Rebane's Ruminations

A functional idiot at work

George Rebane

“We have to pass this (healthcare) bill so that you can find out what’s in it.”  said a sober looking Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives, United States Congress in session on 9 March 2010 in Washington, District of Columbia, US of A speaking to the American electorate.  At this point further words fail.

Sustaining Sustainability

George Rebane

Sustainability season is upon us, and it will probably beat spring this year in all the blooming proposals that will be written to attract other people’s money to Nevada County.  Nevada City is leading the way with consultant facilitated public workshops that will identify the sustainable projects which the city will undertake once the money comes rolling in.  Well, some of the projects actually don’t need OPM, and can be launched with new ordnances designed to nudge us to behave properly or else.

I briefly observed this effort being launched and gain steam last Monday (8 March) in city hall.  The gathering definitely looked enthusiastic, with lots of high energy evident at each of the breakout tables.  It looked like attendance was a bit north of sixty, all under the able hand of Mayor Reinette Senum and consultant.  So I asked a fellow observer and colleague how they had cleared the first hurdle, namely defining ‘sustainable’.  He informed me that they decided to bypass that hurdle and get right down to business.  After all, everyone knows what sustainable means – don’t they?

Actually, here’s a little test you can do yourself.  Ask ten people to define sustainable, and see if you don’t get twelve distinct but perfectly good answers.  It turns out that sustainable is one of the more slippery words in the English language.  Sort of like, depends what your definition of ‘is’ is.

Water + Sunlight = Energy

George Rebane

I’ve been an open critic of ARRA ever since it started a year ago.  But I do want to report on a possible benefit that may derive out of ARRA funds that are being channeled through the Advanced Research Projects Agency(Energy branch) to Sun Catalytix, a start-up in Massachusetts.   Physorg.com reports –

With one bottle of drinking water and four hours of sunlight, MIT chemist Dan Nocera claims that he can produce 30 KWh of electricity, which is enough to power an entire household in the developing world. With about three gallons of river water, he could satisfy the daily energy needs of a large American home.

Using the electricity generated from a 30-square-meter photovoltaic array, Nocera's cobalt-phosphate catalyst converts water and carbon dioxide into hydrogen and oxygen. The process is similar to organic photosynthesis, except that in nature, plants create energy in the form of sugars instead of hydrogen.

The hydrogen produced through artificial photosynthesis can be stored in a tank and later used to produce electricity by being recombined with oxygen in a fuel cell, even when the sun isn't shining. Alternatively, the hydrogen can be converted into a liquid fuel.

With his start-up company, Sun Catalytix, which was awarded $4 million in government funding through the new ARPA-E agency, Nocera hopes to make the system affordable enough to allow individual homes to generate their own fuel and electricity on-site.

There’s an old Estonian saying that even a blind chicken pecking will sooner or later find a seed.  If this works, it may be one helluva seed.  Here’s an unabashed promo video that’s a little disappointing.  If the technology is real, some other stuff could have been shown.  But this looks like a government sponsored show n’ tell, and we can all hope for the best.

 

 

Census Fraud

George Rebane

County CEO Rick Haffey sent out this warning in his usual ‘Friday memo’ to the Supes yesterday.  Good stuff to know as we prepare to answer the 2010 census.
 
Beware of Fraudulent Census Questionnaires: You may have seen the all county e-mail that was sent out yesterday concerning fraudulent census questionnaires. As the 2010 Census count has begun, with it comes the opportunity for identity thieves and crooks to take advantage of unsuspecting victims. The Planning Department received a call from a constituent from Alta Sierra yesterday who thinks she filled out a fraudulent Census questionnaire that she received in the mail.  The questionnaire asked for her social security number, creditor and bank information. She stated that the return mailing address was somewhere in Nevada City. She also stated that the form looked official and said that she would be violating federal law if she did not return it. It is possible that during the 2010 Census Count potential identity thieves may contact you via mail, e-mail or in person.  It is important to note that the 2010 Census does not ask for personal information, such as social security, bank account, or credit account numbers. Official 2010 Census takers should also never solicit for donations or contact you by e-mail. It is recommended that if you feel someone is falsely representing the Census Bureau, that you contact your local law enforcement agency. For additional information on the 2010 Census, such as What the Census Does Not Ask and How to Identify a Census Taker, please refer to the County’s “2010 Census is Coming” webpage or the U.S. Census Bureau’s Website.

http://mynevadacounty.com/cda/index.cfm?ccs=772&cs=4326
www.2010census.gov

Dismal Science is not Science

George Rebane

RR readers are familiar with the two pillars on which science stands – Occam’s razor and falsifiability.  I have for years railed against the economics on which know-nothing public policy makers rely.  Almost all of them are innocent of any training in math-science, and most of them are innumerate to boot.  The gaps in their education and knowledge are firmly patched with hubris, and the belief that we are dumber than they are.

After Dr Russ Roberts wrote his 27feb10 WSJ piece, I started unlimbering my pen for a dissertation on reinforcing Roberts’ points and filling in some gaps he left.  This morning’s WSJ contained a letter from a reader, Theodore A. Gebhard, that covers almost everything I wanted to say, and covers it well.  The only notion I want to re-emphasize from past RR postings is that it is the collectivist economists (e.g. Paul Krugman of Princeton) and their political funders who continue to believe and convince us that their mathematical models are science which should inform new public policies and how we organize our governance.  In this, these people are worse than the scam artists in climate science who claim verity in their general circulation models and have now made that ‘science’ a fraudulent enterprise.  But I digress.

The sequel contains Mr/Dr? Gebhard’s letter in its entirety, and I throw in one from Mr Roy Carriker for good measure.  Enjoy.

===
Russ Roberts is spot on in questioning whether economics can legitimately be called a science ("Is the Dismal Science Really a Science?," op-ed, Feb. 27). The great 20th-century philosopher of science, Karl Popper, famously defined a scientific question as one that can be framed as a falsifiable hypothesis. Economics cannot satisfy that criterion. No matter the mathematical rigor and internal logic of any theoretical proposition in economics, empirically testing it by means of econometrics necessarily requires that the regression equations contain stochastic elements to account for the complexity that characterizes the real-world economy. Specifically, the stochastic component accounts for all of the innumerable unknown and unmeasurable factors that cannot be precisely identified but nonetheless influence the economic variable being studied or forecasted.
 
What this means is that economists need never concede that a theory is wrong when their predictions fail to materialize.

Social Security Lockbox - KVMR commentary

George Rebane

[I recorded this commentary for its scheduled 5mar10 run on KVMR FM89.5.  The topic was a continuation of ‘The Sad Tale of Patricia Black’ post that exposed a surprising ignorance that a large number on the left profess about the status of Social Security funding.  I consider this to be a serious problem in the intellectual make-up of our electorate, at least equivalent to persistent beliefs that the Apollo 11 moon landing was staged in a restricted area hangar somewhere.  Such beliefs, when taken into the voting booth, also burden the rest of us.]

What comes after trillions, gazillions?  Today all government dollar figures describing debt, deficits, budgets, unfunded liabilities, … all have become denominated in trillions of dollars.  What happened to the billions that were huge only yesterday?   And no one even mentions millions anymore - have those become governmental chump change?

Hi, I’m George Rebane trying to make sense out of these numbers.  First, let’s get one thing settled from the gitgo, any Washington politicians, who tell you that they know how to pay off our nation’s financial obligations, are lying in their socks.  And you can tell them that I said so.

The US government’s unfunded liabilities are today somewhere north of $106 trillion, of which our national debt is but a small part.  This amount is owed in many ways to many different people, but don’t ever think that it does not have to be made good.  In one way or another it all must be paid, and paid out of our pockets.  But no one has provided for these payments, and that’s why no one wants to talk about it.

Love that 'Pivot to Jobs'

George Rebane

FIREARMS REFRESHER COURSE

George Rebane

The Supreme Court is hearing a landmark gun rights case (here).  I have lived when and where citizens were denied the right to bear arms – it was not a good time or place for humanity.  Therefore, I have little patience for people espousing restrictive gun control theories.  A measure of a person’s civilized behavior is when he can harm you yet he will not, and not his behavior when he has been constrained to harm no one, not even in the defense of family or self.  Throughout history, and especially in the twentieth century, the state has been and remains the greatest killer of its own people.  Our founders knew this, many of our recent leaders do not.

• The American Revolution would never have happened with gun control.
• “Those who hammer their guns into plows will plow for those who do not.”  ~Thomas Jefferson
• “Those who trade liberty for security have neither.” ~John Adams
• Free men do not ask permission to bear arms.
• An armed man is a citizen. An unarmed man is a subject.
• Gun control is not about guns; it's about control.
• Only a government that is afraid of its citizens tries to control them.
• Know guns, know peace, know safety.  No guns, no peace, no safety.
• You don't shoot to kill; you shoot to stay alive.
• Assault is a behavior, not a device.
• The Second Amendment is in place in case the politicians ignore the others.
• Guns have only two enemies; rust and politicians.   
• When you remove the people's right to bear arms, you create slaves.
• You only have the rights you are willing to fight for.
• What part of 'shall not be infringed' do you NOT understand?
• The United States Constitution (c) 1791. All Rights Reserved. 

[For the record – I am a lifelong NRA member, a member of the Nevada County Sportsmen’s Club, a former combat arms officer (US Army), avid shooter, and gun owner.  I support the concept of par force and extending our firearm laws to include those of Switzerland.  H/T to an RR reader who sent some of the above material that I have edited for this post.]

 

The Sad Tale of Patricia Black

George Rebane

Ms Patricia Black is one of probably millions across the country who has been taken in by the progressive media and pundits debunking America’s Social Security crisis.  In a letter to the newspaper, she lambasts my 13feb10 Union column for “perpetuating the mistaken idea that Social Security is broke.”  She firmly believes that there is an “amassed surplus of $2.7 trillion” ready to be doled out “with no changes” to beneficiaries “for at least 30 years.”

What that poor woman, along with her similarly persuaded cohort, does not understand is that the famous Social Security ‘lock box’, so proudly displayed by Al Gore many years ago, is full of nothing but Treasury bonds.  These are IOUs of the US government that must first be cashed in before the SS recipients can spend it.  As such, they must be paid for by future taxes or future borrowing or future printing.  There simply is no spendable money there, and as fungible Treasuries, the SS recipients have to get in line with all the other holders of Treasuries here and around the world.  And since the Congressional Budget Office projects that our federal government will run in the red to the tune of about $1 trillion a year, literally forever, there is no money set aside to pay for SS or, for that matter, anything else that the government is obligated for.  It will all have to come out of the general fund one way or another.

Ms Black and her ilk join the similarly disadvantaged yet joyful women in Detroit, who when interviewed about where all the economic stimulus money was coming from, said they thought it came from a “stash” that President Obama had access to somewhere.  Does that sound familiar?

The sad tale of this ignorance grows when we consider that it is these millions of duped people who give comfort to the spendthrifts in Congress to continue their spending, while smoke-screening this and about another $100 trillion of unfunded government liabilities from public view.  One could argue that these beliefs are a charming aspect of our backwoods isolation up here, but that would be an oversimplification.  In spite of a legion of articles, analyses, and media interviews with responsible leaders, analysts, and economists (more here and here), the myth of the ‘stash’ or ‘lock box’ survives, and shows itself in letters like the one written by Ms Black.

Ruminations - 2mar2010

George Rebane

- If your day seems shorter and step lighter …
- Ackerman roasted for editorial
- Local blogger reaches for new highs
- Rio Tinto manages luddites in Australia

The Chilean earthquake affected all earthlings, but most just a mite.  A NASA scientist has calculated that the earthquake shifted enough mass in the earth’s mantle to tilt its axis and shorten our day by a 1.26 microseconds (here).  This is not enough so that you’d notice, but if you’re watching your weight, your bathroom scale will give you the good news – but it will be hard to see.  But all kidding aside, as a public service I have calculated that as of today Nevada County residents will weigh about 0.00000000146% (or 1.46 nano-percent) less than they did before the quake.  This little improvement will not require anyone to update their driver’s license, unless the government, as part of their new jobs program, wants to create even more jobs at the local DMVs.  But then again, any port in a storm.

Editor/publisher Jeff Ackerman wrote a good editorial in today’s Union (here) highlighting the parallels of California’s financial quandaries with that of Greece today.  As you may know, Greece is heading for the mud financially, and the rest of the euro-zone countries don’t know what to do.  Most of them are not in a position to do anything, but a few like Germany and France might be if they wanted.  Greece isn’t teetering on bankruptcy by accident, it did it to itself over the last couple of decades just like California.  The two have flown in pretty tight formation and are now in the same position of fiscal decrepitude.  The only difference is that California has the ability to petition the printing presses in Washington; well, that’s another story that I covered previously and you can check out more here from the WSJ.

All that aside, please take a look at the comments that Jeff’s article drew taking him to task in a most unkind manner.  It is the local view into the alternative universe that we all live next to cheek by jowl.

Calpers, Capers? – what the L is the difference? (updated)

George Rebane

Readers familiar with my screeds were informed almost two years ago of the unfunded liabilities game played across our formerly golden state.   One aspect of the game was how Calpers – the world’s largest state employees’ retirement fund manager – was projecting its future income from the retirement monies it invests.  The yokels at that organization were telling equally gullible local officials all over the landscape that they would earn a handsome 7.75% net on their investments, and the locals should plan their retirement contributions based on this performance.

I and several other lonely voices on the sidelines tried our best to get out the message that Calpers was smoking funny stuff.  Local jurisdictions already underwater in their unfunded liabilities should plan on much higher remittances if they were not going to stiff their retirees when it came time to write the checks.  Ridicule from those who knew better was our lot.

But now comes the hot flash, and you guessed it.  The 1mar10 WSJ reports (here) that

One Census Too Far

George Rebane

The feds are telling us that they need to collect all that data about us in the 2010 census so that government can serve us better.  Nine out of ten of us will get the ‘short form’ that already goes beyond what the Constitution prescribes for a census.  One out of ten will get the ‘long form’ that includes questions about your mortgage and what time you leave for work in the morning.  If you sleep with a teddy bear, you will be outed.  (BTW, I couldn't find the link for the long form, can anyone help?)

I got this link from CABPRO that features a YouTube video of Jerry Day telling us about a sinister experience he had with the Census Bureau when he submitted a set of questions for a scheduled telephone interview with them.  Upon seeing the questions, the feds cancelled the interview and refused to answer a single question.  I would have asked the same questions, and my guess is, so would you.  Michelle Malkin, one of my very favorite on-air commentators and bloggers, also has a worthy piece or two on this census (here).

For those Americans keeping track of government overreach and concerned about their privacy, each of these data gathering projects is more comprehensive and intrusive as far as painting a very accurate and intimate picture of each of us.  Instinctively, this is something a free people would reject.  But like slowly boiling frogs, we have been taught not to notice the increasing encroachment into our lives.  Taught?  Here’s an example of an Obama student propaganda program that teaches the joy of compliance to our little darlings.  As the song says, ‘They’ve got be carefully taught.’

If the Tea Party Patriots are looking for a concrete rallying point for highlighting an intrusive, wasteful government, then organizing their membership for a meaningful pushback to the ‘Census Enumerator’ who rings your doorbell would be something we all could get excited about.  In the military you are taught that the Geneva Convention requires a prisoner to give only his name, rank, and serial number.  We should reveal the moral equivalent of this – name, gender, and age of the occupants of the household.

To serve us better, … hmmm?  I’m reminded of an old science fiction story (and movie) in which some technologically superior aliens arrived.  They claimed to be galactic do-gooders whose job it was to elevate and benefit the species they encountered across the galaxy.  Their prescriptions for Earth were contained in a book entitled ‘How to Serve Man’ that they displayed, but which we could not read since it was written in their language.  The aliens delivered on their promise - wars were abolished, diseases disappeared, food and entertainment was available to all.  A program was started to take some people back to their world on a regular basis for advanced training.  The new utopia came to an end when a stowaway human made it back to Earth to reveal that ‘How to Serve Man’ was a cookbook.

Clerk-Recorder – There’s more to be said …

George Rebane

Let me say from the gitgo that I support Barry Pruett for Clerk-Recorder and have contributed to his campaign.  On his blog my friend Aaron Klein (another person the Rebanes support) has written an eloquent endorsement of Barry with which I totally agree.  Yesterday our Union published a lengthy front page article that covers almost all the factors related to the Clerk-Recorder office support software issue that is beginning to be the vortex around which this election is now revolving, or should I say, spinning.  For the sequel, I assume that you have read the article.

What I found puzzling in the Union piece was its discussion of the procurement process for the support software in question, and the subsequent complaint (law suit) filed by AtPac that is now pending against Aptitude Solutions (Florida company and current software supplier), Nevada County, and Mr. Greg Diaz, our sitting Clerk-Recorder.  I speak from over twenty years experience as supplier of services, software, and hardware to governments at all levels ranging from the federal down to individual school districts in counties across the land.

I was puzzled by the newspaper’s description of how our county procures software, and presumably other items from private sector vendors.  The article characterized an uncharacteristic gulf that exists between a department/agency head and the county’s procurement office.  Here in Nevada County, the process seems to be a ‘fire and forget’ affair wherein the department presumably gives the procurement office a set of system/product specifications, possibly a list of qualified vendors, participates in some kind of evaluation, and then retires to hear who the final supplier will be at what cost and schedule.  In short, the end-user department appears to have minimal or no involvement in the actual scoring of the vendors (an admittedly subjective procedure), or the remainder of the procurement process.  Such a process normally involves quite a number of intervening steps and communications with the competing suppliers before a winner is selected and the actual contract negotiated.  Is that really the way our county operates?

Grandpa's Brag Sheet

George Rebane

Grandson Lucas continues to clear the boards up in Washington state, and his team is headed for the state finals in Spokane. Picture from the Redmond-Reporter.com.  I knew all you guys were waiting for this report ;-)

 

Ruminations – 27feb2010

George Rebane

• Horses on Border Patrol
• Climategate ad nauseum
• The Consummate Harry Reid

The Border Patrol has discovered the age-old utility of horses on broad open country.  The agent on a horse has all kinds of advantages over the on-foot illegal alien and/or drug runner.  The agents are able to use the natural senses and sensibility of the horse to pursue, detect, corral, and herd the bad guys who show up on the sophisticated thermal imaging and other kinds of sensors that are deployed along our border with Mexico.  The critters work so well that the Border Patrol is now worried that Congress will not provide them with enough funding for horses to do the job.  Hell, if those scumbags won’t, we should set up a 501c3 collection trust and send them all the nags they need.

Most heartening to me in the Fox News report was the uniformed latino Border Patrol officer giving the interview in a pronounced Hispanic accent.  He extolled the virtues of the new equestrian project and expanded enthusiastically on how it will enhance the security of “our country’s borders”.  Hearing him say it that way choked me up - I could hear in him my father's heavily accented English, the voice of an American patriot.  There is yet a glimmer.

Are We Turning Blue Yet?

George Rebane

Oh What a Beautiful Mooorning, …!

George Rebane

Most of us watched some of the political theater from the Blair House yesterday.  As predicted, at least by those who took a day off from lying, the event didn’t go anywhere.  It might have made some of the slow students think that Obamacare is just starting out from somewhere in the ideological middle, and that little sleight of hand may have been worth the effort.  But in the end it’s going to come down to whether the Titanic Trio will opt for a ‘reconciliation’ vote that would pass this landmark legislation with a simple partisan majority.

The latest polls tell us that about 57% of Americans think the federal government has already and continues to reduce our freedoms.  53+% don’t like the Democrats’ approach to healthcare reform.  In response Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WVa) voices the mantra of the progressive elitists, “Sometimes decisions have to come from Washington.”  Sometimes??!!

The bugaboo still happens to be the evil health insurance industry that keeps increasing healthcare costs and making obscene profits.  Future historians will see America’s acceptance of this nonsense as an unmistakable sign of the nation’s downfall.  Here’s an industry with a profit margin of about 3.3% - down in the cutthroat grocery store range – and no one blinks at the accusations.  These are the guys who have to make the right bets of premiums against payoffs so that they can stay in business.  They don’t set the intrinsic costs of delivering healthcare, that is done primarily by government agencies and our resident legion of tort lawyers.  If the insurance companies were making all that money, how come their stocks are going nowhere?  And why is no one yelling at the soft drink companies with profit margins in the upper teens?

I also got a giggle out of UN’s IPCC now openly talking about having to straighten out its act and start mending its public image.  Listening to the local true believers rail against Climategate, you’d think the whole thing of science fraud was cooked up right here in Nevada County.  Well, that ain’t necessarily so either, some of us just saw this ‘science’ train wreck coming sooner than others.

Speaking of locals, there’s a blogger here who thinks he really is the source of outside news to our neck of the woods.  I did my morning news round-up that includes a number of widespread sources and read on the Washington Post that the hard left has started the Coffee Cup Coalition (also here) as a response to the Tea Party Patriots.  There will be a lot more to say about that in the coming days, but my fancy was tickled by the local blogger’s ire on Russ Steele’s NC Media Watch which also picked this up, apparently from the local blogger who was irked by not being credited for what? being the first one to read the Washington Post?

Meanwhile, I’m going to use this rainy windy day to prepare for the TechTest2010 seminars that I am conducting for the high school seniors preparing for this merit scholarship exam on 27 March at NUHS (juniors are advised to take the test for practice).  The two-hour seminars will be tomorrow and next Saturday 6 March also at NUHS.  The amount of stuff these young scholars have to know would make your head spin.  But someone has to get educated up so they can work and pay for all that good stuff that we’re entitled to from Washington.  Some things are lookin’ up!

Washington Notables

George Rebane

Judicial Watch has assembled the backgrounders for its selection of “Washington’s ten most wanted corrupt politicians” of 2009.  It’s not clear to me who ‘wants’ them for what, but then I’m just a voter and not a special prosecutor.  Nevertheless, reading the litanies on these jokers is eye-opening for those whose eyes have started to droop a bit from all the foul spray coming off the fan in the nation’s capital.  The RR reader who sent me this little item opined that had Judicial Watch upped their count to eleven, they would have had to include ol’ slippery Harry in this gang.  I would amend his observation with my own that were the list to include only the quick and not the dead, Harry would be in like Flynn.

Millennial & Rational Voters

George Rebane

The well-respected Pew Research Center published a report on its recent survey of the political attitudes of the so-called millennial voters (young people who came of age in the first decade of this millennium).  Pew noted that “their attachment to the Democratic Party weakened markedly over the course of 2009”, although a majority of them still hew to the progressive talking points if not its deeper philosophy.  The noteworthy output from the survey was the “marked” reduction of those still enthralled with Team Obama.

What I found remarkable in Pew’s report was the large plurality (2/3) of Millennials who were successfully taken by Obama’s campaign message.  The results overall seem to corroborate the conclusion of the research reported by Bryan Caplan in his The Myth of the Rational Voter – Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies.  I expanded on this theme in the 14may09 ‘Republicans Need a New Strategy’ post and elsewhere on RR.

Apparently many of these Obama supporters were also voting in their first election, being encouraged to do so by the various get-out-the-vote machinery (e.g. Acorn, SEIU) that Obama’s campaign so successfully marshaled in its behalf.  Caplan argued that the long accepted Principle of Aggregation, which gives more weight to the small number of knowledgeable voters, no longer holds.  He presented evidence that the well financed media campaigns directed at potential voters with little knowledge of the issues or history would today easily overwhelm the slim victory inducing margins of knowledgeable voters.  Today, the informationally short voters no longer split themselves more or less equally in their historically random voting patterns.  In short, as go the dummies, so goes the nation.

I think the Pew results, together with Caplan’s research, support the intuitive conclusions of most students of the American scene, especially those of the conservative-libertarian bent.  The bottom line is that our educational system’s much documented ideological biases and pedagogical shortcomings now influence the vote as never before.  It is in this light that we should all interpret the renewal of the intense fight over campaign financing that will hit its high notes this year.  Money matters more than the message.