Rebane's Ruminations

Climate Reporting and Other Asymmetries

George Rebane

We have covered a lot of left/right asymmetric reporting on RR.  Calling such journalism ‘asymmetric’ perhaps substitutes a kinder word for what today has come to be called ‘fake news’.  One area that has institutionalized fake news is the way our lamestream media report the ‘science’ of climate change.  Starting with the leftwing leading lights like the New York Times, we are now getting reports from former reporters for the Gray Lady that the topics it covers has to support what is internally called ‘the narrative’.  All reporters are automatically tuned in to that editorial invisible hand, for which they then create the conforming copy to sustain the narrative.

The most recent, from the legion of examples, involves research by climate physicists Peter Cox, Mark Williamson, and Chris Huntington of Exeter University and the UK Center for Ecology and Hydrology.  Their work first and foremost admits to the uncertainties involved in predicting climate parameters such as temperature, but also significantly narrows the range of predicted temperature increase, most noticeably removing the possibility of the upper hysterical values of +4.5C and above from consideration and making increases greater than +3.4C highly improbable.  Their report has been buried by the lamestream climate science reporters.  WSJ’s Holman Jenkins reports more on this here.

The Cox et al study again confirms that the best kept secret about climate science is that this domain of knowledge has not progressed very much – “This 40-year lack of progress is no less embarrassing for being thoroughly unreported in the mainstream press.”  A litmus test for advancing science in any domain is that its continuously refined theoretical models generate results with ever smaller uncertainty bounds.  This has not happened for general circulation models used for long-range climate forecasting.  One reason is that the GCMs incorporate various specific climate and weather processes, most of which are poorly understood and therefore continue contributing to the error of the overall outputs.

As I have reported for years, the earth’s CO2 cycle remains, as confirmed in a recent commentary in the prestigious Nature, “an intractable problem”.  For example, no one can answer the basic question “By how much will Earth’s average surface temperature go up if the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is doubled?”  All we know is that the GCMs have gotten it wrong using historical data.  And no one in the lamestream mentions this because it doesn’t fit their narrative, which is to support ‘fundamentally transformative’ changes not only in public policies but also in the fundamental forms and structures of governance.  (I again refer you to Agenda21.)

But the skewed ideas about climate change is just one of many areas where the lamestream and their blindered consumers dispense a constant stream of errors and lies.  The stats on the political leanings of the nation’s broadcast, print, and online newsrooms has been extremely well documented in multiple studies.  And the claim that no matter a journalist’s personal ideology, their professional work product comes out fair and balanced.  Nobelist Kahneman and Tversky (q.v.) gave lie to this bullshit decades ago, and it is regularly reinforced by academics and students of decision-making like in Annie Duke’s recent Thinking in Bets (2018).  The bottom line here is that confirmation bias is and has been endemic in humans.  In simpler times this kind of thinking had a survival value; in more complex times it also leads to narrative-directed reporting.

One can reasonably argue that the impact of this asymmetry affects leftwingers much more than those of the Right.  The leftist reader’s confirmation bias is continuously supported by the lamestream, and a negligible fraction of these bother to find out what appears in the more conservative outlets (this is also confirmed by the displayed one-sided knowledge of RR’s leftwing commenters).  The rightwing readers have no choice but to be bathed in lamestream reporting because of its sheer preponderance.  These readers must go to relatively few outlets that have a different and usually more complete slant on what is going on.  Why more complete?  Because they also have to report on the output that forms the overwhelming coverage to which their own news consumers have been exposed.  The lamestream’s coverage clearly indicates that they have no such concerns about their audiences.

We conclude this observation with yet another current omission in the lamestream media about school shootings and gun control that does not fit the obligatory narrative.  I refer you to the study by Dr James Alan Fox, professor of criminology, law, and public policy at Northeastern University.  The study contradicts that school shootings are on the rise, and one of its main findings is that “the number of students killed in schools today is one-fourth what it was in the early 1990s – a somewhat surprising fact given the 24/7 media hysteria surrounding atrocities like Parkland.”  (more here)  In short, there is not an epidemic of school shootings when compared to historical data.  Now how many liberals would run across a report like that?

Ruminations – 27feb18 (updated 3mar18)

‘Remember, the government cannot give anything to anyone that they have not first taken away from someone else.’ Anonymous

George Rebane

The Democratic Party’s sharp move to the left during the last ten years is now visible to all save only the most politically myopic among us.  Daily dunnings of fellow Democrats (especially in California) for not being sufficiently progressive or socialistic are now common.  The dismal dumbth of Millennials has given impetus to the Left’s elites to strike now before life’s experiences start creating doubts in those numbed minds.  This ideological migration has caused the so-called middle to also move leftward. (more here)

California has already started implementing the Great Divide as our vanguard proto-socialist 'nation' that today exercises its newfound sovereignty by choosing which federal laws to follow.  According to the one-party legislature in Sacramento, there are more initiatives on the way to maintain the state’s headlong rush into collectivism.  It is has been clear for years that in Sacramento, the interests of Republicans and conservatives in general have not been represented, and today are being actively rolled back as fast as the state's bureaucracies can act.

Echoing RR, William McGurn in the 27feb18 WSJ writes in ‘Our Childish Gun Debate’ – “… the public debate about how Congress ought to respond to this latest mass shooting is guided by two broad principles. Dubious on their own, they are even more witless when combined. The first is the idea that the most important thing is to 'do something'. The second is that we ought to look to high-schoolers for the answer.”

Hillary and Barack are fawning acolytes of Saul Alinsky, the communist who is finally recognized as the father of America’s political schism that has now morphed into the country writhing with tectonic tenets like the Great Divide.

On the tenth anniversary of W.F. Buckley’s death (27 February 2008), we remember that he “wanted American institutions to affirm capitalism on the grounds that it created more wealth and higher civilization than any alternative. He wanted them to acknowledge that not all cultures were equal and that the Judeo-Christian creed was superior because it recognized that man was created in the image of God. That premise, he held, was the source of all liberty, justice and law.” (more here)

[update]  Snowstorm of the century or not is expected to start tomorrow night.  The meleagris manning our weather guessing agencies are all over the map.  As opposed to forecasting 2-4 ft of snow at 3,000 ft, we have others guessing that it will be only rain and slush.  I guess diversity has struck the meteorological industry, today you can select the forecast most commensurate with your needs.  I’m worried about how all this diversity will affect people’s decisions to attend Friday night’s MIM Amaral Center concert at the fairgrounds featuring the Sacramento Philharmonic (more here).

Speaking of weather predictions that feature probabilities from 0% to 100%, all of them effectively insane (in the technical sense) and changing daily, RR is willing to hold a seminar for the more mindful meleagris currently engaged in such futile pursuits - they know not what they know not.  During the seminar we will cover the correct way to analyze and report probabilistic events yet to emerge from complex stochastic processes.  As a sidebar and to inject some levity into an otherwise technically intense presentation, we will also discuss the hubristic aspects of general circulation models as used to predict water levels and temperatures a century from now.

Festung Academe - governors are planning to fortify their states’ schools with barbed wire, metal detector entry points, steel doors, bullet-proof glass, and armed sworn LE officers, but all of these worthies are against any trained teachers and staff with CCWs.  That is supposed to send a wrong message to kids who will also be encouraged to show up in Kevlar vests and helmets.  Even Florida governor and Republican Rick Scott has had a generous draught of that Kool-Aid.

The nation’s critical thinkers have concluded that the NRA was responsible for Parkland and all the other school shootings.  In the next phase of the nation’s schism companies will declare themselves either conservative or liberal by their silence or vociferous opposition to and severing ties with the NRA.  It seems that the fault really lies with all of us millions of NRA members who need an extra layer of public punishment, such as Delta’s decision to discontinue giving NRA members discounted fares they also give to many other affinity groups and organization members.  I’m not sure that these businesses want to jump into politics with both feet.

[1mar18 update]  Gag orders.  Are there any legal mavens around here who could explain to us the origin of gag orders and their legal basis for suppressing the First Amendment rights of people who have not been convicted of anything, and whose subsequent speech would not affect national security.  I can't find any support for gag orders in the US Constitution; where is it hiding?

[3mar18 update]  How do we evaluate the wisdom of California’s public opinion polls on new public policies given that almost 40% of the state’s residents depend on a government check to maintain their quality of life?  I throw this out as another point of discussion in light of the last such enquiry (above) to our RR readership having gone over like a turd in the punchbowl.  I guess circling familiar barns is a lot more fun.

Comparing the Memos

George Rebane

Well, there is a difference or two between the Nunes (here)and the Schiff (here) memos.  The main difference is the approach to disclose.  Nunes stated material facts of what was and was not in the FISA application – it was not comprehensive for a number of reasons that included it being a purposely sanitized version that precluded the FBI and DOJ objecting to it on legal grounds of releasing classified information to the public.  The Schiff memo was politically drafted to make it so that its release had to be delayed for national political gain that all turned out to be bullshit.  Proof of that is seen in the memo itself which was submitted to the DOJ and FBIl (as was the Nunes memo) who returned it full of redactions.

(The memos issue has also been extensively discussed in these pages here and here.)

Schiff’s responses can be seen in this point by point compare/contrast piece in the WSJ (here), and they mainly consisted of ‘No it wasn’t’, ‘Yes, it was’, ‘there was also other good stuff in the application’, ‘the court knew the Dems paid for the dossier’, …, but no material facts that would support their rebuts.

The Democrats will all now vow that Schiff has completely destroyed the Republicans’ indictment of the Obama DoJ and FBI behaving badly in getting and renewing permission to spy on Americans.  The rest with critical thinking skills will see Schiff’s response as the successful smokescreen it is for a neurologically more diverse audience.  The whole dueling memo issue again comes down to declassifying and releasing the original DoJ and FBI applications so everyone can see what was the actual basis for the request to surveil.

Don’t hold your breath that people in those two agencies will ever be investigated by Mueller, let alone be indicted for the rampant corruption and incompetence that was evident then and has since seen even more light of day.

Sandbox - 24feb18

[Please note the recent topic specific commentaries under which to collect your thoughts on those issues.  For all else, this is the place.  gjr]

Legal guns in schools (updated 26feb18)

George Rebane

RR has always taken the position that keeping certain facilities (public and private) as ‘gun free zones’ has been and continues to be a terribly misguided policy.  There are millions of CCW permit holders in America who regularly carry, and keeping these folks out of ‘gun free zones’ has demonstrated that the only ones who then do take guns into such facilities are criminals, terrorists, the mentally disturbed, …, and occasionally LE officials when called.

After the recent Parkland, Florida massacre the gun control debate has now expanded to doing something real to prevent and/or mitigate such future massacres by arming selected school staffers with concealed carry firearms.  President Trump has now indicated his backing for this sane policy which is already quietly practiced in multiple school districts across the land.  Giving credit where due, NPR this morning broadcast an interview with a Texas school superintendent about schools in his district which have practiced an armed staff policy for some time with the full support of parents and voters.  (The liberal interviewer did do his best to ask a couple of gotcha questions to which the superintendent had no problem supplying civil and utterly reasonable answers.)

Government guilty until …

George Rebane

RR readers are familiar with the Rebane Doctrine maxim – ‘If something has gone wrong in society, government is guilty until proven innocent’.  The verity of this has been demonstrated countless times in any and every country, especially in America.  As our government has become the bloated leviathan that it is, the examples of major harm done by and through government tentacles (i.e. its bureaus, agencies, departments, commissions, …) to its citizens have literally grown without bound.  A recent and timely compilation that includes current events and government activities is presented by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and WSJ Deputy Editorial Page Director Daniel Henninger, whose thesis is that “the list of fatal mistakes by federal agencies in recent years is staggering.”

After some toe-curling examples, Mr Henninger asks – “Why do these public-agency mistakes continue to happen? The reasons are complex, so an appeal to Occam’s Razor is in order. The simple answer is that the federal government has become too big to succeed. Its vastness ensures mistakes, and its public-safety responsibilities ensure that some of those mistakes will be fatal.” (more here)

And the growth is fueled by our citizens' carefully taught myopia about big government as the source of all of society’s blessings.  The only ones celebrating the federal bloat are our calcified collectivist elites and their reliably history-challenged constituents.  Today when anything goes wrong that passeth understanding, our carefully taught and hard-wired response is to face Washington and demand, “Do something!’

Going through Henninger’s list of federal travesties should convince any reasonable person of the ongoing dangers to fundamental public safety that government presents.  In these pages, we understand that it’s difficult/impossible to centrally control a complex system whose behavior you don’t understand (i.e. whose transfer function that joins inputs and outputs is unknown and unknowable).  Henninger concludes his commentary with –

It’s pertinent to ask, though, whether the federal government’s inexorable bloat has made it a clear and present danger to the American people. That’s a question for public safety. It’s also a question for our politics.

Scattershots – 20feb18

George Rebane

Ever hear of the Office of Financial Research?  OFR was created by Obama’s Congress after the 2008 financial crisis, it’s mission was to bring brains to bear on avoiding the next one by developing new prediction methods.  It “was supposed to anticipate trouble and issue warnings”, but ten years and $500M later this new agency has turned out to be, let’s say, less than satisfactory (‘dud’ would have been shorter).  Part of their problem is government’s perennial epidemic of poor organization and morale.  The morale part resulted from losing battles with other government bureaus, and being called to account by Republicans for “squandering” its charter to “significantly improve regulatory oversight of financial risk”. (more here) So what else is new?  The feds could have saved a bundle and gotten some real information about pending crises in a whole slew of areas affecting global finances by subscribing to Didier Sornette’s work at the Financial Crisis Observatory of ETH Zürich (about which RR readers were last informed here).

Among President Trump’s many denied accomplishments is the revamping of Obama’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, born of the Dodd-Frank mess, and given the goal of regulating fair markets and a stable financial system, all for protecting the consumer.  What the CFPB actually wound up doing is creating a quagmire in the consumer banking sector that primarily hurt the middle- and lower-class borrowers and seekers of other financial services.  ('We're from the government, and we're here to help')  It did all this by issuing a flood of “poorly designed regulations (to) choke off access to credit, drive up interest rates, and eliminate choices.”  Another harbinger of what America will be like when the socialist elites take total control of our country.  Trump put in Mick Mulvaney to turn around the CFPB which is now rolling back the stifling regulations and finally becoming the agency that it was advertised to be.  Mulvaney’s new guiding principles for CFPB focus on inclusion, innovation, choice, competition, and respect.  You can read more about this revamping here.

Gun Confiscation – again on the march (updated 21feb18)

“Over the last fifty years, it’s the Left that has assaulted every moral norm and disdained every religious and cultural restraint.”  Andrew Klavan

George Rebane

Student groups across the land are now forming to protest the ownership and availability of guns in America.  Their tearful yet uninformed emotions will supply more grist for grinding down the Second Amendment in the name of ‘saving the children’.  I don’t want to re-circle the barn on all the arguments that correctly point out that no new gun control law suggested by the Left would have prevented the Parkland massacre.

I gave my views on a reasonable approach to preventing such shootings in ‘Stopping School Shooters’.  We know it works because it is successfully applied in Israel and at the schools to which the elites send their kids.  However, the peasant children can serve a far more useful role for the elites as pawns – to sacrifice in their schools, or parade for the press where they can influence the country’s neurochallenged, a new term to join ‘neurodiverse’, ‘neurotypical’, ‘neurodivergent’ … introduced by leftwing academicians (more here).

The only thing that I’ve heard which merits discussion and possible immediate implementation are the so-called Red Flag laws.  Five states have these which allow a family member, who is almost always aware of a developing situation, to alert authorities who can then temporarily but immediately remove access to guns by the disturbed individual.  The removal of the guns is not permanent, and their return depends on how the case is subsequently diagnosed and adjudicated.  Bottom line, it is those close to the individual who can nip a developing situation in the bud, and thereby prevent a suicide or a tragic shooting like in Parkland.

‘Are We Free to Discuss America’s Real Problems?’

“He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that.” John Stuart Mill

George Rebane

This is the title of a recent major essay by Dr Amy Wax that initially appeared (here) in the January 2018 issue of the Imprimis, and was also featured in the 17feb18 issue of WSJ.  I bring it to our attention because it asks and answers a question of great moment in today’s America, and it also totally reflects the Rebane Doctrine that I have promoted for years in these pages.  Her vitae abstract reads –

Amy L. Wax is the Robert Mundheim Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where she has received the Harvey Levin Memorial Award for Teaching Excellence. She has a B.S. from Yale College, an M.D. from Harvard Medical School, and a J.D. from Columbia Law School. She is a former assistant to the United States Solicitor General, and her most recent book is Race, Wrongs, and Remedies: Group Justice in the 21st Century.

Dr Wax sets the stage with – “Too few Americans are qualified for the jobs available. Male working-age labor-force participation is at Depression-era lows. Opioid abuse is widespread. Homicidal violence plagues inner cities. Almost half of all children are born out of wedlock, and even more are raised by single mothers. Many college students lack basic skills, and high school students rank below those from two dozen other countries.”

Sandbox - 17feb18

[I think I pushed all the liberal hot buttons in my 16feb18 post on school shootings.  So gather your continuing thoughts on the topic there.  And please use this fresh sand for dissecting Mueller's latest indictments and Trump's latest travails.  gjr]

Stopping School Shooters

George Rebane

We’ve said it here before about stopping school shooters, only guns will stop killers with guns.  That’s why police and the military carry them.  Israel recognized a long time ago that their schools were inviting targets for terrorists, and their response was to arm the schools – teachers, administrators, maintenance workers, …  Not everyone has to always carry, but if enough always do, there is little chance that someone will come into the school, start shooting kids, and not be instantly engaged by defending guns.  As happened again in Parkland, teachers have always demonstrated their willingness to sacrifice themselves to save their students.  Today all they can do is stop bullets with their bodies, so we are assured, that when armed and trained, they will engage the killer.  It is always the story that when seconds count, police are minutes away.

Given our cultural demise and that the threat spectrum has expanded noticeably over the last twenty years, it is a crime against ourselves that we don’t follow Israel’s sensible lead.  Why we don’t do that is not hard to understand given that the Left owns the schools, and it is the Left that wants to disarm America.  It is hard to think of a better way than to periodically sacrifice some kids so as to build public outrage to a level that in hopeless frustration they seat representatives who will then constructively remove the Second Amendment.  As Iosif Vissarionovich said some years back, ‘You have to crack a few eggs to make an omelet.’  Maybe then they will also adopt the Israeli solution after legal civilian ownership of guns is history.  Until then, please read this letter purportedly from a teacher written in 2012 after Sandy Hook.

Our New Cannabis Ordinance – A Civil Approach

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 14 February 2018.]

Yesterday afternoon Jo Ann and I were in the packed supervisors’ chamber at the Rood Center.  The supes were there to discuss the new county cannabis ordinance and give guidance to the county staff about what they wanted to see in the finished product.  The entire affair was presided over by Supervisor Scofield who is the current board chair.  The meeting began with a presentation by Community Development Agency head Sean Powers in which he outlined a bit of history, the state’s current and evolving cannabis regulations, and what our own Community Advisory Group had recommended.

The gathering opened in a very orderly, businesslike, yet congenial manner.  Supervisor Scofield then allowed about 30 minutes of additional public input, even though this was not a public hearing.  Then the supes started their first real discussion among themselves about the ordinance.  The Brown Act prevents elected officials from discussing and deciding public affairs in private.  So the exchange that followed was interesting to witness as each supervisor asked questions of the staff and began expressing their own druthers about the complex details that the ordinance must contain and also make clear to our newly legalized cannabis industry and concerned citizens alike.

The dimensions of the ordinance quickly revealed themselves to be byzantine as each layer of important factors was examined and peeled back.  The main points of contention were the nuisance of cannabis stench in residential neighborhoods vs the desire to allow legal, regulated, and taxed cannabis grows.  If the ordinance were to come out too draconian, then the growers and producers would return to their illegal ways, and we would be back where we started.

Also important to note is that all these deliberations are taking place within the current political environment in which 18 California counties are also writing their ordinances, while the rest are preparing to do so, and in which everyone is attempting to resolve the same conundrums.  The factors that need to be sorted out involve existing zoning laws, parcel sizes, numbers of permitted indoor vs outdoor plants, setbacks from property lines in the attempt to staunch the stench, and on and on.  Our cannabis proponents want Nevada County to lead the way with our ordinance, a tactic that is not without its own chuckholes.

It soon became clear which supervisors were more concerned about abating the nuisance issues, and who leaned more toward the cannabis growers.  Actually, only Supervisor Heidi Hall, representing District #1 that contains Nevada City, found herself alone advocating for more plants grown outside on smaller parcels with smaller setbacks from the neighbors.  Supervisors Miller, Anderson, Scofield and Weston all leaned toward smaller grows of only medicinal marijuana on larger parcels zoned for agriculture and having larger setbacks.  Nevertheless, all of them also understood that the growers needed some reasonable slack so that their commercial interests would also be served.

The overall discussion was most civil, with a lot of understanding of each others’ concerns that at times was even leavened with humor.  My only criticism about the process was with Sean Powers’ preparation – he didn’t make enough slides that were needed to give everyone, including us in the audience, the definitions, charts, and data that would have made things go more smoothly with fewer repeated questions and misunderstandings that had to be cleared up. More specific details about the Supervisors’ guidance and next steps in the drafting process, that would include additional public input, can be found in the online (here) and print editions of today’s Union newspaper.

We came away from the meeting in good spirits, having witnessed how local government can work in a reasoned and reasonable manner to consider difficult issues with divers advocates, and proceed visibly with an even-handed approach to making public policy.  In recent years I have become pessimistic about the outcome of our Founders’ legacy that left us the Great Experiment, which is based on the question, ‘Can common man govern himself?’  Witnessing our Board of Supervisors at work gave us new hope that maybe, just maybe, we could actually do that in today’s hyper-polarized America.

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.

Sandbox - 14feb18

[This is your Happy Valentine's Day sandbox in which we may pursue all the divers love affairs that ended badly with sexual harassment and abuse and ... which are now the newly preferred weapon in the armory assembled to destroy President Trump's administration.  I'm sure when this has run its course, a new one will already be fashioned and ready to deploy.  gjr]

Scattershots – 12feb18 (updated 15feb18)

George Rebane

Today we celebrate the closing of the National Hotel’s escrow.  Owner Tom Coleman is a longtime Rebane family friend and poker buddy (developer of the notorious Coleman Shuffle, the Coleman Deal, and, of course, the ever-reliable Coleman Dollar bet).  Tom called yesterday to tell me to get my butt down to the hotel for a last chance to haul some libations out of his inventory.  Saturday night along with another couple of Tom’s friends, we spent an evening with him and his son (up here to help dad close up) in the Hoover Restaurant & Bar’s dining room toasting the old place, and being regaled with stories about the fabled hotel which Tom has owned now going on 40 years.  Jo Ann and I wish Tom and Ernie the best of a retirement that has been too long in coming.  Nevertheless, I promise to continue doing my best to assault Tom’s wallet during our longstanding monthly poker parties.

As I write, the Dow is up 2.22% (537 points) on its rocky recovery from attempting to scale an unsustainable super-exponential growth pattern.  As Dr Didier Sornette of the ETHZürich has taught us, super-exponentials attempt to grow to infinity in a finite time.  Our universe does not support those kinds of enterprises, and promises each such attempt a bruising correction.  In the current correction I again smile at the naifs reporting on the markets – ‘Investors were bailing out of stocks today due to … .’  No they weren’t.  Who the hell do you think was then doing the buying, the tooth fairy?  For interested readers on why and when markets crash, I recommend perusing the good professor’s writings and the Financial Crisis Observatory website.  And as you study today’s market charts, always remember – buy low, sell high.

The DC investigations memo wars are at a high fever pitch.  RR readers from all sides of the political landscape have a fascinating weeks-long debate going (with citations galore) about what all the memos portend about Trump’s political future and this year’s midterm elections.  (See comment streams here, here, and here.) Predictably the two major sides are trading ripostes from their separate universes which apparently have very few points of connection, most certainly not in what the facts are nor how we arrived at the current locations in our respective universes.  By any measure, this dialogue (multi-logue?) is the most unprofitable exchange of words that the country has experienced in living memory, perhaps ever.

[14feb18 update]  It now turns out that what all of us have been reporting about the Schiff memo was absolutely true – Adam Schiff and Pelosi lied when they claimed that President Trump gratuitously refused to declassify their rebuttal to the Nunes memo.  It turns out that the lying SOSs purposely inserted sources and methods into their memo so it could not be released, and they could claim on national media that Trump was playing a political cover-up to his own wrongdoings in the memo wars.  All lies, and lies that count.

And it turns out that what I reported as the dictionary's and RR’s definitions of ‘collusion’ also turn out to be correct.  Collusion does not automatically mean a conspiracy to do something illegal, as the lamestream and the lesser lights have been hyper-ventilating about lately.  From the horse’s mouth (or is it the other end?) we have that, “(Congressman Schiff) also somewhat backtracked on the Trump-Russia collusion issue, saying the Democrats’ definition of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia was much lower than potential criminal acts being reviewed by special counsel Robert Mueller. Collusion is not a crime under the federal statutes.” (more here)

[15feb18 update]  Obama’s economic adviser speaks with forked tongue (here).  We all know how the Left denigrates stock market performance and puu-puuhs its economic effect on anyone who is not in their currently designated wealthy class.  But suddenly when it serves their narrative or can be used to excuse past poor professional performance, then suddenly the lower and middle classes become shareholders whose economic behavior is immediately stimulated by the “wealth effect” of a rising stock market.  This is how Harvard biz school professor Jason Furman attributes the cause of last year’s breakout GDP growth – it was demand driven by the broad population of consumers who mysteriously became the beneficiaries of their appreciating, but heretofore non-existent, portfolios and went on a buying splurge.  This is the same professor who was Obama’s chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers (2013-17), and one of the prime architects of the historically post-recession stagnant growth we enjoyed during his time in government.  Wonder what he’s now teaching the next crop of MBAs - oh yes, it's "hoping for 3% or more (annual growth) is folly. The fundamentals—people and productivity—seem unlikely to provide it."

 

Atrocious Asymmetries Abound

George Rebane

We take a look at the most recent lopsided lamestream reporting and actions by the Deep State – short version: the beat goes on.

Hillary Clinton is an existential criminal as corroborated by abundant evidence released to the public and more that must still be classified.  An available paper trail, including money changing hands, proves that she and the Dems commissioned and colluded with the Russians to have third parties develop and disseminate a damning dossier to torpedo Trump’s presidential campaign.  She spread US government secrets worldwide through her emails and a personal illegal server.  During campaigning she colluded with the DNC to pop the Bernie bubble.  She and husband Bubba took bag money from the Russians to facilitate the sale of America’s critically needed uranium.

This litany can go on and on.  But the bottom line is that she is home free, cleared of all offenses, and daily held up by the lamestream as the hapless victim of the 2016 election.  It appears that no one, most certainly not Special Prosecutor Mueller, dares investigate Hillary.  On the other hand, President Trump is the subject of an investigation whose clear charter is that it will continue until some evidence of his colluding with Russia to throw the election is found.  (Meanwhile Mueller's is casting his net wide on unrelated waters, hoping to catch something, anything to show for having been hired.)  Now with two years and counting, and not a shred of collusion evidence yet found, the lamestream daily lambasts the President with newly minted allegations distributed to the dull-witted as more evidence of his guilt.  No major media outlet, not even Fox News, raises a finger at this new pinnacle of yellow journalism.

And then there’s the treatment of the Nunes vs the Schiff memos.  The Nunes memo revealing the top management sleaze at the FBI and DoJ was vetted and wordsmithed for months to make sure that it contained only documentable facts, and did not reveal national security compromising sources and methods.  After an atrocious blizzard of pre-release accusations led by Rep Schiff claiming exactly the opposite, even after having been read by the entire House, the Nunes memo was released and found to be as advertised – no security compromises, and only facts of how the various parties at DoJ and FBI colluded to present an informationally deficient and fraudulent FISA application so that members of Team Trump could be surveilled during the campaign.  More evidence on that issues daily (here).

In response Schiff and the Intelligence Committee Dems concocted a rebuttal memo purposely laced with security compromising information that they knew President Trump could not release. (more here)  The president sent it to the DoJ and other national security offices for vetting and any necessary redaction.  At the same time Trump told the Dems and the country that he wants the Dems’ memo released so that he and the Intelligence Committee would not be shown to violate what had been charged of the GOP memo.  The lamestream's response?  President Trump is obviously trying to hide something big; another allegation put out there to the double dummies as ‘evidence’ of Team Trump’s wrongdoings.  Nobody seems to be picking up that the White House is not doing anything to modify Schiff’s memo, and if it gets a clean bill of health from the security vetters, it will be released as is.  Reporting that would not fit the months-long narrative which holds that the only reason damning evidence of collusion has not emerged is that Team Trump and the GOP have waged a successful campaign to both hide it from Mueller and suppress it through some vast rightwing conspiracy.  And again: the beat goes on.

Why should the neighborhoods suffer revisited?

[Don Bessee is a leading opponent of bringing legalized marijuana into Nevada County and specifically into its residential communities.  He is the regional director of Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM), and sits on its board.  Project SAM, founded by congressmen Patrick Kennedy and Kevin Sibet, is a national, non-partisan organization that coordinates opposition to the legalization of marijuana.  Recently Mr Bessee sat on Nevada County's Community Advisory Group (CAG) that was formed by the county to advise its Board of Supervisors on the adoption of a new marijuana ordinance.  This is an invited byline to allow Mr Bessee (pictured below) to openly express his views after CAG was disbanded.  It is posted as received.  gjr]

Don Bessee

We have been having a long conversation about commercial marijuana’s impacts on communities and neighborhoods.  During the prop 64 lead up and campaign there were some very interesting conversations and warnings.

I set up a press conference in late oct. 2016 in the heart of the financial district in SF where SAM stood with leaders of the medical marijuana community. We were there to put a spotlight on the tricks in prop 64.  That brought a very diverse group together to voice an area of significant agreement.  All of us there took heat for it.

We warned that the supermajority clause made the rest meaningless and that SAM’s long warned Big Tabaco 2.0 would come to Cali. So did UCSF addiction researchers.  We were right. We were right on so many levels.

I warned of the law enforcement street view from states that went commercial medical and commercial party pot before us. The urban and small town homeless magnet issues in CO. The quality of life crime increases and public drug use. Then there was the wanton abuse of the hard rules. As time went on the tax money got gobbled up by administration of the commercial track and tax system. A system that did nothing to decrease the black market. It only empowered it. Take for example the hide in plain sight criminal gang activity where they set up pot shops without licenses. It’s a whack a mole without any real enforcement ability, just like LA now.

We were promised by Newsom et al.  that all the problems would go away when we legalized.

It has been very interesting to watch all the moves since the passage of 64 in Nov. 2016, very interesting.

Let’s look at the facts on the ground right now. As it sits there are all of 17 Counties that are commercial. 1 allows deliveries. That means that all the other  Counties are not commercial. Yes, the vast majority of Cali is non-commercial.

The reality on the ground across the state of California it that things are not better on any level, they are worse and getting worse.

It was gratifying that the head of the State pot growers sued the state recently for doing exactly what we warned about. It is said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, if that’s the case, thanks Hez.

According to Hezekiah Allen, executive director of the California Growers Association, which filed the suit in Sacramento County Superior Court, the farm-size caps are essential to stop the industry from becoming “Big Tobacco 2.0”

Last week I was at another press conference in SF. I was standing shoulder to shoulder with the Catholic Archdiocese of SF, the head of the Congress On Racial Equality (CORE) and The Pacific Justice Foundation among others. The event was held in a very special location.

We were in the magnificent Chinese Episcopal Church on Noriega in SF. A Church that has a full day care and all day long bi-lingual tutoring. The planning commission in SF had made the egregious decision to allow a pot shop across the street in violation of prop 64.  The worst part is it was a politically connected former mayor of Oakland that got the ok. The righteous uproar forced even the SF Board of Supervisors to grant the appeal to protect the neighborhood. A neighborhood of color.

The facts are that most liquor stores and pot shops are in neighborhoods of color.

I spoke about the facts in NorCal.

We have had elected officials in Truckee threatened when the community wisely rejected commercial weed.

Nevada County has too many stories of abused neighborhoods like Wolf Dr.   Do any of you feel safer in your neighborhood? I hear NO in a big way every day.

The audit of the commercial pot shops in Sac. City showed they were selling black market weed, lying, cheating and even refusing entry to auditors even though the license required it. On Kathleen Ave in Sac the city is not protecting homeowners who are getting harassed for opposing a license applicant who is running without a license.

We were promised that things would get better, have they for your neighborhood?

What I hear from people who failed in other states in the weed business and locals who have no idea about what real world business plans are is that we MUST make what they want to do legal here everywhere.  Do we really? I think we need to see an enforcement model in CA that works first.

Healthcare Apples, Oranges, and Fruitcakes

George Rebane

The perennial healthcare debate didn’t get any more clear with the latest release of US life expectancy data by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the British Medical Journal.  Our life expectancy is 1.5 years lower than the average in OECD countries, and it decreased by another 0.1 year to 78.6 in the most recent (2016) calculation.  The single-payer (nationalized healthcare) advocates always jump to this stat to argue that we should adopt the highly propagandized and unsustainable socialized system like Canada’s or the British National Healthcare Service.  But such simple thinking behind single-payer neither discovers the causal factors of longevity, nor points to a workable reform of our healthcare system.

As cited in the BMJ and by the CDC, the US death rate, hence life expectancy, is almost completely determined by our wealth and culture, and not by how healthcare is delivered and consumed in America.  We have the money and the cultural support to continue killing ourselves early with everything from illegal drugs, prescribed opioids, horrible diets, sedentary lifestyles, growing suicide rates (mostly among rural whites), …, in short, activities that less wealthy and more traditional populations don’t value or have the time, wherewithal, or interest to raise to lethal levels.  (more here)

But all that makes no never mind to our central planners for whom nationalizing healthcare is just one of many steps they prescribe to fundamentally transform America into a second world country in which government is the gentle giant and end-all in people’s lives.  The issue recently rose to prominence when President Trump called the British NHS “broke and not working” (here)  This accurate assessment, of course, caused the usual anti-Trump uproar, especially from British politicians who have been unsuccessfully wrestling with attempting to make the NHS work for several decades.  Today the system’s shortages in physicians, hospital beds, and diagnostic facilities (e.g. CT scanners) is critical as reported in the British press (here and here).  NHS waiting times have always been long, both for scheduled treatment and daily in the waiting rooms (often exceeding 12 hours).  Recently these have “spiked” even higher, driving ever more people to seek private healthcare services both in and out of country.

The problem with the NHS and ALL other nationalized healthcare systems is lack of sustainability.  Their costs are constantly overrunning the nationally budgeted funding levels which also increase year-over-year.  But more importantly, the healthcare budgets are commanding ever greater percentages of the countries' GDPs and government budgets – the litmus tests of unsustainable enterprises.  The socialists' only answer to all such undertakings diving for the mud is that ‘well, it ain’t crashed yet’.  And while the rush to collapse continues, the daily solution to the problems entails ever more rationing, and simply doing without (which is also what lengthening waiting times constructively do).

In the US and elsewhere, none of this information must be allowed to concern our already neurodiverse fellow citizens.  ‘Neurodiverse’, ‘neurotypical’, ‘neurodivergent’, … ??  We’ll soon be hearing more about these new ways to look at and describe our neighbors and co-workers, whether we like it or not.  Stay tuned.

Scattershots – 5feb18 (updated 9feb18)

George Rebane

Lots of pot businesses coming to Nevada City.  In the 5feb18 Union our George Boardman documents (here) the lament he shares with many of the town’s locals and most certainly many other county residents.  Now I’m a longtime proponent of legalizing MJ (to avoid Einsteinian insanity), but I’m not yet smart enough to know how best to do it.  My advice has been for our little community not to spearhead bringing in multiple dispenseries and processing facilities – let some others do it first and let’s see what we can learn from them before making our county the state’s Marijuana Mecca.  We need to heed Mr Boardman’s call for more citizens to get involved in debating this on councils and boards.  (See also Don Bessee's related byline here.)

Sandbox - 5feb18

[We'll keep the 2feb18 sandbox open for some residual Nunes memo discussion until an update post on the now dueling memos.  Mea culpa for not have a general purpose sandbox open during this interval. gjr]

Deep State’s Natural Defenses

George Rebane

Capitalism's cancer is corporatism, when corporations grow so large that they need government to stifle their competition and in the process kill capitalism.

As we witness the massive lamestream and Democrat pushback on the Nunes memo (more here, here, and here), thoughts turn to how Deep State has survived and thrived over the years and how it operates – specifically how it defends itself and deflects the occasional foray against it such as is currently being attempted.  A little reflection reveals that the Deep State has baked in some pretty impressive and longstanding defenses; I would even argue that they are natural defenses in the sense of being intrinsic to such an institution.

The case for Deep State’s (DS’s) natural defenses can be summarized in the following points –

1. The DS is necessarily political. To believe that its cadre hew to some ideological middle is beyond naïve.  As a minimum, DS always seeks to endear itself to the political faction which provides its current succor and assures its longest survival.  This DS attribute is now organic in our penultimately polarized republic.
2. DS as a hierarchically structured bureaucracy is also intrinsically survivalist regardless of its ideological cast or that of its political sponsors. This is a well-known and documented aspect of all bureaucracies going back to biblical times.
3. The career staff manning the various DS units has been and continues to be politically biased. In the lower levels its workers know that their job security depends on pleasing their department bosses and minimally, if at all, on how they satisfy their ‘client’ needs.  They also know that they will not be able to command their current benefits if forced to seek employment in the private sector.  For lower level staffs having government employment on your resume puts you at a distinct disadvantage.  Therefore, these workers are fiercely loyal to forces and initiatives that promulgate large government.
4. An extremely powerful natural ally of DS is the practice and growth of corporatism – the state of private/public sector collusion wherein government and corporations benefit each other through trading market protections (against competition foreign and domestic) for campaign contributions, direct ‘bag money’, and lucrative post-public service employment. Corporatism serves both the elected and the higher echelons of the DS.
5. The DS is always prepared and extremely compliant to being weaponized by their political favorites to launch attacks against designated political, commercial, and private citizen cohort targets. This is more so when the DS units are directed against targets they perceive as being inimical to their survival if the power balances should shift.
6. Natural political allies of the DS are parties and movements that promote the versions of collectivist governance, since for those ideologies the growth of government and its bureaucracies is endemic, being marbled in their social values and various objectives leading to the eventual fundamental transformation of America.

Deep State’s Rogue Roots (3feb18 update)

George Rebane

In a republic the only government oversight the people have is through their elected representatives, and that is necessarily political.

The 2feb18 release of the Nunes memo underscores a serious concern that has arisen among most Americans since the Obama era national elections, and now heightened by the suspicious goings on during and after the 2016 presidential campaign and election.  Major federal agencies such as the IRS, EPA, VA, NLRB, CFPB, FBI, and DoJ have all been exposed as behaving in the interest of its bureaucrat managers, and against the interests of Americans whom they were established to serve.  It is not necessary to go through the litany of the specific corruptions both revealed, alleged, and buried.  Anyone can resurrect them by just typing in the agency’s initials along with ‘corruption’ to get a laundry list of historical and current malfeasances.

The barely visible and totally invisible machinations of the federal departments we now label as happening in the ‘Deep State’.  And most Americans understand from the news and government reports that the Deep State may best be viewed as the secretive and mostly hidden fourth branch of government that is nowhere called for in our founding documents, but, putatively under the President, is supposed to implement the laws, regulations, executive orders, and rulings handed down from the three constitutional federal government arms.  Of the three, Congress has the additional job of oversight, to make sure that these bureaus, departments, and agencies are acting according to the intent and prescriptions of their enabling legislation.

One can argue that the Deep State has always been with us, because it comes alive naturally when growing organizations spawn departments whose continued existence, growth, and influence does not depend on the quality of service they provide their designated clients.  But its existence becomes toxic when it comes to be used as a tool for meting out rewards and punishments to satisfy the needs of their sponsors.  In government these sponsors are its politically controlled branches and sub-branches – e.g. Congress and its various committees.

Before the days of radically polarized political parties, oversight of the Deep State had a chance of working because its operating units had a more unified direction, and operating according to its rule book was the safest route for Deep State managers – both parties wanted more or less of the same future for the country.  Such a common vision has now been eroding for the last fifty years, and today our political factions have publicly declared their diametrically opposite futures for America.  As political scientists and historians have concluded, today the two major parties are really in mortal combat, each seeking advantage to completely destroy their opponent.

With this mindset, the party in power naturally resorts to weaponizing the Deep State against the party out of power.  In this enterprise the Left has had a distinct and demonstrated advantage, since its goal is to establish a national collective based on central planning and control by the elites, which fosters the sustenance and growth of government as embodied in the components of its Deep State.  In short, the Deep State is already staffed and operating with the mindset that fosters one party’s objectives and modus operandi.

It is then not a large step from the installation of people such as Hillary Clinton, Eric Holder, Loretta Lynch, John Koskinen,  … under whom the likes of ‘career managers’ like James Comey, Lois Lerner, Bruce Ohr, and Andrew McCabe were inspired to initiate and carry out actions that were definitely in the agenda-driven and often intentionally illegal service of their political betters.

When the inevitable scandals do emerge and there is opportunity to shed light and hold accountable those responsible, then it is always the political beneficiaries of the Deep State who leap to the defense and seek to seal the shutters.  They use scurrilous exhortations against the truth seekers, such as transforming the investigation of the rotten managements into unwarranted attacks against the department’s “thousands of hardworking men and women”, when there is no intent or evidence of the investigation or its reporting to impugn their labors.  Such responses are nothing short of political lies intended to pluck the heartstrings of the ignorant and unread.  This kind of lie is often accompanied by more direct and easily detectable lies.  In the Nunes memo case, some opponents of its release told the nation that the memo’s contents would reveal highly secret sources and methods which would compromise our nation’s security.  As is now evident even for the fourth-grade level reader, the memo contains no such revelations.

The fundamental arguments for the release of sanitized reports of investigations into the corrupt activities of the Deep State all rest on the necessary prerequisite, that if we as a people are to govern ourselves, in the manner of The Great Experiment bequeathed by our Founders, then we must see things for ourselves to the maximum extent possible.  And for the part that prudent maintenance of national security - and only national security - requires, then there we must trust the reports and decisions of our elected representatives since we are not a democracy with oversight by the national committee of the whole.

My representatives argued persuasively for the release of this memo to shed light on some of the most recent perversions of the Deep State, and I am grateful that they had the courage to follow through and give us the appropriate information.  I only trust that this is not the only burst of sanitizing sunshine that we see during the coming months, because clearly there is more, much more.

[3feb18 update]  A better example of Deep State’s rogue roots than Hillary’s corrupt international escapades is hard to find.  And even there we must limit our attention to only one of her many – space and time don’t allow a full discussion that is better suited for a large volume or perhaps an anthology.  Here I want us to focus on her uranium dealings with Russia as a real example of collusion corrosive to our nation.  Investigative journalist Anne Williamson has assembled this story – ‘Beyond Imagination: Uranium One’ - in the Jan2018 issue of Chronicles.  I suggest reading it to get a better perspective on our Deep State’s international tentacles, and what yet could and should come out from both Mueller’s investigative wanderings, and in subsequent House Intelligence Committee memos.

Sandbox - 2feb18 (Nunes memo edition)

[The Nunes memo is out and may be read here on Politico and other sites.  I've added a link to download Kim Strassel's 2feb18 WSJ column 'Memo Reading for Nonpartisans' here - Download Memo Reading for Nonpartisans.  Lots to consider and discuss.  gjr]

Cirque du SOTUS (updated 3feb18)

George Rebane

President Trump’s State of the Union speech highlighted the roots of congressional dysfunction and confirmed that we are more polarized than ever in choosing our country’s future.  The Democrats in the audience, in their multiple counter-speeches, and subsequently in the media have demonstrated that they have no intention of either celebrating benefits enjoyed by their constituencies or working with the Republicans to extend such benefits to broader cohorts of Americans.

Their focus is twofold – 1) maintain the belief that the formerly aggrieved classes are still aggrieved, and 2) retake Congress in November.  And if this requires putting the Alinsky political protocols on steroids, so be it – lie at every turn, and loudly accuse the other side of having committed your own iniquities.  As examples we see the Left’s leadership chorus broadcast to one and all that 2017 was the worst year in decades for Americans, and that 86 million of us will now pay higher taxes than before while all the benefits go to corporations and the rich who will do nothing with their ill-gotten gains to help America’s middle and poorer families.  In short, as tens of millions of us are keeping more of our earnings, as our employers are giving us raises and bonuses, corporations are bringing back overseas stashes of cash, businesses are building new facilities and creating new jobs by the tens of thousands, … all of this is denied by the Left who tell our uninformed neighbors that exactly the opposite is happening under Trump.

That we are polarized is now accepted even by the elites of the Left who confirm their epiphanies regularly on talk shows and their op-eds.  The only population segments remaining that refuse to accept the evident reality are local leftwing loonies scattered around the country.  Their alt-left message is still that the country is overwhelmingly in support of liberal cum socialist policies, and that only isolated pockets of ignorant, old, and out-of-touch rightwingers hold on to the notion that our country is deeply divided.  And in these backwoods, those (of us) who are anti-collectivist and point out that the Left does not speak for all Americans, we are accused of everything from being stupid to treasonous.

Now that cry of treason has been elevated to the highest levels in Washington where there has been a concerted witch hunt going on to hang that label on the conduct of our duly elected president and his team who are accused of stealing the 2016 election with Russia’s aid.  That there is no evidence to support this makes no never mind to the disciples of Alinsky.  They live and thrive on the votes of the half that pays no attention or has no ability to do so.

The post-SOTUS chasm that divides us has gotten noticeably wider.

[3feb18 update]  Admittedly President Trump took a victory lap about the economy during his SCOTUS.  The Dems were quick to respond that he was taking credit for the residual tailwind still blowing from Obama's brilliant performance with our economy (you recall, that's the one that saw the slowest recovery from a recession since WW2).  Well here's a little stat that was reported tonight on the results of the latest WSJ/NBC poll - 57% of Democrats (gasp!) approve of President Trump's handling of the economy.  In his eight years at the helm, Obama never achieved such a high atta boy.  When prepping for the 2018 elections, this should make Chuckie and Nancy change out their Depends.