Rebane's Ruminations

Another Bridge to Nowhere?

George Rebane

[This post is actually the continuation of a magnificent comment thread that started in response to ‘McClintock Visits Nevada County’.  That thread became an examination and debate between the economic policies of the Right and Left, especially in the context of what is happening today in Washington with the seeming sea change of the government’s launch of a stream of ‘stimulus’ packages that appear to be dysfunctional for their intended purpose, and have no foreseeable end in their issue.  All of this may be viewed as a hearteningly civil discourse that seeks to build a workable bridge, or understand why one is not possible, between our country’s contending political philosophies.]

... Finally in extension and with the intent of starting a new thread, we come to sovereign nation states and protectionism.  As this blog testifies, I am a proponent of retaining the plurality of nations and cultures which survive in their own homelands, and die/transform rapidly when forced into multi-cultural confines.  From such sustainable diversity come good and competitive ideas for governance, technology, arts, etc.  Yet I am also for free trade between nations - let all who can, offer what they can at the best value.  But sovereignty becomes meaningless to a nation state (as it has to many countries today) when it cannot generate a certain critical mass/collection of goods and services internally. 

The last exercises of sovereignty, that even the smallest countries can apply, always take the form of protecting some critical/strategic domestic supplier(s) from ‘unfair’ foreign competition.  These notions of international diversity and integration of commerce contend with each other (witness the rapid spread of the financial crisis).  I have yet to discover a rule set or algorithm to apply on to where/how to draw the reasonable line.  And drawing the line is important because protectionism, seen from the inside, is the siamese twin of welfare.  But as soon as we start national welfare programs in all their various shades, the mangling of the country’s original political structure and social order cannot help but follow, and its resulting form is never as intended.  America is Exhibit A.

Does anyone have a recommended approach over our present form of making laws and sausages that would halt the growing schism between the Right and Left?

"Do Nothing ... Sooner!"

George Rebane

This ad is running in a major newspaper near you.  For a readable version, please click here.

NASA’s Hockeystick Hansen Rebuked

George Rebane

James Hansen, the NASA scientist responsible for most of the so-called computer modeling behind the global warming scare, has been publicly rebuked by his former boss Dr. John Theon, now retired.  I would be remiss if I didn’t pick up this important development for RR readers since the MSM may never make much of it.

Dr. Theon is among the growing throng of scientists who reject the half-baked theories of manmade global warming.  This global hysteria has been exposed now for several years by many investigators who examined all aspects of the UN IPCC report that is the main basis for continuing to cause all the excitement.

Locally bloggers Anthony Watts and Russ Steele have been the stalwarts in keeping their readers up to date on the latest science that debunks the IPCC conclusions.  (see their blogs for more details)

Now the question is when will the politicians in Washington and Sacramento, who never did and still don’t understand climate change, come to their senses and start rolling back travesties like the Lieberman-Warner legislation of the feds and California’s AB32, both of which promise to devastate our economy – as if that can stand more devastation.  There is a lot of damage to undo if we are to dodge this bullet.

You can help, let your voice be heard.

A View from Leftfield (updated)

George Rebane

To keep track of what our socialist brethren in the country are saying, I visit sites like truthout.org.  One of the Left’s champion commentators is economist Dean Baker who writes ‘The Anti-Stimulus Crowd Blows a Gasket' .  I cannot claim that I understand any of Baker’s logic or development, it comes from a universe I have spent my lifetime studying, and subsequently unsuccessfully avoiding.

Now it looks like we are all fated to ride the train of Team Obama into a socialist future that even they are unabashedly giving the redux label of ‘New Deal’.  The Right has no goods to sell on this train, their only hope is that people see sooner than later that it’s headed in the wrong direction.  But given examples like the mindless support that AB32 (California’s greenhouse gas law) continues to draw, there is little hope of that.

[update – to those concerned that “mindless” is perhaps too strong of an adjective, please check out the long list of analyses at the Institute for Energy Research site on the cost of the federal Lieberman-Warner climate change legislation that California’s AB32 seeks to trump in its implementation.  Especially revealing is the SAIC study done for the National Association of Manufacturers.  Hat tip to Russ Steele on NCMW for sending me this cost analysis.]

Perhaps the only chance of some redemption lies in Baker’s own prescription of how long it will take for Team Obama to succeed.  He states that

The anti-stimulus crowd is getting desperate. The possibility that a young charismatic new president will push through an ambitious package that begins to set the economy right is truly terrifying to this crew. After all, if the economy begins to turn around and has largely recovered in three or four years, the Republican leadership can look forward to spending most of their careers in the political wilderness. (Emphasis mine)

‘Three or four years’, ‘largely recovered’ (!?) seem to me admissions that the Dems are going to wander in the woods for a while before coming to the tunnel with the light at the other end.  Last I looked, there will be an election in 2010.  And if we are still in the full bloom of a recession, someone may notice.  The problem is that by that time we will be used to getting our semi-annual Vote Democratic (aka ‘stimulus’) checks.  At least those of us who can reliably be counted on to vote socialist will get their checks and tax rebates.

The Republicans don’t yet have a plan on how to communicate to the voters a solution to this prolonged economic travesty.  It’s not even clear that such a concept can be communicated to the very large, pre-educated segment of the electorate, especially when your message is that you have to retrain yourself to regain your relevance in the new workplace.  It’s hard to embrace that kind of responsibility when the Left is saying, ‘Pay no mind, just look at the checks you’ve been getting, and here’s a nice new government job waiting for you, all paid for by the coddled rich.’

Oh, in case you’re confused about the ‘coddled rich’ part, Dean Baker also has that sorted out for you in his new book The Conservative Nanny State.  And here is the part that I really worry about - Baker has a point.  We all know that the big corporate rich have received their share of government coddling.  And while the Dems try to uncoddle those people, the successful entrepreneurs and wannabes - those who risk in creating our new technologies, industries, and jobs - will be swept along and made to pay through the nose as we all sink into the suffocating sameness of a socialist sunset.

Fork Over Your Job to Robo-Forklift

George Rebane

Here’s another ‘you can’t just do ONE thing’ development.  MIT recently announced (here) that

Researchers in MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) are working on a better way to handle supplies in a war zone: a semi-autonomous forklift that can be directed by people safely away from the dangers of the site.

Well, that all seems like a good idea.  That little puppy pictured nearby will learn the layout of warehouses and loading docks, and then accept high-level directions (‘Unload truck from Dock 7 and stack pallets in Warehouse 3 Sector 19.’) to do its job.  Most of you are already ahead of me – how long until such operations become common in more peaceful environments stateside?  And what do we do with the people who used to earn a good living driving these things?  Many (most?) of these people cannot be retrained for jobs that successfully (pay per performance) compete with machines in other sectors of the economy. 

As we approach the Singularity, such technological advances will permanently displace workers with limited abilities to learn more sophisticated skills.  The smart machines are pushing us out of our traditional workplaces more rapidly than ever.  And no one should dream on about this just happening to a few workers out there with ‘learning disabilities’.  We’re talking about tens of millions of more Americans who will soon be looking to the government to sustain them in one way or another – the operational word here is ‘more’.  No one today seems to want to think about this Singularity signpost very much.   

Tied in Legal Knots

George Rebane

Today President Obama’s call for “a new era of responsibility” is stillborn.  Most well-read people have known for some decades now that we have tied ourselves into legal knots that kill the spirit of initiative and freedom.  Lawyer Philip Howard (chair of Common Good) in today’s WSJ writes ‘How Modern Law Makes Us Powerless’  – it is definitely worth a read before we suffer our next ‘Well, there ought to be a law …’ reflex response to some problem we hear about.

Regarding the immediate implications of our laws and lawyers dilemma, Howard writes

Here we stand, facing the worst economy since the Great Depression, and Americans no longer feel free to do anything about it. We have lost the idea, at every level of social life, that people can grab hold of a problem and fix it. Defensiveness has swept across the country like a cold wave. We have become a culture of rule followers, trained to frame every solution in terms of existing law or possible legal risk. The person of responsibility is replaced by the person of caution. When in doubt, don't.

And our concept of freedom has become atrophied in that “(w)e think of freedom as political freedom. We're certainly free to live and work where we want, and to pull the lever in the ballot box. But freedom should also include the power of personal conviction and the authority to use your common sense.”

The real problem comes down to “(t)he overlay of law on daily choices (that) destroys the human instinct needed to get things done. Bureaucracy can't teach. Rules don't make things happen. Accomplishment is personal. Anyone who has felt the pride of a job well done knows this.”

As a start to fixing things, we must restructure law to “affirmatively define an area free from legal interference.”  But that will be no simple task.

Reviving the can-do spirit that made America great requires a legal overhaul of historic dimension. We must scrape away decades of accumulated legal sediment and replace it with coherent legal goals and authority mechanisms, designed to affirmatively protect individual freedom in daily choices. "A little rebellion now and then is a good thing," Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison, "and as necessary in the political world as storms are in the physical . . . ." The goal is not to change our public goals. The goal is make it possible for free citizens to achieve them.  (Emphasis mine)

McClintock visits Nevada County

George Rebane

This afternoon Russ Steele and I went to an intimate coffee and wine meeting with Congressman Tom McClintock and about thirty other local folks.  Tom McClintock was introduced by our State Senator Sam Aanestad,  Russ has already posted on the meeting here (that man is fast).  I just want to add a couple of points I took away from a very informative and congenial get together of a Congressman with his constituents - it was pure Americana, and long may it wave.

First from Sam Aanestad -

• California has about a $40B deficit to overcome if the Legislature does nothing; it'll probably be up to $60B if they get in there and do something.
• The state has already started issuing IOUs, and the first ones presented in Redding have been refused by BofA.

From Tom McClintock -

• Re the financial crisis - in Congress "we know what works, we're just not doing it."
• The $350B added bailout allocation will be blocked in Congress next week.
• The federal bailout total will probably reach $8T.
• Re the country's developing political mood - "we're in a major shift in the politics of this country."
• Anthropogenic global warming is a political sham.

 

The Green Bandwagon comes to Nevada County (updated)

George Rebane

This morning’s Other Voices (‘Let’s create a local economy around green jobs’) by Don Pelton in The Union is another example of why economic development in our county is so difficult – muddle-headed thinking.  The author’s proposal to spend money to make Nevada County a hub of green technology companies is not only silly, but to the extent that it diverts our very limited resources from more productive economic goals, it is also destructive to our collective future during this deepening recession.

This remote foothills county has almost nothing to offer but a wonderful living environment and a tourist destination.  Unfortunately, to many people seeking to be helpful, this is all that is needed to attract high tech enterprises.  The reality is very different.  Technology companies are tightening their belts and looking to locate elsewhere, starting with the high hard one – ‘How do we get out of California?’  This week a greatly relieved Intel announced the closing of its hallmark Santa Clara chip making plant, instead of investing to modernize it.  The excuse of the recession was a welcome reason for Intel to remove one more connection with the state that has now become the leading anti-business environment in the country (cf AB32 et.al.).

We Believe What We Need to Believe

George Rebane 

I’m reminded by today’s Stratfor bulletin of a recent comment on RR regarding Islam’s crusade against the West.  Buzzing out Stratfor’s report, I wound up on the INRA site (Iran’s Islamic Republic News Agency) to read that “Over 70,000 students sign up for martyrdom operation list”.  To quote that comment, many good-hearted people continue to believe that “reaching out to moderate Muslims who also favor peace and wealth to war” is something that the West has not done, and because of that we have the problem of worldwide Islamic terror.  Many such people go on to “believe the war on terror should not be framed as between Muslims and the West, but between the primitive/extremists and the modern/moderates.”

Unfortunately, when it comes to terror and warfare, it only takes one to tango.  Anyone, not convinced that Islam is actively seeking to spread their Caliphate agenda, is not paying attention to what the Islamists at ALL levels are saying to us, to their children, and to each other.  The web is a rich resource of English-language Islamic sites that contain the up-to-date sentiments of their commentators, and translations of what their government and religious leaders are telling them.  It does not stretch credulity to understand that their sites in Arabic and Farsi are even more explicit about the Islamic vision of the future and the means to get there.  In this list one need not include the rabid sites published by the myriad of Islamic terrorist organizations.

New White House Blog

George Rebane

The Obama administration got off on the right (sic) foot today by immediately publishing the new White House Blog.  RR is pleased to include that blog's link in its permanent 'Our Links' list in the right hand column.  Macon Phillips, the Director of New Media for the White House, writes a nice welcoming piece ('Change has come to WhiteHouse.gov') and explains how Americans can contact the Administration on a huge category of areas through the new blog.  I plan to use this opportunity, and will be a keen observer of how others take advantage of this new pipe directly into the Head Shed.

Hat tip to Russ on NCMW for finding this so quickly. 

President Barack Hussein Obama

George Rebane

Mr. Obama was not my candidate, but he is my President.  He comes to office during a critical time for America and brings with him, many of us believe, an erroneous social philosophy and promised programs equally flawed to get us back on an even keel economically and geo-politically.  Nevertheless, I cannot and do not wish that his presidency will be a failure.  We all need for him to succeed, perhaps through ways that are even now foreign to him.  For his success will be ours and our children’s success.  It is to that end that I join with those who pray that God grant him and his family the health, wisdom, and courage to become a great and meritorious leader as our 44th President.

Ruminations – 19jan2009

George Rebane

The MSM (aka mainstream media), God love ‘em, but what are we going to do with them?  Russ Steele on NC Media Watch keeps us up to date (I had to bag the nearby image from his link) with MSM developments, especially as it involves our local media.  My modest contribution here is from a correspondent who points us to a short piece ‘When newspapers are gone, what will you miss?’

From a report on NPR, another correspondent confirms that “the top jobs all involve mathematics and some aspect of science. In fact, the guest, representing Jobs.com, says their survey shows that the top job is a mathematician, and nine out of the top ten involve math and science.  Some of the top jobs are actuary (#2), accountant, statistician, biologist, and software engineer.”  I leave it to you to contemplate on what kinds of students our schools pump out.

But not to worry, at latest count our government will now create new jobs by the millions.  And about 20% of the most recently promised 4,000,000 new jobs will be for government workers.  You can bet your bippy (remember bippies?) that none of these newly minted 800,000 civil servants will be proficient in the any of the skills required for top jobs in the private sector.  And like all good Pauls expecting their wages from Peter, they will be permanently ensconced in the Democratic Party’s voting block.  However, they will be perfectly suited – recall your last experience at a government counter - to monitor the rest of us to make sure that we keep on the straight and ever narrower, as mandated by the new laws and regulations coming down the pike.

One of my favorite economists and columnists is Walter Williams.  He has a very short brief here on the current financial mess cum recession (cum depression?).  RR readers are familiar with my long-standing attitude toward TARP and the ensuing bailouts which may now come at us like a herd of turtles – TARP2, TARP3, … .  It will be hard keeping track of the trillions scheduled for air drops across the country and into the several states.  I recall reading somewhere that when asked what the government should do in such a situation, Ludwig von Mises replied, “Nothing … sooner!” 

Jeff Pelline Resigns (corrected)

George Rebane

My sources tell me that Mr. Jeff Pelline, the recent editor of our beloved Onion, has “resigned”, and is moving on to bigger and better things.  I wish Jeff Pelline success on his next project.  Publisher, Jeff Ackerman, is slated to fill in, at least for the interim.  Perhaps soon we may even be able to celebrate the return of The Union.

[20jan09 correction – from Jeff’s comment below and the lengthy explanation on his new blog, we correct this post.  Jeff Pelline was laid off by Jeff Ackerman as a cost cutting measure.  However, a puzzle remains from reading his new blog – why lay off a multi-talented journalist who was already taking a greatly reduced salary and doing his job as a community service?  And Jeff’s irritation at not being a brilliant flash in the blogosphere on his first posting on 18 January 2009 can be forgiven.  He will soon learn that it takes a while to build up a readership no matter how famous you think you are.  Welcome to the blogosphere.]

Trifecta – The Perfect Socialist Storm Rising

George Rebane

The confluence of the three international hysterias – war on terror (i.e. Islam vs West), global warming, financial crisis – with the advent of our first openly socialist president marks the start of a new epoch.  The masses and media have converged in Washington DC, and the show of shows is about to start.  There will not be a dry eye in the crowd.  The specially written songs and poems for the event all tell us that it is now that we will finally become free and realize the promise of America.

Standing unnoticed on the side there are a few of us who have seen this all before.  That trifecta is now in place, and the administration along with a compliant Congress will immediately begin making policy, passing legislation, and enforcing regulations that are guaranteed to ratchet back our freedoms like never before in this country’s history – all for the good of ‘the people’ and ‘saving the earth’.

A friend and correspondent pointed out a timely piece (‘Atlas Shrugged: from fiction to fact in 52 years’) published last week in the WSJ.  In it Stephen Moore reminds us that Ayn Rand’s fiction of a half-century ago is now the reality that has quietly enveloped us without so much as a moan from the greedy capitalists and entrepreneurs who have been busy manufacturing their own nooses along with all the good things in our lives.  There are no films in the archives of streets or malls filled with people demanding the rollback of encroaching government, the restoration of the Constitution and its former guarantees.

Unless the Islamists, sensing weakness, strike first, my bet is on the perfect partnership of the financial crisis and global warming that will invite the government to complete the mangling of American markets into a similitude of the EU.  And then, of course, we must demonstrate ‘leadership’ and really show them how to nip innovation and initiative in the bud.  This is called for by the global warming hysteria that is now gearing up for the final push to turn us all green.  Here is a typical piece (‘President has four years to save Earth’) reverberating around the web that screams a warning not substantiated by any science that can be presented and debated in a reasoned forum.  And our scientifically illiterate electorate will now peacefully follow the loudest clanging bells to the new world that awaits us all.

Plan B: Let your voices be heard in your local statehouse and Congress.

Ruminations – 16jan2009

George Rebane

We may be living in a hologram, in fact the entire universe may be a hologram.  The GEO600 project in Germany is geared to detect noise in the gravity wave background (think of the cosmic microwave background noise that points to the Big Bang) that would up the granularity of spacetime by about 20 orders of magnitude.  This would be an important element of proof to what more scientists have proposed over the last ten to fifteen years – that our experienced three-dimensional space is really a programmed holographic projection through a two-dimensional surface somewhere.  Gives rise to a lot of interesting questions – what/where is the 2-D surface? what/where are we really? what is doing the projecting? what is the running program? who is or is there a programmer?  Of course, none of this can be related to a discussion of intelligent design.

Republic, Democracy?  Most true blue, flag-waving (or flag-burning) Americans don’t have a clue about the difference between those two forms of governance.  During this worldwide financial crisis as we enter the new season of hopeful change, it might be good to polish up on the country our Founders bequeathed us through the Constitution.  Here is short informative video that will help.

Ammunition Accountability?!  As the song says, ‘If the right one don’t a get ya, then the left one will!’, and it’s a’comin’ from the left no matter that candidate Obama promised that he “won’t take our guns”, President Obama and his team will have other ideas on how to track, tax, and take your ammo.  There are more ways than one to make sure our government won’t have to pry one from your cold dead hands.  Here’s the status of bills making their way through state legislatures.  Pro or con, you may want to contact your representatives. 

Finally, for those local Readers who have yet to discover Dixie Fix, please pay a visit – Ruminations has a permanent link to her site on the right.  Dixie Redfearn has made her blog into another little treasure of Nevada County.  Her timely “over the back fence” commentary is informative and a joy to read.  Besides, Dixie is a very nice person. 

 

Singularity Signposts – 14jan2009

George Rebane

Two developments, one hopeful and one scary.  Japanese researchers concerned about their aging population of farmers are developing a machine-assisted-man (MAM) suit to assist frail bodies do hard work.  The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) reports that

Researchers at the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology recently demonstrated the suit by having someone pull radishes from the ground and pick oranges from high branches. The robot suit has eight motors, 16 sensors, and weighs 55 pounds. Japan has an aging, shrinking farm industry, and the researchers believe the robot suit would help provide support for the leg muscles and joints of elderly farmers.

The suit, pictured here, clearly needs more work in its miniaturization.  But I can see strapping one on in my eighties to go hiking in high mountains.  More here.

On the more sinister side, ACM reports that Ohio State University researchers are developing a “smart” wide-area surveillance camera system “that will be able to determine if a person on the street appears to be lost or is acting suspiciously. The goal is to create a network of smart video cameras that will allow officers to quickly and efficiently observe and monitor a wide area.”

Around the world states are developing such people surveillance and control systems by the ton.  Their funding is from various defense and national security agencies, and their putative purpose is to keep us all safe and secure or behaving per the mandated social norms as defined by the government.  As long as the government is on our side, everything is hunky-dory.  But it takes only one election to change things, and in some countries it doesn't even take that.

Meanwhile a researcher blithely says, "We are trying to automatically learn what typical activity patterns exist in the monitored area, and then have the system look for atypical patterns that may signal a person of interest,"

The system is designed to “focus on where a person goes and what they do.”

It is a very short step from here to such a system being integrated into the sensor suite of a metropolitan area’s automated police system the autonomy of which will grow and be directed by whoever has control of its ‘knobs’. 

More here in an article that has all the soothing palliatives assuring us that the system won’t care who you are or what color your skin is (today).  I am appropriately soothed.

 

Imported Dollar Multipliers and Local Economies (14jan09 update)

George Rebane

With the worldwide economic downturn that is being amplified by the mavens in Sacramento, there is a lot of interest and attention paid to local economies.  Here we are trying hard to keep existing businesses (by buying locally) and at the same time attract more firms or cash importers to our community.  In this piece I attempt to give a working understanding of the ‘output multiplier’ which summarizes the economic effect on a (local) economy from the arrival of an imported dollar.  (A more general discussion of multipliers is available in this short pdf Download EconMultipliers.)

It’s long been known that every dollar that comes into a local economy produces more than just a dollar’s worth of benefit to the community before it leaks back out.  This benefit is calculated using the so-called ‘Output Multiplier’ or simply ‘multiplier’ which is just a number like 1.83. 

The total benefit of an imported dollar is then equal to the multiplier in dollars – for example $1.00 * 1.83 = $1.83.  It’s as if the multiplied dollar amount was actually making the rounds in the local economy.  The reasoning behind such a multiplier is easy to understand.  Say, a retired person living here gets a check from a pension plan or an investment account.  Depending on her lifestyle, she may spend 60% (the retention factor) of her check in the community and the remaining 40% (the leakage factor) for expenses that are outside the community – for example state and federal taxes, online shopping, a big box store in the next county, and so on.

If we now assume that she’s a pretty typical spender, then we see that the 60% of the cash that stayed in the county will be spent in such a way that 60% (or 0.6 * 0.6 = 0.36 = 36%) of that cash also stays in the community, and so on until all the money leaks back out of the local economy.  The question now is, what is the sum of all the diminishing pieces or percentages of that imported dollar that benefit the local economy – that is the multiplier number that we seek.

Nevada County Economic Development Revisited (11jan09 update)

George Rebane

Small counties across the state are going through hard times.  Nevada County is both blessed by its geographic location and burdened by its political location.  In today’s WSJ California Congressman Devin Nunes writes in ‘California’s Gold Rush has been Reversed’ (this link will be open to non-subscribers tomorrow) that “entrepreneurs are fleeing heavy taxes in the state”, and goes on to say

After more than 150 years of being a destination, California is becoming a place entrepreneurs, investment capital and the hardy workers who made it a global leader in agriculture, technological innovation and scientific research are fleeing. This exodus is the marker of something deeper than a national recession. It's a sign that the attempts by state leaders to spend their way back to prosperity are killing California.

Today the annual net outflow of Californians is north of 135,000 a year.  And these are not only chicken farmers frustrated with the state’s new large cage regulations; these are the people who start small and high-tech businesses from which grow national icons employing thousands.  To this Nunes says

Consequently, Idaho, Utah and Wyoming all have unemployment rates around 5% at a time when California is suffering an unemployment rate of 9%. Californians are moving east and creating jobs in their new home states.

Over the past few years, we've witnessed the state government's response to the capital and entrepreneur flight out of our state: Taxes remain high, and lawmakers employ all the tricks in the book to produce "balanced" budgets from shifting expenses around to borrowing ever larger sums of money.

And the malfeasance in Sacramento directly impacts Nevada County which last November declared its switch from historically conservative to a newly minted liberal county – our Peters have petered out and the Pauls are taking over (see Peter-Paul Principle).

Economic Development season is coming back into vogue locally, new business development issues are on our minds as county businesses are shutting down and/or moving, and new start-ups continue being put through the wringer (see piece on NC Media watch about the Idaho-Maryland Mine).

Without much amplification, the following summarize my thoughts about Nevada County economic development.

Nevada County Responds to California's Financial Crisis

From the CSAC press release  - "SACRAMENTO - Many California counties will be unable to continue providing state and federally required services for California residents as the budget stalemate continues and the state ultimately runs out of cash."

Nevada County senior executives are giving up pay increases to help the county weather the current financial storm.  County Executive Officer Rick Haffey informs the Board of Supervisors, "I have been approached by the appointed department heads representing 19 positions who have volunteered to forgo their 3% raise July 1 as a contribution to maintaining the County’s fiscal health. I have accepted their offer and accepted your Clerk of the Board’s offer as well. This group has approached the Elected Officials and thus far the Auditor – Controller, Clerk-Recorder, District Attorney, Sheriff, and Treasurer–Tax Collector have agreed. We will be bringing the necessary resolutions to you to make this change. I would like to thank all for making this contribution for the County’s well being."

Ruminations – 8jan2009 (updates 9jan09)

George Rebane

It turns out we really can have two Presidents at a time.  As President-elect Obama was holding his next news conference and giving a “very important speech” exhorting Congress to pass his economic stimulus package (more on that insanity below) before he gets sworn in, the BBC World observed sagely that “Obama knows the meaning of audacity.”

[update 9jan09 - “It was a remarkable speech for someone who isn't president yet and hasn't revealed the details of his economic rescue plan,” ABC’s Jake Tapper reports. “The most pointed criticism of the plan came from Democrats who objected to Obama's plans to cut taxes for businesses and for middle class families.”]

Leading economists from both sides of the political spectrum now publicly agree that last spring's stimulus package, during which we all received our checks from the government, didn’t work.  And moreover, such checks to the consumers don’t do anything to help end the financial crisis, but do help us along the road to hyper-inflation.  Nevertheless, the sheep do understand money in hand, and while not spending immediately, they will vote accordingly.  So politics again trumps prudence.  It’s hard to decide whether these politicians are evil or just idiots.

Most “persons of information” - a delightful and apropos early 19th century descriptor - are aware that the journalism and news reporting industry is undergoing a massive change in its structure, delivery of its product, and credibility of its content.  A local media professional sent me this report in which the author makes a case for dying newspapers to just quit flogging their dead pulp editions.  And George Friedman of Stratfor re-examines the Watergate affair (‘The Death of Deep Throat and the Crisis of Journalism’), and a side of the story that journalists have either buried or failed to understand.  The Watergate saga had an equally significant side in what the Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, and the dynamic duo of Bernstein and Woodward chose not to reveal about Deep Throat who turned out to be the recently departed Mark Felt, operational head of the FBI at the time and a disgruntled government employee.  The bottom line here is that at the highest and most prestigious levels of an industry that loves to trot out its ‘code of ethics’ at the drop of a hat, a higher value was placed on protecting a juicy source than revealing that a sinister attack was being waged against the Presidency by one of its own agencies.  In short, the Washington Post was “burying a story to get a story”.

[update 9jan09] Seattle Post-Intelligencer is put up for sale - "Hearst Corp. put Seattle's oldest newspaper, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, up for sale on Friday and said that if it can't find a buyer in the next 60 days the paper would likely close or continue to exist only online."  

President Obama’s Policies for a Real World

George Rebane

[This post is really a focused continuation of topics raised by James Currier in the comments to ‘Obama, you gotta love him!’.  For now I will simply characterize James as an educated, left-leaning, successful capitalist, although he may correct me as he has in the past ;-)  His views are important to those of us on the conservative cum libertarian side, because they represent what has emerged as the dominant mindset of the intellectual left and also many of those whom our President-elect is appointing to high office in his upcoming administration.  To understand these perspectives may help us anticipate and understand what Barack Obama intends for us in the coming months and years.  And to those of us predisposed and already anointed as critics-in-waiting of everything from inside the Beltway, we should prepare ourselves with this knowledge so that our future tirades may contain more light than their inevitable heat.]

 

Regarding world changes:  Here it seems to me we may be confusing prediction of change with the actual change or the ‘change event’.  I disagree wholeheartedly with the notion that the Berlin Wall’s fall and 9/11 did not embody a ‘world change’.  Yes, many people predicted the fall of communism, as did many predict the conflict between the US and Japan.  (In 1935 Will Durant predicted the inevitability of that conflict in his first volume of Story of Civilization.)  But when 7 Dec 1941 arrived, the world did indeed change with the US entry into both theaters of WW2, and we are living with the strong echoes of that entry to this day.  Things would have been different had we not unequivocally thrown our weight on the side of the Allies.
 
With regard to the “common knowledge that they (USSR) were done” in 1980, nothing could be further from the truth.  The cold war had two crisis periods where the likelihood of WW3 peaked.  The first was very public and occurred when Krushcev tested Kennedy and Johnson in the early 1960s (lasting longer than the Cuban missile crisis).  Overshadowed in the public eye by the oil crises, the second occurred during the latter part of the Carter presidency in the late 1970s.   Many reputable analysts and historians persuasively argue that the second crisis was the more dangerous of the two, precisely because the USSR was economically weaker and saw a weak American president as fortunate coincidence during which to roll the tanks through Fulda Gap.  (I was in a position to witness both of these crises from the ‘inside’.)  Most educated people on the right had known for decades that the USSR would end either ‘hard’ (WW3 with civilization in tatters), or ‘soft’ with its economy in tatters and an internal putsch.  It was always their call during which time we wanted to present them with the MAD outcome for the ‘hard’ alternative, while waiting for the inevitable ‘soft’ resolution to realize.  This strategy was common knowledge in the educated world.

Obama, you gotta love him!

George Rebane

Somebody once said that politics is the art of the possible.  To get elected, you pick a constituency or two that you can lie to with a straight face.  Push all their hot buttons, it doesn’t matter what you say as long as they’re part of the base that will get you to 51%.  If you have any, keep your real beliefs a secret.  No one needs to know, because once you’re in you can let your beliefs be pliant and twist in the winds of expediancy.  Constant and unbending principles are for fools and losers.  Let them go back home and blog or start a talk show.

The WSJ just announced that Obama and his Democratic acolytes are busily crafting an economic recovery plan that may yet get support from both sides of the aisle.

President-elect Barack Obama and congressional Democrats are crafting a plan to offer as much as $310 billion in tax cuts to individuals and businesses, a move aimed at attracting Republican support for an economic-stimulus package and prodding companies to create jobs.

The size of the proposed tax cuts -- which would account for about 40% of a stimulus package that could reach $775 billion over two years -- is greater than many on both sides of the aisle in Congress had anticipated, and may make it easier to win over Republicans who have stressed that any initiative should rely relatively heavily on tax cuts rather than spending.

We have a new leader, and you gotta love him!

Ruminations – 4jan2009

George Rebane

Our liberties continue to be ratcheted downward.  Our daily round, as it were, is taking place in an ever smaller corral.  As RR readers know, this is one of the national issue threads that I am compelled to track in these posts.  A recent ratchet click is reported on the CABPRO Report in ‘OHV Use on Public Lands Threatened: Overview of the 2005 Travel Management Rule’.  And on the same blog Assemblyman Dan Logue argues in ‘Decentralize California’ for the decentralization of power in California that may be seen as an effort to undo some of these ratchet clicks.  No one expects that to happen because it is only through a strong centralized government that wealth can be forcefully redistributed.  The Peter-Paul Principle simply will not allow the return of local control.  Nevertheless, it is good that we remind ourselves now and then of what kind of pussies we have become.

Editor Jeff Pelline strafed NC Media Watch again and took Russ Steele to task for discussing the decline of “pulp newspapers” (fighting words for Jeff) and how our beloved Onion should make an effort to save itself.  Russ and I have been strong proponents of that newspaper transforming itself to THE community’s online source for information and ecommerce.  We both want the Onion to revert back to The Union and survive for another 150 years.  So it is with ongoing amazement we witness the kind of dialogue that the current editor of the paper carries on with its critics.  Jeff’s response to Russ’ critique was the usual personal attack (“… put your money where your (big) mouth is …” in the comment thread here.  I, for one, would like to see Jeff give a solid and sober response to the question of The Union’s survival while the country echoes with the slamming doors of newspapers shutting down.  As examples of the kind of responses that would speak well of our newspaper’s management and help resolve the community’s concern, I offer –

1. The Union is a going and growing concern in the Swift Communications family.  The rumors of its imminent demise are greatly exaggerated.
2. The Union is currently not profitable but has a plan to soon return to profitability through its print and online operations, and Swift has pledged to support the newspaper through the execution of its current plan forward.
3. These are difficult times for all newspapers across the land and made doubly so by the current economic downturn.  We at The Union are working with our parent Swift Communications to come up with a plan that will continue this newspaper's historical legacy of which we are the current custodians.  We ask for your support and ideas in these difficult times.

It’s worth a try.

Speaking of the economy, Cato recently published ‘How Did We Get into This Financial Mess?’ by Lawrence White, F.A. Hayek Professor of Economic History at the University of Missouri.  It’s short, to the point, and worth a read.  Here is its Executive Summary and link to the paper.

 

“… and we’re here to help.”

George Rebane

Can’t figure out who to thank for the $500K FEMA grant the county got from the Feds.  An appropriate thank you note should go either to the good people of Ohio or The People’s Republic of China because, heaven knows, we don’t have that kind of money here in California to take care of our needs (and Sacramento is making sure we’ll have even less tomorrow).  They must know that by next month our state might start papering the walls with IOUs.  But what a bunch of kind people, wherever they may live, to send all this cash to an out-of-the-way rural county in the western mountains.  The county announced yesterday –

Department of Public Works Receives $500,000 FEMA Grant: The Department of Public Works (DPW) has been approved for a FEMA 07 grant. The grant was initially not approved but Nevada County’s Office of Emergency Services appealed, and the grant has now been approved. This will give our Department of Public Works approximately $500,000 to do brush fuel reduction mitigation along County roads thus reducing fire hazards. The initial meeting with FEMA and DPW staff will be held on January 15th. Facilities Manager, Tom Coburn, will attend for OES. The Department of Public Works is responsible for the administration of the grant. Great job, OES staff in submitting the appeal!

I guess this kind of grit and compunction in grant writing gives a whole new meaning to ‘can do’ and self-reliance.  When we extend the cup from Nevada County, we just won’t take no for an answer.  Makes you walk a little taller.  Modern times.

And now for the latest updates from “Bailout Nation”

Deepak Chopra’s advice to Obama (4jan09 update)

George Rebane

A modern Chinese naval squadron is now operating off the coast of Africa, the first such projection of power since the 1400s.  Stratfor reports that these ships also completed their first at-sea replenishment as they joined the international effort to suppress piracy off the coast of Somalia.  Along with Russia and India, China is spending its considerable resources in building up its military to accompany and protect its world worldwide reach for natural resources and trading partners.  To do otherwise would be sheer idiocy, and the Chinese are not idiots.

In this environment one of our country’s famous pop spiritual leaders has it all figured out as reported by the left-wing truthout.org.  Mr. Chopra has written an open letter to our president-elect outlining that our country follow nine steps to bring peace and prosperity to the world.

    1. Scale out arms dealing and make it illegal by the year 2020.
    2. Write into every defense contract a requirement for a peacetime project.
    3. Subsidize conversion of military companies to peaceful uses with tax incentives and direct funding.
    4. Convert military bases to housing for the poor.
    5. Phase out all foreign military bases.
    6. Require military personnel to devote part of their time to rebuilding infrastructure.
    7. Call a moratorium on future weapons technologies.
    8. Reduce armaments like destroyers and submarines that have no use against terrorism and were intended to defend against a superpower enemy that no longer exists.
    9. Fully fund social services and take the balance out of the defense and homeland security budgets.
    These are just the beginning. We don't lack creativity in coping with change. Without a conversion of our present war economy to a peace economy, the high profits of the military-industrial complex ensures that it will never end.

In the large I’m not sure what all this letter demonstrates.  One can reasonably argue that perhaps meditation does not clarify the mind in all the claimed dimensions.  In any case we should renew our gratitude and respect for the Founders, and the role they foresaw for the church in the country’s governance.

[4jan09 update]  Good intentions are no insurance against a sophomoric understanding of what is going on in the world.  As wannabe and former world powers take a measure of the upcoming American leadership, they are all beginning to make their moves.  Here is Russia's latest move - 'Russia wants warships stationed around the world'.