1/Today's @bopinion post is about Trump's taxes, and what they show about how America allocates capital.

We appear to have some big problems.

Today's @bopinion post is about Nigeria. I expect its conclusions will not come as a surprise to most Nigerians, but it's good for Americans to be thinking about Nigeria and its problems.

Nigeria is very dependent on oil, for its government revenues and for its foreign exchange earnings.

When oil prices fall, Nigeria's people suffer.

And like many oil-rich countries, the government tries to cushion the blow by subsidizing fuel (this is more expensive than you might think, since Nigeria can't refine all of its own oil).

When oil prices rise again, this puts a strain on govt. budgets.

Meanwhile, fewer and fewer Nigerians have jobs, which could portend a rise in social instability.

To escape the doom spiral of the Resource Curse, Nigeria should look to a country that seems to have beaten the curse:

Today's @bopinion post is a review of the excellent new book "The Gift of Global Talent: How Migration Shapes Business, Economy & Society", by

This is an excellent, short, highly readable, very important book. Every business executive and politician should have a copy.

Why are skilled immigrants so good, and so important?

Because they're the backbone of high-value industries where the U.S. has a dominant position.

If we don't bring skilled immigrants to the United States, high-value industries will migrate to other countries, and America will lose industrial dominance and be a poorer country.

Contrary to popular belief, skilled immigrants - including H-1b workers - RAISE wages for native-born skilled workers.

Why?

Because downward wage pressure from competition is more than canceled out by the upward wage pressure from CLUSTERING.

1/People I know on the Right tend to be obsessed with the idea of "crimethink", taboos, and the (supposedly) oppressive, omnipresent enforcement of liberal cultural norms.

Why?

My new theory: A lot of it is guilt.

2/It's true that in some circles - the media, universities, many big corporations - liberal norms *are* enforced to some degree, and the enforcement has probably gotten stronger in recent years.

But I don't think this explains all of the Right's obsession.

3/The stereotype is that people on the Right tend to be more threat-sensitive. That would help explain the perception that liberal norm-enforcers are lurking everywhere, ready to pounce and anathematize anyone who makes a misstep.

But I don't think that's all of it either.

4/And of course, it's always fun - whether you're on the Right or the Left, or playing a video game, or whatever - to style yourself as the brave iconoclastic rebel fighting against the oppressive forces of blah blah blah.

But I don't think this is all of it, either.

5/The reason I think it's more than these things is that even *in private*, people on the Right express their "crimethink" ideas very gingerly and hesitantly.

I get the sense that they're not just afraid of external censure, but have also internalized liberal norms.

1) The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Senate Trial today
 
What is expected to be the final day of President Trump’s second impeachment trial will begin at 10 am et today. We anticipate a final vote on the guilt or innocence of the former President as early as midday.

Here’s the thing, Trump & his lawyers aren’t really trying to overturn the results of the election. They know that they don’t have a path to victory. These lawsuits were all supposed to fail, all of the fillings were intentionally sloppy and unsustainable, the “proof” is garbage

Guilani’s entire shtick, along with Powell’s utterly fabricated explanations are only meant to distract. The only people convinced by their so called evidence are Trump cultists who want to be fooled. They’re so ignorant that they have no idea just how ignorant they actually are.

The court cases have all failed because they were meant to fail. Because Trump’s people all know their evidence was fabricated and all the witnesses far from credible. Given the sheer level of incompetence Trump’s legal team has shown so far, their failures are intentional.

So, instead of trying to actually overturn the results of the general election, what are these people up to? The answer is two-fold: One. The attempts, rhetoric and ultimate failures are meant to shed doubt on the overall electoral process and to cast doubt on the legitimacy...

Of a Biden/Harris presidential term. Trump and his lawyers have used racially charged accusations to discredit the legitimacy of Black voters. Given that Trump earned votes in the same process that they’re trying to discredit, it’s systematic racism, hypocrisy and cynicism...

Trump was a very specific kind of disaster: a chaos agent, who lacked the wit, patience and executive function to recruit the powerful institutions of the US military-industrial complex to fight his corner.

1/

The kind of guy who demands the impossible and then fires and publicly humiliates any allies who fail to deliver - or dare to contradict him - is not the kind of guy who can build new, enduring, evil institutions.

2/

The best he can hope for is to get some trumpalike goblins into positions of power (where they will replicate his chaos, but without the broad impunity of the presidential office, resulting in a series of resignations and prosecutions), back by executive orders.

3/

The last months of the Trump admin were an orgy of executive branch rulemakings that dismantled public safety, health, labor, anticorruption and (especially) environmental protections.

4/

Trump is a debt kingpin. His MO is running across a river on the backs of alligators, hoping to move so fast that none of them takes a leg: borrow, refinance, restructure, borrow, blow town, borrow, restructure, bribe, blow town.

5/

20 January 2021 #MAGAanalysis

The Day After

Here's the link to soon-to-be former President Trump's Farewell Speech. It's not easy watching, I can tell you that. But we boldly do what we must,