IF SOME PEOPLE HAVE THEIR WAY, YES: Joel Kotkin: Will Race Issues Destroy America?

Kumbaya is not a country

The ugliness of nativist rhetoric has also reinforced the self-righteousness with which the progressive left, and their media allies, address immigration and diversity. Yet like their Trumpian foes they have created their own mythology which skips over reality and ignores basic facts.

This particularly applies to the notion that all immigration is essentially good. Some California secessionists even suggest it’s a good thing to export our native middle class in order to make room for more energetic immigrants.

Many immigration advocates particularly ignore the economic realities of low-skilled immigration. In California nearly three quarters of non-citizen Latinos live in poverty, this in a state determined to welcome more undocumented, often poor, immigrants. Rarely considered is the impact on wages at the lower end of the job spectrum, something that the late Rep. Barbara Jordan, D-Texas, suggested as early as 1997 and has been demonstrated recently in the leftist American Prospect. Many of the progressive policies in the state, notably those exacerbating high energy and housing costs, have made the lives of the immigrant population even worse. A poorly performing school system is not much of a help either.

Lax immigration laws even impact some high end workers. The H-1B visa program essentially replaces American workers with indentured servants, mostly from developing countries. Silicon Valley hires almost half of all these bound workers.

As a great man said, when your heart is full of patriotism, there’s no room for bigotry. But not enough hearts are so filled.

LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: Venezuelans recycle worthless bolivar bills into crafts.

Each collector item produced by Richard Segovia fetches between $10 and $15 — a huge markup from the pennies that bolivars retrieve on Venezuela’s black market.

Segovia, 24, arrived two months ago to the Colombian border city of Cucuta with his wife and a cousin fleeing a dead-end job at a warehouse in Venezuela, where he made the equivalent of just $2.50 a month. He came up with the idea to make artwork one night when he and his cousin were back in Caracas staring at a pile of cash.

“We had a lot of cash but nothing to buy, because in Venezuela your money is worth nothing,” he said.

So, he started folding and creasing Venezuela’s colorful bills into trinkets and then larger creations like purses and bags. Each item consists of around 800 to 1,000 mostly 50 and 100-bolivar notes — less than 50 U.S. cents.

Positive spin: Chaveznista Socialism provides artists with the means to pursue their craft!

HMM: Why Air Force Is Rushing To Fly A Sixth-Generation Fighter Jet.

The service is investing nearly $10 billion in the platform over the next five years, $2.7 billion more than previously planned, for the Next Generation Air Dominance system, which will likely include a fighter to replace current fifth generation platforms like the F-35 and Lockheed’s F-22.

Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson told reporters at a conference in Orlando Thursday that the system will have a “renewed emphasis” on electronic warfare, according to Aviation Week.

Lockheed’s secretive Skunk Works division told IBD over the summer that a sixth-gen fighter would likely feature improved stealth as radar capabilities expand across the electromagnetic spectrum, as well as more autonomy, hypersonic technology and defensive laser systems.

Last month’s National Defense Strategy from the Pentagon emphasized a shift toward focusing on global competitors. And while Russia continues to be a growing threat, Wilson said that China is the “pacing threat” for the Air Force regarding speed of innovations.

If we’re smart, the new jet will have longer legs than either the F-22 or F-35, which were designed to fight from nearby airbases rather than across the Pacific’s great distances.

ON THE ONE HAND, THIS MAKES ALL THE NBC FAWNING OVER THEM KIND OF WEIRD: North Korea’s Cheerleaders Are Forced to Have Sex with Party Leaders.

On the other hand, given that NBC gave Matt Lauer his special door-lock button, maybe not so weird.

SORRY, DOESN’T MATCH THE NARRATIVE: Actually, there is a clear link between mass shootings and mental illness.

WARREN BUFFETT’S ANNUAL LETTER FAILS TO IMPRESS:

Warren Buffett on Saturday released his annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, covering the year 2017. This year it struck me as newsworthy more for what was omitted than for what was in there.

Despite Buffett’s Democratic-leaning politics, there was nothing in the letter complaining about President Trump. No pleas for free trade, no pleas for immigration reform to accommodate the “dreamers,” no pleas for gun control, no major complaints about the tax law (though some brief discussion of how it affects Berkshire). No mention of the #MeToo movement, though there is a borderline inappropriate comment in Buffett’s letter about how board members encouraging CEOs to consider possible acquisitions is “a bit like telling your ripening teenager to be sure to have a normal sex life.”

Nor was there any discussion of Berkshire’s selling of its roughly $10 billion stake in IBM. There was no discussion of the problems at Wells Fargo, which at year-end was Berkshire’s largest single common stock investment, with a stake valued at $29 billion. Buffett previously has been all too happy to testify to shareholders about how “very well-run” a bank Wells Fargo was. There was no discussion of the joint health care project that Berkshire Hathaway, Amazon, and JP Morgan Chase announced recently.

Much more at the link, from Ira Stoll.

STUPID LIKE A FOX! Democrats now are the stupid party.

Fred Barnes:

They’ve adopted several of the foolhardy habits of Republicans—for instance, the government shutdown. It’s an act of political masochism. History is consistent on this. Those who shut Washington down fail to achieve their goals.

Despite this losing streak, Democrats decided on a shutdown to force President Trump and congressional Republicans to let immigrant “dreamers” stay in this country. The shutdown featured hours of Democratic handwringing.

It flopped, as every Republican shutdown had. Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, called it off after a single day, upon realizing its chances of succeeding were zilch. Pro-shutdown Democrats wanted to hang on and picketed Schumer’s residence.

Schumer was wise to cut his losses. He balked at doing the same in the fight against the Trump tax cut, just as Republicans had been foolish to prolong the agony of trying to kill Obama-care. In both cases, the outcome was clear.

But not to House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, who proved in an eight-hour speech to be a know-nothing on taxes.

Republicans can thank Trump for this. As 16 of Trump’s Republican competitors learned in 2016, he has a knack for driving his opponents into making dumb mistakes.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: In Spite of Executive Order, Cuomo Takes Campaign Money From State Appointees. “That type of arrangement — appointments go out, campaign cash comes back in — has vexed government reformers in Albany for generations. Things were supposed to change in 2007, when Eliot L. Spitzer, then the newly elected governor, issued an executive order barring most appointees from donating to or soliciting donations for the governor who made the appointment. Mr. Cuomo renewed the order on his first day in office. But a New York Times investigation found that the Cuomo administration has quietly reinterpreted the directive, enabling him to collect about $890,000 from two dozen of his appointees. Some gave within days of being appointed. The governor also has accepted $1.3 million from the spouses, children and businesses of appointees, state records show.”

INSIDE THE INTELLECTUAL DARK WEB:

The phrase is the invention of Eric Weinstein, a brilliant West Coast mathematician and economist who has observed and participated in part of this trend. He has also seen up close the way in which the world now discovers otherwise forbidden ideas and opinions. Until last year, Eric’s brother, Bret, was a biology professor at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. A Bernie Sanders supporter and life-long leftist, Bret also came to national attention because of a stand he made.

Since the 1970s, the college had celebrated a ‘Day of Absence’ in which black students and faculty met off campus. Last year, this was flipped and all white people were ordered off campus for the day. Bret Weinstein refused, explaining his objection carefully, liberally and lucidly. Some student activists accused him of racism and he got little support from his cowed fellow professors. Weinstein and the college ended up parting ways.

But the story gained serious internet and eventually even some mainstream media attention. Today, Bret speaks on podcasts and interviews across YouTube and other media and gets his views on biology and society out to countless numbers of people around the world. Far more people than if he had stayed at Evergreen and submitted to the pieties and dogmas of the era. As with [Jordan] Peterson, an audience came for the scandal and then stayed for the show.

Read the whole thing.

THE MISGUIDED DRIVE to measure “learning outcomes.”

CULTURE OF INCOMPETENCE: Florida Sheriff Refuses to Resign, Accuses Critics of ‘Grandstanding.’

Who’s grandstanding? You make the call:

DEMOCRACY DIES IN DARKNESS: Barack Obama gives hush-hush Boston talk…on hoops.

Ex-President Barack Obama gave a secret talk in Boston yesterday at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, where organizers threatened to eject and ban credentialed journalists for simply doing their jobs — prohibiting them from tweeting or reporting on the event, both during and after.

“Everyone involved in this blanket coverage ban should be embarrassed,” said Ken Paulson, the president of the First Amendment Center at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. “I’m sure President Obama has his pick of lucrative speaking gigs. Why pick one that’s the antithesis of transparency?”

Why, indeed?