Author: philg

Taxpayers must fund, but cannot enjoy, the Blue Angels

by philg

Today was when hundreds of thousands of taxpayers had expected to enjoy an air show.

“NAS Pensacola cancels annual Blue Angels air show because of government funding uncertainty” (Stars and Stripes):

Naval Air Station Pensacola canceled this year’s Blue Angels Homecoming Air Show due to uncertainty regarding government funding. Officials said the ongoing government shutdown, limited funding and the time needed to arrange for performers and necessary support contracts are key reasons for canceling the annual two-day event, according to a Facebook post by NAS Pensacola. The show was originally set for Nov. 14- 15 in Pensacola, Fla., and expected to draw hundreds of thousands of visitors.

Pensacola might be the best place to learn about the relationship between peasants and rulers in the U.S. See Two-year anniversary of National Naval Aviation Museum’s temporary coronapanic closure (2022) and “US government shutdown closes NAS Pensacola to the public, including aviation museum” (October 1, 2025) and “National Naval Aviation Museum to reopen to public” (AOPA, May 4, 2023):

Access to Naval Air Station Pensacola, home of the museum as well as the Pensacola Lighthouse and Maritime Museum, and Fort Barrancas, had been restricted to Department of Defense cardholders since December 6, 2019, when a terrorist opened fire at the military base, killing three and wounding eight.

Wokipedia:

On the morning of December 6, 2019, a terrorist attack occurred at Naval Air Station Pensacola in Pensacola, Florida. The assailant killed three men and injured eight others. The shooter was killed by Escambia County sheriff deputies after they arrived at the scene. He was identified as Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, an Air Force aviation student from Saudi Arabia. … On January 13, 2020, the Department of Justice said they had officially classified the incident as an act of terrorism, motivated by “jihadist ideology.”

On February 2, 2020, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula claimed responsibility for the shooting. In an audio recording, emir of the Yemen-based group Qasim al-Raymi said they directed Alshamrani to carry out the attack. On May 18, 2020, the FBI corroborated the claims.

In response to the domestic jihad, the government excluded taxpayers from the museum for about 3.5 years and then opened the border for any other jihadi who might want to settle permanently in the U.S., e.g., “Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, an Afghan national who entered the US on September 9, 2021, via humanitarian parole (later applying for a Special Immigrant Visa). In October 2024, he was arrested in Oklahoma City for plotting an ISIS-inspired Election Day mass shooting attack targeting large gatherings. Tawhedi purchased AK-47 rifles and ammunition from undercover FBI agents, communicated with an ISIS facilitator, and planned to die as a martyr. He pleaded guilty in June 2025 to conspiring to provide material support to ISIS and attempting to acquire firearms for a terrorism offense” (Grok).

One of my photos of the Blue Angels from the Reno Air Races 2016 (the races themselves were shut down by “the Reno-Tahoe Airport Authority citing regional growth and safety concerns” (source)):

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Full self-driving v14 in Maskachusetts

by philg

A friend in suburban Boston apparently delights in enraging his neighbors and, thus, purchased a Cybertruck. His monstrous machine upgraded itself to FSD v14 last night. Our message exchange:

  • have you tried it?
  • Just did. It was needing to make a left turn onto a side street. A car was coming in the other direction making a right turn on the same road. They had their turn signal on. The truck turned in front of them and went first, violating the right of way.
  • So it had one dangerous failure in its first 15 minutes of use?
  • 5 minutes

A New Jersey-based Tesla Y owner in the same group:

  • It is much more twitchy than v13. It will hesitate hard at blowing leaves and other situations. But it is much more responsive to legit threats, like when another car starts to enter your lane.

(My friends love paying taxes to progressive Democrats!)

Separately, how about this wrap?

Related:

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10-year anniversary of the Paris theater attack

by philg

Today is the 10th anniversary of the November 13, 2015 Paris jihad, which killed 130 civilians, including 23-year-old American student Nohemi Gonzalez.

What’s happened since then? Are nearly all of the jihadis and their supporters out of prison by now? “Most of the Paris attackers were French and Belgian born citizens of Moroccan and Algerian backgrounds…” Salah Abdeslam, a Belgian man who chickened out and did not detonate his suicide vest, was sentenced to “life in prison”, but “life” doesn’t necessarily mean “life” in progressive societies.

How’s Europe doing now compared to then? Did a few years of meekly complying with lockdowns and mask orders calm Europeans down, including the jihadis? The Wikipedia page “Islamic terrorism in Europe” doesn’t seem to list attacks after 2021.

Politico says that the attacks substantially boosted government power:

The attacks forever changed the country and its politics, tipping the balance of protecting civil liberties versus ensuring public safety in favor of the latter.

Since 2015, France has passed a slew of laws meant to ensure such an event could never happen again. Members of parliament have expanded the state’s surveillance powers and its ability to impose restrictive measures without prior judicial approval. They’ve also reshaped France’s immigration policy and oversight of religious — particularly Muslim — organizations.

The French loss of liberty seems to be evidence for my theory that immigration from disparate cultures is inconsistent with liberty. If residents of a country don’t share a common language, culture, or religion, the only way for the rulers of that country to ensure safety is by taking away their subjects’ rights, e.g., the right to privacy or the right to own a gun.

Related:

  • Gonzalez v. Google LLC, a case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2023 regarding the extent to which YouTube could be held responsible for showing jihad-related content to European Muslims who would otherwise have been entirely peaceful or at least mostly peaceful
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A Massachusetts town spends its tax dollars telling residents how to dodge La Migra

by philg

Our former home of Lincoln, Maskachusetts:

(I tried to Zoom in for the meeting, but the link resulted only in an “Invalid meeting ID. (3,000)” error message.)

The town spent money producing its own guide to dodging La Migra (ICE). Excerpts:

A former “illegal alien” is no longer “undocumented” but rather “with uncertain immigration status”:

What if the worst happens and a “Massachusetts man” who arrived in the U.S. a few days earlier is being hauled away?

Note that, due to the two-acre zoning minimum, the typical neighborhood in Lincoln, MA is home only to those undocumented migrants who have at least $1 million to spend on a vacant lot. The town does, however, have a small public housing development in which those who don’t work, regardless of immigration status, can live at taxpayer expenses.

Here’s a friend’s photo from near the Town Hall:

In addition to the advertisement for the event, the photo includes a righteous hater of inequality who has bought him/her/zir/theirself an expensive Audi. He/she/ze/they could have made due with a Camry and donated the extra $40,000 to the worthy poor, but apparently that wasn’t an option. The photographer’s comment:

paint is coming off the house, ugly pipes on the ground and ugly wiring

(As a Floridian I’ve become allergic to the sight of utility poles and exposed wires and boxes like the ones in the photo.)

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Science proves that the U.S. needs immigrant workers; U.S. companies say that they don’t need more workers

by philg

It’s Veterans Day. Historically, one of the things that U.S. society tried to do was ensure that good jobs were available for those who left the military and returned to civilian life. This was a matter of great concern around the end of World War II. See for example “JOBS FOR VETERANS REPORTED FEWER; Full Impact of Discharges Is Yet to Come, Says Commerce Bureau” (New York Times, December 20, 1945):

Veterans are beginning to encounter difficulties in finding employment, with the full impact of discharges upon the labor market yet to be felt, the Department of Commerce said today in this month’s issue of its Survey of Current Business.

With Army surveys showing that at least 75 per cent of the returning veterans would be job-seekers, the article concluded that the country faced a “primary problem” of developing a labor demand sufficient to provide employment for the returning veterans,” along with the additional problem of “finding jobs satisfactory to the veteran with previous training, newly acquired skills and generally high expectations.”

Ever since we opened our borders in 1965 we’ve forced veterans to compete with an ever-larger group of immigrant workers. We’re informed that it is a Scientific fact that an open border enriches every American, including veterans, because immigrant workers are critical to the U.S. economy and there are more than enough jobs to go around. For this post let’s ignore that our immigration policy doesn’t select for immigrants who are able to work; someone who is 2 years old or 85 years old or disabled or completely unskilled has the same entitlement to lifetime residence/citizenship under our asylum-based system or under our family relation-based system as someone who is of working age. Let’s assume that, in fact, immigration does bring in mostly people who are capable of working and who want to work (an irrational desire in a cradle-to-grave welfare state!). Does the assumption that there are ample jobs both for new veterans and new immigrants still make sense?

“More Big Companies Bet They Can Still Grow Without Hiring” (Wall Street Journal, October 26, 2025):

American employers are increasingly making the calculation that they can keep the size of their teams flat—or shrink them through layoffs—without harming their businesses. Part of that thinking is the belief that artificial intelligence will be used to pick up some of the slack and automate more processes. … “If people are getting more productive, you don’t need to hire more people,” Brian Chesky, Airbnb’s chief executive, said in an interview. “I see a lot of companies pre-emptively holding the line, forecasting and hoping that they can have smaller workforces.”

Many companies seem intent on embracing a new, ultralean model of staffing, one where more roles are kept unfilled and hiring is treated as a last resort. At Intuit, every time a job comes open, managers are pushed to justify why they need to backfill it, said Sandeep Aujla, the company’s chief financial officer. The new rigor around hiring helps combat corporate bloat.

“Amazon Plans to Replace More Than Half a Million Jobs With Robots” (New York Times, October 21, 2025):

Over the past two decades, no company has done more to shape the American workplace than Amazon. In its ascent to become the nation’s second-largest employer, it has hired hundreds of thousands of warehouse workers, built an army of contract drivers and pioneered using technology to hire, monitor and manage employees.

Now, interviews and a cache of internal strategy documents viewed by The New York Times reveal that Amazon executives believe the company is on the cusp of its next big workplace shift: replacing more than half a million jobs with robots.

Amazon’s U.S. work force has more than tripled since 2018 to almost 1.2 million. But Amazon’s automation team expects the company can avoid hiring more than 160,000 people in the United States it would otherwise need by 2027. That would save about 30 cents on each item that Amazon picks, packs and delivers to customers.

Executives told Amazon’s board last year that they hoped robotic automation would allow the company to continue to avoid adding to its U.S. work force in the coming years, even though they expect to sell twice as many products by 2033. That would translate to more than 600,000 people whom Amazon didn’t need to hire.

“Amazon to Lay Off Tens of Thousands of Corporate Workers” (WSJ, October 27, 2025):

The latest round of job cuts would be the largest since 2022, when Amazon eliminated around 27,000 roles. That layoff occurred in waves.

The company views the cuts in part as an effort to correct an aggressive hiring period during the pandemic, the people said. During that period, a boom in online shopping led Amazon to double its warehouse network over a two-year period.

Amazon CEO Jassy has sought to find ways for the company to do more with less. In June Jassy sent a note to employees that said increasing use of artificial intelligence will eliminate the need for certain jobs. He called generative AI a once-in-a-lifetime technological change that is already altering how Amazon deals with consumers and other businesses and how it conducts its own operations, including job cuts.

“​​As we roll out more Generative AI and agents, it should change the way our work is done,” he said at the time. “It’s hard to know exactly where this nets out over time, but in the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce.”

Veterans are above-average in health, intelligence, and education and they come from richer-than-average families. Nonetheless, I wonder if the combination of AI and a continued inrush of legal immigrants (somewhere between 1.2 and 2.6 million annually, according to ChatGPT) will make it almost impossible for tomorrow’s veterans to get decent jobs.

Related: The Bobs.

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Bill Gates: Climate change is a crisis, but not such a bad crisis that anyone should stop flying Gulfstreams

by philg

Happy World Immunization Day to those who celebrate (not to be confused with World Immunization Week, which WHO says is the last week of April). Let’s turn our attention on this sacred day to one of the world’s leading vaccine scientists and covidologists: Bill Gates. From the World Economic Forum, April 2020:

“Because our foundation has such deep expertise in infectious diseases, we’ve thought about the epidemic, we did fund some things to be more prepared, like a vaccine effort,” Gates said. “Our early money can accelerate things.”

It turns out that Prof. Dr. Bill Gates, M.D., Ph.D., also owns a company that fuels Gulfstreams (WSJ):

Also, “Bill Gates shifts tone on climate, criticizes “doomsday view,” drawing mixed reaction” (CBS):

In a memo posted online, Gates wrote that while climate change is still a major problem that needs to be solved, “People will be able to live and thrive on Earth for the foreseeable future.” Gates, who has invested billions developing green technologies to cut greenhouse gases, says doomsday climate scenarios over-emphasize cutting emissions while “diverting resources from the most effective things we should be doing to improve life in a warming world.”

Is it possible that Bill Gates has personally done more to accelerate climate change than any other human? He and his wife-turned-plaintiff have worked tirelessly for 25 years to accelerate human population growth. And Bill Gates will continue to try to maximize the number of humans emitting CO2 on this planet, says CBS:

The lengthy memo essentially argued that we should continue to innovate and back climate breakthroughs but not at the expense of funding for global health or development — “programs that help people stay resilient in the face of climate change.” He argued for putting “human welfare at the center of our climate strategies,” including improving health and agriculture in the world’s poorest countries.

It’s human “development” that got us into this climate change mess, right?

So… climate change is a crisis, but it isn’t such a bad crisis that anyone should stop flying Gulfstreams or suspend efforts to increase human population.

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The government is required to pay Americans who don’t work (SNAP) and forbidden to pay Americans who do work (air traffic controllers)

by philg

A judge appointed by Barack Obama ordered the federal government to pay Americans who don’t work (state-sponsored PBS), i.e., those who receive SNAP (“food stamps”). At the same time, we’re informed that it is illegal for the federal government to pay Americans who do work (air traffic controllers who drew the short draw and are required to work every day for the same delayed paycheck that government workers who are on vacation will receive).

Could the Founding Fathers have imagined a day when people who don’t work for the federal government and who mostly don’t work at all (see “The Role of Full-Time and Part-Time Work in SNAP” from AEI, 2023) have a superior claim on the fruits of taxpayer toil than do people who actually work for the federal government?

Separately, I’m pleased to see that the answer to Why won’t rich states fund SNAP and other welfare programs during the federal shutdown? is “some will”! Connecticut’s governor says that he will step in with other people’s money (from his taxpayers/subjects) and pay the SNAP royalty with state funds:

It is tough for me to understand why SNAP is a federal program, actually. Don’t state and local governments have a better idea of who might be hungry in their corners of the U.S.? And of what food costs in their corners of the U.S.? Also, the farther away from the average taxpayer these decisions are being made the less personal satisfaction a taxpayer can take in helping his nonworking brothers, sisters, and binary resisters (see Immigration kills pride in paying income tax?). Think of the righteous satisfaction that will now be available to the rich taxpayers of Connecticut (the 10th richest state).

Given that the FAA is primarily funded by user fees, i.e., taxes on airline ticket and on fuel purchased from Bill Gates to fuel private jets, why can’t it keep paying air traffic controllers from these fees, in the same way that that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office continues to pay patent examiners? ChatGPT explains:

1. Different legal frameworks for how “fees” are held and spent

🏛️ USPTO — Fees go into a revolving fund that stays available

  • The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office operates under a Permanent Appropriation — the Patent and Trademark Office Revolving Fund (31 U.S.C. § 42).
  • Fees collected from patent and trademark applicants do not go to the Treasury’s general fund. They are kept in the USPTO’s own account and are “available until expended.”
  • That means USPTO has multi-year, no-year spending authority: it can use fee revenue (and any surplus) during a lapse in appropriations.
  • As a result, the USPTO can continue operations — including paying employees — even when Congress hasn’t passed a new budget, as long as its revolving fund has sufficient balances.

🛫 FAA — Ticket and fuel taxes go into a trust fund, but still need appropriations

  • Airline ticket taxes, fuel excise taxes, and other aviation fees are deposited into the Airport and Airway Trust Fund (AATF), established by 26 U.S.C. § 9502.
  • Crucially, those funds are not automatically available for expenditure.
  • Congress must appropriate money out of the trust fund every year to specific FAA accounts (Operations, Facilities & Equipment, etc.).
  • When there’s a lapse in appropriations (a shutdown), FAA legally cannot obligate or spend AATF money — even though the Treasury is still collecting ticket taxes daily.

2. Anti-Deficiency Act — the key legal barrier

  • Under the Anti-Deficiency Act (31 U.S.C. § 1341), federal employees can’t volunteer or be paid without an active appropriation unless they’re performing “excepted” duties (like safety-of-life).
  • Air traffic controllers are “excepted” — so they must report to work — but cannot be paid until Congress authorizes the expenditure.
  • The FAA’s hands are tied: even though tax revenue is flowing into the AATF, no one has authority to draw from it.

Maybe we need a new law that says that the FAA can draw on the Airport and Airway Trust Fund to fund its operations any time that there is a shutdown?

Related:

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Where are the 8K computer monitors and televisions?

by philg

I recently did some work in a law firm conference room where we were trying to review some PowerPoint slides that contained patent excerpts and, even after walking right up to the big flat-screen TV it was impossible to see text and figures clearly. A diverse (and therefore strong) group of female scientists of color created the first 8K television 22 years ago:

Why can’t we buy these today? Dell made a 32-inch monitor with 8K resolution and, therefore, an absurd PPI of about 275. It seems to be discontinued. Meanwhile, they continue to sell a 43-inch monitor with 4K resolution, an inadequate 100 PPI (it would be a great monitor with 6K resolution and, therefore, 160 PPI). At the typical desktop viewing distance of about two feet (24 inches), 150 PPI is supposedly near the limit of human perception.

100-inch 4K TVs now seem to be down to consumer prices ($1500). Especially if used as a digital picture frame and approached closely, it would be great to have more than the 44 PPI resolution that 4K affords. Samsung actually does make an 8K 98-inch TV… for $35,000.

I would love to know who is willing to pay 20X for the resolution bump! Zohran Mamdani, AOC, and Bernie Sanders should perhaps try to get a list of these folks and hit them with a new “fair share” tax.

In other TV news, I decided that our boys should be able to watch their beloved NFL in 4K. Our house is in the middle of an Xfinity-only ghetto and the neighborhood of 1/4-acre lots isn’t dense enough for AT&T or Hotwire/Fision to be willing to invest in burying fiber. Three cable boxes and basic cable TV are bundled into our HOA fee. I traded in two of our Xfinity cable boxes for the latest and greatest XG1v4 version (not regularly stocked at the local Xfinity store, bizarrely, considering that every customer now has a 4K television). After being plugged in for a day, and presumably after an Artificial Intelligence review of my weblog posts, both boxes locked themselves to showing only a single station: South Florida PBS. They wouldn’t respond to the channel up/down and Guide buttons on the remote. I would love to see this implemented on a national basis by President AOC! Imagine how much erroneous anti-Science thinking could be corrected if Americans were restricted to watching only PBS.

Circling back to the main question of the post… Why aren’t 8K televisions littering Costco and Best Buy? “There is no 8K content” doesn’t make sense in light of the fact that the latest smartphones can take still photos in 8K resolution (48 megapixels) and some can capture 8K video (e.g., Samsung, Google Pixel). Also, for progressives who claim to be defending the U.S. Constitution against the hated dictator, the idle screen of a TV could be a display of the sacred document (four pages handwritten or, typically, closer to 20 pages with modern typesetting). Lying down in front of the TV could be the progressive’s pit bull tearing apart a Donald Trump chew toy:

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Peasant vs. Elite electricity rates in New Jersey

by philg

A friend in central New Jersey has a new Tesla Model Y:

I just calculated my effective $/kWh rate on my first month of the EV charging plan. Regular rate is ~$0.24/kWh. After 9pm, I get charged $0.04/kWh. Last month of charging has cost me $10.

My response:

The peasant renter pays 24 cents for electricity at night. The elite homeowner with the new Tesla pays 4 cents, It’s a great country.

Loosely related, a plug-in hybrid at our local strip mall:

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