Rebane's Ruminations

McGuire to run against Beason for BoS seat

George Rebane

Sue McGuire has announced that she will be running against Nate Beason for the Nevada County District #1 supervisorial seat.  Press release below.

News Release
Contact: Julie Johnson
Phone: 530 263 2060

For Immediate Release

Sue McGuire announces candidacy for First District Supervisor

Nevada County Attorney Sue McGuire this morning announced that she is seeking the office of First District Supervisor for Nevada County.  She believes her deep roots in the community and two decades as an attorney in Nevada County have provided her with the love of the lifestyle here, and the experience that makes her perfect for the job.  Sue’s family has been actively involved in the county for six generations.

Sue’s first goal as county supervisor will be to ensure that Nevada County retains existing businesses and encourages new businesses that will provide jobs for Nevada County residents.  Given the economy and resulting job attrition in government, it is critical to provide an atmosphere that encourages private sector business.  Sue will review all regulations that may be a hindrance to this goal to determine what is working and alternatively, what needs to be changed.

McGuire was born and raised in Nevada County, as were her parents, Mel and Bonnie McGuire.  Mel was a self-employed trucker, hauling logs in the warmer months and refrigerated trailers cross-country in the winter.  Her mother was a homemaker and is an artist and writer.  Sue’s grandparents, Tom and Marie McGuire, moved to the area in the 1920s and owned apartments in Nevada City while Tom hauled equipment for the mines and local construction companies.  That included equipment and supplies for construction of the annex to the Nevada County Courthouse and for Nevada City Elementary School. 

Sue’s maternal grandparents, Val and Lilly Belle Baima, began operating a local organic farm in the 1940s, long before anyone else pursued organic farming.  They received numerous local and state awards for excellence in agriculture.

Sue graduated from Nevada Union High School and immediately began working in local law offices, while eventually completing law school at night and opening her private practice in Nevada County in 1991.  She worked in the Nevada County District Attorney’s Office from 2003 to 2008, when she decided to return to her current private practice handling civil and criminal cases.

Sue has volunteered with the American Red Cross, including assisting in Louisiana during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and helped out at the San Francisco Rescue Mission.  She also served as an election official for three elections during the past decade and volunteered with Veteran’s Stand Down.  McGuire is a past local Board Member for Project Jump Start, Anew Day, and the Nevada County Tea Party Patriots.  She currently serves as a regular volunteer at Twin Cities Church and is a mentor attorney with the Nevada County Peer Court.

McGuire vows to meet with her constituents during her campaign and will continue that practice upon assuming duties as the First District Supervisor.  She plans meeting with community organizations, county staff, and city, state, and federal officials on a frequent and regular basis.

McGuire feels it is her patriotic privilege and duty to be a public servant in the community that she calls home.

Calvin's Econ 101

"The trouble with quotes on the internet is that it's difficult to determine whether or not they are genuine."  Abraham Lincoln

George Rebane

This post is unabashedly lifted from and is composed of content, in whole cloth, from reader emails.  (I am still in mourning over Bill Watterson's decision to retire the strip in 1995; talk about quitting when you're ahead.)

Nevada City Occupied

George Rebane

On a mild October late afternoon with fall colors in the air, about 150 good-hearted but misguided people gathered to express their opposition to ..., well, it was hard to say.  But a theme that tried to surface was that 'Corporations are bad, peace is good'.  A couple of Nevada City's finest stayed quietly in the background; no one expected trouble and no one delivered it.  It was just a planned demonstration of solidarity with those in the big cities like New York and Los Angeles who want to pull down capitalism and replace it with communism.  OK, so they'll start with socialism, but the communists are a patient lot and know that their turn (opportunity?) will come soon enough - socialism is just a slippery slope to their front door.  No one really knew what they were doing, it was just a nice evening to assemble, walk, protest our sick economy, and while we may, enjoy this great gift which we call the United States of America.

The Morass of Morals and Morality

George Rebane

The ‘morality’ of capitalism, of empire, of wealth redistribution, and many other things are much on the minds of people these days.  Yet, as with notions like race, prejudice, government subsidy, censorship, socialism, …, almost no one comes to the debate with a coherent, let alone operational, definition of the terms they glibly sprinkle into their arguments.  Such ignorance has reached unheard heights that now call for books – e.g. philosopher Jamie Whyte’s Crimes Against Logic – Exposing the Bogus Arguments of Politicians, Priests, Journalists, and Other Serial Offenders (2005) - that have been published on the rising incomprehensibility of public babble.

To this semantic morass I now wish to add an understanding of the notion of morals and morality since it is often brought up in the comment threads of RR, usually as part of an indictment of fellow readers or their wayward beliefs.  This contribution joins a growing list of other terms on RR (see ‘Critical Thinking and Numeracy’ category) I have defined, many at the request of readers.  The intent of such definitions is to make my commentaries and comments more understandable, and hopefully invite others to appreciate the offered semantics.

How to Fix Congress

George Rebane

Warren Buffet is credited with the following prescription for fixing the deficit and Congress, even though many of the points have been circulating for years (including in these pages).  In order to give Warren full credit - he needs it after the Buffet Tax - I reproduce below the hopefully titled Congressional Reform Act of 2011 which was emailed me by a correspondent with a note from the billionaire himself that it be spread around the country ASAP.  Do your part; if not, then you can continue wondering why the corruption continues on the banks of the Potomac.

Warren Buffett, in a recent interview with CNBC, offers one of the best quotes about the debt ceiling: "I could end the deficit in 5 minutes," he told CNBC. "You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election.

The 26th amendment (granting the right to vote for 18 year-olds) took only 3 months & 8 days  to be ratified! Why? Simple! The people demanded it. That was in 1971... before computers, e-mail, cell phones, etc. Of the 27 amendments to the Constitution, seven (7) took 1 year or less to become the law of the land...all because of public pressure.

*Congressional Reform Act of 2011*
1.     No Tenure / No Pension.  A Congressman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they are out of office.

2.     Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security. All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the American people. It may not be used for any other purpose.

3.     Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all Americans do.

4.     Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.

5.     Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.

6.     Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people.

7.     All contracts with past and present Congressmen are void effective 1/1/12. The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen. Congressmen made all these contracts for themselves. Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their term(s), then go home and back to work. If each person contacts a minimum of twenty people then it will only take three days for most people (in the U.S.) to receive the message.

Lies and Lying (updated)

George Rebane

In this information age lies abound more than ever.  And the art of lying involves understanding the three major types of lies.  This piece is an addition to the RR lexicon that may be of use in future discussions. The sequel here is an edited version of a little essay on lying first delivered in 1993 as part of a university lecture on critical thinking.

The term ‘lie’ has given trouble to semanticists and parents alike because it embraces such concepts as truth, intention, belief, and the roles of the parties involved.  If we look at lying in more scientific terms, we see that it can be cast as a communication event that comprises of a message, its sender, and its receiver.  We offer the following definition.

A Lie is a Message, the truth value of which is known to be ‘False’ by its Sender, who at the same time anticipates that the Receiver will assign ‘True’ to its truth value.  As such, a Lie is simply a Message intended to deceive.

This somewhat technical definition is nevertheless sufficiently direct, comprehensive, and operational so as to support a useful analysis of lying - a most popular and ingrained human activity.  The definition obviates such indeterminables as utilities and morality, and avoids the infinite regressions of “he knew that she knew that he knew…” that often cloud any discussion of lying. When the Lie results in consequential injury to the Receiver or third parties, those so injured are called Victims of the lie.  From the definition - and our own experience - it is clear that lies can also prove of benefit to the Receiver and, indeed, in the large can conceivably have a neutral effect on all concerned.

Ruminations - 16oct2011 (updated)

George Rebane

New Scientist, always politically correct, has discovered the possibility that if Greece goes under and reduces its GDP by the predicted 50%, then it will not only leave the eurozone but also the EU.  The real Greek tragedy is that this could well start the dominoes falling, resulting in beggaring half the EU countries, and cause the whole system of European unity to come crashing down.  The upshot of the science journal’s concern is that Europe’s climate control measures will then go by the board since poor countries are never good stewards of the environment.

They note that “The climate always takes a back seat when economies turn sour, but the impact of a euro break-up would be profound. Any country leaving the euro would also breach the treaties of Maastricht, Lisbon and Rome, and therefore be forced to leave the EU. A euro break-up is likely to shatter the EU, and with it the hard won architecture of climate policy.”  (more here) Socialists are always belatedly surprised that a clean environment only comes arm-in-arm with a good dose of functional capitalism.

If you’re so rich, why aren’t you smart?  That’s a question no one would ever have thought to ask Mortimer Zuckerman, Democratic billionaire and social scene commentator extraordinaire.  We read Mortimer’s commentaries for years as the final word in the US News & World Report.  Their leftist tilt was always a bit jarring when considered in the context of the centrist editorial policy evident in the rest of the magazine.

Well, now we find out that Mortimer is disappointed in the man he voted for in 2008 (more here).  Doesn’t anyone pay attention to what the community organizer promised us?  Apparently Mortimer was a bit too busy making his billions to really discover what made it all possible.

And, of course, the question could also apply to that Wizard of Omaha who is now getting a new tax named after him.  The Buffett Tax on “millionaires and billionaires” is the new replacement for or addition to (depending on the intensity of your faith in government justice) the AMT.  Ol’ Warren is even using the sleazebag trick of arguing that his tax only applies to the hundreds, when America’s great minority (aka federal taxpayers) knows that in reality it will be applied to the millions.  His rationale seems to be that the country already has enough millionaires, and this is just the ticket to put a cork in it.  (more here)

Elizabeth Warren, Obama’s former consumer czar cum candidate for the Senate, has persuaded legions of leftists that the rich got that way by using taxpayer funded roads, taxpayer funded police for security, and other amenities of a publicly funded society.  Her argument then proceeds that the money they earned was not really earned by them alone, but earned by all the citizens.  Her leaps of economic logic finally conclude that these rich unfairly garnered what could have been more fairly earned by millions of others who apparently couldn’t figure out how to use the roads and the police and the tax code and the … .  Therefore social justice demands that such unfair advantages shosuld be leveled by making them pay an even more generous share of the federal take for eventual redistribution to those who have been cheated by the fickle goddess Fortuna.

All this goes to bolster the progressive view that wealth creation is a matter of fortune or luck – some have it, most don’t.  Therefore government’s proper role is to act as the Luck Leveler with a gun.  And how is the correct luck level determined?  Democratically, of course.

Professor Nouriel Roubini ('Dr No'), national pundit and premier economic prognosticator, has come to recognize that the systemic inequality of people's ability to create wealth in a globalized high-tech world can lead to social instability and blood in the streets.  He even recognizes the impact of the Great Doubling (search RR) on the American workforce.  He doesn't have a solution, but sees only a dark future if things continue as they are (more here).  Welcome aboard!

Finally, here is a talk by Tarek Fatah, a Pakistani-Canadian Muslim, on Islamism, its intentions for the west, its penetration into the highest government circles (including the White House), and the politically correct silence that we, the children of western civilization, shamefully practice toward enemies sworn to exterminate us.  H/T to RR reader.

[update] There's finally some good news from Washington.  Apparently the nation's fisc is nowhere near the disastrous state that some of us have reported.  A correspondent and RR reader informs me that the State Department is sending representatives from suitable NGOs on overseas junkets.  Even one of our local NGO executives will be spending some quality time in China and Mongolia on our nickel.  Things are looking up.

Obama Riots – The last full measure of desperation (updated 17oct2011)

George Rebane

As a fresh face in 2008, community organizer, ‘resigned’ lawyer, and sometime senator Barack Obama outspent opponent McCain by $665,000,000 to win the White House.  Most of this advantage was contributed by public service unions.  Given the man’s demonstrated record of incompetence or intention (your pick), stronger medicine is needed for him to prevail in 2012.

It took about two summer months of demagoguery for Team Obama to launch the so-called ‘Occupy Wall Street’ demonstrations that are destined to turn into what unfettered history will record as the Obama riots.  In these months the socialists were able to assemble a gaggle of the uneducated, unemployed, and unthinking into a mass of “activists” that first occupied a lower Manhattan park, and then spread to satellite demonstrations in cities across the land.  More to come.

At first these concerned people came together to protest “Wall Street”.  When the media stuck microphones in their faces, the babble that came out made progressive eyeballs roll up from the Oval Office to Berkeley.  These idiots had no message and demonstrated no understanding of what was going on – they just wanted “more” money from a government that was broke and unwilling to go after the “fat cats” to wring out the “fair share” that was purloined from their share of the national weal.

Led by worthies such as former administration Green Czar Van Jones, consumer protector Elizabeth Warren, and The Man himself, the message was fashioned, conferences held, and everyone now has their talking points.  They still don’t know what they are talking about, but at least the words are there.  Local progressives from far and wide – Nevada County included – have held their sympathy demonstrations, are planning solidarity junkets to ‘occupied’ cities, and preparing for the real protests when the proclaimed “revolution” really takes off.

All this is needed now that Obama’s latest gambit for the next ($447B) stimulus has received a bipartisan rejection.  Obamacare has turned out to be an albatross of titanic proportions for the country (see 17oct11 update below).  There is no sustainable green industry, only a subsidized sham.  The millions of “jobs created and saved” at the cost of trillions cannot be verified by the most dedicated of government agencies.  And a coalition of Democrats (reported by Rep Jim Matheson D-UT) is even joining with Republicans to reduce offshore profits taxes to 5.25% from its current 35% rate which keeps about a trillion dollars from coming back to the United States.

Meanwhile, Pennsylvania’s state capitol Harrisburg is preparing for a Chapter 9 bankruptcy filing because of unfunded government employee pension liabilities – an event watched by uncounted cities in similar straits.  And now we hear from many knowledgeable sources that we really don’t know the full magnitude of the government’s involvement in creating the current recession (or Depression2 IMHO), and that the whole matter deserves careful study if we are to come out of it better informed.  This, of course, is the last thing that people preparing to fundamentally transform America want.

So now we see that Obama’s planned billion dollar war chest will not carry the day no matter how much he outspends his Republican opponent, and it is time for the next stage of strong medicine to keep the ball rolling toward a new USSA – please study the Rebuild the Dream proclamation for the Occupy demonstrations.  The unions will have to contribute more than their hundreds of millions, they will now have to take an active part in organizing the demonstrations and then fill their ranks with bussed in members.  The call for an end to capitalism is loud and clear.  It is even evident on the better quality of professionally printed signs that these “grass roots” demonstrators are carrying as the weeks pass.  How many arrests are needed before these demonstrations turn into undeniable riots?  Nothing less will divert attention from the sad road to socialism on which Obama is leading the nation.

[17oct2011 update]  Obamacare's so-called Class (long-term care) program is just one of the many big lies of which the entire nationalized healthcare scam is composed of.  The Democrats now agree with Paul Ryan's analysis when he dismantled Class at the recent White House healthcare summit.  The math in this sham insurance program doesn't add up, and that was known from the gitgo by the bill's authors.  They just wanted another bamboozle added in that would appear to "bend the cost curve downward", and when it didn't, it would be repealed by a future Congress.  Well the damn thing won't add up and the cat's out of the bag with Sen Judd Gregg's inserted proviso in Obamacare that says if Class doesn't measure up actuarially, then it must be omitted from the overall legislation.  So Class is dead and so are all the ballyhooed "savings" of Obamacare since Class was the major contributor to the advertized savings.  A similar treatment now is proposed for all the other gimmicks that make up Obamacare.  And if that bit of responsibility passes Congress, Obamacare will be toast.

The White House and Dems need to do everything possible to keep this development from becoming the banner headline of the election season.  A solution at hand is to turn on the heat under the OWS demonstrations and see if they can be blown up into Occupy America affair - the messier the better - which will keep the nation's angry un/underemployed and rent seekers from paying attention to what's going on behind the curtain.

Adiministrivia – 13oct2011

George Rebane

Less than an hour ago we got our trailer parked (more or less) in its assigned spot.  We have returned from a trip on which I was consigned to the Black Hole of Connectivity.  I notice that the RR comment streams  have continued to grow with a dull roar from which my little squeaks have been absent.  My apologies for any inconvenience or apparent affront caused by my silence; none of this was expected (all RV parks claimed to provide connectivity, but not to my laptop), and no affront was intended. So much has happened in the interval that it will be difficult to select a new point of entry – nevertheless … .   My duty as I see it ;-)

Misunderstanding Job Creation

George Rebane

[This is the submitted version of my October column that appeared in the 8oct11 print and online editions of The Union.]

This column has long argued that the American worker is at a distinct disadvantage when compared to workers in emerging economies, and especially when compared to what the American demands as compensation to maintain his ‘right’ to a high standard of living.

The left has fastened on to the premise that it is the failure of markets that has caused the current glut of workers and high unemployment rate.  This failure must be fixed by more government flexing its muscles to tax, regulate, and spend (sorry, “stimulate”) to create jobs.  Supply side economics is anathema to the crowd in Washington, and we are back to government attempting to create jobs through demand side (Keynesian) policies.

This didn’t work during the Great Depression - FDR’s 17.1% unemployment rate in 1939 was the same as the one he inherited in 1933.  It was the dynamic trio of Hitler, Stalin, and Tojo who showed how to work the demand side of Keynesianism – after September 1939 everyone was able to find government jobs.

Earlier this week I woke up to an NPR interview of a venture capitalist and a fellow of the Competitive Enterprise Institute.  Lynn Neary, the liberal interviewer, wanted to know what was wrong with the Occupy Wall Street crowd’s belief that (government) creating jobs would lead to “growth and prosperity”.  In vain, Bill Frezza of CEI attempted to convince NPR that the popular notion of ‘first jobs, then prosperity’ was a myth.