David Brooks, "A Little Reality on Immigration": Only Rocket Scientists Need Apply

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In a Times of Israel article entitled "Top Israeli researcher: Robots could take over most jobs within 30 years," we are told (my emphasis in red):

"Moshe Vardi, of Houston, Texas’s Rice University, told the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington on Saturday that society’s major challenge in the coming decades will be to find meaning in a mostly automated life.

'We are approaching a time when machines will be able to outperform humans at almost any task,' Vardi said. 'Robots are doing more and more jobs that people used to do. Pharmacists, prison guards, boning chicken, bartending, more and more jobs we’re able to mechanize them.'

With robots eliminating many middle-class jobs, Vardi said unemployment could rise beyond 50 percent."

Thirty years? I most likely won't be around to see it, but it would appear to make sense why people entering the job market today might be a little anxious about their future sources of income.

Which brings me to David Brooks's New York Times op-ed entitled "A Little Reality on Immigration," in which Brooks addresses Donald Trump's plan to build a wall along the Mexican border to keep illegal immigrants out of the US. Noting that "by 2044, America will be a majority-minority country [nice oxymoron, David]," Brooks concludes (my emphasis in red):

"Donald Trump’s G.O.P. is a rear-window party pining for a white America that is never coming back. Ronald Reagan’s G.O.P., and maybe some future G.O.P., will fix the immigration system and attract the people who will make the country innovative, dynamic and interesting for decades to come."

Ah yes, people who are going to make the US "innovative, dynamic and interesting for decades to come." If indeed, unemployment is going to skyrocket to 50 percent, things could indeed become "interesting." Meanwhile, maybe only rocket scientists should apply for Green Cards.

David Brooks, "The American Idea and Today’s G.O.P.": Not As Simple As David Believes

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Deriding an "anguished cry" from certain Republicans for a "receding America," David Brooks begins his latest New York Times op-ed entitled "The American Idea and Today’s G.O.P." by observing:

"America was settled, founded and built by people who believed they were doing something exceptional. Other nations were defined by their history, but America was defined by its future, by the people who weren’t yet here and by the greatness that hadn’t yet been achieved.

American founders like Alexander Hamilton were aware that once the vast continent was settled the United States would be one of the dominant powers of the globe."

Well, the image of Alexander Hamilton is soon to be removed from America's ten dollar bill, and as was observed by Nick Bryant in a July 10, 2015 BBC article entitled "The decline of US power?":

"George W Bush, a president with a Manichean worldview, was widely seen as over-eager to project America's military might, without adequately considering the long-term consequences.

Barack Obama, who campaigned in 2008 on a platform of extricating America from its unpopular and exhausting wars, has drawn criticism for disengaging too much.

Under both presidents - the first an impulsive unilateralist, the second an instinctive multilateralist content sometimes to lead from behind - America's global standing has been diminished."

America is no longer the superpower it once was? Is this indeed the reason why Bashar al-Assad ignored Obama's so-called "red line" involving the use of chemical weapons against Syrian civilians, and why Obama backed down from his demands, e.g. anytime, anywhere inspections and the dismantlement of all Iranian centrifuges, in order to reach an unsigned nuclear deal with Supreme Leader Khamenei? Could be. You see, when Obama finally leaves office in January 2017, the United States will be in debt to the tune of some $19 trillion, or stated otherwise, effectively bankrupt.

Brooks's op-ed, however, appears to be more concerned with Republican immigration policy than with America's demise as a superpower, and in this regard he writes:

"Today there are some conservative commentators and Republican politicians who talk a lot about American exceptionalism. But when they use the phrase they mean the exact opposite of its original meaning. In fact, they are effectively destroying American exceptionalism.

. . . .

Out of this backward- and inward-looking mentality comes a desire to exclude. Donald Trump talks falsely and harshly about Hispanic immigrants. Ben Carson says he couldn’t advocate putting 'a Muslim in charge of this nation.'"

But what if this so-called "desire to exclude" stems not from a "backward- and inward-looking mentality," but rather from a coldly calculated economic determination that America can no longer afford to open the floodgates of immigration? Should the United States be seeking out scientists and academicians from overseas who can grow the American economy and rescue it from disaster?

Brooks notes that "[i]mmigrant men age 18 to 39 are incarcerated at roughly one-fourth the rate of American men, yet he fails to point out that as reported by the Pew Research Center in an August 30, 2011 article entitled "Muslim Americans: No Signs of Growth in Alienation or Support for Extremism," eight percent of US Muslims believe that suicide bombing can "often/sometimes" be justified. Imagine: If you randomly place 100 American adult Muslims in a room, only eight of them think that it's "often/sometimes" justified to blow you to bits.

Regrettably with respect to immigration, America is facing a dilemma, and there are no simple answers.

David Brooks, "Beyond the Fence": A New JG Caesarea Challenge Round! Win Yourself a . . .

Hey, you're in luck! It's time for a new JG Caesarea Challenge Round!

I want each of you to go to the home page of The New York Times and tell me what's missing. As I sit here writing in my underwear, socks and t-shirt, it's just past midnight in the Big Apple, and among the lead stories being proffered by the Gray Lady: Chinese cyberattacks, the Syrian crisis, farm reliance on immigrants, psychiatry out of touch with science, transgender students and sports, and, further afield on the opinion pages, David Brook's latest op-ed entitled "Beyond the Fence" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/07/opinion/brooks-beyond-the-fence.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&_r=0). More on the Brooks opinion piece in a moment. For now, you must stay focused on what's most important, the Challenge Round, of course!

Three, two, one. Sorry, time's up, all pencils down! Not enough time? I wasn't "fair"? Life's not fair, as more and more depressed middle-aged men (see: (http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/study-suicide-rate-for-middle-aged-americans-up-28-percent-over-decade-40-pct-for-whites/2013/05/02/cb339740-b341-11e2-9fb1-62de9581c946_story.html) have come to learn! Get over it!

You want the correct answer? Do a search of the Times home page using the word "Benghazi." My computer tells me: "No matches found."

Odd.

A top story at The Washington Post is "Special ops halted from responding to Benghazi attacks, U.S. diplomat says" (http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/special-ops-halted-from-responding-to-benghazi-attacks-us-diplomat-says/2013/05/06/c3f311d4-b677-11e2-aa9e-a02b765ff0ea_story.html?hpid=z1). Moreover, if you go to WaPo's "Opinions," you will immediately see a link to Marc Thiessen's opinion piece entitled "A Benghazi bombshell" (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/marc-thiessen-a-benghazi-bombshell/2013/05/06/d7a4e3fe-b651-11e2-92f3-f291801936b8_story.html?hpid=z3). Thiessen writes:

"The Obama administration wants to consign the Benghazi terrorist attack to the history books, but this week three State Department officials will tell Congress that the Obama administration’s version of history is false — and that the falsehoods it told the American people were willful and deliberate."

Heck, that sounds like a "bombshell" to me. Why is there no mention in The New York Times? Is this so much less important than psychiatry out of touch with science, or the content of its editorial, "Corruption in Albany"? My goodness, this could prevent Hillary from running in 2016, but I suppose we don't want to contemplate anything as unseemly and disturbing as that . . .

And now back to Brooks's most recent opinion piece that provides us with a laundry list of the goals sought by opponents to immigration reform, which in turn threaten the demise of the Republican Party. In a nutshell, according to David, these opponents are seeking to restrict:

1. "the flow of conservatives into this country."
2. "assimilation."
3. "love affairs."
4. "social mobility."
5. "skills."
6. "the inevitable," i.e. the United States becoming "a much more cosmopolitan country than it is now."

Why do I smell a straw man? No mention by Brooks of unemployment. If Brooks were to go his own newspaper's home page, he would read under the link to the article "Workers Claim Race Bias as Farms Rely on Immigrants" that "Americans, mostly black, who live near large-scale farms say they are illegally discouraged from applying for work and treated badly by employers who prefer foreigners’ malleability."

Also, no mention by Brooks of heightened concern over the violent radicalism of certain immigrants. According to a new Pew Research Center survey (http://www.pewforum.org/Muslim/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-exec.aspx):

"Few U.S. Muslims voice support for suicide bombing or other forms of violence against civilians in the name of Islam; 81% say such acts are never justified, while fewer than one-in-ten say violence against civilians either is often justified (1%) or is sometimes justified (7%) to defend Islam."

Only 1% of US Muslims "say violence against civilians is often justified" and only 7% say that such violence "is sometimes justified"? What a relief . . .

What's that? You correctly answered today's JG Caesarea challenge round and want to know what you won? Sorry, but in the aftermath of Benghazi and Boston (I know, I shouldn't make too much of the Boston Marathon bombing, because it was carried out by that tiny 1% of violent US Muslims), it's time you learned that today there are no winners, and there are only losers.

David Brooks, "The Easy Problem," Versus Paul Krugman, "Looking for Mister Goodpain": I Prefer Immigration

David Brooks and Paul Krugman are again at odds on the op-ed page of The New York Times.

In his latest Times op-ed entitled "The Easy Problem" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/01/opinion/brooks-the-easy-problem.html), Brooks persuasively makes the case for immigration:

"Increased immigration would boost the U.S. economy. Immigrants are 30 percent more likely to start new businesses than native-born Americans, according to a research summary by Michael Greenstone and Adam Looney of The Hamilton Project. They are more likely to earn patents. A quarter of new high-tech companies with more than $1 million in sales were also founded by the foreign-born.

. . . .

Immigrants, both legal and illegal, do not drain the federal budget. It’s true that states and localities have to spend money to educate them when they are children, but, over the course of their lives, they pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits. Furthermore, according to the Congressional Budget Office, giving the current illegals a path to citizenship would increase the taxes they pay by $48 billion and increase the cost of public services they use by $23 billion, thereby producing a surplus of $25 billion."

Could relaxed immigration laws reinvigorate the American economy, or is it already terminally ill? I would certainly give it the chance that it deserves.

Krugman, on the other hand, in his latest Times op-ed entitled "Looking for Mister Goodpain" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/01/opinion/krugman-looking-for-mister-goodpain.html), continues to demand (yawn) that the US spend its way out of the recession:

"So what do we learn from the rather pathetic search for austerity success stories? We learn that the doctrine that has dominated elite economic discourse for the past three years is wrong on all fronts."

Excuse me, but where do we find any economic success stories during this cold winter, premised upon either austerity or spending? Me? I believe in the words of Chance the Gardener in "Being There":

"In the garden, growth has it seasons. First comes spring and summer, but then we have fall and winter. And then we get spring and summer again."

Yes, after the winter comes the spring, provided we don't spread too much fertilizer, i.e. spend, spend and spend, and kill all the roots.

Thank you, Paul, but I think I'll side with David on this one.