Rebane's Ruminations

The Kilogram and Judges' Pay and ...

George Rebane

The standard kilogram - ensconced under glass in Sevres, France – is losing mass, and the world of standards is all a-twitter, as it should be.  For you see, “its only purpose (is) constancy.”  As Seth Lipsky points out in his ‘The Floating Dollar as a Threat to Property Rights’ in a recent issue of the Imprimis.

Lipsky raises the interesting notion of why keep the kilogram (hence the pound, etc) constant. Why not let it float too according to the whims of government or your local butcher?  From there the thread of reasoning is connected to the floating value of the fiat paper dollar which has been the subject of much discussion in these pages over the years.

This thread winds its way over to the laws on dealing with judges’ pay that the several states have each set up.  The common argument here is that, due to the separation of powers, judges’ pay may be set by legislatures, but not reduced by them.  And this launches a whole new dust-up that can grow into a tornado on setting the value of the dollar.  Since non-legislative branches and organs of government can diminish that value at their whim, thereby reducing the burden and buying power of the judges, what does it mean to keep such payment in “legal tender” constant?

The question is not idle, and as Lipsky points out, there are court cases now pending on just that issue.  From there it is a short skip to property rights, and, using Kelo v New London, the connection is well made.

Seth Lipsky’s short piece is a must read for anyone following the development and downfall of the nation’s fisc, and its broader effects on all of us.

McClintock = Doolittle Redux ??? (updated 14apr2011)

George Rebane

At Tom McClintock’s 22mar11 town hall meeting our congressman 1) acknowledged my characterization of the spending cuts and related continuing resolutions as being insignificant pinpricks on the country’s fiscal gangrene, and 2) politely stated that my assessments were in error.

Now that the mother of all CRs, citing $38.5B spending cuts, has been trumpeted across the land by both parties, it turns out that I, and others who take a more careful look behind the curtain, were right and continue to be so.  The cited amount is nothing but feathers and hot air composed of accounting gimmicks that in their most hopeful application still wind up showing that we are spending more this year than last, and that the long-term benefits – if any, since the jury is still out – will be less than $20B annually.  (For a quick summary of the “hokum” see the editorial in the 13apr11 WSJ.)  Talk about flys#%t.  (Apologizies for my more crude characterization of congressional output that bespeaks of its backwater origins.  But then, we do communicate a bit more clearly here in the mountains.)

I strive with all the hope and reasoning power within me to believe that our congressman has not been turned by the Washington cesspool in which he now labors.  His predecessor was weak and became just another posterboy for the Democrats making fun of Republican hypocrites on spending.  In a private meeting Doolittle personally handed me a shovelful of BS on how congressional pork was dispensed.  We all have our moments and areas of ignorance, and that is what I will chalk up Tom McClintock’s misunderstanding of what he was describing and voting for, and not that he intended to deceive us.

So, now as the battle on the debt limit and the FY2012 budget shapes up, we have the Republicans under Boehner’s leadership having in the main caved on spending reductions for FY2011 and their effective shadow into the future.  If Congress passes last Friday night’s bamboozle then we have essentially achieved nothing.  And President Obama’s mendacious speech today is beyond my willingness to refute; let the national commentators who are paid for their labors dissect that septic tank.

As a tea party member, I cannot yet put anything that we support, in principle or substance, into the congressional Win Column.  Paul Ryan’s FY2012 budget proposal remains in the Hope Column.

[14apr2011]  Congressman Tom McClintock's NO vote on the FY2011 budget travesty restores my long held view of Tom as a man of principle.  The compromise budget turned out to be even more putrid than originally advertised.  The actual FY2011 spending reductions reduced down to the order of $300 million and change.  The Democrats won this one walking away.  Boehner knows how to wear a suit pretty well, but he doesn't negotiate worth a crap.  Add to that Paul Ryan's YES vote, and then we really have a picture of a confused Republican Party.  Thank God for Tom's vote, he is not a Doolittle. Complete vote tally here.

As We Talk About Taxes and Skin in the Game (updated 18apr2011)

George Rebane

 

Why would the bottom 50% ever vote for lower taxes??  The Democrats know the answer.

[18apr2011 update]  Russ Steele of NC Media Watch pointed me to the following little milestone that highlights the above graphic.  The sheeple are being prepared.

Singularity Signposts – Running out of processing matter/energy?

George Rebane

There was an interesting exchange on Ray Kurzweil's website between Kurzweil and a reader with a "disturbing thought" about post-Sinularity trans-humans some day running out of 'stuff' on which to store their ever-expanding knowledge base and on which to do the ever more expansive 'thinking' that presumably we will then be able to do (here).

The reader was concerned about a future gargantuan conflict as such beings competed for the limited matter/energy in the universe.  Their conversation wound up contemplating either our evolution into God(s), or the already achieved existence of God through such a process.

Neither participant seemed to realize that the likelihood of all such scenarios is low because they depend on Homo Sapiens being the only sentient and sapient species in this universe.  Most of us studied in such conversations cannot conceive of the case in which we find ourselves alone.  And if we are not alone, then the probability that anything of such post-Singularity nature has already happened is close to unity - since if we are not alone, then we are also not in a privileged point in time, i.e. we are not the species in the forefront of any such development or evolution.

It seems then that this argument fortifies the notion that, relative to Homo Sapiens, God already exists.  And it also then provides credence to the notion held by many leading scientists today that we may live – and all of our perceived existence is – in a running program.

I'll have more to say about this at a later time.  But in the interval, such reasoning threads should maximally disrupt the belief systems of calcified secular humanists – e.g. those who blindly insist that intelligent design has no provenance of its own and is merely a code word for creationism.

The Fierce Fight over Flys*#t (updated)

George Rebane

From listening to all the talking heads this weekend going on about the $38.5B spending cuts in the FY2011 budget, we hear that both sides are taking full credit.  And both the Dems and Repubs have declared victory … but over what??

It is clear that the tea parties are the only ones getting it.  Before Friday night's compromise, Tea Party Patriot co-founder Mark Meckler was in the lion's den on CNBC with a white-haired, fast-talking progressive loudmouth who kept interrupting Meckler while trying to get him to say something silly about various social issues involved with the proposed cuts.  Meckler wisely stuck to his guns stating that the TPP stood for fiscal responsibility, and was promoting the originally promised $100B spending cut in the budget for this year FY2011.  He emphasized that it was the amount that is important to us as a nation in the global community (a position long held in these pages).

Other countries with whom we trade, borrow from, and convince to keep the dollar as the world's reserve currency don't give a rat's butt where we reduce our spending to become fiscally responsible; they just want us to do it.  Actually, our enemies are siding with the Dems, and want the train wreck to happen sooner than later.  In any event, it is only the spending cut AMOUNTS that matter, and it is only the tea parties, led by the TPP, who started us on this responsible path that has now led to the Paul Ryan FY2012 budget proposal.  And it is only the tea parties that are still holding the politicians feet to the fire on an adult approach - cutting trillions in spending to reduce trillions in deficits - to a feasible fiscal soft landing.

As a TPP member, I see no reason to dance in  the fly pucky and celebrate the smidgeon announced last Friday night.  IF IF IF that leads to a clear-headed approach needed to negotiate a meaningful basis for raising the debt limit in May, and then adopting a real FY2012 budget – a la the Ryan Plan – to demonstrate good faith, THEN maybe I'll tap my toe quietly to the celebratory parade that everyone from Obama to Boehner to Reid is trying to lead.  But getting excited today is a mite early.  The sobering figure below explains.

[update] And Ramirez is always able to summarize succinctly.

Public Service Pension Sticker Shock

George Rebane

This was posted on 8 July 2008 by Bill Zettler (here and more here).  It is another of the ‘songs without words’ that are again reminding us of the rot which is even worse today.  But they do shine a light on how we got here.  (H/T to RR reader.  Click to enlarge table.)

Top 100 School Administrators Salaries and Pensions - Illinois 2007

 

A Snowball’s Chance in Hell

George Rebane

[This the submitted form of my Union column for April.  It was submitted on 7 April 2011, and could not reflect the yet another “short-term funding measure” agreement reached late Friday 8 April that averted government shutdown as reported here in the WSJ.]

The GOP’s federal budget – ‘The Path to Prosperity’ - for FY2012 was authored by Rep Paul Ryan (R-WI) and fellow Republicans on the House Budget Committee, including our congressman Tom McClintock.  This landmark budget is the first having the necessary painful entitlement cuts, and presents a feasible plan to bring the country back from fiscal disaster.

On the other hand, everything offered by the Democrats to date has been electioneering materials that pander to the ignorant and those of us receiving transfer payments – these include Democrats, Republicans, and the great uninvolved.

The Congressional Budget Office says President Obama’s budget proposal contains spending, deficits, debt, and taxes headed to the moon before the decade is out.  Yet the Dems and friends are already banging out histrionics about the “heartless” GOP.  More confusing is that there are two fiscal issues before Congress – related but of entirely different scope.

Deconstructing Obama and Journalism

George Rebane

The 2apr11 post – ‘Simon & Schuster’s Revenge’ - on American Thinker by Douglas Hackleman is a review of the recently published book Deconstructing Obama: The Life, Loves, and Letters of America's First Postmodern President by Jack Cashill.   The review is a worthy read and will serve for many of us as a compelling preamble to the book itself.

Besides the many items about Barack (Barry) Obama that Cashill excavates and assembles for us, the author’s product is another massive indictment of the state of American journalism, a profession populated and defended primarily by the left.  Hackleman’s conclusion contains this –

“Most unfortunately, the deconstruction of congenial myths is often received with the same enthusiasm as a stool specimen in the baptistery. While Jesus of the gospels said that the truth will set you free, one of his most poetically ardent defenders recognized that "nations grown corrupt" would rather take "bondage with ease than strenuous liberty." This fact is made obvious by the struthious apologetics that day by day through the popular media continue to anchor the myths of Dreams and Audacity.”

Would that in 2008 more of us had known only a fraction of this.  (H/T to RR reader.)

The first realistic budget - hallelujah! (updated 6apr2011)

George Rebane

The House Budget Committee submitted the first federal budget in years to deal with our fiscal crisis.  Under the leadership of Rep Paul Ryan (R-WI) the submitted budget will now have to weather the storms of Democratic opposition, for these are the people who think that liabilities in the tens of trillions will be handled by grudging spending cuts in the tens of billions.  Nothing new here, math and economics have never been their strong suit.

Our congressman Tom McClintock has thrown his support in for the GOP budget, and we’ll see how he and the other tea party supported Republicans will do when they run into heavy weather.  I have posted on this theme and its attendant continuing resolutions – one’s coming up this Friday – for some time now.  Ryan is the first national politician who has stepped out front with cuts totaling over $6 trillion in the next decade, and a path from here to a balanced budget in which we spend what we take in.  Well, not right away because initially we’ll still have to borrow to service the debt.  But the budget is the first to recognize that nothing happens without reducing the Big Three entitlements.

The Democrats will have a field day convincing the ignorant and the stupid, nevertheless their constituencies must be served, even if all you can serve them is pabulum.

For the full story on the FY2012 GOP budget proposal ‘The Path to Prosperity’ go to the source before you get underwhelmed by the lamestream – check the charts and graphs linked in the hard-to-see lime green band.  (H/T to Congressman McClintock’s office for the early email on this.)  This saga will be with us for some days yet; stay tuned.

[6apr2011 update]  The battle to rescue the country is joined.  Over the years our European friends have told us that they see very little difference between our two major political parties.  That problem has faded over the last four years, and I sincerely hope that it will completely disappear as the battle lines on the FY2012 budget and its more important portents are drawn.

Today the WSJ’s lead editorial essentially echoed the sentiments of this post and highlighted the significance of the first realistic budget as a stake in the ground marking responsible government and the distance we may/will stray from it in future negotiations with the country’s progressives.

The nearby photo was filched from another article on Rep Ryan’s budget that appeared in the 6apr11 WSJ showing the House Budget Committee stalwarts who have worked hard to bring this budget into the national debate on our fiscal future.  Prominently shown to Rep Ryan’s right is an extremely serious looking Tom McClintock, our own congressman from California’s 4th District.  The work in the coming months for all these gentlemen is cut out, and they deserve the support of all Americans who don’t belong to the can kicking cadres.

 

This morning via email from Rep McClintock’s office I received the transcript of his work session remarks to the Budget Committee.  It is presented below in its entirety.

Opening Statement
House Budget Committee
Markup of the 2012 Budget

Mr. Chairman:

 History walks with us today as we begin this work.  History offers us not a single example of a nation that has ever spent, borrowed and taxed its way to prosperity, but it offers us many, many examples of nations that have spent, borrowed and taxed their way to economic ruin and bankruptcy.  And history is screaming this warning at us: nations that bankrupt themselves aren’t around very long, because before we can provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare, we have to be able to pay for it – and the ability of our nation to do so is now in grave danger.

 Throughout these hearings, economists from every part of the spectrum have warned us that if we have just a few precious years left to avoid a sovereign debt crisis and potentially the financial collapse of the United States Government.

 Fortunately, history also offers us lessons of what to do and what not to do.

 We know what not to do.  Herbert Hoover responded to the recession of 1929 by increasing federal spending by a staggering 60 percent in just four years.  He began by imposing the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act – a steep tax on some 20,000 imported products – and ended by boosting the Federal Income Tax from 23 to 65 percent.  Franklin Roosevelt amplified and expanded these policies and in 1939, the unemployment rate was just as high as when he started.  We had lost an entire decade.

 In 1945, Harry Truman abolished the excess profits tax.  He slashed federal income taxes. In 1946, Truman cut the federal budget from $85 billion down to $30 billion in a single year.  He fired ten million federal employees.  (It was called war demobilization).  The Keynesians at the time predicted 25 percent unemployment and a renewed depression.  Instead, his policies produced the post-war economic boom.

 We have more recent examples.  During his administration, Bill Clinton reduced federal spending by a miraculous four percent of GDP.  He dared to touch the third rail of entitlement spending and produced the most important and fundamental reform of the welfare state in our century.  He signed what amounted to the biggest capital gains tax cut in history on home appreciation.  He produced the only four budget surpluses in the last 40 years and a period of pronounced economic prosperity.

 True, George W. Bush reduced taxes but at the same time he recklessly increased federal spending – boosting it by 2 percent of GDP.  He re-introduced the discredited folly of stimulus spending.  He approved the biggest expansion of entitlement spending since the Great Society.  He produced massive budget deficits. If entitlement and stimulus programs, crushing deficits and massive spending increases were the road to prosperity, the Bush Administration should have produced a new Golden Age for the economy. 

 Let’s put partisanship aside today and concentrate on policy.  In the mid-1990’s, a Republican Congress and a Democratic President, following precisely the policies outlined in the measure before us today – balanced the budget, reformed entitlement spending, placed us on a path to pay off the entire national debt and produced a period of economic expansion and prosperity.   

 This budget turns us away from policies that we KNOW do not work toward policies that we KNOW do work.  It brings federal spending back under control, it puts Medicare and Medicaid on a sound financial foundation, it produces a million new private sector jobs next year through economic expansion and places our nation on a path so that when my children retire, the retirement systems they’ll have paid into all their lives will be safe and secure and their nation will be debt free and prosperous.

Supervisor Lamphier Revealed

George Rebane

Nevada County’s recently elected Supervisor Terry Lamphier published an extremely revealing, and therefore, welcome column last Saturday in the 2apr11 Union.  In that short piece (‘Re: It’s Time to Get Serious’, below in blue italics) he did an admirable job of telling readers his perceptions of our economy and understanding of American governance.

Many would dismiss his words as just the disjointed ramblings of a lightly learned liberal.  Here we choose not to do that; instead we take Mr Lamphier at his considered word, and inform ourselves of this elected representative’s world view and beliefs.  These tenets are important for us to understand, since he and his intellectual peers may soon dominate county government, and take us all to where their lights will show the way.  Let’s look at this new shining.

I agree with Sen. Doug LaMalfa's observation that “Americans are a can-do people.” Unfortunately, I disagree with him on just about everything else, everything else being rationalizations as to why, implied in essence, the business world is the superior role model for how we should live our lives. He is forwarding the conservative message that ‘society, and its representative, our government, should be subservient to economics and the private sector.'

Right off the bat, Mr Lamphier posits that government should not be subservient to the principles of economics and the private sector - the fundamental credo of a socialist cum whatever stronger form of collectivism you care to insert.

We are no longer talking about representative government — where we all have a say in what happens — when regular folks' voices are drowned out by a Wall Street government populated by those who perpetuate the migration of wealth into an ever smaller pool while systematically dismantling the very agency they were elected to work for and with.

So governments that are subservient to principles of economics and the private sector do not belong to the class of representative forms of governance.  Our Founders would find this conclusion most remarkable and counter to their intended legacy to us.  Difficult to tell here how Mr Lamphier connects these two propositions, but connects them he does.  Onward.