#1
The kind of people that end up as TSA employees scares you to death. Any one can be TSA. Even terrorists that can let terrorists through or even provide the weapons.
I first ran into Emerson in 1989. He's been at the terrorist thing for quite a while. I'd consider him one of the leading counterterrorism experts and writers.
h/t Instapundit
Declining prospects for upward mobility, and the simultaneous social inequality, are the existential issues of our time. The percentage of adults who believe things will be better for their kids is at its lowest point in 30 years, with a majority now saying upward mobility for the next generation is not likely. The kids, God bless them, are still far more optimistic.
Despite President Obama's occasional class-warfare rhetoric, this gap has widened significantly under his watch; the top 1 percent of earners garnered more than 90 percent of the income growth in his first two years, compared with 65 percent under George W Bush.
#1
We simply can't wish away reality; the scar of racism and the impact of economic change, has made it tougher for less-educated minorities to rise in contemporary America.
The "less educated" tend to do less well nearly everywhere. Blaming a "legacy" of racism or [colonialism and apartheid as in Africa] along with "economic change" will only take one so far. This is particularly striking as in Africa, true when the alleged victim demographic [87-90%] far outnumbers the European oppressors. The struggle of culture and demographics has been around for a while. Good article on the whole.
#3
We simply can't wish away reality; the scar of racism and the impact of economic change, has made it tougher for less-educated minorities to rise in contemporary America.
Of course legalizing 10 million non-Americans with minimal skills who violated the law to add to the voter rolls will do nothing to help those Americans already with low skills in the labor market.
The present huge sum of $17 trillion in debt is serviced at the same cost that we paid over 15 years ago. Indeed, we are paying today about the same amount in aggregate annual interest payments, in non-inflation-adjusted dollars no less, as in 1997 even though the 2012 figure of $17 trillion in debt is about three times larger than it was a decade-and-a-half ago.
That anomaly is possible only because todays interest rate of about 2.2% is only a third of what it was back then. If interest ever returned to 1997 levels, at say 6.6%, wed be paying over a trillion dollars a year in debt service.
In crude terms, the winners of this Ponzi scheme are the very wealthy connected to Wall Street, which is flooded with foreign and domestic capital. It need not do much of anything more than outperform a pathetic 1% return on savings accounts. The poor benefit from the vast increase in federal spending and exemption from federal income taxes. In contrast, the middle class still pays high interest on its student loans, credit card, and, to a lesser extent, car debt, receives almost no interest on its meager savings accounts, and is not so ready, after 2008, to dabble in real estate and the stock market.
In some sense, holders of U.S. Treasury debt and passbook savers are giving up hundreds of billions of dollars in interest returns (cf. the difference, say, between 1% and a more normal 5%) to subsidize the redistributive policies of the federal government. The lack of interest, or de facto negative interest, keeps the near-retired working and hampers job prospects of the young; discourages thrift, savings and investment; and plays an underappreciated role in the slow economic recovery. The Democrats must deal with the contradiction of needing zero interest rates to service their recent extra $6 trillion in debt, and higher interest to encourage savings, investment, and job growth.
#5
The lack of interest, or de facto negative interest, keeps the near-retired working and hampers job prospects of the young;
It's a well known fact: I'm old and in the way. I'd like to retire but I'm afraid I can't afford it. I'm the old dog who keeps learning new tricks so some smart young programmer can't take my place. But sometimes I get soooooo tired. I can think of other things to do with my remaining years too.
[Power Line] You knew this was coming. In fact, Power Line may not have been the first to do it, but we didnt look. Anyway, from Power Line Productions, our latest original contribution to the Hitler Learns About oeuvre. (Hat tip to Richard Samuelson, for collaborating on the writing.) Ausgezeichneter !
#2
The Obummer administration is no longer saying that the computer program has a "few glitches." They are now saying it has "technical problems."
All that is a bunch of cow pucky. From the git-go, the law was bad. Most people did not want it. They especially did not want it shoved down there throat. They did not like SCOTUS' contorted decision to call it a tax rather a penatly and force people to buy Obamacare. Hillary Care, the forerunner to ObamaCare was soundly rejected back in the 1990s. I would have thought that stake driven into the heart of this vampire would have been the end of it but no, the Donks never, ever leave a pet part of their agenda--it always returns. Time to wake up to the fact that their diktak is still not popular and exacerbates rather than solves a problem.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.