Rebane's Ruminations

Wrong Rights (Addended)

George Rebane

[This is the addended and linked transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 30 September 2011]

It looks like we’re entering into the season of rights again.  Wisconsin judge Patrick Fiedler has informed the nation that we don’t have and never had any rights to either our cows, our crops, or our gardens, and that we may enjoy their benefits only to the extent that the government permits.  Meanwhile, here in California we are again leading the world in the discovery of a new “fundamental human right”, that being home ownership – everyone has a right to their own home.

Ladies and gentlemen, none of this is made up or hyperbole.  I am talking about the Foreclosure Modification Act, which California voters will see on their ballots as another initiative in November 2012.  The act will essentially prohibit the lender from foreclosing on a house that is the contracted collateral for the mortgage on the house.

Specifically, one of the purposes of the act is to “prevent the loss of one's personal home property by foreclosure or other means due to hardship or illness or other calamity.”  Under “other calamity” we find such things as tanking of the real estate market, or interest rate hikes that affect adjustable rate mortgages.  With this new right under our belts, we get to stiff the lender if the market value of our house goes ‘under water’, or we simply can’t come up with the monthly mortgage.  The lender cannot kick us out of our house and must renegotiate the loan to make it compatible with our new financial situation.  It will be one of our rights.

This kind of rights creep has been going on for the last several decades.  Things we naturally thought were our rights, such as property ownership, have been whittled away to effectively government permitted custodianship or simply criminalized.  And then new rights have been bestowed on us which we never expected to be called rights – like the right to safe hiking trails or nationalized healthcare - which, when enforced, almost always reduce our ability to enjoy what the right is supposed to promote.  You can form your own estimate of what will happen to California’s housing market if we pass the Foreclosure Modification Act.

DARPA’s Alpha Dog – The Latest Generation

George Rebane

On these pages we have been following the remarkable technological advances in all-terrain walking pack robots of the Big and Little Dog programs (here).  The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is funding this program at Boston Dynamics, the development contractor.  Alpha Dog is the latest generation in this program, and shows a mule sized mechanical critter that is designed to carry a 400 pound payload (horses are “comfortable” carrying about 250 lbs).  The video shows off the progress to date.



I will really get excited when they strap a power pack into this beast that makes it totally autonomous for carrying such loads over rough terrain for hours.  The energy density required of such a power source will challenge current designs.  (Anyone ever wonder how R2-D2 and his little buddy of Star Wars fame were powered.  They were autonomous and never needed recharging, refilling, or a change of whatever made them go.  Alpha Dog could do with one of those.)  More here on Alpha Dog from the IEEE report, and we look forward to the release of the videos of humanoid robots doing similar tasks over rough terrain.

H/T to RR reader for the tip on this latest step toward the Singularity.

AtPac Suit Cost Update

[The following reports Nevada County resident and RR reader Bob White’s progress in his investigation into the cost impact of the AtPac suit which the county fought for almost two years and then settled.  The EIA mentioned below is the agent administering the insurance pool for member jurisdictions like counties and municipalities.  RR’s reporting on the background and progress of this lawsuit can be accessed by searching this blog with keywords ‘AtPac’ and ‘Diaz’.]

Bob White

As you may know I have been conducting an investigation into the actual cost to the County of the AtPac settlement.  This investigation is not only directed at ascertaining the cost or an approximation of the cost but also an attempt to determine how that cost could have been, or can be determined, and of course with that, whether or not it could be determined, prior to the settlement, at the time of the settlement, or after the settlement was made.  At this time my investigation has amounted to seven letters containing 4,400 words, and two face-to-face meeting with County staff.

I am continuing my investigation but it is appropriate that I relate some of the information I have obtained to this point.  Some of this information may have already been disclosed and some of this information is not pertinent to my inquiry.

The fact the settlement was in excess of one million dollars it automatically triggered an additional $60,000 in premium.  I have not yet determined if this additional $60,000 is a onetime occurrence or if it is reoccurring for any period of years.

The total cost of the settlement was $1.9 million to AtPac and $775,000 in legal fees.  The County paid that amount and was reimbursed by EIA (Excess Insurance Authority) for $2.575 million.

It was EIA that made the offer of $1.9 million in settlement.  That limited EIA's costs to $1.9 million had the County refused to settle.  It was for that reason the County agreed to settle.

The County's case was based on, and contingent on, an independent forensic evaluation of the data that Aptitude manipulated.  This forensic evaluation was expected to illustrate that AtPac incurred no damage.  Because this information does not actually pertain to my investigation, I did not attempt to determine why it was believed that this would absolve the County.  This forensic evaluation was never accomplished or completed due to litigious obstruction tactics employed by the plaintiff's attorneys.

The legal costs were around $5,000 to $10,000 a month until April of 2011.  It was at that point the costs started escalating to the $100,000 per month range.  That was then that EIA became involved.

Another Silly Coincidence, Right?

George Rebane

A correspondent sent me this YouTube video of Idaho House (District 10) representative Curtis Bowers (R) talking about the communist agenda in America.  Apparently his surprising statements got some traction, and a lot of people were riled up about his connecting such dots for an obvious series of coincidences.  Then again, others thought he was spot on.

Fortuitously, here you can sign a petition calling for the recall or resignation of Rep Bowers for his offensive and “absurd accusations”.  And here you can see what an RR reader has shared with us as an explanation of what is really happening around the world.

‘Investors sell …’ – What a crock!

George Rebane

Time to vent.  One of today’s financial reporters again comes out with – “U.S. stocks sank in afternoon trading as investors worried about policymakers' ability to contain Europe's debt crisis.” (28sep11 WSJ)  You read this kind of pabulum constantly in the financial press.  ‘Investors believe X, therefore they sell’, ‘Investors look forward to Y, therefore they buy.’

As a long time investor in the stock and bond markets, I and my friends of similar persuasion always smile at the naifs who write such drivel.  If the investors are selling or buying, who the hell are they selling to or buying from? The local public storage facility, United Van Lines, inmates of the nearby mental hospital, who?

No one has informed these ‘journalists’ that when investors sell, guess what?, other investors buy.  And it would probably surprise those same keen observers of the markets that it also works the other way around.

Such pieces point out the uselessness of 95% of financial reporting.  They spout the obvious (i.e. tautologies), or make up stuff when no one knows what’s happening.  When the market goes down and I buy, what am I then?  A potted plant?

Civil Discussion of Issues with Paul Emery (updated 2oct2011)

George Rebane

I want to remind everyone that KVMR News Director Paul Emery and I will be having a “civil discussion of current events that spans the political divide” featured as The Great Dialogue by the Nevada County Tea Party Patriots.  This event will held be at the Nevada County Horseman’s Club in Grass Valley on Tuesday the 27th of September at 6:30PM.  We will be appearing as private individuals not representing KVMR or the Tea Party Patriots.  Please join us for this free admission event.

[2oct2011 update]  I want to thank RL ‘Bob’ Crabb, our socio-political cartoonist extraordinaire and RR reader, for his cartoon below that recognized the Civil Discussion event last Tuesday, and published in the 1oct11 edition of The Union.

Klamath Claptrap Continued (updated 26sep2011)

George Rebane

Congressman Tom McClintock has delivered some eloquent and incisive critiques in opposition to the intent of California environmental fanatics’ plan to demolish dams on northern California rivers.  These dams provide critical watershed control, agricultural water supply, recreation, and electrical power generation.  The congressman’s article ‘Klamath Claptrap’ is required reading in order to understand the nature of the debate over this issue.  But destroying functional dams as a part of California’s ongoing social(ist) engineering programs highlights the malady that has stricken our state, and is therefore worth study to appreciate our current road to ruin.

Also informative is how the left promotes such destructive policies in the larger and specific sense.  Instructive in this regard are the comments of Mr Steven Frisch appended to the congressman’s article.  (Mr Frisch is president of the non-profit Sierra Business Council, a northern California NGO promoting various environmental and leftwing regulatory causes.)

Ruminations - 25sep2011

George Rebane

Some thoughts on violence and the blind.

Harvard psychologist Professor Steven Pinker asks, “Why has violence declined so dramatically for so long? Is it because violence has literally been bred out of us, leaving us more peaceful by nature?”  In his recent book (as reported in the 24sep11 WSJ, ‘Violence Vanquished’) Pinker cites the history of human violence declining over the ages, and dropping at an astounding rate during the era after WW2, which he calls the “Long Peace” that was succeeded by the “New Peace” after the collapse of Soviet communism.

He attributes this progress toward non-violence to three primary factors – growth of governments, growth of commerce, and cosmopolitanism.  The last is a cultural factor abetted by improved education and facile communication of ideas.

What I find missing in his broad analysis is that he does not seem to understand the role of technology in the suppression of violence.  Most violence, ranging from states to serfs, was motivated by getting each other’s ‘stuff’.  And in olden days stuff was stored in widely distributed repositories that were guarded by its owners.  To get stuff away from its owners, one had to marshal and apply considerable force that left behind lots of bodies and bad blood to motivate the next forays.

Starting during the Industrial Revolution when nation-states and corporations became organized and capital intensive, there arose more and more opportunities to get the other guy’s stuff through outright fraud and other dodgy lawyer-intensive activities.  'Violence' to get stuff was done contractually and to your bank accounts with the attendant benefit of a greatly diminished body count.  Today governments, corporations, and even sole practitioners have practically legitimized such wealth transfers, and elevated them to the celebrated impresario level.  The good professor should redo his analysis, factoring in the effect of these more civilized ways of transferring wealth from its generators and owners to less deserving pockets.

Has our missile early warning system – the ever attentive eyes of nuclear defense – gone blind?  Moreover, the announcement of this apparent malady has attracted the attention of neither politician nor medal-bedecked military brass, and it has been completely overlooked by our ever-vigilant journalists.  A well tracked 6.5 ton research satellite in a decaying orbit streaked to its much anticipated fiery death somewhere over the North Pacific yesterday.  And when asked, NASA said it really couldn’t tell us where its debris field was located.

The US military has emplaced and operated a critical part of the nation’s defense shield – a multi-satellite, ballistic missile detection and tracking system (remember Star Wars?).  This is a 24/7/365 system that sends its data to NORAD’s nerve center under Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado (now also at Peterson AFB in Colorado Springs).  Its thermal detectors constantly track literally all heat events on earth and in its atmosphere, which have expanded to include all air traffic over North America since 9/11.  Fortunately, from meteor tracks to refinery fires, they have all been false alarms, and have been quickly identified as such.

My point here is that this early warning system can rapidly detect and pinpoint the location/dynamics of such heat events, whether they be the launch stage of a missile exiting its silo, or of MIRVed warheads buried in a cloud of decoys re-entering the atmosphere.  But yesterday, they couldn’t see and track 6.5 tons of predictable space junk searing through the atmosphere, trailing bright thermal plumes against the background of a cold ocean, and then tell us exactly where the major pieces would splash down.  Or did the mavens at NASA forget to call NORAD and just ask?

“… they can only build the gates so high.”

George Rebane

On these pages I have predicted that there will be blood in the gutters when the government destroys the economy (which they insist on characterizing as “the private sector”) to a level where new jobs are non-existent and savings are gone.  The usual liberal response in the attendant comment streams has been that ‘there goes that right wingnut again, fomenting violence’.  A reader reminds me that now we have the Progressive Poster Boy Michael Moore (here) joining Mayor Bloomberg to advise his audiences of such a future.  (It appears that they just didn’t know how to read the obvious tea leaves very well.)

Consequently, the guilty parties who must immediately be brought to account are the – wait for it – corporations and the 'rich'.  Monies must be extracted from them using the government’s force majeure in sufficient amounts to redistribute it either through transfer payments or state sector/selected jobs.  And we are assured that there are no gates high enough behind which corporations and the rich can hide to keep out an avenging government of the ‘peepuhl’ when these use “street demonstrations and civil disobedience to make their voices heard.”

So Moore’s advice is to turn on the screws, and “deal with it non-violently now.”  In his social program for the country he definitely sees a Bolshevik type of ending, and tells us that he would like to avoid achieving that end through Bolshevik means.

This is the kind of call-to-arms that is going on the airwaves from the liberal lamestream (see union videos from Wisconsin, Ohio, Seattle).  In the meantime the administration’s mental midgets are assuring everyone that they don’t see a double-dip coming as long as we pass the huge tax increases of the latest stimulus (aka American Jobs Act) that President Obama wants to pile on to the previously passed new taxes, fees, and regulations already in the pipeline.  All of this is, of course, scheduled to land on us after the 2012 election so as “not to distract” the voters in making their decisions.

As I’ve stated unequivocally before, I believe we have entered Depression2.  Neither party has a plan to bring us out of it quickly, and one party is already working their plan to make Michael Moore’s warnings come true.

Klamath Claptrap

Tom McClintock

[On the floor of the House our Congressman delivered an indictment of the current environmental radicalism that is part and parcel of the forces destroying California.  This article summarizes his speech. It is printed with permission.  gjr]
 
This generation is facing spiraling electricity prices and increasingly scarce supplies.  Californians have had to cut back to the point that their per capita electricity consumption is now lower than that of Guam, Luxembourg and Aruba.
 
What is the administration’s solution?

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced yesterday that the administration is moving forward with a plan to destroy four perfectly good hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River capable of producing 155,000 megawatts of the cleanest and cheapest electricity on the planet – enough for 155,000 homes.

Why would the administration pursue such a ludicrous policy?

They say it’s is necessary to help increase the salmon population.  We did that a long time ago by building the Iron Gate Fish Hatchery.  The Iron Gate Fish Hatchery produces five million salmon smolts each year – 17,000 of which return annually as fully grown adults to spawn.  The problem is, they don’t include them in the population count!

And to add insult to insanity, when they tear down the Iron Gate Dam, we will lose the Iron Gate Fish Hatchery and the five million salmon smolts it produces every year.

Declining salmon runs are not unique to the Klamath.  We have seen them up and down the Northwest Pacific Coast over the last ten years as the result of the naturally occurring Pacific Decadal Oscillation – cold water currents that fluctuate over a ten year cycle between the Pacific Northwest and Alaska.  During the same decade that salmon runs have declined in the Pacific Northwest, they have exploded in Alaska.  We’re at the end of that cycle.

The cost of this madness is currently pegged at a staggering $290 million – all at the expense of ratepayers and taxpayers.  But that’s just the cost of removing the dams.  Consumers will face permanently higher prices for replacement power, which, we’re told, will be wind and solar.

Not only are wind and solar some three times more expensive, but wind and solar require equal amounts of reliable stand-by power – which is precisely what the dams provide.

We’re told that yes, this is expensive, but it will cost less than retro-fitting the dams to meet cost-prohibitive environmental requirements.  If that is the case, then maybe we should re-think those requirements, not squander more than a quarter billion dollars to destroy existing hydro-electric dams.  Or here’s a modest suggestion to address the salmon population: count the hatchery fish!

We’re told this is the result of a local agreement between farmers and other stakeholders.  Mr. Speaker, everybody knows that the Klamath Agreement was the result of local farmers succumbing to extortion by environmental groups that threatened lawsuits to shut off their water.  And obviously the so-called stakeholders don’t include the ratepayers and taxpayers who would pay dearly for the loss of these dams.  Indeed, local voters have repeatedly and overwhelmingly repudiated the agreement and the politicians responsible it.  The locally-elected Siskiyou Board of Supervisors vigorously opposes it.