Rebane's Ruminations

Belated but Important (updated)

George Rebane

Paul Emery of KVMR sent me an email during a time that I have a hiatus in checking emails.  He asked me to post an announcement of an interview that he would have with Dave Wells, Executive Director of the Building Standards Commission about the new sprinkler ordinance.  It aired tonight at 6:07pm.  Paul said that “This is one issue that we probably agree on.”  Perhaps this five minute interview can be posted on the KVMR website (please).  [update] Just received this MP3 file of the interview from Paul.  It is quite revealing of how nameless and faceless bureaucracies jam this regulatory crap down our throats.  Worth a listen; Paul does a good job in getting out the info.  And here's the KVMR link.  This is a follow-up of 'What if we just say NO'.

Building codes.mp3 web

A hopeful report this evening from Fox News.  It was the ‘Portland Christmas Tree Bomber’ Mohamed Osman Mohamud’s father who first alerted the FBI that his son was turning into a raghead.  This is a piece of hopeful and heartening news that a loyal American Muslim had the courage and the decency to do the right thing when he saw his son being irretrievably radicalized.  Mr Mohamud saved countless lives while standing with America in its fight against radical Islam.  Please tell people about this.

Will someone call the question? Please!

George Rebane

David Skeel of the Weekly Standard picks up a notion frequently discussed in these pages – the federalization of California and the attendant national Great Divide (more here).  In his article ‘Give States a Way to Go Bankrupt’ he argues that "the states are the next frontier in “too big to fail.” In the topsy-turvy world we now inhabit, letting states file for bankruptcy to shed some of their obligations could save American taxpayers a great deal of money".

Given the divisive condition of the country and its irretrievable fiscal condition, it is clearly time to start doing more than just thinking about such contingencies.  Along the same vein Russ Steele on NCMW asks ‘Is this an idea worth pursuing?’, to the comment stream of which I added –

In a TBD shape and form California will be federalized. I do agree that in its present form the state is essentially ungovernable. To parse it into two or more states does not require that we transit through territorial status. There are other mechanisms available to bring this about.

A hopeful sign is that there may be enough leftwingers who believe it is they and their socialist ways that actually generate the country's wealth and pull the rest of us along. It is my heartfelt recommendation that whenever and wherever such views are encountered, that they should be strongly endorsed and their purveyors congratulated for their keen insight. If we work it right, maybe we can get them to kick us out.

Scattershots – 27nov2010

George Rebane

- Forest for the Trees – Al Gore’s Epiphany
- Another Chapter from the Religion of Peace

These entries struck me as having religion for their common denominator.

After years of ignoring ample financial, environmental, and engineering data about the inadvisability of turning corn into ethanol, Al Gore has admitted to seeing the light.  In his epiphany he also admitted that part of his enthusiastic promotion of the ethanol fiasco might have had something to do with getting elected to political office.  But what the sumbich still doesn’t see is that ethanol is just one scraggly tree in a forest of stunted and stillborn ecological sacraments.  More here.

The FBI sprung the trap on Mohamed Osman Mohamud, another American Muslim who was caught in the act of attempting to trigger what he thought was a devastating car bomb parked in the middle of a throng of people mostly consisting of women and children.  They had gathered in downtown Portland, Oregon for the annual lighting ceremony of the city’s big Christmas tree.  In his own words the bomber wanted people "attacked in their own element with their families celebrating the holidays".

This 19-year-old naturalized US citizen of Somali extraction was apparently radicalized through the internet.  Fortunately the FBI intercepted and played along with his intentions as the car bomb was constructed and emplaced.  Had the device been real, this Muslim would have shredded the bodies of tens of holiday celebrants, and the lives of hundreds of their relatives.

That the raghead was apprehended by the FBI in such a sting operation may indicate that our country’s security infrastructure is finally beginning to include the ‘religion of peace’ in their profiling (gasp!) of most likely terrorists.  It is clear now that they live among us and share some telling characteristics.  The Reverend Bayes lives!  More here.

The Latest Volley from the Local Left

George Rebane

Yesterday morning, while waiting on PG&E’s ‘extended outage’ line listening to elevator music, I received an email from Russ Steele that contained a copy of the latest effluent directed at me personally by Jeff Pelline and his friend Steven Frisch.  For your edification you can read the original and its comment stream on Pelline’s blog here.  The piece contained the usual characterizations that regular readers have seen many times before in these pages and, presumably elsewhere.  The added descriptors worth noting were “slimy” and “pseudo-intellectual masturbation”.

Yet reading that screed, one comes away with the feeling that somewhere in the bowels of it there is still a desire to bring us in from the frozen world of ignorance into which we have been consigned.  I don’t know whether that is really possible in this “hyperpartisan country”, because the ‘in’ into which they want to bring us is a world of misery beyond belief.

We are now a nation with a widely recognized broken educational system whose publicly supported part is outputting its third generation of graduates in the humanities who have been grounded in the collectivist anti-American mantra.  These people open their eyes every morning and see a very different world from the one that I see.

They see themselves in a country that has been a scourge on mankind, one whose selfish consumption has deprived other peoples of their just due, and in the process visited on them all sorts of evils and bedevilments.  Also a country that generates obscene amounts of wealth which it allows to be husbanded in the most inequitable of ways.  In short, a country that needs radical social salvation possible only through a strong and thriving central authority with the wisdom to regulate and redistribute ‘fairly’ throughout the land.  And that is a land whose people are yearning for collective world order, where each will produce according to his abilities and receive according to his needs.  Of course, such abilities and needs will be determined by distant councils wherein lies all beneficial knowledge and wisdom.

Against such ‘educated’ legions of the left, there remain voices such as mine.  And no matter how insignificant, small, ignorant, evil, and irrelevant we are judged to be, somehow our very existence remains a constant irritant to those whose collectivist stratagems we reject.  As if, upon reading and meditating on our words, a person would conclude that the progressive prescriptions of the left are utterly bankrupt of what they promise.

Having seen, lived in, and studied other social orders for the many years of my life, I cannot but conclude that America, with all its warts, is an historically exceptional country that has brought to the world ideas, products, and benefices beyond all expectation.  A land that, though hobbled in many ways today, can still do that.  And those riches of body and soul were made possible by free Americans under a government restrained, with individuals making their own decisions on how to spend their energies and treasure.

The politically incorrect Thanksgiving Story

George Rebane

The nationally syndicated conservative commentator John Stossel reminds us of the deeper history behind America’s first Thanksgiving celebrated by the Pilgrims and their Indian neighbors.   This piece was published yesterday and it is presented here in its entirety.  Stossel’s reminder adds a needed dimension to all the things with which we Americans have been blessed, and should today give thanks to Him who blessed us.  (H/T to the RR reader for the heads up on the printed word, and subsequently, the attending image.)

=====

 

Happy Starvation Day by John Stossel

Had today's political class been in power in 1623, tomorrow's holiday would have been called "Starvation Day" instead of Thanksgiving. Of course, most of us wouldn't be alive to celebrate it.
 
Every year around this time, schoolchildren are taught about that wonderful day when Pilgrims and Native Americans shared the fruits of the harvest. But the first Thanksgiving in 1623 almost didn't happen.
 
Long before the failure of modern socialism, the earliest European settlers gave us a dramatic demonstration of the fatal flaws of collectivism. Unfortunately, few Americans today know it.
 

California – the Next Carbon Marketplace

George Rebane

Now that Prop23 has crashed and burned, AB32 will ravage the countryside and trading carbon credits will join tulip bulbs, Florida swamp land, and south sea islands in their historical niche of foolish markets.  In the last years people have lost their shirts trying to get a market going trading this ersatz commodity.  But as long as governments mandate CO2 emission limits along with the right to buy and sell such permissions, there is money to be made.

It is for this reason that major trading houses and consortiums have backed all kinds of ‘green laws’ that are based on the pronouncement that CO2, what all critters exhale, is a toxic gas.  They know that if money, lots of money, for such credits can be set in motion, then they can position themselves in the cash conduits and make a pile for themselves.

We recall that carbon credits are simply mandated ‘mother may I’ slips that will permit their holders to emit CO2 above and beyond the nominal limits set by agencies such as CARB.  Only so many of them will be issued/sold by the government, so they will become a valuable item for carbon emitting factories, utilities, and transportation firms.  The idea is to let the marketplace set their price so that emitters and investors can buy and sell them according to what they perceive the future market demand for them will be.

What if it’s all a show, or not? (updated 24nov2010)

George Rebane

The yuan is too expensive, the dollar is tanking, the US has not a clue about how to pay its debts and revive the economy, China and a bunch of other countries are holding trillions of dollars in their reserves, trade is lopsided, the mid-east is an endless mess, the EU is entering a financial fiasco … - it looks like the time has come to kick the can down the road and take everyone’s eye of the ball for a bit.

So here’s a far out scenario that is not so far out when conniving governments get together.  Obama has now demonstrated to the world that he is inexperienced and ready to compromise American sovereignty at every turn.  He is also a weak president, one who invites our natural antagonists/enemies to take advantage of his tenure.  All this has greatly weakened the world’s premier reserve currency much to the detriment of everyone.  Not that they don’t want us to eventually ‘eat sh__ and die’, but they don’t want us to do it too quickly.  They’re not ready for that just yet, and we appear to be fading too fast.

So wouldn’t an international crisis involving the usual parties be in order, doing what everyone knows they can and want to do anyway.  It seems if we could just cook one of those up in the right way, then the US could show its strength and the dollar would hang on for a bit longer.

From stage left enter one Chinese SSBN (nuclear missile submarine) that somehow penetrates our broad area SSN (attack submarine) patrols and probably the most sophisticated undersea surveillance sonar networks in existence (off our west coast), and winds up less than a hundred miles from  the southern California coast near Vandenberg AFB.  The SSBN opens one of its tubes and launches a missile away from the shoreline.  Over the decades Southern Californians have seen many of these missile launches from Vandenberg to impact areas at Eniwetok and Bikini atolls.  No panic is caused, but inevitably someone in the area east of Point Conception notices that the contrail does not look like it was launched from Vandenberg, it originated from offshore.

The Liberal Mind – Censorship

Accepting a little bit of socialism is the same as taking comfort in that you are a little bit pregnant.

George Rebane

The 21st century liberal cum progressive retains the same views and definitions of censorship that did their Bolshevik progenitors in the early 20th century.  Specifically, if the dissemination of their ideas are not supported by the public purse, then they consider themselves and their message to be victims of censorship.  Also if their message is not imposed by the government onto some media that broadcasts other political ideologues supported through private sponsorship, then they consider themselves to be censored.  As an example, the current issue of withdrawing government funding from NPR has set off all the usual leftwingers from here to Washington screaming that they are being “censored by the government”.

However, on the other side of their view of censorship, we hear them constantly calling for the silencing of conservative/libertarian voices that have followings which the liberals cannot hope to attract.  This occurs at all levels (e.g. even in Nevada County) where frustrated collectivists gather.  They do not see these calls for proscribing their opposition as censorship.  Instead, they wrap such proposed programming pogroms in notions such as ‘fairness’ and ‘balance’ – cf. the Fairness Act and Net Neutrality.  Since only the extreme few will voluntarily listen to their pap, they seek to impose it by the power of the bayonet.  If this means denying certain political free speech that the consumers want, so be it.  But in their minds, that is never seen as censorship.

Ruminations - 22nov2010

George Rebane

- No scanners, no pat downs??!!
- QE2 driving interest rates in the wrong direction
- Hillary on ice, until 2012?
- Palin not ready to run in 2012

Scanners at airports are the latest to get people’s undies in a bundle.  Since last Christmas when the latest Muslim terrorist unsuccessfully tried to touch off the bundle in his undies, scanners are the latest that TSA has come up with to keep the nation secure.  And if you don’t want your stuff looked at in the scanner, you get the now ‘infamous’ pat down that provides an alternative way to save us all.  But those opposed to either are told by the government not to worry because there are only about 85 scanners available for the entire country, and chances are that you won’t run into one to have your stuff peeked at or patted.  If the new security policy made any sense, then why wouldn’t all the other airports without the scanners impose mandatory pat downs?  This is the logic that is only accessible to the progressive mind.

QE2 will have the Fed pump $600B additional dollars into the economy.  It does not take rocket science to predict what this money will do.  Like the trillion plus that preceded it, QE2 will not stimulate the economy by keeping interest rates low.  As witnessed by the behavior of the ten year Treasury, the rest of the world (save Bernanke and Obama) is betting that all QE2 will do is to add to the inflation which the government claims is non-existent.  Note that the ten year Treasury is the new ‘long term’ bond, it used to be the thirty-year Treasury.  But today no one is stupid enough to actually bet that the dollar will survive that long.  You heard it here first – tomorrow’s long term Treasury will mature in five years.

Does anyone know where Hillary is?  She seems to be permanently in the ‘fifth wheel department’ of American diplomacy.   For any real work that used to be done by the State Department, Obama has been using ‘special envoys’.  These individuals report directly to the President and have the added feature of keeping Hillary from being in front of those nosey cameras and mikes.  After all, 2012 starts in 2011, and Democrat pundit James Carville probably put his finger on it.  His statement over the weekend was that if Hillary gave Barry one of her balls, they’d both have two.

Sarah Palin’s contemplating a run for the White House in 2012.  I think that eventually Sarah will make a great candidate, but 2012 is too early.  She needs more experience, experience that she can acquire by continuing to do what she is doing.  And lack of cojones is not the only attribute in question about President Obama.  As aptly demonstrated during the last two years, his inexperience has also cost the country dearly in both the domestic and international arenas.  Having no executive experience on his resume puts him in Palin’s shadow – teleprompter speeches withstanding.  So my advice to both Barry and Sarah for 2012 is to not run – hold back until you are both more seasoned.  In the meantime Hillary will be able to give anyone the Repubs nominate a run for his money.

Winter Wonder Land

George Rebane

Like many folks in Nevada County last night, Jo Ann and I were listening to the limbs crashing down around our house wondering if the next one would come through the roof.  The wet snowfall – ‘Sierra cement’ – wreaked havoc across the foothills and turned out the lights for most of us in western county.  They are still out.  After the sun came up things didn’t get any better, but now we could see the damage and witness the crashing of more ‘widow makers’.

As friends Russ Steele and Bob Crabb report, others were not as fortunate as we (knocking on my noggin).  Both had damage to their houses from falling trees and limbs.

We and the neighbors played generator derby, turning them on and off to save fuel.  It seems that no one knows how long the power will be off.  The damage was so extensive and the outages so many that PG&E crews are swamped.  Calling their customer information number lets you play phone menu until you get to a recorded voice that assures us they are working as hard as they can, and the power will come on when it comes on.  Those who harbored thoughts that the PG&E crews were out there dawdling are, of course, heartened by such reports.

That kind of response was about all that KNCO has been able to put out.  Actually, they have had more information because people call in with outage, downed power lines, and blocked road news.  But PG&E isn’t more forthcoming with the mediat than they are with us.  When I called KNCO about the matter on the media line, I was told that PG&E is a lot less informative today than they were in days of yore when such storms ravaged the area.

My suggestion was for the media to ask PG&E to report how many people have had power restored since we know that about 23,000 accounts lost power.  This number they would surely be able to tell us, and that lets people at least come up with a guesstimate of progress and their own power restoration fortunes.  Again, I was told that PG&E wasn’t very forthcoming with that kind of information.  ‘We don’t know’ is their story, and they’re sticking to it – go suck eggs.

When all else fails, there is a bit of science that can be applied to this informational wasteland.  Some years back physicist Richard Gott came up with some complex reasoning about the termination of unknown processes.  I was able to reduce his arguments to a simple formula that you can apply in a few seconds with a calculator.  The question is ‘given an unkown but observable ongoing process that has been going on for a known period of time, what is the probability that it will terminate in the next interval of a given length?’

In our case the unknown process is PG&E’s repair efforts that will sooner or later include service to our house.  We want to know what is the ‘chance’ that power will be restored in, say, the next four hours.  As I write this, power has been out for about 20 hours at our house.  The formula for computing that power will come on some time during the next four hours is 4/(20 + 4) = 0.167 or one chance out of six.  More formally, if a process has been going on for time T, then  Prob(process ends during next t interval) = t/(T+t).  The complement T/(T+t) is, of course, the probability that it will end sometime after the next t interval.  So the chances that power will be restored to our house more than four hours from now is 5 out of 6 or 0.833.

This, dear reader, is the best that one can do with an absolutely minimal amount of information that is available about an ongoing process.  And this seems to be the exact amount that PG&E is willing to share with us.

And what if we just say NO? (Addended again)

George Rebane

[This the transcript of the 19nov2010 edition of my bi-weekly KVMR-FM 89.5 commentary.  Today's cartoon in the 20nov2010 Union by my friend RL 'Bob' Crabb is on the same topic.  It is here purloined by permission.]

This week I attended the November luncheon meeting of the Nevada County Republican Women Federated, of which I am an Associate Member.  These women are by far the most dynamic and active conservative Republican group in the county.

Supervisor John Spencer was the featured speaker this month, and he chose to give us a Glenn Beckian whiteboard presentation of highlights of the county’s political history over the last twenty years.  It was an excellent summary that ended with an alarming report of the next layer of regulations coming down from state that will cost us more money and reduce our freedoms.

Supervisor John told us of the new state mandate to have all new construction housing in California incorporate inside sprinkler systems.  These new systems will add at least $10,000 to the cost of a house and promise to provide a goodly fraction of their owners with a wet surprise now and then.  The new code calls for the sprinklers not necessarily to put out any insipient fires, but to provide a ‘mist’ that may enable occupants to evacuate the premises.

California’s Visible Insanity (updated 15dec2010)

George Rebane

Silicon Valley, once synonymous with productivity-enhancing innovation, is now looking to make money on feel-good government handouts.

That’s the tag line to ‘California’s Destructive Green Jobs Lobby’ by technology pundit and futurist George Gilder in today’s (16nov10) WSJ.  Our state’s insanity, capped by the failure of Prop23, is now an international embarrassment.   The destruction derby that California entered in 2006 with the passage of AB32 was instantly apparent to most with functioning inter-aural capacity.  RR and NC Media Watch readers became aware of this long ago, and were reminded of the impending disaster on a regular basis.

However, the Destroy America protagonists have prevailed, and the under-educated have no idea yet what the portents of this legislation are.  This is witnessed by the ongoing global warming propaganda show now in progress at UC Davis.  The progressives at all levels (including the local useful idiots) turned out to lobby for ‘green jobs’ improving our economy, and the state’s electorate did not have sufficient tools to understand what was being foisted on them.  Gilder lays it out compactly in his article.

(Prop23) was the California referendum to repeal Assembly Bill 32, the so-called Global Warming Solutions Act, which ratchets the state's economy back to 1990 levels of greenhouse gases by 2020. That's a 30% drop followed by a mandated 80% overall drop by 2050. Together with a $500 billion public-pension overhang, the new energy cap dooms the state to bankruptcy.

The larger tragedy is that “as America’s chief fount of technology, California cannot go down the drain without dragging the rest of the country with it.”

[17nov2010 update] Joel Kotkin at Forbes.com puts a bow on it.  He dissects our problems and the opportunities California daily hands to Texas.  In a telling segment Kotkin points the finger at the California voters whose stupidity (not ignorance) has sealed our fate –

This state of crisis is likely to become the norm for the Golden State. In contrast to other hard-hit states like Pennsylvania, Ohio and Nevada, which all opted for pro-business, fiscally responsible candidates, California voters decisively handed virtually total power to a motley coalition of Democratic-machine politicians, public employee unions, green activists and rent-seeking special interests.

In the new year, the once and again Gov. Jerry Brown, who has some conservative fiscal instincts, will be hard-pressed to convince Democratic legislators who get much of their funding from public-sector unions to trim spending. Perhaps more troubling, Brown’s own extremism on climate change policy–backed by rent-seeking Silicon Valley investors with big bets on renewable fuels–virtually assures a further tightening of a regulatory regime that will slow an economic recovery in every industry from manufacturing and agriculture to home-building.

Everyone knows what’s happening here with the exception of our state’s substantial leftwing, nowhere more exemplified than the legions of local-level choristers of whom Nevada County has its vociferous share.  Ours have the added benefit of being terminally innumerate as they continue hailing the non-existent list to port of our community, election results notwithstanding.

[15dec2010 update]  The overall insane situation is well documented by the celebrated conservative columnist Victor Davis Hanson in his 'Two Californias'.  Thanks to Russ Steele of NCMW for the heads up on this.

Ruminations - 15nov2010

George Rebane

• Radical left says that Tea party is now a thugocracy
• Alan Blinder and economics in the real political world
• EPA comes to help CARB crush California
• Charlie Rangel didn’t have time to get a lawyer (really!)

The Tea Party is now painted as a thugocracy by the progressives and their farther left brethren and cistern ;-)  This is happening at all levels of discourse, just as if the word went out to start the rant from national outlets to local blogs.  The charge is that the new conservative House will not fund the socialist programs put in place by the Barry, Harry, and Nancy show.  Obviously this will “shut down the government” and only legislative thugs would use the appropriations clause (Art I, Sec 9, Clause 7) of the Constitution to do such a thing.  And predictably the Saul Alinsky manual calls for the immediate launch of a vilification campaign which is now under way.

Princeton’s Alan Blinder is perhaps my favorite liberal economist.  His no nonsense visage and prognostications are even on the mark now and then.  But no kudos for his ‘In Defense of Ben Bernanke’ in the 15nov10 WSJ.  There Dr Blinder takes us through a ding-dong school version of Econ 101 presenting a weak apology of his buddy Ben’s QE2.  But what Princeton’s finest doesn’t seem to understand is that economics is not yet (and may never be) a science.

An economy is a complex dynamic system which contains a mighty stochastic element called the human bean.  Not only that, but no matter how reasonable the rank and file humans attempt to be, their best intentions are almost always short-circuited by the politicians they elect whose utility function has only one attribute to be maximized – expected number of years to suck on the public tit.  The math models of Blinder and tribe do not include the resulting policy perfidies, and therefore we hear daily reports of economists being ‘surprised’ and ‘disappointed’ that their predictions are constantly off by hundreds of percent.  Opposing economists weigh in here, and I here.

We now discover that Washington’s EPA is coming to the aid of our state’s CARB in making sure that the enforcement of AB32’s greenhouse gas provisions will be sufficiently draconian on California’s economy.  It’s more of the ‘if the right one don’t a getcha, then the left one will’.  Russ Steele has more of this on NC Media Watch.  The Rebane cars will proudly wear their Prop23 bumper stickers until the sun bleaches them off.

Concluding with a picking from the Capitol Clowns’ Corner, we hear reports that ol’ Charlie Rangel got a mite ired this morning.  Seems that his House trial on multiple charges of years’ long corruption kinda snuck up on him.  For months the rest of the country knew that today was when he would have to stand tall in front of his colleagues, and explain how come he has been paying over a million dollars in lawyers’ fees absconded illegally from various PACs and other no-no funds.  All this in addition to not paying taxes on vacation homes and using rent-controlled living units for his private offices.

So this morning the old irascible scumbag got on his high horse in front of the House panel trying him, and (drum roll please) demanded a delay in the proceedings because he hadn’t yet hired another lawyer.  And then, after excoriating the panel and with high dudgeon firmly strapped on, the sumbich walked out of the hearing room.   Next we will be able to enjoy the Maxine Waters Show that’s also been in the oven for some months now.  No end to the entertainment value coming out of that greatest deliberative body in the world.  Only in Congress.

The Tea Party Movement – here to stay

George Rebane

Last night at the GV Elks Lodge the Nevada County Tea Party Patriots held a packed house celebration of the mid-term election results – California excepted, but Nevada County included.  Jo Ann and I attended with our friends Russ and Ellen Steele.  While both Russ and I did our usual scribbling during the goings on, Russ has already posted an excellent account of the meeting’s main thrust and points - including the new TPP 40-year plan - on NC Media Watch.

The main takeaway of the tea party movement meetings going on nationwide is that, no matter to which faction/segment of the movement you belong, our work in holding the politicians accountable for implementing our principles has only begun.  We the people are here to stay.

This morning’s WSJ contained a good report of some of the happenings in the DC area this weekend.  Our own TPP national co-founder Mark Meckler (AP photo) is prominently featured.  The fundamental message put out during these meetings with freshman members of Congress is that we the people will now organize ourselves into perennial watchdog groups and take an historically keen interest in what’s going on in Washington and the state capitols.  We the people are neither going to trust you politicians nor quietly go back to our knitting until the next election.

One of the strong winds on the back of the tea party movement is that the progressives, starting with Obama and going all the way down to local leftwing bloggers, haven’t a clue of what has happened and what will be going on.  Their seventeen slogan ideology has no breadth within which these events can be encompassed, let alone understood.   And as the producers begin to retake and reduce our government, the socialists will again become a shrinking echo chamber.

And if we are successful, America will be in the best position to climb out of the fiscal and monetary hole we have dug for ourselves.  It will not be easy, and we will always have the progressive parroting pinheads on the sidelines screeching ‘Just tax the rich, tax the rich!!’  But reassuming our world leadership role in a post-Obama world is what the other producing nations of the world have been urging us again at the G-20 meetings in Seoul (here).  The community organizer gets none of this, and is just telling everyone that the really important thing to do between now and 2012 is to stay the collectivist course and massage the message more skillfully.

Things are looking up.

 

On the Road to Weimar (addended)

George Rebane

[This is the submitted copy of my November column in the 13nov10 Union.  The online version is available here.]

You no doubt agree that these are interesting times.  The economy is swimming in molasses, the declared unemployment rate is cemented at about 10% (the actual is closer to one in six, or about 17%), and public debt at all levels of government is soaring beyond amounts that anyone knows how to pay off.  And we just got another ‘surprise’ announcement that California will be running uncontrollable deficits exceeding $20B annually - that on top of half a trillion dollars of unfunded liabilities already cooked into the state’s books.

To add insult to injury, the feds will not let us print the money we need, and are being more than obtuse about letting the folks in Ohio and China fund our rightful and well-deserved spending programs.  This is clearly unfair since the feds can print all the dollars they need as they need them.

The recent election may not have done anything but highlight the deep divisions between our two halves – one saying ‘government get off our backs and let us create the needed jobs’, and the other responding ‘oh no you don’t, you already have too much of our money and have to be watched like a hawk.’  As a solution to our debt problems, print and plunder are the accepted alternatives to growing the economy.

2010 Bastiat Prizes in Journalism

“When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion–when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing–when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favours and approvals–when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you–when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice–you may know that your society is doomed.”  Ayn Rand

George Rebane

The International Policy Institute awards the annual Bastiat Prize and the Bastiat Prize for Online Journalism.  Last night in New York Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal placed first in the Bastiat Prize competition.  Second place was tied by Tim Harford of the Financial Times and freelance writer Jamie Whyte.  James Delingpole who blogs for telegraph.co.uk won the Online Journalism prize.  Delingpole writes –

Why does the Bastiat Prize matter so much? Because it’s about the only prize left which celebrates those true journalistic virtues of scepticism and inquiry which our libtard MSM [mainstream media] has all but abandoned in its eagerness to suck up to whichever bunch of statist shysters currently happen to be in power. It’s about free markets, about small government, about liberty.

Hard to add anything here.  (H/T to two RR readers for this material.)

Veterans' Day 2010

Walking into the Liquidity Trap

George Rebane

QE2 used to be the short moniker of HMS Queen Elizabeth 2, flagship of Cunard’s luxury liners.  You boarded QE2 and forgot your troubles as you were transported across The Pond with more comforts than you could imagine.  Today’s QE2 is the code word most people hear and can’t put together with anything that might affect them, let alone cause them more discomfort than they can imagine.

QE2, the second tranche of ‘quantitative easing’, is planned to pump $600B more newly printed fiat money into the economy backed by nothing but the blather of the Obama administration.  Coming from the Fed, it is intended to turn loose more money from the banks that have been using past bailouts and QE1 to fatten their reserves instead of making needed loans.  The additional money is supposed to continue to ease interest rates and maybe even revive the housing market.  Not a chance.

The real purpose of QE2 is to ‘monetize the debt’ – i.e. to continue destroying the value of the dollar so that our government’s (or should that be governments’) debts and unfunded liabilities can be paid off in worthless dollars that add to up to the quoted nominal amounts that are on the books for the Chinese, Japanese, … lenders and our legions of pensioners.  In short, it is the quiet beginning of the last stage of government make believe that all is still well with our economy.

The thing here is to note that we have entered the dreaded Keynesian ‘liquidity trap’

"There is the possibility ... that after the rate of interest has fallen to a certain level, liquidity preference is virtually absolute in the sense that almost everyone prefers cash to holding a debt at so low a rate of interest. In this event, the monetary authority would have lost effective control."  John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory.

Expanding on this, John Hussman of the Hussman Funds writes –

Alternatively, monetary policy might transmit its effect on the real economy by directly altering the quantity of funds available to lend. In that view, a liquidity trap would be characterized by the failure of real investment and output to expand in response to increases in the monetary base (currency and reserves).
 
In either case, the hallmark of a liquidity trap is that holdings of money become "infinitely elastic." As the monetary base is increased, banks, corporations, and individuals simply choose to hold onto those additional money balances, with no effect on the real economy. The typical Econ 101 chart of this is drawn in terms of "liquidity preference," that is, desired cash holdings plotted against interest rates. When interest rates are high, people choose to hold less cash because cash doesn't earn interest. As interest rates decline toward zero (and especially if the Fed chooses to pay banks interest on cash reserves, which is presently the case), there is no effective difference between holding riskless debt securities (say, Treasury bills) and riskless cash balances, so additional cash balances are simply kept idle.

 

An Evening with Dan and Karl

George Rebane

Last night we attended a reception for re-elected Assemblyman Dan Logue that was held at the Southridge Event Center in Sutter.  The gathering also honored retiring State Senator Sam Aanestad for his years of service.  Sam was presented with a large commemorative resolution that will now grace the wall of his office.  But what made the evening special was that Sam, who knows Karl Rove, told Rove of all the good work that Dan has done in his short time in Sacramento.

Karl Rove, President GW Bush’s top adviser for those just in from Mars, was coming up to Napa for a well-deserved post-election respite when Sam nabbed him and convinced Mr Rove to take a little detour and speak to us for a bit on a Saturday evening.  The ‘us’ were invited guests who had supported Dan during his time in office and contributed to his re-election campaign.  Jo Ann and I were pleasantly surprised when Dan brought Karl Rove by for a shake and a howdy with us as he escorted his special guest to the podium.

After some good and mercifully short prelims, Karl Rove was introduced and began his extemporaneous monologue.  The event was off-the-record with no press people present, and only an occasional itinerant blogger there with his pen, madly scribbling away.  Therefore my report of Rove’s remarks will contain stuff that you may have heard him say on his recent media appearances and published columns.  His own ruminations about the Presidents Bush and Obama will not be included in this little summary.

Rove started by speaking of his early years in government and involvement with Radio Liberty.  Of receiving the ceremonious gratitude of Russian workers after the Fall of the Wall, workers who had listened to the broadcasts in secret and at great peril to themselves and their families.  This tied in with the rights that all Americans have to really choose their political leadership – rights which over 90 million voters exercised during these mid-terms.

The tea party movement was appropriately recognized and lauded for making the difference that it did.  Rove cited that 55% of independent voters had voted Republican, which contributed to the nationwide (sans California) landslides.  He also invited people to look at the Appendix One chart in Romer & Bernstein’s January 2009 report on stimulus job creation.  The fudging that the government has done to attempt justification of its $814B stimulus will not be heralded on MSNBC. (more here)  This job destroying legislation begs the question ‘if the claimed job creation/saving was over 3 million, why stop at $814B?’

Marriage - A Union of Fungible Units

George Rebane

[This is a transcript of my bi-weekly KVMR-FM commentary broadcast on 5 November 2010.]

Two years ago California voters approved Proposition 8 that made marriage, as a union between a man and a woman, a part of the state’s constitution.  According to the people, the debate about ‘marriage’ was over.  But this was not to be.  This August in US District Court, Judge Vaughn R Walker, who is a homosexual, held that this new clause in the state’s constitution violated the US Constitution 14th Amendment’s due process and equal protection clauses.  And marriage became a relationship whose modern meaning was once more set adrift.  (more here and here)

Under Perry v. Schwarzenegger, Judge Walker’s ruling will be appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals where you can bet the farm that it will be upheld, and then further appealed to the Supreme Court.  Most likely, the Supremes will vote 5 to 4 to uphold Judge Walker and declare Prop8 null and void.  And why will we have gone through all that?

MSNBC Suspends Olbermann – Shhh or BFD?

George Rebane

MSNBC has suspended hard left pundit and talk show host Keith Olbermann.  Why is that such a big ... deal?  The reason given was that the man gave money to support the campaigns of three Democratic candidates.  Why cannot any citizen express his right to free political speech by openly contributing to whatever issues or politicians he wishes?

I suspect it’s MSNBC still trying to foist some ‘standard of journalism’ on its rapidly shrinking audience.  Does anyone besides the cadre of useful idiots of the left believe that Olbermann revealed an unknown political bias by such contributions?  A political bias that was carefully kept hidden by his record of well balanced reports and commentaries?  General Electric (owner of MSNBC) is apparently concerned that this revelation on politico.com will reduce even further the market share of their poorly camouflaged hard left outlet.

For my money Keith Obermann and everyone else in the media claiming to be middle-of-the-road, unbiased, balanced, or unbalanced can give to their hearts’ content to support whatever out there they want.  After all, it is their own money.

I’d rather see that kind of open support than the stuff that George Soros and other big swingers are doing in quietly backing organizations that support other organizations that support …, well, you know what I mean.  In partisan political campaigning, everyone gets to toot their own horn no matter its size, and it’s best so long as everyone else also gets to know who the tooters are.

California in Iron Lung - Hard Left Unfazed

George Rebane

Last Tuesday’s inland tsunami washed over most of the land without much effect on the coasts.  With its margins of establishment pullback, the voters shouted loudly that the country has been going in a hard left direction under the leadership of hard leftwingers.  This, of course, is something totally invisible to those with a firm grip on the port rail of our ship of state.  Starting with our fearless leader, the problem was not his policies and legislation - which has ranged from ineffective to ravaging - but that the whole nation couldn’t be better bamboozled.  It was all a problem in messaging.

Well, there was no problem in messaging states like California and New York.  In the once golden state, the unions got out there in force and convinced ‘the blacks, the Hispanics, and selected Asian communities’ to vote the Peter/Paul Principle.  Arguably, these communities contain the most politically innocent among us and have always been ballot box fodder for the left.  2010 was no different.

What continues to amaze me in post-election talks with some liberal friends, is that some of them still don’t believe that government service unions have driven states and hundreds of local jurisdictions across America to the brink of bankruptcy.  They are convinced that all this reporting (e.g. ‘Tough Fiscal Problems Loom for Cities’) is still some rightwing anti-labor conspiracy.  And these are otherwise educated people.  This intellectual chasm is what keeps that sought after middle ground a no-man’s land.

And with Jerry ‘Moonbeam’ Brown back in the saddle, with the same gang in Sacramento that got us where we are, our direction is sealed.  Remember his 'age of limits'; now he's in a position to implement those limits.  The state’s Prop23 failure and Prop25 passage have given the progressives more than enough ammunition to keep California at the bottom of the stack for the indefinite future.

From the liberal lie factory we heard for months that Obamacare was going to provide better medical care, reduce healthcare costs, and lower deficits.  Casual examination of the new law quickly showed that that was not even close.  So starting in September the White House put out the word to the Dems on the stump to stop touting those lies, because the Repubs would take them to the cleaners.  Most listened, and even the lamestream media quit giving mouth-to-mouth to that progressive public policy cadaver.

Now the question is how long (please submit your entries in sealed envelopes) it will be until the “cleantech” economy-boosting, job-creating AB32 propaganda will be quietly pulled from the public view.  Along with the unions, the bay area capitalists are going to have a problem with a Congress that will put subsidizing California’s social experiments on a short leash - all that money invested in an ersatz and subsidized economic future.  The 5nov10 WSJ summarized it with –

... much of the funding to defeat Proposition 23 came from a Silicon Valley that is deeply invested in green technology and its iron lung of government subsidies. After Dodd-Frank, Wall Street is also now more than ever tethered to Washington.

The bottom line is that we continue to be at the mercy of the public service employee unions whose power has made their message short and to the point – ‘Pay us, or we’ll shut you down.’

... In other words, the results in California and New York are an instructive lesson in what happens when government doesn't serve a state but holds it hostage.

California Election Results Summary

 

[H/T to RR reader for nailing this timely synopsis.  Also, an excellent interactive results compendium from the WSJ can be seen here.]

Vote! but only IF …

George Rebane

Election Day.  Everyone in the country is exhorting everyone else to vote regardless of whether they are informed on the issues and candidates or not.  I thought I would continue on the road less travelled by asking you to vote only on ballot items about which you feel informed – leave the others.  And if, after these past two years, governance and public policy are still not your thing, then stay home and don’t mess things up doing something for which you are not prepared.  There, I said it.

 

Frequent RR visitor RL (Bob) Crabb has another one of his clever and thought provoking cartoons in today’s Union (here) and reproduced above.  “Republicans in the wild” indeed.  The first panel says it all about those unshaven, gun-toting knuckledraggers whose intellects seem to be formed in their spinal chords somewhere below the navel.  Not only that, but they’re the ones who keep happy hikers and nature lovers of more progressive persuasions at bay with the selfish and threatening protection of their private property.  My, my.

Unfortunately, studies and polls show that Republicans in the wild and otherwise don’t vote their numbers.  As I have reported, Gallup’s most recent polls report that self-declared sentiments across the country come to about 40% conservative, 40% independent, 20% liberal.  So the ballot box may not provide an accurate count of these rascals.

My only editorial quibble with Bob’s cartoon is the last panel which I would modify to read, “Assuming that voters understand what they’re voting for, we’ll know by tomorrow.”

Prop 25 – A Poster Child of Sleaze

George Rebane

This election season has seen more than its share of voter pandering and false advertizing.  My vote for the winner of sleaze in that department are the proponents of California’s Proposition 25.  I was again reminded of this as we watched the last game of the World Series this evening.  The ads promoting this proposition mention only that California legislators late in passing a budget will not get paid until they pass one and send it to the governor for signature.  It makes a big deal of ‘We’re gonna dock their pay until they deliver.’  That sounds real good to the mildly informed and frustrated voter.

But the sleazebags are really out there to stick to all of us, and counting on the ignorant and uninformed to help them do it.  The pay docking is a smoke screen for the real intent of Prop25 which is to pass a constitutional amendment that reduces the requirement for passing a budget – which may mandate (but not include) all kinds of tax and fee increases – to be reduced from a two-thirds majority to a simple majority.  Is this not really government promoted constructive voter fraud?

This, of course, will let the leftwing progressives go beyond the pale with their tax and spend policies and will put in place a Peter/Paul Principle on steroids.  I don’t know what we could do to make the state sink faster than defeat Prop23 and pass Prop25.  We are determined to federalize California.

Exit question – What comes after bankrupt?