Millennials and Gen Z Kids Need to Settle Down With This #OkBoomer Stuff

Kids these days. I’m hearing a lot of griping about how their parents screwed up the world. Global warming, wealth inequality, mass shootings, student debt and so forth. This sort of stunning ingratitude is all too common amongst the younger generations. They don’t appear to realize how the older generations made the world better, and spend all of their time on focusing entirely on the mistakes the older generations made.

When older people call them on this, the slightly snippy reply from from these young adults is “OK, Boomer.” Which loosely translates as “shut up, person who screwed up the world.” This is applied broadly to any generation older than the Millennials, not just Boomers. But is it truly fair to treat Boomers like they screwed up the world? Let’s think about the things Boomers and the Silent Generation did, with an occasional assist from Gen-Xers.

One that even the most hardcore woke Millennial would have to acknowledge are the advances in Civil Rights and Women’s rights produced by the Boomers. They were in the streets for the rights of minorities. They pushed back against Jim Crow and redlining. They demanded equal rights for women. And they succeeded. There were a few things they didn’t get, like free abortions on demand or slave reparations. But perhaps that’s because those would have been a bridge too far. Regardless, the generation of the Millennial’s parents and grandparents advanced the cause of liberty in a manner more extraordinary than perhaps any generation before it.

Nerdier members of those generations advanced mass communications. This may not seem super sexy, but think for a second. In previous generations and centuries, things could happen halfway around the world and you might never hear about it. Or at least not hear about it for months. But when reporters could file stories that hit print or nightly news within days or hours, the response became more rapid. When Boomers heard about atrocities in Vietnam or starvation in Ethiopia, they could take timely action.

Speaking of timely news, the world was sort of blown away when they watched a couple of guys land on the moon in 1969. The older generations did that. And the entire world witnessed it. And the guys who did it did so in peace and on behalf of all mankind and left a memorial to all astronauts and cosmonauts who died getting into space.

And let’s not forget what may be the greatest achievement of the second half of the 20th century: the defeat of communism. After the fall of the Berlin wall in the late eighties and the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early nineties, millions of people across the world were uplifted from poverty and oppression. Some of those countries are truly free countries now. Others are at least more free than they were. This was one of the pivotal moments in the 20th century and probably all of human history. Your parents and grandparents did this, young people.

This may be why there was Crazy, Ridiculous Economic Growth. It started before the end of the Cold War, but most of it happened after that. 75% of the wealth of the United States has been produced in the past fifty years. Years where our own record on freedom and equality was better than it had ever been. Years where the oppression of older, oppressive ideologies (such as fascism, communism, and colonialism) were on the decline. Freedom and equal rights appears to have finally produced results. Lots of old white men theorized about it in the late 18th century, and the older generations appear to have realized it better than anyone else.

Some of their advances occurred in mundane but important ways. Like food and medicine. The Boomers made advances in medicine and food production that ended disease and hunger not just in America, but in distant places around the world. One early boomer meme before the Internet was even a thing was “there are hungry kids in China”. My parents told me that when I refused to clean my plate. But that’s not a thing anymore, because of the actions of their generation.

And there’s one other little thing. Computers and the Internet. The Boomers made your computers and video games and consoles and websites possible, although some of that was done by my own GenX generation. You couldn’t even throw down your little #OkBoomer memes if they hadn’t made that possible.

Despite all of this, there are a number of things that young people endlessly scream about. We hear endless complaints about mass shootings, despite a long term decline in mass shootings and violence in general. We hear endless screams for socialism and communism, even though the literal opposite of that is what made the world great.

One of the most confusing complaints is in regards to global warming. Yes, the world is warming. Yes, the cause is primarily human made. But have you given any thought as to why? The global population has roughly doubled over the past forty years. In 1972, it was 3.85 billion, half of what it is today. When the population was half of that, it was sometime in the early 20th century. It was half of that shortly before the end of the 18th century. And it was half of that roughly 150 years earlier and half of that about 700 years earlier and half of that 1800 years earlier. It used to take centuries to double the population, now it takes decades. And this is not a simple geometric increase, it’s a sudden, meteoric rise.

This is because the Boomers made food and medicine available. The consequence is that the human population expanded suddenly, requiring more energy. The energy sources required to support this population produced emissions, warming the earth. The Boomers dropped the ball on this. They could have done better. But this happened primarily because they wanted food and medicine (especially vaccines, the most important of all medical advances) spread around the world. Hardly evidence of ill intent. This problem was caused by them solving other problems. Unintended consequences are a thing for every generation.

Here’s something you need to know if you don’t already: Your parents were right about just about everything. After years of fighting with my parents as a teenager, it slowly dawned on me in my mid-twenties (after I’d moved out, finished college, and started paying my own way for a few years) that they had been right in almost every one of those arguments. There are a few things my parents might have been wrong about (LGBT rights, global warming, whether or not superhero movies are good), but for the most part, they got it right. Because they learned the lessons from their parents, which were passed down from their parents, and so on. The lessons of our ancestors are not irrelevant. Some truths are timeless.

Truth is your parents and grandparents (with an assist from your older cousins, brothers, and sisters, the Gen Xers) made the world better than it has ever been. They solved millions of problems. They also caused thousands of new ones. So it goes for every generation. They did way more good than bad. So acknowledge that, and don’t waste your time griping about the things they missed. Instead, spend your time fixing the things they missed. And remember this when you have this same conversation with your children and grandchildren.

Internet Broken By People Who Menstruate

So there’s a bit of a row over whether or not trans people menstruate. This is not a new debate amongst the loudest portions of the Internet, but it appears to have flared up in response to an article on some website. I think it was NPR, but I just realized I don’t really care. The article in question was discussing the quantity of sanitary pads and tampons and whatnot that are used each year. Apparently, the sales tax alone is $150 million. That would be about one dollar per woman, per year, on average. But that’s beside the point. Something much smaller caused things to go off the rails.

The NPR article did not say that “women” spend that much. It said that “people who menstruate” spend that much. And since much of the Internet is primed and ready to pounce on anything that appears to vaguely touch on the subject of transexuality, all hell broke loose.

In fairness to NPR, “people who menstruate” is not necessarily them acquiescing to the dark hordes of the woke Gestapo who seem to spend their entire lives hunting and punishing all those who dare to cross the lines of political correctness. There are a large number of women who don’t menstruate. They’re called, old women. Post menopausal women do not menstruate. It is entirely possible they were just referring to them. On the other hand, why not just say “women who menstruate.”?

Having said that, there are trans people who menstruate. Trans men (who are biological women) still have uteruses, and therefore still menstruate, although I gather that the hormone treatments can interrupt this or make it irregular. But the most odd part of this debate is the insistence by some that trans women have periods.

The denizens of the Interweb machine were already on a razor’s edge in the wake of the second annual International Pronouns Day and the first ever National Period Day. Those two celebrations of gendered wokeness resulted in endless virtue signalling and trolling and rubbed a lot of nerves raw. So pretty much everyone with too much time on their hands had trans on the brain. As a result, the hate tweeting ramped up in the past few days.

Angry vituperations from the religious right and from many left-leaning feminists (strange bedfellows indeed) insist that trans women cannot have periods, because they do not have uteruses. Angry responses from trans activists insist that trans women can have period-like symptoms, including cramping and various other things, brought on by hormone treatments.

I don’t pretend to know everything about this, and one thing that aggravates me is the sheer number of people who insist that they do know everything about this and vehemently defend their points of view as if they are holy writ.

In the case of the angry feminists, I at least understand why they would take umbrage at this. Maybe trans women have some cramps and other symptoms, but they do not dispose of a uterine wall on a monthly basis. I’m sure regular women would consider this to be getting off light.

What’s confusing to me is why trans women are so committed to convincing people that they have periods. They may feel that they are women. And I don’t pretend to understand the science (Spoiler alert: Nobody does; it’s far from settled), but why would the periods be so important? It seems like the least awesome part of being a woman.

And the fact that I’ve never been a woman doesn’t mean I can’t know this. Firstly, every guy has noticed that women get a bit cranky during their time of the month, so one can deduce that they’re not having a good time. Secondly, women have straight up told me how much it sucks. The only woman I have ever met who was even slightly okay with getting her period was one that was worried that she was pregnant, and did want to be. This was not my doing, by the way. This girl put me in the friend zone almost immediately. Anyway, even when the period came, her relief was not enough to offset her normal irritation because of menstruation. The point is, if it were possible to experience being a woman (presuming that one wanted to) without having periods, that would seem to be a bonus.

I don’t get the insistence that we all must believe that trans women have periods. If you want to take hormones, get surgery that fundamentally changes your body, and believe that you have periods (even if it means referring to hormone side effects as a period), then you’re welcome to do and believe whatever you like. Although I might push back a bit if you expect other people to pay for it. But why is it so important that everyone thinks as you do?

This actually seems like less of a big deal than the pronouns arguments a few days ago. Maybe someone who, say, believes that they are a woman born into a biologically male body might find it irksome when someone uses the “wrong” pronouns. For example, if I were confronted by a large, male appearing person, say, in a Gamestop, I might say “sir” even though this is not the case. And I can understand how hearing the wrong pronoun can be irritating.

I was once referred to as “ma’am” when I was sixteen. Not because I’m particularly feminine looking. I was handing out food at a homeless shelter, and I think the homeless guy who called me ma’am was high, or drunk, or both. But it was annoying, and if it happened to me daily, I’m sure it would be really annoying.

But it seems there is less of a reason to obsess over the period thing, because I can envision no circumstance where someone might accidentally inform you that you do or don’t have periods when the opposite is true or you believe the opposite is true. What are the chances of someone “mis-perioding” you? How would this even come up in a normal interaction?

You’re not going to just walk up to the dude in the video game store and instead of saying “sir” say “person who doesn’t have periods”. Even someone who is either hardcore evangelical or a rage-filled TERF wouldn’t do that. They might use the “wrong” pronouns, but why would anyone bother bringing up periods? Why would we bother policing speech that isn’t likely to happen at all?

One thing that has always been a bit off-putting for me (and many others) is this insistence that we all must hold conform to the increasingly myriad rules of political correctness. It is not enough that we be accepting or tolerant. We must believe exactly as the paragons of the new left do, or fall victim to a deluge of Internet outrage. Failing to acknowledge that biological men have periods or that not only women have periods is the latest law of progressivism, and woe betide anyone who violates these precepts. Although, there is one upside to this for heterosexual men. If one of our dudebros is acting overly emotional, we can accuse him of being on his period and it won’t be crass or toxically masculine. It would actually be woke.

My advice is that if you want to insist that you can do things biological women can do, instead of picking one of the least awesome things about being a woman, why not one of the most awesome? Like multiple orgasms? Why not declare that that’s a thing? Maybe it is? I even thought about researching it. But I think if I started Googling “trans women multiple orgasms” I’d probably just get a bunch of porn.

It’s Time to Disabuse Ourselves of the Myths About Venezuela’s Crash

One of the on again/off again debates occasionally reverberating around the Internet is about the plight of Venezuela and its causes. Many on the left say that Venezuela’s dramatic economic crash was brought about by sanctions from the United States. People on the right claim that it is the natural result of the form of socialism that Hugo Chavez and Nicolás Maduro attempted to implement in the country.

Whether or not socialism is truly to blame is somewhat debatable, but one thing is clear to anyone with a basic understanding of cause and effect and the willingness to perform maybe five minutes of research. The sanctions did not kill Venezuela’s economy.

I’ve always found it remarkable just how easy it is to refute many of the common misconceptions on the Internet. Not just because many experts have exposed the falsehoods behind everything from birthers to 9/11 truthers to anti-vaxxers to flat earthers. But because one doesn’t even have to be an expert to debunk this crap. And dispelling the myths around Venezuelan sanctions is only slightly harder than disproving those other things I mentioned.

In 2014, the Venezuelan economy began tanking. At that time, there were sanctions. Against seven people. Seven people who had, in the estimation of the U.S. government, committed crimes against humanity when repressing protests in the country. One can argue the validity of this (Although there is an ongoing ICC investigation into this, documenting numerous killings and instances of torture between 2014 and 2017), but the fact is, sanctions against seven people doesn’t kill an economy.

The United States government would go on to add a handful of people to the list here and there, based on deeds committed between 2014 and 2018. But the total never got to be more than a hundred. This is readily verifiable. Sanctions are effectively laws and regulations, which the US government updates daily in the Federal Register. Anyone can see the progression of sanctions over the years.

And it should be very obvious that you cannot destroy an economy by sanctioning a hundred people. Unless those hundred people had total control over the economy. If that was the case, then it would be proof positive that Venezuela was never truly a democracy. But I’ll assume, for the sake of argument, that this small group did not have that much control.

Venezuela’s economy took another precipitous dive in 2018. This left the economy in the toilet. And it’s important to know this, because it wasn’t until 2019 that there were sanctions imposed on Venezuela’s national oil company. This would have been the first sanctions that could truly affect the entire country. But by then, Venezuela’s economy was already a dead horse, and any additional kicks from the Trump administration could not have made it much worse.

One could argue that the 2019 sanctions are excessive. That they’re an undue burden on a suffering population in the name of regime change. And we should realize that our recent attempts at regime change have had a variety of perverse, unwanted consequences. But what is absolutely clear is that the sanctions didn’t kill the Venezuelan economy. It was due to a decline in oil prices.

Venezuela’s economy is based largely on the massive oil reserves under its surface. In June 2014, prices began dropping, and they would drop nearly 50% by year-end. By the end of 2015, they would be roughly a third of what they had been. Most nations reliant on oil production keep a rainy day fund, but Chavez and Maduro were spending like madmen. They did manage to reduce poverty, especially extreme poverty, for a time, but the money ran out when the oil market cratered. It doesn’t help that both administrations were plagued by corruption, either. Nations and empires throughout history have been brought to their knees by corruption.

Now I understand why there are those on the left who don’t want to believe this. There is an element of the left that wants a functioning socialist government. And not the type of democratic socialism practiced by Germany or the Scandinavians. Indeed, what these countries practice isn’t necessarily socialism at all. They call it Rhine capitalism and Nordic Capitalism, respectively.

There is an element of the left that still wants the worker’s paradise, where a visionary, revolutionary, transformative figure radically transforms an economy. There are those who still want to believe it’s possible, despite the brutal repression resulting from the policies of Lenin. And Stalin. And Mao. And Ho Chi Minh. And Pol Pot. And Castro. And Che Guevara. And Robert Mugabe. And countless others.

The belief that somebody can still get it right is why they’re so willing to believe the Chavistas who try to blame America. They want to believe in the dream, and they’re willing to believe whatever the current socialist messiah says. And the current socialist messiahs are blaming “the Empire.” It is normal for repressive regimes to try to push the blame for their own mistakes outwards. Strongman socialists have done it for years, while also suppressing speech and the press to ensure that opposing voices can’t be heard. And many leftists are lulled by this singular message into being what Lenin called “useful idiots”.

Now, let’s not assume that the right wing of the debate is right about everything. They’re very quick to blame socialism. But the primary cause of Venezuela’s collapse is internal corruption and mismanagement. One could argue that the statist, strongman, centralized form of socialism that Venezuela attempted naturally leads to corruption and inefficiency. That’s certainly what killed the Soviet Union. But certainly, there are mixed economies with elements of socialism that are able to function. Including the United States. (see: Social Security. See also: Medicare)

But there’s no question that the left-leaning Chavez supporters are obviously wrong. Blaming the economic ruin of Venezuela on the U.S. (or anyone else) is a blatant conspiracy theory. It’s the result of failures from within, not influence from without. The Chavez and Maduro governments were corrupt, incompetent, and inefficient. And then they ran out of other people’s money.

Don’t #EatTheBabies or #EatTheChilldren, Eat the Fat Acceptance Activists

People are still talking about the rather hilarious troll who crashed a town hall being given by freshman congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In a set up so obvious only the most dim-witted couldn’t see through it, the young woman insisted that the fight against global warming was not enough. Even some Swedish scientist’s idea of eating the dead (which is apparently a story that is only true on the Internet) was insufficient. We must immediately start eating babies.

This led to the #EatTheBabies and #EatTheChildren hashtag trending on Twitter, with typically hilarious results. More than a few (myself included) reminded the Twitterverse that this was not the first time baby consumption had been encouraged. The writer Jonathan Swift, of Gulliver’s Travels fame, once suggested in his satirical essay, A Modest Proposal, that we should eat babies to end poverty. This was in response to a large number of poor single mothers in his time. Apparently, even in the 18th century, when single motherhood was very taboo, it was a major driver of poverty.

But today eating babies is offered as a method of population control. And there’s no question that the explosion in the population (primarily due to medical advancements, such as immunization, and increased food production, resulting in fewer deaths from starvation) is a major driver of carbon emissions. But eating babies is not the correct answer.

Now I wouldn’t even consider eating a baby, even if the world depended on it. I have trouble eating veal (baby cow, for the uninitiated). Unless it’s veal parmesan. Anything “parmesan” is inherently awesome. Although I still don’t think I would eat baby parmesan. But more importantly, babies probably have the absolute lowest carbon footprint of all humans. They are not the problem.

There is a better way, though. Many modern countries are struggling with obesity. I once did too. But no longer. Once I discovered an app to track my calories, nutritional intake, and exercise, I was able to discipline myself to eat less and exercise more in a way that resulted in losing over one pound per week. As a result, I lost 30 pounds in half a year. It was quite simple. Eat 500 calories less than I burn per day, and ensure that I get all the necessary vitamins and minerals. It is only possible to do this by eating more fruits and vegetables and less meat. So by losing weight, I reduced my carbon footprint.

If every fat person in the world did this, we would have a significant impact and be generally healthier and therefore less of a burden to the healthcare system. We wouldn’t need to ban farting cows and lamb and other meats. We would just need to eat fewer of them. But there is one segment of the population that this would not apply to. A peculiar splinter of the Body Positivity movement known as the Fat Acceptance movement.

Now Body Positivity was originally a good idea. It was about encouraging people, especially young women, not to harm themselves to attain an unattainable body image. It’s better to be a healthy size eight than an anorexic or bulimic size four. But then the Fat Acceptance movement got carried away.

Instead of being happy with average weight, they decided that being morbidly obese was fine. So massive they break normal scales. So huge that when they need an MRI because they have chest pains, they get sent to the zoo because they’re too big for human-sized MRI machines. So gigantic that, in the words of the eternally corpulent (and now sadly, but unsurprisingly, dead) comedian Ralphie May when he lost 270 pounds, that they could lose an entire fat man and still be fat as hell. So instead of avoiding the unhealthy lifestyles of self-starvation and forced regurgitation, they went completely the other way and chose the unhealthy lifestyle of constantly stuffing one’s face.

One does not get that large without engorging themselves on absurd amounts of meat. And it’s pretty clear that they have just given up on health, and will continue to murder the earth by scarfing down an endless diet of dead animals. So the solution is obvious. We must eat the Fat Acceptance activists.

We must find and corral all of the unrepentant gluttons of the world. This will be easy, since they can’t outrun us. The obese are nearly 40% of the U.S. population, according to the CDC, and their carbon footprint by far exceeds a normal person’s. So if we eat all of the ones who won’t go on a diet, humanity’s carbon footprint will be reduced, because normal people don’t eat nearly so many animals. They also don’t fart as much as fatties do.

Also, since the population will be noticeably reduced, the power consumption will decrease, reducing emissions even more. Not just because there will be fewer people. Skinny people won’t need the air conditioner turned on so high, because their fat free bodies don’t retain as much heat. Also, the weight carried by planes, trains, and automobiles will be noticeably lower, improving fuel efficiency.

We could even solve other problems in the process. We could ship fat people to parts of the world where there is hunger. If we send fat people to Venezuela, for example, where hunger is rampant due to the widespread mismanagement and incompetence of the Maduro government, we could reverse the weight loss trend amongst their population. This could be mutually beneficial. We could lift the sanctions and trade fat people for oil.

We could even have a form of slave reparations. We could send fat white people to the poorer parts of the black community where there is hunger. This would also be fiscally beneficial, since poor blacks would no longer need food stamps and could feast on chunky white people for years. The only trick is that there is a higher rate of obesity in the black community. So we may need to actually send some black people back to Africa to feed the hungry there.

Make no mistake, many fat people could become unfat people (as I did) by simply having a responsible diet. But for those incorrigible few, cannibalism is probably the best choice. We can reduce the carbon footprint of the human race by eating the hopelessly heavy. In a fat-free world, we would all be healthy, happy, and have a much lower carbon footprint. And since we would all be noticeably more attractive, we could get laid more frequently and have all the babies we want.

Why #ClimateChange Rhetoric From Greta Thunberg and Others Doesn’t Help

So the internet is going nuts over Greta Thunberg, a teenager from Sweden. She yelled at the UN about climate change. Her supporters are calling her speech “Stirring” and “Passionate” and “Powerful”. Detractors are complaining about a child being propped up to support a political issue. Just about everyone is being angry and annoying.

Now, granted, the propping up of children, widows, grieving mothers, and victims can go too far. They’re presented in a way that makes them unassailable, with even mild criticism resulting in a cacophony of “How-dare-you”s. And typically, proponents get a bit carried away. Thunberg has already been compared to Joan of Arc and Jesus.

But that doesn’t warrant her critics being huge douchebags. The response from the right is just a bit too vituperative. Like Dinesh D’Souza comparing her to Nazi propaganda, and managing to prove Godwin’s Law in record time. Or YouTuber Mark Dice calling her a brat and threatening to dump trash in the ocean. This would be a petulant act reminiscent of Xerxes whipping and branding the waters of the Hellespont to punish it for destroying his bridges. And, of course, @realDonaldTrump couldn’t resist trolling her on Twitter. They all need to take a breather.

The perfect microcosm of the hysteria was an interaction on Fox News between Michael Knowles of the conservative Daily Wire and Democratic activist Chris Hahn. Knowles called Thunberg a mentally ill child. Technically, an accurate statement (she has depression and Asperger’s), but intoned in a way that sounds like an ad hominem dig. Chris Hahn took umbrage, but his response focused primarily on Thunberg’s age. Thus, supporting the point of many rightwingers that children are used as props because they are perceived as untouchable.

Children can participate in activism, and frequently have to good effect. They are not immune to criticism, though, and shouldn’t be. But effective criticism should always contain a degree of tact, especially when dealing with children. So here’s how to appropriately criticize a child.

Thunberg insists that the “climate budget” will be used up in 8.5 years. That’s true if we want to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius. To limit to two degrees, we have 26 years, although the consequences of that would be much worse than 1.5. So it would behoove us to move quickly. Nothing wrong with this part of it.

She says people are dying and ecologies are collapsing. Sort of true, although what the scientists tell us is that the truly dire consequences (such as losing 250K per year due to climate change) are what happens if we do nothing. They’re not really saying that it happens right now. But there are deaths happening. As a guy who ran away from Hurricane Irma, a storm that was more powerful than it would have been otherwise due to climate change and absolutely devastated the Florida Keys, I’ve seen it first hand.

But where she went wrong is when she berated attendees for offering “technical solutions” and “business as usual”. If I’m not mistaken, replacing fossil fuels with wind and solar (and possibly nuclear) is a technical solution. And why not invest in other technologies that would improve mitigation or adaptation? We’re being told that what’s happening is not enough, but what alternatives is she proposing?

This vagueness is one thing that aggravates me. We’re being told of dangers, but not being told what should be done differently. And she doesn’t get to play the “I’m only 16” card, because if she has time to be as involved as she is in this, she has time to read up on solutions too. When I was her age, I was quite capable of doing research, and Google wasn’t a thing back then. So if technical solutions are not enough, what is?

Climate change deniers (of which I am not) seize on this vagueness to claim that there is an underlying motive. As if it’s all a ploy to bring in “Green Socialism”. They support this by showing pictures of Thunberg in what looks like an Antifa shirt. And the truth is, there have been numerous pundits pushing this notion, which I find to be despicable opportunism. Using a crisis to push a political agenda is slimy. The truth is, there is little need to adopt green socialism.

The scientists show that going green would actually improve efficiency, meaning energy production would be more profitable. That means that capitalist solutions are entirely possible, although some of the more intractable energy producers might need a nudge or two to get moving. The fact that U.S. renewable energy has nearly doubled since 2008 and now produces nearly one sixth of our energy supports this. So there’s no need for alarmism on a socialist takeover. But it also means that the “technical solutions” do actually appear to be producing results, although we need to speed things up.

But Thunberg’s vagueness is not the only problem. When I saw a bunch of young people protesting and speechifying about climate change a couple of days ago, I started to freak out. One young lady insisted that some damage would be irreversible within 18 months. I live about 100 yards from Tampa Bay, which makes me one of the most vulnerable people in the country (if not the world) when it comes to things like sea level rise and increasingly powerful storms. So, naturally, I feverishly searched the internet for details about the specific damage that would be irreversible within 18 months.

And found bupkis. I did find one BBC article which quoted someone saying that the next 18 months were critical because of various climate summits and conferences and whatnot where decisions will be made. But nothing about damage within the next 18 months. Oh, and the person quoted was Prince Charles. I don’t think he’s a climate expert.

This is not the first time someone oversold the threat. Like when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said the world would end in 12 years. We need to reduce emissions significantly over the next twelve years to limit the damage, but the world will still be here. Or when she said Miami would be gone in a few years. Scientists say the sea will rise two to seven feet by 2100. That means pieces (perhaps most) of Miami might be gone sometime in the next eighty years. That’s a bit more than a few years.

No one ever seems to bother specifying the threat. “Irreversible damage” is a bit vague. What does that mean? Will all the crops die? Will all the glaciers melt? If so, when and where? Let us know the details.

Here’s one thing I discovered about this word “irreversible”. It doesn’t necessarily mean “irreversible”. For example, if we dump a bunch of CO2 into the atmosphere, it can be pulled down to earth by plants and whatnot. But about twenty percent of it will hang in the air for a much longer time. So this part isn’t “irreversible” it’s “irreversible in our lifetime with existing technology”. If we were specific about this, it would tell us that one way to reverse this is to invest in research and development. We could produce technologies to speed up this reversal. But instead, we’re just inundated with scary language.

Now some things are irreversible. If a species goes extinct, it’s gone. If Greenland melts, you can’t just up and refreeze it. And if anything like this is going to happen, we need to know when and where so we can take action. But nobody in the news bothers to cover that. It’s just people yelling and waving signs and telling us the world is going to end.

I’m not a denier. If the climate goes to hell, I’ll be one of the first victims. I want people to take quick and decisive action. I want to try anything we can to fix this. But when people seem to exaggerate the danger from climate change, it just hurts that cause. Deniers will point to the exaggerated and frequently vague claims as evidence that the whole thing is a hoax. They’re already pointing to times when past predictions went awry.

If you want to motivate people, give them a concrete goal. This definitely works on Americans. Don’t make vague and contradictory claims. Tell us what technologies need to be developed. Tell us how we might change our lifestyles to avert this. Tell us how many wind turbines and solar panels and nuclear plants need to be built to replace fossil fuel power plants.

Doomsday threats, especially when they are of questionable validity or incredibly vague, don’t tell us what to do. It just results in fear and anxiety, and then backlash if the claims are shown to be spurious or exaggerated. This perpetuates the climate deadlock, which we can’t afford. Deniers aren’t helping, but neither are overzealous activists. Instead of exaggerating the risks, let us know the details of the danger, and how we can fix this.

I’d recommend ignoring all of these people. Ignore the screaming activists, ignore the trolls (even if they are president of something), and ignore the pundits throwing rhetorical feces at each other. Instead, look to responsible, science based sources, like NASA or NOAA or the United States military. All of them agree that climate change is a big problem, and are proposing and researching numerous potential solutions. Reports from them, not from climate activists and their detractors, provide a fair and accurate picture, and have the wisdom to include potential solutions to the problem.

#Reparations, the #WealthGap, and #Immigrants

One of the increasingly common topics being discussed in congressional committees, news panels, and debate stages is the need for reparations for slavery. The need for reparations is frequently asserted as if it is a necessity, as if the debate is over and the relationship between the descendants of slaves and other Americans cannot be resolved without it. Various lofty sounding phrases such as “the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow” and “intergenerational theft” are deployed regularly in this debate.

The underlying assumption is that while white people were able to obtain wealth and pass it down over generations, black people were not. The persistent gap in wages and wealth between white and black people is pointed to as proof positive of this. But there are a lot of facts that seem to conflict with this narrative.

For starters, the presumption that white people have been passing down wealth for decades is shaky. This is true for some people with names like Kennedy and Rockefeller and Walton, but most family wealth that is passed down is not measured in millions, if any is passed down at all. And often, one generation obtains wealth, only to have later generations squander it. Transfer of great wealth is relatively rare, which is probably why the estate tax has rarely been more than one or two percent of the government’s tax revenue.

And while it’s true that the wage and wealth gap would have been exacerbated by practices such as Jim Crow and redlining, if that was the primary cause, it doesn’t explain how the wage and wealth gap increased since those practices were outlawed. Even though that obviously wouldn’t eliminate racism, one would think it should have resulted in a decline in the gap, not an increase.

Further complicating this assertion is the fact that (according to Pew Research, amongst others) the wealth gap between whites and Hispanics is only slightly less than the gap between whites and blacks, and the wage gap is slightly higher. It should be obvious that the legacy of slavery would have no significant impact on Hispanic populations, and although certain other policies (such as redlining) would have negatively affected them, it would be to a lesser extent.

This would lead us to believe that Hispanics should be wealthier and have higher incomes than blacks, not have rough parity. And since Asians would have been affected by redlining too, they should have been negatively impacted as well. Instead, they have higher wages and wealth than all other groups.

Even when wealth is passed down, it is usually dwarfed by the earned income of the inheritor. A person who earns the national average income (about $50K per year) earns $2 million over the same time. Inheritances are rarely this large, averaging about $300K. Meaning less than 15% of their earnings is inherited. In fact, if more than 15% of your lifetime earnings is inherited, it is usually an indicator of poor performance in your career, not huge inheritances from your parents.

This is definitely true amongst the extremely wealthy. Take a look at the people on the Forbes 400. Although the inheritors (Waltons, Rockefellers, etc.) are there, the majority (about 70%) are people who made billions instead of inheriting billions. The primary driver of success appears to be personal effort and ability, not family history.

One group of people whose experience seems to consistently support this notion are immigrants. Many immigrants come here with nothing, but they frequently rise to great heights. Some are people who, like the slaves of centuries ago, had everything stolen from them. Two such groups that exist in America are the Vietnamese and the Cubans.

These communities started largely as refugee populations, from countries that were overrun by authoritarian, communist regimes. Many people fled these countries in the face of this oppression, while the communists who took power tortured, imprisoned, and killed their family members and stole all of the wealth they had labored for over the years. In other words, they often started with almost nothing, as the freed slaves did.

And it’s worth noting that the time at which these refugees entered the country is about the same time that Jim Crow and redlining were outlawed. It’s also true that these populations would also have faced discrimination, since it’s virtually inevitable that any significant immigrant population faces some discrimination.

Despite this, these two populations have prospered over the roughly forty or fifty years that they’ve been here. Some have obtained great wealth, while many others have been able to at least lift themselves into the middle class. Sometimes they did this in one generation, despite the tremendous setbacks imposed on them by the communist takeovers of their countries of origin. Others have been able to do it in two. The numbers support this, as both populations earn more than the national average household income.

So this flies in the face of the “intergenerational theft” narrative. We are being told that the impacts of the thefts and injustice compound over generations. Certainly, the person who was robbed was negatively impacted. But often, they or their children’s generation are able to recover, often achieving more than their fellow citizens. This suggests that with each successive generation, the impact of the original injustice on their wealth, wages, and well-being declines rather than increases.

As noted previously, the amount of time these groups have had to recover from their injustice is approximately the same amount of time since the end of the Jim Crow era. This suggests that the black population has had at least the same amount of time to recover from the thefts and injustices that occurred to previous generations. The fact that they have not, while certain other similarly situated populations have, strongly suggests that there is more to this discussion than “The Legacy of Jim Crow and Slavery”.

And even if the amount of racism black people experience currently exceeds the discrimination faced by Cubans and Vietnamese, the fact is that many recent African immigrants, most notably the Nigerians, are able to earn far more than not only American blacks, but more than the average American. This happens in spite of the fact that they would be subject to similar prejudices as native-born blacks.

Obviously, none of this implies that racism is gone and has no impact on inequality. This is also not to say that inheritance is irrelevant. Nor does it mean that the sins of the past have no impact on the gap between whites and blacks. But the notion being pushed by many liberal and progressive politicians and pundits appears flawed. They seem to want to claim that the impact of slavery, Jim Crow, and redlining on inheritance is the primary or only cause of the gap. This is inconsistent with known facts, and should not go unchallenged in the public debate.

Is Felicity Huffman’s lenient sentence #WhitePrivilege or #RichPrivilege?

After attempting to bribe college officials to get her daughter into a fancy school, actress Felicity Huffman has been sentenced to jail time. For a grand total of 14 days. Naturally, there are dozens of people screaming “White Privilege!” at this. Many point out other similar crimes committed by poorer, darker people who received far harsher sentences. And on its face, these accusations appear plausible.

Not because of this one anecdotal case, though. A study by the Vera Institute of Justice, at the request of the District Attorney of New York County (i.e. Manhattan) found that there were numerous differences in sentencing for blacks, Hispanics, whites, and Asians. In that order, from most harsh to least harsh. It also found that bail, plea deals, and pretrial detention were disparately applied. In that same order, from worst to best.

It should be noted that race was not the primary determining factor. And, obviously, what happens in Manhattan isn’t necessarily what happens in the rest of the country. Or even the rest of the New York boroughs. But it’s not a huge surprise that the justice system has a disparate impact amongst races. Some would argue that this is systemic racism. But maybe not.

Black, Hispanic, white, and Asian is also a list in the order of poorest to richest. So maybe the cause is wealth, not race. There’s no doubt that Felicity Huffman has some money. I don’t know what her last acting gig was, but I’m sure her husband, William H. Macy, is being paid handsomely for his role on Showtime’s “Shameless”. And if you can afford to bribe a college just to get your daughter accepted, you can afford kickass lawyers.

Everything listed above would obviously correlate to wealth. Poorer people are more likely to have pretrial detention because they can’t afford bail. And if they can’t afford good lawyers (or any lawyer), they’ll get worse plea offers and heavier sentences if they go to trial.

One solution would be to have policies which ensure that DAs are offering the same plea deals for similarly situated individuals, but according to the Vera study, that’s already happening to some extent. Despite this, sentencing disparities exist.

One obvious partial solution is getting rid of the bail system, at least for minor crimes. Poorer people (which also typically means darker people) are more likely to be unable to pay, and therefore spend time in jail. This means they will spend days or weeks away from their jobs, which they will probably lose and their families cannot afford. It doesn’t even make fiscal sense. If we jail a person who can’t afford a $100 fine, we will probably spend more than that just feeding him for a day or two.

I think it’s worth noting that the British, who invented the bail system (which we inherited from them) have decided to get rid of it. They realized that it had these disparate impacts, and chose a system which jails based on risk, not wealth. If they no longer consider it a good idea, then we should bag it too.

And obviously, a lot of the problem disappears if we stop throwing people in jail for minor drug offenses. Not only do some of these people need treatment (if not all), but throwing them in prison can set them on a path of crime and poverty that is hard to break out of.

But the main thing is legal representation. A young, poor man, who may not even have a father present and has limited schooling, is likely not sophisticated in legal matters. When confronted with the intimidating presence of the DA’s office, he may feel overwhelmed. He may take whatever offer he is given. A richer person with a lawyer will have an advocate who knows the system and can negotiate for a better plea deal or even offer a defense which results in acquittal if the case goes to trial.

And it’s worth noting that these longer sentences (longer than most countries in the developed world) are precisely what causes us to have the highest incarceration rates. It’s not that we have more crime; it’s that we sentence people to longer sentences, even though that does not appear to have any impact on recidivism rates. We should take steps to bring these sentences down.

I’m sure you’re wondering, what about public defenders? Well, this is the problem. Public defenders offices are woefully underfunded. So, this is how we bring the sentences down into parity. A good defense lawyer can bring these sentences down, but they need to be able to make a living and have sufficient funding to provide an adequate sentence.

And it’s not just about racial equality. It also makes fiscal sense. Sending people to jail for longer than is necessary is wasteful from both the human perspective (destroyed lives, broken families) but also a financial perspective. If we’re sentencing people to excessive time, the extra time costs money. A good defense lawyer who obtains a fairer sentence would actually save the system money.

Maybe Felicity’s sentence is about white privilege. I’m not so naive to believe that racism is entirely out of the system. But I have no doubt that her money was the bigger factor. Everyone has a right to a lawyer. Let’s make sure the lawyers for the poor have the resources to fight just as hard as the lawyers to the elites.

Eighteen years later, trolls still darken the #NeverForget and #911 and #911remembered hashtags, #WhereWereYou and other #9/11 hashtags.

Eighteen years ago, I crawled out of bed in my Marietta, Georgia apartment and began the thirty minute drive to my job in Alpharetta. It was about 2:45, and my shift started at three, so I started needed to hustle to get there. I flipped through a few radio stations, looking for some driving music, and I vaguely heard some mention of someone attacking the Pentagon on the talk radio channel. The idea seemed ludicrous, so I assumed it must be radio nuts just throwing out some hypothetical situation. I quickly flipped over to the classic rock station and drove to work.

I arrived fifteen minutes late, and hustled through the door, hoping to slip in quietly past my supervisor. It was a call center job, and it was normally easy to slip in through the maze of cubicles unnoticed. But the second I got inside, I quickly realized it was unnecessary. Crowds of people stood gathered around the monitors that hung at various points around the work areas. The twin towers were on fire. I would quickly discover that this was all footage from earlier that day. The towers had collapsed while I slept. A few hours later, we witnessed the collapse of building 7 live on television.

Everyone in my generation remembers where they were, and remembers the feeling of fear and shock. My parents’ generation can remember the same thing when they heard President Kennedy was assassinated, and their parents can remember where they were on December 7th, 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Their feelings of pain and loss, and later anger, were not that different from ours.

For years this was treated as a sacred day of remembrance, and by most people, it still is. But in recent years, there are certain occupants of the darker corners of the internet that feel the need to post trolly comments in the hashtag. Some of these are virtue signallers who lecture the rest of us about various past injustices. Others are just blatant anti-government or anti-American nuts.

I have no doubt that some of these schmucks are just people with a superiority complex, trying to hold themselves apart from the hoi polloi, the “normies” who are trying to commemorate a tragedy. People like this seem to assume that anyone engaged in any vaguely patriotic or pro-American display are merely ignorant members of the unwashed masses. Examples include the creative director of the 9/11 museum, who six years ago initially rejected the iconic photo of three firemen raising the stars and stripes at ground zero. It had been declared “kitschy” and “too rah-rah America”.

These days, the least offensive of these snooty elitist types will post things like “#timetomoveon”. Typically, this is justified because “Bin Laden is dead”. This is asinine. For starters, we have moved on. We’re still living our lives and America is still great. Secondly, Bin Laden may be dead, but Islamist terror and extremism are not. But the subtext of this statement is that we shouldn’t waste time commemorating this. Which is nonsense. We’ve moved on from WWII and the Cold War, but that doesn’t mean we’ve forgotten Pearl Harbor or the Kennedy assassination. Hashtags like this seem to think that commemorating 9/11 is boorish and trashy behavior.

More annoying variants of this type of troll lecture us about the number of dead in Iraq and Afghanistan, which obviously exceeds, by orders of magnitude, the dead on 9/11. I could point out that the intervention in Afghanistan was an attack on an Al Qaeda ally, the Taliban, which was entirely justified, even if it may have lasted longer than necessary. I could point out that many of those dead in both wars are due not to our intervention, but by actions from Iran, Pakistan, or various other foreign actors. But I need not bother.

The simple fact is that the subsequent wars and any questionable or unjust events that may have happened in no way reduce the fact that the attack on us was a blatant act of evil carried out by a madman who was annoyed that there were westerners in the (ostensibly) holy land of Saudi Arabia, amongst other things. We are allowed to remember and still be outraged by this injustice, regardless of subsequent events.

Some of those triggered by our remembrances are more than just smug, self-aggrandizing imbeciles. Some are people who are virulently anti-establishment. The worst of these spew the most vile conspiracy theories about the attacks.

Believers in conspiracy theories are almost by definition people falling victim to confirmation bias. Anti-vaxxers are people who distrust the medical establishment, especially the pharma companies who make the vaccines, and immediately fall victim to any narrative that paints them in a negative light. People who are convinced that the moon landing was faked seem to almost universally harbor anti-American feelings. Flat earthers, anti-GMO activists, and holocaust deniers are all motivated by ideology, not facts.

So when leftists with anti-American sentiments are given a theory that the entire thing was an inside job, they pounce on it. The absurd “Loose Change” documentary was one of the early conspiracy screeds. I watched it (I was feeling masochistic that day) and later watched a documentary where experts debunked the documentarians ludicrous claims. The most striking thing to me was not how easily the experts debunked the lunacies in the documentary, but the fact that the experts were unnecessary.

High school or low-level college science was all that was necessary. Almost anyone with a basic knowledge of physics, for example, would know that steel didn’t have to melt for the buildings to collapse. All that was necessary was enough heat to soften the metal.

But the left wing is not alone in this. I have heard anarcho capitalist libertarians insist that building 7 was a planned demolition. And in recent years, I have heard the disgraceful “Q-Anon” activists tweet with absolute certainty that the attack on the towers was orchestrated by the Mossad and the Pentagon was hit by a cruise missile launched from an Israeli submarine. These are merely anti-government and anti-semitic madness. But the 9/11 hashtags are polluted by this nonsense even 18 years later.

Some of the most abhorrent are those engaged in Soviet-style whataboutism. These are the type of people who are triggered by anything that paints America in a positive or sympathetic light, and go out of their way to point out negative things about us. Their anti-American, anti-Western beliefs are usually evinced by the presence of a #NWO hashtag in their profile. These are the type of people who celebrate the Fourth of July by reminding everyone that America once practiced slavery, a practice that virtually every civilization has in its history.

One of the most common tirades tweeted by overwoke trolls is a reference to the overthrow of Salvador Allende by Augusto Pinochet, with CIA assistance. This incident occurred in Chile, also on September 11th. The obvious intent is to shame the “normies” by pointing to a historical injustice.

I could remind them that declassified documents show that the CIA assisted Pinochet in his anti-Soviet activities after he took power, but the CIA actually refused to help him in his coup attempt. I could remind them that this took place in the context of the Cold War, against the largest threat to freedom and humanity in the late twentieth century, and perhaps all of history. I could remind them that spies do shady, sneaky stuff for a living, sometimes for the good, sometimes, in retrospect, not. And in that environment, they had to ally themselves with anyone who could fight the larger threat.

But it makes more sense to simply remind them that this day is not a day to rehash every bad thing America might have done. It is not a day to spam absurd conspiracy theories which were excreted from the bowels of the internet. It is not a day to snidely insult ordinary Americans for their patriotism. It’s a day where we remember an earlier, terrible day where a group that was objectively evil attacked and killed thousands of people who wanted nothing more than their freedom.

#Climatechange thoughtlessness

Wednesday night’s climate change marathon of townhalls on CNN, like most CNN townhalls over the past few years, was mostly an endless series of the same old talking points. Primarily applause lines which appeal to people who already plan to vote D straight down the ticket. And it highlighted the flaws in the climate change debate.

On the one hand, we are consistently told that climate change is a crisis that we must do something about. Which I agree with. But then candidates push for some solutions, while ignoring or dismissing others. One would think that if we’re in such dire circumstances, all options would be on the table. But they’re not. Here are three things that most of the candidates blew it on: Nuclear, agriculture, and steel.

I’ve never understood why so many people dismiss nuclear as an option. Sure, the Soviets ate it with their janky technology at Chernobyl. Sure the Japanese built a reactor where it could get slapped by tsunamis. Sure there was a leak at Three Mile Island that hurt no one. But on the other hand, the French are one of the cleanest countries in the world, and they’ve had very little difficulty. There must be a way to do it right.

Fact is, wind and solar are intermittent. The sun spends part of the day on the other side of the planet, and power storage is a problem that hasn’t been figured out. The wind doesn’t blow all the time. Not even in Tornado Alley. Not even in Florida in hurricane season. Nuclear seems like an option that doesn’t have these limitations.

Only Andrew Yang pointed out that nuclear could work. We could make reactors with Thorium that don’t melt down. We could store nuclear waste without risking the population. We know this, because we already do. We could possibly even recycle nuclear fuel. The French do. But green activists seem inclined to dismiss this automatically. Pointing out potential dangers and problems to be overcome is rational. Dismissing out of hand is ridiculous.

Several candidates pointed out that we need to eat less meat to save the planet. No. We need to find ways to manage the emissions from agriculture, which comprise nine percent of global emissions. These emissions are caused by things like how we manage soil and manure. Adopting better ways to manage these might mean we could continue to eat meat. And not all meat is equal. Beef and mutton produce high emissions. Chicken, pork, and fish…not so much.

But for some reason, the first move is finding ways to tell people what to do with their lives, instead of finding ways to reduce the emissions at their source. Instead of helping farmers manage the problem, we tell people not to eat hamburgers.

One spot that virtually every candidate misses is the fact that steel production produces ten percent of global emissions. And steel is made with coal. And even though there are a few alternative methods that are under development, that’s not changing any time soon.

Steel is one of the most recycled items in the world, but that still produces emissions and still doesn’t meet demand. And demand will only increase as the developing world develops. But this goes unmentioned by virtually everyone. Green energy won’t change this. Eating vegetables won’t change this.

Honestly, even though this is a seriously unpopular option, I don’t see any way to fix this apart from some kind of “clean coal” (I know, a contradiction in terms) option. Even if we eliminate coal power plants, we’ll still have coal emissions from steel. If we can’t sequester those or find another option, we can’t achieve net zero emissions.

Let’s be clear. I am not a shill for nuclear. If there was an economically feasible way to do everything with green energy, that would be find with me. If we could make steel using electrolysis or hydrolysis or whatever the scientists are working on, that’s great. And if it was necessary to stop eating meat, I would do that. But it aggravates me that people aren’t willing to consider alternatives.

I believe climate change is a threat. I live one hundred yards from Tampa Bay. That means I’m in one of the most endangered places in the country, and possibly the world. But if the situation is truly as dire as we’re being told, why aren’t all options on the table? Why do we have to limit ourselves to a narrow set of solutions that have been deemed acceptable by environmental activists, when we know that other solutions are viable and often employed in other parts of the world?

If I was a suspicious type, I would assume that there was some hidden agenda on the part of climate activists. It doesn’t make sense that they’ve married themselves to a limited set of solutions. But I’m not. I think people fear nuclear because they don’t understand it. I think people want to ban meat because they don’t realize there are other options. And I think almost nobody understands the part of the problem steel poses, because nobody ever seems to talk about it.

So we need to get past this. If climate change is truly the threat that we are being told it is, then any viable solution must be considered. All options on the table. Whatever works, regardless of how popular it may be.

The Dream And Promise Act Sends a Strong Message to Legal International Students: You’re a Sucker

The House passed HR 6 yesterday, the Dream And Promise Act. It gives DACA and other undocumented immigrants a conditional permanent residence, and the conditional part can be removed once certain requirements are met.

Democrats are celebrating it as a great achievement. Republicans are condemning it as amnesty. It probably doesn’t have a chance in Hell of passing the Senate. But whenever this sort of bill is debated, both sides always miss a critical point: Just how unfair it is to people here legally.

What bothers me about this bill is that it’s terribly unfair to international students here on student visas. It gives a student who was brought here illegally a better deal than one who came here legally.

The bill allows anyone who came here before they were 18 and has been here at least four years to have conditional residency. An international student often comes here at 17 and is here for over four years, but they get no such treatment. I don’t understand why someone here illegally for four years gets a better deal than someone here legally. Sure, many DACA students have been here for over a decade, maybe most of their lives. But there are also plenty of legal international students who’ve been here over a decade while earning multiple degrees.

The conditional green card alone is unequal treatment. Any green card is a work authorization. It allows a DACA student to work their way through college. An international student can normally only get work through the school, frequently a part-time, minimum wage job. So DACA students have special treatment before they even start school. They can get a job that actually allows them to afford school, while international students (unless they’re from wealthy families) often must hustle to make ends meet.

Once the DACA student completes two years of school, they can apply for normal permanent residence. A normal international student can finish a bachelor’s or master’s or even a doctorate degree, but still must apply for a work visa to stay. If they can’t get one within a year, they must go home.

I had many friends in college who struggled to finish college and struggled to find work, vying for a limited number of H1B visas. They were from all over, from every continent. Some were from wealth, others grew up poor. All had degrees and many had graduate degrees. All had more than met the requirements of this bill, except that their presence here was legal. All fought desperately to stay and had to jump through numerous hoops to get It. They wanted to stay and become Americans just as badly as any dreamer. Some have, after years of struggle, paperwork, and legal expense.

This bill would give an easy route to someone who hasn’t even finished college, but only if they came here illegally. Legal international students get the shaft. It offends me that people like my friends from abroad, people who would more than fulfill the requirements of this bill (except that they broke no laws) are ignored by both parties in the immigration debate.

Understand, I’m fine with certain parts of this bill, like granting a green card to undocumented immigrants who served in the armed forces. And I’m fine with working something out for the DACA students. I’m willing to accept that their illegal entry was their parents’ fault, not theirs. But this means they are foreign students, and should be treated no differently from any other foreign student.

Either undocumented students should be treated as international students, or international students should be given conditional permanent resident status. The constitution requires that similarly situated individuals be given equal protection. If we ignore the illegal entry of the DACA students, then these two groups are similarly situated. If this bill refuses to treat them the same, it is unjust.