Rebane's Ruminations

Workers’ Rights and Attack on the Middle Class

George Rebane

Unionists in Wisconsin and their sympathy demonstrators across the country have been taught new slogans to shout.  These are various forms of ‘violating workers’ rights’, and that cutting back the power of public employees unions is ‘an attack on America’s middle class’.  Both are false, but both are powerful since most listeners don’t have the equipment to parse the lies.

The notion of ‘right’ has long since lost its useful meaning in public discourse.  Nobody knows what the other means when they use the word.  (More on Rights & Privileges)  The Federal Government, by law, and the Wisconsin government, by law, have given their public employee unions certain rights to negotiate wages and benefits.  What is given by law, can be taken away by law – all the way up to the Constitution.

Were the Wisconsin government gratuitously to refuse to negotiate with the unions under present law, then the unions and their bussed in demonstrators could argue that their rights were being violated without first being rescinded by due process.  But that clearly is not the case, as the 14 Democratic legislators hiding out in Chicago can attest.

The ‘attack on the middle class’ shout is not only a blatant lie, it’s 180 degrees out from reality.  It is the middle class that has to bear the tax burden which union fat cats – both leaders and members – enjoy in their outrageous compensation packages that are breaking the fiscal backs of the states.  If anything, what Wisconsin and other states are attempting with their public service unions is to rescue the middle class, and save these non-union workers from the union onslaught that has been going on for years and must finally be brought to a halt.

Report from Hind Tit Road (updated 28feb2011)

George Rebane

I’m sure we here on Cement Hill aren’t the only ones in Nevada County who think they live on Hind Tit Road.  But we think of it often enough that we might as well grab the name while it’s still available.  After another freezing night without power, our thoughts turn to Pacific Gas & Electric and our beloved California Public Utilities Commission.  Whenever the wind blows, or the rain’s a bit too hard, or, heavens, some snow falls, it’s Martha man the kerosene lamps, haul in the firewood, and crank up the generator (if you have one).

Those in the mood for dark humor during the blackout can call 800/273-5002, PG&E’s emergency repair status line.  There a robo-maid will lead you through a menu of choices that always makes you wish you could choose another utility to supply your power.  The ‘information’ they dispense comes from some of the most faulty automated customer service algorithms you can access today.  The story is always the same.  No matter what they say, you get the message that they don’t know what’s going on or what they are doing.

This time they’re telling us here on Hind Tit that, as of this morning (26feb11), they have no idea when they will know when they can get a grip on the problem, and then tell us how long it will take to fix.  Got that?  That’s like two layers removed from telling us when the power will be restored.  And the snow already stopped yesterday, and today the sun is shining.

When I first reported the outage last Thursday night, they put out the word on the status line that power would be restored today, Saturday.  When I called yesterday morning, the story changed to ‘It’s an equipment failure, and we’ll be able to tell you Sunday (tomorrow) when we’ll know about when power will be back on.  When I called last night, the confusion at PG&E had grown, and they reported ‘It’s an equipment failure, and we’ll be able to tell you Monday (28feb11) when we’ll be able to tell you when the power will be restored.’  This morning someone up there in the mother temple threw up their hands and admitted that they had no idea what they were doing.  When I called, they said that ‘It’s an equipment failure, and be prepared for an extended power outage.’  Period.

You have to understand that PG&E reports two kinds of distribution problem – power lines down, and equipment failure – which means that the wires are down or a transformer has blown.  Everybody understands trees falling on power lines, but explaining a blown distribution transformer gets a little too technical and is reduced to “equipment failure”.

Theoretically, you want hear about ‘equipment failures’ because getting to a fallen tree across power lines on a steep snowy slope is a bit dicey, especially in blowing snow at night.  And let me say right now, that in no way do I want to denigrate the field crews with my bitching and moaning here – those guys do a tremendous job with the direction and equipment they get.  No, my gripe is with PG&E’s middle management on up.  And I mean on up all the way to the PUC.

Winter Wonder? Land – 25 February 2011

George Rebane

There’re only a couple of parts of this winter wonderland that folks here in the Sierra foothills are wondering about today – when’s the damn snow gonna stop, and when’s power coming back on?

I can just see the grins on the faces of certain RR readers living in parts south and southeast.  Yeah, well wait until the hurricanes come and the earthquake shakes your eyeteeth loose.

Yesterday afternoon started out quietly enough with a light snowfall that didn’t promise to be much.  But looking at the usual weather guesser sites, those people were saying to us ‘just you wait ‘enry ‘iggins, just you wait!’  We didn’t have long to wait.  Curled up in bed last night with our books, puppy dog bedded down in her nest, heater blasting out warm air, a little Debussy in the background, perfect setting for a cold winter’s night.  Correctemundo, until 2215 sharp when the world turned black.  (Oh, that’s 10:15PM PST for you civilians.)

But what the heck, I had run the generator earlier in the day, Jo Ann had all the kerosene lamps and candles in their usual places, and the fireplace was still merrily dancing in the front room.  So we decided to turn in early.  I set the alarm for 3am so I could start the generator to let us pump some water from the well to keep any pipes from freezing in the well house, and to have the house heat up to a low thermostat setting.

At about 1am the lights went on and the world came alive again – you know the drill, in our office every printer, computer, UPS, phone system, … went through its start up sequence.  The happy sound of whirring, buzzing, and clicking as all the gizmos rejoined the land of the living.  Yay! that was a short one we thought.  Not so fast, in less than five minutes all went dead again.  And the same drill was repeated just before 3am, after which I went outside into some very deep drifts that the wind had sculpted around the house to switch on our dependable Kohler 12K watter.  I had to push back some serious snow that almost covered the entire machine before I could open the door behind which was the switch.  Never had that problem before.

This morning we surveyed what could be seen from the windows and porches, and both decided that this was the biggest snowfall since we moved here in 2002.  And the wind was still blowing and more snow falling.  We got about 18 inches with drifts in the 3 to 4 foot range, you can see that the regular 10ft basketball rim doesn't quite look that high.   The radio said that the white stuff wafted way down to 1,000 feet, so this will be a storm to remember.  I’m waiting for some of that global warming to save the day since all the cold in recent years and this winter is just “weather” and has nothing to do with climate change.  OK, then where do I sign up for that warmer weather?  Meanwhile my pal Russ Steele keeps mumbling about something called the Dalton Minimum.

They’re telling us that the snow will stop later in the day, and after a cold night we are promised sunshine tomorrow.  And the power coming back on? fuggedahboutit.

‘We Have No Guns’

George Rebane

That was the lament from a businessman and demonstrator on NPR’s morning coverage of the Libyan crisis.  He told of the government hired mercenaries riding through the streets of Tripoli, machine gunning anyone caught in the open.  The death toll is over a thousand with thousands more wounded.  And this is not even the real story of what the Libyan people have had to endure for 41 years.

Governments like Gadhafy’s take a hideous toll on their people over the years which is totally ignored by our lamestream media.  I’m talking about the thousands of lives that have been snuffed by Gadhafy and his henchmen as a ‘natural cost’ of operating a tyranny.  Add to that the millions of lives that have been stunted along every dimension imaginable, and you begin to get just a glimmer of the impact that tyrants all over the world inflict on their populations.

In Libya, Gadhafy is using Stalin’s old trick to stay in power.  He saw how Egyptian and then his own military could become unreliable executioners of street demonstrators.  So he brought in mercenaries from other parts of the country and other parts of Africa.  These thugs have no inhibition in spraying AK-47 fire into crowds or people looking out of their windows.

Stalin’s standard operating procedure was to station troops from faraway places in the USSR where they were essentially foreigners.  This served two purposes – they would be reliable executioners to hold down local uprisings, and they would not collude with the local population against Moscow.  For example, in the Baltics the Red Army troops stationed there were natives of USSR’s central Asian ‘republics’ like Kazakhstan.

But the common denominator of all tyrants is to have a disarmed citizenry.  They all know along with Stalin that you have to “crack a few eggs to make an omelet”, and the egg cracking goes on year in and year out.  Nobody notices such a steady stream of killings because it occurs within the boundaries of a sovereign nation-state and is considered an ‘internal affair’.  Imagine the decades long murder of millions that is the internal affair of North Korea.  No one gives a big rat’s ass about those humans, most certainly not the progressives of 'civilized' western nations.

The New Nevada County Brand – Really! (updated)

George Rebane

Today the Board of Supervisors accepted the proposal by Switchback Public Relations + Marketing Inc to develop a county tourist promo website and spread the word that henceforth the following image will indelibly remind the prospective visitor of Nevada County and its manifest pleasures.  This shall be the case in perpetuity, or until one of us is brave enough to soak himself in gasoline, sit in the paved circle in front of the Rood Center, and light a match.

For more details, the well-intentioned people of Switchback also gave a PowerPoint presentation that must have had the desired effect on our Supervisors.  On 1 March 2011 you can see the fruits of their labors at http://gonevadacounty.com/presentation.

[update]  A correspondent sent me a copy of the PowerPoint presented to the BoS this morning.  You can download it here Download Power Point 2.22.11.

Ruminations - 22feb2011

George Rebane

The role of public employee unions in the sacking of America has long been denied by the socialists.  This is the political crowd that is regularly elected to office through the support of these same labor organizations.  They are the closest thing the left has to a franchised criminal class in our society.   Their extortions and fraudulent practices over the decades have become legend.  My own position on such organizations is well known to RR readers (latest here).

Now, thanks to a mid-western governor attempting to save his state from fiscal ruin, the entire question of how the public unions have bilked the populace may get a proper hearing.  My hope is that the union bosses and their political lapdogs will spread their demonstrations across the land.  Then all will be able to see what has been festering under their local state house or county administration center.  For more see Steven Malaga’s ‘The Showdown Over Public Union Power’.

If Second Amendment rights were not such a serious matter, the latest leftwing hypocrisy on gun control would draw a bit of chuckle, and we would leave it at that.  It seems that rabid gun control advocate and North Carolina state senator R.C. Soles shot one of the two intruders that recently entered his home.  As part of the ruling class, the good senator does not have to worry about his gun rights, but he and his kind worry very much about our gun rights.

It is an old story in the annals of collective governance.  Their greatest fear is the armed law-abiding citizen.  It is not the criminal that worries the left wing; hell, the higher the crime rate, the higher taxes and more government spending they can justify.  But it is the armed citizen who strikes fear into the heart of all insipient autocrats, for that citizen will be pushed only so far before he bands with his fellows to resist tyranny.  And if they have the tools at hand to put up a fight – well, you know the rest.  To counter that, all of us must be disarmed by whatever subterfuge our would-be masters can muster.  But the picture of the 74-year-old senator, shootin’ iron in hand, blasting away while defending his home, does bring up a chuckle or two.  You think the incident has changed his mind any?  Me neither.

Meanwhile, a happier piece about guns is the role that a particular air rifle had in implementing our ‘manifest destiny’.  Take a look at the above video (H/T to RR reader) to get the full story.  But Lewis & Clark in 1803 made it clear across the American west and back to St Louis by not trading shots with the Indians, but by showing them the power and glory of one particular firearm, and an air rifle at that.  Historian Stephen Ambrose mentioned that weapon in his Undaunted Courage, but the full story of this unique weapon was not known to me until I saw the video.

Russ Steele makes the New York Times

George Rebane

Russ Steele, pre-eminent Nevada County blogger and author of NC Media Watch , was prominently featured in a NYT article about the impact of social media on blogging.  Russ, who has been an inspiration to many of us lesser lights in Nevada County, spoke for those of us who have not chosen to use Facebook or Twitter when he characterized blogs as the internet medium for more considered and expanded presentation of ideas and commentary.   Of the more abbreviated versions of such communication media, Russ said he is not interested in telling people whenever he goes to the grocery store.  I’ll add an Amen to that.

Congratulations my friend, you cast a long shadow and are an inspiration for the rest of us.  Write on!

Assaulting Public Sector Unions (updated 21feb2011)

George Rebane

The Wisconsin teachers union imbroglio promises to get uglier before it is resolved.  The left is accusing Republicans of launching an “assault on the unions”, as if that were akin to committing some kind of sacrilege.  Given what public sector unions have done to the nation and its several states, it seems appropriate to acknowledge that yes, an assault has finally been launched to curb the corruption and fiscal drain on the public purse that is endemic with these labor organizations.

Their emotional charge that we taxpayers are attacking their families and democratic rights is scurrilous and cynical.  We too have families who have to do with less because they get more.  The union members are state employees who have corrupted our elected officials that now represent their interests in opposition to ours.  For some long years these sinecured union members, in the aggregate, have ceased to deliver value.

And these people know the dimensions of their deficit, and what will happen if Wisconsin goes through with its stated reforms.  They cannot argue their case on merit, merit that would justify their over-generous compensation packages.  Because of this the leftwing is sending in its big guns from all over the land.  Notables from Jesse Jackson to Nancy Pelosi to President Obama are answering the Wisconsin unions’ call to arms.

Given the current financial mess the country is in, I believe that the debate on the continued role of public service employee unions should be joined.  Demonstrably these organizations do not serve the public interest.  They have become what FDR warned the nation about many years ago.  After emptying the public coffers, these unions now threaten ‘job actions’ that will cripple or shut down government functions.

Additive Manufacturing and its Aftermath

George Rebane

Another quiet revolution is taking place that will impact all of our lives in ways known and unknown.  Its big name is additive manufacturing (AM), but we used to know it as 3D printing.  Stereolithography, the technology behind AM and 3D printers, was first invented by Charles Hull in 1984.  These printers take in a CAD (computer aided design) file that describes a part or gizmo, then it computationally decomposes the object into layers like individual slices of your head in an MRI scan, and finally lays down, layer by layer, each of its various materials until the entire thing is built.  (more here)

And these things are not just simple pieces like a vase or toy truck.  Today people have printed complex objects such as a copy of a Stradivarius violin and a pendulum clock.  The violin plays beautifully, and the clock ticks and tells time.  But even these feats are not the punch line of the game changing story in how things will be made – a process we usually call manufacturing.

 

The Suicide of Jeopardy

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my 18feb11 commentary broadcast bi-weekly on KVMR-FM 89.5.  A related post 'Epochal My Dear Watson' was posted on 17feb11.]

We Americans have always loved winners, and see ourselves as winners, especially in this age of universal self-esteem.  Oh yes, there is that phase we sometimes go through when we root for the underdog.  But that lasts only as long as we can see the underdog eventually coming out on top, or at least making good.  For popular champions, we seldom stick with the perennial loser – all of us look forward to Lucy’s annual snatch of the football that once more lands Charlie Brown on his back.

Something momentous happened on TV’s Jeopardy this week.  And I’m talking about ‘momentous’ as in momentous for Mankind.  But let’s go back a little bit before we examine what a computer called Watson did to the best that we humans could deliver.

Epochal My Dear Watson

... and they knew not what they had witnessed.

George Rebane

Really!  The ease with which IBM’s Watson supercomputer dispatched its champion human opponents on Jeopardy last night, will go down as perhaps the first pre-Singularity temblor on this third planet from the Sun.  During the three session tournament, Watson showed the world what the next phase of living with intelligent computers will be like.  We’re not talking about something in the future, we’re talking right now.  IBM will make sure that everyone who wants a Watson will get one, and IBM’s competitors will make sure that IBM will not be the only one selling such smart machines that can understand and talk to humans about literally all the world’s knowledge.

Ray Kurzweil, one my oft-cited Singularity authors (The Singularity Is Near) and creative giants of technology, writes ‘When Computers Beat Humans on Jeopardy’ in today’s WSJ.  Here he makes the point that Watson and its progeny might have a relatively easy time passing the Turing Test, with a minor adjustment that is.  Watson would have to be dumbed down, else the human tester would quickly discover that Watson could instantly answer questions that no single human could.

I would also make a note about your whereabouts on the evening of 16 February 2011, your grandchildren will be asking you about that in the future.  Take a look at the nearby full page ad that IBM ran in today’s WSJ.  It hopefully declares that “Humans win!” – well, some humans will win.  But regular RR readers know what Watson’s performance portends, and will be able to interpret this as the quantum leap toward the Singularity that it is.  Hedge fund manager, financial guru, and author Andy Kessler writes ‘Is Your Job an Endangered Species?’,  please read this in light of what you have heard here over the last several years, and especially in light of what happened last night.  I may have to increase my estimate of the 70 million American un/underemployed in 2020 – the jobs ballgame is changing that fast.  And stay tuned, stay very tuned.

Homework assignment:  Describe how Watson-like and Watson-plus (RACR) machines will be factored into the social justice equation so dear to progressive hearts.

[Addendum – Yesterday I recorded my bi-weekly KVMR-FM commentary that will air tomorrow (18feb11) evening.  It was about Watson and its anticipated sweep of the its human competitors on Jeopardy.  I would have had to re-record if Watson had not lived up to my expectations.  The transcript will be posted here tomorrow night as usual.]

Multiculturalism is a Deadly Affectation (updated 21feb2011)

George Rebane

Three European leaders recently concluded very publicly that unassimilated multiculturalism in their countries was not only a failure, but a dangerous failure (here).  In America that is not yet received wisdom as we are again reminded of the ongoing saga of Major Nidal Malik ‘Allahu Akbar!’ Hasan – the Ft Hood Islamic terrorist who killed 13 and wounded 32 more.

This massacre was perpetrated by an institutionalized political correctness in our Department of Defense that wears multicultural blinders causing it to ignore the most blatant and obvious evidence of hatred against western civilization in general and America in particular.  Now all branches of the military have analyzed and reported on the Ft Hood massacre.  And given what has happened in the interval here and all around the world, none of the reports mention radical Islam as a causative or contributive factor to Hasan’s atrocity.  (more here)

I take this to be the latest harbinger of our relentless slide as a nation.  As a child, student, and defender of western civilization, I feel very alone when I see my government invite continued assaults from all quarters on American culture, values, and mores.  We go on spewing the ‘all cultures are equal’ pabulum while no longer defending our birthrights.  And that for us in the end will be deadly.

[18feb2011 update]  Thinking it as an intellectual given, I almost didn’t expect pushback on the thesis of this post.  Nevertheless, there it was in the comment thread, and most of it stayed on topic.  Historically multiple cultures living under a single political government have kept the peace primarily through separation and the government’s brutal force of arms.  Countries and empires divided into ethnic provinces and into smaller regions into “quarters” that had no political and social contact with each other, and tolerated a commercial contact of necessities.  Not exactly what we view as the American ideal.

When assimilation occurred, it did so over generations and usually at the cost of one culture assimilating its weaker counterpart.  In short multiculturalism per se did not survive.

Throughout history forced multiculturalism has abruptly ended with the downfall of the enforcing government, after which the (usually violent) separation of cultures has been the immediate aftermath.  Modern examples abound with the British Raj leaving India, the implosion of the USSR, the fall of Yugoslavia, and most recently Sadam Hussein’s Iraq.

Such politically incorrect history has not been taught to our young by the left dominated public schools.  Instead the mental midgets who mentor our classrooms have pushed the worship of a particularly dysfunctional form of “diversity” and “inclusion” which is Marxist in its modern inception, and seeks to prepare its acolytes for global citizenship.

The question now posed is, ‘Given that multiculturalism is a deadly affectation in America, what do we do about it?’  The implication is that we want to ‘do’ something that will keep America whole within its modern boundaries.  Let me start by saying that such solutions may no longer exist.  Jefferson’s “A nation ignorant and free …” echoes across the centuries; we may have become too ignorant to save ourselves as the historical sovereign nation-state founded in 1776.

But were we to attempt to save the country, the natural starting place would be to robustly re-establish our national totems (flags, statuary, pledge of allegiance, music, …) in all public places and all public occasions.  Most certainly our children’s history books would have to be rewritten again – books that, say, would once again give more column inches to George Washington than to Cesar Chavez.  Civics classes that focused on American exceptionalism and political unity rather than inclusionary diversity (whatever the hell that is) would re-enter the curriculum.  And most of all we need to re-establish the three most important things that are common to a culture – language, language, language.  Speak what you will at home, but in public and the workplace be fully communicative in English.

[21feb2011 update]  The news on the disastrous failure of multiculturalism in Europe just keeps pouring in.  It's almost as if for years people were afraid to open their mouths, and now that national leaders have taken their fingers out of the dike, the flood of reality is washing over the continent with a splash or two getting noticed on this side of the Pond.  Russ Steele sent me this link 'Europe's Mulitculturalism Leading to Civil War?' on Islamic 'no-go zone' that have arisen in countries like France, Germany, and Great Britain.  "France has some 751 "No Go" zones. The French government has labeled these areas 'sensitive urban zones' that are dangerous for whites and non-Muslims to enter."

Medved Misses on Obama (updated 15feb2011)

George Rebane

Conservative syndicated columnist and radio host Michael Medved writes in the 14feb11 WSJ that ‘Obama Isn’t Trying to ‘Weaken America’’.  His somewhat torturous path through the history of well-meaning Presidents concludes that President Obama isn’t trying to weaken America because he too shares the awe and respect for the office with his predecessors.  In short, the implication is that Obama’s disastrous policies which have weakened America, and continue to do so, are not the “result of a diabolical master plan for national destruction”, but just the result of incompetence and bungling by a well-meaning President.

Well yes, that is a plausible and tempting assessment of the current administration.  However, in my opinion, a more useful one that would equally satisfy Occam is that he simply intends to do what he has said all along.  No devious diabolics are needed to explain away the observables.  Assume the man is not stupid, and that he sees the world in a transition to a yet to be determined form of global governance.  America’s current strength and world hegemony stands squarely in the way of such a unification – it is El Domino Primo.  And America must be brought to heel before the other sovereign nation-states will fall in compliance.

So how does an astute collectivist administration accomplish that feat?  Simply by doing exactly what it is doing now.  On the current path America will be ready in the shortest time to join the community of nations as an equal, sharing its remaining wealth and knowhow to the benefit of all the world’s peoples.  To its adherents such a credo and its attendant goal are anything but evil.  And the President, along with his known circle of advisors and institutional sponsors, has made this noble end more than perfectly clear.  Occam would be equally satisfied by seeing Obama within this framework.

And so viewed, Obama then emerges as the nation’s first post-American President.  He is yet young enough to see his vision come to fruition, and hence it is equally plausible for him to consider the American Presidency as a stepping stone to higher office.  Therefore, if one wishes to counter his efforts, it is more useful to view him as smart, energetic, and focused on achieving his goals.

[update]  The release of the administration's 2012 budget proposal today confirms that President Obama is smart and cynical in the extreme.  And he continues to bet that at least one half of the national electorate is ignorant beyond redemption.  It is an astute bet.

[15feb2011 update]  As the hours pass since Obama's budget hit the public eye, more and more comedy (perfidy?) is being wrung out of its assumptions and numbers.  Here is a particularly clear example of some of the shenanigans that are in that hernia pack.  H/T to RR reader for the link.

English – Going, … going, … gone?

George Rebane

Our English, as a language to express complex and abstract thoughts, is almost absent from conversations of not only the young, but also people already in their forties.  I was reminded of that again during this morning’s sermon when our pastor totally destroyed any notion of properly using personal pronouns – ‘… and then they asked he and I to come …’.

When we got home my email contained a note with a link to an article about the death throes of English as commonly used today.  Reading the report (here) with sample quotes was almost as painful as actually listening to someone attempting to speak.  Among the points made was the expanding absence of abstract thoughts in today’s communications.

The piece recounted the almost diseased uses of ‘like’ multiple times in a short sentence.  Also noted was the common habit, primarily by females, of ending declarative sentences in a questioning inflection, as if the speaker was in doubt about the simplest of things.

To abstract and summarize an experience or idea today is attempted by the most torturous of soliloquies that consist of recounting statement by statement the contributions of the participants.  No conclusion is, or perhaps, can be offered.  And the unaided listener is left to draw his own conclusion about whether the dialogue had any point whatsoever.

Author Clark Whelton identifies the mid-eighties as the approximate start of this linguistic pandemic, discounting attempts at earlier starts with such afflictions as ‘Valleyspeak’ that was already prevalent in the LA suburbs of the seventies.  But that was the decade when the problematic pedagogical produce of the Great Society was firmly ensconced in classrooms across the land.  It was also the decade when other components of a young person’s education were deconstructed in the public schools.  New math was being poured into young minds, the utility of grammar was abandoned, and history was being revised into a more progressive view of the past.  Hopeless change was already in the air as attempt was accepted for achievement.

Time Magazine discovers the Singularity

George Rebane

Readers know that one of the dominant themes of RR has been the Singularity (see the RR Singularity category for more).  As a technologist and AI researcher I have been a Singularitarian for most of my life.  Ray Kurzweil has done civilization the service of becoming the most dominant and credible spokesman for accelerating technology and the prospect of functional immortality.  But even in this age of information tsunamis, most people have no clue about what the Singularity is, and that they are living in the pre-Singularity years during which humanity’s ballgame is being changed to its very core.

Perhaps this age of ignorance is closer to ending with Time Magazine’s extended cover story of The Singularity (here).  It is well written and covers most of the major issues related to this epochal event.  From there we read –

The difficult thing to keep sight of when you're talking about the Singularity is that even though it sounds like science fiction, it isn't, no more than a weather forecast is science fiction. It's not a fringe idea; it's a serious hypothesis about the future of life on Earth. There's an intellectual gag reflex that kicks in anytime you try to swallow an idea that involves super-intelligent immortal cyborgs, but suppress it if you can, because while the Singularity appears to be, on the face of it, preposterous, it's an idea that rewards sober, careful evaluation.

I believe that if we seek to truly understand what is happening today and what near futures may be in store for us, then that effort will be futile, or at best incoherent, if it excludes the advent of the Singularity.

From Molehills to Megatrends

George Rebane

[This is the submitted version of my 12feb 2011 Union column published today in its print and online version here.]

Some of us recall the time of ‘population bombs’, ‘megatrends’, and the coming ice age thawing into ‘hothouse earth’.  The 1970s were a bleak time – a lost war, economy in stagflation, the Soviets’ trigger finger on the ‘now or never’ button, and a Peanut Farmer at the helm.  Somehow we managed to survive that with a new rush of enthusiasm that brought on twenty years of the greatest creative and wealth generating enthusiasm since WW2, and the demise of the USSR in the bargain.  But that was then, this is now.

Today we are back in the age of megatrends big time.  But this time, economically we are in debt beyond our ability to repay, and structurally unemployed with no plan beyond fervent hope that history will somehow repeat itself.  And according to Professor J. A. Goldstone of George Mason University, these aren’t even the real megatrends into the face of which we are on a firm course.

The Hope of Homesourcing

George Rebane

Yesterday we lost manufacturing jobs, tomorrow will we lose service jobs?  The fate of the American worker has been a longstanding concern in these pages.  For various reasons our political leadership (both sides) is blind to what is in store for our workers, or they simply want to keep us all docile for as long as possible (at least until they are out of office).  I want to take another opportunity to dissipate some of the mist surrounding jobs from recent news reports that may not have wide purview.  Full disclosure: what follows may be detrimental to the cardiovascular health of the firmly entrenched progressive reader – take no chances.

First and foremost, we have to get over the absolute bullcrap that the US is going to remake its workplaces in the image of Gaia soothing green tech, or cleantech, or whatever new moniker the progressives use to sell their big government control of the American job market.  The alternative energy technologies that some day may become economically feasible will, in all likelihood, be developed overseas and their offspring products manufactured there as well.  Oh, we will have a share of the market, but that will mainly consist of installing the imported stuff into our homes and infrastructure.

One of the left’s biggest lies in selling the cap and tax AB32 (with the defeat of Prop23) to California’s semi-literates was hawking all the astute investment going into a new generation of Silicon Valley cleantech firms, investments coming out of Sand Hill Rd (home of west coast venture capitalists) to fund California’s resurgence as the tech development capital of America.  Well, it didn’t happen, and it ain’t gonna happen – technology companies and workers are still leaving California.  A no holds commentary on this was recently given by Scott McNealy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems and Silicon Valley tech pioneer, in the 10feb11 WSJ (here).

About the resurgence of green tech jobs in California, McNealy says, “I’m skeptical that the green jobs are going to drive the recovery.  So far the track record’s been terrible.  That’s going to be a challenge for the people here who stuck their neck out to go green.”  And to put a bow on it, McNealy goes on to say –

I see a migration from the early days of the Valley. We aren't doing manufacturing; we aren't doing design; we aren't doing computers. It's all moving to Asia and other places where there are lots of technical engineers who are willing to work at a more reasonable salary because they don't have to spend $3.5 million on a home and pay half of it to taxes.

I think every new transition has created less job opportunity as technology has become very leveraged. I don't think our education system, our regulations, our government policies have kept pace with the changes that technology is driving. (emphasis mine)

Two factors add to this overall assessment – the level of unemployed engineers, and the polarization of students with critical job skills.  The 11feb11 American Thinker reports (here, H/T Russ Steele for link) that as recently as 2009 the Bureau of Labor Statistics counted 29,000 engineers out of work.  At that peak, unemployment for electronics engineers was at 8.6% and software engineers at 5.7%.  It wasn’t supposed to be like that in the high tech field, but then refer back to what Scott McNealy pointed out above.

Scattershots - 9feb2011 (updated 11feb2011)

George Rebane

- The next multikulti shoe drops
- Obama’s socialist slip is showing

Last year Germany’s Angela Merkel let the world know that decades of her country’s attempts to bend backwards to accommodate multi-culturalism (‘multikulti’ to the Europeans) was not working (here).  Specifically Germany was becoming home to hives of unassimilating Muslims living lives quite distinct from the remainder of the citizens in their host country.  This made some waves in the other European capitals as it should have since other EU nations were experiencing Germany’s plight (blight?).

Here in the US, the lamestream media quickly buried the story in its vast graveyard of other politically incorrect reports of inconvenient happenings around the world.  Then David Cameron, British PM, declared at last week’s security conference in Munich that Britain’s multikulti policies toward its Muslim population has been an abject failure.  The more accommodating and bordering beyond silly the Brits have been toward their Muslims, the more anti-western has been their reaction.  They also have made it clear that they are settlers there to transform the country and not immigrants wanting to assimilate.  Mr Cameron cited the report from his country’s security services that there are now over 3,000 Al Qaeda operatives in Great Britain, most of them British subjects.

One of the main discriminants between ethnic Muslims and, say, ethnic Jews is that Muslims go out of their way to retain and express their identity; they approach the established culture as Muslims, ‘peaceful Muslims’.  The Jews and Lutherans deal with the established culture as Brits or Americans – you have to do some digging to discover what is their religious bent.  This behavior continues to isolate the Muslim communities no matter how docile or militant they claim to be.

And their militant factions visibly working for converting their host countries to sharia law under an Islamic Caliphate are more and more recognized as a “cancer growing in the west” as stated by syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer.  Unassimilated multikulti doesn’t work.  And citing the Ft Hood massacre, Senator Joe Lieberman added that in all this, "political correctness has a cost."

[update]  Coincidentally the 9feb11 WSJ had two pieces on Cameron and multi-cultural failures here and here that tie with this post, with more from Australia here.  Also with regard to the otherwise moderate and peace loving Muslims, a correspondent sent a link to a story (here) that - in spite of the lamestream's efforts to suppress - is becoming all too common in western lands.

[11feb2011 update]  French President Nicolas Sarkozy added his voice (here) to the conclusion that unassimilated multi-culturalism is a "failure" in France and other countries.  "Of course we must all respect differences, but we do not want... a society where communities coexist side by side."

President Obama’s recent walk and talk to the US Chamber of Commerce was revealing.  No matter how nice he sought to make with the country’s business community, his true colors as a socialist flew bright and crisp.  In his speech he made clear that the improving economic conditions would allow companies to again become profitable.  But this time around he said that such “profits would have to be shared with the workers”; and presumably he’s just the President who would bring that about.  BTW, there was no mention of the workers also having to share the losses.

And he didn’t stop there, but admonished the business people attending that the recovery put the onus on CEOs to maximize the number of American workers hired.  The meaning was clear, in his fundamentally transformed America the aim of businesses is to provide jobs first and foremost, rather than to provide goods or services to its customers at a profit.  In short, the Community Organizer in Chief displayed no understanding that maximizing the number of American workers hired and maximizing the likelihood for staying in business might be the two separate ends of a see-saw (more here).  These days the White House is filled to the gills with equally illumined worthies.  Remind me again of the President’s celebrated move toward the center since last November’s election.

‘Providing Intellectual Ammunition …’

George Rebane

In the latest package of materials from the Mercatus Center of George Mason University there was an exhortation to today’s conservatives (the classical liberals) to man the intellectual ramparts against the onslaught of socialism.  Their opening argument was from a post-war essay by F.A. Hayek –

We must make the building of a free society once more an intellectual adventure, a deed of courage … .  Unless we can make the philosophic foundations of a free society once more a living intellectual issue, and its implementation a task which challenges the ingenuity and imagination of our liveliest minds, the prospect of freedom are indeed dark.  But if we can regain that belief in the power of ideas… the battle is not lost.

This was written in 1949, the same year Hayek wrote another influential essay ‘The Intellectuals and Socialism’.  In this piece Hayek identifies the intellectuals – being neither anchored in original thought nor practical experience – as the intermediaries between an esoteric social philosophy like socialism and its broad dissemination.  These “professional secondhand dealers in ideas” are positioned to the adulating masses as deep thinkers bringing down the wisdom of the ages from Olympus.  From this essay we read –

In the light of recent history it is somewhat curious that this decisive power of the professional secondhand dealers in ideas should not yet be more generally recognized. The political development of the Western World during the last hundred years furnishes the clearest demonstration. Socialism has never and nowhere been at first a working-class movement. It is by no means an obvious remedy for the obvious evil which the interests of that class will necessarily demand. It is a construction of theorists, deriving from certain tendencies of abstract thought with which for a long time only the intellectuals were familiar; and it required long efforts by the intellectuals before the working classes could be persuaded to adopt it as their program.

Having recently (re?)read this, I was struck by how timely its analysis still is after sixty years have passed.  And then it occurred to me that its currency might instead be cyclic.  Did we not go through a Cold War, that began in 1948, and which had convinced most Americans by the end of the 1950s that socialism was indeed the slippery slope to totalitarian communism?  By 1960s we all saw the hopeless morass that Britain and France had gotten themselves into through an overreach of government.  There were riots in the streets, and France was changing governments as often as people changed oil in their cars.

The Unchanging Left View

George Rebane

[This cartoon by my friend, RR reader, political cartoonist RL ‘Bob’ Crabb appeared in the 5feb11 Union op-ed pages.  You might note that we don’t see eye-to-eye on everything.  Oh well.]

 

No matter the decades of leftwing legislative control that has brought California to its knees; it seems that as long as there remains a Republican in Sacrmaento, it is all their fault.

Siren Song of Norway

George Rebane

American progressives cum socialists frequently wax eloquent about the Scandinavian forms of governance, and pointedly ask ‘why can’t we be like that?’.  What is the ‘that’ that so enamors them to countries like Denmark and Norway?  Norway especially is the oft-cited posterchild of “socialist capitalism”.  Perhaps this is because we recall the beauty of the country, its music, and enthusiastic fluff pieces that regularly appear in our media.  One such offering, published as ‘In Norway Start-ups say Ja to Socialism’ on Inc.com, is typical, and was cited in these pages to underline and give meat to the argument that a more collective America would get us all closer to those pristine landscapes and happy peoples.

Norway is a fully developed first world country, prosperous by most measures, a contributor to America’s northern European stock, and an ally on the world scene.  But in comparing it with America, and proposing that its model of social organization is something that would work here is a bit of a stretch as we shall see.

Norway is a culturally and ethnically tight or cohesive country of about 4.6 million souls.  People speak the same language, live in low density environments, and share a lot of their double helix with each other.  They are close to an ideal in size, distribution, and composition as what sociologists recommend for ideal human communities.  We in America are not, and continue to distance ourselves from such an ideal.

Local 39: Unions Eating their Young?

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular commentary on KVMR-FM 89.5 that was broadcast earlier this 4feb2011 evening.]

In Nevada County Local 39 of the International Union of Operating Engineers AFL-CIO enjoys the membership of about 555 of the current 825 employees, or about 2 out of 3 county workers.  Our county, like most across the land, is suffering from a budget shortfall caused by the current, or if you will, ‘recent’ recession.  Our elected Supervisors have sought and received wage and benefit concessions from the Sheriff’s Department and county management level staff.  This was done in the spirit of understanding the signs of the times, and the desire to keep as many people working as possible to provide the county its needed services.

However the leadership of Local 39 has informed the county that it will make no such concessions for its membership.  The most likely result of this is that the county will have to lay off some union members.  And as usual, the layoffs will most likely be based on seniority rather than merit or utility to the people whom the county serves.  In short, for the sake of keeping the benefit packages intact for the union’s leadership and senior members, the union will instead sacrifice members’ jobs.  Job security was supposedly one of the benefits that attracted them to the union in the first place.  Or was it?

The Liberal Mind – Taxes to Mandated Spending

George Rebane

The recent national debate on socialized healthcare (aka Obamacare) has illuminated the way progressives, and presumably all collectivists, organize their thinking on how the government can determine the allocation of your funds and assets.  The main enlightenment here is that they see no difference in a government's taxing a citizen to obtain revenues that it putatively then spends for the public good (like building roads and buying stealth fighters), and applying its power of the bayonet to also mandate that a citizen uses the monies left him to purchase a government prescribed good or service.

To a progressive the extension of traditional taxing to include spending prescriptions are birds of a feather.  He sees no distinction between the two methods of mandating the disposition of your funds, and no procession from a creep to a gallop toward a comprehensive determination of how our earnings and assets should be disposed.  For detailed examples and expressions of this belief tenet, please see the comment thread to ‘Healthcare on a Leftwing and a Prayer' in these pages.

Since a progressive cannot conceive of any limits to taxation, there are also no limits to what the government can and should determine on how we pass cash through our hands, whether it is buying light bulbs, or healthcare insurance, or ultimately the styles of shoes we should wear.  It is all part and parcel of the plan to first nudge and then herd us all into a co-operative, complacent, and compliant society long envisaged by their social engineers and philosophers.

Being aware of this mindset removes another puzzlement when attempting to understand their weltanschauung or comprehensive view of the world and human life.

Healthcare on a Leftwing and a Prayer

George Rebane

My email this morning contained an “open letter” by local resident Michael Anderson to the Tea Party Patriot leadership.  It was published in Jeff Pelline’s blog and sent to me by the ‘duty reader’ of Jeff’s output.  Michael excoriates the policies and efforts of the TPP and the Republicans in Congress to roll back Obamacare.  Throughout his piece Michael asserts to the TPP leadership that “You lose by default”, although it is not clear, at least to me, what such a default might be.

In reading Michael’s well written apology for the latest leftwing attempt at nationalized healthcare, his arguments stood out as those we have heard for the last two years or more from that side of the aisle.  Nevertheless, I believe that the points Michael presents are the best that the left can muster, and has no alternative but to reiterate endlessly.  His letter is consistent even to the level of not recognizing ANY of the considered conservative responses and/or alternatives to adopting the path that the Europeans are now attempting to travel in the other direction, this as the unsustainability of their socialized medicine schemes becomes clear to even their most dedicated ideologues.

In the aftermath of the federal district court ruling on Obamacare, Michael’s outpouring is another crie de couer of the progressives in the land.  Considering where this monotone mantra appeared, its purpose is really to reconstitute and rally the left to continue their push toward socialized medicine.  The effort is difficult given how this partisan monstrosity was given birth in the dead of night against historically widespread opposition across the land.

Below is Michael’s italicized letter annotated with my comments in square brackets.