Rebane's Ruminations

Another Bridge to Nowhere?

George Rebane

[This post is actually the continuation of a magnificent comment thread that started in response to ‘McClintock Visits Nevada County’.  That thread became an examination and debate between the economic policies of the Right and Left, especially in the context of what is happening today in Washington with the seeming sea change of the government’s launch of a stream of ‘stimulus’ packages that appear to be dysfunctional for their intended purpose, and have no foreseeable end in their issue.  All of this may be viewed as a hearteningly civil discourse that seeks to build a workable bridge, or understand why one is not possible, between our country’s contending political philosophies.]

... Finally in extension and with the intent of starting a new thread, we come to sovereign nation states and protectionism.  As this blog testifies, I am a proponent of retaining the plurality of nations and cultures which survive in their own homelands, and die/transform rapidly when forced into multi-cultural confines.  From such sustainable diversity come good and competitive ideas for governance, technology, arts, etc.  Yet I am also for free trade between nations - let all who can, offer what they can at the best value.  But sovereignty becomes meaningless to a nation state (as it has to many countries today) when it cannot generate a certain critical mass/collection of goods and services internally. 

The last exercises of sovereignty, that even the smallest countries can apply, always take the form of protecting some critical/strategic domestic supplier(s) from ‘unfair’ foreign competition.  These notions of international diversity and integration of commerce contend with each other (witness the rapid spread of the financial crisis).  I have yet to discover a rule set or algorithm to apply on to where/how to draw the reasonable line.  And drawing the line is important because protectionism, seen from the inside, is the siamese twin of welfare.  But as soon as we start national welfare programs in all their various shades, the mangling of the country’s original political structure and social order cannot help but follow, and its resulting form is never as intended.  America is Exhibit A.

Does anyone have a recommended approach over our present form of making laws and sausages that would halt the growing schism between the Right and Left?

"Do Nothing ... Sooner!"

George Rebane

This ad is running in a major newspaper near you.  For a readable version, please click here.

NASA’s Hockeystick Hansen Rebuked

George Rebane

James Hansen, the NASA scientist responsible for most of the so-called computer modeling behind the global warming scare, has been publicly rebuked by his former boss Dr. John Theon, now retired.  I would be remiss if I didn’t pick up this important development for RR readers since the MSM may never make much of it.

Dr. Theon is among the growing throng of scientists who reject the half-baked theories of manmade global warming.  This global hysteria has been exposed now for several years by many investigators who examined all aspects of the UN IPCC report that is the main basis for continuing to cause all the excitement.

Locally bloggers Anthony Watts and Russ Steele have been the stalwarts in keeping their readers up to date on the latest science that debunks the IPCC conclusions.  (see their blogs for more details)

Now the question is when will the politicians in Washington and Sacramento, who never did and still don’t understand climate change, come to their senses and start rolling back travesties like the Lieberman-Warner legislation of the feds and California’s AB32, both of which promise to devastate our economy – as if that can stand more devastation.  There is a lot of damage to undo if we are to dodge this bullet.

You can help, let your voice be heard.

A View from Leftfield (updated)

George Rebane

To keep track of what our socialist brethren in the country are saying, I visit sites like truthout.org.  One of the Left’s champion commentators is economist Dean Baker who writes ‘The Anti-Stimulus Crowd Blows a Gasket' .  I cannot claim that I understand any of Baker’s logic or development, it comes from a universe I have spent my lifetime studying, and subsequently unsuccessfully avoiding.

Now it looks like we are all fated to ride the train of Team Obama into a socialist future that even they are unabashedly giving the redux label of ‘New Deal’.  The Right has no goods to sell on this train, their only hope is that people see sooner than later that it’s headed in the wrong direction.  But given examples like the mindless support that AB32 (California’s greenhouse gas law) continues to draw, there is little hope of that.

[update – to those concerned that “mindless” is perhaps too strong of an adjective, please check out the long list of analyses at the Institute for Energy Research site on the cost of the federal Lieberman-Warner climate change legislation that California’s AB32 seeks to trump in its implementation.  Especially revealing is the SAIC study done for the National Association of Manufacturers.  Hat tip to Russ Steele on NCMW for sending me this cost analysis.]

Perhaps the only chance of some redemption lies in Baker’s own prescription of how long it will take for Team Obama to succeed.  He states that

The anti-stimulus crowd is getting desperate. The possibility that a young charismatic new president will push through an ambitious package that begins to set the economy right is truly terrifying to this crew. After all, if the economy begins to turn around and has largely recovered in three or four years, the Republican leadership can look forward to spending most of their careers in the political wilderness. (Emphasis mine)

‘Three or four years’, ‘largely recovered’ (!?) seem to me admissions that the Dems are going to wander in the woods for a while before coming to the tunnel with the light at the other end.  Last I looked, there will be an election in 2010.  And if we are still in the full bloom of a recession, someone may notice.  The problem is that by that time we will be used to getting our semi-annual Vote Democratic (aka ‘stimulus’) checks.  At least those of us who can reliably be counted on to vote socialist will get their checks and tax rebates.

The Republicans don’t yet have a plan on how to communicate to the voters a solution to this prolonged economic travesty.  It’s not even clear that such a concept can be communicated to the very large, pre-educated segment of the electorate, especially when your message is that you have to retrain yourself to regain your relevance in the new workplace.  It’s hard to embrace that kind of responsibility when the Left is saying, ‘Pay no mind, just look at the checks you’ve been getting, and here’s a nice new government job waiting for you, all paid for by the coddled rich.’

Oh, in case you’re confused about the ‘coddled rich’ part, Dean Baker also has that sorted out for you in his new book The Conservative Nanny State.  And here is the part that I really worry about - Baker has a point.  We all know that the big corporate rich have received their share of government coddling.  And while the Dems try to uncoddle those people, the successful entrepreneurs and wannabes - those who risk in creating our new technologies, industries, and jobs - will be swept along and made to pay through the nose as we all sink into the suffocating sameness of a socialist sunset.

Fork Over Your Job to Robo-Forklift

George Rebane

Here’s another ‘you can’t just do ONE thing’ development.  MIT recently announced (here) that

Researchers in MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) are working on a better way to handle supplies in a war zone: a semi-autonomous forklift that can be directed by people safely away from the dangers of the site.

Well, that all seems like a good idea.  That little puppy pictured nearby will learn the layout of warehouses and loading docks, and then accept high-level directions (‘Unload truck from Dock 7 and stack pallets in Warehouse 3 Sector 19.’) to do its job.  Most of you are already ahead of me – how long until such operations become common in more peaceful environments stateside?  And what do we do with the people who used to earn a good living driving these things?  Many (most?) of these people cannot be retrained for jobs that successfully (pay per performance) compete with machines in other sectors of the economy. 

As we approach the Singularity, such technological advances will permanently displace workers with limited abilities to learn more sophisticated skills.  The smart machines are pushing us out of our traditional workplaces more rapidly than ever.  And no one should dream on about this just happening to a few workers out there with ‘learning disabilities’.  We’re talking about tens of millions of more Americans who will soon be looking to the government to sustain them in one way or another – the operational word here is ‘more’.  No one today seems to want to think about this Singularity signpost very much.   

Tied in Legal Knots

George Rebane

Today President Obama’s call for “a new era of responsibility” is stillborn.  Most well-read people have known for some decades now that we have tied ourselves into legal knots that kill the spirit of initiative and freedom.  Lawyer Philip Howard (chair of Common Good) in today’s WSJ writes ‘How Modern Law Makes Us Powerless’  – it is definitely worth a read before we suffer our next ‘Well, there ought to be a law …’ reflex response to some problem we hear about.

Regarding the immediate implications of our laws and lawyers dilemma, Howard writes

Here we stand, facing the worst economy since the Great Depression, and Americans no longer feel free to do anything about it. We have lost the idea, at every level of social life, that people can grab hold of a problem and fix it. Defensiveness has swept across the country like a cold wave. We have become a culture of rule followers, trained to frame every solution in terms of existing law or possible legal risk. The person of responsibility is replaced by the person of caution. When in doubt, don't.

And our concept of freedom has become atrophied in that “(w)e think of freedom as political freedom. We're certainly free to live and work where we want, and to pull the lever in the ballot box. But freedom should also include the power of personal conviction and the authority to use your common sense.”

The real problem comes down to “(t)he overlay of law on daily choices (that) destroys the human instinct needed to get things done. Bureaucracy can't teach. Rules don't make things happen. Accomplishment is personal. Anyone who has felt the pride of a job well done knows this.”

As a start to fixing things, we must restructure law to “affirmatively define an area free from legal interference.”  But that will be no simple task.

Reviving the can-do spirit that made America great requires a legal overhaul of historic dimension. We must scrape away decades of accumulated legal sediment and replace it with coherent legal goals and authority mechanisms, designed to affirmatively protect individual freedom in daily choices. "A little rebellion now and then is a good thing," Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison, "and as necessary in the political world as storms are in the physical . . . ." The goal is not to change our public goals. The goal is make it possible for free citizens to achieve them.  (Emphasis mine)

McClintock visits Nevada County

George Rebane

This afternoon Russ Steele and I went to an intimate coffee and wine meeting with Congressman Tom McClintock and about thirty other local folks.  Tom McClintock was introduced by our State Senator Sam Aanestad,  Russ has already posted on the meeting here (that man is fast).  I just want to add a couple of points I took away from a very informative and congenial get together of a Congressman with his constituents - it was pure Americana, and long may it wave.

First from Sam Aanestad -

• California has about a $40B deficit to overcome if the Legislature does nothing; it'll probably be up to $60B if they get in there and do something.
• The state has already started issuing IOUs, and the first ones presented in Redding have been refused by BofA.

From Tom McClintock -

• Re the financial crisis - in Congress "we know what works, we're just not doing it."
• The $350B added bailout allocation will be blocked in Congress next week.
• The federal bailout total will probably reach $8T.
• Re the country's developing political mood - "we're in a major shift in the politics of this country."
• Anthropogenic global warming is a political sham.

 

The Green Bandwagon comes to Nevada County (updated)

George Rebane

This morning’s Other Voices (‘Let’s create a local economy around green jobs’) by Don Pelton in The Union is another example of why economic development in our county is so difficult – muddle-headed thinking.  The author’s proposal to spend money to make Nevada County a hub of green technology companies is not only silly, but to the extent that it diverts our very limited resources from more productive economic goals, it is also destructive to our collective future during this deepening recession.

This remote foothills county has almost nothing to offer but a wonderful living environment and a tourist destination.  Unfortunately, to many people seeking to be helpful, this is all that is needed to attract high tech enterprises.  The reality is very different.  Technology companies are tightening their belts and looking to locate elsewhere, starting with the high hard one – ‘How do we get out of California?’  This week a greatly relieved Intel announced the closing of its hallmark Santa Clara chip making plant, instead of investing to modernize it.  The excuse of the recession was a welcome reason for Intel to remove one more connection with the state that has now become the leading anti-business environment in the country (cf AB32 et.al.).

We Believe What We Need to Believe

George Rebane 

I’m reminded by today’s Stratfor bulletin of a recent comment on RR regarding Islam’s crusade against the West.  Buzzing out Stratfor’s report, I wound up on the INRA site (Iran’s Islamic Republic News Agency) to read that “Over 70,000 students sign up for martyrdom operation list”.  To quote that comment, many good-hearted people continue to believe that “reaching out to moderate Muslims who also favor peace and wealth to war” is something that the West has not done, and because of that we have the problem of worldwide Islamic terror.  Many such people go on to “believe the war on terror should not be framed as between Muslims and the West, but between the primitive/extremists and the modern/moderates.”

Unfortunately, when it comes to terror and warfare, it only takes one to tango.  Anyone, not convinced that Islam is actively seeking to spread their Caliphate agenda, is not paying attention to what the Islamists at ALL levels are saying to us, to their children, and to each other.  The web is a rich resource of English-language Islamic sites that contain the up-to-date sentiments of their commentators, and translations of what their government and religious leaders are telling them.  It does not stretch credulity to understand that their sites in Arabic and Farsi are even more explicit about the Islamic vision of the future and the means to get there.  In this list one need not include the rabid sites published by the myriad of Islamic terrorist organizations.

New White House Blog

George Rebane

The Obama administration got off on the right (sic) foot today by immediately publishing the new White House Blog.  RR is pleased to include that blog's link in its permanent 'Our Links' list in the right hand column.  Macon Phillips, the Director of New Media for the White House, writes a nice welcoming piece ('Change has come to WhiteHouse.gov') and explains how Americans can contact the Administration on a huge category of areas through the new blog.  I plan to use this opportunity, and will be a keen observer of how others take advantage of this new pipe directly into the Head Shed.

Hat tip to Russ on NCMW for finding this so quickly.