Rebane's Ruminations

‘True Value of Work’ and ‘Caring Economics’

George Rebane

KVMR news director Paul Emery commenting on ‘Right Wing Extremism in Action: Tea Party Houston’ introduced Riane Eisler’s Caring Economics into the wide-ranging discussion in that post’s comment stream.  Paul Emery’s concern there was that Eisler’s ideas are so compelling and, at the same time, revolting to conservatives, that they find it too hot to handle and simply want to change the subject instead of confronting head on its solutions to society’s problems.  I personally was accused twice of doing so after answering Paul’s charges (BTW, readers should know that Paul is a friend, the ‘editor’ of my regular KVMR commentary, a student of the human condition, and one of the leading light’s in the local left’s intellectual  pantheon.  I am grateful that his observations and critiques generously grace RR’s comment streams.)

By any measure, Eisler is a left-wing economist with strong feminist overtones.  The above link provides an excellent summary of her Caring Economics.  The purpose of this post it to provide a forum for a discussion of Eisler’s ideas for a brave and caring new world.  We begin appropriately with Paul’s most recent lament about capitalism -

One of the problems with capitalism as it is heralded by the self described conservatives is that it places no value on the work being done, only on whether it turns a profit. To place a value on the importance of the work being done is an evolution that Ms. Eisler embraces.  Doesn't the work of raising intelligent, educated and responsible children have more value than the manufacturing of cigarettes for example?  How is the true value of the work we do established?  It's a huge question that no one wants to talk about.

So let’s begin by talking about the ‘true value of work’.  (I have the honor of being not only a “self-described conservative”, but an ascribed conservative who has enjoyed that appellation from far and wide, bestowed over many years.)  Value itself is usually understood to be “the worth of something in terms of the amount of other things for which it can be exchanged or in terms of some medium of exchange.”   The ‘other things’ may be person-to-person specific, or person-to-market specific – here it takes to two tango.

‘True value’ of anything is a general concept foreign to most people, except perhaps those contemplating the workings of command economies.  Most progressives quickly tend toward command economies when in such discussions they are invited to bare their souls.  So in this sense, there exists no ‘true value of work’ that can be applied in the large where people are free to bargain and trade.  It has and continues to be a socialist shibboleth.

Now to the value of “the work of raising intelligent, educated and responsible children”.  In dollars and cents that value is already expressed precisely by the parents of the child as they invest in his support and education while he remains in their household.  From an economic perspective, the kid returns little beyond the hopefully net joy that is provided for by the human relationships involved.  And the little darlin’ doesn’t even provide that to the rest of us.

We stand still for transfer payments to benefit another’s child in the hope that the present value of the kid’s future economic contributions will somehow make worthwhile today’s expenditures.  As a taxpayer, I don’t need to pay for the parents’ marginal labor in bringing up their kid.  If they have wealth generating jobs, they already charge enough for their labor there to account for such ‘home expenses’.  The last thing that we need is an armed and uniformed marshal at my door to collect the marginal tax for paying some mother to raise her kids.  To an extent, I think we already have a foot in such a world.

Eisler’s new brand of command socialism would have us succumb to exactly such government assignations of the ‘true value of working mothers’ to be an added cost borne by the (all together now) ‘rich’.

Let me conclude this post by bringing forward the relevant comment thread from ‘Right Wing Extremism …’ to Paul’s above opening salvo.  Notice that Paul will introduce a new idea, “true capitalism”, in his response below.  This is another notion inaccessible to most of us.

 

‘All Political Violence is Wrong’

George Rebane

That is a thesis put forward in the comment stream of ‘Rightwing Extremism in Action: Tea Party Houston’.  And I believe this strong and important statement deserves an examination in its own right.  First, let us understand political violence to be the use of force in the pursuit of a political end.  What’s a political end?  In this case it is clearly a political environment that does not exist at the time that the violence is perpetrated.  Else why even give the matter thought, let alone start using force?

Politics (from Greek πολιτικός, "of, for, or relating to citizens"), is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs (an excellent definition from Wikipedia).

So a political end is usually one that specifies a state of governance ranging all the way from the structure of government itself, to one or more policies of such a government that are codified in anything from its constituting documents, through its laws, to regulations made by its departments in pursuit of executing certain laws.

With this groundwork laid, we may profitably contemplate the truth value of the thesis ‘All political violence is wrong.’

To begin, can anyone think of any kind of violence (excluding naked criminality committed within a system of governance) which would not be considered political violence?  Political violence is throwing a Molotov cocktail through the window of an abortion clinic; it is blowing up a big government office building; it is also using billy clubs to determine who can or not enter a polling place, to attack commercial establishments in protesting certain meetings or government actions, to commit a suicide bombing, to cause harm to someone for not joining, and so on.

Political violence is also the marshalling of a population to raise an army, and fight for independence from a legally constituted and recognized government that rules the land – this is called a revolution.  Political violence is also when one nation decides that its interests are best served through the use of force to weaken another country, sanction it, coerce it into certain concessions, or to invade it and annex it into its sphere of influence either by absorption or installing a new government that serves its needs.  In short, it all seems to be political violence.

Do we now condemn some of the above, but not all of it?  It seems that most people would not condone an individual deciding to blow up a random group of innocent people in pursuit of political ends.  Yet if a group of people fill a city square to overturn cars, set fires, and make barricades to protest against their government, then we (in the large) don’t instantly condemn such political violence.  Instead, we will take into consideration many factors, and may even go to the aid of those people and abet their violence.  This is something that we will most likely not do if the perpetrator of such violence acted alone, or with a comrade, or maybe a cohort of less than ten, or … .

Unavoidably, it seems that numbers have something to do with whether we admit and condone political violence or condemn and resist it.  The principles that motivate the ‘lone wolf’ and the mob of thousands may be identical, but somehow here principle is overshadowed by plurality.

If that is true, how do we assign an a priori threshold or rule set (algorithm) to separate ‘good’ political violence from ‘bad’ political violence?  Many will immediately respond by saying, ‘Well, that depends on many things.’  And that is point here, what are those many things?  How are we – or better, how am I - to judge the acceptability of political violence given that it is one of the most common and enduring expressions of human desperation?

Elizabeth & Lucas: Grandpa's Bragging Rights

George Rebane

 

Grandkids Lucas and Elizabeth, of our Northern Tribe in Washington, went to Spokane this weekend for the state's high school track championships.  They attend Bear Creek School in Woodinville, and their track team qualified for the championships in several events.  Both kids and the team did well as you can tell from their expressions.  Lucas also plays basketball for the school, and Elizabeth is on the school's volleyball team.  Their little sister Catherine, another basketball player (actually none of the Rebane sprouts are little) is off playing in the AAU league on a team for which she was recruited.  Mom (daughter Sini) is a trained sports photographer, and took the pictures.  Just thought you all would want to know ;-)

Remembering and Providing for Sacrifice

George Rebane

Today we remember and honor the military service men and women who died for us, and those who have yet to come home.  We sent them into harm’s way to keep harm away from us and our loved ones.  They went willingly again and again to do the work of war with the belief, and sometimes only hope, that their country was behind them.

 

Since the days of muzzle loading rifles and the Constitution class of frigates, one way Americans heading for battle knew their country supported them fully was in the quality and supply of weapons and stores they were provided.  In the main, these were always the best that was available for warcraft.  And with innovative entrepreneurs free to invent, make, and sell, America soon set the standard for getting there firstest with the bestest and mostest – once our politicians had things sorted out.

California – Failed and Federalized

George Rebane

About two years ago in these pages I introduced the notion of California rapidly becoming federalized (here) because it was successfully pursuing many concurrent avenues to failure.  A federalized state must first be a failed state, and that we have become as William Russell Mead explains in a tightly written piece on his American Interest blog.  The following is the introduction to Mead’s essay.

The controversial US Supreme Court decision that could ultimately force California to release tens of thousands of prison inmates is more than a shockingly broad exercise of judicial power.  It is also an official declaration by the highest constitutional authority in the land that California meets the strict test of state failure: it can no longer enforce the law within its frontiers.

Let there be no mistake: when you produce so many criminals that you can’t afford to lock them up, you are a failed state.  Virtually every important civil institution in society has to fail to get you to this point.  Your homes and houses of worship are failing to build law abiding citizens, much less responsible and informed voters.  Your schools aren’t educating enough of your kids to make an honest living.  Your taxes and policies are so bad that you are driving thousands of businesses away.  Your management systems must be fouled and confused to the max for you to create something so dysfunctional, so wildly beyond your means, that the Supreme Court of the United States (wisely or foolishly is another question) starts to micromanage your jails.

California used to be the glory of this country, the dream by the sea, the magic state.  Now it produces so many criminals it can’t pay to keep them locked up.

Please read the entire essay ‘SCOTUS Makes It Official: California A Failed State’.  H/T to regular RR reader for alerting us to this.

Orthogonality – Semantic and Otherwise

George Rebane

These pages see a lot of debate between commenters of widely varying ideological stripe.  One of the problems often encountered by the reader of comment threads, embedded in a posted article's comment stream, is that one debater suddenly posts a comment that somehow does not follow what went on before – it seems to have taken a turn and headed off to left field.  If the other commenter or debater attempts follow or point out the sudden detour, then the debate essentially disintegrates with no clear understanding by readers of where at least one (usually the dear departing) contenders stands on the original proposition.

I am posting this little piece as one that I and others can refer (and link) to in the future when it is desired to highlight the basis for a discussion thread’s going awry.  And I will provide for this by defining the notions of semantic orthogonality and the independence of likelihoods (or probabilities) of propositions being true/correct.

Rood Center Bumblings

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular bi-weekly KVMR-FM commentary broadcast earlier this (27may11) evening.]

Going into its second year now is a ballooning lawsuit that names Nevada County, its Clerk-Recorder Mr Greg Diaz, and Aptitude Solutions, a Florida software company as defendants.  The suit is brought by AtPac, the county’s longtime records processing and storage software vendor, which was replaced by the Florida company selling similar software and services.

Things with the switchover to Aptitude started going wrong from the start as I reported to you last month, and as has been covered extensively in The Union and some local blogs, mine included.  The former vendor AtPac has charged that Mr Greg Diaz and the county wrongfully gave the new vendor access to AtPac’s proprietary intellectual property.  Diaz and the county apparently did this in order to facilitate the changeover of county data so that it could be handled by the Florida vendor’s software.

Both the county and Mr Diaz continue to deny doing anything improper as the case drags through its discovery phase and preparation for trial sometime later this year.  The problems apparently started when the county refused to hire its old vendor to convert county data from its proprietary format into one that could be used by the new vendor.  That job would have cost the county a “maximum contract amount of $15,000”.

'Rightwing Extremism in Action: Tea Party Houston'

George Rebane

Here's an example of the asymmetry in the violent rhetoric and revolutionary fervor between the left and the right.  This video makes clear the palpable violence and hatred of the right.  Take a look at these rabid rightwingers; and check out the music that sets the mood.  Is this their best shot?

And then check out a good representation of what has become identified as the rightwing credo.  How does the self-declared midddle differentiate itself from these tenets?

Last night we saw the screening of 'A More Perfect Union', a compelling depiction of America's Constitutional Convention that produced the document which made us an enduring democratic republic.  The film was presented at the NC Board of Realtors' Easterly Hall by those radical NC Tea Party Patriots.  When the film ended it was hard to find a dry eye in the SRO hall.  Gotta watch 'em like a hawk.

TechTest2011 Survivors’ Breakfast

George Rebane

Tofanelli’s in Grass Valley was again the venue for the annual TechTest Survivors’ Breakfast.  2011 is the fifth anniversary of TechTest ('Where the Elite Compete'), the merit scholarship examination taken by a teacher-nominated group of select Nevada County high school seniors headed for careers in science and technology.  TT is written and sponsored by the Sierra Environmental Studies Foundation, and is administered by a committee of Nevada County high school teachers chaired by Mr John McDaniel.

  

This year’s breakfast was well attended by ‘survivors’ (pictured here), parents, local educators, SESF board members, and contributors to the TT2011 merit scholarship fund.  Scholarships are awarded strictly on the basis of test scores (more here).

This year’s survivors are heading for universities and colleges ranging from Ivy League and West Point to California’s institutions of higher education.  The breakfast allows everyone to share their plans and kibitz on their test experience – TT2011 was judged to be “a little easier” than previous editions, even though the top score was still about 60.  As author of the tests, I am making special note of that.  (Readers are invited to judge for themselves; past tests and solutions are available here.)

Also highlighted at the feed was SESF’s TechMentor program that supplies tutors and mentors to Nevada County schools.  These volunteers act as a teachers’ resource to work with students who have special remedial or advanced studies needs.  I wrote about this program in a recent Union column that provides more information if you are interested in helping our young people.

The plans for TT2012 include increasing the scholarship fund by inviting local businesses, especially the high tech companies, to contribute and get more involved with young people heading for technical careers.  If you wish to participate in TechTest or TechMentor, please email me at nctechmentor@gmail.com .

Tea Party – “Deaf, deluded, deceptive”?

George Rebane

 

The cartoon by friend and RR reader RL ‘Balanced Bob’ Crabb appears in today’s (24may11) Union.  Balanced Bob is a self-proclaimed down-the-middle observer of our partisan puffings and pitfalls.  Here he administers a well-worn leftwing swipe at the tea party movement by taking it to task for being too focused as an organization.  The tea party attracts its members through the narrow door of small government, fiscal responsibility, constitutionality, and free markets.

The tea party members (and I am one) take these as a limited yet powerful set of goals for governance that many people can agree on.  We don’t cover the waterfront as a political party might by also espousing social goals, a foreign policy, and so on.  This doesn’t mean that tea party members don’t each have their own beliefs and ideas about all those things; it’s just that these are not germane to their membership in our particular organization.  Sorta like the National Organization for Women not taking a stand on free markets (maybe they do?).

But a standard tack of the left, when at a disadvantage on the main point of an argument, is to immediately defocus it in either the topical and/or the historical dimension.  To their mind this is a perfectly valid method of discourse, especially political discourse.  For example, if a proposition is made that ‘high school education would be improved by putting only qualified teachers into classrooms’, then a teachers' union progressive would deflect the argument by accusing his counterpart of not caring for the quality of grade school education by omitting that from his proposition.  Or even more egregiously, applying the historical gambit, ‘Yeah?  Well where were you guys when we tried to do that ten years ago?’  Examples of this abound in the comment streams of these pages.

So here we have Balanced Bob now tilting at the tea party from the left in order to keep his credentials in equilibrium.  But the part that I’m having trouble understanding is how are we being “deceptive” by constantly publishing our focused emphasis on the principles we espouse.  And just because they were never meant to be comprehensive does not mean that tea party members wear blinders and are ignorant about the other issues on which their candidates take a stance.

I may not be among the most knowledgeable of tea party members – for which I apologize – but I do invite anyone sharing Bob’s view of the organization to button hole a member and talk to him/her about their knowledge of candidates and other issues.   It is the tea party kind of large scale awakening of the American electorate that keeps slogan-slinging politicos awake nights.

May Day in LA

George Rebane

The 2011 May Day celebrations in Los Angeles were not covered as thoroughly by the lamestream as one might wish.  Our progressive cadres continue to lay a thick smokescreen on the notion that today's labor movement, led by public service unions, have again picked up the theme of a new communist revolution.  Moreover, they want you to know it and join them.  Please file this in your Great Divide folder.  (Click to enlarge image.)

 

Ruminations - 22may2011

"Democrats voted for Obama to prove they weren't racist,....now they can vote for Cain to prove they're not stupid."  From an article announcing Cain's candidacy.

George Rebane

- New Report on the status of American education and its public schools,
- SleazeWatch Dept – Obamacare waivers line is getting even longer,
- Remarkable position of Dems on debt and deficit,
- No explanation on the glories of ‘card check’,
- Still hear about Al Gore’s notorious SS Lock Box?

‘The Failure of American Schools’ by Joe Klein in the June issue of The Atlantic lays out the most recent grim picture on the performance and policies of unionized public schools in America (H/T to reader).  Recommended reading for both Democrats and Republicans – the former to celebrate how their voter pool is growing, and the latter to stay focused on efforts to return real education into the country’s classrooms.

In our SleazeWatch Department the spotlight returns to that legislative luminary, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who still holds the title of Ms Pass-then-Ponder in the House.  Yes, her main claim to fame is still Obamacare, but maybe not in the way she intended.  As the long line of businesses, institutions, and unions (more than half of applicants, who’d a thunk it?) at the Obamacare Waiver Window grows, someone noticed that almost 40 of the recent additions to this line of worthies seeking to opt out come from Pelosi’s district.  Not to worry though, those with petitions to take a pass on socialized healthcare need no longer embarrass their electeds in Congress with direct appeals.  They can use a front outfit by the name of Flex-Plan Services to do their dirty work with the government (wink-wink).  Love that name; wasn’t Obamacare supposed to do away with all that flexibility in the healthcare markets?  For a snootfull on these doings, just google ‘Obamacare waivers’.

It seems that not many people understand the whys and wherefores of raising the nation’s debt ceiling.  One way you can tell is to look at the straight-faced position of the Democratic congressional caucus.   With not a blink of an eye, the Dems state that we’ll continue screwing the country by opposing meaningful spending cuts, unless you Republicans let us screw the country by helping us raise taxes and support meaningless spending cuts.  For a while there I thought that both sides had the best interests of the nation at heart.  To see why the Dems don’t have to worry how this stand will play with the voters, take another look at the status of education report above.

Maybe I’m just waiting for the Easter Bunny and Tinkerbell, but I did expect someone like Trumka or Andy Stern to explain to the rest of us about forced unionization and workers’ rights.  To date none of the progressives have stepped up to explain how denying workers a secret ballot on admitting a union increases their rights.  One explanation is that the leftwing politicos are afraid the public schools haven’t yet graduated enough double dummies who will believe how that ‘card check’ liberal lobotomy will substitute for reason and logic.

Finally, it seems that one funny farm factoid has finally been laid to rest in the debate about our country’s unfunded liabilities.  It seems that the ‘fully funded Social Security trust fund’ phools are getting the hook from their leftwing pulpits.  It must be about three months or so since I last heard one of those talk in a public forum.  Now it’s only a few local yokels here and there who still believe that Al Gore’s notorious SS Lock Box full of Treasuries will be good for anything except perhaps launching QE47.  Bernanke, call your office.

The Visegrad Group - as NATO disintegrates, Poland steps up

George Rebane

A little noticed rearrangement of Europe’s security apparatus will have a great impact on how ‘old Europe’ will finally react to its historical threats from the east (Russia) and south (Islam).  NATO had the con on defending Europe against international communism (USSR) during the Cold War.  With the collapse of the USSR and the rehabilitation of communism – it is now an openly pursued alternative form of governance in the US and the rest of the world – NATO entered its muddled decline that has become a farce with its forces arrayed tentatively and far from the territories it was intended to protect.

In this interval, European countries have reduced their defense expenditures to nil, letting Uncle Sam be the world’s policeman and do all the heavy lifting – literally.  The German Bundeswehr - son of Wehrmacht, the inventor of the mechanized army and blitzkrieg – could not even transport its soldiers to the Polish border if they would reprise their attack of September 1939, the troops would have to hitchhike.  In the meanwhile Germany has decided, that for its economic survival, it must make nice with the thugocracy that today is Russia.

And that leaves Poland and the other central Europeans to again play the role of buffer and pawns.  They have been screwed, blued, and tattooed many times over the centuries by their neighbors, and they see it coming again.  Their latest experience was the defection of Great Britain and France who signed mutual aid and guarantee of borders treaties after WW1 with the Baltics, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, … .  When Stalin and Hitler attacked (per their secret Molotov-Ribbentrop pact signed in the spring of 1939), all these countries called for the military aid they had been promised.  What they got was a fistful of diplomatic cables from the west that in essence said, ‘just kidding’.

Polish national memory recalls that it was that country which halted the tide of Islam’s Ottoman Turks in 1683 at the Battle of Vienna.  Under the command of Poland’s King Sobieski the Muslims were thrown back into the Balkans where they have retained their European toehold to this day.  Minarets on Europe’s skylines were postponed for three centuries.

Recently Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic have quietly united to revive the historic Visegrad Group.  Under this union these countries recently announced the formation of a military force that is totally independent of NATO, and charged with the defense of central Europe.  Expect the Visegrad Group to soon include the Baltics, Rumania, Bulgaria, Austria, and (here come the fireworks) the Ukraine.  Eventually, the Christian remnants of Yugoslavia would also become natural members of this alliance, or assume the role of new pawns between Islam and Europe.

Stratfor has focused on tracking this development, and reports on it in ‘Visegrad: A New European Military Force’  by George Friedman (nearby map from that article).  Those of us on these shores who are not mollified by the politically correct views of Islam should pay particular attention as this is the beginning of the renewed polarization of the next regional hegemons, Turkey and Poland.

As a footnote here, keep an eye on how Turkey will break its silence on the Arab Spring.  Turkey cannot stand on the sidelines of this growing Islamic parade.  It must step in there to take a leadership position when it sees that a caliphate-like coalescence is starting among the revolting countries of north Africa and the Middle East.  President Obama’s 19may11 speech also laid the groundwork for that.

Ruminations - 19may2011

George Rebane

- Global warming solutions are no solutions
- How Democrats plant to beat Repubs again in 2012
- The American intifada

The hilarity or tears, take your pick, on the entire issue of global warming just don’t stop.  Given that any of the AGW propaganda happens to be true, the cost effectiveness of attempting to stop it with the currently known alternative energy solutions is essentially nil.  A reader sent a link to a humorous, short, and but fairly detailed look by Christopher Monckton at the numbers involved (here).  Enjoy.

One of my spies in California politics sent this little piece of intelligence from the Democratic Party.  It’s an 8-page glossy brochure (Download California Democratic Party Election Recap) of how the Dems beat the bejeezus out of California’s GOP last November, and “actually tightened their grip on the statehouse.”  All the world now knows what that has done to the state over the last decades (here).  And they expect to do it again in 2012.  Given the state’s political and demographic realities, this is not an unreasonable expectation.  The Republicans cannot afford to ignore this strategy.

 “We are Mexicans and the Americans stole our land.” is the cry that students in colleges are now using to unite themselves with the Palestinian case against Israel to bring the simmering Reconquista movement back onto the front burner of American politics.  The Arab Spring has turned militant against Israel in the latest attempt to start the third intifada.  Mock walls are built on campuses to represent the US and Israeli borders (more here).

Reconquista is gaining momentum with the help of anti-American progressives.  This faction is fronting radical students to link the current attacks on Israel’s borders and the illegal alien onslaught on our borders.  Both are protests against the invasions of the “occupiers” – the one in 1948 and the other in 1848.  The lamestream is silent about this attempt to start an American intifada.  (more from RR search on ‘reconquista’).

Sharia Creep – while we’re not paying attention (updated 18may2011)

George Rebane

One way to deconstruct a nation-state is to have its citizens divided into cohorts each answerable to a different set of laws.  The Islamic settlements in Europe are on their way to such a legal construct.  Great Britain already has a Sharia dual in its legal system to which Muslims are bound and under which their justice may be dispensed.

Islamic organizations in Australia united under AFIC (Australian Federation of Islamic Councils) are now petitioning the government to do the same.  AFIC states that it “strongly supports that multiculturalism should lead to legal pluralism . . . and twin tolerations”.   This is perhaps the most blatant demonstration that Islamic societies, as they spread across the world, have no intention to assimilate into their host societies.  (more here and here)

On the current path of progressivism in America, we are on course to soon entertain similar appeals on our shores.  Strong arguments will be made and explained to the rest of us by the left that the natural maturation of multiculturalism must needs embody a legal pluralism and multiple tolerations specific to who belongs to what group.

As argued before in these pages – societies remain cohesive to the extent that its members can reliably predict each others’ behavior.  A common language and a common body of law contribute to such cohesion.  Legal pluralism does not.

(H/T to RR reader.)

[18may2011 update]  A reader's email contained this strong exhortation by conservativeactionalerts.com regarding some relevant legislation - HR973 - on Sharia law now before Congress.

Vestiges of Understanding, perhaps toward a Consensus?

George Rebane

The lengthy comment streams on RR, each containing several comment threads dissecting various ideas, are a joy to behold.  In these pages we join to discuss weighty propositions and happenings that range from the nature of the universe to the why, what, and how of the critters that inhabit our planet.  Mostly we are like the blind men, each groping a part of the pachyderm attempting to describe the whole from what they grasp.

Intuitively we know that we can better discover the overall ‘nature of the beast’ if we accurately communicate our own observations to others, and in turn correctly understand what others are perceiving from their points of vantage.  (‘No Harry, that’s my leg.  The elephant is over here.’)

There are many dimensions to such discussions and/or debates.  And not everyone comes to hug the elephant with a common objective.   Some are there to present and defend their long held idea against all comers.  Some come just to denigrate an idea, or to denigrate the class of people who value the idea, or worse, to simply denigrate the individual who holds to the idea without much concern for the idea itself.

The saddest exchanges are those in which a discussant, out of whole cloth, ascribes to his opposite a position (usually simplistic) that is not supported by any careful read of the other’s words.  Then the discussant proceeds at length to attack and vilify that auto-ascribed position, and doubly so his intended target.  The astute reader recognizes this as the algorithmic basis of political dialogue and debate.  It frustrates the intelligent, and merely plays to the gallery of idiots.  The goal is not greater understanding, but to gain the march on the other.  Most media debates, commentaries, and blogs – sadly including RR - have generous dollops of such back and forth. 

Then on rarer occasions we witness a thread in which the participants begin to productively build a mutually shared understanding, each contributing what they know and civilly pointing out what they believe are errors in the previous contributions, independent of their contributors.  In my mind, that is the sought for elixir of blogs that traffic in ideas.  Don’t get me wrong, productive results do not come only from full agreement or consensus.  Because there are an uncountable number of coherent systems of logic, there can be an equivalent number of ideas (propositions) that are correctly supported by such logics.

And to me at least, discovering such differences, and how they can stand, is itself an illumination and a giant step toward greater understanding in diverse societies.  Such discoveries made in good faith allow the discussion to go to a meta-level where, perhaps, a new and more powerful consensus could be achieved, or at least understood why it still eludes.

From a perusal of RR’s comment streams over its relatively short tenure, I believe that bit by piece we may be moving toward such a forum here.

Ruminations - 15may2011 (updated 16may2011)

George Rebane

- It’s not your father’s inflation
- Obama’s birth is too hot to handle (updated)
- Global warming disguised as a mid-May snowfall

We know that part of the government’s tactic to keep us in the dark on the true fiscal and economic parameters of the country is not limited to the daily lies that we’ll default on our debt service payments if we don’t raise the debt limit and continue profligate spending as usual.  Another major messing with our heads is their assurance that the country’s inflation rate is very low as measured by the inflation metric they re-fiddled in 1990.  The actual inflation rate measured the old way, and the one we experience daily in our expenditures, is closer to 11+% than the 2% number that we are fed almost daily.  Russ Steele on NCMW has the details here.

My post ‘Birth Certificate from Hell’ gave rise to quite a discussion in its comment stream that launched a number of left/right charge counter-charge exchanges.  The issue is apparently way too hot to handle by even the tea party backed champions we sent to Congress recently.  It is clear that politics triumphs inside the Beltway, no matter the stated good intentions before jumping into that ring.  My own experience with our Congressman Tom McClintock on this matter is documented in the 15may11 update to the above post.  [16may2011 update - Tom McClintock's chief of staff Igor Birman spells out the reasoning behind the strategy of silence.  See the original post that is linked above.]

This morning’s surprise snowfall in Nevada County left a lot of people wondering about the arguments for and against global warming, global cooling, and ‘it’s only weather’.  We lost a major part of a beautiful 30-year-old maple tree.  It shaded the west side of the house.  Regardless of how True Believers and Skeptics argue the matter, this summer is going to make the Rebane house hotter in the afternoons.

Morganza Spillway Decision (updated 16may2011)

George Rebane

This afternoon the Army Corps of Engineers opened a spillway in a massive containment levee (dam) to flood the few in order to save the many (see nearby AP photo).  From wsj.com -

A steel, 10-ton floodgate was slowly raised Saturday for the first time in nearly four decades, unleashing a torrent of water from the Mississippi River, away from heavily populated areas downstream.

The water spit out slowly at first, then began gushing like a waterfall as it headed to swamp as much as 3,000 square miles (7,770 square kilometers) of Cajun countryside known for small farms and fish camps. Some places could wind up under as much as 25 feet (7.5 meters) of water.

Opening the Morganza spillway diverts water away from Baton Rouge and New Orleans, and the numerous oil refineries and chemical plants along the lower reaches of the Mississippi.

What puzzles me is that this massive piece of flood control infrastructure was built for the precise purpose of saving those 3,000 square miles of Cajun towns and farms from exactly this level of Mississippi flood waters.  It is a fairly simple problem of flood control engineering to calculate that given a so-and-so river level at Morganza will mean that Baton Rouge and New Orleans are going to be flooded.  Yet no appropriate flood control infrastructure has been built to protect those major population areas from flood levels that are provided for at Morganza.

It had to be known that the Morganza levee would never be used for its purported purpose unless and until the Baton Rouge and New Orleans flood control infrastructures were in place to handle the level of floods that Morganza can handle.  Yet the decision was made to build Morganza first, and decades passed without a finger being lifted to protect the cities downstream.

Would it not have been more sane to use the monies to first protect the cities to the extent possible, and let the Cajun countryside suffer what floods may come, because the Morganza spillway, to obviate its purpose, would have to be opened in any case to save the unprotected Baton Rouge and New Orleans?

The media have not picked up on this little question.  Maybe a reader can supply the simple explanation that eludes just me.  Or is this another example of government overwhelmed?

[16may2011 update]  The map below from the 16may11 WSJ gives an idea of the scope of the decision's effect to flood the Atchafalaya River basin.

 

Our Students Need You

George Rebane

[This is the submitted form of my May column in the 14may11 Union (here).]

The classroom format of teaching requires that students are in a more or less tight group as far as progress and learning ability are concerned.  The larger the class, the less chance the teacher has to bring along the slower learners and individually challenge the faster ones.  As a consequence both ends suffer when teaching resources are limited.

With today’s economy and government cutbacks in the headlines, we have just such a situation in our public schools.  To help alleviate this, a couple of years back the Sierra Environmental Studies Foundation (SESF is a 501c3 non-profit organization) launched the TechMentor project to introduce qualified mentors and tutors to high school students in science and math classes.  The aim is to provide science and math teachers in Nevada County with an expanded resource of qualified individuals to tutor students and mentor them in the various school science projects.

A TechMentor relationship starts with the classroom teacher contacting SESF or Mr John McDaniel, NUHS physics teacher and head of the TechTest Scholarship Committee.  (TechTest is SESF’s annual merit scholarship exam taken by Nevada County high school seniors who are headed for careers in science and technology.  Scholarships are awarded strictly on test scores.  Juniors can take TechTest for practice.)   Mr McDaniel then gives SESF the teacher contact information and student requirements, and we go to work finding one or more candidates who can fill the bill.  The mentor/tutor candidate is then identified and put in contact with the teacher.  The teacher makes the final determination as to the suitability of the candidate, and sets up the work program with the student.

An Eerie Feeling re the Great Divide

George Rebane

Is the Great Divide already under way?  RR readers are familiar with the Great Divide discussion in these pages (RR search ‘great divide’).  The basis for the idea of a structural change in these United States is an old one, one that is provided for by our Constitution, and one that was in lively national discussion even before The War for Southern Independence (aka The Civil War).  Today the debate has again become compelling due to the seemingly irreconcilable polarization between the factions of the Left and those of the Right.

One ‘solution’, to the indisputable fact that both sides live in their own universe, is a peaceful separation of the two cohorts into a confederated assembly of the current states.  One that would enable open practice of limited government, Founders’ constitutionality, fiscal prudence, and free markets.  The other would continue the current collectivist path to socialism and whatever may follow that folly.  The actual division of territories is among the several problems that need a good-faith dialogue to solve peaceably.

Another and perhaps more serious problem is the asymmetry with which both sides view the Great Divide.  The people on the Right see themselves in a growing bondage of restraints, constraints, unlimited taxation, and loss of liberties.  Their general response is ‘let us go our own way.’  The Left’s general response is ‘oh no you don’t!’, the direct implication being that they would then very quickly run out of OPM, the fuel that always powers progressivism.

But for completeness, I have to add that there are a few progressives who firmly believe that their social order does not need money from other people; they can generate the necessary wealth themselves.  In fact, some of them even claim that it is the Left that is generating the country’s wealth and dragging along the worthless Right.  (Such progressives should be complemented for their keen insight, and the conversation taken to the next stage of how the Great Divide can remove from them the burden of having to carry the Right.)

A useful path toward the Great Divide is the re-establishment of states’ rights.  Removing such constitutional rights from the states has been a proto-progressive passion at least from the time of Lincoln.  Many recognize that the expansion of the Interstate Commerce Act (1887) and central banking (Federal Reserve 1913) have been the prime tools for reducing states to administrative districts of a strong federal government.

Today a last bastion of states’ rights is how they divide themselves into ‘right to work’ and ‘forced union’ states.  For all intents and purposes this already is a step toward the Great Divide, with the proviso that, if properly handled, such a divide may not even be necessary.  But here’s the rub.  The Left is lying to all ignorant enough to believe them that not forcing workers to join unions is actually denying workers their rights.  This twisted logic is one of the insane pillars upon which collectivism proudly stands.

On the Road to Denver (updated 8may2011)

George Rebane

We are on our way to visit our month-old great-granddaughter Lucy Pearl in Denver.  On the outward bound we chose ‘The Loneliest Road’, better known as US50, out of Reno.  It is a wonderful way to re/introduce yourself to some of the most picturesque country in this beautiful land.  The route took us to an overnight in Ely, Nevada.  And from there we hit the real scenery big time.  All day and in all directions it looked like we were in a John Ford western spectacular.

Tonight we are in Grand Junction, Colorado and just back from dinner.  Jo Ann picked WW Peppers from the AAA book, and did we luck out.  The place is 35 years old and an icon of good eating in the greater Grand Junction area.  It is owner operated by a husband and wife team – he handles the kitchen, and she is the hostess and handles the customer contact duties.

Awesome food – I had a burrito stuffed with New Zealand elk and all the fixins that was out of this world, Jo Ann’s was a sirloin tip burrito with equally outstanding flavors – wonderful service.  The ambiance and dining furniture are exceptional and comfortable.  The place was packed with regulars.  Just off I-70 and worth stopping for even if you’re not staying over.

WW Peppers
753 Horizon Ct
Grand Junction, CO 81506
(970) 245-9251

Tomorrow we see our little Lucy Pearl!

[Footnote:  We had a few words with Debbie, the Mrs Owner-Operator, before leaving.  I complimented her for the food and service, and invited her to consider our neck of the woods if she and her husband ever decided to move operations to California.  She in turn thanked me for the invitation, but said that they would have to decline because “California has some (business, regulatory, and tax) issues” that would be pretty hard to overcome.  Can’t say I didn’t try, but the word is definitely out.]

[8may2011 update]  We have spent the last two days with Lucy Pearl and her parents Claire and David here in Denver.  The weather has been perfect, and between all the holding and cooing and feeding and nappy-poos and periodic sanitary maintenance operations, we had a chance to take a picture or two (why do you think God invented JPEG?).  Nearby I present photographic evidence that Lucy Pearl is a real photogenic sweetie.  No visit to the first great-grandchild should be accepted without such evidence in these days of instant technology.  To complete the modern times component of this milestone Mother's Day, four generations got together on Skype for a long confab when our daughter Teine, Lucy Pearl's grandmother and her remaining brood (our grandkids all) joined us from southern California.  Blessings abound.

California’s “Dysfunctional Democracy”

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my 6may11 KVMR radio commentary broadcast earlier tonight.]

The spate of serious articles, reports, analyses, and commentaries on California’s disaster-in-progress reached a new plateau this last week with the prestigious (23apr11) Economist featuring a major survey of the state.  The world’s oldest international ‘newspaper’ traces California’s problems back to the start on its road to a “dysfunctional democracy”.  Students of history learn early that almost all democracies become dysfunctional sooner or later.  California’s experiment with direct democracy has implemented the ‘sooner’ option that has taken less than forty years.

Wiley politicians know that they can become comfortable wards of the state with sinecure jobs when they successfully pander to the voter that it is his direct voice that should be heard in the halls of the state capitol.  In California direct democracy allowed our elected representatives to duck the high hard decisions through referendums, initiatives, and propositions.

A referendum allows us voters to gainsay the legislature by going through a second step of accepting or rejecting a legislative proposal or law already on the books.  An initiative allows the citizens through a petition, or legislators directly to put a measure on the ballot.  This puts the onus of passage or rejection on the electorate and leaves the elected representatives unaccountable for the result.  A proposition is simply a stronger form of an initiative or legislative measure that the powers that be decide should be placed on the ballot for an up/down vote.

To these three, the California voters have also added the power of direct recall of elected officials.  In short, we voters can do damn near anything we want through the ballot box that affects our governance.  But can we really?

RR Administrivia

George Rebane

I have removed the indented reply feature from the comment threads.  A reader suggested its implementation, and it seemed like a good idea.  But then it soon became apparent that new comments were suddenly buried 'in the past', attached to some previous comment thread which was invisible to an arriving commenter.  This obfuscation was also picked up by one of my critics who promptly accused me of changing the comment format so as to hide his and other critics' comments.  Finally, it turned out that it is more difficult to manage the comment stream in such threads, especially trying to find comments that have no place here and should be deleted (e.g. this morning's droppings from a 'Mike Smith').

So we're back to the old format which seemed to work.  I recommend that we maintain responses and comment threads by continuing to address the previous commenter and, perhaps, adding the specific date/time of the previous comment responded to - e.g.  'Harry re YYMMDD tttt, ... ' - using the 24 hour clock to indicate the previous comment's time stamp.

On my part, I will do my best to cull the off-topic gratuitous attacks so that they will not waste the time of readers not interested in such personal vendettas.  Let's see if these efforts will work, and thank you for your patience in all this.

‘… war for national survival …’ (updated 12may2011)

George Rebane

Thank goodness, at last I’m not alone ;-)  In these pages my commentaries on the resumed war between (radical) Islam and the West have met with some pretty hard criticism from our progressive brethren.  My assessments have been described as everything from lunacy to racism.  While I have never claimed a sole perch on this tenet, others have bestowed that upon me.

In regard to the war on Muslim terror, yesterday 3may11 the venerable Wall Street Journal again acknowledged that “we cannot forget that this is a war for national survival against enemies who would annihilate our cities if they could.” (emphasis mine)

I suppose my detractors will now argue that the WSJ is just playing catch-up with RR, even though I myself would take a more modest stance on such a conclusion.

[12may2011 update]  The debates in the comment stream to this post notwithstanding, I early on joined with those who saw the conflict between radical Islam and the West as something much larger than fragmented Muslim vendettas against the western countries for their alleged and acknowledged acts of imperialism.  My claim was that I agreed with the declared Islamists and their condoning silent majority.  Among these was the former head of Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden.  As reported in the world’s leading journals it was bin Laden who “by framing the fight as a clash of civilizations, he could draw the West into a global war on terror.”  (The Economist, 7-13may11)

In the meanwhile it has been the constant and conspicuous labor of the left to minimize the scale and scope of this confrontation to the point of attempting to trivialize it into a series of disparate criminal activities.  As the conversation in the sequel reveals, the left is coming around to acknowledging the global import of radical Islam, and instead, is now citing a view of history highlighting the argument that the West had it coming.

The natural extension of this line of reasoning is that our proper response should be contrition in the extreme, doing everything we can not to aggravate or further irritate Muslims wherever they may be found – in their historical lands or in our midst.  All asymmetries in how the two cultures treat each other’s members should be ignored.  And since our culture is the guilty party, it falls on us to bend, comply, and comport ourselves properly so as to bring the matter to a peaceful conclusion acceptable to Islam.

The Birth Certificate from Hell (updated 16may2011)

George Rebane

President Obama posted what he vouched as his genuine Hawaii birth certificate the other day (here).  The intent was to finally put to rest the innuendos, claims, and downright charges that he is not a ‘natural born American’.   But given the image analysis tools broadly available today, along with a remarkable amount of well dispersed knowledge about image processing, the posted birth certificate raises more questions than it answers.

With some background in the theory and practice of image analysis, I found the arguments in this YouTube video illuminating and at the same time disturbing.  The question that resonates in my brainbone is ‘why would anyone from the White House think that this image of the birth certificate would pass muster?’  This dust-devil just wants to become a tornado.  You be the judge.

H/T for the email from a reader.

[4may2011 update]  The White House presented birth certificate is now becoming laughable.  The above image analysis was expended and explicated in this YouTube video.  To accept the certificate as authentic now requires the suspension of disbelief usually attributed to religious fanatics.  All that remains for the hard left to do is to just talk past this which does happen to be real evidence that the WH posted long form birth certificate is a doctored fake.  H/T to a reader.

[15may2011 update]  To bring the WH posted birth certificate issue to closure, I sent the following email to our Congressman Tom McClintock on 4 May 2011 with a copy to his chief of staff Igor Birman.

Hi Tom – I’m sure you’re aware of it by now, but the WH posted pdf of the President’s “scanned” birth certificate is a doctored fake.  I pulled down the image myself, and viewed it in Adobe Acrobat Professional to confirm the analyses available on YouTube.  My own post on the subject is here
http://rebaneruminations.typepad.com/rebanes_ruminations/2011/05/the-birth-certificate-from-hell.html

I don’t know what the politics behind this fakery is or how it should be played, but I would like to know 1) any additional info you have on the posted birth certificate, and 2) what, if any, official reaction will you have toward this latest ‘proof’.

Thank you the great job, and for hanging in there for us,
George

And on 12 May 2011 I followed up with an email to Igor Birman that read –

Hi Igor – this birth certificate issue must really be one too hot to handle.  I made no birther claim, only corroborated (in my capacity as a registered professional engineer in the relevant technologies) that the WH posted birth certificate pdf is a fake.  If you don’t want to address that blatant fact, can you at least tell me what is the strategy of silence over this clumsy posting on the WH website?  In short, if Tom believes it to be authentic, and that it settles the matter, then please tell us.

Thanks,
gjr

To these emails I received the following reply.

[16may2011 update]  The subsequent exchange today between Igor Birman and me may put paid to the above developments.

Hi George:

First, please forgive the tardiness of my reply. Last week presented far more material than could be digested, so I am writing you back from a United A319 cruising at 38,000 feet over Ohio en route to California.

Our office never had the time to examine the birth certificate, so your findings concern me. You may have heard this before - we did have the time to send Brittan Specht to the Library of Congress to find the original newspaper bearing Obama's birth announcement in Honolulu. If the conspiracy to make him a natural-born citizen extends that far back, we are in more trouble than we realize.

The more important point for me is this: there is a finite amount of time between now and the election. We can either spend the next 17.5 months debating where Obama was born, or we can invest every moment of our time and every ounce of our energy into making a case against his reckless monetary policy, bungled bailouts, forcing Soviet-style healthcare on the country, wild spending, naked hostility to domestic energy production, etc. I can assure you that on the latter we have the rapt attention of almost every American. I don't know what percentage is paying attention to the former, but I can also assure you that it is a smaller figure. I am afraid that if we don't focus like a laser on the tangible consequences (present and future) of Obama's misadventures in the White House, we will allow him to skate on through into a second term.

Let me know what you think!

All the best,
-Igor

To which I replied -

Igor, thank you for the reply – well formed and to the point.  With your permission, I would like to publish it and my response.  In sum, I agree with your resource allocation decision in the face of ‘limited bandwidth’ that the congressman has at his disposal.  My caveats on the issue are intended to be added arrows in Tom’s quiver should the appropriate occasion arise.  I list them below –

1. As pointed out by several other commentators, the Honolulu newspaper birth announcement is not a validation of anything per se.  Newspapers don’t vet the accuracy of classified ads.  Such ads have been placed regularly for decades, and for a number of reasons by people who think ahead.  As concerned collectivist thinkers and activists, Obama’s parents most certainly had the ability and motive to think and act strategically in this manner.  Many illegal entrants do so regularly.
2. The posted birth certificate (pdf) is represented by the WH as definitive proof of Obama’s birth.   Americans should take at its face value the WH declared objective, production pathway, and intended function of publishing this pdf in resolving the birth issue.
3. Given #2, the FACT that the pdf is a modified document that could not have gone through the claimed production pathway – original paper document, file of scanned paper copy, conversion of file to pdf, posting pdf on WH website – makes the posted birth certificate a fake, and its representation to the American public a lie.
4. None of this is proof, per se, that Obama’s birth situation violates the constitutional provision for the country’s presidency.  But, at a minimum, it sustains the proposition that Obama has yet to offer proof that he does satisfy the Constitution.  And the more, that for TBD reasons his administration (he?) has behaved fraudulently in the posting of the pdf.
5. Any member of Congress can vet the authenticity of the pdf (for much less cost than sending someone to Honolulu to read newspaper archives) by asking a government funded unit such as the NSA or JPL to have their imaging experts look at the file for fifteen minutes, and report back on its purported authenticity viz its stated production pathway.  Or simply hire one of a legion of available private technical consultants to do so (I have already done it pro bono).  BTW, since we are dealing with a reproduced digital image, why the administration has not provided such accompanying bona fides is an additional mystery.

I hope this at least helps clarify my position on the matter.  Thanks again, and let me know when you’re next in town or striking distance.

gjr

Finally, my error in implying that Congressman McClintock's office sent someone to Honolulu instead of to the Libraty of Congress in Washington DC.