Rebane's Ruminations

What’s a fair share in 2012?

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 27 January 2012.  In it I gently introduce the beginnings of monetary utility and mention fair division algorithms about both of which I intend to expand in future posts.]

In last Tuesday’s State of the Union speech President Obama made clear that he will not run for re-election on his record – it would be a disaster if he did.  With an historical congressional majority he has been able to pass all of his programs save the cap and trade bill which his own Democrats killed.  In spite of this, the resulting numbers are damning.

At a little above 60%, the fraction of productive age Americans in the workforce, working or looking for work, is the lowest ever.  Even with population growth, our economy has fewer jobs today than in January 2009.  And this after the so-called stimulus spending has increased our national debt by over $4T or about 40% in just three years, and costing $1.5M for every job that the administration claims to have created.  (Radio does not allow us to pause here for a minute or two to absorb this little statistic.)  Putting a ribbon around the whole thing, our employment rate at 8.5% is still higher than the 7.9% than the President inherited, while the major costs of Obamacare, hanging tax hikes, and the new costly EPA regulations have yet to kick in.  Running on his record is a definite no-no.

But not to worry, the political pyrotechnics locker is still chuck full of good stuff to loft into the air, there to create great eye candy in the sky, and take the voters’ mind off our real problems here on the ground.  The first thing to launch is the ‘fair share’ argument for the vilified 1%, with poster child none other than leading Republican contender Mitt Romney.

From Lysenko Loonies to Climate Change Clowns

George Rebane

The 27jan12 WSJ publishes a major piece ‘No Need to Panic About Global Warming’ signed by sixteen science and technology heavyweights.  From my perspective as a systems scientist, I long ago joined the once lonely voices that pointed out that the climate change alarmists (especially of the anthropogenic global warming stripe) were intellectually naked shills with a pernicious political agenda.

Led by internationally recognized serious science commentators (links on right) like Anthony Watts, and locally by Russ Steele, the voices of reason and scientific accuracy have been growing and becoming more prominent over the last years.  But the political steamroller has yet to show significant slowing.  AGW is now a recognized and much applied tool of the political Left which uses it at every turn to remove individual liberties and shackle economies.

The authors of the cited piece point out the eerie similarities of how politicized science today recalls the days of church proscribed scientific enquiry and communist mandated politically correct sciences of (Lysenko, et.al.) of the USSR during the first half of the 20th century.  We are there again with claimed “incontrovertible evidence” that AGW exists.  Science contains no incontrovertible evidence, and once ‘evidence’ is so ascribed, it exits the halls of reasonable enquiry and science and enters the temples of religion.

The piece concludes –

A recent study of a wide variety of policy options by Yale economist William Nordhaus showed that nearly the highest benefit-to-cost ratio is achieved for a policy that allows 50 more years of economic growth unimpeded by greenhouse gas controls. This would be especially beneficial to the less-developed parts of the world that would like to share some of the same advantages of material well-being, health and life expectancy that the fully developed parts of the world enjoy now. Many other policy responses would have a negative return on investment. And it is likely that more CO2 and the modest warming that may come with it will be an overall benefit to the planet.

If elected officials feel compelled to "do something" about climate, we recommend supporting the excellent scientists who are increasing our understanding of climate with well-designed instruments on satellites, in the oceans and on land, and in the analysis of observational data. The better we understand climate, the better we can cope with its ever-changing nature, which has complicated human life throughout history. However, much of the huge private and government investment in climate is badly in need of critical review.

Every candidate should support rational measures to protect and improve our environment, but it makes no sense at all to back expensive programs that divert resources from real needs and are based on alarming but untenable claims of "incontrovertible" evidence.

SESF Launches TechForum

George Rebane

TechForum is a new program from the Sierra Economics and Science Foundation that will feature distinguished speakers and prominent industry professionals to talk about advances in technology that will impact Nevada County businesses, industry, governments, and education.  These quarterly presentations are designed around a congenial luncheon format that allows the participants to connect and network.  The purpose of these forums is to support SESF’s TechTest merit scholarship program (‘Where the Elite Compete’) now in its sixth year.  More information on the upcoming TechForum2012.1 is found on Russ Steele’s NC2012 and by downloading the TechForum2012.1 flyer pdf seen below.

A TPP Evening with Mark Meckler

George Rebane

A vision cannot be imposed on a people, it can only be inspired.

After a good dinner at the GV Cirino’s, the Steeles and Rebanes hightailed it to the fairgrounds for the monthly evening gathering of the Nevada County Tea Party Patriots.  Our featured speaker was Mark Meckler, national co-counder of the TPP.  We thought we arrived early, but that was not to be.  The assigned parking for Ponderosa Hall was chuck full, and I wound up going in Gate #4 and weaving through a dark forest that was also packed with vehicles, before finding a slot for my truck.  The hall itself was overflowing with folks of all political colorations (even an occupier or two).

As a TPP member I am overjoyed that each meeting we hold has more people than the last.  It is now definitely a place to meet and greet all kinds of friends who feel that the country is off on the wrong track, liberty and the Constitution are sacred, and that neither party has a clue on how to get out of big government business as usual.

Homeland Security’s fundamental transformation

George Rebane

As reported here, LA and other American cities are the new training ground for our military.  They’re not exactly saying who the enemy is, but you have to be pretty dense not to figure it out.  Prominent LA radio station KFI reports that these “closed to the public” exercises in the city “are designed to ensure the military's ability to operate in urban environments, prepare forces for upcoming overseas deployments, and meet mandatory training certification requirements”.

Maybe President Obama will tell us tonight about these “upcoming overseas deployments”.  I thought that he was hell bent on bringing our troops home.  As usual, the government’s stories don’t fly in tight formation.  But not to worry, all things will be ‘clarified’ in the coming weeks, you think?

Having lived in LA all my life, we never witnessed the military training in the city to “ensure (its) ability to operate in urban environments”.  Over the years, when the riots came, so did the California National Guard, and that was that.  Now American cities are becoming training grounds for the regular military.  How does all this tie in with the promised Civilian National Security Force that is supposed to make sure we don’t get too uppity?  (H/T to a couple of RR readers on the heads up.)

Ruminations - 23jan2012

George Rebane

The Fresno Bee reports that its largest public service union SEIU will lead its 4,100+ county worker members out on strike today.  The walkout is scheduled to last three days and protest pay cuts that the union says were negotiated “unfairly”.  RR readers are familiar with the pernicious policies of public service unions first heralded in 1937 by none other than FDR himself.  No one listened.  And now across the land we are harvesting the bitter fruit of yet another progressive policy – compromised and corrupt elected officials, overcompensated public employees, society debilitating unethical ‘work actions’, and trillions of dollars of unfunded pension liabilities.

In my 18jan12 ‘Log entry on the road to ruin (aka fundamental transformation)’ I outlined the utter cynicism of Moonbeam’s new proposals on taxing the “rich”.  The state is in an economic death spiral and the socialists are doing nothing but piling on the misery, knowing full well that it will not raise anywhere near the projected revenues.  Moonbeam’s last hike in taxes projected $4B in receipts and delivered $2.2B, the projection missed the actual by more than 80%.  Now our leftwing looney is telling all his equally gifted constituents that his new taxes will pull in $5B a year.  Even California’s own Department of Finance is advising everyone within earshot not to hold their breath; that the max they could expect is about $3B a year.  And that doesn’t account for all the added high earners who will bail out for better financial climes.  The 23jan12 WSJ finally picked up on RR’s lead on this ;-)  Bottom line: much tougher sledding ahead in the gelded state.

Speaking of worldwide socialist tragedies, our own version of it will be put into overdrive if our dedicated anti-capitalist Chief Community Organizer gets re-elected.  He will take that to be ‘Mandate City’ on the path to a fundamentally transformed workers’ paradise.  Those who don’t believe this are invited to listen tomorrow night to Obama’s State of the Union speech, it promises to be a doozy.  Oprah will again shed tears of joy as she envisions ‘social justice’ spreading across the world.  But first we gotta tax all them rich guys.

The Value of Stereotyping

George Rebane

Stereotyping is the use of a template of characteristics that are thought to belong to members of a particular class more frequently than members of the general population of which the class is a subset.  The template of characteristics is also known as the stereotypical characteristics like, say, a plastic pocket protector full of writing instruments more often seen in the shirt pockets of male engineers than in the pockets of other men.

Stereotyping has gotten a bad rap in our society, and its use is roundly criticized in the public forum.  However, stereotyping, so as to assign or exclude someone from membership in a given class, is built in to almost every critter that lives on this planet.  Why?  Simply because it is a low cost survival technique that has evolved in all species to simplify quick decisions about the famous ‘Three F’ functions – feed, fight, or mount - important to everyone.

But if you understand the underpinnings of stereotyping, it can be a valuable tool in making all kinds of decisions, and also serve as a mirror for better understanding yourself.  I was motivated to write this piece when recently reading Daniel Kahneman’s monumental Thinking, Fast and Slow which dances around the subject without getting into the nitty-gritty of it because of the little math involved.  Kahneman, recent Nobelist and co-father of behavioral economics with the late Amos Tversky, is also a giant in the field of psychology.  In that field stereotyping comes up under the forbidding label of representativeness (q.v. – which is short for quod vide or ‘which see’, and I’ve concluded that its modern version is simply ‘google it’.)

Now consider seeing a good looking woman, finely coiffed, beautifully dressed, and dripping with expensive jewelry, getting out of a chauffeured limousine in front of a fancy restaurant.  You wonder if she’s a member of the currently notorious ‘1%’.  More particularly, what are the chances (friendly word for ‘probability’) that she is a member of that exclusive class, given she has some of the stereotypical characteristics of that class that you just observed?  If you had been facing the other way and your friend told you that a woman just got out a car behind you; then without seeing her, what would you answer if he mused whether the woman belonged to the '1%'?

Responding to Mr Fred Perry (updated 24jan2012)

George Rebane

Too bad that The Union has erected a paywall around its online edition that also includes their op-ed pages.  Usually newspapers going to that source of revenue leave their op-ed pieces as free content so that it will attract more eyeballs, and in the process help sell 'premium content' that’s behind the paywall.  In any case, more people would see some ads on the newspaper’s startpage.  But I’m sure that publisher Jeff Ackerman and the people at Swift Communications used some pretty sharp pencils to puzzle out the net dollars and cents of this decision.  In any event, I hope it works out well for their bottom line.

Nevertheless, I have a lament about that paywall.  You see a Penn Valley gentleman named Fred Perry wrote an Other Voices piece – Re: ‘Devil in democracy', by George Rebane – in today’s (21jan12) Union.  And I’d like all RR readers to be able to read Mr Perry’s contribution.  I was intrigued that his response to my 14jan12 column ‘The Devil in Democracy’ called for an even longer reply.  But its reading made clear that the response could be construed to also support the upcoming ‘teach-in’ against the ‘Citizens United’ ruling by SCOTUS.  The Union has recently been giving that event all the support they could wish for.

Reading Mr Perry’s tortured arguments to counter what he thought I had said is in itself an education in miscommunications and who knows what else.  (Made doubly difficult for the Union reader due to no link to my original piece.)  For example the man completely missed my strong commendation of our republic and Constitution, as off the starting blocks he criticizes my offering no alternatives to naked democracy.  From there he departs on a meandering journey of fabricating propositions not raised in my piece, to which he then proceeds to offer disjointed counter arguments.  While I am pleased that his reading of my piece motivated such a literary outpouring, perhaps a rereading would have better focused his objections onto the topic that I discussed.  Then again, maybe not.

[24jan2012 update]  For the record I make available here a more detailed response to Mr Perry's energetic attempt at criticizing my Union column.  The pdf is Mr Perry's article annotated with my comments.

Our Mobile Politicians

George Rebane

Our California Assemblyman Dan Logue just announced that he “changed his mind” and will no longer represent us.  He is moving out of our community – into which he moved just last year – to another city in another assembly district.  This makes sense for him when he considers his longer term prospects in politics.  Politicians make these moves on a regular basis.  Our congressman Tom McClintock is a transplant from southern California where it was harder for him to get into Congress.  And our state senator Doug LaMalfa is abandoning his California seat for a try at the House of Representatives this November.  Musical chairs to the max.

Now I’m not against anyone trying to make a good living and seek advancement in their profession.  No shame, no blame in all these moves.  But it does occur to me that we should bear such machinations in mind when we encounter and then decide to support our elected politicians.  Traditionally, since our school days these people have been presented to us as individuals of extraordinary abilities and character.  After all, when elected they become explicitly honorable and indicate that by appending ‘The Honorable …’ to their titles and names.

This feeling, or should I say aura, comes from our democratic roots.  In thousands of communities across the country, we imagine ourselves having always gathered together to discuss our local concerns, and then joining to select ‘one of us’ to run for high office.  And then, with our blessings and good wishes, to go off into some capitol to do battle in our behalf.  Those elected have always been viewed as ‘our people’ with roots that entwine with ours,  roots that go deeper into our soil and past than the new comer just off the stage upon whom we instinctively fix our gimlet eye.  But this is far from today’s reality as defined by ever shifting district lines, mass communications, rapid travel, multiple residences, and easy moves.

Here today, they all promise to bear our standard into the long fight – we must recall that every politician heralds intimate knowledge of our community and long tenure in complex legislatures as a part his strong suit for re-election – you just can’t send anyone ‘up there’.  But tomorrow better opportunity beckons, and off they go.  So in this day and age, how are we supposed to deport ourselves as we nervously finger our checkbooks when deciding whether to put our money where their mouths are?

Log entry on the road to ruin (aka fundamental transformation)

George Rebane

As usual I woke up to National Propaganda Radio and heard a mind-numbing hit piece on income inequality that for openers confused tax fraction, tax rate, paid taxes beyond any means of recovery.  But they did manage not to mangle the message that rich people should not make so much money, and most certainly they should pay more taxes than they already are.

From there we went to the California Capitol where Governor Moonbeam ‘California is on the mend’ Brown gave his state of the state address demonstrating that his head is still firmly planted where the sun don’t shine.  To a state in a permanent downward spiral, he proposed raising sales taxes and income taxes on the ‘rich’ (those who already pay the elephant’s share of state taxes), giving a go-ahead on the fast rail to nowhere, abetting CARB’s green regulations, and proposing less testing in California’s schools that already pump more students into our prison system than it can handle.  And the list of inanities and insanities goes on.

On the national scene we heard that Obama in his fervent desire to promote Agenda21 (shhh!) nixed providing for America’s energy security and gave a pass to China by turning down the Keystone XL pipeline project.  Too many jobs would be created, while too many core constituent environmentalists would be pissed off if the pipeline brought Canadian oil down to Texas refineries.  Much better to take it across the Canadian Rockies to a Pacific port and ship it to Asia.  Every vote counts.

And locally we have the Nevada County loonies (aka Occupiers) looking forward to a massive ‘teach in’ (wasn’t that what Göbbels called those little gatherings in Nürnberg and the Reichstag?) about corporate political contributions (unions too?) and the taxing of assets.  It turns out that a new tenet in the occupier mantra is that you shouldn’t “hoard” the stuff that belongs to you.  That is socially unfair and irresponsible.  And, of course, the state should step in and make sure that every year another piece of what you thought you had bought and paid taxes on would be turned over to the government.  Why? because it has allowed you to live and breathe air (which privileges will be taken away promptly if you resist remittance of that last little joy of property ownership).  Also see 'Taxing Your Assets Off'.

Another day on the march to a socially just world.

Ruminations – 17jan2012 [updated]

George Rebane

We have long heard that ‘stupid is forever’, and now we have indelible proof of that proposition.  Moonbeam has no clue that California has a systemic fiscal disaster on its hands.  His proposed budget for FY2013 is $95.4B when he adds up all the transfers to the general fund from raiding every other kind of account imaginable.  But the pinhead’s piece de resistance is the brilliant idea of taxing the bejeezus out of the upcoming stock cash-ins resulting from recent IPOs that he projects the fortunate employees of those companies will exercise.  His own Legislative Analyst’s Office is telling him not to hold his breath until he collects all those one-time state income taxes.

But what really frosts me is the depth of ignorance that progressives have about what has been going on in the state.  We already depend on a small cohort - the top tenth - of wage earners to pony up almost 75% of the state’s budgets, and almost every 3-digit type knows that continuing on this policy is sheer lunacy.  So what does Moonbeam do?  He doubles down on stupid, and is now trying to convince everyone that he’s solving California’s long-term crisis with a one-off short-term tax bounce that itself is based on la-la land accounting.  Meanwhile, he's driving more companies out the state with economy killing green initiatives that seem to multiply like weeds.  And our liberal neighbors are cheering him on as they continue sending to Sacramento people with big bulbous red noses wearing funny looking large shoes.  (There’s more, and the details are here.)

‘Can a Nonexistent Congress Issue $1.2T in Debt?’ asks Daniel Horwitz of RS Redstate.  While contemplating this, we recall that through an historic decision by the Chief Community Organizer, this same Congress was made “non-existent” through the claim that it is reposing in blissful recess.  The CCO then rushed through a recess appointment on another czar whose job is to keep the promised fundamental transformation on schedule.  So, without even so much as a wink-wink from behind the teleprompter, our fearless leader brazenly plays the game from both sides of Recess Street.

[update] You remember CALPERS, the California state employees pension outfit that was supposed go forward making 7.5% on its portfolio to work off its members' hundreds of billions of unfunded liabilities.  Well, it seems that reality is striking home and things are going the other way (as CALPERS was warned by all).  The funds manager has just decided to write down one fifth of its real estate portfolio taking a haircut that will range between 30% and 50%, not counting the appreciation it could have had on the initially invested monies.  The investments were made during the real estate bubble for which government employee pension funds, along with Fannie and Freddie, were somehow left out of the fulminations and fury that unions and occupiers continue to heap on “the banks”.

Science still says, ‘Creation occurred.’

George Rebane

The best brains in cosmology ranging from Stephen Hawking of Cambridge to Alan Guth of MIT have been trying to munge the equations and the data to come up with some/any kind of support for the proposition that the universe did not have a beginning.

NewScientist.com reports in ‘Why physicists can’t avoid a creation event’ -

YOU could call them the worst birthday presents ever. At the meeting of minds convened last week to honour Stephen Hawking's 70th birthday - loftily titled "State of the Universe" - two bold proposals posed serious threats to our existing understanding of the cosmos.

One shows that a problematic object called a naked singularity is a lot more likely to exist than previously assumed (see "Naked black-hole hearts live in the fifth dimension"). The other suggests that the universe is not eternal, resurrecting the thorny question of how to kick-start the cosmos without the hand of a supernatural creator.

While many of us may be OK with the idea of the big bang simply starting everything, physicists, including Hawking, tend to shy away from cosmic genesis. "A point of creation would be a place where science broke down. One would have to appeal to religion and the hand of God," Hawking told the meeting, at the University of Cambridge, in a pre-recorded speech.

After looking under every theoretical rock available today, and then some, the bottom line is that “all these theories still demand a beginning.”

As a proponent of Intelligent Design (not to be confused with Creationism), I continue to celebrate such corroborative reports as satisfying Occam’s razor to the max.

The Devil in Democracy

George Rebane

[This is the linked form of my regular Union column which is published in the newspaper’s 14jan12 edition.]

When progressives start to talk about democracy again, it is time to get a real firm grip on your wallet and your liberties.  Democracy is now the watchword that echoes across the occupied streets, and also the revived cry of the labor unions.  What could be a more appropriate and compelling message during an election year?  Aren’t we a democracy, and haven’t we been taught that democracy is the best for everyone?

Actually, ‘democracy’ has always wound up as the first stepping stone to autocracy.   The guiles of democracy as a form of governance were understood by the Greeks over two thousand years ago.  And since then writers and historians over the ages have documented the steady progression of suicides committed by democracies.  Our Founders were well-read men of intellect and learning, they were not about to risk their lives, fortunes, and honor in backing a revolution that would leave a short-lived democracy as their legacy.  Today, our poorly educated of all creeds and colors believe that America once was a democracy that has been subverted by the greedy rich – it is time to revolt and again return the country to a democracy.

The problem is that democracy’s sweet spot is small.  It works primarily within groups that have a common culture, a common understanding of the situation, and a desire for fairly similar outcomes.  In such fortunate populations there are no sizeable contending factions whose victory would impose a long lasting cost on the others.  So since there may be more than one way to get to such a mutually beneficial outcome, a democratic vote as to which path to pursue is proper.  But remove one or more of these ingredients from the mix, and you are soon boiling a bitter brew.

Taxing Your Assets Off

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 13 January 2012.]

Most people know that governments fund themselves by taxing income, profits, consumption, and assets.  The first three we have become used to at least to a degree where we now debate how much higher or lower such taxes should be.  It’s the tax on assets that causes pupils to dilate and blood pressures to rise – well, at least on those who have assets.  All countries have a natural division between their makers and takers, the latter being reliable backers of any and all taxes on the makers, because that’s where the money is.

But asset taxes are somehow different.  Maybe one reason is that many takers also own assets.  Almost everyone instinctively knows that an assets tax (aka ‘wealth tax’) allows the state to take what you have already worked for, have already paid taxes on, and put aside to support your way of life.  Your assets - like your house, land, car, collectibles, business, and bank account – are part of the extended you, part of the established perpetuity that you want your kids to have.  It is for that reason that you belong to a culture, a society, and a sovereign nation-state, because they claim to provide an environment for guaranteeing your security, property, and liberty.  And it is for that reason that you will man the ramparts, and put your life on the line when your country is in danger.

With the discussion of a new assets tax, all things become possible.  In a recent issue of the Wall Street Journal, Stanford economics professor Ronald McKinnon argues for an add-on assets tax for the purpose of – seatbelts fastened? – for the purpose of mollifying the street occupiers.  He even sprinkles sugar on his proposal by claiming to make “the conservative case” for such a tax.  The example he presents is that the government would annually confiscate 3% of your accumulated wealth in excess of $3M.  And that means everything you own, including the “imputed rental value of owner-occupied homes”.