Rebane's Ruminations

One Census Too Far

George Rebane

The feds are telling us that they need to collect all that data about us in the 2010 census so that government can serve us better.  Nine out of ten of us will get the ‘short form’ that already goes beyond what the Constitution prescribes for a census.  One out of ten will get the ‘long form’ that includes questions about your mortgage and what time you leave for work in the morning.  If you sleep with a teddy bear, you will be outed.  (BTW, I couldn't find the link for the long form, can anyone help?)

I got this link from CABPRO that features a YouTube video of Jerry Day telling us about a sinister experience he had with the Census Bureau when he submitted a set of questions for a scheduled telephone interview with them.  Upon seeing the questions, the feds cancelled the interview and refused to answer a single question.  I would have asked the same questions, and my guess is, so would you.  Michelle Malkin, one of my very favorite on-air commentators and bloggers, also has a worthy piece or two on this census (here).

For those Americans keeping track of government overreach and concerned about their privacy, each of these data gathering projects is more comprehensive and intrusive as far as painting a very accurate and intimate picture of each of us.  Instinctively, this is something a free people would reject.  But like slowly boiling frogs, we have been taught not to notice the increasing encroachment into our lives.  Taught?  Here’s an example of an Obama student propaganda program that teaches the joy of compliance to our little darlings.  As the song says, ‘They’ve got be carefully taught.’

If the Tea Party Patriots are looking for a concrete rallying point for highlighting an intrusive, wasteful government, then organizing their membership for a meaningful pushback to the ‘Census Enumerator’ who rings your doorbell would be something we all could get excited about.  In the military you are taught that the Geneva Convention requires a prisoner to give only his name, rank, and serial number.  We should reveal the moral equivalent of this – name, gender, and age of the occupants of the household.

To serve us better, … hmmm?  I’m reminded of an old science fiction story (and movie) in which some technologically superior aliens arrived.  They claimed to be galactic do-gooders whose job it was to elevate and benefit the species they encountered across the galaxy.  Their prescriptions for Earth were contained in a book entitled ‘How to Serve Man’ that they displayed, but which we could not read since it was written in their language.  The aliens delivered on their promise - wars were abolished, diseases disappeared, food and entertainment was available to all.  A program was started to take some people back to their world on a regular basis for advanced training.  The new utopia came to an end when a stowaway human made it back to Earth to reveal that ‘How to Serve Man’ was a cookbook.

Clerk-Recorder – There’s more to be said …

George Rebane

Let me say from the gitgo that I support Barry Pruett for Clerk-Recorder and have contributed to his campaign.  On his blog my friend Aaron Klein (another person the Rebanes support) has written an eloquent endorsement of Barry with which I totally agree.  Yesterday our Union published a lengthy front page article that covers almost all the factors related to the Clerk-Recorder office support software issue that is beginning to be the vortex around which this election is now revolving, or should I say, spinning.  For the sequel, I assume that you have read the article.

What I found puzzling in the Union piece was its discussion of the procurement process for the support software in question, and the subsequent complaint (law suit) filed by AtPac that is now pending against Aptitude Solutions (Florida company and current software supplier), Nevada County, and Mr. Greg Diaz, our sitting Clerk-Recorder.  I speak from over twenty years experience as supplier of services, software, and hardware to governments at all levels ranging from the federal down to individual school districts in counties across the land.

I was puzzled by the newspaper’s description of how our county procures software, and presumably other items from private sector vendors.  The article characterized an uncharacteristic gulf that exists between a department/agency head and the county’s procurement office.  Here in Nevada County, the process seems to be a ‘fire and forget’ affair wherein the department presumably gives the procurement office a set of system/product specifications, possibly a list of qualified vendors, participates in some kind of evaluation, and then retires to hear who the final supplier will be at what cost and schedule.  In short, the end-user department appears to have minimal or no involvement in the actual scoring of the vendors (an admittedly subjective procedure), or the remainder of the procurement process.  Such a process normally involves quite a number of intervening steps and communications with the competing suppliers before a winner is selected and the actual contract negotiated.  Is that really the way our county operates?

Grandpa's Brag Sheet

George Rebane

Grandson Lucas continues to clear the boards up in Washington state, and his team is headed for the state finals in Spokane. Picture from the Redmond-Reporter.com.  I knew all you guys were waiting for this report ;-)

 

Ruminations – 27feb2010

George Rebane

• Horses on Border Patrol
• Climategate ad nauseum
• The Consummate Harry Reid

The Border Patrol has discovered the age-old utility of horses on broad open country.  The agent on a horse has all kinds of advantages over the on-foot illegal alien and/or drug runner.  The agents are able to use the natural senses and sensibility of the horse to pursue, detect, corral, and herd the bad guys who show up on the sophisticated thermal imaging and other kinds of sensors that are deployed along our border with Mexico.  The critters work so well that the Border Patrol is now worried that Congress will not provide them with enough funding for horses to do the job.  Hell, if those scumbags won’t, we should set up a 501c3 collection trust and send them all the nags they need.

Most heartening to me in the Fox News report was the uniformed latino Border Patrol officer giving the interview in a pronounced Hispanic accent.  He extolled the virtues of the new equestrian project and expanded enthusiastically on how it will enhance the security of “our country’s borders”.  Hearing him say it that way choked me up - I could hear in him my father's heavily accented English, the voice of an American patriot.  There is yet a glimmer.

Are We Turning Blue Yet?

George Rebane

Oh What a Beautiful Mooorning, …!

George Rebane

Most of us watched some of the political theater from the Blair House yesterday.  As predicted, at least by those who took a day off from lying, the event didn’t go anywhere.  It might have made some of the slow students think that Obamacare is just starting out from somewhere in the ideological middle, and that little sleight of hand may have been worth the effort.  But in the end it’s going to come down to whether the Titanic Trio will opt for a ‘reconciliation’ vote that would pass this landmark legislation with a simple partisan majority.

The latest polls tell us that about 57% of Americans think the federal government has already and continues to reduce our freedoms.  53+% don’t like the Democrats’ approach to healthcare reform.  In response Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WVa) voices the mantra of the progressive elitists, “Sometimes decisions have to come from Washington.”  Sometimes??!!

The bugaboo still happens to be the evil health insurance industry that keeps increasing healthcare costs and making obscene profits.  Future historians will see America’s acceptance of this nonsense as an unmistakable sign of the nation’s downfall.  Here’s an industry with a profit margin of about 3.3% - down in the cutthroat grocery store range – and no one blinks at the accusations.  These are the guys who have to make the right bets of premiums against payoffs so that they can stay in business.  They don’t set the intrinsic costs of delivering healthcare, that is done primarily by government agencies and our resident legion of tort lawyers.  If the insurance companies were making all that money, how come their stocks are going nowhere?  And why is no one yelling at the soft drink companies with profit margins in the upper teens?

I also got a giggle out of UN’s IPCC now openly talking about having to straighten out its act and start mending its public image.  Listening to the local true believers rail against Climategate, you’d think the whole thing of science fraud was cooked up right here in Nevada County.  Well, that ain’t necessarily so either, some of us just saw this ‘science’ train wreck coming sooner than others.

Speaking of locals, there’s a blogger here who thinks he really is the source of outside news to our neck of the woods.  I did my morning news round-up that includes a number of widespread sources and read on the Washington Post that the hard left has started the Coffee Cup Coalition (also here) as a response to the Tea Party Patriots.  There will be a lot more to say about that in the coming days, but my fancy was tickled by the local blogger’s ire on Russ Steele’s NC Media Watch which also picked this up, apparently from the local blogger who was irked by not being credited for what? being the first one to read the Washington Post?

Meanwhile, I’m going to use this rainy windy day to prepare for the TechTest2010 seminars that I am conducting for the high school seniors preparing for this merit scholarship exam on 27 March at NUHS (juniors are advised to take the test for practice).  The two-hour seminars will be tomorrow and next Saturday 6 March also at NUHS.  The amount of stuff these young scholars have to know would make your head spin.  But someone has to get educated up so they can work and pay for all that good stuff that we’re entitled to from Washington.  Some things are lookin’ up!

Washington Notables

George Rebane

Judicial Watch has assembled the backgrounders for its selection of “Washington’s ten most wanted corrupt politicians” of 2009.  It’s not clear to me who ‘wants’ them for what, but then I’m just a voter and not a special prosecutor.  Nevertheless, reading the litanies on these jokers is eye-opening for those whose eyes have started to droop a bit from all the foul spray coming off the fan in the nation’s capital.  The RR reader who sent me this little item opined that had Judicial Watch upped their count to eleven, they would have had to include ol’ slippery Harry in this gang.  I would amend his observation with my own that were the list to include only the quick and not the dead, Harry would be in like Flynn.

Millennial & Rational Voters

George Rebane

The well-respected Pew Research Center published a report on its recent survey of the political attitudes of the so-called millennial voters (young people who came of age in the first decade of this millennium).  Pew noted that “their attachment to the Democratic Party weakened markedly over the course of 2009”, although a majority of them still hew to the progressive talking points if not its deeper philosophy.  The noteworthy output from the survey was the “marked” reduction of those still enthralled with Team Obama.

What I found remarkable in Pew’s report was the large plurality (2/3) of Millennials who were successfully taken by Obama’s campaign message.  The results overall seem to corroborate the conclusion of the research reported by Bryan Caplan in his The Myth of the Rational Voter – Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies.  I expanded on this theme in the 14may09 ‘Republicans Need a New Strategy’ post and elsewhere on RR.

Apparently many of these Obama supporters were also voting in their first election, being encouraged to do so by the various get-out-the-vote machinery (e.g. Acorn, SEIU) that Obama’s campaign so successfully marshaled in its behalf.  Caplan argued that the long accepted Principle of Aggregation, which gives more weight to the small number of knowledgeable voters, no longer holds.  He presented evidence that the well financed media campaigns directed at potential voters with little knowledge of the issues or history would today easily overwhelm the slim victory inducing margins of knowledgeable voters.  Today, the informationally short voters no longer split themselves more or less equally in their historically random voting patterns.  In short, as go the dummies, so goes the nation.

I think the Pew results, together with Caplan’s research, support the intuitive conclusions of most students of the American scene, especially those of the conservative-libertarian bent.  The bottom line is that our educational system’s much documented ideological biases and pedagogical shortcomings now influence the vote as never before.  It is in this light that we should all interpret the renewal of the intense fight over campaign financing that will hit its high notes this year.  Money matters more than the message.

A Multilingual post-America Rising

George Rebane

 

Only lightly camouflaged conspiracy theories come to mind when I hear the latest reports of the government abetting efforts to again minimize the role of English as the prime unifying force in this wonderful polyglot that has always been America.  The disunity and political strife in multilingual countries has been the norm over centuries of human conflict. The latest effort to cultivate this disease at home comes from the Obama justice department as reported by the U.S. English Foundation -

The state of Alabama, which passed an Official English law in 1990, is now being investigated by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) for failing to provide court interpreters in civil cases for people who cannot speak English, regardless of their legal status.

In an effort to force multilingual policies on states wherever they see fit, officials at the DOJ are suddenly enforcing Title VI of the Voting Rights Act of 1964 and claiming Title VI should apply to limited English proficient speakers in America – and if they succeed in Alabama, at least 40 other states could be forced to comply as well.

Title VI of the Voting Rights Act of 1964 provides that no person shall be subjected to discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin, however, the umbrella of national origin is increasingly being extended to cover limited English proficient people in America.  As a result, Title VI is now being inappropriately interpreted and applied to force states to provide documents and services in languages other than English.

And all this is becoming an issue with the DOJ a mere 46 years after Title VI was enacted.  And the timing of attempting to hamstring the states with this enormous increase in all litigation costs is occurring when the states are looking at over one trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities that are coming due.  The mullahs in Teheran could not come up with a more sinister plot to poison our already fragmented body politic in a time of economic crisis.  And we are to believe that this is being done by our own federal government at a time when it itself is in a state of historical disarray.

I interpret this DOJ action as of a piece with what has been coming out of Washington for the past year.  Our first post-American president is clearly busy planning for the post-American world.  The Progressive movement has been at it already for the past century.  It shivers me timbers to think of what will be left of the America so many of us remember and still love when the post-American era comes to pass.  For the sake of my children, I don’t want to hasten that day.

(The Post-American World by Fareed Zakaria.  Amazon describes the book –

"This is not a book about the decline of America, but rather about the rise of everyone else." So begins Fareed Zakaria's important new work on the era we are now entering. Following on the success of his best-selling The Future of Freedom, Zakaria describes with equal prescience a world in which the United States will no longer dominate the global economy, orchestrate geopolitics, or overwhelm cultures. He sees the "rise of the rest"—the growth of countries like China, India, Brazil, Russia, and many others—as the great story of our time, and one that will reshape the world. The tallest buildings, biggest dams, largest-selling movies, and most advanced cell phones are all being built outside the United States. This economic growth is producing political confidence, national pride, and potentially international problems. How should the United States understand and thrive in this rapidly changing international climate? What does it mean to live in a truly global era? Zakaria answers these questions with his customary lucidity, insight, and imagination.")

Backbone is back, maybe (updated 23feb2010)

George Rebane

I have commiserated about corporations falling for the climate change hoax because they see themselves in favored positions with regard to cap n’ tax (Waxman – Markey) subsidies and suppressed competitors.  Recall Rebane’s Rule of Corporations – the good part is that they will game the system, the bad part is that they will game the system.  Well, here’s one corporation that’s gaming the system to all of our benefit.

Peabody Energy, a coal company, has finally concluded that coal is never going to be sufficiently clean for the greenies, and they might as well throw their weight on the side that would at least promote their survival.  Climategate.com reports that Peabody has filed suit against the EPA in Obama’s effort to end run Congress with the now stalled cap n’ tax energy bill.  The piece opens with –

The world’s largest private sector coal business, the Peabody Energy Company (PEC) has filed a mammoth 240-page “Petition for Reconsideration,” a full-blown legal challenge against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The petition must be answered and covers the entire body of leaked emails from ‘Climategate’ as well as those other ‘gate’ revelations including the frauds allegedly perpetrated under such sub-headings as ‘Himalayan Glaciers,’ ‘African Agricultural Production,’ ‘Amazon Rain Forests,’ ‘Melting Mountain Ice,’ ‘Netherlands Below Sea Level’ as well as those much-publicized abuses of the peer-review literature and so called ‘gray literature.’ These powerful litigants also draw attention to the proven criminal conduct by climate scientists in refusing to honor Freedom of Information law (FOIA) requests.

The rest can be read here.  H/T to RR reader.

[23feb2010 update]  Well, it now turns out that eight Democrat senators are joining the challenge to EPA to justify its designation of CO2 as a toxic greenhouse gas as reported on Fox News.  But, they in their wisdom are restricting this challenge only to the CO2 that comes out of the industries that reside in their states (and presumably contribute to their re-election coffers).   Now there’s a new congressional twist on honor and science.  Speaking of the science behind the AGW hysteria, European media are looking at the growing Climategate scandal and calling for a redo of the IPCC ‘science’ that started the whole mess.  Of course, our balanced and unbiased media is totally silent on both counts so as to minimize exposure to past errors and omissions.  Meanwhile, the AGW acolyte chorus is totally unfazed by any of this, and is still chanting ‘consensus!!’ where there is none, and ‘peer review!!’ where the peers are now in duck and cover mode.

Constructive Fraud?

George Rebane

There is currently an overhang of about two trillion dollars of budget shortfalls and unfunded liabilities that threaten the states and their respective jurisdictions like counties and municipalities in the near term.  These entities cannot print money and are having a difficult time borrowing it.  The question that goes begging is what happens if the voters start seeking legal recourse from politicians for getting them into their respective financial messes.  Consider a class action suit against either sitting (after impeachment) or recently sitting politicians.

The politicians may cop a plea saying that they did what they thought was prudent given the input from their staffs and, perhaps, even lobbyists.  Specifically, they may dredge up a defense based on the claim that they were victims of constructive fraud.  A definition of constructive fraud is –

constructive fraud n. when the circumstances show that someone's actions gives him/her an unfair advantage over another by unfair means (lying or not telling a buyer about defects in a product, for example), the court may decide from the methods used and the result that it should treat the situation as if there was actual fraud even if all the technical elements of fraud have not been proven.

A specific example that politicians could cite is that their staff committed constructive fraud when presenting an analysis of employee pay raises that failed to quantify or even highlight the long-term unfunded liabilities that the jurisdiction would incur subsequent to granting said pay raises.  The same allegations could be made against, say, public service union lobbyists who provided the electeds only partial information about the impact of such raises.

TechTest2010 KVMR Commentary

George Rebane

[Yesterday KVMR broadcast my bi-weekly commentary which I recorded as posted below.  I was informed by KVMR that they may need to edit out the solicitation for contributions for TechTest2010 scholarships due to some very specific FCC rules.  The commentary was in fact broadcast without the solicitation which I do retain here in hopes that you may consider it, and write a very large check for Nevada County’s young scholars.  Small ones will also be gratefully accepted.]

Ever since WW2 America has been the world’s technology leader, and technology has been the main driver of our country’s wealth creation.  And that wealth has spread itself far and wide across the land raising the quality of our lives to unprecedented heights.  Sadly, all of that may be coming to an end.

Hi, I’m George Rebane.  It turns out that the wealth, which lifts everyone’s quality of life, is today produced mostly by people good at science, technology, and math.  These are hard subjects and not accessible to everyone.  Americans on the whole have been turning away from learning these skills.  But overseas, young people are entering these fields in such droves that our businesses are importing foreign technologists in the attempt to keep America innovating.
 
Wealth consuming and redistribution skills are not very marketable in this age of globalization.  And even though our universities still rank first in teaching advanced science and technology, the students who study these subjects are mostly foreigners.  What is worse, most foreign students return home after completing their degrees and, perhaps, spending a few years working for an American technology company.  Ultimately we wind up exporting this valuable expertise and experience.

Dr Frank Tipler, professor of mathematical physics at Tulane University, is one of the world’s leading physicists whose ideas are at the forefront of human knowledge.  In a recent essay he describes some truly awesome science that we as a species are ready to discover, but he ends it with a startling lament –

Screaming Stimulus (not)

George Rebane

Counsel from a Democrat

George Rebane

Douglas Schoen was President Clinton’s pollster and continues his astute observations of America’s body politic.  Today he writes a piece advising fellow Democrats on some major policy shifts to get them through 2010.  Among his pearls –

- Democrats “need pro-growth, fiscally conservative policies.”
- The tea party movement “is not a Republican movement, and anyone who sees it as such is making a mistake.”  Instead it is a “move away from liberal, big-spending and big-taxing policies.”
- New Democrat policies should “include a broad-based payroll tax holiday”, and “an extension of the Bush tax cuts.”  Additionally we need “to educate the next generation of entrepreneurs” and provide “tax incentives for small businesses”.
- Obama should “become the ‘jobs president’ rather than the ‘healthcare president’.”
- On healthcare “Mr Obama must go back to square one.”
- Those people “who support the tea party will only come back to Democrats if it demonstrates that it understands (the) voters’ desire to return to the kind of limited government the movement endorses.”

Amazing as these insights are, Schoen still hews to his true colors when he backtracks to a “willingness to consider a continuation of the Bush tax cuts for another year until growth is stimulated” (emphasis mine).  If tax cuts stimulate economies, and history shows government revenues increase in good economies with lower taxes, then why start squelching a good thing again by raising taxes?  Does that not start another socialistic cycle of tax and spend?

But I guess that systemic blind spot is part and parcel of every dyed-in-the-wool progressive.  My advice to Democrats is to not listen to this guy and keep on following the winning trifecta of Obama-Reid-Pelosi that you fought so hard to send to Washington.

Ruminations – 18feb2010

George Rebane

- Cities contemplating Chapter 9 bankruptcy
- Small nuclear reactors
- States sinking under weight of public unions
- Government spending outpaces all
- Tea parties successfully keep distance from major political parties
- Joe Biden takes credit for Iraq

More and more cities across the land are now contemplating going into Chapter 9 bankruptcy, the kind reserved for municipalities and government institutions.  The common ball and chain dragging them under are the public employee unions about which I have spilled quite a bit of ink.  It boggles the mind how the hard left continues to deny the whole thing as they vote for bigger and bigger government.  Meanwhile, the rest of us should keep a wary eye on any municipal bonds we may still have in their investment accounts.  (more here)

Nuclear reactors are becoming smaller and easier to install in more locations (here and here).  Obama’s administration is doing everything it can to appear pro-nuclear to the independents.  But the careful reader will have no problem discovering that the initial stimulating billions are targeted for utilities to help them fund the draconian permitting processes that they have to negotiate.  This lets our Chief Organizer play both sides of the street.  Well, not actually both sides – just the left and the center – to one claiming a wink-wink ‘we’ll never let ‘em build’ and to the hopefuls ‘see, we’re making positive moves to energy independence’.  The whole thing appears to many of us as just another preamble to cap n’ tax in the hope that Climategate blows over.   And then again, maybe not – after all, the guy is first and last a politician.

Cities aren’t the only ones feeling the weight of public service unions.  The Pew Center on the States has completed an analysis of the states' government employee benefit liabilities and published a report on the damages to date (here).  The unfunded benefit liabilities gap for the states is now in the one trillion dollar range.  RR readers have been aware of this approaching train wreck for the last year or two when it was considered arcane knowledge, and rabidly denied by those not paying attention, and, of course, our progressive brethren.

Greecing the Skids

George Rebane

For the last several weeks we have been watching Greece sliding down the same chute that we are on.  The symptoms and the disease appear to be identical, only their progress is a lot faster since they are a smaller economy and their mistakes are quickly amplified.  The disease, of course, is big government abetted by government worker unions.  Like we, the Greek electorate voted in their scumbags to try to get more out of the public trough than they were willing to put in.

Now the country is coming unglued with its budget shortfall soaring above 13% of their GDP (compared to the current 11% in the US).  Looking at the bonuses, differential tax rates, and other perks that Greece's government employees get, it’s a wonder the wheels have stayed on so long.  And now this euro-zone country is threatening to take down the euro and, perhaps, the EU with it.  Joined by Portugal, Spain, and Ireland, the fearsome foursome have so ruined their fiscs that the rest of the EU, led by Germany and France are scrambling to cobble together a bailout program.

The more prudent EU countries have been counseling, now demanding, some spending discipline before they pour in more good money after bad.  The Greeks will have none of it, no one will stand for taking a cut in pay or benefits.  State worker unions (think of our SEIU) representing customs and finance are holding strikes that shut down the country’s ports thereby further weakening the economy.  Through their unions taxi drivers and truckers are joining in.  Those guys all know where the pressure points are, but they are not smart enough to figure out that Greeks simply don’t have the cash (euros) to continue paying for runaway government.  So the striking workers are really playing poker with EU’s richer countries.

Fred Buhler - Thank You

George Rebane

 

Fred Buhler stepped down as the fearless leader of Friends of the Nevada County Military after serving as its co-founder, hardest worker, and chief promoter for 6 years.  It was Fred who told so many of us of the FNCM and the fine work it was doing to support our troops in the war zones and their families at home.  When we heard, we joined and lent our support.

Tonight the Friends joined Fred at the Grass Valley Veterans Hall to say a special thank you during our regularly scheduled 'packing party'.  It was a happy gathering and coming together, the kind that we could all take pride in.  Fred and Margie received their well-deserved plaques, resolutions, flowers, and even a birdhouse from the Friends' board of directors.   Fred will be succeeded by Ed Rossovich who has been with Friends and Fred since day one.  And Margie, an equally hard worker at Friends, will be glad to have her hubby spend maybe a night or two a week not having to attend yet another meeting.

Fred and Margie have been our friends and neighbors here on the ridge for the last several years.  Jo Ann and I feel privileged to have been able to support Friends of the NC Military these past years and look forward to the being there in the years to come.

Well done Fred.

Hydrogen Barackside

(H/T to RR reader.)
 

Hot Flash on AGW

George Rebane

Anthropogenic (manmade) Global Warming is the Sword of Damocles hanging over all of us.  Its primitive logic argues that since we caused global warming (now hiding under the ‘climate change’ label), we can fix it by some progressive (cap n’ tax) legislation that will destroy our economies.  Saner heads – I modestly count myself among them – have argued for years that the basis for AGW is bull pucky.

Dr Phil Jones of East Anglia University’s Climate Research Unit has been at the center of our charge to oblivion that was orchestrated by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and its (in)famous report that started socialist control freaks salivating over five years ago.  Jones’ work gave rise to the notorious temperature hockey stick and his CRU was the mother temple of all things having to do with gathering earth temperature data and making ‘sense’ of it.  Well, things began to unravel last fall with the emails of Climategate.

Jones now wants to get ahead of the tsunami before it totally destroys him, and has been backtracking mightily in the last few weeks.  His summation is now available in the interview he gave that ‘rightwing’ outfit called the British Broadcasting Corporation.  To wit, Jones now –

• admits late 20th century warming rates not unique;
• admits there has been no statistically significant warming since 1995;
• admits temperature data of only 130 years ago is “more uncertain” than previously claimed;
• admits there has been a slight global cooling trend since 2002;
• admits temperatures from 1,000 years ago are “considerably less certain” than recent data (say, from 130 years ago?);
• admits to asking a colleague to delete all IPCC emails;
• admits to having had trouble keeping track of temperature data records;
• admits there is no consensus among scientists about AGW (remember Al Gore’s “the debate is over!”?).

You would think that after all this stuff having been revealed, the MSM would publish banner headlines, the politicians would join arms and declare that we have to reconsider all this crap about the effects of CO2, and the draconian measures required to reduce it.  Not a bit of it.  All because, as I and others stated early and often, it has nothing to do with science, and all to do with global control.

(My hat is off to more assiduous bloggers like Anthony Watts and our local Russ Steele for their daily presentation of the reasoned arguments against the hysteria.  BTW, the hysteria is not about to abate at this point.  The collectivists and their know-nothing acolytes will just turn on the heat even higher to pass some form of economy crippling climate legislation.  California’s AB32 seems to be a bullet-proof canary in this control carbon mine.)

Ruminations – 14feb2010

George Rebane

** A reader sent this unfortunate yet revealing picture from the Oval Office.

 

** The progressive readers of my 13feb2010 Union column demonstrate again the two worlds we live in.  From their media sources they reveal a total ignorance of and rage against the relevant debt numbers that impact our daily lives while promising a draconian future.  Their happy solutions to all our problems continue to promote the ‘tax the rich until all is well’ school of thought.  They respond most joyously to mandated, subsidized, and unsustainable jobs.  Is there a box I missed checking that would give me liberal answers from government websites that present these deficit, debt, and unfunded liabilities numbers?  Do these people get rosy numbers when they check the ‘I voted for hope and change’ box?

** I found Russ Steele’s NCMW post on Nevada City Mayor Senum’s proposal to be a piece of heroic commentary.   Or maybe it’s just that I’ve been giving myself too much credit for proficiency in the King’s English - after all, it is barely my third language.  To the point, I could understand each individual word Russ quoted from her proposal.  But when looking at them strung all together, I drew an embarrassed blank.  What’s worse, for a lifelong 'boxes and arrows' man, I made no sense at all out of the figure she had drawn.  In sum, these thoughts from one of our community’s leading lights passed right over my head.  Maybe for the rest of us, she (or somebody else) could publish a ding-dong school version.  And I’m not kidding.  Looking at the comment stream for that post makes it plain to me that everyone else either understood her perfectly, or didn’t bother to chew on what she had written.

** Every second Friday of the month the Tea Party Patriots gather for lunch.  Yesterday’s lunch at the NC Contractors Association was an overflow crowd again – strictly SRO, late arrivers ate with their plate in their hand.   Plans are afoot to move the gathering to more commodious quarters.  There was a speaker talking about Obamacare, but that clearly was not the draw.  When we attend these TPP functions, it seems to Jo Ann and me that we are among people like ourselves who just want to know that each of us is not alone in our bewilderment and opinions about the direction the country is going.

The Mecklers and others, who do what might be called ‘leadership’ for this large and motley crew, are truly modern day patriots in my book.  It is a labor of love for our country that keeps them going, and digging into their own pockets to make cash-in equal cash-out.  Speaking of which, we all noted that another month went by without a frikkin check from the big corporations, Republicans, and other moneyed interests.  We should really ask some of the MSM mavens, those who keep broadcasting about how our movement is funded by the fat cats, as to who these fat cats are so we can tell them that they are in arrears.  Anyway, Mark Meckler has let us all know that he has pretty much tapped out his family funds paying for travel, hotels, food, etc as he does TPP work around the country.  We and many other TPP members now have the privilege of helping him out.  (More here)

If China Won’t, Your 401k Will (updated 16feb2010)

George Rebane

[This editorial appears today (13 February 2010) in The Union’s print and online (here) opinion sections.  This is the submitted version.]

While we’re all told to keep our eyes on the bloating $22 trillion national debt during the next decade, that no one knows how to pay off, you are not to notice the more $60 trillion of liabilities (out of about $130 trillion total) that will start coming due during the same time frame from unfunded entitlements.  The government just announced an epochal milestone that very few people caught - Social Security has now started paying out more than the workers are paying in.  From now on the difference will be paid out of the general fund.  But the general fund already has an annual shortfall of about 40% which has to be borrowed from folks overseas.

To make ends meet on all the planned social engineering programs, the President tells us we will have to somehow fund annual deficits exceeding 5.5% of GDP.  And God help us all if the economy doesn’t grow at the planned 3.5% rate or higher to keep the projected deficits at such a low level (cue nervous laughter).  Because then the fraction of government spending, that’s already gone through the roof, will go into orbit.  Meanwhile, our kids will try to figure out how they can drop us into the nearest river and not be nailed for murder one.

Both Sides Now

George Rebane

Has anyone figured out what the purpose is for claiming that the ARRA $787B stimulus has helped when so little of it has been spent to date?  And why is a third stimulus "jobs bill" needed when there is plenty of money left in ARRA?  Couldn't that be spent for jobs and then decide if more is needed?  Very puzzling for this old head.

Ruminations - 11feb2010

George Rebane

Barry Pruett, candidate for Nevada County Clerk-Recorder, responded to an article in today’s Union regarding the contest between him and the serving Clerk-Recorder, Greg Diaz.  There are two clear and independent issues involved here – the election campaign between Pruett and Diaz for the job, and the lawsuit filed by AtPac against Diaz.  If AtPac prevails in its suit that alleges Diaz violated an intellectual property confidentiality agreement with the company, then it will call into question Diaz’s character and decision-making abilities directly related to the Clerk-Recorder position.  In the meantime, as a local company formerly served by Pruett, AtPac has contributed to Pruett’s campaign.  This fact is being used to muddy the water in this campaign since it wrongly implies that Pruett was somehow involved in the suit against Diaz.  (Full Disclosure – The Rebanes support Barry Pruett’s election to the Clerk-Recorder position and have made a financial contribution to this end.)

The upcoming Board of Supervisors vote on the disposition of the Nevada County Library has drawn a lot of ink.  Despite deep cuts by County Librarian Mary Ann Trygg, the service is still an open vein in the county’s fisc.  The Supes will now have to vote on whether to let a private company staff the facilities or … something else.  Union publisher/editor Jeff Ackerman has mounted a spirited and laudable campaign to keep the library in the hands of county staff.  To date his efforts have netted over $43,000 of local contributions which he intends to turn over to the library for maintaining operations.

Readers who recall my Union columns and RR posts (here and here) know that I would like to see the government pull out of supplying most of the non-constitutional services they now perform.  In the case of our library, the simple choice seems to be whether we want to have a temporary solution of continuing to fund expensive (salary & benefits) union represented staff to perform essentially the same services for fewer hours, or have the county turn over staffing to a much more economical alternative provided by a private company.  Hour for hour, the savings would be from the 35-40% of added benefits which also accrue to the county’s unfunded liabilities.

Representation by the SEIU is, of course, another downside for the taxpayers which I and others have covered.  To put a point on it, the county library staff are now working under a five-year contract which also calls for them to get raises this year and the next.  I don’t know where they are going with this contract, but the starting point of negotiations always seems to be that government employees are entitled to their contracted jobs and total compensation, regardless.  Maybe Nevada County employees will be different.

But the bottom line is still, why would the county’s taxpayers want to go on paying a premium for staffing the library, especially in the coming years when all libraries will go through huge transformations to shapes, sizes, and services provided about which none of us are really certain.  Attempting to configure our library’s future, while dragging along expensive union represented staff, seems to promise an added ball and chain from which we would want to be free.

Finally, a correspondent from New Zealand writes that there has been a new wrinkle added to the political rhetoric that, no doubt, will soon arrive on these shores.  There a prominent politician “pledged” to not raise taxes when elected.  After being elected, the man promptly voted to raise taxes.  When reminded that his promise not to raise taxes had something to do with his being elected, the man explained some of the finer points of electioneering down under.  He told one and all that, yes, he had made a “pledge” not to raise taxes, but that was not to be confused with a “promise” not to do the same.  Is ‘pledge’ related to ‘promise’ in the same way as ‘possibility’ is related to ‘probability’?  Anyway, you have been alerted to look for onshore sleazebags picking up on this little bit of lexicographic legerdemain in this election year.

The Seasons

George Rebane

It was always green.
Then how quick the colors came –
is that a snowflake?

Kinda reminds you of ...

George Rebane

... a government program.