Rebane's Ruminations

Black Helicopters over South Houston and Miami

Smokey the Bear's rules for fire safety - keep it small, keep it in a confined area, and keep an eye on it - apply doubly so to government.

George Rebane

Here’s a 12 minute video taken by Houston’s KTRK news helicopter of a military drill involving what looks like Army H500 helicopters armed with machine guns participating in an exercise that involved some actual firing that got local people excited.  KTRK reports –

SkyEye 13 HD was over the south side where at first look, it appears there's a massive SWAT scene happening.   People have been calling police, as well as our newsroom, saying they're hearing gunshots in the area of Scott and Airport. It turns out, the Army says, it's a multi-agency training drill. They're doing it at the old Carnegie High School.  Helicopters were also involved. The Army isn't giving any details of what the training is about.   So if you see the helicopters or hear gunfire, it's only a drill.

It looks like the next kid planning to shoot up a school will have to contend with some real counter fire if he keeps at it long enough to give time for the helicopter gunships to get there.  Each can also carry about four armed infantrymen.  But there’s nothing to worry about, it’s only a drill against gun toting nut jobs, Islamist terrorists, or whoever else needs to feel the full force of government response in peace or war.

Now many of you may say, Houston was just a one-off, a special training exercise unique to the area or some other bullshit like that.  OK, so then what are they doing over Miami at night as reported in this WSVN newscast by a very compliant 'journalist' who isn't surprised that none of this was announced beforehand?

Some paranoids might think that these helicopters actually belong to the Dept of Education SWAT teams in its newly armed capability to collect delinquent student loans – their existing riot guns for that function may not be enough.  But then you know how desperate those student loan deadbeats can get.

Now consider if these unannounced 'drills' become so common place that the population at large comes to take little notice, and actually takes comfort in that the government is training to protect us all real good.  Would we ever know if someone or group was really apprehended during one of these 'drills'?  Would we ever take special notice after becoming sanguine about machine gun fire from low flying helicopters overhead?

In any case, practice makes perfect.  And as the good folks at KTRK and WSVN tell us “it’s only a drill.” (H/T to RR reader and correspondent.)

Numbers get a (confused) boost

George Rebane

The importance and magnitude of EVERY social problem lies in its numbers.  If you don't understand the numbers and how they relate, all you can do is emote about the problem.

RR has argued from the start that applying the tools of the systems sciences is critical to the solutions of all social problems (see end notes below).  For obvious reasons, also presented and discussed in these pages, the Left has been the major opponent of bringing analytics and numeracy to bear on social issues – this for the simple reason that it deflates their emotion based fuzzy rhetoric which they use to promote their collectivism.

Well, now we have no less than Bill Gates coming out in a major piece promoting quantitative “measurement” for solving worldwide problems ranging from high infant mortality to the classroom evaluation of teachers.  His proposals contain absolutely no new ideas, but what is important is that the world’s most famous billionaire and philanthropist is going public with 'new' notions the youngest of which is about fifty years old.

In his ‘My Plan to Fix The World’s Biggest Problems’ there is no plan presented, save the exhortation to start measuring and recording things to do with the problem that you’re trying to solve.

For reasons unknown, Gates does not make clear the difference between a utility function or figure of merit (FOM), that would serve as an objective or goal or to define ‘good’, and the measured attributes that go into the FOM.  Perhaps it’s because the piece was written for broad audiences who would be confused by such nuances.  However, regular RR readers should not suffer similarly.

A clarifying example might serve here.  Consider buying a car from the many models offered – which one to buy?  To keep it simple, the only attributes you consider important are its top speed and cost.  Somehow you have to trade off these contentious attributes since the faster cars cost more.  The tradeoff is performed in your formulation of the cars’ FOM which combines the numerical values of each car’s speed and cost.  Then you can collect the numbers for the cars, calculate their FOM values, and pick the one that for you yields the maximum utility.  (For you phormulaphiles, a typical FOM formulation here might be FOM = weight*(mph top speed) + (1 – weight)*(K$ cost), where weight is a number between 0 and 1 that reflects your speed/cost tradeoff.)

And here’s rub and the benefit – the adoption and expression of every FOM or utility function is completely subjective for whatever problem you’re solving.  The FOM captures your values, judgments, experience, likes/dislikes, and even constraints on what can be done.  And such explicit FOMs can do the same for a government, community, or a corporation (business has been using them for decades).  Gates is finally saying to America that we have to approach problems with systems thinking if we want to make progress.  Continuing with the Left’s approach of “issues activism” based on selected anecdotes and fuzzy emotionalism, while rejecting data and a common understanding of ‘good’, will not accomplish much, and has gotten us to where we are now.  (That last italicized bit I added because Bill Gates couldn’t.)

The belated call for such quantitative approaches is encouraging, even though it might turn out to be just more relieving yourself over the windward gunnel.  I hope not.  Read the article.

End Notes:  For a brief summary of RR postings related to reasoning and systems thinking, I have culled the following short list.  More can be found filed in RR’s ‘Science’ and ‘Science Snippets’ categories.

'Economic Development in Nevada County'
'Systems Science Rules (almost)!'
'Healthcare Utility Metric with Scriptural Underpinnings'
'A Thoughtful View of Climate Change'
'Why Reason Fails'

Climate Change – Another Asymmetric Dialogue

George Rebane

Bjorn Lomborg is an internationally recognized and much published environmentalist.  He even believes that AGW is a factor in climate change.  Recently he wrote an article that was critical of President Obama’s inaugural “three horsemen of the climate apocalypse” listed as the "devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms".  The astute reader knows that there have been no such increases in fires, droughts, and storms with which the Left likes to decorate its calls for greater government control of everything under the sun.

And Lomborg does a fine job of again summarizing the data on all this.  But that is not what I want to talk about.  The vagaries of the climate change data and its in/correct interpretations have been argued for years by qualified scientists and technically savvy bloggers (locally by Russ Steele and Anthony Watts).  What I want to reprise is how substantive reports on issues – here about the misinformation spewed by AGW True Believers – are treated in today’s polarized public debate.

Lomborg’s assertion concludes, “Fear-mongering exaggeration about effects of global warming distracts us from finding affordable and effective energy alternatives.”  As an AGW skeptic I wholeheartedly agree with that.  Unfortunately, fear-mongering is the only stock in trade that the Left has for making its collectivist policies palatable to the general public, even if it means outright misrepresentation of the record.   But more important, it is the asymmetry of how the debate is conducted that makes the fear-mongering stick.

MOOCing a Bachelor’s degree

George Rebane

A quick update on a major developing theme in education – the massively open online course or MOOC.  I last reported on this progress earlier this month (here).

While MOOCs are providing tens of thousands of online students with low cost education and certification in various areas, they have yet to be accepted as a sufficient means of getting a baccalaureate degree.  Well this is about to change.  In today’s (25jan13) WSJ we learn (here) that the University of Wisconsin has launched a program wherein taking MOOCs and passing online tests, a student can earn a BA or BS degree.  What’s more, the university is accepting the student’s experience and knowledge, as demonstrated through testing, as sufficient requisites for certain parts of the accredited degree it will award.

Times they are a’changin’.  The impact on the requalification of America’s workforce for the changing jobs landscape is yet to be determined, but in my view, very hopeful.  MOOCs are the visible solution to bypass the education industry’s established and costly labyrinth for students who have the wherewithal to absorb knowledge needed for the new jobs.

Ruminations – 24jan13

George Rebane

The classical liberal fears the growth of government, and sees it as the prime source of society’s ills.  The collectivist celebrates and promotes bigger government, and sees it as the proper foundation for a proper society.

Hillary ropadopes Congress.  The outgoing SecState’s testimony on Benghazi was political kabuki at its best.  The Dems, in their turn, made great efforts to laud her service as the “greatest Secretary of State” the country has ever had, citing her airline miles and number of countries visited.  Some (e.g. Brad Sherman, D-CA) expected her appearance to really be a valedictory address to Congress giving “input on the bigger issues of foreign policy”, instead of talking about the “criminals” and “suspects” who razed our consulate and killed four Americans.  The Dems still have a hard time connecting organized Islamic terrorists (e.g. the Mahgreb Al Qaeda) with the attack. (H/T to reader for photo)

The Repubs didn’t get an answer, straight or otherwise, to their material questions.  The bottom line was that it was Congress’ fault for not funding security properly that caused Benghazi, even though Congress pissed away billions on the solyndrizing of dubious green energy projects.  Meanwhile, the lamestream buries another national tragedy and sends Islamists the wrong message, all because it would prove an embarrassment to the Dems - the sacrifices of Benghazi, RIP.

For the record, I repeat my assessment of Secy Clinton as America’s worst SecState in light of her record.  At no time has American global influence become more ineffective, discounted, and lame than under her tenure.  I cannot think of a positive thing that she has done in the country’s behalf, while our foreign policy failures during the last four years have been legion (as pointed out in these pages).  The only mitigating factor in her favor, the extent of which we’ll perhaps discover from her memoir, is how much she was constrained, limited, and directed in her duties by President Obama.

Romneydamus ignored.  The on-the-mark prognostications by candidate Mitt Romney were vilified by the press during his campaign, and now are being totally ignored by the lamestream media as what PJ Media mistakenly refers to as its “dereliction of duty.”  I’m talking about, among other things, Romney's predicitions that Jeep manufacture would be farmed to China (this was called the “biggest lie” of the campaign), that Mali was going to be the next expansion of Islamist terror and takeover, and that Obama would do everything possible to weaken 2nd Amendment gun rights.

Where I think that outfits like PJ Media and Fox miss the mark is their implying that the lamestream ever thought it was their duty to be anything except the public mouthpiece for promoting and legitimizing progressive and socialist causes (and recently re-electing Obama).  Were they to accept another charter and defend their performance under that, then one could argue their dereliction.  But they have unabashedly done no such thing.  It would better for the audiences of more conservative outlets to stop implying that the lamestream is somehow falling short of what they are (not) attempting to do.

Soviet agriculture in America.  For years I have argued against corporate and agricultural welfare.  In the latter case, I have raised arguments against the inconsistency of government subsidizing family farms while not subsidizing other inefficient enterprises supplying goods and services to the public.  A bit of research reveals that America’s farm policy is founded on a baseline of farm production that dates back a century (1910-14).  This baseline was incorporated into the cleverly named Agricultural Adjustment Acts of 1938 and 1949.  The whole purpose of these acts is to “provide financial help to farmers by artificially inflating the prices of the commodities they produce.”

But, of course, as soon as you start such market mangling, things go to hell real fast with missed supplies to misjudged demand.  And to adjust for such screw-ups government laid in another dollop of, you guessed it, more screw-ups.  This it did by adding on layers of what crops who could plant where in what quantities, and then sell in which markets.  Central planning, just like ol’ Uncle Joe was then doing on the great steppes of the former Ukraine and Russia.

But the real nuclear option that has and can again explode food prices is the so-called “permanent law” that was baked into these bills.  You see, Congress has to renew agricultural subsidies from time to time.  The astute reader knows that once subsidies start in some area, the recipients immediately game the system and tailor it to work to their optimum benefit in a subsidized (as opposed to free market) environment.  The result it that our agricultural industry, from small farms to big agri-businesses, are long tuned to subsidies, and would suffer great dislocations (bankruptcies?) if the subsidies were suddenly pulled.

So the permanent law stipulates that if Congress fails to pass the next agricultural subsidy bill, then something called parity pricing automatically kicks in to hike food  prices to the adjusted baselines set a hundred years back.  Burleigh Leonard in the 23jan13 WSJ points out that the “permanent law is a hodgepodge of inconsistencies” where “some commodities are covered by parity-based price supports (and) others are not.”   And none of it takes into account the technology advances and productivity gains that have occurred since the parity levels were adopted.  The next food bomb can go off on 1 October 2013.

Ag subsidies make up just one of the cesspools of federal government policies that we quietly tolerate, mostly because we are an ignorant electorate.  There are many more like it, and our re-elected President promises to populate the land with as many more of these as he and his can during the next four years.  Socialists are a grim bunch who will never give up their belief that they know best.  Obamacare is just the first volley down our throats.

This President’s Second Term (addended)

George Rebane

Never confuse effort with achievement.

The country is in shambles, and it’s time to think of historical legacies.  Fortunately, as Barack Obama formally starts his second term, the President can salve both through implementing the same set of policies.

Over the last four years these pages have detailed the mistakes of this administration which have accelerated the country on the path to fiscal ruin, domestic polarization, and international ineffectiveness (even The Economist and The Heritage Foundation agree on these).  And though he regained the presidency, most Americans still believe that the country is headed in the wrong direction.  What should the President do to assure his place in history as a leader who, after recovering from first-term missteps, was able to turn the country around and regain America’s promise in the 21st century?

According to my lights he should do as much of the following as possible –

1.    Launch a massive deregulation of America and American life that includes the consolidation and/or elimination of federal departments such as Energy, Education, EPA, Commerce, … .
2.    Develop a new tax code that is simple, as flat as possible, and eliminates the convolutions of federal favoritism, behavior modifications, and inhibitions to re-enter the workforce.
3.    Reduce federal taxes to historical 18% levels of GDP, and balance the federal budget.
4.    Recognize Singularity’s advent and the new labor markets that it will mandate, including the generation of wealth by fewer people using ever more productive technology.
5.    Revamp public education to benefit America’s youth instead of those who run the ‘public teaching industry’.
6.    Eliminate all public service unions in governments and public education.
7.    Eliminate corporate and agricultural welfare (not needed under new tax code).
8.    Restructure Obamacare from the unintended and poorly conceived burden that it will now be, to newly formed open, state run markets that invite more competition at the levels and practice of healthcare providers, insurance, and pharma.  This includes a revision of the tort laws that promote litigiousness.
9.    Restructure entitlements so that their funding is converted to benefit from more private sector investment than untenable taxes which inhibit economic growth.
10.    Become a net energy exporter by developing America’s abundant energy resources, especially gas.
11.    Engage with our international trading partners – China, EU, South America, Russia, … - to the maximum extent possible to assure that only goods, not armies, cross the world’s borders.
12.    Declare a climate change holiday to reevaluate the entire proposition of AGW and its alternative, global cooling on the basis of science and not international politics.
13.    Acknowledge the existence of Islamic terror and its demonstrated anti-western objectives, and work toward a quick two state solution with Israel and Palestine.  This includes promoting strategically located Gaza to become the world’s most productive and prosperous free port – i.e. get the Palestinians into commerce big time, and invite the Israelis to join them with the long term leasing of adjacent real estate needed for expansion – it is only through business and commercial growth that a sustainable peace will be achieved in the near and mid-east.
14.    Revamp our military to project power with air, naval, and space systems that use ground troops in sparing and short engagements.  Use the goal of normalizing Iran and parity with China in the Pacific as the design standard for a new force structure.
15.    Encourage private sector space enterprises, and give NASA a new inspiring objective that invites international co-operation to achieve man’s next great step on its way to the stars.
16.    Honor American citizenship by securing our borders and legitimizing our resident illegal aliens onto acceptable paths to residency, repatriation, or citizenship.
17.    Re-establish the constitutional intent of states’ rights, and encourage states to resume their role as competitive laboratories of liberty and prosperity.

[Addendum]  After some reflection I want to add some ruminations on President Obama’s second inaugural speech.  To me it was an extremely ideological speech – an impression corroborated tonight by talking heads of both persuasions – that underlined what I have been interpreting about this man’s belief system since his 2008 stump speeches.  The liberal Washington Post opined that it was “a speech that challenges the other side”, but was primarily targeted to his base.  He no longer needs to pander to us all.

His parade contained no acknowledgement of our European legacy - no units with costumed Pilgrims, no Revolutionary War patriots, no nod to the entrepreneurs of our industrial revolution, no recognition of our great westward movement that formed what today is America, no nod to the faith that saw our forebears through unimaginable difficulties.  Instead he was entertained by a bunch of hoaky Indians dancing in Hollywood-like costumes in an ensemble that included women to satisfy politically correct gender equality dicta.  I was surprised that no obviously gay couples were included in the spectacle; perhaps I missed them.

One of my maxims has been to “Never confuse effort with accomplishment.”  President Obama left no doubt that in his America both should be equated and equally rewarded.  And he let us know that he is proud of his ideology, which means that he will do everything that he can to implement it during the first, say, eighteen months before he becomes a certified lame duck.

Today he gave no quarter to his political opponents; he sought no reconciliation between the country’s ideological poles.  His legacy will be that of the leftmost ideologue of all American presidents.  He made it clear that he was not acknowledging the many paths up the historical mountain of America’s common future of achievement; instead he told us that he would lead us up a different mountain altogether (and there’s more to be said about that).

In the large view, he wants to be remembered as perhaps the co-equal of MLK as America’s preeminent civil rights leader.  Of one thing we can be certain, in our history his regime will be more than merely noteworthy.

3D Printing – Bigger and sooner than you think (updated 28jan13)

George Rebane

Additive manufacturing, now ‘3D printing’, has been around and evolving for years.  But with the introduction of the precision and automated control of lasers and CAD (computer aided design) encoding the design of the manufactured (‘printed’) part, the field has taken off.  Imagine having a device approximately the size of a refrigerator in your garage that can build a complex part and heat treat or anneal it so that it’s ready for use or assembly with other parts.  (For a tutorial video on the subject, view this TED talk.)

RR has covered 3D printing in the context of living in these pre-Singularity years (here).  Because it is not at all farfetched to anticipate autonomous intelligent machines deciding what parts to make when in order to repair something or build an unimagined device, or even replicate itself.  But most people can’t wrap their minds around that and will relegate it to way out science fiction.  So let’s leave that thread, and talk about more immediate matters.

I believe 3D printing will soon become another cause and contributor to social and commercial upheaval.  Such manufacturing capability will upend so much of our current commercial infrastructure.  Imagine the spread of low level fabrication across the land.  A part fails on your lawn mower or air conditioner.  Instead of going to the usual outlets to buy a replacement, you either make it yourself or pick it up from a local fabricator for a fraction of the price.

The required CAD files to make things will multiply like bacteria across the internet.  You will be able to download (and possibly modify) the needed design that the printer will use to make the part(s).  The overhead of setting up the manufacturing operation will be miniscule, and its cost identical to making either one or a number of parts of this or that design.  The only real set-up will be to load the proper powdered metal/plastic/etc and bonding agent into the printer.  And local manufactories will specialize in custom manufacturing that use certain materials and handling parts up to a given size or precision or ... (after all, the damn thing has to fit in the printer, so you can’t make everything with just one size machine).  But all these are just details that are being worked out by dozens of companies – just google ‘3D printing’.

Since CAD files for everything imaginable will go viral on the internet, people will be able to make procure one-off items that governments and their corporate partners will seek to prohibit.  An obvious class of item is firearms.  As the nearby picture shows, you will soon be able to make a, say, totally vanilla and unregistered semi-auto pistol.  And only your imagination will limit your own list of controlled articles that will be available to anyone with a printer.

And that’s where the state will come in.  Because of the utter flexibility of what can be made, the state will quickly begin controlling 3D printing and the production of the necessary powdered forms of the materials and their bonding agents required in the process.  Unfortunately, this government/corporate control partnership will work against the creation of jobs that would be created in the thousands of small job shops and just-in-time manufactories across the land, and overseas.

Most certainly this kind of printing will bring jobs back to the developed countries because the labor overhead is so low, and the transportation and distribution cost savings will be great.  It is such modes of creative destruction that the stasist factions of our society will try to prevent.  The interview with Cody Wilson of DefDist, pictured nearby, is revealing.  (H/T to reader for this link.)

[28jan13 update]  iRobot filed a patent for autonomous all-in-one 3D printing, milling, drilling and finishing robot.  More here.

Taxes, taxes, and more taxes

George Rebane

[This is the linked transcript of my regular KVMR commentary which was broadcast on 18 January 2013.]

OK, the so-called New Year’s fiscal cliff has been avoided, and now it seems that the national hysteria over the Newtown shootings is on the ebb.  We may be able to return our attention to the awesome and real problem that faces our country and every American, whether they are paying attention or not.  That problem is the amount of our debt and unfunded obligations that is beyond the ken of the overwhelming fraction of our citizens.

Washington’s dominant elites are in terminal denial about the problem and its impact.  Their solution to the mounting annual deficits, that have now grown to trillion dollar monstrosities, is the Big Lie – raise taxes on the rich and cut military spending, and all is well.  The tax rises were supposed to have been handled by Obama’s fiscal cliff victory legislation.  Don’t believe a word of it.  It took less than two weeks for the opening drums to begin beating for raising more taxes on everyone – including the formerly sacrosanct middle class.  Why?  Because that’s where the money is.

But today things are so bad that taxes cannot be raised high enough to dent the debt.  Entitlements and transfer payment spending must also be drastically cut.  Problem is that there’s not a single Democrat who will acknowledge that, even while their own Congressional Budget Office is pointing out the obvious arithmetic involved.  Instead, we will attempt ‘solutions’ that involve even higher taxes and more regulations to stifle freedoms and economic growth.  In short, we are hell bent headed for the now defunct European model.  The WSJ reports that -

Ruminations - 17jan13 (updated 18jan13)

George Rebane

Do you notice that on all the media (Fox included) it’s a big no-no to piss off Muslims?  Now with all the action going on in Mali, Obama’s lie about Al Qaeda being on the ropes is exposed, and the reporters are again having to talk about “the war on terror” a lot.  But when they get down to reporting against whom the war is fought, they get all mushy and wind up calling them “Islamic militants”.  That’s it, there are no other enemies in that misnamed conflict called “the war on terror”, except the ragheads who keep killing innocent civilians by the thousands wherever and whenever they can do it.  But no one dare report that we are fighting ‘Islamic terrorists’, that’s a big no-no.  It is politically very incorrect to juxtapose Islam and terrorism, or to call them bad names like ragheads.  Those folks are only militants, you know, just like people all over who happen to be 'militating' for what’s good and right.

And there’s more.  The WH spin is that Al Qaeda is just “shifting its focus” to north Africa, as opposed to expanding its operations from the middle East.  I don’t know, given all the stuff that’s going on and growing in Afghanistan as we prepare for our victorious exit, it sure looks like more than a little shift of focus is going on.  After all they are now operating in two theaters with boots on the ground and guns in hand, and kidnapping Americans.  Oh well, I hope everyone here knows who is fighting whom for what.

Wonder what Hillary will say about Benghazi on 23 January?  Maybe it will be the Richard Pryor confession about when he screwed up heating his heroin or something – ‘Best we can tell, the ambassador and his aides were in the compound getting ready for bed.  They decided to have some milk and cookies in the kitchen before turning in.  And when one of them dunked a cookie into his glass of milk, suddenly the whole thing blew up.  Then a lot of people showed up.  It was terrible.  We really don’t know much more than that.’

Oh yes, the gun banners have gained another public relations advance.  Recall that they went from wanting to ban guns to just ‘controlling’ them.  Well, after Newtown, outlets like National Propaganda Radio have been reporting on Joe Biden meeting with all kinds different groups in order to fashion his recommendations that the President received this week.  So here’s the new look for those who really don’t like guns in civilian hands, they’re now called the ‘gun safety groups’.  Yep, the whole 2nd Amendment debate will be divided into folks belonging to the ‘gun rights’ groups opposing the ‘gun safety’ groups.  Now which of you out there are against gun safety?

Remember all that blather for months and years about not raising taxes on the middle class.  Bygones.  The guy needed to get re-elected, and dammit he had to promise something, don’t you see?  We now find out that taxes are going up for as long as this bunch is in Washington, and don’t you forget it.  Why?  Because that is the way we’re going to get the economy going again and reduce the deficits.  They’ve looked at the whole mess from every which way, and that’s clearly the only solution that will work.  Besides, you didn’t really think he wasn’t going to raise taxes on everyone who still pays them.  After all, there aren’t that many of us suckers left out there – it’s either us or who?

Finally, we recall how responsive this White House was going to be to the people's inputs?  You know, using the internet and all that.  All it would take was 5,000 of you good folks out there signing a petition about some concern, then this White House would jump on the case and provide an answer.  Well, that was a bit low, lotta petitions – how about 10,000?  No, nope, that was still too many petitions.  Let’s make that 25,000.  Whoa! Now that didn’t work; how about we bump it to 50,000 little siggies required on a single petition.  Well hell! Whatsamatta you out there, no one got a job or nothin’, signing petitions alla time!!  Today the WH asked ‘how’s a cool 100,000 sound before we even peek into our inbox?’  I guess the real message is that all such bets are off until 2016 when Hillary can have a go at it.  In the meantime you all can shove your ‘vox populi’ up where the sun don’t shine.

[18jan13 update]  I was waiting for John R Lott Jr to weigh in on the current gun ban imbroglio.  Lott has been the leading researcher on gun laws, and has published extensively on the subject.  In the 18jan13 WSJ he writes ‘The Facts About Assault Weapons and Crime’.  It’s worth a read, especially by those enthralled with all the ‘benefits’ to the safety of school children promised by Barack and Dianne when their next gun bans go into effect.  This is bullpucky season in spades, and it might help to throw in a fact or two on the matter, even if they are inconvenient.

Debt Limit and Things Economical

George Rebane

[Cautionary note to innumerate readers, this post will require some facility in basic arithmetic and an attention span.]

El Lider Fearless has issued his latest executive demand – no more congressional limits on accruing national debt.  "We are not a deadbeat nation," Mr. Obama said. "And the consequences of us (sic) not paying our bills...would be disastrous."  The dirty little secret that his constituents can’t grasp is that Obama’s fundamental transformation is taking us directly into that very same disaster, big time.  His offer to “accept responsibility for raising the debt limit if Congress voted to give him the authority” is meaningless pabulum.  What possible ‘responsibility’ could he accept in the matter of running up more debt, after having already added over $5T with impunity, and then being re-elected by his ‘stash’ shouting supporters.

We will first dispose of the notion of defaulting on our debt service payments under the current debt limit of approximately $16.4T.  Then looking at the White House 2013 federal budget put out by its OMB, we see that projected total federal outlays are about $3.8T, with projected total tax receipts coming in at about $2.9T.  This leaves a deficit of $900B which must be borrowed.   When some other wiggle items are added to the amount to be borrowed, the real deficit rises to $1.2T and the national debt will then increase to about $17.5T.  (See Table S-15 in the Summary Tables)

To service the debt at today’s very low interest rates will cost ‘only’ $250B in 2013 (Table S-5).  (When interest rates become real again, debt service costs will approach $1T; more later.)  I hope readers are beginning to appreciate that the debt service-to-GDP or debt service-to-budget are the real metrics which no one wants to make available and publish.  As I’ve pointed out many times before, the ever popular debt-to-GDP is a meaningless metric in guiding both fiscal and monetary policies, and that’s why interest rates are supremely important.

So where are we with all this ‘default on our debt’ nonsense?  Our tax receipts are $2.9T and we have to pay our lenders $250B or about 8.6% of our receipts.  Therefore, there is no need to stiff our lenders unless we purposely want to create a financial crisis.  Even without raising the debt limit by one cent, we are not at risk of ruining our standing in the credit markets.

Gun Control 2013 (updated 13jan13)

George Rebane

The 14dec12 Newtown massacre has been blown into a celebrated “crisis” for the nation’s gun ban contingent.  And President Obama has made certain that this crisis will also not go to waste in his overarching program that is fundamentally transforming America.  He gave VP Joe Biden the job of fashioning the next set of regulations that will further criminalize law abiding citizens who own and bear guns.  Remarkably (or not), Biden will present his panel's rapidly reached conclusions and resulting recommendations within the next few days.

The Second Amendment is one of the two or three major dividers in our ideologically polarized country.  And its public debate (mirrored in these pages) shines a bright light on the enormous differences that separate our self-declared progressives from those who consider themselves to be classic liberals and libertarians – more compactly labeled our Left and Right.

The major element of debate about the extent of public ownership of guns is their beneficial functions, if any, in a free, open, and liberal society that intends to remain so.  These functions are summarized in gun uses for 1) self-defense, 2) sport (including hunting), and the maintenance of 3) par force (q.v.) against a government turned rogue.

CES2013

George Rebane

The long running Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is again in full swing showing off all kinds of new technical innovations, gizmos, and ongoing projects.  Absent again are the big guys like Microsoft, Apple, etc, but you can be sure that they have sent teams of attendees to see what's worth copying and buying.  (The big guys are so big that they no longer want to share the stage with other companies, since they can rent and fill an auditorium anywhere, any time they want to announce a new product.)

CES continues to be the launch point for hundreds of companies who hope to interest the markets with their brain children.  Of course, the major attendees are the media of all stripes including the associations and institutes for engineering professionals.  IEEE has  put up a nice website that lets you peruse CES2013 from the comfort of your home.  Enjoy.

Takers vs Makers

George Rebane

Debt is an injustice imposed on borrowers by greedy lenders who do not deserve to be repaid - from the liberal mind.

Forbes has identified eleven states that are in an economic “death spiral”.  These are the pictured states whose taker/maker ratios equal or exceed 1.00, states where takers are the government employees and welfare recipients, and makers are those who are taxed to pay for the takers.

This list of shame reads New Mexico 1.53, Mississippi 1.49, California 1.39, Alabama 1.10, Maine 1.07, New York 1.07, South Carolina 1.06, Kentucky 1.05, Illinois 1.03, Hawaii 1.02, and Ohio 1.00.  From this we see that California has 1.39 takers for every diminishing maker in the state.  [H/T to regular reader for the heads up on this.]

Victor Davis Hanson is keeping a stiff upper lip as he reports the goings on in the once golden state.

Not just in its finances but almost wherever you look, the state’s vital signs are dipping. The average unemployment rate hovers above 10 percent. In the reading and math tests administered by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, California students rank near the bottom of the country, though their teachers earn far more than the average American teacher does. California’s penal system is the largest in the United States, with more than 165,000 inmates. Some studies estimate that the state prisons and county jails house more than 30,000 illegal aliens at a cost of $1 billion or more each year. Speaking of which: California has the nation’s largest population of illegal aliens, on whom it spends an estimated $10 billion annually in entitlements. The illegals also deprive the Golden State’s economy of billions of dollars every year by sending remittances to Latin America.

For those wanting more than a little depth on this entire issue, Nicholas Eberstadt has written an analysis that pulls together the magnitude of the disease our country is afflicted with in his A Nation of Takers – America’s Entitlements Epidemic (2012).

The government statistics he quotes that document our behavior over the last 50 years or so are devastating.  Many of them have also been presented on RR, and, of course, duly rejected by our leftwing neighbors.  Eberstadt cites that 98% of Americans over 65 receive SS and Medicare payments. But what is more shocking is that in 1960 only 0.65% of 18-64 year olds were receiving SS disability payments, and that number today has swollen to almost 6%.  And well over a third of these are getting checks for “musculoskeletal and connective tissue” maladies and “mood disorders” – clearly the nation has discovered and is exploiting a new commons and getting while the getting is good.

The problem, it appears, is that once the government spigot is put in place and turned on, there is little chance of stopping people from demanding more spigots flowing at ever greater rates.  Contributor to the book, Yuval Levin notes that “Liberal democracy has always depended upon a kind of person it does not produce.”  These stark factors that now describe the landscape of American propensities have formed the basis of my own established assessment that we are beyond the tipping point that forebodes failure in the great experiment of our ability to govern ourselves.  And by no means is this a solitary vision of our future.

Meanwhile the looney Left denies all of this, and with supermajorities in both houses in Sacramento, you ain’t seen nothing yet when it comes to taxing and regulating the state's Makers.

 

 

The Great Divide – ‘We don’t need no stinking Constitution’

George Rebane

Bit by piece America’s Left is unraveling the role of our Constitution as the foundation of our country's governance.  Undoing the legacy of our Founders has now progressed from dancing the progressives' constitutional sidestep to a growing chorus of calls to do away with the Constitution altogether - a document they see filled with “evil provisions” that has long held us in “bondage”.  This is the conclusion that constitutional law professor Louis Seidman presented in his 30dec12 NYT op-ed ‘Let’s Give Up on the Constitution’.

And I don’t think that Seidman is the only academic who has been denigrating the Constitution in our halls of ivy.  Progressives have correctly concluded that the Constitution does stand squarely in the way of their desire to fundamentally transform America into the next attempt at a socialist paradise.  So, as Seidman, they claim that it is the restrictions of our Constitution that have caused everything from our dire fiscal cliffs (yes, plural) to the heartbreak of psoriasis.

While agreeing that certain parts of the Constitution need to be retained, Seidman advises that we can govern ourselves through some TBD ad hoc process that we make up as we go along.  He claims that “(our) obsession with the Constitution has saddled us with a dysfunctional political system, kept us from debating the merits of divisive issues and inflamed our public discourse”, and asks us to “imagine that after careful study a government official — say, the president or one of the party leaders in Congress — reaches a considered judgment that a particular course of action is best for the country.”  Should such judgments and courses of action be then reviewed in light of the Constitution?  Absolutely not, according to this prominent maven of constitutional law.

Ruminations - 6jan13 (updated 7jan13)

George Rebane

The banner of socialism still can’t be unfurled over the world’s newest socialist country, but I don’t think it will take much more time before the new generation will accept the label.  The national Left is bursting with pride with its victories in the bag and more on the way.  Everything is falling into place, from Agenda21 to “millionaires and billionaires” finally “paying their fair share” (see below).  Only in backwoods locales like Nevada County is there still some resistance from the collectivist choral society as they deny the advent of socialism in America, a progress which is now apparent worldwide.  Even Republicans appear to have thrown in the towel because they have to attract the youth, homosexuals, women, Latinos, lame, infirm, union members, retirees, …, don’t they?  And promising all the sheeple an ice cream cone is the demonstrated sure fire way to do it – so climb aboard.

Congressional prudence got another kick in the hind end as the pork prone politicians started hollering about the House not passing the bacon ladened $60B Sandy Aid Bill that in passing also included a little aid to the storm victims.  It was expected that the looney Left would knot their undies over this, but people like Gov Christie bulging his veins was a bit much.  The House did pass a real $9.7B aid bill, and will forward additional aid once it can be assured that it won’t be used to solyndrize a few more favorite companies on Obama’s list.

But that was nothing compared to what hit us with the fiscal cliff bill.  Now that the Pelosi Principle has been applied, that new tax law, with its added ‘crony capitalist blowout’, framed the new year’s most audacious ladle full of bullshit yet to come from the mouth of this president.  Lauding the bill, the Big O called for “further reforms to our tax code so that the wealthiest corporations and individuals can’t take advantage of loopholes and deductionas that aren’t available to most Americans.”  (emphasis mine)  This new tax law increased taxes on everyone, is chuck full of loopholes and deductions to the wealthiest and the select cronies in the corporate world, and added more complications to a tax code that is already the world’s laughing stock.  The 3jan13 WSJ provides an excellent summary of this offal.

PJ Media reports on the initiative to replace teaching the classics with lessons highlighting the latest government propaganda.  Those busy little socialist beavers are just gnawing away at the remnants of the education part in ‘public education’.  Something is ‘classic’ if it endures with time.  And western culture and traditions have apparently endured long enough in the American mind – another part of the ongoing fundamental transformation.

President Obama has now come out of the closet with his ‘take no prisoners’ approach to negotiations.  Along the way he has adopted the simple and direct strategy made famous by Samuel Gompers, national labor leader during the first half of the 20th century.   Going into union contract negotiations, Gompers was asked by reporters what he was going to ask for.  “More!” was his reply.  With Harry in the Senate, we are reminded way back when of Tennessee Ernie Ford singing, 'If the Left one won't a get you, then the Left one will.'  So now what's a Republican to do?

Finally, we note the celebratory tone of progressives telling the country that Congress is now beginning to look more and more like America.  These astute observers of the Left are, of course, on the mark.  Translating the statistics from the Dept of Education, we can easily accept that half of them have two-digit IQs, 40% are functionally illiterate, almost all are totally innumerate, and only about one in twenty can reliably determine the intent of a written paragraph.  We presume that their staffs and the lobbyists who write their multi-thousand page bills have their elevators going to higher floors no matter the perfidy of their produce.

[7jan13 update]  Krugman the Keynesian has joined the $1T coin chorus.  You know, where the Fed stamps a platinum coin of the realm putatively worth $1T, and uses it to fund future national debt.  Presto, no more debt ceiling debates and no added inflation "since the coin will not make it into circulation".  Oh yeah.  Just start making serious plans to do that and watch what happens with all those holding US Treasurys.  Can you say 'run on the bank'?  It seems that a good part of the nation is becoming addled wholesale.

In the 'Brussels on the Potomac' department, EU countries are in a crisis to fund, among other things, their unsustainable nationalized healthcare systems.  The 5jan13 Economist is highlighting what our lamestream buries and our progressives deny, that there are not enough tax revenues to fund the increasing costs of socialist healthcare.  Delivered services are now on the bottom tier and patients are literally dying of neglect - one hospital alone has "unnecessarily" killed 1,200 patients during 2005-2009.  And the government is trying to fix things by "expanding the responsibilities of family doctors and encouraging more private-sector involvement" - fancy that.  The new health secretary belatedly proclaims a "crisis in standards of care" as the regulatory bodies and death committees of the single-payer program have multiplied over the years.  And patients are beginning to scream bloody murder loudly enough to be heard in Westminster.  Our future, if we care to look at it.

MOOCs and the education revolution (addended 9jan13)

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my 4jan13 KVMR commentary.  I last covered MOOCs in my 21aug12 post.  This post has an addendum that explains in more detailed how intelligent MOOCs can be designed to deliver complex instructional sequences that are not available in traditional learning environments. ]

Let’s consider higher education for bit tonight, especially its cost, relevance, and the impact of learning technologies on traditional ways of delivering education products.   Our post-secondary education and its graduates are the national jewel that affects every American’s quality of life.  As a stake in the ground, consider that our population growth has slowed to under one percent per year, which still translates to adding almost 3M people annually.  With demographic lags, we currently pump out about 4M young people a year into our job markets.

Everyone knows that they will earn more, the more post-high school education they get.  And everyone is told they are college material, and are encouraged to borrow money and apply for scholarships to pay for college.  This encouragement has been so successful that outstanding student loans now amount to over $1T nationwide.  On the whole, it’s hard to see how much of this debt will be paid off given that many or most college students select majors that don’t teach marketable skills.  The Atlantic reports that “53% of recent college grads are under- or unemployed”.

Distinguished professor Richard Vedder of Ohio University tells us, “In 2009, spending by Americans for post-secondary education totaled $461B, an amount 42% greater than in 2000, after accounting for inflation. This $461B is the equivalent of 3.3% of total U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) and an amount greater than the total GDP of countries such as Sweden, Norway and Portugal.”, adding that  “…more than 17 million college graduates were ‘underemployed’ in 2008.”   For many college graduates ‘Would you like fries with that?’ is a recurring theme across the land.

Many educators and employers, especially those who can’t find enough qualified workers, tell us that not everyone needs to go into debt getting a mushy major.   Most high school graduates are not ready for a college education, and would do much better for their careers by learning a marketable skill set that is confirmed by various accepted levels of certification.  And to do that, more and more young people and older workers needing to change careers are turning to online education and training courses.  The acronym to remember is MOOC – massively open online course.

Cirino’s Nevada City, RIP

George Rebane

The Progressive Plague that has ravaged California for some years, and with every passing day is becoming even more virulent, struck down a local landmark establishment.  In Nevada City Cirino’s Bar & Grill is shutting its doors according to owner Jerry Cirino because “The state and federal government has taken the most valuable asset of a business (employees) and made it a liability.  They have disrupted, irreparably, the triangular relationship between customer, employee, and employer.”  (reported in the 3jan13 Union)

In these pages I have evangelized that important relationship and its financial implications to a business, especially a small business.   The target audience for these soap box lectures has been the independent reader who is not yet convinced about the contributions of capitalism and free enterprise to his wellbeing.  The pushback on these clarifications has always been from the progressivists who are beyond redemption (aka butt stupid), and now cover the land like locusts destroying every shred of wealth creating commercialism that they can.  And in the dust and debris of their plunder they leave unemployed workers who are among the most needy, workers who must now become wards of the state and learn quickly on which side their bread is buttered.

One more tombstone in California's Business Cemetery.  And what again is the alternative to the Great Divide?

‘They Can’t Take That Away from Me’ – 2013 style

George Rebane

[I'm not sure that much of this is comprehensible to younger generations, but many of us older people do hearken back to some grand years in the good old US of A.  Granted, time has worn off some of the rough edges.  Nevertheless, here're some ramblings to mark another milestone that we pass in an age that is so different from the America of days gone by.]

For those of us born in the 1940s, it’s already in the bank, and no one can take it away.  We have been blessed to live in the iconic America that reached its apex during the 1945 – 1965 period.  It was an age when America was the world’s white knight, having emerged victorious from vanquishing two global foes, then pouring its enormous wealth and productive capability into rebuilding a shattered world, and setting itself to stand guard against the surviving evil of communism.  We had a common public culture, boundless energy, and a pragmatic vision of how we would continue to make ours a more perfect Union.

But best of all, most of us were free and working to bring such freedoms to all.  The beguiling bamboozle of 1930s socialism cum communism, that so enthralled America’s leftwing elite during the Depression, finally showed its true face as the Iron Curtain divided Europe into the history’s largest prison camp on one side, and thriving nations reaching new levels of prosperity and quality of life on the other side.  In schools we learned about American exceptionalism and then lived it as we hit the streets when school let out.

We were also free to work our butts off.  As kids we could get about any job we could talk ourselves into.  We flipped burgers, carried papers, mowed lawns, or even worked as field hands doing stoop labor on farms.  As we got older we could get jobs using the skills we learned in high school shop classes.  My own jobs path was going from a farm laborer into aerospace light manufacturing as a sixteen year old cutting and brazing jet engine electrical conduits.  My next stop was an aerospace draftsman drawing awesomely complex functional diagrams of submarine combat systems as a teenager in college.

There was no government to tell employers that they could not hire me, and no government telling me I could not work here or there, or taking my parents to task for ‘abusing’ me if I decided to work long hours months at a time.  In fact, I bought my first car, a used 1957 VW bug.  After arriving in Los Angeles, I registered with the California Youth Employment Agency in Hollywood.  They sent me on called-in daily jobs located from Orange County to the canyon country north of Los Angeles.  I did whatever my boss for a day (or more) would tell me to do, whether it would be to wash windows, clean out the garage, rake leaves, polish floors, or paint a porch.  America’s youth was then enabled by the state, not inhibited.

And fearing government was something we learned about in school and saw in other countries, but none of us experienced government overreach in our own or our parents’ lives.  We could go where we wanted and do what we wanted (within reason of course).  Public lands were then truly public lands.  We could throw a backpack and gun (it had to be visible) into the back seat, and before the sun set we’d be in a very remote spot sitting around a campfire with a dubiously cooked meal warming our bellies.

Our entertainments were salutary to God and country.  Coming out of a movie – whether a grand western, a biblical epic, filmed version of a Broadway musical, war story, or comedy – you invariably felt uplifted.  Hollywood was on the case, giving us a gratifying respite from our daily labors which were many.  And television echoed all that during its ‘golden age’, those shows whose recorded kinescopes are still entertaining and somewhat unbelievable to the current generations.

Vandalism at the Pump

George Rebane

Happy 2013!  Hope that everyone has recovered from New Year’s eve and the bowl games.  I thought it would be proper to waste no time in launching the new year with the latest from from the EPA scumbags who are introducing E15 gasoline to the nation’s pumps (that’s gasoline made from 15% corn ethanol that separates from the petroleum gasoline when it settles in your tank).  AAA strongly recommends your not using it in cars older than the 2012 model year.

When presented with the obvious f**k up, the EPA sniffed in response that (fasten your seat belt) ‘it is impossible to do years of testing in a few months.’

The government’s ‘nudge policy’ (a la Cass Sunstein) has now graduated into out and out vandalism in their efforts to get older cars off the roads and push their disastrous bio-fuels program which has EVERYTHING wrong with it that one can imagine.  The bottom line is that E15 will rot out your fuel system while you are getting fewer miles per gallon driving with the crap.   (See the complete report on Fox News here.)

Now that the fiscal cliff has been kicked down the road a couple of months, it’s good to re-establish our perspective on the constant stream of damage and distress that issues daily from the banks of the Potomac.