"The food here is awful." "Yes, and the portions are so small."

 I sometimes wonder if the editors at the LA Times read their own paper. The top story on the paper's front page today says that a new coronavirus strain that is sweeping California is not only more transmittable than the old strain but it is more deadly and resistant to the Covid-19 vaccine. In another month, a UC San Francisco researcher said, it will probably account for 90% of all new infections in the state.

But then you go to the front page of the California section and the lead story there is that blacks and Hispanics are getting vaccinated far less frequently than whites or Asians. Prior stories about this have suggested the reasons are institutional racism, long memories of Tuskegee, and lack of transportation to inoculation centers. 

Well, cripes. If we are all being vaccinated for one version of Covid and all the new cases are from another vaccine-resistant strain, I wonder why anyone would even bother to worry about racial disparities in the vaccination rate. It's like that old joke about the two old ladies who went to dinner in the Catskills. "The food here is awful," said one. "Yes," said the other, "and the portions are  so small."

The "i... a..." word is out.

In his Los Angeles Times column today, Gustavo Arellano says that the Biden administration will require the Citizenship and Immigration Service to start using "inclusive" language in its communications. The term "illegal alien" will be banned in favor of "undocumented noncitizen" or "undocumented individual." Apparently, the government doesn't want to cast any aspersions on people who jump to the head of the line because they place their needs above those who obey the country's immigration laws. 

One observation though. Arellano ought to be careful though using a term like "illegal alien," which he says is no better than calling someone a "greaser" or a "wetback." A couple of weeks ago the New York Times fired its long-time science writer, Donald McNeil, for using the n-word in a discussion two years ago with students of whether one of their fellow students should be suspended for having used the term in a video when she was 12.  Two weeks ago the Times fired McNeil after 150 of NcNeil's colleagues expressed outrage that McNeil would use the term for any reason, academic or not. 

The staff of the Los Angeles Times, I suspect, is no less politically correct than that of the New York Times. The use of the "i... a..." word may soon be as indefensible at this paper as the n-word is at the New York Times.

When It Comes to Taxes Everyone Needs to Have Skin In The Game

What a surprise. Joe Biden plans to increase taxes. Well, that's what we voted for so that's what we'll get. Current plans are to tax the rich. Here in California, the top 1% of earners pay more in income taxes than the bottom 90%. So do we only tax the rich? As Margaret Thatcher used to say, "The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money." If most of the people don't pay taxes they will just elect politicians who will increase taxes indefinitely. That never works. But if a tax increase is inevitable we at least need to counter the trend to make someone else pay. Yes, the rich will continue to pay the most.  After all, they are the ones with all the money.  But everyone has to pay something, as vanishingly small as that number might be.