Rebane's Ruminations

The Union *Questions* Authority

George Rebane

Well, I guess this morning the local paper declared war on our county's Board of Supervisors with a hit op-ed piece that garnered a lot of support from our progressive brethren.  Being a member of the accused 'hacks of the Board' and contributor to at least two of their campaigns, I immediately forgot all propriety, went into knee-jerk mode, abandoned my "watchdog status", and posted the (below) comment under the offending diatribe on The Union's website.  It sat there in its full glory for about an hour, then it was gone.  Immediately, I thought the worst had happened and inquired about its fate.  Not to worry.  According to editor Jeff Pelline, the comment disappeared from under the op-ed and onto the "more comments" page due to a design feature of the website.  In any event, I did take the content of their well-honed piece to task and posed some questions about their "questions", which I would want people to see if The Union deems them worthy of addressing.  The holding of one's breath is not recommended.

========= comment posted this morning

Be sure you really *question* authority

The Supes have made public statements and given data that supports their decision to move the DA’s offices to the Tintle-Robinson building. The decision is best evaluated by comparing the county’s specifications for new DA digs with the available alternatives. I have asked for and been promised the list of these specifications, and will then post them on Rebane’s Ruminations in a format that allows those of us who know of better alternatives to fill in the blanks. I’m sure the The Union will publish its own results – group decision making at its finest.

When I read the above op-ed this morning, I was struck by the nature of the posed ‘questions’. What possible satisfactory answers could be given to these three questions that are really the journalistic equivalents of ‘Have you stopped beating your wife, yes or no?’ Perhaps The Union could give an example of a satisfactory answer to each question that would resolve this issue, otherwise we are left to conclude that they are just thinly-disguised and unfounded innuendos. Professional journalists know how to ask questions without really asking questions.

BTW, I too have contributed to the campaigns of Sue Horne and Nate Beason, and plan to contribute more unless they screw up. And I am not a journalist.

Romney vs the senators, male and female

George Rebane

From one of our deep-thinking and worthy correspondents, posted as submitted -

"During the debates, Mitt Romney catches heat for laying off employees.  If a candidate from the US Senate raises  this issues he/she falls into a trap:

   1-  All the companies M Romney took over were in trouble.  Therefore he saved a lot more jobs with reorganization.  The necessity and ability of organizations/companies to adapt  makes American business the best in the world.

   2-  After leaving the Navy, Sen. McCain joined the US Government, one of the least adaptive  organizations.  During  JM's over 25 year tenure senator (25 years? Now he owns it! ) his record includes:

      A)  The War on Poverty is now over 40 years old and has likely cost over $10 trillion.  Where is victory?  When do we withdraw the staff?  Is there a timetable?  Is poverty gone?

      B)  The War on Drugs is now 37 years old.  There are 250,000 in prisons generally less benign than Guantanamo, and the casualty rate for enforcement agencies, "turf wars," users and  bystander victims is way beyond Iraq.  Our border with Mexico is in turmoil that won't cease for several generations (Stratfor).

This list could go on.  The failure to adapt and perform by government is displayed every day on a local, state, and federal basis.  If  those US Senators  use their success in Washington as the basis for promotion to President, they must operate on a different reality."

Nevada County Supes Hold a Workshop – Some Observations

George Rebane

The county’s Board of Supervisors and senior staff held a two day workshop at the local Holiday Inn away from the phones and walk-in business that usually interrupts sessions at the Rood Center.  This environment provided the right atmosphere for an informal give-and-take by the participants that was interspersed by formal presentations by department heads.  I and a few fellow bloggers and observers were welcomed guests and got to sit in the public chairs.  We all had ample opportunity to ask questions and trade ideas with the Supes and staff during the breaks.

I was a little disappointed that more of the public did not attend.  They missed sessions of our local government at work that were not only informative but eye-opening.  Unfortunately our newspaper was able to spare a reporter for only part of one day and its meager attendance reflected that level of attention and its quality of coverage. 

What the attendees saw and heard were presentations and policy discussions that spanned the entire spectrum of our county government’s actions, issues, concerns, and intentions.  I saw a well-facilitated gathering where department heads gave slide presentations on key areas that were followed by round table discussions – all on point and effective.  After each presentation the five Supervisors engaged and dissected topic after topic, each bringing their own perspectives and concerns into the forum.  The department heads performed superbly as resources to explicate matters of fact and process that enabled the policy makers to keep up the momentum. 

Over the two day period I came away impressed by the quality of people we have doing the people’s business in Nevada County.  Having been involved in one or two affairs of local government over the decades, seldom have I seen such mutual courtesies shown and collegial demeanor among elected officials – there was no grandstanding, posturing, or hubris.  The staff - all having command in breadth and depth of their respective areas – joined comfortably into the discussions, always remembering who they were supporting, but never holding back from a professionally rendered correction or contribution.  More of us citizens should witness such governmental work sessions, especially those of us who have learned (with some cause) to look at government with a gimlet eye.  But enough of this grateful gushing.

All of us in the public seats were taking notes trying to capture the more salient snippet here and there from the constant shower of information.  I’m going to list a few of my takeaways in no particular order to give a flavor of what transpired.  Perhaps one or two of these will motivate you to call your Supervisor and give him/her your take on a topic.

Ruminations - 28jan2008

George Rebane

• fooled by the current economic stimulation package
• hiring managers are starting to pay people for an interview

- Even level-headed columnists are fooled by the current economic stimulation package making its rounds through Congress.  In a recent Sac Bee column Ruben Navarrette writes hopefully that “A stimulus may not work exactly as expected, but it's worth a try. Americans are overtaxed as it is, and anything that gets more of their tax dollars back into their hands is a good thing.”  This makes it appear as if he is ignorant of how our economy works.  Those aren’t tax dollars coming back.  When a country is in debt and practices chronic deficit spending, any money, not accounted for in reduced spending, it sends back to people is money it doesn’t have.  This money it must print anew, thereby further debasing the currency and putting an added lien on taxes to be paid in the future.  There is no free lunch – as recently claimed by Hillary - in any of this, especially for those of us who get nothing, and then have to pay the lion’s share of a political vote buying spree during election year.  The wool is firmly over our eyes.

- Readers of this blog are familiar with my rants on the growing redundancy of the workforce induced by accelerating technology, and, specifically, its division into those who can generate new wealth and those who cannot.  This process now takes another giant step as hiring managers are starting to pay people submitting to an interview (before they just covered your travel expenses).  Those paid to do so are wealth generators already employed by other companies.  Today’s WSJ reports that a new start-up, NotchUp, is helping these hiring managers “reach employed professionals who aren’t necessarily looking for a job – but might talk to a hiring manager for a price.”  Meanwhile, the memberships of unions for government workers are filling with people who couldn’t get an interview with a private sector hiring manager even if they first submitted an envelope filled with unmarked bills.

Singularity Signposts - 25jan2008

George Rebane

• Artificial life created from scratch.

• Moving by thought – brain/machine interfaces.

• Hi-tech hiring, youth matters – ‘up or out’.

• Swarm computing – how do ants know what to do?

• 'guaranteed' gadget buyback service for frequent upgraders.

Climate Change – A Format for Reasoned Dialogue

George Rebane

I am a skeptic about anthropogenic global warming (AGW) and all that is currently shoved under this all-encompassing umbrella.  True believers or, more correctly, post-enquiry adherents (PEAs) of AGW do not recognize the nuanced category of skeptics and lump us all together under the label “Deniers” – it keeps things manageably simple for them.  In one of the pieces that I posted on this issue, I expounded on the scientific notions of Occam’s razor and falsifiability.  The latter being a requirement of any proposition accepted as science.  If there is no way that what you propose can be shown to be false, then your proposition is not one of science but of faith/religion.

My friend James Currier, a smart and serious thinker, posted a comment to my piece in which he challenged me to defend my stance as a skeptic by presenting arguments in a manner that would allow my position to be falsified.  If the arguments upon which a person bases his skepticism can be shown to be false, then his position as a skeptic would be unreasonable, and, presumably, such a person of good will would seek another more defendable position even, perhaps, becoming an AGW proponent.  I have accepted my friend’s challenge and invite the reader to download the short paper 'Climate Change - A Format for Reasoned Dialogue'.

In this paper I bend over backwards to not use equations or complex diagrams so as to make it accessible to the broadest audience of intelligent readers.  Nevertheless, the issue of AGW is very complex and the paper will probably not be as broadly accessible as I had hoped.  For that all I can do is apologize, and leave it as an admitted weakness that I was not able to overcome.   

Bastiat Triangle Alliance

George Rebane

Ruminations joins a small group of local blogs that have launched the Bastiat Triangle Alliance.  This is a declaration of the shared social and economic philosophies propounded by Frederic Bastiat, the 19th century French thinker and political philosopher.  Bastiat is considered one of intellectual precursors of what came to be known as the Austrian School that was one of the first to counter the challenges of Marxian economics. This school gave rise to such 20th century economists and luminaries as Ludwig von Mises, Frederick von Hayek, and Milton Friedman.  The latter two Nobelists went on to become the pillars of our country’s Chicago School of economists promoting ideas of free markets and free peoples.

A basic tenet of the Alliance is that rapidly advancing technology, globalization, and the growing ‘dumbth’ of our American electorate has put in place an insidious environment of social values and thought which seeks ever greater government interventions, using other people’s money, to shelter us from our own risky behaviors and solve an increasing number of our everyday problems.  We wish to call attention to the apparently invisible and incremental process by which this is happening and highlight its cost of abrogating what the Founders considered our “natural rights”. 

The top right-hand link will download a more complete statement of purpose for the BTA.

Southern California Fires – Part III: Lessons Learned

George Rebane

This concludes the series on wildfires that started with Part I: Our House Burns and continued in Part II: Our House is Still There!.

During the hours we spent with the fire crews who were sheltered in our house, we learned a lot about the nature of wild fires and how they could and could not be successfully defended against.  Jo Ann and I were the only civilians within a circle of ten or twelve firefighters gathered around the breakfast table and adjoining family room.  There were no reporters, everyone could talk freely, political considerations were the furthest from everyone’s mind.  Our main concerns at this point were 1) had we prepared properly, and 2) what else could we have done or now do to prepare for the future?

We were told straight out that the ‘future’ we were concerned about was about eight years away given how thoroughly the vegetation around our neighborhood and nearby mountains had burned.  But there were some important insights which the fire fighters led by their captains laid down for us.  These formed our lessons learned – some corroborated our thirty-plus years of experience watching and studying southern California wildfires; and some points made came as a complete surprise.  I will list them with comments as appropriate.

Singularity Signposts – 19jan2008

George Rebane

• Linden Labs’ Second Life reigned in by feds.
• Contact Lens to give us Bionic Eyes

Second Life grabs attention of the Feds

Linden Labs is the developer and operator of today’s most popular online virtual world, Second Life, in which ‘residents’ can travel, shop, meet, and carry on many functions of the real world.  Companies today hold meetings on (in?) Second Life and some people actually earn their living doing business in Second Life.  It’s all made possible by Linden dollars, the currency of Second Life.  But watch out, here come da judge!

Property Takings - Plunder Implemented Softly

George Rebane

“Saving Historic Homes – Grass Valley adds layer of protection to stave off the wrecking ball”  This feel-good frontpage article in The Union today reports the latest affront to property rights in the name of the collective.  What glides by without notice is that the “saving” is done for the sake of the collective – the people who don’t own the “historic home”.  The legal and putative owner of that property gets screwed.

Putative? When we think, we realize that you own something only to the extent that you can dispose of it as you will.  That is the operational definition of ownership, and the only one that really matters.  When government restricts your rights of ownership, bit by piece it takes away your ownership.  Of course, it doesn’t matter to you since that quaint looking house is not yours, and you kinda like the way it looks next to all the other such properties on the street.  Besides, what’s another few thousand dollars of fees and another hoop to jump through if you want to do something else with the property.  It’s for the common (collective) good, isn’t it?

Well if it is, then let’s have the collective buy it (without the market distorting restriction in place) with everyone’s tax dollars and do whatever they want with it.  The “historic house” will then belong to those who value it in its present condition.  Short of that, let the owner negotiate the price of a covenant put into the property’s CCRs that keeps it looking like that in perpetuity.

Instead of that, the nodding know-nothings encourage another step back from personal property ownership without a clue that this also erodes their personal security and social liberty.  The Constitution’s Fifth Amendment enshrined this principle and Frederic Bastiat (‘The Law’) explained it very clearly.  And no one will notice. 

Ruminations – 16jan2008

George Rebane

• Idiocracy here and now
• Greenpeace sowing peace in the Antarctic
• The China Model may be our common future
• World Bank scandal and the role of government

The other night we had one of our movie nights with friends – cocktail hour then dinner then a movie in front of a warming fireplace.  The movie was the dark comedy ‘Idiocracy’ (2005) and told the story of a future 500 years from now where the imbeciles had outbred people with three digit IQs and dominated society.  As you can imagine, lots of TV was included in the daily fare of that future society.  After the movie ended, we turned off the DVD player and on came a regular TV channel.  From what was streaming out at us – especially the commercials - it was hard to tell that the movie had ended.  Scary.

There is a little saga being played out in the Antarctic between the Greenpeace ship Esperanza and a small Japanese fleet claiming to start something called ‘scientific whaling’.  The Esperanza launched motorized inflatables against the main Japanese ship.  And as they came along side the crew of the small Greenpeace craft threw acid bottles at the Japanese crew.  Then the same idiots pulled along side and two of them actually boarded the Japanese vessel.  The Japanese, of course, took the enviro-hooligans into custody and will turn them over to authorities.  Greenpeace is now claiming that the Japanese have taken hostage two of their crew members thereby yielding up another perfectly good English word to the politically correct word manglers.  Go figger.

In their last 2007 issue The American has an extensive analysis of what may now be termed ‘The China Model’.  The thesis is that China seems to heading toward a social model that mixes a heavy dose of capitalism and entrepreneurial freedoms with a continuing iron-fisted limitation of personal liberties.  The news is that this may result in a new kind of equilibrium and demonstrate that capitalistic growth can co-exist with a repressive socialist regime with an entrenched and corrupt cadre of elites.  This is an eye-opener to the world’s sleaze bags running countries ranging from banana republics to sub-Sahel African countries to mid-eastern secular dictatorships to our favorites Cuba and North Korea.  These guys are saying to themselves that there may be a way to survive, maintain control, and still prosper if we follow the China Model.  Vietnam is currently the poster-child of doing exactly this.  Unfortunately our own US of A has also been headed for that destination as we slowly diminish our corporate freedoms and rapidly continue reducing our personal liberties.

Mike McDaniel, SESF Executive Director, looks at the recent $570,000,000 scandal at the World Bank (don’t look for it in your mainstream media) and posts the question ‘What is the role of government?’.   

   

Ruminations – 12jan2008

George Rebane

• Nevada City’s latest is buried quietly
• San Francisco’s tiger episode
• Hillary’s economic stimulation

Well, I guess that all is now well in Nevada City.  Years of malfeasance not collecting almost half a million dollars for rendered city services is now behind us.  When this all came to light, city clerk Cathy Wilcox-Barnes was fingered as the one responsible.  What a mistake!  After careful backroom deliberations and negotiations, the city has reached the happy conclusion that, in fact, no one is responsible.  Furthermore, as part of her departure package, the city’s insurance company will be dunned about a quarter million dollars to heal the damage from that outrageous allegation.  It turns out, in that kindergarten that serves double duty as city hall, there are no processes or procedures to be found that identify who really was in charge of such major city financial functions.  So now is the time to put it all behind us and go on with the other city business such as paying insurance premiums on vehicles the city no longer owns, and divers arcane duties of governance.  Kudos to our editor Jeff Pelline of The Union for his editorial today that memorializes this and the screed below; a further tip of the hat to local cartoonist Bob Crabb for giving us a graphical take-away of the same episode.  We may all rest easy because the whole affair is now safely under the rug.

In following the San Francisco zoo’s escaped tiger episode, I am again amazed at what new limits are possible in a country overfilled with lawyers on the prowl.  The three youths involved apparently were culpable in taunting the tiger to set a record in leaping man-made barriers.  This turned out to be one taunt too far for which one of the youths paid with his life.  Enter lawyers from stage left to argue that the zoo and city are the real culprits.  Given the growing record of such legal shenanigans, what levels of stupidity and malice must we now defend ourselves against?  In considering an answer to this, we must also factor in that we are liable to make whole the cretins hurting themselves as they assault civilization.

Finally, we consider the politics of economic stimulation cum vote buying – ‘vote for me ye members of the downtrodden classes and I will give you each $500’. Being true Keynesians, the left’s version of stimulating the economy is always to shove some quick cash into the shorts of their constituents.  Do we conclude from this that their supporters don’t have the ability to appreciate the long-term albeit delayed benefits created by tax reductions and tax credits?  Of course, a large fraction of the Democrats’ constituents don’t pay any income tax and would not be helped by tax credits, so Senator Clinton’s approach makes all the sense in the world.  Besides, it’s easy to pander their voters by attacking tax reductions – ‘Here they go again, the Republicans helping the wealthy and the corporations’ – conveniently forgetting that it’s the taxpayers that make possible the good senator’s generosity.

Singularity Signposts – 7jan08

George Rebane

These posts highlight some current technological developments that confirm our increasing pace to the Singularity.

• Machine with a conscience
• Cars that drive themselves
• Robots to help the elderly

Ruminations - 6jan2008

George Rebane

As the media bleats about $100/bbl oil, I wonder whether we're supposed to forget that it's really the dollar in our pockets that is under assault by the government.  They want to take more money from us and find that raising taxes is too obvious because even the most backward of us then see that their take-home pay is smaller and may not agree that it's all going for a good cause.  A much better way to bilk us is to continue debasing the currency which allows the government's fixed debts (e.g. national debt) to be paid off in cheaper dollars.  The government figures correctly that the rubes among us will not notice.  Those not convinced of the greenback's fall in value should examine the nearby chart (from the 4jan08 WSJ) showing the price of oil in dollars, euros, and gold.  There they will see that the price of crude in terms of real money (i.e. gold) has remained pretty much constant.

It was heartening last night in the New Hampshire debates to see all Republicans declare that the first part of any beneficial solution to the illegal alien problem is to secure our borders.  This, of course, is anathema for our friends on the left whose solutions are akin to stopping the ship of state from sinking by ignoring the hole in the hull and just trying to bail more furiously.  And then again, some of them don't even want to bail all that much.  I wonder what they're up to.

Arguably taxes, trade, and the free market are the prime differentiators between the Republicans and Democrats.  If the GOP loses its grip on making this clear during the coming year, it will become history sooner than later.  (A canary in the mine will be Ron Paul becoming an independent or, better, a declared Libertarian candidate.)  Some right-wing stalwarts are saying that abandoning such conservative distinctions will not necessarily spell the demise of the party.  Maybe not, but it seems to me that it would be a prudent move to at least start measuring that sagging and staggering pachyderm for its pine box.  The amount of lumber required will require placing a timely order.

Finally, those of us looking for an end to the state's monopoly in education should add tax credits to vouchers as an alternative way for parents to direct the education of their children.  Adam Schaeffer of the CATO Institute has completed a very readable policy paper (The Public Education Tax Credit) arguing the benefit of tax credits over vouchers in pushing through a success campaign for school choice.  Personally, I was convinced and am now a proponent of the tax credit approach.

   

Populism??

George Rebane

During this election season we’re going to be hearing a lot about populism and the populist positions that certain candidates on both sides will be taking.  What the heck is populism anyway?  When you google populism you get over one million hits that help illuminate (obfuscate?) this term – everything from esoteric definitions from the academics to historical citations as to its occurrence during various bygone political campaigns.  The notion and term definitely appears to be of American origin, probably because we have led the world in political diversity and in holding wide-open, free-swinging elections.

I was going to wordsmith a definition of populism according to my lights, but then I ran into a well-written one on Wikipedia that sounds about right, and that I believe will serve most of us.

Populism is the use of discourses, ideas or policies which try to appeal to "the people" by setting up a dichotomy between "the people" and "the elite". This populist appeal to "the people" has often been associated with an emotional appeal to identities, including national, class, ethnic and regional ones.

This suggests that candidates who are populists or use populistic arguments often chase opinion polls and/or the votes of people who are most prone to emotional appeals.  The definite implication here is that the politician who uses populist arguments has at best a malleable political philosophy or at worst is unprincipled – it pays for us to find out how long he’s been with the message that we hear today.   The overarching goal is to get elected no matter what the message du jour has to be.  The second implication is that the populist politician is playing to the electorate’s “dumbth” (term coined by the late Steve Allen) the effectiveness of which tactic was recently corroborated and reported in The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies by Bryan Caplan.  Exciting times.

Happy Unfunded New Year!

George Rebane

Dear Reader, I hope that you and your family have survived another hectic holiday season with health, hearth, and hoard more or less intact.  Jo Ann and I wish you all a Happy 2008!

My apologies for being absent from these pages during the last week.  For Christmas we drove to soCal to attend a big family celebration and also spend some dinners with friends and more family.  Since returning I have been busy, literally day and night, with my SESF colleagues in completing the report of a substantial study of unfunded liabilities that currently burden the city and county governments of Nevada County.  Over the past year this research was ably shouldered by SESF's Executive Director, Mike McDaniel.  There were many meetings reviewing financical data along with input from concerned elected officials for which we are grateful. The results of the study are documented in the technical report TR0712-1: Undfunded Liabilities - Our Community's Fiscal Time Bombs which can be accessed here.

Unfunded liabilities at all levels of government are usually below the radar of public attention except when a financial catastrophe, like the recent one in Orange County, occurs.  Well folks, the problem has quietly continued to grow until it has now become a monster of more than a TRILLION (that's a million million) dollars across the land.  Almost all of this non-existent money has been promised to government employees as they retire.  There are only two ways to defuse such time bombs - take more money from the taxpayers and/or renege on the promises made to the employees.  The SESF report details the available data on the major unfunded liabilities of our county. However, even it does not yet paint the complete picture. 

Whether by design or happenstance, the funding of government employees and officials' benefits packages is a murky matter.  The recent across-the-board raises given in Grass Valley is an example of how little of its total impact was revealed to the city's taxpayers and the larger community.  Therefore, in its role as a non-profit, non-partisan Nevada County public policy analysis resource, SESF plans to update the current report with later editions and issue supporting information as it becomes available.  In the interval, please visit the SESF website and blog for updates as they develop.

(I am the co-author of the report, and, as most of you know, the SESF Director of Research.)