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American politicians love to talk about deporting illegal aliens (e.g., Bill Clinton in 1995). Yet one of the things that foreigners like to do once in the U.S. is have children. The kids are entitled to U.S. citizenship and, once they turn 21, are entitled to bring their parents back to the U.S. as permanent residents (process explained).

Is the current election debate about immigrants therefore mostly irrelevant? A lot of the stories in the media seem to concern families in which the U.S. citizen children are pretty close to 21 and the parents are undocumented immigrants potentially subject to deportation.

[What about consuming welfare benefits? At least here in Massachusetts, once the parents have green cards they are entitled to free housing through various towns’ public housing programs. They are entitled to free healthcare through Obamacare. Once in the public housing system they can get an Obamaphone (eligibility requirements). So to the extent people are unhappy about paying higher taxes to provide welfare to undocumented immigrants they should be just as unhappy about paying the same higher tax rates to provide welfare to documented immigrants, no?]

Related:

• “US twice tried to deport man killed by police in California” — Maybe not too many people will actually be deported because their native countries will refuse to accept their return. (People who don’t want to be deported could simply ask officials in their original homeland not to cooperate and/or pay a non-cooperation fee.)

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Readers: Who has been to Cuba on one of the newly approved flights? If so, what is it like?

[I’d be more interested in going if the Central Planners in D.C. had decided to favor Boston, but apparently the Great Father in Washington thought that consumers should fly from other cities (see “Boston loses out on commercial flights to Havana”).]

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Most articles on immigration talk about the number of people arriving in the U.S. “Thousands Eager to Vote Won’t Become Citizens in Time” (nytimes) instead looks at the number who are becoming citizens:

In the last year almost 940,000 legal immigrants applied to become citizens, a 23 percent surge over the previous year.

If we want to see what kind of politician will be successful in the U.S. ten years from now should we look at what kinds of politicians are successful today in the countries from which immigrants are arriving? Or are there specific things that American politicians can promise immigrants in order to gain their votes?

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One thing that Americans like to do is express outrage that leading Russian politicians and/or their friends are getting rich. How new is this? “Not very” is the answer from Peter the Great: His Life and World:

Bribery and embezzlement were traditional in Russian public life, and public service was routinely looked upon as a means of gaining private profit. This practice was so accepted that Russian officials were paid little or no salary; it was taken for granted that they would make their living by accepting bribes. In Peter’s time, only a handful of men in government were said to be honest and imbued with the idea of conscientious service to the state—Sheremetev, Repnin, Rumyantsov, Makarov, Osterman and Yaguzhinsky. The others were loyal to Peter personally, but regarded the state as a cow to be milked. As a result, the majority of administrators were motivated less by a sense of service to the state than by desire for private gain, mingled with the effort to escape detection and punishment. Thus, two powerful negative motives, greed and fear, became the predominant features of Peter’s bureaucrats.

Disappointment followed disappointment, not only at the highest levels. Once, Peter elevated an honest lawyer to a judgeship. In this new position, where his decision could become an object of bribery, the new judge became corrupt. When Peter found out, he not only absolved the judge, but doubled his salary to prevent further temptation. At the same time, however, the Tsar promised that if the judge ever again betrayed his trust, he would surely hang. The judge fervently promised that Peter’s faith was justified—and soon afterward accepted another bribe. Peter hanged him.

Peter, a man of simple tastes, was distressed and disgusted by the shameless rapacity of his lieutenants clutching at every opportunity to rob the state. On all sides, he saw bribery, embezzlement and extortion, and the Treasury’s money “flowing from everybody’s sleeves.” Once, after hearing a Senate report listing further corruption, he summoned Yaguzhinsky in a rage and ordered the immediate execution of any official who robbed the state of even enough to pay for a piece of rope. Yaguzhinsky, writing down Peter’s command, lifted his pen and asked, “Has Your Majesty reflected on the consequences of this decree?” “Go ahead and write,” said Peter furiously. “Does Your Majesty wish to live alone in the empire without any subjects?” persevered Yaguzhinsky. “For we all steal. Some take a little, some take a great deal, but all of us take something.” Peter laughed, shook his head sadly and went no further.

Related:

• Were American politics better 50 years ago? (quote from Sam Rayburn: “I have been unable to save much money in my life. I have been in politics, and in politics an honest man does not get rich.”)
• “How Hillary and Bill Clinton Parlayed Decades of Public Service into Vast Wealth” (Fortune)
• “Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation Amid Russian Uranium Deal” (nytimes)

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Today is my birthday (39 again!). I think that I deserve an iPhone 7 Plus as a gift to myself.

The Chipworks teardown shows that the phone contains two Sony camera sensors.

Why no wireless charging, though? Especially given that the only way to use conventional headphones is via the Lightning connector, wouldn’t it have made sense to enable the phone to charge on a bedside pad?

Related:

• my iPhone 7 presentation comments
• DxOMark’s objective review of the iPhone 7 (not Plus) camera, in which it seems that there is no substitute for a larger sensor (even an old Samsung S6 turns in a slightly better performance). See the “image quality versus super-slim phones” section toward the bottom of the article: “Samsung also made an interesting choice by managing to pack into an equally-thin handset an f/1.7 lens and a sensor whose area is 35% larger than the iPhone 7’s sensor. … Samsung chose to use a lens with a wider field-of-view to reduce the thickness of the Galaxy S7 Edge.” (i.e., you can’t have a big sensor, a not-super-wide lens, and a thin phone)

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About 2.5 years ago I wrote about a talk by Charles Isbell, one of my grad school classmates who is now at Georgia Tech, describing an online Master’s in Computer Science program. Today’s New York Times has a story on the same subject. Could it be that a crack in the edifice of high-priced higher education is developing? I wonder if people will look back 50 years from now and say that it was Georgia Tech that brought everything down.

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Two friends and I watched the Trump debate from the Trump hotel in Chicago (one of the best hotels in the U.S.) while savoring the taste of Trump-brand Virginia wine (“pretty good” was the verdict). This was a violation of my normal policy to avoid watching politicians give speeches, but given our location it seemed worth making an exception.

One thing that confused me about the debate was Trump missing seemingly obvious responses to Hillary attacks. For example, Hillary said “you’ve taken business bankruptcy six times. There are a lot of great businesspeople that have never taken bankruptcy once.” Trump responded with “on occasion, four times, we used certain laws that are there. … I take advantage of the laws of the nation because I’m running a company. My obligation right now is to do well for myself, my family, my employees, for my companies. And that’s what I do.”

“I take advantage of the laws” doesn’t seem to me like the best answer. Why not “I’ve done approximately 100 business projects over my lifetime and about 10 of them didn’t work out as I’d hoped. In fact, four of them went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization, which saves jobs for employees at the expense of investors. So I’ve had a 90-percent success rate rather than the 100-percent success rate that you seem to be demanding. If you have had a 100-percent success rate in the projects that you’ve done over your lifetime then I congratulate you. If you don’t think businesses should be able to reorganize under Chapter 11, why didn’t you work to change the law when you were a senator?”

Similarly, when Hillary attacked Trump for not paying every contractor whatever amount the contractor had billed Trump could have said “I have built or renovated X million square feet of space. If you’ve ever owned a 2500-square-foot house you may have have a dispute with a contractor over what was the fair amount to pay for the work done. I wish that we had never had any disputes while building X million square feet, but that’s not realistic.”

Trump could also have pointed out that he wasn’t able to find a friendly commodities broker to stick another customer with losing trades (Hillary’s 100X return on investment). Nor could he get companies and countries seeking Washington access to pay him speaking fees or donate money to a foundation that he controlled. So he had no choice but to take risks in the marketplace. Yet the words “donation” and “foundation” don’t appear in the debate transcript.

He could stick in some jabs against Hillary and Obama, e.g., “It is easy to be successful 100 percent of the time when you are spending tax dollars and making up your own criteria. You spent $1 billion on a web site for Obamacare and now you call it a success. I’m sure the contractors were happy that you paid all of their bills for that project, but if a private business had spent $1 billion on a web site it would be bankrupt.”

[This is not to say that I think Trump is a better candidate than Hillary. As a Massachusetts resident whose ballot is primarily candidates running unopposed (and the races in which there are multiple choices are seldom in doubt), I haven’t educated myself on the relative merits of these two. The point of this posting is just to show that Trump could have done a lot better by practicing standard responses to a handful of predictable attacks.]

[Separately, a bunch of my Facebook friends have complained about me choosing to stay in the Trump hotel. I wonder if they are missing one of the good things about a market economy in terms of breaking down prejudices and barriers among groups. In a market economy you may choose to do business with people whom you wouldn’t ordinarily be friends with or socialize with. This can be the first step toward harmony among groups of disparate people.]

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The New York Times has endorsed Hillary Clinton: editorial. As my ballot here in Massachusetts consists primarily of candidates running unopposed this is not of any personal relevance. One item caught my eye, however:

She helped promote the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an important trade counterweight to China and a key component of the Obama administration’s pivot to Asia. Her election-year reversal on that pact has confused some of her supporters, but her underlying commitment to bolstering trade along with workers’ rights is not in doubt.

How is it possible for a politician to “bolster trade” and simultaneously support “workers’ rights”? Does “workers’ rights” refer to the rights of workers in Vietnam to have full access to the U.S. market?

What do readers think? Is there a way to promote free trade and also shield Americans whom employers don’t value (see unemployed = 21st century draft horse?) from the fact that the world is now full of well-educated, hard-working, and sought-after employees? (or the fact that a company may be better off running leaner rather than bringing in less-qualified American workers) If the answer is “give cash handouts to Americans” I don’t think that qualifies as relating to “workers’ rights” because handouts are usually available to those who don’t work (see Book Review: The Redistribution Recession).

Related:

• New York Times suggests that companies other than the New York Times hire transgender workers
• Why do people who chose not to study science and math opine on the virtues of studying science and math?
• White people at the New York Times bemoan the fate of the black man

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Peter the Great: His Life and World talks about folks on the tails of the human height bell curve:

In Peter’s time, dwarfs and giants were much valued throughout Europe as exotic decorations in royal and noble households. King Frederick William of Prussia had collected most of the giants on the continent, although Peter kept Nicholas Bourgeois, the seven-foot-two-inch giant he had found in Calais. For years, Nicholas stood behind Peter’s table, and in 1720 the Tsar married him to a Finnish giantess in hopes of producing oversized offspring. Peter was disappointed; the couple remained childless. Dwarfs were more evenly distributed. Every Infanta of Spain was accompanied by a court dwarf to underscore whatever beauty she possessed. In Vienna, the Emperor Charles VI kept a famous Jewish dwarf, Jacob Ris, as a kind of ex-officio counselor at the Imperial court. More often, dwarfs were kept as human pets whose antics and droll appearance were even more amusing and diverting than talking parrots or dogs that could stand on their hind legs. In Russia, dwarfs were especially prized. Every great noble wanted a dwarf as a symbol of status or to please his wife, and competition among the nobility for their possession became intense. The birth of a dwarf was considered good luck and dwarfs born as serfs were often granted their freedom. To encourage the largest possible population of dwarfs, Russians took special care to marry them together in hopes that a dwarf couple would produce dwarf children.

It was a lavish gift when a dwarf or, even more, a pair of dwarfs was given away. In 1708, Prince Menshikov, a particularly keen collector of dwarfs, wrote to his wife: “I send you a present of two girls, one of whom is very small and can serve as a parrot. She is more talkative than is usual among such little people and can make you gayer than if she were a real parrot.” In 1716, Menshikov appealed to Peter: “Since one of my daughters possesses a dwarf girl and the other does not, therefore I beg you kindly to ask Her Majesty the Tsaritsa to allow me to take one of the dwarfs which were left after the death of the Tsaritsa Martha.”

More: read Peter the Great: His Life and World

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This is the last week for the Boston Lyric Opera’s production of Carmen. Six of us went on Sunday afternoon and were favorably impressed.

What is the point of a regional opera company? Grab a recording from the 1970s and you can hear better singers. For that matter, what is the point of a national opera company? Grab a video from the 1970s and the singing and sets will be just as good. Why pay $100+ per seat for something that can be streamed for pennies?

The Boston Lyric Opera’s current production, which will be performed a couple more times this week, actually adds a lot compared to what opera companies were doing in the 20th century.

The text of the opera is all about “love” and yet the characters are intimately involved with each other after only the briefest of acquaintances. The BLO asks, via the action on stage, “What if it is really about sex?”

The men on stage are constantly trying to get sex from the women. The women, even those just entering adolescence, are constantly trying to get cash from the men. When the men aren’t getting what they want they resort to physical force. When the women aren’t getting what they want they resort to lies, deception, and cunning.

The BLO reminds the audience that the opera has only two characters that might conceivably be considered virtuous. There is the on-stage Micaela, Don Jose’s fiancé from the village, and the off-stage sainted mother of Don Jose. Everyone else is corrupt, with the men willing to do almost anything for sex and the women willing to do almost anything for money.

Staging is kind of minimal and relies heavily on some classic Mercedes cars that are rolled around by the actors. This is an idea that I haven’t seen before. If you put old-style (non-radial) tires on a car it is quite easy to push, fills up a good portion of the stage, and lets the actors do a bunch of dramatic stuff. Compliments to the BLO and San Francisco Opera (it is a joint production) who thought of this expedient. Certainly the opera set designers of the 20th century were working way too hard.

See also https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmen

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