Rebane's Ruminations

Sandbox - 30nov17

[The Christmas season is nigh - share some cheer and family plans on how the holidays will be spent.  And here is the new spirit of Christmas in OUR White House.  gjr]

Systemic Unemployment – now it kills (Addended)

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 29 November 2017.]

Longtime listeners to these commentaries are aware of the approaching Singularity – when super-intelligent machines match and then exceed human intelligence – and what is happening with jobs and employment in these pre-Singularity years.  As machines replace more and more humans in the workplace, and the fewer newly created jobs call for workers with skillsets that require higher intelligence to master, what we have been witnessing is the rise in systemic unemployment in America and other developed countries.  Today, the estimated number of Americans systemically unemployed ranges between 70 and 90 million.  These are people who cannot sell their labor for wages that will maintain their former quality of life.

A new and alarming symptom of this socio-economic disease is that we have started noticing “deaths of despair” among the class of workers who traditionally had excellent jobs and great prospects for improving their careers and lives.  According to two academics who first discovered this symptom about two years ago, the increasing mortality rates for working age whites “with low levels of education” have now been confirmed.  Nobel Prize-winning economist Angus Deaton and his fellow Princeton University professor and wife, Anne Case report that the death rates for these white workers have increased while the death rates for other demographic groups such as Hispanics and blacks continue to improve.  (more here)

The causes attributed to this sad state of affairs focus on the changing nature of America’s culture, a subject we have also covered.  Our educational system is broken in several important ways.  A most important one is that kids graduate from high school without any marketable skills along with a carefully instilled yet unrealistic self-image.  Workers in the 40 to 55 age groups have had either several jobs with no definite career direction, or a career that suddenly has disappeared from the job markets.  Drs Deaton and Case also point out that our family structures have weakened markedly with soaring divorce rates and fragile cohabitation relationships that provide little or no support to the dejected and desperately unemployed.  In short, what they call the “pillars of life” – work, family, and church – have crumbled for these white workers, whom we may consider as the early harbingers for what will only get worse as more people permanently lose their ability to earn living-quality wages.

As we may expect, the increasing mortality rate for this demographic has been impacted by terminal alcoholism, drug overdoses, and suicide.  To fight this growing epidemic that sooner or later will affect other demographic classes, social scientists, economists, politicians, and even some very rich business people have started saying that now may be the time to try some forms of guaranteed national income.  Two countries – Canada and Finland – have launched test programs to see how a sample of their un- and under-employed will fare with such unearned income. (more here and here)

In the meantime, our government, desperate to protect lower paying jobs, is upping the scrutiny of workers we admit through the H1-B visa program, designed to attract highly skilled people to fill the shortfall of American workers. (more here)  And regionally, smaller communities lacking large manufacturing and service industries were thought to be more insulated from technology-driven unemployment.  A recent study by MIT’s prestigious Media Lab throws water on that hope, and reports that smaller cities and towns, due to their small high-tech worker base, are even more susceptible to automation with the loss of lower level jobs such as cashiers and waiters.  This study (here) is corroborated by other universities and adds one more reason to why it is difficult to create new jobs in Nevada County.

The bottom line is that almost half of current occupations, or kinds of jobs, in the US are at “high risk” of being automated out of existence in the near future.  And please don’t accept, without large doses of evidence, the popular myth that new technologies create as many or more jobs than they eliminate.  With the advent of smart and soon super-intelligent machines, that is pure pabulum, dispensed only to keep politicians in office while they kick the systemic unemployment problem down the road.  In the meantime, keep your eye on the mortality rates of workers frustrated and without hope.

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]  Some more points to ponder during these pre-Singularity years.  One of the more reprehensible and destructive aspects of progressivism cum socialism has always been their generation of bad public policies that wind up killing jobs in the service of ‘social justice’.  As the progress of technology enables machines to replace more and more humans in the workplace, the Left continues to double that pain by eliminating even more lower level jobs (and thereby abet automation) through their horribly miscreant laws and regulations that mandate and constrain productive economic behavior.  In ‘Forget Robots: Bad Public Policies Could Be Bigger Job Killers’ Lauren Weber provides perspective for this phenomenon by citing some really eye-opening and relevant statistics.

And to show the cynical nationwide impact of such policies, consider that today there are 6,100,000 unfilled jobs in the US according to the Department of Labor.  (more here) These are jobs that Americans either refuse to do or, sadly, not enough of us are qualified to do.

Scattershots – 27nov17 (updated 29nov17)

George Rebane

Norm Sauer presents a more salutary summary of Trump’s tenure in office as a response to the unprecedented campaign of hate the Left has mounted against the president with programs such as ‘The Resistance’, Tom Steyer's 'Movement to Impeach', and Obama’s ‘Organizing for Action’ – a first for a former president who has launched an active program to derail the efforts of his successor.  Mr Sauer’s column – ‘Unprecedented adversity doesn’t derail Trump’ – appears in the 27nov17 Union and is also posted here.

Kudos to Union columnist and RR reader George Boardman whose regular Monday column also appeared today in the newspaper’s 27nov17 edition.  Entitled ‘Progressives destroying the Democratic Party I’ve known’, Mr Boardman laments what the progressives have done to the political party that used to espouse his more moderate liberal sentiments.  In reflecting on this shift, he writes about –

… thoughts (that) have occurred to me in recent years as the Democratic Party has moved farther away from the liberal tenets that are the foundation of my political beliefs. The so-called progressive movement has made my party almost unrecognizable.

… The big tent Democratic Party is becoming the party of elitists and aggrieved minority groups — however you want to define that term. The party's post Trump proposals look like they were written by the Sandernista wing. They apparently will be funded by taxing businesses out of existence.

Donald Trump’s developing deal with Russia and Iran re Syria does not appear to be too artful if reports to date are accurate.  Obama’s comprehensive incompetency in foreign affairs reached its nadir with his invitation to Putin to establish permanent Russian air and sea bases in Syria, achieving in less than a decade what the country’s czars and commissars were not able to accomplish over centuries.  Then he capped that catastrophe with an Iran deal that now let’s the world’s leading sponsor of ragheads quietly complete development of deliverable nuclear weapons while getting paid with billions in pallet loads of dollars FOB Tehran.  It now looks like our president will attempt to exit the Mideast by encouraging Putin and the mullahs to put an end to the Caliphate of ISIS, and then rewarding them with a legitimized Syrian dictatorship that extends Russia’s projection of power and completes Iran’s goal of Mideast hegemon from the Indian Ocean (Arabian Sea) to the Mediterranean.  Now I may be wrong, and Trump really has a subterfuge in mind that somehow drives Turkey – Iran’s competitor for hegemon - back into western arms as Erdogan works to deny Iraq as Teheran’s keystone in their long-sought arc of power.  Here is what the Council on Foreign Relations has to say about Mideast doings.

[29nov17 update]  Listen to the loudest silence of all.  On RR alone there have been hundreds, if not over a thousand, comments by the Left convicting members of Team Trump on totally unproven allegations of their colluding with Russia to throw the 2016 election.  From them there has not been one peep about the ONLY real evidence of a conspiracy with Russia that occurred with Hillary Clinton and the DNC commissioning Fusion GPS to pay Russian sources to generate a fake dossier on the alleged actions Donald Trump in order to weaken and/or destroy his campaign for the presidency.  To make matters worse, Obama’s FBI then joined in to use that bogus dossier in convincing the FISA court to enable them to launch an investigation of the Trump campaign for exactly the same purpose of which the Clinton campaign was already guilty.  You simply cannot make up this level of perfidy and hypocrisy.  The only thing that piles on to all this is the subsequent behavior of our leftwing lackies – both high and low - who have done everything possible to convict Team Trump for allegedly having thrown the 2016 election with some unknown and implausible aid from Moscow, when the ONLY proven aid went exactly in the opposite direction to torpedo Trump.  So, why the sound of silence about the only reality on Russian collusion cum conspiracy?

Sauer on Trump

[Norm Sauer, who submits his columns to be concurrently posted on RR, had his latest commentary – ‘Unprecedented adversity doesn’t derail Trump’ – published in the 27nov17 Union.  It appears below.  gjr]

Norm Sauer

Donald Trump has been our president for nearly a year. He has accomplished much despite unprecedented resistance undermining everything his administration is trying to accomplish.

The other day at a local market a woman confided her concern that some locals had outwardly expressed hatred for our president and such hatred concerned her. On reflection, people of "The Resistance" don't just hate President Trump, but loathe anyone who had voted not to be subject to the government swamp.

The influence of Obama's "Organizing For Action" urging resistance to impeachment has changed our society materially and not for the better.

Since Obama's presidency everything has become politicized, including the NFL, the national anthem, Hollywood celebrities, Halloween costumes, statues of historically prominent people, etc. We people have forgotten to never discuss race, religion or politics in polite company.

Also, political correctness, which is like walking on egg shells, abounds and ties in with those who claim to be victimized by others. For example, Bowe Bergdahl, a treasonous deserter who caused fellow soldiers to be maimed or killed, argues mental distress and gets no serious jail time. Tried by an officer of the military swamp who kowtowed to Obama's upside-down value system that Bergdahl served with "honor and distinction," and this traitor was worth the release of five high-value Taliban.

Non-judgmentalism has also crept into our society. The fact that we are so unwilling to draw a line in the sand and say "That's right" or "That's wrong" has mired our culture in degeneracy. For example, Kevin Spacey is revealed for sexually assaulting a minor (a crime), but mainstream media deflects by airing instead his coming out as gay (non-crime).

Meanwhile, the left desires to quash free speech. From campus protesters to the neo-fascist gang antifa, they are so afraid of discussing conservative principles, the Declaration of Independence and our Constitution they resort to rude disruption and/or violence to prevent airing such topics.

Besides these multiple cultural problems in our society, President Trump must contend with the non-businesslike government that surrounds him.

His executive orders are stayed by obscure judges in deep-blue states. Deep state employees in the State Department and other bureaucracies drag their feet in obeying their commander's orders. Senators and congress members the president confers with and strokes go their own way with indifference while no Democrat legislator will do anything but delay and resist.

Government dereliction of duty mounts as those who serve us have no memory of what is good government.

Despite no evidence, for over a year President Trump has been investigated for colluding with Russia to win the 2016 election. Meanwhile, the Obama/Clinton administration gave Russia 20 percent of our uranium resources, and the Clinton campaign illegally paid foreign agents for a phony Russian dossier on candidate Trump. Many try to understand how we now live in a country where a special counsel stacked with Democrat donors is charged with investigating Republicans for crimes of which the Democrats are likely guilty.

In spite of all, it is amazing what President Trump has accomplished. He has nixed the Paris Accords, decertified the Iran deal, pulled out of UNESCO, launched another major pipeline, enforced our borders, appointed good judges, and restored the rule of law.

By wielding his executive pen, President Trump removed many of Obama's onerous regulations crippling businesses and jobs. To date the American economy has soared. As Bloomberg reported on Oct. 13, consumer confidence has surged to a 13-year high, while our 4.2 percent jobless rate is the lowest since early 2001.

On Oct. 17, the Dow hit 23,000 for the first time wand it was the fifth 1,000-point milestone since Trump was elected. Gross domestic product (GDP) growth in the second and third quarters increased to just over 3 percent, a growth number declared impossible by mainstream economic pundits.

In foreign policy, the military is being restored, ISIS is severely crippled, and trade relations as well as strategic alliances are being reordered on an America-first basis. Respected by the Chinese, President Trump received red carpet treatment, five star hotel accommodations, and became the first foreign leader to dine in the Forbidden City since the founding of the People's Republic.

President Trump has done a lot of heavy lifting. He is a powerful personality who is seemingly tireless. He understands the art of the deal. If successes like we've seen continue, our country and our people will be better for his leadership.

My prayer is he succeeds so our country succeeds.

Sandbox - 25nov17

[Here's a short piece - 'The problem with liberalism: It has no limiting principles' - by Tim Jones that closely summarizes a lot of what RR has been promoting (H/T to correspondent).  Its appearance in the American Thinker again gives lie to the local liberal loonies who continue to maintain that the sentiments and observations appearing in these pages are the rantings of lone rightwing voices found only in these foothills.  My own thesis - that these loonies don't get out very much to find out what's happening in the world - has been proven true countless number of times over the lifetime of RR.  They really should expand their sources if they want to stop coming off as being somewhere between terminally cynical and simply silly.  gjr]

Our idiots write

[The letters from two local progressive worthies appeared in the 24nov17 Union.  They are published here as a part of the public service component of RR.  My commentaries on the liberal mind pale when compared to the real things.  You really can’t make this stuff up.  gjr]

Trump-Republican gun culture and gun violence

When will the 300 million Americans take a stand against these few hundred GOP House and Senate politicians who continue to block any meaningful gun control?

How many more children, students, family and friends have to die at the hands of guns?

A few hundred Republican politicians are holding the American population hostage to a NRA mandate. Are you going to take action only after your sons and daughters and loved ones lay buried six feet under the ground?

Ban weapons of war from our streets and throw the Republican politicians out of office in 2018.

Ron Lowe, Nevada City

 

Multiculturism is a beautiful thing

It's quite clear to me that those pressing for "non-sanctuary" status for Nevada County live in a bubble narrated by Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and other right-wing extremists.

I suggest that they broaden their horizons.

I know some of these folks and I know that they have no firsthand knowledge of the ambitions of immigrants. Said immigrants are keenly interested in participating fully in the American experience. Their biggest obstacles are bigoted attitudes regarding brown skins and foreign accents.

Multiculturalism is a beautiful thing. Get a passport and learn a little something for yourself.

The only agenda I see here is fear everything non-white, stoked by inexperience, ignorance, and bigotry.

Jon Peck, Grass Valley

 

A grim joke turned real

George Rebane

Two men sitting next to each other on an airliner started talking in glowing terms about their home towns.  One was regaling about the history and sights of Philadelphia and the other about the culture and cuisine of New Orleans.  The Philadelphia man was a bit skeptical, and asked his New Orleans fellow about the high crime rate in his city.  The New Orleans man pooh-poohed the reports and said they were overblown.  Finally they started talking about their jobs and Philadelphia asked New Orleans how he earned his living.  To which New Orleans enthusiastically replied, ‘Oh, I have a great job with good benefits.  I’m the tail-gunner on a Budweiser truck.’

This story has been making the rounds and drawing knowing chortles for some years now.  And then yesterday farce turned into fact with the front-page picture of the guy whose job really was tail-gunner in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.  Modern times creating new jobs.

Still Counting Our Blessings

George Rebane

As we again look forward to a family gathering at Casa Rebane, Jo Ann and I wish all of our readers and their families a most happy and meaningful Thanksgiving.  We live in a land still blessed.  Here are a couple of related readings appropriate for the holiday - 'The Desolate Wilderness', 'And the Fair Land'.

 

US Students’ PISA Ratings

George Rebane

The latest (2015) release of PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) scores are out, and the all important ratings for 15-year-olds in now a matter of record.  We have long mourned the performance deficits in our educational system and the resulting standing our students have on the international stage where America must compete more and more in the high tech areas of AI, genomics, and nanotechnology – the main sectors that will determine who will win and lose both economically and strategically in the coming pre-Singularity decade(s).  As the chart below shows, America will not be among the winners.

Our deplorable ratings have been covered here for years.  During that same interval progressivist pundits have been white-washing the bad news to our gullibles as nothing to worry about, that we’re doing OK in our super expensive, union-dominated public schools.  The latest spin comes from a team of researchers from the University of Chicago and University of California, San Diego.  These academic worthies have conducted some psych experiments with students and concluded that US kids are just as smart as anyone, but that they’re simply not trying hard enough (also note the inappropriate use of "about average" with the above data).  They ran a test with American and Chinese (first place) math students to see how performance could be improved with cash money prizes. (more here)

Well, guess what?  It turns out that the Chinese were not much affected since they were already on top, but US kids’ performance improved enough, that according to the pencil pushers, they would have placed 19^th instead of the (fasten seatbelts) dismal 36^th among the 65 nations taking the PISA tests.  So the conclusion is that our kids just don’t give a crap about doing well on such tests, and they would do much better if motivated by some kind of valuable prize.  (Recall, they’ve all grown up in world where everyone gets a trophy for just showing up and fogging a mirror.)  Now, 19^th in the world in math is still horrible for our country’s future, but that claimed improved score is specious on its face.  It assumed that the rest of the world’s scores were static; no other country’s kids were enticed with prizes.  A more rigorous test would have been to offer such rewards to all the test takers, and then see how much our students’ ranking would have improved.

So that no one misunderstands, American students’ gray matter is just as good as that between the ears of the rest of the world’s students – i.e. we are not genetically disadvantaged.  Where we have a huge deficit is in our carefully inculcated culture of learning – three generations of politically correct schooling and parenting – and a school system designed to keep the bottom quartile of college graduates gainfully employed and fully pensioned (with unfunded pension portfolios).

The cited study heralds that if we just motivate our students better, their performance can be improved from putrid to piss poor, and we can all stop worrying about our schools.  Well, that’s not the case in any of the three tested areas – science, reading, math – as the above data plot shows. 

In parting, we should remember two notables.  In Silicon Valley, where STEM jobs/skills dominate, more than half the workers are foreign born and educated.  And to show how good California’s schools and economy are in supplying and attracting born-in-state workers, only 18% of such students qualify for and/or accept jobs in the highly-touted high-tech mecca from which Sacramento draws the lion’s share of its tax revenues. (more here)

The second notable is the absolute bullpucky in PISA’s testing in the ‘science’ category.  They make it out as if science and math are somehow two separate and disjoint areas of learning, and therefore produce two separable skill sets.  This myth is designed to successfully fool those holding education degrees, and the general public which doesn’t have a clue.  The simple truth of the matter is that for at least the last half century there has been no science without math, and today ALL science is done with and within the language of mathematics.  (emphasis mine)

Sandbox - 20nov17

[Can anyone give a cogent definition of an 'inappropriate sexual advance' or 'sexual harassment' that is accepted by more than two people?  If not, then what are we really talking about? gjr]

Definitions Derby

Hold to nothing too violently.  Every fool stands convinced: and everyone convinced is a fool; and the faultier a man's judgment, the firmer his conviction; even with the proof on your side, it is well to make concession; for your reasons are known and your gentlemanliness is recognized; ... .  Gracian #183

George Rebane

In these pages we have sought, so far with limited success, to make our discussions and debates semantically crisper by using well-defined terms, and editing these definitions as necessary to capture the more nuanced meanings intended.  For example, many keyboards have been pounded over the years debating the definitions and the subsequent uses of socio-political labels such as socialist, communist, capitalist, liberal, progressive, conservative, conservetarian, etc.  The resulting definition derbies seem always to revolve around how attribute comprehensive should the labeled thing be before its assigned label is accepted.

Most people will accept a label such as ‘socialist’ or ‘conservative’ if the person, program, or policy can claim some sufficient number of attributes to unambiguously indicate its membership in the labeled class.  As an example, a policy can safely be called socialist if it expands state’s control of the means of production or mandates market-blind distribution of goods, wealth, etc.  Such common usage doesn’t call for implementing all (i.e. the comprehensive set) of the attributes of socialism.  In short, a useful discourse can be had if the parties either understand each other’s use of a label, or accept a working principle that doesn’t make ‘comprehensive’ the enemy of ‘sufficient’.

Debating definitions can also serve agendas, especially if you determine that your ideology must be sold carefully to broader audiences (e.g. your lightly-read constituencies).  In such cases you don’t want to reveal the complete picture too soon because your audience will then balk.  In these times such has been the case when collectivists of various shades want to hide behind easy-to-embrace social give-aways without going into the details of what it will take to sustain such transfer payments, or if sustainability is even possible.

So, when you believe in a future in which the state controls more than less of our property and behaviors, a future where markets are greatly curtailed or completely eliminated by state mandated distribution policies, then you don’t want to advertise that too early, even if you believe that such a system will ultimately provide the greatest good to the greatest number.  In that case you will decry the socialist label being prematurely attached to policies that are at best camouflaged in half-way houses on the road to socialism.  You then will argue in favor of the comprehensive definition, and dismiss any sufficient characterization of socialism that doesn’t check off all the dictionary items listed under socialism – ‘my policy doesn’t call for the elimination of all markets, therefore it is not socialism.’

With comprehensive definitions suppressing the merely sufficient, the debate’s progress will be successfully stifled until the destination is achieved at which time it will be revealed when all of its features or attributes are in place.  In such a forum, one is not allowed to identify himself, say, as a conservative unless he can check off somebody’s complete list of requirements for a conservative.  The same for a ‘free market’ which is then defined as one that is not allowed to have even a smidgen of regulations under which it must operate.  Or the obverse, mandating the ‘free market’ label when a massively regulated market still has a bit of wiggle room left.  It all depends on your agenda.

Quite often definitions are given in terms of an overarching concept that can stand on its own, but can be expanded to have one or more appended categorical components.  We recently ran into one such term – ‘collusion’ – that is much in the news these days, and forms the crux of an enlarged debate that is attended by participants all wearing ideologically colored glasses.  To illustrate, for the Right ‘collusion’ is seen simply as two or more parties proceeding in confidence to accomplish some end, be it innocent or evil.  The latter being the addended categorical component.  To pursue its current agenda, the Left can only view ‘collusion’ in terms of its categorical component of ‘evil’ firmly clamped to the overarching definition, with the attendant logic that colluding secretly or in confidence must always and necessarily be evil – no further proof is needed. (more here)

Unfortunately, such definition derbies often lap over to embrace countless faulty logics so prevalent in the comment streams of most blogs including RR’s.  The preceding semantical gymnastics are usually part of a drill that starts by characterizing everything in black/white or binary terms.  If you don’t explicitly condemn/embrace something, then the clear conclusion is that you must love/hate that same thing.  This is the most common and ham-brained way of rejecting the cautionary wisdom that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.  Related to this is the so-called ‘argument from ignorance’, so popular today, wherein one ‘asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false’.  Both appeal to the same logical fallacy.

In my experience, also confirmed in these pages, it is overwhelmingly the folks on the Left who don’t want to be explicit about what they actually believe (i.e. the tenets of their credo), and consequently in a debate they sail under false colors as long as possible, and then simply quit the field when such colors no longer serve.  I have yet to meet a person of the Right who, when asked, hesitates to declare the underlying tenet of his credo that gives basis for his argument on an issue.  Perhaps others have had the same experience.

(Readers may always examine my credo and glossary of terms so as to correct or confirm that my own apologetics conform to my previously stated beliefs.)

 

Scattershots – 15nov17 (update 18nov17)

George Rebane

Whistling past the jobs graveyard.  Here is an example of highly paid people who don’t know what they are talking about as they attempt to convince us that AI will create more jobs for humans than the number it will destroy.  An inane example assures us that “In retailing, store jobs lost to e-commerce have been replaced by jobs in fulfillment centers."  No they haven’t; the fulfillment center jobs don’t come close to matching the brick-and-mortar jobs lost.  The hoaksters also come up with some new jobs such as “genetic diversity officer”, “virtual store sherpa”, and “personal memory curator”.  Right.  And even if these materialized in sufficient numbers, how long before they too are snuffed by smart machines?  To sum things up, these pinheads reach way down where the sun don’t shine and pull out some brown numbers such as, “… about 19 million positions in the U.S. will be automated out of existence in the next 15 years, while employers create some 21 million new roles.”  You literally can’t make this stuff up.

Now for some real job news that tells you what kind of jobs are really out there now, and that our educational system doesn’t supply enough workers able to do the work.  Take a look at what is happening in New London/Groton area where Electric Boat is building the Navy’s new submarines.  The company says “it can’t locate enough qualified employees as higher military spending boosts orders”.  Putting this into context in proto-socialist Connecticut, we read, “The defense industry is one of the few bright spots in Connecticut’s still-sluggish economy, which hasn’t fully recovered all the jobs it lost during the recession. Connecticut’s unemployment rate is 4.6%, down from a peak of 9.2% in February 2011, though above the national figure of 4.1% last month.”  Whouda thunk that such a progressive state would have such a hard time climbing out of the Great Recession?  (more here)

Finally, in this vein we are heartened to know that AI will now become a bona fide religion in which a super-intelligent godhead is conceived by its worshippers.  This new god will no doubt give comfort to its believers who are jobless in ways we have yet to imagine.  And it’s all happening – wait for it – yes, in the Bay Area (where else?).  Now all of you think that I’m just putting you on to end this series of items with a little humor – au contraire mon ami!  Get a snootful of what a correspondent just sent me – ‘Ex-Google Executive Registers First Church of AI with IRS’.

[18nov17 update]  ‘Political parties serve and important, powerful purpose’ is the title of former supervisor and RR reader Todd Juvinall’s op-ed piece in the 18nov17 Union.  In his commentary Mr Juvinall highlights the powerful argument for why likeminded people join in political parties, and what happens when one party or the other becomes dominant.  In the old days we had parties seeking compromise as each realized that in the future the pendulum would swing the other way.  Today that is a bygone as demonstrated in Sacramento and Washington.  The only remaining alternatives are to steamroll, be steamrolled, or obstruct to achieve legislative stasis.  Juvinall posits the Great Divide question for a number of contentious Right/Left issues.  The commentary’s comment stream should be interesting reading.

‘Top general says he would resist “illegal” nuke order from Trump’ is one of the breathless headlines now making the rounds of the lamestream.  The statement was made at an international security conference by Gen John Hyten, commander of STRATCOM, and in charge of passing the president’s order down to lower commands that would actually launch/deliver the weapons.  There is nothing new in this statement by any US military officer.  What’s news is the news media’s ignorance of how the US military works.  As I’ve explained before in these pages, it is the responsibility of every commissioned officer to determine the legality of the orders he receives from his superiors, and carry them out only when he determines that they are legal.  But more importantly, to refuse their execution if the officer believes the order to be illegal.  Every since the Nurnberg war criminal trials in 1946, the defense of ‘I was just following orders.’ is no longer valid.  In the American military every officer puts his ass on the line when ordered to kill.  It’s his responsibility and duty to determine the legality of all orders before he executes them.  Gen Hyten was just relaying what has been SOP for over 60 years, and the media were exposing their butt stupidity as usual.

Sandbox - 15nov17

[Begrudgingly many are now acknowledging that Trump had a good trip to the Far East.  More people now understand that America has its own interests topmost, and considers it a good thing if everyone recognizes and admits that they too have their countries' interest come first.  It cuts out a lot of the bullshit when people meet to make deals on stuff like trade and national security.  Maybe the new paradigm will be named the Trumpian Schools of Diplomacy.  gjr]

Democratic Socialists of America (updated 14nov17)

Lord, give me coffee to change things I can change, wine to accept the things I cannot change, and bourbon to forget about the whole mess.

George Rebane

DSA candidates running openly as socialists under the Democrat banner now have 35 seats in the country’s state legislatures.  “Tuesday's election night gains for the group were fairly substantial. The Democratic Socialists picked up a historic 15 seats across the country, adding to the 20 members they already have in office.” (more here)  Make no mistake about the staging of their socialist ideology as nothing but communism resurgent.  The DSA got an enormous boost from socialist Bernie’s candidacy and the fact that he was screwed by the DNC – DSA’s membership surged sixfold over the last few years and it is the fastest growing political organization in the country, primarily abetted by the know-nothing Millennials who now poll around 50% saying they’d rather live under communism than capitalism.

This is part of the extreme or alt-left direction the Democrats have taken under Obama’s reign while telling all their Alinsky lie that it was everyone else that moved to the right while they stood still.  Their and the Democrats’ successes (e.g. Virginia and New Jersey) now have openly declared the true nature of the long-sought fundamental transformation.  The Republicans are abetting the whole movement by not being able to execute the promised legislative program that got them elected.  Formerly right-leaning news outfits like Fox are daily slanting their reports toward the Left’s interpretation of events and history.  For example, in recounting the murderous communist century (more here), they include the term ‘Red Scare’ without qualification describing the 1950s, allowing the history-innocent viewer to continue believing that such a post-WW2 fear of communism’s expansion was an unfounded hysteria against just another method of governance.  The times they are a’changin’, and a good part of that impetus is powered by Republican impotence.

Given California's unabashed embrace of socialism, how long will it be until the state's Democrats hoist their true colors?

[14nov17 update]  The contention by two of our community’s leading progressive intellectuals is that California has gone socialist because the “right wing has pushed their agenda so far off the scale that any socialist bullshit solution looks good in comparison.”  (Presuming, of course, that America’s leftwing has maintained its more reasonable proximity to the center.)  This conclusion in Mr Crabb’s 947am comment below is detailed in Mr Frisch’s 749am, which itemizes the sins of the state’s Republicans.  To wit (item numbers inserted) –

Republican are increasingly irrelevant in California politics because they embraced a political philosophy, largely driven by the national party, that is completely out of step with California residents and voters.

1. They demonized Hispanics when they were the rising demographic in the state and lost their support.
2. They demonized homosexuals when no one below the age of 40 gives a shit if someone is gay.
3. They attack women’s rights to health care when the vast majority of Californians support abortion.
4. They claim climate change is a hoax when the vast majority of Californians see it every day.
5. They stand up for guns when people are crying out to stop the mass killing; they are whores to the NRA.
6. In short, a political party cannot reject the majority of the people and expect to get a majority of the vote.

The above assertions are based on a worldview – which illustrates the two irreconcilable universes in which we live -  and lacks evidence to back up the individual assertions.

1. “demonized Hispanics” – now there is hyperbole for the pre-educated consumption. The only thing that remotely relates here is the Republicans’ support of secure borders and cessation of welfare programs targeting illegal aliens which makes California an inviting destination from their own dysfunctional and corrupt countries.  Republicans have long endorsed guest worker programs that have proven a win-win for alien Hispanics.
2. “demonized homosexuals” – Republicans sought to retain the label ‘marriage’ as identifying the traditional union between one man and one woman. There is no desire or attempt to deny them the legal and functional benefits provided by marriage.  However, Republicans, in general, do oppose public schools teaching that homosexual unions are normative in the affairs of Man; they have never been and are not now.  But that sentiment does not mean that Republicans seek to proscribe, let alone “demonize”, such unions, only that they should be openly recognized as one of several special kinds of socially acceptable relationships that humans have with one another.  (The Left has no problem endorsing Islam, globally and in America, which does not share such beliefs.)
3. Republicans “attack women’s rights to healthcare”, now really. That kind of patronizing pabulum is really a sad commentary on the demonstrated acumen of the Left’s constituency.  First, there is no “right” by women or any other class of people to be provided free healthcare.  Second, Republicans simply don’t want the government to get into the abortion business, since ‘women’s healthcare’ is the accepted dog whistle for the poor and prophylactically challenged to understand what party will give them a free pass from unintended parenthood.
4. Regarding climate change, the “vast majority of Californians see” what they have been propagandized to see by the media and leftwing public schools. There is no science behind their beliefs; most certainly no accessible science, since the issue has been presented to them as a non-falsifiable religion.
5. Yes, Republicans stand up for Second Amendment rights, and continue to pose the question never dealt with in the lamestream and by the local leftwing luminaries. Why pass new and more restrictive gun laws since there is no evidence that the present gun laws don’t work, because these have yet to be either enforced or shown relevant to preventing the “mass killings” which are the claimed objective for constructively denying private ownership of guns in America?  Enforce current laws and show how they are ineffective before seeking more laws that will be subsequently ignored by everyone (law enforcement and criminals) save the law-abiding.
6. Given the above, this statement should read, ‘a political party, successfully portrayed to reject the majority of wealth-recipient people, can expect to be rejected by these same people in the voting booth (for they know from whence comest their largesse).'

But in the final analysis, all of the above is nothing but a carefully crafted and executed smokescreen by the socialists as part of America’s fundamental transformation that calls for calving individual coastal states from the traditionally constitutional parts of the country through their own well-versed and historical means of fomenting class warfare, demonizing the ‘rich’ and redistributing wealth from the taxpayers to the permanently and growing aggrieved classes who willingly vote for politicians and programs promising free money.  It was ever thus.

As an example of a corollary concept, which the Democrat collectivists seek to convince the lightly read, we have their fundamental ideological tenet that tax rates do not affect economic behavior of the wealth producers – i.e. taxpaying workers, entrepreneurs, and businesses.  Giving lie to the Democrats’ contention “that marginal tax rates don’t matter to investment and growth” are the “IRS data (which) show an accelerating flight from high-tax states.”  More detailed data of such state-to-state income transfers is given in ‘The Great Progressive Tax Escape’ which highlights the huge dollar amounts now leaving ‘tax-the-rich’ states for more suitable fiscal climes.  This type of migration hurts most the middle classes of the afflicted states, since it is they, the left behind, whose taxes must subsequently be increased to make up the revenue losses.  Again, this bamboozle is one of the Left’s most successfully smoke-screened secrets.   

Once more, I want to show appreciation for the fervently argued positions of the Left in these pages.  RR welcomes such contention of ideas so as to give readers the opportunity to see for themselves how wide differences in public policies that result from their respective ideological antecedents.  The winners and losers in these debates are determined by the individual readers, who in the end must choose for themselves and their families in what kind of country they wish to live.

 

 

Sandbox - 11nov17

[Will Mueller follow all the Russian collusion clues, or just the ones in sync with his political preferences?  gjr]

Scattershots – 10nov17 (updated 11nov17)

George Rebane

That progressivism is an evil ideology, evil in the sense that it stifles wholesale liberty, individual freedoms, entrepreneurship, grass roots altruism (charity), … .  ‘Stifles’ is too weak of a notion by far if we are to hear the prescriptions for creating their new America (i.e. Obama’s “fundamental transformation”).  Longtime RR discussant Gregory Goodknight (see his 357pm comment in the 5nov17 Sandbox) has pointed us to a USA Today op-ed (here) that itemizes some prominent progressives’ views which will guarantee that the transformation they call for will be Orwellian.  What makes this doubly evil is that they, like terrorists driven by religious zeal, are also true believers who seek ends that justify any and all means to achieve them.

In 'Lifting the Steele Curtain', WJS columnist Kim Strassel lays out the case that ‘the Fusion GPS dossier was one of the dirtiest political tricks in U.S. history.”  The claim that it was not used prior to the 2016 election in the blatant attempt to affect the outcome is on its face a Democrat lie, the echoes of which are now the raison d’etre of the Mueller investigations.  The publicly released data is itself a damning indictment of the extents to which Team Hillary and the DNC went to ensure continuation of Obama’s legacy and the fundamental transformation that his policies grounded for our nation.  Now we watch whether any of this makes it into our badly mangled justice system.

A graphic presentation of information, like that for the developments in the Steele dossier affair above, would make the entire story clear and allow readers to visualize the important time-related events that form the basis for its claims.  Sadly, as most recently recounted here, that is not attempted by many reporters for a number of significant reasons starting with the paucity of readers who can interpret such graphs, and going all the way to the other side of similar deficits in the modern crop of journalists who lack not only the skills of graphic presentation of information, but the required critical thinking to formulate the proper content for such a product.  In the Steele dossier report, a simple timeline would have been very useful (Strassel has the skills to do this).  More useful and revelatory would be to present the sordid affair in terms of an inter-agent/process information exchange diagram (here is a bunch of examples), that makes explicit the communicating parties and when (in what order) who said what to whom.  Another graphic on how intelligence is gathered about Americans that includes the machinations described by Strassel can be found here.  But alas, all of that would really flummox today’s readers, hence we continue to present complex time and space related information in text paragraphs which most people, according to the Dept of Education, already have difficulty comprehending.

[11nov17 update]  Sexual harassment is the new national leitmotif now playing 24/7 on all media.  Most recently I hear that the breadth of people involved have added OprahW as victim (of relatives no less) and the Marysville police chief Aaron Easton as alleged sexual assaulter – no one is left out of this equal opportunity tsunami sweeping through America’s workplace.  Today harassment consultants are roaming corporation hallways ferreting out surreptitious means and methods that may make women feel unsafe (more here).  It seems to me that people need to know in their daily round who all has been naughty and nice.  I suggest that a national symbol be adopted which can be worn in plain sight by all of the ‘yet to be accused’, one that will give at least a smidgen of comfort when coming in contact with a newly met whose potentially sordid background is unknown.  My own preference is the familiar lapel ribbon loop, maybe a pure white one.  Then again, maybe not, since that has racial overtones to some.  OK, how about mauve, a color yet to identified with any worthy cause?  Yes, let's make it mauve ribbon loops – people have a right to know.

Something for Veterans' Day - a high school chorus singing our Star Spangled Banner, give it a listen.

An Innumerate SCOTUS, oh my!

A nation ignorant and free, that never was and never shall be.  Thomas Jefferson

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 8 November 2017.]

Numeracy is the name given to a set of math oriented skills that an educated lay person is supposed to have in order to hold a job, function as a householder, and understand the day’s news and issues.  Such skills include the ability to do arithmetic, understand graphs and charts, be able think logically, comprehend the basics of chance and risk, and so on.  For a numerate person, the mastery of these basic skills need not be at the level of a technician, but sufficient to comprehend today’s work-a-day world that will be ever more complex tomorrow.

Texas Massacre and Gun Control (updated 11nov17)

George Rebane

When some dysfunction or disaster occurs in our land, first look to government as the cause or guilty party until proven innocent.

In various forms this aphorism has been a Rebane Doctrine tenet in these pages and the recent Texas killings by a deranged military outcast is again the latest case in point.  The killer bought his semi-auto rifle and fifteen 30-round magazines very recently as he was planning the murder and mayhem within which he intended to shoot his in-laws.  Had the Air Force followed regulations in a timely manner, and placed his name in the national database intended to stop such people from arming themselves, he would not have had the firepower to kill 26 and wound 20 more in the brief interval of time it took.

After the attack was in progress it required the heroic actions of a neighbor to quickly take his own rifle, put himself in harm’s way, wound the killer, and bring an end to the carnage, thereby saving untold additional lives among worshiping congregants.  As is often the case, it was fortunate that a legally armed neighbor was there when seconds counted and the police were minutes away.  After being hit twice by the NRA-trained civilian, the killer fled only to be pursued until he crashed and took his own life, thereby ending the rampage.

The Left’s gun confiscatory cohorts predictably rolled into action across the land, again prescribing additional laws constructively rolling back the Second Amendment, laws that would only limit the legal possession and use of guns.  The actions of the armed neighbor are of the kind replicated in uncounted occasions daily during which legal guns prevent murder, mayhem, and lesser crimes, often before the acts are even attempted.  And this also in countless and unreported times where the perpetrator is deterred by the strong likelihood that he will be confronted by a legally armed citizen – intended victim or bystander.

While the news media (most certainly its lamestream component) overlooks or purposely ignores these occurrences, the NRA documents some of these in their monthly American Rifleman column titled ‘The Armed Citizen’.  For an additional commentary on this tragic incident that addresses the above, please read ‘A Plumber With a Rifle’.

[11nov17 update] ... and had the existing gun laws been enforced, the 'Current Gun Laws Should Have Made it Impossible for Texas to Buy Gun'.  Such considerations make no impact on those whose agenda includes a disarmed America, and can also serve as a litmus test for reliably identifying gun banners.

‘Communism’s Bloody Century’ (Addended)

George Rebane

The titled essay (here) by Princeton historian Dr Stephen Kotkin provides an important critical review of the system of governance under which many still live and many more actively promote.  Under autocratic governments socialism’s logical terminus has been communism, as the attempt to fix socialism’s indigenous failures is always through ratcheting up the reach of central planning and control.  In America today, socialism is taught in our schools as being high in the desiderata of alternatives for organizing societies.

Kotkin presents the historical record of how “in the 100 years since Lenin’s coup in Russia, the ideology devoted to abolishing markets and private property has left a long, murderous trail of destruction.”  Here Kotkin’s only detectable error is his gross underestimation of the length of that “murderous trail”.  Although he does cite China’s Great Leap Forward, which killed over 30 million, he abbreviates the total to the previously documented 65 million that were intentionally killed by communist governments (cf Death by Government, 1994), but fails to include Mao’s Cultural Revolution (1966–76) in which he killed an additional 100 – 120M Chinese citizens through starvation, working to death, and executions.  Every Chinese family today can cite the number of relatives they lost in that holocaust.  Progressive historians have either been silent about that loss of life or revised it drastically downward; some as low as only 1.5M dead.

For communism, as for socialism, capitalism has been the common enemy. “Karl Marx, who saw class struggle as the great engine of history, what he called feudalism would give way to capitalism, which would be replaced in turn by socialism and, finally, the distant utopia of communism.”  This anti-capitalist class struggle continues in full swing, promoted at all levels today in the West by progressives.

Marx & Engels in their 1848 Communist Manifesto declared that their theory “may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.”  Today the visible catchment for this is the longstanding UN Agenda 21 initiative (pdf here) which strives for that and related goals through a variety of constructive legal and regulatory stratagems.  (see also RR’s Agenda 21 category of commentaries.)  All of this is strongly denied by our Left, for which such a denial may serve as a reliable litmus test of their ideology.

The failure of communism wherever it has been tried has demonstrated “that to implement Marxist ideals is to betray them. Marx’s demand to ‘abolish private property’ was a clarion call to action—and an inexorable path to the creation of an oppressive, unchecked state.”  And during the post-WW2 era communist governments sprouted with an alarming regularity, most as the radical means to throw off the yoke of Western colonialism.  Recently, as the West successfully halted the spread of this disease, we have seen some communist countries attempt a rapprochement with heavily regulated forms of market economies.  This, according to Kotkin, was when a “few socialists began to recognize that there could be no freedom without markets and private property. When they made their peace with the existence of capitalism, hoping to regulate rather than to abolish it, they initially elicited denunciations as apostates. Over time, more socialists embraced the welfare state, or the market economy with redistribution. But the siren call to transcend capitalism persists among some on the left.”

Actually that siren call has now been institutionalized in the West’s education systems, entertainment industries, and, of course, the news media.  Today the Millennials, our "dumbest generation", lead in America’s renewed love of collectivism and communism (more here and here).  Almost two out of three Americans support Marx’s fundamental social paradigm – “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.”

Kotkin does not concern himself with (recognize?) the specific advances toward socialism cum communism that the Left has achieved, and continues to work toward in developed western countries.  He only alludes to it in his conclusion – “Communism’s bloody century has come to an end, and we can only celebrate its passing. But troubling aspects of its legacy endure.”  With major “redoubts” in Russia and China, Kotkin grudgingly accedes that the communist revolution is not yet “spent”.

Addendum – On this Bolshevik centenary I ran across another essay recounting the maelstrom of misery that communism has brought to the 20^th century.  The essay ‘100 Years of Communism – 100 Million Dead’ by David Satter is a bit more realistic in its body count and includes a few more salient details and important citations.  In it Satter writes -

“Although the Bolsheviks called for the abolition of private property, their real goal was spiritual: to translate Marxist- Leninist ideology into reality. For the first time, a state was created that was based explicitly on atheism and claimed infallibility. This was totally incompatible with Western civilization, which presumes the existence of a higher power over and above society and the state. … The Bolshevik coup had two consequences. In countries where communism came to hold sway, it hollowed out society’s moral core, degrading the individual and turning him into a cog in the machinery of the state. Communists committed murder on such a scale as to all but eliminate the value of life and to destroy the individual conscience in survivors.”

Importantly, Satter points out that as the influence of communism spread it also had a deeper and more insidious effect.  “In the West, communism inverted society’s understanding of the source of its values, creating political confusion that persists to this day.”  To see an illustration of this, we note the disastrous mentality that has settled in our universities which recalls the prelude to the Bolshevik revolution observed by Russian religious philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev, who 1909 wrote, “our educated youth cannot admit the independent significance of scholarship, philosophy, enlightenment and universities. To this day, they subordinate them to the interests of politics, parties, movements and circles.”  Does that have a familiar ring to it on 21^st century American campuses?

Sandbox - 5nov17

[I think I'll start this sandbox off with another confirmation of the 'two separate worlds' notion that abets our progress toward the Great Divide.  It is always good to climb up the taxonomical tree to see under which branch these individual dust-ups we dissect belong.  

A futile exchange on Bob Crabb’s blog (here).  Mr Crabb accuses Trump administration members of harboring ‘medieval beliefs’ and being “religious fundamentalists” and people who would lock up gays as “deviants”.  Challenging him to provide proof, Bob comes back instead with citations of policies the administration backs as prima facie evidence that such sentiments could only have come from people harboring the detailed medieval beliefs.  When I pointed out the difference between policies and the alleged belief systems, as his repartee I was accused of being just like the other medievals and religious fundamentalists, extremists who are “destroying this nation just as much as the extremists on the other side of the fence.”  In support, this drew in Messrs Frisch and Anderson, two of our local leftwing's intellectuals, who had similar problems setting up the dots and then correctly identifying their connectedness.  In the process I was again accused of being a “traitorous ideologue” who should find a home on other shores.  gjr] 

Scattershots – 1nov17 (updated 4nov17)

George Rebane

Single-payer sounds of silence.  Our lamestream has been forever silent on the blatant shortcomings and fake news about other countries’ SP healthcare systems, especially their posterchild, the UK’s National Health Service.  None of the laments published by the British press about NHS foibles and failures make it to this side of the pond, nor into the noggins of our Bernistas.  The recent clarion warnings appearing in newspapers like the Daily Telegraph are no exception.  We now learn that more and more of NHS death committees (unelected bureaucrats whose word on regional healthcare practices are final) have decided to “ban patients from surgery indefinitely”, thereby passing virtual death sentences for people who smoke or have BMIs considered too high.  In the UK (pop 65M) 3.8M are now waiting for NHS treatment, “a rise of more than 50% since 2012.  Longer ques reduce the ongoing cost of ‘free healthcare’, and the NHS has been running short of cash for decades to which it always responds with more funding and reduced services.  And the Brits still claim to sport one of the best SP systems going.  So how come none of our leftwing readers know any of this?

President Trump is being pilloried for criticizing Schumer’s and TeddyK’s former policy on vetting people coming to the US, since the NYC Islamist killer got his green card under that policy.  Trump is accused of being inconsistent and “politicizing” yesterday’s latest ISIS inspired massacre.  Why?  After a previous terror attack he was asked within hours about what new policies are needed to prevent such attacks.  He correctly responded that it was then too early to start making new policies on the fly.  Today’s journalist mini-minds cannot parse the difference between making new policy and a timely attribution of plausible cause from then existing policies – those kinds of nuances are continually missed and passed on by the agenda-driven or light-thinking pretty boys of our news media.  And politicization of the massacre is their most ludicrous charge – they maintain that should be a no-no.  The massacre itself was a political act, inspired by a political organization that can only be countered by America’s political will to do so.   In such acts, politics is simply the sum and substance of that which leads to ongoing attacks on our culture and way of life.  Again, for our journalists it is a topic intellectually too hard to reach.

Consider today's congressional grilling of the legal mouthpieces for Google, Facebook, and Twitter about complicity in making their social media available for Russia’s (and others’) manufacture of fake news for American consumption - example: Russia started a riot in front of a Texas mosque with cleverly timed 'news' pieces calling out opposing factions.  Their testimony made one thing perfectly clear – immediately stop getting your news from social media, especially FB.  And that goes double for those who can’t find Iran on the map, or still believe that Islam is merely a religion of peace.

[3nov17 update]  Today a federal agency releases its latest climate change propaganda blast, the government’s Climate Science Special Report.  Theoretical physicist Dr Steven Koonin (here and here, also a former member of Obama’s administration) calls it ‘A Deceptive New Report On Climate’.  The report misrepresents historical data and is “misleading in more than a few important places.”  The Left, of course, is hailing it as the final definitive confirmation of preventable man-made global warming.  The beat for complete command and control goes on.

Adios California!  This sad report on California halfway in a flushing toilet adds to the stack that most Californians who speak English are familiar with.  H/T to a reader.  The leftwing responses to such fact-filled accounts are always entertaining in the schadenfreude sense. 

Former DNC head Donna Brazile’s expose of the corruption in the Democratic Party, led by none other than longtime head corruptress Hillary Clinton, documents more than just the crap that has been going down in that organization along with their uncritical and unread voters.  For the umpteenth time it confirms that our lamestream media outlets are firmly in the ideological bag for America’s socialists.  It is hard to conceive that as of today the NYT, ABC, NBC, CBS, not one of them, have made a peep about the scandal.  As documented here for years, these guys are today nothing more than the resurrected clones of USSR’s Pravda.

[4nov17 update]  Ramirez's succinct commentary on our immigration policy viz this week's terrorist attack in NYC.