I don’t write as much at this blog as I used to, with other things occupying my time and with other outlets for writing. But my father passed away yesterday (as I started writing this) and I wanted to share a little bit about him. He was a member of the so-called “silent generation,” born in 1939, on a small farm just outside Denver, Colorado, where his parents had moved from their own farms in Nebraska. His dad worked at… Read more
February 23, 2021
Biden’s immigration bill will not “fix” illegal immigration
February 23, 2021 By Jane the Actuary
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Remember the George Bush immigration reform proposal in 2006, when he claimed that he would “solve” the issue of future illegal immigration by granting a new form of work visa, the “blue card”? Because, you see, people came to the US illegally because of our plentiful low-skill jobs which “Americans don’t want,” the idea was that employers would be allowed to recruit, legally, abroad, for any job at all, so long as they paid minimum wage. So there would still… Read more
February 22, 2021
Why the Equality Act is actually much worse than the Bostock Court ruling
February 22, 2021 By Jane the Actuary
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Remember back last summer when the Supreme Court determined that, by parsing the Civil Rights Act as literally as possible, it protected homosexual and transgender workers? At the time I said, “hey, the sky is not falling, Gorsuch actually affirmed a biological definition of ‘sex,’ and the ruling is fairly narrow.” Indeed, the premise of finding that a transgender person’s employment rights are protected was, when it comes down to it (though he didn’t use this phrasing) “you can’t prohibit… Read more
February 1, 2021
The Bee predicts the post-Trump GOP future
February 1, 2021 By Jane the Actuary
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On January 6, the Babylon Bee posted an article with the headline: “Absolute Legend: Trump Walks Away From Republican Party Without Even Looking Back At Explosion.” Here’s as much of the article as seems appropriate to share without violating fair use norms: In an awesome display of action movie MAGA-greatness, Trump walked away from the exploding Republican Party like an absolute legend, without looking back or even flinching. Witnesses say they saw Trump power-walking in slow motion away from… Read more
January 20, 2021
In which we learn that Biden isn’t a moderate after all
January 20, 2021 By Jane the Actuary
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Let’s start with immigration. Remember the “path to citizenship” and “earned legalization” promises? — that is, the claim that a mass legalization program would not be “amnesty” because there would be hoops to jump through rather than an automatic process and because the prospective new citizens would have to prove their worthiness? Turns out, the requirements for future residents will be few in the new Biden proposal. According to the Biden website, the only requirement for “undocumented individuals” to apply… Read more
January 6, 2021
A GRE postmortem
January 6, 2021 By Jane the Actuary
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No, not an election postmortem — I don’t believe there is appropriate data that could help identify whether, for instance, droves of Republicans really did stay home by getting suckered into the belief that this somehow made sense as a way of fighting against lizard people, at least not at this point in time. A GRE postmortem because one of my projects over the past month has been applying to graduate school. Yes, again. Readers who pay careful attention will… Read more
December 14, 2020
Let’s talk about ‘Dr.’ Biden
December 14, 2020 By Jane the Actuary
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So there was a dust-up over the weekend about a Wall Street Journal opinion piece criticizing Jill Biden and her supporters for her/their wish/demand/insistence that she be called “Dr. Jill Biden,” because of her academic degree. Is Jill Biden a doctor? Not in the ordinary American usage of the term. Does she merit being addressed with the title, “Dr. Biden”? Under some circumstances, by some people, yes. Is that customary usage actually reasonable? No, not really. Let’s start from the… Read more
November 21, 2020
Actually, workers on Food Stamps is a good thing
November 21, 2020 By Jane the Actuary
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In the news yesterday, the Government Accounting Office released its report on the number and percentage of individuals receiving federal aid such as Medicaid and food stamps who were employed by such major employers as Walmart and McDonald’s. The study was, as is the norm for such studies, not initiated by the GAO, but based on a request from Sen. Bernie Sanders, and, as the rhetoric and reporting on the study makes clear, aimed to criticize those employers for offering… Read more
November 16, 2020
Let’s talk about inflation
November 16, 2020 By Jane the Actuary
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So if I were a credentialed economist, or even had any specialized education in the subject, I’d write this at Forbes. But I’m not/I don’t, so I won’t. But I have spent the greater part of the weekend working with my teen to catch him up in his AP Econ class, and we’ve been going over the various graphs and concepts and, in particular, the connection between monetary supply and inflation that appears to have vanished in the United States…. Read more
November 10, 2020
On Trump, Electoral Fraud, and not believing your lying eyes
November 10, 2020 By Jane the Actuary
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Yes, I’m going to talk about electoral fraud, and I use that phrase deliberately to imply something beyond mere “voter fraud” which suggests merely voters committing fraud, rather than the officials accepting and tabulating the votes doing so. I will precede all of this with the statement that the best outcome of the election, given the alternatives, is that which we (likely) have: Biden as president and a GOP Senate to check his desires. But nonetheless: questions of potential fraud… Read more
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