Should Texas sell sponsorship rights for buses that transport asylum-seekers to sanctuary cities?

by philg

Here are a couple of neon sculptures by Eric Adams, the artist who now serves as New York City mayor, in the lobby of the Whitney museum, just above the ticket desk ($25 for an adult, though free for SNAP/EBT beneficiaries):

Our sanctuary cities are somewhat undersupplied with migrants due to a shortage of buses from the border in Texas. A neighbor who is a refugee from Gavin Newsom’s lockdowns said that he wanted to sponsor a bus, but there is no opportunity for a private citizen to do so. Is Texas leaving a lot of sponsorship money on the table? What would the donor get? His/her/zir/their name on the side of the bus? (in a digital sign so that a different sponsor could be recognized on subsequent trips) A photograph of the happy New Americans disembarking in New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago, San Francisco, or some other sanctuary city?

You might think that Democrats are being left out of this offer, but migrants can also be transported with love, not just with hate by Deplorable haters. Example… “Colorado is busing migrants to New York and other major cities” (Axios):

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis is busing migrants who recently arrived in Denver from the southern U.S. border to other major cities. The Democratic governor’s move echoes actions by Republican governors in Texas and Florida that were labeled callous and cruel.

See also “Why New York City Is Buying Bus Tickets for Migrants Headed to Canada” (NYT, Feb 2023):

New York officials, who once condemned Texas leaders for busing migrants from the southern border, calling the treatment inhumane, are buying bus tickets for newcomers who want to go north and seek asylum in Canada.

New York City has been buying tickets for migrants who want to go to other cities to connect with family or friends for months, officials noted.

Roxham Road, where Canadian immigration officials greet migrants in a prefabricated barn, is a popular informal entry point for those who don’t want to be subjected to a law that requires asylum seekers to request protection in the first safe country they arrive in.

(Only one month later, the Canadians decided that they did not want to benefit from this influx of migrants. “U.S. and Canada Reach an Agreement on Diverting Asylum Seekers” (NYT, March 2023): “The deal … will allow Canada to turn back immigrants at Roxham Road”)

Readers: Would you sponsor a bus for migrants to use to reach their dream city? If so, to which city would you offer transportation and how much would you be willing to pay for the honor of sponsorship? What would you want for recognition?

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Is immigration killing native-born Americans via overcrowding in health care?

by philg

A friend’s daughter in NYC is soon to turn a disposable fetus into a precious baby. This transformation will cost her $5,000 out of pocket. She couldn’t find an ob-gyn in Manhattan without agreeing to the “concierge” plan and says that this is the direction of primary care in the city. In Maskachusetts it was difficult to find a primary care physician who was taking new patients and waiting times to see specialists were generally measured in months if not seasons. Florida is, if anything, even more stressed. Americans fleeing lockdowns have been disproportionately not doctors. A doctor who wanted to escape Andrew Cuomo would have had to get licensed in Florida, which is a complex process, and then build a practice here. Compare to a laptop-based worker who could pick up and move over a weekend.

Can waiting a few months to see a doctor result in death? Yes, concludes “Delayed Access to Health Care and Mortality” (2007):

Veterans who visited a VA medical center with facility-level wait times of 31 days or more had significantly higher odds of mortality (odds ratio = 1.21,p = 0.027) compared with veterans who visited a VA medical center with facility-level wait times of < 31 days.

“The U.S. Has Fewer Physicians and Hospital Beds Per Capita Than Italy and Other Countries Overwhelmed by COVID-19” (KFF, 2020) includes a chart with 2017 data:

Our World in Data shows that there was an upward trend from 1960 to 2004, as the U.S. became wealthier and medicine more advanced, but now we’re in a downward trend as our population expands via low-skill immigration.

Maybe the shortage of docs can be addressed via using non-doctors to do what doctors in Switzerland, Germany, and Sweden do? The trade union for docs says this doesn’t work… “3-year study of NPs in the ED: Worse outcomes, higher costs” (AMA):

Nurse practitioners (NPs) delivering emergency care without physician supervision or collaboration in the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) increase lengths of stay by 11% and raise 30-day preventable hospitalizations by 20% compared with emergency physicians, says a working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Overall, the study shows that NPs increase the cost of ED care by 7%, or about $66 per patient. Increasing the number of NPs on duty to decrease wait times raised total health care spending by 15%, or $238 per case—not including the cost of additional NP salaries. In all, assigning 25% of emergency cases to NPs results in net costs of $74 million annually for the VHA.

They don’t bother to try to figure out whether the patients lived or died or what quality of life they might have experienced, but it seems safe to say that “preventable hospitalizations” are not beneficial.

Rich people can buy their way out of waiting to see primary care docs and, perhaps, a handful of specialists who are affiliated (or bribed?) by a concierge practice. A 50ish friend in Boston pays $8,000/year for this. But even the rich may experience a long wait if they need to see a specialist outside of their concierge network.

There have been some recent articles decrying a decline in U.S. life expectancy (example from the public health folks at Harvard, taking a rare break from their mask and COVID-19 vaccine advocacy). But none mention population growth combined with relative stagnation in the number of physicians.

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Why won’t Americans move away from states that they characterize as oppressive?

by philg

“NAACP Issues Travel Advisory in Florida” (NAACP):

the NAACP Board of Directors issued a formal travel advisory for the state of Florida. The travel advisory comes in direct response to Governor Ron DeSantis’ aggressive attempts to erase Black history and to restrict diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in Florida schools.

The formal travel notice states, “Florida is openly hostile toward African Americans, people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals. Before traveling to Florida, please understand that the state of Florida devalues and marginalizes the contributions of, and the challenges faced by African Americans and other communities of color.”

“Let me be clear – failing to teach an accurate representation of the horrors and inequalities that Black Americans have faced and continue to face is a disservice to students and a dereliction of duty to all,” said NAACP President & CEO Derrick Johnson. “Under the leadership of Governor Desantis, the state of Florida has become hostile to Black Americans and in direct conflict with the democratic ideals that our union was founded upon. He should know that democracy will prevail because its defenders are prepared to stand up and fight. We’re not backing down, and we encourage our allies to join us in the battle for the soul of our nation.”

According to the NAACP Board members, Florida has either no soul or an evil soul. Democracy might “prevail” in the future, which implies that right now there is no democracy in Florida. Therefore, nobody should risk spending a week at Disney World or on the Miami Beach sand.

Where do the successful intelligent people who issued this advisory choose to live? Florida. The Board of Directors page lists Leon W. Russell as the Chair. Mr. Russell’s Twitter profile says that he chooses to live in Tampa, Florida. The page shows that at least some other Board members also choose to live in Florida:

In other words, the folks who said that Florida is too dangerous to visit for even a few days due to its missing and/or defective soul and its lack of democracy choose to live in Florida all-year every-year. There is no income or estate tax in Florida, but the folks who issued this warning pay sales tax to support the tyranny of Ron DeSantis (whose name they do not capitalize properly!) every time that they shop at Publix. If they keep sending money to the tyrant, shouldn’t he infer that they actually support whatever it is that he is doing?

The Republicans I know who live in Democrat-run states don’t say that they are suffering from “fascism”, but they still say that they disagree with lockdowns, school closures, mask orders, vaccine papers checks, race-based government programs, gender reassignment surgery for teenagers, etc. When I suggested to a pilot friend in Maskachusetts that he move to a state where the government would use his tax money to do things that he supports, he said that he wants to but that his wife wants to “stay and fight”. He pays about $400,000 per year in state/local taxes. I suggested that he give me $400k/year and that I would do a bunch of stuff that he disagrees with in exchange. His wife can trash talk me on Facebook and Twitter to her heart’s content. Does he think that I will be motivated to change while the $400k checks continue to roll in?

“Stay and fight” makes sense to me if the dispute is over the appropriate level of school funding or whether zoning laws should be relaxed to allow construction of massive apartment buildings to accommodate some of the 100+ million additional Americans who are going to be living here due to our mostly-open-borders immigration policy. But “stay and fight” wouldn’t have made sense against a totalitarian 20th century government. Nobody who stayed to fight Stalin or Mao had any significant positive impact. Yet it is precisely this kind of totalitarianism that Florida Democrats say they are experiencing. Some examples from the tyrant’s opponent in the 2022 general election:

After what he called “fascism” won by a landslide, did he move to a fascism-free state? I haven’t found any media stories suggesting that Crist did anything to free himself. He’s quietly living in Florida, apparently, paying taxes to keep fascism going. (See Will Democrats have to move if Republicans win in their states? for some more examples.)

Marijuana entrepreneur-partnered Nikki Fried is running the Florida Democrats right now. She chooses to live in Florida, where she says that “fascism” prevails (since we must work to “end fascism”):

Why don’t we see Democrats fleeing fascism in significant numbers? There should be plenty of room right now in the fascism-free state of New York: “NYC lost 5.3% of its population — nearly a half-million people — since COVID, with most heading South” (New York Post, May 18, 2023).

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Add some Martin Amis to your summer reading list?

by philg

One of our greatest modern writers, Martin Amis, died recently (New York Times). Cancer got him at age 73. I didn’t know this until I saw his obituary, but he was our neighbor here in Palm Beach County, Florida.

I wrote about one of his books here: Lionel Asbo by Martin Amis. Excerpt:

“DILFs, Des. All divorcees. The lot of them! You know how they do it? First they— first they get theyselves hitched to some old banker for ten minutes. Then they independent for life! And oh, they in gorgeous nick, Des. Superb. And I said to her, I said to this DILF, How old are you anyway? And guess what she said.” “What.”“Thirty-seven! Which means she’s probably forty-three! Think. She’s almost Gran’s age— and there’s not a mark on her. Pampered all they lives, they are. Beauty treatments . Massage. Yoga.”

My notes on one of Amis’s most famous books, The Information:

MIT kids graduate with a profound sense that the world is and should be a meritocracy. There is always then that horrible moment when they are forced to confront the fact that the best things in life go to the ass-kissers and incompetents with big PR budgets. This book is for them. It is about Richard Tull, a brilliant writer of modern fiction. His books are so great that that they are not only unreadable but actually make readers too ill to finish. He starves while watching his friend Gwyn Barry make millions writing tripe with a sentimental appeal.

(I wrote the above 20 years ago and I don’t think the first sentence is true anymore. Young Americans are constantly reminded that there is nothing meritocratic about U.S. society, in which success is primarily based on privilege. Martin Amis, the famous writer son of famous writer Kingsley Amis, actually reinforces this point (unless we think that writing ability is heritable.))

Wikipedia on Martin Amis:

In June 2008, Amis endorsed the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama, stating that “The reason I hope for Obama is that he alone has the chance to reposition America’s image in the world”. … Blaming a “deep irrationality of the American people” for the apparent narrow gap between the candidates, Amis claimed that the Republicans had swung so far to the right that former President Reagan would be considered a “pariah” by the present party

Amis was interviewed by The Times Magazine in 2006, the day after the 2006 transatlantic aircraft plot came to light, about community relations in Britain and the “threat” from Muslims, where he was quoted as saying: “What can we do to raise the price of them doing this? There’s a definite urge – don’t you have it? – to say, ‘The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order.’ What sort of suffering? Not letting them travel. Deportation – further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they’re from the Middle East or from Pakistan… Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community and they start getting tough with their children…It’s a huge dereliction on their part”.

It is unclear when, exactly, Martin Amis moved to Lake Worth, Florida (as we are in the middle of Pride Month, it is important to note that this is the site for Palm Beach Pride, “a two-day festival that celebrates the LGBTQ community, equality and respect in a family friendly environment”).

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Joe Biden takes Idi Amin’s advice to President Nixon?

by philg

How’s the “show me the man and I’ll show you the crime” prosecution of Donald Trump going? I’ve been out in the Mountain West and can’t keep up with all of the legal attacks.

I’m reminded of my 2007 blog post, Idi Amin’s advice to Richard Nixon:

[Idi] Amin sent a letter to Richard Nixon during the Watergate crisis: “When the stability of a nation is in danger, the only solution is, unfortunately, to imprison the leaders of the opposition.”

Democrats knew that Donald Trump deserved to be in prison at least as far back as 2016. Has anything new emerged that is convincing to Republicans or is it still a question of a former president’s right to keep his/her/zir/their papers?

Speaking of insurrectionists, here’s a suspicious character who may have participated in the January 6 insurrection… a golden retriever in Kanab, Utah exercising his Second Amendment rights (carrying bullets in his collar):

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FAA certifies a new piston engine

by philg

An event with slightly lower probability than the sun falling out of the sky… “DELTAHAWK’S JET-FUELED PISTON ENGINE RECEIVES FAA CERTIFICATION”:

Featuring an inverted-V engine block, turbocharging and supercharging, mechanical fuel injection, liquid cooling, direct drive, and 40% fewer moving parts than other engines in its category, the new DeltaHawk engine is a clean-sheet design secured by multiple patents.

In addition, the engine’s slimmer shape and smaller size allows for more aerodynamic cowling designs and requires less space – all while providing extraordinary performance, ease of operation, and unmatched reliability. The engine is environmentally friendly, as well, thanks to its ability to burn both Jet-A and sustainable aviation jet fuels.

The company says that it has tested the engine in a Cirrus SR20!

And it cost $80 million. Wikipedia says that 1,459 SR20s were built through 2019. Let’s assume that 2,000 will be built total. If we were to spread the $80 million development cost over the most successful new airframe in this horsepower category, it would come out to $40,000 per engine (maybe Cirrus is paying $50,000 for the 215 hp Lycoming 4-cylinder that is in the latest and greatest G6 model (vibrates like a banshee compared to the older 6-cylinder Continental 200 hp design)).

How is this engine different from a car diesel engine? It supposedly can still run even after a total electrical system failure, which is what could happen following a lightning strike.

The claim is 40 percent better fuel-efficiency than 100LL engines, so that would roughly restore light aircraft to the payload-range profiles that they had in the 1950s-1970s before Americans got fat.

I wonder how long it will be before we see one in a certified factory-new airplane for carrying humans. Rumor has it they’re trying to sell this for at least 100,000 Bidies per engine, which is somewhat more than the legacy Continental and Lycoming similar-horsepower models. For a measure of inflation in our inflation-free society, note that a magnificent 6-seat Bonanza that include a beefier engine than this DeltaHawk cost only $8,000 when introduced in 1968. Official government CPI says that $8,000 from 1968 is equivalent to purchasing power today of $72,000. But $72,000 is roughly the cost of the (still-available) 285 hp Continental engine that was in the factory-new 1968 Bonanza. The equivalent in purchasing power bought an airframe, six seats, avionics, engine, propeller, landing gear, etc., back then. Today it pays for only the engine.

Europeans hate Avgas so I am going to guess that this more-expensive-that-proven-old-tech DeltaHawk engine appears first on a European plane from one of the innovation-loving companies, e.g., Diamond of Austria or Pipistrel of Slovenia (bought by Textron in 2022). Four years is an eternity in the non-aviation world, so 2027 seems like a safe guess if this engine is an improvement. However, DeltaHawk itself provides an example of Aviation Time. The company was founded in 1996 (Wikipedia) and their product has finally limped out the door… 27 years later. How about 2029 then?

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Harvard man killed by ChatGPT?

by philg

“Ted Kaczynski, ‘Unabomber’ Who Attacked Modern Life, Dies at 81” (New York Times):

After his arrest, Mr. Kaczynski’s extraordinary biography emerged. He had scored 167 on an I.Q. test as a boy and entered Harvard at 16. In graduate school, at the University of Michigan, he worked in a field of mathematics so esoteric that a member of his dissertation committee estimated that only 10 or 12 people in the country understood it. By 25, he was an assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

Mr. Kaczynski’s manifesto — published jointly by The New York Times and The Washington Post in 1995 under the threat of continued violence — argued that damage to the environment and the alienating effects of technology were so heinous that the social and industrial underpinnings of modern life should be destroyed.

Is it fair to say that this Harvard graduate predicted the destructive effects of social media? The NYT and Joe Biden certainly agree with Ted K regarding “damage to the environment”. Do we think it is a coincidence that he dies just a few months after ChatGPT went live?

Separately, this part of the NYT article makes me sad:

The home had two windows set on high; they caught light but kept the home hidden. Agents could not see inside. On April 3, 1996, one of them shouted that a forest ranger needed help. A thin, shaggy man emerged from the cabin. He was grabbed from both sides.

I do not think that our government should take advantage of Americans’ instincts to help each other in order to make arrests.

From the full manifesto:

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Long term effects of taking away $5-10,000 from every upper middle class family with a female child?

by philg

We are informed that the Future is Female. In “The Future is Female”: Women’s March in Boston 2018, for example, the future governor of Maskachusetts is described as having worn a shirt reading “The Future is Female”. Such T-shirts may be found at retailers in MA: All genders are welcome, but the future belongs to only one?

What if a group of evil people identifying with one of the 73 non-female genders decided to oppress those identifying as “female” by taking away $5,000 to $10,000 from every reasonably successful family with a daughter? Would Americans resist this attempt to take away important capital that could otherwise be used to give a young woman an education, startup capital, travel experiences, etc.?

Here’s what StubHub was offering, on May 20, for seats at the Taylor Swift tonight in Detroit, Michigan:

You can buy a house in Detroit for the cost of two tickets (StubHub fees are on top of these quoted rates?) and associated concert expenses.

What will be the long-term effects of this brilliant mining out of families with female children? Wikipedia says that Taylor Swift is childless and “an advocate for … women’s empowerment”. But how are women empowered if, as girls, their college fund is looted of $10,000+ so that they can hear some songs that are regularly played for free on the radio?

(A white male California Democrat posted “The Numbers Are In on How Biden-Era Funding Is Skewing Scientific Research Ever-Wokeward” to Facebook (a professor, he likes everything about the Democrats except that white male professors have the lowest priority for getting research money!). An Italian immigrant scientist contributed to the discussion, which led to a Democrat responding with “for someone coming from a country that has only achieved any level of relevance in recent times by succumbing to fascism, I guess there is some cold comfort and making fun of liberal ideals that psychologically incapable of internalizing.” My response to this attack on Italy:

If you value the ability to listen to Taylor Swift in your Prius, shouldn’t you at least celebrate Italian radio pioneer Guglielma Maria Marconi? She did her work decades before Mussolini came to power. Unlike 2SLGBTQQIA+ community member Nikola Tesla, who attempted long-distance transmission by dumping power into the ground (literally), Ms. Marconi followed Katherine Clerk Maxwell’s equations and Henrietta Hertz.

It is fair to say that Taylor Swift is my touchstone!)

Loosely related, “The Future is Female” art exhibit in Bentonville, Arkansas, January 2019, complete with $38 T-shirts:

Related:

  • the future of the Biden family, Navy Joan, lives in Arkansas and yields $480,000/year tax-free for her plaintiff mom (New York Post) after an initial payment of $2.5 million (i.e., more than $10 million in spending power over 18 years) and is one of a handful of Americans who can afford both a Taylor Swift concert ticket and a college education (though her mom, Lunden Roberts, has demonstrated that there are better ways for an American to earn money than by going to college and working W-2)

Update at 7:24 pm Eastern:

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Filth in New York City

by philg

Canadian wildfire smoke has reached Manhattan, thus resulting in media hysteria regarding what you might think was a dog-bites-man story (filth in New York City).

As measured by METARs at LaGuardia, this was the worst official report:

KLGA 071908Z 31018G22KT 1SM R04/P6000FT HZ FU BKN028 OVC035 19/04

Translation: 7th of month; 3:08 pm; wind from NW at 18 knots gusting 22; 1 mile of visibility (6000’ looking down runway 4); haze and smoke; broken layer of clouds 2,800’ above the airport, overcast 3,500’ above; temperature 19C; dewpoint 4C.

For reference, unless there is fog or exceptionally heavy rain, visibility is usually at least 3 miles.

Note that instrument flying conditions (less than 3 miles of visibility) are often caused by smoke in Alaska and northwest Canada.

From an FAA weather handbook:

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Why is Florida chartering planes rather than buses to help migrants reach the promised land of California?

by philg

“Florida arranged migrant flights to California, where officials are considering legal action” (CBS):

Florida officials confirmed Tuesday that the state arranged the chartered flights that took migrants to Sacramento on Monday and last Friday, generating outrage from California authorities.

The statement from the Florida Division of Emergency Management came a day after California’s attorney general said he was considering legal action over the flights, which he said could amount to “state-sanctioned kidnapping.”

The Florida Division of Emergency Management said in the statement that the state’s relocation program was voluntary, noting that there was verbal and written consent indicating the migrants wanted to go to California.

With thousands of migrants streaming over the border daily and California offering sanctuary, including a full array of welfare benefits, wouldn’t it be more sensible for Florida to charter buses rather than airplanes?

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