Rebane's Ruminations

An apology for all occasions

George Rebane

[In my long working career I was privileged and very lucky to have worked with and under some truly remarkable and very smart people.  One of these was an older systems engineer extraordinaire and a complete gentleman by the name of Skip Case.  I was technically his peer, but I never considered myself as such.  In a number of different ways Skip taught all of us who worked with him.  Those who also bothered to learn, benefitted from his wisdom.

Skip died a few years back, a little before I started RR, and was then only occasionally posting on the SESF website.  When I heard the news, it hit me that over the decades I and several others had been profitably using a phrase that he taught us years ago.  To remember Skip, I wrote the following vignette and posted it on the SESF website.  My most recent use of the phrase in a comment recalled the vignette, and I retrieved it to share with RR readers.  You may also find it useful some day, especially in the heated discussions of complex issues we cover here.]

Skip Case RIP

George Rebane – 21 May 2007

The conference room was crowded with the company’s elite engineering talent and top management for a very important system design review meeting.  The decision taken today would impact the company’s standing and future role as the nation’s leading nuclear submarine combat systems developer and manufacturer.  In 1968 as a young hotshot engineer I was privileged to be included in that tense gathering of greats in a very secretive industry critical to the country’s well-being, yet almost completely and purposefully unknown to the outside world. On board every operational fleet ballistic missile and attack submarine of our Navy, our company’s systems were the ones that would likely fire the opening salvos of WW3.

One of the company’s senior project engineers had just completed a presentation of an important design concept on which the effectiveness of the new system would hinge.  He was a man in his late forties of small yet lithe stature and thinning neatly combed hair.  What especially distinguished Skip’s presence was his gaze – he had the most focused and level gaze which when turned on you established an intellectual connection that would bind like a taught rope.  Using the fewest words needed, Skip always spoke precisely and with a calm urgency that made the listener want to lean forward in his chair so as not to miss a single pearl.

Engineering, as a demanding technical profession, is often a ruthless forum in which mistakes and errors are pounced upon by peers for ego gratification, reputation enhancement, and generally counting coup.  Such critiques are most often spontaneous but sometimes, especially when corporate management will be present, they are planned ambushes of great sophistication.  That morning a mid-level division manager with a short career as a practicing engineer rose to deliver a withering critique of the just concluded presentation.  It was obviously a long-planned critique that had still been in deep rehearsal while Skip was talking. And it was apparent to us all that he had not understood the very essence of the design approach.  As he concluded with a knowing glance to the company’s chief technical officer (Chief Engineer in those days), all eyes turned to Skip.

Remaining seated with hands folded, Skip fixed his attacker in that signature gaze and, with incredible calm and no hint of sarcasm, said,
 
“I’m sorry, I didn’t say it well enough for you to understand.”
 
… and paused.  As the semantic impact of this simple sentence settled in our minds most of us were astounded.  I remember scrambling to record those words in my notebook and I wasn’t alone. The managerial upstart was dumbfounded, he didn’t know on whom those contrite words put blame or shame.  He wanted to strike back, but no obvious target had been presented.  While his would-be nemesis was so consternated, Skip proceeded to quickly correct the man’s error and the meeting went on to a productive conclusion.

In his wisdom Skip Case settled a potentially contentious and divisive situation with a sentence that allowed everyone to draw their own distinct yet proper meaning of the occasion depending on their position and perspective.  All of us left the room with those words in mind.  I was fortunate to count Skip as one of my mentors and to sit at his knee during those early years.  And since that time I also have learned to apologize when I could not say it well enough for my respondent to understand – but still not as well as Skip.

Happy Mother's Day

George Rebane

 

Ellen Rebane (1916 - 1990)

 

Ruminations - 8may12

George Rebane

Happy VE Day!  On 8 May 1945 the Rebanes were in Liederberg - a small German farming village that just a few days ago was firmly brought under the control of Patton’s Third Army (more here) - and ready to be carted off to Augsburg and four years of internment in post-war displaced persons camps.  Meanwhile, on the other side of the world the battle for Okinawa was raging with Marine and Army divisions locked in a no-quarter-given combat with Japanese forces that had only one mission, die as slowly as possible while killing as many Americans as possible.  Okinawa was bigger than D-Day, but in America people were too busy celebrating Hitler’s downfall to notice.  That August the world would again change.

Newly elected Hollande promised to tax France to growth and balanced budgets.  And the French believed him.  Now nothing like that will happen, but what the hell, the French could frolic in the streets for a couple of days before they double down on their loudly proclaimed misery.  The French government's spending already accounts for more than 50% of the country’s GDP and it doesn’t generate any wealth.  All it is capable of doing is buying votes with tribute exacted from its private sector whose top marginal tax rates are now going to go above 70%.  The same silly people there as here believe that someone will actually risk their euros to build/expand businesses from which, if successful, the government will leave them 30 cents of every euro they earn.

Some writers view this latest installment of socialist failure in Europe as a golden opportunity for America (here).  They argue that America will be the only place left in the world for entrepreneurial and investment opportunity.  To me it seems that not everyone is paying attention to what Team Obama has accomplished, and what more they have in store for us should they win in November.  America’s crosshairs are focused squarely on being able to replicate the European toilet economy.  And some independents on this side of the Pond still ask, ‘why would we do that?’

The answer is that the socialist on both shores see none of this going on in Europe.  The EU and its subsequent eurozone are instead seen as triumphs in governance.  Happy dancing in the streets as national healthcare systems go broke, retirement ages are lowered (Hollande will return France to 60 from 62), endless vacations at every turn, can’t-get-fired jobs, minimum wages pushed above $20/hr, austerity measures reversed (no more spending cuts), … what’s there not to like?

No one there or here remembers nor has been taught that when governments have taken over the means of creating the country’s wealth, they have created the sorriest places for human existence on earth.  It has always started with taxing the bejeesus out of ‘the rich’, until everyone who earned a private paycheck found themselves suddenly designated as ‘the rich’.

This is also graduation season and our colleges are in the process of disgorging another million or so of young people (the entire US education system releases 4.3M onto the economy each year).  They are of the 'Me Generation', and the great part of them will land in the job market without marketable skills, and dumber than the proverbial 2x4 with a face painted on it.  Bret Stephens in the 8may12 WSJ writes the Class of 2012 a sobering letter; it begins –

Allow me to be the first one not to congratulate you. Through exertions that—let's be honest—were probably less than heroic, most of you have spent the last few years getting inflated grades in useless subjects in order to obtain a debased degree. Now you're entering a lousy economy, courtesy of the very president whom you, as freshmen, voted for with such enthusiasm. Please spare us the self-pity about how tough it is to look for a job while living with your parents. They're the ones who spent a fortune on your education only to get you back— return-to-sender, forwarding address unknown.

A Cut at 'Rational Optimism'

George Rebane

A friend and correspondent who shares many of my worldviews sent me a link to science writer Matt Ridley's hopeful piece on "seventeen reasons to be cheerful".  RR readers of these pages know that I am of the opinion that the western world is now beyond the tipping point, that we are headed for a gut-wrenching redirection of civilization at the rapidly approaching confluence of dysfunctional political ideologies, accelerating technology, and wholesale popular 'dumbth' (q.v.).  Ignoring many substantiating facets of this argument, Ridley gives us a salutary view of how we got here, and a very optimistic look into our future.  While definitely blindered, the seventeen reasons will nevertheless  bring cheer to some readers who judge my glass to be excessively dark.  Enjoy.

Socialism’s trail of tears, long time coming

George Rebane

A reader sent me this little blast from the past, published in the year I first set foot on these shores.  The ode below was composed as it became clear that the nation’s flirtation with communism in the Great Depression had not been fully purged by Truman’s partial efforts to sunset some of the more egregious New Deal programs after WW2.

As taught by many economists and political philosophers of the classical liberal persuasion and Austrian schools (Mises, Hayek, Hazlitt, Friedman, …), socialism is a cancer of democracy.  Any trace that is left, inevitably begins throwing out shoots and growing again.  There is little hope of eradicating it, only assiduously nipping it in the bud before it begins its inevitable road to metastasizing the body politic.

And we have not nipped it in the bud.  Instead our public schools have now graduated two successive generations of citizens who are either collectivists or don’t know the difference between collectivism and a freshly painted corral post.  But we cannot claim to have not been warned, and are now arrived at the end of the long road which for both ourselves and the Europeans is turning into a trail of tears.

How We Got Here – Looking at the Bush2 Record

George Rebane

On these pages I have argued long and hard that the permissive environment in which mortgage lenders made subprime loans was carefully constructed and energetically promoted by the congressional social engineering programs of the Democratic Party augmented by a klatch of RINOs. Yesterday’s announced retirement by Rep Barney Frank (D-MA), one of the prime perpetrators of Depression2, motivated this post of the record pointed to by an RR reader.

Since the 2008 election we have heard the constant and now-famous wail from our President, echoed by Democrats in Congress, that seeks to absolve him and his cohort of any contribution to the present financial mess.

Actually, Mr President, it wasn’t.  The sequence of events presented below was taken from President Bush’s White House website in September 2008, and it is open for refutation by anyone who can show that the public record is in error.  (Source: NiceDeb)

Ruminations - 27nov2011 (updated 28nov2011)

George Rebane

Communist spying and influence on our national policies have long been denied/diminished by our Left.  The public experience in uncovering these activities within our government was not sufficient to change any minds in our unions, mainstream media, or the halls of academe.  Things should have changed when the USSR collapsed in 1991, and the subsequent opening of some KGB historical files that contained conclusive evidence of atrocities like their massacre of Polish intellectuals and its officer corps in the Katin forest, and spying/infiltrating activities in all western governments.  No contrition from our progressives save a stiffer upper lip.  New evidence from more released files has produced added historical works on “revealing accounts of Soviet espionage in America, from the 1930s, when the pickings were easy, to the unforgiving Cold War era.”  Short summaries of books on the topic, including some classics, are presented in the 26nov11 WSJ here.  We expect no change in the historically impervious Left.

‘The New Tammany Hall’ is how Leftwing historian Fred Siegel sees the last forty years of public-sector union permeation into all levels of government in America.  Siegel, a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute, is still able to call them as he sees them.  In a recent interview Siegel acknowledges that “The Great Society put the state on growth hormones. Less widely appreciated, the era gave birth to a powerful new political force, the public-sector union. For the first time in American history there was an interest dedicated wholly to lobbying for a larger government and the taxes and debt to pay for it.”  The quotable interview is worth a read for the independent voter, and also as a stress test for the rock solid progressive.  The happy conclusion from this is that there exist Leftwing intellectuals who are still Americans first.

Many of us keep wondering how long the national ‘green jobs’ farce will be continued at a government budget near you.  Organizer Obama has been touting green energy jobs for as long as he has been a sty in our public eye.  Every day we hear of more corruption, misdirection, lies, and malfeasance in the government’s nurture of the crony socialism that is the country’s green energy industry.  In  spite of this, the traditional (read fossil) energy sector today employs over 440,000 workers, and since 2003 has grown 80% in its number of American jobs.  And this growth doesn’t take into account the multiplier effect for non-energy jobs to support all these workers and their families.  Now the Left is real good at claiming all kinds of multiplier goodies for their mythical green jobs projections, but howl their heads off when the same analysis is applied to real jobs and job growth in our workforce.

In the meanwhile the political corruption continues without so much as a sniffle from our journalistic stalwarts.  Well almost; according to the Washington Post Obama’s $38.6B green loan program had created – drum roll please – a whopping 3,500 jobs compared with the 65,000 he touted the program would “save or create”.  And please don’t look under the rug where all the Solyndras have been expeditiously swept.  There is no learning here, the beat goes on.

Now for the good news (almost).  Since the government nationalized the nation’s school loan program, someone in the bureaucracy had their bulb light up.  To save the entire enterprise from going bust sooner than later, why not discriminate in who gets the loans.  Don’t lend to students with dumbbell majors who will have little chance of paying back the loan.  What a concept!  But don’t hold your breath, this has yet to be implemented.  And dumbbell majors got rights too, know what I mean?

Stupid once, stupid forever.  My favorite socialist site truthout.com skidded on yet another patch of slick progressive history.  In it Martin Bennett and Richard Walker write ‘Job Crisis: What did Roosevelt do that Obama should?’ This piece deftly cherry picks the sorry record of Depression1 in the 1930s, and concludes that we can replicate FDR’s performance (recall the National Recovery Act and its alphabet soup of jobs programs) by taxing the bejeezus out of the ‘rich’ and closing corporate loopholes.  They turn a blind eye to the high hard statistic of that era that is oft repeated in these pages – unemployment was at 17+% in 1933 and still in 1939 when Sec Treas Morgenthau confessed to Congress that nothing had worked except growing government, running up the country’s debt, and extending the misery.   The socialists’ standard response to such failures over the decades has been to double down and do it again.  It still is.

[28nov2011 update]  This morning Rep Barney Frank (D-MA) announced that he has reconsidered, and will retire at the end of his current term in Congress.  This is the man who is one of the authors and energetic goads of the subprime loan mess, the pompous ass who assured the nation that Fannie and Freddie were in the best of health and doing the right thing in buying all those worthless loans, a member of the dynamic duo of the Dodd-Frank 'Wall Street Reform Act'.  Except for separating the trust and investment functions of banks and insurance companies (as they were before the ill-advised Republicans joined them), the law is a typical one step forward, three steps backward in creating unnecessary frictions in America's financial industry.  So along with the hastily retired Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) of Countrywide scandal fame, the pair will be in a timely retirement instead of jail for their shady careers on the Hill.  Both leave/left easy shoes to fill, and the sad part is that the voters of Massachusetts and Connecticut have been up to the challenge.

‘Estonia, the little country that could’

George Rebane

A friend and RR reader emailed me the link to a Washington Times article by Richard Rahn that summarizes the economic history of Estonia.  Readers may recall my posts from our 15-29jun08 visit back to the old sod (see posts under ‘My Story’, right column).  Misplaced modesty prohibits my adding anything to the Rahn article.  I only draw your attention to it as a part of the larger apologetics that may be seen to underpin my socio-economic biases expressed in these pages.  As such, the source may all be in my double-helix, or perhaps in the water I drank as a young child.  Hard to tell.

Remembering and Providing for Sacrifice

George Rebane

Today we remember and honor the military service men and women who died for us, and those who have yet to come home.  We sent them into harm’s way to keep harm away from us and our loved ones.  They went willingly again and again to do the work of war with the belief, and sometimes only hope, that their country was behind them.

 

Since the days of muzzle loading rifles and the Constitution class of frigates, one way Americans heading for battle knew their country supported them fully was in the quality and supply of weapons and stores they were provided.  In the main, these were always the best that was available for warcraft.  And with innovative entrepreneurs free to invent, make, and sell, America soon set the standard for getting there firstest with the bestest and mostest – once our politicians had things sorted out.

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.)