Rebane's Ruminations

Atlas Mugged (Addended)

George Rebane

Yesterday afternoon we, along with the Steeles, went to see the movie ‘Atlas Shrugged – Part 1’ that I described in ‘Shrugging Atlas is Back’.   The movie, based on Ayn Rand’s novel of the same name, lived up to its expectations.  The casting, acting, production values, and fidelity to the original were well executed.  I look forward to Parts 2 and 3 of this trilogy.

Reflecting on what I had seen in the movie, especially how it depicts what we are living through today, I was struck by the thought that the trilogy will communicate little to the meager number of progressives who will see it.  Heralding its early demise, they simply do not understand the point of the movie.  Its dystopic message for the rest of us will be seen as a necessary waypoint to their new world order.

In that order there is little need for individual risk, initiative, and enterprise.  All problems will be solved by state committees for the common good.  'Excess funds' will be siphoned out of the population through higher tax rates and redistributed.  All progressives know that higher tax rates will not harm the economy, in fact, they cite the post-war years as evidence that higher taxes will even stimulate the economy.

Unfortunately, the conditions of the fifties are misinterpreted by the left.  Then the US was the technology, agricultural, and manufacturing leader of a world mostly under-developed and devastated by war.  As long as international trade was allowed, and appropriate set-asides and subsidies were in place, the imposed tax rate did not matter much.  Money still came pouring in from all sides because we could make and sell stuff that the world could get from nowhere else – competition was non-existent, and demand was found under every overturned rock.  Not any more – Atlas mugged.

[Addendum]  The above does not make explicit what I want to relate as the major takeaway from the movie and the book.  In 1957 Ayn Rand published Atlas Shrugged as a warning to us that if we kept looking to government for solutions and allowing it to grow into a megalith surrogate for our personal responsibilities, then we would wind up with the world she depicted.  That same megalith would hang around the neck of every productive citizen in the land.

The truth of the matter is that Rand's described world is now upon us and much more.  We are past the point she depicted.  In her warning, she still allowed for a way back to sanity.  Today, the added burden of massive debt and deficits has put us beyond the pale - we are beyond the precipice like Wiley Coyote.  And like Wiley, we will not be able to walk on air back to safety.  Even Atlas cannot lift from our backs the trillions upon trillions we have senselessly allowed to accumulate there.

‘Thanksgiving 2022’

George Rebane

[This came in email, and reading it I immediately began looking for some hyperbole.  But given this administration’s stated goals, established direction, and ongoing ‘progress’ thereto, I couldn’t find any.  Perhaps you can dear reader.]

"Winston, come into the dining room, it's time to eat," Julia yelled to her husband. "In a minute, honey, it's a tie score," he answered.  Actually Winston wasn't very interested in the traditional holiday football game between Detroit and Washington.

Ever since the government passed the Civility in Sports Statute of 2017, outlawing tackle football for its "unseemly violence" and the "bad example it sets for the rest of the world," Winston was far less of a football fan than he used to be.  Two-hand touch wasn't nearly as exciting.

Yet it wasn't the game that Winston was uninterested in.  It was more the thought of eating another Tofu Turkey.  Even though it was the best type of Veggie Meat available after the government revised the American Anti-Obesity Act of 2018, adding fowl to the list of federally-forbidden foods, (which already included potatoes, cranberry sauce and mince-meat pie), it wasn't anything like real turkey.  And ever since the government officially changed the name of "Thanksgiving Day" to "A National Day of Atonement" in 2020 to officially acknowledge the Pilgrims' historically brutal treatment of Native Americans, the holiday had lost a lot of its luster.

'He is Risen!'

 

 

Happy Easter from our family to you and yours.

George and Jo Ann

Hardwiring the Right and Left

George Rebane

In my technology newsletters I recently encountered some buzz about clinical evidence differentiating the brainbones of liberals and conservatives – in short, you may be one or the other because that’s the way you’re wired up.  There has been a flurry of articles posted on the original research done on this thesis at the University College London – here is an example report, ‘Liberal vs. Conservative: Does the Difference Lie in the Brain?'

Please note that the research is early stage, the sample size is small, and what characteristic attributes it identifies in the opposing ideologues is a reach.  For example, “liberals tend to be better at managing conflicting information, while conservatives are thought to be better at recognizing threats, …”.  This has been enthusiastically translated by some light thinking progressives to mean that ‘liberals can better handle uncertainty, and conservatives are driven by fear’.  Sweet.

Memo to Obama on Gasoline Prices

George Rebane

The Chief Organizer claims he doesn’t know what’s made gasoline prices go through the roof, and he suspects that it’s all those “traders and speculators”.  So he has launched another investigation to ferret out these low lifes.  Predictably, it will turn up nothing in that quarter, and only repeat the performance of Clinton and Bush2 when they tried that diversionary bamboozle during high oil prices.

The real reason for the soaring price of gasoline is the plunging value of the dollar aided by our Federal Reserve’s 'quantitative easing' and low interest rate policy, and the fact that our politicians are evincing no clue as to how our debt and deficits will be managed.  S&P’s downgrade of our debt repayment outlook from ‘stable’ to ‘negative’ put a ribbon on it this week.

But in the end Mr President, just have your mentors take a look at the US Dollar Index measured against a basket of the world’s leading currencies (more here)  It is down almost 10% from a year ago, thereby making everything we buy from overseas more expensive.  Pay attention Buttercup, we buy oil from overseas – more because of your domestic energy policies – and that dollar devaluation has itself contributed about a 40 cent increase to the price of a gallon of gas since last spring.  So cut the investigation smoke screen, we are not as dumb as you hope.

If you want to help, get serious about cutting government spending instead of putzing around with economy stifling tax increases.  Our only road out of this mess is growth.

The Diaz Case Continues

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my KVMR-FM bi-weekly commentary recorded on 21 April 2011.  I have added a relevant addendum about information from a subsequent conversation I had with a Nevada County staffer.]

Not many people have been paying attention to a complicated lawsuit whose defendants include Nevada County, Mr Greg Diaz, its initially appointed then elected Clerk-Recorder, and Aptitude, a Florida software company.  The whole thing would be forgettable, except for two things – the legal bills the county is running up, and the pile of unanswered questions that just seem to be getting more curioser by the week.

Let’s back up.  ATPac, a software company located in Auburn, provided software and services to our county’s Clerk-Recorder office for about ten years before Mr Diaz arrived.  The software was used to handle, store, and retrieve county records.  In 2008 Mr Diaz decided that it was time to re-select the county’s record-keeping software vendor, and the county issued an RFP, request for proposal, and thereby opened up a bidding process which culminated with Aptitude replacing ATPac.  During the migration from ATPac’s software to Aptitude’s software, some irregularities occurred.  As a result ATPac sued, alleging that its intellectual property had been compromised by the county and Mr Diaz by allowing Aptitude to have access to its proprietary computer programs.

The county and Mr Diaz denied doing anything improper, and under advice from county counsel, the Board of Supervisors authorized legal fees for a strong defense as both sides began pre-trial preparations to gather evidence and take depositions from involved parties.  A complication surfaced almost immediately when attorney Barry Pruett decided to oppose the incumbent Mr Diaz in the November 2008 election.  While not involved in the lawsuit, Mr Pruett had worked for the law firm representing ATPac in the lawsuit, he was familiar with the case, and made its already apparent irregularities an issue in the campaign.  Conservative bloggers Russ Steele of NC Media Watch and my Rebane’s Ruminations supported Mr Pruett, and liberal bloggers along with the county establishment supported Mr Diaz.

Ruminations – 21apr2011

George Rebane

- No Amber Alert on Missing Refugees
- Estonia’s credit rating upgraded

‘Climate Refugees, Not Found’  so headlines the 21apr11 WSJ report on millions of people who have gone missing with nary an Amber Alert issued in their behalf.  The egg just continues to accumulate on the faces of the True Believers, those politically bent devotees of catastrophic climate change that dwell beyond the pale of evidence.  The newspaper reports –

In 2005, the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) published a color-coded map under the headline "Fifty million climate refugees by 2010." The primary source for the prediction was a 2005 paper by environmental scientist Norman Myers.

Six years later, this flood of refugees is nowhere to be found, global average temperatures are about where they were when the prediction was made—and the U.N. has done a vanishing act of its own, wiping the inconvenient map from its servers.

This would be just another laughable episode at the expense of the ignorant cum stupid, if only these folks didn’t have the state’s power of the bayonet on their side.  Since they do, and have every intention of using force to make their growing stack of crippling regulations stick, the joke is on the rest of us who are trying to create jobs, earn a living, and pay our taxes.  More climate change matters on NC Media Watch and Watt’s Up With That?

An RR reader emailed to inform me that Estonia has passed America in its credit rating.  The rating agency Standard & Poor’s, which recently stated that our creditworthiness outlook was changed from ‘stable’ to ‘negative’, has announced that that little Baltic dynamo of capitalism and entrepreneurial fervor is being upgraded from ‘stable’ to  ‘positive’.  CNBC cites a Reuters report (here) that “the ratings agency said Estonia's ratings were supported by its strong public finances, political stability and sanguine economic growth prospects as exports recover sharply.”  Whooda thunk it?

The Silence of the Jews and Christians

George Rebane

In this season of Passover and Easter, our administration and its private sector cadres are promoting Islamists with an added twist.  Al Jazeerah, with its anti-Jewish and anti-Christian worldview, is now being recognized by the leftwing as a necessary and legitimate source of world news and considered opinion among the civilized nations.  In spite of their message being unchanged, there is now a push to bring the Middle East Islamist propaganda outlet into the mainstream, or is it into the lamestream in the west.

In the 18apr11 American Thinker (‘A Passover Present From Obama’) James Lewis wonders “why American Jews and Christians are so silent today.  Has the Left managed to scapegoat them so badly that they dare not speak up?  Or are there millions and millions of people who are just looking for a chance to be heard?”

I’m afraid that we will have to wait until November 2012 to answer these questions.  The silence today is not heartening.  (H/T to RR reader for the heads up.)

“… because that’s where the money is.”

You gotta get it from where it is, cuz you ain't gonna get it from where it ain't.

George Rebane

The President keeps pointing his accusing finger at the “rich” (those earning more than $250K annually) for being under-taxed and thereby keeping the nation from solving its financial problems.  That is a lying ruse to keep the sheeple’s attention from the actual taxes that he intends to increase on his hallowed middle-class – remember? those are the people he is forever promising to protect from higher taxes.

Well, taxing only the rich isn’t going to happen for the same reason that we still quote America’s iconic bank robber Willie Sutton.  Liberals are forever doubting the allocation and sourcing of the nation’s income taxes.  They can’t seem to come to grips with the fact that the top earners already pay the overwhelming fraction of income tax revenues to the governments – starting with the feds and going down the tax jurisdiction ladder (see the graphics in RR’s ‘As We Talk About Taxes and Skin in the Game’).

California is on its fiscal last legs because it decided years ago to put the heavy part of its tax yoke overwhelmingly on its job-creating ‘rich’.  Now these people are thundering out of the state, and doing everything possible to deny our stupid and rapacious government additional monies to waste.

Looking at the most recent IRS data available makes it clear where Obama and the progressives will go to get more money for their bamboozle named “tax reform”, the tax increases that they are now calling for daily.  Take a look at the nearby histogram filched from the 18apr11 WSJ, and then read the accompanying piece ‘Where the Tax Money Is’ that considers what if we just stick a gun in the faces of the rich and take ALL their earnings.

Raising the Debt Limit and Bilge Water (updated)

George Rebane

Just for the record, I don’t want any RR reader to be bamboozled by the bilge water that the administration and Dems are trying to float on raising of the debt limit issue.  The word from the progressives, abetted by Bernanke and Geithner, is that if the debt limit is not raised this May, then America will default on its debt service, and the world will sink into financial chaos.  This is absolute bull crap floating in bilge water.

1. The feds pull in over two trillion a year in taxes, etc.
2. The US currently owes north of $14T which requires around $450B in annual debt service costs.
3. With the current authorized debt limit of about $14.3T, we can still roll over debt and borrow to that level.
4. Instead of defaulting on debt (and causing all that “chaos”) we can always pay our debt service out of current federal receipts - how?  By reducing the size of government along with the entitlement payments we make to our own citizens.
5. No foreign/private lender needs to be stiffed, they will continue to get their interest payments regular as clockwork.  The overdue pain we cause ourselves will not concern our foreign or domestic creditors.
6. Given the demonstrated discipline of NOT increasing the debt limit, foreign lenders will feel more, not less, confident in continuing to lend at our current debt limit.  The chances of getting their principal back would just go through the roof, instead of sinking into the mud.
7. The politicians who have been lying to the voters about being able to afford current entitlement programs and solving the problem with taxing the bejeezus out of the ‘rich’ will be out on their collective butts, and have to get real jobs or sign up for transfer payments.

So in the coming weeks, when we hear the socialists scream about ‘playing Russian roulette with the nation’s future’ and ‘putting the debt burden on the backs of the poor’, stand up and tell your electeds that you too know how to do the arithmetic of debt service and debt financing the country.  Defaulting on our debt service is not tied to what we do on raising the debt limit or not.  But it is tied to a certain political class hoping that you’ll drink the bilge water that they are serving up while you’re too busy to pay attention.

PS.  For the aficionados, listen very carefully to what Bernanke and Geithner say about debt limit and defaulting.  Neither claims that refusing to raise the debt limit will cause problems.  Each only states a likely result of financial turmoil IF the US doesn’t make its debt service payments.  Both are counting that you will unthinkingly connect the wrong dots, and conclude that chaos is automatically linked to what Congress does on the debt limit in May.  But then, you all knew that.

[update]  As if we rehearsed it, Standard & Poor’s this morning changed its outlook to “negative” on America’s ability to repay its debts (WSJ report here).  It isn’t so much that our economy still can support such repayments, it’s that we will not get our political act together in time to save the economy from its inevitable fate as we continue to borrow in the trillions into the indefinite future.  S&P simply says that it sees no evidence that we will make meaningful progress toward solving our fiscal crisis, and therefore advises us to standby for having our AAA credit rating reduced – and that’s only the first step.

RR readers know when this happens our debt service costs will start soaring as interest rates go up.  For some time now someone around here has been musing about shorting government debt instruments – oh yes, c’est moi.