Dershowitz on Mueller's sordid FBI history

If he were a mobster Robert Mueller  would be the target of a major investigation. Unless he was working with the Robert Mueller FBI. Then he'd be safe.

"Respected" doesn't mean what it used to mean. At the link.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/alan-dershowitz-maybe-robert-mueller-should-be-investigated

Run Yankee Run - How migration patterns contradict the "Narrative"

There is a mainstream press 'narrative' about the various US states and regions that has been sharpened by the election of Donald Trump. It goes something like this:

The states that voted for Donald Trump, particularly in the south, did so because they  are living in the past. Their economies moribund, their values hateful, their personal prospects poor, they cling to their guns and their bibles. By contrast, Clinton voting states are the future: their cities are 'booming' filling up with the young and the educated, they are egalitarian, wealthy, sophisticated. 

So how could one test this claim? You could go through a whole litany of statistics and data and compare the two sets of states along all sorts of dimensions - sort of like US News does for colleges or other 'best of' listings. But that's susceptible to what I call "League Table Manipulation". The people doing the rankings tend to pick criteria that are important to them and it turns out that the entities that they are rooting for do well against the criteria that they picked. It's artificial, academic and easily manipulated by whomever is creating the rankings.

The best way to test the attractiveness of any service, entity or country is to see how the 'customer' responds to it - what economists call a 'market test'. You don't evaluate the success of a church by its doctrine but by it's attendance. You don't proclaim a product  great based upon statistics, you do it based upon sales. This is because it's only when people deploy their time and money that they reveal their true preferences. You can survey people all day long but you'll never get the truth until you see what they actually choose when no one is watching (if you don't believe me, ask President Hillary Clinton).

This is particularly true when they make choices about moving to a different city or state. People make these moves based upon a complex set of calculations that vary from person to person. They balance wages, job opportunities, the cost of living, the quality of public services, the attractiveness of the physical environment, taxation levels, how welcome they feel and so on. There is no way to create a set of ranking criteria that could reflect this complicated decision. In fact most people couldn't even describe their true decision process to you.

And among all the moves people can make within the US, the most powerful statement of preferences is when people move from one region of the US to another. It is very expensive in money, time, relationships and disruption terms to move your family far away from where it has been established.  It's also a differentiating behavior: the US is filled with the descendants of people who when they looked at their lives in the "old country", found them wanting and did something about it. Which is one reason the US is such a dynamic country: the people here are (in evolutionary terms) 'selected' for independent initiative and effort.  The same, on a smaller scale holds for domestic migrants from one region of the US to another: they tend to be more aggressive, more dynamic, less willing to tolerate the status quo. Which I suppose is of benefit to the regions they move to.

So I decided to look at the US Census' Domestic Migration statistics between the four regions of the United States: Northeast, South, Midwest and West to see what that reveals about the preferences of Americans. If the 'narrative' is true then we should see the young, the educated, minorities and non natives flocking to the Northeast and the West where virtually all of Clinton's support comes from. After all, if these places are 'the future' wouldn't people flock that way? And people should clearly be flooding away from the South which the 'narrative' holds is the most backward, religious, gun loving, bible beating part of America. This was certainly true for the century between 1865 and 1965 where there was a constant flow north and westward.

But we don't. In fact we see the opposite. Below is my transformation of the domestic migration statistical breakdown into ratios. Ratios less than one indicate that there are more people with those characteristics leaving a region for other parts of the US than are moving to it. A 1 indicates balance whereas a 2.0 would indicate that for every person that leaves a region, two people are moving to that region. I've colored negative ratios red. You can find the original data that I used to calculate these ratios here. The chart has some problems on mobile screens but you should be able to see it well horizontally.

Observations

• Just looking at the colors tells the tale. The South is virtually all positive migration while the other regions are a sea of red, negative net migration statistics.  Overall 1.5 people move to the South for every one that moves away. The Midwest and West both have similar net out-migration losses and the Northeast is hemorrhaging people at the same rate that the South is gaining them. People really, really want out of the Northeast.
• The argument "the south is the most racist" is rather conclusively refuted by the fact that African Americans are migrating to the south at a higher rate than any other racial category and their rate of flight is highest from the 'woke' Northeast and West.
• OK, I admit it: there is one racial/ethnic category where people are migrating away from the south: "All remaining single races and all race combinations". It turns out that Eastern Rite Samoans and Radical Sioux don't like the South. And the mixed race Orthodox Jew/Sharia Arabs are leaving too.
• When it comes to the education level of immigrants, the 'narrative' can claim one partially accurate statement: More persons with graduate or professional degrees are moving to the west than are leaving it. The Northeast can take solace in the fact that it's losing these high earners at a rate lower than any other category tempered by the fact that the backward, deplorable South beats them decisively. The Midwest can take no solace from the fact that they are the big winners of the migration sweepstakes for....high school dropouts. 
• The single most skewed to the South migration category is that of international immigrants who have become citizens. Typically people immigrate to gateway cities like NY or LA but over time as they become more prosperous and more familiar with the country they leave the Northeast and West. Some head to the Midwest but overwhelmingly they go South. And since this group has no long historical or familial ties to any region, their migration pattern can be said to reflect the purest expression of the relative attractiveness of the regions. It's also another massive refutation of the supposed 'xenophobia' of flyover country - perhaps it's the coastal Valhallas that have the real racial problems - driving mass flight by 'people of color'. 
• Finally income level. There's a bit of good news for the west: it is holding its own among those neither poor or near poor. Although the poor and near poor flooding out of the Northeast and West give lie to the 'narrative's' claims that the coasts are more 'compassionate'. I'm afraid the Midwest's news is all bad. It is winning the battle....for the poorest Americans and losing tax base Americans decisively. The Northeast continues their "Run Yankee Run" theme while the South, well you know.

I have a few more thoughts at the bottom but here's the data. 

United States Domestic Migration 2010 to 2015	Ratio of Immigrants to Outmigrants
	Northeast	Midwest	South	West
TOTAL 5+ years	0.66	0.83	1.51	0.90
SEX
Male	0.66	0.86	1.47	0.91
Female	0.66	0.81	1.55	0.90
RACE AND HISPANIC ORIGIN
White alone	0.67	0.83	1.50	0.91
Black or African American alone	0.62	0.73	1.82	0.67
Asian alone	0.65	0.80	1.51	1.20
All remaining single races and all race combinations/1	0.83	1.29	0.90	1.00
White alone, not Hispanic or Latino	0.68	0.81	1.49	0.95
Hispanic or Latino/2	0.73	1.07	1.39	0.74
White alone or in combination with one or more other races	0.68	0.84	1.48	0.91
Black or African American alone or in combination with one or more other races	0.61	0.81	1.70	0.71
Asian alone or in combination with one or more other races	0.65	0.78	1.42	1.26
EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT
Not a high school graduate	0.53	1.45	1.41	0.68
High school graduate	0.73	0.90	1.44	0.79
Some college or AA degree	0.57	0.88	1.66	0.78
Bachelor's degree	0.63	0.70	1.70	1.00
Prof. or graduate degree	0.94	0.60	1.18	1.39
Persons age 5-24	0.59	0.93	1.55	0.85
NATIVITY
Native	0.67	0.83	1.50	0.91
Foreign born	0.65	0.89	1.57	0.87
Naturalized U.S. citizen	0.44	1.10	2.19	0.67
Not a U.S. citizen	0.81	0.80	1.30	1.02
POVERTY STATUS
Below 100% of poverty	0.60	1.23	1.57	0.61
100% to 149% of poverty	0.54	1.25	1.37	0.75
150% of poverty and above	0.69	0.73	1.51	0.99

1/  Includes American Indian and Alaska Native alone, Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone, and Two or More Races.

2/  Hispanics or Latinos may be of any race.

"-" Represents zero or rounds to zero.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, 2015 Annual Social and Economic Supplement

Parting Thoughts - The 'Narrative'
As we've seen every single kind of American catalogued by the Census Bureau - educated or not, white or minority, young or old, immigrant or native, rich or poor - are flooding to the most 'deplorable' region in direct contradiction of what the 'great and the good' have been telling us. How could the 'narrative' be so wrong? I think there are a couple possibilities:

• Cosmopolitan Parochialism: the media and it's academic allies live in the parts of America that lack ideological and intellectual diversity. Most of them attended the same colleges and live in neighborhoods that voted 80 or 90 percent for Clinton. They don't 'get out' much and when they do they tend to flock to places with more people like them. Occasionally in their jobs they have to go out and rub elbows with the 'Great Unwashed' but they tend to approach 'the other' anthropologically - as "Gorillas in the Mist" so to speak. In other words, they're ignorant.
• Confirmation Bias: Relative to earlier decades many of the major cities that the 'narrators' live in have undergone significant renaissances. Since they don't spend much time in southern cities like Dallas, Austin, Miami, Houston, Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville they don't realize that the progress they see at home is eclipsed by these much faster growing, more dynamic cities. They just can't conceive how the 'deplorable' rubes of their imagining could achieve such things.

Either way it's a tragic testament to how lost our so called 'intellectual elites' are. And a good indicator of why their politics will likely continue their bumpy downward trend. The first key of intelligent politics is 'confront reality' and they just can't seem to do that.

Parting Thoughts - Regional Balance of Power Changes

The South is by far the most populous region and is gaining more than half of all the US' population gains with the pace accelerating as the coastal cities' self inflicted real estate and budgetary crises intensify. I don't really think that many of the 'narrative' producers understand the true correlation of forces and how fast it's changing.  But they'll find out - even if trapped in their echo chambers, they're the last to know.

2017 US Regional Population Statistics

Region	Population	Percentage	5 Yr Change	Percentage
Northeast	56,471	17.3%	909	7.9%
Midwest	68,179	20.9%	697	6.0%
West	77,411	23.8%	3,716	32.2%
South	123,659	38.0%	6,212	53.9%

Note on International Migration
What about international migration?  Immigration certainly is a statement of preference for the US over other countries but what does it say about the specific places in the US that immigrants migrate to? In my opinion foreign immigrants move to the US with relatively few options and very little information. They tend to move to the place where others from their country or culture have settled before, usually immigrant gateways like LA, New York, Chicago, or more recently, Miami or Houston. Then as they get established, learn about the country and have more options they make domestic immigration choices. It is those choices that reflect their true preferences between US regions.

The So What? Response
"So there are more rubes piling into poor states. The Northeast coast and west coast are far more affluent and isn't being well off more important than crowds of poor people pouring in?  If it were true, you'd have a point but by and large it's not. Median wages are indeed higher on the northeast and west coasts but the cost of living and levels of taxation are even higher still.  So states like NY, CA, OR, VT and HI are actually 5 of the six poorest states in terms of real, take  home median pay (WV is the other). And CA has the highest poverty rate in the nation. These of course are big reasons why more people leave than come to these states. They can do the math too.  My analysis that demonstrates this can be found here.

Note on Regional Diversity
Obviously these regions do not reflect completely the "Trump vs Clinton Schism". The Northeast includes Trump state PA (and one district of ME), the Midwest includes Clinton states MN and IL, some of the states in the west are Trump but the great majority of the people live in Clinton states CA, NV, OR, WA, CO, NM and HI. The South is the most monolithic with only DC influenced VA going for Clinton.

There is also a temptation to treat these statistics as proxies for the biggest states in each region. But it's important to understand how those states perform relative to their regions.

• New York performs significantly worse than the rest of the NE as a whole, with the highest level of domestic outmigration of any state.
• IL performs significantly worse than the rest of the MW as a whole, currently the only US state losing population
• California performs significantly worse than the rest of the West as a whole. 
• Texas and Florida perform significantly better than the rest of the South as a whole (although states like NC, SC, GA and TN are performing as well).

Note on Choice of Years
I chose the 2010 to 2015 timeframe because that was the latest multi year data that the Census had available that was also after the Great Recession, although the trends identified here appear to be accelerating.

Even if Donald Trump is Making America Great Again, what comes next?

I thought this piece by Irwin Steltzer was good. It reflects how I feel: 

On international matters Trump is  asserting America's interests. An asshole but our asshole.

Domestically he is asserting for the commercial interest of what has always been a commercial republic. In both cases he is promoting Good Things that for many years but particularly the last 8, have been subordinated to other Noble but in the end, questionable goals.

Balanced against this is his driving out the last little bit of fiscal sanity remaining at the Federal level - I suspect an inevitability so long as we are ruled by a massive central state. And so long as the magic money machine continues to work.

And of course he is a crude, boorish, lying, asshole. But I found BHO to be a smooth, manipulative, lying asshole - plus ça change.

The other thing Trump has unwittingly done: By causing an enraged allergic reaction, he has illuminated the corruption at the heart  of the Federal Superstate: its self dealing, its partisanship, its towering self regard and most of all, its abuse of the rules that it holds the rest of us to.

It still shocks me that after 8 years anyone could have argued that the Obama administration was the most ethical and scandal free ever. Or that anyone thought putting the Clintons back in power would be anything but a chaotic catastrophe. At least by being a different kind of ugly, Trump has shaken the complacency of Washington to its core. Which is helpful. 

But the question is this: If the excesses of Obama and the Clinton's begat Trump, what will Trump's excesses beget? You can't weave a bloated, corrupt super state wildly left and right. It begins to lose structural integrity. Absent an agreed to philosophy to unify the two parties' conflict around, it gives the super state's minions the opportunity to create their own faction to serve their interests that may end up more powerful than both the squabbling national parties combined.

And with a diffuse system filled with ways to block things, this is leading to chaos and stagnation that will bleed our nation dry.

Break it up, break it all up. Before it breaks us.

https://www.weeklystandard.com/irwin-m-stelzer/even-if-donald-trump-is-making-america-great-again-what-comes-next