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Jon Stewart discusses things that aren't Donald Trump

I just published an article on Medium about "Jon Stewart discusses things that aren't Donald Trump". But first I basically transcribed the entire podcast, because Google couldn't find me an existing transcription:

A More Complete Transcript

Woman: Hello. Welcome to this live recording of the Axe files with Jon Stewart. I have the privelege of introducing this event to you today, a task which necessarily entails introducing you to someone you already know. You know Jon Stewart. You know that as a political satirist and comedian, Stewart has affected macro-level shifts in our political culture... [to save myself some work, I'm not transcribing the rest of this two-minute speech.]

[2:50] Axelrod: now you can say...

Stewart: this is how Jews meet all the time. When people aren't paying attention. We sneak into churches and just chat.

Axelrod: Definitely. [audience laughs] That theme song by the way was actually the original John D. Rockefeller theme music, so -

Stewart: Yeah, you gotta be a rich motherfocker to have your own theme music.

[3:09] Axelrod: so Jon I have to ask you, where have you been man?

Stewart: Me?

Axelrod: yeah, there's a lot going on over here.

Stewart: I've been in line. [audience laughs] out front. It was a -

[3:19] Axelrod: do you wake up ever and say to yourself that this was some kind of big celestial joke on you, that you announce your retirement from the Daily Show and - I see when you did you said, it didn't appear that there was gonna be anything wildly different about this election year, you had done four others, how's that working for you now?

Stewart: Well, I mean, I think we talk about as though it's something incredibly different, but we truly think, how different is it, really? The media is, as usual, focused on the wrong things and abdicating responsibility for the general filtration of toxicity; you have enormous amounts of money flowing into crazy people who are chaneling populists of years past, so I don't, you know. If you took Sarah Palin's head and jammed it on Donald Trump's body would it make any more sense? Probably not.

[4:20] Axelrod: would look a little weird, though.

Stewart: I don't know that it would look any weirder. [audience and Axelrod laugh]

[4:27] Axelrod: on that point you once said, "I assume there are bad actors in society, it's inherent in politicians to be disengenuous, I assume monkeys are gonna throw shit, I get angrier at people who don't go 'bad monkey' or [who] create a distraction that allows it to be continued unabated"

Stewart: Wait I said that?

[4:44] Axelrod: How responsible is the media for Donald Trump?

Stewart: Oh I don't - listen... I don't necessarily believe that a full court press on his, uh... untruthiveness would necessarily change it. I mean, he's not, he was voted for, but I do think he is generally the conclusion of years of - he makes sense if you view it through the prism of talk radio. I like to drive, and so I listen to talk radio, and it is 24/7 of "your country's being taken away from you". As far as I can tell, the conservative side or on the right side, they feel an ownership over America, they are the stewards of America, they are its forebearers...

Axelrod: [inaudible]

Stewart: Exactly. Republicans, conservatives, love America. They just hate like, 50% of the people living there. So... in general -

Axelrod: Isn't part of their concern that 50% (or whatever percent) is becoming a greater, we're becoming a much more diverse country.

Stewart: Sure. So yeah, no, nativism... look. It's not as though this is inherent only to this country as well. Globalization has created this strange pushback throughout the entire world. You see a lot of countries retreating into nativism, into that type of really, uh...

[6:15] Axelrod: in fact there are Trump-like characters all over Europe,

Stewart: Yes, yes. He is, it's ery similar, I don't know if you ever saw Invasion of the Body Snatchers, very similar. But no, it's... in some ways it's a natural reaction to fear. Now, if you have that fear stoked on a daily basis at an incredibly high pitch - and this is not "we really need to do something about this country, we're facing some difficult problems," this is "you are run by a tyrant, he is going to take away our rights, we are falling, there are rapists and murderers at the border coming to kill you". If that's what you've been fed and that's what you're buying into, Donald Trump makes more sense than anybody else out there because he's going "great, let's build a... the visigoths are at the gate, let's build a fuckin' wall, and not let it--" it makes total sense. What wouldn't make sense are the general Republican leadership going "there are visigoths at the wall, they are here to kill you... let's try and not pass a new budget resolution. You know, that's, their rhetoric has never matched their action. Donald Trump is saying "oh that's your rhetoric? Then yeah, let's buil a wall."

[7:36] Axelrod: there's a weird paradox in both his message and their attacks which is, on the one hand they say "well the dictator is encroaching and threatening", on the other hand their critique of the president is that he's feckless, and it's hard to be a feckless dictator [crosstalk, inaudible] Groucho Marx and -

Stewart: Are you suggesting sir, that there may be slight cognitive dissonance? [audience laughs] Is that what you're suggesting? Because I will not sit here and be told [grins] - look, I don't even know that Donald Trump is eligible to be president, and that's not a birther thing, that's... look, I'm not a constitutional scholar so I can't necessarily say but, can you, are you eligible to run if you are a man-baby? [audience laughs] or a baby-man? [audience applause] Look, I don't know - and again I'm not here to be politically incorrect - if they're referred to as manbaby-Americans, but he is a man-baby. He has the physical countenance of a man, and a baby's temperment and hands, so... [audience claps] so to have that together...

I mean for God's sakes, I should sp - so I do have a history with the man, and so, in an effort of full disclosure, uh, we made fun of him, and uh... I think we referred to him as, you know, a boiled ham in a wig or something, who knows, uh, and so he tweeted at me - because as you know, great leaders tweet late at night, in fact I remember Lincoln's Gettysburg tweet after he delivered...

Axelrod: that's why the address was so short, he had to do it in 140 characters.

Stewart: After the Gettysburd Address he tweeted out, "Emancipate this, motherfucker!"

So Donald Trump tweeted "Jon Leibowitz" - he thought, he's gonna use my birth name, it's Leibowitz, Jonathan Stewart Leibowitz is my full name - he was gonna tweet that, and then he tweeted out, "be proud of your heritage, don't run away from who you are. By the way he's overrated," or something, it was something along those lines.

Axelrod: incisive.

Stewart: It was very incisive. And so, we... thought... geez, let's answer. [David laughs] So we tweeted back to him Donald Trump's real name, which it, I don't know if you even know this, is "Fuckface von Clownstick"

[10:27] Axelrod: the research you guys must do on that show is unbelieveable.

Stewart: Yeah. We have people. Lexus-nexus, I'll tell you that. And so we wanted to know why he was running away from the von clownstick heritage, and we got into this huge fight.

[10:45] Axelrod: did he sue you? I mean he tends to sue people for things like that.

Stewart: Yeah, I mean, I'm just, I don't know that a man-baby can be president, he's, he's - character is destiny, and he is, the most thin-skinned individual, and look, you've been around politicians, you know they're thin-skinned, you know president Obama for all his qualities that you love, gets angry, and certainly I've borne the brunt of that at times, um

[11:12] Axelrod: Yes, I've heard.

Stewart: Yes. And uh, I just don't know that he has - and they keep saying which I think is the most wonderful thing "don't worry, when he becomes president he'd gonna be totally mature", and uh...

[11:28] Axelrod: but he says being presidential is easy, and he'll do it at the appropriate time.

Stewart: But what does that say about your constituency if what you're saying to them is "look, the only way that I can win this part of the race is by being an unrepentant, narcissistic asshole, 'cause that's what my voters like, but once I have to appeal to everybody, I'll be cool."

[11:50] Axelrod: Yeah. But the fact is that, you look at all these exit polls from primary after primary and the big number that he commands is, he tells it like it is. He says stuff that other politicians aren't willing to say, and you know you spoke earlier about people who are frightened about these changes in the economy that have left them without the kind of, uh, future that they thought that they would have, and they are eating that up.

Stewart: Right but again, and this gets to the point of -

Axelrod: Authenticity is what they said

Stewart: This gets to the point though of the press versus the campaign, and what we see in the press is, they're covering the campaign, but they're not covering veracity, or, you know... so the exit poll says this is what people think, then, someone in the press has to come out and go "wow. People must be assholes, because, that's not okay to think," you know, it's not okay to have nostalgia for the Mad Men society, and think that that is, that that ignorance is virtue, and they have twisted this around so that his ignorant pronouncements are somehow, uh, a sign of great character. It's like where I grew up, when people'd go like "hey look no disrespect, I'm not saying your mother's a whore, I'm saying..." and you're like "I think that's what you're saying".

[13:13] Axelrod: the difference is he would just say "your mother's a whore".

Stewart: Right. But when he says [Trump impression] "people are so nervous".... see, here's what's so amazing about this, so, the whole idea of political correctness is, everybody's so sensitive, just get over it. You know, why should African Americans be so sensitive about police shootings? Why do they have to be so sensitive about, uh, years of sensitive racism creating economic disparity, come on, I'm not a slave owner! Donald Trump couldn't handle us making a joke about him. Vanity Fair, Graydon Carter did a joke about Donald Trump's hands 25 years ago, he's still not fuckin' over it.

[13:59] Axelrod: and his hands aren't any bigger

Stewart: [audience laughs] So Muslims - not true by the way. He actually did a deal -

Axelrod: finger extensions?

Stewart: Trump International, and if you see them now [points at the back of his hand] they say Trump in gold letters. [Axelrod laughs]

But, the idea being that, Muslims - "hey man, all he's saying is, they're evil and they shouldn't be allowed in this country, he's just telling it like it is." But God forbid you say "Happy Holidays" in December, it's fuckin' war, so who is it who's exactly sensitive here? We're only talking about, what are the trigger points? And the trigger points seem to me to be, on one side, grounded in a certain reality of life that only those with no experience or empathy toward what those people are going through are having, and the other seems to be a clinging to a society paradigm that just doesn't exist anymore and probably never did. When was America great? What is this time that he speaks of? [shrugs] '81 to '82?

Like, what are we talking about, who took your country away from you? Whose country? Whose is it? Take up the argument with the founders. Take it up with the age of reason. That's the, you know, "all men are created equal" - that's fucked the whole thing up.

[15:19] Axelrod: Yeah. You know, the thing that they, I think the people who are rallying to him would say, I mean - some of it is just I think grounded in pure racism and nativism and all of that, but there also is the fact that the economy, you mentioned globalism, technology, has made a lot of jobs obsolete, that you didn't need a college education. These kids [motions to audience] are gonna do great.

Stewart: No, I don't know about that.

Axelrod: well, there are three or four that aren't gonna do great and you know who they are.

Stewart: They might do great and they might not, but -

[15:54] Axelrod: but I mean my point is this. They're - we haven't paid enough attention as a country to how we shepherd this change and make opportunity more broadly available, I think education is a piece of it. He's not speaking to that, but that's really the debate we should be having in this country, is, what are we gonna do with this big revolutionary change that has left a lot of people behind?

[16:17] Right, but you have a situation in government that makes that very difficult, if government is - the fallacy of this whole thing, and maybe it's a leftover from the Marshall plan, and everything else and, the nostalgia for the WWII era is that America can actually control things in a matter that is tidy. This idea somehow that we can control - we live in a postcolonial world. We no longer have a western frontier, like, that's just reality. Globalization is not a question of - American policy cannot - that box has been opened, and, the problem with globalization is not that America doesn't handle it, it's that corporate America would prefer that - money travels, people don't. So if they can send money to places where they can hire a hundred people that'll work for 12 hours a day versus 10 people that only work 8 hours a day for 15 dollars an hour, what are they gonna do? So this has nothing to do --

[17:16] Axelrod: not an argument Trump's been making.

Stewart: But here's the real political incorrectness, if they really wanna be truthful. The problems in this country are not because of Mexicans and Muslims, and if they want to in any way confront what's really going on, the problem in this country is, you have one party in America whose sole purpose is to freeze the government, and to not fix any of the problems that are associated with it. They have a great game going, which is "government sucks and can't get the job done." And then they can sit as an impediment to that government and point to their destruction as evidence of their thesis. It's a great tautology and it's - for what everyone would say for the democrats, maybe they're feckless, maybe they focus too much on identity politics, or they're not fiscally responsible, at least they're fucking trying.

[18:13] Axelrod: Yeah. Well, I'm not going to debate you on that.

Stewart: You know what? You're not the same without the mustache!

[18:21] Axelrod: [laughs] I know but thank God you took up the facial hair so you can still carry the torch out there.... I wanna talk a little bit about Hillary Clinton but -

Stewart: Who?

[18:32] Axelrod: but before we do, before we do, obviously you're uh, you haven't lost your edge, you haven't lost your passion, have you been restless watching this whole thing, not having the platform you had? Obviously you can... create a new one, and I want to ask you about whether you're about to create a new one.

Stewart: No, I'm not - you know - I'm not restless, because, uh, what I gain from leaving the show in perspective, of, when you are in that suit, it is very hard not to begin to think that the world functions on that currency. There's only two cities that I know of that are that arrogant, and that's D.C. and Los Angeles, and they truly believe - and we saw it again with Larry Wilmore at the White House Press -

[19:24] Axelrod: and I want to ask you about your reaction

Stewart: Larry Wilmore did the White House Correspondents' Dinner, and everybody went nuts. "My God! He's done!" With what? "He's finished!" He's not running for anything, he's not finished. "He'll never get asked back." I don't think he gives a shit. [audience laughs] You know, and when you watched the post-show analysis, it was all based on, whether or not he had helped himself, how some of the room had read it, and not in any way -

[19:53] Axelrod: little narcissistic there.

Stewart: But not only narcissistic, but in no way an examination of the foundation of what he was saying, which was, "you are an incredibly corrupt and blinded symbiotic terrarium."

Axelrod: yeah I don't understand why that message wasn't well-received. [audience laughs]

Stewart: Here's the thing, "not well-received"? Not received. Not noticed. They did not notice it. What they noticed was, "he didn't get that many laughs. He really bombed."

[20:21] Axelrod: yeah. Well, that's the weird thing about the White House Correspondents Dinner. There's this sort of stange, symbiosis between hollywood and washington and they're similar communities, so the actors come to Washington and love to mix with the politicians, the politicians love to mix with the actors and there is a narcisism about those two communities that is uh, that is very much the same. You did the dinner once, in '97?

Stewart: Mm-hmm. I did it right after Imus. And Imus famouly, you know, made a joke I guess about Clinton's proclivities, and again they said -

Axelrod: for diplomacy?

Stewart: Yes. For reading, those things... um. I have to watch, obviously we're in a church, there's only so far we can go.... Or actually you know what, I'm out of His jurisdiction so I can probably say whatever I want. Um... He'd be ready to strike me down with lightning and be like "eh, it's not his house anyway." [audience laughs]

[21:25] I think that the problem is that the system is incentivized in all the wrong directions, and right now the system is incentivized in the way that a crack dealer is incentivized, which is, it can do tremendous damage, but as long as people are buying crack, everything is good on his block. And I really believe it's that... corrosive, and corrupt. When you have the presidents of networks saying "Trump is good for business", when you have the lead anchor of Fox News having to go to Trump's hotel to make him stop being mean to her, and now he says she's terrific 'cause they've had a detante. That's fucked.

[22:13] Axelrod: yeah.

Stewart: You know, I don't know how you describe, you know, there are heads of networks who have said "Trump is great for business." Well, why would you kill the thing that's great for business? Why would you even say what it was?

[22:26] Axelrod: I asked you at the beginning and you were sort of dismissive about what the role of the media has been, but what you're suggesting is that there is, they have a pecuniary interest in the Trump story.

Correct. I think what I was responding to about the role of the media is, can they solve it on their own? But, look, television journalism was ahead of the game at the Nixon-Kennedy debate. That's when the television media -

Axelrod: that was awhile ago.

Stewart: Came into - right. I was there, you were there.

Axelrod: We were pages.

Came into effect. Basically, Kennedy understood it a little bit, rudimentary, he thought "I should probably wear makeup" and Nixon was like [Nixon impression] "I look great" [audience & Axelrod laugh], you know, so, he went out there and you know, everybody thought he had hepititis and that was the end of his campaign [audience & Axelrod laughs].

Since then, an entire industry has risen up, as to how to manipulate and skew that medium to the advantage of the politicians and the powerful, and the industry, rather than in some ways creating a counterweight to that, have been subsumed by it, and so now it's a symbiosis. The media is no longer predator and pray - which I think should be the relationship - but a remora, that's just attached underneath, hoping for crumbs to fall off of the shark.

[23:57] Axelrod: though they do - I mean I watched Trump with George Stephanopolous yesterday, who tried to probe, I don't know if you saw the show but he was probing him on his various proposals, and Trump said, he said you know your tax plan would be a windfall for the wealthy, and Trump said "well it is now, but once we negociate it, it won't be anymore", and just basically shedding all of his positions, so, same challenge he's just -

[24:24] Stewart: But it's, you're talking about singular anecdotal moments, you're talking about floating logs in a torrent, you know, the relentlessness of the cycle requires an equal counterweight. It can't - a counterweight does not mean that occasionally, you know, you push back to a small extent as the waters rush by you everywhere else. That's I think where Fox has an advantage is that they understood that to take over the cycle you have to be relentless. You have to be perpetuating your point of view and your propaganda in the same way people consume it, which is, constantly, self-reinforcingly, and over an over and over again, and unless you have something pushing back with that same force, you're not gonna have any balance.

[25:20] Axelrod: well the interesting thing about this election though, you say it's not much different, Trump has basically embraced that tactic, I mean he is relentless, he is ubiquitous, he is out there all the time...

[25:31] Stewart: He's just learned how to, he'd just doing Judo against them. What works for 24-hour networks? What is it incentivized for? Here's what you would want it to be incentivized for: clarity. It is incentivized for what? Conflict. The voices that are amplified are the ones that are the most conflict-oriented, that are the most extreme. Those are the guys that get the airtime.

So if they're incentivized for conflict, Trump is not playing this like a - everybody keeps talking about "he's amazing". He's not - this is the first season of Survivor. This is, it's Reality Show 101: I'm gonna be an enormous dick at the beginning of the show to get all this attention, and then once I make it to final counsel, then I'm going to reveal - he's, what's the guy's name, Johnny Fairplay. He's Johnny Fairplay. He's the guy who said "oh my grandmother died, and don't vote me out", and then finally when he got to the final tribal counsel - that's what he's playing.

[26:30] Axelrod: what, uh, talk to me about Hillary Clinton as an opponent to him and -

Stewart: I'll never run against her so ...

[26:38] Axelrod: What would you be saying about her if you were doing your show right now?

Stewart: What I think about Hillary Clinton is, I imagine to be a very bright woman without the courage of her convictions, 'cause I'm not even sure what they are, so I would suggest that, when I watch her campaign, when I watch her campaign it reminds me of - and again I'm throwing out references that mean absolutely nothing to anybody so, I will continue to do that - she reminds me of Magic Johnson's talk show. And I won't say any -

Axelrod: You had that thought too huh?

Stewart: If you ever watched Magic Johnson's talk show, Magic Johnson was a charming individual, but he wasn't a talk show host, and when you watched his show, you could almost see Arsenio's advice to him in realtime rendering. So he would sit and he would go "uh, my first guest tonight (oh, Arsenio said enthusiasm is something that I should...) my first guest tonight is [sudden enthusiasm] CHER, EVERYBODY!" But it never seemed authentic and real to his personality, it seemed like he was wearing an outfit designed by someone else, for someone else, to be someone else, and that is not to say that she is not preferable to Donald Trump, because at this point I would vote for Mr. T to Donald Trump, but I think she will be in big trouble if she can't find a way - and maybe I'm wrong, maybe a real person doesn't exist underneath there, I don't know.

[28:18] Axelrod: you dabbled on the government side when you were advocating for the Zedroga Act for 9/11 survivors. Did you work with her when she was senator of New York on that?

Stewart: No. I worked with Kirsten Gillibrand.

Axelrod: I see, so she was out of the Senate by then...

Stewart: She's terriffic. Kirsten Gillibrand is terrific.

[28:37] Axelrod: So she was out of the Senate by then. You must have had her on your show?

Stewart: Yes.

Axelrod: And what was that like?

Stewart: [slowly] Really cool. [audience laughter] It's uh... look. Heh. There are politicians who are either rendering their inauthenticity in real-enough-time to appear authentic, and then there are politicians who render their inauthenticity through, it's like when your computer, if you have a Mac and you wanna play a Microsoft game on it?

Axelrod: Yes.

Stewart: And there's that weird lag.

[29:17] Axelrod: Yes. No, I meam that's a big problem, there's like a seven-second delay and all the words come out in a perfectly politically calibrated sentence.

Stewart: Right. Now, what gives me hope in that, is that there's a delay, which means, she's somehow fighting something. I've seen politicians who don't have that delay, and render their inauthenticity in real time, and that's when you go, "that's a sociopath". [audience laughs]

[29:45] Axelrod: The uh - that's an uplifting message there. The uh -

Stewart: By the way: as far as uplifting messages, I have never in my life experienced what I experienced in my one day of lobbying down in Washington D.C., and let me just say, for however I painted it on the show, it's so much worse than you could possibly imagine. It is a cesspool. There are some good people trying to survive within the lava but it's a fucking horror show - [looks at David Axelrod] no disrespect. [audience laughs]

[30:21] Axelrod: No. Just the fact that you're at the Institute of Politics where we're trying to encourage young people to get into the public arena -

Stewart: Let me say this, get into it, and don't get it on you. [audience laughs] I've never - I was down there with firefighters who had spent a year on the smouldering remains of the World Trade Center. The guy that I was with, Ray Pfifer, had a titanium rod in his leg that was breaking because of the metastasized cancer that was roiling through it, that he got from being on the pile. We had the scientific evidence with us. You cannot imagine the disrespect, the lack of compassion, that was exhibited towards this man and this cause, by individuals in higher office. It was, I will never recover from it.

[31:27] Axelrod: so here's my, heres' my theory, cause I can't sit in front of a a thousand young peole and not say this. You know, you have to, if you turn away and you walk away from this and you just cede all of that to the people you're talking about, you're gonna get what you get, and it seems to me that there's some obligation to go in there and try and change it. You say "go in there and don't get it on you," but we need that.

Stewart: No. No, when I say "don't get it on you," I don't mean "don't engage." I mean, "take appropriate precautions, wear a hazmat suit, wear [audience laughs] - bring your ideals. I have... Whenever I speak to - and we used to do this thing every year where we'd bring the press secretaries for all the senate and all the house people that wanted to come in, and they would say to me, "so what can my candidate to to have a successful appearance on your show?" and I would say "he could, or she could say what she thinks about the issues concerning America?"

[32:36] Axelrod: and they said "is there any other way to do it?"

Stewart: Right. But they would say, "But what should I tell them? What works best?" [hesitantly] "When people say what they believe." [Nods.] "What's that?" [audience laughs] And honestly like, I know you think that I'm being hyperbolic, I recognize that you don't understand this. I am not. They are as unaware of their own machinations as you could possibly imagine. It's - and I'm [not] even saying it's malevolence.

Axelrod: it's the way the game is played.

Stewart: I assume that it's survival. It's -

[33:14] Axelrod: But you must admit that people over the course of, from '99 to last year doing this show, you must have run across people who did, who were disarming.

Stewart: No sure, I must have. [light laughter]

[33:29] Axelrod: do you want a few seconds to think about that?

Stewart: Yeah, hold on...

Um, there are people that were, what I would get there is the same thing I would get in the news industry, which is, people would pull you aside and they would say "yeah, man, it sucks, it's so, you're absolutely right, it's terrible down here". And you would just go [nods] "mm."

Axelrod: yeah. But, you know again, I don't want to sit here as the defender of a system that is badly broken, but there are people who do make a difference.

Stewart: Every day.

[34:05] Axelrod: and as you mentioned Kirsten Gillibrand, there are others actually who go there and - [crosstalk]

Stewart: Sure... The amount of energy that you have to expend, I'll just go with the 9/11 vote, this is as no-brainer as you can possibly get. This is, a horde of zombies would stop their brain-eating rampage to go "yeah those guys should get some health care, that makes sense."

[34:05] Axelrod: so, run out and find a horde of zombies?

Stewart: So these guys, for nine years, had to travel, with cancer, with mezaphilioma, with low lung function, with heart failure. Nine years of incessant lobbying to move this body, and it only, through their lobbying efforts and some measure of public shaming, they relented in the most condescending of ways, to finally give in to it. If it takes that effort to do something that easy, it is a system that must be, it is self-perpetuating in a way that is dangerous at this point.

[35:24] Axelrod: Yeah. But I saw, you know I saw, and you were there, doing your thing, I saw people cast votes for the Affordable Care Act who lost their positions, people who voted for Cap & Trade to try and do something about climate change, who lost their positions, and we should - and there are some who didn't - but we should at least ackowledge that there are those people who are willing to do that. I always say [inaudible] courage was a thin volume for a reason, you know it's not the norm, but it's something that we should -

Stewart: I guess my point is, why in God's name should that be courage? In what world is taking a political stand and trying to affect legislation that should be...

And by the way, what's incumbent on those who should believe that government can make a difference in people's lives is to try and make it more efficient, and I think that's where the democrats fail in an enormous way, is that in their world, if you believe that government can make a difference in people's lives, well then make the bureaucracy work more efficiently, make the regulations that are strangling, you know, small businesses. Don't just open the Fed Window at 0% corporations, force them at some level to at least give a percentage of that to small business loans, I mean, and I understand that they are trying but, and you and your boss and I had a big argument about this with the VA - if you can do an executive order to kill an American citizen from above with a missle, how can you not do an executive order to re-evaluate the DOD and the VA system so that you don't spend a billion dollars trying to get two computer programs to talk to each other when probably 3 of these idiots [points at audience] could probably do it for five hundred dollars. [audience laughs and claps] It doesn't wash. And at some level - and I'll lay the blame then with the democrats - the door is open to an asshole like Donald Trump, because the democrats haven't done enough to show the people that government that can be effective for people can be efficient for people, and if you can't do that, then you've lost the right to make that change and someone's gonna come in and demagogue you, and that's what happens.

[37:52] Axelrod: Yeah. I don't know Jon that it's, that the people who are following Trump are following him because of efficiency, I think there are other elements, I don't disagree with you, I've always said this, that we ought to be committed to Ends and not Means, and if the Means don't work then change 'em, you know, I think that's challenging government is something that democrats should do, but on the other hand...

Stewart: Let me ask you something, is government too big to manage?

[38:19] Axelrod: It's a, that's a very good question. [audience and Stewart laugh; Stewart covers face with hands, then stares skyward] What I think happens is, we've got a country of 330 million so government's gonna be large. What I think happens is, bureaucracy builds on bureaucracy and it gets encrusted on top of itself, and we especially, in an age of technology there is an opportunity to do things better and more creatively, and I think that government [Jon starts to talk] - let me just say this, let me just say a word on this because - I think before we're too cynical about this -

Stewart: This is not cynicism, don't mistake this for cynicism.

[38:59] Axelrod: if you talk to one of the 20 million people that have health care today that didn't have health care, they have a pretty positive view of government. You know, if you talk to people that have a PEL grant or if you talk to people who were finally after all these centuries enjoying their full rights, gay and lesbian Americans and so on, they feel positively that governemnt has been on their side at least in recent years, so I think that it is a little bit too broad brush to say that there's nothing, no progress has been made.

Stewart: Right. I would definitely agree with you if that's what I had said. [pauses] But that's not what I said [audience cheers and claps]. What I said was - and to throw it back the other way, let me say this, can you imagine how disconcerting it is for someone who's talking about efficiency of government, to talk to the man who basically helped Barack Obama get elected, and you're a powerful guy, who has basically been part of the group that's been in charge of government for eight years to say "yeah you know, bureaucracy is bureaucracy, what are you gonna do?" And you're like "I don't know."

[40:12] Axelrod: and here's the thing Jon. Government, the system we have, and you wrote the definitive book on the US constitution [Jon laughs] so I know you know this, the government we have is hard to move, we moved a lot in the first two years when Obama was president, 2010 came along and there was a huge tidal wave, and then, and we've had a situation where you have a gridlock, not a gridlock but a very divided Congress, and the system is devised in such a way that it makes it very difficult to get things done under that...

Stewart: No question.

[40:52] Axelrod: So that's, you know, yes, I would have liked if we had some to office and we didn't have massive economic crisis and some of the other things, I would have liked to have concentrated on this project, which is how do you rationaalize government for the 21st century, there are these projects going on within government, but it's very hard to turn it around.

Stewart: Right. All I'm saying is, if people can see your re-election effort being incredibly agile, and I honestly am still getting emails from the re-elect Barack Obama, sometimes through like the television, like I don't know how you guys figured it out, but if you're that agile for campaigning, why are we so good at campaigns and so bad at governance? [audience cheers and claps]

[41:44] Axelrod: Because campaigns are not as complicated and not as challenging as government because you have full control over your campaigns. Let me tell you something, when we made a decision in my capmpaign, I didn't have to go and have congress affirm it, we could just move, so government is not, the campaigns are not government.

Stewart: You can't do, in the way you use executive action, you can't use that against the bureaucracy?

[42:12] Axelrod: No, you can, and it has been done, and there's been a series of different ways

Stewart: Are you happy with the amount that you guys did in that regard?

Axelrod: I am... I am convinced that had there not been the resistence we had in congress, we could have done more, there's no question about that.

Stewart: Well we agree?

Axelrod: Yes. [Jon laughs] We agree except for this one point which is

Stewart: Yeah. By the way this is how Jews make love. [audience laughs] Just so you know, like, he and I when we're done with this, this is like eating Latkas on top of a Dreydel, the only thing that's missing is an uncle who's to the right of Ghengis Kahn, who can just walk in and go "Israel has the right to defend itself!" [audience laughs] So I'm just pointing out for those who are getting nervous: this is how we communicate. [audience laughs]

[43:10] Axelrod: we had a guy like that standing right here a few months ago but uh [audience "oh"s], no I, I have to say

Stewart: I don't go to school here so I don't know what that means.

[43:28] Axelrod: the, it is too facile to compare campaigns to government.

Stewart: The reason I don't think it's facile is this. So, and again, I think it's a part of, it's very easy to say, well it's two different systems, well, we're at the point in our government where, if you can take extraordinary measures to fix a crisis like the bank bailout then you can take extraordniary measures to fix a crisis like crumbling infrastructure and bureaucratic nightmares. I, you know....

Axelrod: Jon, you can't by executive order fix crumbling infrastructure, you need money to fix crumbling infrastructure, you need a congress that's willing to work with you to fix crumbling infrastructure.

Stewart: Right but you can fix some of the problems in contracting, you can fix that.

[44:10] Axelrod: Yes, you can do that, and some of that's been done, but the point is you can't fix through contracting massive underfunding of infastructure [inaudible] that's been going on for years. But listen we just got a couple minutes left, I just want to ask, I know that you hate -

Stewart: Saggitarius.

[44:23] Axelrod: You deflect - no, this was the if-you-were-a-tree thing. You deflect questins about yourself. I have two, and one is, when you were growing up in Jersey, you could not have imagined -

Stewart: Wait, hold on a second. Thank you for that. That was the appropriate amount of applause for New Jersey. You said "when you're growing up in New Jersey" and literally I just heard this [makes slow silent claps with his hands] like in the way you would if, at the masters, somebody sank a putt.

[44:59] Axelrod: you could not have imagined that you would be opining and you'd have the world hanging on your words on politics, on the social scene, I mean this wasn't, you couldn't, this was not your life goal, it's important 'cause I think some kids are taught to believe that they have a life planned. You didn't have a life planned to become what you are now.

[45:26] Stewart: Uh.... I did.

Axelrod: Well, kind of a circuitous route to get there.

Stewart: I was raised in a laboratory, a comedic laboratory. Um, I mean I think I understand your point about protecting their innocence and their enthusiasm. Please don't misunderstand, criticism is out of love and desperation, not cynicism -

[45:52] Axelrod: No, I totally get that, and no I -

Stewart: In fact I'm not pessimistic, in any way, because this country has proven resilient based on the fact that its foundation is the age of reason and the age of enlightenment, and that is going to be what carries us through. you know, we have faced darker times than these

Axelrod: No, we have, much darker. These guys are gonna make a difference. I think one of the things that's changing in this country is that young people are more tolerant, they're more aware, they feel more rooted in the world and not just in their own lives. I think that these guys are gonna change things, but you're deflecting again because you won't talk about yourself, so I'm gonna give up, I'm not gonna give up the whole Jon Stewart story because we don't have time for it, but it'll be in a bookstore near your soon, but I have to ask you about moving forward because there've been, HBO suggested maybe you'd be engaging in this -

Stewart: I'm not gonna be on television any more, the whole point of growing old -

Axelrod: Are you going to engage at all in this next six months or are we gonna see Jon Stewart any more -

Stewart: I feel like I'm engaged now, I mean, you know - the one thing I also want to make clear to people is that, when you're not on television, you're still alive, and you're still engaged in the world, and I feel maybe more engaged with the world in a real way now than I ever did sitting on television interviewing politicians and convincing them, you know, I -

[47:18] Axelrod: Do you have any creative projects planned between now and November, that have to do with the election, whether it's on the internet -

Stewart: Uh, I, you know, we're working on technology and animation to do interesting little small bits, and if we can figure out

Axelrod: and it will go viral.

Stewart: I don't, again, like, [looks at audience] do what you think is good, and if you get 50 likes great, if you 500, like, your life exists outside of television and likes and instagram, like, engage the world. The reason why I was talking about bureaucracy, so, my wife - who's so much nicer than me, you'd love her - she's, we're starting this sanctuary for farm animals, so we had to go before a local Momoth County agriculture board. The epitome of real America, civic engagement, civic society... the work that these individuals - they were all farmers, the board is ten farmers - the work that they put into preserving and keeping the farm life and what they do, was inspiring. If you want to talk about inspiration, you put it right on them. The questions that they raised with us were thought-provoking, they helped shaped this project in a way that improved it massively, and they dealt with a tremendous amount of paperwork that made no sense to anybody, and they did it with humor and a certain resignation, but they did it

[48:58] Axelrod: this must have confounded your lobbyist.

Stewart: Yes.

[49:03] Axelrod: but the point is, between now and November do you expect to surface some projects relative to the election.

Stewart: Oh, uh... it may. I wish I had a better answer, I just don't know. You know, we're working on it, I'd love to have it ready by September or something like that, but not necessarily for the election as though that's the D-day, like, again.

Axelrod: But it's an important time for the country.

Stewart: As I said, I'll still, like, I'll still vote. [audience laughs] I don't [audience claps], in other words, let me put it this way, the October surprise in this election is not a two-minute cartoon that I'm going to release, like, the powers-that-be are working very dilligently, there's - television has never been more rife with beautiful satire. There are people from John Oliver to Sam Bee to Stephen Colbert to, uh, Seth Myers, to Trevor to Larry to... I am so impressed and amazed at the level of insight and with that is displayed on television every day, it just, you know, there is no dearth.

[50:19] Axelrod: All great, but I will say, and we'll wrap it up here, there's also one Jon Stewart and if you move around, people are asking, why isn't he here commenting on this, but we're so lucky that you're here to -

[50:35] Stewart: I'm delighted, you know, I've always wanted to... be confirmed. This counts right?

Axelrod: yes. As soon as you put something in the collection...

Stewart: All right, I'll do that.

Axelrod: All right, we're gonna take some...

Stewart: Yeah, let's take some questions.

Announcer: Thank you for listening to the Axe Files, part of the CNN podcast network. For more episodes of the Axe Files, visit cnn.com/podcast ... [I'm stopping transcription here 'cause I don't have time.]

How to apply for a Filipino 13(a) Marriage VISA

I'm writing this post to give a little "heads up" and guidance to anyone trying to get permanent residency in the Philippines through a marriage visa (known as 13A). Applying for a visa in the Philippines is much more expensive and time-consuming than it first appears; it may be less expensive than staying as a tourist, but realistically you'll have to pay for both.

The first bad news you should know is that the government requires you to stay near Manila for about two weeks months during the application process and near the Philippines for a year; to do otherwise could be (even more) expensive. We'll talk about that later.

Preparing Your Visa application

The first thing you should do is visit the BI web site and view the official information about the visa. Note the supposed fee: Php 8,620.00. That's not the real fee: for some reason they decide to systematically lie on the web site and charge higher prices when you arrive. More on that later.

Also, check out this other page with more information. Here are the items you're told that you need:

• "Joint letter request addressed to the Commissioner from the applicant and the petitioning Filipino spouse". The document we actually submitted looks like this. I do apologize for the presence of ridiculous words like "defray" and "affiant" but this document is based on another document that a guy from a BI office showed us, a letter written by a successful visa applicant. Later, the Legal Officer will look at the letter and actually write check marks on it like a schoolteacher. I remember that the BI guy said he'd be looking for something about your financial capacity and a couple of other things that I've now forgotten. Anyway, just make sure your letter has the same information as my letter. Oh, and we heard a rumor that the letter has to be "notarized". Whatever that means.
• "Duly accomplished CGAF": The Consolidated General Application Form is currently located here. I am not quite sure what kind of Character References are required, I just used a couple of acquaintances. I'm not sure how to fill out the first three fields on the form, either, but the Legal Officer can probably tell you that when you submit your application.
• "Marriage Certificate or Marriage Contract": do not use the original. If you were married in the Philippines you'll want to get a copy from a PSA (Philippine Statistics Authority) office, formerly known as NSO (National Statistics Office). Some say it takes months after you're married before you're even allowed to get a PSA-certified copy of it; we were able to get our copy the first time we asked for it, three months after our marriage.
• "Birth Certificate or certified true copy of BI-issued Identification Certificate as Filipino citizen of the Filipino spouse." To fulfill this confusingly-worded sentence, the Filipino spouse will need to get a copy of his or her birth certificate from a PSA office. The foreigner's birth certificate is not needed.
• "Photocopy of passport bio-page and latest admission with valid authorized stay": Photocopy your passport's picture page, and also the stamp or sticker that shows how long you are authorized to be in the Philippines. On the day you submit your visa application, you'll need at least two weeks left on your temporary visitor visa, if I remember correctly.
• "Valid National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) Clearance, if application is filed six (6) months or more from the date of first arrival". We were told at a satellite office that, unlike Filipinos, us foreigners couldn't get the NBI clearance from any NBI office. Instead we had to go to the NBI main office: specifically the one on United Nations Avenue, Ermita, Manila (and not any of the other NBI offices in Manila or elsewhere). Other than having to go to Manila, this step is straightforward since the NBI (which is the Filipino quivalent of the FBI) set up a web site for appointments to get NBI clearances: https://www.nbi-clearance.com. There are a couple of things to know about getting an NBI clearance: first, when you get there they will ask for information about your parents such as their birthplaces and birthdays, even though they didn't tell you in advance that you would need that information. Second, they will take your fingerprints and put them in a database. Third, it'll take at least a couple of days to get your NBI clearance, and you have to pick it up in Manila (from the same office)? Caution: to make an appointment on the web site, you must input some personal information. Make sure it is correct.
• "BI Clearance Certificate": Remember that document labeled "Bureau of Immigration - Certification", which says that you do "NOT APPEAR in this Bureau's Hold Departure, Blacklist, Watch list, and/or Intelligence Derogatory Records"? That's NOT what this refers to. Instead, the "BI Clearance Certificate" is something else you get from the main BI office on the same day you apply for the 13A visa. But feel free bring your "Bureau of Immigration - Certification" with you if it makes you feel better.
• "Original or certified true copy of Bureau of Quarantine Medical Clearance, if applicant is a national of any of the countries listed under Annex “A” of Immigration Operations Order No. SBM-14-059-A". WTF? "Annex A" is not available online as far as I can tell, but I saw a copy in the BI office itself - damaged like one of those stone tablets uncovered by archaeologists:
  

Additional documents are required if you're also applying to let your foreign children stay with you, but that didn't apply to my case. Also, in advance you should get a pair of white folders to put your documents in, because it never occurred to the BI to buy their own office supplies (or sell them to you).

Make two copies of your documents because you will have to submit two separate folders to the BI. The first folder contains all the documents, and the second folder only contains some of the documents (sorry, I have misplaced the list of documents for the second folder, and I don't remember the purpose of the second folder, either).

Finally, you might require additional documents that they won't tell you about in advance. In our case, after driving four and a half hours to reach the Main BI Office, we were told that, because my citizenship is "Canadian" on the Marriage License, I would need "proof" that I was a Canadian citizen as well as a U.S. citizen. I had a U.S. passport but not a Canadian passport; the officer seemed to be saying that if I had two passports then everything would have be fine, but since I only had one, I was in for a world of hurt.

Verifying my citizenship: a side story

I had my Canadian Citizenship Certificate, but the legal officer said they wouldn't accept it. He said I'd have to go to the Canadian Embassy to "notarize" it, and then we'd have to go to DFA (Departmen of Foreign Affairs) to authenticate the notarization (what?), which would take 24 hours if we paid extra for "express" service.

So we travelled to the Canadian embassy and purchased space in the parking garage, only to be told "sorry, we don't have notarization services after 10AM". So we drove home for four hours, having accomplished nothing, although we did take some toll roads and buy a lot of gasoline, which I have heard is good for the economy (albeit bad for the planet).

We went again on Monday. Five hours on the bus starting at 2:30AM, then I asked for my Citizenship Certificate Card to be "notarized". The woman in the embassy asked some confusing questions. Apparently they couldn't do "notarization", or couldn't do it quickly, and she wondered if what I really wanted was a "certified true copy", which would cost less and could be done immediately, but would not be a verification that the contents of the certificate were correct. So I said yes, let's do that, and paid $21.50 (by credit card - cash was not allowed here, even though the Filipino government agencies all seem to require cash) for them to sign a black and white photocopy on a plain white sheet of office paper that "yes, this is really a copy of a citizenship certificate. The contents of the document have not been verified." I'm paraphrasing.

Next we went to a nearby DFA office in a mall so they can verify that "yes, this certification from the Canadian embassy looks like a real certification". But the DFA office said "no, we can't verify that document here, please go to this other DFA office that can do those."

The "correct" DFA office is halfway across the city, about one kilometer southeast of the Mall of Asia, on Diosdado Macapagal Blvd., opposite a McDonald's. After going through security, I went through Door 2, filled out a form, and waited more than half an hour in line to request the Express service; after that I waited in a second (shorter) line to pay the 200 pesos, and then went back to the original window where I was given a special receipt which, as I learned later, You Must Not Lose. I'm telling you all this in case you ever have to do it, because there are no written instructions in this office and I felt confused the whole time. Their process takes One Business Day, so we stayed in a SoGo hotel (1644 pesos for the cheapest room available at the time) about 2km away while we waited.

The next day I went back at the beginning of the appointed time frame, in through Door 2, dropped my special pink receipt in a special "drop box" on the right-hand side of the room, and waited for my name to be called. Less than an hour later I had my special verification document in-hand, with a symbolic band of red tape attached to it (they call it a "red ribbon") plus a nice embossed stamp. The document says something like "I work for the DFA and I'm familiar with the signature of the guy at the Canadian Embassy and yeah, that looks like his signature all right, so I guess that's a real certified true photocopy stapled to this document".

Finally we went via Jeepneys and LRT trains to the main Bureau of Immigration to really apply for a visa, for reals this time.

The application process

Do you wear a tank top, shorts and flip-flops to keep cool? If you're wearing a tank top, they probably will not let you in. I have actually been rejected before and had to buy an extra shirt before they would let me pay them another half-month's rent.

I've been allowed in with shorts and flip-flops, but their dress code does ask for long pants, shoes and a shirt with sleeves.

Having acquired the NBI clearance and all the other documents, we went to the main BI office on Magallanes Drive, Intramuros, nearly one kilometer from the nearest LRT station (Central Terminal). We spent about two and a half hours there, mostly waiting. First we signed up, then we waited for our name to be called, then we had an interview with the legal officer, who checked that all documents were present and acceptable, then we went to Window 25 to get the BI Clearance Certificate (the real one), then we waited half an hour at window 13 to pay in cash, then we went to Window 20 to hand in our two folders.

Now that we have applied for a 13A visa, we confirmed in the "interview" that we will have to keep buying more time on the 9A temporary visitor visa.

The government's obsession with Manila

The government's process makes it clear they don't care about people who don't live in Manila. Here's why you'll want to live near Manila for more than two months:

• First, if you've been in the Philippines six months or more when you apply, you need an NBI clearance, and you can only apply for one in person, in Manila, which takes a few days (I forgot how long exactly).
• Second, when you go to apply for the visa, it's possible they could ask for some extra document that wasn't on the document list, as they did for me, which would delay you by a couple of days.
• Third, after you've paid the big-ass application fee, they will tell you you have to come back in 4 to 7 days for a "hearing". Why is there a hearing? I have no idea. If they want to ask me some questions, why didn't they ask them on the application form? So they gave us two dates-and-times on which we could return to the BI office for a hearing, and said we had to pick one.
• Fourth, we were told that we could only pick up the visa from the main office in Manila; it is estimated to be available about five weeks after our hearing.
• Fifth and finally, we are asked to pick up a new extra ACR I-Card two weeks after the visa. Again, it is not available from BI satellite offices.

The price tag

The real price for the visa application itself was 10,970 pesos: 8470 pesos for the visa application, and 2500 pesos for the four surprise "Express Lane" fees, which we had to pay because they made us wait in four separate lineups. Maybe time is money, but they'll take both just to be sure. As I was telling my wife, making us carry our documents around to several different windows is a security risk since it adds loopholes in the system, but I guess they think it's worth the risk in exchange for more excuses to charge "Express Lane" fees.

It's costly once you add everything up, but the visa itself is still the main thing:

• Fees for "visiting" the Philippines, including the $US50 "ACR I-Card": at least ₱17,000 for six months.
• Notarizing the letter of intent: about ₱200
• NSO/PSA copies of marriage and birth certificates: ₱280 (2x140)
• NBI clearance: ₱160 (₱110 plus a ₱25 fee that the payment processor "accidentally" charges twice)
• Visa application: ₱8470 plus ₱2500 of "Express Lane" fees (I notice that the ₱2950/$US50 I-Card fee was charged again)

Here were the other expenses in our case:

• Previous trip to Manila: gasoline donated by my in-laws; ₱1000 for lunch and toll roads
• Travel to Manila: ₱486 for two of us
• Taxis (which we used initially): ₱220 for two trips, about 8.9 km
• Canadian Embassy Charge: ₱794
• LRT (best for long distances): ₱110 for 2x3=6 tickets
• Jeepneys: ₱112 for 2x8=16 rides
• DFA "red ribbon": ₱200
• Hotel SoGo: ₱1625
• Travel home: ₱464 for two of us
• Travel back to Manila for the hearing: about ₱1116 for busses, trains and Jeepneys

We'll pay another ₱1116 (or so) twice more to pick up the visa and the extra useless I-Card. Moreover, we learned that we would have to buy another month on the 9A temporary visa while we wait for them to process the visa application, and it turns out that a single-month extension costs ₱2,430 (because most BI fees are charged per-visit, not per-month). So the total cost of our probationary visa will be about ₱22,400, on top of the ₱18,889 we spent earlier for BI's "visitor" fees. I expect most people will pay slightly less since they won't be grappling with the Canadian Embassy and DFA; on the other hand, some of you might have to fly into Manila and pay even more.

The hearing/interview

Janessa A. gave helpful information about this, although our interview went a bit differently:

Either date you choose is acceptable. So, if you miss the first date and time, you can still come back on the second date offered to you. Just be sure not to miss your appointment the second time, or you will have to start the process all over again and pay the fees again as well. It’s extremely important that you’re not late for the interview.
...
Be sure to bring your Official Receipt and Passport, and the Filipino spouse needs to have an ID to prove his identity as well.

The interview was pretty informal, we just stood up behind a counter and the interviewer asked us just basic questions; when and where we met, our wedding date, simple stuff. The most important part is financial information, to prove that we can support each other. The interviewer asked if either or both of us were employed and how much we made, as well as if we receive financial support from anyone else. We’d actually brought a copy of David’s employment contract as proof of financial capacity and I offered to give it to him, but he said they didn’t need it, he just needed us to tell him verbally.

That’s all there was to it. The interviewer said everything sounded good, and that things looked good for us:) He then directed us to the next window where I got my biometrics(fingerprints, signature, and photo) taken for my ACR I-card. We were done! The interview itself was only about 10 minutes, the biometrics took another 5 or 10

For us, we arrived at 6:50, two hours early (leaving home at 2AM just to be extra sure we didn't miss the hearing) but our hearing happened two hours later than scheduled, at about 11AM. It took place in a cramped, private office on the 4th floor. We were not asked for any financial information; in fact the interviewer had no questions and simply asked us to sign a paper. Here's the document we traveled for five hours to sign:

This document seems to say in the most confusing possible way that:

• Approved visas must be picked up within two months from approval.
• Application status may be checked somewhere in www.immigration.gov.ph
• Leaving the country during the waiting period shall be a huge hassle.
• Leaving the country during the approval period shall be a huge hassle.
• Applicants for 13A visas must buy more time on their 9A visa while waiting for approval, or your visa application will be denied without refund or recourse. In other words, we hate you, but we love your money.

I asked the interviewer if we really needed to get the ACR I-Card, since I already had one. He said yes, we needed a new I-Card to go with our new visa Next, we waited another 30 minutes to be fingerprinted and photographed. Something strange happened: the woman asked for a pre-printed passport-sized picture of me (one inch square? I forget), which luckily we brought, and then she took a second passport-style photo with her camera! Truly the BI has no self-awareness or sense of reason. The picture-taking lady told us we would have to return to Manila twice more: once to get our visa, and again, two weeks later, to get our second I-Card. My wife asked if it was possible to get both of them in one trip. She said no.

After you get your visa

Assuming they don't find a reason to reject your visa application (while keeping your money), the visa they grant is "probationary". In other words, it's a temporary permanent visa, also known as an "oxymoron visa". A guy at the Olongapo BI office told us that we would have to return to Manila after 11 months (but less than 12 months) to convert the visa into a permanent one, or it would expire. We are not told why this happens... but it turned out that the second visa costs as much money as the first one (and is basically the same process again) so maybe it's a form of bureaucratic capitalism. As far as I know, if you fail to appear, your visa will expire and you'll have to start over from scratch. The suggestion to return after 11 months appears to be bad advice, based on a comment on Janessa's post:

Immigration told me last year to apply to convert the 13a prob to perm 1 month before the 13a prob expires, this is not enough time. I applied 3rd Feb, paid extra to have the hearing the next day, was given a tentative date of 17th march (this is 5 days after my 13a prob expires). After waiting 10 weeks my name finally appeared on the website. What’s frustrating is that when they release the list of approved visa’s it takes around 10 days before they put it on their website. So apply for this conversion early.

After you get your visa, you will still have to pay the special "it's January" fee (P310?) at the BI office every January when you are in the Philippines. I've also heard that you have to renew your ACR I-Card every five years ($US50 and a bunch of bullshit "bonus" fees.)

Please let this be over

Okay, that's all the information I have. I wish you good luck getting your visa!

Fun fact: the total cost of ₱21,969 for this one-year visa costs nearly as much as three month's salary for a Filipino working full time, 5 days per week at the minimum wage for the province of Zambales, ₱364/day. However, a Filipino working full time might not actually be able to take a 14-hour trip to Manila six times in two months, and still keep his job. Clearly, the government of the Philippines is demonstrating how much it hates poor immigrants. Demonstration successful: we believe you!

Update

After getting the temporary Permanent Visa, we applied for the real Permanent Visa as planned. The process for the second visa was pretty much the same as the first, but I don't remember the details.

They denied my visa.

The way we found out is that the BI publicly publishes periodically the names, dates of birth, and other information about all visa applicants. One of the sections is for people whose visa was denied. My wife saw my name appear there.

We called them, of course. They would not tell us the reason why our visa was denied unless we visited Manila in person. We visited Olongapo to seek help. On short notice, we had to gather together 40,000 pesos, cash, and pay a fixer, all without knowing why our visa was denied. We had noticed that the BI lawyer who interviewed us seemed not to like me because I was unemployed. I had to assume that my work status was the problem, so I quickly drew up a contract for remote work from my brother, whose wife needed a web site (I am a software developer with about 20 years of experience). My brother signed it, scanned it, and sent it back, and I delivered it to the fixer. I asked the fixer whether the lawyer who denied the visa would get some of this money, and the fixer confirmed that indeed he would. If I remember correctly, that's because the lawyer himself would be the one to petition for reconsideration of the decision.

Here's what actually went wrong. To make an appointment on the NBI web site, you must input some personal information. I originally didn't understand what the NBI was, and I signed up on their web site thinking it was just an appointment system. I was wrong about that. As a rule, I do not give detailed personal information to unfamiliar web sites, so I put a slightly incorrect birthdate into the system. Unfortunately, the NBI later ignored the birthdate I wrote on their own official forms and used the birthdate I wrote in their appointment system instead. A BI lawyer noticed this 13 or 14 months later, and denied the visa. So after paying 40,000 pesos, I had to repeat the NBI clearance process, but in the end the visa was granted.

Actual cost of overstaying in the Philippines: ₱18,889

Before I left for the Philippines, I looked for immigration information, and found a web page or two that seemed to suggest that a tourist could stay longer than 30 or 59 days in the Philippines (30 or 59? It wasn't clear) by paying a 500-peso fee ($11 USD) per month. This information was wildly inaccurate; the actual cost is dramatically higher.

It's easy to get confused if you can't figure out what the BI page is saying. You might see the line "Every month of extension - Php 500.00" or "Fine for Overstaying – (additional) Php 500.00 per month" and think "oh, okay, I can afford that". But in fact, you are required to pay all the other fees at least once, and some of the other fees are charged either every month, or every two months, so the real cost is much higher than they lead you to believe.

I've paid to "overstay" in the Philippines by 6 months so far (not counting the first 59 days, which I think were free for me, although the regulations are confusing - perhaps it's 30 days for some people). The fees for overstaying two months are the worst:

First two months: ₱11,309 ($US 240)

I went to the Philippines to get married. I did find out that you are required to buy a return flight before being allowed to board the flight in, so I got a one-way ticket to Hong Kong or Vietnam or something (about $50 US) and didn't use it. However, we live far from an immigration office, so I wasn't careful to check in with immigration on-time - I was about one month late, I think, having waited until after the wedding. That was a mistake, since there is a significant fine for missing the deadline. Plus, they make you sign a paper acknowledging that if you miss the deadline a second time, you will be deported. Also, if you miss the deadline because it fell on a weekend (when their office was closed) or a full-week holiday like Lent (when their office was closed), it is considered entirely your own fault; the Bureau of Immigration can do no wrong.

I suspect that ₱1000 to ₱2000 on this receipt is the price of failing to check in with the BI, but I'm not sure which of the line items are related to this mistake (I think "Motion for Reconsideration" is one of them.) Therefore, expect to pay up to ₱10,309 ($219 USD) to overstay by two months (four months total) even if you follow all the rules.

What the hell is an "express lane fee"? There is no "slow lane" - in fact there have never been any lineups when I was there. In fact, there isn't even any space set aside in the office for a queue. They do not ask you nor inform you about the "express lane fee"; in fact, the teller behind the glass said nothing whatsoever. She simply showed me a calculator with the number 11,309 on it and seemed, via body language alone, to expect me to pay her. Even though all written business seems to be conducted in English, it's quite possible she didn't speak it. I asked for a receipt or list of what I was going to pay for, but they refused; the woman didn't really speak, so a man came out to tell me that I would not be given a receipt until I paid the amount they demanded. He did tell me about some of the items, like the large "ACR I-Card Fee", but he didn't mention the express lane fee and the total of the things he mentioned didn't add up to anything close to 11,309 pesos.

I looked online afterward for information about the Express Lane fee - especially since it's mysteriously listed on a separate receipt - to see if it was some sort of local bribe. Google doesn't easily find information on the BI web site itself about this fee, but based on articles like this one, the fees do seem to be officially sanctioned, and at least one guy says "EVERYBODY pays this fee". I do not know if there is any way to avoid paying it... I'm not a smooth talker, at least not in person, and even if I were, the fact that I can't speak the local language would put me at a disadvantage. My wife doesn't want to negotiate either. So I pay.

Second two months: ₱3,240 ($US 69)

Since this receipt is the cheapest, I think we can conclude the minimum price of overstaying is about ₱1600 per month, but the one-time fees are huge enough to drive the average monthly fee much higher.

Third two months: ₱4,340 ($US 92)

Sorry, I didn't go to the trouble of digitizing this one. The price increased because they added a "Certificate of Residence For Temporary Visitors" line: ₱1400. The total only went up by ₱1100 because the "Annual report" fee of ₱300 disappeared this time.

Grand total: ₱18,889

That's a total cost of ₱18,889 ($402 USD or $540 CAD) for overstaying 6 months, which is ₱3148 per month, although you can avoid a small fraction of that fee by not missing any deadlines to check in at the BI office. More than half of that money is charged for the first two months. But that's not all: when you actually convert your money to pesos, you'll be charged 200 pesos per transaction by the ATM machine (that's a minimum 2% fee since all banks except possibly RCBC limit withdrawals to ₱10,000), and your bank is likely to charge about 3% as a hidden fee in the exchange rate, in addition to any overt fees they tack on. My research indicates you can't do much better, either - I found an online currency conversion service that was highly recommended by others, but the hidden fee (buried in the reduced exchange rate) was about 3.5% - twice as high as the fee for conversions to USD or Euro. I don't know if it's because the Philippines is a third-world country or because the currency isn't very popular, but whatever the reason, you can expect higher conversion losses on pesos than on "more important" currencies.

So, when I added $50 for the plane ticket that I wouldn't be using, the total reached about ₱22,183 or $471 for a six-month overstay. Apparently, if your stay includes January like mine did, you have to show up at the BI office in January to pay a special "it's January" fee of ₱300, officially called the "Annual Report" or something like that, and this is required even if you have a full VISA to the Philippines. It's required, but they aren't likely to tell you about it. There was, however, a small sign on the wall of the BI office to inform visitors about it. Want to find out what happens if you don't show up in January? I don't want to find out either.

Now I'm looking into getting a marriage VISA. Officially, if I understand correctly, it costs ₱8,620 to apply for a 13(a) marriage VISA. However, once you add up all the extra fees it's quite a lot more. I'm required to take a minimum of three trips to Manila, which is expected to cost about ₱1,000 by bus, plus 10-12 hours of travel time. The first trip was for the NBI clearance which costs ₱160 (including a ₱25 "service fee" that is inexplicably charged twice); this involves giving both sensitive personal information and biometrics to the government. I fully expect more (and bigger) hidden fees to pop up during the process. Another web page estimated the total cost at ₱10,000 to ₱15,000. Plus, every month that they delay granting a VISA is a month that they get to charge the roughly ₱2000 temporary visitor fee. This is a direct conflict of interest for them, but rumor has it that the whole process should take two months at most.

I'm treading dangerously here, since I heard a rumor that one must return to Manila after one year to convert the "Probationary" VISA into a "permanent" VISA (no doubt with a large fee attached!). That's a problem, since I planned to leave the Philippines less than one year from now. I might actually be forced to stay longer just to convert my VISA from "pretend" to "real" status.

Finally, I've heard rumors that the Philippines charges quite a lot - 2000 pesos? - to its own citizens to let them leave the country, and a similar fee is charged to people with VISAs who want to leave. That's right: I'm charged money to stay in the country and I'm charged money to leave too. Think of it as a "being alive" tax. God help you if you run out of money. It's even worse for a normal Filipino emigrant, because 2000 pesos is a lot of money in a country where the minimum wage is ₱481 per day - what is that, $1.20 US per hour?

Throughout everything, my wife didn't seem at all concerned. "It's the Philippines," she shrugged. "There's always bullshit fees here."

I used to be angry about this, but anger is tempered by expectations. I hope that by learning about the bullshit fees up-front, you won't be caught off-guard with large unexpected fees after you arrive in the Philippines. Walang anuman.

One more thing: avoid one-month extensions

Most of the BI fees are charged per-visit, not per-month, so a one-month extension costs almost as much as the maximum extension of two months (which explains why they set the maximum at two months and not more.) While getting our 13(a) VISA we found out we'd need a one-month extension, which turned out to cost ₱2430 - only ₱800 of that is per-month fees.

So um...

I haven't been blogging much lately... because I don't seem to have an audience. So I've been posting lots of mini-commentaries to Facebook instead, where at least I have some Facebook Friends, but most of the time I can't get so much as a Like from my wife.

Oh, by the way... I got married late last year.

To find out how well I might fare as an active activist, I started my very first petition a little while ago, a click-bait test, and I asked all my friends to sign and share it, but none of them did. With repeated nagging, I managed to convince my wife to share it, but still nobody else would sign it. I'm taking this as a sign: nobody likes me (still). Either that or nobody cares about the topics I post about: the most important problems facing the world today, and the solutions to those problems. Between these two interpretations, it's really better if nobody likes me.

Or maybe there's some secret of social media I'm not getting.

I signed up on Medium recently - on the whole, it seems a lot better than BlogSpot, but I don't see how to make a link to my own stories, so ... I dunno. I'm not sure what to do with it.

Okay, non-readers, have a nice day!

Stop the Carnage of JJ Abrams!

I've started a petition to stop the destruction of multiple star systems at the hands of JJ Abrams. End the carnage - share this petition!

Oh, there's work.

IF YOU'RE UNEMPLOYED,
IT'S NOT BECAUSE
THERE ISN'T ANY WORK

Just look around: A housing shortage, crime, pollution; we need better schools and parks. Whatever our needs, they all require work. And as long as we have unsatisfied needs,

THERE IS WORK TO BE DONE.

So ask yourself, what kind of world has work but no jobs? It’s a world where work is not related to satisfying our needs, a world where work is only related to satisfying the profit needs of business.

This country was not built by the huge corporations or government bureaucracies. It was built by people who work. And, it is working people who should control the work to be done. Yet, as long as employment is tied to somebody else’s profits, the work won’t get done.

- An old poster from the New American Movement

DNC changes rules to block Lessig from debates

In case you still haven't learned about Lawrence Lessig and how U.S. political corruption works, I urge you to see Lessig's TED talk from two years ago - well before Lessig ever considered running for president.

Recently I offered to be part of the volunteer tech team that would help Larry Lessig in his campaign for president - his campaign to fix corruption in Washington, having earlier donated to his campaign, and before that to his MAYDAY SuperPAC. But Lessig has faced opposition from the democratic party itself, which included Martin O'Malley, Jim Webb, and Lincoln Chafee in the first debate but excluded Lessig despite his strong fundraising base:

Webb raised $697,000, while Chafee raised a paltry $15,457 (including $4,121 from himself). Lessig’s numbers put him in the same league as fellow Democrat Martin O’Malley, who raised $1,283,000, though they’re both well behind Hillary Clinton at $30 million and Bernie Sanders at $26 million.

Of course, there's a limit to how much money you can raise when no one knows your name. Lessig knew that getting in the debates was the key to changing the game. To get in the debates, you have to make at least 1% in multiple national polls - which is a big problem when some pollsters wouldn't include Lessig on the list of candidates. Even so, he recently managed to get enough exposure to qualify for the next debate. Clearly, however, certain powerful individuals had a trick up their sleeve. I was saddened to receive this message from Larry today:

I am writing with sad news that has forced me to end my campaign for the Democratic nomination for president. The Democrats have now changed the rules for the debates, making it impossible for my campaign to continue.

As you know, the critical step in this improbable campaign has been to get into the debates. Though we raised more money than almost half of the field, and with you, built a vibrant campaign for reform, the party was slow to welcome us to this race. The polls have been slow to include me on the list of candidates.

But last week, we were making progress. A national poll by Monmouth found me at 1%. Three days ago, an NBC poll found the same. HuffPost Pollster now lists three polls at 1%. Since the Monmouth poll, no poll that included my name found me with less than 1%.

Under the rules for the debate announced by the DNC in August — and upon which we relied when we launched our campaign — the standard was 3 polls “in the six weeks prior to the debate.” Depending on which polls CBS counted, we either have qualified or could be just one poll away from qualifying for the debate.

But at the end of last week, I learned from my team that the DNC has now changed the rules. The standard is no longer the rule announced by the DNC Chair — 3 polls “in the six weeks prior to the debate.” The standard is now 3 polls “at least six weeks before the debate.” That means, for me to qualify, I had to have had 3 polls at 1% before October 10! You can read the @full and sad story as described by the leader of my campaign, Steve Jarding. The consequence of this change is that it is now impossible for me to get into the second debate.

I recently started writing predictions for the future in my phone. Last week I wrote:

If serious reforms do not happen in the 2016-2020 time frame, some parts of the US government will collapse soon afterward, creating a large poverty crisis when some public services halt abruptly. Due to media manipulation by the wealthy, many U.S. citizens like my Mom and Dad will simply blame the Democrats again, but in reality the Democrats are merely ineffectual, pacified to inaction by wealthy donors, while the Republicans—funded by a fraction of the top 5% of the top 1%—will have been the true destructive force. Some states will remain largely functional, due to responsible management, but the long-term future is unpredictable. Edit: perhaps the disaster will occur earlier, but the current economic situation is unprecedented so I am not prepared to estimate exactly when things will fall apart.

I know that many, many people agree with me about this: corporations and billionaires may thrive in the coming depression, but the U.S. federal government and the U.S. economy is on the brink of disaster. And the DNC is killing one of the best chances to avert this disaster. So, what more can I say? Good night, and good luck.

I have been a Democrat my entire life. I have proudly helped elect many of the leaders of our party including Tom Daschle, Bob Kerrey, Mark Warner, Jim Webb, and Tim Johnson to high office and I have served nearly four years at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee as Communications Director and Senior Advisor. But I am sad to say that I have never experienced this kind of game playing and deception from party leaders in nearly 38 years of political activism. - Steve Jarding (campaign consultant for Lessig)

Say... who are these gatekeepers anyway? Who are these people that essentially get a sort of "veto" power to block grassroots candidates from running for president?

Reversing inflated health care costs: a free market approach

The Atlantic has a good analysis and a solid proposal for affordable health care in the U.S., which pays twice as much for health care as the average for industrialized countries. Although it was written 6 years ago, the inflated costs it talks about have only become worse since then.

It's very long, but IMO well worth reading. The techniques by which his proposal will reduce costs should excite Democrats and its focus on free markets should excite Republicans, but I fear that Democrats won't support it because it's tantamount to admitting Obamacare sucks, and Republicans won't support it because reducing health care costs would eat into the profits of hospitals and insurance providers.

Thus, those who want intelligent reforms will have to reform Congress first. Fix democracy first: vote Lessig in the primaries, and don't vote for anyone that doesn't support campaign finance reform.

Hello again, Deepak Obhrai

VoteTogether.ca asked its supporters to express their top priorities to their new MP, but my new MP is the old conservative MP (who clung to his seat with 48% of the vote). I wrote him anyway.

To be honest, I'm not a conservative, but I do think there are merits to common conservative beliefs, such as low taxes with minimal public services, a hands-off approach to governance (I mean, Calgary zoning regulations really tick me off sometimes!), a reluctance to support abortions, and so forth. I'm even sympathetic to the Conservative reaction against the niqab - hey, it creeps me out, too.

However, the Harper conservatives adopted bad policies that are not core elements of conservatism, such as the "war on data" (killing the long form census, sending libraries to landfills even if they contain the only remaining copies of certain publications, muzzling scientists), or C-23, a bill to reduce minority voter turnout, among other things. Plus, the conservatives maintained the long tradition that all parties in power enjoy, of rejecting election reforms (Direct Representation and Proportional Representation) that would make the power of people in Parliament reflect voters' wishes accurately.

So I would just urge the conservatives not to get in the way of electoral reform, and to favor small-c conservative values over big-R Republican ones.

The Needless Complexity of Academic Writing

When I was in my last year of university, trying to get my degree in Computer Engineering, one of the courses I took required me to choose a goal and write a program to fulfill that goal. My goal was to add unit inference to a programming language. This would detect, for example, that in "dist + 2 km", dist must be a quantity of kilometres; and if dist seems to have a different unit elsewhere in the same program, the program must have a bug in it.

One requirement of the course was to find and read five academic papers related to my goal, and I was indeed able to locate 5 academic papers about unit checking and unit inference. I remember there were multiple papers about unit checking that I was able to follow, but they weren't really useful because I wanted to go beyond unit checking and do the more complex task of unit inference (I won't bore you by explaining the difference between unit checking and unit inference; the essential difference is that unit inference is easier for a programmer to use, but harder for the programming language to perform. In other words, it shifts effort from the programmer to the computer.)

As I recall, the academic paper that ultimately seemed most relevant to my work was also the most incomprehensible. I'm unable to locate the paper now, 9 years later, but I remember being stuck on its use of obscure terminology such as "abelian groups" and other jargon, its reliance on an obscure programming language like ML or Lambda Calculus, and/or its use of notation that looked something like this:

(For non-programmers reading this, just let me clarify that most programmers, and perhaps most computer scientists, have never seen anything like this.)

Look, there are literally millions of professional programmers in the world. So here was a paper about concepts that all engineers know about (unit checking) that is relevant to most programmers (we all make bugs involving units at some point), for a goal that could benefit all programmers (unit inference), yet no matter how hard I tried, I could not comprehend that paper or any other paper that had useful information about the subject. In the end, the papers were worthless; I ignored them and figured out how to perform unit inference by myself.

Since that time I have tried hard to write in ways that my audience would be able to understand, and to use other communication techniques not used by those damn worthless papers (such as using good examples). Today I'd like to thank The Atlantic for reminding me about the importance of comprehensible writing, and for reminding academics that they're still doing a crappy job.

See also:

• Why academic jargon thrives
• The Myth of Academic Difficulty