Rebane's Ruminations

Berkheimer and Bernie – birds of a feather (updated)

George Rebane

Last Saturday’s (28may16) newspapers offered up dollops of leftwing wisdom from the great and the small, both issuing from what to me and mine has always been a Neverland of cogent thought.  From Hiroshima (pronounced Hiroshma, not Hero-shiima) we heard once more the words of our leader pleading for an Earth that never was and never will be (more here), ignoring the fundamental tenets of human character that have driven geo-political history since man made marks on stone – a sentiment also recently immortalized by Mr Rodney King.

But what really caught my eye was Mr Darrell Berkheimer’s ‘A myth about government socialism’ in the 28may16 Union.  We have visited with Mr Berkheimer before (here), but his most recent offering left me a conundrum.  Is the man abysmally ignorant about the workings of governments, socio-economic systems, private industry, fundamentals of economics, and the basics of human behavior, or is he a sinister cynic writing for an audience with such hoped for deficits?  In his favor, I adduce a case for the former.

Memorial Day - 30 May 2016

George Rebane

We again gratefully contemplate the terrible price paid by those who gave their all so that America may remain the land of opportunity and the home of the free.  The words and photo from Memorial Day - 30 May 2011 still apply.

Alexander Rossi wins Indy 500 (updated 30may16)

George Rebane

Alexander Rossi of Nevada City won the Indianapolis classic as a rookie entry starting in the 11^th position in the middle of the pack.  It was an unbelievably tactical race that brought Rossi across the finish line first while literally running on vapors that he and his team husbanded in the last few laps of the race.  Home town boy makes good never delivered a better story than our Alexander Rossi standing milk-drenched in the Brick Yard’s Winner’s Circle.  I’m looking forward to cheering him on as he rides down Broad Street to take his well-earned congratulations from all Nevada County residents.

I was introduced to Alexander about ten years ago by his grandfather, my friend, and fellow Rotarian Don Fultz.  Early in his career as a budding race car driver Alexander talked to our Rotary Club several times describing the travails that he was going through to become a world class Formula One driver.  During those visits I had a chance to chat with him more than once about his progress and the support our Rotary was contributing.  He was an impressive young man then, and the years have demonstrated what dedication and training will do.  His racing career has now the imprimatur of having his likeness join the 99 previous greats who adorn the giant silver Borg-Warner trophy.  And we in these foothills will always be proud to point to him as being one of us, but not as proud as is Grandpa Don smiling down on his grandson.

[30may16 update]  Alexander Rossi's career to date has not been a straight line of acknowledged achievements to his Indy victory.  In fact, he has of late been on the back burner as a "reserve driver" on other racing teams.  To me this aspect of his journey makes his dedication and perseverance an even more significant part of the young man's character.  He didn't arrive in the winner's circle on a bed of roses; here is more from Associated Press. 

Sustainability and Single Payer Revealed

George Rebane

Sustainability is the established watchword cum battle cry of 21^st century world transforming progressives everywhere.  Its most identifiable provenance was the 1992 UN conference which gave us the globalists’ plan for the future – Agenda 21.  Today sustainability is continually evoked as the raison d’etre for stultifying public policies that constrict our activities and take our properties.  However, any concerted attempt to discover a coherent meaning of sustainability yields definitions that are literally unusable in any serious exchanges between thinking people (e.g. see dictionary.com).  In what follows I intend to set the matter straight so that well-meaning, intelligent RR readers may understand and use the notion of sustainability in reasoned discussions.  In this context and as a Lucky Strike extra I present some newly, albeit belatedly, discovered information on the performance of single-payer healthcare systems that have become the holy grail of America’s ideology driven Left.

The ‘Blessings’ of the Ferguson Effect (updated 27may16)

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 25 May 2016.]

Amid this two-year election season we have ignored the alarming rise in crime rates across the nation.  Violent crime in big cities has begun rocketing upward over the last couple of years since the August 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO.  The shooting of Brown was then amplified by attention drawn to the deaths of other black men at the hands of police during the following months.  This gave rise to the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement that focused its ire on the resurrection of ‘proactive policing’ which has been widely connected with the dramatic drop in crime rates over the last twenty years.

Proactive policing included the traditional tactics of police stopping to question young people gathered on street corners at 2AM in high crime neighborhoods where drug trafficking was rampant.  In cities like New York proactive policing applied the ‘Broken Windows’ theory that markedly improved a community’s self-respect and reduced crime.  It also involved the practice of ‘stop, question, and frisk’ of individuals the cop on the beat considered suspicious.  While these encounters seldom advanced to the ‘frisk’ stage, the anti-police activists shortened the label to ‘stop and frisk’, and accused police of its widespread and gratuitous practice in black neighborhoods.  

After Ferguson, President Obama launched a direct and politicized attack on America’s police, instructing his Department of Justice to conduct several investigations of law enforcement agencies which were pre-judged guilty until proven innocent.  The message quickly got across to outfits like Black Lives Matter that held numerous demonstrations and urged blacks to confront the police whenever there was an officer involved activity in their community.  Consequently, police departments and individual officers also got the message – ‘if you can let it go, then then let it go.’ – and proactive policing became a thing of the past.

As a result the Ferguson Effect now correlates perfectly with the jump in crime rates to a degree that FBI Director James Comey has recently come out twice citing the alarming statistics.  For example, “Homicides increased 9% in the largest 63 cities in the first quarter of 2016; nonfatal shootings were up 21%, according to a Major Cities Chiefs Association survey. Those increases come on top of last year’s 17% rise in homicides in the 56 biggest U.S. cities, with 10 heavily black cities showing murder spikes above 60%.”, and “homicides in Chicago are up 95%, according to the police department.” (more here)

Instead of sharing in the concern for the safety of urban Americans and instructing its Justice Department to work with police to halt this resurgence, Obama attacked Director Comey, accusing him of “cherry picking the data” and pursuing a “political agenda”.  Through his press secretary Josh Earnest, the president has made the issue one of race and class warfare as blacks continue to overwhelmingly die at each other’s hands in mounting numbers.

Why a black president would want to sacrifice other blacks in this election year might be a puzzle if it weren’t so easy to connect many of the dots.  Regardless of the impact on their health, safety, wages, and education, the African-American voters have never been able to sort out the effect of Democrat policies on their welfare, and have instead listened to their politicians’ talk and ignored their walk.  By ostracizing Comey, today Obama is casting the bureau as an anti-black, anti-Democrat political organization and therefore preparing his constituents for the possibly damning Comey Vote on Hillary’s classified emails scandal, while fanning the embers of class-war by telling all African-Americans that they still live under Jim Crow laws from which only the Democrats can free them.  And more blacks shooting other blacks is the perfect argument for castrating the Second Amendment.  So about today’s resurgent crime wave, what’s not to like?

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

[Addendum]  Ms Heather MacDonald, the author of the above referenced WSJ piece, also wrote an edited version on the topic for the April 2016 Imprimis published by Hillsdale College where she gave an extended talk on “the danger of the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement”.  In her forthcoming book War on Cops Ms MacDonald documents the continued tragedy of our progressive elites using black-on-black killings to serve as grist for their ongoing socio-political agenda.  I believe that keeping a segment of America’s population purposely ignorant as a compliant voting block while ignoring the gratuitous killings in their communities is evil pure and simple.  And that this has been going for decades in overwhelmingly Democrat controlled cities is literally beyond the generally accepted meaning of comprehension.

[27may16 upadate]  Additionally corroborating the above report, this week in NYC its “progressive city council, which this week repudiated the ‘broken windows’ policing that has contributed so much to making Gotham safe. … On Wednesday the councilors decriminalized so-called quality-of-life offenses such as littering, drinking or urinating in public and loitering in parks after dark. The package of new laws downgrades such misdemeanor citations to civil summonses so scofflaws will no longer have to appear in court or pay hefty fines.” (more here)  I recall what happened in the People’s Republic of Santa Monica when its city council gave a similar nod to its vagrants, homeless, and just plain bums.  Every bad statistic climbed, including the number of boarded up stores and closed restaurants in one of the most iconic and fabled locales in the world.  Then they reversed themselves and things got back to normal.  Such reports remind us again that, except for CA liberals, in general they are not stupid; it’s just that liberals so often have bad luck when they try to think.

 

Sandbox - 23may16

[What can I say?  See the last 'Ruminations'.  gjr]

Ruminations – 23may16 (updated 27may16)

George Rebane

Yesterday we returned from a couple of weeks in Europe with friends visiting Czech Republic, Austria, Slovakia, and Hungary.  Somewhere I picked up massive cold augmented by the Hungarian Hack that I brought home on a miserable return from Budapest to SFO in three draining hops.  Air travel (we traveled first and biz class) has lost all of its glory and glamour, and for some years now has been Greyhound with wings.  I’ll have more to say in upcoming posts what we saw in the capitals and country sides of those countries.

An example of the power of unions to put a business on its knees was evident in our last leg from O’Hare to SFO on AA.  It seems that the co-pilot spilled hot coffee all over his right hand seat and then refused to fly until they replaced the cushion with a dry one.  What happened over the next two hours is too painful to recount in detail.  The captain was helpless and kept feeding the fuming passengers pabulum for two hours while we were parked at the gate; he mainly asked that we wouldn’t take it out on the cabin crew.  Finally people who would miss their SFO connections started exiting the plane (leaving their luggage behind) as AA mechanics were desperately searching for a spare 737 cushion at one the world’s largest airports.  A painfully obese mechanic kept bringing cushions that for one reason or another weren’t exactly kosher, and had a hell of time fitting into the cockpit in his attempt to try them out in situ.  Long story short, we arrived in SFO 2.5 hours late, and then there was a mix-up in getting our bags to the terminal – don’t ask.  Finally, acknowledging the concerns of the sumbich who didn’t want to sit on a plastic bag, the first class seats in the plane were as old as the airframe and all sat out.  It felt like sitting in a chair whose front legs were two inches shorter than the back ones.  And there’s more …

NPR reported this morning that Sacramento will expand Medicaid coverage to illegal aliens in 35 more counties to that “more Californians can receive healthcare.”  It appears that butt stupid liberal thought has been picking up steam in our absence.  When was the last time that you could illegally enter Mexico and then be referred to as being Mexicans by the Mexican government?

Europeans are so frustrated with their governments that populism is now rampant – witness yesterday’s Austrian election.  The ‘Socialist dream’ of that continent has foundered by every measureable (more later) with their unemployable populations burgeoning while the producers are told that taxes and regulations will be increased to more evenly divide what’s left.  Young people, dismally ignorant and with no visible prospects, are wandering around the Schengen countries supposedly looking for work or bigger handouts.  Meanwhile our lamestream continues to promote the National Lie that everything there is hunky-dory and we need to be more like them.  What you see in the capitals is not what you see in the countryside.

Finally, apologies for letting the last sandbox continue for so long.  My cold, connectivity, and a demanding cruise schedule left the happy hour as the only slack in the day, and I didn’t think anyone would dun me for setting properly setting my priorities.

[24may16 update]  Heard on NPR this morning that TSA security administrator Kelly Hogan was “removed” from his job due to long security lines across the nation and especially at O’Hare where we witnessed them last Saturday.  The interview with SecHSA Jah Johnson this morning was the usual mealy mouthed cover up of gross incompetence.  The firing was doubly embarrassing because Hogan had received over $90K of bonuses for outstanding performance over the last year when in fact none was in evidence.  This again confirms that there is literally NOTHING that government does well, and most certainly not better than what private (non-corporatist) industry can do.  Of course none of this makes no never mind to our big government liberal readers.  (more here)

[25may16 update]  Socialist thugs rioted at a Trump rally last night in Albuquerque in the attempt to stop the candidate from speaking.  Waving banners like “We’ve heard enough”, throwing stones and burning objects at police, the leftwing crowd put on what has become a typical response across the nation to speakers they oppose either on or off campuses.  As reported by Associated Press (here) their biggest burr was Trump’s initiatives to stop the illegal entry across our borders and succor illegal aliens in our midst.  Evaluating her walk vs talk, even New Mexico’s Republican (sic) governor Susana Martinez supports easy access to our land and largesse by illegals.  Now we will again hear that the Left really does support free speech.

And regarding that great socialist idea of a high minimum wage, a correspondent sends this corporate decision from MacDonald's as a response to hiring humans at such butt stupid wages.  The question stands - are the socialist elites evil or just stupid like their constituents?

[26may16 update] Mexicans protesting at Trump rally in California.  This photograph from the 26may16 WSJ puts into sharp focus the real agenda of those who oppose the construction and maintenance of secure borders for America.

[27may16 update]  For joy, in education today’s “most important news is that voucher students show ‘statistically significant’ improvement in math and reading test scores.”  The lying Left will continue to tell its low-info constituents that no such thing is possible - government-designated, union-operated schools are just as good or better than any alternatives, and can be improved even more by pouring in more money. (more here)

 

Sandbox - 14may16

[Time for a new sandbox for the weekend. The old one required too much scrolling to get to the most recent stuff. Anybody willing to give any odds on the Comey Vote. Several of you are so sure that Hillary will pull it off that it seems you're willing to bet the ranch on it. I'm just wondering what kind of odds are all those sure-shots willing to give, or are we doomed to receive only repeats of their staid old verbiage? GJR]

Sandbox - 7may2016

[Administrivia - I will be 'out of the sandbox' so to speak for the next week or so where connectivity may be a mite iffy.  I trust that everyone will behave themselves accordingly ;-)  gjr]

TechTest2016 Survivors’ Breakfast

George Rebane

Last week we celebrated the tenth anniversary of TechTest at its traditional Survivors’ Breakfast held each spring at Tofanelli’s in Grass Valley.  TechTest is a four-hour merit scholarship examination, sponsored by the Sierra Economics and Science Foundation, used to award cash prizes to Nevada County seniors headed for STEM careers.  The awards are based solely on the examinees’ test scores.  Qualified juniors are invited to take the test, usually given in March, for practice.  More information is available on www.sesfoundation.org where you can also examine copies of all past exams.

TechTest is administered and scored under the supervision of its academic committee which in the past was chaired by Mr John McDaniel, former award-winning physics teacher at Nevada Union High School.  Last year Mr McDaniel left teaching for a career in software engineering, and the administration of the test this year was assumed by the Nevada Union Joint High School District under the leadership of Superintendent Dr Louise Johnson.  The NUJHD scholarship chairman, Ms Barbara Ross, is the new TT academic chair.  The photo collage is from the breakfast showing the three high scorers who attended (several had conflicts in taking other tests and visiting college open houses).  All attendees received their coveted TT Survivors t-shirts.

Several years back SESF was asked to also start TechTestJr for eighth graders.  This year marks TTJr’s fourth year.  It will be given on 19 May at the Telestream facility.  Telestream is one of the community sponsors of the TechTests.  Plans are afoot to develop yet an earlier version of TTJr for students in the early grades.   Mr David Pistone, SESF board member, is the developer of TTJr and coordinates its administration with the various participating middle schools.  (My role has been as the author and SESF coordinator of TechTest, and I also conduct the January/February TT seminars which test takers may attend before tackling the test itself.)

The students’ response to SESF’s annual merit scholarship tests over the years has been heartening, and all of us involved with this project to promote young people’s interest in STEM careers are grateful to our county’s schools and teachers for preparing their ‘elite to compete’.

Comey willing, we’ll have The Donald vs Hillary

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 4 May 2016.  See also notice of another upcoming KVMR community affairs broadcast.]

Last night in Indiana Trump got more than 53% of the Republican vote, again handily beating Cruz and Kasich both of whom have ended their campaigns.  But on the Democrat side Queen Hillary got broadsided by Comrade Bernie by what in elections is called a landslide – 53% to 47%.  Going forward to the Democrat machine controlled convention, socialist Sanders’ victory will continue as the least prickly burr under Clinton’s blanket.  With Trump’s win it is almost certain that The Donald will be running against Hillary this November.  I’ll cover the ‘almost certain’ part later.

The nomination of Trump in Cleveland will be historic in that the Republicans will then place their first rogue candidate on the ballot.  A nominee seen as a flamboyant businessman with a very large ego whose campaign was from the beginning considered a comedic fluke.  Yet less than a year later Trump has ended the presidential ambitions of 17 capable competitors, of whom all but two are experienced elected politicians.  And he did it by breaking every rule about how one should run a national campaign.  Now if the past is any indication, he will continue his run in a manner not yet seen in American politics.  We all can expect a riveting road to November.

Today the Sanders/Trump supporters demonstrate that a good fraction of Americans believe their federal government is broken and cannot be repaired with the usual changing of the guard.  Each candidate prescribes a very different regimen to make things right, and in that their strident populist messages confirm that America is severely, if not terminally, divided into two irreconcilable socio-political cohorts.

But to win, Trump will have to overcome an entrenched demographic that has given the Democrats an electoral college handicap for almost two generations. Since Democrats outnumber Republicans in our large welfare-laden and mismanaged cities, Trump will have to win over the lion’s share of the so-called independents.  And his only tool for doing that is the one he shares with Bernie – the promise that some form of trade isolationism will bring back or create new jobs.  But neither candidate has revealed how they would invoke such a magical spell on the land.  Therefore, so long as Hillary can stay on the ticket, her pivot toward the center and promise of running the country as Obama 3.0 should then put her in the White House.

All this analysis is remarkable in that, according to the polls, Democrats know that Hillary has always been a scheming liar and incompetent at every real project she has undertaken.  But her ineptness, corruptions, and scandals are a matter of record, already accepted, and now forgotten.  The remaining Damocles sword that still hangs over her head is the Comey Vote.  And you can bet the ranch that Trump will do everything he can to goad the FBI director to cast that vote as early as possible, even as the bureau continues its investigation of Clinton’s mishandling of classified materials.

If Comey delivers already established evidence to the Dept of Justice calling for Hillary’s indictment, she will instantly be dead meat as a candidate; both Trump and Sanders will see to that, regardless of what the DoJ then will do.  Even Obama’s anticipated pardon will not help her.  And if Comey somehow concludes that there is not enough evidence to indict her, then I foresee a national scandal fed by the inevitable FBI leaks and mass resignations.  There will definitely be street protests against what millions will see as irrefutable proof of Washington corrupt and broken.

But what if Comey capitulates, surrenders his reputation as a straight shooter, and just keeps his lips sealed as we head to November?  Then I believe it’s anyone’s guess as to how effective will be Trump’s campaign invective that will paint Hillary as part and parcel of a demonstrably dysfunctional federal government which she as president will have no choice but to maintain its stone walls and continue business as usual.

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

[Notice]  KVMR News Director Paul Emery and I had an extended conversation with Nevada County Sheriff Keith Royal about Measure W, the upcoming voter initiative that will define permitted medical marijuana grows in the county.  KVMR will broadcast this conversation on 5 May 2016 at 6PM.  See also previous RR posts on Measure W.

Ruminations – 3may16 (updated)

Not the village constable.  There are men of evil mind, who would make of everything a crime, and not because of passion, but just naturally.  They condemn everybody, some for what they have done, and others for what they may do. ...  Gracian #109

George Rebane

It was 13 years ago today that we moved into our current home.  The evening before a light snow started falling and we went to bed worried about the two Japanese maples which frame our front entrance.  As today, the trees had already leafed and we weren’t sure how much snow load their branches could stand.  I got up early, looked out the window to see a much heavier snow falling.  We both jumped out of bed, dressed, and rushed to our ‘new’ house over snow covered streets.  We got there in time; the leafed branches of the specimen trees were full of snow and bent to the ground with a few already broken, but we did save the Japanese maples.

Foreign affairs analyst, Robert D. Kaplan (The Post-Imperial Moment, 2016) is the latest to recognize the sweep of ‘great divides’ across the globe as people demand space (lebensraum) to practice their own cultures and celebrate their own ethnicities within existing sovereign nation-states.  Kaplan writes, “The upshot is a maelstrom of national and subnational groups in violent competition.  And so, geopolitics – the battle for space and power – now occurs within states as well as between them.”  These pages have been recording America’s progress toward a Great Divide as our progressive policies continue to call for the suppression of existing cultures and the celebration of arrived un-assimilating cultures.

Augmented reality and ‘layered manufacturing’ (3D printing) are galloping into the marketplace.  I’ve described my own experiences in designing AR systems for equipment maintenance.  Today with advanced materials and computing power, these two technologies are making game-changing inroads.  And alas, as covered in these pages, the impact on our workforce will not be pretty.  There is little in these advancements that enable the systemically unskilled (and the unskillable) to penetrate job markets.  Check out the articles in the current (6may16) Economist here and here.

The world of Uber is discovering ‘youth on demand’ jobs as reported in the 2may16 WSJ.  This appears to be an attempt to resurrect programs such as the California Youth Employment Agency of my youth.  Then a teen-ager would register with the CYEA, state what kind of jobs he was willing to do, and then get a phone call in the morning telling him the address of his employer du jour.  Home and small business owners would call the CYEA and tell them the work they needed done and what they were willing to pay.  Having arrived from Indiana in June 1957, through the CYEA I was able to work every day and earn good money doing so.  The CYEA acted as a clearing house that our state government of yore provided through its usual revenue sources, the young people and part-time employers paid nothing extra for the service.  Due to regulations, child-protective laws, litigiousness, and a generally progressive dumbass view of the world, such solutions for youth employment are no longer available.  Instead, we have a legion of dubious state sponsored ‘skills development programs’ for our unemployed young people.  But today no one can get a rent-a-kid for some chores around the house or shop.

In their Relic (2016) social scientists William Howell and Terry Moe argue that “America needs a prime minister” in the form of a yet more powerful president who can submit bills directly to Congress for an up/down vote with no modifications allowed.  This is required in the 21st century because “government is broken, and changing the type of people elected to Congress won’t make a difference.  Amending the Constitution will.”  Their real druthers are that Congress would elect a president similar to how European parliaments elect their countries’ prime ministers.  Then there would be cohesion between the legislative and executive organs of government.  Howell and Moe clearly discount our Founders’ desire to minimize the size and role of government in our lives when they gave us the constitutionally separated and often contending powers in government.

[update] Just got an email from our designated reader that the community’s low-life is now advising parents to be careful about their kids taking TechTest because I happen to be its author. Only the rabid left puts out such putrid politically inspired proscriptions.  Those primitives cannot separate one issue from another, whether here on the local level, in academe, or commerce.  If you don’t conform to their template of the perfect progressive, then you are also unqualified to perform any other function in society – everything you touch becomes tainted in their eyes.  Given the growing record of dismissals from universities, business, and government, our leftwing radicals are just coming into their stride.  In Red China, Cuba, Vietnam, and other totalitarian lands this kind of proscription has been successfully practiced for decades (and is currently enjoying a resurgence), which is why our socialists so fond of aping these policies.  When you cannot compete in the arena of ideas, this has always been the inevitable alternative.  And there are those who still say that it can’t happen in America.