Rebane's Ruminations

Tea Party Patriots welcomed Dr Anna Haynes

George Rebane

This evening Jo Ann and I, along with a neighbor, attended the monthly Nevada County Tea Party Patriots meeting that filled the Easterly Hall of the Nevada County Realtors Association.  We were happy to see Dr Anna Haynes sitting in the throng, listening with great interest to the speakers, and taking notes.  Dr Haynes is not a stranger to these pages (some background here).

Dr Haynes is also a recognized liberal voice in Nevada County who writes the blog Nevada County Focus  and is the creator/operator of Nevada County Voices, a true community internet resource, where even RR is recognized as one such voice (consigned to the rightmost ‘Denialism/Climate contrarians’ column).

What made her attendance noteworthy was that the lady is a dedicated investigator of all things tinged with conservatism.  And in that TPP is proud to be a bit more than tinged because of its unique grounding principles – small government, fiscal responsibility, constitutionalism, and free market capitalism – that derive from our fundamental belief in individual liberty as interpreted by our Founders.

From Dr Haynes’ previous writings and personal encounters one might come away with the distinct impression that she is a collectivist’s collectivist in her socio-political leaning.  So to now see her in attendance at a meeting of local folks who lean the other way is both hopeful and heartening.  Perhaps, her study of our organization’s core principles, grass roots structure, and non-partisan political action has inspired her to give us another look; and who knows, even consider becoming a member?  If so, I will be the first to celebrate her epiphany, and welcome her into our midst.

Ruminations - 29jun2011

George Rebane

MediaMatters.org has declared “war” on Fox News.  This far left organization, one of many such enterprises receiving funds from George Soros, is seeking to squelch speech with which it disagrees.  This type of political action is a common distinguishing feature of progressive tactics drawn from the Saul Alinsky play book Rules for Radicals (1971).  Can you imagine the howling on lamestream media if any conservative voice even suggested that a liberal voice be constrained?  But about such programs as “Drop Fox” the lamestream is dead silent.

Team Obama has declared that its plans for the economy have not worked, and that they are now bankrupt of any new ideas.  Instead of offering something concrete in its next step to fix the economy (starting, say, with a budget), Team Obama has reverted to that perpetual bamboozle of delivering stump speeches criticizing the specific conservative programs now on the table.  An example is the President’s call for America to again “take the lead in manufacturing”.

It’s a safe smokescreen since his constituents are too dense to figure out that this can only happen through massive technological advances that increase worker productivity to unheard heights, thereby reducing manufacturing jobs to an absolute minimum.  Obama voters instead have visions of jobs, jobs, jobs - thousands of factory workers with lunchboxes coming out of big factory gates heading home for the evening after a well-paid workday (remember the newsreels of 40s and 50s?).  And the Community Organizer in Chief will do everything he can to imprint this fantasy on every simple mind in the land that can be registered to vote.

Lt Gen John R Allen, slated to replace Gen Petraeus in Afghanistan, testified to Congress that Obama’s announced 10,000 troop drawdown was NOT among the alternatives offered by the Pentagon to the President as he had claimed (oops!).  That little political alternative was stitched up out of whole cloth by a White House responding to the hard left burr under its blanket.

But the puzzlement about Allen is his turnabout statement, "Although I was not a participant in those discussions, I support the president's decision and believe that we can accomplish our objectives."  (The next theater commander on the ground was not consulted on what means he would have left to carry out what kind of objective??!!)  And since there is no way to achieve any straight-faced objective in Afghanistan after telegraphing our departure, why would a senior Marine general close out his career overseeing America’s drawn out retreat designed by a politician for his own political gain?  An honorable alternative would have been, “Mr President if we are to leave, then let us be out of there before Christmas.”  Retirement would have been another one.

The AtPac Suit – More fumes ascending (updated 16jul2011)

George Rebane

Nevada County issued a professional services contract to SC Consulting in Pollock Pines contemplating work that started on 10 June 2011 and was completed on 24 June 2011.  The presumed purpose of the contract was for the consultant, Steven Steinbrecher, to conduct an investigation, comprised of a series of interviews with county management and staff, in order to finally get to the bottom of the server scrubbing issue that is so prominent in the AtPac lawsuit which names Nevada County, Aptitude Solutions (Florida company), and Clerk-Recorder Greg Diaz as defendants.  (For more background see my 21apr11 KVMR commentary and search RR with ‘AtPac’) 

I received a pdf copy of this contract that is also available from the Nevada County's website here.  It is more or less a standard professional services contract of the type I have both worked under and have myself employed consultants.  What caught my eye about this contract was the form of its “Exhibit A” that contains the Schedule of Services and Statement of Work.  The exhibit begins with a startling and gratuitously worded preamble that appears to limit the scope of the procured investigation from the gitgo, and thereby provides cover for everyone in the county above and including County Counsel Michael Jamison.  To wit, it reads –

Schedule of Services

(Provided by Contractor)

Information Systems employee Kathy Barale ordered the "scrubbing" of the Aptitude AS server that made unrecoverable certain data, that may have had relevance to pending litigation, after a litigation hold email was issued from the County Counsel’s Office. The County is interested in learning why Ms. Barale proceeded with the scrubbing process. If the issue surrounds procedural flaws, what steps, if any, can be taken to minimize the chance of a recurrence? The report is to be delivered to the County Counsel and should be treated as an attorney-client communication and attorney work product.

Statement of Work …

From this we see that Mr Steinbrecher is the attributed author of this remarkable preamble to his own Statement of Work.  Yet it is hard to believe that he could or would conclude that Ms Barale “ordered the scrubbing of the Aptitude AS server” before starting his work.  Furthermore, he also preemptively states that County Counsel issued a “litigation hold email” that presumably gave directions to preserve any and all materials that may be considered evidence in the case.  This seems to clear Mr Michael Jamison of any further responsibility in the matter, since by issuing this email he performed his duty in protecting evidence.  Did Mr Steinbrecher really supply all these a priori conclusions that were to become part of the baseline to his contracted work?

Finally, should the work product that the consultant delivered have been to someone who would reasonably have been one of the subjects of the investigation – what was the content of that “litigation hold email”, who wrote and sent it, to whom, when, … ??  And the conclusions of the investigation were then delivered in confidence to that same reasonable subject of the investigation in a manner and format that can keep it permanently from seeing the light of day.

One could further reasonably ask why Mr Jamison would not have recused himself from this effort, and have the Deputy County Counsel Ms Allison Barratt-Green receive Mr Steinbrecher’s report and determine its further disposition.

To me it seems that this contract adds yet another puzzling aroma to a case that has already amply stimulated our olfactory senses.  Now if we had a real Grand Jury … .

[30jun2011 update]  Opening this morning’s Union at breakfast revealed the belated but blaring headline ‘County orders investigation in AtPac case’.  With its usual policy of attributing primacy on this development, the newspaper goes on to review the case and append the latest maneuver from the Rood Center.  Apparently the unusual declaration in the Schedule of Services highlighted above was sufficiently odd as to require further explanation by Mr Jamison who, according to The Union, “couldn’t confirm Barale had ordered the scrubbing, from documents he has access to, and said the mention of Barale in the contract was a characterization of her actions, rather than an exact recounting of events”.  Really?

Let’s read that again; it sure looks like a pretty strong “characterization” that most English speakers would take for a statement of fact that Ms Barale did indeed “order” the scrubbing.  And just who did the 'characterizing' of Ms Barale - Mr Steinbrecher (as represented in the Exhibit) or Mr Jamison (whose emailed directive was disobeyed) or Mr Haffey (who signed for the county) or Mr Monaghan (Ms Barale’s boss) or …?  It just gets curioser and curioser.

Barry Pruett's Inside Nevada County Politics has more on this case.

[1jul2011 update]  Rick Haffey, County Executive Officer, announced in today's Friday Memo that county counsel has tendered his resignation effective 1 October 2011.  This was also pointed out and expanded upon by Barry Pruett and Russ Steele in the comments below.

http://www.theunion.com/article/20110702/NEWS/110709964/1066&ParentProfile=1053

[2jul2011 update]  In my conversations with the county’s CEO, Chief Counsel, and Risk Management Officer, as reported here, I urged them strongly to become more open in the information they supplied to the public on the litigation the county was involved in and about the AtPac case in particular.  Mr Jamison said that the county would take that under advisement, although at the time he could say very little about the AtPac case other than promising that someone from outside counsel would call me (they never did).

Apparently the county has started to open their litigation portfolio door a little bit as reported in today’s Union (here).  Given the information from this article, it would be of great interest to compute the net present value of the AtPac litigation costs taking also into consideration the significant increase in our liability insurance premiums that would most like result from this case’s settlement.

[16jul2011 update] County CEO Rick Haffey reported the following in this week's Friday Memo to the Board of Supervisors.

CSAC-EIA Reimburses County for Atpac Litigation Costs: Peter Cheney, our Risk Manager, reports that the County has received $618,758.10 from the County’s insurance carrier CSAC-EIA. This is reimbursement for defense costs in the Atpac litigation matter.

Democracy Bound on the Ship of Fools (updated 28jun2011)

George Rebane

Lately our American ship of state has taken an historical pummeling, and the beating literally goes on as you read this.  The remarkable part is that our country was designed and built so well that it can take a decade (generation?) or two of utter mismanagement, and still provide a world class home for its citizens, most of whom don’t know and don’t care what is happening.  You see, the pummeling is coming from the inside, we’re doing it to ourselves.

Our leaders in the aggregate are fools who were sent to the capitols by their equally foolish constituents – that’s us.  So today we see them monkeying with the machinery of state, pulling levers and turning knobs the effects of which they have not a clue.  They do it for the show that we expect to see from our leadership – don’t leaders always pull levers and turn knobs on the ship of state?

In recent days we have seen everything from “leadership from behind”, to the breakdown of the national fisc, to buying votes with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, to admission (by the Bernank) that no one within the beltway really knows what is happening.  The only real game that is being played by all the electeds is ‘How can I make sure the crap doesn’t hit me so that I can get re-elected?’  We really are putting to the test the question ‘are people in the aggregate capable of governing themselves?’  The historical answer by princes and philosophers has been a resounding NO.

Yes, Liberal Nostalgia

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my bi-weekly KVMR commentary that aired on 24 June 2011.]

Many of us small time political philosophers have long maintained that progressives are really not all that progressive.  That most of their ideas are pretty moss-backed, have been around for more than a few centuries, and have been tried again and again since at least the French revolution in the late 18th century – all to no avail.

For such thoughts we backwoods conservetarians – yes, that’s a new feather in our political plumage describing a conservative with a dash or a dollop of libertarian thrown in – we backwoods conservetarians have been pilloried by collectivists of all hues.

This week Michael Barone, a big media gun and fellow of the American Enterprise Institute, wrote a piece entitled ‘The Surprising Roots of Liberal Nostalgia’.  In it he draws a taut line between the American ‘Midcentury Moment’ – the years from the late thirties to the early sixties – and the longings of today’s progressives working once more to fundamentally transform our country.

Unified Field Bank – like a bad penny

George Rebane

… it just keeps coming back to Nevada City.  Last March I did a KVMR commentary on what obviously looks at best like the blind leading the blind, and at worst like a scam.  (‘Community Partnership Banking – Worm Farm 2?’)  Their nearby poster (click to enlarge) announces a “follow-up” to the “enthusiastic response” they got a few months ago.  It is not clear when this next enthusiastic response occurred or is scheduled since there is no “Tuesday, June 23, 2011”, and the Sierra Commons does not answer its phone.

In any case, they’re baaaack!

Employment and Income Inequality

George Rebane

[This piece is the last of a four part series on taxes, jobs, and income that includes, in order of posting, 'The Administration Discovers Shortage of Engineers', 'Higher Tax Rates = Lower Revenues',  'More Green Companies Heading for Greener Pastures', 'Employment and Income Inequality'.  It was motivated by two articles, one that appeared in the June 2011 IEEE Spectrum and the other in the 23jun11 WSJ on the need, disposition, and importance of technology workers to our country’s economy and future - a future which is being compromised by progressive politics and policies in the name of the misguided notion of ‘social justice’.]

Predictably when the economy is in the dumps, the usual voices on the left unlimber their class warfare guns and launch another assault on capitalism as the evil that has caused all the world’s problems.  Even a pseudo-free market has what are known as business cycles, always have and always will have.  A market is a dynamic complex system that is hard to control, and more so when centralized control is attempted.  Appropriately trained technologists know that distributed adaptive control is the best (and nature's) way to achieve semblances of stability – even Adam Smith taught us that back when we declared our independence from Britain.  The collectivist is forever ignorant of this, and sees vindication in his distorted belief in every slowly failing socialist economy – but the dots are never connected when crunch time comes, and blood is in the streets as we see in Greece and the countries now enjoying Arab springtime.

To convince ignorant audiences, the easiest targets for the socialists are the high earners in a capitalist economy.  Free market capitalism is a ruthless meritocracy that has constantly witnessed creative destruction – the new replacing the old as we distance ourselves from the cave.  Conservatives and libertarians celebrate this process in proportions equal to the energies progressives expend in their attempt to stifle it.  It is only in the ironic juxtapositions of their names that confuses the ideologically innocent – there is nothing progressive about the progressive.  To the socialist, the railroad brakeman’s job is socially just and forever.

But in the real world of technological advance, those with the brains, vision, and courage to invent and build things and methods that deliver to humanity products cheaper, quicker, and more capable, to those belong inordinate rewards.  And the more their products and services can be scaled, the more inordinate are such rewards which come from newly created wealth, and not, as claimed by the class warriors, from the pockets of the poor.  But the result is there for all to see, the people who can and will are the high earners, and those who can’t or won’t will be at the other end.

‘Estonia, the little country that could’

George Rebane

A friend and RR reader emailed me the link to a Washington Times article by Richard Rahn that summarizes the economic history of Estonia.  Readers may recall my posts from our 15-29jun08 visit back to the old sod (see posts under ‘My Story’, right column).  Misplaced modesty prohibits my adding anything to the Rahn article.  I only draw your attention to it as a part of the larger apologetics that may be seen to underpin my socio-economic biases expressed in these pages.  As such, the source may all be in my double-helix, or perhaps in the water I drank as a young child.  Hard to tell.

Keachie Again Misreads Rebane

George Rebane

Mr Douglas Keachie is a loud voice in the community and on local blogs.  A man of progressive persuasion, he is also a sometime commenter on these pages.  In his latest effort he attempts to reveal “three fatal flaws” in my 11jun11 Union column ‘Entrepreneurship 2011’.  His revelation was published as an Other Voices submission in the 21jun11 Union (here).

Mr Keachie launches his piece with the devastating deduction that I claimed the tax rate to be 100% (confiscatory) for all earnings above $250,000 – “The tax on net income above $250,000 is not 100 percent.”  It is easy to verify that nowhere in my column do I make such claim or anything that remotely resembles it.  From that point of departure Mr Keachie proceeds swiftly downward in his displayed comprehension of what I wrote, and in his understanding of the entrepreneurial enterprise in general.

There are two possible explanations for such errors.  The first is that Mr Keachie is among the many who have been short-changed by our public educational system.  And that would explain why his remarkable conclusions fall into the lower categories as documented in the longitudinal National Adult Literacy Survey   that is conducted every ten years by the National Center for Educational Statistics.  As the record shows, this is not the first time that Mr Keachie has had trouble understanding what I write.  (I have reported extensively on adult numeracy and literacy on these pages – RR keywords ‘numeracy’, ‘adult literacy’.)

The other explanation is that Mr Keachie is taking a page from Saul Alinsky’s manual of political discourse, and simply fabricating a set of ‘facts’, attributes, or other characteristics that can be ascribed to a person to be denigrated.  Such characteristics, derived from whole cloth, go on to serve as the ridiculed targets for the remainder of the presentation.  The reader, unfamiliar with the original, is then at the author’s mercy.

As to why The Union so prominently published Mr Keachie’s article, one can only guess.  Perhaps, through their over-worked editorial filter, my column represented an ideological bias that had to be ‘balanced’, and the Keachie piece was the only one at hand – any port in a storm.

More Green Companies Heading for Greener Pastures

George Rebane

[This piece is the third of a four part series on taxes, jobs, and income that includes, in order of posting, 'The Administration Discovers Shortage of Engineers', 'Higher Tax Rates = Lower Revenues',  'More Green Companies Heading for Greener Pastures', 'Employment and Income Inequality'.]

The left controlled lamestream has long touted the spawn of California’s AB32 as being the salvation of an economic new age for the state.  Well, as some of the shouted down voices attempted to inform the public (RR being one), not only has the heralded venture capital pulled out, but now we have the green companies themselves doing everything they can to minimize their California footprint.  They are either relocating, or expanding their subsidized operations in friendlier climes.  Consider the following from Kurt Brower’s Marketwatch Blog

1. Aptera Motors:

…the North County Times reported that Aptera, “which once had big plans to hire thousands to design and manufacture ultra-efficient cars in Oceanside, is trimming costs by moving its headquarters to Carlsbad while it searches for a factory in the auto-rich region east of the Mississippi River. ‘We are really scrutinizing our business,’ said Paul B. Wilbur, president and chief executive of Aptera Motors …. Wilbur said Aptera is likely to end up in a factory east of the Mississippi River …. Wilbur had previously said that Aptera would eventually employ 2,500 people. He also said 10,000 jobs would be created indirectly for component suppliers, retailers and other companies involved with Aptera. Source: North County Times story, May 17, 2011, “Manufacturing: Aptera to move headquarters to Carlsbad, place car factory out of state.”

2. Calisolar Inc.

…Calisolar Inc., a “green” company, is making a $750 million investment in Ontario, Ohio… Construction is expected to begin by October at a former General Motors plant. The Bucyrus Telegraph Forum reported that the company “would create 831 full-time positions at an average wage of $45,000, generating $37.3 million in annual payroll” with priority given to hiring local workers. Also, “About 1,000 construction jobs will be needed to ready the former GM plant” that will “marry an industrial process into a green energy solar sector .… Source: Bucyrus Telegraph Forum April 6, 2011 story “Calisolar in final stages of talks for Ontario site.”

3. Fallbrook Technologies Inc.

…The Austin American-Statesman reports that Fallbrook Technologies Inc., a company offering “green” technology improvements, which “has run its operations division from Cedar Park since 2002 , would agree to spend $5.5 million on a larger corporate operations center that would add at least 65 jobs by 2013 …. The company would use it for light manufacturing, engineering development and testing …. Fallbrook currently employs 60 people in Cedar Park …. the company will agree to maintain a combined payroll of $9.5 million by 2019 …. the company has two facilities in Cedar Park, one housing a test lab and a second for design engineers, both of which it has outgrown. “They’re both extremely crowded,” said a company spokesman. “We’re hiring people every month and we’re wondering where we’re going to put them.” Source: Austin American-Statesman, May 25, 2011 story, “Cedar Park to weigh $1.68 million incentive package for Fallbrook Technologies.”

4. Sharp — Solar Energy Solutions Group

…According to The Columbian, this “green” group will relocate from Sharp’s western regional office in Huntington Beach to its campus in Washington State…. Sharp Corp. is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of solar cells and has been mass producing solar cells since 1963. It produces solar cells at two factories in Japan, and uses the cells to manufacture solar modules in five factories around the world, including one in Tennessee. Its website says the company created the world’s first solar-powered calculator and that its products power more homes and businesses than any other manufacturer.” Source: The Columbian, June 10, 2011 story, “Sharp Solar to move to Camas.”

5. WindStream Technologies, Inc.

…The company created small wind turbines designed for residential energy use, and Bates said WindStream is on pace to produce more than 40,000 units in three years …. New Albany could benefit from the 105 new positions WindStream plans to add …. A California native, Bates said several states vied for WindStream when the company launched. Source: New Albany News and Tribune, June 6, 2011 story, “Vote on Windstream loan likely to be tabled by New Albany council.” Additional Information: The New Albany News and Tribune reported earlier WindStream Technologies, Inc. will develop a multi-million dollar investment production facility in the New Albany and Purdue Research Park of Southern Indiana … by 2012. “The company — currently located in California — manufacturers wind turbines called TurboMills.” Source: New Albany News and Tribune, Nov. 23, 2009 story, “WindStream Technologies bringing 260 jobs to Purdue Research Park in New Albany by 2012″

And your Lucky Strike Extra is that California companies’ bums rush for the exits has now become a gallop.  Today there are thriving companies consulting to the state’s businesses wishing to relocate elsewhere – talk about a hot sunset industry that you might want to get into.  The exit rate today has grown to five times the 2009 rate, and it is still increasing as reported by The Business Relocation Coach.

Meanwhile, as these pages witness, the progressives are all arguing for raising more income tax from the state’s ‘rich’ who already account for about 70% of state revenues.  Anyone have any idea when the left will get a clue?

(H/T to RR reader for the latest heads-up.)

Ethanol – Insanity Ensconced

George Rebane

A perennial wet dream of the liberals is a world of internal combustion engines, all running on renewable and sustainable ethanol.  This unsanitary and polluting notion was unmasked years ago, but as with global warming, science had nor has anything to do with government mandated ethanol in our lives.  An early piece that describes this rank idiocy is ‘Ethanol Faces Facts’, and since then the evidence against converting food crops into fuel has become a torrent.

A reader sent me this report from Europe detailing how those environment loving Germans have come to reject ethanol – ‘German Ethanol Requirement Turns Into a Debacle’.  There we learn that -

Never mind that burning ethanol is an environmental debacle that leads to the destruction of forests and food shortages that lead to higher prices and more hunger worldwide, but it also burns less efficiently and causes damage to many cars. It is yet another well-intentioned program that is making things only worse. Nobody in Germany wants the stuff – neither the drivers nor the environmentalists.

This is one more topic that progressives would rather not talk about.  But there is a snowball’s chance in hell that Congress will remove federal ethanol subsidies.  Before popping a cork to celebrate, we recall that the government’s mandate to include an increasing percentage of ‘renewable‘ fuel in our gasoline is still firmly in place – Damn the torpedoes and all that!!

Ruminations – 18jun2011

George Rebane

- Wynton and the boys come to town
- Nevada City Soapbox Derby premiers

Last night Jo Ann and I joined friends George and Christine for a delicious and well-served dinner on Holbrook Hotel patio, and then drove to the Grass Valley Veterans Memorial Auditorium for a world class event.  We and an SRO audience were delighted beyond words to attend a concert of contemporary jazz performed by Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra of which he is the Music Director.  The compositions were breath-taking and their performance exquisite.  Every member of the orchestra, starting with Mr Marsalis, is a virtuoso on his instrument(s) and the program allowed ample demonstration of this.

At the end of the scheduled concert, we would not let them go and kept up a rhythmic applause until Marsalis along with piano, base, percussion, and sax returned to perform an extended improvisation of a piece that allowed every musician to demonstrate his considerable prowess.  It was an evening to remember, right here in Nevada County, and with no need to fly to New York, or even drive to the Mondavi Center in Davis where they are performing tonight.

 

This weekend is the 51st annual Father’s Day classic bicycle race in Nevada City.  As an integral part of the professional racing tour, the Nevada City race circuit is the shortest but also the most difficult of the whole tour.  The town fills with visitors and tourists for the yearly event that heralds the real start of our county’s summer doings – Marsalis, annual Bluegrass Festival, and other sundry delights.  To put a fine ribbon on it, this year Nevada City added an important and exciting event to the weekend’s entertainment – the inaugural running of the Nevada City Soapbox Derby (more in The Union).

This ‘race’ featured over forty entries competing in the ‘speed’ and ‘artistic’ categories.  The cars were built by various enterprises – businesses, clubs, individuals, … .  All the cars were custom built using lots of love, laughs, and at most $400.  Of course we had to be there, so with our puppy in tow, there we were with more friends bellying up to the hay bales to see them come down Nimrod Street next to Pioneer Park on a well laid out downhill course.

Seeing as how it was the first time and all, a lot of the rules governing the goings on were, shall we say, in flux.  One of the problems to be fixed for next year is to run the heats in a tighter interval – lots of folks were getting a bit antsy waiting for the next batch of great looking speedsters and funsters come rolling down the hill.  We and the neighbors thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, and we see this event becoming another summer draw for visitors to our mountains.  (Now if we could only figure out a way to start a pari-mutuel betting scheme that would benefit local charities and not run afoul of the state’s gaming laws.)

Higher Tax Rates = Lower Revenues (updated 22jun2011)

George Rebane

[This piece is the second of a four part series on taxes, jobs, and income that includes, in order of posting, 'The Administration Discovers Shortage of Engineers', 'Higher Tax Rates = Lower Revenues',  'More Green Companies Heading for Greener Pastures', 'Employment and Income Inequality'.]

The progressives’ calcified mindset does not admit to the truth of the title, no matter the data that supports it.  This reconfirms to many conservatives and those of libertarian bent that there is a larger agenda at work here which involves the economic castration of America – they can’t all be that stupid.

An example of the right/left debate that highlights this is found on these pages in the comment stream of ‘The Liberal Mind – Tax Rates Don’t Affect Earnings’.  There we find the tired and well-worn liberal arguments citing Eisenhower era rates and the belief that more taxes on the rich increase government revenues.  Some liberals actually do believe that such higher revenues could then be applied to their conceptions of ‘social justice’.  But I’m afraid that the globalists among them know better, and pursue higher taxes in America under that façade as an effective avenue to their one-world objective.

 

In the 16jun11 WSJ Alan Reynolds of Cato again presents US government data, and argues ‘Why 70% Tax Rates Won’t Work’ with a note to Robert Reich (the ‘70% man’) that says – “The income tax brought in less revenue when the highest rate was 70% to 91% than it did when the highest rate was 28%.”  (see nearby table from the article)

Reynolds goes on to detail the history of revenue production from tax rates reaching back to 1951.  He concludes with –

… the Joint Committee on Taxation recently reported that 51% of Americans no longer pay federal income tax.
 
Since the era of 70% tax rates, the U.S. income tax system has become far more "progressive." Congressional Budget Office estimates show that from 1979 to 2007 average income tax rates fell by 110% to minus 0.4% from 4.1% for the second-poorest quintile of taxpayers. Average tax rates fell by 56% for the middle quintile and 39% for the fourth, but only 8% at the top. Despite these massive tax cuts for the bottom 80%, overall federal revenues were the same 18.5% share of GDP in 2007 as they were in 1979 and individual tax revenues were nearly the same—8.7% of GDP in 1979 versus 8.4% in 2007.
 
In short, reductions in top tax rates under Presidents Kennedy and Reagan, and reductions in capital gains tax rates under Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush, not only "paid for themselves" but also provided enough extra revenue to finance negative income taxes for the bottom 40% and record-low income taxes at middle incomes.

Of course, none of this will make a dent in the progressive chorus, because they are singing to voters already embracing the Peter/Paul Principle, and those for whom such information is not accessible.

[22jun2011 update - the following letter in the 22jun11 WSJ rebuts Robert Reich's criticique of Reynold's analysis, and extends the argument presented.]

The Administration Discovers Shortage of Engineers

George Rebane

[This piece is the first of a four part series on taxes, jobs, and income that includes, in order of posting, 'The Administration Discovers Shortage of Engineers', 'Higher Tax Rates = Lower Revenues',  'More Green Companies Heading for Greener Pastures', 'Employment and Income Inequality'.]

The shortage of native technical talent in America has been known to those who read for at least twenty years.  The shortage became apparent during the Reagan administration, but the hullaballoo created by the personal computer and interactive multimedia technologies overshadowed the acknowledgement that it was the engineers and other techies who created that new wealth engine – it was not the MBAs and the lawyers.

But institutional venture capitalists helped promulgate the myth that propeller heads did only, you know, propeller head stuff, whatever that was before they finally showed up with a marketable product.  The real wealth was created by business suits and legal beagles.  Besides, it is much easier to get an MBA or a law degree.  So native enrollments in tech schools started dropping, but not to worry, kids from overseas flocked to our excellent university programs in technology.

As the years passed and young people graduated from high schools with advanced placement programs in self-esteem, they began to discover that it was even easier to get degrees in black studies, environment management, comparative social justice, and God knows what else.  And what the hell, with one of those sheepskins in your shorts you could always BS your way into a government job.

Well, the world changed in the interval.  The Great Doubling came and no one noticed - they still don’t because it’s not visible from where they stuck their heads (RR keyword 'Great Doubling').  The foreign graduates began more and more to go back to their own countries instead of Silicon Valley to start their businesses.  With the US headed for European socialism and their own lands heading toward capitalism, the decision on where to start a business was easy.

Now we have the situation where no one gives that big rat’s asset if you’re a lawyer or have an MBA.  You need an MBA today to be seriously considered to run a Jiffy-Lube, and lawyers are making as little as $35/hr in New York just to get some part time work.  Most certainly, nobody overseas wants to hire such Americans for a ‘fair day’s wages’.  And forget it if you have a degree in Latino Perspectives.

So now President Obama sagely informs the nation that we need at least 10,000 new engineers every year - I am sure that is a brown number.  But it finally acknowledges a desperate national need, and a need that cannot be filled with the crap they teach kids in our public K-12 grades.  Other nations are graduating many times that number of engineers and technical workers annually, and it is they who now build the fastest computers, best cars, smartest robots, and merrily hack their way into our nation’s most sensitive financial, industrial, and defense networks.  (That last one is perhaps the scariest story of all for another time.)

Our kids still proclaim that they ‘don’t do numbers’, instead they are being taught their ‘rights’ and the ‘rights of nature’ under new systems of international social justice.  When was the last time any of us examined the qualifications of our unionized K-12 teachers, or spoke up at a board of education meeting?

 

Ruminations - 15jun2012

The experiment that said “the bigger the state, the more just the society” clearly failed. There is no point pretending that it didn’t. - Tony Blair

George Rebane

- It's the Sun, stupid!
- Dems put bad stuff on hold til 2012
- Mexican right of return

Russ Steele at NC Media Watch reports here the latest real news on climate change – ‘it’s the sun, stupid.’  The AGW true believers are having to run around in ever tightening circles as they try to paper over every piece of new data that belies their political theory of manmade global disaster.  Every day it is more apparent that the only misery man is yet able to afflict on fellow man is through bad politics.  It was ever thus.

The perversion of the progressives is nowhere more visible than in the hiatus that the Obama administration is taking from its own agenda.  All those social and stimulus programs that were designed and passed by the Democrats to get the country back on its economic track have proven to do exactly the opposite.  And the social(ist) engineers in Washington know it in spades.  With the election coming up and the economy on its butt (second cheek is hitting the ground now), these hypocritical leftwingers are pulling back the enforcement of literally every piece of damaging legislation they have passed.  The dirtbags aren’t repealing any of it, only putting it on hold until after 2012 (details here).

That there is no public outcry about any of this will hopefully again explain my ongoing use of Bryan Kaplan’s ‘sheeple’ for a large fraction of America’s electorate.  In his Myth of the Rational Voter – Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies Kaplan presented ample evidence of how the democratic process goes awry the more direct democracy we instill at the cost of removing the republican safeguards bequeathed by our Founders.  (See ‘How Elections Really Work’)

As these pages have noted for the last several years, the Great Divide (here and here) is not just an apprehension of conservatives who view as hopeless the reunion with progressives.  A major force promoting the GD is the latino Reconquista movement (here and search RR with ‘Reconquista’).  The lamestream media has successfully subverted any coverage of the progress of Reconquista.  Now it has advanced to where it is openly taught in American public schools.  As reported in the 20jun11 National Review -

“Mexican-American Studies” in Tucson schools now include “Rodolfo Acuna’s Occupied America, which proposes that the US southwest become a “Chicano nation” and quotes without disapproval Hispanic activist Jose Angel Guiterrez saying that “we have to eliminate the gringo, and what I mean by that is if the worst comes to the worst, we have got to kill him.”

Shhhh, the sheeple are sleeping.

‘Saving the American Dream’

George Rebane

That is the short title to a landmark plan that Heritage Foundation published about a month ago.  In the popular media, it has received scant attention.  I believe this is so because it presents an utterly reasonable way for us to rescue America from its current financial freefall, and its ideological bedfellows are stuck in the NIH mode.  They want to get re/elected, Heritage just wants to put good policy on the table for all to draw from.   The socialists wouldn’t touch this plan with a ten-foot pole, its implementation may delay their global goals indefinitely. But we’ll come back to ‘Saving the American Dream: The Heritage Plan to Fix the Debt, Cut Spending, and Restore Prosperity’ in a bit.

So, has anyone read the 20jun11 Time magazine’s cover article ‘What Recoverey? – The Five Myths About the Economy’?  Time started coming to our house spontaneously about three months ago; we have no idea how that happened since we did not order it.  But since it is a prominent national rag for liberal thought, we throw it on the ottoman with the other front room reading materials, and peek at it now and then to confirm our assessment of its direction and depth – beats watching MSNBC.

Time acknowledges that, given Obama’s policies so far, recovery from the Great Recession is nowhere in sight.  And it predictably concludes that more of the same is what’s required to pull us out of this insipient depression that was all Bush2’s fault.  In the process the magazine argues that placing our false hopes on any combination of its five myths is futile.  The myths are – 1. The downturn is a temporary blip, 2. The Fed can save us, 3. The private sector will make it all better, 4. We can move where the jobs are, and 5. Entrepreneurs are our greatest strength.

The Liberal Mind – Tax Rates Don’t Affect Earnings

George Rebane

According to the progressive worldview, you will work just as hard and take just as much risk when the government takes 80% of your earnings as you will when the government takes only 30% of those same earnings.  That simple proposition is the left’s basis for funding any additional revenues they deem government to need.  Just raise tax rates until the numbers come out as required by your spending programs.

And it isn’t only the sheeple in their ranks that fervently believe this.  It is also a phalanx of credentialed economists (some Nobelists included) and behavioral sociologists.

That the historical data does not support this conclusion is ignored by the apologists who see all fiscal problems solved by simply raising taxes.  Most people will instinctively understand the insanity of such a belief, at least when they put themselves into the earner’s shoes.  ‘Why should I work just as hard for the dollar from which the government will let me keep twenty cents, than I do for the same dollar from which I got to keep seventy cents?  I think I’ll just take some extra time off and figure out where to put my energies so I can keep more of what I earn.’

And that such thoughts are beyond rocket science to the collectivist is borne out by their constant surprise of why government revenues fall when tax rates approach confiscatory levels.  Yet, as we can see today, their tax hike solution is in stasis, trotted out every time the debt burdens and unfunded liabilities of governments are discussed.  ‘We’ll just tax the rich, they’re so stupid that they won’t notice, and we’ll get all that extra money that they will continue earning no matter what we do.’

Entrepreneurship 2011

George Rebane

[This is the submitted form of my July column that appears in the 11jun11 edition of The Union and in its online form here.  A related graphic on the impact of the stimulus is on NC Media Watch here.]

This administration has taken a bad economy and, by any measure, made it unimaginably worse.  We all know the litany of government stimulus packages, corporate bailouts and takeovers, new reams of regulations designed to drive business and finance off-shore, and, of course, Obamacare.  That nationalized healthcare monstrosity is proving to do exactly the opposite of every one of its touted benefits.  And parodying Nancy Pelosi, the more we find out about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the worse it gets.

Polls now show President Obama’s disapproval ratings well above 60% for his handling of the economy, yet enough people are being paid sufficiently that 44% of voters would still re-elect him.  With so many people ignorant about or out of today’s economy, it will take a miracle to replace him.

Meanwhile both Democrats and Republicans agree that small businesses are the nation’s job creators, and success there paves the road to recovery.  Yet the social engineers and vote buyers in Washington continue hindering the very economic activities they tout from the other side of their mouths.

Few people know what it takes to be an entrepreneur and start a job-creating business.  A successful entrepreneur comes with an over-arching dream, a practical approach, tolerance for considerable risk, and enough funds to last through the ‘cash minimum point’ when revenues start exceeding costs – whenever that may be.

Economic Summit – This time from the Left

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of the 10jun11 edition of my regular bi-weekly KVMR commentary broadcast earlier this evening.]

Nevada County has had a harder time than most during this Great Recession.  The closing of stores, shops, and businesses has hit our workforce particularly hard, causing our unemployment to hover above 11% with the nation at 9.1%.  To pile on, the county is currently in the throes of a costly lawsuit and embarrassing scandal.  But it’s easy to see that all of these misfortunes could be turned around with an improved local economy.

In the past years we have had various conferences and summits that drew together business and community leaders to see what could be done to make things better.  These were usually led by the county’s Economic Resource Council, cities, and the local chambers of commerce.  None of these conferences ever went anywhere because first and foremost, we could not agree on where we wanted to go.

The Jobs of Texas

George Rebane

Just a short update on how individual states can still affect their own fortunes as long as they have the brains and will to do so.  After all, allowing the several states to improvise and compete in how they solve their own problems of local governance is part of the genius of our Founders.  California, of course, has shoved that genius up where the sun don’t shine and we are where we are.

Today’s WSJ reports the results of a recent study by the Dallas Fed (here).

… since June 2009, when the recession ended. Texas added 265,300 net jobs, out of the 722,200 nationwide, and by far outpaced every other state. New York was second with 98,200, Pennsylvania added 93,000, and it falls off from there. Nine states created fewer than 10,000 jobs, while Maine, Hawaii, Delaware and Wyoming created fewer than 1,000. Eighteen states have lost jobs since the recovery began.

From the nearby graphic our California is not even lumped with ‘All other states’ because it lost a net 11,400 jobs.  Today we find that “Texas accounts for 45% of net US job creation” and “is also among the few states that are home to more jobs than when the recession began in December 2007.”

So how did they do it?  Well let’s see if we can guess which state “has no state income tax. Its regulatory conditions are contained and flexible …, is fiscally responsible and (its) government is small. Its right-to-work law doesn't impose unions on businesses or employees” and it “is open to global trade and competition”.

Only the hard left rejects that “capital—both human and investment—is highly mobile, and it migrates all the time to the places where the opportunities are larger and the burdens are lower.”  That lesson has been absent in the Golden State for over a generation now, and like insane people everywhere, we expect things to change for the better by doing even more of the same.

What can little Nevada County learn from this data and constructively do, as we contemplate developing our own economy?

And what does all this say about multi-cultural democracy unleavened by education?  But never mind, that query we’ll save for another time.

Ruminations - 7jun2011

George Rebane

The ‘birther’ pot continues to boil.  In ‘The Birth Certificate from Hell’ I reviewed the response to the White House posting of President Obama’s long form birth certificate.  The pdf image of the certificate, available from the WH website, indicated clearly that it had been ‘photoshopped’.  For more recent developments, please read Russ Steele’s 06jun11_0650 comment on that post.

 

RR readers know that I am of the Austrian persuasion (Mises and Hayek) when it comes to economic theory and government policy.  Mises’ famous advice to governments seeking to repair recessions – “Do nothing, sooner!” – was first borne out in the Great Depression.  In the recessions since, the dictum has garnered additional support.  This is nowhere illustrated better than the above graphic from calculateriskblog.com (H/T to RR reader).  Here we see the extension of recessions as the feds have started to ‘help’ out.  And, of course, the poster child of them all is the current Great Recession that is on its way to becoming Great Depression Two. 

Bush2’s TARP started things off (red line) by slowing down unemployment at the predictable and predicted (also here on RR) cost of a deeper and more extended unemployment later which President Obama cooked into this economic cow pie with his bailouts, corporate meddlings, increased regulations, and trillions of stimulus dollars that have left the socialists yapping their perennial ‘It would have been worse had we not done what we did.’  Were Mises and Hayek still alive, I venture that their next piece of advice to us would be, ‘Stand by for ram!’  (More on this at NCMW here.)

Last night I was at Bear River High School presenting some scholarships from SESF (TechTest) and the Nevada City Rotary Club on their annual awards night.  And last week SESF presented the major tranche of TechTest2011 merit scholarships to Nevada Union High School seniors.  These scholarships continue to support young people headed for technology careers.  The daily news reminds us again that we are in dire straits as nation when it comes to supplying wealth creating workers.  Thanks to the new politically correct curricula promoted by leftwing teachers’ unions, we have been turning out dumber students in mostly ‘meathead majors’.  Industry is again beseeching our school systems to turn out workers with skills needed in the American workplaces (see ‘Industry Puts Heat on Schools to Teach Skills Employers Need’ in the 6jun11 WSJ), and progressive organizations like the NAACP continue to throw their weight against the kids who are most disadvantaged (here).  The nearby graphic illustrates the competitive slide of US students compared to students in other OECD countries.

The shortage of qualified people in the manufacturing and service sectors is especially acute even in the days of 9+% unemployment.  The greatest “service sector” job shortage is in engineers which, of course, relates to our inability to attract and educate people in the STEM subjects (STEM? Science, technology, engineering, mathematics).  It would behoove all of us with a voice and a vote to become familiar with this problem which has been assiduously ignored and/or downplayed by the progressives in places where it counts – the nation’s classrooms.  For more details on jobs and the strategies leading companies are using to get workers, please see the special reports in ‘The War for Tech Talent 2011’.

Competence vs Criminality in Nevada County (updated 14jun2011)

George Rebane

My email has been running torrid over the last day or so with everyone telling me, and everyone else, about the Sac Bee article on ‘hard money’ lending shenanigans in the state, and especially in Nevada County.  “NC Clerk/Recorder Diaz has company regarding questionable dealings while in office.” is a typical message line in those viral emails.

Please, dear readers, let’s not let this latest hot flash confuse or dilute our limited attention spans with what is going on in the AtPac lawsuit.  The hard money lending businesses recently rife in the county, that the Sac Bee says implicates our DA Cliff Newell, is a horse of a significantly different color.  One involves our highest elected officials in an arguable screw-up that brings to question their competence, the other involves alleged criminality in private business dealings that smell to high heaven of fraud (with the added allegation that certain people received “favorable treatment” from the DA’s office).

The AtPac case also has immediacy.  The folks at the Rood Center, our vaunted leadership and defendants in the lawsuit, are into a period of critical strategizing and negotiations with the plaintiff that can spell loss of more good money after the bad money already committed and spent.  And as we have seen from the available evidence, these guys have yet to demonstrate the sterling quality of the their decision making capability.  They tacitly corroborate this assessment by having nurtured this ‘nuisance suit’ into a nightmare while trying to keep a lid on the whole thing.

Meanwhile, the NC hard money caper is still under investigation by everyone from our local constabulary through Sacramento to the feds.  Sac Bee has yet to drop the other shoe in their two-part investigative reporting on the matter.  I think it’s too early to get our undies in a bundle on this one, especially since they already have a couple of good twists in them over the lawsuit that promises to cost us taxpayers some serious bucks before it is settled.  No one has yet provided a hint of a connection between AtPac and hard money.  In my view, job one here is to first gain enough information about the AtPac suit so that we can evaluate the people we elect to govern us.

[6jun2011 update]  The SacBee dropped the other shoe today as reported by Russ Steele on NCMW.  In its second of two articles the newspaper spells out some of the gory details of hard money lending that have gone down in Nevada County.  The attendant graphics in the article help make sense of some complicated stuff and highlight the cast of characters involved.  There is no indication yet of new evidence that would incriminate our DA Cliff Newell.  The Union covers this aspect here.

[14jun2011 update]  The county will enter mediation on the AtPac case on 21 June 2011.  Clerk-Recorder Greg Diaz gave his deposition on 27 May.  In this deposition Mr Diaz gave testimony from his perspective on the events germain to this lawsuit that would presumably identify the who/when of giving Aptitude Solutions access to AtPac software, and the subsequent scrubbing of the county records server.  It appears that the county does not want Mr Diaz's deposition to see the light of day.

AtPac’s Nuclear Option

George Rebane

Word from the litigation front is that former Nevada County software provider AtPac is filing for summary judgment in its intellectual property suit that names the county, Clerk-Recorder Greg Diaz, and Aptitude Solutions, the county’s new software provider, as defendants.  (Ref Case 2:10-cv-00294-WBS -JFM Document 172 Filed 06/01/11)

Filing for summary judgment is an extremely expensive and aggressive step in such lawsuits, and entails risk if the plaintiff is not absolutely sure about the strength of the evidence and its case against the defendants.  Such an action essentially says to the court, ‘The evidence is overwhelming, our claims are on solid ground, let’s cut to the chase and get this thing over with.’

Readers not familiar with what is turning out to be a landmark fiscal and political event for Nevada County can quickly get up to speed by reading ‘Rood Center Bumblings’ or searching RR (left column) or The Union with ‘AtPac’.  (A related story about Aptitude Solutions and its owner LPS is found here.)

It will cost the county an additional arm and leg in legal fees just to respond to a summary judgment filing.  And you can bet the costs will go up even more if AtPac’s strategy is correct.

I believe that the county will now get off its high horse and scramble to mediate so as to head off the summary judgment at the pass.  This will still add costs way beyond the $1.2 million approved so far by the Board of Supervisors.  But it will serve what seems to have become the overarching objective at the Rood Center – the cover-up of errors, omissions, and just plain incompetence.

There are no legal strictures in place that prevent the county from telling taxpayers what is going on with AtPac and Aptitude, they all know.  And there is nothing that says the county ‘must’ keep a tight lid on developments in this case, only that it ‘may’.  In my opinion, the only conceivable reason that the county is keeping things hush-hush is to keep the taxpayers and voters in the dark on the details of what now appear as gross errors in oversight, management, communications, operations, strategy, and cost controls.

However, this sound of silence from the Rood Center will not come free.  In its mediated settlement the county will demand that AtPac not divulge the contents of the evidentiary packages that have been exchanged according to the applicable rules governing federal court proceedings.  Such revelations would put a laser pointer on individuals, from the electeds through management to the worker bees who screwed up.  And in addition to covering its legal costs, AtPac will be due its pound of flesh for such an agreement, mitigated only by its hope that it may again in the future become the county’s records and processing software provider.  I will not be surprised if we taxpayers will be out of over $2,000,000 when the dust settles on this.

In response, the local know-nothing echo chamber will parrot that such agreements of confidentiality in perpetuum are the norm, but that is both wrong and irrelevant.  Between private parties, who have no higher authority to which they must answer, such agreed-upon silences are indeed the norm.  But even between corporations, the managements handling a lawsuit must divulge the settlement details to their boards which hire and fire them.

But in such cases as the AtPac suit, it is the imperial state that looks down upon its citizens, who fund it and hire/fire its leaders, and then deems what they should know and not know.  This is an ancient maneuver of self-preservation über alles, and we are witnessing it right here in Nevada County.

‘Meathead’ Majors

George Rebane

Apropos to the lively discussion at ‘True Value of Work and Caring Economics’, Harvard professor of government Harvey Mansfield contributed a telling piece about the “poor choices … students made in selecting their courses and majors.”  In ‘Sociology and Other Meathead Majors’ Dr Mansfield points out the distinction between education based on facts and that based on values.  And, of course, therein lays a root cause of rot in our workforce.  Majors in ‘values based’ subject areas are hard to sell on the labor markets.  And moreover, such majors are victims of the commercially useless leftwing ideologies that are rampant in the country’s schools.  That is a double burden that no employer, save the government, wants to bear.

Mansfield opines that “Archie Bunker was right to be skeptical of his son-in-law’s opinions.”, and goes on to say –

More fundamental, however, is the division within the university today, in America and everywhere, between science and the humanities. Science deals with facts but the humanities also have to deal with values. This is where the problem of bad choices arises. We think that one can have knowledge of fact but not of values—the famous "fact/value" distinction.

Science has knowledge of fact, and this makes it rigorous and hard. The humanities have their facts bent or biased by values, and this makes them lax and soft. This fact—or is it a value?—gives confidence and reputation to scientists within the university. Everyone respects them, and though science is modest because there is always more to learn, scientists sometimes strut and often make claims for extra resources. Some of the rest of us glumly concede their superiority and try to sell our dubious wares in the street, like gypsies. We are the humanists. 

Hollywood Synthesized – Another Step Closer

George Rebane

In ‘Avatars – Lauren and Bogie Together Again’ I described the progress toward a new film industry wherein old actors would become immortal and continue to star in new films as long as audiences were willing to pay for them.  Accelerating technology has taken another giant step in this direction as described here in ‘Digital human actors set to break into big time’.