Met a Brazilian-American Lyft driver from San Diego who passionately attacked the racism of Republicans, then switched to passionately defending Bolsonaro.

If I were Thomas Friedman, I could tell you what this means.

1/OK, I should really write another thread about university-centric regional development, because I think people often make some (very understandable) mistakes when thinking about this issue.

2/The biggest myth, I think, is that universities help regions by educating locals as undergraduates.

Skeptics of universities say: "But most of the people who graduate end up leaving."

3/In fact, most of what a university does for a regional economy is NOT about educating local kids.

Educating local kids is good for the nation, but doesn't help a region much.

The way a university helps a region is through

4/Undergraduates usually leave town after graduation.

But university RESEARCH pulls in OTHER smart people from other regions, and they stay there.

Here's a paper showing that this is the main way universities increase a region's human capital:

5/Research also pulls in business investment.

Companies want to partner with university labs, so they can commercialize the technologies the labs produce. So they invest in the labs, and sometimes they even put their offices in the town.

Confession: I haven't the slightest interest in my genetic ancestry or where my ancestors came from or what they did.

I mean, my dad's family came from Lithuania. They changed their name from Kuznets in 1905. At some point they were blacksmiths. My mom's family came from Halychyna in Ukraine. I have no idea what they did. That's about all I know.

Oh, I do know that pretty much all of my extended family who stayed in Europe got wiped out by the Nazis.

I like to think that my ancestors were nothing and nobody. Random boring peasants with no special talents or wealth.

Except for Genghis Khan, of course. But he's everyone's ancestor.

The best thing about this approach is that I don't have anything to live up to. ;-)

(end)

1/Today in @bopinion, I discuss why America has been producing too many PhDs in recent years, and what we need to do to solve the

2/First of all, many people don't realize just how many PhDs we produce! More than almost any other rich country.

3/And we've kept ramping this number up and up.

4/But the problem begins when PhDs start looking for (usually academic) jobs.

5/The U.S. built a ton of universities and then we stopped.

Professors have tenure.

That means there are just going to be fewer new tenure-track jobs than before. Everyone in academia already knows this well.

1 “Amazing Juan O'Savin Video: America's New Day Dawning, the Rebirth of America" 12.21

When Senator Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated on June 6, 1968, Jacqueline Kennedy cried out, “If they’re killing Kennedys, then my children are targets. I want to get out of this country.”

2. Mrs. Kennedy had a heartbreaking reason and a compelling reason to say that.

President Kennedy’s family are either incredibly accident prone or possibly, and this is just my supposition, there was an underlying plot by the de*ep state to remove every Kennedy that they...

3. ... believed posed a threat to their envisaged defeat.

How can I make that claim?

Because both the de*ep state and the Alliance are in possession of Looking Glass technology. This advanced off-world tech enables one to see into everything: Akashic records, future, past,...

4. ... present, timelines, dimensions, 2020 U.S. elections, anything.

Gene Decode reported that POTUS was in a SCIF Election Night watching the Election fraud take place on Quantum Computers and that this was the second time the Alliance had watched the fraud. They’d already...

5. ... seen Election Night 2020 before Trump even became POTUS thanks to Looking Glass.

This technology could also explain why Q’s posts are so eerily accurate.

It is my theory that, perhaps, when the ca_bal looked into future timelines they could see that an essential...

That new attack piece about Seth Abramson is full of easily debunked false claims. Whenever the mainstream media gets annoyed at an indie pundit like Seth, it just publishes a bunch of bullshit about him, and most people mistakenly believe it. They've done the same thing to me.

The sad part is that when the author of that piece tried to smear a bunch of mainstream media journalists for daring to compare notes with him, they all responded by lying and said they've never compared notes with him. Even though Abramson has proof that they have.

This is the EXACT same strategy that certain mainstream media outlets used against me in 2017-2018. First they lied about me. Then they attacked my mainstream media associates for associating with a "fake news" pundit like me. Then some in the media felt compelled to disown me.

Sadly, it didn't matter that I had overwhelming proof that everything said about me in those attack pieces was false. When you defend yourself, no matter how factually, the average observer merely decides you're being "defensive" and therefore guilty as charged.

Ask yourself why the mainstream media is choosing now to dishonestly attack Abramson. The media's ratings are way down now that Trump is gone. Abramson presumably still has his entire niche audience intact. So the media gets jealous and takes it out on him.

THREAD: CCP vs US Military, on home soil.

1. I watched the Executive Orders and I watched the media panic. I watched the MSM lies and I watched the treason. I watched the fake Russia narrative. I watched the calls for impeachment. I watched a stolen election, in full view.

The death of Alhaji Lateef Kayode Jakande brings to my mind the triumph of excellence in political leadership as well as rebellion against the political order.

A lot has been said about LKJ since he died yesterday and I hope only to contribute my perspective to enrich all said.

My emphasis with history has always been to draw out lessons relevant to the present, to show how trends repeat themselves and to show certain hypocritical contradictions within the present system.

Only few others qualify as well as LKJ to do all the three - I hope I do justice.

One area pundits have largely missed out in the Jakande story is the very beginning - both of his life and of his politics.

LKJ's parents were from Omu-Aran in present day Kwara State but he contributed more to Lagos than so many others - we will return to this subsequently.

LKJ was not originally a political ally of Awolowo - a number of elders were with Awo right from the very beginning but LKJ contributed politically to Awolowo at a crucial time of religious threat to the dominance of the Action Group (Awo's party) in the pre-Independence mid 50s.

A group had been formed in 1957 and named the National Muslim League headed by Alhaji R.A. Smith who had been very critical of Awolowo's AG as a Christian party and moved to align with the Northern People's Congress of Sir Ahmadu Bello.

The political threat to Awo was very real.

1/Zach has the history right (again). I doubt the current political leadership read the book where Summers et al explained what they did, unless they look at borrowed copies. Here it is: https://t.co/4gyFiagaj3

2/ But the summary is that Summers, Geithner, Orszag, Emanuel agreed on telling Obama and Biden in December 2008 that about $800b was an adequate stimulus. Would lower unemployment just below 8% by late 2010. Romer thought $2.1T or $1.7T was needed to achieve full employment.

3/ They wouldn't let her make the case in writing for $1.2T because her number could leak. The reasons for $800b were: they wanted the bill passed by February, so they could move on to health care reform and cap and trade; they had no ways to spend more;

4/ spending more might kick off inflation or cause markets to fall for fear of inflation; that might lead to more bank runs; more bank runs might require a second TARP so they couldn't ask Congress for too much for recovery; Pelosi would give them whatever they asked

5/ for but they didn't think they could get the needed 1 or 2 R Senators quickly if they asked for more; they wanted 60 but had only 58 D Senators; popular "moonshots" or signature items in the package would take too long (Biden asked for that);