the right ideas. I tend to agree with your list. John D. Macdonald also qualifies.

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Chaos Manor View, Monday, September 5, 2016

Labor Day Part Two

Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for the West as it commits suicide.

James Burnham

If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.

Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983

Deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Illegal Immigrants and what to do with them.

Does anyone talking about this subject have any sense of reality? There are said to be 11 million undocumented illegal immigrants in the United States. Some of them want nothing more than invisibility; to be left alone, do their work as nannies, housekeepers, gardeners, day laborers, small business operators, pushcart sales persons, and the myriad other activities they engage in. They send some money back home, but most don’t send a lot because they don’t have a lot to send. Many are the parents of “anchor babies”, US citizens under existing law.

At the other end of the spectrum are the career criminals, some in Federal prisons, others in city and county jails.

With only these facts we can draw some conclusions. First, it would be difficult to find and apprehend all 11 million. It would also be very expensive. We’ll assume it is possible for the sake of discussion, but can we all agree that it will be very difficult and expensive to deport them all, and the benefits of deporting all 11 million are likely to be lower than the costs?

One conclusion seems obvious: we should immediately deport any illegal alien – undocumented migrant – upon the end of a jail or prison term for any felony. Exceptional cases can plead for clemency. I say this to cover the usual cases presented in fiction but rare in reality, the illegal whom we ought to welcome who got caught up in some legal technicality and deserves mercy. Those cases generally stand out, and we can rely on citizen volunteers to find them and make pleas. The usual fate of a illegal alien convicted of felony should be instant deportation, and there can’t be much Constitutional argument that Congress has not the power to make that legal and binding. Aliens have no rights under the US Constitution unless those rights are granted by law.

Another exception would be those who have already been through this process and then return are apprehended during the commission of a criminal act. A possible way of dealing with such cases is obvious. They have no rights as citizens. They can be confined in low cost conditions, not expensive prisons in which the courts have power to grant various rights they discern in emanations from penumbras in the Constitution. They deserve neither emanations nor penumbras, nor bail.

Meanwhile. Close the borders; get back in control of the flow of undocumented migrants into the United States.

If we could stop the incoming flood while deporting the felons, we’d be miles ahead. One of the Presidential candidates would at least attempt to do that much; would both?

As we begin to take control of the influx and deport the felons, we can attack another problem, the expenses associated with illegal immigrants. That too is fairly simple. We explicitly deny them all rights to entitlements: welfare benefits, health care, food stamps; etc., may be rights for citizens, but they are not rights for illegal aliens. Mercy, charity, and social stability may require giving illegal aliens some of these benefits. Some may be ignored, but it must be understood that these are gifts, not matters of right and not entitlements. Cutting back on these “entitlements” will not only save money, but also lower the expected value of illegal entry. Some of those already here may decide the game is not worth the candle and turn themselves in for deportation.

That still leaves millions of illegal aliens, most striving for invisibility. If we simply declare that a legal change in their status requires that they register, deport themselves, and seek legal reentry before they can apply for citizenship, I suspect that solves the problem. Most won’t deport themselves, in which case they are eligible for deportation upon coming to the attention of the authorities – an event they will make every effort to avoid. Many will assimilate over time, which is an outcome devoutly to be wished. Legally they remain deportable, and on conviction of crimes of violence or other felonies they certainly will be deported. Meanwhile, your gardeners, housekeepers, and nannies remain outside the active scrutiny of the law. They will never be citizens, but why should they become citizens? If that’s what they want they can deport themselves and apply for legal entry.

As to protecting American jobs, we already have the laws against hiring illegal aliens. How vigorously we enforce those laws would, I suppose, depend on local conditions and local sentiments; local politics. Not the concern of the federal government in most places.

Obviously the above is not the end of discussion. On the other hand, it’s a beginning. Controlling the borders, deporting felon illegal aliens, and curtailing entitlements for non-citizens would almost certainly produce a better society than we have now, and just that much will not be simple or easy or cheap; surely it is a good start?

Of course it’s a pipe dream. There are too many political interests in the present situation, which is why only one candidate, the outsider, raised the immigration question when the others would as soon have avoided it as too difficult. Much easier to make grand talk about comprehensive immigration reform and Dream Acts on so forth. Much easier to go with the flow, and accuse anyone actually facing the problem of being too hard, too soft, flip-flopping, and un-Presidential.

It’s late and time for bed.

ATT
We had our ATT land line go out a week or so ago. As with yours, it was a street problem, not a house problem. It took two techs (two trucks!) several hours to pull open at least three street boxes, unwrap the incredible rats nests of wires inside them, and finally track the problem to a broken line under the street.
Fortunately, they run several spare wires, so all they had to do was disconnect the broken wire and connect up a spare.
The techs did good work, and didn’t seem to be just going through the motions.
I’m getting the impression from my aging wiring that our land line system is falling into neglect under the onslaught of cell phones. How much real innovation and infrastructure update is going into these systems? How much is just companies like ATT supporting a shrinking group of land line users while focusing on other communication markets?
There’s a chart at this website:
https://www.statista.com/chart/2072/landline-phones-in-the-united-states/

Tom Brosz

Phyllis Schlafly, RIP.

<http://stlouis.cbslocal.com/2016/09/05/longtime-conservative-icon-phyllis-schlafly-dies-at-92/>

———————————————————————–

Roland Dobbins

To paraphrase Jerry, I don’t agree with all of Fred’s arguments at his article linked below, but I have to agree with the conclusion.

The worst time to get into war with Russia or China is after 8 years of Obama doing his damndest to destroy the military, and the RINOs walking to the drumbeat to keep the (domestic political) peace.

The above is not intended to imply that there is any BEST time to get into such a war. But if current Russian hacking is being conducted with the intent of either weakening the US or getting us into a shooting war (I submit that there is less doubt about China’s current maritime adventuring), the best we can do at present is fall back to “a well regulated militia, being necessary to a secure state…” (and the appropriate cyber variants necessary to today’s technology) and bide our time (expensively) until we can once again mount a good offense.  Of course, Obama has spent 8 years railing against part A, and Hillary has promised to complete the job…

http://fredoneverything.org/hillary-trump-and-war-with-russia-the-goddamdest-stupid-idea-i-have-ever-heard-and-i-have-lived-in-washington/

J

Paul & Galations 3:28 /buffy willow

Dear Jerry,

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

“St. Paul may have been an optimist.” 

Or Galatians 3:28 is being grotesquely and disingenuously wrenched out of context to attempt to justify secular social and political goals and ideas it never had the slightest connection with.  Coincidentally enough this verse and a few others before and after were the Epistle reading a few Sundays ago at our church.  Since you appear to be using the Berean Literal Bible I’ll continue with it:

Galatians 3:26 teaches, “For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.”

Galatians 3:27 continues, “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.”

And Galatians 3:29 followed up with, “Now if you are of Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, heirs according to the promise.”

Taken together this very clearly refers to a fellowship of all Christian believers.   It certainly can never be used under any circumstances to justify an unlimited influx of non-Christians into any Christian land.  And it can’t even be used at all unless a theocracy is set up.  

Alternately we could go ahead and add numerical references to each word in the Bible, or even each letter.  This will make it still easier for people to indulge that favorite pass time of using the Bible to justify their personal positions.  As the late Sam Francis observed on the occasion of the Southern Baptist Convention’s apology for slavery, the Bible endorses human slavery and does not prohibit it.  Even John the Baptist and the Apostle Paul advised slaves to be content in their situations.

But this being Sunday, I’ll quote one another applicable Bible teaching, this one on the question of the extremely wealthy welcoming strangers while imposing all the costs of their hospitality involuntarily on their poor neighbors:

2 Samuel 12:1-6

12 The Lord sent Nathan to David. When he came to him, he said, “There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor. ² The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, ³ but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him.

⁴ “Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him.”

⁵ David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, “As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this must die! ⁶ He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity.”

This seems appropriate for the many persons who enjoy the large profits of low cost immigrant labor – frequently illegals – while involuntarily imposing all the social costs onto the broader community.  Mark Zuckerberg and his H1B programmers come to mind here.

Best Wishes,

Mark

I agree. My context was different and I should have been more careful in the way I said it.

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Chaos Manor View, Monday, September 5, 2016

LABOR DAY

Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for the West as it commits suicide.

James Burnham

If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.

Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983

Deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

We have dial tone. This is the second time I have written this. I wrote about a thousand words but as I was completing my account of how my dial tone was restored, I managed to hit the alt key and the spacebar simultaneously, then some more keys – I was typing rapidly – and Word closed without saving. I do not know what combination of keys produces that result. I don’t care. I am now looking for alternatives to Word. No text editor ought to have a combination of keystrokes that will close it without saving.

I thought I had a work-around: I would save as a work file whatever I was working on, and this would automatically save every few seconds. It does not. Word Help does not have any response to “save Word file automatically”. So far as I can see the response is the same to any search that has save and Word in it. Microsoft, you bloody ought to be ashamed of yourselves, and I wonder if a handicap organization does not have a valid case under some obscure provision of the Americans with Disabilities act. Worse, if there’s a setting to do automatic saving I can’t find it. Help as usual is not much help. I suppose it doesn’t matter. I once had the habit of saving early and often because computers were not reliable. I gradually lost the habit – not entirely, but I did trust more to the electronics I guess – and today I lost a thousand words. Gone. They weren’t crucial, and I know what I said, but I am irked. Annoyed. And it’s Microsoft’s fault. There should be no way to simply close Word without saving.

Back to my story. Dial tone. Early this morning, Roberta called AT&T again, got a human, and Lo! They already had a record of our problem and said a technician would be here before Six. He showed up an hour later. Armando had been with The Phone Company for 42 years, and oozed competence. He cut the cable tie off the outside box in back, and said something to the effect of “You only have one line?” I told him that at one time we had had six active lines, but that was long ago.

I then conducted him back into the house to the hall phone, where we have a simple phone that needs no house power and connects directly to the outside. He unplugged it and plugged in a small signal generator, and went out to the outside box again. I went to my office and lifted the Panasonic wireless phone – one of several we have around the house, and heard warbling. Since the Panasonic station is attached to a jack on the same line as the hall phone where the signal was coming from, it was pretty clear that the problem wasn’t in the archaic wiring of Chaos Manor.

The technician said he had to go up the pole on Cantura, a street about half a mile away. A few minutes later we had dial tone, and his cell phone number in case we had other problems. And now we have dial tone, the plumbing is working again, when I am writing fiction I use the ASUS laptop upstairs where I don’t hit alt-spacebar and I do save early and often as I am doing now, and things are back the mild but chronic state of chaos normal at Chaos Manor.

The War Drums are beating. Russia could not govern the Ukraine even if the Ukrainians overwhelmingly asked them to; the economies are too bare. Russia is beginning to rise from the depths, but Putin is no fool: he sees what reviving East Germany did to the Germans. They know what rebuilding the Crimea is costing. There is a great effort underway to get the United States into hostilities with Russia. Trump opposes that.

For more, see

Hillary, Trump, and War with Russia: The Goddamdest Stupid Idea I Have Ever Heard, and I Have Lived in Washington

http://fredoneverything.org/hillary-trump-and-war-with-russia-the-goddamdest-stupid-idea-i-have-ever-heard-and-i-have-lived-in-washington/

It is Labor Day, and we have guests. I’ll let Fred talk on this one. Fred and I don’t agree on everything, but I don’t think I can find much to argue with here.

If you’re planning on submitting to There Will Be War, Volume 11, this is the month to do it. We should have it put together by October, which means my introductions need to be done, which means I have to have all the stories and articles we’re going to include since I tend to use them to generate a theme.

The school systems

Hello Jerry,

In your blog a reader signing in as ‘B-‘ provided an account that started like this:

“Maybe that will teach me.”

The problem described is not confined to the educational system.  It is rampant throughout ALL government bureaucracies.

When I worked for the federal government there were two absolute career killers for budding managers:

1.  Being tagged with a ‘diversity problem’.  ANY diversity problem.

2.  Failing to spend your budget—all of it—PRIOR TO the end of the fiscal year.

Spending several million dollars on a program (ideally, a multi-year effort) that produced absolutely nothing of use or relevance was specifically NOT a career killer.  Quite the contrary.  Proving your expertise in program management by running a multi-million dollar program for a couple of years that ultimately produced nothing, then moving on to the next hot (higher budget) project before the first one cratered was the path to career glory, whether the programs produced anything useful or not.  The key was to get in while the programs were hot, then bail upwards before the crash.  

Of course not ALL programs were useless.  But a large number of the folks who gravitated to the top did so by ‘managing’ a succession of those which were.

Bob Ludwick

The Constitution gives no powers over education to the Congress or any other part of the Federal government, meaning that was supposed to be left to the states; which meant competing educational systems, some better, some worse, some very good, some awful. The important thing was some were very good.

Then came Sputnik (The Soviet launched first Earth satellite) and there came a drum beat for Federal Aid to Education, since we clearly needed a national education system and we had the experts to provide it. That generated a Federal Department of Education. Teachers’ Unions, who wanted tenure and credentialism, instantly jumped aboard the bandwagon they had helped build, and fewer than a dozen years later the National Commission on Excellence in Education concluded that

If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightly consider it an act of war.

The schools have deteriorated greatly since that accurate system. Prior to Federal Aid to Education, the United States boasted some of the best schools in the world, the envy of every other country. They encouraged the growth of excellence, and imposed the learning of as much competence as possible on everyone. We had a few school systems considered awful, several in the South, but note that in Tennessee I received, in Capleville with two grades to the room and more than 20 pupils to the grade, a very good grammar school education. I wasn’t made to work as hard as I should have been, but I still learned more in eight grades than nearly any present day public school student learns in twelve. There wasn’t a single student in Capleville school who didn’t learn to read, and I include the girl who was 15 in the fifth grade. She didn’t understand much, but she could read.

(Parenthetically, she did right well. Her parents were Italian truck gardeners. An Italian prisoner of war was assigned to be a farmhand at her place, and he and she were married within a year, thus keeping her from spinsterhood, her husband from being repatriated at the end of the war, and her parents from not having grandchildren. Sometimes stories do end well.)

And it remains true, “If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightly consider it an act of war.”

sc:bubbles]

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Chaos Manor View, Sunday, September 4, 2016

Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for the West as it commits suicide.

James Burnham

If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.

Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983

Deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

I’ve actually been getting some work done, but I’ve also been engaged in monkey motion because of the new ATT&T system. It didn’t help that I seem to brought back about seven different varieties of common cold or mild influenza from Kansas City. I’ve pretty well shaken them off – I no longer have that ache all over feeling – but I admit to doing a lot of funking out and reading old Nero Wolfe stories.

My problem with AT&T can be stated in a few words: on my cell phones the service fades in and out over time, from never more that three dots, generally only one, and all too frequently zero, which still sometimes permits a call, or worse it says on my iPhone, “no service”, and really means it. My wife’s old fashioned flip phone has the same kind of service – erratic fading to zero – but her phone doesn’t give her information. It just works or it doesn’t, and all too frequently, it doesn’t.

This bad wireless service has been a problem for decades, and I dealt with it by buying a mini-tower from AT&T; that worked like a charm for years, but then it stopped working, and I’ve lost all record of how to use it. This problem I can solve: I just take the Mini-tower to an AT&T Store and tell them to make it work, and if they can’t, I buy another. It will shoot a morning, but it can be done.

Because cellphone or wireless service is so erratic in this part of Studio City, I have always had a landline. At one point I actually had five of them, including a kind if primitive high speed digital preview of ISDN which I used for broadcast radio back in the days before the Internet. I couldn’t get actual ISDN. We are three hundred feet beyond the distance allowed to the switch.

But the landline always worked. Back before they got clever and broke up the old AT&T, the two things you could count on from the SAT&T Regulated Public Utility: arrogance for the clerical staff, and dial tone. If you ever lost dial tone, it was likely that all your neighbors had as well. If it was only you and you could use a neighbor’s phone to report it, you were never more than one day without dial tone, and more usually only an hour or two would go by before an AT&T truck pulled op in front of your house and a very competent technician fixed the problem, generally without cost. AT&T might be hated for its attitude, but by gum they got you dial tone.

They broke up AT&T, but the parts kept merging, and eventually someone put enough of them together to be able to call itself AT&T. Of course it no longer had or supported Bell Labs, AKA the Basic Research Institution for the human race, but that’s not all it had lost: Gone, too, was the basic mission of “we always give you dial tone.” There are a few of the old AT&T people who remember that era, but most have died out; and their replacements apparently don’t care.

In my case, my problem is that I have no dial tone, and I have no way of getting AT&T to acknowledge they know that. I go on line and it tells me, if I have no dial tone, disconnect everything and wait five minutes “to let the line clear.” Did that. Another tells me to go to the box outside and connect a working telephone and listen for dial tone. The Phone Company put a big cable tie around that box so I cannot open it.

I need help. I tried 611 calling on my cell phone. So has my wife. The result is invariant. I get a person who tells me my cell phone is fine. I say I want to report a landline without dial tone. Considerable conversation about who I am and what number I want to report takes place. Eventually this person, probably in Bombay, says she can’t do anything but she’ll connect me to someone who can, please hold. Then nothing no matter how long I wait. Now it may be that the cell phone irregularity has something to do with this, but it happens every time. Every dadgummed time.

If anyone knows a way to report NO DIAL TONE to AT&T, please let me know. I thought of going to the AT&T store on Ventura, but Roberta called them and they said there is no one they can notify. I saw an AT&T Service truck as we were on the way to church this morning, but we were late and I didn’t see it on the way home after we left church for breakfast. Come Tuesday, I may just go out and hunt one down. Or go to the AT&T store and sit there with a sign saying NO DIAL TONE or something similar.

If any AT&T execs read this, I have NO DIAL TONE on an AT&T landline. Attempts to dial the number produce the illusion of ringing to the caller, but my phones never ring. If I answer while it is “ringing” to the caller, I hear a sort of buzzing noise in the phone I answer with. After 20 rings I hear a robot tell the cell phone that the number you are calling is unavailable. I cannot test the NIB because the AT&T tech put a cable tie around the outside box; and how would I know if the test phone I was trying it with works anyway?

I HAVE NO DIAL TONE. I cannot find a way to report that.

Aside from the AT&T nonsense, and recovering from seven kinds of flu, I am getting back on track. Thursday was entirely devoured by locusts, including a no charge visit by reliable Mike Diamond to root out the sewer pipe which was causing my toilets to overflow. Distracting. Friday the flu got me. Friday and Saturday were used in vain and frustrating attempts to report the landline had no dial tone. It’s now Sunday afternoon and Labor Day is tomorrow.

There’s a great deal of mail, some important, and I need to do an essay on the essence of America and The Melting Pot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDPE-NronKk

The Indianapolis: Men of Courage

Starring Nicholas Cage

The trailer doesn’t say how much might have been taken from Jack Chalker’s historical fiction novel of the event, The Devil’s Voyage. Hopefully a lot, but probably none, since they didn’t use his accurate but melodramatic title. Those of my age will recall the discussion of the loss of Indianapolis – not mentioned by name – in the infamous move Jaws.

(Jack’s book ended with the speculation that chain of events which lead to the discovery of the Manhattan Project – and a suggestion that the Russians warned the Japanese about the Indianapolis – was a Russian spy finding out about the government’s investigation of Astounding Science Fiction magazine in 1942 for Cleve Cartmill’s story Deadline, and Robert Heinlein’s Solution Unsatisfactory, both of which feature a fictional Manhattan Project-like secret program to develop nuclear weapons.)

J

He also, more frivolously, sends this, for those who prefer nerdish jokes:

Subj: T-shirt spotted at Staples

I can see your graph paper. You must be plotting something.

 

 

People who were doing actual work, contributing to their economy, were forced away so that twenty of the most elite could have the entire city to themselves to bloviate and do nothing to actually contribute to an economy.
The fact that they forced people out of the city and filled the space with security personnel is telling all by itself.  They are frightened of the population whose wealth they have stolen.

China’s Xi warns against ’empty talk’ as G20 summit opens

Ben Dooley

AFP – AFP – ‎Sunday‎, ‎September‎ ‎4‎, ‎2016

Leaders of the world’s biggest powers met Sunday to try to revive the sluggish world economy, with their host Chinese President Xi Jinping urging them to avoid “empty talk”.

http://a.msn.com/r/2/AAitqOK?a=1&m=en-us

It is also reliably reported that every prostitute within ten kilometers of the meeting and where the delegates staying was banished, to be replaced by state agents who are trained in the arts of  honey-pot. This would be a technique long in use by the GRU and KGB, so hardly surprising, except the Chinese employ it with amazing efficiency.

EM Drive
Dear Dr. Pournelle:
You’ve mentioned several times that the controversy over the drive could be settled easily enough if someone would test it. It looks like someone was listening.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a22678/em-drive-cannae-cubesat-reactionless/

Tim Scott

There are many reports that the test results merit publication. Extraordinary results require extraordinary evidence, said Descartes (and Carl Sagan); perhaps we are seeing that. More when I learn more. I am still dubious but hopeful.

As the bear moves so does the dragon:

<.>

In early August, Japan’s Coast Guard witnessed an unconventional Chinese assault on its territorial waters. According to Japanese officials I met with last week, at least 300 Chinese “fishing vessels”

began incursions into the exclusive economic zone around the uninhabited Senkaku Islands, disputed territory administered by Japan but claimed by China and Taiwan as well.

</>

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-08-31/china-s-little-green-boats-have-japan-on-alert

And Japan is keeping the British in business:

<.>

Tensions in the South China Sea have led Japan to splurge on British-made hardware to prepare for a confrontation with China.

Recent saber-rattling by North Korea has also given Japan cause to restock its armory.

</>

https://www.rt.com/uk/357768-japan-china-arms-sales/

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

The Ignorant Generation

Dear Jerry:

“Our students’ ignorance is not a failing of the educational system – it is its crowning achievement. Efforts by several generations of philosophers and reformers and public policy experts ­ whom our students (and most of us) know nothing about ­ have combined to produce a generation of know-nothings.”

From Patrick Deneen’s essay “How a Generation Lost its Common Culture” at http://www.mindingthecampus.org/2016/02/how-a-generation-lost-its-common-culture/

Best regards,

–Harry M.

Crowning achievement, to have sown the wind…

Amazon jet delivery service

https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-amazon-delivery/

A good article. I think your comments on too big to fail is too big to exist really applies here. Just as Walmart destroyed the mom and pop stores in small town America and now, due to obsession with profit over everything else, is letting their giant stores become crime magnets and slums, Amazon may do the same thing to all other retail business and even the shipping business.

I think what Amazon has done to the book business is fantastic, especially for authors, but books are something that lend themselves to online sales. For many of the things Amazon sales, you need to see it in the real world first to evaluate whether you want it. That need leads to shop locally and buy online which destroys the local retailers who have to pay for the stores and still loose the sale.

I don’t want to see Amazon stop innovating, but I do think our existing anti-trust laws need to be enforced. If Sherman anti-trust does not apply here, then we the country need to start talking about the situation.

—

Phil Tharp

Agreed that the existing laws ought to be enforced; whether we need new ones is clear. What they should be is not so clear. Bezos has said he has no intention of absorbing FedEx. But as a general proposition, I think there must be limits to growth, particularly in vital services; and I think the “growth” fetish is very dangerous. I see no need for Hersey to “grow”. It makes a profitable and very satisfactory product; why the pressure to “grow”? I could name many other such products.

Unlimited Capitalism sees no value in stable communities.

Professors tell students: Drop class if you dispute man-made climate change

http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/28825/

L

http://www.q-mag.org/

This summer of 2016, excavations led by Nicholas Conard at the Hohle Fels Cave in the Swabian Jura in Germany have, once again, yielded an extraordinary find: a 40,000 year old tool, made of mammoth ivory, which served to make ropes. The implications of this find are invaluable…

sc:bubbles]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/02/obese-patients-and-smokers-banned-from-all-routine-operations-by/

How to get rid of your beer belly http://www.telegraph.co.uk Obese people will be routinely refused operations across the NHS, health service bosses have warned, after one authority said it would limit procedures on an …

Stephanie Osborn

“The Interstellar Woman of Mystery”
http://www.Stephanie-Osborn.com

This is WAY COOL

https://techxplore.com/news/2016-09-d-pen-professionals-special-materials.html

A 3-D printing pen for professionals handles special materials, lets users fine-tune work techxplore.com (Tech Xplore)—At first sight drawing objects in the air has you rubbing your eyes in disbelief and then you realize you are looking at a 3D pen in action.

Stephanie Osborn

“The Interstellar Woman of Mystery”
http://www.Stephanie-Osborn.com

I think I want one.

just bought two old fluke bench meters

They are 8840A’s from the 80’s. I’m a little over whelmed. Both units are in perfect condition. They look like they are maybe a year or two old, not 30 years old! They both came with excellent printed manuals with theory of operation and schematics! I would be happy to get a PDF version, but they are real manuals that make sense and are easy to use.

And they were made in the USA.

I don’t know who convinced Agilent (to us old guys, that’s HP) to move test equipment production to Malaysia, but they should be pilloried for it. There is no excuse for building high margin, long term durable equipment in a 3rd world country. And then, of course, there is the intellectual property theft that goes with it. I bet executives at HP/Agilent/Keysight (or whatever name they have now) are stymied why China is making better and better test equipment. Perhaps it was all the intellectual property that went out the back door of the Malaysian plant Agilent setup.

—

Phil

Made in a time when there were values.

Walmart is cutting 7,000 jobs due to automation, and it’s not alone

It’s not manufacturing jobs that the robots are taking now

But the Walmart decision may be a bit more alarming for those in the workforce. As the Wall Street Journal reports, the most concerning aspect of America’s largest private employer might be that the eliminated positions are largely in the accounting and invoicing sectors of the company. These jobs are typically held by some of the longest tenured employees, who also happen to take home higher hourly wages.

Now, those coveted positions are being automated. The Journal reports that beginning in 2017, much of this work will be addressed by “a central office or new money-counting “cash recycler” machines in stores.” Earlier this year, the company tested this change across some 500 locations. “We’ve seen many make smooth transitions during the pilot,” said Deisha Barnett, a Walmart spokeswoman.

https://www.yahoo.com/tech/walmart-cutting-7-000-jobs-135725099.html

John

 

By 2024 half the lobs in the US could be done by a robot costing no more than ten times the annual wage of the person now doing that job. Live with that knowledge.

 

And on that happy thought I’ll leave you. More shortly.

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.