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SCOTT ADAMS: Income Inequality:

What happened is that candidate Trump persuaded us that immigration was a big problem. And in so doing, he pushed the issue of income inequality off the page. Do you remember the last time you saw CNN obsessing about income inequality? I thought it was the public’s biggest issue two years ago. Did it just sort of stop being one?

No, President Trump is in our heads. He told us what our priorities were and we accepted it, even if we hated his plans. Some people think is it a priority to get tougher on immigration, some think the opposite. But we all agree the issue is important.

If you had asked me in 2014 to list my country’s top 10 problems, immigration would not have been on the list. Now it’s usually at the top of the news. Trump did that. And by doing it he showed us a level of leadership that I have never seen in my lifetime. Even if you don’t like where he is leading us.

But here’s the interesting part. If you want to address income inequality, what is one of the best ways to do it? Answer: Limit immigration. That means higher wages for American citizens and lower profits for the top 1% who want cheap labor.

I saw a factoid yesterday that illegal immigration from Mexico is way down lately, presumably in anticipation of the Trump administration being tough. That’s an indicator of rising wages to come. I suppose the top 1% can pass along the higher costs to some extent. But the jobless guy who gets a job won’t be too unhappy that his food is 10% more expensive. He still comes out ahead. And if the employer gets a Trump tax cut, she doesn’t need to pass along as much of the higher wage expense to consumers.

Speaking of jobs, if Trump’s job-creation hype evolves from anecdotal to real, that’s a great way to reduce income inequality too. As I have often said, economies run on psychology, and Trump is a master of psychology. He proved that already by injecting enough optimism into the system that it goosed the stock market, and business confidence in general. That should translate into more investments and a better economy.

The Trump administration also recently tightened their connection to historically black colleges to see how they can help. The best way to reduce income inequality is to address the hardest cases first, to get the most bang for the buck. And the African-American community is coming from the deepest hole. We see no results there yet, but the move makes sense from the perspective of addressing income inequality.

Well, it’s not how Bernie Sanders would do it. Which means it has a chance of working.

SOME THOUGHTS ON VAGINAL MORAL COMPASSES.

Imagine if a man said his moral compass was his penis.

NO, IT’S BECAUSE THEIR INSTITUTIONS HAVE BEEN TAKEN OVER BY CULTURAL ENEMIES: Americans have lost faith in institutions. That’s not because of Trump or ‘fake news.’

I REISSUED ANOTHER BOOK: Many years ago, I was writing the Musketeer’s Mystery series.  This series, inexplicably (!) didn’t survive some very odd marketing choices, such as having the first book out of print when the second and third came out, or having the cover of the third virtually identical to the first.  It survived even worse having the title logic broken and the fourth book having “the Musketeer’s” removed from the title.  (I have since reissued the series, and they’re doing fine even though book six is way overdue.)

The publisher, in a fit of the same brilliance responsible for the rousing commercial success of the first series, asked me to come up with a “craft” mystery proposal, in place of the sixth musketeer book.

This was somewhat of a quandary, since at the time, with two small children, my only craft was writing.  And though craft mysteries — what replaced cozies when the publishers arbitrarily declared them dead — were not my primary mystery reading, I’d read a few.  I know they were supposed to involve craft shows and the like, none of which I knew anything about.

In despair I turned to the only craft I’d really done since getting married: rehabilitating and refinishing furniture (because mathematician and writer money does not stretch that far.)  The result was Dipped Stripped and Dead, QUITE the silliest book I ever wrote.

And it sold.  Boy did it sell.  So I signed a contract for two more books.  Then when renewal came around I set the price so high they wouldn’t buy anymore, and waited for rights to revert.  (By then indie publishing was a thing, and I knew it.)

They finally have, and I just re-released the second book, A French Polished Murder. 

In a couple of weeks I’ll release the third, and then the fourth should be ready to go.  Again, these are VERY silly books.  But maybe silly is what we need just now.  (BTW the books are under Elise Hyatt, as the publishing house explained they wanted a “less ethnic” name than… Sarah A. Hoyt.  It is reasoning like this on the part of traditional publishing that made indie the success it is!)  And yes, there will be trade paperback versions in a couple of weeks.

THE WAR AGAINST THE PEOPLE’S LEGITIMATE CHOICE: The War Against Trump.

PITZER COLLEGE SHAMED: For not teaching their students anything about real history or culture, only Marxist catch phrases.  (For those following along at home, hoop hearings have existed in every human culture going back way into pre-history.)  #Stupidityappropriation

BECAUSE IT WAS MARXIST WOMEN’S DAY:It’s Women’s Day, so why am I at work?

IS YOUR FAVORITE INSTITUTION JUST A HUSK OF ITS FORMER SELF? Marxism: the Bug Wearing an Edgar Suit

SURE, BUT IT’S NOT AS IF THEY’RE A REPUTABLE NEWSPAPER:Did the New York Times already tell us Trump was ‘wiretapped’?

WHY NOT, SINCE THEY’LL NEVER PAY THEM BACK, ANYWAY:College kids are using student loans for wild spring break trips.

HIS FAMILIARITY WITH A CHICKEN’S END PRODUCT EXPLAINS WHY HE UNDERSTANDS HOLLYWOOD:The Surprising Lessons My Family Learned from Raising Chickens.

NEW BOOK FROM PAM UPHOFF:No Confidence.

MINGLING THE TWO COULD ONLY HURT BASEBALL:Baseball Is Largely Free of Politics. Let’s Keep It That Way.

IF YOU KEEP HEARING DOG WHISTLES NO ONE ELSE HEARS: Maybe you’re the dog? King Kong is racist, according to The Huffington Post’s Zeba Blay.

PT BOAT RESURRECTION: PT-305 revives and thrives. Cool.

ARE YOU TIRED OF WINNING YET? U.S. Consumer Comfort Just Reached Its Highest Level in a Decade.

On the one hand, such surges usually portend a crash. On the other hand they usually come after long, hot recoveries, and we certainly haven’t had one of those.

AT AMAZON, deals on Musical Instruments and Recording Gear.

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LIFE IN A FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED AMERICA: “The Reality Is, Half Of Americans Can’t Afford To Write A $500 Check.”

WAIT, I THOUGHT TRUMP WAS PUTIN’S STOOGE: Michael Totten: Brace Yourself for a New Cold War.

American-Russian relations are about to take a sharp turn for the worse.

President Donald Trump, like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton before him, hoped to “reset” Washington’s dismal relationship with Moscow, but that was always the longest of long shots. Vladimir Putin’s ideology and perceived national interests require the West as an enemy, and no matter how many times Trump tweets that he respects Putin’s “strength” and says it would be “a good thing” if we could get along with Russia and unite against ISIS, neither the Kremlin nor permanent Washington will allow it.

To be sure, Russians initially swooned when Trump beat Clinton in the election last November. . . .

That’s over now.

Read the whole thing.

THE PASSWORD IS GLEICHSCHALTUNG. Claim: FBI Used Best Buy’s Geek Squad To Increase Secret Public Surveillance.

Earlier: Members of Best Buy’s Geek Squad passed incriminating evidence to the law enforcement agency and received payments from agents.

A paranoid schizophrenic is a guy who’s just found out what’s going on, to coin a phrase.

(Classical allusion in headline.)

FASTER, PLEASE: Sessions Has Asked Remaining Obama-Appointed U.S. Attorneys to Resign.

Naturally, the left dials the hissy-fit up to 11 in response, despite this being SOP when a new administration comes into power (“In 1993, the Clinton administration fired all 93 United States attorneys on the same day,” those crazy right-wing Rethuglicans at the New York Times notes). But then, what other response do they have?

JIHADI MERGER:

Just so you’ll know:

Three jihadist groups operating in the Sahel region of Africa have merged to form one single organisation, Mauritania’s private news agency ANI said Thursday, citing a video distributed by the Islamists.

Among the groups joining the merger south of the Sahara are Mali’s Al Qaeda-linked Ansar Dine and Al-Murabitoun, led by Algerian extremist Mokhtar Belmokhtar.

The new movement will operate under the name the Group to Support Islam and Muslims, and will be led by Ansar Dine’s Iyag Ag Ghaly, ANI said, adding that it had received the video Wednesday.

The Macina Brigades group, active in central Mali, has also joined the merger.

SIX DEGREES OF FEDERATION: Video: The Secret James Lileks-Leonard Nimoy Connection Revealed!

METAPHOR FOR THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY: Patient shows brain activity for 10 minutes after death. Who am I kidding? The party of Pelosi isn’t displaying any brain activity. . . .