Harvard graduate discovers that the suburbs are packed with narrow-minded white heterosexuals

by philg

The old white guy who led the First Parish church in our suburban town, a union of Congregational and Unitarian, retired. The Millionaires for Obama on the church hiring committee found Manish Mishra-Marzetti, a young Indian-American (Indian from India, not Indian like Elizabeth Warren) to become the new minister (in 2015). He, his husband, and their two adopted kids (characterized as “African American” in the video link below) moved into our midst.

On paper, at least, this guy is exactly the kind of person that the residents say that they want to assist and/or get to know better. He’s the child of immigrants. His skin is nearly as dark as a Virginia Democrat headed out for a party. He identifies as LGBTQIA. He organized trips to our southern border to assist migrants. He sermonized against the evils of Trump and Trump supporters.

In a YouTube talk, he tells the story of playground interactions with the soccer moms. Spoiler alert: He bailed out on our boring suburb and moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan. This can’t be because he didn’t want to pay the 30-percent property tax increase (we are demonstrating our commitment to environmentalism by bulldozing a 140,000-square-foot school, having trailers trucked in to house students for three years, and constructing an identical-sized school on the same spot (full story); at $110 million and considered per-town-resident-student, this will be the most expensive school ever built in the United States). As pastor, he received free housing from the church and I don’t think that the church-owned house was subject to property taxation.

Watch the video (start at 8:30 if you’re pressed for time) and see what the Harvard Divinity School graduate learned!

The video made the rounds on our town’s mailing list. Some excerpts from the Millionaires Who Hate Trump (formerly the Millionaires for Obama):

Where is the outrage? The outrage each and every one of us should feel that we are the cause of this man and his family moving half way across the country so they could feel welcome!

Being black in America is dangerous, especially these days. Being a woman in America is dangerous as well. Being a Muslim is dangerous. Being any person of color… Being poor and homeless is dangerous as well – and there are homeless in the suburbs, even [Happy Valley].

When we were in our adoption classes years ago, one lesson I heard there and have learned over and over again is that if our children say they are being discriminated against, we had best believe them. For those of us that are members of the dominant society, it is not possible to fully recognize all the nuances of racism.

It’s unfortunate that the First Parish could be blamed for Manish’s
unhappiness, because they extended an invitation to him and his
non-traditional family, which other organizations might have denied. [i.e., because it was two daddies and two adopted children, this guy should have been grateful for the job because the rest of the country is even more hostile to gay multi-racial families? Where is the evidence that other Americans are yet more racist?]

it’s awesome how open and welcoming Ann Arbor has been, guess I need to check my own prejudgment of the general Midwest! [the minister’s new job, mentioned favorably in the video, is in Ann Arbor; folks here know so much about the rest of the U.S. that they assume Ann Arbor is solid MAGA land! (the square around Ann Arbor voted overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton in 2016)]

He talks about his children which is a difficult issue for a male parent. [What better way to show one’s lack of prejudice than to assert that men are inferior at handling the challenge of talking about children?]

The perceived’symbolic moat around our Town should be a wake-up call that I hope our Town leaders will address. Perhaps the [Board of Selects] might consider forming a Task Force on Ethnic and Gender Diversity and Inclusion in [Happy Valley]. The enormous amount of money we are spending on a school building will not make a “school” unless we teach the values of embracing differences to both parents and children in school and outside in “playgroups”.

As a person of color [who let her in?!?], I am quite tired of “seeing the intent” of my fellow citizens, and having to assume the best of them every time I’m asked where I’m from (or even “where my people are from” if I don’t play along nicely. Even in the [Happy Valley] post office I was asked if I was from Outer Mongolia. Hey, I’m from New Jersey.) I’ve spent a lifetime of assuming the best of people when they make me feel like “other.” Maybe it’s time for the majority to take a deeper look at their own biases and presumptions. Please don’t whitesplain Manish.

Do you know how many times I’ve been asked where I’m from? Exactly zero. Because I’m white. It’s not difficult to understand how a question like that, given our society’s history, could bother a person of color who not only has to field the question frequently but recognizes that the question often comes with undertones of “do you belong here?” [You belong if you want to spend $250,000 per town-resident student on a renovated school!]

I cannot convey enough how valuable this book has been for me. Everyone can get something from it. White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo [I don’t think it addresses how whites should deal with the fact that average white IQ and income is lower than average Asian-American IQ and income]

Speaking as a woman who was an international athlete in the 70’s and who suffered greatly from the negative assumptions then prevailing about physically strong women and the privileges available to male athletes which were denied to women, I can attest that although times have changed for the better, I still see anti-female intent in events where others don’t necessarily see it. The Kavanaugh interviews were a good example.

[From a guy with an Indian-sounding name] Most (All!) immigrants are vulnerable. On some difficult circumstances they had to leave their native country. They are looking for support and help. [Maybe the U.S. could set up a program where an immigrant who wants support and help could get free housing, food, health insurance, and smarthphone from the government? To be funded by taxes on the native-born…] Hence an immigrant can feel intimidated by seemingly unfriendly questions. … The color of skin adds another layer of sensitivity. Here it is a function of profiling the person as less intelligent or of lower character. I observe this as a cultural issue in the US because of the history. Because of my own skin tone, i have faced such individuals.

On Sunday afternoon, over a hundred people gathered [at the church] for a facilitated workshop and discussion of our reactions to the video. … The First Parish, founded in the New England tradition of individual thought and conscience, is a democracy. [I wonder how long a member would last after expressing the individual thought that Donald Trump would make a better president than Hillary Clinton!] Many people who thought they had gone out of their way to welcome Manish and his family to the church and to [Happy Valley] are disappointed by their failure to make that welcome fully understood. [The white say-gooder (few actually take action and rise to the level of “do-gooder”) is doomed to be misunderstood] We do need to take a careful look at who we are and who we appear to be when we deal with newcomers and people who feel like outsiders. [i.e., the problem is mostly the appearance of white narrow-mindedness]

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Prostitution next to the Outback Steakhouse… and it is Trump’s fault

by philg

Here’s a story for New Englanders… “Patriots Owner Robert Kraft Charged in Florida Prostitution Sting” (nytimes):

Robert K. Kraft, the billionaire owner of the Super Bowl champion New England Patriots, was charged Friday with two counts of soliciting sex as part of a wide-ranging investigation into prostitution and human trafficking in South Florida.

The charges against Mr. Kraft, 77, came after the police in Jupiter, Fla., used video surveillance to observe activity inside several day spas and massage parlors.

One of the most powerful owners in American sports, he is a leading voice in the N.F.L.’s small fraternity of billionaire owners, a member of the committee that sets Commissioner Roger Goodell’s salary, and a friend and political benefactor of President Trump.

All of the sexual encounters that have resulted in charges were videotaped as part of the investigation, the police said.

Mr. Kraft was said to have patronized a spa called Orchids of Asia in Jupiter … The mall, anchored on one end by an Outback Steakhouse,

NYT readers express the appropriate amount of outrage in the comments. A few do ask, essentially, “If the guy has a Gulfstream, why doesn’t he go to a place where prostitution is legal?”

Plainly this is Donald Trump’s fault, somehow, but if the accusation is “human trafficking” could it be that Trump’s proposed tightening of undocumented immigration would actually reduce the number of brothels next to Outbacks? The managers of Mustang Ranch cannot sponsor H-1B visas on the grounds that the job is a “specialty occupation requiring a bachelor’s degree,” can they?

Related:

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How would the Wall work through Big Bend National Park?

by philg

The U.S.-Mexico border is 1,954 miles long, of which 580 miles was fenced (not “walled”!) prior to Donald Trump taking office (Wikipedia). That leaves 1,374 miles of proposed new barrier (immoral “wall” if built by Trump; moral “fence” if built by others?). Of those 1,374 miles, 118 miles are part of Big Bend National Park.

Reading The Line Becomes a River, by a former Border Patrol agent (2008-2012), made me wonder how Trump’s proposed barrier can work along this part of the border. Some excerpts:

On a hot Texas evening at the edge of Big Bend National Park, I watched a man ride his horse across the Rio Grande.

I gestured at the village across the river and asked the man if he lived in Boquillas. Of course, he said, beaming with pride. I asked what he did for work and he nodded at the unattended souvenirs and handmade crafts that had been set out atop the rocks. No hay trabajo, he complained—we make our money from tourists. I asked if many Americans crossed over to visit. Sure, he said, Boquillas is very safe. Narcos don’t bother us, even the rangers and la migra leave us alone. He paused. You know, he said, there’s a nice restaurant in my village. Is there breakfast? I asked. Of course, he smiled. I’ll come for you in the morning.

The next morning, as the sun grew pale and white in the eastern sky, I met my guide at the banks of the river. He instructed me to climb onto his horse, and then, like it was nothing, he spurred the animal across the river into Mexico. We spoke little as I jostled atop sauntering haunches and grasped at the back of his saddle. Passing the first cinderblock homes of Boquillas, I considered the extent to which my safekeeping depended upon this stranger, leading me into the silent and unfamiliar streets of his village.

Our young fit fluent-in-Spanish half-Mexican hero bravely makes a trip that, during my visit to Big Bend, was mostly being taken by senior citizens after exiting from their RVs. The “river” is more like a wide shallow stream at this point in its course. Neither the U.S. nor Mexico was bothering to do any border control at the border. In the case of the U.S., there were checkpoints across the roads about 50 miles north. I enjoyed my time in Boquillas, especially the town’s dusty museum (unattended by any guard; pay into a box via the honor system).

The National Park Service now has an official guide to visiting Boquillas. It seems that the ability to walk to Boquillas and get a taco was one of the freedoms we supposed lost after 9/11 (Wikipedia; except that the author made it across easily!), but since 2013 (Wikipedia) there is a formal border crossing.

I wonder how Trump’s political promise can be implemented in this part of the country. Here are some possibilities:

  • Despite the idea that national parks are supposed to be mostly natural, we install an ugly fence along our side of the river. It will appear in every visitor’s snapshots from Big Bend.
  • We build a fence on the north edge of the park, with checkpoints at the handful of roads that would cross the fence. Any caravan of migrants that has made its way to Mexico City can ride a bus for another 18 hours, get off in Boquillas, walk across the Rio Grande and tell the nearest park ranger “I am seeking asylum” (or give birth to a baby who will then be entitled to bring the parents in 18 years from now, thus saddling U.S. taxpayers with the cost of public housing, health care, food stamps, etc., for the now-older parents)
  • We pay the Mexicans to build a monster fence somewhere on their side of the border, out of sight of the tourists who come to Big Bend (but the Mexicans have their own state park on their side).

Is there any other alternative that is consistent with Trump’s campaign promise?

[Also, given that it is easy to walk into the U.S. at Big Bend, why aren’t migrant caravans choosing this route right now? Why wait near the border in Tijuana, for example, when one could just as easily be over the border and on one’s way from Big Bend?]

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While you’re watching the cable box, the cable box is watching you…

by philg

Our Verizon FiOS service was beginning to flake out, though could usually be restored by power-cycling the router. I decided that it was time to upgrade to Gbit service so I called up the friendly sales folks to sign up for a new package.

“Let me see what channels you watch,” said the agent. “Oh! Your favorite is NBC?” He sounded surprised. Other than watching the last five minutes of the Super Bowl (one hour of clock time?), we hadn’t turned on the TV since an attempt to tape “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.”

In other words, the agent knew what we watched and how much we watched, presumably from cable box data.

Is it common knowledge that TV viewing habits are not private in a cableized world? Why aren’t folks who say that Donald Trump is establishing a dictatorship concerned? Wouldn’t it be straightforward to use cable company data to find those who #Resist (e.g., by refusing to watch Fox News) and send them to concentration camps?

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The Line Becomes a River: Birthright citizenship is the root of the fight over family separation

by philg

The Line Becomes a River is by a guy who worked as a Border Patrol agent between 2008 and 2012. He is outraged by U.S. policies that result in families of migrants being separated:

No father should be kept from his family this way, no father should have a young son and wake up unable to hear him in the next room.

A big portion of the book concerns two undocumented immigrants whose children were born on U.S. soil. Due to “birthright citizenship,” the children are U.S. citizens despite the illegal status of their parents. When the father is caught and deported, the parents decide that the children and mother need to remain in the U.S. so that the children can have maximum opportunity (and once the 15-year-old turns 18 he can sponsor his dad by right for a Green Card).

From Mom to the immigration bureaucrats:

Lupe wrote in Spanish on lined school paper borrowed from her children: I Lupe Balderas declare that José Martínez-Cruz is my husband since the year 1999. We have 3 boys age 15, 10, and 8. … now we miss him very much because I Lupe cannot take my boys to the park because lately I have been unwell. My husband took my boys to play soccer every Wednesday and on weekends he dedicated his time to us to eat and go out and now we miss him. My husband has given sixteen years of happiness and love to my sons and me but we won’t return to Mexico because my boys don’t know anyone there and they speak very little Spanish and it’s very difficult to adapt to another country when their whole life has been here they were born here and they are growing here. For us as parents we want the best for our sons Diego, José Junior, and Vicente. … we give hope to God that very soon we will be together because God does not like to see his children separated.

From a son:

Hi I’m Diego Martínez I’m the son of José Martínez I’m his oldest son I am 15 years old. I have two younger brothers. One is 10 and the other is 8. I’m working to keep my brothers happy to buy them what they want to keep them happy. Well my dad José is the nicest guy I know my dad is like my best friend and my father. I treat my dad with so much respect he’s the father any kid would want to have. My mom and my whole family broke down when we saw him at court on the first court he had everyone started crying. … I miss my dad he knew how to cheer us up when we were down. He took us to the park on Monday and Wednesday to play soccer with our church friend he got along with everyone at church my dad was the coolest person most nicest, most religious, most caring person always made my mom happy, always putting a smile in our faces every single day he’s also very smart and very funny. … How I feel right now about my dad being in jail and seeing him like this makes me really sad depressed my father isn’t here with us everyone that asks me about my dad makes me sad to say he’s in jail. My heart kinda stops pauses and breaks down on every letter they send him he was a man with three children and one woman. Each one of my friends I’ve had for many years loved my dad because he took us to places like to any place appropriate, to mountains in the west to parks to many places in the city. My dad did anything to make us happy now my life is depressing hollow my dad’s not here. A missing place for him here waits.

Thanks to modern telecommunications and transportation, the family can talk 24/7 and actually get together regularly:

I asked Lupe about the boys and she told me that an uncle with papers had offered to take them across the border so they could see their father.

A week later I checked in again with Lupe. Did the boys see José? I asked. Yes, she said, but not Vicente. He just got his arm put in a cast. He’s a little sad, she explained, he hasn’t seen his daddy since he was in court. Lupe told me that José was still at the border, that he planned to cross again soon, maybe this weekend, that everything was fine, that he told her not to worry.

I wanted to confess to her that I wished I had the courage to smuggle José myself, to ferry him safely through the desert, past the sensors and watchtowers, past the agents patrolling distant trails and dirt roads, past the highway checkpoints.

From the father:

For a while, you know, a couple months ago, after I had tried to cross again and again, I finally started to think that maybe my family could come live in Mexico until Lupe and I could arrange our papers. I even mentioned it to the boys on the phone. We don’t want to live in Mexico, they told me. We don’t know anyone there. We like it here, they said, we like our school.

When Lupe and I went to get married, the pastor told us that it was important to grow a family, that it was important for children to see their parents together. Es de mucho valor una familia unida. Family should stay together. If I must stay in Mexico and my wife raises my boys alone, they will be getting less care, less love, and so the family will slowly deteriorate. Being a parent is a job that you share, it’s a job you have to be present for.

Some politicians in the United States think that if a mother or father is deported, this will cause the entire family to move back to Mexico. But in fact, the mothers and fathers with the best family values will want their family to stay in the U.S., they will cross the border again and again to be with them.

If I am arrested crossing the border, I understand it’s part of the system. I realize that I am crossing illegally. But it’s complicated, you see. I know I’m breaking the rules, but it is necessary because my family is there. I don’t want to cause harm to the country, but I have to break the law. I have to. Es una necesidad. It is a situation of emotion, of love. Those who accept staying apart from their family are without love. Their children grow up without love. So I must fight against this.

I don’t want to carry drugs across the desert, I don’t want to get myself into more problems, but sometimes it’s not a choice. The same people who control the drug smuggling control the human trafficking, so in some places if you want to get across, you have to carry a load.

To be honest, I would rather be in prison in the U.S. and see my boys once a week through the glass than to stay here and be separated from my family. At least I would be closer to them. So you see, there is nothing that can keep me from crossing. My boys are not dogs to be abandoned in the street. I will walk through the desert for five days, eight days, ten days, whatever it takes to be with them. I’ll eat grass, I’ll eat bushes, I’ll eat cactus, I’ll drink filthy cattle water, I’ll drink nothing at all. I’ll run and hide from la migra, I’ll pay the mafias whatever I have to. They can take my money, they can rob my family, they can lock me away, but I will keep coming back. I will keep crossing, again and again, until I make it, until I am together again with my family. No, no me quedo aquí. Voy a seguir intentando pasar.

The final paragraph above is actually the last paragraph of the book, prior to a brief Epilogue.

The book reveals what I think is a fundamental contradiction in our laws occasioned by birthright citizenship. We cannot bear the idea of the federal government separating families. At the same time, we won’t simply allow anyone who claims to be the parent of a minor child to enter and stay in the U.S. forever. If the child is a U.S. citizen, however, there is no way to implement our stated values. We cannot deport the child. We insist on deporting the parent. But we also insist that the federal government should never separate parents from children.

[Separately, the author is a product of U.S. state government separation of parents from children via our no-fault divorce laws. His mom has been through family court so many times that the author thanks “three fathers” in the Acknowledgments. Mom of author did not meet her own father until she reached the age of 17. Until that age, the only contact that she had with her mother’s former partner was a photograph. Like Elizabeth Warren, Americans are eager to see children separated from one parent in the event that an American adult wants to have sex with some new friends (and will offer significant cash incentives for this behavior), but they’re inconsolable if children are separated from one or both parents in the event that a parent is detained and/or deported.]

Helicopter enthusiasts and Airbus salespeople will appreciate The Line Becomes a River. Whenever there is a need for transportation, a Border Patrol Eurocopter spins up. It might be a dehydrated migrant. It might be looking for a corpse in the desert.

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La Traviata: first opera performed on the Outer Banks

by philg

I was fortunate to be among the first 600 people to enjoy a fully staged opera on the Outer Banks of North Carolina: La Traviata.

Three charitable foundations got together to make a professional production possible in the swank community auditorium that was built in 2004 as part of the First Flight High School, adjacent to the Kitty Hawk Monument/Airport.

Local hero Tshombe Selby was a powerful Alfredo. It’s easy to see why he was picked up for the Metropolitan Opera chorus. Wayne Line brought a truly huge baritone to the role of Alfredo’s dad.

The women were equally good: Sarah Joyce Cooper in the title role of Violetta and Caroline Tye as her good-time girlfriend Flora.

One of the fun parts of the program was finding that the conductor’s name is also “Violetta”: Violetta Zabbi. Her parents back in Communist Odessa watched Teresa Stratas in the Zeffirelli movie and were inspired.

As with a recent La Boheme (see below), it was nice to see opera in a smaller venue, bringing the form back to its roots in 17th century Italy. The 3,800-seat Metropolitan Opera House would be great if not for the existence of video cameras. Given the existence of video, however, why would anyone want to see a live opera from seats that are so far away that binoculars are required?

The smaller venues give younger performers a chance to grow and develop. Cole Tornberg, Gennaidi Vystoskiy, and Erik Tofte were able to shine as Gastone, Doctor Grenvil, and the Marquis D’Obigny. Debra Kasten was appropriately discreet as the courtesan’s maid Annina. John Adams, in black tie with cane, was convincing as “Baron Douphol, the man who has been supporting Violetta.”

Sets were simple, but effective. The audience was never in doubt as to where the characters were.

Related:

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Learning the history of aviation from the U.S. government

by philg

The U.S. government-produced video running behind the replica Wright Flyer at the Wright Brothers National Memorial shows the arc of aviation starting at Kill Devil Hills and ending with U.S. government-run programs such as the Blue Angels, the USAF, and NASA. All advances occur within the U.S. Entirely left out: the importance of the Wright Brothers’ time in France (the U.S. government was initially unreceptive to the Wrights); the first modern airplane (Bleriot, in France); the British invention of the jet engine (led by Frank Whittle); the jet-powered commercial airlines and airfreight services that have enabled our global economy:

Note the two propellers driven by one engine. What kind of rating would be necessary to fly that today? It is not “multi-engine” per se, but what if the drive to one prop fails? It would yaw just like a multi-engine plane on a single engine.

[Also potentially interesting: in the official government history of aviation, after Wilbur and Orville Wright completed their 1903 flights all of the notable advances were made by women. In the photos above, for example, Bessie Coleman is important enough to cite by name while the Tuskegee Airmen appear in an anonymous group (thanks for your 1578 combat missions, though!). Olga Custodio, the “First Latina to complete US Air Force pilot training,” is cited on the “Inventors” screen (Wikipedia does not credit her with any inventions). Amelia Earhart is featured (why not Jacqueline Cochrane instead?) and also Louise Thaden (from Bentonville, Arkansas, now an important center of aviation thanks to the Walton family). Sad: Kalpana Chawla is cited as the “first woman of Indian origin in space” (she was killed due to incompetent group decision-making (by government workers) in the foam-damaged shuttle Columbia).]

The wing-shaped stone monument started in 1928 is awesome: “Conceived by Genius; Achieved by Dauntless Resolution…”

The North Carolina state government set up its own monument in 2003: a life-size bronze sculpture by Stephen H. Smith of the team launching the first flight. Photography nerds will appreciate the bronze view camera!

The original takeoff and landing locations from December 17, 1903 are marked with impressive stones and engravings. Example:

[I wonder if these locations are approximate, though. There was no GPS back in those days. I don’t think the Wright Brothers bothered to make a careful survey of the sandy/scrubby field and then leave permanent survey monuments behind for future generations.]

AOPA members will appreciate seeing their dues put to good use in a pilot lounge built next to the adjacent 3,000′ KFFA runway. But how well does requiring secret pilot knowledge to get in work in the age of LTE and Google?

The surrounding area reflects a world changed more by the automobile than the airplane. The Wright Brothers had to seek help from the guys manning the local U.S. Life-Saving Service station (merged into Coast Guard in 1915) as the local population was only about 300. Today if they needed big guys to lug a glider up a dune they could wander over to the adjacent Try My Nuts and Duck Donuts. From the top of the dune one can see a wide strip of houses, stores, condos, etc. stretching to the horizon in both directions. U.S. population has grown a little more than 4X since 1903, but the summer population of Kill Devil Hills is more than 100X larger than it was in 1903. Nearly all of these folks arrive by car.

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez takes an anti-immigration position?

by philg

At lunch on Friday, a friend bragged a bit about his daughter, a whip-smart Computer Science graduate working for one of the most prestigious Wall Street banks: “She’s making a ton of money.”

Really, I asked. She won’t need a car in Manhattan so let’s say that she can spend half of her after-tax earnings on rent. Within a 20-minute walk of her office, how big of an apartment would she get? “Not even a one-bedroom,” he replied. The young energetic works-all-the-time college graduate has to share an apartment. So, she’d have an objectively higher standard of living if she were a programmer for the State of Indiana? “Yes.”

Let’s look at what happens when a big rich employer moves into this environment.

“Ocasio-Cortez and progressives score a victory in Amazon fight” (CNN):

Ocasio-Cortez hailed the Washington Post report on Friday as a victory of the citizen over the corporation, when she tweeted a link to the Post article and added: “Can everyday people come together and effectively organize against creeping overreach of one of the world’s biggest corporations? Yes, they can.”

Let’s also consider “Ocasio-Cortez leads immigration rally outside White House” (The Hill):

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) on Tuesday used a pro-immigration rally outside the White House to call for permanent residence for people in the U.S. with temporary protected status (TPS).

“We are a nation that turns peril into promise,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “We are here to make sure that all TPS recipients become permanent members of the United States of America.”

Also “ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ SHEDS TEAR, SAYS ‘WE ARE STANDING ON NATIVE LAND’ AS SHE CALLS TO DEFUND ICE” (NBC):

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Thursday called on Congress to cut funding to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and accused the agency of criminalizing Latinos in the United States, which she called “native land.”

I wonder if everyone’s favorite member of Congress has figured out that the immigration of Amazon into Manhattan is likely to be a net negative for most of her constituents. Plainly, property owners will be better off. There will be more demand for office space, retail space, and apartments.

What about renters? Consider the school teacher, age 32, who has been working for NYC Public Schools since graduating college at age 22 and has earned an online master’s degree. If I’m reading the salary schedule right, this puts the teacher at $87,160 per year. If the teacher has no children, earning $87,160 is above the eligibility limit for public housing.

Why is the teacher better off after Amazon moves in? The teacher’s salary is set by union contract and won’t go up. Amazon was forecast to pay an average of $150,000 per year. This is great news for the teacher’s landlord, who now has 25,000+ new potential renters earning $150,000 per year. Why is it great news for the teacher?

If we consider the teacher a “native” and the Amazon workers “immigrants,” I wonder if this is the same situation as the immigration question on which Ms. Ocasio-Cortez takes the opposite view.

An extra 50 or 100 million immigrants plus children of immigrants is wonderful news for property owners (the government will pay to rent a migrant family an apartment), the health care industry (more customers and the government will pay for nearly all of them!), folks who work in the welfare industry, etc. But for a renter with low skills, the immigrants will drive up the cost of an apartment and drive down the market-clearing wage.

Readers: Is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez being inconsistent here in advocating for migrants to come through the southern border and for Amazon to stay out of Queens? Does the own vs. rent dichotomy explain most of the disagreement in New York City on whether Amazon HQ2 was a positive or a negative?

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Energy and cost efficiency of different forms of transportation

by philg

“Lesson From The A380 And California HSR: Smaller Is Better In Transportation” (Forbes), by Brad Templeton, contains a lot of interesting numbers:

In the Department of Energy Transport Energy Data Book you will see some surprising numbers. For example, for transit buses you’ll see that the average American bus uses 4,102 BTUs per passenger-mile, while the average car uses 2,939. (A gallon of gasoline is around 115,000 BTUs.) Yes, US bus ridership is so poor that it would use less energy to move all bus riders in cars, at the national average of 3 people for 2 cars. You don’t even need to fill all the seats, and the cars are just average efficiency. The Toyota Prius is twice as efficient as that average car. People driving around alone in hybrid cars out-green the bus system.

You can compare what you would guess is an efficient electric train, the New York MTA subway. The DoE reports it uses 503 BTUS (of electricity, not heat) per passenger-mile. Even measuring the heat, that’s better than those cars and buses, but about the same as that Prius.

Looking at the MTA again, it spends about $16B to for 13B passenger miles, or $1.23 per passenger mile. Typical car ownership costs in the USA for late model cars is 50-60 cents per vehicle-mile, plus parking. Drivers get subsidies (though they pay gas taxes and other taxes for the roads) but the MTA isn’t paying for its tunnels either.

This is consistent with what I’ve heard from other sources: The idea of building and maintaining rails is obsolete for passenger transportation.

Separately, the article covers the demise of the Airbus A380, which saddens me because I’ve heard that it had the lowest level of cabin noise of any airliner ever produced (the A350 is a close second) and I never got to experience it (there have been some A380 flights in and out of Boston, but they are not common).

Maybe the countries that say they are morally obligated to assist refugees will snap up all of the A380s and send them out daily to pick up 1,000 refugees at a time from the world’s poorest and most troubled regions. If you are sincere about wanting to help people, why demand that they walk 1,000 miles to get that help?

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NYT: Greedy employers love women; woke university professors hate them

by philg

“The Secret History of Women in Coding: Computer programming once had much better gender balance than it does today. What went wrong?” (NYT, February 13, 2019) describes a golden age of female nerddom from the 1950s through the mid-80s. Employers would recruit, train, and pay people who identified as women to write software in IBM 704 assembly language. They would even do this for applicants who identified as part of two victim groups (a “young black woman” is cited).

According to the newspaper, once it became conventional for programmers to get Computer Science degrees, the percentage of women choosing coding dropped:

If we want to pinpoint a moment when women began to be forced out of programming, we can look at one year: 1984.

Who was forcing them out, then? University professors and the environments that they set up! Women-hating CS faculty were apparently eager to send approximately half of the potential students, and the funding that would accompany them, into the arms of less sexist departments.

The women described in the article don’t support the narrative of the NYT. One left coding because she wanted to be a lawyer and had a successful four-decade career in the law (see Atlantic article below on how the availability of higher-paid and more prestigious work in, e.g., finance, medicine, law, and politics can draw women away from the last-resort jobs of engineer and computer programmer).

The comments are interesting. A young woman reading these would certainly choose some career other than programming. Women describes decades of misery and sexism in the cubicle plantations where they’ve been stuck (and now they don’t even get cubicles!). So we have the odd phenomenon of the NYT saying that they are passionate about pushing up the number of women in STEM while simultaneously writing articles that any rational young woman would interpret as a huge warning flag regarding a STEM career.

Alternative explanations are not considered by the journalist and editors. For example, the purported golden age of female coding ended just as programming changed character. The job of data scientist today is a lot more like what a “programmer” was doing in the 1970s.

Another alternative is that the golden age coincided with a time of maximum female economic insecurity. No-fault divorce was being rolled out, in which the husband could unilaterally shed the wife in favor of a younger sex partner. But post-divorce financial arrangements were subject to the whims of individual judges due to a lack of guidelines and precedent. Once known-in-advance rules were set up, a lot of married women concluded that they didn’t need to work (see the economic study by Voena cited in “Litigation, Alimony, and Child Support in the U.S. Economy”). Child support guidelines introduced in the 1980s made it more lucrative for a woman to have sex with an already-married dentist or doctor than to go to work as a software engineer (see Massachusetts family law, for example).

Nor does the Times consider why female-run profit-hungry employers don’t seek out women to hire, train, and exploit. Sheryl Sandberg runs Facebook and advertises her passion for the advancement of women. If there is a huge reservoir of female coding talent out there, why wouldn’t Facebook tap into it with an aptitude test and an in-house training program? The cost of training women to the standard of a BSCS is less than what Facebook is currently spending to recruit men. (Remember that most of the four years of a BSCS is spent doing stuff that doesn’t relate to being a software engineer. For one thing, a full two years is spent not being in school at all.) How about Epic Systems and its multi-billionaire founder who identifies as a woman? Why wouldn’t they save a ton of money by recruiting and training an all-female staff to relive the glorious days of the 1960s with their 1960s database technology? (Epic rejects the RDBMS!)

Finally, the Times doesn’t consider the apparent inconsistency between this article and the rest of their journalism. Capitalism is responsible for the evils of racism and sexism. Universities are where enlightenment prevails. Is it that CS professors are the exception to the general rule? And what’s their motivation? Why do they want to see the biology department get the fancy new building to accommodate all of the female students (now a majority on campus)?

Finally, the article is strong on its mischaracterization of what James Damore, the cast-out Google heretic, wrote. (Has anyone at any American newspaper actually read his infamous memo?)

Readers: What was your favorite comment on this piece? I like the ones that say that the waning of female nerddom was due to the high salaries that purportedly began to be paid to programmers (the BLS can’t find this! Programmers today get paid less, on average, than the women described in the article were getting way back when). None of these coastal elites ask why, if it is all about the Benjamins, the percentage of women is growing in the highest-paid fields, such as medicine and finance.

Related:

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