Dean Baker Does It Again

Dean Baker’s Tuesday column proves once again my theory that studying economics in college causes brain damage, when he says that this nation’s cuts in economic support to the United Nations were a waste of time because doing so didn’t really save us any significant amount of money.

He’s obviously not a parent. When you dock a kid’s allowance, do you calculate how much money that is going to save you?

He references a New York Times article which informs that a cut of $1.2 billion amounted to 22% of the UN operating budget, and that another cut constituted 28.5% of the UN’s budget for peacekeeping operations, which calculates to a cut of $1.94 billion. From that, a reader whose brain was intact could derive the information that Trump’s punitive cuts to the United Nations for its votes on the Jerusalem issue, no matter how ill advised, was fairly effective punishment.

Dean Baker, whose brain is clearly not intact, was critical of the Times for not telling their readers that the cuts of “slightly less than $3.1 billion” amounted to a mere 0.08% of federal spending. I’m not sure I trust the percentage, since he clearly is not a mathematician: the total of the cuts he cites comes to $3.14 billion, which is slightly more than $3.1 billion.

I’m surprised he didn’t related it to GDP, and I suspect he tried to but came up with a few thousandths of one percent and didn’t know how to express that in print. 1.65e-4% would be even less understandable to readers than… Readers would simply think his calculator blew up, and he’s talking about “informing readers.”

Good Thinking

The NFL rearranged the schedule for the last week of the season, putting all games which involve teams "in the playoff hunt" in the 4:30pm EST time slot so that no team will know, as they begin their game, whether or not they are still alive in the playoffs.

Nice thought, but it screws the fans, because it means that any fan who wants to watch more than one of those meaningful games, or two by means of recording one of them, cannot do so because all seven of the games are at the same time and they are all carried between only two networks.

Good work. The NFL, as always, is putting the fans last.

Christmas Morning

This may not seem impressive, but in San Diego we usually either have a "marine layer," which is a solid cloud layer, or the wind is offshore, in which case there are no clouds at all. In either case sunrise is, to say the least, unimpressive. So Molly and I had a nice treat this morning while the wife slept in.

Stealing The Game

The Pittsburg Steelers lost the game today because of an utterly ridiculous call by the officials with 13 seconds remaining in the game. The Pittsburg receiver caught a pass on the one-yard line, went to his knees, rotated his body, reached the ball across the goal line, placed the ball on the ground and let go of it. The officials ruled it an incomplete pass because the reception "did not survive contact with the ground."

The rule that this idiot was referring to requires the receiver to "make a football move" before losing control of the ball, either by contact with the ground or from a defender, or to make contact with the ground with any part of his body other than a hand or foot while in control of the ball, for it to be ruled as a completed pass. Apparently this official did not consider rotating one's body and reaching the ball across the goal line to be "a football move," nor did he consider both knees to be a "part of the body other than a hand or foot."

Actually, by another rule, once the ball crosses the goal line in an offensive player's control, which it very clearly did in this case, it is a touchdown no matter what happens to it afterward. Apparently the official is unaware of that rule.

Off-Season Quickie

I'm not sure I want to mention "quickie" and Danica Patrick in the same article, but this piece doesn't have a whole lot to say. Danica announced that she would exit the stage by racing at the Daytona 500 and the Indianapolis 500 next year, but named neither sponsor or car owner at the time. There now seems to be a problem. Only two owners have cars in both races. Penske immediately sent a message to Ganassi saying that he hoped Ganassi would enjoy the 2018 experience with Patrick, and now her negotiations with Ganassi seem to be on the rocks.

Quick Question

Do you think the tax bill would pass without all this sexual misconduct?

Two months ago, in an online discussion, I remarked that all of the hand wringing over the proposed tax bill was uncalled for because it could never pass in anything like its then-present form. I submit that the comment was entirely correct, given the circumstances at the time.

The great lie of Russian interference in the election had been repeated often enough that everyone believed it, but no one really cared any more because the "magic bullet" that proved that Trump had participated with the Russians in corrupting the elections, or that he was the Manchurian Candidate, had never materialized. The media had given it one last shot with a memo that he supposedly received about Wikileaks documents ten days before they were released, but after a couple days of hyperventilation it turned out he got the email, along with several million other people, four days after they were released.

So now we have this tidal wave of accusations of sexual misbehavior. They've been around for years, of course; Bill Cosby comes to mind. But now we have a tidal wave. Every day there are one or two new ones. Politicians, newsmen, football players, media stars, actors, journalists, chefs... And who is on the tail end of that parade? You got it, The ones who accused Trump early in the campaign and were ignored are back making the same accusations, but in this climate they are being taken very seriously indeed.

And because of this distraction, the tax bill, which I said two months ago could not pass, is going to pass into law before the end of the year.

The Eternal Question

Dean Baker is at it again, saying that the claims of employers that there is a shortage of skilled workers is nonsense because, “there are always workers with the necessary skills — they just might work for competitors or in another city,” and that all an employer needs to do is offer higher wages in order to lure those workers away from those competitors and other cities.

He offers no evidence for his statement, of course, let alone proof, but we'll let that go and proceed with our argument based on the accuracy of his unsupported allegation, unlikely as it may be.

So if you have an shortage of gas in the form of a 20-gallon tank with only 10 gallons in it and I have a full 20-gallon gas tank, all we have to do is siphon half of the gas from my tank to yours and the gasoline shortage is over, right? Because you now have 20 gallons of gas and I have…

Oh wait, something went wrong. There’s still the same shortage of gasoline, but it’s just in a different place. I now have it instead of you.

Only an economist would come up with the utterly stupid idea that you solve a shortage by moving that which is in short supply from one user to another. Which raises the eternal question. Do only idiots become economists, or does becoming an economist cause normal people to turn into idiots?

Hoist On Their Own Petard

The media is presenting the concept of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and the transfer of our embassy to that city as being some radical idea conceived in the insane mind of Donald Trump and sprung as a major surprise into the politics of the nation, catching everyone on the wrong foot and at a loss for how to respond to such an insane idea coming from such a stupid and inexperienced idiot.

I have been waiting for one news pundit, just one, to mention the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, Bill S-1322 passed by votes of 93-5 in the Senate, and 374-37 in the House and not vetoed by William Jefferson Clinton, allowing it to become law on Nov. 8, 1995.

The law mandates that the US recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and requires that the State Department move our embassy to Jerusalem no later than May 31, 1999. The bill provides that failure to move the embassy would be punished by a cut of 50% in State Department funding.

It is worth noting that among the people who voted for the bill and are now screaming about Trump’s insanity in this particular action are John McCain and Dianne Feinstein, so both sides are in on the hysterical hypocrisy.

Clinton, Bush and Obama all repeatedly took advantage of the bill’s provision for a six-month delay in implementation based upon national security concerns. Trump used one such delay, but is now carrying out the will of Congress.

Anyone with more than half a dozen functioning brain cells has to be wondering why the media is so intent on condemning Trump for carrying out the will of Congress and so unconcerned with addressing the insanity of people in Congress complaining about Trump acting to implement their own law.

Democratic Thinking

Spoiler alert: the title is irony, perhaps sarcasm.

Democrats are leaping to claim that Al Franken should not have resigned because he has twenty women who claim that he did not sexually harass them and was, in fact, a perfect gentleman to them at all times.

So when a man is accused of robbing a bank, his defense should be to present a list of banks that have never been robbed. The judge will promptly bang his hammer on the bench and proclaim him innocent.

This actually parallels NFL gambler thinking, which now places the Los Angeles Chargers, with their 13th-best 6-6 record, as the third most likely team to win the Super Bowl, albeit with 15-1 odds. This despite the fact that they have not yet this season defeated a team which currently has a winning record.

Jobs Data Nonsense

The jobs report from the Bureau of Lies and Scams tells us that the country added 228,000 new jobs in November, which has economists ecstatic about the “robust economy” and has them swooning about the economy being “on its firmist footing in at least a decade,” but is leaving them confused about why “salaries show meager growth,” given their theory that increasing employment should lead to increasing wages.

Maybe it’s because the jobs increase is not as “robust” as the “Employer Survey” would lead us to believe, since the “Household Survey” tells us that 43,000 fewer were employed in November than in the previous month.

The report does turn that 43,000 fewer people into 57,000 more people employed on a “seasonally adjusted” basis, but one has to wonder how those seasonal adjustments are helping some 100,000 people pay their bills. Do the mortgage and utility companies accept seasonal adjustments as payment?

The absurdity of the method used by the BLS to report on the jobs situation in the nation simply defies belief. They conduct telephone surveys which result in two conflicting reports which inform us that 43,000 fewer people are filling 228,000 additional jobs. They then attempt to reconcile that discrepancy with “seasonal adjustments” of 100,000 fictional workers that suggest that 57,000 new workers are filling those 228,000 new jobs.

Really? Neither the 100,000 seasonal adjustments, nor the 57,000 imaginary new workers that result from the 100,000 seasonal adjustments can fill 228,000 new jobs.

If you’re going to make up numbers, at least make up numbers that work.

What sense, regardless of the rationale for them, do seasonal adjustments make? We’re talking about living breathing people here, and about whether or not they are able to feed their families. If you are in the labor force, are you employed, unemployed, or are you a “seasonal adjustment” as reported by the Labor Department? Ridiculous.

There is a very easy, fast and highly accurate method of reporting on the jobs status. Employers file payroll tax reports within ten days of every pay period, and from that data we can gain the exact number of people employed and the exact amount they are paid. The BLS says they cannot use those records due to “privacy concerns” which is utter nonsense.

Those databases can provide information in any manner which is programmed into them, including summary numbers and totals, and the information needed to provide jobs data can be provided all but instantaneously with total respect to the privacy of all individuals. Ignoring them to obtain contradictory, tardy, costly and contradictory data in the current manner is utter stupidity.

Worldwide Garrison as Homeland Defense

In an article datelined AFP, which presumably stands for the world’s third largest news agency Agence France-Presse, we are informed that the United States has announced that it is prepared to maintain a permanent military presence in Syria.

My immediate reaction is, “Well that’s no surprise. We maintain one everywhere else, why not Syria?” Which should not be interpreted to imply approval by me of anything.

Anyway, Pentagon spokesman Eric Pahon told that news agency that, “We are going to maintain our commitment on the ground as long as we need to -- to support our partners and prevent the return of terrorist groups.”

Hard to imagine who Eric thinks “our partners” are, since the Syrian government has said repeatedly that our military is not welcome in their country and has told us in no uncertain term to get the hell out. That would seem to mean that “our partners” are forces fighting against the Syrian government, and against the Russians, and makes our presence there a very dicey proposition both on legal grounds and logistically.

Some people would, of course, describe the “partners” we are supporting as terror groups themselves, and do actually, but not all nations define terror groups in the same manner. That itself has actually been a point of contention in Syria for quite some years, but it’s a separate topic and would fill a book all by itself.

I’m beginning to see a trend here. We are maintaining a “multigenerational” presence in Afghanistan in order to “deny them space in which to plan their attacks” (which is very nice grammatically at least), and now are maintaining an apparently permanent presence in Syria in order to “support our partners and prevent the return of terrorist groups.”

Aren’t we just fucking awesome?

Maybe not so much. The Roman Legions occupied Britain, France and Germany in order to keep the Visigoths from attacking Rome, and we all know how that turned out.

Go Chargers?

Local sports writers are absolutely swooning over the fact that the Chargers (never mind that they are no longer a local team) are now tied for the division lead, having won five of their last seven games. Let’s see how close that brings them to the Super Bowl.

Other than the AFC West, the worst division is the AFC South, which is led by two teams tied with 8-4 records. The Chargers are in a three-way tie atop the AFC West with the Chiefs and the Raiders, all with 6-6 records.

The Chargers, in this seven game streak, have played two teams who currently have winning records. They lost both games. To underscore the point, of the five games they won, all of them have been against teams which currently have losing records.

They scored 19 points this past weekend against a team with a 0-12 record, winning by a whopping nine point margin. The Chargers are just majorly kicking ass, aren’t they?

Signs of The Times

Yesterday evening I went to Rubio’s to order a take-out meal for the Sunday Night Football game. Well, full disclosure, my wife doesn’t watch football so we watched a program on the DVR while we ate and then I watched the football game and wound up wishing I hadn’t. But this is not about the football game.

Two customers came in ahead of me with the same purpose, ordering take-out, one of them carrying a rather large dog. The dog was of a size such that the guy was barely able to carry it, and he had no small amount of difficulty keeping hold of it while waiting for his order. No employee informed the man that state law does not permit dogs to be in food service establishments, including the manager who spent her entire time delivering orders to tables and ignoring her employees, few of whom were actually working.

Three of the employees, in fact, were petting the dog and chatting with the owner, fellow dog owners apparently. None of them washed their hands before returning to their food handling duties. The manager saw that, but did not appear to notice it.

I saw my order placed on the kitchen’s serving shelf, two bowls of salad and two small containers of dressing. A worker, not one who had been petting the dog, put lids on the salads and put them in a bag, turned and called my name and handed me the bag, correctly describing my order. I looked in the bag, for effect because I already knew precisely what was in it, and told her that I didn’t see any dressing. Only then did she turn and notice the dressing containers sitting right there where she had taken the salads from.

And they want to be paid $15 per hour because…?

Certainly not because they are highly trained and know the rules under which they are working, like what is and is not permitted in their place of work and that they are required to have clean hands when handling food. Not because they are so attentive that when taking an order off of a shelf and putting it in a bag they are careful to get all of that order. Because, apparently, someone told them that they have rights and did not tell them that with rights come responsibilities.

We're real big on rights these days. Not so much on responsibilities.

Of Course She Did

A San Diego woman has filed a lawsuit for damages resulting from her participation in a protest that “spilled out onto I-5” from the USD campus last winter. Named as defendants in the suit are the university, the city, the police department and the driver of the car that hit her when she went onto the interstate highway.

She claims that the police, and apparently the city and somehow the university as well, should have prevented her and the crowd of protestors from leaving the campus and going onto the freeway. Not sure about her rationale regarding the driver of the car. Perhaps the driver should have levitated the car over the crowd.

The protestors were, of course, protesting the presidential inauguration, arguing that it should not have taken place because elections only matter when the right side wins.