Rebane's Ruminations

The Liberal Mind – Diminishing Diminishing Returns

George Rebane

Another large impediment to making progress when attempting to reason with progressives is that their world lacks the reality of diminishing returns that accrue when any enterprise is taken past its optimum operating point, let alone being taken to an extreme.  Most certainly the concept is no longer taught in schools as a short conversation with the public educated teenager of your choice will reveal.

This seminal truth about the liberal mind again displayed itself in recent debates on these pages that concern the looming fiscal cliff and bringing socialized healthcare to America.  Preceding these issues has been the already decades long imperative to make our country insanely safe and risk free.  Consumer advocacy groups, manned almost wholly by leftists, scream bloody murder when the next kid is injured, sickened, or killed on a playground or from his (usually) unusual use of a plaything.

Simple back of the envelope calculations (an inaccessible feat in this land) will quickly show that the rate or probability of occurrence of almost all such incidents is vanishingly small, but that makes no nevermind to the liberal brain.  The clinching argument for overreaction is – ‘But what if s/he were your child?’  When presented as response, that clinching question is sure to draw a bevy of self-satisfied nods from a chorus of the like-minded.  To liberal minds it appears that social policies are immune to the law of diminishing returns.

Owing $100T+, STEM Jobs Bill, Workplace Harassment (updated 12dec12)

George Rebane

Now how do I pull all those together into one cohesive topic?  Two former congressmen, Chris Cox and Bill Archer, just informed the country of our real debt problem, ‘Why $16T Only Hints at the True US Debt’ – something of which you fortunate RR readers were apprised of years ago.  It’s more than worth a read since you have to hear from someone besides moi.  The punch line of that piece is, “Hiding the government’s liabilities from the public makes it seem that we can tax our way out of mounting deficits.  We can’t.”

This truth has been and continues to be most successfully hidden from our progressives and those just plain stupid.  The ONLY legitimate way out of our mounting deficits is to set the stage for historically unprecedented GDP growth levels.  And all that invokes today is visions of a snowball’s chance in hell.

Fiscal Cliff Fairness (updated)

George Rebane

Well, it won’t be long now.  On 1 January 2013 most people’s taxes will skyrocket, unless you’re one of the gimmes.  The tax increases have one common denominator, they will bring our still anemic GDP growth to a halt and reverse it, while at the same time increasing unemployment by at least 50%.  National commentators are now jumping on the bandwagon and trumpeting the strong likelihood of a recession/depression that RR readers have known about for years.

Are We More or Less Free?

The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names. Chinese proverb

George Rebane

This important topic was resurrected in a comment thread under ‘Happy Thanksgiving – 2012’.  Two readers voiced strong opinions (one with cited evidence) that our freedoms have increased.  One reader disputed that, and I join in that dispute.  I believe evidence abounds that will support the case that we are less free today than we were fifty years ago.  However, the issue has complexities that compel exploration as our governments’ scope and reach continues to grow, and doubly so given the consequences of the last two national elections that are propelling us toward autocratic collectivism (redundancy intended) at an ever faster pace.

First of all, freedom has more than one dimension, made up of more than one factor, or what is technically known as being composed of multiple attributes.  For example, under one form of governance we can be totally free to have sex with chickens at public gatherings, but not free to select and place ceiling lights in our new kitchen.  There are behaviors and things I may want to do to express my understanding of individual freedoms, things which may be of no interest or import to you, and vice versa.  The point here is that different people, maybe based on their education, culture, life experiences, etc will measure freedom and personal liberty quite differently.

There is no absolute measure of freedom.  The closest social organization that attempts to define a broadly accepted and ubiquitous environment for liberty is the US Constitution.  But even before it began to be amended, the Founders admonished us with caveats as to what kind of populace the document would successfully serve.  Time has proved them to have been right.

The problem, of course, arises when such people with disparate views and beliefs are forced to live cheek-by-jowl, and worse, if one cohort wants and is able to proscribe what is dear to the other.

Consolidated Confabulation

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary that was broadcast on 23 November 2012.]

Listeners to these commentaries have rightfully come to expect the discussion of important national, international, and even cosmological issues.  This evening I wish to reduce considerably the scope of such perspectives, and focus on what should become the next little dust devil down our main street to catch some well-deserved attention.  It involves the tax increase that our Nevada County Consolidated Fire District convinced us to approve last March.  The matters of fact in the following tirade come from the lead story (paywalled) in last Tuesday’s (20nov12) edition of The Union.

Happy Thanksgiving 2012

George Rebane

Today our beloved country has an even rougher road ahead as recent events have now confirmed.  Yet, we still live in a land where possibilities for a better tomorrow abound because not all of us have begun looking for other pockets from which to line our own.  That is the real hope that remains for our land, and for which we can be thankful.  Worth a thought or two as we sit down today.  Happy Thanksgiving.

Singularity Signposts – IBM’s TrueNorth advances cognitive computing

George Rebane

A few days ago IBM published a very short paper titled simply 10¹⁴.  It summarized the first successful testing of TrueNorth, IBM’s cognitive computing testbed funded under DARPA’s SyNAPSE.  That program “calls for developing electronic neuromorphic (brain-simulation) machine technology that scales to biological levels, using a cognitive computing architecture with 10¹⁰ neurons (10 billion) and 10¹⁴ synapses (100 trillion, based on estimates of the number of synapses in the human brain) to develop electronic neuromorphic machine technology that scales to biological levels.”

It so happens that the human brain contains about 10¹⁰ neurons and 10¹⁴ synapses in a system of relatively few highly organized and repetitive pattern recognition structures arranged into hierarchies.  This is a major advance in the current fanout of intelligent machines that seek to replicate the functioning of the human brain.  Right now TrueNorth runs only about a 1,500 times slower than the human brain.  But that will soon change.

I am currently in the middle of Ray Kurzweil’s How to Create a Mind (just published) wherein he goes into great detail on the type of structure and capabilities of a neuromorphic machine like TrueNorth.  Therefore I was happy to see this concurrent announcement of the next step toward Singularity from IBM, the company that also brought us Watson (here) and is now marketing that into several application areas beginning with medicine.

These advances need to be viewed in the context of today’s accelerating technology, and its disturbing impact on the workforces of developed countries (more here).  Their greater effect on humanity is already very difficult to predict beyond giving rise to the obvious redundancies of mediocre human talents.

RL Crabb, Heeeelp!!

George Rebane

Well, my cover is finally blown.  RR has often been accused by our Lefties as trying to pass itself off as an ‘oh so smart’ blog.  But no more.  My nemesis came this morning when I opened the Tuesday Union to its op-ed page to enjoy Bob’s regular ‘It Takes a Village Idiot’ offering that I share with readers below.

After some considerable study and consultation with my beloved cooking wench, we both came away puzzled, and more importantly, embarrassed.  We didn’t have a clue as to what the Crabb Man was telling us.  As a devoted fan of crabbisms, crabbastications, and divers crabbophilia in general, this was most distressing.  Clearly the graphic intends to convey a deep message to the broad audiences that regularly peruse The Union’s pages for local wisdom and goings on.  And now suddenly I found myself left out, and scratching my shiny pate.

So I’m appealing to Sir Robert himself and any other kind-hearted RR readers to explain, as gently as possible, the meaning of a throng of people bearing torches, pitchforks, and claiming some mandate while assaulting a windowless castle that flies the banner of the (formerly) Almighty Dollar, and is the repository and bastion of something or someone in need of such a formidable redoubt.  To amplify my question mark, I see an occupant wearing a military style hat peering down from the ramparts.

Having now confessed, and hopefully soon in possession of the clarifying explanation, I thereby appeal for reinstatement as a member in good standing of Nevada County's broad audiences and general public.

The Liberal Mind – A Recent Potpourri of Revelations

George Rebane

In general, liberals are not stupid; many of them just have bad luck when they think.  This cannot be said of California liberals.

Recently I have encountered a literal flood of observations and events that provide more insight into the workings of the now-dominant national liberal mind.  This small compilation is by no means comprehensive.

Past the Tipping Point – 16nov12

George Rebane

Did you know that 36 states already regulate speech between private citizens when it may remotely bear on public policy?  Specifically, today “in more than half the country the simple act of speaking to fellow citizens about issues of public importance can be regulated as a form of lobbying.”

In ‘Targeting the ‘Lobbyist’ Next Door’, Institute for Justice attorney Jeanette Petersen describes how a case now in front of those fun-loving justices of the Ninth Circuit Court can impact what you and/or your grass-roots organization can do or say.  The case is one filed in Washington state which apparently is the leader on this latest assault on the First Amendment.  A judgment for Washington would “result (in) a trap for the unwary that may mean fines or even jail time for ordinary citizens who fail to comply with complicated regulations written to cover professional lobbyists.”

Two Washington grass-roots organizations – one each liberal and conservative – have already ceased activities.  And dozens of others across the country are watching how the Ninth will come down on this.  I include this report under the Tipping Point heading because it wasn’t long ago that such cases affecting private speech would have been unthinkable when we still were a Republic that the Founders would recognize.

Petersen concludes – “Simply put, the supposed benefits of these laws are entirely speculative, but the costs to grass-roots advocates and their supporters are substantial. … If the First Amendment protects anything, it protects Americans' right to communicate with fellow citizens and to contact their elected representatives about important issues. That isn't "lobbying"—it's speaking. The Ninth Circuit would be wise to pull the law up by the roots.”

I think this may be one of the few steps in our relentless march toward tyranny on which our more thoughtful political extremes may agree.  Although I’m not sure about our local lefties, you know the ones who are constantly daubing themselves with a purple that doesn’t seem to stick.

Ruminations - 13nov12 (updated 17nov12)

George Rebane

Mitt Romney is definitely being disposed of under the traditional bus.  Conservative sage Thomas Sowell joins with his ‘Nice Losers’ that begins –

Mitt Romney now joins the long list of the kinds of presidential candidates favored by the Republican establishment— nice, moderate losers, people with no coherently articulated vision, despite how many ad hoc talking points they may have.

A flavor of America fighting a real war can be gleaned from these quality PR photos that were assembled by a Russian blogger.  For those whose ‘back there’ includes the 1940s, these pictures take you there.

Finished reading Cloud Atlas by Mitchell.  Excellent book; now look forward to seeing the movie with Tom Hanks, Hugh Grant, and Halle Berry.  Even though Mitchell misses the mark on the impact of smart machines on the future of Man, the novel with its unusual structure does have an interesting take on our dystopic future.  I don’t read many novels, but this one held me.  (My next book in the reading stack is Kurzweil’s How to Create a Mind.)

Interesting breakdown of how the counties votes last week.  Them socialists sure pack themselves into small areas, and have a definite and transformative plan for doing that to the rest of us.  (BTW, I agree that the colors should be changed to reflect the leanings of the Right and Left.  Whoever the imbecile, who first designated the currently used wrong assignment, was innocent of both history and ideology.)


Nobel laureate Paul Krugman concludes that “Gods, guns and gays didn't swing voters into supporting corporate interests; instead, human dignity for women swung votes the other way.”  And that’s how it all came down in his Welcome to the Real "Real America".  It was oh so simple when the true Americans had their say last week.

In becoming acceptable to the nation's Hispanics, does the Republican party really need to embrace open borders and amnesty?  Isn’t that already the political posture of all the leftwingers under the Democrat umbrella?  Where then will be the political choice for maintaining America as a sovereign nation-state?

Tracking the number of informal petitions to secede that are submitted to the WH website will be of interest.  Over 30 states now have groups collecting and submitting such Great Divide (q.v.) signatures.  Glenn Beck advises that the feds will keep the names of the signatories and get ugly on them later.  We shall see.

Exit question: After 2008 and 2012 will the blacks ever admit that they are racist minority, even unto their own worst interests?

[14nov12 update]  President Obama met with the leftwing activists and unions yesterday, and today seeks to give the impression of 'equal time' to the capitalists.  He is doing this by meeting in the WH with the heads of big corporations as I write.  These are outfits that cannot exist without heavy cooperation, or is it collusion, or is it corruption with government.  Meanwhile, the middle and small businesses are going to be trampled by Obama's tax increases.  American manufacturers are already 20% behind global competitors in their costs.  On top of this they will now see their tax and regulatory burdens increase.  Instead of creating the millions of jobs needed in America, they will be busy seeking new and innovative ways to shed cost in order to survive.  Socialism marches on while the sheeple watch in awe.

[15nov12 update]  As often mentioned here, the world is looking at the United States with various levels of disbelief in how we are managing to inflict evermore egregious wounds on our dumbing population, wealth creation capacity, and body politic.  In the 10nov12 London Telegraph columnist Janet Daley wrote –

The United States has now acquired an electorally powerful liberal bourgeoisie who are convinced, as their European counterparts have been for several generations, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, that public spending is inherently virtuous, that poverty can be cured by penalising wealth creation, and that government intervention can engineer social "fairness." But just when some of Europe's political class has begun to appreciate the dangers of this philosophy—that taken to its logical conclusion, it leads to economic stagnation and social division—America seems to have decided that it is the quintessence of enlightened sophistication.

[17nov12 update] We saw 'Assassins', the Stephen Sondheim musical, at the Off Center Theater in Grass Valley last night with friends.  It was a marvellous if somewhat disquieting performance, and unfortunately the production closes today.  Jo Ann summarized it artfully in an email to friends which follows -

Thinking about the play - certain actors, all the main ones, were absolutely terrific.  JWBooth was smooth and cunning, the women played off each other very effectively, the guy with the stomach ache, the bottle maker & Emma Goldman, and Oswald  were played well.  Guiteau and Santa Claus were exceptional portraits.  The little boy was great in his role.

The topic, troubled/mentally ill people doing the awful, was hard let alone entertaining.  Sondheim's music was also hard.  But the talented cast rose to those challenges.  I'm glad I saw it.  Next, I want a jolly good comedy or sweet Christmas carols.

We all are fortunate to live in a community with so much talent and culture pouring out of every pore.

The Buffett Rule - Butt stupid is as butt stupid does

George Rebane

                                        ‘Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Progressive.’

One thing we’ll see a lot more of is the practice of static analysis by progressives.  For those recently arrived from Mars, it goes something like this.  Harry the millionaire currently pays an effective tax rate of 25% on his annual income of a million dollars.  That gets the government a cool $250K in tax revenue.  A progressive has an idea that we should put the ‘Buffett Rule’ in place requiring all who make a million or more to increase their tax rate to 30% of earnings.

The sharp minds in places like Center for American Progress (love that name) instantly tap a few keys on their calculators and conclude that the country’s Harrys will now pay an extra $50K annually to Uncle Sam.  In short, Harry and his well off friends will all act like potted plants, and do nothing save write bigger checks at tax time.  And when the projected  revenues don’t come near to the amounts calculated by the pinheads, everyone is surprised and starts thinking about the next tax hike.  After all, it’s the Democratic way, and it’s also the democratic way since 51% of the voters agree.

In the end, it doesn’t count for a hill of beans on the $8T+ of deficits baked into Obama’s budgets for the next ten years.

Does Multikulti require Multiparty?

George Rebane

[This is the submitted form of my November column published in the 10nov12 print and (pay-walled) online editions of The Union.]

Last year Germany’s Angela Merkel made an audacious pronouncement – she said that ‘multikulti’ or multi-culturalism was not working to keep her country a cohesive nation-state with shared values that support needed public policies.  Other EU countries like Britain and France hold the same views but were then too timid to give them voice.

Here in America the election and then re-election of President Obama has highlighted our prominent cultural divides.  Many people diagnosed Mitt Romney’s problem as not being able to attract the black and Hispanic votes.  And as we saw last Tuesday, Americans voted strongly along ethnic and racial lines.

In this election, as in no other in our history, Americans were offered a robust choice of diametrically opposing directions society should take to organize and govern itself.  And splitting down the middle, we attempted to take Yogi Berra’s fork-in-the-road advice.  Instead, what we got was four more years of a forced march toward a kind of trans-European socialism.

Today we are way past the tipping point of being able to recover our Republic as inherited from our Founders, or even as modified by Presidents Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Johnson.  We now have huge schisms that divide us on national sovereignty, wealth distribution, and the scope of government in our lives.  The only cultural aspect that we all seem to agree on is the broad-based promotion of an ignorance that fosters compliance.  Our public schools have institutionalized this as can be demonstrated on any street corner in the land.

Beware the lame duck at midnight

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 9 November 2012.]

The election is over, President Obama won, and it’s too early to tell what will come out of the new Congress that gets sworn in with the President this coming January.  I was going to do a real interesting piece on the reported clinical differences between the people of the Right and Left persuasions; you know, dealing with questions like ‘Does your biology influence your vote?’  But then it struck me that a more immediate concern in the coming weeks will be what our so-called lame duck Congress is capable of doing before the year is out.

Most people understand that a ‘lame duck’ Congress is the one that knows the results of the November election, still has seated members who have been voted out of office for the following term, and still has the full powers of a sitting Congress that is capable of a lot of mischief before the next Congress is seated.   Historically, much of what lame ducks ‘accomplish’ has depended on who was still in the White House.  The lame duck session is only for a month or so because Congress recesses for Christmas, and the new Congress is sworn in January. 

Today’s lame duck will have some pretty weighty decisions to make, or kick down the road and let the country take the consequences.  But what usually happens now is a surge of pre-planned midnight legislation during these four weeks.  The problem with such legislation is fourfold –

Dems Supermajority – there’s no stopping them now (updated 9nov12)

George Rebane

Not that there was any chance of doing that during the last thirty years or so.  Huffingtonpost.com summarizes it –

State Democrats have won a supermajority in the legislature (at least 54 Assembly seats and 27 Senate seats), which means they can now reach the two-thirds majority vote needed to overcome filibusters and pass crucial tax revenue laws. It also empowers the party to overturn vetoes handed down by Gov. Jerry Brown.

The certifiable idiots are now fully in charge of the asylum known as the California Legislature.  I believe that Californians are again first in the nation, this time to demonstrate that we are not capable of governing ourselves.

Dear reader, if you thought that AB32 (aka the cynically named 'Global Warming Solutions Act') was a disaster when passed, you were among the state’s few prescients.   Today no one will get much credit for predicting the dystopia that now faces our once Golden State.  All I can advise is to keep women, children, and the infirm away from the exits.  We don’t want any more injuries as the rush of the state’s emigrants turns into a torrent.

And then, just when you thought things were already going to hell in a handcart, they upgrade that to high speed rail.

[9nov12 update] The world of liberty and enterprise is beginning to take note of the other disaster that befell our country last Tuesday.  Today’s 9nov12 WSJ observed our state’s calamity with these words.

For Republicans unhappy with Tuesday's election, we have good news—at least most of you don't live in California. Not only did Democrats there win voter approval to raise the top tax rate to 13.3%, but they also received a huge surprise—a legislative supermajority. Look out below. … The main check on Sacramento excess has been a constitutional amendment requiring a two-thirds majority of both houses to raise taxes. Although Republicans have been in the minority for four decades, they could impose a modicum of spending restraint by blocking tax increases. If Democratic leads stick in two races where ballots are still being counted, liberals will pick up enough seats to secure a supermajority. Governor Jerry Brown then will be the only chaperone for the Liberals Gone Wild video that is Sacramento.

Noting the ongoing rise in union power in the state that promises to swamp the already unserviceable fiscal burdens, unfunded liabilities, and growing municipal bankruptcies, the WSJ states that “now Californians will experience the joys of one-party, union-run progressive governance.”

However, there is a possible upside for America in this regional storm of electoral dumbth.

The silver lining here is that Americans will be able to see the modern liberal-union state in all its raw ambition. The Sacramento political class thinks it can tax and regulate the private economy endlessly without consequence. As a political experiment it all should be instructive, and at least Californians can still escape to Nevada or Idaho.

President Obama defeats Mitt Romney (edited)

Peter/Paul Principle - Whenever you promise to rob Peter to pay Paul, you can count on the full support of Paul.

George Rebane

It was a day of foreboding that ended in an evening of doldrums.  I did a little poll watching at the Rood Center while Jo Ann worked at the Republican HQ helping coordinate other poll watchers across the county.  We assembled before the TV in the evening to see history being made.  The final numbers are not in yet but Obama’s electoral count was above 300 and Romney’s was just above 200 when he conceded.  Then we watched the speeches, and contemplated possible futures.

What struck us about this election all along were the diametrical options offered by the candidates.  And when it came time to choose, our country split down the middle with half the voters seeing a bigger government as the better solution for America, while the other half saw government as the larger part of the many burdens which we already bear.  The vote also turned strongly on racial lines.

But most telling was a datum presented by CBS that showed the vote going about 2 to 1 for Obama by people who made less than $50,000 a year, and almost exactly the same ratio going for Romney by people making over that amount.  And we recall that $50,000 is the current median household income in America, which explains the 50-50 split in the popular vote.  (The actual 2011 number reported by the US Census Bureau is $50,054.)

So after all is said, it turns out that economics was a strong factor in how people voted.  As a low earner you didn’t have to understand the finer points of the economy to know how to vote.  All you had to understand was whether you’d be mostly on the paying or receiving end of things before marking your ballot.  We have again confirmed the lines that define our rift, but are no more sure today than yesterday about whether and how that knowledge will guide us in the direction to take America.  Yogi Berra’s wisdom about forks in the road will not help us.

Cueing the Luddites - The October Jobs Report (updated 5nov12)

George Rebane

Productivity growth is the engine of an economy's wealth generation, and the bane of the poorly educated/skilled worker.

[The following commentary on the October 2012 jobs report is also the latest installment of the RR series on employment and the economy.  These are viewed from an existential perspective that is avoided by our politicians of all stripes.  Most recent contributions to this series were ‘edX meets the workforce’  and ‘The real jobs problem – shhh!’ (and its tech appendix) respectively.]

This is really a letter to the future, few today are interested or capable of following these arguments.  Things in America are going from bad to worse, and the promised fundamental transformation (i.e. massive social crisis) of the country is not far off.  The delay from here til then will depend on next Tuesday’s (6 November 2012) election.  The purpose of this post is to tell some future reader that the coming change was not a surprise to all of us living in these exciting times.  Credence to these and succeeding words is supported by the predictions for these last four years as presented herein in 2008.

Today the Left is attempting to squeeze the most out of the latest bad report on our staggering economy.  The big message for the country’s light thinkers is that in October ‘the economy added more jobs than expected.’  And that’s all you can say about it in the attempt to mislead people into thinking that things are improving.

But as soon as you peek behind the curtain a bit, the whole thing falls apart.  Who are those people who “expected” a lower job figure for October?  Why, they are the usual gang of economists and analysts who have yet to get anything right in their prognostications – they are constantly surprised one way or the other, for they are the Gang That Can’t Shoot Straight.  But the closely guarded wonderment of our times is that these dufuses (q.v.) are still tolerated in the public square – nay, they occupy honored positions and their words are ever the gold standard for private and public sector decisions, until followed by their inevitable “surprise” when the actual data is published.  But let’s get back to the real employment picture.

Today’s salient data includes:  US population of about 310M; workforce size is 155M of whom 131M are actually working somewhere; the official unemployment rate is 7.9%, and would be 10.9% if our workforce today were the size it was in early 2009.  A more comprehensive measure of unemployment is above 14% with about 24M workers out of work.  The mysterious workforce participation rate sits somewhere near 63%, but nobody knows how that number ties to the ones quoted by the Dept of Commerce and the Federal Reserve.  The above figure shows how our nonfarm employees have grown since the eve of WW2.

Voter fraud getting into full swing? (updated 2nov12)

George Rebane

Let me start by inviting our progressive pals to post links to reports of rightwing instigated voter fraud because nationwide the left is off and running.  The latest comes from Las Vegas where the unions are stuffing ballot boxes, voting for the old and infirm, and hauling their own members off their jobs to cast supervised votes.  Meanwhile legions of loyal lefties surround polling places (at minimum distances?) to do some last minute campaigning.

SEIU and ACORN (renamed) are prominent in the ‘vote early and often’ efforts.  And one candidate running for the state senate was told that he couldn’t vote because he had already voted – that was news to him.  More here. 

But the interesting part is the Left’s continued denial that any voter fraud is taking place by citing the dearth of successful court cases dealing with voter fraud.  Most readers know that bringing an obvious voter fraud case to court is difficult and expensive.  And if you make it, the Left’s justice system will seek to prosecute you as likely as the fraudsters.  Besides, why should an individual care, voting is a commons, and no one feels personally aggrieved – the pain is diluted over all of us.  We all recall the Black Panther squad during the last election threatening with clubs all whites who dared to approach a polling place frequented by blacks.  The whole thing was caught on video, and our Sec 8 Attorney General threw the case out.