Scattershots – 9mar18 (updated 10mar18)

People want to have their soul in the game.  In that sense, decentralization and fragmentation, aside form stabilizing the system, improves people's connection to their labor.  N. Taleb

George Rebane

‘Trump’s Hoover Temptation’ appears to be real and, to me, scary.  The only thing that would keep the world from spiraling into another Smoot-Hawley abyss is that today countries have many ad hoc trade relationships with each other such as the new TPP from which the US withdrew.  But we’re still the economic gorilla on this planet, so it’s hard to tell what will really happen.  My own hope is that Trump has the guts to replace Gary Cohn with some equivalent anti-tariff voices like Kudlow, Laffer, or Graham.  The Dems, of course, are cheering on Trump’s tariffs, hoping that they will cause enough economic chaos to dent the GOP’s chances in November.  For today's Dems it's always party above country.

The national ID card is here for all intents and purposes.  Remember all the debates we had for decades protesting the issuance of such a card – ‘We don’t need no stinking ID card, we’re Americans!’  Well, all that has gone by the board.  All US citizens are already ID’d twenty ways from Sunday, and now one more won’t hurt much.  So, has everyone heard of Real ID (here)?  Congress passed a law in 2005 that is now coming due that will require all of us by 1 October 2020 to be properly identified with a Real ID if we want to fly on domestic airlines and go into federal buildings and facilities, and who knows what else.  On 22 January 2018 California’s DMV started letting residents convert their driver’s licenses to serve double duty as their Real ID cards when they renew.  The DMV will also issue separate Real ID cards to non-drivers.  On the same date the law has required that travelers show an equivalently vetted ID for air travel.  (more here)

To get your Real ID you have to present a birth certificate, valid US passport, …, confirming your legal status in the country, and show that you really live in California with something like a utility bill.  Your driver’s license will then bear a specific logo to identify it as a Real ID card.  Veterans can also get ‘Veteran’ to appear on their license.  To qualify for that you have to take the DD214 form you received on discharge to the county Veteran Affairs office, and they will verify your DD214 and give you another certificate confirming your service, which you then will present to the DMV.  Got all that?

[update] In today's mail was Cato's Policy Analysis #831, 'The New National ID Systems' which summarizes the several ways the feds and the states are going to keep closer tabs on all of us through various new approaches to comprehensive identification (and tracking) of all Americans.

[10mar18 update]  Since the launch of President Johnson’s Great Society, the Left has done its best to cripple the US educational systems.  As part of that program, they have also attacked standardized tests that measure the performance of students coming out of their union-dominated, pension-prominent profession.  They have vigorously opposed and rejected anything that can remotely reflect on teacher performance.  For once you have become a member of the education industry family, your reliable vote and dues producing sinecure become paramount – and doubly so if you are a member of a privileged minority.

A dominant theme in this destruction has been the dunning of standardized tests, specifically the SAT and the ACT.  Among other criteria, these are the staples used by colleges and universities to guide their admissions decisions.  To denigrate these tests over the years, the Left has promulgated a number of well-publicized myths that have sought to deny the predictive power of the SAT and ACT in forecasting the academic and post-academic success of the test takers.  Nationally prominent industrial psychologists and researchers Drs N. Kuncel and P. Sackett (q.v.) have conducted longitudinal studies of these test takers.  Their work concludes that “myths abound about standardized tests, but the research is clear: they provide an invaluable measure of how students are likely to perform in college and beyond. … If anything, the relationship between scores and success increases as scores went up.”

The results of their research, also published in Measuring Success: Testing, Grades, and the Future of College Admissions (2018), summarily dismantles the Left’s myths in chapter and verse.  A myth-by-myth synopsis of this research – ‘The Truth About the SAT and ACT’ – can be found in the 10mar18 WSJ. 

Comments

[Walt]

I have to disagree with ya' Dr.R. these Tariffs are leveling the playing field. Those here that have whined and sniveled about subsidies (corp welfare) should be dancing in the streets.
US Steel has called up for more employees. What is next? miners.
New equipment for the mines. More jobs for CAT and the like.

Just think if Grass Valley had allowed the mine to open.
Instead,, we got dope..... Yup,, that's going to turn this place around....(NOT) Some soil brokers will clean up,, but that's about it.

[Russ]

Walt@11:59 AM

My uncle, Fred was a mining engineer at the Empire Mine. I worked in the Empire engineering office on Saturdays for about two years, before we move to Idaho in June of 1956. According to Uncle Fred, years later over a glass of wine on this back patio, when the Empire closed in the mid-1950s, there were still 3 billion dollars of gold in the ground under Grass Valley. That was 3 billion in 1950s dollars; it should be more in today's dollars. Someday, that gold will once again spur the local economy. The change will come on a generational boundary, the problem is generations are living too long, obstructing economic growth.

[George Rebane]

Walt 1159am - Disagreement is good on this matter, Mr Branson. Tariffs are a form of corporate welfare which also distorts the playing field. But if all playing fields are already distorted, then one can argue that putting a thumb under our scale doesn't hurt that much. However, I wonder what will motivate our metals companies to continue innovating and getting more price competitive if they know that Uncle Sam has always got them covered.

Big conflicts in the future will be intense and of short duration. They will not allow the warring parties to ramp up war production of the sort we did in WW2. This brings to question as to exactly what kind of national security will expanded US steel and aluminum industries provide, since during the normal course of international trade we can multi-source any excess amounts of those metals that we need.

[Todd Juvinall]

What was the US revenue sources in the beginning?

[Scenes]

"This brings to question as to exactly what kind of national security will expanded US steel and aluminum industries provide,"

That's a good basic point, is a conflict the only case where you might consider a material or manufactured good or food a strategic item? It's worth asking whether Lockheed Martin should compete with Sukhoi for US government contracts. Any war with Russia would result in a cessation in airplane production by both sides in any case.

Several values to tariffs...as a bargaining chip in trade relations, in order to protect your workers in a particular area, to retain the ability to make that product...there are probably all three at work in the case of this steel/aluminum thing.

I have to admit that it bothers me somewhat that so many items aren't sourced in the US at all anymore, or nearly aren't. Once you lose the specialized knowledge, supply chain, facilities etc. to make something like shoes or flat panel displays, you never seem to get it back.

[George Rebane]

Scenes 704pm - And that is the salient point Mr Scenes. Over the years the US has become less hungry and its workers have become more comfortable, while the rest of the world has hunkered down and mastered our basic skills including how to make things better and cheaper. The Great Doubling (due to the fall of the USSR and liberalization of Russia, China, India, et al) of the world's workforce in the mid-1990s was pretty much ignored in America.
http://rebaneruminations.typepad.com/rebanes_ruminations/2009/08/the-great-american-labor-squeeze.html

[Don Bessee]

Then you have this and its broader implications if they do in fact energize practical vocational training for all the underemployed citizens can change things. -

The massive tax cut on businesses appears to be helping a lot and may have even started helping before it was passed.
The perception that the regulatory environment will no longer be a drag on businesses, particularly manufacturing businesses.
The revival of domestic oil and gas, another key Trump campaign promise, contributes to manufacturing jobs.
Consumers sentiment and business optimism are at or near decades-long record highs.
Manufacturers know Trump has their back and will make efforts to aid their export efforts and fend off cheap imports.
Foreign manufacturers are moving jobs into the U.S. in hopes of avoiding tariffs they fear are coming.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/03/09/this-is-the-greatest-manufacturing-jobs-boom-in-twenty-years/

;-)

[Xeno]

George 531pm - “Tariffs are a form of corporate welfare” - Yes, so why not, as Laffer says, give subsidies to the few remaining steel mills and primary aluminum processors?

[Xeno]

BTW - you give way too much credit to “the Left” for the destruction of the educational system.
Your screed reads as if it was part of a deeply planned conspiracy.

Maybe you were referring to teacher’s unions? But, if so, they only had their self-interest in mind.

Re: tariffs - Keep in mind that the steel worker’s unions were also opposed to Trump’s latest tariff brainstorm because they also work at shops that produce products from steel.

[George Rebane]

Xeno 128pm - If keeping those mills is a necessary part of our national security, there is no argument from me not to subsidize them with tariffs. But let's do that with eyes open and not feed people the unsubstantiated pabulum that such subsidies will be a net creator of jobs. Just tell people that your job may toast, but it's for the good of the country. BTW, you have a dreadful understanding of what Laffer et al are saying about the tariffs.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/03/tariffs-are-taxes/

Re destruction of education: When an objective is commonly held by a broad collective, then no "deeply planned conspiracy" is required to do the things needed to achieve the objective. A21 is the existential proxy for the Left's objective (check it out), its provisions taught in all union schools and left-dominated colleges. That objective requires the castration of America as a world hegemon, the achievement of which can only be from the inside. And as Lenin counseled a hundred years ago, "Give me your youth, and I will ..."

[Scenes]

From Mr Xeno:

"Re: tariffs - Keep in mind that the steel worker’s unions were also opposed to Trump’s latest tariff brainstorm because they also work at shops that produce products from steel.

https://www.npr.org/2018/03/08/592114568/steelworker-union-leader-on-why-he-supports-trumps-tariffs-on-imports

About as close as I've found to your statement is interviews with individual steelworkers.

The thing that's an absolute hoot about all of this is articles like:

https://patriotpost.us/articles/42727-obamas-steel-tariffs-will-hurt-us-economy
http://money.cnn.com/2016/02/04/investing/obama-oil-tax/index.html
http://archive.fortune.com/2009/10/07/news/economy/obama_china_tires_tariff.fortune/index.htm
https://instituteforenergyresearch.org/analysis/obama-administration-penalizes-foreign-solar-panels/
etc.etc.etc.

You can bet your bottom dollar that the Mr. Xenos of the world weren't pulling out their fifi from the sock drawer on those matters.

Please spare me the sonorous droning on about economics. This has nothing to do with the economy, it's 100% domestic politics.

[Bonnie McGuire]

Don't know if you've seen it. My neighbor was given this movie by a friend many years ago, but hadn't watched it until we both did today. Evidently it was filmed during 2012. Charley Daniels " Behold a Pale Horse." Interesting to see how far the predictions have come since our "change puppet" served time in the White House. Here's a short YouTube preview regarding the film.
http://youtu.be/iD9mKdQnk7c

[Xeno]

GeorgeR 210pm - I am not the one with a dreadful understanding of what Laffer et al are saying - Trump is the one who needs help. But most of what he does is designed to titialate his base and help his reality TV presidential image as a tough guy.

[George Rebane]

Xeno 925am - The reading of your 128pm aside Mr Xeno, I fervently recommend that you disperse your interpretation of President Trump's behavioral 'designs' with as many of your fellow ideologues as possible, and perhaps even have it become a plank in the Democrat platform for this November. Pursue your instincts, and good luck.