Rebane's Ruminations

‘Elasticity of Taxable Income’

George Rebane

Taxing fewer people more is the socialist’s stock answer to all of his plans to control and spend.  Fortunately history does not confirm such plans to be correct.  In America today we have two major problems now joining forces to threaten our republic – make the rich pay more, and make them also pay our taxes.  The growing consequences of these policies are surfacing all around us.

Basically, what’s happening is that our “dependency-creating programs” have now passed the tipping point with the passage of Obamacare.  As the creation of such programs accelerates, its hunger for cash induces short-sighted legislators to extract more out of the wealth producers whose natural response has always been to defend their property.  These people change their earnings into less taxable forms that reduce government revenues.  The opposing dynamics play out over an exploding national debt that every year requires a larger fraction of the federal budget just to pay its interest costs.

Using government data sources, the Heritage Foundation reports that today our per-capita income from dependence-related programs sits at almost $32,000.  Adjusted for inflation, it has risen 5X in the last fifty years with the biggest rise occurring since 1990.  Bill Beach writes in the 4mar10 issue of Heritage’s The Foundry  –

The steady growth of dependency creating program, particularly the so-called entitlement programs, and the equally steady shrinking number of taxpayers who have any financial stake in the government threaten rapid growth in mandatory, dependency programs and our very democracy. Are Americans closing in on a tipping point that endangers the workings of their form of government? If citizens can vote ever greater outlays for their income, health, housing, education, and food support; will the growth of government overwhelm the delicate political balances between those citizens who provide the means for helping other citizens in need?  (We all know this as the Peter/Paul Principle – the nemesis of all democracies.)

Meanwhile, on the income side of the ledger we have about 1% of taxpayers paying 50% of the collected taxes.  The federal government alone grabs almost 25% of GDP, up from an historical 20%.  When the government starts raising tax rates above its historical levels, its revenues have always dropped through the “behavioral responses” of the classes having to pay the most tribute.  A legion of studies cited by Alan Reynolds, senior fellow at Cato, continues to show the truth of this effect which economist Arthur Laffer summarized in his famous curve.  That little graphic has become one of the staples of the socialists’ comedy central who through their derisive laughter still can’t figure out what makes the feds’ take go up and down.

As Reynolds shows us in ‘The Rich Can’t Pay for ObamaCare’ how Obama and the Dem’s hoped for $1.2 trillion in increased taxes will be whittled to about $670 billion.  The rest of the cost of Obamacare will have to come from more overseas borrowing and/or onshore printing.  All systems in Washington are tuned to create the desired mega-crisis that will be the necessary precursor for transformational change.

The Sad Tale of Anna Haynes

George Rebane

Dr Anna Haynes is a True Believer in Anthropogenic Global Warming and its dire consequences for all Mankind.  She has taken great exception to my being an AGW skeptic, and has recorded her distress –

• On her personal website NC Focus,
• On her community information website NC Voices,
• During her requested meetings with me,
• During an unexpected walk-in at one of my Rotary luncheons,
• In unsolicited phone calls to our residence during which she has attempted to interrogate me and my wife.

Recently (27mar10) she launched an attack of unfounded allegations on TechTest, a philanthropic merit scholarship project of the non-profit Sierra Environmental Studies Foundation (sesfoundation.org) of which I am a board member and its Director of Research.  She alleges that the actual purpose of the test is to gather and indoctrinate the participating young scholars to become climate change skeptics.

She has a longer history of such dealings with my friend and SESF colleague Russ Steele (NC Media Watch).  Additionally, her unfathomable labors have also included Messrs Michael McDaniel (SESF) and Martin Light (CABPRO).  I will let them tell their own stories.

Tonight Dr Haynes called during dinner to pose yet another question – have I or any of my family been compensated for my skepticism of AGW.  As soon as I said ‘no’, she thanked me, hung up, and posted the conversation as a comment here.

This series of intensifying harassments lasting over a year are most disconcerting.  My lay assessment is that I am dealing with a disturbed person, and therefore I have not responded to her as a peer.  In a recent comment thread I recommended that she seek professional help.  I stand by that recommendation, and hope that she would reconsider her continued confrontations until after getting such help.

Rights and Privileges (updated 13apr2010)

George Rebane

What is a RIGHT?

A right is always contrasted with and discussed in relation to the notion of privilege, which is the easier of the two to understand and define.

PRIVILEGE – The permission to do, be, or have something specific, which permission can be granted to and subsequently withdrawn from one party/agency by another granting party/agency that has the ability to prevent the privileged party from exercising the permission.  Privileges can be granted and withdrawn by individuals, institutions, and states.

We think of a right as being a permission that is in some sense of a higher order.  A right is always publicized and formalized in some permanent and accessible code.  To dispel any early fuzzy thinking, it is clear that rights are also held by individuals and agencies at the pleasure of a higher granting agency.  For example we don’t think of a right as being granted by one individual to another.  Although rights may also be withdrawn/suspended by the granting agency, such withdrawal is always a formal and publicized step that must be sanctioned by some code in law, or within a specific and broadly known tradition.

Rights issue from an agency that in some way represents the collective will of a society. Therefore, such an agency is almost always a duly established representative government that describes such rights in its constituting documents and derived law.  This makes it clear that permissions issued by autocracies are always privileges.

We also recognize that rights do not necessarily travel with the so-favored individual.  A right stops at the border of the domain under the control of the granting agency (a right in America may not be a right in Saudi Arabia and vice versa).  If the underlying permission does ‘have legs’, then it is only through an agreement (e.g. treaty) between the two involved controlling agencies.  And to the extent that on ‘foreign soil’ the permission may be easily withdrawn, there the right always reverts to a privilege.

Certain special rights (e.g. “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”) are sometimes advertised as being ‘inalienable’ – that is, deriving from a source even higher than the agency granting a broader collection of rights to individuals which includes such inalienable rights.  Inalienability of certain rights is a declaration by the agency’s members (e.g. citizens of a country) that if the agency’s minions attempt to withdraw such rights, then the agency and/or minions become outlaws and the members may legally or, indeed, morally be required to abolish it and reconstitute a new agency that honors such inalienable rights.  (Operationally this amounts to making a distinction between a ‘legal revolution’ and an ‘illegal revolution’.  But we know that all successful revolutions are legal, and all unsuccessful revolutions are deemed illegal insurrections and dealt with accordingly.)

Finally the permission represented by a right must be persistently enabled by the granting agency to its right holders.  The granting agency must continually and actively expend resources to ensure that the underlying permissions of a right are made possible throughout its domain.  As a collective, the agency cannot be indifferent to one of its subgroups of members denying another subgroup or individual a right without going through a due process specified in the agency’s social code (law, tradition).  This is the key distinguishing feature between right and privilege – one who grants another a privilege is under no moral or legal imperative to assure that the so privileged can or is able to enjoy the underlying permission.

Searching for the prime distinctions from the foregoing in order to render a succinct definition, we understand that 1) the grantor must be a collectively founded agency with an established and widely accessible social code, and 2) the granting agency must commit itself to and actually carry out the enforcement of the rights that it grants its individual members.  With this we offer the following.

A RIGHT is a codified permission to do, be, or have that is granted by an agency to its member individuals/agencies who have formed and maintain the granting agency to carry out their collective will in a manner that requires the agency to expend all necessary resources to insure that such granted rights are enjoyed uniformly by all of its franchised members.

Corollary: To the extent that the granting agency is not able to insure the universal enjoyment of a right within its domain, such right does not exist.

Sustainable Rights.  Not all sets of rights are operationally sustainable either because their scope is too broad, or they are members of a mutually inconsistent or insufficient set.  America’s Founders did not explicitly address this problem in their post-revolutionary labors.  However, their student and French economic philosopher Frédéric Bastiat (cf. The Law) recognized the need to identify a seminal set of rights which must be granted/included to provide the minimum structure upon which succeeding rights could be built upon in a reasonable manner that makes the whole set of rights sustainable.  This fundamental structure consists of three interlinked rights called the Bastiat Triangle.  In his words –

Each of us has a natural right — from God — to defend his person, his liberty, and his property. These are the three basic requirements of life, and the preservation of any one of them is completely dependent upon the preservation of the other two. For what are our faculties but the extension of our individuality? And what is property but an extension of our faculties?

[13apr10 update] Using different words we can summarize the main points of the following operational definitions:

PRIVILEGE –
1. is a permission to do, be, or have that does not have to be formally codified;
2. is granted by party/agency that can legally prevent the exercise of the permission.
3. is intended to be granted and withdrawn with minimal or no due process; and
4. its grantor has no obligation to enable exercise of permission;

RIGHT –
1. is a codified permission to do, be, or have;
2. is granted by an agency that can legally enable and prevent the exercise of the permission;
3. is granted to specified agency members to carry out an expression of collective will;
4. is intended to be permanent and granted equally to all specified members;
5. its grantor has the explicit obligation to expend all required resources to enable exercise of the permission within its jurisdiction; and
6. is in effect only to the extent that its grantor enables its exercise.

[The above is adapted from materials I developed for a critical thinking course for journalists and media producers that I taught at California State University in the late 1990s.  Rights and privileges are perhaps some of the most important, overused, and least understood ideas in our society.  The objective here is to offer consistent and compact operational definitions for these ideas.  If some object to these definitions, then new labels must be fashioned and communicated that will serve these definitions.  This is because the above definitions are experienced daily by us all, and are therefore existential to our social order.  The added purpose of this posting is as an accessible reference for future discussions that require operational definitions of a right and a privilege.]

Recalling England and Canada (updated)

George Rebane

Many people were enticed to support Obamacare over the past year by the examples of socialized healthcare in England and Canada.  Recently UN’s International Health Organization has contributed its information to the ongoing debate.  Now that Obamacare is the law of the land, we may yet hope to achieve parity with our role models.  According to the IHO -

Percentage of men and women who survived a cancer five years after diagnosis:
U.S.   65%
England     46%
Canada     42%

Percentage of patients diagnosed with diabetes who received treatment within six months:
U.S.  93%
England    15%
Canada     43%

Percentage of seniors needing hip replacement who received it within six months:
U.S.   90%
England    15%
Canada     43%

Percentage referred to a medical specialist who sees one within one month:
U.S.   77%
England    40%
Canada     43%

Number of MRI scanners (a prime diagnostic tool) per million people:
U.S. 71
England     14
Canada     18

Percentage of seniors (65+), with low income, who say they are in "excellent health":
U.S. 12%
England    2%
Canada    6%

H/T to a soCal RR reader for the above.  For a broader view of what the nation faces with Obamacare, please consider 'Our Long National Nightmare is Just Beginning' this morning from The Heritage Foundation.

Our Earth Sensitive Future

George Rebane

Some of our local environmentally sensitive and concerned voices were disappointed in the level of participation in last night’s politically correct Earth Hour.  As a public service for those folks, RR is publishing a space photo of one of several nations around the globe that take saving energy real seriously.  As you can see, the Dear Leader has his people turn off lights all across the country to highlight his concern for the environment, and differentiate it from his more insensitive kinfolk in the south.  And to think that these dedicated people do this every single night of the year.  The lonely little bright dot in the north is Pyongyang where the people’s leadership never sleeps.

 

Many of the progressive bent here are waiting for the day when America can put on such a non-display.  Last year the online edition of Pravda predicted (here) our path to a more sensitive and comprehensive observance of Earth Day along with the dispensing of other frills our society has introduced over the last two centuries of licentious liberty.  But, of course, we don’t have to believe any of this.

H/Ts to the RR readers for nudging this post.

2030-2130 PDT

George Rebane

TechTest2010 Weekend

George Rebane

Today the fourth annual merit scholarship TechTest was given in the Science Lecture Hall of Nevada Union High School.  The test was administered by NUHS physics teacher Mr John McDaniel who also heads the TechTest academic committee.   I visited the lecture hall this morning and took the nearby pictures.  Mr McDaniel told me that this year 24 students from Nevada County were competing for the scholarships which will total a little north of $15,000.

   

As you can see, the students looked, shall we say, engaged in their labors.  This year the four-hour exam had eight problems of various weights.  I have had the privilege of writing the TechTests, which is a rewarding effort in itself.  Test problem ideas occur throughout the year, sometimes in the craziest ways.  For example, this winter as I was closing our driveway gate, I gave it a pull and, without looking back, walked briskly to the latch point expecting to get there before the gate hit me.  I lost, and sported a badly bruised Achilles tendon for about three months.  But that little incident inspired this year’s toughest test problem.

After coming up with about ten to twelve problems, I work each of them out with the clock running.  If I can’t solve them in a 20-30 minute interval, I either edit the problem or toss it.  The completed test, along with the solution key, is then made pretty and submitted to Mr McDaniel, who then reviews the questions and solutions.

The exams will again be graded by NUHS science and math teachers under the supervision of Mr McDaniel who will then send the results to the test’s sponsor, the Sierra Environmental Studies Foundation (SESF).  Later this spring the entire TT2010 exam along with the solution key will join the previous years’ exams on www.sesfoundation.org.  For you techies out there, it might be fun to download one of the pdfs, pour yourself a full measure of your favorite adult beverage, look at your watch (but not the solutions), and have at it.  No handicap allowed for the adult beverage.

TechTest2010 results will be posted after the annual TechTest awards breakfast that is usually held in May.  The scholarship checks will be presented to the students during the annual NUHS scholarship awards night.  The SESF TechTest scholarship fund is made up of 501c3 tax deductible contributions solicited from local residents, businesses, and SESF members.   You may want to join them.

The Podcars Are Coming

George Rebane

 

Wired reports that Segway technology has now found its way into a new line of small urban people movers – well OK, call them cars or podcars.  To me the most amazing thing about them is that they are being introduced by General Motors, and in China to boot.  Don’t know much about their total energy consumption. I would also like to see some results of traffic modeling with a downtown packed full of these gizmos.  Just increasing the density of small vehicles doesn’t mean that things will move better since each vehicle still has a human agent making decisions on when/where to change lanes, turn, slow down, stop, … .  If they can be automatically hooked into computer controlled ‘trains’, then things could be really looking up.  In any event, these electrically driven pods really look cool and could be just the thing for zipping around town.  Read more and see more pictures here.

Obamacare Endorsements Pouring In

George Rebane

Socialists and communists the world over are overjoyed with America taking a major step in their direction, and away from individual liberty and free markets.   Our ‘Shining City on a Hill’ has been the perennial burr under the blanket for collectivist states ranging over the entire authoritarian spectrum from the EU to North Korea.  Their citizens always compared their own countries to America and, of course, found them wanting.  This requires their dear leaders and ruling elites to keep up a constant propaganda barrage that says ‘no no, they’re a lot worse off than they look from a distance’ to defend their failures at governance.  Meanwhile, their populations keep agitating for a better life, and many risk their all in their attempts to copy or come.

Yesterday, communist Cuba’s iconic revolutionary and founder, Fidel Castro, was able to slip a congratulatory message to Obama and the Democrats into his usual harangue against the US.  At bedtime last night AP reported - 

"We consider health reform to have been an important battle and a success of his [Obama's] government," Castro wrote in an essay published in state media, adding that it would strengthen the president's hand against lobbyists and "mercenaries."

Of course, our local socialists have been pointing to Cuba’s nationalized healthcare for years as part of their message that communism isn’t all that bad, and we should at least start putting our toe into the water.  So you can imagine the joy worldwide, now that we too have jumped ass deep into this collectivist swamp.  'They’re starting to turn out the lights in the Shining City, and soon they’ll be like us.'

Waiting for qualifying imports?

George Rebane

They have owed us about $5.5 million from the beginning of the year.  What game are they playing now, wasn't everything supposed to "pivot" to jobs creation about two months ago?  Are they waiting for the arrival of the new Democratic import from Florida who will run against Congressman Tom McClintock?  Will they release the funds if we also throw in a big welcome party for Stupak from Michigan?  That guy will be looking for a new congressional district in the fall.

 

Ruminations – 25mar2010 (updated 26mar10)

George Rebane

- Has political speech threatened violence?
- Consequential voting in democracies
- The Gospel of Peer Review
- Penn & Teller’s survey of environmentalists

All Americans get concerned when political speech threatens violence.  The current charges that the right stepped over the line with threatening phone calls, tossing bricks through windows, snipping gas lines, calling a black legislator “nigger”, and who knows what else are very disturbing and should be followed up by more than just journalistic curiosity.  And I understand that the matter has been referred to the FBI.  In the meantime is there yet any hard evidence of who and of what political coloration did what?  Nevertheless, the media – that now includes the blogosphere – is full of mounting charges from the left.  One thing is clear though, performing such acts does nothing except to hurt the conservatives’ case against Obamacare.  I presume that the FBI still knows how to spell MOM – means, opportunity, motivation.

[26mar10 update]  Our progressive friends have become very agitated by the reported crowd reactions and other alleged responses to Democrat members of Congress in response to passing Obamacare.  The left has a long history of political violence in America, and this opportunity to even the perception in the public mind is not to be missed.  But before we put these reports paid, we should look at some more recent evidence or the lack thereof.  I have made a pdf of some materials available here that were compiled and sent by an RR reader.  Please have a read. Download NwordEvidence

Sometimes it is clear that democracies vote in ways that are not in their best interest.  Bryan Caplan has explained this in an essay that summarizes research into what determines the outcome of free elections.  About two years ago I reported on his just published book, The Myth of the Rational Voter - Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies, in a post titled ‘How Elections Really Work’.  Readers have shown a renewed interest in the consequence of elections, especially now that Obamacare has passed.  Caplan’s work is a recommended review for discussing this issue.

‘Climategate Was an Academic Disaster Waiting to Happen’ writes Dr Peter Berkowitz of Stanford’s Hoover Institution.  He covers thoroughly the weaknesses in the peer review process much revered by the layman not familiar with what really goes on when academics evaluate each others’ work.  The main point developed in this article is that

The notion of objective truth has been abandoned and the peer review process gives ample opportunity to reward friends and punish enemies.

Few outside the practitioners of science and leading edge technology know that about 90% of peer reviewed and published papers contain seminal errors as other workers in the field replicate the experiments and/or reanalyze the data.  This is part of the normal course of expanding human knowledge, which is always a ‘work in process’.  Driving a stake in the ground through any given paper or set of papers, and surrounding them with a non-debatable religion, has always been and continues to be dangerous.  This is especially true when these form the basis for far-reaching and/or draconian public policies.  More outsiders should become familiar with what goes on in such closed societies.

Finally, a little serious humor on the psychology of all these touchy-feely folks who will march in a moment to defend the earth and the environment.  A correspondent from soCal sent me the heads up on this video, and mused that it might say more about human nature than only environmentalists.  Nevertheless, it is that ilk that brought us Alar, the tragedy of Three-Mile-Island, the Delta Smelt, and is now busily working on the joys of California's AB32.  Please enjoy Penn & Teller telling it like it is.

 

'Obama Awakens the Nation'

George Rebane

Gary Hubbell of the Aspen Times Weekly writes a hopeful piece about the Obama administration.  Passage of Obamacare has left me in a dour mood with the Rebane flag at half staff.  But ‘this too shall pass’ and we need something to look forward to.  Hubbell’s essay seeks the brighter side of this benighted presidency.

Average Americans who have quietly gone about their lives, earning a paycheck, contributing to their favorite charities, going to high school football games on Friday night, spending their weekends at the beach or on hunting trips they've gotten off the fence. They've woken up.
 
There is a level of political activism in this country that we haven't seen since the American Revolution, and Barack Obama has been the catalyst that has sparked a restructuring of the American political and social consciousness.
 
 Think of the crap we've slowly learned to tolerate over the past 50 years as liberalism sought to re-structure the America that was the symbol of freedom and liberty to all the people of the world.

If you’re a downtrodden conservative with nary a political party to turn to (yet), reading this piece will help get your chin off the floor.  Give it a look.

H/T to a regular RR reader who feels my pain.

 

Stupak the Stupid (or is it the Spineless?)

George Rebane

Congressman Bart Stupak (D-MI) presents at the same time the best and worst views of a professional politician.  This man has pandered his voters for years on the notion that he was like most of them, against the federal funding of abortion.  Suddenly nationalized healthcare hung in the balance.  Then, recognizing the man for what he is, Obama invited Stupak to the White House and took him to the wood shed behind the Rose Garden.  There he explained the matter of Obamacare and Stupak’s chances of spending the rest of the year in the House broom closet working off of a card table by candle light.  Obama made clear what kind of support the party would give him for his re-election in November, and then reminded him that he probably wasn’t qualified for a job as checkout clerk at the local Home Depot.

It didn’t take all that much for a very chastened Stupak to emerge from that little ‘conference’, find the nearest array of microphones, and sing the party line like a canary.  And the seven or eleven or … moral midgets who had been following him around, all dutifully also fell in line.  The rest is history, including today’s signing of the executive joke for which the congressman sold his soul.

In the end, Obama was merciful in delivering the coup de grace.  He conceded to Stupak’s request that the signing be done behind closed doors with no press or photographers present.  The last thing Stupak wanted was the picture of him standing behind a grinning Obama, putting the presidential signature on a toilet paper roll.

Actually, Obama had a little self-interest in not publicizing spineless politicians in the Oval Office.  He will undoubtedly have to use this ruse again, and the memory of Stupak the Stupid plastered across front pages, blogs, and TV screens nationwide may stiffen opposition by future swallowers of this bitter pill.

But for the rest of us snuffies out here in Voterland, this should serve as a good reminder of the so-called principled people we send to Washington and the states’ capitals.  Almost all of them are stupid or spineless, or both.  Most illuminating.

Ruminations – 23mar2010

George Rebane

‘Propaganda in the mornin’, propaganda in the evenin’, propaganda all the live-long day.’  It’s been a full time job, going on two years now, to put lipstick on this pig.  And it’s not over yet as the President prepares to depart on a cross country campaign to sell Obamacare.  This is the new law for the peehpul, their representatives had to be bribed to pass it, and now they need to be told how much they like it.  Kool-Aid now has a new flavor.  I predict these mid-term elections will be the most watched and eventful in the country’s history.

Reading NCWatch, I learned that Former Union Editor Jeff Pelline’s blog will join the new Sacramento Connect network of blogs started by the Sacramento Bee.  Jeff has been assiduously reporting and interpreting foothill news for months.  And his Sierra Foothills Report blog will now receive traffic from the Sac Bee website.  I agree that the format of Sacramento Connect is a good one for newspapers, and a great match for like-minded satellite blogs.

This new relationship should lay aside any continuing claims that Mr Pelline offers centerline and balanced reportage.  The Sac Bee is an established MSM liberal voice of California.  It has been one of the media stalwarts supporting the Democratic California legislature over the years as that body passed law after law to impede, halt, and destroy the state’s economy.  That job is pretty well done, and California will now choose to become either a federalized or dysfunctional state.  Federalized if it intends to maintain its skeletized services while surrendering control and its fisc to the Beltway.  And dysfunctional if it continues to reduce services and raise taxes as it chases balanced budgets with its shrinking revenue base.  (The Arnold has now become the nation’s epitome of the girly-man governor.)

95959google.com

George Rebane

Nevada City’s efforts to attract Google’s attention for field testing its new broadband program is making news in the big city.  The New York Times described our community hullabaloo held Saturday a week ago.  Russ has more about that on NC Media Watch.

In a side discussion with an old friend and internet academic, Dr Larry Press, he suggested that perhaps we should include the ability to implement haptic applications from the remoteness of Nevada County.  That would be novel and perhaps also attract a different genre of businesses to our community.  Haptics is the techie word for (remote) touch capability.  In other words, someone sitting in Grass Valley could be doing surgery on a patient in Redwood City or Bucharest.  Technically it’s all possible if we have sufficient bandwidth.

Years ago the haptic applications I worked on involved simple force-feedback to handheld manipulators that worked with equipment located on the seabed five miles down.  Imagine today’s technology that is able to transmit the coarseness of a surface to your fingertip in a special glove over a broadband link.

Anyway, Chip Carman and John Paul who head up our 95959google proposal have set up a new website, www.95959google.com, please visit it to keep updated on what’s happening on this community project.

The Charade is Over

George Rebane

Justifiably giddy with their fundamentally transforming victory Sunday, the Administration is opening its kimono.  The Reverend Al Sharpton has been elevated into the White House circle, and after conferring with President Obama, he went before the cameras to declare, “… the American public overwhelmingly voted for socialism when they elected Barack Obama.”

The Reverend is no dummy, and the Administration is clearly using him as the bait fish to see what kind nibbles it will get from TV land in showing its true colors.  They seem to think, perhaps correctly, that this is the time to go ‘All In’ and run with the momentum of healthcare.

The fuzzy lefties have been denying Obama’s true colors for almost two years now.  Their position has gotten so silly that some of the more mesmerized have even claimed that identifying someone backing socialist policies as a socialist is actually “name calling”.  I think it’s now time to cut this crap from debates in the public forum.  If you consistently back collectivism and collectivist policies, identify with the self-declared progressives and socialists, then stand up and be counted, you’re a socialist.

Now is the time to take pride in your ideology and acknowledge what everyone already knows, because of you, our country has again arrived at that nexus in its history where the debate must answer which fork of the road we take.  And as one reader of these pages keeps reminding us, ‘Elections have consequences.’  Well, of course they do.  But the important thing now is that most of the majority that voted for Obama is saying, ‘Holy s#@t!, did we do that?’

So we need to decide on which fork to embark.  Taking Yogi Berra’s counsel on the matter brings us to the alternative some of us have labeled as The Great Divide.

The Day After …

George Rebane

Yesterday’s nationquake still trembles, and now we await the aftershocks that will follow in the coming months.  They will come as surprises to many but not all of us.  Only one much-touted promise of Obamacare will actually come true – redistributive subsidies.  But you will NOT see the promised

• Lower insurance premiums, they will go up;
• Reduction in budget deficits, they will sky rocket;
• Reduction in overall healthcare spending, it will continue going up;
• A more competitive US economy, anemic growth will be institutionalized;
• No reductions in Medicare benefits, they will be reduced;
• Ability to keep your healthcare plan, you will be jailed if you resist complying with government directives that mandate your new healthcare regime.

And above all, your individual freedoms will now take a noticeable hit as the newly hired 17,000 to 20,000 federal bureaucrats begin their work sniffing up your backside.  Who will be most disappointed? most likely those with personal stories of medical hardships, perhaps due to going crosswise with an insurance company.  These folks will now expect a bright sunrise followed by a new day that will see their neighbors joyfully pitching in to pay their medical bills.

Perhaps the most pernicious lie that the progressives have foisted on the unthinking is that ‘healthcare is a right’.  Never mind that the entire concept of rights has been mangled beyond repair by our public schools and the leftwing media, the operational definition of rights and privileges was recognized by our Founders who found very few of them “inalienable”.  And even the inalienable ones they had to group with those that the government unevenly upheld and could also remove.  Before Obamacare, we had the right to include healthcare among our purchases, now that right will be replaced by government specified and rationed levels of care.

My own lament on the larger ramifications of nationalized healthcare is recorded in ‘The First of a Grand Trifecta?’, and follows in a consistent stream the future I have seen for some years now.

One of the compliments that my leftwing readers often pay is to credit me with the introduction of ideas and opinions beyond my meager accomplishments.  While I have introduced a number of views and perspectives, most of my contributions are personal commentaries through the lenses of systems science and a rich life that reflect the ideas of a mature and established ideological class.  Often these pages have some claim on primacy due to the speed that a small blogger today is able to get his thoughts published.  But overall, being called out as a lone rightwing wolf howling at the moon may simply reflect the constrained reading horizons of some, but by no means all, of my progressive readers.

In this light I want to bring to your attention the lament of a nationally syndicated and respected conservative columnist and academic, Victor Davis Hanson.  Last night before turning out the lights, I ran into Hanson’s lengthy view of what the passage of Obamacare will mean to America.  It is the most dire and detailed long-term prognosis from Hanson’s pen that I have read.  Hanson and I often fly in a tight ideological formation, therefore I recommend his extended thoughts in ‘We’ve Crossed the Rubicon’ (aka, the tipping point).

 

The First of a Grand Trifecta?

George Rebane

The passage of Obamacare promises to be the first salvo of the socialist trifecta that takes the country well beyond the tipping point from the Republic the Founders left us.  The left will celebrate this day as the beginning of the end of the evil United States that they have been battling against for most of the last century.  The free market conservatives will drape a different kind of bunting around this day.

The second salvo will come in the form of ‘immigration reform’ which is a thinly veiled program for maintaining the current open borders while giving amnesty to 12 million illegal aliens already in the country.  The obvious result is a very large welcome mat for millions more from Mexico alone - people desperate to escape the corruption and drug cartel wars.  The ‘reform’, of course, will promote exactly the opposite than its lying sponsors in Washington claim.  Mexico will have even less of a motive to become a functional country when a permanent, wide open relief valve for their growing population is installed.  The first step of any real immigration reform starts with an effective closing of the border.  Every other approach is futile and will hurry us to Reconquista.

The third salvo will be the cap n’ tax (Waxman-Markey) energy bill that in its implementation will deliver the coup de grace to America’s ability to generate wealth beyond the anemic pace of European countries, if that.  When we recall that none of the EU countries maintain a credible military, we realize that America will either 1) no longer be able to maintain its ability to project power, or 2) control and tax our economy to Soviet levels in the attempt to prolong our ability to field the already straining 12 carrier task forces and 7 expeditionary groups that we now maintain.  In either event, this global hegemony dynamic, coupled with the debt and unfunded liabilities disaster already baked in, will create a crisis of totally unprecedented proportions.

Such a national crisis, that may include a hot war between the US and China, will insure that the already trammeled citizenry demand the arrival of the notorious ‘man on a white horse’ to save the country.  Such a man has always been available, and his first act will be to set aside the established order so that new ‘temporary emergency measures’ can be instituted.   These measures will enable him to mobilize for and manage the crisis.  Everyone will cheer.  The cheering will fade when everyone realizes that there is nothing temporary about the emergency measures - they will be institutionalized.

So as we review today’s political theater, we see the Republicans vainly pointing out the fraudulent accounting of Obamacare.  The Democrats respond by totally ignoring these realities and increase the volume on the anecdotal recounting of individuals in medical distress.  This is a wildly successful tactic with under-educated and uninformed voters nationwide.

School Quotas Slated for Return - KVMR commentary

George Rebane

[I recorded this as my regular KVMR FM89.5 commentary for broadcast on 19 March 2010.  President Obama appears to be ready to re-establish equal outcomes as the proxy for equal opportunity, a proxy which was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2001.]

The equal opportunity debate is now at least forty-five years old.  The problem has always been how you measure equal opportunity.  The progressives came upon the solution years ago – it was simply equal outcome.  If a population contained 20% Hispanics and 80% of some other class, then after going through an equal opportunity program, you’d better have the success rate be at least 20% Hispanics and 80% others for the results to have delivered equal opportunity.

Conservatives had big problems with this definition.  They argued that you have to account for the predisposition of the racial and ethnic classes in order to explain any disparities in the results.  They said that all we could and should do was to ensure that everyone had an equal chance going through the process. The outcomes would always be determined by many factors that take a lot of things into account, including what each participant brought to the starting line.  Skewing the race to force the outcome to conform to class proportions would mess up the whole process and mess up society to boot.

But across the land, equal opportunity came to mean equal outcome.  Nevertheless, the debate raged on in and out of court, and was finally brought to a conclusion in 2001.  Then the Supreme Court ruled in Alexander v. Sandoval that the Civil Rights Act prohibits only disparate treatment and not disparate impact.  In short, equal outcome lost and equal opportunity meant that you couldn’t rig the race in favor of one class or another.  This ruling has held for about nine years.

This year in the public schools, Obama’s Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is planning on going back to equal outcomes.  In enforcing Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, Secretary Duncan intends to correct ‘ten years of neglect’ - code for the Bush administration - by turning loose the department’s Office of Civil Rights to return us to the Clinton years when statistical disparity was equated with discrimination.  We knew this as the quota system.

Meanwhile, on the back burner ...

George Rebane

With the Obamacare asteroid heading for earth, this effort reminds one of deckchairs on the Titanic.

Obamacare costs summarized (updated)

George Rebane

The Republican Caucus released this cost summary (Download HBC Analysis of CBO Est HR4872) to their membership yesterday after the version of the House healthcare bill was made public.  The facts summarized are substantive, and, if false, can be exposed.  I predict that the Dems will continue to divert our attention with the fraudulent argument that it's Obamacare or status quo, as if no other alternatives exist and/or have been proposed for lowering the cost of medical care delivery (as opposed to insurance costs).  This weekend will be history-making high political theater. 

H/T to Kim Pruett of Tom McClintock's office for releasing this.

[update] More from KimP.  This is the 19mar10 letter (Download Orszag_HC_Paygo_Letter) from Rep Paul Ryan to Orzag, OMB Director requesting invocation of the 'pay-go' provision on deficit inducing legislation.

Indonesia in June?? (updated)

George Rebane

Anyone have any money on Obama actually going to Indonesia in June, or any time soon in a blue moon?  Cancelling the double delayed Sunday departure is smart, the scars where his statues were have not yet overgrown with weeds.  And the last we heard, they were still painting his welcoming signs.

Bret Baier of Fox News conducted one of the most effective interviews of a sitting President that I have seen in my lifetime (here).  He claimed ownership of “my bill” and had no idea what was in it.  But he did agree with the Speaker’s proclamation that we need to first pass it (whatever ‘it’ is) so we can find out what we’ve passed.  All in all Obama’s non/answers did not sway any true believers, but for the rest of us (independents and knuckledraggers) the interview piled more evidence on to the stack labeled ‘Inexperienced socialist community organizer in charge’.

Meanwhile in the bowels of the Capitol, the Legion of Liberal Liars is going for the Guinness book of records on Obamacare.  In addition to their messiah, Pelosi informed us today that CBO’s latest estimate of $940 billion is even less than the $871 figure they gave the Senate’s bill last December.  And they still don’t have the votes that they have claimed all week that they have.  Nancy’s nose is going to need a splint to keep it up above her waist.

Of course, during all this, everyone on the progressive side is also combing through House books on arcane rules and hidden histories to come up with something even more nasty than Slaughter’s ‘deem and pass’.  It boggles the mind to fathom what the House gave the CBO to ‘score’; no one has yet voted on anything – neither the Senate bill, nor any announced set of deemed ‘fixes’.

Historians are going to have a field day on this travesty when they study the fall of Pax Americana.  Sociologists and anthropologists will have even more fun putting together our profile as the double dummies who sat on their collective ass, and let the whole thing transpire while mumbling, ‘But we had to do something.’

[update] Here's an analysis of the actual healthcare from the Heritage Foundation.  This afternoon I was struck again with the serious demeanor with which the CBO numbers on deficit reductions, or for that matter, anything else having to do with the federal budget that is more than three months (yes, THREE MONTHS) out are discussed in the media.  These guys have a demonstrated capability of successfully predicting federal expenditures that is worse than the IPCC clowns have of predicting climate change.  Of course, a lot of it is not their fault because Congress lies to them and/or later does something different.  The White House's OMB makes the CBO look good.  The OMB projections are an inside job, the big guy calls out the correct answer, and the boys and girls with eye shades back it up with as many mind numbing numbers as you want.  And all of us sheeple just eat it up.

Crabb Cuts to the Chase (again)

George Rebane

This 16mar10 edition of ‘It Takes a Village Idiot’ cartoon was ripped from The Union's website (link at left).  These cartoons are a regular feature of the newspaper, and drawn by one of our county’s resident treasures and RR reader R.L. ‘Bob’ Crabb.  Bob attempts to fly pretty much down the center stripe of the political highway. Most of the time he makes it, but old school conservatives like me often see him holding a slight heading to the left, and debating that crab angle (pun intended) is one of the pleasures of his company.  This time he must have been caught unawares by a gust to the right.  Thank you Bob!

PS. Happy St Paddy's Day

Singularity Studies at Rutgers

George Rebane

Rutgers University is announcing a new course on the Singularity – its basis and advent.  The online course will be taught this summer.  According to the bulleting, “The course is especially recommended for anyone who anticipates working in a high-technology industry or applying future technologies in any area of human endeavor.   Future entrepreneurs and innovators are especially encouraged to participate.”  More information on the course is here.

RR readers are familiar with the Singularity (if not, then here and the Singularity Signposts section of this blog).  My only wish is that public policy makers become aware of what’s happening sooner than later.

Obamacare Trainwreck is Coming

George Rebane

I have a bad feeling about the upcoming vote on healthcare - it may pass.  The legislation is so horrific that the progressives bent on bringing the next notch of authoritarianism to America are now going to “deem” the Senate’s bill into being without actually passing it.  The sleazebags are so brazen that they make no bones about going extra-constitutional in getting some form of Obamacare signed.  And the majority of Americans don’t even know what’s happening, and half of the remainder are actually promoting it.

In my lifetime, this is by far the most putrid sausage to come out of Washington.  This left-wing Congress needs to bribe, bend, and blindside to get something resembling nationalized healthcare into law.  No one today 16 March 2010 knows what the bill will be.  Pelosi has already publicly stated that ‘we have to pass it so you can see what it is’.  This is now the new norm in the partisan legislative process.  And we’re not talking about adding little amendments to administrivial bills to flush out clogged procedural pipes in Congress.  This is the biggest of the big kahunas to hit the nation in the last two generations.

Healthcare is definitely on the blink in this country, but not for the reasons that the progressives are touting.  It is not health insurance that is the cause, but the underlying costs of delivering healthcare that are out of control.  The causes for that have nothing to do with health insurance, and Obamacare purposely avoids any remedies to that part.  The biggest hunk of wool over our eyes is foisting the belief that this is all about providing better health care.

Astounding to me is the argument given by otherwise normal people that Obamacare is just more of what this government already does and what advanced nations around the world provide for their citizens.  But none of those programs are sustainable; not Medicare/Medicaid in the US or, for example, the cited and propagandized healthcare programs in EU countries.   All around the world, the year-to-year costs of socialized healthcare are increasing so that they consume an ever greater fraction of their nations’ GDPs.  This cannot go on.

The leftwing press will not report that the only, albeit futile, efforts to slow down this process in each country is to tighten the rationing screws.  On paper it still looks like all are getting equal care, but those who can afford it are taking ‘medical vacations’ and going where they can get the treatment they need. And business in SE Asia and the Caribbean is booming.  Yet our leftwing friends simply ignore all of this as they chant ‘O-baah-mah, O-baah-mah!’  Their man on a white horse has arrived.

An example close to home has one of our friends in Britain just taken off a two year list that she was on for a knee replacement.  Due to the pain, the woman is barely mobile and has been hobbling with a cane waiting for the new knee.  One of Britain’s ‘death committees’ told her perfunctorily that she was suddenly off the list, and within two months of the scheduled operation.  She is now in a panic looking for another EU country that might serve her while wondering how she will be able to pay for it.

Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin laid it all out in ‘Health Care in a Free Society’ , a short speech given on 13 January 2010 in Washington.  As someone said, if you think health care is expensive now, wait until it’s free.  Our beloved Republic trembles.