Archive for July, 2006

Here we will archive all of the data files that we use for posts:

Average of six polls forecasting the 2008 Presidential election under the Clinton vs. McCain scenario

World’s arms exports and imports by country with graphs showing leading countries and broken down by country income levels

Historical poverty levels by country

GDP per capita on a PPP basis by country

Unemployment and median weekly earnings data divided by race

Analysis of increase in black vote needed for the southern states to be put in play for Obama

You can read my old Daily Illini columns and the e-debates that ensued from them at my old blog, Conservative Means, Liberal Ends. To read the last 20 or so entries I’ve written on Urbanagora click on this link.

Billy Joe Mills graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in May 2006. He majored in Political Science, Economics, and Finance. He began law school at UIUC in Fall 2006 and will graduate in 2009.

His undergraduate activities included: Daily Illini Columnist; Provost Search Committee; Illinois Student Senate Committee Chairman; College Republicans Committee Chairman; Participation in 13 public debates alongside undergrads, grads, and professors; Founder of the Political Forums Newsletter; Martin Luther King Commemorative Committee; Tuition Policy Advisory Committee(testified in Springfield on behalf of Committee); Dialogues on Diversity Chairman; Chancellor’s Advisory Committee; other committees. In law school he is co-president of the Federalist Society.

Billy (that’s actually me, I’m writing this, but I’m pretending it’s not me by writing it in 3rd person, which is why I sound so damn good so far) has also been the recipient of multiple awards and scholarships, including the Lincoln Academy Laureate, which is awarded by the Governor to one senior at each university in Illinois as voted by deans and faculty.

Outside of school Billy has been a Precinct Captain in Schaumburg Township, an intern at the Cook County Public Defender’s Office, and a researcher in economics and comparative constitutional law at the Center for the Study of Democratic Governance. He is also Governor Edgar’s research assistant at the Institute of Government and Public Affairs. Billy is addicted to becoming skilled at various games, thus he currently plays about an hour of chess a day on gameknot.com (you can play me, my name is onemanbandbjm).

In 2006 he, along with William Shatner, founded The Billy Joe Mills Institute for the International Dissemination of the Glorious Triumph of Democracy and Capitalism – ©Copyright 2006. It has quickly become the world’s most frequently cited Think Tank (relax, just a joke).

He enjoys poker, fantasy and real baseball, the Chicago Cubs, da Bears, classic rock, wearing vests, and not drinking alcohol.

You can view my blogger profile.

You can email me at billyjoemills@gmail.com

Johnny Cash wrote this song for me in anticipation of my birth.

Here’s the bio that I wrote for the Daily Illini:

Billy Joe Mills is a conservative in the most traditional, Burkean sense. He believes in radically changing government, at times advocating for the march of militant moderates. He is so extreme that he has reportedly confessed to being a straight white male Christian conservative. However, he is a devout moderate President McCain conservative, thus none of his beliefs are derived from his religion. In June 2006 Mills, along with Sir William Shatner, established a neoconservative think tank devoted to the violent spread of peaceful liberty. As a first year law student he considers Billy Joe Mills to be the next Denny Crane. While serious in debate, he can often be spotted playing with bouncy balls on campus, and he was co-founder of the Bouncy Ball Appreciation and Distribution Association (B.B.A.D.Ass.). He frequently denies the accusation that he is blissfully unaware of himself, particularly on the subject of arrogance. His views are too complex and nuanced to be understood by most people, but 99 percent of the time they are simple and brutish. He believes in helping people by not helping them much at all, making foreign peoples less violent by going to war with them, and lowering taxes on rich people to help poor people. Mills is so desperate to meet new girls that he strongly encourages strangers to email him, but warns that he does not like getting emails from girls he does not know.

Brandon has decided to write a real biography.

Brandon was born on an auspicious autumn day at Glendale Adventist Hospital in Glendale, California. He is one of five children from multiple marriages, having two sisters from his father’s first marriage, one brother from his mother’s second marriage, and one sister from his mother’s fourth marriage. He spent much of his early life in northeast Los Angeles although much of this period is a hazy blur of things he’s blocked out or would rather not remember. At the age of seven he was taken from the happy and carefree schoolyard of the local public school and thrust into the brutal regime of Catholic school where he remained until he was in middle school. Upon returning to public school at age 12, he was socially maladjusted and his performance in school tanked from top of his class to near the bottom.

Ever so slowly his social skills improved and he was again made socially acceptable when he discovered the cult of the Theatre god Dramaticus and became a drama kid his junior year in high school. While in the theatre group he had the privilege of directing a children’s theatre group and acting in multiple pieces for competition and performance for the general public. He received first place at the Cal Poly Shakespeare festival his senior year and made the semi-finals and finals in several other theatre competitions.

Having graduated high school and broken many of his theatre company’s dating taboos, he began college at the University of California, Santa Cruz. There, under the guidance of his college provost, he quickly took an interest in politics and world events, developing a passion for public policy and history. He wound up majoring in Sociology. In the middle of his sophomore year he was in a horrible and probably-fatal-to-anyone-else accident which caused him to seriously re-evaluate his priorities in life. Shortly thereafter he went to the University of California Center in Sacramento where he interned for a state senator and got his first taste of real politics as he lobbied and did constituent services work while taking classes in the evenings.

Immediately after this experience, he moved to Washington D.C. where he interned for the National Science Foundation and had the honor of meeting numerous diplomats and government ministers from throughout Latin America. Also during this time he met the woman who was to become his wife, a fiery little Puerto Rican who reminded him that he was actually Latino and that his Spanish was utterly horrible. A little over a year later they were married and moved to Puerto Rico for six months where he wrote an extensive paper evaluating the political situation of one of America’s last colonies.

He graduated from the University of California with a B.A. in Sociology in 2006 with honors overall and high honors in his major and was admitted into the prestigious honors society Phi Beta Kappa. He currently attends the University of Illinois College of Law where he is an active member of the Law School Democrats, Latino/Latina Student Association, and a founding member of the Immigration Law Society.

Brandon Ruiz came out of the closet from being hidden as Hanno for the past year after returning to Law after a brief flirtation with the Hill.

Born in Glendale, California to a Puerto Rican father who grew up destitute in Spanish Harlem, and a white mother who led a bizarre existence in the affluent suburb of Tiburon near San Francisco, Brandon is a flying squirrel. He was raised primarily in the neighborhoods of Highland Park and El Sereno in East Los Angeles with a lot of shuffling around the San Gabriel Valley for most of his teenage years. At seventeen he left Los Angeles to attend college at the University of California at Santa Cruz (most known for the human genome, pot, and radical activism) where he received his B.A. in Sociology. He is currently a 3L at the University of Illinois College of Law and eagerly awaits the day that he graduates so that he can escape Illinois winters.

Brandon has spent most of his adult life working in politics and has inexplicably found himself pulled into criminal law despite having no extraordinary desire to see people go to jail, it’s just where the tides of fate have pushed him. He currently splits his weeks between the L.A. City Attorney’s Office doing misdemeanor child pornography/exploitation, fraud, and political corruption cases and working with the L.A. Bar’s Immigration Legal Assistance clinic learning immigration law and doing client counseling.

Oh yes, and he enjoys camping, hiking, long walks on the beach, and a carcass free diet.