Rebane's Ruminations

Gun Control 2013 (updated 13jan13)

George Rebane

The 14dec12 Newtown massacre has been blown into a celebrated “crisis” for the nation’s gun ban contingent.  And President Obama has made certain that this crisis will also not go to waste in his overarching program that is fundamentally transforming America.  He gave VP Joe Biden the job of fashioning the next set of regulations that will further criminalize law abiding citizens who own and bear guns.  Remarkably (or not), Biden will present his panel's rapidly reached conclusions and resulting recommendations within the next few days.

The Second Amendment is one of the two or three major dividers in our ideologically polarized country.  And its public debate (mirrored in these pages) shines a bright light on the enormous differences that separate our self-declared progressives from those who consider themselves to be classic liberals and libertarians – more compactly labeled our Left and Right.

The major element of debate about the extent of public ownership of guns is their beneficial functions, if any, in a free, open, and liberal society that intends to remain so.  These functions are summarized in gun uses for 1) self-defense, 2) sport (including hunting), and the maintenance of 3) par force (q.v.) against a government turned rogue.

The Great Divide – ‘We don’t need no stinking Constitution’

George Rebane

Bit by piece America’s Left is unraveling the role of our Constitution as the foundation of our country's governance.  Undoing the legacy of our Founders has now progressed from dancing the progressives' constitutional sidestep to a growing chorus of calls to do away with the Constitution altogether - a document they see filled with “evil provisions” that has long held us in “bondage”.  This is the conclusion that constitutional law professor Louis Seidman presented in his 30dec12 NYT op-ed ‘Let’s Give Up on the Constitution’.

And I don’t think that Seidman is the only academic who has been denigrating the Constitution in our halls of ivy.  Progressives have correctly concluded that the Constitution does stand squarely in the way of their desire to fundamentally transform America into the next attempt at a socialist paradise.  So, as Seidman, they claim that it is the restrictions of our Constitution that have caused everything from our dire fiscal cliffs (yes, plural) to the heartbreak of psoriasis.

While agreeing that certain parts of the Constitution need to be retained, Seidman advises that we can govern ourselves through some TBD ad hoc process that we make up as we go along.  He claims that “(our) obsession with the Constitution has saddled us with a dysfunctional political system, kept us from debating the merits of divisive issues and inflamed our public discourse”, and asks us to “imagine that after careful study a government official — say, the president or one of the party leaders in Congress — reaches a considered judgment that a particular course of action is best for the country.”  Should such judgments and courses of action be then reviewed in light of the Constitution?  Absolutely not, according to this prominent maven of constitutional law.

Cirino’s Nevada City, RIP

George Rebane

The Progressive Plague that has ravaged California for some years, and with every passing day is becoming even more virulent, struck down a local landmark establishment.  In Nevada City Cirino’s Bar & Grill is shutting its doors according to owner Jerry Cirino because “The state and federal government has taken the most valuable asset of a business (employees) and made it a liability.  They have disrupted, irreparably, the triangular relationship between customer, employee, and employer.”  (reported in the 3jan13 Union)

In these pages I have evangelized that important relationship and its financial implications to a business, especially a small business.   The target audience for these soap box lectures has been the independent reader who is not yet convinced about the contributions of capitalism and free enterprise to his wellbeing.  The pushback on these clarifications has always been from the progressivists who are beyond redemption (aka butt stupid), and now cover the land like locusts destroying every shred of wealth creating commercialism that they can.  And in the dust and debris of their plunder they leave unemployed workers who are among the most needy, workers who must now become wards of the state and learn quickly on which side their bread is buttered.

One more tombstone in California's Business Cemetery.  And what again is the alternative to the Great Divide?

2013, the year of the Progressive Pandemic (updated 23dec12)

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 21 December 2012.]

You’ve all heard enough about the Newtown killings, and, no doubt, you will hear a lot more.  I decided to give you a break on the topic, and take one myself since the debate about the response to that tragedy has been hot and heavy on the web and on my blog.  In any case, today’s diatribe has obvious connections, should anyone want to tie things together.

I want to explore the notion that 2013 will be the year of the progressive pandemic.  In various forms this topic is being explored around the world after Americans gave a second term to their openly socialist president, and the country seems hell bent on a course of fiscal disaster that will remove the United States as a world hegemon.

In ‘2013: The Year America Dies?’ British journalist Paul Joseph Watson asks, “Will 2013 be remembered by future historians as the year that the United States of America, to all intents and purposes, died as a Republic and was finally seized by authoritarian globalists who have already openly usurped governments all across Europe?”

There are a lot of indicators baked into that question which answer it in the affirmative.   I’ll go through a few of them so you can form your own opinion as to how much they support Watson’s and my outlook.  It is easy to see that Europe is already in the bag for globalism, with leaders of major banks and investment houses in the EU countries all moving governments and economies in a direction to make the world safe for international finance.

Fire!, Ready, Aim – Panic-driven Public Policy (updated 21dec12)

"Passion governs.  And she never governs wisely."  Benjamin Franklin

George Rebane

The 14dec12 Newtown elementary school massacre again brings out all of our weaknesses as an ignorant and free people.  And the pandering politicians and public media are already at the trough, feeding on and encouraging every imaginable emotion that short circuits reason.  I want to take a look at the next collective calamity we are adding to the current pile within the Beltway.

The national debate on the massacre and reawakening of more gun controls is being repeated in an extended comment stream below ‘Ruminations – 14dec12 (updated)’.  Predictably, the arguments highlight the main polarities that today define and divide us.  The discussion herein will be limited to the reasoning processes that are fueling the forecasts of new public policies promised for the new year.

In the above referenced post a liberal commenter declared that the Newtown evil arose out of an inbred quality of American culture displayed most gruesomely in the 19th century massacres of American Indians during the nation’s westward movement.  His reasoning strongly concluded that Newtown’s mass deaths were of a piece with those inflicted on the Indians, and therefore give rise to modern day mass deaths in schools, theaters, malls, and other places where people are tightly packed.  His summa is that “a death is a death”, therefore they should all be considered of a feather.  Several other liberal commentators were quick to join their support to this deductive delusion.

Ruminations - 6dec12

George Rebane

Remember the ladies from Detroit who loved President Obama’s “stash” but had no idea where it came from.  Well, it’s almost four years later, and one of them seems now to be on the Detroit City Council.  As readers know, Detroit is on its collective ass and getting ready for a little bit of Chapter 9 bankruptcy filing, and the lady is maximally irritated.  It seems that they have sent their paid lobbyists to Washington to tell Obama that ‘we voted for you, and now we want to be paid.’  What she’s actually asking for is some “bacon” from the stash that the city now richly deserves.  Obama seems to be filching on his promise.

And then there’s Great Britain equally sliding into fiscal oblivion on its derriere (can’t use ass twice in the same post).  Prime Minister Cameron is rallying the Brits to demand that companies operating on the island pay more taxes than they need to on (wait for it) “moral grounds”.  Sticking a mike into the face of a typical citizen, and you hear that corporations like Starbucks and Amazon are “immorally minimizing their taxes” by following the applicable EU tax laws.  Sadly, such is the damage that socialism does to an otherwise healthy brain.

Coming back to our side for a peek at the growing imperial presidency, we see a President, with bulging veins in his temple, tell the country that “I will not play that game (of joining debt limit and budget negotiations) any more.”   No one has yet been smart enough to tell him that 1) the Constitution gives him no power to reject political deals like that, and 2) it is most proper to join debt limits and budget negotiations since they both deal with and are intimately related to our run away deficits and the real fiscal cliff, which is the soaring national debt whose service costs will swamp future federal budgets.   Is he acting dumb on purpose or just letting the rest of us know that his voters are too dumb to understand this demagoguery?   (No need to answer this.)

The Liberal Mind – Diminishing Diminishing Returns

George Rebane

Another large impediment to making progress when attempting to reason with progressives is that their world lacks the reality of diminishing returns that accrue when any enterprise is taken past its optimum operating point, let alone being taken to an extreme.  Most certainly the concept is no longer taught in schools as a short conversation with the public educated teenager of your choice will reveal.

This seminal truth about the liberal mind again displayed itself in recent debates on these pages that concern the looming fiscal cliff and bringing socialized healthcare to America.  Preceding these issues has been the already decades long imperative to make our country insanely safe and risk free.  Consumer advocacy groups, manned almost wholly by leftists, scream bloody murder when the next kid is injured, sickened, or killed on a playground or from his (usually) unusual use of a plaything.

Simple back of the envelope calculations (an inaccessible feat in this land) will quickly show that the rate or probability of occurrence of almost all such incidents is vanishingly small, but that makes no nevermind to the liberal brain.  The clinching argument for overreaction is – ‘But what if s/he were your child?’  When presented as response, that clinching question is sure to draw a bevy of self-satisfied nods from a chorus of the like-minded.  To liberal minds it appears that social policies are immune to the law of diminishing returns.

The Liberal Mind – A Recent Potpourri of Revelations

George Rebane

In general, liberals are not stupid; many of them just have bad luck when they think.  This cannot be said of California liberals.

Recently I have encountered a literal flood of observations and events that provide more insight into the workings of the now-dominant national liberal mind.  This small compilation is by no means comprehensive.

The Buffett Rule - Butt stupid is as butt stupid does

George Rebane

                                        ‘Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Progressive.’

One thing we’ll see a lot more of is the practice of static analysis by progressives.  For those recently arrived from Mars, it goes something like this.  Harry the millionaire currently pays an effective tax rate of 25% on his annual income of a million dollars.  That gets the government a cool $250K in tax revenue.  A progressive has an idea that we should put the ‘Buffett Rule’ in place requiring all who make a million or more to increase their tax rate to 30% of earnings.

The sharp minds in places like Center for American Progress (love that name) instantly tap a few keys on their calculators and conclude that the country’s Harrys will now pay an extra $50K annually to Uncle Sam.  In short, Harry and his well off friends will all act like potted plants, and do nothing save write bigger checks at tax time.  And when the projected  revenues don’t come near to the amounts calculated by the pinheads, everyone is surprised and starts thinking about the next tax hike.  After all, it’s the Democratic way, and it’s also the democratic way since 51% of the voters agree.

In the end, it doesn’t count for a hill of beans on the $8T+ of deficits baked into Obama’s budgets for the next ten years.

Slapdown from 'The Middle'

George Rebane

Saw Bob Crabb's latest contribution in this morning's Union - therefrom it is filched and displayed below for all to see.

Oh, the slings and arrows that penetrate most deeply come not from the enemy, but alas, the friend.  This piece of contemporary art recalls an ancient ode from another Bob who lived in bonnie Scotland -

"O would some power the giftie gie us to see ourselves as others see us."