Year: 2013

Shikha Dalmia rebuts the notion that illegal immigrants suck the welfare state dry:

A 2006 analysis by the Texas comptroller estimated that low-skilled unauthorized workers cost the state treasury $504 million more than they paid in taxes in 2005. Without them, however, the state’s economy would have shrunk by 2.1 percent, or $17.7 billion, as the competitive edge of Texas businesses diminished.

Likewise, a 2006 study by the Kenan Institute at the University of North Carolina found that although Hispanic immigrants imposed a net $61 million cost on the state budget, they contributed $9 billion to the gross state product.

Alan Sepinwall asks:

In 2002 — the year “The Shield” debuted on FX — there were actually 28 original scripted dramas on premium and basic cable (some of it famous stuff like “The Wire” and “Monk,” some of it long-forgotten like “Falcon Beach” and “Breaking News”) and 6 original comedies. In 2007, there were 42 original dramas and 17 comedies. By last year, that number had ballooned to 77 original dramas and 48 comedies. And in the first four months of 2013 alone, there have been 34 dramas and 19 comedies. And that’s on top of everything that ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC and the CW are doing. That pace will slow down somewhat as we shift into summer, but I’d still expect 2013 to top the 2012 numbers, and to keep rising. Netflix is making its own original shows now, and releasing all the episodes at once. Amazon has pilots in development. The amount of television expanding, but so is our definition of what counts as “television.”

Alyssa wonders if the TV market is over-saturated.

Boris puts Barack to shame on the basketball court.

The dialect Arab leaders choose, either classical or colloquial, matters more than one might think:

Qaddafi’s populist rhetoric was matched with popular language. His use of local dialect in political contexts made him seem closer to ordinary people, but also masked an authoritarian streak. This style, more associated with the old guard of Arab nationalist leaders like Gamal Abdel Nasser, connected Qaddafi to the politics of the 1960s. With his demise, Libya, too, has shifted toward the linguistic center.

Others are more tone deaf:

Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, the former president of Tunisia, gave his first speech in response to popular unrest on December 28, 2010, in stiflingly literary Arabic, with full inflections and no emotion (although there is an amusing moment half-way through when a phone rings in the background for nearly a whole minute). That he recognized the alienating effect this had on listeners is clear in his attempt to tone down the formality of his subsequent speeches, although in vain.

Stefan Fatsis pans the new decision by the National Spelling Bee to force contestants to memorize definitions:

There are two reasons for the change. One is philosophical—that learning definitions will make the event more educational for its participants. The other is procedural—allowing the Bee to better accommodate its new overlord, television. Both are wrongheaded. …

It was bad enough when the Bee was moved into prime time and sometimes stretched past the bedtimes not only of the participants but also of other children (my daughter, for one) who wanted to watch. Now TV is dictating how many kids get to stick around and spell some more. If you knew the cameras were showing up to film an event designed for the children who participate, it was easy to justify watching this. The fact that the Bee is being reformatted to satisfy ESPN’s scheduling needs should make everyone a bit more squeamish.

Some contestants could always retaliate like the one seen above.

Rick Warren experiences the problem of unregistered guns in a terrible, personal way. Recent Dish on the subject here and here.

It now looks inevitable in France by next week and has just passed in Uruguay. The RNC – an outlier in the West – is reaffirming its commitment to discrimination.