Philip Greenspun’s Weblog

What the authors of our modern immigration policy believed that it would do

October 29, 2023October 24, 2023 by philg

“The Hard Truth About Immigration” (The Atlantic; paywalled, but included with Apple News subscriptions) has some interesting quotes from the people who authored our current immigration policy. This is not about the asylum policy that has effectively opened the border to anyone who asks, but the official immigration policy that has resulted in most of the population growth in recent decades. From Pew:

The author of the article is a New York Times journalist, i.e., from a team of cheerleaders for open borders. So perhaps we should be skeptical of any claims regarding the benefits of low-skill immigration to natives (see this 2016 Harvard analysis for how elites benefit and the working class gets destroyed financially), but I think that the quotes are likely accurate.

What did the best and brightest of the 1960s predict?

“This bill that we will sign today is not a revolutionary bill,” President Lyndon B. Johnson said as he put his signature on the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, at the base of the Statue of Liberty. “It does not affect the lives of millions.” All that the bill would do, he explained, was repair the flawed criteria for deciding who could enter the country. “This bill says simply that from this day forth those wishing to immigrate to America shall be admitted on the basis of their skills and their close relationship to those already here.”

Edward Kennedy, the 33-year-old senator who had shepherded the bill through the Senate, went even further in promising that its effects would be modest. Some opponents argued that the bill would lead to a large increase in immigration, but those claims were false, Kennedy said. They were “highly emotional, irrational, and with little foundation in fact,” he announced in a Senate hearing, and “out of line with the obligations of responsible citizenship.” Emanuel Celler, the bill’s champion in the House, made the same promises. “Do we appreciably increase our population, as it were, by the passage of this bill?” Celler said. “The answer is emphatically no.”

How wrong were they?

Johnson, Kennedy, Celler and the new law’s other advocates turned out to be entirely wrong about this. The 1965 bill sparked a decades-long immigration wave. As a percentage of the United States population, this modern wave has been similar in size to the immigration wave of the late 1800s and early 1900s. In terms of the sheer number of people moving to a single country, the modern American immigration wave may be the largest in history. The year Johnson signed the immigration bill, 297,000 immigrants legally entered the United States. Two years later, the number reached 362,000. It continued rising in subsequent decades, and by 1989 exceeded 1 million.

How did they get it so wrong? The miracle of chain migration, which Donald Trump tried to end:

The most consequential nonquota entries proved to be family members, including extended family. The law declared that immigrants who were coming to join relatives already in the United States would not count toward the quota. That loophole was not wholly new. But it had not mattered much before 1965, because the overall system was so restrictive. The new law opened the doors to the entire world without solving the nonquota problem.

Didn’t anyone foresee how the U.S. would be transformed?

The critics’ predictions—that annual immigration might soon triple, as one conservative congressman forecast, and eventually surpass 1 million, as another anticipated—ended up being more accurate. The advocates of the 1965 law also incorrectly promised that any increase in immigration would come from white-collar professionals filling specific job shortages. Willard Wirtz, Johnson’s labor secretary, went so far as to tell Congress that the bill offered “complete protection” against increased labor competition. In truth, many arrivals have been blue-collar workers, admitted as extended family, seeking a broad range of jobs.

The Harvard analysis that I cited above was considered hate speech in 2016 when Hillary was running for the Presidency that she so richly deserved. The author of this Atlantic piece presents the same conclusions, with the implication that we’re only figuring this out right now:

The decades when the American masses enjoyed their fastest income gains—in the middle of the 20th century—were also the decades when immigration was near historic lows. The 1965 law ended this era and caused a sharp rise in the number of immigrants entering the workforce. Shortly afterward, incomes for poor and working-class Americans began to stagnate. The 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s were a time of low immigration and rapidly rising mass living standards. The period since the ’70s has been neither.

The post-1965 immigration wave has had both benefits and costs. On the plus side, it has probably accelerated economic growth, mostly by expanding the labor force. With a larger population, the United States has been able to produce more goods and services. Immigration also appears to have benefited many high-earning, native-born professionals. The costs of immigration for these workers have been fairly low because they face relatively little competition from immigrant workers. Few of the highly educated immigrants who come to the U.S. are lawyers or doctors, partly because some professions have created barriers that restrict entry. In medicine, foreign doctors are required to complete a multiyear residency program in the United States, regardless of their prior experience. Professionals who have enough political influence to shape labor-market rules, like doctors, understand that a larger labor pool can reduce incomes.

(When I lived in Maskachusetts and a cardiologist would talk about how the borders should be open, how no human was illegal, how much Trump needed to be hated, etc., I would ask “Should a cardiologist from Switzerland or the UK be allowed to come here and practice?” The answer was inevitably “No.”)

After acknowledging that low-skill immigration makes the working class poor, just as the Harvard nerds said in 2016, the author explains that “racism” is why working class voters oppose open borders:

Racism, of course, is part of this story. In both the United States and Europe, right-wing politicians like Trump have tried to raise fears of immigrants by using xenophobic stereotypes and lies. This racism can be anti-Latino, anti-Asian, anti-Black, or anti-Muslim, depending on the time and place. The tactic has proved distressingly effective at winning working-class voters.

“Effects of Immigration on African-American Employment and Incarceration” (NBER, 2007): For white men, an immigration boost of 10 percent caused their employment rate to fall just 0.7 percentage points; for black men, it fell 2.4 percentage points. … For white men, a 10 percent rise in immigration appeared to cause a 0.1 percentage point increase in the incarceration rate for white men. But for black men, it meant a nearly 1 percentage-point rise. [This study is not cited in the Atlantic article by the NYT writer!]
“A price tag to reject migrants? It’s not the only fight threatening a reform package” (Politico EU): Negotiators are haggling over a per-migrant fee — somewhere between €10,000 and €22,000, according to numerous people involved — to charge a country if it declines to take in asylum seekers. [We are informed that low-skill migrants make a country richer, which means each migrant should be valuable. Instead, the price within Europe is negative and countries will have to pay to unload a migrant.]

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How’s Twitter doing, one year after Muskification?

October 28, 2023October 28, 2023 by philg

It has been a year since Elon Musk took over Twitter. Is that a long enough period to determine which side of the fine line between stupid and clever the acquisition fell on?

After half a year, Elon had cut the number of employees by 80 percent (CNN).

Here’s my 15 minutes of fame on Twitter:

The tweet in context, replying to a tweet from state-sponsored National Public Radio:

Correction: An earlier tweet incorrectly stated there is limited scientific evidence of physical advantage. Existing research shows that higher levels of testosterone do impact athletic performance. But there’s limited research involving elite trans athletes in competition.

There is limited research to show that a team of 65-year-old people, in a rainbow of gender IDs and all under 5'4" in height, would be beaten by the FAU Men's Basketball team. Therefore, we cannot say that the 6'8" tall 20-year-olds would have a physical advantage.
— Philip Greenspun (@PhilipGreenspun) March 27, 2023

The glorious like itself:

Note that Twitter’s software didn’t highlight this to me. Elon Musk was lumped in with “and N others” in the notifications. I probably wouldn’t have noticed my brief moment of Twitter fame if not for the separate notification of the ELON ALERTS tweet.

The financials sound bleak. Despite all of the payroll cuts, the company was losing money as of July 2023 (Reuters).

And, more importantly, how is our democracy doing after a year of being attacked with misinformation? Will the biggest beneficiaries of freedom of speech on Twitter turn out to be supporters of Hamas? In the pre-Musk days, Facebook and Twitter might have prevented the righteous from expressing their hatred of Israel, Jews in general, etc. On the other hand, Facebook doesn’t seem to be censoring anti-Israeli posts. Example:

It is not “misinformation” by Facebook standards to refer to what is happening as “Israel’s war on the people of Palestine” nor to assert that Israel bombed a hospital despite the fact that nobody at Facebook has seen a picture of a bomb crater.

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Gender and pregnancy in the New York Times

October 27, 2023October 24, 2023 by philg

In 2021, gender ID had nothing to do with pregnancy. “The C.D.C. escalates its pleas for pregnant and breastfeeding Americans to get vaccinated against Covid.” (New York Times, September 29, 2021):

In an urgent plea, federal health officials are asking that any American who is pregnant, planning to become pregnant or currently breastfeeding get vaccinated against the coronavirus as soon as possible.

Covid-19 poses a severe risk during pregnancy, when a person’s immune system is tamped down, and raises the risk of stillbirth or another poor outcome, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Twenty-two pregnant people in the United States died of Covid in August, the highest number in a single month since the pandemic started.

About 125,000 pregnant people have tested positive for the virus; 22,000 have been hospitalized, and 161 have died. Hospital data indicates that 97 percent of those who were infected with the virus when they were hospitalized — for illness, or for labor and delivery — were not vaccinated.

Vaccination rates among pregnant people are lower than among the general population. Fewer than one-third were vaccinated before or during their pregnancy, the agency said.

Some data also suggest that pregnant people with Covid-19 are more likely to experience conditions that complicate pregnancy … Clinical trials have a long history of excluding pregnant people from participation, and pregnant people were not included in the coronavirus vaccine trials.

The phrase “pregnant people” occurs 10 times in the article.

Fast forward to this week… “Despite State Bans, Legal Abortions Didn’t Fall Nationwide in Year After Dobbs”:

… increased options and assistance for women who traveled …

The response by abortion providers and activists to the end of Roe v. Wade, it seems, has resulted in more access to abortion in states where it’s still legal — not just for women traveling from states with bans but also for women living there.

Many women, especially in the South, have turned to methods outside the U.S. medical system or carried their pregnancies to term, researchers said. These women are likely to be poor, teenagers or immigrants, and to have young children or jobs that don’t give them time off.

Planned Parenthood Northern California, which operates 17 clinics, began hiring and expanding appointments and telehealth months before Dobbs. It was in part to prepare for an overturn of Roe, and in part a realization that demand for women’s health care had built up during the pandemic, said Dr. Sara Kennedy, its chief operating and medical officer.

More recently, women in states with bans have also been able to order the pills because of shield laws that protect providers that prescribe and mail pills to such patients.

Not a single use of the phrase “pregnant people” to describe those who receive abortion care.

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Tesla road trip from New Jersey to Boston

October 26, 2023October 24, 2023 by philg

Messages to a group chat from a friend whose daughter is a high school athlete:

So my daughter caught a ride today from NJ to Boston with a girl whose father had a Tesla
took six hours to get here
because they had to stop three times to charge his thing
“we went to get sandwiches and the dad still sat in line waiting for the charger”
“we had to drive sideways to some mall to the charger”
“the GPS said 3h50m to get to Boston, it took us six”
“I wanted to be funny so I asked the dad if he would recommend an electric car to us because we have old cars and it’s time to upgrade. He enthusiastically said yes”

This was not a weekend with exceptional travel demand. This was not a trip through a sparsely populated state. This was not a trip on back roads.

I’m still a Tesla fan because it is the only company with Dog Mode (see Car/Kennel from this blog in 2003). The latest Tesla 3 seems to have been restyled slightly. Here’s the 2019 version from Car and Driver:

This the latest version, perhaps available in the U.S. in 2024:

I hate to give up the space and sliding doors of the minivan, though, and I’m not sure how we would charge an electric car. We don’t keep our Honda Odyssey in the garage. We would need HOA approval to install a car charger on the exterior and I am not aware of any chargers that fit into a Spanish Colonial Revival style.

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Meet in Orlando at the big fencing tournament?

October 25, 2023October 24, 2023 by philg

Who would like to meet in Orlando at the big fencing tournament? I expect to be in Orlando on Thursday and Friday (26 and 27). Watching the competition is free. SeaWorld and Disney may also be involved! (Those are neither free nor immune from the inflation that the government assures us does not exist.) A friend’s kids are competing. If you haven’t had your mRNA COVID-19 booster and your flu shot (prevents all flu symptoms except for hospitalization and death), you can get that mistake corrected at the same time:

What if Ron DeSantis comes down from Tallahassee and says something unkind about the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community? Just text “CRISIS” to Dr. Shannon Jolly, the Sr. Manager – Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging for USA Fencing.

Potentially confusing:

USA Fencing encourages everyone to be mindful of others’ pronouns and gender identities. When in doubt, ask politely, and use the pronouns people share with you.

In the first sentence, people are merely “encouraged”. In the second sentence, however, people are ordered to use specified pronouns. Also, what do they mean by “when in doubt”? Are they suggesting that gender identity can be inferred from surface appearance?

Please email philg@mit.edu if you want to get together!

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New York Times explores the low SAT scores of poor children

October 24, 2023October 25, 2023 by philg

“New SAT Data Highlights the Deep Inequality at the Heart of American Education” (New York Times, October 22, 2023):

One-third of the children of the very richest families scored a 1300 or higher, while less than 5 percent of middle-class students did, according to the data, from economists at Opportunity Insights, based at Harvard. Relatively few children in the poorest families scored that high; just one in five took the test at all.

The disparity highlights the inequality at the heart of American education: Starting very early, children from rich and poor families receive vastly different educations, in and out of school, driven by differences in the amount of money and time their parents are able to invest. And in the last five decades, as the country has become more unequal by income, the gap in children’s academic achievement, as measured by test scores throughout schooling, has widened.

What are readers supposed to do with this information? SAT scores are correlated with job performance. By highlighting the dismal scores of a subset of Americans on its front page, is the NYT trying to persuade readers to avoid hiring those who grew up in poverty?

The Newspaper of Truth says that helicopter parenting is the sure path to a smart kid:

Parents have embraced what researchers call intensive parenting — the idea that parents should immerse children in constant learning. Half a century ago, rich and poor parents spent about the same amount of time with their children. Now high-income parents spend more one-on-one time with them, doing activities like reading — what Robert Putnam, the political scientist who wrote “Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis,” calls “‘Goodnight Moon’ time.”

If true, shouldn’t the SAT scores of children from high-income families be much higher today compared to in the 1970s? The NYT cites no evidence to suggest that “Goodnight Moon” time has helped the privileged brats of today compared to 1970s kids who were left with their toys while moms socialized over gin and tonics, read their own books, had sex with neighbors (“One woman who married at 20 started an affair within a year. ”I think it’s your way of asserting that you can still act independently,” said the woman, now in her mid-30’s.” (NYT 1987)), etc. Also, aren’t the poorest parents the ones who have the most time to spend with kids? Consider what used to be called a “welfare family” whose house, health care, food, smartphone, and broadband are all paid for by taxpayers slaving away at boring jobs. The adults in that family don’t need to suffer the indignity of wage labor in order to keep a roof over their head and food on the table. The NYT does not explain what the jobless poor are doing if not spending time with their children.

One explanation that the NYT does not explore in detail: SAT performance is heritable. If rich parents had high SAT scores and the ability to score well on the SAT is heritable, it would make sense that children of the rich also have high SAT scores. One sentence is devoted to this topic: “Although the heritability of cognitive ability appears to play some role on an individual level, there is also a lot of evidence that environment matters.” There is no explanation for why heritability couldn’t play the same role on a neighborhood or city-wide level. If a neighborhood is packed with low-income parents due to everyone with a higher income having moved out, and employers in our modern economy pay for higher cognitive ability, why wouldn’t the average cognitive ability in the low-income neighborhood be low?

In a study of supernerds, it turned out that a higher SAT math score did correlate with higher income. From Insider:

The chart below compares the top (Q4) and bottom quartile (Q1) of the top 1% of performers on the SAT math section. It shows a significant difference, even among those subsets, in performance later in life (participants were surveyed at around age 33). For example, men in Q4 from one study group earn 13 percent more than those in Q1.

Note that “bottom quartile” was not the “bottom quartile” of all Americans who took the SAT, but of the top 1% supernerds. (identified at age 13).

It is surprisingly tough to find a broad study of how SAT scores from, say, 1990, correlate to 2022 income. But it makes sense that there would be a correlation. People who do well on the SAT are good at sitting at a desk, following instructions, being consistent with procedures, etc. These are exactly the capabilities that many high-paying jobs require. Some high-paying jobs, such as physician, have been explicitly limited to those who score well on standardized tests (though that may change; see “Removing the MCAT Could Improve Diversity in Medicine” (Newsweek 2023)).

Circling back to the NYT article, I find it interesting that the possibility of SAT score being heritable was not considered, even for long enough to dismiss it. Let’s also look at the solution:

The solution, researchers say, is addressing achievement gaps much earlier, through things like universal pre-K, increased funding for schools in low-income neighborhoods, and reduced residential segregation.

It could benefit all parents and students, even wealthier ones. Parenting in highly unequal societies is intense and competitive, driven by fear of the increasing risk that children will be worse off than their parents. Parenting in places with less income inequality and more public investment in families is more playful and relaxed, research shows. When the risk of falling is smaller, a college admissions test becomes less fraught.

The “increased funding for schools in low-income neighborhoods” idea seems inconsistent with a note earlier in the article that the typical state is already spending “more for students in low-income schools”. For example, Baltimore, one of the nation’s worst-performing public school systems, was spending over $17,000 per student in pre-Biden money (Fox), above the state average. Was the money effective? “At 13 Baltimore City high schools, zero students tested proficient on 2023 state math exam” (Fox).

[Note that these per-pupil spending numbers are substantially fraudulent. They don’t count capital costs, which are enormous. When $154 million is spent on a new high school (see https://www.wbaltv.com/article/building-new-lansdowne-high-school/41430553 ), that isn’t “spending”. Nor is the cost of the real estate considered. Baltimore official spending is up to about 22,000 Bidies per year per student, but it would perhaps be over 30,000 Bidies per year if these off-books costs were folded in. https://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/baltimore-city-schools-spending-per-student-2022-enrollment-performance-kirwan-new-york-boston-washington ]

Given that the number of spaces at elite colleges is held fixed while the population expands, I would like to see an explanation for how the rich will “benefit” if their kids are out-competed for elite college admissions by the children of the poor, whose schools have been turbocharged with extra money (on top of the existing extra money mentioned in the article). Why didn’t Asian-Americans realize how much better off they were when Harvard rejected them in favor of non-Asians? (see Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard) Are Jewish families better off now that their kids can’t get into elite schools? (“Harvard has gone from being 25% Jewish in the 1990s and 2000s to under 10% today. … Penn’s Jewish population declined from 26% in 2015 to 17% in 2021”; Tablet)

the personality characteristic of conscientiousness (“substantially heritable”), which is hugely helpful for SAT prep and taking the SAT

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WSJ: “Israel’s war against Hamas”

October 23, 2023October 22, 2023 by philg

Buried in a Wall Street Journal article on what the lockdown champs of the Northeast will be paying for heat this winter…

Israel’s war against Hamas has injected fresh risk into oil markets. Traders have hurried to reposition themselves for a conflict that could embroil oil-rich, Hamas-backer Iran.

The recent fighting is not a battle within the war that the Arabs declared against the Jews in 1948 after rejecting the United Nations partition (background). Nor is the continued fighting part of a new war that was initiated by the elected government of the Palestinians (still popular with residents of Gaza) on October 7, 2023 (two weeks ago and, apparently, already forgotten). The current fighting is a war initiated by Israel for unspecified/unknown reasons. It is entirely “Israel’s war” and anyone who isn’t Israeli is a passive victim of the war.

Maybe CNN can shed some light on why Israel has attacked the mostly peaceful mostly defenseless Islamic Resistance Movement (“Hamas”)? Here’s the front page last night:

Muslims are heroically working in hospitals while Jews attack for no reason.

More from CNN last night, below. Palestinians are “refugees” and “evacuees”. They need “humanitarian relief” because a “complete siege” has been perpetrated by Israel for, apparently, no reason. These are disaster victims and had no role in creating the disaster:

(Separately, if whatever food trucked in isn’t sufficient for the entire population, won’t most or all of it go to those who carry guns and fight the enemy? In any type of wartime shortage situation, don’t soldiers always eat first? Thus, will it be fair to say that President Biden’s humanitarian aid will go directly to soldiers of the Islamic Resistance Movement and Palestinian Islamic Jihad? (also known as “terrorists”, but I reject this label for people fighting on behalf of an elected government))

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Has California succeeded where Tranheuser-Busch and Target failed?

October 22, 2023September 19, 2023 by philg

It’s been more than a month since Governor French Laundry signed a new California bill that revoked the state’s ban on taxpayer-funded travel to the Lands of the Deplorables (26 horrible states).

Hate is now okay, in other words? Not exactly. The new bill says that California taxpayers’ money will be used to eliminate hate in the 26 bad states via advertising: “creates a new public awareness project that will consult with community leaders to promote California’s values of acceptance and inclusion of the LGBTQ+ community across the country” (press release)

The marketing geniuses behind Target and Bud Light famously failed this summer at their stated goals of getting more Americans to embrace the 2SLGBTQQIA+ lifestyle or, at least, celebrate the 2SLGBTQQIA+ lifestyle. The bureaucrats in Sacramento imagined that they will be more successful than the world’s highest-paid advertising experts.

Readers who live in formerly banned states: have you been reached by California’s public awareness project? If you were a hater, were you persuaded to stop hating?

Separately, I’m wondering if the ban revocation was timed to allow California elites to travel (on the taxpayers’ dime) to Austin, Texas for today’s Formula One race. Who’s watching the race on TV or in person? It might be fun to be a Formula One fan here in Florida if the organizers would schedule the Miami race for February or March rather than May (a time when a person should be paid to sit outdoors all afternoon, not pay $2,000 for the experience).

Separately, a Facebook friend in Maskachusetts is an attorney with a passion for Constitutional rights (which is why he continues to reside in a lockdown state?). He recently represented a woman who was attacked and ultimately sued by her wealthy suburban Boston neighbors for thoughtcrime. An excerpt from her lawsuit defense:

[one lawn sign displayed by the defendant] shows the words “PRIDEMONTH” and then the letters on each side of “PRIDEMONTH” fade out, to “PRIDEMONTH” to finally “DEMON” and on the last line, it says “Makes sense now.”

The judge was hostile to the Deplorable lady, and she told the defendant to stop sharing her political views, but ultimately couldn’t find a basis to rule in favor of the plaintiffs.

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On the effectiveness of the Anti-Defamation League

October 21, 2023October 19, 2023 by philg

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) claims expertise in eliminating hatred. When they started, they were experts in getting American haters to love Jews. In their own opinion, at least, they were so good at this that they expanded. Here’s just their civil rights section:

They want to make sure that low-skill Americans have plenty of competition from low-skill immigrants:

ADL fights tirelessly for immigrants and refugees seeking safety and a better life in the U.S. Through legislative advocacy, amicus briefs, and public awareness efforts, we have promoted just and humane immigration and refugee protection policies throughout the decades.

The ADL will make haters realize that #LoveWins:

ADL has long fought in the U.S. and abroad to advance LGBTQ+ equity, encouraging legislation that protects individuals’ rights and providing education resources that make schools, workplaces and communities more welcoming and inclusive.

What have we seen in the past few weeks? Muslim immigrants to the U.S., whose right to settle here was pushed by the ADL, rallying and pointing out that the Islamic Resistance Movement (“Hamas”) is not a terrorist organization, but the Israeli government and all supporters of Israel are (video). Twitter and Facebook jammed with anti-Israel content. A young woman in a hijab in NYC and her friend giving the finger to a billboard truck advocating for the return of hostages held by Hamas (video). Depending on your political point of view, you might agree with these anti-Israel positions, but I think that everyone can agree this is not what the ADL was trying to accomplish.

Maybe the ADL could be more effective with people if they would spend more time soaking up the ADL message? From the New York Post:

One of the NYU students who brazenly ripped down posters of Israeli hostages is an activist “extremely passionate about fighting racial profiling” who blamed her behavior on misplaced anger.

Yazmeen Deyhimi — a junior at the top university who once worked for the Anti-Defamation League — admitted to tearing apart banners that were plastered outside NYU’s Tisch Hall, in a shameless act that was caught on video.

“I have found it increasingly difficult to know my place as a biracial brown woman, especially during these highly volatile times,” she wrote.

According to her LinkedIn profile, Deyhimi is an advocate against Muslim bigotry and spent a summer working with the ADL as a CSC education intern when she was just 15 years old.

“After review, we can confirm that one of the participants was part of an ADL high school level summer internship in 2019,” a spokesperson for the organization told The Post.

The ADL had a whole summer to convince this young person that Jews are lovable!

If the ADL has failed spectacularly at its original mission, at least the Ministry of Truth is working effectively there:

The ADL has since taken down a blog post announcing the Long Island native as one of the 12 student leaders joining the program, describing Deyhimi as “extremely passionate about fighting racial profiling and championing gender equality.”

Does supporting Hamas impair a migrant’s claim for asylum in the U.S.? Not according to the Deplorables at the Daily Wire… “The U.S. Gov’t Hired A Pro-Hamas PLO Spokeswoman To Handle Asylum Claims”:

Speaking of Deplorable, what does Ron DeSantis have to say about the ADL’s passions for Islamic immigration and using propaganda to eliminate hatred? From Twitter:

No Gaza refugees, period.

It’s a fools errand to think we can separate a terrorist from a ‘freedom lover’ in Gaza.

the College Terror List, which was disappeared by the Ministries of Truth at Google, archive.org, DuckDuckGo, and all of the other righteous folks. This page contains various statements by elite college students who don’t seem to have been reached by the ADL’s message about the wonderfulness of Jews. Harvard: “We … hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence”; Stanford: “while Palestinian resistance is legal under international law, Israel’s breathtakingly violent actions are illegal collective punishment under the Geneva Convention”; Swarthmore: “Since early Saturday morning, Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank have valiantly confronted the imperial apparatus that has constricted their livelihoods…”; George Mason: “Every Palestinian is a civilian even if they hold arms. A settler is an aggressor, a soldier, and an occupier even if they are lounging on our occupied beaches.” (preserved by Ghostarchive; the only way to find it is with the Kagi search engine (see below))

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New Yorkers write about the Florida homeowners insurance market disaster… using 100-year-old wooden houses as a typical example

October 20, 2023October 17, 2023 by philg

Just as the weather here in Palm Beach County turned perfect (dry and highs of 75-80), friends in Maskachusetts who’ve been talking about escape send me an article from the Manhattan-based Wall Street Journal, “Home Insurance Is So High in This Florida Town, Residents Are Leaving”:

James and Laura Molinari left Chicago for a two-story stucco home in this city’s historic Flamingo Park neighborhood. The four-bedroom house was a short bridge away from Palm Beach island and walking distance to downtown West Palm Beach.

Then the renewal for his home insurance arrived. The new rate for the year starting in September was around $121,000—more than seven times what the Molinaris said they paid last year, and more than 13 times what they paid when the family moved to Florida in 2019.

While they found a better rate from another insurer, at about $33,000 it is still nearly double what they paid last year. The family this month listed the home for sale with an asking price of nearly $3.5 million after determining that insurance costs made staying there too expensive. Others in Flamingo Park told The Wall Street Journal they are drawing the same conclusion.

Paying nearly 1% of the house’s value for insurance is pretty expensive. But… “historic” in Florida? Here’s a house that I found on Zillow in that neighborhood:

It’s almost 100 years old. Is it made from concrete blocks and steel rebar like the typical reasonably new house in Florida? No. It’s a wood structure (“frame”):

So the New York-based journalists write about a 100-year-old neighborhood with the implication that this is typical for Florida. In fact, any house built after Hurricane Andrew (1992; made landfall south of Miami as a Category 5 storm) is likely well-defended against hurricanes. State Farm won’t write new policies on houses built before 2003, presumably due to the fact that a post-Andrew building code took effect statewide in 2002 (a similar code took effect just two years after Andrew in South Florida).