Rebane's Ruminations

Atlas Mugged (Addended)

George Rebane

Yesterday afternoon we, along with the Steeles, went to see the movie ‘Atlas Shrugged – Part 1’ that I described in ‘Shrugging Atlas is Back’.   The movie, based on Ayn Rand’s novel of the same name, lived up to its expectations.  The casting, acting, production values, and fidelity to the original were well executed.  I look forward to Parts 2 and 3 of this trilogy.

Reflecting on what I had seen in the movie, especially how it depicts what we are living through today, I was struck by the thought that the trilogy will communicate little to the meager number of progressives who will see it.  Heralding its early demise, they simply do not understand the point of the movie.  Its dystopic message for the rest of us will be seen as a necessary waypoint to their new world order.

In that order there is little need for individual risk, initiative, and enterprise.  All problems will be solved by state committees for the common good.  'Excess funds' will be siphoned out of the population through higher tax rates and redistributed.  All progressives know that higher tax rates will not harm the economy, in fact, they cite the post-war years as evidence that higher taxes will even stimulate the economy.

Unfortunately, the conditions of the fifties are misinterpreted by the left.  Then the US was the technology, agricultural, and manufacturing leader of a world mostly under-developed and devastated by war.  As long as international trade was allowed, and appropriate set-asides and subsidies were in place, the imposed tax rate did not matter much.  Money still came pouring in from all sides because we could make and sell stuff that the world could get from nowhere else – competition was non-existent, and demand was found under every overturned rock.  Not any more – Atlas mugged.

[Addendum]  The above does not make explicit what I want to relate as the major takeaway from the movie and the book.  In 1957 Ayn Rand published Atlas Shrugged as a warning to us that if we kept looking to government for solutions and allowing it to grow into a megalith surrogate for our personal responsibilities, then we would wind up with the world she depicted.  That same megalith would hang around the neck of every productive citizen in the land.

The truth of the matter is that Rand's described world is now upon us and much more.  We are past the point she depicted.  In her warning, she still allowed for a way back to sanity.  Today, the added burden of massive debt and deficits has put us beyond the pale - we are beyond the precipice like Wiley Coyote.  And like Wiley, we will not be able to walk on air back to safety.  Even Atlas cannot lift from our backs the trillions upon trillions we have senselessly allowed to accumulate there.

‘Thanksgiving 2022’

George Rebane

[This came in email, and reading it I immediately began looking for some hyperbole.  But given this administration’s stated goals, established direction, and ongoing ‘progress’ thereto, I couldn’t find any.  Perhaps you can dear reader.]

"Winston, come into the dining room, it's time to eat," Julia yelled to her husband. "In a minute, honey, it's a tie score," he answered.  Actually Winston wasn't very interested in the traditional holiday football game between Detroit and Washington.

Ever since the government passed the Civility in Sports Statute of 2017, outlawing tackle football for its "unseemly violence" and the "bad example it sets for the rest of the world," Winston was far less of a football fan than he used to be.  Two-hand touch wasn't nearly as exciting.

Yet it wasn't the game that Winston was uninterested in.  It was more the thought of eating another Tofu Turkey.  Even though it was the best type of Veggie Meat available after the government revised the American Anti-Obesity Act of 2018, adding fowl to the list of federally-forbidden foods, (which already included potatoes, cranberry sauce and mince-meat pie), it wasn't anything like real turkey.  And ever since the government officially changed the name of "Thanksgiving Day" to "A National Day of Atonement" in 2020 to officially acknowledge the Pilgrims' historically brutal treatment of Native Americans, the holiday had lost a lot of its luster.

'He is Risen!'

 

 

Happy Easter from our family to you and yours.

George and Jo Ann

Hardwiring the Right and Left

George Rebane

In my technology newsletters I recently encountered some buzz about clinical evidence differentiating the brainbones of liberals and conservatives – in short, you may be one or the other because that’s the way you’re wired up.  There has been a flurry of articles posted on the original research done on this thesis at the University College London – here is an example report, ‘Liberal vs. Conservative: Does the Difference Lie in the Brain?'

Please note that the research is early stage, the sample size is small, and what characteristic attributes it identifies in the opposing ideologues is a reach.  For example, “liberals tend to be better at managing conflicting information, while conservatives are thought to be better at recognizing threats, …”.  This has been enthusiastically translated by some light thinking progressives to mean that ‘liberals can better handle uncertainty, and conservatives are driven by fear’.  Sweet.

Memo to Obama on Gasoline Prices

George Rebane

The Chief Organizer claims he doesn’t know what’s made gasoline prices go through the roof, and he suspects that it’s all those “traders and speculators”.  So he has launched another investigation to ferret out these low lifes.  Predictably, it will turn up nothing in that quarter, and only repeat the performance of Clinton and Bush2 when they tried that diversionary bamboozle during high oil prices.

The real reason for the soaring price of gasoline is the plunging value of the dollar aided by our Federal Reserve’s 'quantitative easing' and low interest rate policy, and the fact that our politicians are evincing no clue as to how our debt and deficits will be managed.  S&P’s downgrade of our debt repayment outlook from ‘stable’ to ‘negative’ put a ribbon on it this week.

But in the end Mr President, just have your mentors take a look at the US Dollar Index measured against a basket of the world’s leading currencies (more here)  It is down almost 10% from a year ago, thereby making everything we buy from overseas more expensive.  Pay attention Buttercup, we buy oil from overseas – more because of your domestic energy policies – and that dollar devaluation has itself contributed about a 40 cent increase to the price of a gallon of gas since last spring.  So cut the investigation smoke screen, we are not as dumb as you hope.

If you want to help, get serious about cutting government spending instead of putzing around with economy stifling tax increases.  Our only road out of this mess is growth.

The Diaz Case Continues

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my KVMR-FM bi-weekly commentary recorded on 21 April 2011.  I have added a relevant addendum about information from a subsequent conversation I had with a Nevada County staffer.]

Not many people have been paying attention to a complicated lawsuit whose defendants include Nevada County, Mr Greg Diaz, its initially appointed then elected Clerk-Recorder, and Aptitude, a Florida software company.  The whole thing would be forgettable, except for two things – the legal bills the county is running up, and the pile of unanswered questions that just seem to be getting more curioser by the week.

Let’s back up.  ATPac, a software company located in Auburn, provided software and services to our county’s Clerk-Recorder office for about ten years before Mr Diaz arrived.  The software was used to handle, store, and retrieve county records.  In 2008 Mr Diaz decided that it was time to re-select the county’s record-keeping software vendor, and the county issued an RFP, request for proposal, and thereby opened up a bidding process which culminated with Aptitude replacing ATPac.  During the migration from ATPac’s software to Aptitude’s software, some irregularities occurred.  As a result ATPac sued, alleging that its intellectual property had been compromised by the county and Mr Diaz by allowing Aptitude to have access to its proprietary computer programs.

The county and Mr Diaz denied doing anything improper, and under advice from county counsel, the Board of Supervisors authorized legal fees for a strong defense as both sides began pre-trial preparations to gather evidence and take depositions from involved parties.  A complication surfaced almost immediately when attorney Barry Pruett decided to oppose the incumbent Mr Diaz in the November 2008 election.  While not involved in the lawsuit, Mr Pruett had worked for the law firm representing ATPac in the lawsuit, he was familiar with the case, and made its already apparent irregularities an issue in the campaign.  Conservative bloggers Russ Steele of NC Media Watch and my Rebane’s Ruminations supported Mr Pruett, and liberal bloggers along with the county establishment supported Mr Diaz.

Ruminations – 21apr2011

George Rebane

- No Amber Alert on Missing Refugees
- Estonia’s credit rating upgraded

‘Climate Refugees, Not Found’  so headlines the 21apr11 WSJ report on millions of people who have gone missing with nary an Amber Alert issued in their behalf.  The egg just continues to accumulate on the faces of the True Believers, those politically bent devotees of catastrophic climate change that dwell beyond the pale of evidence.  The newspaper reports –

In 2005, the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) published a color-coded map under the headline "Fifty million climate refugees by 2010." The primary source for the prediction was a 2005 paper by environmental scientist Norman Myers.

Six years later, this flood of refugees is nowhere to be found, global average temperatures are about where they were when the prediction was made—and the U.N. has done a vanishing act of its own, wiping the inconvenient map from its servers.

This would be just another laughable episode at the expense of the ignorant cum stupid, if only these folks didn’t have the state’s power of the bayonet on their side.  Since they do, and have every intention of using force to make their growing stack of crippling regulations stick, the joke is on the rest of us who are trying to create jobs, earn a living, and pay our taxes.  More climate change matters on NC Media Watch and Watt’s Up With That?

An RR reader emailed to inform me that Estonia has passed America in its credit rating.  The rating agency Standard & Poor’s, which recently stated that our creditworthiness outlook was changed from ‘stable’ to ‘negative’, has announced that that little Baltic dynamo of capitalism and entrepreneurial fervor is being upgraded from ‘stable’ to  ‘positive’.  CNBC cites a Reuters report (here) that “the ratings agency said Estonia's ratings were supported by its strong public finances, political stability and sanguine economic growth prospects as exports recover sharply.”  Whooda thunk it?

The Silence of the Jews and Christians

George Rebane

In this season of Passover and Easter, our administration and its private sector cadres are promoting Islamists with an added twist.  Al Jazeerah, with its anti-Jewish and anti-Christian worldview, is now being recognized by the leftwing as a necessary and legitimate source of world news and considered opinion among the civilized nations.  In spite of their message being unchanged, there is now a push to bring the Middle East Islamist propaganda outlet into the mainstream, or is it into the lamestream in the west.

In the 18apr11 American Thinker (‘A Passover Present From Obama’) James Lewis wonders “why American Jews and Christians are so silent today.  Has the Left managed to scapegoat them so badly that they dare not speak up?  Or are there millions and millions of people who are just looking for a chance to be heard?”

I’m afraid that we will have to wait until November 2012 to answer these questions.  The silence today is not heartening.  (H/T to RR reader for the heads up.)

“… because that’s where the money is.”

You gotta get it from where it is, cuz you ain't gonna get it from where it ain't.

George Rebane

The President keeps pointing his accusing finger at the “rich” (those earning more than $250K annually) for being under-taxed and thereby keeping the nation from solving its financial problems.  That is a lying ruse to keep the sheeple’s attention from the actual taxes that he intends to increase on his hallowed middle-class – remember? those are the people he is forever promising to protect from higher taxes.

Well, taxing only the rich isn’t going to happen for the same reason that we still quote America’s iconic bank robber Willie Sutton.  Liberals are forever doubting the allocation and sourcing of the nation’s income taxes.  They can’t seem to come to grips with the fact that the top earners already pay the overwhelming fraction of income tax revenues to the governments – starting with the feds and going down the tax jurisdiction ladder (see the graphics in RR’s ‘As We Talk About Taxes and Skin in the Game’).

California is on its fiscal last legs because it decided years ago to put the heavy part of its tax yoke overwhelmingly on its job-creating ‘rich’.  Now these people are thundering out of the state, and doing everything possible to deny our stupid and rapacious government additional monies to waste.

Looking at the most recent IRS data available makes it clear where Obama and the progressives will go to get more money for their bamboozle named “tax reform”, the tax increases that they are now calling for daily.  Take a look at the nearby histogram filched from the 18apr11 WSJ, and then read the accompanying piece ‘Where the Tax Money Is’ that considers what if we just stick a gun in the faces of the rich and take ALL their earnings.

Raising the Debt Limit and Bilge Water (updated)

George Rebane

Just for the record, I don’t want any RR reader to be bamboozled by the bilge water that the administration and Dems are trying to float on raising of the debt limit issue.  The word from the progressives, abetted by Bernanke and Geithner, is that if the debt limit is not raised this May, then America will default on its debt service, and the world will sink into financial chaos.  This is absolute bull crap floating in bilge water.

1. The feds pull in over two trillion a year in taxes, etc.
2. The US currently owes north of $14T which requires around $450B in annual debt service costs.
3. With the current authorized debt limit of about $14.3T, we can still roll over debt and borrow to that level.
4. Instead of defaulting on debt (and causing all that “chaos”) we can always pay our debt service out of current federal receipts - how?  By reducing the size of government along with the entitlement payments we make to our own citizens.
5. No foreign/private lender needs to be stiffed, they will continue to get their interest payments regular as clockwork.  The overdue pain we cause ourselves will not concern our foreign or domestic creditors.
6. Given the demonstrated discipline of NOT increasing the debt limit, foreign lenders will feel more, not less, confident in continuing to lend at our current debt limit.  The chances of getting their principal back would just go through the roof, instead of sinking into the mud.
7. The politicians who have been lying to the voters about being able to afford current entitlement programs and solving the problem with taxing the bejeezus out of the ‘rich’ will be out on their collective butts, and have to get real jobs or sign up for transfer payments.

So in the coming weeks, when we hear the socialists scream about ‘playing Russian roulette with the nation’s future’ and ‘putting the debt burden on the backs of the poor’, stand up and tell your electeds that you too know how to do the arithmetic of debt service and debt financing the country.  Defaulting on our debt service is not tied to what we do on raising the debt limit or not.  But it is tied to a certain political class hoping that you’ll drink the bilge water that they are serving up while you’re too busy to pay attention.

PS.  For the aficionados, listen very carefully to what Bernanke and Geithner say about debt limit and defaulting.  Neither claims that refusing to raise the debt limit will cause problems.  Each only states a likely result of financial turmoil IF the US doesn’t make its debt service payments.  Both are counting that you will unthinkingly connect the wrong dots, and conclude that chaos is automatically linked to what Congress does on the debt limit in May.  But then, you all knew that.

[update]  As if we rehearsed it, Standard & Poor’s this morning changed its outlook to “negative” on America’s ability to repay its debts (WSJ report here).  It isn’t so much that our economy still can support such repayments, it’s that we will not get our political act together in time to save the economy from its inevitable fate as we continue to borrow in the trillions into the indefinite future.  S&P simply says that it sees no evidence that we will make meaningful progress toward solving our fiscal crisis, and therefore advises us to standby for having our AAA credit rating reduced – and that’s only the first step.

RR readers know when this happens our debt service costs will start soaring as interest rates go up.  For some time now someone around here has been musing about shorting government debt instruments – oh yes, c’est moi.

The Kilogram and Judges' Pay and ...

George Rebane

The standard kilogram - ensconced under glass in Sevres, France – is losing mass, and the world of standards is all a-twitter, as it should be.  For you see, “its only purpose (is) constancy.”  As Seth Lipsky points out in his ‘The Floating Dollar as a Threat to Property Rights’ in a recent issue of the Imprimis.

Lipsky raises the interesting notion of why keep the kilogram (hence the pound, etc) constant. Why not let it float too according to the whims of government or your local butcher?  From there the thread of reasoning is connected to the floating value of the fiat paper dollar which has been the subject of much discussion in these pages over the years.

This thread winds its way over to the laws on dealing with judges’ pay that the several states have each set up.  The common argument here is that, due to the separation of powers, judges’ pay may be set by legislatures, but not reduced by them.  And this launches a whole new dust-up that can grow into a tornado on setting the value of the dollar.  Since non-legislative branches and organs of government can diminish that value at their whim, thereby reducing the burden and buying power of the judges, what does it mean to keep such payment in “legal tender” constant?

The question is not idle, and as Lipsky points out, there are court cases now pending on just that issue.  From there it is a short skip to property rights, and, using Kelo v New London, the connection is well made.

Seth Lipsky’s short piece is a must read for anyone following the development and downfall of the nation’s fisc, and its broader effects on all of us.

McClintock = Doolittle Redux ??? (updated 14apr2011)

George Rebane

At Tom McClintock’s 22mar11 town hall meeting our congressman 1) acknowledged my characterization of the spending cuts and related continuing resolutions as being insignificant pinpricks on the country’s fiscal gangrene, and 2) politely stated that my assessments were in error.

Now that the mother of all CRs, citing $38.5B spending cuts, has been trumpeted across the land by both parties, it turns out that I, and others who take a more careful look behind the curtain, were right and continue to be so.  The cited amount is nothing but feathers and hot air composed of accounting gimmicks that in their most hopeful application still wind up showing that we are spending more this year than last, and that the long-term benefits – if any, since the jury is still out – will be less than $20B annually.  (For a quick summary of the “hokum” see the editorial in the 13apr11 WSJ.)  Talk about flys#%t.  (Apologizies for my more crude characterization of congressional output that bespeaks of its backwater origins.  But then, we do communicate a bit more clearly here in the mountains.)

I strive with all the hope and reasoning power within me to believe that our congressman has not been turned by the Washington cesspool in which he now labors.  His predecessor was weak and became just another posterboy for the Democrats making fun of Republican hypocrites on spending.  In a private meeting Doolittle personally handed me a shovelful of BS on how congressional pork was dispensed.  We all have our moments and areas of ignorance, and that is what I will chalk up Tom McClintock’s misunderstanding of what he was describing and voting for, and not that he intended to deceive us.

So, now as the battle on the debt limit and the FY2012 budget shapes up, we have the Republicans under Boehner’s leadership having in the main caved on spending reductions for FY2011 and their effective shadow into the future.  If Congress passes last Friday night’s bamboozle then we have essentially achieved nothing.  And President Obama’s mendacious speech today is beyond my willingness to refute; let the national commentators who are paid for their labors dissect that septic tank.

As a tea party member, I cannot yet put anything that we support, in principle or substance, into the congressional Win Column.  Paul Ryan’s FY2012 budget proposal remains in the Hope Column.

[14apr2011]  Congressman Tom McClintock's NO vote on the FY2011 budget travesty restores my long held view of Tom as a man of principle.  The compromise budget turned out to be even more putrid than originally advertised.  The actual FY2011 spending reductions reduced down to the order of $300 million and change.  The Democrats won this one walking away.  Boehner knows how to wear a suit pretty well, but he doesn't negotiate worth a crap.  Add to that Paul Ryan's YES vote, and then we really have a picture of a confused Republican Party.  Thank God for Tom's vote, he is not a Doolittle. Complete vote tally here.

As We Talk About Taxes and Skin in the Game (updated 18apr2011)

George Rebane

 

Why would the bottom 50% ever vote for lower taxes??  The Democrats know the answer.

[18apr2011 update]  Russ Steele of NC Media Watch pointed me to the following little milestone that highlights the above graphic.  The sheeple are being prepared.

Singularity Signposts – Running out of processing matter/energy?

George Rebane

There was an interesting exchange on Ray Kurzweil's website between Kurzweil and a reader with a "disturbing thought" about post-Sinularity trans-humans some day running out of 'stuff' on which to store their ever-expanding knowledge base and on which to do the ever more expansive 'thinking' that presumably we will then be able to do (here).

The reader was concerned about a future gargantuan conflict as such beings competed for the limited matter/energy in the universe.  Their conversation wound up contemplating either our evolution into God(s), or the already achieved existence of God through such a process.

Neither participant seemed to realize that the likelihood of all such scenarios is low because they depend on Homo Sapiens being the only sentient and sapient species in this universe.  Most of us studied in such conversations cannot conceive of the case in which we find ourselves alone.  And if we are not alone, then the probability that anything of such post-Singularity nature has already happened is close to unity - since if we are not alone, then we are also not in a privileged point in time, i.e. we are not the species in the forefront of any such development or evolution.

It seems then that this argument fortifies the notion that, relative to Homo Sapiens, God already exists.  And it also then provides credence to the notion held by many leading scientists today that we may live – and all of our perceived existence is – in a running program.

I'll have more to say about this at a later time.  But in the interval, such reasoning threads should maximally disrupt the belief systems of calcified secular humanists – e.g. those who blindly insist that intelligent design has no provenance of its own and is merely a code word for creationism.

The Fierce Fight over Flys*#t (updated)

George Rebane

From listening to all the talking heads this weekend going on about the $38.5B spending cuts in the FY2011 budget, we hear that both sides are taking full credit.  And both the Dems and Repubs have declared victory … but over what??

It is clear that the tea parties are the only ones getting it.  Before Friday night's compromise, Tea Party Patriot co-founder Mark Meckler was in the lion's den on CNBC with a white-haired, fast-talking progressive loudmouth who kept interrupting Meckler while trying to get him to say something silly about various social issues involved with the proposed cuts.  Meckler wisely stuck to his guns stating that the TPP stood for fiscal responsibility, and was promoting the originally promised $100B spending cut in the budget for this year FY2011.  He emphasized that it was the amount that is important to us as a nation in the global community (a position long held in these pages).

Other countries with whom we trade, borrow from, and convince to keep the dollar as the world's reserve currency don't give a rat's butt where we reduce our spending to become fiscally responsible; they just want us to do it.  Actually, our enemies are siding with the Dems, and want the train wreck to happen sooner than later.  In any event, it is only the spending cut AMOUNTS that matter, and it is only the tea parties, led by the TPP, who started us on this responsible path that has now led to the Paul Ryan FY2012 budget proposal.  And it is only the tea parties that are still holding the politicians feet to the fire on an adult approach - cutting trillions in spending to reduce trillions in deficits - to a feasible fiscal soft landing.

As a TPP member, I see no reason to dance in  the fly pucky and celebrate the smidgeon announced last Friday night.  IF IF IF that leads to a clear-headed approach needed to negotiate a meaningful basis for raising the debt limit in May, and then adopting a real FY2012 budget – a la the Ryan Plan – to demonstrate good faith, THEN maybe I'll tap my toe quietly to the celebratory parade that everyone from Obama to Boehner to Reid is trying to lead.  But getting excited today is a mite early.  The sobering figure below explains.

[update] And Ramirez is always able to summarize succinctly.

Public Service Pension Sticker Shock

George Rebane

This was posted on 8 July 2008 by Bill Zettler (here and more here).  It is another of the ‘songs without words’ that are again reminding us of the rot which is even worse today.  But they do shine a light on how we got here.  (H/T to RR reader.  Click to enlarge table.)

Top 100 School Administrators Salaries and Pensions - Illinois 2007

 

A Snowball’s Chance in Hell

George Rebane

[This the submitted form of my Union column for April.  It was submitted on 7 April 2011, and could not reflect the yet another “short-term funding measure” agreement reached late Friday 8 April that averted government shutdown as reported here in the WSJ.]

The GOP’s federal budget – ‘The Path to Prosperity’ - for FY2012 was authored by Rep Paul Ryan (R-WI) and fellow Republicans on the House Budget Committee, including our congressman Tom McClintock.  This landmark budget is the first having the necessary painful entitlement cuts, and presents a feasible plan to bring the country back from fiscal disaster.

On the other hand, everything offered by the Democrats to date has been electioneering materials that pander to the ignorant and those of us receiving transfer payments – these include Democrats, Republicans, and the great uninvolved.

The Congressional Budget Office says President Obama’s budget proposal contains spending, deficits, debt, and taxes headed to the moon before the decade is out.  Yet the Dems and friends are already banging out histrionics about the “heartless” GOP.  More confusing is that there are two fiscal issues before Congress – related but of entirely different scope.

Deconstructing Obama and Journalism

George Rebane

The 2apr11 post – ‘Simon & Schuster’s Revenge’ - on American Thinker by Douglas Hackleman is a review of the recently published book Deconstructing Obama: The Life, Loves, and Letters of America's First Postmodern President by Jack Cashill.   The review is a worthy read and will serve for many of us as a compelling preamble to the book itself.

Besides the many items about Barack (Barry) Obama that Cashill excavates and assembles for us, the author’s product is another massive indictment of the state of American journalism, a profession populated and defended primarily by the left.  Hackleman’s conclusion contains this –

“Most unfortunately, the deconstruction of congenial myths is often received with the same enthusiasm as a stool specimen in the baptistery. While Jesus of the gospels said that the truth will set you free, one of his most poetically ardent defenders recognized that "nations grown corrupt" would rather take "bondage with ease than strenuous liberty." This fact is made obvious by the struthious apologetics that day by day through the popular media continue to anchor the myths of Dreams and Audacity.”

Would that in 2008 more of us had known only a fraction of this.  (H/T to RR reader.)

The first realistic budget - hallelujah! (updated 6apr2011)

George Rebane

The House Budget Committee submitted the first federal budget in years to deal with our fiscal crisis.  Under the leadership of Rep Paul Ryan (R-WI) the submitted budget will now have to weather the storms of Democratic opposition, for these are the people who think that liabilities in the tens of trillions will be handled by grudging spending cuts in the tens of billions.  Nothing new here, math and economics have never been their strong suit.

Our congressman Tom McClintock has thrown his support in for the GOP budget, and we’ll see how he and the other tea party supported Republicans will do when they run into heavy weather.  I have posted on this theme and its attendant continuing resolutions – one’s coming up this Friday – for some time now.  Ryan is the first national politician who has stepped out front with cuts totaling over $6 trillion in the next decade, and a path from here to a balanced budget in which we spend what we take in.  Well, not right away because initially we’ll still have to borrow to service the debt.  But the budget is the first to recognize that nothing happens without reducing the Big Three entitlements.

The Democrats will have a field day convincing the ignorant and the stupid, nevertheless their constituencies must be served, even if all you can serve them is pabulum.

For the full story on the FY2012 GOP budget proposal ‘The Path to Prosperity’ go to the source before you get underwhelmed by the lamestream – check the charts and graphs linked in the hard-to-see lime green band.  (H/T to Congressman McClintock’s office for the early email on this.)  This saga will be with us for some days yet; stay tuned.

[6apr2011 update]  The battle to rescue the country is joined.  Over the years our European friends have told us that they see very little difference between our two major political parties.  That problem has faded over the last four years, and I sincerely hope that it will completely disappear as the battle lines on the FY2012 budget and its more important portents are drawn.

Today the WSJ’s lead editorial essentially echoed the sentiments of this post and highlighted the significance of the first realistic budget as a stake in the ground marking responsible government and the distance we may/will stray from it in future negotiations with the country’s progressives.

The nearby photo was filched from another article on Rep Ryan’s budget that appeared in the 6apr11 WSJ showing the House Budget Committee stalwarts who have worked hard to bring this budget into the national debate on our fiscal future.  Prominently shown to Rep Ryan’s right is an extremely serious looking Tom McClintock, our own congressman from California’s 4th District.  The work in the coming months for all these gentlemen is cut out, and they deserve the support of all Americans who don’t belong to the can kicking cadres.

 

This morning via email from Rep McClintock’s office I received the transcript of his work session remarks to the Budget Committee.  It is presented below in its entirety.

Opening Statement
House Budget Committee
Markup of the 2012 Budget

Mr. Chairman:

 History walks with us today as we begin this work.  History offers us not a single example of a nation that has ever spent, borrowed and taxed its way to prosperity, but it offers us many, many examples of nations that have spent, borrowed and taxed their way to economic ruin and bankruptcy.  And history is screaming this warning at us: nations that bankrupt themselves aren’t around very long, because before we can provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare, we have to be able to pay for it – and the ability of our nation to do so is now in grave danger.

 Throughout these hearings, economists from every part of the spectrum have warned us that if we have just a few precious years left to avoid a sovereign debt crisis and potentially the financial collapse of the United States Government.

 Fortunately, history also offers us lessons of what to do and what not to do.

 We know what not to do.  Herbert Hoover responded to the recession of 1929 by increasing federal spending by a staggering 60 percent in just four years.  He began by imposing the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act – a steep tax on some 20,000 imported products – and ended by boosting the Federal Income Tax from 23 to 65 percent.  Franklin Roosevelt amplified and expanded these policies and in 1939, the unemployment rate was just as high as when he started.  We had lost an entire decade.

 In 1945, Harry Truman abolished the excess profits tax.  He slashed federal income taxes. In 1946, Truman cut the federal budget from $85 billion down to $30 billion in a single year.  He fired ten million federal employees.  (It was called war demobilization).  The Keynesians at the time predicted 25 percent unemployment and a renewed depression.  Instead, his policies produced the post-war economic boom.

 We have more recent examples.  During his administration, Bill Clinton reduced federal spending by a miraculous four percent of GDP.  He dared to touch the third rail of entitlement spending and produced the most important and fundamental reform of the welfare state in our century.  He signed what amounted to the biggest capital gains tax cut in history on home appreciation.  He produced the only four budget surpluses in the last 40 years and a period of pronounced economic prosperity.

 True, George W. Bush reduced taxes but at the same time he recklessly increased federal spending – boosting it by 2 percent of GDP.  He re-introduced the discredited folly of stimulus spending.  He approved the biggest expansion of entitlement spending since the Great Society.  He produced massive budget deficits. If entitlement and stimulus programs, crushing deficits and massive spending increases were the road to prosperity, the Bush Administration should have produced a new Golden Age for the economy. 

 Let’s put partisanship aside today and concentrate on policy.  In the mid-1990’s, a Republican Congress and a Democratic President, following precisely the policies outlined in the measure before us today – balanced the budget, reformed entitlement spending, placed us on a path to pay off the entire national debt and produced a period of economic expansion and prosperity.   

 This budget turns us away from policies that we KNOW do not work toward policies that we KNOW do work.  It brings federal spending back under control, it puts Medicare and Medicaid on a sound financial foundation, it produces a million new private sector jobs next year through economic expansion and places our nation on a path so that when my children retire, the retirement systems they’ll have paid into all their lives will be safe and secure and their nation will be debt free and prosperous.

Supervisor Lamphier Revealed

George Rebane

Nevada County’s recently elected Supervisor Terry Lamphier published an extremely revealing, and therefore, welcome column last Saturday in the 2apr11 Union.  In that short piece (‘Re: It’s Time to Get Serious’, below in blue italics) he did an admirable job of telling readers his perceptions of our economy and understanding of American governance.

Many would dismiss his words as just the disjointed ramblings of a lightly learned liberal.  Here we choose not to do that; instead we take Mr Lamphier at his considered word, and inform ourselves of this elected representative’s world view and beliefs.  These tenets are important for us to understand, since he and his intellectual peers may soon dominate county government, and take us all to where their lights will show the way.  Let’s look at this new shining.

I agree with Sen. Doug LaMalfa's observation that “Americans are a can-do people.” Unfortunately, I disagree with him on just about everything else, everything else being rationalizations as to why, implied in essence, the business world is the superior role model for how we should live our lives. He is forwarding the conservative message that ‘society, and its representative, our government, should be subservient to economics and the private sector.'

Right off the bat, Mr Lamphier posits that government should not be subservient to the principles of economics and the private sector - the fundamental credo of a socialist cum whatever stronger form of collectivism you care to insert.

We are no longer talking about representative government — where we all have a say in what happens — when regular folks' voices are drowned out by a Wall Street government populated by those who perpetuate the migration of wealth into an ever smaller pool while systematically dismantling the very agency they were elected to work for and with.

So governments that are subservient to principles of economics and the private sector do not belong to the class of representative forms of governance.  Our Founders would find this conclusion most remarkable and counter to their intended legacy to us.  Difficult to tell here how Mr Lamphier connects these two propositions, but connects them he does.  Onward.

As We Kick the Can (updated 3apr2011)

George Rebane

Busy week ahead and spending cuts are on everyone’s mind these days.  Many Americans understand that our country’s fiscal course is taking us to a certified fundamental transformation – national ruin.  There are also a lot of people who see nothing of the sort happening, they believe the current debt and deficits are totally manageable.  We just need to increase taxes on corporations and the ‘rich’.

Most Democrats in Washington don’t perceive any fiscal crisis that requires spending cuts of more than, say, forty or fifty billion dollars.  And enough Republicans seem to agree, if we just watch their walk and don’t pay much attention to their talk.  This talk admits a national debt and near-term obligations of over $50,000,000,000,000 (that’s fifty Trillion for short), and annual deficits way north of $1T.  Consequently the federal budget must suffer big cuts to the Big Three Entitlements – Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid.  Nicking a couple of billion here and there from discretionary spending will do nothing except buy near-term votes from the clueless.

But the current Republican talk hints at a big secret deal in the works with the Dems, a deal that will really ‘make a difference’.  This pending agreement is what motivated enough Repubs – including our Congressman Tom McClintock – to kick the continuing resolutions can down the road a couple of weeks ago.  The next kick is scheduled for next Friday 8 April when another CR or something is needed since we have no federal budget for this year – the Dems decided to kick that garbage can down the road last October.  Now the real rubber meets the road in a month when the current national debt limit is reached, and we can no longer borrow from the Chinese and friends, or even the prescient bond giant PIMCO.

Today the can-kicking Repubs are telling us that the debt limit is where they’ll draw the line and make their stand; be patient until then.  Our patience will be rewarded by the Repubs calling on a mysterious power that will make the Dems bow to massive spending cuts in the order of hundreds of billions.  We just have to wait for it, … and believe.

Returning to KVMR News

George Rebane

[In response to KVMR’s listing of me as their 1apr11 news reporter, I recorded this little number for my regular commentary.  All of it survived to be aired except the last disclaimer.  The station’s news director felt strongly that the commentary was too realistic for a goodly portion of the listening audience, so I also recorded the more standard disclaimer that I normally use.  And that was substituted for the last paragraph.  Shucks.]

This is George Rebane continuing with KVMR’s evening news.  Washington - after being pilloried for reporting that the Muslim Brotherhood was a secular and peaceful organization with no Islamist intentions, the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper returned to the Senate to confirm his earlier testimony.  A new report released by the CIA finds unequivocally that the Brotherhood is in fact a secular educational organization that has “eschewed violence” and whose connection to Islam is in name only.  Concurrently a State Department spokesman added that this organization has successfully applied for, and will now receive federal grants to conduct educational programs in all major federal detention facilities.