Let In The Terrorists

If my conservative friends are to be believed, liberals want anyone - including terrorists - to wander into the country whenever they want.

So, yeah, I can explain that.

What they describe is not what liberals want.

They want immigrants to be vetted using the existing, quite rigorous process. The current screening process, by the way, takes 18 to 24 months on average. it includes a number of tests, interviews, and database checks and is carried out by both the UN and US government agencies. If there are improvements that need to made to the process, by all means let's make them.

Let's also make those changes using actual data to make our decisions. For example, if we want to protect Americans from foreign terrorists, what countries would we focus on?

Oops, looks like our President missed the mark a bit.

One has to wonder what criteria was used to determine the countries included in the ban...

My Friend, Bernhard Langer

It gets weirder all the time.

Seriously, Trump lies constantly. And about the stupidest things.

His need for affirmation doesn't just border on ridiculous, it's an obsession.

Why would a guy like Trump need to name drop Bernhard Langer? And especially in a way that's so easily checked for accuracy? Langer's not his friend and didn't personally relate the story to him. Further, as a German citizen, Langer couldn't have been in the voting line.

What I find especially disturbing is Trumps explicit comment that the people in line "didn't look American."

I'd ask what he means, but I don't have to. He's now let the cat out of the bag with all the voter registration and fraud angst in the Republican party.

It's really about people who don't look like me being able to vote.

That's what made America great...

The fact that originally only white male landowners could vote.

Cracking Down On Illegal Immigration

We've been cracking down on illegal immigration for years. In fact, Bill Clinton called for a crackdown in 1995, and so did his successor, George W Bush.

Given all the noise about Obama's ineffectiveness regarding immigration and Trump's calls for renewed crackdowns, it made me wonder what the illegal immigrant population has done over the past twenty years.

So I looked. And here's what I found about the number of illegal immigrant workers:

It looks like when Clinton and Bush cracked down on illegal immigrants, their population increased. When Obama was "ineffectual" - according to his critics at least - the population leveled off or actually decreased...

Further, the same research showed that the number of illegal immigrants peaked in 2007 at 12.2 million. Since it has dropped to 11.1 million.

So if the trend is flat or down, why all the fuss?

If we kill trade with Mexico, all the decent paying jobs will disappear from Mexico and we'll have more people from Mexico trying to come here to get jobs.

The end result is the opposite of what Trump says he wants.  Seems like he has trouble understanding cause and effect...

The Dramatic Expansion of the Federal Workforce

On Monday, January 23, 2017 President Trump issued an executive order which institutes federal hiring freeze.

At a news conference also on Monday, Trump's spokesman Sean Spicer said the freeze "counters the dramatic expansion of the federal workforce in recent years."

The statement caused me to wonder, has there been a dramatic expansion of the federal workforce in recent years?

So I did a quick Google search and stumbled upon the federal government's Office of Personnel Management website. Yes, there is such a thing. And, in fact, they have regularly gathered statistics about the size of the federal workforce since 1962.

Here's what it looks like in graphical form:

There doesn't appear to be a "dramatic expansion of the federal workforce in recent years".  In fact, after an increase in 2008 (1.9%), 2009 (5%), and 2010 (.2%), by 2014 the workforce had already shrunk down to 2004 levels. Note that in the 2009 and 2010 increases, more than half of the increase came in the form of an increase in uniformed military personnel.

Presumably the 2011-2014 trend continues and the data for 2015 and 2016 show similar rates of decrease.

Also note that every ten years there is an increase in the federal workforce to perform the decennial census.