Rebane's Ruminations

Liberty’s Twilight

George Rebane

We are living in dangerous times.  Among the countries that used to be known as the ‘free world’, America is the leading jailer and the world’s title holder as the country that imprisons the largest fraction of its citizens.  The rate of criminalization and incarceration has been quietly mushrooming in the US, and is now at a level that attracts the attention of other countries, most notably our allies.  How and why is that?

The 24jul10 issue of the Economist is focused on “Rough Justice: Too many laws, too many prisoners”.  Our jails are loaded with about 2.4 million inmates, making one out of every hundred of our adults sit behind bars and one out of 31 adults being under some form of supervision ‘in the justice system’.  Per 100,000 population the US has 748 behind bars, Russia is second with 600, in third place Brazil drops down to about 240, and then it goes way down from there.  We win.  Or do we?

In America you can be thrown into jail for the damndest things as we try to live our lives in an ever-growing spaghetti bowl of regulations.  There are over 4,000 federal crimes, and many times more regulations that carry criminal penalties.  Every day more human behaviors that were legal yesterday are becoming overnight criminalized.   “(O)ver the last 40 years an unholy alliance of big-business-hating liberals and tough-on-crime conservatives has made criminalization the first line of attack” on most social problems.

And today with trillion dollar deficits, new trillion dollar social legislation, and trillion dollar regulatory injections or ‘stimulus’ packages raining down on our heads, the restrictions on our liberties are accelerating at a pace that makes child’s play of the alphabet soup programs in FDR’s National Recovery Act of the 1930s.  In the last 18 months the Obama administration has brought into being five times as many regulation spewing federal agencies than did FDR in the eight years preceding WW2.  And as some of us know, at the bottom of every stack of state regulations lies a government gun.

Why do we need so many rules to tell a supposedly free people in their own land how to behave?  Why do we need so many pages of legal code that set down myriads of criminal behaviors, and why do these rules need to multiply beyond any sense, comprehension, or reason?  Almost all of them are unknown to the people, and almost all of them are such that our natural instincts and cultural traditions are totally useless in advising us whether today this is right and that is wrong.  And tomorrow these social tools will be of even less use.

In simpler days societies relied on the traditions and customs of culture to define, direct, and constrain normative behavior.  For example, the shame that people then felt when they misbehaved served as an effective constraint on aberrant and socially destructive actions.  This allowed some fairly large and complex communities to thrive and grow as nation-states.  Visitors and minorities from different cultures knew how to deport themselves within dominant cultures.  (My own immigrant family was a typical example of this in the mid-twentieth century.)  Their choices ranged from assimilation to isolation into their own enclaves.  In no way were these minorities allowed to openly challenge the dominant culture; change was evolutionary not revolutionary.

When two or more cultures in a sovereign nation-state achieve peerage or equal power, then history records very few cases where strife and trouble are not the result.  In modern times peace in such polyglot societies has been kept by a strong central government claiming to be culturally neutral and fair to all.  Such a strong central government is faced with a situation that can be explained with the help of the figure below.

  

Dumb and Dumber 2 (updated 1aug2010)

George Rebane

We really have the dynamic duo of dummies in the White House.  Ol’ Joe Biden has been taking a lot of solo heat for way too long on being the fastest blank shooting lip in Washington.  As RR, other conservative sites, media programs, and published pieces have pointed out for almost two years now, El Presidente is the least qualified holder of that august office, perhaps in the country’s history.  He even lags a bit as he works his way up to the VP’s level.  But he has achieved parity in being able to hip shoot embarrassing blanks.

Earlier in the week (here) Obama announced that the material in the Wikileaks emails from Afghanistan were “old news” and nothing the country should concern itself about.  The people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and at the Pentagon almost tossed their lunch when they heard El Hefe come out with that little piece of interpretive wisdom, and they have been trying to do a little reconstruction of the story without making our Chief Executive look like an absolute idiot.  Not to worry folks, Sec Def Gates and his trusty troop have handled the case.  But to accomplish that it has required the lame stream media to switch operations into extreme ‘What me worry?’ mode.

NPR reported this morning Gates was pressed to admit that what happened was according to him a “massive breach of security”.  It was immediately clear to anyone who has dealt with military security that such raw reports revealed “names, methods, and processes”.  (In the early sixties I also served as S-2, intelligence officer in a nuclear artillery battalion, and was privy to such reports from both our and the Soviet side of the curtain.  Part of my job was to extract pieces that would impact our battalion’s battle plans and summarize these for my boss, the battalion commander.) 

The full impact of this loss will yet be felt, but Gates already has pointed out that it will now be much more difficult to garner “future trust” of current and potential Afghani informants and security forces when they know that their identities are already known or tomorrow will be known to the Taliban.  Two murderous retribution attacks by the Taliban have already taken place this week because of the released emails, and there are more to come.  Gates is literally begging Wikileaks and anyone else in possession of additional emails to not release them on the web.  As the well-read reader knows, the counter-insurgency effort in any country, especially Afghanistan given its history of dealing with foreign forces, depends almost wholly on gaining the trust and co-operation of the indigenous people.

Ruminations – 29jul2010 (updated)

George Rebane

Man Bites Dog Story – Of all places, in San Francisco we find Democratic Supervisor Sean Elsbernd challenging the city’s powerful mass transit workers’ union to back off on their contract with the city that is doing its share to wreak financial havoc (here).  This kind of conduct, especially with Mayor Gavin Newsom’s support, would have been unthinkable in the recent past and has been the ‘third rail’ of liberal politics in that very progressive city.  Now that they can’t get the folks in Ohio to continue supporting their generous benefits and poor (according to San Franciscans) service, a quiet introduction of a bit of sanity is attempted but with no guarantee that it will work.

The local know-nothings brigade that has been defending the public service unions may currently be sullen and silent, but that is not evidence that any of them understand the sources of the fiscal fiascos in political jurisdictions that now blanket the land.

There is a real useful and informative post on a local leftwing blog that shines light on the difference between people who share the Tea Party core values and principles of governance, and those of the progressive persuasion.  Hat tip to Jeff Pelline to whose post I was directed that contains an excellent discriminant which helps distinguish the two national groups.  It comes in the form of “a ballad for non-Tea partiers”, and is offered as an answer to the current TP favorite musical offering ‘I am America’.  The liberal ballad’s telling chorus summarizes our current direction of hope and change to a fundamental transformation of America.  It is ‘People Like Us’ sung by John Goodman and has the chorus –

We don’t want freedom
We don’t want justice
We just want someone to love
Someone to love

Please visit Jeff’s blog to read the rest of the lyrics, they are of a piece with the chorus.

This song would also have been a natural preamble in the Russia of 1917, the China of 1948, and several other locales of similar historical note.  Even though history shows the freedom and justice parts of those people’s wish lists were granted, I’m not sure that they found anyone else to love in their new worlds except their fearless leader du jour.

[update] The Nevada County Tea Party Patriots announce, "Please watch the Glenn Beck show on Friday July 30th.  Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots with Mark Meckler, will be on this show.  We heard that it was great.  This is the first time that Glenn Beck has featured the TPP.  If you can't watch it live, record it on your DVR."  For all of our readers who may have a love-hate relationship with the TPP, or simply want to see what's happening, tomorrow on Fox News at 2pm is a great opportunity to get a snoot full.

Tea Party Patriots Update

George Rebane

My spies in the TP movement inform me that the nationwide number of organized local TPP groups now number in excess of 2,200 and growing at a rate of approximately 50 per week.  More good news rolls in from the left in that it appears the progressives are discounting the TPP as nothing more than a retread of conservative Republican copy.  However the fear there is real in that we now see the launch of some pretty crass hit pieces like this one cobbled together of a TP gathering on Huffington Post (here).  Note the injection of the screams and tussle of someone being manhandled.  This is serious stuff.  As one of my liberal friends in the news business wrote me, “The gloves are off.”

Some recent information from Mark Meckler, national co-coordinator of the Tea Party Patriot movement.

46% say tea party movement is good for America (145 million), 31% say bad (Rasmussen).  16% say they have signed up as "members" of a tea party (49 million) (Winston Group)
42% of Americans self identify as "conservative,"  30% as "moderate" and 22% as "liberal".

The Barack Obama Show (updated 28jul2010)

George Rebane

President Obama made a televised White House appearance today to announce that the 20K+ Wikileak emails of raw field operations reports from Afghanistan and Pakistani aid to the Taliban were no big revelation, in fact they were “old news”.  Meanwhile all those dummies at The New York Times, The Washington Times, The Guardian (British), etc were reporting this as a major new development, the effects of which on our ‘allies’ and the war were yet to be determined.  Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mullen, announced from the Pentagon that he was “astonished” at the release of all this White House old news.

Meanwhile, Arizona sheriffs are showing videos of heavy illegal entrant traffic and ongoing gunfights that regularly now take place 70 to 90 miles inside the US border with Mexico.  The local authorities and Border Patrol are out gunned by the cartels deep inside our country.  Obama not does not care about any of this but continues to hold out sealing the border until he reaches a political settlement with Republicans on amnesty for the 12 million illegal aliens already here.  American sovereignty and the Constitution be damned when there are that many potential Democrat votes to be garnered.  Obama has been invited to visit the border area by both Arizona authorities and his own Border Patrol.  But with the elections coming up, that’s the last place he wants to be photographed, showing support for maintaining the integrity of United States territory.

This litany could go on for pages documenting the unique stance this post-American president has taken on rejecting the constitutional, traditional,and historical duties and customs of the office.  I close by drawing your attention to Obama’s rejection of having anything to do with the Boy Scouts of America as its honorary president - a traditional office that all previous presidents have held.  His latest is refusing to put in an appearance at the centennial celebration of the Boy Scouts this year.  Instead of attending this 100-year event, the man is making time for an appearance on ‘The View’ TV show and a Democratic fund raiser.  First things first.

Oh yes, did you hear of the latest little zinger they snuck into Obamacare.  Henceforth, when we sell our home the feds will dip in for a new 3.8% tax.  That calculates to an additional $3,800 from your wallet for every $100,000 of profit you have been able to accumulate in the major nestegg of your life.  More zingers on the way from the Chief Community Organizer.  This will go a long way to solve the housing crisis - happy retirement!

The lies, neglect, and sophomoric sophistry just keeps rolling out of this White House.  And his base continues lapping it up as the hope and change they have been waiting for.  The plea from the rest of the country is –

 

[28jul2010 update]  Mikey McD's comment below needs highlighting because the hidden 'gold zinger' in Sec 9006 of Obamacare is one more example of the sleaze overflowing Washington's rush toward socialism.  Government confiscation of gold is provided for and enabled in the depths of this healthcare bill because it could never have passed in the light of day.  Now the lame stream media outlets (e.g. ABC) are joining the government's propaganda team airing outright lies that the government cannot confiscate your physical gold.  FDR did exactly that through Executive Order 6102 in 1933.  Government's institutionalizing of lying has now reached Soviet levels, and the floundering fourth estate, waiting for government subsidies, is a full partner in the enterprise.

Why the White Gold Standard?

George Rebane

Race and racism is again very much in the news.  Obama had a white mother and a black father which makes him a mulatto who draws equally from the gene pools of at least two races and continents.  Then why is he automatically called a ‘black President’, our first black President?

Not too long ago every race saw the ‘mixing of their blood’ as something to be avoided.  This extended from race through ethnicity and region to nationality.  Japanese didn’t want their sons and daughters to marry a white, and American southerners didn’t want their kids to marry ‘damyankees’.  And I recall some Estonian parents carefully advising their son to look for another Estonian young lady to marry after he had fallen for a deep-rooted American.  That son was me.

But in today’s world it seems that the offspring of all cross marriages (or unions) between a ‘white’ partner and a non-white partner get labeled with the non-white partner’s dominant racial characteristic.  It’s as if the world thinks that in some way the ‘white race’ (polyglot that it is) is some kind of baseline or standard from which all departures should be measured and called out.

Why can’t a Malaysian-white mixture still be called white, or given a unique new name that recognizes the person’s diverse racial background?  Why the common denominator that all such mixed race people must instantly lose their ‘whiteness’ never to return.  It’s as if mixing white and something else were an act of pollution where the resultant mixture instantly inherits only the name of the pollutant.  To me that is an insidious form of racism that we have practiced for a long time.  No doubt in the past it was considered exactly that – race pollution – but have we not progressed beyond that today?

Other non-western cultures have very specific labels for offspring of their race mixed children.   The races that are today members of what may loosely be called western civilization continue a very anti-white and information-destroying protocol for race labeling people who are not ‘pure white’.  It's as if to count coup against the white race – ‘once we get one from you, you have lost them from your ranks forever.’  Is it not time for a more enlightened view?

Getting the Balance Right

George Rebane

[This aired last night on KVMR-FM 89.5 as my bi-weekly commentary.  It continues on the recent thread of how our journalistic industry is changing in an environment of ever rapidly evolving events, ideological polarization, propaganda, government's desire to control content, and the availability of new technologies.]

Dr Lee Bollinger, President of Columbia University, recently made an impassioned argument in the national press that journalism needs government help.  He started with the laudable notion that “free speech and a free press are essential to a dynamic economy”, and then proceeded to lay out a path that all but guarantees that neither of these essentials will be met.

Buying Votes

George Rebane

Tis the election season when we all become aware of how candidates buy our votes.  Nevada County’s iconic cartoonist Bob Crabb published this little piece of thought provoking wit in The Union this week (used with his permission).

 

Looking at Meg sitting there, and all the various stimulus and spending programs that continue to come our way, the thought occurred that maybe there is a telling difference between Republican and Democratic candidates.  The Republicans tend to buy your votes with their own money.  And the Democrats tend to buy your votes with your own money.

Our Cuban Future?

George Rebane

I recently finished reading two important essays.  The first was “America’s Ruling Class—And the Perils of Revolution,” by Angelo M. Codevilla.  This essay was an eye-opener in how it summarized and knit together the things that we have all witnessed happening to our country over the last several decades.  I filled the margins of this piece with notes and links to happenings and experiences.  I was going to post on Codevilla’s piece, but Martin Light on the CABPRO Report beat me to it.  Please take the time to go there and read his excellent introduction (here), and then download the pdf itself to see to which American class you belong.  I found myself firmly in the ‘country class’.

“Know this well: our ignorance, our underdevelopment, is paid for with freedom.”  – Fidel Castro, speaking with students at the University of Havana, September 1970.   Compare this with Jefferson’s ‘A nation ignorant and free, that never was and never shall be.’

The second essay I read motivates the title of this post.  ‘Freedom and Exchange in Communist Cuba’ is written by Yoani Sanchez who lives in Cuba where she maintains what must be a surreptitious blog called Generación Y.   The essay outlines the political and social history of Cuba from 1959, when Fidel and the boys came down from the mountains and threw out Batista.  She goes into lucid detail to show how bit by piece the Cuban people, over a two year span, traded their freedoms promised by the revolution for a new and irrevocable form of dictatorship.

Her writing is eloquent, every other paragraph contains a profundity suitable for the marble cornerstone of a public building or monument – ‘… it is much easier to redistribute wealth than to create it …”, “To demand individual freedoms was to loudly declare one’s selfishness.”.

What struck me most was her analysis of how the socialist system proceeded rapidly into communism, and how that system then subverted the best intentions and abilities of people to recoup their freedoms and society.  This type of subversion is intrinsic to all forms of collectivism and rises in and of itself.  It is self-starting, self-promoting, and self-maintaining, even within such an inefficient system of governance.  All it requires is ignorant people to trade in their freedoms in advance for a promise of future utopia.

And as you read Sanchez’s words, you cannot help but start drawing the analogs to what is happening around us.  The one-to-one correspondence of the path we are on is striking.  The Cato Institute makes this essay available in monograph form and online here.

Finally, what conclusion can we draw from the dribs and drabs the ruling class sprinkles over an unreliably liberal Nevada County?

 

Fox News, Oh My!! (updated 23jul2010)

George Rebane

The Shirley Sherrod saga has reached the silly season.  On RR, and probably many other blogs, the howls of how Fox News “snookered” the country and its government into an unjustified termination of the woman from her Dept of Ag job has reached hysteric heights.  The comment threads stand as a permanent witness.

The timeline of events turns out to tell another story, a timeline that by regulation the FCC requires broadcasters to maintain of content that they air.  Let’s take a look.

- On 27 March 2010 Ms Sherrod makes her famous NAACP speech and video.  NAACP has the full video of the speech.
- Early April internet commentator Breitbart gets a copy of the video, and sits on it.
- Week of 12 July 2010 the NAACP announces its draft resolution that alleges the Tea Party movement as containing racist elements and proceeding toward a racist organization.
- 19 July 2010 at 0818EDT Breitbart posts the now infamous video segment of Sherrod’s speech.  The WH finds out about it, briefs Obama who, as a minimum, does nothing to halt the intended firing of Sherrod because she will be “on Glenn Beck tonight.”
- By mid-afternoon on 19 July the Dept of Ag places three separate cell calls to Sherrod, in her car, demanding her resignation, and finally gets her to pull over and transmit her resignation on her Blackberry.  She has been fired.
- 19 July 2010 5-6pm the Glenn Beck show airs on Fox with no mention of Sherrod or the incident.
- 19 July 2010 in the evening after Glenn Beck’s show, commentators O’Reilly, Hannity, van Sustern all cover the firing (announced on an Atlanta station, CNN?) and the Breitbart segment.
- 19 July 2010 about 2100, Fox News interrupts Hannity to confirm the firing of Shirley Sherrod.
- 19 July 2010 2355 (almost midnight) the NAACP “cheers” the WH firing of Sherrod and fully backs the decision.

Quite a day.  And, of course, the leftwing media and blogs started screaming for the heads of Breitbart and Fox News way before the sun set that night.  The comment threads from the left across the country have ranged from the thoughtful to the vile, but have uniformly condemned both Breitbart and Fox News for journalistic malfeasance.

There apparently is much confusion in the liberal ranks about the difference between commentary and objective news reporting.  Commentators of all political hues picked up on the Breitbart posting during the afternoon of 19 July.  The WH, which doesn’t consider Fox News to be a real news source and has given its imprimatur to the 'Faux News' label that is used today by most collectivist outlets, apparently gave the highest credence to every blogger it encountered that afternoon and hip drew the decision to get Sherrod out before the evening news cycle.

The above timeline is a matter of record that can be reconstructed at will from the FCC archive.  What should be especially interesting is to review the original Breitbart video post, and then make a straight-faced case that that segment was sufficient for any kind of precipitous action, let alone a very public dismissal, by national institutions supposedly run under adult supervision.

[23jul2010 update] In a discussion with KVMR News Director Paul Emery today, he told me there was evidence that Fox News wrongly attacked Ms Sherrod on the air before she was fired.  The evidence he emailed me is on this MSNBC program.  The indictement starts with a Fox News clip which begins with the newscaster saying, "Breaking news tonight ... ", indicating clearly that it was broadcast after the afternoon firing of Ms Sherrod.  The rest of the MSNBC program presents numerous other Fox News clips with anchor Rachel Maddow tying it all together in a sequence that somehow omits the needed timeline to nail Fox News.  In fact, all the clips shown seem to be of the post-firing evening programs.  In trying to get to the bottom of who did what when, does someone have any time related material of what Fox News broadcast before the afternoon firing?  If Fox News screwed up and then covered up, I want to post it.

But true to form, Ms Maddow, a handsome looking woman with a mouth like a razor, comes across convincing her viewers that Fox News fired Ms Sherrod.  Maddow is good, I almost believed her myself until it suddenly occurred to me that there was something in the middle called the United States Government and the Obama Administration that may also have had a hand in it.  Instead, Maddow makes out that the government was a sock puppet in which Fox News had its hand.

What a day! (updated 22jul2010)

George Rebane

It’s hard to put all this together.  Dept of Ag staffer Ms Sherrod got unjustly condemned by the NAACP, and then fired by the White House after President Obama was briefed on the matter.  Now after looking at NAACP’s full video, everyone rushed to back pedal, apologize, and then Obama ordered her to be rehired.  Ag Secretary Vilsack spent some considerable time in front of reporters falling on his sword.

Meanwhile the leftwingers in chorus and perfect key blamed the whole thing on Fox News.  If Reagan was identified as the ‘teflon President’, then I don’t think Dupont has yet invented the frictionless cover that can match what Obama has pulled over his administration.

Another revelation today was that Obama’s stimulus monies go to fund only projects that pay the workers union scale whether they belong to a union or not.  This adds an automatic 20% to the taxpayers’ bill, and removes the competitive advantage of union-free companies.  Somehow no one on the left is dunning their media for not reporting this.  It was the White House's discredited Fox News who had to break this story.  Remember Fox News, the outfit that other real news organizations were told to shun, and, apparently the news organization that the White House most listens to if they want to find out what’s really happening out there.

Piling on were the dirt bag members of ‘Journolist’ – the now-shuttered leftwing outfit of ‘opinion based journalists’ who conspired successfully through emails to divert the nation’s attention from  Obama’s relationship with the Rev Wright by publishing arbitrary and scurrilous charges of racism against various Republicans.  Tonight we also heard NPR’s Mara Liasson distinguish that group’s membership to also have ‘objective journalists’.  But they leave it to us to puzzle out who is on first.  Like with Climategate, someone ought to write a book.

All of this makes commentators like me on the internet remind everyone again that we are not journalists.  Journalism has been a self-preening and unexamined fraternity for too long.  The only 'profession' in still lower esteem in the public eye are politicians and the lawyers, cadres of whom are now stumbling over each other rushing to represent Ms Sherrod.  Journalism’s few members who can still stand to look in the mirror should find a new word to describe what they do – calling yourself a journalist will no longer serve.

[22jul2010 update]  Fred Barnes, of JournoList’s cited targets of opportunity, wrote a piece in the 22jul10 WSJ.  His words bear on my recent posts on journalists and support assessments on what the profession has become.  In a telling paragraph Barnes also covers racism, another recent topic on RR.

What was particularly pathetic about the scheme to smear Mr. Obama's critics was labeling them as racists. The accusation has been made so frequently in recent years, without evidence to back it up, that it has little effect. It's now the last refuge of liberal scoundrels.

He concludes that “it was sad to see what journalism, or at least a segment of it, had come to.”

Fred and Margie’s Odyssey

George Rebane

Fred and Margie Buhler are established pillars of our community.  They volunteer and serve on boards, commissions, and organizations to the benefit of all who live here.  Recently they took a leave (here) from the Nevada County Friends of the Military, an organization they helped found, packed up their magnificent fifth-wheel, and headed overland to Alaska.

 

Their great northern odyssey began with some fits, starts, and detours, but soon their noses were pointed north and off they went to the land of the midnight sun.  Both Fred and Margie are excellent photogs and have the equipment to match their talents.  They immediately started a trip blog and began posting their adventures accompanied by lavish picture galleries of the places, scenery, and wildlife (see photo above) they encountered.

Jo Ann and I are fortunate to count them as friends, and have been in regular email contact with the intrepid travelers.  As their route took them deeper into Canada, their travel blog’s posts became a veritable National Geographic account of the country they were passing through.  The photography was especially something to look forward to as they took time every few days to publish another chapter of their odyssey.  To me it seemed that Fred and Margie’s audience was too narrow – in a sense they and their adventures belong to all of us.

I asked Fred if he and Margie would mind sharing the Buhler illustrated trip diary with RR readers and the rest of the community.   They graciously consented, and so here is the link to an excellent dose of vicarious adventure.  Put it in your favorites and enjoy!

CNN continues as a forum to the ousted …

George Rebane

Everyone who follows what’s happening in the country knows that Mark Williams and the Republican-owned Tea Party Express was ousted from the Tea Party Federation of which the Tea Party Patriots movement is the largest member.  Mark Williams was accused of racist remarks he wrote in response to the recent NAACP resolution about the Tea Party movement.  (more here and here)

What is now a concern to the TPP is why CNN continues to give Williams air time to argue his case.  The answer is fairly obvious; as a liberal voice CNN knows it can damage the TP movement by continuing to broadcast interviews with Williams.  The audience not in the know about the structure and make-up of the TP movement can therefore be convinced that its accusers of racism are on the mark, and therefore they can chalk the whole TP ball of wax up on the Ku Klux Klan side of the ledger.  Yellow journalism comes in many hues.

Rent-a-Government

George Rebane

Hey, it’s the new wave sweeping the country.  More and more cities and counties are hiring out their core services to neighboring jurisdictions and private enterprises.  Most of these measures are driven by runaway public sector compensation packages that the local electeds just let get out of hand, some like Maywood, CA (see here) came to grief through just plain malfeasance, and others saved the day exercising fiscal prophylactics.

Tamara Audi writes in ‘Cities Rent Police, Janitors to Save Cash’ –

After years of whittling staff and cutting back on services, towns and cities are now outsourcing some of the most basic functions of local government, from policing to trash collection. Services that cities can no longer afford to provide are being contracted to private vendors, counties or even neighboring towns. … The move saves cities budget-crushing costs of employee benefits like health insurance and retirement. Critics say contracting means giving up local control and personalized services. … Cities say they have little choice. Municipalities across the U.S. will face a projected shortfall of $56 to $86 billion between 2010 and 2012, according to a report from the National League of Cities.

Our own Nevada County Supervisors just passed a resolution to have Recology, a waste management contractor, increase its services at the local county dump or, more accurately, our ‘transfer station’ since the stuff eventually gets hauled away to a distant landfill.  They figure this will save the county about $75K a year, and these days every penny counts.  I guess we can file this little item under fiscal prophylactics, which file, I’m happy to say, has been well added to over the last several years.

Unfortunately, looking at the wider horizons, these cost saving measures are coming a day late and more than a dollar short for most places.  I’m sure each of the affected jurisdictions had their own bell ringers who brought the pilfering of the public purse by the public service unions to the attention of local voters.  As were my colleagues and I (e.g. see my columns in the online Union) here in the foothills, they also were shouted down by their local know-nothings, and charged with falsely accusing the selfless public service employees of bankrupting the hands that fed them.

The important thing to keep in mind is that these same progressives have learned nothing from such developments, and continue their opposition to fiscal responsibility at every turn and at all levels of government – tax, borrow, print, and spend.   Those who oppose such social philandering are accused of polarizing the country.  The alternative is to walk off the cliff with them arm in arm.

Who is a Racist?

George Rebane

We recently took a look at an operational definition of Socialist; this is an attempt to serve up the same treatment for ‘Racist’.   The notions of racism and racists have been bandied about in the public forum with ever increasing frequency since the Civil Rights Act of 1957.  Had we been playing racist paintball instead, I suspect that almost all of us would have a splatter or two that hit us from more directions than we can count.  Calling someone a racist has become a national pastime to the point that the label is now almost irrelevant for understanding.

 

The respected American Heritage (unabridged) Dictionary defines ‘race’ as –

1. A local geographic or global human population distinguished as a more or less distinct group by genetically transmitted physical characteristics.
2. A group of people united or classified together on the basis of common history, nationality, or geographic distribution.
3. A genealogical line; a lineage.

And ‘racism’ is defined as –

1. The belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others.
2. Discrimination or prejudice based on race.

‘Racist’ is not explicitly defined, but it is pretty clear that a racist is a person who believes in or practices racism as defined above.

Rage, Concern, and Opinions for Hire

George Rebane

You’ve heard of the old custom of hiring mourners to walk behind the hearse loudly wailing their ‘sorrow’ about the dear departed.  Well, the unions have now adopted that approach for putting pickets in front of establishments they don’t like or agree with.  They advertize and hire unemployed non-union people to carry signs, holler, shout, and generally act as if they were the genuine article instead of an impersonation of the aggrieved union member (more here).

The unions’ argument is that if the picketed company can hire non-union workers, then the union can hire non-union picketers.  Interesting little piece of logic that.  The hired non-union workers are on the job for the dual purpose of making money for themselves, and for producing goods or services for the hiring company.  Both parties to the deal are principals of their own interests.

Not so with the union’s new hirelings.  Its represented members are nowhere in sight.  Their surrogate disappointment (rage?) is present and visible/audible in the form of mercenaries expressing faux agitation who actually “don’t care” for the issues at hand, and are there because “it’s something to do while you find something better.”  They are not principals, and they usually get paid minimum wage plus a bit.  (Maybe they should also strike for union scale wages instead.)

In former times one was taught to believe that the protesting people with signs were there voicing their own opinions and concerns, and they were doing it at a cost to themselves.  They themselves were the ones denied work, or working conditions, or wages, or whatnot.  And they expressed that by being there to personally communicate those desires and frustrations.  Should these stand-ins be required to wear some kind of identifiable marker so that the intended onlookers are not fooled?

In this new age of entitlement mentality, it seems that even during recessions there are classes of American workers who will not do certain kinds of work.  These union members know their rights to have better jobs and higher wages, and they are quite satisfied with more desperate Americans and even illegal entrants doing all that unacceptable work.  Now it seems that the unions have given rise to yet another line of such employment to attract people from south of the border.  Is this not a land of opportunity or what?

Reconquista Preview

George Rebane

Maywood, California – please start with this report from the LA Times.

Now read this more fully detailed report below by syndicated radio commentator Roger Hedgecock.  The Hispanic promoters of Reconquista (here and here) still believe that America and Mexico are separated by an easily crossed chain link fence instead of a cultural chasm that has developed over centuries.  (H/T to RR reader for this.)

==========

Boasting a population that is 97% Hispanic, more than half foreign born, and 40% illegal, the Los Angeles County, Calif., incorporated city of Maywood has achieved the Reconquista goal. It is now as lawless and chaotic as any place in Mexico . Maywood is a warning to every city and town in America .
 
The Maywood City Council announced this week that after years of radical policies, corruption and scandal, the city was broke and all city employees would be laid off and essential city services contracted out to neighboring cities or to L.A. County government.
 
How did this happen? Until recently, Maywood was the model for "brown power" politics. 

Washington Parasitics

George Rebane

The progressives in Congress keep rolling over the country like a cloud of locusts.  Next week President Obama will sign his ‘finance reform’ bill that just passed Congress.  The legislation will do nothing to secure us against the kind of financial calamity we went through, but will create another very expensive and large government department, and make us uncompetitive in the world’s financial markets.

 

Fannie and Freddie are untouched and continue to make and guarantee disastrous loans.  The legislative goads to irresponsible consumer borrowing remain in place.  The causes of the current recession remain politicized and unstudied.  Remember that the ballyhooed financial commission empanelled to figure all this out and then recommend new legislation will not even issue its report until after the election.  When the Dems figured out they may lose the key to their congressional steamroller, they exposed their hand and said ‘Hell, let’s get done what we were going to do anyway, commission report or no commission report.’

This 2,000 plus page monstrosity is an iceberg, the part we see is already bad and the parts that will come to light in coming months (years?) are guaranteed to be worse.  Our financial industry was supposed to be the great hope to fill in for American manufacturing that has and continues to go overseas.   Now that possibility will go by the board.

The Alinsky Administration

George Rebane

If free men and women are allowed to write history in the coming years, this administration will be recorded as the most destructive to American sovereignty and the quality of life of its citizens since independence was declared.

At this time over 55% of Americans judge President Barack Hussein Obama to be a socialist.  They join their assessment with that of world leaders ranging from the recent Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd through Hugo Chavez to most of the EU heads of state.  I do not agree with them, and believe that evidence is mounting that will show his true colors to fly with those of his political mentors, primarily those of the communist revolutionary Saul Alinsky (1909 – 1972). 

But actions speak louder than words, and his success in fundamentally transforming us from a market-driven capitalist country to an opposite, which only our now-proscribed Judeo-Christian God knows, are telling the tale.

The recent recess appointment of the post-socialist (see ‘Who is a Socialist?’) Dr Donald Berwick to become the commissar of almost one fifth of our economy – yes, it will be bigger than Obamacare – confirms the intent and direction of this president’s hopeful change for the United States.  The below appended direct quotes that underline Berwick’s overall political philosophy and his intended structure of the nation’s command healthcare system are taken from the 15jul10 WSJ column by Daniel Henninger.

Please read them carefully and make sure that the focus stays on Obama and not Berwick.  Obama can replace Berwick with any number of likeminded commissars that match the ones with whom he has already lined the halls of the White House.  Saul Alinsky lives.

It Ain't Working

George Rebane

 

For more on how all this stimulus is working out see here. 

Who is a Socialist?

George Rebane

“The American People will take Socialism, but they won’t take the label.”  Upton Sinclair

[The two short pieces that follow define socialism – the first is mine and the second was penned by RR reader and lifelong Nevada County resident Michael McDaniel.  The timing of these definitions is in response to the question raised by KVMR News Director Paul Emery on a recent call-in program with me.]

These days we all talk about people being or acting like right wingers, left wingers, liberals, conservatives, progressives, capitalists, libertarians, communists, …, and socialists.  Since I’m probably guiltier than most in hanging such ideology tinged labels around people’s necks (some of them even take exception to this) I will try to clarify what I mean by at least one of these labels – socialist.

First, we dispense with the nonsense that someone has to have ALL the consensus attributes of a socialist or whatever to be called such.  If that were the case, information summarizing labels and stereotyping efficiencies would disappear and language would collapse – not gonna happen.  BTW, if you thought this is going to be some kind of tip-toeing, politically correct treatise, please turn the page.

Socialism is a form of governance that seeks as its endgame the state ownership of the means of production and distribution which it executes through a centralized process of planning and control.  Socialism teaches that it can be achieved through a bit by piece transformation of capitalism, there need be no sudden overturn of the existing system or “basic character of the state”.  And in the end we will have a salubrious and classless environment that distributes goods and services to individuals on some yet to-be-defined basis of people’s deeds – i.e. “the quantity and quality of work done.”

The reason that socialism’s endgame is yet TBD is that we know of no country that has been able to carry out this transition to its terminus.  Things have always fallen apart before getting there, so that we don’t even know if there is any there there.  In short, no sustainable socialist state has yet been achieved.  But the pace of attempts toward that goal have picked up as capitalism, riding on the back of accelerating technology, has dunned the dumb and the dear for the clever and the capable.

The natural opening that this course of events has provided is a ready path to sinecures and power for politicians.  All they have to promise to the over-priced and under-educated is ‘equality’ through the forced redistribution of wealth.  In a pure democracy – a necessary pre-condition, see the 17th amendment – this is a lead pipe cinch and even has a name, the Peter/Paul Principle.

By now the careful reader may be asking, ‘well, what then is communism?’  Communism has a stateless endpoint populated by a classless people who work altruistically to produce at the best of their abilities for which they are to receive goods and services to satisfy their needs.  The methodology to operate such a society is also TBD, no one yet has created such a happy land.

But communism teaches that the road to achieve it must start with a fundamental transformation that rapidly changes the “basic character of the state” – we’re here talking revolution, no deliberate pace or hemming and hawing.  The direct result of this is the immediate installation of an all-powerful state run by elites ‘serving’ the classless people.  The state takes immediate ownership of all means of production and distribution, and, of course, does all the planning and control.  And as the succeeding generations are ‘educated’ toward the goal of the acculturated ‘communist man’, Stalin’s succinct prescription comes to mind – ‘To make an omelet, one has to break a few eggs.’

With this we can now define a socialist as one who, in a pre-socialist environment, makes political decisions and conducts himself in the daily round so as to promote (Cass Sunstein’s ‘nudge’ comes to mind) his society on the path to the socialist goal described above.

I can hear the howls already – ‘I have no intention of going all the way to socialism, I just think things will be better with a little progress toward state ownership, planning, and control.  I’m more nuanced than that you simplistic sumbich!’  Well friend, you may indeed be more nuanced than that.  But I don’t know your degree of nuancing (new word), and I’m sure that it’s not the same as that of your friend there who is now pushing for the same ‘reforms’.  If you’re both on the apparent road to socialism, then we’ll call you socialists for short.  It sure as hell communicates effectively because if I tell any third person that you are a socialist, then he’ll be able to reliably predict your near-term political decisions and conduct as the events of the days unfold.  And that’s all that I aim to do by hanging that little label around your neck.

I do consider socialism a misguided form of governance destructive to human aspirations and the human spirit.  But my calling someone a socialist is not an insult any more than their calling me a conservative or right-winger or whatever that communicates to their audience.  And I apply a similar protocol to any of the other labels the more detailed definitions can be teased out of me at some future time.  Nuff said.

 

[The following contribution by Michael McDaniel on socialism is from an email to me.  It refers to the above noted KVMR program hosted by Paul Emery, and is here used by permission.]

During your KVMR interview the subject of being labeled or called a socialist was discussed.  It was clear to listeners that the host was a card carrying member of the 'socialist movement.'  What was not clear is why such card carrying members dislike or disapprove of being called socialist.  Does the term socialist need to be clearly defined in order to allow it to be used? Why are capitalists not ashamed of being called capitalists?

The term socialist is used as a disparaging label in our home.  Socialists are anti-liberty. Socialism or to promote the enslavement of the individual to the collective is immoral and anti-American ("life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness").   Socialists believe that the correct equation designed and implemented via 'planners', 'bureaucrats', 'czars', 'regulations', 'entitlements', 'debt' provide the elixir of equality or social justice.

We believe that social justice or equality is a birthright byproduct of our God given liberty and not the byproduct of government manipulation.  It is a difficult argument at the foundation of the progressive philosophy or socialism; that men acting in their own self interest in private enterprise are inherently more 'evil' than the same men put into positions of power in government. 

A caller noted that being called a socialist somehow deprived them of being patriotic.  I believe that history has shown that socialist/communist communities are greatly patriotic (maybe too patriotic).  There is irony in the terms "patriot" and "patriotic."  For it was our country's original patriots who fought against the homeland; yet being patriotic currently means love of country... but I digress.

The term "Progressive" needs to be examined as well.  Progressivism is a 'gateway' philosophy. The logical progression (forgive the pun) is to have a progressive movement evolve into a socialist movement which evolves into a communist movement... Throughout this enslaving evolution the liberty of the individual is robbed to increase the power of government.

Again, it is a difficult argument at the foundation of the progressive philosophy; that men acting in their own self interest in private enterprise are inherently more 'evil' than the same men put into positions of absolute power in government.

Ruminations - 14jul2010 (updated)

George Rebane

- Government funded journalism
- NAACP’s racist relevance
- Taliban’s hidden murder campaign
- Hobbes’ Leviathan redux

In the 14jul10 WSJ ‘Journalism Needs Government Help’, Dr Lee Bollinger, president of Columbia University, argues for government funding of our fourth estate.  This would bring our already leftwing news dealers up to par with the similar state sponsored enterprises in the EU (e.g. BBC), China (Xinhua), and middle east (al Jazeera).  The argument goes that we have already demonstrated with PBS and NPR that our government doesn’t mess with editorial content (but they do seem to have problems with corporate sponsored content), therefore state subsidies should be expanded to cover all.  And the man seems dead serious here; there wasn’t a smiley face in the whole article.  Bollinger’s magnificent blind spot is highlighted by his apparent certainty that academe also remains a centrist American institution in spite of massive cash infusions from federal and state sources.

The NAACP has now declared the Tea Party movement (which includes the Tea Party Patriots of which I am a member) a racist enterprise that will prove to be malignant on America’s body politic.  In 1968 after Martin Luther King was assassinated, I joined the NAACP to protest that racist killing, and show solidarity with the efforts to grow a race neutral America.  Perhaps many of us whites did so, because its membership jumped after the assassination.  Then when the organization responded by becoming anti-white racist itself, most of us let our memberships lapse.  An opportunity was lost and the NAACP began struggling for relevance over the next decades as the world moved on, and goodly prospects for blacks bloomed across the land (albeit some with Sec 8 fertilizer).  Now it has played its desperate race card again to show that its true colors have not changed under generations of post-MLK leadership.

The Taliban continues in its persistent murder campaign against working Afghan women who sometimes are the only support of their families in that war-torn country.  They are being killed on a regular basis for going against warnings delivered to them in the form of surreptitious ‘night letters’.  You see, working might put the women in the proximity of men in a manner that is proscribed by that religion of peace.  The Taliban solution to all such infractions is death, carried out by their raghead assassins.  In concert with the administration’s policy to overlook/suppress any Islamic connections to worldwide incivility, the lame stream media predictably covers none of these atrocities.  Of course, our leftwing feminist organizations have had their mouths firmly duct-taped on such matters for years – women are only brutalized in western countries.

Time to add Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan to our reading list.  Most of us have studied the Hobbesian duality of individual liberty leading to anarchy vs the impressed peace and order under a leviathan state.  The social philosophy of Hobbes, 'the west’s first political scientist', informed the deliberations of both our Founders and Karl Marx, one of the intellectual progenitors of the current administration.  Now the classic essay is available in a new edition “containing commentaries from scholars writing for general audiences” and edited by Ian Shapiro.  This volume would nicely complement your library of Bastiat's The Law, von Mises' Human Action, Hayek's Road to Serfdom, Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson, and Friedman's Free to Choose.

[update]  On the local scene, an RR reader emails me that the Nevada County's 2009-2010 Grand Jury report seems to be stuck in some bureaucratic or procedural labyrinth.  They are about two weeks late while other counties have already released their grand jury reports and put them on their websites.  Perhaps others are also waiting for some of the important items that this report is supposed to address.  Our GJ website is here.

KVMR Conversation – Tea Party Patriots (updated)

George Rebane

Tonight on KVMR FM89.5 during 6:30 to 7:00pm the station’s News Director Paul Emery and I will be talking about the Tea Party movement and the Tea Party Patriots.  The program will also include a listener call-in segment.  To those interested readers, my apologies for any inconvenience that the lateness of this notice may cause; still not used to all this media stuff.  Then again as some may wish, I may not last long enough to worry about getting used to it ;-)

[update] My friend Russ Steele of NCMW just called to remind me that KVMR also streams its programming on the web (here), so you can listen to my mumblings wherever you are.  The noted time slot is Pacific Daylight Time.  Thanks Russ, a word from the wise is always appreciated.

A Peek at Our Local Democrats

George Rebane

It’s always good to see and attempt to understand how the local left views the world and, more importantly, things around our neck of the woods.  This is part and parcel of the RR policy to bring you news from across no-man’s land untrammeled by my views.  Here is the June newsletter of the Nevada County Democrats with an extracted graphic to whet your curiosity shown below.  Now one might ask why the county Republicans can't get their act together and produce a fine pdf like our Democrat neighbors.

 

Obamacare's New Lows

Think losing that leg or eye for your country still counts.  Well, the profligate spenders in Congress have found another way to lower the bar of decency for our new national healthcare system.  Here's an extract from the Tea Party Patriots newsletter, and another proof of their extremist views.  We really did have to pass it to find out what's in it - and dear reader, this road of discovery is yet long and full of surprises.

The health care overhaul passed by Congress and signed into law by President Obama earlier this year contains a new tax on medical devices such as prosthetic limbs, pacemakers, and wheelchairs. This tax, which its proponents claim will raise $20 billion over the next ten years, contains no exemption for the nation's 22 million veterans. In fact, Senate Democrats specifically refused to exempt veterans from the tax.

On March 24 2010, Senate Democrats rejected an amendment offered by Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) to the healthcare bill. This amendment (SA 3644) would have prevented the medical device tax from hitting veterans covered by the Veterans Healthcare Program or TRICARE for Life. This amendment was rejected by a vote of 44-54. All but five Democrat senators voted in favor of retaining the tax for veterans.