Rebane's Ruminations

The Great Divide – America’s Cultural Split

George Rebane

Victor Davis Hanson continues the ongoing study of how America is coming apart.  In ‘Is America Repeating the Cultural Split Between Rome and the Byzantine Empire?’ VDH lays out the parallels and answers the question in the affirmative.

When the Roman Empire split into its western part centered on Rome, and its eastern part centered on Constantinople, the two halves took distinctly different approaches to governing their territories, with catastrophic results for Rome.  Rome’s hedonistic practices and passive acceptance of a “polyglot and often fractious” tribal cultures and religions (including versions of Christianity) soon focused people on the regional me and mine that came to vie with the you and yours.  By 600AD the disintegration that started around 450AD was complete.

This was not the case in the east – “the glue that held the East together against centuries of foreign enemies was the revered idea of an ancient and uncompromising Hellenism—the preservation of a common, holistic Greek language, religion, culture, and history.”  The Byzantine Empire, as it then became known, held together for a thousand years after Rome, finally becoming so over-bureaucratized and corrupt that it was overrun by the Ottoman Turks in 1453AD, and Constantinople became today’s Istanbul.

Today we see the definite analogue of such a split in our red/blue America.  Now “millions of Americans yearly self-select, disengage from their political opposites, and make moves based on diverging ideology, culture, politics, religiosity or lack of it, and differing views of the American past.”  Our conservatives are migrating to the interior, leaving both coastal areas to liberals.

This is producing two distinct Americas.  “While red states welcome change, they believe America never had to be perfect to be good. It will always survive, but only if it sticks to its 234-year-old Constitution, stays united by the English language, and assimilates newcomers into an enduring and exceptional American culture.”  The more conservative traditionalists prefer states “where there is usually smaller government, fewer taxes, more religiosity, and unapologetic traditionalists.”  

America’s Left prefers the blue state “bicoastal salad bowl” as their “model for immigration” where “newcomers can retain and reboot their former cultural identities”, and where “religion is less orthodox; atheism and agnosticism are almost the norm. And most of the recent social movements of American feminism, transgenderism, and critical race theory grew out of coastal urbanity and academia.”  Tribalism par excellence.

VDH concludes with – “Our Byzantine interior and Roman coasts are quite differently interpreting their shared American heritage as they increasingly plot radically divergent courses to survive in scary times.  But as in the past, it is far more likely that one state model will prove unsustainable and collapse than it is that either region would ever start a civil war.”  From his mouth to God’s ear.

So here again is the bottom line.  Today a lot of lip service is paid to ‘finding common ground’ and ‘coming together’ and ‘there’s more that unites us than divides us’, etc.  But for any of these attempts at dialogue to bear fruit, we must first and foremost recognize the gorilla in the room – the “radically divergent courses” that have been plotted and embraced by the tens of millions of polarized Americans which give rise to the Great Divide.  If these radically divergent courses are not resolved first, the rest will only continue the rehash of hot air.

The Union – no room for blasphemies du jour

‘All great truths began as blasphemies.’  GB Shaw

George Rebane

We have broken bread with our newspaper’s publisher Don Rogers, communicate with him regularly, and consider him a friend.  Don is a likable and honorable man with clear ideas about the kinds of content that should appear in The Union, ideas that he most recently shared in the 22oct21 edition of his weekly column.(here)  Writing about the criteria for acceptable commentary, he informed us, his readers, that –

Facts and evidence must check out with conventional, legitimate sources. We try to keep it within the mainstream guardrails factually for more grounded discussion than, say, on Brunswick street corners or at the start of county supervisors meetings.

Swimming with the times, the newspaper’s editorial policy has noticeably tilted leftward.  I sensed something had changed when a recent Other Voices submittal of mine (here) on some new research by sociologist Charles Murray was rejected for containing subject matter outside established norms, content that would violate the sensibilities of the newspaper’s readership.  It was my first and only rejection in twenty years, and since then I’ve almost learned to behave myself.

These are trying times and new ideas are a messy business, often rejected by minds more careful and staid.  And as a private enterprise, The Union has every right to determine what it chooses to print.  Nevertheless, this is my lament about our hometown newspaper which we eagerly consume daily.  It is also an appeal for more latitude in the ideas it sees fit to print.

With its current editorial policy in place, the writings of thinkers such as Pythagoras, Copernicus, Galileo, DaVinci, Newton, Kepler, Darwin, Pasteur, Mendel, Edison, Bell, Einstein, Fermi, Payne, Revere, Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton, Adams, Madison, … would not have passed muster to grace the pages of today’s Union.

As a student of both history and science I am reminded that, fortunately, our beloved land was born on “Brunswick street corners” and in exciting “county supervisors meetings”, all of which then as now were considered outside “the mainstream guardrails factually”, violating the “more grounded discussions” of the day.  So now as then, such out-of-box expressions have again been proscribed, and it appears that The Union has joined the ranks of today’s publications with an editorial policy distinctly of a medieval bent.  But I wonder, does it have to be this way?

Scattershots – 21oct21

George Rebane

DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) has now penetrated the deepest recesses of STEM academia and corporatist organizations of all hues.  As theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss reports in the 21oct21 WSJ, applicants for teaching positions at major universities and corporatist management positions must now submit an essay on DEI with their applications.  And they will be evaluated first and foremost on the contents of what should read like a heartfelt testament for the verity of critical race theory and its anti-racist therapeutics.  Added to that, the applicant must include how he will incorporate the practice of the DEI monomania into his conduct of the sought position.  As an example, an addition to the usual list of qualifications, the applicant must also supply “a statement of diversity, equity and inclusion describing the applicant’s efforts and aspirations to promote equity, inclusion and diversity through teaching, research and service.” Today these organizations have huge DEI departments staffed with zealous STASIs who not only evaluate applications, but also monitor the practice of DEI by the institution’s staff.  It is now common for applications to be rejected for insufficient DEI even before the applicant’s other qualifications are even considered. (more here)  Verily, we have entered America’s age of perdition.

The coordinated calamity of climate change is heralded by all the western media in preparation of next month’s Glasgow conference that will not be attended by the leaders of China, Russia, and India.  In America the lamestream is reeling of stories of impending catastrophes of famine, flood, and fire.  Bjorn Lomborg analyses these for us (here), and points out how the described “catastrophic scenarios presuppose people will do nothing to adjust to differences in the weather.”  No matter what one thinks about the notion of preventable manmade global warming, doing such passive extrapolations decades into the future is nothing short of politicized scaremongering.  It is carried out regularly by the usual leftwing outlets such as CNN, USA Today, and WaPo.  Lomborg’s message to the sheeple is that yes, the climate changes, but so can we.

Biden’s taxes avoid the top 0.1%.  Why?  Because that cohort knows how to play the legal exemptions game – always has, always will.  The taxes are really designed to start with the remaining top 9.9% and then quickly ripple down to the tens of millions of middle-class earners (aka makers).  And it makes perfect sense, since the lying sacks of shit (aka Biden, Pelosi, Psaki, …), claiming that the trillions to be spent are “free”, know where to get all this free money.  This is clear from what little we know of the Democrats’ proposed $5T+ spending spree. (more here)

The Onslaught of the Politically Dormant

"The problems we face today are there because the people who work for a living are now outnumbered by those who vote for a living." Anonymous

George Rebane

We have been told many times that democracy works only so long as the takers can’t use the government gun to derive their livelihood from the makers.  Staged governance in a democratic republic was conceived to prevent (delay?) that from happening.  But leftwing autocrats have also known that for over a century, and have always attempted to convince the masses of the non-existent benefits of a pure democracy applied wholesale across the land – it is the fastest way to secure enduring political control by unprincipled authoritarians.

Today we witness what appears to be the beginning of the end with a ‘fundamental transformation’ of our republic.  The Deep State of autocratic elites and their central planners has become firmly ensconced in our government through 50 years of elections by an increasingly under-educated and politically dormant electorate.  California’s failure to recall Newsom is undoubtedly the nation’s posterchild of such misguided elections when we look at the condition of the state and his horrible ongoing policies.  Consider (here) that in just one region –

• SF retailers (e.g. Walgreens) closing stores because their city lets thieves clear shelves of goods and openly haul them away;
• People are moving away in numbers that leads to an enrollment drop in SF schools;
• Polls show that more than half of Bay Area residents plan to leave permanently.

Given Newsom’s overwhelming repulse of the recall, it is clear that the added level of pain to cause a sea change in people’s attitudes is yet to be determined.  And that again brings to question the ability of voters to understand the source and sustenance of their pain.

Sandbox – 16oct21

[Looking at the increasing number of stores with empty shelves and long lines of customers waiting to buy what’s left, we are told by Biden’s lackies that all this signifies another administration success as a sign of a booming economy where the people are exhibiting their ample ‘buying power’ that outpaces the nation’s ability to manufacture enough goods.  The same arguments were made in the USSR when newsreels showed Russians standing in long lines waiting to get into stores with empty shelves.  gjr]

‘Tax the Rich’ – a momentous Democrat lie

“… until you run out of other people’s money.”  M. Thatcher

George Rebane

The momentous lies retold daily by the Democratic Party are now getting too numerous to count.  Among the most impactive on Americans is their assertion that the $5T+ cost of their new government growth and spending programs “will be zero”.  How’s that?  Well, they’ll just tax the crap out of “the rich” and corporations.  ‘You, Mr/Ms Main Street Snuffie won’t have to pay a penny; what’s not to like?’

For our informed and educated neighbors such claims are truly head-spinning as is made clear again by economists Phil Gramm (also former senator) and Mike Solon in the 15oct21 WSJ (here).  There we are reminded again that “the wealthy already bear far more of the burden in the US than they do in other developed countries.”  The chart below compares the ‘fair shares’ paid by the top 10% earners in the US, France Germany, and Sweden.  Note the enormous imbalance in what our socialists are demanding to what we already are paying to keep the vote buying programs funded.  The tax burden in other developed nations (including the vaunted Sweden) is more equally shared by incorporation of a nominally 15-20% VAT on all purchases.  So it turns out, as Gramm and Solon show, that the US already has the most progressive tax system in the world, thereby giving lie to the claims that somehow the ‘rich’ are getting away with murder at the expense of the remaining 90% of Americans.

Their public copy aside, what the Democrats’ new tax proposals do is continue to favor the top 1% who lower their tax rates by charitable giving and investing in tax-favored securities and sectors promoted by our government.  These provisions actually favor the very rich – i.e. the top 1% of earners, not the 10% - and none of such bennies will be affected by the new ‘tax the rich’ rates designed to hit the less wealthy down the income ladder.  No lamestream outlet is allowed to tell us this.

In the meantime we are having a problem finding enough workers to support robust economic growth.  “Since the War on Poverty started in 1965, the labor-force participation rate of bottom-quintile earners, who now receive more than 90% of their $50,000 average income from government transfer payments, has fallen from almost 70% to 36%. With the Build Back Better Act proposing to explode unearned benefits and shower them on middle-income Americans, how long will it take for the current U.S. labor-force participation rate of 61.6% to fall to 55%, as it is in France, or 50%, as it is in Italy? Who then will pull the wagon and pay the taxes to fund the American welfare state?”  This is what we mean when we talk of the takers and makers.  And who do the takers vote for, and which party wants to maximize the people (citizens and illegals) who draw ever more of their succor from the government?

(And these worthies have no idea what’s in store for them regarding their contribution to labor, once the nation, any nation, falls under the tender mercies of a single party state.  History read is a great teacher; not so much history ignored.)

We are reminded again by Gramm and Solon that “corporations don’t ultimately pay taxes” – their customers and their risk-exposed owners pay the whole kit and kaboodle.  “If there is anything economists agree on—and there isn’t much—it’s that all taxes imposed on corporations fall in part on the consumers of their products and in part on their stockholders and workers. Workers pay between 50% and 70% of the corporate tax that isn’t passed on to consumers in higher prices. The record growth in real wages after the 2017 corporate tax cuts, especially among low-income, minority and disadvantaged workers, bears this out.  So when corporate tax rates are raised, it’s workers and their pensions, retirement accounts and insurance investments, which own 72% of America’s stockholder equity, who pay most of those taxes.”

Again, the indominable man-in-the-street who votes Democrat has no clue of this, or at best considers it to be another rightwing piece of fake news put out by rich capitalists and big corporations.  However, when you run the numbers, you see that “not surprisingly, with much of the 2017 tax cuts made up of corporate rate reductions, child tax credits and a doubling of the standard deduction, the Trump tax cuts made the tax code more, not less, progressive.”  When was the last time you heard that on any of the lamestream outlets?

We can put a ribbon around all this by citing the most recent big three feel-good economic accomplishments out of Bumblebrain’s teleprompter – 1) he has created 5M+ new jobs, 2) unemployment dropped below 5%, and 3) wages have gone up.  Well, not exactly.  Employment gain has been anemic due to government handouts, industry is stifled for lack of workers.  Unemployment dropped only because more people dropped out of the workforce -  i.e. they quit looking for jobs.  And the buying power of wages has declined due to not keeping pace with the big jump in inflation.  Americans’ real wages have declined for the first time since the big Obama dip in 2013.  And all of this is due to self-inflicted harm brought to you by Team Biden and his ballyhooed Build Back Better policies which have a snowball’s chance in hell of kicking in.  But to Bumblebrain, all this is "progress".

Climate Change Policies – Costly and Ineffective

George Rebane

Bjorn Lomborg (q.v.) enlightens us again about the realities of the much-ballyhooed policies to fight what is sold as preventable manmade global warming. (here)  The bottom line is that the agreed on policies of the recent Paris accords, and those to be adopted next month in Glasgow, are both enormously expensive and will not make a hill of beans difference in the future anticipated as calculated by the UN and reported in Nature.  We should also note that no one is even on track to meeting their Paris commitments signed under Obama.

If the whole country went carbon-neutral tomorrow, the standard United Nations climate model shows the difference by the end of the century would be a barely noticeable reduction in temperature of 0.3 degree Fahrenheit. This is because the U.S. will make up an ever-smaller share of emissions as the populations of China, India and Africa grow and get richer.

America’s goal, according to the Biden administration, is a 95% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050, which will come in at a cost of 11.9% of GDP annually.  The Left claims that polls show Americans are all for reducing carbon emissions, and even willing to pay up to $200 annually to achieve that.  But the actual cost per person breaks down to $11,300 per person per year.  That means that the annual bill to an average American household of 2.53 people is over $28,500, and no one is willing to pay even close to that by almost an order of magnitude.

Polls are mostly worthless pieces of legerdemain because their questionnaires are ideologically wordsmithed, represent dynamic attitudes, and their results are misunderstood by their innumerate audiences.  Few would answer ‘No’ to ‘Do you favor policies to reduce future crop scorching temperatures and rising sea levels?’ or ‘Should CO2 levels be reduced to what we had in 2005 to stop global warming?’  With one-sided questions like these, no one knows either the effect or the cost of achieving the stated goals.  And yet the policy promoters in government and the media state with grave authority that ‘85% of Americans favor policies to significantly reduce future carbon levels’.  This then is supposed to be the public’s support for draconian increases in our taxes, economy stifling regulations, and added restrictions on our freedoms.  Sleazebag politics at its finest – “A nation ignorant and free …”.

Alinsky Abridged (Edited)

George Rebane

Saul Alinsky is one of the Left’s modern intellectuals and still a guiding light who died back in 1972 after having written Rules for Radicals and Reveille for Radicals.  He was admired in print by both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.  One of the ‘practical’ guideposts he bequeathed his disciples, now grown into the millions, has been coagulated into a set of eight rules for restructuring the country into a compliant socialist state.  The Democratic Party has embraced these in their entirety and are working hard today to bring the country to heel before this decade is out.  It is visible everywhere that they are making progress that even exceeds their expectations.  Here are Alinsky’s rules that we see assiduously implemented today in America by socialists of all hues, no matter where we look.

1)  Healthcare - Control healthcare and you control the people.

2)  Poverty - Increase the Poverty level as high as possible, poor people are easier to control and will not fight back if you are providing everything for them to live.

3)  Debt - Increase the debt to an unsustainable level. That way you are able to increase taxes, and this will produce more poverty.

4)  Gun Control - Remove the ability of the people to defend themselves from their Government. Thus less (or no) resistance to a police state.

5)  Welfare  - Take control of every aspect of their lives (Food, Housing, and Income).

6)  Education  - Take control of what people read and take control of what children learn in school.

7)  Religion  - Remove the belief in God from the government and schools.

8)  Class Warfare  - Divide the people into “wealthy” and “poor,” causing discontent:   It will be easier to take (Tax) the wealthy with the support of the poor.

Scattershots – 11oct21 (updated 12oct21)

George Rebane

The disaster at our southern border is described and discussed by former US Customs and Border Protection commissioner Mark Morgan in the August 2021 Imprimis (here).  Morgan served under Presidents Obama and Trump.  In chapter and verse he puts lie to the unbelievable claims that “our borders are secure” delivered daily by Bumblebrain and one of his incompetent henchmen SecDHS Alejandro Mayorkas, and dutifully echoed by the lamestream until recently.  Then even they could not peddle the national tragedy that Team Biden has created and maintains.  Their objective, as always, is to transform America into a compliant second-rate autocracy ready to accept global governance.

[12oct21 update] ‘Why Are So Many People Still Dying from COVID?’ asks a physician on American Thinker.  More people are dying of the virus this year than at the same time last year, and most in America are now vaccinated.  So what gives?  The short answer is that no one really knows.  With all the hanky-panky with the stats aside, it is clear “regardless of which factors are causing the uptick in COVID deaths, something clearly is not working, whether masks, distancing, vaccines, or other measures. Instead of doubling down on what appears not to be working, where is the thoughtful questioning and analysis by the medical establishment, public health agencies, and the media?”  And here’s the punchline – “Just look at therapeutics. Japan and India introduced ivermectin as an early outpatient treatment option and their COVID cases promptly plummeted. Members of Congress and their staffs have reportedly been taking hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin for COVID while trashing the drugs publicly as dangerous or horse paste.”  (H/T to reader)

Who in hell pays for their porta-potties, tents, blankets, food, medicines, encampments, transportation (bus and boat rides)??  There is a well-funded pipeline of these wannabe illegal aliens cued up from Chile through central America and then Mexico.  Some agencies and individuals with a deep hatred of America are making this colossal conduit of economic refugees possible and coordinating with the Biden administration to keep the southern border open while everyone through the lamestream is feeding bullshit to American citizens dumb enough to swallow it hook, line, and sinker.  Watching the news is becoming a nauseating experience.

Jen Psaki explains away all the Biden f#ck-ups as nothing but part and parcel of the administration “incentivizing fundamental change to the American economy.”  Has anyone told them that they’ve already achieved such fundamental change by turning our economy from increasing workforce participation, keeping inflation in check, destroying energy independence, flooding the country with unvetted illegals, and attempting to pass a socially destructive spending program that will cripple the economy for the next generation of Americans (at least)??

Sandbox - 8oct21

{The Hill reports (here) the Dems are getting real worried that Trump will run in 2024.  One of our readers has specialized in telling all who will listen that Trump's candidacy would be a blessing for our Left.  He should provide his fellow ideologues a great deal of comfort if he would share his reasoning with them.  gjr]

WHO: Economic Development Trumps Climate Change

George Rebane

In his regular WSJ column on climate change issues, Bjorn Lomborg of the Copenhagen Consensus and Stanford's Hoover Institution shines a light on the little reported aspects of the World Health Organization’s analysis of factors affecting the health of the world’s poor in the coming decades. (here) The bottom line, hidden by the Left and its lamestream media, is that more lives will be saved (by millions) through continuing the current course of global economic development, than will be saved by adopting the stringent climate change policies as prescribed by the Paris climate agreement and at next month’s Glasgow Climate Conference.  All such policies are based on utility functions which overwhelmingly favor policies that are ‘deemed’ to reduce global warming over other factors, primarily the effects of economic development on the QoL and health of the world’s poor.

The lives saved annually in 2050 by implementing existing and anticipated global warming accords is projected at 85,000.  However, over a spread of economic growth scenarios impacted by policies seeking to reduce preventable manmade global warming, the annual deaths range from 300,000 to 2,000,000 from malnutrition among the world’s poor.  If saving lives, especially among the poor, ever becomes important in these politicized and dubiously scientific considerations, then sanity advises avoiding draconian approaches such as contemplated in the Green New Deal and the additional socialist diktats on our lives and livelihoods planned by the Biden administration and amplified by established radicals such as are ensconced in Sacramento and Albany.  Per today’s dominant media and government narratives, these conclusions remain invisible to the general public.

Ruminations – 6oct21 (updated 9oct21)

George Rebane

The autocratic state advances. ‘Government secretly orders Google to track anyone searching certain names, addresses, and phone numbers’.  The Deep State on the march under a very supportive administration.

‘Domestic Terrorists’ is the DoJ’s new designation for parents and citizens attending local school board meetings to protest teaching Critical Race Theory, gender-bending, and revisionist history to young students.  The FBI, acting more like the STASI every day, will be investigating and arresting Americans who still believe that the state does not own their children.

‘The Woke Left’s Primitive Economics’ are described by Paul Rubin in the 6oct21 WSJ.  When examined, it becomes clear that liberal thought in its acute embodiment ‘wokeness’ requires the adherent to first become butt stupid in most things about how the realworld works.  These pages have chronicled this phenomenon for over a decade.

[updates] Ivermectin manufacturer Merck dunned that drug for C19 therapeutics and is now promoting a new therapeutic that it is pre-marketing and will soon introduce (more here).  By its own admission it will be about half as effective as IVM (which costs about $3 a course).  But you can bet the farm that the new pill will be many times more profitable.  (H/T to reader)

Braindead journalists on Fox News and Republican politicians in Congress have yet to ask germane questions of the Democrat elites who are siccing the FBI on American parents on the pretense that they are ‘domestic terrorists’, parents who openly and legitimately protest the local schools’ curricula during public school board meetings.  The critical unasked question is ‘Show ONE example of evidence of “intimidation”, “public threat”, “violent action”, “threat of violent action” toward elected school boards on which you base your case for federal law enforcement intervention against the publicly protesting parents whose children are being subjected to unmitigated socialist propaganda during class periods in which they should be learning the basic skills ultimately required of an educated and informed electorate?’  The Dems’ attempt to answer that question should expose them as the pariahs that they are.

[7oct21 update]  Women in clodhoppers and combat boots.  In these days of topsy-turvy sexes and genders, women’s fashions have adopted a distinctly counter-culture currency.  And nowhere more violently than in their new footwear rage – gone are Melania’s elegant pumps, and in are shoes and boots with multi-inch platforms and styles with trench warfare uppers and soles with treads more commonly found on military Humvees.  My great-aunt Tante Alvi, a recognized fashion expert during the pre-war era in Europe, enunciated the de rigueur of women’s footwear – ‘Ladies do not appear in public sans heels’ (with the usual exceptions of course).  My sainted mother and my beloved sweetie-pie were/are strict adherents.  And fortunately, especially for us men, that dictum held until the current societal disintegration began.

Terry McLaughlin's column on the Hyde Amendment in the 7oct21 Union (here) will be an eye-opener for most readers concerned about the federal funding of abortions.  Attempting to end run its inclusion this year is yet another about-faces which the Dems are doing as they reconfigure their party in its Great Leap Leftward as called for by their growing socialist faction.  McLaughlin's succinct and clear description of the goings on is worth a read.

[9oct21 update]  The leftwing Quinnipiac Poll respected by all leftwingers came out with a typical report of Bumblebrain’s numbers diving for the mud.

• Overall opinion of administration: Approve 38%, Disapprove 53%
• On ‘Immigration’: Approve 25%, Disapprove 67%
• On Foreign Policy: Approve 34%, Disapprove 58%
• On Economy: Approve 39%, Disapprove 55%
• Overall assessment on running the country: Incompetent 55%

Note that our drive-by liberal poll commenters remain totally silent on the nationally recognized and reported disaster of the Biden administration.  I don’t follow polls per se, but I’m told these numbers are historic.

Sandbox - 3oct21

[“Falling Unemployment Adds to Worries About the U.S. Labor Market.  A lower rate could signal that many people are staying out of the workforce, which could add to employers’ hiring difficulties.”  This is among the flood of maladies that Bumblebrain’s socialist policies and promises now causing suffering and hurt in the land.  Has anybody yet found a SINGLE THING that he and the Dems have done right?  gjr]

A Leftwing Journalist Admonishes

George Rebane

Darrell Berkheimer is one of our more thoughtful, though still terminally misguided, local columnists whose current crusade to “curb misinformation” and “halt the spreading of lies” is at its apex with The Union publishing his 24sep21 and 2oct21 back-to-back columns.  His main thrust is to find a solution to the government allowing “mass media to continue the spread of misinformation, lies, untruths and false conspiracy theories that create dangerous divisiveness and threaten individual citizens.”  To his favor, he does want such state enforced prohibitions while still protecting freedom of speech.

In his 24sep21 piece he attacks conservative media and quickly demonstrates that he knows not of which he speaks, especially when it come to C19 therapeutics.  But his naivete reaches new heights with his assertion that there is a government-discernible and “distinct difference between opinion and factual truth.”  Hence, we need to implore “our lawmakers (who) are long overdue to draft such limiting and protective legislation.”  And to help this process along, we grassroots citizens can “ask our attorney friends to recommend some suggestions and proposals”, which we may then communicate to our representatives.

The entire cast of his two columns reeks of the righteousness of the Left, and leaves no doubt that it is the conservative media that must be reined in.  He, of course, stands aside and above such crass practices of ‘fake news’ and yellow journalism.  Before one examines his recent record, it’s instructive to read – ‘Hunter Biden’s Emails Were Suppressed for a Reason’ - a well-summarized and pithy letter from Mr Dan Pisenti of Mill Valley, CA in the 2oct21 WSJ.

“Vindication Over Hunter’s Emails” (Review & Outlook, Sept. 25) rightly criticizes the press and prominent former officials for labeling Hunter Biden’s emails as Russian disinformation. But the victim—President Trump—is again disregarded. The Hunter story was neutralized to prevent Mr. Trump from winning re-election. Fair reporting of the graft and low behavior on full display in Hunter’s laptop could have kept Mr. Trump in office.

The media speaks often of “the Big Lie” about the election result, but Mr. Trump faced a buffet of lies spanning his entire presidency. Dirty tricks kept him embroiled in a Russian hoax for two years and left the stink on him even when Robert Mueller could provide no evidence. Congress tied Mr. Trump up in impeachment trials. The press manufactured phony scandals about him and his family. And then key states relaxed controls on ballots. Acknowledging the onslaught that Mr. Trump faced could help the press understand why he might question an election result.

Through his own condemnations and silences, Mr Berkheimer was one of our local co-conspirators during the ongoing epoch of journalistic lows.  Today he continues to wear his TDS mantle to comfort him as he looks down from the chilly and revealing heights of Mt Olympus.

In his latest offering Berkheimer concludes “The importance of repressing misinformation cannot be overstated — because it is tearing apart the fabric of our American society. It’s at the root of our mounting divisiveness. It is our biggest crisis.”  In consuming such heartfelt proposals to expand the reach of government to evermore precisely and consummately control our speech and thought, it is important to always note from which side such ‘solutions’ originate, and who then accuse their opposites of fomenting tyrannical government.

‘Most wildfires started by people’

George Rebane

In a recent exchange with Union publisher Don Rogers I lamented that since most wildfires are started by people, there was not enough coverage or interest in the attribution of such great disasters in our state.  Wildfires were implicitly treated in the press as if they were some kind of natural phenomena, acts of God if you will.  Don agreed, and we began to see more stories in our newspaper covering details of how our regional wildfires were started by suspected arsonists or identified careless (stupid?) humans ranging from campers to homeless indigents in the woods.

As part of this exchange I wrote a letter to The Union which was finally published today (1oct21) with an interesting editorial insert at its conclusion in the print edition – the online version is here.  My letter reads –

The genesis of our wildfires. Here’s a topic everyone is afraid of discussing. Almost all of our wildfires are man-made — they are started by indigents, crazies, and people with a political agenda. The fires started by accidents and natural causes are well-known, few and far in between. However, our politicians, liberal activists, and media of all hues treat Western wildfires as if they were “acts of God,” and therefore their genesis need not be questioned, let alone examined, any further.

Given the number of annual wildfires, notice how rare is there any subsequent mention of arson investigations or what these may have discovered. It seems that the “vulnerable underprivileged” have a natural right to start fires and then be left alone.

And it is not a stretch to imagine the damage anti-American terrorists can do in a free country by simply setting wildfires with easily fabricated, time-delayed pyrotechnic devices. But from what the public sees, our authorities neither suspect nor pursue such errant behavior — the fires just magically flare up and cause totally acceptable devastation.

… and followed by this editorial coda.

Editor’s note: Studies of wildfire causes show a range of 85% to 95% are a result of human activity, with 20% to 25% of those deliberately set.

I may be accused of some hyperbole to make the point of how easy it is for bad people to set devastating fires in our wildlands that destroy, kill, and deplete scarce resources.  But to me the editor’s note is a bit too dismissive, if not inaccurate, of not only the history of fire starters but also the portent of purposely caused destruction meant to impact both the mode and quality of life in the less populated regions of our country.  My main thesis is that wildfire arson is still both under-reported and therefore under-acknowledged by the public and even law enforcement.

Here are two documents that speak to this assertion.  The first is a study – Wildland Arson: A Research Assessment - by the US Forest Service that concludes – “Wildland arson makes up the majority of fire starts in some parts of the United States and is the second leading cause of fires on Eastern United States Federal forests. … Beginning with initial studies by Donoghue and Main (1985) through studies by the authors reported here, it seems clear that law enforcement deployment and other efforts to apprehend and incarcerate arsonists work to reduce wildland arson in the long run in high-arson locations in the United States.”

Another report from FEMA’s US Fire Administration (here) recounts various aspects of arson wildfires including arsonists’ motives and the significant but relatively few court cases that result from the apprehension of suspected arsonists.

Scattershots – 28sep21 (updated 30sep21)

George Rebane

In the aggregate and hands down, California continues to have the most ignorant cohort of voters in the Union.  Rebane Doctrine

This tenet of Rebane Doctrine has stood the test of time and today continues to express itself at every opportunity.  No one can point to any other state that has been done in so thoroughly by its voting residents (citizens?) over the years as has the once Golden State.  To make any kind of reasonable comparison, you also have to consider the tremendous heights from which our state has fallen.  When I was a young’un California had achieved the pinnacle in about every attribute that civilized humans attach to a desirable place in which to put down roots, raise their families, and build productive communities for their progeny.  And then came the socialist takers, generation after generation they have infected every institution that served as the pillars of this fair land.  Now they virulently infect every nook and cranny to guarantee that any possible road back has already been scorched beyond hope; and these same from here and other similarly afflicted states are looking to infest the remaining regions of the heartland yet to be touched by their destructive and rapacious policies and world views,

The above outpouring was again prompted by a couple of op-ed columns and a letter in today’s 28sep21 Union.  One by a regular contributor claiming technical credentials who nevertheless cannot parse not being against wearing masks, while also being against mandates to require wearing them.  For him, this and a number of other concepts are simply a cognitive bridge too far.  Then we have another contribution by an indefatigable lady liberal who continues to genuflect to science at a distance from which it is unrecognizable to her.  An example will suffice – “Our forests are burning because we are in the throes of a catastrophic warming of the globe caused by the increase in carbon dioxide in our atmosphere.”  To such perceptions she adds “extreme weather events” as another unsupportable calamity caused by preventable manmade global warming in which her faith is unwavering.

[29sep21 update]  It’s always a source of bittersweet humor to hear how socialists and proto-socialists wrestle with economic matters.  In fact, it would be 'Comedy Central' if their policies did not muck up the country's economy.  The latest farcical attempts come from PressSec Jen Psaki who assures us that it’s “unfair and absurd” to think that corporations would pass on increased tax expenses to their customers.  This woman has to be among the dumbest on Team Biden, or among the evil in hoping that her audience is equally ignorant to know that all corporate taxes are paid by customers.  And then we have political scientist William Galston of the Brookings Institute who writes a regular WSJ column on economics.  In today’s paper he assures us that “you don’t need a doctorate in economics to understand that when rising demand meets too little supply, the result is inflation.”  Wrong.  To students of economics, the words of Uncle Milton taught us that inflation is strictly a monetary phenomenon, i.e. when there is too much (government printed/borrowed) money chasing too few goods.  A doctorate in economics would have informed our leftwing political scientist that what he described is just the normal dynamism of a capitalistic market explained by the intersection of the demand and supply curves, as most of us learned in Econ 101.

[30sep21 update]  Bread and circuses galore.  Just read about the $300M+ A Round funding for Trading Card Fanatics, Inc, valuing the company at over $10B (see today’s WSJ).  These people are to become the online marketplace and clearing house for all sports trading cards, and a lot of smart money is betting on their success (this is no longer a kids’ activity).  My little fevered brain got all discombobulated about another piece of evidence that our nation’s electorate cum body politic is really more interested in the various ‘bread and circuses’ they are offered to while away time not spent in more productive undertakings.  A friend recently educated me on the growth of sports betting, which is another bird of a feather to such massive diversions now made available to a population that daily understands less about the fundamental transformations going on in Washington and their state houses.  They no longer ‘do politics’, which is a deadly portent for our republic.  And with technology driven systemic unemployment now on the rise, the ratio of takers to makers is already at a dangerous level. 

“Doctors and pharmacies are rapidly signing up patients for Covid-19 booster shots, many with requiring proof of eligibility under standards that federal official set last week.”  These people get spiffed by the big pharmas selling the boosters to the government.  And all this is going on as pharmacists are refusing to fill legitimate prescriptions for other demonstrated but less profitable C19 therapeutics like Ivermectin.  More rampant national insanity, again demonstrating that it is easy to put a dollar value on human lives.

Bumblebrain’s nominee for Comptroller of the Currency (i.e. our economy) is a devout and declared communist.  Cornell law professor Dr Saure Omarova has published “radical ideas (that) might make even Bernie Sanders blush.”  A 1989 graduate of Moscow State University, she is truly one of Lenin’s lasses who unabashedly and favorably compares USSR’s economy and economics to that of the US and the West.  Even SecTreas Yellen, under whom Omarova would work, is not happy with the president’s latest nomination.  It is hard to witness day after day how this Oval Office idiot can do nothing right.  (more here and here)

Green energy insanity is rampant across the land.  The lamestream’s reports gush with news of green energy taking over all of electricity generation and even transportation and much of manufacturing by 2040.  The reality is markedly different as calculated by the International Energy Agency and reported (here) by noted environmental economist Bjorn Lomborg, president of the Copenhagen Convention.  Green electricity is extremely expensive (ask Europeans and Californians) and requires massive back-up generation from fossil fuels.  The attempted road to green electricity guarantees only that 1) our energy bills will skyrocket, 2) third world power blackouts will become the norm, and 3) the whole effort will have no discernible impact whatsoever on climate change which the true believers and central planners propagandize as preventable manmade global warming.