Rebane's Ruminations

Road Ruminations – 27apr2008

George Rebane

Las Cruces is a city of about 70,000 in southern New Mexico.  It is a modest bedroom community for the various government facilities (White Sands Missile Range, Holloman AFB, …) hereabouts and is also within commuting distance of El Paso, Texas.  For us it is a rest stop on the way to visit friends in Tucson.  The town is located in the Rio Grande valley which is to New Mexico as the Nile is to Egypt – all the major cities are located and all economic activity apparently takes place within about twenty miles of this vigorous and life giving river. (Click on photos to enlarge)

As the home of the southern campus of the State University of New Mexico (‘The Aggies’), Las Cruces is also a college town.  The large student population gives the community a definitely young appearance.  However, Jo Ann pointed out that many of the older men here display some kind of orthopedic injury that they collected from their hard working lives.  The city itself seems to be in a state of becoming and suffers from some neglect in how things work.  Yesterday we were directed to the worst Mexican restaurant in the world, and filled up at a Chevron station that needed a lot of love. 

In the evening we decided to take no more chances and selected an IHOP near the movie we would later attend.  Visions of the Grass Valley IHOP danced in our heads as we walked in.  Along every dimension (including promised deliveries from its food distributor) we quickly discovered that not all IHOPs are created equal.  Ours is a gem.  Oh yes, and in the theater their new digital (DLP) movie projector broke down three times before it finally relented to play the entire movie.

The Great Western motel where we are staying was selected by the New Mexico British sports car club which made its parking lot look like something out of an old movie.  I met an engineer who works at the Los Alamos lab; he gave me a thorough rundown on his TR4.  Lucky for me it was parked in the shade.

This morning we visited the White Sands Missile Range about 40 miles to the east on the other side of the Sacramento Mountains.  Since I worked on a number of missile weapon systems in a former life, I wanted to see their museum of this country’s missile development history.  WSMR is an active facility, so in order to take our car on base we had to have it “inspected” for explosives, etc.  That done, we drove to the museum and were well rewarded for the effort.  The exhibits, while a bit weather worn, were still impressive.

Road Ruminations – 25apr08

George Rebane

For the Steeles and Rebanes this was the last day together on our RV trip without an RV.  We decided to do a little research on community development from an historical perspective and took a trip to the Bandelier National Monument.  There we were promised the opportunity to discover and examine the lifestyles of the Anasazi Indians who settled in the region more than 10,000 years ago.  From a perusal of the pictures depicting the ruins of their settlements it was clear that we would find the progenitors of smart growth.  This is apparently where community planning started.  The deep interest in such an approach to communal living in Nevada County left us no choice but to conduct our own investigation up close and personal.

Road Ruminations – 24apr08

George Rebane

Our visit to Santa Fe was made this morning when we visited the Santa Fe Institute.  SFI is a non-profit institute of learning in the systems sciences with an international reputation.  Russ and I, being systems techies, just wanted to go to the mother temple and genuflect a little.  When with our brides we walked in unannounced, we were greeted most cordially when we revealed the purpose of our visit.  After being served coffee and shown around a bit, we were joined by Dr. Chris Wood, vice-president of SFI, who spent over an hour with us going over the institute’s research, academic staff, methods, and plans.  In the coming months there will be more to say about what all of us look forward to as a growing relationship connecting the issues of Nevada County to some world class research in methods and approaches to public policy.  We left the ‘temple grounds’ with an armload of reports and papers after being given run of the institute’s library.

Road Ruminations – 22apr08

George Rebane

Grounded in Grants, NM.  Today was supposed to be our excursion to the Ice Caves about 25 miles south of here.   We pulled into the local Great Western motel yesterday afternoon after driving about 250 miles on I-40 from Flagstaff across some of the bleakest country in these United States.  It makes you understand whe the Mexicans didn’t fight harder for it back in the 1840s.  The two major towns that one encounters en route are Holbrook on the Arizona side and Gallup as you first cross into New Mexico.

Russ and Ellen had stop at Holbrook to pay respects to their former residence there when in the Air Force.  Russ also surveyed the local thermometer that has been telemetering its readings to the federal agencies concerned with such things as global warming.  (See his post on NC Media Watch.)

We of the RVless contingent on this RV trip stopped in Gallup because my bride claimed the town was full of fine galleries and she was in need of some retail therapy.  So we pulled over on the main drag in front of a ‘gallery’ that was carefully selected for the parking space in front of it.  The establishment was presentable but totally empty.  Upon our entry its Palestinian owner ‘Mike’ sprang from a back room and smiled his way across the floor to where Jo Ann had already begun casting a critical eye on the merchandise.

Road Ruminations - 20apr08

George Rebane

We have seen the sun set in Flagstaff for the second day and last night heard our share of the 100 to 130 trains per day that pass through this town.  The last time in Flagstaff for me was in 1957 when as a teenager I drove my own used Beatle following my parents on our family's migration to California on US66.  That was before they wrote the song about getting your kicks on Route 66. Today was Grand Canyon revisited with Russ and Ellen.  We had a fantastic lunch at the best table overlooking the canyon El Tovar could offer.  Lots of pictures and memories of previous visits.  The day ended with BBQd rib eye steaks served with all the fixin's at the Steeles' rolling roadhouse.

Having written the SESF report on our county's ozone problem, I am looking forward to attending the Sierra Ozone Summit.  It will be interesting to see if we can mobilize to do something innovative and effective about highlighting the plight of communities downwind from massive pollution sources.  Right now the feds and the state are still holding us responsible for a correcting a problem that is out of our hands and threatening punitive actions if we don't.

Jeff Pelline takes me to task in calling a spade a spade on the proposed left-wing Managed Growth Initiative.  Community general planning, which includes handling growth, is and always has been a political problem pitting opposing ideologies against each other in a competition that sometimes finds a tolerable middle ground.  Not understanding that this well-worn path must be trod again is an unfortunate shortcoming of our newspaper.  For the community's conservative and MGI-opposing liberal coalitions to join in defeating MGI will require that the common charter they adopt be an effective compromise.  The draft of the "talking points" against MGI that I have seen is clearly too one-sided and needs work.  Not solving the real political problems in mounting an opposition plays into the hands of the Stagnators who back the MGI.

Road Ruminations – 19apr08

George Rebane

We just pulled into Flagstaff, Arizona.   This morning we left from Laughlin, Nevada for the short trip here.  Our friends Russ and Ellen Steele were first on the road with their Airstream and GMC2500 prime mover.  For Jo Ann and me this is our RV trip without an RV.  We were supposed tag along with the Steeles in our rented Class A RV learning the fine art of trailering and RVing.  However, a last minute malfunction caused us to return the RV, shown in our driveway, and put Plan B into action.  We travel in our Grand Cherokee (Ol’ Faithful) and sleep in a motel near the RV park where we spend the evenings with our friends taking turns cooking suppers – lots of fun.  We’re still learning a bunch about what makes all these thousands of people travel in those huge rigs, and then spend nights parked cheek-by-jowl with other rigs on a parcel of land that is usually the cheapest in the neighborhood.  But there is a method to this madness the discovery of  which we will file in future reports.

The proposed Managed Growth Initiative, if passed, will manage to stop all growth in western Nevada County and is now bringing on a very illuminating silly season.  I think in the end it will benefit our community by shining a light into ideological corners that have been hidden too long.  I’m not sure that the coalition cobbled together to fight MGI will serve the county’s conservative cause, but there is still time to wordsmith a proper response to the proposal forwarded by (drum roll) The Stagnators.

The lack of clarity and truth that has characterized the presidential campaign so far got a bit foggier when Senator Obama was attacked for his remarks about the frustrated common folks clinging to their religion and guns.  Like a good liberal exposed, the senator has been trying to backpedal on this remarkable flash of insight.  Instead doing the ‘I didn’t mean it like it came out’ two-step, he should stick to his guns (sic) because he nailed it the first time.  All of us lucky enough to have religion and guns have always tended to get closer to them when things got tough – most certainly our Founders did.  After all, that’s why God invented guns and gave us religion in the first place.  As the song says, “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition”.

Cancelled Flights and Codaphobia

George Rebane

This week’s cancellation of over three thousand flights for safety inspections is a political flap where the FAA is over-reacting to Congress accusing it of being too cozy with the airlines.  What makes it all possible is the established public mentality of codaphobia, now nationwide and growing in direct proportion to the country’s innumeracy rate.

Several years ago I was teaching an upper division/graduate critical thinking course to journalists and media producers called ‘Society and Media’.  In the course we covered ways that the journalistic media select their stories.  One prominent category was to promote and then exploit an unreasonable fear of rare events.  In order to facilitate discussion I named that kind of fear ‘codaphobia’ or literally ‘fear of tails’.

Why tails?  Well the occurrence of events like accidents, major storms, falling off a swing, and getting cancer are random events described by probability distributions such as the famous bell curve.  The events under the hump occur most frequently and the ones to either side out under the tails occur less frequently.  And the ones way out there in the tails are really rare.  Most probability distributions have at least one tail that characterizes how rare certain events described by the distribution are. Codaphobia served our discussions well since it had all the related terms like codaphobe, codaphobic, and so on.  And since then its utility in talking about our society has grown.

NC Blogger Updates - 9apr08

George Rebane

CABPRO's Exec Dir Martin Light has posted at CABPRO Report a very thorough update on this Tuesday's Board of Supes meeting on the steadily advancing Fire Safe plan for the county.  If you have an acre or two with trees, you want to keep up with this package of new regulations.

SESF's Exec Dir Mike McDaniel has some new information here on Grass Valley's unfunded liabilities.  In Nevada County GV is not alone in wrestling with this problem.

Dixie Fix is finally off and running after some inaugural technical glitches.  Look for Dixie Redfearn to revamp and resume her community news column that formerly ran on The Union.  Her current post is an update on local restaurants.  Now that there are no more space limitations, we can all get our community news, favorite nostrums, and nagging nits published. Just send her an email at [email protected] and don't forget to get your Dixie fix on Dixie Fix.

No Friends of Our’n – Anti-Growth Group Opposed in Council Chambers (Updated)

George Rebane

Just returned from a very significant meeting of the Grass Valley City Council.  The council chambers were packed – SRO.  Mayor Johnson opened the session with some well deserved citations and proclamations recognizing local organizations doing good.  Then he opened up the meeting to public comment.  Howard Levine, Exec Director of the GV Downtown Association, stepped up to the podium and delivered a prepared statement that correctly and succinctly framed the proposed anti-growth initiative that has been announced by a nascent group calling itself Friends of Grass Valley. 

Howard outlined the divisive and strangling future that this initiative, if successful, would impose on Grass Valley and Nevada County in general.  At the end of the statement when he came to the “we stand together” to oppose this inititiative, with a few exceptions, the whole chamber stood in solidarity to make their feelings known.  A very impressive statement lost on none.

Ruminations - 7apr2008

George Rebane

Collateral Carbon Credit Damage.  This morning I awoke to a NPR report of gushing young lawyers in WashDC all atwitter about getting into the carbon credit business and making a ton of money; oh yes, they’re in it to also save the environment.  This is one of many unknown collateral catastrophes that occur when government starts messing with the markets – and the bigger the messing the bigger the mess.  Now we are having another huge cohort of America’s bright young people with MBAs and law degrees chasing a buck that is destined to help no one and hurt everyone around the world.  Oh, did I mention that another such group is taking perfectly good food off the prairies, adding a ton of hydrocarbon energy, and then making government subsidized ethanol that achieves no energy objectives but does make tortillas more expensive for the poor Mexicans, the Africans, the Asians, the … and Ms. SixPack in Poughkeepsie.

Can't Change Climate Change.  Team Gore is turning on the heat under media outlets who dare to even contemplate making public the recent findings about climate change that trips up the True Believers.  As Russ reports on NC Media Watch, the politics about this is getting ugly.  And we do have to keep in mind that climate change now is a political issue of a desperate ideology that is pulling all the stops to achieve its global agenda – and, sadly, winning against the skeptics who constitute the small but growing voices of reason.

GV City Council and the Growth Snatchers.  At 645pm tomorrow night in the GV council chambers we will witness the first collision of the no-growthers Friends of Grass Valley and those who see the return of boarded up store-fronts on Mill and Broad Streets.  (With friends like these, who needs … )  Our county electeds see this as a horrible portend for the future of our community, literally guaranteeing the failure of any initiative promoting prosperity and the quality of life that makes our foothills unique.  If you have a spare piece of backbone lying around the house, please bring it tomorrow night and contribute it to our politicos who will be most grateful – and so will you.  Here’s the press release about this on NC Media Watch.

Mud Match on The Union.  Speaking of the effort to promote non-existent growth for a community with non-existent growth, did you catch the mud match on the online Union in response to an article 'Growth measure raises questions' – questions my foot! it raised a lot of hell, read the comments.  What many of us found entertaining was the quality of the Union’s correspondents that was equaled by none other than publisher Jeff (‘The Gravitas’) Ackerman down there in the pit slinging away.  I guess that’s how you defend a newspaper; what a dialogue ;-)

TechTest2008 ignored by The Union.  TechTest2008, the second annual SESF TechTest merit scholarship exam was given this Saturday to the county’s best and brightest science/math students.  This scholarship recognizes students who plan to go into technology careers.  (read here the importance of Nevada County grads returning home to staff our community’s high tech companies).  This four-hour exam is administered by an academic committee headed by John McDaniel, award-winning physics teacher at NUHS.  He sent the appropriate and timely letter to the newspaper to gain some deserved publicity for the effort which will award $15,000 of scholarship prizes this year.  Nothing.  Apparently the paper was too full of local pumpkin contests and teddy bear exhibits to recognize these young people who will be the next generation of wealth creators.  Kudos to KNCO which picked up the ball and made the event known in our town.

Economic Development Done Quietly.  The two-day joint meeting of our elected leaders from the four major jurisdictions – Truckee, Nevada City, Grass Valley, and the County – to set a course for future economic development concluded on Saturday.  I attended both sessions and posted my recap here .  The meeting was well attended by local NGOs, non-profits, and the public.  Economic development in our county is on a crutch and needs all the support it can get from us and our institutions.  Apparently such gatherings do not meet the high standards for content that our local paper sets for itself and you.

Economic Development – Once More With Feeling

George Rebane

The electeds of Nevada County had a two day joint meeting to continue their dubious path toward some or any, for that matter, approach toward economic development (ED).  It was marvelous to see an amicable meeting where the city councils of Truckee, Grass Valley, and Nevada City joined with the county supes to discuss the matter.  Cutting to the chase, the outcome was to do more of the same – i.e. nothing to put your hopes on – while identifying yet more areas where there is perhaps no understanding, and, most certainly no agreement.  The meeting was a success in that everyone could declare victory by tossing the ball to Gil Mathews and the Economic Resource Council, and hoping that he will come back with something to make them all look good, or innocuous enough that it will not show on anyone’s radar and we can go forward with the same ol’ same ol’.  Details below.

Ruminations - 3apr2008

George Rebane

Keeping Grass Valley’s non-existent growth non-existent. We don’t yet know if the GV city mamas and papas will love the Friends of GV initiative that would put all difficult questions about planning and growth to the voters.  Kind of reminds one of the scam that the state pols pulled in 1911, and how we now vote statewide on initiatives ranging from tax rates to the color of underwear kids will be allowed to wear to school.  Maybe this initiative will reduce staff costs since they won’t be developing the positions for the electeds to vote on. For the record we must point out that The Union agrees (look here, it happens!) with Ruminations (here and here) about the nonsense the new ‘Friends of Grass Valley’ are trying to foist as an initiative to tie the hands of city planners.  When you add to this the recent thoughts on economic development by Terry Lamphier, one of GV’s leading lights, you understand why that city continues to suffer from a lack of lumens.

The Medler Memorial Traffic Light is our newest source of congestion and pollution.  This traffic light, paid for by tribute from the developers of Morgan Ranch to mitigate the additional traffic that may be generated by the subdivision’s last unit of twenty plus homes, is now causing off-rush-hour back ups at the intersection of Ridge Road and Sierra College Drive.  GV should try setting it to flash red except during the morning and afternoon peak traffic hours.

As predicted and pooh-poohed, the county's new Fire Safe regulations are already starting to attract the attention of insurance companies that need a reason to bail from insuring houses in Nevada County.  Here is the latest about Allstate.

TechTest2008 will be taken this Saturday at NUHS by the county’s science and math seniors.  Russ Steele’s NC Media Watch has the press release.

?Hillary was fired from Watergate prosecution team for lying and unethical behavior?  This little nuke was popped by her former boss Jerry Zeifman as reported by (right-wing?) North Star Writers Group.  The left-wing Daily Kos has picked this up and is looking into it.  When you google ‘Hillary fired, Watergate’, you get over 200,000 hits indicating that the web is alive with this story.  Nothing in the mainstream media yet.  Most interesting is that Drudge, the blog of blogs, is keeping mum on it.  They haven't even acknowledged that this loose cannon is rolling around the below-decks of the web.  Does this mean that Drudge has finally grown so big that it is starting to act like a mainstream media outlet? 

Economic Development 101 in Nevada County – Round 3 (4?, 5?, …)

George Rebane

Today we have a public service post for all of you keenly interested in how our county’s leaders are making progress on economic development (ED).  This Friday and Saturday will see another conclave of the county’s electeds, staff, media, non-profits, and hangers-on at the Holiday Inn Express doing their best to push the ED peanut ahead.  Your humble blogger will be in attendance with pen at the ready.

Here’s how you can tell if anyone is serious about ED.  Since no one yet knows what ED looks like for Nevada County, serious people will address that part first.  For we all know that ED goals can take a myriad of forms.  For example, one goal statement would be ‘increase retail sales taxes 15% annually for the next five years’, another might be ‘increase the property tax base by 50% over the next ten years’, and another may be ‘double the county’s private sector workforce over the next ten years’.  This kind of specific goal statement then makes it clear what kind of an ED plan must be adopted to achieve the goal, and also provides a gauge by which to measure progress toward the goal.  Alternative approaches to ED can then be reasonably debated by how much sense each makes in achieving the goal.

It’s easy to see that picking such an ED goal/definition is a purely subjective undertaking; there is nothing objective about saying that increasing sales taxes is ‘better’ than increasing private sector workforce.  In fact, to really emphasize the subjective nature of picking an ED goal, we can put both sales tax increase and workforce increase (or any other economic performance attribute) into the same goal statement in a way that measurement is still possible.  The main thing is that the goal of ED defines its nature, and that is a judgment call.

In a representative government judgment calls like this should be made by the elected representatives of the people – that’s why we elected them.  But you can also see that supporting an ED goal also means that you have to stick your neck out for this rather than that.  Politicians naturally shirk from this whenever they can.  Now here in Nevada County we often believe that our politicians are our friends and neighbors, and therefore are made out of stiffer stuff.  On Friday everyone will be able to see for themselves whether that’s true or not.

Grass Valley Lurches Forward

George Rebane

The GV mamas and papas are really in a quandary but, true to form, are keeping a stiff upper lip as they consider the conflicts of reality butting heads with a sagging ideology.  The city is unable to fund its upcoming budget and is seeking to cut costs to stay afloat.  In the meantime, it is contemplating another progressive measure to not only ignore, but actively fight, any hope of growing its revenue base so it can provide the services it has promised to maintain for the good people living there.  Here from a local correspondent is a pdf with a compendium of a press release, proposed city resolution, and petition from yet another anti-growth organization ‘Friends of Grass Valley’ apparently made up of the same folks who put the vim and vigor into the RQC and CCAT (they sure have to wear a lot of hats to man all the switches and keep all the balls in the air).  Download grass_valley_initiatives.pdf

As you read this, keep in mind that our county is growing at less than a fifth of California’s growth rate, and at the same time with the other hand is trying to promote economic growth.  Can anyone spell schizophrenia?

'Dixie Fix' is Online!!

George Rebane

Ruminations is pleased, hell, is excited to welcome the return of Dixie Redfearn's neighborly news, comments, and features about what is happening in Nevada County - we have added Dixie Fix to our links.  Dixie, a longtime icon of our community, was the Union columnist whose Reader's Corner informed us of the events, happenings, and reflections that put not only a human face, but our human face on items of interest, inspiration, and importance.  As most of you know, Dixie is now on the air with KNCO.  Today she has also joined the Nevada County bloggers to again provide her own unique brand of community reporting which we all enjoyed as our Dixie fix with the morning coffee.  Well, now Dixie Fix is online and will be filling us in with more of the good and positive about Nevada County than ever before.  Submit your stories, announcements, and musings to Dixie, and share them with your neighbors when we all log on to get our Dixie fix.

Par Force – An Uncommon View of the Second Amendment

George Rebane

Today the Supreme Court is considering a Second Amendment case that will have a sweeping impact on our ability to keep and use guns.  The California legislature has before it AB2062 that seeks to proscribe the effective ownership of guns through a back door ruse of greatly limiting the purchase and distribution of ammunition.  Almost half of Americans have come to believe that in a civilized world the state should be the only agency to possess and wield deadly force.

A few of us knuckle-draggers see this as part and parcel of the march to a monolithic global state, perhaps stopping along the way for an oligopoly of super-states as described by Orwell.  The rapid recognition of splinter states such as Kosovo is right on the path to such a future.  To see how one of these super-states will operate, we need look no further than the United Nations of today while keeping in mind what passes for prudent government in our own District of Columbia.

In today’s WSJ we read – “More than one American has tried to make the United Nations live up to its original ideals -- Pat Moynihan, Jeane Kirkpatrick, John Bolton. We'd add to that distinguished list the name of Mark Wallace, an ambassador to the U.S. mission at Turtle Bay who resigned yesterday having tried for two years to make the U.N. a more transparent place.”

Our Founders understood that governments operate on the edge of evil.  Therefore they wrote into our Constitution the provisions by which our new government would always remain responsive to its citizens, not by the goodwill of honorable and incorruptible politicians, but by the direct means of armed revolt when our leaders finally step over that edge.  The existence of this desperate but necessary redress has not escaped the elites who are forever dedicated to constraining our behavior to fit into their template of a politically correct Homo Perfectus.

That past attempts to shepherd humanity along this road have created hells on earth is the motivation for an introduction to the role of par force in a liberal democracy which I argue in 'Par Force in the Maintenance of a Liberal Democracy'.  This piece can be downloaded here Download ParForce160627.