Ruminations – 16feb12

George Rebane

The Singularity concept is beginning to spread beyond the community of techies consisting mostly of people involved with the development of machine intelligence.  (see the Singularity Signposts section in RR)  A reader sent me this interesting little video of a young intellectual who is writing a book on ‘robots will steal your job’.

Another reader points us to news that Greeks are jumping their ship of state for shores greener  than the dry husk their socialist country has become before it catches fire and consumes the last vestige of hope that some of their citizens still retain.  The suicide rate in Greece has sky-rocketed.  Running out of other people’s money is always really painful – a notion our own Left firmly rejects.  The Greek exodus is currently directed toward Canada and Australia which have big Greek ethnic communities.  (more here)

The dirtbags in the administration have been working hand in glove with the dirtbags in the lamestream.  It turns out that over $21B of ‘stimulus money’ and loan guarantees have gone to a slew of green companies that have direct conflict of interest connections with members of the White House staff.  Among them is a former Obama campaign worker and venture capitalist who has a direct financial interest in betting on these government picked winners which somehow become losers as soon as they run out of the last government handout.  It turns out that the lamestream has known about it and been silent on the story for almost a full year before someone finally told Fox News.

Yesterday the White House budget director slid into something that must have looked like third base from a distance.  Jeff Zients told a House committee that the mandated purchase of insurance coverage under Obamacare was NOT a tax on the people, but simply an imposed fee.  This would bring the adjudication of its legality under the Constitution’s commerce clause and make its survival dicey.  But what’s more embarrassing is that the other side of the WH braintrust realized this long ago, and is arguing in the Supreme Court that the mandated purchase of insurance IS a tax.  This brings it under the broader tax prerogatives of government and is easier to defend.  I wonder if Obama will now look for new budget director, or is this kind of administration stupidity just par for the course which they know is beyond the ken of their constituents?

The personal share of national debt for each American has risen from $35K, when Obama took office, to $50K today.  If Obama’s budget is passed, it will climb to over $80K per person in the next decade.  And these liars are daily claiming to be cutting spending.

Al Gore’s latest sermon from the manmade global warming pulpit now is that ‘capitalism is unsustainable’.  He hasn’t  spelled out Plan B yet, but you can bet the farm (before they take it anyway) that it will make achieving Agenda21 (q.v.) just a stepping stone to his brave new world.

Dai Meagher and I attended last Tuesday’s Board of Supes meeting and took the mike on some matters of the county’s budget which was being discussed as an agenda item.  I thought that the points we voiced were made in a cordial, exploratory, and conducive manner.  I understand that they were not received that way by some members of the Board, and an interesting exception to our remarks was taken and entered into the record by one of the supervisors.  More to be said about that I suppose.

EU commissioner Daniel Hannan speaks at CPAC2012.  Great speaker with a message worth a lengthy ponder.

Comments

[billy T]

Of course the Greeks are jumping ship. If they can't get handouts in Sparta, they will get them somewhere else. After Greece, who is next? Portugal, Ireland, Spain? Cuts aren't easy. Ain't easy to break the slave mentality. They might have to wander 40 years in the wilderness before the slave mentality is broken from this whole Greek generation. No one with the slave mentality is allowed in the promised land to borrow from another book. Funny that Algore says capitalism is unsustainable. You mean like Greece, the USSR, and our worm farm are great examples of non capitalistic sustainable ventures? This should give Algore some heart burn. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-16/spain-says-31-billion-power-system-debt-burden-must-be-shared.html

[Douglas Keachie]

Some leaders cite other reasons for going Green.

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Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan attends a news conference on his resignation at his official residence in Tokyo August 26, 2011. REUTERS/Toru Hanai

By Linda Sieg and Yoko Kubota

TOKYO | Fri Feb 17, 2012 2:23am EST

(Reuters) - Nearly a year after Japan's Fukushima nuclear disaster, then-premier Naoto Kan is haunted by the specter of an even bigger crisis forcing tens of millions of people to flee Tokyo and threatening the nation's existence.

"Having experienced the 3/11 nuclear disaster, I changed my way of thinking. The biggest factor was how at one point, we faced a situation where there was a chance that people might not be able to live in the capital zone including Tokyo and would have to evacuate," Kan told Reuters in an interview on Friday.

"If things had reached that level, not only would the public have had to face hardships but Japan's very existence would have been in peril."

That was the fear that convinced Kan, in office for less than a year when the March 11 triple disaster struck, to declare the need for Japan to end its reliance on atomic power and promote renewable sources of energy such solar that have long taken a back seat in the resource-poor country's energy mix.

"While many technological measures can be taken to secure safety at nuclear power plants, such measures on their own cannot cover great risks," said Kan, sitting in front of a calligraphy scroll inscribed with the ancient Chinese proverb "Be Brave, But Not Reckless."

[Todd Juvinall]

It appears Keachie has hijacked George's blog.

[Brad Croul]

Obama administration puts another California businessman out of business...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/17/cannabis-seized-pilot-obama-airspace

"It turns out that the lamestream has known about it and been silent on the story for almost a full year before someone finally told Fox News."

So, are you saying Fox News is not lame, or lamestream? I mean, it only took them a year to dig this up.

[George Rebane]

BradC 806am - That's a good point. The only inference from the report is that certain 'acknowledged' news outlets have more facile conduits to the WH and other government agencies, and therefore knew of these connections in funding green enterprises. Recall that several senior WH staffers have gone out of their way to denigrate Fox News as not being a legitimate news outlet.

I expect that there will be more such revelations as this election year advances toward November. It is not unreasonable to believe that both sides are stocking up on 'revelations' that will be 'discovered' at appropriate times.

[Robert White]

George, The Supes may have thought you were suggesting what they should consider doing. They don't like that!

[THEMIKEYMCD]

Greek 1 Year gov bond At 629%, Biggest One Day Jump In Yield Ever

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/greek-1-year-629-biggest-one-day-jump-yield-ever

[George Rebane]

RobertW 908am - I did indeed recommend that they become both more proactive and clear in disseminating the county's fiscal good news. That they all are sanguine about our unfunded liabilities needs to have the basis for such comfort shared with the voters. Let us see a plot of when what level of unfunded liabilities come due, and how we plan to respond to those obligations. Then we all can be as happy as they.

[Ryan Mount]

Hey, regarding the Singularity stuff, have you guys ever read Bill Joy's (he needs no introduction in my Book. :-)) "Why the future doesn't need us"? Or is that old news?

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html

[Douglas Keachie]

Back to insurance. It is my understanding that in the fine print of many policies there is written a limit to the payouts, in th event of catastrophe. That limit is defined as being what everyone in the vicinity has paid in. Thus if the Bay Area is hit by a massive quake, and the amount paid in by all of what they define as the "region" is 49% of the the total losses, all that you will be able to recover is 49% of what you coverage was supposedly good for. If the area in the "region" is large enough, i.e., we are in the same area as SF Bay, then buying quake insurance up here is a very good deal, as you will be sure to be paid if it hits locally. If you are in San Francisco, however, you will be screwed.

[Robert White]

George, I recommend you make a habit of contributing suggestions to the Supes on a regular basis.

[George Rebane]

RyanM 1123am - Bill Joy's views on our dystopian future are well known to RR readers.
http://rebaneruminations.typepad.com/rebanes_ruminations/2007/12/the-singularity.html

[George Rebane]

THEMIKEYMCD 1011am - the 629% rate for a one-year Greek bond means that the market thinks that the probability of Greece defaulting on the bond in the coming year is 0.998, almost certainty. More here -
http://rebaneruminations.typepad.com/rebanes_ruminations/2011/11/investors-playing-the-odds.html

[billy T]

The Democrat run White House is not the only agency that dispenses favors to people with connections to staff. It is true for some aides to councilpersons as well. Forget crony capitalism. More like crony "public servants". http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/02/17/MN2B1N97RB.DTL

[billy T]

Glad to see Spain is hopping on the bandwagon. Thought I heard a faint noise from across the pond. Was that the sound Ross Perot described as the "sucking sound"?http://xfinity.comcast.net/articles/finance/20120219/EU.Spain.Financial.Crisis/