Renounce your citizenship, get a place in college...

If you are a high school student in Florida (or have a child who is), and you're a legal resident of the US/state, you might just have your in-state tuition spot handed to an illegal immigrant in the near future. This article talks about a bill (well, two, actually: one in the Florida house and one in the Florida senate) that, per this analysis, will cost the state about $21 million (the first year) and displace about 5,000 legal resident students from higher education institutions in order to provide "College Tuition Subsidy for Illegal Aliens."

Yep, that's what it says: the bill(s), if passed, will attempt to "aid" illegal immigrants, but does so without regard to the impact to citizens and legal residents, without attempting to expand capacity, leading to their displacement. The benefit? Proponents of the bill(s) say that it will "lead to economic and fiscal benefits in the long-term" - that is, that it's an investment with a payoff two or three decades down the road. Those benefits may or may not pan out, and some have reason to doubt the claims (see the analysis for details).

Is it just me, or is this wrong? Similar to my qualms about US (government-sponsored) tuition for Pakistani students (paid for, in part, by my tax money, while my own children don't even get enough loans from the government to cover their college education, and which saddles them with debt, while my own money - which could be used for their education - is being sent overseas to pay for education of Pakistani students), this seems backward from a national perspective, that we're providing all sorts of aid and benefits for non-Americans, while leaving Americans (who are paying for those benefits) out in the cold.

Wrong. Just wrong. Is it time to reboot America?

Say what you mean...

Hey, Florida department of digital highway signs, some things. First, when you mean "it is," there's an apostrophe (') between the t and the s. And if you can't do that with your digital sign, then spell out "it is" instead of writing "its" because that is wrong. Second, you wrote, "wipers on headlights on its the law" - well, I think I know what you mean, that it's the law to turn on your headlights when you turn on your wipers because of rain, but technically you wrote that it's the law to have both my headlights and wipers on, period. I.e., all the time. Which isn't the case. You should have written something like, "lights on when raining" or "headlights on when wipers on" (although that's technically not correct either, since according to that I'd have to turn my headlights on when washing the windshield). So, as I often tell my kids, say what you mean, and mean what you say.

Also, it might be better to have advice like "slower traffic keep right" or "keep right except to pass" or "don't keep your bright lights on when another car is in front of you" (that minivan following us with its brights on for several miles could have used that advice this evening).

Congrats to Alabama and Spanish Fort on their football victories this weekend, and too bad, South Alabama; you probably should have won, too, but probably doesn't carry any points, unfortunately. As for me, I think I ate too much and slept too little. So, g'night, all!