When I was first coming up, I found myself in the company of big shots at a big shot dinner. The head big shot, feeling like a king, started ordering wine for the table. I was a young man and wine was alien to me. At least the culture of it. I knew nothing about it and I had no interest in it. The waiter brought over a magnum sized bottle of wine and did the wine ritual for the big shot. He told me the wine was $1500 a bottle. It tasted like every other red wine I’d tasted to that point.

Later in life I came to understand that wine is mostly bullshit. It is a lot like modern art. A small group of people decide what is and what is not trendy and the prices are set accordingly. I actually got to know a guy, who is a member of the Court of Masters. His membership is all about making money in the wine business. I never believed for a second he knew anymore about the taste of wine than anyone else. He just knew all of the proper jargon that was used to impress people out of their money.

The thing is, people look at the price tag above all else. For years now I have bought my office manager a bottle of wine at Christmas. She likes to entertain over the holidays. I go into the wine store and ask the clerk to give me a $100 bottle of French or Italian wine. I accidentally leave a price tag on it. Every year she tells me her guests love the wine. It looks expensive so they just assume it must be good. They make sure to say it, to avoid sounding plebeian. The wine rackets depend on that natural social instinct.

There’s also the priest/expert factor. In spiritual matters, we rely on holy men to tell us right from wrong. There are rituals they conduct to instruct us on morality, absolve us of sin and bear us up under the weight of life. In practical matters, we look to experts to cut through the thicket of details and tell us that we need to plug the red wire into the blue socket. The wine business rolls the two together making the wine expert the arbiter of good taste and good character. He also teaches people how to show it.

This story from America’s Paper of Record shows how high end wine is just high end bullshit.

An international wine dealer has been jailed for 10 years for fraud after selling fake vintages and cheating fellow connoisseurs out of tens of millions of dollars.

Rudy Kurniawan, 37, an Indonesian-born businessman, had been considered one of the top wine collectors in the world, becoming famed for his palate and ability to identify fine wines.

But it emerged he had been blending the contents of cheap bottles in the kitchen of the home he shared with his mother.

He then placed the blends in old bottles, stuck fake labels on them and claimed they were rare vintages, selling them for vast sums.

While selling the fake wines he lived a luxury lifestyle driving expensive cars and collecting modern art.

I always thought I may be Latino or a Latino. I’ve never been comfortable with the term to know the proper usage. Hispanic is another word that vexes me. I’ve never met a Mexican or Puerto Rican that used it. It’s always upper middle class white people. Anyway, according to this story, polls show Latinos agree with me on a wide range of issues. Either I’m Latino or they are becoming me.

Immigration is only the 6th-most-important issue for Latino voters in California when casting a vote for a candidate for U.S. Senator or for U.S. Congress, according to a statewide survey conducted by Univision.
When registered Latino voters were asked to name their most important issues, the results, in order, were: education (21%), jobs (16%), government spending and the deficit (15%), social security (13%), “how what they do will affect my wallet” (10%), health care (9%), immigration (8%), and crime and personal safety (5%).

An overwhelming 86% of those surveyed support comprehensive immigration reform. However, a majority–53%–of registered Latino voters in California also answered that they believe that, “…we should require borders to be secured before providing a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.”

Furthermore, when asked, “Which of the following is your major concern or complaint about the Republican Party?”, only ten percent of those surveyed named Republican opposition to immigration reform.

The number one gripe was that Republicans “care mostly about corporations and big business” (17%). Other concerns, in order, were that Republicans: care only for themselves (17%), favor the rich (14%), are against immigration reform (10%), don’t stand up strongly for their beliefs (7%), “don’t understand people like me” (6%), and favoring white people not minorities (5%).

I’ve said for years that the problem we have is both parties are sock puppets for multi-nationals and the banksters. The Democrats are better at pretending they are for the average guy, but that’s because most of them are a little nuts. Republicans, on the other hand, think being the friend of CitiCorp and Haliburton is the same as being business friendly. These are not businesses. They are fiefdoms.

The second complaint, that they care for themselves, is another with which I agree. The GOP leadership has known for a long time how to turn their promises to the base into results, but they refuse to do it. They prefer the status quo as that’s where the easy money resides. They use the middle-class to lever riches for themselves from the political system. Democrats, at least, try to follow through with their promises to destroy the country.

Of course, the big take away is that immigration is meaningless to the prospects of the GOP with Latinos. As a newly minted Latino, I have a different interpretation. Like the majority of my new race, I want a secure border, expedient deportations and sensible policy about who and how many immigrate here. I DON’T WANT AMNESTY.

The other day, I saw this on Drudge and saved it away, thinking maybe it would get traction during the week. The last time the moonbats got caught coordinating their “news reporting” it was very entertaining. Tucker Carlson really enjoyed tormenting them with their own e-mails. While there’s nothing wrong with members of the same hive buzzing together on-line, these are the folks constantly tisk-tisking about ethics in journalism and all that nonsense. It looks like some of them did not learn their lesson.

A prominent CNN commentator, the top two political reporters for The Huffington Post, a Reuters reporter, the editor of The Nation magazine, a producer for Al Jazeera America television, a U.S. News & World Report columnist, and approximately two dozen Huffington Post contributors are among the more than 1,000 members of Gamechanger Salon.

Founded by leftwing activist Billy Wimsatt, the group is a secretive digital gathering of writers, opinion leaders, activists and political hands who share information, ideas and strategy via a closed Google group.

The group’s existence was discovered by Media Trackers through an open records request filed with a University of Wisconsin professor who happened to be a member of the network.

There’s something deeply weird about people in a competitive racket like the media going in for something like this. The reason these liberal personalities blend together on the screen is all of them say the same things. Talk radio guys love doing montages of them using the exact same phrasing. It’s good radio. If your career depends on being a draw on TV or the Interwebs, blending in with the blob seems like a dumb idea to me.

But, I’m not a member of a cult.

I never heard of the site Drudge linked to so I went to my nearest google machine and the first thing that turned up is a very weird post on Wonkette.

Pity the poor wingnuts. They worked so hard to bust ACORN into a million pieces and salt the earth so no part of it would ever grow back. Little did they know that the Progressive Menace was just using ACORN as a distraction while it rebuilt the most fearsome of all anti-American organizations dedicated to spreading leftist propaganda like the Ebola virus: JournoList, which has been reconstituted as a closed Google Group called Gamechanger Salon. And the conservative website Mediatrackers.org is ON IT.

First, a disclaimer: Despite our impeccable leftist credentials, yr Wonkette is not now, nor has it ever been, a member of the Communist Party secretive anti-American group Gamechanger Salon. Nor would we join a group with such a stupid name. Seriously, you guys couldn’t come up with something better? The wingnuts are going to find it scary no matter what, so go all out. Call it Mao’s House of Propaganda or All Hail Pol Pot or HITLER! (The all caps with exclamation point is so they know you’re serious.)

It has been a while since I’ve trolled the hard thumping crazy sites like Wonkette. There was a time when it was fun to torment these nuts, but that was before one of them slithered into the White House. Another coo-coo for cocoa-puffs site I used to like trolling was FireDongLake. All of these moonbat sites popped up in the middle of the Bush years and most were founded by women or homosexuals.

Anyway, it is a Friday in August so I thought I’d visit some old stomping grounds. It is good to know the nutroots is still nuts.

Every once in a while you see something that you think has to be a spoof, but turns out to be serious. In the process it confirms a lot of what you suspected of the people waving the thing around. Here’s one of those examples I see on the Twitter machine.

Some government programs have gained hundreds of billions of dollars paid by undocumented immigrants, who have been shown to draw a smaller amount from the same services.

Stephen Goss, chief actuary of the Social Security Administration, told Vice News that undocumented immigrants pay about $12 billion a year into the Social Security Trust Fund. Over the last decade, the agency estimates undocumented immigrants have contributed $100 billion to the program.

An estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants live in the U.S. and the agency guesses 7 million are actively working. Of these, 3.1 million use fake or expired social security numbers and still pay automatic payroll taxes.

Let’s just peel back this onion a little bit. For starters, we have been repeatedly told for decades that figuring out who is using fake Social Security numbers is impossibly expensive. To notify employers that the number they are using to submit taxes for their employee would be impossible and the cost to employers would be onerous. Yet, the actuary of the Social Security Administration seems to have this data at his fingertips.

Now, let’s take a look at the math. $13 Billion sounds like a lot of money until your divide it by the 3.1 million. The result of that bit of math is $4193.55. Let’s call it $4195 just to keep it simple. That does not sound like a lot of money all of a sudden. Of course, Abdul from Yemen and Kwame from Ghana are not bringing this cash with them from the old country. Their employer, the guy taking the bogus social security number and fake ID, is taking the money from the wages he is paying them. Currently the employee pays 6.2% and the employer pays the same.

That bit of math means the illegals are theoretically making over $33,800 per year. Keep that number in mind. Meanwhile, let’s take a look at the rest of this piece.

Goss said undocumented workers contribute about $13 billion a year in total and collect about $1 billion, leaving a net contribution of $12 billion a year. Considering their questionable legal status, it’s unlikely undocumented immigrants will benefit from their Social Security contributions.

A study published in the journal Health Affairs in May 2013 found that, in 2009 alone, immigrants paid $13.8 billion more to Medicare’s hospital account balance than they used. The U.S.-born population left the fund with a $30.9 billion deficit that same year.

Whether immigrants contribute to or use up federal services is a key issue in the immigration reform debate. The May 2013 study did not differentiate between documented and undocumented immigrants.

Experts say Medicare’s $115 billion surplus by immigrants from 2002-2009 was largely because their average age — 34 — is lower than the U.S.-born population, so most cannot benefit from the retirement service for many years. At the same time, however, many baby boomers have gone into retirement.

First of, why are illegal immigrants collecting anything from Social Security? How would anyone know, given that they say it is impossible to police the use of fake identification.

Anyway, let’s get back to the math. The second study that coincidentally claims illegals pay over $13 Billion in Medicare taxes is even more interesting. If we do the same math as we did before, we take $13.8 Billion divided by the magical 3.1 illegals paying the taxes Americans won’t pay. That gives us $4451.61 so let’s say $4450.00 just to keep it simple. Pretty much the same math as with the Social Security claim.

The difference is the tax rate for Medicare is 1.45% for employer and employee. That means either there are many more illegals paying Medicare taxes or the Health Affairs Journal thinks these illegals are making over $150K per year. That’s a lot of tomatoes to pick.

To make their numbers match those of the actuary, you have to assume over 14 million illegals are working and paying taxes. You also have to assume they are making $16/hour. How likely is that?

Sarcasm aside, the math simply does not add up. The math and simple observations says there are a lot more than 3.1 million working with fake papers. Ask anyone who is familiar with payroll software or payroll services and they will tell you there are a lot of bogus numbers in the system.

There’s also loads of these guys working for cash. I know of a dozen places around the Imperial Capital where you can get day labor for cash. Painters, landscapers, drywall guys, roofers. If you need guys to do low-skilled work and you don’t need the hassle of doing it legal, there’s a solution.

None of this really matters, of course. Immigration, legal or otherwise, is not about propping up collapsing welfare systems. If that were the case, then we should bring back slavery. After all, if bulldozing the laws and customs of a country is justified in an effort to pay welfare debts, then what is the objection to bringing back chattel labor?

The fact is these people paying the alleged taxes are doing so in lieu of Americans doing the same jobs. Open borders fanatics carry on like these people coming over the border are creating jobs that don’t exist.  The reality is something else. Employers want cheap, dependable labor. If the government says it is OK to hire foreign guys for cash or with fake papers, then they will do it if it makes sense.

Gutting the wage base with illegal labor, however, has costs. No one ever bothers to examine those costs when celebrating diversity. The millions of unemployed men collecting relief checks has a cost to society. It’s not just the taxes and welfare payments. It is the cost to the culture. Then you have the direct costs to state and local infrastructure of adding tens of millions to the system. Go into any emergency room and you see what I mean.

Nate Silver is breaking hearts in the CML¹ with his latest picks for the upcoming election. His complete wildass guess at the moment has the Hive² losing control of the Senate by a couple of seats.

If Americans elected an entirely new set of senators every two years — as they elect members of the House of Representatives — this November’s Senate contest would look like a stalemate. President Obama remains unpopular; his approval ratings have ticked down a point or two over the past few months. But the Republican Party remains a poor alternative in the eyes of many voters, which means it may not be able to exploit Obama’s unpopularity as much as it otherwise might.

The funny thing about this is Nasty Nate, like everyone else in the Cult³ thinks the reason the GOP is a poor alternative to the festering carbuncle in the White House is they are not agreeing with the festering carbuncle enough. Many of the TPA (The Poor Alternative Party) agree with him, but they will win despite their best efforts.

Generic congressional ballot polls — probably the best indicator of the public’s overall mood toward the parties — suggest a relatively neutral partisan environment. Most of those polls show Democrats with a slight lead, but many of them are conducted among registered voters, meaning they can overstate Democrats’ standing as compared with polls of the people most likely to vote. Republicans usually have a turnout advantage, especially in midterm years, and their voters appear to be more enthusiastic about this November’s elections. Still, the gap is not as wide as it was in 2010.

The problem for Democrats is that this year’s Senate races aren’t being fought in neutral territory. Instead, the Class II senators on the ballot this year come from states that gave Obama an average of just 46 percent of the vote in 2012.¹

Democrats hold the majority of Class II seats now, but that’s because they were last contested in 2008, one of the best Democratic years of the past half-century. That year, Democrats won the popular vote for the U.S. House by almost 11 percentage points. Imagine if 2008 had been a neutral partisan environment instead. We can approximate this by applying a uniform swing of 11 percentage points toward Republicans in each Senate race. In that case, Democrats would have lost the races in Alaska, Colorado, Louisiana, Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Oregon — and Republicans would already hold a 52-48 majority in the Senate.

It therefore shouldn’t be surprising that we continue to see Republicans as slightly more likely than not to win a net of six seats this November and control of the Senate. A lot of it is simply reversion to the mean.² This may not be a “wave” election as 2010 was, but Republicans don’t need a wave to take over the Senate.

Nate knows where his bread is buttered so he is going to throw his team a bone.

Jim Geraghty picked up on it and put his optimistic spin on it.

There’s not a ton to disagree with in this new assessment from Nate Silver — “Republicans Remain Slightly Favored To Take Control Of The Senate” — but I’m left scratching my head at his suggestion that the GOP’s Jim Oberweis  is more likely to defeat Sen. Dick Durbin in Illinois than Ed Gillespie is to beat Sen. Mark Warner in Virginia. Really? Really?

While I think Durbin is bullet-proof in a state run by the Mafia, Warner is probably safe too. Virginia is a coin flip state now, thanks to the army of lunatics that invaded Northern Virginia. Having spoiled their former states, they moved to Virginia because of the low taxes, freedom and normalcy. As expected, the immediately set about tearing it down by voting for lunatics.

The bigger problem is The TPA Party is offering up a damp dishrag with nothing to offer the voters. Ed Gillespie is a permanent barnacle attached to the Leviathan. He has never had a job or done anything of consequence in his government service. He has been an open borders fanatic so he cannot take advantage of the one issue that seems to be working with voters. At least he scrubbed his website of open borders fanaticism, but that’s small beer.

That’s the problem with GOP, they really are the poor alternative party. Look at the rest of Geraghty’s rundown.

Republicans enjoy three near-automatic pick-ups of Democrat-held seats, in South Dakota, West Virginia, and in Montana, where incumbent Sen. John Walsh, dealing with a plagiarism scandal, is being urged to drop his reelection bid and/or resign from the U.S. Senate. Then there are three southern Senate Democrat incumbents who look vulnerable, but not quite toast yet: Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Kay Hagan of North Carolina. Bill Cassidy, Tom Cotton and Thom Tillis all just need their home states to follow their GOP instincts.

Then there are the vulnerable Democrat incumbents in red or purple states outside the South: the not-yet-determined GOP bid vs. Mark Begich in Alaska, Cory Gardner’s bid against Sen. Mark Udall in Colorado, and former Sen. Scott Brown’s effort against Sen. Jeanne Shaheen in New Hampshire.

Perhaps this tier can include in Monica Wehby’s effort against Jeff Merkley in Oregon and Gillespie’s effort against Warner in Virginia, although Nate Silver obviously disagrees. (It looks like a really tough year for incumbent Democrat senators named Mark.)

Then there are two open seat races held by retiring Democrats in blue states where GOP women candidates are running surprisingly strongly: Joni Ernst taking on Bruce Braley in Iowa, Terri Lynn Land vs. Gary Peters in Michigan.

Then there’s the one Republican incumbent who needs to hold on, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. For what it’s worth, Silver sees an 80 percent chance McConnell holds on against Alison Lundergan Grimes.

Then there’s the one open seat race where a Republican is retiring in Georgia, where David Purdue needs to hold off Michelle Nunn.

That’s not exactly an electrifying cast of candidates.

¹Cult of Modern Liberalism

²The collection of pundits who promote liberalism

³The Liberal Democrats

Next month, I think, the Scots are going to vote on whether they remain in the United Kingdom. Americans have an image of Scotland as a combination of Groundskeeper Willy, Braveheart and Rob Roy, maybe playing golf in the rain. It is the image of rugged, independent men not yielding to anyone. The truth is nothing of the sort. The Scots are mostly on the dole. Like the rest of the UK, they are a generation ahead of America in their march over the cliff. Voting for independence, therefore, seems like a clever joke.

By way of example, look at this story from the BBC.

The Scottish government has defended its controversial plan for a named guardian for every child in Scotland.

Speaking to the BBC, Children’s Minister Aileen Campbell said the policy would be rolled out across the country as planned in 2016.

She said it would help families in need and save taxpayers’ money.

Conservative MSP Gavin Brown said the policy would create a “giant bureaucracy” that would not help those most in need.

MSPs approved the Children and Young People Scotland Bill, which includes legislation to create a “named person” for every child in the country, in February.

The policy is already in place in a number of areas, including the Highlands, Edinburgh and Ayrshire, but is not due to be extended to the rest of Scotland until 2016.

The Scottish government has said the legislation would stop vulnerable children slipping through the net and give families a point of contact should they need assistance.

Earlier this month, ministers announced £40m in funding for 500 new health visitor posts to meet the demands of the policy, which will cover children from birth to the age of 18.

Midwives and senior teachers could also be named guardians, depending on the age of the child.

In case it is not clear, they are planning to assign a government minder to each child at birth.

Religious groups have raised concerns around the diminishing role of parents and the Christian Institute is preparing to mount a judicial review against the move.

The group has asked the Scottish government not to implement the “named person” element of the bill until the outcome of the legal action is known.

Speaking on the BBC’s Sunday Politics Scotland programme, Ms Campbell said the policy was supported by many organisations and would go ahead as planned since there was “no good reason” to delay.

She added: “This is about embedding good practice. We’ve seen [from pilots] that this reduces bureaucracy and allows professionals to intervene where families most at need require additional support. We’ve seen a reduction in inappropriate referrals to reporters – it saves money.

“The cost to the public purse of not doing these things is that problems escalate into crisis and that’s something we want to avoid. This supports parents and responds to what parents have told us they want.”

She said nothing in the legislation affected parents’ rights.

If you are wondering about those Christians, about 55% of Scots identify as Christian. About 40% claim to be irreligious or have no religion at all. The Young are hardly religious and only 8% of the population attends weekly services. Those Christian groups have as much influence as Rastafarian groups.

Not that it matters. The Scots, like people all over the Occident, are throwing in the towel on civilization. The Scottish fertility rate is 1.7, according to the numbers I can find. More Scots die every year than are born and uncontrolled immigration will soon swamp the country in hostile foreigners. If you dig through the official figures, a country of 5 million is bringing in 250,000 foreigners each year. It is the foreign population having the babies. Simple math says the Scots are going the way of the dodo.

The question is whether they do so independently.

The title of this post should be the title of John Kerry’s biography. He is quite famous for using the line when he is about to force the little people out of the way. I’m proud to say he tried that line on me once. My reply was, “No, I really don’t.” He did not take it well. That was the intent so I was happy.

I thought about that while reading this gem form America’s Paper of Record.

CNN ​is being sued by two EMTs who say a foreign ​correspondent ​for the cable news network ​bit them​ ​in a drunken rage outside the US Embassy​ in Baghdad​.

A​rwa Damon, described by the cable network as a senior international correspondent, was intoxicated and abusive to a medical team stationed on the grounds of the embassy, where Damon did not have authority to be, ​according to the $2 million lawsuit​ filed in Manhattan on Monday​.

According to the lawsuit, Damon, 36, bit EMT​​s Tracy Lamar and Charles Simons before threatening them, saying she was a “major reporter for CNN.”

The medics were trying to treat Damon when she became violent, the lawsuit said.

It was not clear what sparked the incident.

The suit claims CNN knew Damon had a history of drunken and abusive behavior, and had a penchant for violence, even when sober.

They should have just let her bleed out. Who watched CNN? I’m not even sure it is on my television system. On a bet I could not name two people on that network. If they let this aging skank die on the street, who would notice?

I’m not a fan of the “data journalism” as it is mostly just a marketing scheme. Fake nerds want to be told they are smart and nerdish so everyone is recasting their act as something fresh from the laboratory. The CML has always wrapped itself in the cloak of science, believing it works like garlic on a vampire. In their case it is intended to ward off Christians and “right-wing extremists.” Vox, 538, Grantland, The Upsnot and others have glommed onto all of this and recast generic, boiler plate progressivism as “data journalism.”

Ezra Klein is the worst example. He started out in life as a doctrinaire lefty and has now dressed himself up as a technocratic nerd boy. Ezra Klein went to school for political science and maybe took statistics for liberal arts majors, but otherwise could not count his balls twice and come up with the same number. But, the act sells to the intended audience, largely the same people who watch Jon Stewart and Bill Maher. These are people who want to hear the old time religion sung by the latest stars of their cult.

Anyway, I saw this posted on MR and I see a couple of gags these guys like to play on their audience. The first is the false dichotomy.

In a July 19 New York Times column, conservative economist Tyler Cowen scolded the egalitarian left for not recognizing that on a global basis inequality has been falling thanks to growth in China and other Asian countries even as it’s risen inside almost all rich countries. In a followup dialogue with Eduardo Porter on whether inequality is really a big problem, Cowen returned to the point that “the biggest inequalities are those across borders” so a laxer attitude toward immigration “should be the number one priority for anyone concerned about income inequality.”

Meanwhile, late Friday night House Republicans passed a bill to strip about 580,000 immigrants of their work permits while President Obama ponders executive action to reduce the pace of deportations and conservative columnist Ross Douthat preemptively slams the illegality of the as-yet-unknown measure.

Which is to say that while Cowen’s point about the global picture is both interesting and correct, his political stance is backwards. It’s not fans of Capital in the 21st Century who are pushing nationalism as an alternative to plutocracy, but its detractors. And though the recent politics in the US Congress have been driven by the somewhat odd sequence of events around the arrival of unaccompanied minors from Central America, the underlying pattern runs much deeper than that.

Yglesias, like the hive minded everywhere, imagines a world of only two options. We either have inequality or utopia. We either have xenophobic isolationism or borderless one-worldism. There’s never a third option or gradations between the two poles. As I’ve pointed out before, the hive minded are obsessed with the boundaries between their team and the other team, which is defined as those not on their team. That leads them to see the world in absolutes, black and white.

In the United Kingdom where the transient political factors are entirely different, the ruling Conservative Party runs on a platform of Capping Welfare and Reducing Immigration. Inside the United States, a major debate has taken place inside GOP circles as to what to do after consecutive Republican Party losses in presidential elections. An initially popular idea, especially in business circles, was that the GOP should moderate its stance on immigration and seek Latino votes. This was, of course, countered by the party’s most retrograde elements — the Michele Bachmanns and the Steve Kings. But more importantly, the pro-immigration impulse was also opposed by the most forward-thinking elements in American conservative politics. Douthat, David Frum, Reihan Salam, and other “reform conservatives” have positioned themselves as leading opponents of a compromise with the White House on immigration.

This bifurcated view of the world leads to another error. That is the belief that all issues are moral. Immigration, for example, is a public policy like zoning bills or utility rates. The people, through their representatives, express their preferred polices and those are made law. As opinions change and new experiences raise new objections, the laws change.

Immigration is not a moral dilemma. It is a debate about how many people from foreign lands we would like to permit into our lands. As citizens everywhere, it is our right to set these limits for whatever reason we like. These choices will turn up in the political math of the parties. For a guy who pitches himself as a statistics maven, he sure seems to struggle understanding the simple political calculus. Foreigners vote for Democrats so Republicans will want fewer foreigners.

The hive minded can never accept that. They lose track of where their identity ends and the issue begins. Rejecting their preferred solution is a personal affront, the equivalent of telling them their kids are ugly. It is why they are so emotional and angry. You can’t be in a mass movement without being outraged.

It is this reformicon ideological tendency, not mainstream liberalism, that has embraced egalitarian nationalism.

And the cause of its rise is not left-wing worries about inequality, but the failure of traditional supply-side economics. Reagan-era conservatives could be for welfare state rollback and broadly pro-immigration because they promised a rising tide that would lift all boats. Now that we’re decades into an era of wage stagnation, those kind of easy promises ring hollow. So for Cameron and the reformicons, a tilt against immigrants is the new answer. On this view, the big problem with trickle-down economics is that the bucket is too leaky. Let the rich get richer, but prevent them from hiring maids from Latin America, and soon enough wages for native-born maids will rise.

The moral math whereby this policy becomes more attractive than the win/win/win alternative of broadly freer movement of people paired with progressive taxation and more provision of public services has always escaped me somewhat. It appears to involve putting a negative value on the interests of foreign-born people. But it is a real movement. But it’s a movement on the right of politics in the United States and other English-speaking countries. Progressives, rightly, see no need to chose between equality and cosmopolitanism.

Finally, this is why Yglesias is just a tarted up lefty regurgitating New Left pabulum. Tired old ideas about progressive taxation, the metastasizing welfare state and free lunch economics pretty much have no audience outside the hive. That’s been true for three decades now. Instead, the Left clutches at its skirts and bellows about the moral defects of their adversaries, real and imaginary. Ezra Klein’s brand of data journalism is nothing more than yelling “those other guys are bad because science” over and over so no one notices he has nothing much to offer.

Maybe they will label the doors “Gamma”, “Delta” or “Epsilon” and give the tenants different keys based on their social standing. Perhaps they will just make them scale a fence or navigate through obstacles to get into the building. This story is not all that clear on the details, but the “poor door” is coming to a reservation near you.

New York City has approved a developer’s Dickensian plan to include a “poor door” in a luxury apartment complex in the Upper West Side.

The prospect of a separate entrance for lower-income residents has been circulating for some time, but as the New York Postreported today, plans by company Extell Development to put a separate entrance for affordable housing tenants, who make 60 percent or less of median income, in the 33-story condo have been given the green light. The property will have 219 units, including 55 affordable units overlooking the street. Those renting and buying the apartments at the market-rate will have waterfront views.

The entrance is part of the Inclusionary Housing Program application, under which developers can build larger projects if they also provide low-income housing, either on- or off-site.

A few things worth noting at this point. The mock outrage by the snooty writer is tiresome. Liberals have been self-segregating for years. They have driven most of the NAM population out of San Francisco. They are doing the same in DC, where blacks are no longer a majority. Similarly, gentrification in NYC is intended to drive away the NAM population so young professionals like Lucy Westcott can live in trendy urban neighborhoods.

Beyond that, it is just the natural evolution of the servant’s entrance. Before we got all of these egalitarian ideas in our heads, it was simply understood that the rich did not want to mix it up with the poor. Big houses had a separate entrance for the cooks, nannies, gardeners and other staff. For live-in staff, there were quarters on the edge of the property or maybe above the carriage house or garage. No one thought it strange or mean, especially not the servants. The poor have always known their place.

The approval of the entrance at 40 Riverside has prompted outrage, with many on social media calling it nothing more than an updated version of segregation. ThinkProgress’ report notes that issues affecting low-income tenants in luxury buildings — which include not being allowed to use perks like the gym or pools — usually fall on people of color.

Brooklyn Magazine points out that it’s “not an unusual scheme” to include affordable housing units in fancy buildings that will remain, for most people, mere real estate fantasies. But New York Magazine reminds us that the entrance will serve the purpose of  “[sparing] all the residents from the terrible awkwardness of regularly encountering people whose lifestyles differ from theirs, or something.”

The only people outraged are the credentialed urban lefties who think it is grossly unfair that they don’t get to live like the over-class. That’s the dirty little secret of the meritocracy. The truly poor now live on welfare. The dwindling working class is supplemented by indirect welfare payments like public schools, free health insurance and so forth. The urban middle lass is now the servant class to the rich. Young Lucy Westcott, the author of this piece, is merely a servant for the rich people signing her paychecks.

I think that’s why the people most outraged by inequality are the urban credentialed lefties. They were told all along they were special little snowflakes and destined to rule the world. Now they find out that the rich are nothing like them and they will never be in that class. Instead, they will be the modern equivalent of footmen, chauffeurs and coat holders to the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world. They don’t like it one bit.

The comment feature of this WordPress template is not the best. I chose this template because it is plain and easy to navigate. I hate overly complex sites with loads of scripting. National Review and the Daily Caller are horrible to navigate because of the ridiculous scripts they have running, all intended to jam ads in your face. I went for simple and that means the commenting space is limited.

Readers have made some points I’d like to address so I figured a post addressing some of the comments would be worthwhile. Here are a few:

fodderwing writes:

There’s a big dif between having one’s questions answered and having them answered satisfactorily. That Fred is still asking is not necessarily evidence that he has ignored the “libraries full of books,” but may only be telling us that the books give unsatisfactory answers.

Satisfactorily to whom? It seems that millions of people have had no trouble finding the answers Fred says are elusive. John Derbyshire has addressed all of his points hundreds of times. Further, these answers are more than satisfactory to the people interested in evolutionary biology. They are, in many cases, axiomatic.

fodderwing continues:

I have my own unanswered questions about evolution, but the real lazy wusses in my view are the ones who get defensive when I ask. After reading Michael Behe’s Darwin’s Black Box I thought it best to let him ask the hard questions, I would stick with the easy ones. I have read many answers to his “black box” concept, absolutely none of which seemed sincere or for that matter particularly well thought out. As for my easy questions, those are the ones that really frustrate people as the usual responses can probably best be summued up as “why can’t you just believe, man, like the rest of the smarter set? There is such overwhelming evidence, so many libraries full of books … “

If someone keeps asking you to explain why water is wet and ice is cold, you will begin to think that they are uncommonly stupid, have an agenda, or are passive-aggressively challenging your aptitude. If it is the first case, there’s only so many ways to explain something. Once you have exhausted them all, you give up. The world needs ditch diggers and hod carriers too.

If it is the other two, then you are dealing with a dishonest person. In both cases they are concealing their agenda, which is to sew doubt in your mind about your knowledge of the subject. This form of argumentation is common with the anti-science crowd, which makes it a campaign to spread ignorance. It is why the response from science these days when asked these sorts of questions is this.

I’ve said it before, but I’ll repeat it again. I have no quarrel with creationists or intelligent design. These beliefs are not science, but the world will not spin off its axis of people believe that stuff. We get enough oogily-boogily from the Left and their war on science and reason. Christians would be wise to not follow their lead.

Bones writes:

Whatever else Fred is or isn’t, he isn’t a phoney. He’s always been upfront about his life. Fred comes from a mildly prominent Virginia family, but he was born in the coal mining town of Crumpler, West Virginia and spent a lot of his youth in rural West Virgina and Northern Alabama. He has a high regard for the people in the parts of Appalachia where he grew up. The ‘down home’ writing style he sometimes adopts is simply a literary device, used by people such as Joel Chandler Harris and many others.

Fred has an excellent command of the English language. He is making writing mistakes these days because he was hit in the face with shrapnel in Vietnam and his eyesight has deteriorated. He is now blind in one eye as the result of his latest eye surgery.

You may not like Fred or the stuff he writes. He may or may not know what he’s writing about. But ‘phoney’ is no more than name-calling

It is name-calling and I’m proud of my ability to use nouns. Without name calling, we would still be riding those big things in that place or whatever. I think Fred is a big phony and I have no qualms about saying it. At least you know where I stand.

I could be all wrong on that. Maybe his act is harmless and sincere. We all don a mask in public and maybe that’s just how Allah made him. I don’t know and I can’t know. All I can go on is what I see and my own sense of these things.

james wilson writes:

There are several factors. Jews, especially the ones you are describing, have no great affection for the country (I am increasingly sympathetic to that state of being). That being so they always have an exit strategy and a tradition of using it, so they continue to indulge their opinions–which are life itself to them–without restraint. And if the block is busted, well, they’ll once again be the first to sell. This strategy has worked well for them in recent times except for that miscalculation of 1933-45. But Montaigne wrote that even opinion is of force enough to make itself be espoused at the expense of life. No one contributes more to opinion than Jews, with less regard for the consequences.

A couple of points here. Steve Sailer points out frequently that Jews dominate certain industries and are wildly over represented in the millionaire and billionaire clubs. The thing is, Jews dominate transactional industries like entertainment, retail and the law. You don’t see a lot of Jews in construction, agriculture, mining or manufacturing. These are industries that require planning and investment to mitigate events currently over the horizon.

Is that cultural? Maybe. The old line was that the mean old Christians did not let Jews own property so they had no choice but to go into banking and commerce. That was always nonsense. Jews in Europe left the farm for the village 2,000 years ago. It is more likely the result of being a distinct minority that has often needed an exit strategy. Loading up the furniture and money is a lot easier than packing up the cattle or the fame land.

The other point is the Jewish relationship with the state. This has often been the justification for persecuting Jews. They were accused of dual loyalties, with loyalty to the tribe overriding all else. If you look at the world today, that seems like a shrewd position. Being an American citizen carries little value these days. Abroad it is a burden and home it is becoming a liability. We treat illegal alien invaders better than our own poor.

The Jews seem to have it right. Governments and countries come and go. Why sacrifice for a concept that has so little utility? America may have been a special place long ago, but today it is just a slab of land with a bunch of people living in it. It’s every tribe for himself, so to speak, whether we like it or not. Only a fool clings to his patriotism these days.

Deck writes:

The second law of thermodynamics puts the lie to evolution. Evolution is atheistic dogma dressed up as science, nothing more. Psalm 14:1 “The fool says in his heart, There is no God.” The vituperation coming out of Pisco shows Fred hit a nerve. Read, In The Beginning by Walt Brown.

The second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy of an isolated system never decreases, because isolated systems always evolve toward thermodynamic equilibrium, a state with maximum entropy. Put another way, the natural process is for the complex to decay into the simple. The final result is complete randomness.

This is a popular misappropriation of physical science to biological science. This line of argument has been addressed many times in many places. Here’s one I found just by entering “second law of thermodynamics” in a nearby google machine. The fact that it remains popular with creationists underscores my point about Fred Reed. There’s no amount of facts and reasoning that will ever satisfy the creationist. Therefore, why would I or anyone else bother trying?