Rebane's Ruminations

Ruminations - 31may12

George Rebane

As a continuous lament on these pages, the country’s lack of technical talent is now reaching new lows.  We hear that “On college campuses these days, the top nerds are getting a taste of what it's like to be star jocks.  Companies big and small are going on school campuses to hire undergraduate tech majors, offering outstanding compensation packages and stock (more here).  Meanwhile tens of thousands of PhDs holding degrees in latino studies and women’s public policy are on the dole, with more arriving daily.  All of this is lost on the country’s liberal contingent.

Sex selective abortions are giving those feminists who understand things a bit of a problem.  There’s a bill in the House that would prohibit such abortions done for the sole purpose of getting a kid with specified outside plumbing.  It turns out that minority women are in the overwhelming majority who request such government sponsored genocide services.  Since such killings are the most basic form of gender bias, what’s a dyed-in-wool leftwing feminist to do?  Opposing the bill would be blatant hypocrisy, yet supporting it would deny the federal dole to clinics that do this kind of thing.  And it didn’t help that someone made a video of a woman having a very understanding interview with a worker in one of those abortion clinics.

The descendants of Lenin’s “useful idiots” are still parroting the denial of government worker pensions as the main cause of fiscal failures of local jurisdictions in America.  Now we hear that Mayor Rahm Emanuel has finally seen the brick wall after having gone splat against it in Chicago.  As the WSJ reports, in Illinois “Many teachers don't pay a penny toward pensions but can retire at age 60 with an annuity equal to 65% of their final salary plus a 3% annual compounded cost-of-living increase. The state's pension bill, which has quadrupled in five years, consumes all $7 billion of additional revenue from last year's income and corporate tax hikes. Even so, the pension funds are projected to go bust in a decade.”  So now that he has executive responsibility, the former Obama chief of staff is singing a different song titled “Illinois pensions are breaking my city.”

Voting for Sue McGuire and Doug LaMalfa

George Rebane

In next Tuesday’s primary I am voting for Sue McGuire for Nevada County’s District #1 supervisor, and State Senator Doug LaMalfa to become our new representative in Congress.

Sue McGuire has all of the qualifications to become our new supervisor.  I won’t belabor them; you can see them on her website.  She has also come to our home for an extended meeting with us and our neighbors, and we have talked with her numerous times at community meetings.  In this interval we have gotten to know her, and I endorse Sue because she will be a capable, professional, and prudent voice on the Board who is ideologically the closest to my own beliefs about governance.

But, given those necessary qualifications, perhaps the prime reason I am voting for Sue is that she will be a new face at the Rood Center, a person with no established ties or ‘accounts’ with county staff, the other electeds, and relationships with the various special interest government associations, leagues, commissions, committees, and NGOs that dot California’s public policy landscape.  Today more than ever, for me that has become the necessary add-on in choosing whom to support for public office.

A Look at GDP

George Rebane

Gross Domestic Product is constantly in the news.  It is the definitive measure of a country’s annual production of goods and services.  GDP is calculated in several different ways, all are supposed to be compatible.  The most often used and useful way is called the Expenditure Method that relates to the different kinds of spending that go on in an economy.  In this post I will lay down a little background on GDP that will serve as a ready reference when we talk about things economical during this election year, and keep an eye on the indicators that tell us about the world in Depression2.

As shown in the above figure, the expenditure method defines GDP as the sum of consumer spending (C), private investments (I), government spending (G), and the net of exports (X) minus imports (M), which is also known as the ‘current account’ of the country’s foreign trade.

The first thing to notice is that government spending (G), which itself generates no wealth, contributes to GDP.  This is the notorious Keynesian spigot that is supposed to be opened wide during economic hard times to flood the economy with cash and stimulate spending.  The problem comes when we examine the source of G.  It all derives from three sources that can at best only hide the pain temporarily when the spigot is opened, and then after a while the whole thing simply ceases to function.  (Actually, many of the President’s constituents believe that there is fourth and more mysterious yet just as reliable source called ‘Obama’s Stash’)

G is made up of mainly taxes of several kinds and collected under various guises, and labeled so as to hide their true sum.  But all taxes come out of the wealth creating private sector, with the possible exception of autocratic governments selling their nationalized natural resources to other countries.  When taxes don’t generate enough ‘revenues’ (love their use of business terms like ‘revenues’ and ‘investment’), then an alternative source is to borrow from lenders (foreign and domestic) to make up the shortfall.

We Remember - 28 May 2012

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.  (continued)

Dear Reader, that was the opening to my last year's Memorial Day post.  Since I can't improve on it, I will simply recall your attention to those sentiments which are even more appropriate today.

TechTest2012 Survivors Breakfast

George Rebane

Last Friday (25may12) the annual ‘Survivors Breakfast’ was again held at Tofanelli’s.  The event has become a tradition to celebrate the young people who took the year’s test and those who received the top scores on the SESF sponsored merit scholarship exam.  TT2012 top three scorers (in no particular order) were Ben Martin, Parker Scanlon, and Dominic Castro-Wehr pictured below.

This year included was Joe Fenner (pictured above), the top scorer of TechTestJr2012, and his parents.  TTJr was inaugurated this year for the county’s 8th graders in response to requests from local middle schools.  Students starting 9th grade make a very serious choice to take the science-math track in high school or not.  That choice greatly determines their ability to study STEM subjects in colleges and embark on STEM careers.

After a hearty breakfast, the students each told us of their plans for next year.  The juniors, who took the test for practice, all promised to study much harder for TT2013 when they will be going for the money.  The breakfast always ends with everyone getting their coveted Survivor’s T-shirt, and then a big picture taking session.  Pictured below are the juniors (left) and seniors.

More pictures and information is available on the SESF website here.

The Rotten Roots of Socialism

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary aired on 25 May 2012.]

The world is in a turmoil that most people equate to something that has to do with finances.  In addition to the reports from Europe about Greece, and Spain, and Italy, and on-and-off austerity programs, we are already numb with news of the European disease that has also spread to our shores.  For those who still try to bury their heads in the sand, there’s more, and here I’ll try to connect a few dots.

The latest news about the joys of socialism comes from the Northern Marianas, way out in the Pacific.  Home to about 53,000 people, these islands are a United States territory populated by American citizens.  And looking at the mainland years ago, their government employees saw a good thing – lavish public service employee union negotiated pension funds – and so they set up one of their own.  Well, cutting to the chase, their pension fund is broke and last month filed for bankruptcy.

The Liberal Mind – Profits vs Jobs

        'Tax rates have no effect on the behavior of the taxed.' - deeply held liberal tenet

George Rebane

This week President Obama made another extremely important statement that reveals his understanding of how the world works.  At a campaign stop he took Romney's credentials to task, doubting that anyone who has focused on business ventures like reorganizing companies for the purpose of making a profit is suited to be President of the United States.  The better recommendation for such a candidate would be to have focused on creating jobs.  On hearing this I could not help but go slack-jawed.

To be sure, it is a tragedy to have such ignorance (or perfidy?) resident in the chief executive of a putatively capitalistic country, but the portents of making such a statement to the electorate should be our real concern.  Obama spoke those words knowing that a large fraction of voters would agree with him simply because of his position, abetted by their inability to understand the basics of economics beyond their own spending habits.  In other words, the man knowingly pandered to the complacantly ignorant.

The correct message should have been that in free markets all businesses are created to make a profit, and when successful, such enterprises also create jobs.  No business is started for the purpose of creating jobs.  You have to be successfully shielded from reality or just plain dumb not to know that labor – i.e. a job – is an element of cost that makes any product or service more expensive to the customer, makes the business less competitive, reduces profits and the ability to grow, and jeopardizes the survival of the company.  In short, a successful business does its best when it minimizes the jobs needed to function profitably, and thereby best guarantees that the jobs it does provide will be the most secure.

It is only the collectivist state with its twisted ideology that sets up organizations, which employ cadres of inept and inefficient workers to impede the increase of wealth and the quality of life for the most people.  And the collectivist state does this without regard to the unsustainability of the entire scheme, counting on increasing the wholesale level of equally applied misery to mask any alternative approach to creating and distributing wealth.  This is what our President has been successfully selling, and through his cadres, successfully imposing on the country.

Part and parcel of such a downward spiral is the notion of a nation, up to its eyeballs in debt, spending its way to economic recovery and wealth.  The Greeks are now demanding to spend more, instead of tightening their belts from profligate borrowing and spending.  The French just voted in a socialist who promises to put their country on the same road.  Spain and Portugal are ready to sign on.

This entire approach was recently given a mind-boggling justification by Hannes Swoboda, a member of the European Parliament and president of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in that ‘august body’.  In his ‘Europe Can Spend Its Way to Growth’ (21may12 WSJ) he advances some economic prescriptions for the EU that have yet to work on this third planet from the sun – nevertheless, member countries are exhorted to throw themselves into the breech one more time.

First and foremost, he recommends compelled borrowing by states and businesses for the purpose of job creation.  This, of course, requires some mysterious compelling of lenders, since prospects for profits that assure a payback are neither apparent nor a necessity.  He then appeals to la-la-land accounting to dictate that such debts “should not be integrated in calculations of structural deficits and hence be punished because (somehow) investment in growth generates income and taxes, and therefore revenues for the state.”

To achieve this new level of unsustainable indebtedness, Swoboda argues that “European institutions should enact legislation that requires all members to make public investments in growth and employement.”  A staple of economic activity in this direction is to re-ignite the efforts that “would finally lead us onto the path toward a seriously environment-friendly economy.”  This in the face of the disastrous recent history that EU countries have experienced in their pell-mell charge into green industries, an experience which subsequently caused everyone to beat a hasty retreat in order to save their national fiscs.

How will all this be accomplished?  Swoboda’s sure-fire approach spells out that “these additional investments need to be financed, one way or another.”  (No kidding, you can’t make this stuff up.)  And just to make sure that capital has every impediment to moving into its most productive use, he prescribes a new “financial transaction tax".   On top of that, the EU would establish additional regulations to “fight against tax evasion” which then would “channel additional funds into national treasuries.”

To put a nice bow on it, we can now all do a little anticipatory happy dance because “once growth takes off, tax revenues will start flowing.  Tax policy that favors lower-income classes and better regulation of financital markets would (then) already be fostering growth.”  Now, do you see how easy all that would be?  And do you finally understand why Team Obama wants to take us down that same road once “after (his) re-election (he) will have more flexibility”?

The Liberal Mind – Asymmetric 'Cacooning' (updated 25may12)

George Rebane

For some years in these pages I have written about the apparent ignorance of the liberal voices about what’s going on and how things work.  Quite often I, and other conservative bloggers, have been taken to task by our left-leaning readers accusing us of ‘introducing’ some outlandish new notion.  But more often than not, the notion is neither new nor outlandish in the greater scheme of things.  It only appeared so to the more narrowly exposed readers.

I have argued that a contributing factor to these one-sided expressions of outrage is that liberals in the aggregate are disposed to seek out news and information from liberal outlets.  These include the usual lamestream outlets and, of course, the Hollywood led entertainment industry.  Sources which the conservatives cannot help but also frequent, if for nothing else then curiosity as to what the other side is talking about.

National commentator Michael Barone on polipundit.com has noticed that same phenomenon and writes about it here (H/T to Russ Steele for link).  Barone cites the notion of ‘cacooning’ introduced by journalist Bill Bishop in his recent (2009) The Big Sort.  Bishop observes that professionals and idea shapers on both sides migrate to enclaves that best match their views – e.g. San Francisco area and Dallas-FtWorth.  But where liberals in such areas can totally immerse themselves in like-mindedness, conservatives find that impossible to do because of the pervasive left tilt of the national media, academia, the arts, and, of course, Hollywood et al.

The conservatives are bathed in both lights wherever they may live, and therefore benefit from a broader understanding of the beliefs and notions held by the American public.  One indicator of this is the types of fruitless debates that go on between the two sides, where one side wants to examine, say, the impact of a proposed idea of governance while the other side is simply outraged that someone would ‘introduce’ or even consider such an idea.

Some years back Alan Abramowitz and Bishop, while working on his book, wrote a piece, 'The Myth of the Middle', in the Washington Post describing the findings of a study and poll that confirmed what many of us were witnessing daily in the national dialogue.  Again, somehow much of the left (most certainly our local locally focused brethren) missed the report of this revelation.  The article concluded -

For the past three decades, the major parties and the electorate have grown more divided -- in what they think, where they live and how they vote. It may be comforting to believe our problems could be solved if only those vile politicians in Washington would learn to get along. The source of the country's division, however, is nestled much closer to home.

This, of course, contributes to and confirms the overall polarization of the country, and has induced many conservatives to begin exploring the notion of a Great Divide (q.v.).

[25may12 update]  This evening we finished an historic week in the annals of defending the First Amendment and religious freedom.  Over 22 churches and institutions (including the liberal Notre Dame University) have filed suit against the administration regarding Obamacare’s revealed strictures on what is a church and who must deliver abortion services.  This is a big story, and promises to have a material effect on this election as it heads toward SCOTUS, where the justices already have that travesty under their microscope.

But the added news here for the record is that liberals looking to the lamestream for its news have again literally no idea that any of this is going on, let alone the scope of this exploding national debate.  To again demonstrate in which basket it has all of its eggs, the lamestream channels in toto devoted only 19 seconds(!) to reporting this story during the entire week that has passed – this according to people who track media coverage as was reported by Fox News.  Talk about asymmetry.  Exit question: Isn’t there at least one pissed progressive in the country who would stand up and demand that his news not be selectively censored?

Agenda21 on cat’s feet (updated 24may12)

George Rebane

I just returned from the Nevada County Board of Supervisors meeting at the Rood Center.  I went there to hear the report on establishing a 2005 county baseline for CO2 emissions presented by the Sierra Business Council with some mysterious connection to ICLEI.  (You can check the details on the county’s website.)  The report consisted of a bunch of pie charts showing metric tons of “CO2 equivalents” emitted by various county activities and sources.  The numbers came from plugging SBC collected county data into a computer model supplied by ICLEI.

The longer term purpose of this baseline data is to set CO2 targets, pass future regulations and ordinances, and establish monitoring and enforcement procedures to further constrain and dictate the behavior of county residents.

ICLEI stands for International Council for Environmental Initiatives.  It is the NGO charged with implementing UN’s Agenda 21 plan for constraining and controlling ALL human activity on earth as soon as possible.  ICLEI, headquartered in Germany, is the coordinating arm for the distributed infusion of ‘smart growth’, ‘sustainability’, ‘energy efficiency’, ‘climate change laws’, … at local levels throughout the world.  USA, signatory to Agenda 21, has more than 500 national chapters of which over 100 are in, where else, California.

The SBC presenters professed singular ignorance of any of this or even any depth of the work they had done.  To them ICLEI was the supplier of the computer model into which they stuck their local data, period.  Supervisor Ed Scofield called me to the mike to explain ICLEI, and then expressed his deep concerns about the encroachment of ICLEI’s infusion of Agenda 21.

Supervisor Nate Beason asked some excellent questions re the presented ‘metric tons’ and the source of the computer model used.  Supervisor Beason wanted the quoted numbers to be put into some context which would establish their significance.  The SBC people were not able to do that either.   The question still to be asked is ‘how was the computer model validated and by whom?’

Ruminations - 21may12 (updated)

George Rebane

President Obama’s background and biography is throwing people for another loop – at least those with their heads still exposed to the sun.  Who knows where the man was actually born?  Who knows what actually happened in South Chicago?  All we know is that the Washington establishment (both parties) and the lamestream don’t want to go there, no matter what is discovered under newly turned over rocks. 

And Obama’s ‘autobiographies’ will now have to be re-cataloged under fiction.  The disparities from truth are becoming so easy to document that a high school sophomore could do it for her term paper, if only her teacher would countenance such research.  PJMedia, Breitbart, and Drudge, along with some local blogs, have been having a field day on the new revelations about the background of our fearless leader.

Everyone with an ability to buy popcorn at a movie should now understand what a private equity firm like Bain does and did when Romney was there.  Especially revealing is the Left’s celebrated cause of telling the country that Romney and company bankrupted GST Steel and destroyed 750 secure long-lasting jobs; worse, sent them overseas to cheap steel makers.  ('Bain Capitalism 101')  Ol’ Joe can say it best of all from the Team Obama side.  Their lies are understandable, but the puzzle remains as to how well such lies work with the Left’s constituents.  A lot of these must be the parents of kids like those in Florida who flunked the state’s reading test. The answer’s gotta be in the double helix.

Knowledge Engines

George Rebane

Part of our rush toward Singularity involves the web becoming ‘smarter’.  In case you haven’t noticed, search engine technologies are rapidly evolving from providing ‘information’ to becoming so-called knowledge engines.  Wolfram Alpha was an early one into this functionality, and it is now being joined by Google’s Knowledge Graph Microsoft will soon upgrade its Bing to provide the same type of functionality.

My friend Dr Larry Press reports on Knowledge Graph here.  And this is a short video that gives you an idea of all this before you dive into the details.

As evident from my past posts on the topic, I’m looking forward to IBM offering its Watson technology on a broad basis to websites.  To do that though will require the installation of what I’d call server cities instead of server farms.  Today web related utilities already consume more than 5% of our electrical capacity.  With all of us starting to use Watson-derived knowledge engines will make the country’s lights dim.

 

Illegal Aliens + IRS = Tax Fraud

George Rebane

There are over two million illegal aliens in America, overwhelmingly from Mexico.  Now it turns out that an additional draw for such illegals has been the ability to blatantly defraud the American taxpayer with the help of our compliant IRS.  The entire scheme involves filing the 1040 tax return using an IRS-created ITIN (Individual Taxpayer Identification Number) that was supposed to allow working illegals without an SSN to still pay taxes on their earned income.  (This stuff is hard to make up.)

Well, the damn thing backfired years ago when the illegals discovered this ‘loop hole’ (aka fraud) that allowed them to claim refunds for children supposedly living with them that were members of their larger families.  The refund is the Additional Child Tax Credit.  So tax returns with ITINs started being submitted by the hundreds of thousands and more, each with a list of kids on them who were nieces and nephews to pad the ACTC list on their 1040s.  Adding to this insult is that the kids don’t even live here, but are still back in Mexico.

The refunds are huge.  Individuals get back thousands of dollars apiece.  The total taxpayer bill comes to over $4.2B annually, year after year.  And no one at the IRS wants to fess up or talk about this fraud that has been known to them for years.  To show how dysfunctional our government is, even the US Treasury Department’s Inspector General has investigated and written reports about this abuse, and reported it to the IRS, all to no avail.  (more here)

None of the illegals feel bad about doing this because the ACTC is simply another commons added on top of the Great Commons of America which they already hold in contempt, and in which they live as fugitives from an inept and corrupt government headquartered in Washington DC.  (H/T to a correspondent.)

Placebos vs Big Pharma

George Rebane

A recent ’60 Minutes’ surprised me with a segment in which it was reported that placebos worked just as well as drugs like Prozac for fighting depression – well, almost as well.  Prozac did have a tiny edge in really severe cases of depression.  The research was done by Dr Irving Kirsch of Harvard, and it has reignited a firestorm of debate as to what real effect do many expensive big pharma concoctions have over sugar pills.

The power of the human brainbone to gin up alternative realities has been known for decades.  In the Greece of pre-Dorian invasions the gods regularly conversed with individuals and even attended public events such as weddings and other celebrations.  Everybody saw them and corroborated each other’s experiences.  In the middle ages and later, people actually saw witches fly on broomsticks, and believed such sightings to be as reliable as seeing clouds in the sky.  In the modern age anthropologists have discovered and studied a tribe in Papua-New Guinea whose known world has a boundary at a narrow river, the other side of which has always been invisible to the aboriginals.

Some psychologists have identified the responsible region of the brain for such hallucinations in the right hemisphere opposite Wernicke’s area (used in language processing).  In any event, most of us have heard some astounding stories and are aware of the power of placebos.  It all seems to revolve around the level of credibility (faith) we attribute to the sugar pills presented as medicine and administered by sincere and serious healthcare professionals.  And this effect seems to work in spades with anti-depressant medications.

But that wasn’t really what caught my attention in the TV segment.  The question that popped up was why did the FDA still allow Prozac et al to tout themselves as the clinically effective standard of care for depression.  The answer was that FDA’s approval procedures rate a drug effective, if it bests the performance of placebos in at least two properly conducted drug trials or studies.  It could fail to be better in, say, ten previous studies, but as soon as it racks up two victories over the placebo, it gets to go to market.

My instant reaction was ‘Wow! I didn’t know that.’  So if in a (double?) blind trial Prozac and a placebo are each given to two samples of 500 subjects suffering from depression, and Prozac is judged to effectively reduce symptoms in, say, 100 subjects, while the placebo equally reduces symptoms in only 98 subjects, then Prozac wins.  There was no requirement of statistical significance or any such technical niceties.  Two such victories, and the billions start rolling in.

The question then becomes, what kind of risk do big pharma companies take when bringing to market already developed, marginally performing medicines?

Message to Team Romney

George Rebane

Republican contender Romney is overlooking a key and compelling message to the voters.  He and his are just getting up to speed on, ‘Since Obama did not come close to meeting his first term promises of hope and change, and we are still in economic dire straits; what makes you think that Obama can deliver on the same promises during his second term?’

The real message that no one seems to be talking about in the pundit universe, and that has been totally absent in Romney’s copy is, ‘Since Obama did not come close to meeting his first term  promises of hope and change when his second term prospects still hung in balance; what makes you think that now in his second term he will keep those promises when he has no such requirement to deliver, and need let nothing stand in the way of implementing his twisted (aka ineffective, butt stupid, wrongheaded, socialist, …) ideology on America?’

Wordsmith it as you will, the logic of it is overwhelming, and this message should be heard from Republicans at all levels to the widest possible audiences until we vote on 6 November 2012.

Ruminations - 16may12

George Rebane

The bad news about Obamacare just keeps getting worse.  In addition to recent reports that colleges are dropping higher costing student health plans prescribed under the law’s provisions, we now discover that Obamacare puts a new excise tax on one of the remaining areas of job creating and innovation in which we still lead the world – medical device manufacturing.  It’s one of the few industries left that contributes to the positive side of our trade balance, and provides over 400,000 direct jobs and about two million indirect support jobs.  Here I’m talking about CT scanners, pacemakers, blood pressure devices, and even the new robots used in surgery.

In ‘Obamacare’s Killer Device Tax’ Dr Henry Miller writes that “the US leads the world in medical technology.  A punitive new excise levy jeopardizes jobs and innovation.”  Team Obama sees this industry as the next one it can attack in order to further disable American leadership in innovation and commerce.  Obamacare will impose a new add-on 2.3% excise tax on medical devices that kicks in next January.  This is a serious kick in the shorts because of the high regulatory cost of jumping through hoops, and the long accrual of sales revenues required before ROI becomes positive.  It isn’t that hard overseas.

And what happened to this year's five million new citizens that became of age and didn't bump the number in the workforce?  Lots of possible answers, "Or are more of the long-term unemployed becoming the never-again employed?"  The labor market participation has increased since the 1940s, then leveled and started going down around 2000, causing a lot of people to look for reasons.  My money is also on the govt worker retirees whose outlandish pensions came due, and made it easy to drop out early. Meanwhile on the campaign trail the Big Lie machine about how our economy is creating jobs under the Messiah is in full swing.  Daily the real news belies every bit of his empty braggadocio.

‘Testing is not Teaching’ is the growing cry of parents of minority kids across the country.  The teachers unions like NEA are joining in and asking that Congress roll back testing mandates that started under Bush2’s No Child Left Behind and were picked up by Obama’s Race to the Top.  The charges against testing range from being unfair to teachers, having arbitrary scoring levels, being poorly designed, to stifling the more creative aspects of education.  Teachers are accused of teaching to the tests, and they are not doing a good job at it.  Meanwhile other school districts are saying that their teachers have not changed their curricula, are not teaching to the tests, and that their kids are doing quite well on such tests.

I’m a proponent of standardized testing in core skill areas like reading, writing, and math.  Testing can also be useful in confirming what kids have learned in the hard sciences like physics and chemistry.  But things get squishier when you add in questions about sociology, literature, and even civics.  The opponents of testing don’t tell us about reliable alternatives for measuring how kids and teachers are doing in the learning and teaching of critical skills that underpin the ability to do well in all the other subjects, and in life.

For reasons that I don’t understand, the cost of testing has also gone up, even with the introduction of computers and other technology.  And that is part and parcel of the overall cost of education that is sky rocketing, again for reasons that both academics and economists are attempting to discover.  Over the years why does it cost more and more to turn out Susies and Johnnies who know less than ever?

And did you catch that some school children from LA are suing California for promoting a "statutory scheme" that keeps bad teachers in classrooms, especially classrooms in low-income schools.

Climbing Sugar Mountain.  Mark Zuckerberg’s baby is going to hit the merciless markets on Friday, and no one really knows what it’s worth.  Why?  Well, Facebook’s market cap will be based on “finding ways to make money that haven’t been demonstrated or articulated yet.”  No one is sure that ads on the social medium work, and dealing in the vast amounts of collected user data is an uncertain minefield.  And young Mr Zuckerberg has not exactly been sending strong signals about his concern for profits and acumen in being CEO of a public company, one that will be under intense scrutiny by everyone.  But what the hell - got a hunch, bet a bunch – after all,  people are saying that out the gate Facebook will be worth ten times as much as Google was at its IPO.

The Real Liberal Man

George Rebane

Social futurist(?!) Sara Robinson tells us the real meaning of Mother’s Day, and comes up with quite an analysis of men from both sides of the political spectrum.  Her ‘How the Ayn Rand-Loving Right Is Like a Bunch of Teen Boys Gone Crazy’ is a worthy sample of what sites like AlterNet.com and truthout.com are telling their own kind.  Again, it’s worth a read for our more conservative and libertarian readers to get a measure of the chasm, and also some perspective on the criticism from our more liberal readers clucking their tongues for merely being identified as collectivists or socialists or liberal or leftwing – all labels apparently of a pejorative nature when uttered in mixed company, and in the light of day.  H/T to a reader who definitely does not identify with the right, and yet is a bit embarrassed at the extremes her brethren and cistern (or is it sistern?) dish out.

An apology for all occasions

George Rebane

[In my long working career I was privileged and very lucky to have worked with and under some truly remarkable and very smart people.  One of these was an older systems engineer extraordinaire and a complete gentleman by the name of Skip Case.  I was technically his peer, but I never considered myself as such.  In a number of different ways Skip taught all of us who worked with him.  Those who also bothered to learn, benefitted from his wisdom.

Skip died a few years back, a little before I started RR, and was then only occasionally posting on the SESF website.  When I heard the news, it hit me that over the decades I and several others had been profitably using a phrase that he taught us years ago.  To remember Skip, I wrote the following vignette and posted it on the SESF website.  My most recent use of the phrase in a comment recalled the vignette, and I retrieved it to share with RR readers.  You may also find it useful some day, especially in the heated discussions of complex issues we cover here.]

Skip Case RIP

George Rebane – 21 May 2007

The conference room was crowded with the company’s elite engineering talent and top management for a very important system design review meeting.  The decision taken today would impact the company’s standing and future role as the nation’s leading nuclear submarine combat systems developer and manufacturer.  In 1968 as a young hotshot engineer I was privileged to be included in that tense gathering of greats in a very secretive industry critical to the country’s well-being, yet almost completely and purposefully unknown to the outside world. On board every operational fleet ballistic missile and attack submarine of our Navy, our company’s systems were the ones that would likely fire the opening salvos of WW3.

One of the company’s senior project engineers had just completed a presentation of an important design concept on which the effectiveness of the new system would hinge.  He was a man in his late forties of small yet lithe stature and thinning neatly combed hair.  What especially distinguished Skip’s presence was his gaze – he had the most focused and level gaze which when turned on you established an intellectual connection that would bind like a taught rope.  Using the fewest words needed, Skip always spoke precisely and with a calm urgency that made the listener want to lean forward in his chair so as not to miss a single pearl.

Engineering, as a demanding technical profession, is often a ruthless forum in which mistakes and errors are pounced upon by peers for ego gratification, reputation enhancement, and generally counting coup.  Such critiques are most often spontaneous but sometimes, especially when corporate management will be present, they are planned ambushes of great sophistication.  That morning a mid-level division manager with a short career as a practicing engineer rose to deliver a withering critique of the just concluded presentation.  It was obviously a long-planned critique that had still been in deep rehearsal while Skip was talking. And it was apparent to us all that he had not understood the very essence of the design approach.  As he concluded with a knowing glance to the company’s chief technical officer (Chief Engineer in those days), all eyes turned to Skip.

Remaining seated with hands folded, Skip fixed his attacker in that signature gaze and, with incredible calm and no hint of sarcasm, said,
 
“I’m sorry, I didn’t say it well enough for you to understand.”
 
… and paused.  As the semantic impact of this simple sentence settled in our minds most of us were astounded.  I remember scrambling to record those words in my notebook and I wasn’t alone. The managerial upstart was dumbfounded, he didn’t know on whom those contrite words put blame or shame.  He wanted to strike back, but no obvious target had been presented.  While his would-be nemesis was so consternated, Skip proceeded to quickly correct the man’s error and the meeting went on to a productive conclusion.

In his wisdom Skip Case settled a potentially contentious and divisive situation with a sentence that allowed everyone to draw their own distinct yet proper meaning of the occasion depending on their position and perspective.  All of us left the room with those words in mind.  I was fortunate to count Skip as one of my mentors and to sit at his knee during those early years.  And since that time I also have learned to apologize when I could not say it well enough for my respondent to understand – but still not as well as Skip.

Dufus Government – why we need to starve it

Government at its best is a necessary evil, and at its worst, an intolerant one. – Thomas Paine

George Rebane

The contradictory, self-defeating, and citizen oppressing behavior by government at all levels just added two more battle ribbons of stupidity to their banners.

The first is the latest outrage by the feds who deem marijuana consumption illegal across the country in contravention to 17 states which have pronounced it legal.  California is one of the 17, and Nevada County is currently in a white heat debate over its recently passed ordinance prescribing the cultivation of marijuana.

The ordinance is quite draconian, with sufficient measures of all hues in it that 99.44% of the county’s growers can be busted at any time at the discretion of local authorities.  And, of course, they can be arrested and indicted by federal authorities regardless of what California and our county permits.  Our local supes assure us to not worry about the ordinance; that unless you’re really really bad, no one will enforce it.  No such guarantees can be given about the feds.

Our congressman Tom McClintock joined with two other House members to introduce a bill that would remove funding for federal marijuana raids.  The bill failed miserably (262-163) with most Dems in favor, and only one in eight Repubs willing to back states’ rights (H/T to reader, more here).  Go figger, but don’t take too long, the problem is not that hard.  As I have long noted, the two cohorts in our society that would have the most to lose if marijuana progressed toward legalization are the drug traffickers and the drug enforcement authorities.  The trade is a cash cow for both, and neither wants the cops and crooks game to go unfunded and, God forbid, stop.  (History buffs will recall that for the same reasons the repeal of prohibition was equally opposed by the police and organized crime.)

Here in California our Governor Moonbeam made the easily predicted announcement today that none of the state’s past tax/fee increases, regulatory additions, green industries, …, none have produced the projected revenues needed to balance California’s so-called budget.  In fact, revenues have plunged enough to increase the recently announced $9B deficit to its current level of $16B.  Enough people have bailed and continue to banzai out of here to make a bad situation worse.

But the pullet pucky politicians in Sacramento are not done.  They have put their cross hairs on those wealth producers still here, and have decided that another round of tax increases is required to finally fix things.  Not having the character or courage to pass such an increase themselves, they have again thrown the measure into the referendum mill, hoping that we would be dumb enough to pass the increase this November.  One of the big lies, reported here before, is that some of the money will go to maintaining classroom services for our kids’ education.  Actually, the new tax money will go to shore up the egregious under funding of teachers’ union pension funds.  The kids will see no benefit.

Anybody willing to do a little wager on the amount of revenue shortfall the new tax increase will create if it passes?

So, dear reader, here is more conclusive proof that the fix-all remedy for government is simply to starve the beast while revising its legal code, abolishing rogue agencies, rewriting its tax code in toto, and returning rights to the states as exquisitely prescribed by our Founders.

Happy Mother's Day

George Rebane

 

Ellen Rebane (1914 - 1990)

 

Discrimination by the numbers

 

George Rebane

Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona’s Maricopa County is being sued by the Dept of Justice for discrimination through the use of profiling.  When ol’ Sheriff Joe stops a car for some traffic, licensing, or other safety violation, it seems that he puts the occupants through an immigration check nine times more frequently when they are Hispanics, than when they are not.  This to the feds and other soft heads is clear discrimination through profiling; is it not?  Let’s return to the sheriff after a couple of preliminaries.

Most people who put their feelings on the back burner for a bit and revert to reason will agree that discrimination occurs when some benefit or sanction is directed toward a segment of population that is out of kilter with the proportion of the population having an attribute that legally deserves the benefit or sanction.

Let’s say that 15% of county residences have a specific building code violation, and county winds up writing citations and fining 25% of residences for that violation.  It is clear that 10% of residences have been discriminated against since they can show that no violation existed on their properties.

Also if a population of equally developmentally handicapped people were supposed to get a certain subsidy, and upon examination it was later found that payments went excessively to a subset of the handicapped that had another attribute (say, they were all tall) not contemplated in the law, then the subset without the secondary attribute (the short ones) suffered discrimination.

It gets a little dicier when we start dealing with realworld uncertainties, and when we have to allocate scarce resources to achieve a certain objective.  And this brings us to some of Sheriff Joe’s problems.  So let’s get a few numbers under our belt (they may be off a bit, depending on your source, but I tried to get them all from the Census Bureau, so they should work for this discussion.)

Conspiracy Theories by the Dozen, Oh My! (updated 21may12)

George Rebane

[Correction: This is the submitted form of my column that appeared belatedly in the print edition of the 25may12 Union.  I was informed of the delay due to a rush of political columns and articles on the new marijuana ordnance.]

In this election year all the weird stuff we’ve been hearing about seems to be coming at us more loudly and from every direction.  Each piece by itself sounds like a purposed effort to drive America deeper into a place that most of us don’t want it to go; each piece sounds like the revelation of another quiet conspiracy at work.  And when you gather all the pieces together, they don’t look like separate pieces at all, but to many they appear to fit into one big concerted effort from somewhere by some people who are working together.

And what makes it even more curious is that the individual pieces have been promoted by people from all political parties – most certainly including Republicans and Democrats.  So we can’t just point our finger at one side and blame the whole thing on them.

We start with the International Democrat Union (idu.org) founded in 1983 by the likes of Margaret Thatcher and Republican Party National Committee’s John Allen, and joined by VPOTUS George HW Bush.  It is a self-declared union of ‘centre and centre right’ parties with high sounding principles that include abiding by the anti-constitutional UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and calls for unspecified obligations between nations.  Who knows what the IDU does, but it meets every four years near the Republican Convention.

Then we have the notorious UN Agenda21 initiative to which President GHW Bush signed us up (http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/agenda21/res_agenda21_00.shtml).  Reading its tenets and principles calls for a one world in which human activity is restricted to a fraction of the earth’s land surface, and everyone belongs to a wholesome, sustainable, inclusive, happy society of peacefully like-minded and sensitive people.  The progressive principles of this future UN-dominated world are being implemented through something called the ICLEI Global (iclei.org) which organizes “local governments for sustainability” and already has over 550 US cities as members.

Next we come to the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 with its draconian Title X, Subtitle D.  There its anti-terrorism provisions give the President powers to do all kinds of spooky and unconstitutional things like constructing a gulag of stalags in the US for forcibly interning thousands of US citizens when the need arises.

‘Me Generation’ looks for work

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary that was broadcast on 11 May 2012.]

It’s graduation season during a particularly intense election year while the economy is stuck in the mud, and technological advances still come pouring out the research universities and private industry.  Our educational system at all levels puts 4.3 million young people out into what you might think is America’s workforce.  A good fraction of these youth have not completed their education – they are either high school dropouts or leave college before earning some recognized certificate of completion.

And when we look at our graduates – those who can boast a high school diploma, an AA degree, or a baccalaureate sheepskin – we discover that they are proudly educated in skills few can understand and employers cannot use.  The result is that an alarming fraction of these people cannot qualify for the fewer jobs that this economy is producing.  What’s more, they will not qualify for the kinds of jobs that a future job market will demand when the economy finally begins to recover.

Most academics and writers who have studied this alarming shift in skills demographics continue to blame it on what and how our youngsters are taught in their schools.  First, teaching has long been devalued by policies which attract the lower tiers of college graduates into the profession.  And for years now the curriculum of essential skills has been watered down and in some cases eliminated altogether.

I’m, of course, talking about subjects that motivate and prepare students to take science, technology, engineering, and math, the so-called STEM subjects, in high school and college.  For example, the latest and greatest federal program called ‘Race to the Top’ is redefining the top in its Common Core curriculum standards by calling for a delay from the 8th to the 9th grade in starting to teach algebra.  That removes 20% of the available math schedule for high schoolers.

Apparently the little darlins are no longer ready to start algebra in the 8th grade because of what they didn’t learn in the previous seven years.  And that brings me to what the kids have actually been taught during those years, and will continue to learn until they walk out of school into the chill wind of the real world.  Today’s young people belong to something that the psychologists and demographers have labeled the 'Me Generation'.

Prelude to an American Spring?

George Rebane

Last night after supper I spent several hours with a Nevada County high school teacher talking about the state of education here and across the country.  He told of how top students, some of them brilliant, appear directionless with no focus or fire to go and do some definite thing with their lives.  No desire to be the next whatever that would benefit society, or even make themselves wealthy.

The college bound seem to care only about getting good grades, and therefore take the softer subjects.  Even their counselors understand that motivation and advise them to take this easier course vs that one so their GPA will be maximized.  This motivation extends to students who demonstrate abilities to master STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) courses and enter productive STEM careers.  Many (most?) who enter college as STEM majors quickly change direction into something like sociology, psychology, or English after their freshman encounter with a first real math class.

Talking to them about a future with family, house, kids, … makes no dent.  The focus of the best of them is limited to getting into a better school and then looking around to discover how to graduate with the least work.  Telling them about the prospects of finding a job or what different jobs pay also makes little impact.  ‘$35K a year’s OK, I can live on that’ too often is their depth of planning ahead.  The dismal numbers on local college graduates coming back to live with their parents is replicated across the country.

Ruminations - 8may12

George Rebane

Happy VE Day!  On 8 May 1945 the Rebanes were in Liederberg - a small German farming village that just a few days ago was firmly brought under the control of Patton’s Third Army (more here) - and ready to be carted off to Augsburg and four years of internment in post-war displaced persons camps.  Meanwhile, on the other side of the world the battle for Okinawa was raging with Marine and Army divisions locked in a no-quarter-given combat with Japanese forces that had only one mission, die as slowly as possible while killing as many Americans as possible.  Okinawa was bigger than D-Day, but in America people were too busy celebrating Hitler’s downfall to notice.  That August the world would again change.

Newly elected Hollande promised to tax France to growth and balanced budgets.  And the French believed him.  Now nothing like that will happen, but what the hell, the French could frolic in the streets for a couple of days before they double down on their loudly proclaimed misery.  The French government's spending already accounts for more than 50% of the country’s GDP and it doesn’t generate any wealth.  All it is capable of doing is buying votes with tribute exacted from its private sector whose top marginal tax rates are now going to go above 70%.  The same silly people there as here believe that someone will actually risk their euros to build/expand businesses from which, if successful, the government will leave them 30 cents of every euro they earn.

Some writers view this latest installment of socialist failure in Europe as a golden opportunity for America (here).  They argue that America will be the only place left in the world for entrepreneurial and investment opportunity.  To me it seems that not everyone is paying attention to what Team Obama has accomplished, and what more they have in store for us should they win in November.  America’s crosshairs are focused squarely on being able to replicate the European toilet economy.  And some independents on this side of the Pond still ask, ‘why would we do that?’

The answer is that the socialist on both shores see none of this going on in Europe.  The EU and its subsequent eurozone are instead seen as triumphs in governance.  Happy dancing in the streets as national healthcare systems go broke, retirement ages are lowered (Hollande will return France to 60 from 62), endless vacations at every turn, can’t-get-fired jobs, minimum wages pushed above $20/hr, austerity measures reversed (no more spending cuts), … what’s there not to like?

No one there or here remembers nor has been taught that when governments have taken over the means of creating the country’s wealth, they have created the sorriest places for human existence on earth.  It has always started with taxing the bejeesus out of ‘the rich’, until everyone who earned a private paycheck found themselves suddenly designated as ‘the rich’.

This is also graduation season and our colleges are in the process of disgorging another million or so of young people (the entire US education system releases 4.3M onto the economy each year).  They are of the 'Me Generation', and the great part of them will land in the job market without marketable skills, and dumber than the proverbial 2x4 with a face painted on it.  Bret Stephens in the 8may12 WSJ writes the Class of 2012 a sobering letter; it begins –

Allow me to be the first one not to congratulate you. Through exertions that—let's be honest—were probably less than heroic, most of you have spent the last few years getting inflated grades in useless subjects in order to obtain a debased degree. Now you're entering a lousy economy, courtesy of the very president whom you, as freshmen, voted for with such enthusiasm. Please spare us the self-pity about how tough it is to look for a job while living with your parents. They're the ones who spent a fortune on your education only to get you back— return-to-sender, forwarding address unknown.

‘… to shift the burden of hardship to the rich …’

George Rebane

That promise is resounding worldwide as socialist/communist politicians promise to ease the long overdue payments for profligate government spending in countries facing financial ruin.  Today France elected Francois Hollande to be its new president.  How did Hollande beat Sarkozy?  by promising to shift the burden of hardship, naturally.

The rich are already paying more than the lion’s share, and could not supply the spending spigots if their earnings were confiscated in toto.  But none of this matters while the other half pays nothing into those tills, and still demands more.  No one among the sheeple is aware of the greater problem that has nothing to do with ‘the rich’ who are prominently dangled to fill their attention spans.

The same thing is happening in Greece, and soon in Spain, Italy, Portugal, …, and, of course, the United States which is already in the lead bringing such policies to the fore with messianic force.  In California, we have been ahead of that curve for years, and show no inclination to let slip our position of leadership.

How have you prepared for this future?