Rebane's Ruminations

Online Education Promoting More Inequality? (updated 1jun13)

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 31 May 2013.  This and previous commentaries are also available on the KVMR website.]

Information systems professor Larry Press of CalState Dominguez Hills recently asked the question ‘Are poor students excluded from online education?’  In this commentary and on my blog the larger issue of wealth and income inequality has been extensively debated, and continues to be a hot button topic between the Left and the Right.  The Left insists that the problem is correctible through the proper adoption of new and improved social justice policies.  The Right doesn’t agree and offers to lift all fortunes through smaller government, less regulation, and lower taxes.  But it claims no solution to the inequality problem.

Travails of our Community Organizer (updated 30may13)

George Rebane

Actually, that should have been ‘… our out-of-depth Community Organizer’; but where to begin?

The ongoing and growing scandals – Asleep or fiddling while Benghazi burns, Holder going after Fox News reporter, IRS going after conservative orgs, DOJ tapping into AP, … - are piling up faster than the administration spin doctors can provide material for the late evening comedy shows.  Now we have a real genuine ‘Oh shit!’ embarrassment coming in the back door of the White House on Obamacare.

The unions are going public with their opposition to the President’s premier showcase legislation that has been celebrated by liberals from Nevada County to Cape Cod.  About 20M union members are about to take a real hard look at the remaining benefits of their union membership, then prepare to head for the exits.  Union leaders are screaming at the Dems in Congress to get them exempted from Obamacare, why?  Because they’ve now seen what the rest of us knew way back when, everything Obama told them about the ‘Affordable Care Act’ was a lie, they can’t afford it.

Some union leaders like KM Robinson of the United Union of Roofers are saying flat out that they should rebuild that travesty from ground up, or just get rid of it.  And that’s not good for the guy who sweet talked the unions out of gazillions to fund his election campaign – twice!  Now I’m not saying that ol’ Barry intended to screw his big base of support.  Not at all, he just screwed up big time and delivered a “train wreck” for what will wind up as 18% of America’s economy.  Well, he did have a little help from a few other ditzos on the Hill like Princess Pelosi and Hapless Harry.

Obamacare is being received so badly that Kathleen Sebelius, HNIC at the Dept of HHS is out beating the bushes for private funds to pay for some propaganda to get young healthy people to buy health insurance through the federally mandated state insurance exchanges.  Lawyers are looking at that little exercise as being the equivalent of Reagan’s Iran/Contra kerfuffle.  But what’s the ACA implementing cabinet secretary to do when we now hear that 54% of Americans “disapprove” of the healthcare munificence from their federal government.  In spite of all this, the lamestream continues to send their best crickets to cover the story – or stories.  (HNIC? that’s Head Nanny in Charge, what’d you think it meant?)

Thanks to Barry’s misreading of Lord Keynes and listening to fellow nobelist Krugman, the country is up to its collective butt in debt while continuing to dig the hole ever deeper.  As I have said before, Obamacare will turn out to be the world’s most expensive and despised healthcare system ever.  But not to worry, the CO and the peace-loving Dems are going to pay for the whole thing out of our defense budget.  The speeches about America’s global retreat are already being delivered on a weekly basis.

The Liberal Mind - Ol' RL nails it, again

RL Crabb's cartoon filched from the 28may13 Union.

Ode to Deflected Dialogue

George Rebane

Memorial Day - 27 May 2013

George Rebane

[The following was originally posted on 30 May 2011, it applies today more than ever.]

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 here)

 

Singularity Signposts – Just ask Watson

George Rebane

IBM’s Watson will now take your calls.  The progeny of Watson of Jeopardy fame is being introduced into all kinds of new decision support applications from medicine to finance.  One of the new areas for Watson technology is to ‘man’ call centers – you know, those telephone sweat shops where the speaker at the other end frequently has a hard to understand Asian accent, and very often (50+% of the time) does not solve your problem.  Ten companies have signed up for the AI systems that will let their customers converse with this ‘cognitive’ supercomputer in natural language, i.e. normal English.  Reporting on this, Larry Press, my longtime friend and professor of information systems at CSUDH, muses whether we will then witness another successful Turing Test passed by a computer, albeit in a constrained knowledge domain. (more here)

The significance of this is that more legions of humans will lose such call center jobs as systemic unemployment continues to grow.  And this for the simple reason that for them there will be no new automobile factories as their buggy whip shops close down.  But that’s another story oft told in these pages.  In the meantime simpler souls see only that some jobs still don’t pay a so-called ‘living wage’ as the real problem confronting our workforce.

Agenda21 – The Beat Grows Stronger (updated 26may13)

More than two out of three Americans think that "government is out of control and threatening our basic liberties."  Fox News poll reported on 21 May 2013.

George Rebane

Last night we attended the Agenda21 talk at the Grass Valley Veterans Center given by anti-Agenda21 activist and author Rosa Koire.  Her talk was sponsored by our local CABPRO and was attended by about two hundred people who arrived from places as far as Reno and the bay area.  Ms Koire is a self-described liberal Democrat and ‘married’ lesbian who also happens to be an excellent and animated speaker, especially about Agenda21, a topic about which she is very well informed and quite passionate.  (We also bought her recent book Behind the Green Mask: UN Agenda 21.)

RR readers are familiar with my Agenda21 views, they are a matter of record and available in the ‘Agenda21’ section of this website.  Ms Koire emphasized that Agenda21 is a non-partisan issue. She went on to summarize the UN’s Agenda21 Sustainable Development initiative as “the action plan to inventory and control all land, all water, all minerals, all plants, all animals, all construction, all means of production, all information, all energy, and all human beings in the world. INVENTORY AND CONTROL”

In short, Agenda21 (first formulated in 1987) is the blueprint for the stage-wise achievement of a unified global government that rules the world within one standardized set of laws, regulations, and codes that will spread social justice uniformly over all lands and peoples.  The project is not a conspiracy or some ‘tin hat’ mythology, but an open initiative that in 1992 was signed on to by 179 world leaders that included President George HW Bush.

The fundamental thesis underlying this plan is that humanity’s current mode of living on the planet – lifestyles, modes of commerce, capitalism, property ownership, energy consumption, regions of habitation, etc – are unsustainable and must be drastically altered during the 21st century.

Pipe Dream – Candidates’ Full Disclosure Act

George Rebane

Chatting around the dining table the other night, we reviewed all the laws that require sellers to fully disclose to the buyer the condition and relevant history of what is being sold.  Such full disclosure provisions as apply to real estate, cars, firearm purchases, medicines, and so on.

But when it comes to politicians who will not only affect our lives, but the future course of a state, or region, or even the whole country (world?), we are pretty much encouraged to buy a pig in a poke.  In vetting candidates for office, we rely on a hide-and-go-seek game between the candidate and the press, or the ‘political operatives’ of their opponents.  For all too many good reasons, today people think very little of journalism and journalists.  According to the Pew Center for the People and the Press, two out of three people think press reporting is “often inaccurate”; four out of five believe the press “tends to favor one side” and is “often influenced by powerful people and organizations”.

So here we go again, voting for some smooth talking, slicked down Sam or Sally, and later we happen to find out that s/he has been fighting clinical depression for years, has a law degree from an online diploma mill, ran two businesses into the ground, smokes pot regularly, or mysteriously lost a spouse whose remains have never been found.  You get my drift.

Wouldn’t it be better if there were a Candidates’ Full Disclosure of Material Facts law that requires each candidate to fill out an appropriately revealing questionnaire, and publish its answers online?  The questionnaire would also ask if there were any other material factors or incidents in the candidate’s past that would bear on a decision by a reasonable voter to reject the candidate.  The law would stipulate that knowingly providing false, incomplete, and/or inaccurate information constitutes perjury, and its subsequent discovery would be prima facie sufficient cause to start impeachment proceedings against the office holder.

Would such full disclosure laws on the books of the several states and in the US Code result in our becoming better informed voters while getting a better slate of candidates, and consequently a better set of politicians in office?  Or would there be collateral effects that outweigh any benefits, advising us to just suck it in and be satisfied with being led by sleazebags and morons?

Fetus + 12 inches = Baby

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 17 May 2013.]

OK, if you’ve been habitually glued to the lamestream media, you probably just recently heard of the murder trial of late term abortionist and now convicted hat trick killer Dr Kermit Gosnell.  According to court testimony Gosnell ran a lucrative back alley abortion clinic right out in the open, visible from the street, and accessible from the sidewalks of Philadelphia.  His dilapidated storefront, cynically named ‘Women’s Medical Society’ with logos of a happily bouncing toddler between mom and dad, had not been inspected by a pro-abortion city health department for more than 15 years.   During this time the sleazy and filthy walk-in was the scene of hundreds, perhaps thousands of murders until some of his employees simply could no longer take it.

Gosnell was convicted for killing three live babies out of the uncounted thousands that actually died at his hands during the many years his death factory was in operation.  Babies, that he or his staff were unable to kill twelve inches before the point at which they exited the womb, were then immediately dispatched after their births.  These live human beings, as witnessed and testified by Gosnell’s workers, were then quickly murdered by jamming scissors into the backs of their necks to cut their spinal chords.  The defense unbelievably argued that the delivered and visibly viable babies were already dead, but it left hanging the question as to why they then had to be killed again.

Now consider that our current pro-choice understanding is that a baby, a universally acknowledged human being, a human who could go on to live a productive and rewarding life, can be just twelve inches and seconds from having been designated a fetus.  And as a fetus, it is legally only a lump of protoplasm liable for summary execution by one of a dozen ways.  Gosnell’s preferred method was an in utero lethal injection that did not always do the job.  But not to worry, the clinic’s ‘medical staff’ was twelve inches and seconds away, ready and waiting with the scissors.

So here’s the logic of the matter – if twelve inches separate a live baby from a formerly live fetus, does that not also mean that twelve inches separate a live fetus from being a live baby, a live human being?  This is what the legalization of late term abortions comes down to in our civilized society.  Twelve inches and seconds between an innocuous clinical procedure and a prosecutable murder.

I apologize for the brevity of this commentary, but there simply isn’t anything more to say beyond reminding you that there are still many more Gosnells out there.

My name is Rebane, and I expand on this and related themes on NCTV and on georgerebane.com where the transcript of this commentary is posted with relevant links, and where such issues are debated extensively.  However these views are not necessarily shared by KVMR.  Thank you for listening.

Ruminations – 16may13 (updated 18may13)

George Rebane

The flowering Obamagate scandals are simply “controversies” as National Propaganda Radio spent a great deal of time this morning assuring its audience.  Nothing special here, the President always comes out to the formally prepared East Room in the evenings to remark on little kerfuffles or differences of opinion.  Everyone go back to sleep.

Pioneer aviator Lyman Gilmore was celebrated yesterday at the school of his name.  There was a big ceremony for students and speakers to recognize Nevada County’s contribution to early aviation.  The event included an organized overflight by a large group of local aviators, some of  them with national reputations.  The flight was comprised of 18 private aircraft led by Jim Booth in his now familiar yellow AT-6 warbird followed in close formation by three members of the Ryder Flight.  Getting all those airplanes in the air, oriented and lined up, and then back on the ground on a very windy day was a grand feat of organization and heads up piloting by all participants – H/T to our own Bob Hobert (Ryder Flight leader and RR reader, who also sent me the pic) for organizing and getting everyone briefed and debriefed.  I was happy to be invited by Jim to again fly in the rear seat of the T-6.

“Untruth” versus lie.  The media, led by Fox News, seems to have some problem with those terms.  Even the conservative Dr Charles Krauthammer (around our house known as ‘The Bonze’), their most noble of nationally syndicated commentators, dripping with gravitas, can’t bring himself to call a lie a lie – well, he did once last night.  On the air politicians aren’t lying, they’re telling “untruths”.  For us with simpler minds, an untruth is any statement that is not true independent of the intent behind its utterance – misreading a clock and then falsely reporting the time is an untruth.  A lie is a known untruth told with intent to deceive.  Most politicians are inveterate liars, it’s part of the job requirements – let’s call a spade a spade when their lies are obvious to the whole country.

Rosa Koire will present an update on Agenda21, and how this UN inititiative has been making progress ‘Behind the Green Mask’.  Here’s the info –

When:  Tuesday May 21, 2013, 5:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
Where: Grass Valley Veterans Hall, 225 S. Auburn Street, Grass Valley
Admission: $20 at the door; $15 in advance
Advance tickets: BriarPatch Co-op, online at www.cabpro.net (special events tab) or by calling CABPRO (530) 478-1331

Those of us a bit paranoid about government training guns on its own citizens (aka us), should keep their eye peeled on the first steps that our military has now taken in this direction.  Obama’s Pentagon has “unilaterally” granted itself powers to aid local law enforcement agencies to curb “civil disturbances” by changing some wording in the US Code covering ‘Defense Support of Civilian Law Enforcement Agencies’ (more here).

[update]  New  speech codes will be sweeping the nation starting with the college campuses and the revision of what consists of sexually harrassing speech.  This will not stop with either the campuses or sexual harrassment.  All the while our astute progressives are protesting, 'What new regulations? there're no more new regulations.  And let's talk about Bush instead.'  Obama's fundamental transformation is on a roll.  (more here).

[18may13 update]  Well, it looks like it's CYA time in embassy land, at least in the mid-eastern part of the world.  Now that everyone's attention is on the Benghazi debacle, tragedy, and cover-up, no ambassador in that part of the world is going to be left behind in alerting the mother temple (aka Foggy Bottom) that threats to their embassies and consulates are increasing.  (more here)  For sure Kerry is not going to hang on to Hillary's hand as he helps Obama throw her under the bus.  So we are sure to see some visible muscle deployed closer to where the action is anticipated.  And playing his cards right, maybe ol' John can emerge out of all this as the new, improved, and heroic hopeful for 2016.  Crazier things have happened.

Living in Obamastan – what’s not to like?

George Rebane

What was foretold has come to pass, he has delivered with a vengeance and a promise of more to come.

1.    Benghazi – ineptness, tragedy, cover-up, lies, demonstration of weakness, …
2.    Syria – inattention, ineptness, tragedy, loss of prestige and confidence, …
3.    Obamacare – national healthcare and economic disaster, ultimate partisanship, ineptness, uncertainty, lies about implementation, effect, costs, …
4.    Iran – ineptness, uncertain ally to mid-east friends, meaningless ‘red lines’, invitation to war, Islam’s war on west promoted, …
5.    Iraq – inept withdrawal, total loss of influence, waste of sacrifices made, bolster Iran
6.    Afghanistan – confusion, withdrawal guaranteed to leave region unstable, wasted sacrifices, Taliban will triumph, …
7.    North Africa – Al Qaida expands and triumphant, no clear policy, leading from behind in the wrong direction, relinquishing an entire continent, …
8.    IRS politicized – responsive weapon to target opposition groups, institutions, and individuals, agency radicalized, cover-up, lies, …
9.    EPA – rogue agency, congressional bypass, executive hammer, economic brake, fear in the land, uncertainty, disastrous impediments to a beneficient national energy policy, …
10.    Immigration reform – borders remain porous, amnesty, Democrat voter fast track, Reconquista, …
11.     US Economy – on permanent slow track, regulatory hell, uncertainty, inept/perfidious economic policy, systemic unemployment growth, constructive nationalization of business and industry, …
12.    American culture – in last stages of destruction, war on Christianity and European heritage, massive loss of freedoms, replaced by growing mass of government regulations, education system propagandized, class warfare ignited, …
13.    Fundamental Transformation of America – Agenda 21 provisions adopted while denied, military being castrated, intelligence/security apparatus remains stovepiped and compromised to combat homeland terror, government arming to combat Americans, goal to become a compliant peer member of the new global order, progress to mediocrity is on track.

This list is incomplete.

‘In Defense of Carbon Dioxide’ (updated 14apr13)

George Rebane

That is the title of a short but extremely important column by Professors Harrison Schmitt and William Happer that appeared in the 9may13 WSJ.  Readers know that I am a longtime skeptic of the ongoing climate change hysteria (especially the AGW part), and for technical reasons believe that results from data diddling and climate modeling have been at best questionable to incompetent science, or at worst blatently formulated to achieve political ends.

Schmitt and Happer present a science side of the CO2 phantasmagoria that IMHO has not received anywhere near the consideration it should have in the ongoing debate on the global insanity and local trans-hysteria (witness California’s AB32) that is going on.  The piece starts –

Of all of the world's chemical compounds, none has a worse reputation than carbon dioxide. Thanks to the single-minded demonization of this natural and essential atmospheric gas by advocates of government control of energy production, the conventional wisdom about carbon dioxide is that it is a dangerous pollutant. That's simply not the case. Contrary to what some would have us believe, increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will benefit the increasing population on the planet by increasing agricultural productivity.

The cessation of observed global warming for the past decade or so has shown how exaggerated NASA's and most other computer predictions of human-caused warming have been—and how little correlation warming has with concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide. As many scientists have pointed out, variations in global temperature correlate much better with solar activity and with complicated cycles of the oceans and atmosphere. There isn't the slightest evidence that more carbon dioxide has caused more extreme weather.

The current levels of carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere, approaching 400 parts per million, are low by the standards of geological and plant evolutionary history. Levels were 3,000 ppm, or more, until the Paleogene period (beginning about 65 million years ago). For most plants, and for the animals and humans that use them, more carbon dioxide, far from being a "pollutant" in need of reduction, would be a benefit. This is already widely recognized by operators of commercial greenhouses, who artificially increase the carbon dioxide levels to 1,000 ppm or more to improve the growth and quality of their plants.

The whole article, from which the graphic was filched, can be read here.  Such information will make little impact on the lay reader whose beliefs about AGW are already well calcified.  But they should be an eye-opener for the serious intelligent reader still seeking direction on whether or not to support the steady “carbon footprint” diet that we are fed daily.

To keep up on the overall developments in the climate change forum please visit Russ Steele’s ‘The Next Grand Minimum’ and Anthony Watts’ ‘Watts Up With That’.

[14apr13 update]  Reasonable people who made a case before t₀ that Observable #1 may have been the cause of Observable #2, would reexamine their premises, let alone their conclusions, at some point after t₀.  The rest will be unfazed by the observed data.

 

The Senate’s Amnesty Bill (updated 10apr13)

George Rebane

The Senate will “mark up” and pass their version of immigration reform, probably tomorrow.  What is turning out to be an amnesty bill has drawn a lot of fire from the Right for a lot of reasons, not all of them flying in tight formation.  For example, the Heritage Foundation has published a report outlining some of the bill’s shortcomings and delivering the punch line that the net life-cycle cost of the legislation to the American taxpayer will be $6.3T over the 50-year time horizon covered.  Full report here.

The Cato Institute has declared the report to be bull pucky because Heritage did not use "dynamic modeling and scoring" when they simulated the impact of putting 11M+ illegals through the Senate’s immigration process.  Instead, Cato's analysis says the Senate bill would “increase U.S. GDP by $1.5 trillion in the ten years after enactment.”  Yes, you got it right, they’re talking past each other comparing apples and oranges.  More here.

The Senate bill does have the usual Democratic flaws – no secure border, early start of government benefits, and shortened path to citizenship.  But I have a couple of concerns to add to these.  First, I don’t think that the 11M illegals will behave any differently from Americans with the same education levels enjoying the same benefits.  I don’t think that these new immigrants will continue ‘doing the jobs that Americans refuse to do’, instead they’ll behave just like Americans.

Second, I think that to keep their snouts in the trough, they will work and vote for candidates who promise to keep that trough filled.  (Their pardons will also motivate the rest of the Hispanic Americans to vote for their munificent providers.)  In short, as these people become franchised voters, they will provide the Democrats with an unassailable majority to pursue the provisions of Agenda21. 

Speaking again of systemic unemployment (an enduring topic on RR), this cohort of illegal aliens has nothing to recommend it in alleviating the current levels of under- and unemployed.  The cited dynamic models don’t account for the dynamism of accelerating technology; these ever hopeful models don’t recognize how the workforce now ratchets downward with every recession leaving a lower fraction of eligible workers participating in the workforce.  When the smoke clears from immigration reform, we will have just added to the level of systemic unemployment in the country.

With runaway debt levels, unfunded liabilities, mounting regulatory burden, insane healthcare, unabated green initiatives, and mounting tax burdens, the country is headed for its next economic shock that will most likely occur before 2016.  None of this is being discussed or even anticipated in the design of a reformed immigration law that will serve Americans’ interests.

[9may13 update]  The nearby photo of the Verizon ad in today’s WSJ is apropos to the discussion of immigration reform.  It shows a STEM worker contemplating a whiteboard full of squigglies.  I spent a good part of my time in harness in that position, either alone or with colleagues.  In those sessions time disappeared and reappeared only when the janitor stuck his head into my office or conference room where we were huddled, or the inevitable call from one of our wives informing us that we had missed dinner since the children had to be fed.  All that came with the territory.

The text at the bottom of the ad is not readable in the photo, but it is relevant when we consider how to prioritize whom we should attract to these shores.  It reads - Brains matter.  Particularly when you’re dealing with robots and algorithms.  But at Verizon’s Innovation Centers, you’ll see another constant.  Passion.  Smart people working overtime.  Running on fumes.  Because they know what technology can solve.  They know it can help doctors make a more informed diagnosis in seconds instead of months.  They know if we think long and hard enough, we can help insure a constant supply of clean energy.  Or help a fire fighter see through a blaze.  The hours are long.  But great.  Because we believe the world’s biggest challenges deserve even bigger solutions.

[10may13 update]  In my 'Teach Them to Code' post I argued that learning a programming language was a critical skill for young people to acquire.  Learning the elements of programming requires the student to be able to take a specification (or objective), break its achievement down into parts (or tasks), and understand the sequence and content (process or work required) in each of the parts.  In short, programming skills are transferable to countless other job areas beyond writing code.  And also vice versa; if a person has trouble learning to write simple code, they will probably have trouble organizing a job assignment.

In the 10may13 WSJ, Kirk McDonald, president of PubMatic, writes an open letter to this year’s new baccalaureate graduates telling them not only why he won’t hire them, but why they will have trouble getting a job anywhere – ‘Sorry College Grads, I Probably Won’t Hire You’.  His message is summarized by “If you're at all interested in media, technology or related fields, please learn a little computer programming."

McDonald reviews an oft ignored stat – in the next decade(!!) the US will produce only 40K computer science BS degrees, and also 120K new jobs requiring that degree.  And that’s only in computer science and not the entire STEM field of jobs in which the equivalent stats are even more distressing.  We all know where these jobs are going, and from where the needed people to fill them are coming.  In short, Americans will not be able to fill such gratifying career jobs, and McDonald’s point reinforces one often made on RR that such graduates with deficient degrees will not be able to fill very many positions that require college degrees.

The bottom line here is that our immigration policy should be heavily weighted toward attracting the talent needed to fill the burgeoning STEM and other wealth producing jobs versus inviting in people to do jobs that Americans have been taught are below their station in life.  A much needed national initiative should focus on getting Americans to do all jobs available in our land, and not further burden the country with more welfare programs and eager illegals willing to take any available job.

Breaking Bread – ‘2nd Amendment and Gun Control’ (updated 10may13)

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 3 May 2013.  I have included an extensive addendum to memorialize the structure of the current gun control debate in our country’s widening ideological schism, and to illustrate key factors in the asymmetric understanding and approach taken by the Left and Right when they meet in a public forum such as was provided by the 1may13 edition of ‘Breaking Bread’ on NCTV.  To view this and past episodes go here and search archives with 'Breaking Bread'.]

Last month our community television station NCTV launched Breaking Bread, a new independently produced program airing monthly and available online.  Breaking Bread is an hour-long program featuring discussions of national issues and current events.  At the start I want to emphasize that the program’s objective is to present and clarify the different perspectives in our socio-political landscape from which people view the issues that “alter and illuminate our times”. 

The program will feature co-hosts and guests who as a group will represent a diversity of views and seek to make them understood.  And where possible, we will also try to reach some consensus.  Therefore Breaking Bread is not intended as a debate but an open, unformatted, and unrehearsed get together wherein the participants offer their own views on the topics discussed.

The program debuted on 5 April during which its five co-hosts were introduced discussing ‘Language and Labels’.  You can access the inaugural edition on NCTV’s website at nevadacountytv.org or from this commentary’s transcript posted on my website.  The same will be true for all subsequent editions of the program – after all, this is the 21st century.

We recorded the second edition of Breaking Bread, titled ‘The 2nd Amendment and Gun Control’, on 1 May, last Wednesday.  The program was co-hosted by Paul Emery, KVMR news director, and me, George Rebane, introduced as “a conservetarian blogger and commentator with a lot of birthdays and, some say, a contentious ideology.”

Joining as guests were Nevada County’s Sheriff Keith Royal, Mr Norm Sauer, a retired lawyer who lectures on constitutional affairs, along with Mr and Mrs Nick and Amanda Wilcox who tragically lost their daughter Laura to gun violence.  They are prominent gun control advocates and supporters of the Brady Bill.

In framing the discussion that followed, I reminded viewers that people of the Left, who advocate for stronger gun controls or even confiscation, approach gun ownership from an episodic or topical point of view.  Their stated objective is to reduce gun violence, or more specifically, gun deaths.  And the statistics they cite, along with descriptions of horrific episodes of murder and mayhem, are designed to grossly simplify the issue, and get the listener to focus on events that everyone wants to prevent, and wishes that had never happened.  Liberal academics have identified this common and effective tack of public debate as ‘issues activism’, basically a bottom up approach that the Left uses to induce the desired public opinion.

The Right approaches gun ownership top down through the 2nd Amendment, arguing the intent and writings of the Founders in their drafting of our Constitution.  They see the real purpose of grassroots gun ownership as necessary to keep government from going rogue, and if it does, then as a last resort, to launch a successful revolution.  This, after all, was the explicit intention left to us in the legacy of our country’s early years.  While the Right does admit to the need for some regulation in who gets to own what armaments, it points to history that records tyrannical governments killing their own citizens in the hundreds of millions during the 20th century - all as a matter of intended policy, and not related to wars or combat.  Such killing by governments is called democide, which took over 260M lives during the 20th century.

So, of gun violence one must ask, ‘Would you sacrifice ten lives to save 10M lives?’  Yes, of course.  Or ‘Would you sacrifice 10M lives to save ten lives?’  Of course not.  But for such a trade-off the correct answer for each of us lies somewhere in between, and in the realworld the numbers are never known for certain, but must be estimated using probabilities.  For those who don’t understand the role of probabilities in assessing realworld uncertainties, as is required in making public policies, then any reasoned discussion of such policies will be inaccessible to them.  Instead, we will hear from them nothing but their emotional outpourings on the matter.  But then, reasonable discussion has never been a necessary prelude to legislation or regulation.

My name is Rebane, and I expand on this and related themes on NCTV and on georgerebane.com where the addended transcript of this commentary is posted with relevant links, and where such issues are debated extensively.  However these views are not necessarily shared by KVMR.  Thank you for listening.

Addendum:  The Asymmetry of Information and Tactics in the Gun Control Debate

With this addendum I want to reflect on the experience from taping the second edition of Breaking Bread (BB2) covered in the above transcript of 3may13 KVMR commentary.  The experience of that telecast both confirmed and expanded on the asymmetry of information and tactics used by the Left and Right in today’s gun control debate.

Conservatives’ Use of ‘Nanny State’

'The time has come, the Walrus said, to talk of many things, of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings ...', L Carroll

George Rebane

Conservatives continue their idiotic practice of characterizing the encroaching leviathan of big government as the ‘nanny state’.  There is nothing nannyish about such a state, it is simply a government on its way to autocracy, in this case a collectivist autocracy.  To characterize such a government as a warm, competent, caring, and loving nanny who always has the best interest of her kiddies in mind is a brutal lie that continues to misinform the already woefully misinformed in the land.  Take a look at the picture of Mary Bloomberg Poppins on the cover of the formerly astute National Review.

A more accurate picture that needs to be conveyed for an increasingly authoritarian government is shown nearby, and even that is still off the mark.  I consider that the use of proper labels is extremely important because labels always invoke a collateral image with all of its semantics in the mind of the reader.  The Left must be smiling from ear-to-ear every time they see the Right lambast the leviathan as a caring nanny.

Illegal, or worse, undocumented immigrant is another equally important label that is misused in the place of the correct ‘illegal alien’.  An undocumented immigrant invokes images of the hordes of poor from Europe lugging their suitcases and boxes tied with rope standing in line at Ellis Island – the perfect picture of ‘the wretched refuse of their teeming shores yearning to breathe free.’  The problem is that these people were on Ellis Island because they followed our immigration laws which made them party to a two-party contract on the way to citizenship.  Illegal aliens violated those same laws, and now seek special dispensation to side step them altogether and remain here under the most favorable terms, terms which are constantly misrepresented by the Left at every turn in the immigration reform debate.

Such is the propaganda of our public discourse – by being the first to mis/name the baby you are halfway home.