Rebane's Ruminations

Trolleyology and the Value of Human Lives

George Rebane

For decades we have seen those yellow diamond shaped signs in the back windows of cars admonishing us to ‘Drive Carefully, Baby Aboard’.  Years ago as a young father, I puzzled over the first such sign that I spied.  Its message was clear, ‘this car is transporting a human whose life is worth more than that of the run-of-mill human life, therefore extra effort should be made to preserve it’.  I recall that a moment’s reflection made me say to myself, no it ain’t.  A couple of thoughts later I concluded that in the larger scheme of things that baby’s life is worth less than the run-of-mill lives we all encounter in the daily round, including our own.

Most certainly that conclusion is true if we consider the baby’s ‘replacement value’ – you can make a new one in nine months – or its worth to society in the investment made, or the investment still required to civilize the little guy and educate him to productivity.

In my way of reasoning, I thought a more appropriate sign in the back window should read ‘Drive Carefully, A STEM Worker Aboard’, or ‘…, An Established Taxpayer Aboard’, or something similar.  It was clear to me that of all the other more demonstrably accomplished lives driving down a crowded freeway, the babies strapped into their car seats represented the least valuable expressions of humanity when viewed from the larger perspective of a community or society in general.

Thanksgiving 2013

George Rebane

Warmest greetings and wishes for a meaningful Thanksgiving to all RR readers from Jo Ann and me.  Norman Rockwell still says it the best for those of us who remember the 'golden years'.

Ruminations - 26nov13 (updated 29nov13)

George Rebane

The Next Big Lie.  Lies are the established communications staple of the Obama administration.  There is no longer even an attempt to give truth a fly-by.  The next big lie out of the WH will be that healthcare.gov has been fixed as promised when 30 November arrives.  They’ve walked back ‘fixed’ to some hokey level of usability like 80%.  Not a chance since more than half of the system’s back end has yet to be designed.  For a succinct “reader’s guide to the coming Affordable Care Act traumas”, get a snoot full here. 

The WSJ’s annual CEO Council was held the other day.  It featured luminaries like President Obama, Gov Chris Christie, Sec Commerce Penny Pritzker, Sec Treas Jacob Lew, Rep Paul Ryan, and the ever popular Larry Summers.  Bottom line, “the disconnect between what’s going on in Washington and what corporate leaders are asking for was as sharp as ever.”  (details here)  But the most inane ‘recommendation’ that came out of the conference was, “Business and government should build better bridges to each other – rather than viewing each other as adversaries – to advocate for free enterprise and shared prosperity.”  We get this bovine scat while both ends of the ideological spectrum still agree that such “better bridges” already exist, and all that the rest of us get out of it is corruption and crony capitalism.

The temporary agreement with Iran has turned out to be the latest Obama foreign policy foible, and a “nuclear triumph” for the mullahs (details here).  Nuff said.

Socialism’s advance took it in the shorts in Switzerland.  There the voters overwhelmingly rejected a referendum on ‘pay equity’ that would have limited to 12:1 the pay of the highest-to-lowest workers.  It seems that the Swiss know that its passage would have beggared the country by choking off foreign investment and driving out their wealthy.  (‘What’s wrong with that?’ is the predictable question from the Left.)

Finally, the HHS is looking for new fields onto which to put its infamous stamp of failure.  HHS has defined bone marrow as an organ, and seeks to prohibit its harvesting and sale to people in dire need of such an infusion.  True to the socialist ideal, they believe that only government mediated altruistic donations should be allowed when it comes to organ transplants.  Today marrow extraction is a fast, non-invasive, and safe procedure.  Nevertheless there is a shortage, and 13,900 patients are standing in line while death approaches.  Even the notorious Ninth Circuit Court is not willing to go along with HHS on this one.  Funny liberal logic – a woman’s right to be in control of her body when it comes to killing her fetus is sacrosanct, but the rest of us don’t have the right to market our body parts when there is a willing donor and a willing recipient.

[update]  Think back, to the extent that you believe in instant injection of liquidity, it was Bush's TARP that brought us out of the recession in the spring of 2009.  No economist has found a shred of evidence that any of the subsequent Obama era ARRAs or QEs or Dodd-Frank or Obamacare have done anything to the economy except throw sand in the gears, and make our 'recovery' the laughing (crying?) stock of the world.  I was again reminded of this as I am reading Mauldin's Code Red, an essay on the world's economies and financial status.  More about that later, but it is interesting that the media have totally ignored that, and lapped up the intervening crap pumped out by the White House.

[29nov13 update]  CARB - those folks bringing California all the destruction and devastation of AB32 - are daily discovering the utterly stupid regulations to which their ineffective clean air act has given rise.  The latest concerns diesel engine filters that have caused big rigs to break down and even burst into flames (one incident caused a forest fire).  Instead of pulling the regulation, they are going to start holding hearings (more here and here).  In the meantime truckers are suing the agency and making plans to leave the state.  If these people at CARB didn't have government guns to enforce their idiotic prescriptions, we could put them into the proper institutions where such mental cases would receive appropriate care, and where they would never have to interact with the outside world again.

Crickets vindicate erroneous charges (addended & updated 3dec13)

“Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.”
Read more at http://allenbwest.com/2013/11/superb-video-reagan-vs-obama-social-economics-101/#6G7psfo6DLpBkIvb.99

“Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.”
Read more at http://allenbwest.com/2013/11/superb-video-reagan-vs-obama-social-economics-101/#6G7psfo6DLpBkIvb.99

“Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.”
Read more at http://allenbwest.com/2013/11/superb-video-reagan-vs-obama-social-economics-101/#6G7psfo6DLpBkIvb.99

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery. - Winston Churchill

George Rebane

Here is an exchange that did not take place in the pages of The Union.  On 7 November 2013 the newspaper published Ms Nancy Eubanks’ gratuitous attack on the Tea Party and former Sheriff Richard Mack who recently spoke in Nevada County.  The local media outlets covered the well-attended event sponsored by the Nevada County Republican Women Federated.  Ms Terry McLaughlin of the NCRWF immediately submitted a response to Ms Eubanks' article three separate times – McLaughlin’s 7nov13 letter was followed by a shorter letter and then one Other Voices piece on 18 November.  The Union has seen fit not to publish any of these nor any other communications that would serve to correct the record of the apparently untouchable Eubanks’ charges.  The Union’s policy vindicates Eubanks through silencing all answers.  As a public service, RR has now stepped into this breech.

See you there tonight! (updated)

[update]  We just go back at 11pm.  What a fantastic evening of musicianship and entertainment was put on by Paul and friends for an appreciative crowd of locals that filled the Nevada Theater.  Thank you Paul.

As our Republic unravels

George Rebane

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

•    The Senate’s ‘nuclear option’ has been exercised;
•    Obama continues to violate laws and the Constitution by rolling back more of Obamacare;
•    Progressives mandate and subsidize windfarms and then sue their operators when they kill birds;
•    Nevada City’s council goes off the rails (again) by refusing private monies to build Sugarloaf trail;
•    Local worthy Jim Firth’s attack of tea parties based on utter bullshit;
•    …

The list is endless, and the above is just a sprinkle across the broad spectrum of liberal policies, reasoning, and statement of values that measures our widening polarization.  As reported in ‘What Babies Teach Us About Ourselves’, to me and mine these acts continue to confirm that we really belong under two radically different political jurisdictions.  In a societal framework, they are not like us, and thank God we are not like them.

Across the broadcast, internet, and print media (save the lamestream), many commentators have weighed in on Reid and Schumer pulling the trigger on the Senate’s nuclear option to start doing away with supermajority requirements.  Tom Korologus in the 23nov13 WSJ summed it up best, “Welcome to the Senate that has now formally completed the polarization of the two parties.  Uncharted waters ahead.”  Fallout to come.

Doing Obama’s bidding, Reid and Schumer yesterday loosened the same rabid dogs of democracy that have demonstrated over the centuries that man cannot rule himself when he attempts collectivized governance.  Our Founders thought differently and launched the Great Experiment, with tools that inspired us to hold back history for the better part of two centuries.

Liberal insanity takes untold forms.  Many of these manifest themselves in the environmental movement that involves alternate sources of energy, including wind energy as a prime source.  Duke Energy, operator of windfarms, has been sued by environists for birds killed by their wind turbines.  Duke has agreed to settle for a reported $1M, but it will not end there.  This is just a burble in the ‘sue and settle’ campaign that the environists have been waging for years at taxpayers’ expense – yes, we pay for their legal fees when they take government agencies, utilities, and corporations to court, no matter how insane or frivolous their efforts.  All this is done to the cheers of the nation’s innumerate progressives who understand neither the technology nor economics involved.

The Nevada City and 49er Rotary Clubs have obtained private monies to enable Nevada County citizens to enjoy Sugarloaf, one of the regions landmarks that is currently the exclusive habitat of coyotes and bums.  The proposed trail to the top that would let residents and tourists enjoy the scenic vistas was nixed by a majority of the NC city council on the basis of what passes for progressive reasoning.  Even had they accepted the gift, the remainder of the bureaucratic labyrinth to be penetrated – CEQA, Caltrans, …, ‘sue and settle’ – would still be formidable.  But a glimmer of sanity from that notoriously dysfunctional council would have been a local breath of fresh air.  (I am a member of the NC Rotary Club.)

Having started with federal diabolics, I conclude with an evaluation of Grass Valley resident Mr Jim Firth’s ‘In the footsteps of history …’ (paywalled in the 23nov13 The Union).  This obvious leftwinger sorely disparages the American tea party movement through the tried-and-true method of painting them as “rightwing extremists” in colors totally foreign to the tea parties (of which I am a member), and then proceeding to lambast his own characterizations which are utter bullshit.  (I have expanded on this in ‘The Views of a Rightwing "Extremist" – Indictment without Evidence’, more here and here.)  That The Union welcomes such obvious tripe in its op-ed pages is testimony to the state of our fifth estate and worthy of separate examination.

Please excuse this therapeutic lament.

What Babies Teach Us About Ourselves

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 22 November 2013.]

Where do our deep seated feelings about right and wrong come from?  As we cooperate with each other or defect, when did we learn to do that?  Were we taught by our parents, our village, or schools in these matters?  Or did we arrive in the world with a goodly part of it already embedded in our double helix?

Psychologists and behaviorists have been seeking answers to these questions for a long time under the well-known rubric of ‘nature or nurture’.  A focus of such studies for some years has been at the Infant Cognition Center at Yale University.  In a series of experiments with infants, some as young as three months, several intriguing and heartening answers have come forth.  In sum, the babies are finally telling us something about the ‘software’ of morality and ethics with which they and we arrive in the world.

There we learn that we have an innate sense of observed right and wrong behavior, and we immediately prefer to associate with critters who behave correctly.  The babies’ preference for associating with beings that do the right thing is overwhelming – over 85% in the experiments conducted at Yale by investigators like Dr Karen Wynn.  Wynn and her colleagues have published extensively their findings, and the popular media - CBS (’60 Minutes’) and PBS (‘The Human Spark’ with Alan Alda) - have broadcast entertaining and informative programs on this work.

Structuring the BIG LIE

'O, what a tangled web we weave when we practice to decieve ...',  Sir Walter Scott

George Rebane

Yesterday’s House Oversight Committee hearing into Obamacare’s disastrous launch revealed documented evidence that months ago low level code jockeys already told their bosses healthcare.gov would not fly, and could not be made to fly by 1 October 2013 (Fox News).  These bosses then confirmed the conclusions and communicated the warnings up the organizational ladder.  And from previous testimony by people like Henry Chao and Todd Park, it is clear that this process continued over the summer months up the bureaucratic organizational ladder until it mysteriously stopped before reaching the White House.

In his latest ‘duck and cover’ from responsibility (actually culpability), we recall that our Chief Community Organizer just told us that he isn’t “so stupid” as to have allowed the crash and burn to take place had he known the sad state of affairs at healthcare.com.

People – even those in Congress and on Fox News - have trouble connecting the dots here, so let me offer my humble services.  To start, we are here dealing with three distinct messages – two of them voiced and a matter of record, and the third staring us in the face but mysteriously absent.  And no one yet appears smart enough to put their finger on it, and ask the HHS’s Sebelius to explain the obvious.  OK, here are the messages –

1.    ‘Omigosh, the damn thing won’t work and is beyond repair in the time remaining.  If we continue on the present launch schedule the administration will be embarrassed and millions of Americans will be hurt.  I am telling my boss about this.’
2.    ‘All is well, the launch is a go.’ (based on ‘Oh shit! the damn thing won’t work and is beyond repair in the time remaining.  If we continue on the present launch schedule the White House along with Democrats in Congress and across the country will be embarrassed, and millions of Americans will be hurt.  But I’m not going to tell anyone, and hope that no one discovers it was me who screwed up and didn’t pass the word.’)
3.    ‘Well hell, would you look at that!  Whouda thought?  What a mess!  But hey, it wasn’t my fault or the fault of anyone in the White House.  Nobody told us.’  

We now know that Message1 was passed up the line from contractors to the HHS bosses who so testified.  And, of course, we’ve been hearing Message3 from the White House and the Democrats for the last six weeks.  But we know for certain that if Message3 is not Obamacare's BIG LIE continued, then someone near (or at) Secretary Sebelius had to relay Message2.

So what do you think are the chances that Message2 actually went through someone’s head just below the level of the White House as claimed by Jay Carney?  Who at HHS was so stupid as to let things proceed to this level of denial, and think that no one would subsequently connect the dots at a much greater political cost to Obama and the Dems?

Well students, get out your pencils and a clean sheet of paper.  This is a multiple choice test with two possible answers – A: Obama lied, and B: Obama lied and is still lying.  Think hard now.

BB6 is in the can – A conversation with Sheriff Keith Royal

George Rebane

Tonight we recorded the sixth edition of Breaking Bread at the NCTV studios.  BB6 may be the last program recorded at the former Grass Valley Group facility since the station is undergoing a transition which involves moving to new quarters for the new year.  I hosted the program in which we introduced a new one-on-one format – a conversation between the host and invited guest.

The topics that I sought to explore Sheriff Royal’s views on were the militarization of the nation’s police and sheriffs, the constitutional sheriffs movement, and Nevada County’s preparedness for large scale emergencies.  The hour went well, we both felt comfortable in the conversational format, and all topics received appropriate coverage.

BB6 was hastily arranged and scheduled for tonight.  Producers Terri Hicklin and Patty Smith wanted to get in one last edition of BB before NCTV had to start disassembling its studio this Friday.   After some thought, I volunteered to do the program due to the apparent unavailability of any of the other hosts.  The program airings will be announced on the NCTV website, and it will be archived there for later viewing on demand.  The working title of BB6 is ‘A Conversation With Nevada County Sheriff Keith Royal’.  I will post the link when it's available.

Many thanks to the crew of all volunteers who showed up on a rainy evening to at least provide a professional effort behind the cameras.  These folks make community television possible.

Ruminations - 19nov13 (updated)

“Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.”  Groucho Marx

George Rebane

It turns out that the Census Bureau faked the 2012 pre-election jobs report.  That is reported by zerohedge.com, Armstrong & Getty on AM650, and the National Review.  The list of underhanded things that Team Obama did to continue the Big Lie from Pennsylvania Avenue has grown to remarkable proportions, and the end is nowhere in sight.  (H/T to several correspondents)

“Misdiagnoses are among the most common, costly and harmful medical errors.  But they are also some of the most preventable.”  (18nov13 WSJ)  Medical mistakes kill way north of 100K people a year in the US.  That is like a jumbo jet crashing every day with all aboard killed.  Were that to happen, there would be a national outrage with continuing demonstrations in front of the FAA headquarters and major aircraft manufacturers' facilities.  Yet we the sheeple are so cowed by the sanctimonious medical industry that we make not a peep.  How long will it be until we demand that physicians start using the available cloud-based AI diagnostic tools instead of flying blind with their fingers up their sunless orifices?  And with the atrocity of Obamacare looming over the land, the ongoing development of more capable ‘AI docs’ should be a national priority.

Bill Gates is guest editing the Dec2013 issue of Wired on how to fix the world.  And Bill Clinton is there to lend a hand.  Check out the thoughts of a thoughtful man after having so much that he can’t spend it all.  (more here)

Desperation time at The Union?  Did you see that its Other Voices column now contains infomercials with product descriptions and contact information included.  I was a bit taken aback by today’s piece on life coaching by Chuck Petch in the op-ed section.  (paywalled here)

Control and estimation theory join with algorithmics to illustrate the art of the possible with ‘athletic quadrotors’ in this amazing TED video.  The presenter’s narrative is accurate, succinct, informative, and entertaining as the miniature helicopters do their stuff in front of a slack-jawed and obviously beguiled audience.  I was entranced watching the video demonstration because it took me back to the same kind of work that I did as a DoD contractor, although the platforms that I worked on were designed for a more deadly kind of athleticism against Soviet submarines, surface ships, and aircraft.  But take it from me, working in control/estimation algorithmics is one of the most challenging, fulfilling, and enjoyable jobs in engineering (and they even pay you good money!).  In my ken, only AI research is its equal.  And when you embed AI into such algorithms, well, it doesn’t get better than that.  Enjoy the video.

[update] Just got this link to Congressman Tom McClintock's House floor speech - 'The Toll of Obamacare' - delivered today.  It summarizes well his remarks delivered last Saturday at the Nevada County Tea Party fundraiser.

Another Obama foreign policy masterpiece?  Afghanistan’s Karzai, that staunch tower of ethics and rectitude, has announced that he has gotten agreement for an ‘apology for mistakes made’ from our president.  He demanded this as a pre-condition for letting American troops remain in the country after December 2014 – and do what, continue ‘nation building’?  All this is reported with a straight face in the 19nov13 WSJ.  I sincerely hope that this is nothing but bluster from Kabul.  No one has spelled out what are America’s continuing interests in Afghanistan, yet we seem to act as if these remain significant as we field a constant shower of camel crap that is flung at us by the country’s corrupt government and warlords who have grown rich from the “hundreds of billions” we have spent in the country during the last decade.  Absent persuasive interests, what say we let the Taliban come back, cut their heads off, publicly whip their over-educated women, and put the country back on a solid footing of pre-medieval sharia law?  Since UAVs can now operate from carriers (here), we can then drone their terror-exporting butts as/when necessary, which is what we are doing now anyway.

Supervisor Weston to Manage County’s Unfunded Liabilities (updated 16nov13)

George Rebane

The 14nov13 Union announced that Supervisor Hank Weston will seek a 3rd term for the county’s fourth district.  Among the reasons for his re-election Mr Weston cited his “budgetary experience” that will now be necessary to manage the county’s response to its unfunded liabilities that are coming home to roost.  In particular CalPERS has informed Nevada County that it needs to pay $1.3M per year for the next five years to satisfy minimum contribution requirements for its retirement account maintained for country employees.

Seven years ago SESF analyzed the county’s unfunded liabilities which it found to total over $48M as of 2006.  These findings were published in ‘TR0712-1: Unfunded Liabilities – Our Community’s Fiscal Time Bombs’, and presented to the Board of Supervisors by Michael McDaniel, the report’s lead author.  As I recall, the supervisors politely thanked us for our labors, and promptly dismissed the matter from further consideration.  At the time the county had almost $20M in reserve, and all was well.

This was in the heady days of 2007 when CalPERS was reaping double digit appreciations on its portfolio, the real estate market was on its way to the moon, and everyone was drinking the kool-aid.  Our warnings of the unsustainable performance of such investments were lost in those days of wine and roses.  I think we were judged to be out of our depth; after all county finances, especially public employee pension funding, are a complex matter not accessible to everyone.

The point of this missive is that the liabilities are now starting to come due, with the operational word being ‘starting’.  The $6M+ demanded by CalPERS is just the beginning of what the county must start making up if it is not to default on its pension commitments.  CalPERS has demonstrated itself to have a deficit in both accounting and investments when it comes to astute portfolio management.  Way back when, it was content in calculating its future fiscal health by predicting 7.5% annual returns.  The market has delivered these since the depth of the Great Recession, yet now CalPERS is going to the counties and displaying its newly discovered sore finger.

The point here is that Nevada County’s plans should include contingency responses to when CalPERS discovers more shortfalls in its ability to make ever increasing pension payments to the state’s growing cohort of public employee retirees (many from jurisdictions in or teetering on the edge of bankruptcy).  I fear that the bills to our county will quickly amount to tens of millions as the markets react to the inevitable ‘tapering’ of the Fed’s $85B/month quantitative easing.  Yellen is inheriting Bernanke’s folly, and she will own it if she does not start slowing down the gratuitous printing of dollars that is now going on at a trillion dollar annual rate.  This reputed monetary dove will be the one to take away the punchbowl, you can bet on it.  And then she will be known as the Fed’s Black Swan.

I wish Hank Weston godspeed in his re-election, and then in his confrontation with the All-devouring Beast.

[16nov13 update]  Then there are those who believe that Yellen will launch her chairmanship by really turning on the money nozzles.  This will doubly guarantee that there will be no soft landing for the economy, but it sure would blow the lid off the stock markets for a bit.

But it's really our own RL 'Bob' Crabb who in the 16nov13 Union nails the essence of how the present, shown above, pilfers from the future.

Another Conservative Alternative to Obamacare (updated 15nov13)

George Rebane

As Obamacare is disintegrating on its launch pad (here, here, and here), Republicans should do more than just stand by roasting marshmallows in the flames – so argue Ramesh Ponnuru and Yuval Levin in ‘A Conservative Alternative to Obamacare’.  While several alternative and mandate-free approaches have been proposed by Republicans to overhaul America’s government mangled healthcare markets, none have gotten the traction that is now possible with the disintegration of Obamacare.  

RR has long argued for a more than less market-oriented solution to making healthcare available for all Americans.  Ponnuru and Levin make the case that “the Democrats are now making things worse doesn't mean the public wants to keep that prior system, or that Republicans should.”  The previous system was not a free-market, wild west version of capitalism.  “On the contrary: (America’s healthcare) has consisted chiefly of massive and inefficient entitlements that threaten to bankrupt the nation; the lopsided tax treatment of employer-provided coverage that creates incentives for waste and overspending; and an underdeveloped individual market struggling to fill the gaps.”

The Ponnuru/Levin plan rests on “a flat and universal tax benefit for coverage. … People who have pre-existing conditions when the new rules take effect would be able to buy coverage through subsidized, high-risk pools.”  Please read their article for more detail.

The remaining argument, still acceptable to the daily diminishing number of true believers, is that Obamacare is the only game in town to replace a system that worked well for 85% of Americans.  That simply is not the case, and is just one of the more significant bamboozles in a legion of lies that continue to blanket every piece of the cynically named Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.  Ponnuru and Levin conclude that “defenders of ObamaCare are using the absence of a Republican alternative to suggest that their law is the only answer to the grave problems of American health care and that without it millions of Americans would continue to lack access to coverage. That argument is their final trump card. It is time for Republicans to take it away.”

[Addendum]  Did you catch the ongoing desperate attempt by our Chief Community Organizer to back pedal (and back peddle) his infamous ‘if you like it, you can keep it’ promise?  Now he says that he’ll allow people to keep the existing healthcare policies that they like.  The problems with this knee-jerk act of desperation are numerous, including how the insurance companies can respond, having spent months/years rejiggling their plans to make them Obamacare-compliant and getting them approved by the states’ insurance commissions.  For openers our former professor of constitutional law still has no clue about what the Constitution says on the Executive’s ability to peremptorily change laws passed by the Legislative Branch.  The man still behaves as if he were some tinpot martinet in a banana republic, making, changing, and retracting laws as his political whims dictate.  More here.

[15nov13 update]  Washington, D.C. – Congressman Tom McClintock (R-CA) today delivered the following remarks on the House floor:

Obamacare and The Rule of Law
November 15, 2013

Mr. Speaker:

            Yesterday, we heard yet another empty promise from the President: that by fiat he can delay provisions of law under Obamacare that have already cost a staggering FIVE MILLION Americans their health insurance.

            Notice that he didn’t say the law has changed.   He simply said that he will ignore the law, and he invites health insurers to do the same.

            This is a constitutional abomination.  We live in a nation of laws and not of men.  The principle Constitutional responsibility of the President is to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.  

            If a law is a bad one, we change that law.  We don’t ignore it.

            As a practical matter, the President’s announcement has no effect.  Since the law hasn’t changed, the criminal and civil liability that a health insurer would incur for disobeying it hasn’t changed either.

            The President’s announcement cruelly gives people false hope while severely damages the fundamental concept that separates democracy from despotism: the rule of law.

Ruminations - 12nov13

George Rebane

Now the world, including the dyed-in-the-wool econut chorus, should know about the ‘greening of ethanol’, things that the rest of us (those who paid attention and knew arithmetic) have known for years.  The left leaning Associated Press no less has released a long expose – ‘The Secret Dirty Cost of Obama’s Green Power Push’ - on the total impact of the government’s ethanol diktat, and it ain’t pretty.  How long will it take us to peel off the bull crap from the rest of state mandated green initiatives that don’t work, pollute, trample property rights, reduce liberties, and mangle the country’s economy?

But California still leads in the double butt stupid race to implement environmentally insignificant policies promoting the state’s economic ruin and reducing our quality of life.  From the recently released study by the Energy Department’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, there is no way under the laws of this universe that California will even get close to its 2050 mandated emissions levels.  The draconian regulations and ordnances receiving progressives' public genuflects will make a hill of beans difference in our environment.  The laboratory’s message to Governor Moonbeam and the California Air Resources Board is ‘dream on!’.  The WSJ’s report on this concludes with some food for thought –

Meantime, California is spending billions every year on electric car and rooftop solar subsidies, energy efficiency upgrades and alternative fuel development to achieve its pie-in-the-sky emissions goal. And don't forget the Governor's $100 billion bullet train, which during its first few decades will increase emissions. All of which underscores how modern environmental policies are less about solving problems than they are about indulging faith-based dreams.

Great Veterans Day concert at the GV Vets Hall yesterday afternoon.  Lots of good musical talent and patriotic music, enough to bring a tear to me eye.  We enjoyed it with friends and Jo Ann’s sister who is visiting from SoCal.  Would like to see more in the audience from the 20-40 age group.  Most of those government educated youngsters don’t have a clue about how much they owe to those who served.

Those who have borne the battle

George Rebane

On this Veterans Day 2013 my thoughts again turn to our wounded warriors, and how we care for those who have borne the battle at the behest of our government.  How we neglect these battered heroes and their families after they are returned from the front has now become a common refrain on our media.  Where are the rest who are outraged that our government first distributes taxpayer funds to illegal aliens, through the countless corporate and public welfare programs, and even entitlements before it seeks to salve the suffering of those who manned the ramparts for us?  Why are their needs not on top of the list of obligations that we the people fulfill, not only as an expression of our inexpressible gratitude, but also as our most fundamental moral obligation for what they have sacrificed for us?

Pay attention to the politics, it’s only your job

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 8 November 2013.]

All of us swim in social circles where we meet people who look down at anything that has an obvious political tinge to it.  They consider being informed about or getting involved in politics as somehow sullying their higher sensibilities – they are above such base concerns.  These individuals will also let you know that while politics is a necessary undertaking, its place as an occupation is actually somewhere between pimping for prostitutes and rendering horse carcasses.  Others hold absolutely no value in politics, seeing it as the preventable disease of governance that could be cured with Rodney King’s simple ‘Why can’t we all just get along?’

Obamacare – all is well (updated 8nov13)

George Rebane

For some years now RR has been critical, well more than critical, of Obamacare.  All for good reason since everything promised by Team Obama has turned out to be a blatant lie about the law and its impact on America.  Moreover, as again recently pointed out in ‘Obamacare – legis horriblis’, the Pelosi Principle continues to deliver new bombshells about the diktat on a regular basis.

Today we seek what some call ‘balance’ about the Affordable Care Act.  Most Americans live in an information light condition, and are exposed primarily to the lamestream when it comes to news and commentary.  As a result, they have a totally different perception of what has been and what is.  For example, this morning on National Propaganda Radio’s Morning Edition we heard a segment on Obamacare.  Listening to it one comes out believing everything is running hot, true, and normal with the legislation, there are no problems, and things are going to be really swell with our healthcare as the years roll by.  In fact, this piece of ingenious legislation is not only going to pay for itself, it’s even going reduce our deficits.  What’s not to like?

Hear it for yourself - ‘How the Affordable Care Act Pays for Insurance Subsidies’.  (To play audio, select the title of the piece from the playlist if it is populated.  Otherwise the transcript of the broadcast is available here.)

(And in the event that you need a quick rinse for your intellectual palate after listening to NPR, try ‘Edie Sundby’s Choice’.)

[8nov13 update]  Again Ramirez says it well.

 

Ruminations – 5nov13 (updated 6nov13)

George Rebane

‘Does Environmentalism Cause Amnesia?’ asks WSJ's Bret Stephens in a short piece reprising climate change worries that go back over two centuries.  The latest effluent scheduled to be pumped out by the IPCC is that the world will again face falling crop yields and hunger.  What has been happening is exactly the opposite.  Based on my own experience and observations, the answer to Stephens’ question is that environmentalism is one of these pseudo-scientific, feel good pursuits that attract people with poor study habits who are a combination of pre-amnesic, information stunted, and intellectually lazy (and/or lame).  Their ability to think clearly is inversely proportional to the size of the consensual groups in which they find themselves.

The new Common Core curriculum, rapidly becoming endemic across the land, is guaranteed to produce millions more of such high intellects if we sample some math questions it poses to first graders (here).  It is not clear which foreign enemy bent on America's destruction was able to gain entry into the development of this new national government schools curriculum, but that such penetration was successfully effected can no longer be in doubt.  Mind boggling!

SCOTUS has federalism in the dock this week.  Big important case on states’ rights that has evolved from chemicals ineffectively used in a love triangle attack.  Recall that federalism is ‘a political system in which several states or regions defer some powers, e.g. in foreign affairs, to a central government while retaining a limited measure of self-government.’  Our Constitution is all about defining the boundary between these powers, and was written to specifically limit the powers of central government and prevent it from encroaching on states’ rights.  However, with the rise of collectivism in America during the last century, this battle has now come to involve treaties in which America participates, or may do so in the future.  Can such treaties transcend the constitutional powers of our own federal government to dictate what states can and cannot do?  Very important stuff astutely ignored by the liberal lamestream.  (more here)

Finally, in the current and glorious advent of the perniciously titled Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, a correspondent draws a telling parallel that undoubtedly explains the law’s travails, both ongoing and yet to come.  He recalls that the former House speaker’s embarrassing prescience likened the new national healthcare law to a stool sample, thereby correctly identifying its now obvious prime ingredient, when she advised one and all that "We have to pass it, to find out what’s in it."

[6nov13 update]  Bill de Blasio will be NYC's new mayor.  He won by playing the race card with the city's ignorant through repeating the lie that the city's tremendously successful 'stop, question, frisk' policy discriminated against the blacks.  The truth is exactly the opposite (here and here) but not accessible to NYC's informationally light.  Since baseline mortality and morbidity rates are a matter of record, we will see how the lamestream reports and credits those stats after SQF is halted by de Blasio.  The bet by everyone from the city's white demogauges to its black leaders (a la Sharpton) is that black-on-black deaths neither count nor matter in the greater scheme of divvying power and money when Tammany reestablishes historical cronyism. 

Great Divide – ‘America 3.0’

My contention is that good men (not bad men) consistently acting upon that position would act as cruelly and unjustly as the greatest tyrants. They might in some respects act even worse. Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good, will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be 'cured' against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.  From C.S. Lewis's essay anthology "God in the Dock" (1948)

George Rebane

The decentralized America of 2040 may be a country of 71 states with populations of 8 million and under.  This is the vision presented by James Bennett and Michael Lotus in their just released America 3.0.  (Thanks and H/T to RR reader who sent me a copy of this book.)  Their essay is based on the same reasons I have outlined over the years which call for a new structure for America’s governance.  Actually, it is not so much a new structure, but one more akin to what de Tocqueville observed during his visit here in the 1830s.

Bennett and Lotus acknowledge the deep ideological divisions that have arisen since the Great Society years, and see a transformation that seeks to retain America as a single sovereign nation-state that molds itself into regions of smaller states.  Each of these states will be more uniform in their political outlook, social philosophy, cultural values, and perhaps even ethnicities.  The fundamental truth that will out in such a reconfiguration is that people like to live among people who share their ideologies, cultural values, and mores.

The America of 2040 will come about through its successful transit of a number of financial crises that arise for all the reasons RR readers are familiar.  These give impetus for Congress to launch massive new legislative initiatives that reform national tax policy and the functions of the federal government.  Most of what the feds now do will be relegated back to the states.  The watchword for success will be the re-establishment of local control down to the city and county levels.