Sleazy I-Banks and the End of Nationalism Among Elites

The Wall Street Journal is reporting (link through financialbin, WSJ behind the paywall) in their dead tree July 5th edition, that big Wall Street Investment banks and commodity firms are snapping up metals warehouses. In turn, their business practices are driving up indirectly consumer prices. More evidence of the utter corruption of the elites, and the vast social distance and disconnect between elites and ordinary Americans.


The Journal reports that about 25% of London Metal Exchange stocks of Aluminum, are sitting in Goldman-Sachs and other big Investment bank-controlled warehouses. The total rental income is about $171 million (for all the owners, combined). The warehouses in New Orleans, contain about 59% of LME supplies of zinc, netting the owners a rental income of $70 million. Also in New Orleans, about 25% of LME copper nets annual rental income of about $16 million, and 73% of LME nickel supplies nets owners about $13.4 million.

These warehouses used to be independent, until Investment banks like Goldman-Sachs, and commodities firms like Glencore, bought them up in the past few years. Users of the warehouses like Coca-Cola, complain that they were lured in by cheap rental rates, but when they asked to pull their stocks out, were told they had to wait seven months, in some cases. Goldman releases only 1,500 metric tons a day (the minimum requirement by LME) of their stocks. Obviously a short-term play designed to drive up the prices of metals on the spot market (by restricting supply from warehouses) and possibly on the futures market as well.

Further, critics like can-maker Novelis, and Coca-Cola, charge that the I-banks and big commodities firms are using a "birds eye view" of what clients put in and request to be pulled out, to spot trends and trade off customer information in the commodities markets. You might recall, it was exactly this "trading off the customer's information" that was one of the more damning things to come out of the sub-prime meltdown financial crisis investigations, largely bearing out the charges made by Michael Lewis in "the Big Short" and various other critics. Historically Goldman-Sachs has been suspected of using customers as ways to gather an information advantage, and screw everyone in the market. The preponderance of Goldman-Sachs executives in the first Bush Administration, the Clinton Administration, the Bush II Administration, and the Obama Administration only furthers that accusation.

That accusation seems spot-on with the purchase of the metals warehouses. Formerly a "backwater" the warehouses don't earn much profit. Capital expenses are large (warehouses, guards, security, people to move the metal in and out, contracts with barges and trucking firms, it is no accident these warehouses are located in major ports or on industrial traffic rivers). The expertise in running large warehouses and synergy with what amounts to trading firms are nil. But ... the information to be gathered on what customers are doing with metals (storing them, or asking to take them out) can provide a key edge in trading the metals. With deals like sub-prime a thing of the past, basically Goldman-Sachs is looking for new people to screw over.

The ABCD firms that dominate basic commodity trading (Archer-Daniels Midland, Bunge, Cargill, and Dreyfuss) do so by having a huge network of spotters, counters, and other information/intelligence operatives in places like say, Abidjan, Ivory Coast, counting how much cocoa is actually being loaded into warehouses or shipped abroad. In many cases these networks providing intelligence took decades to construct (and are often highly illegal in the countries they operate in, many of them providing basic economic/commodity information that are state secrets). Agriculture is a tricky business, because sudden weather events can change almost every prediction, and often in the Third World expected harvests come in radically different due to rampant cheating one way or another.

For now, the big I-banks are seeking profits by ... well blatant manipulation of the metals spot and likely futures markets. Naturally this benefits metals producers, basically big mining companies like Xstrata or BHP Billiton. They get higher prices by restricting the supply sitting in warehouses. Of course, eventually the major users of metals will simply build warehouses themselves. And keep their data (what they put in and pull out) as private as possible. But if Coca-Cola or Novelis must build and staff their own warehouses (and nothing of course prevents them from doing so) their overhead becomes larger. Thus the prices they charge the customer in the end becomes higher.

What should have remained a staid, sedate business serving the specialized needs of big metals consumers in the US and elsewhere, has been turned upside down by what amounts to a set of elites with no boundaries or national feelings. Even Gilded Age Robber Barons had some sense of propriety, a shared nationalism that moderated the urge to gouge every last penny out of the average person. Even Standard Oil's John D. Rockefeller had limits:

 In spite of the formation of the trust and its perceived immunity from all competition, by the 1880s Standard Oil had passed its peak of power over the world oil market. Rockefeller finally gave up his dream of controlling all the world’s oil refining, he admitted later, “We realized that public sentiment would be against us if we actually refined all the oil.”

What we can expect is far higher prices, for consumers, in almost every product using metals: every can of soda, every bit of consumer goods containing copper (such as blue jeans with copper rivets or a laptop), or zinc, or nickel, will cost more. Eventually, trust-busting such as brought Standard Oil to heel will be needed. But laws themselves will not be enough. The "smart guys" at Goldman-Sachs will always be searching for a new customer to screw, with the end "screwee" being the average American. The same is true of the other I-banks: JP Morgan, in particular, comes to mind. So too the massive firms like Glencore, incorporated outside the US (and trivia time, formed by a buyout of Marc Rich, yes THAT Marc Rich).

The US has always had people trying to say, corner the silver market. These individuals usually came a cropper because there was always the possibility of new supply over the horizon. Mining companies could mine more silver. Politicians could bust up trusts and force supply onto the market. No one individual no matter how wealthy could stand up to the government that had to act at least sometimes to avoid massive pain on the part of voters. But the problem today has gone far beyond individuals into institutions, with the institutions themselves becoming rotten to the core.

The rot is the result of an elite that fundamentally lacks any identification with, or even understanding, of the ordinary people in the nations in which they live and work. The folks at Goldman-Sachs are not only from all over the world, the ones born in the US feel little loyalty to their fellow citizens. In a word, they lack nationalism. A tie that binds the highest of the elite, the King or the Prime Minister or the President, and the lowly private, janitor, and factory worker.

While an excess of nationalism in its worst form can result in folks goose-stepping down the Champs Elysee, that's akin to saying since food can make some people grossly obese, no one should ever, ever eat anything. That strategy is only viable for supermodels (who have apparently the super power of not eating anything, ever, and existing on cocaine and smokes). For everyone else, eating is essential. So too for nations, nationalism is essential. Like everything good in life, all is well as long as no one goes overboard.

The modern globalized world is very very good at putting some of the smartest people, and some of the most privileged and hereditary privileged people, in powerful groups and letting them run amok in screwing over their ordinary peers in nations powerful and weak alike. Blogger Half Sigma has done outstanding work noting the privileged, rich background of most of the New York Times reporters and editors. The same people essentially make up Goldman-Sachs, or Glencore, or JP Morgan's executives. Plus of course elites from India, China, and other places. Their loyalty is to themselves, their own institutions, and their own hereditary interests. Like mini-royal families in Medieval Europe, they lack even the notion of a nation-state, and national interests, and shared ties with fellow countrymen. They deny even the notion of a country, instead seeing peasants, serfs, a few middling tradesmen, all interchangeable with others in other places. The modern, international corporate world is very good at producing people like this.

Indra Nooyi may be CEO of Pepsico, but how much loyalty does she possess towards Pepsi's American workers? To Americans as a whole? Her career encapsulates the modern elites lack of nationalism. Positions at Johnson and Johnson in India, then a textile firm, then consulting with Boston Consulting Group and strategy positions with Motorola and Asea Brown Boveri. Although a naturalized US Citizen, her main appeal as CEO is her extensive ties to India's elite. I am quite sure Nooyi is a fine person, but Pepsico could not find a more qualified CEO? The results of her leadership have not been good, with Pepsi sliding to #3 among US sodas, trailing both Coke and Diet Coke. Nooyi is quoted as saying she took steps to push "healthy foods" like Quaker Oats and Gatorade and such, and not sell "flavored sugar water." Pepsi has been neglected, lacking promotion compared to Coke, and the stuff Nooyi likes (an elite taste) account for only 20% of the US Pepsico revenues.

PC makes you stupid. So does pushing trans-national elites at a company where most revenues come from US sales. An Indian born Hindu understands US consumer tastes? When her entire career has been from one "strategy" posting to another? Nothing selling, well flavored and colored sugar water? That is what Pepsico is. But the pressure and power of the elites is frightening. [Trivia time, in the CW show "Gossip Girl," one of the characters, herself a "rich girl" plans to get an internship under Nooyi.] Reasoned Sceptic notes that the business press has been light on Nooyi despite her failures to match Coca-Cola because she is both Indian and a woman. Muhtar Kent, Coke's CEO, is of course also foreign born (a Turk) but is a Coke lifer, having started selling Coke out of trucks across the US. If I wanted someone to sell flavored colored sugar water, I'd pick Kent over Nooyi. The former seems to understand (having spent most of his life doing it) how to sell that stuff, and the other doesn't. Both are elites of course, having spoken at Davos (one is always an elite if one speaks at Davos).

Any nation can withstand some corruption and greed on the part of its elites. Those flaws are part of human nature, and can at best be only curbed, not eliminated. But in the end, it is not laws (nearly always evaded in one form or another) that curbs the greed, ambition, and power of the elites. It is, or at least has been since the late 1500s and the rise of the nation-state, nationalism that has curbed the worst excesses. By instilling among even the most greedy, ruthless, and powerful of the elites, a sense that there are lines better left uncrossed. That squeezing every spare penny out of the populace was a bad job, and better go across the ocean and squeeze it out of some other poor person from another country. Nationalism, and nationalism alone, promises a small shelter, perhaps poor, but the only one the ordinary person has got, from greed and cruelty and abuse by the elites.

Goldman-Sachs, JP Morgan, and Glencore will always seek advantage. They will always be looking for an edge. As long as there remain limits to what they will do, limits instilled by national feeling and solidarity, then while not perfect, the situation is tolerable for most people, most of the time. Good enough. But without those internal limits, no laws, no regulatory agency, no "perfect administration by perfect people" (not the least because no human being yet born has been perfect) will suffice. Making the urgent task not regulatory reform but the return of ...

Nationalism.

Only that promises to restrain the otherwise un-alloyed greed and shadiness of institutions run by elites like Goldman-Sachs.
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NBC's Diversity Bet Fails

[Editor's note: work/family issues required a break from blogging. Hence the lengthy hiatus.]

NBC's past season, from Fall 2010 to Spring 2011, was a massive bust. NBC's big bet on diversity failed. Gone, was "Undercovers" (a glamorous Black couple running a high-end catering service are also super-sexy uber-spies). The show failed fairly quickly, and was pulled in November 2010. "Chase" featuring a waify blonde woman all of 120 pounds beating up on hefty evil White guy fugitives, as an uber-US Marshall, in February of 2011. "The Event" with an Obama-like President uncovering an evil White guy conspiracy involving Aliens was canceled in May 2011. So too was "Outsourced," the wacky comedy about the hilarity of firing Americans and moving a call center to India. So too was "Law and Order Los Angeles," with the usual Law and Orderen lineup of evil White guys (is there anything they can't do?) and downtrodden non-White victims (not reminiscent of the Los Angeles I know, where the Azusa 13 Gang was indicted by the US Attorney for hate crimes against Blacks).


Diversity just did not pull in viewers. NBC's big bet came a cropper. The failure was so bad, across the board, that NBC even ... renewed "Chuck" for a fifth and final season (a limited 13 episode run). Likely that move was taken in consideration of a likely NFL lockout. Given that "Chuck" is the only NBC show (and outside Fox's Sunday animated shows, one of the few on network TV that at all) that skews male. NBC tried betting big on "diversity" and hoped that would draw in lots of female viewers. Who in turn are mostly White. The dirty little secret is that while Univison and Telemundo are posting dramatic gains in audiences, their night-time audiences are still tiny. Less even than the CW, itself a baby netlet often drawing fewer than one million viewers for some shows. NBC thought that going all out for "Diversity" would provide an alternative to what other networks were doing. In this they were correct. Where NBC went wrong was in thinking that the mostly White/Female audience was interested in this diversity. By and large, they were not.

Now NBC has resorted to lots of comedies, crummy reality shows, and hoping NFL football comes back in its new 2011 Fall Lineup. The only things original are the "Sliding Doors" type dual-reality show "Awake" (in one reality his wife is dead, in another his son), and "Grimm" (about a police procedural involving ... Grimm Fairytale characters). These may fail. But NBC should be applauded for at least taking the risk. Both are a bit different, offbeat, and not the same old procedural stuff.

[Interestingly enough, both NBC and CBS, during their fireworks broadcasts on the Fourth of July, heavily promoted their upcoming shows, the first time I can recall them doing so. It seems they feel the need to expend more time/money in promotion than in years past.]

CBS only has "Person of Interest" with Jesus (Jim Caviezel from "the Passion") and Michael Emerson (the bad guy from "Lost") about a covert op teamed with a software mogul aiming to stop crimes before it happens. Basically, a variant of the Equalizer, done decades ago, but hey that was a good show. Everything else is either a renewal or tired re-run (Poppy Montgomery from "Without a Trace" has a new show "Unforgettable" about a detective who cannot forget anything). "A Gifted Man" is a weepy-ghost-chick-flick show (so naturally it should do well). I'm shocked Katherine Heigl is not in this one.

ABC has a "Mad Men" clone ("Pan Am") and a Charlie's Angels remake, plus a woman in jeopardy Lifetime Movie Network series ("Missing") with a global twist, and another with a "Lost" in the Amazon style twist ("the River") and a couple of night-time soaps ("Revenge" and "Good Christian Belles") the latter of which was changed from "Good Christian Bitches." Nothing of interest to anyone not gay and possessing a Y chromosome. "Once Upon a Time" has again, the Grimm Fairytales characters inhabiting the modern world, in the town of "Storybrooke" seeming to mix Harry Potter with conspiracy-theory heavy shows like "Lost" or "Fringe."

Fox has the usual assortment of lame comedies, plus the dramas "Terra Nova" (much delayed) about a family moving to the Earth of 80 million years ago to escape Global Warming and pollution, or just the neighbors, or something. Plus mid-season replacements "the Finder" (about an Iraq War vet with a talent for finding things that have gone missing) and "Alcatraz" (another "Lost" clone about criminals from Alcatraz who never age and go on killing sprees, or something.

CW has "Ringer" with Buffy herself, Sarah Michelle Gellar, as a woman on the run from the mob posing as her missing twin sister ... who is herself pursued by unknown enemies. The rest is teen witches, teen vampires, and so on.

FX has picked up for pilot Brian Michael Bendis (who did an excellent turn on Marvel's "Daredevil" years back) based on his own comic book (he retains ownership in other words) "Powers." The series features gritty cops investigating crimes committed against ordinary humans and super-powered people by people with ... powers. Meanwhile ABC is prepping for the following season a number of Marvel properties, including "the Incredible Hulk," "AKA Jessica Jones," and "Cloak and Dagger." [Sadly for ABC/Disney, Marvel's drop-off in superhero quality from their first tier is substantial. "Jessica Jones" and "Cloak and Dagger" are both "diverse" and low-rent superheroes, who while having been around since the 1970s never really caught on. By contrast DC has tons of superheroes, poorly used, with rabid followings.]

As usual, AMC has a violent/provocative show ("Hell on Wheels" about the building of the Transcontinental Railway) and various other basic cable and premium cable outlets have new series they will premiere in dribs and drabs.

But of all of them, NBC has fallen the farthest, and the hardest, from a state of grace. NBC, after all, was the network of such male-oriented shows as "the A-Team," "Miami Vice," "Hunter," "Misfits of Science," along with "Hill Street Blues," "Seinfeld," "St. Elsewhere," "Crime Story," "Private Eye," and even "the Rockford Files." Heck what I would not give for a DVD release of "the New Maverick," (the abortive, one-season western with the great James Garner replaying his Brett Maverick character). While CBS may have had "the Equalizer," and ABC briefly "Max Headroom," NBC remained the place for guys in the 1980's and even into the 1990's. Heck as recently as 2009, NBC aired "Life," one of the most shockingly tough-guy shows ever put on network TV.

As Newton Minnow said in his Vast Wasteland Speech


When television is good, nothing — not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers — nothing is better.

But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite each of you to sit down in front of your own television set when your station goes on the air and stay there, for a day, without a book, without a magazine, without a newspaper, without a profit and loss sheet or a rating book to distract you. Keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland.

You will see a procession of game shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western bad men, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence, and cartoons. And endlessly commercials — many screaming, cajoling, and offending. And most of all, boredom. True, you'll see a few things you will enjoy. But they will be very, very few. And if you think I exaggerate, I only ask you to try it.

While Minnow is often quoted as noting the vast wasteland, the first part of his speech is often forgotten. I have seen over the course of my life TV go from a purveyor, even though flawed, of a mass culture and matching model of traditional masculinity (do the right thing, don't stop trying) to one of total camp, attention-whoring, and paralyzing uniformity. A place where men exist only as female-oriented studs or gays, without even a smidgen of action, adventure, and excitement.

TV, when it is good, is simply unbeatable. Its restrictions on budgets and effects are matched by the advantage of time. A typical movie will have to clock in at around 2 hours, more or less. A TV series, going 22 episodes, even with only 43 minutes devoted to story (less commercials) can still clock in at around 17 hours. That 17 hours allows for a richer story to be told. One with more detailed and developed characters, one with more complex and emotionally arousing storylines. TV at its best helps unify the country and provide (all the more necessary with the collapse of church attendance and religion) a unified morality, and one based on what the people themselves believe, not what elites in Hollywood and NYC believe.

So, it has been good and refreshing to see NBC's diversity line-up fail. Other networks have followed suit. None have launched copies of what has failed at NBC. No laugh-a-minute yuks about outsourcing to India, or super-glamorous super-spy couples who are Black, or Obama-clones fighting off Aliens and corporate White bad guys. Instead, NBC has basically punted, relying on junk reality, a final season of "Chuck," (at least Adam Baldwin will be on TV again in the role of John Casey, he's completely hilarious) and two new series trying something a bit different. Even so that network will have a huge Sunday night hole if the NFL (hopefully) remains on lockout. ABC, CBS, FOX, and CW are merely repeating in new shows what they've always done before. More soaps for ABC, more procedurals for CBS, more big-budget Sci-Fi for FOX, and hunky magic teens for CW.

Eventually, one network will have to take a chance to break from the pack. More of the same fighting over a constantly declining female audience will not cut it. "Diversity" and other tricks, aping "Lost" or pushing a big-budget (soon to be trimmed) Spielberg-driven Dinosaur show won't do it. "Terra Nova" seems set for the success of "the Young Indiana Jones" or "Amazing Stories." Back when Spielberg was not corrupted by a posse of toadies telling him his every brain fart was genius, he made some pretty compelling movies. He's been consistently bad in TV, however, not realizing that TV requires story-telling emotion over a budget always under assault. The network most desperate is obviously ... NBC. So it was good that "Diversity" failed. Nothing gets network attention (and all the networks pay attention) like spectacular failure.

Sooner or later someone at a network will take a gamble on men, and provide a staple of cheap, entertaining, and amusing male-skewing shows. The country will be better off, because traditional male-oriented shows for the most part must embody fairly conservative values. Honor your word, show physical and emotional courage, stand up and fight, protect the weak, punish the wicked. Those are the stories men of all ages are interested in, and are almost completely absent on the TV screen every night. Let's hoping those stories return soon.
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Obama Calls Workers Slugs: Is Obama the New Nixon?

Via CBS and Mark Knoller, Obama called Federal Workers "slugs" and lamented he did not have a cool phone.

"I always thought I was gonna have like really cool phones and stuff," he said during a Q&A session with contributors to his re-election campaign.

"We can't get our phones to work." Acting out his exasperation, he said: "Come on, guys. I'm the president of the United States! Where's the fancy buttons and stuff and the big screen comes up? It doesn't happen."

Mr. Obama made the remarks at the 2nd of 3 fund-raisers last night in Chicago. He took questions from contributors after the press pool had left and may not have realized some reporters back at the White House could still hear his comments.

He said the White House is "like 30 years behind" when it comes to technology.

"Our IT purchasing is horrible," said the president referring to Information Technology throughout the government.

"It's true in the Pentagon. It's true in the agencies. It's true in the Department of Homeland Security," Mr. Obama said of outdated equipment.

But he did have some kind words to say about government workers.

"What's striking when you enter into the federal government is how generally smart and dedicated people are." He did opine that some employees "are slugs and not trying to do their job. But that's true of any large institution."

CBS has refused to release the audio tape, which Big Government confirms.

Obama is of course, completely protected by the Media. They might as well be his press secretaries. The coverage would be the same if they were.

But with Drudge linking to a CNBC report predicting $6.50 a gallon gas in the Summer, not even the media can protect Obama from consumer misery. As Ace of Spades noted echoing my own post that College Educated White women are the key to Obama's re-election, even that group of people need to drive. More dollars into the gas tank means less for everything else. So Obama calls workers in the Federal Government slugs.

CBS will not of course be reporting on any of this. But government workers are going to get the news, if anything their conservative friends will send them the Mark Knoller link, and laugh that CBS won't report it on their own newscast. Even government workers need to buy gas. At a certain point, all the air cover the press flies for Obama becomes meaningless.

Just as I predicted, Obama's collapse will be spectacular and ugly. The man has a thin skin, has never faced failure, and has skated on being the "magical Black guy" for so long that he's even more unstable and insecure in his own skin than Richard Nixon. No doubt he's ordered his own group of plumbers to "go after" people. Not realizing that what works for a cheap Chicago Pol is disaster in a President.

People expect results. They expect at a minimum the President to produce an economy that lets them buy stuff. Since the rest of American culture has been eroded into the point of nothingness, and America is basically a place on a map. Without meaningful borders and now trending (because we won't enforce our immigration laws) rapidly non-White majority. Obama cannot even deliver a bit of economic recovery, while insulting people in private and expecting it will stay that way.

Obama really is the New Nixon.




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Educated White Women REALLY Hate Sarah Palin, Part 5,231

The LAT has a column by Meghan Daum entitled "Why Sarah Palin Doesn't Get What She Deserves." Basically asking "Who Will Rid Me of this Meddlesome Priest?" Women really hate, hate, HATE, HATE Sarah Palin. Daum even tells us why. It's all about class and a certain kind of White person.


Daum is typical of her class. An NPR Commentator. Writer for the New Yorker, Harpers, and so on. As well as being a regular contributor the LAT. Daum tells us why she hates Palin:

She forces her critics to choose between the roles of merciless oppressor and guilt-ridden enabler.

But what it really is the hatred of a "lower class woman who does not know her place." This is what drives the hatred of Palin into overdrive. Donald Trump can say what he thinks, most of it far more radical (and therefore common-sense laden) than anything Palin says. Mike Huckabee is an unctuous former TV preacher who you would expect would drive the NYC literati up the wall. Complete with Southern Accent, and overt expressions of Christianity. Alan West all but calls Obama a traitor, and Herman Cain (both Black men, thus "traitors") actually does so. Meg Whitman ran against Jerry Brown, and Carly Fiorina against St. Barbara Boxer of the Botox, aka "Senator Ma'am." Chris Christie and Wisconsin Gov. Walker have cut and slashed Public Employee Union dues, and political organizing. Arizona Govenor Jan Brewer supports SB 1070, the anti-illegal immigration statute, so you'd think she'd be "Women's Enemy #1."

Nope. The enemy, the one that drives them insane with rage (and they're pretty much insane anyway) is Sarah Palin. A TV personality and minor GOP figure. Here's some of the flavor of it:

Even Palin's longtime champion, William Kristol, has said she's "unlikely to be" and "probably shouldn't be" the GOP nominee.

In other words, Palin-a-phobes, the danger is receding. The apocalypse may be averted. You might not need to move to Canada after all.

But even as she edges off the political stage, Palin still has the power not just to fascinate but to obsess us. The woman could probably disappear from public life, retreating to a yurt somewhere off the grid for a second career as a taxidermist, and still get tapped constantly as a cultural and political touchstone.
…
Palin lacks the intellectual, analytical and rhetorical skills to have a competent discussion about policy or much else. She is handicapped not only by a lack of education, experience and curiosity about the world (wearing a Star of David in Israel doesn't count), but by a speaking style that often collapses under the weight of disjointed, undiagrammable sentences. She is, in terms of the political arena, easily outclassed.

Joe Biden had to go easy on her during the vice presidential debates so as not to look like the big bad wolf. Among professional journalists (as opposed to foaming-at-the-mouth partisans), there was a clear attempt not to come across like a browbeater. [Ed -- This would be the same Joe Biden who thought FDR went on Television for his fireside chats. Or many other idiocies no doubt issuing from his aneurism that has left him with the mind of a retarded child.]
…
Traister offers a rigorous dissection of the hypocrisy and incoherence of Palin's platform and persona, but nowhere in the book does she swat Palin with the grizzly bear-like strength she could have summoned. She doesn't come close to doing what my friends and readers (and no doubt her friends and readers) want her to do, which is to rip the lady to shreds and move on.

Alas, we cannot. Not only because it would be cheap and lazy and unbecoming, but also because Palin is too well-shielded by her own incompetence. By casting herself as the less privileged, less polished outsider in the fancy school, she fashions the rest of us into playground bullies (ironic, given her predilection for bullying language) who taunt her with big vocabularies and book learning and obsession with nuance. By playing the victim (ironic, given how closely she associates victimhood with liberal whining), Palin forces her critics to choose between the roles of merciless oppressor and guilt-ridden enabler.

One thing I observed quite clearly was the class obsession of my female classmates at MBA school. To a woman, they were all obsessed with class, and social standing, and being the "correct" way to advance in both. I've since seen this in the workplace, and in the writings of pretty much every professional class (or those with that pretension) White woman in America.

To observe the dog that didn't bark, watch the reaction of Black women to Sarah Palin. They don't even know anything about her, and could care less. As much as Palin creates rage among College Educated White women, she creates mostly indifference among Black women of all stripes, College or not. Black women (and men) just don't obsess and foam at the mouth over Sarah Palin.

Really, the whole thing boils down to the class rage of College Educated White women who are livid that White women without their social standing "don't know their place" and bow to themselves. Nothing infuriates this class of woman more than those of their White peers who have perceived inferior status and don't bow and scrape. Being a College Educated White woman is why they put in all that effort at social climbing and at work, in the first place. So they could have social standing over their lesser (White) female peers.

Note the advice to "disappear" out into the boonies (because life is centered around LA and NYC). The taxidermy dig. And the repeated assertion that Palin is an uneducated dolt. After all, she said that America has 57 states. And called corpsman "corpse-man" twice. And noted that dead veterans were with us today, on Memorial Day. Oh wait. That was Obama!

What Daum is really saying, is that a woman who did not go to an Ivy, or at least Stanford or Northwestern (home of the Live Sex Show called the "F-Saw" [link NSFW, language]) is nothing but an uneducated moron. That University of Idaho, or University of Arizona, or University of Illinois, are all so inferior to the top universities in America (the Ivies, near Ivies like Stanford or Northwestern) that non-elite White women should not even bother. They're just dolts, not going to an Ivy like say, Vassar or Columbia (Daum's undergrad and graduate universities, respectively). Daum grew up in Ridgewood, NJ, so Wikipedia says. Median family income? A cool $147K, and almost 87% White, 1.64% Black, 3.8% Latino. We can assume Daum comes from a well-off to fairly rich (by most people's standards) family, with enough money to send her to both Vassar and Columbia.

What enrages Daum the most about Palin is really lack of deference. This class of women, larger than you might think, is angered by a lack of interest in say, the New Yorker, or the minutiae of the Upper East Side. For most of America, putting groceries on the table beats worrying about what movie Woody Allen will make next about screwing his step-daughter, or which gay designer is "in" this year. Much less maundering on about "authentic" Bolivian cuisine (fried grasshoppers! Yum!) and the tragedy of McDonalds available on the Champs Elysee. Few Americans can afford to go to France in the first place.

Meanwhile, most Americans have a hunger for knowledge outside the confines of political correctness. The Teaching Company, advertises quite often in the Wall Street Journal and Weekly Standard. Not so much in the New Yorker or Atlantic. What would Daum know about Ike's views on coalition warfare, and its implications for Libyan policy? Did she even read his "Crusade in Europe" or Grant's Memoirs, or Churchill's "the River War" (about the Sudan)?

Of course not. No one is more ignorant and deluded than a College Educated White woman when it comes to military history. Particularly the books written by direct eyewitnesses to it. Not only the great commanders, but Daum (and women like her) haven't read anything along the lines of "With The Old Breed" by EB Sledge, or Pappy Boyington's autobiography, or Robert Leckie's "Helmet for My Pillow." Anything military is "icky" and gives these women the cooties, so they run away from it. I'm sure that Daum, however, would know exactly what fabulous gay designer is not shouting anti-semitic slurs this season.

Palin is what she is. A relentlessly lower middle class woman with a midwestern accent, who refuses to eradicate it or her own background. It is a sign of the elites degeneracy and semi-hereditary aristocracy that being lower middle class and refusing to bow, even symbolically, provokes rage. Like that of an aristocratic lady who whips an insolent servant.

An overlooked part of the conflict within White people is the battle of highly educated White women to beat down those of "lesser degrees" into the aspect of a cowed domestic servant. This is not going to end well.
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Unaffordable Family Formation

Regular readers of Steve Sailer know his "affordable family formation" theory very well. Which amounts to Whites having kids when they can afford them. When land is cheap, suburbs all around, and the cost of living is relatively low. But there is a flip-side to that. Which is "unaffordable family formation." I.E. Mexican (mostly illegal) immigrant family formation on the taxpayer dime. New research from The Center for Immigration Research (their Research Director Steven Camarota was a guest on KFI 640 AM's "John and Ken" on Tue April 12, 2011) suggests strongly that immigrants cannot afford their families, and must rely on welfare to support them. This is in stark contrast to the behavior of Whites in America.


First, the raw numbers. The data was compiled from the US Census Bureau "Current Population Survey" done every March, and crunched through databases and spreadsheets (the raw data is made available for download). The US Census Bureau certainly does not release the findings, but does make the data available, which the Center for Immigration Studies used to complete their findings.

The findings include the following highlights:

• In 2009 (based on data collected in 2010), 57 percent of households headed by an immigrant (legal and illegal) with children (under 18) used at least one welfare program, compared to 39 percent for native households with children.



• Immigrant households’ use of welfare tends to be much higher than natives for food assistance programs and Medicaid. Their use of cash and housing programs tends to be similar to native households.



• A large share of the welfare used by immigrant households with children is received on behalf of their U.S.-born children, who are American citizens. But even households with children comprised entirely of immigrants (no U.S.-born children) still had a welfare use rate of 56 percent in 2009.



• Immigrant households with children used welfare programs at consistently higher rates than natives, even before the current recession. In 2001, 50 percent of all immigrant households with children used at least one welfare program, compared to 32 percent for natives.



• Households with children with the highest welfare use rates are those headed by immigrants from the Dominican Republic (82 percent), Mexico and Guatemala (75 percent), and Ecuador (70 percent). Those with the lowest use rates are from the United Kingdom (7 percent), India (19 percent), Canada (23 percent), and Korea (25 percent).



• The states where immigrant households with children have the highest welfare use rates are Arizona (62 percent); Texas, California, and New York (61 percent); Pennsylvania (59 percent); Minnesota and Oregon (56 percent); and Colorado (55 percent).



• We estimate that 52 percent of households with children headed by legal immigrants used at least one welfare program in 2009, compared to 71 percent for illegal immigrant households with children. Illegal immigrants generally receive benefits on behalf of their U.S.-born children.



• Illegal immigrant households with children primarily use food assistance and Medicaid, making almost no use of cash or housing assistance. In contrast, legal immigrant households tend to have relatively high use rates for every type of program.



• High welfare use by immigrant-headed households with children is partly explained by the low education level of many immigrants. Of households headed by an immigrant who has not graduated high school, 80 percent access the welfare system, compared to 25 percent for those headed by an immigrant who has at least a bachelor’s degree.



• An unwillingness to work is not the reason immigrant welfare use is high. The vast majority (95 percent) of immigrant households with children had at least one worker in 2009. But their low education levels mean that more than half of these working immigrant households with children still accessed the welfare system during 2009.



• If we exclude the primary refugee-sending countries, the share of immigrant households with children using at least one welfare program is still 57 percent.



• Welfare use tends to be high for both new arrivals and established residents. In 2009, 60 percent of households with children headed by an immigrant who arrived in 2000 or later used at least one welfare program; for households headed by immigrants who arrived before 2000 it was 55 percent.



• For all households (those with and without children), the use rates were 37 percent for households headed by immigrants and 22 percent for those headed by natives.



• Although most new legal immigrants are barred from using some welfare for the first five years, this provision has only a modest impact on household use rates because most immigrants have been in the United States for longer than five years; the ban only applies to some programs; some states provide welfare to new immigrants with their own money; by becoming citizens immigrants become eligible for all welfare programs; and perhaps most importantly, the U.S.-born children of immigrants (including those born to illegal immigrants) are automatically awarded American citizenship and are therefore eligible for all welfare programs at birth.



• The eight major welfare programs examined in this report are SSI (Supplemental Security Income for low income elderly and disabled), TANF (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families), WIC (Women, Infants, and Children food program), free/reduced school lunch, food stamps (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), Medicaid (health insurance for those with low incomes), public housing, and rent subsidies.

The authors further caution:

Unreported Welfare Use. Although almost all other researchers in this field have relied on self-reporting in the CPS or some other government survey, one limitation of this approach is that it understates welfare use. It is well established that respondents to the CPS tend to understate their use of social services. One reason for this seems to be the survey by proxy methodology used to collect the data, which is discussed in the methods section of this report. While the methodology is practical and generally produces reliable information, it has its problems. One problem seems to be that the person responding to the CPS may not be aware of all of the programs or the size of the payments that are received by every individual in the household.

The problem of under-reporting of welfare is well known by the Census Bureau and has been studied for some time.10 For example, a comparison of administrative data on Medicaid to the results in the CPS shows that the survey reports at least 10 million fewer persons on the program than there actually are.11 Use of cash and food programs is also under-reported in the CPS. This problem, however, should not prevent comparisons between immigrants and natives because there is no clear evidence that immigrant or natives are more likely to under-report welfare use.12 So the undercount should be similar for both groups, making comparisons possible. What this does mean is that the welfare use reported in this analysis is too low, and the actual use rates for immigrants and natives alike are higher. [Emphasis Added]

What stands out is the table, seen to the right, showing welfare use by number of children in the household. Immigrants (the study does not distinguish by legal and illegal, though likely nearly all immigrants are illegal because of the sheer volume of the exodus out of Mexico as it collapses) actually use less food aid than natives when with only 1 child per household (23.6% for immigrants vs 32.3% for natives). For Medicaid, the situation is slightly reversed for household with only one children, 36% vs. 29.6%. [This likely counts Blacks and poorer US born Latinos, as "native" usage and the main drivers of welfare but since we don't have race breakouts we cannot say for sure.] However with 2 children in the household, immigrants use food aid at 41.5%, compared to 25.8% for natives, and for 4+ children it jumps to 69% vs. 47% for natives.

From Table 1, Immigrant & Native Households with Children: Welfare Use 2001-2009, we can see that for all Immigrants, 1+ child, any welfare usage is 71% for Hispanic, vs. only 38.7% for Natives (a category that includes native born Hispanics and Blacks). We can see that since immigrants with only one child do fairly close to natives in welfare usage, the real problem is …

Unaffordable Family Formation.

Which amounts to, basically using welfare to pay for very large (around 4+ certainly) Mexican immigrant families (nearly all of them illegal based). This should not surprise anyone. The welfare industry depends on this large amount of desperately poor, huge-family-size illegal immigrant wave. Subsidized by the White middle class tax revenues.

Which have now just run out. Since all that "White privilege" has not turned into money, and a White middle class effectively cleansed out of much of California, has its own concerns. Like buying both groceries and gas.

Welfare, particularly TANF (formerly AFDC), WIC, food stamps, school lunches, and Medicaid are required to support the ultra-large families that are fueling the "Latino takeover." Mexican immigrants, nearly all illegal, cannot support them on their own. While the White middle class has only the kids it can support, the Mexican illegal class has the kids the Welfare system can support. And then some.

What happens when the welfare is cut off, suddenly because of fiscal crisis? Which at some point will happen because Helicopter Ben Bernanke and company cannot keep inflating the dollar away forever. Nor are the Krugman pushed middle class tax increases to pay for more or even current welfare sustainable. Given stagflation and living standard erosion.

Can even DC force White taxpayers to ante-up for all those ninos who are replacing them? Nope. The House will surely block any new revenue scheme, and while the EPA is busy making life even more expensive and restricted, all the Democratic dancing around can't keep the issue of cost due to Federal intervention off the table, particularly with 2012 nearly here. America is running out of money for Unaffordable Family formation, and the results are going to be catastrophic.

At some point, perhaps not this year, or even the next, but at some point, the Welfare money will be cut off. To pay for things the White Middle Class wants: affordable gasoline, affordable food, jobs at defense contractors. Particularly if there is a populist willing to make it. [Which might or might not be Trump, if he runs ala Perot as a Third Party Candidate say hello to two-term President Obama. There is some suspicion he is a deliberate Obama dirty trick to do just that. Others have speculated his "might run third party" comment as a warning to the Republican National Committee not to anoint Mitt Romney.]

At some point the Welfare will just cease. Probably suddenly rather than slowly, because vested interests will keep running the Welfare machine to keep their K-12, Welfare related jobs until the last possible moment. And then it will just stop.

Meanwhile those ninos still have to eat. All four, five, six, seven of them. So do their parents. Do you think the parents will all just go home to Mexico, meekly? They already know the foreign country they entered illegally does not enforce its laws against people with their skin color and national origin. They know perfectly well the racial caste system that puts Whites dead last. They know they always have a safe haven from which they cannot be realistically extradited, if things get too dicey.

So, yes, I expect mass riots on the scale of the LA Rodney King riots, only larger and nationwide. While Black residents of LA burnt down much of their local businesses, and even some homes, most did not participate in the widespread looting. That was done mostly by Mexican illegal aliens who had little to fear from a compliant, passive, and ineffective law enforcement apparatus. TVs, diapers, even totally useless junk was looted. Even toilet paper was looted. By hordes of mostly illegal aliens. Rule of law ceased, and it became "loot the Gringo." Loot an alien, foreign country that most had nothing but contempt and hatred for, at best. Looting reached all the way up to the fringes of West LA, and around the Sunset area, briefly.

With far more Mexicans in the US, expect it to hit places like Atlanta, or New York City, or Chicago, or Denver, or Raleigh, or Richmond, or Washington DC. Along with Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio, Las Vegas, Tucson, Phoenix, and Knoxville. Something will spark a riot, where the police will withdraw, and then YouTube, CNN, Twitter, Facebook, and all the rest will spread the rioting and looting to other cities. Where police will withdraw, or be ineffective in trying to restrain a massive mob without killing lots of people or putting themselves at risk. Politicians will dither, wasting days or even weeks before calling in the National Guard, which will have to shoot considerable people (including inevitably those innocent of any wrongdoing -- troops are not police nor can they be). Much of the nation's largest cities will be a looted wreck, and the effect on the White population will be very different than times past.

In previous riots, the violence was mostly Blacks against Whites, for which residual White guilt and shame played a part in excusing. Whites response was to ignore commenting on this publicly, and privately moving as far away from Black areas as possible. See, Detroit, death of. The LA Rodney King Riots were different, but not repeated. There, for the first time, widespread looting by Mexican-origin illegals was the main action. The looting was for lootings sake. Often it was all out of proportion to the risk run doing the looting.

The massive amount of illegal alien families will loot because they have to, in order to survive, with welfare cut off suddenly, and will loot because they want to, since they have learned nothing but contempt for an America that does not enforce its borders, nor conserve its traditions or ethnic makeup of its people. [They will not of course simply go home.] Looting will spread, into no doubt previously "safe" White areas. Not just downtowns, but "safe suburban" places like Irvine, or Greenwich.

When people have no more flight available, they always fight. I've seen a bemoaning of the passivity of White America, and the view that White people always just give up and surrender to non-Whites. This would have been a surprise to all those conquered or killed by Whites, or the Black men and women lynched during the Klan's original run from the late 1860's through the late 1870's, and its revival during the teens, twenties, and thirties. In New York City, the NAACP had banners proclaiming "A Black Man Was Lynched Today" during the 1920s and 1930s, and it was true, too. There were, disgustingly, even postcards of the lynchings made and kept as souvenirs. Ugly but true, and done well into the 1930s.

Middle Class and Wealthy people are not inclined to violence, generally. Violence is for the lower classes. You are far safer in Malibu, even at Charlie Sheen's house, than you are in the barrio or ghetto, and this is true for any man or woman of any race. Or the poor districts of say, Moscow or St. Petersburg. Middle class and wealthy people suddenly terrified that everything they have (including their lives) will be taken from them, however, can be inclined to the most horrific and systematic violence. The kind of violence that simply annihilates entire peoples.

The other part of the supposed passivity of Whites is the iron lock that elites have on our nation. The President, Congress, Court System, Media, and Law Enforcement all rest on the savage preservation of near-hereditary offices, open to non-Whites of "good background" but closed to average Whites (like Sarah Palin). Legitimacy of the elites and these institutions rests on both control and a monopoly of violence. But widespread looting, ever growing "White no-Go areas" (like Dodger Stadium, which now and forever belongs to Latino Gangs) and manifest loss of control invite local protectors. In Western Europe after the Roman Empire collapsed in the West, this was called Feudalism. America is running full tilt into what amounts to not a "Second Civil War" but full blown feudalism. There will still be a President, and a Congress, and Judiciary. And they will be total jokes, viewed as not only corrupt but powerless hacks unable to do much of anything. For 150 years after the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, the Roman Senate met. The Holy Roman Empire, and Emperor, also come to mind as "dead institutions walking." None of that has to come to pass, but it is likely to come to pass if permanently large portions of America become in effect White no-go areas, the White middle class is not protected from illegal mob looting and violence, and the determination of the elites to summarily punish the White (former) majority is inescapable. Literally as in there is no where for White flight to move next. Power will shift rapidly, to local, and unassailable versions of Pepin the Strong, or such. Local Sheriffs un-handcuffed by PC, or diversity, local mid-size mayors, even governors of some smaller, more Western states. While places like California degenerate into an uglier version of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, but without Lord Humongus.

This will not end well. Peter Brimelow is correct, I think, in predicting unhappy times ahead. The dominant concerns of the 21st Century will be the White population doing whatever it can to stave off oppression and annihilation, much like Jews in the Twentieth, in the face of Unaffordable Family Formation and the sudden shock when the Unaffordable becomes ... unaffordable. For those who wonder why a Scots-Irish likes and identifies with Israelis and Jews, well I can relate.
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Will K-12 H1-Bs Peel Off Obama's Support?

As noted here, Obama still has some core White support: College Educated White women. Who alone benefit from Affirmative Action (non-College White women have the highest disapproval rates for all Whites). And are a good cultural fit for Obama as First Rockstar, the Celebrity to rule Celebrities. But the Center for Immigration Studies has a new report that suggests a wave of H1-B usage is breaking upon Education, particularly K-12, and could spread to other areas. Which might finally put College Educated White women in the same boat as their male counterparts, and non-College Whites of both sexes.


As noted in the report, H1-Bs have been used with great success in the Computer Science area in replacing older, more expensive American workers with visibly cheaper Foreign ones, who are younger besides (lower health care costs, perceived "hipness" etc.) The report for the Center for Immigration Studies notes:

n FY 2010, the Department of Labor certified 6,578 new K-12 jobs to be filled by H-1B workers, about 10 percent of the new certifications within the 65,000 general purpose ceiling; many other H-1B workers were approved for the 20,000 ceiling for those with advanced degrees, and others who came into the system outside of the numerical ceilings (primarily people in higher education.)

The H-1B K-12 educators were thus a small minority within the H-1B program, and a much smaller minority within the universe of kindergarten, elementary, and secondary teachers, but what did the use of this program by some school districts show?

My sense, after pouring over the detailed DoL data on this single year’s worth of K-12 certifications, is that some of the implications of this limited database are troublesome (in two different ways), some are bizarre, and others are puzzling.

[The report author notes that the Dept. of Labor, unlike other Federal Depts, makes their raw data available. The link to the Dept. of Labor data, sadly all in Microsoft Access files is here. For those unable to run MS Access directly, and needing a dump into CSV or directly into MySQL, there are instructions here that have been known to work. From the reports by users at the link it seems the best/safest way is to make a CSV dump of each table, and then import them manually into manually created tables in a new MySQL database. Tedious but effective.]

Among the findings were: the employers using H1-Bs in K-12 were concentrated in Texas (1,426 certifications), California (247), and Louisiana (313), besides Maryland with 632 certifications. Houston and Dallas accounted for most of the Texas certifications. Baltimore most of Maryland. For occupational breakdowns, most of the certifications were for special education teachers (305) , or bilingual teachers (664).

The implication is that K-12 is transitioning to H1-B visa employment. These holders are significantly cheaper, younger, and most of all, compliant. They can't fuss to the Union, because they can be replaced at any time and sent home with near unlimited manpower in other places. So far this usage of H1-B visas in K-12 is limited to the bigger city school systems. But the advantages for hard-pressed school boards (cheap teachers who can be easily replaced without union fuss) is obvious. So long, "nice White lady" from "Teach For America!"

Interestingly enough, bilingual teachers form a large portion of the H1-B visa pool in K-12. Suggesting that school boards (and charter schools) want cheap, compliant non-natives brought over on the H1-B visa rather than native Spanish speakers. This is quite interesting because it kicks a major prop out from under school system support -- local Hispanic patronage. Most Latino majority school districts are not oriented towards teaching students but maximizing job patronage. Since the school is often the city's biggest employer. Even Latinos can get hurt by diversity, a useful point to make. As Machiavelli noted in the Prince, a man will forgive the murder of his parents sooner than being made poor.

H1-B visas mean only one thing for wages: considerably lower ones. Essentially we are seeing teaching being lowered to Third World levels, and probably quite rapidly. Because we have a Third World population, particularly with K-12 students, but demands for a First World education system. Something has to give, and that will be, first, teacher salaries. Those hanging on to their jobs will do so at H1-B visa rates, just like in computer programming and the like.

Also notable is that Charter Schools are the worst offenders in participating in H1-B visa programs, and have the most complaints against them (for teacher abuse, fees, and the like) lodged against them with the Dept. of Labor. Bizarrely, there is a fellow named Fethullah Gülen, a Turkish Islamist of mixed reputation foolishly granted a green card by the US State Dept. after first being denied, who has gamed the US Charter school system.

Essentially what Gülen is doing is gaming the Charter School system. He sets up a Charter School, gets federal money (a lot of it, with very little oversight) and imports lots of teachers, on the H1-B visa program to ostensibly teach Turkish. The demand for which is near zero. It is basically a corrupt scam to create a massive kick-back and patronage system. Once again an ethnic, nepotistic network scams a government system set up for trustworthy Calvinist New Englanders.

There are also massive pay differentials among the H1-B visa holders, in places right next door to each other (New York and New Jersey, Elgin and Chicago IL) amounting to as much as $30,000 or more. Could there be … kickbacks?

Yes Obama's education bubble, with massive amounts of federal stimulus money (now expiring) shoveled into schools, created the same kind of exploitation and crook-dom that the housing bubble, and its no-document loans did. Not surprising.

Essentially, the market as it existed for K-12 teachers, employing "nice White ladies" and men, would not and did not last. We are seeing its dying already. Regardless of "mean Republicans" cutting state budgets, local districts and shady businessmen, running "regular" and charter schools respectively, are sure to pick up on the ability to create cheap and compliant labor forces. Not just for teachers, but every type of administrative function except the top. For the Charter School operators, most being "not-for-profit" (but that's a mere bagatelle) the ability to kick-back a portion of above market salaries that are paid for by federal and state funds must be an overwhelming temptation. Particularly since Education is not built on the assumption that people operating it are mostly crooks. Rather, it is built on the trust that nearly everyone involved sincerely loves teaching, education, and a better future for the students.

People vote their pocketbooks. College Educated White women are overwhelmingly employed in places like K-12 Education, the media, health care, corporate finance, human resources, and the like. Instilling bare, naked fear that they could be replaced by a person younger, more subservient (conservatives cannot stress this enough), and CHEAPER than themselves … and will be, unless a nationalist approach is taken through conservatism, is probably the most productive action conservatives can take against Obama. Obama's great weakness is that his coalition is prone to fighting amongst themselves over the limited spoils. White Women with College Education can be made to fear. Know the fear that their male peers in Engineering, or Finance, or Accounting, have already felt: replacement.

Particularly if "subservience" is stressed, the idea that say, a "fat and brassy" White College Educated woman will be replaced by a "meek and mild" Vietnamese girl at half the cost, and with deference to (beta) White males at the very top, is something that will go over like gangbusters. There's nothing White women hate more than being told they're being replaced by a younger, more subservient (to beta males) model. Since most of the top management at most places resembles a cross between Tim Geithner and Don Knotts, rather than say Charlie Sheen or Russell Brand, this wedge has some power.

Already, nursing save the ER staff is mostly H1-B. You can't visit a hospital room or floor (save perhaps ICU or CCU) and not find mostly or all H1-Bs (now from Vietnam or the Philippines). Trust me on this, I know. The same can be true, for HR people, or media ad buyers, or really almost any office work. While it is true that Mexican-origin illegal aliens from Chiapas or Cuidad Juarez won't be good fits, women and men from India, or the Philippines, or Vietnam certainly will. Many of them already are, in occupations like Radiology, or dental assistance, or even now K-12 education.

Yes, the usage of K-12 H1-Bs is small now. So is the first trickle of water bursting through a fractured dam or dike. Eventually it will be a tidal wave. With nowhere for College Educated White women to go. What will they do? How will they work? How can they support themselves? They can't. They won't. And this is precisely the argument conservatives should make to this target. Obama is bad for their bank account because he'll replace them with H1-B visa holders. Younger and more subservient, and definitely cheaper.



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James Cameron, 3D-TV, and Buying a Clue

James Cameron continues to show that while he's the master of intermittent, hideously expensive movie spectacles, he's completely clueless about the world outside of epic movies made every ten years. Cameron aims to bring 3-D content to TV, Reuters reports. In the article, Reuters notes that despite big bets by Sony and Mitsubishi, 3-D TV has failed to catch on. The Financial Times notes that Best Buy had a disappointing Christmas selling season, largely due to the failure of 3D TVs, as did Wedbush Morgan Securities, an analyst firm. Price, glasses, limited viewing angles, and content are all major factors for consumers saying no. The WSJ reports that Samsung is predicting that glasses-free 3D TVs will not appear in the next 5-10 years because of technical hurdles revolving around price. [Nintendo's 3DS gaming system uses very small screens, with limited viewing angles OK for single users. Many have meanwhile found the 3D effect to be nauseating and have turned it off.]


The Financial Times article predicts 2010 3D TV global sales will total 3%, the WSJ predicts that 2010 will have 3D TV sales around 5% of global totals. Gary Shapiro, head of CES thiks 3D TV is over-hyped. Direct TV thinks 3D TV will be a niche service.

So why doesn't Cameron get it? For three reasons.

He's rich. He's not that old. And he has relatively good eyesight.

Let's take the last first. Relatively good eyesight is required, for all 3D TV variants, glasses-based or not, because it works by fooling the brain that each eye gets a shifted image. Much like the old Stereoscopes of the 19th and early 20th century. Particularly as people age, they tend to have better eyesight in one eye than in the other. Extended 3D viewing tends to produce headaches and eyestrain, and for those with fairly limited eyesight in one eye, 3D TV can be viewed for only a short time. Other people find 3D screens, regardless of glasses or passive systems, nausea inducing.

Cameron has good eyesight. He can't understand those who don't, and find 3D image viewing a strain.

Cameron is still relatively young. He has yet to suffer the infirmities of age. Leaving him unable to grasp the reality, that an aging White America (and a very poor Mexican one) will be unwilling to part with money to buy a new TV when their old one works perfectly well, is paid for, and is easier to view to boot!

But the dominant factor in Cameron not understanding that it is not lack of content, but the technology itself, limiting 3D TV adoption, is his wealth. His vast amount of wealth has left him simply unable to comprehend life on a budget. Carefully parsing what is spent and what is not, particularly in a recession, particularly with stagflation, rising gas and energy and clothing and food prices, and stagnant wages. If 3D TVs were $10 in today's money, then yes, people would mostly buy them. Even at $200, replacing a fairly workable TV, with one that only does 3D images, and thus suffers from limited viewing angles, most likely glasses, and is uncomfortable for those with less than robust vision, would be a questionable decision for most consumers.

Probably not even porn will drive adoption of 3D TVs. Sports and movies, are just not that compelling in 3D to drive considerable outlays (it is likely that 3D TVs will be more towards $2,000 than $200) for … what amounts to 3D viewing of say, "Celebrity Apprentice" and the Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

SCTV had it best:



Cameron has no equal in spending ten years to bring a stunning spectacle from conception to screen. His scripts however might as well be written in crayon. Nevertheless the man has amazing visual talent. But his visual talent no more transcends that narrow boundary than programming talent makes one a business genius. For all his ability in one narrow area, Cameron is no Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. His failure in making 3D TV a dominant force in consumer video is assured.

Cameron recently signed an open letter advising against early release by studios of Video on demand.

“I do feel it’s not wise to erode your core business,” said Mr. Cameron. The problem, he said, is not that on-demand offerings will overlap with the theatrical run, since most films are out of most theaters within a month. Rather, he said, many potential viewers might skip the theatrical experience, knowing that a movie would soon be available at home.

Earlier this week, Jim Gianopulos, a co-chairman of Fox Filmed Entertainment, defended the on-demand plan as a tool that would help bring viewers to certain movies that, like his own company’s “127 Hours,” were well reviewed, but didn’t fully connect with an adult audience that is hard to get out of the house. Mr. Gianopulos, in an interview, made clear that Fox had no intention of diminishing the impact of big event films like Mr. Cameron’s “Avatar,” but needed more revenue from movies that were being swept off screens anyway.

“For me, it’s enlightened self-interest,” countered Mr. Cameron, who voiced concern that early video-on-demand would weaken the theater industry, making it harder to release even films as grand as his own. [Emphasis Added]

Well yes of course. Consumers want lower quality but more convenient music. First Cassette Tapes instead of LPs, then CDs, and finally MP3s, which are very convenient but lose quality. Consumers want cheap and easy e-books, instead of finely bound hardbacks. Consumers prefer McDonalds or Taco Bell or KFC, to fine dining experiences.

And movies and serial entertainment will be the same. Amazon has released its cheaper, ad-supported Kindle (on the home page and screen savers) because that is the wave of the future. Eventually the devices will be even cheaper.

The business model that supports Cameron's every ten years epic is slipping away. People would rather watch on even a non-High Def TV through Netflix or some other service, for a very modest fee, than pay expensive prices for movies. And withdrawal from public spaces is part of the fruit, the harvest of diversity. Robert Putnam's Harvard Study confirms, that with more diversity, people go out to public spaces less. Who wants to go to movie theaters over-run by the equivalent of those who kicked in the head of Bryan Stow?

Cameron may make one more spectacle, and that's it. Movies are rapidly moving towards what happened in books and music. Cheap, ad supported content aimed at economically stressed consumers, who avoid public spaces like the free-fire zones (against vulnerable targets like Whites) they have become.
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