Rebane's Ruminations

National dumbth on parade, again (updated 1jul18)

George Rebane

Today the nation will witness ‘hundreds of thousands’ of Americans demonstrating against what is represented as “Trump’s immigration policy”.  The demonstrations are sponsored by the usual leftwing anti-American and socialist organizations, and will focus on the ‘separation of children’ aspect of US Code (including our extant immigration law) that requires the separation of children from people (American citizens and illegal aliens) taken into custody – we have never thrown kids into jail with criminal adults.

This aspect of US law is totally denied and suppressed by today’s leftwingers who will shout themselves hoarse.  The reporting on this is so one-sided and misrepresented on the lamestream media that, in addition to riling up the leftwing base and those lightly read on social justice, that some more moderate and even conservative media dare not put these emotional claims into some kind of realworld perspective.  We have reported on this and discussed it extensively in these pages (here, here, and here).  Locally, as well as nation-wide, the Left does not want to even recognize their information-free and illogical position on this, because the real agenda here remains the maintenance of incivility against our duly elected president – all this answers the call to now put their “bodies on the line” to oppose anything and everything this administration does.

In today’s (30jun18) Union, Nancy Garcia takes up our incivility and asks (here), “Why is it OK to not serve someone because of their political affiliation but not OK to discriminate against race or creed of customers?  Why is it OK for a past president to put children, who crossed the border illegally, in caged detention cells, but not OK for a sitting president to house them in a safe, secure and caring environment?  The immigration laws were created by Congress, not the president. It will take Congress to change them.”

That the hordes attending today’s demonstration have been carefully taught to ignore such questions is another confirmation of national dumbth solidly in place and on the rise.

[1jul18 update]  Well, as part of our national dumbth in its upper reaches, we have a major op-ed piece in the NYT decrying ‘How Conservatives Weaponized the First Amendment’.  The fools in their editorial department are so ignorant of constitutional principles that they don’t even realize that the First was meant by our Founders to be used as a weapon against any insipient tyranny arising in the land.  And nowhere is that more obvious today than what the progressives have done and are doing to our national dialogue in academe, our public schools, business, and the media.

Formerly fierce promoters of free speech, the Left today has its mammaries in a pinch with a bitter harvest of what it has sown.  The notions now being discussed by progressive elitists include the total revision, if not abrogation, of the First Amendment and free speech, because (wait for it) it turns out that the Constitution hinders free speech.  Apparently the rich and powerful are now using it to make arguments for which the progressive pinheads have no reasonable counter, and they and theirs are made to look like the fools they are in even their own lamestream media.  The solution for them is always the government gun in the attempt to put a stop to the whole thing.  I can already see proposals for a federal Free Speech Commission through which public speech must first be cleared before being posted, published, or broadcast.

And while this is going on, the Left, exemplified by our local loonies, continues to call for inclusion and diversity as they howl for opposing voices to be silenced, or at least denied forums in which their ideas can be disseminated.  As they accuse us of being divisive, we witness calls by our own alt-Left to silence Union columnist George Boardman, cartoonist Bob Crabb, and of course, yours truly.  And I am sure such calls are echoed across the land as we now prepare to witness the most vicious political fight of our lifetime as our national socialist will fight tooth-and-nail to stop anyone and everyone that President Trump nominates to replace Justice Kennedy on SCOTUS.

Sandbox - 29jun18

[OK boys and girls, it's time for SCOTUS roulette.  Make known your odds that one of your favorite candidates will get the presidential nod.  gjr]

No Abyss for Progressives

George Rebane

‘Progressive movement jumping into abyss’ by Manny Montes appeared in the 23jun18 Union, opening with the hopeful salvo –

An extraordinary thing is happening right before our eyes.  The implosion of the progressive movement, and its complicit ministry of propaganda, our news media, are jumping head first into the abyss, oblivious to the progressive ideological dangers of their descent.  The incipient tyrant in every progressive is now manifest for all to see. The Obama administration blatantly politicized our government's intelligence and law-enforcement apparatus. The tyrant plays by his own rules. Power is the objective. Principles, ethics and constitutional restraints mean not a whit to the tyrant.

The remainder of the piece presented a cogent, clear, and concise summary of the Left’s iniquities, under Obama’s watch and Hillary’s candidacy, revealed over the last six years or so.  All of which have been much discussed in these pages and elsewhere across the land.  The problem with Mr Montes’ assessment appears to come from his limited awareness of the workings of the liberal mind and their lightly read constituencies.

The Left sees none of these extra-constitutional cum criminal acts – they have been and remain totally blind to them as amply evidenced in the RR comment streams, and more prominent progressive trumpets.  For them, the only atrocious aberrations in government remain Trump’s alleged “collusion with Russia” for which there is yet to be discovered one shred of evidence.  And Trump’s immaterial bombasts, exaggerations, misanthropics, and fabrications have become a catalog of impeachable “lies” for them that totally overwhelm the material lies and illegal activities – including documented collusion with Russia and its third-party agents - perpetrated by Team Obama over their eight years in power.

What Mr Montes misses is that for there to open a convenient abyss into which the progressives can either jump or blunder, there has to be a sufficiently knowledgeable political mass in the nation to demand that they be held to account, through either the justice system or in the voting booth.  The American electorate is now hopelessly divided into those too dumb to be informed, and those too smug who think that they need do nothing but wait for Divine Justice to strike through a parting of the clouds to “implode the progressive movement” of dastardly and seditious anti-Americans.  Meanwhile, with apparent impunity, the Left continues to field platoons of political thugs to confront administration staffs, shut down public and private facilities, and block avenues of transportation – all with both tacit and vociferous approval from our already coopted and compliant Fourth Estate.

The logic, totally absent from the Left’s mindset and to which Mr Montes appeals in his arguments, is shared today by a diminishing minority – the masses neither care, let alone dare, to call the progressive perps to account.   The great unwashed are continually reminded that the only evil in the land to be purged is Donald Trump, else (cue the chorus) ‘All is Well, All is Well’.

Tom Coleman, RIP

George Rebane

My dear friend and one of Nevada County’s iconoclastic gentlemen and longtime community leaders Tom Coleman died last night in Reno of heart failure.  He was playing poker when he collapsed and was taken to the hospital where doctors did all they could, but were not able to save him.  Tom was the longest owner of the recently sold National Hotel in Nevada City, and was to be honored along with his partner Ms Ernie Kehn as the grand marshals of this year’s 4^th of July parade.

Tom was a stalwart and one of the original members of our long running dinner/poker group.  He always sat in his special chair at the octagon, dispensing his wit, wisdom, and stories of Nevada County, and he never let an opening betting round be passed without betting what became known as the ‘Coleman buck’ to get things started.  When it was Tom’s turn to host the dinner, he would order up a sumptuous meal from the hotel’s Hoover Restaurant that always featured a prominent hunk of beef with, of course, all the fixins and a collection of fine wines to lubricate the evening’s labors.

For years we were fellow Rotarians who met regularly at the National.  Tom was also an Elk, and his celebration of life will be held at the Nevada City lodge with date/time to be announced.  Funeral arrangements will be handled by Hooper and Weaver Mortuary.

Over the decades Tom served on many boards, panels, and community associations, always giving freely of his time, talents, and treasure.  He will be missed by his family and the uncountable friends he made as one our community’s most prominent and liked citizens.  We will miss him greatly.

Ruminations - 26jun18 (updated 28jun18)

Maxine Waters (D-CA) is a crook and certifiable idiot, and the best thing that has happened to Republicans in a long time – she’s a gift that keeps giving.  Her latest call for alt-Left hoodlums to physically confront, in public or at their residences, people who either work in the administration or are on record supporting Trump is indeed beyond the pale.  But the majority of American independents know that, and therefore GOP congress critters currently calling for her censure should just go through the obligatory motions to get their outrage on record, and keep the spotlight on her.

ESG funds and bonds are the latest investment craze.  “Once a fringe concept, environmental-, social-, and governance-based investing has hit the mainstream.”  ‘G’ is the important component here because the profitability of all of these investments will depend heavily on the success of lobbying Congress and government bureaucracies to provide market mangling subsidies along with competition suppressing fees and regulations.  We recall that the good thing we celebrate about capitalism is that it will game the system, and the bad thing we hate about capitalism is that it will game the system. (more here)

Hanlon’s Razor – never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.  And its earlier version by Napoleon – never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.  Good label to keep handy in these discussions.  And it cohabits comfortably with the Rebane Doctrine aphorism – government should be held guilty until proven innocent as the cause of all social problems.  And these pages have also enquired mightily into whether the leftist elites are either evil or just stupid.  In that, perhaps Hanlon’s Razor is the most generous when assessing progressive public policies.

‘Why Women Don’t Code’ is an excellent piece by Univ of Washington professor Stuart Reges.  He presents some excellent history on this issue, and even more interesting research that bears on the relative proportions of men and women in STEM careers – especially computer science. (H/T to reader and correspondent)

[27jun18 update] Milan Vodicka PhD is one of Nevada County’s stalwart leftwing ideologues and a local leading intellectual light.  In today’s (26jun18) Union he again shares his caliber of thinking, extensive knowledge of history, penetrating insights of current events, and unbiased ideological perspectives in ‘Fascist USA? Concentration camps? For kids?’ (sic).  The man continues to present himself as an auto-attributed straight arrow, ever maintaining himself “above the fray” while assuring us that the “arbiter of my take on everything is the truth and truth only, validated by proof”, which proof we presume will be provided in one of his subsequent columns.  Fortunately, we have met Dr Vodicka before in these pages, and readers can review some of his vitae here.

SummerFest 2018, the annual musical gala presented by Music in the Mountains, continues tomorrow night at our fairgrounds.  This year’s series includes four outdoor concerts on the fairground’s Great Lawn.  More here on the entire series.  Bring your lawn chairs and munchies (adult libations purveyed within easy stumbling distance), and enjoy an evening with friends under the big pines.  Did I mention that kids get in free?

[28jun18 update]  Physicians vs gun-owners.  These remarkable stats pass our desks from time-to-time – they’re worth keeping in mind as the gulf between us grows, so pay attention.  Annual deaths from physician mistakes is around a constant 120,000 (accidental deaths from the overall medical industry is over double that) as reported by the Dept of Health and Human Services.  There are 700,000 physicians in the US, therefore the accidental death rate at the hands of a physician is 0.171 deaths/physician/year.  More than 80,000,000 Americans own guns, and the total number of annual accidental gun deaths is around 1,500.  This calculates to 0.0000188 accidental deaths/gun-owner/year.  Ergo, on average you are about 9,000 (= 0.171/0.0000188) times as likely to die accidentally at the hands of physician than you are at the hands of a gun-owner.

Sandbox - 25jun18

[Here's the next batch of fresh sand.  I find it interesting how the intersection of what interests me and RR's commenters goes up and down.  It appears that the interests of our most voluble readers pretty much track the news cycle, often leaving unattended more fundamental and systemic events/trends that impact our lives and country.  Because I have always walked a path less tread, for me this variance is noteworthy but not a consternation, since RR has always been a record of my observations and interpretations from the last great century of Man.  In sum, I think of my weblog as a letter to my family and the future which, of course, includes the contents of its comment streams.  gjr]

The Diaspora of Dumbth in America

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

George Rebane

Nothing in recent memory highlights the dumbing of the American mind like today’s hysteria about separating kids from adults (parents or coyotes) who criminally enter the United States.  Led by the Left, our news media, both lamestream and conservative, have now started supporting the narrative that such separation from illegal alien adults taken into custody is something new, unique, inhuman, permanently damaging, and not the American way.  In reality nothing could be further from the truth.  America has never jailed kids with adults in whose custody they were at the time of incarceration.  We have always separated the kids and put them into appropriate care institutions until they could be reunited with parents, relatives, or placed with other legal guardians.

Today the insane notion has spread across the land, a diaspora of the belief that somehow illegal aliens who criminally enter our country deserve special treatment that is not now and never has been afforded American citizens.  Our laws, and especially border security laws, have always called for equal separation of alien children brought illegally and surreptitiously into the country by criminal adults who have been arrested and taken into custody.  Here’s a letter in the 25jun18 WSJ from a defense attorney that reinforces what I introduced on these pages in ‘Separating kids from parents’.

Regarding your editorial “The GOP’s Immigration Meltdown” (June 19): I am a criminal defense attorney and can say with confidence that hundreds, if not thousands, of parents and their minor children are separated in this country every day by the criminal justice system. What was happening at our southern border is routine.

It is not uncommon for criminal defendants to bring their minor children to court with them for bail hearings, revocation of bail hearings, revocation of probation hearings and sentencing hearings. Perhaps they think that the presence of their children will influence the judge. It has been my experience that it will not.

If a criminal defendant is denied bail, has his bail revoked (as Paul Manafort recently experienced), has his probation revoked or is sentenced to prison, he will be taken into custody and, by definition, separated from his children (the children don’t accompany the defendant to prison). If a family member or other guardian isn’t present to take the children, the children will be taken by a state agency that is charged with caring for children who have no adult to care for them.

Illegally entering the U.S. is, by definition, a crime. If the parent is taken into custody by law enforcement for the crime of illegally entering the U.S., that parent will be separated from his minor children, just as any other criminal defendant in the examples above.

As an attorney, I don’t understand the current outrage. Parents have been separated, are being separated and will continue to be separated from their minor children by the criminal justice system. Why should there be an exception for noncitizens who have been arrested for the crime of illegally entering the U.S.? As far as I know, there is no exception for any other crime.

Ivars Lacis, Peachtree City, Ga.

The diaspora of this anti-American insanity was further expanded on and put into the context of an ongoing broader leftwing agenda in ‘The Existential Abrogation of Sovereignty’.  What I want to emphasize here is that more centrist and conservative media outlets have fallen in line, putting out news items about separating kids that do nothing to dispel the lies that 1) the whole policy was started by Trump, and 2) that such separations are unique to entering illegal aliens, who have been converted simply into “immigrants” no longer adorned with even the mildly clarifying modifiers of ‘undocumented’ or ‘illegal’.

And the under-educated of the land are lapping it up with manufactured visions of such huddled masses, as in days of yore, gathered at the foot of the Statue of Liberty demanding to be allowed entry simply because they and their neighbors have lost their native countries to criminals and corruptions.  All this time the alt-Left Democrats are also telling Americans what a horrible land the United States is, and no one has the ability to see the disconnect between that argument and the existential confusion at our borders where more than 1,000 illegals daily risk life and limb to enter.

The unexamined bottom line in the public forum, and now the proclaimed policy of the Democratic Party is that America should welcome one and all from across the world who illegally cross our borders with the complaint that they want, nay, demand a better economic future.  Promoting such open borders and automatic amnesty is the surest way for us to lose our national sovereignty and speed up our departure from the America that for the last two centuries has served as the gold standard of governance.

The Old-age Dependency Train Wreck

George Rebane

The baby boomer retirement tsunami is in full swing, and the number of working age Americans whose efforts will support the rapidly growing population of retireds is shrinking at an alarming rate.  Some significant verbiage expanding on the problem is available in ‘A Generation of Americans Is Entering Old Age the Least Prepared in Decades’.  Given what we know today, the following charts tell the quantitative side of the story.

But what really struck me is the graphic below showing the entire country’s aging ratio (more here).  The arithmetically and geographically astute will note that in Nevada County during the last seven years we have gone from almost one-in-three seniors (above 64) to about one-in-two residents of working age (18-64).  This is more than a 50% increase in this ratio, the impact of which is really not appreciated by our local political leaders in the sense that we don’t know how much cash the retirees are importing into our community versus how much of our local services they depend on to live their lives – i.e. how much cash are they pulling out.

This data again gives lie to the local loony lefties who frequently celebrate the myth that Nevada County with its population in stasis is turning younger (the hordes with LA and SF values replace exiting younger middle class workers), and that the older generation hereabouts is on its way out.  As shown above, the reality is the other way around, as I have vainly attempted to educate the ineducable by explaining to them the workings of ingress and egress rates.  Actually, our exiting 'native' middle class workers are being replaced with a constant influx of people with LA and SF values who have soiled their previous nests and promise the same here.  But at the same time our remaining workforce of baby boomers is aging and now replace, at an ever greater rate, the oldsters who are either escaping socialist California for greener pastures or the great beyond.

In any event, the only mitigation of this looming national social catastrophe is a vibrant and growing economy (aka capitalism, entrepreneurship, development), something that the globalist progressives with their grassroots echo chambers are dead set against, since such a state of affairs will work counter to their fervent belief in a big government command economy as the epitome of a social justice delivered.  Whatever your politics, from time to time it pays to review the data tracking this social dynamic.

Ruminations – 22jun18 (updated 24jun18)

George Rebane

Dr Charles Krauthammer (1950-2018).  This man was an intellectual staple in our house for at least twenty years, and his most recent stint on Fox News brought him to our dinner table on an almost daily basis.  His towering intellect, expansive knowledge base, exquisite reasoning, and gentle, often self-effacing humor made him a welcome extension of the media family in our home, and also millions of other homes fortunate enough to have discovered him.  The way he sat (wheelchair bound) in a dignified upright as he delivered his on-air soliloquies, always with a twinkle in his eye and with a dry bon mot, slyly intertwined for the attentive listener, that confirmed his well-earned sobriquet as ‘The Bonze’ to all of us grasshoppers.  He lived a blessed life of courage and wisdom, and the hole he now leaves in many lives across the land will eventually fill, but very slowly.  RIP.

‘City of London Will Be Powered By 100% Renewable Energy Starting in October 2018’ – this little bowl of bullpoop was put out by the Good News Network (H/T to reader).  Actually, the whole city will not be blessed by this technological miracle as reported by the City of London Corporation (here).  But the part that will is going to draw its electricity from some solar panels on buildings, and (seat belts please) buying only “renewable energy already on the market” drawn from the grid that is, of course, polluted with all that dirty power from fossil fuels.  But not to worry, their green accountants will know how to sort out the good from the bad electricity, and buy only the good stuff.  There was no report of what the marginal cost would be for all this clean energy.

Speaking of global warming, it was 1988 when James Hansen, NASA scientist, told Congress that earth was going to hell in a handcart according to his general circulation models.  Looking back, we ask, ‘Thirty Years On, How Well Do Global Warming Predictions Stand Up?’.  The answer, explained all over the web (and here), to those who would listen and could understand, is ‘not very well at all’.  Bottom line, it is nowhere near as warm as predicted by Hansen and the IPCC, and Earth will not be the hyped hothouse by mid- or end-of-century, and we still don’t know exactly all the gazintas and how they interact so as to produce a reliable camzata temperature number on which to base reasonable public policy. (more here) But that, of course, makes no never mind to the True Believers who worship consensus science.

 [23jun18 update]  My position here has grown to ascribe the lamestream media as definitely anti-American (see definition here) in the way that they purposely fabricate lies into their ‘normal’ coverage of the news (e.g. here), and the way they self-censor reporting salient news items that contradict their anti-Trump and long-playing anti-American narrative (e.g. here).

[24jun18 update]  Just watched former HS Secretary Jeh Johnson on FN admit that there is no immediate or short-term solution beyond Trump’s zero-tolerance to stop the illegal alien border violations and taking the illegals into custody, a policy that was initially enabled by a Democrat legislation way back when.  Of the 12K separated kids now in question, only 2K are separated from their illegal entrant parent(s) and placed with relatives in America.  The other 10K arrived with non-family coyotes and need to be housed somewhere before their disposition is determined.  Sec Johnson had no better solution than what is going on now.  This clears the demagoguery that the sleazebag Dems and their local lackeys are blowing for political gain, lying to Americans that Trump created the problem which he could now solve with a stroke of the pen.  Today Feinstein is floating a bill that in preventing separation, would encourage human trafficking, invite unlimited migration from the south, and promote the continuation of open borders and amnesty to the illegal aliens who successfully crawled under the fence.

The Existential Abrogation of Sovereignty

George Rebane

Across this land we are debating the wrong thing.  There is no contention about separating kids from parents.  No one want to do that gratuitously.  But as a society, we do it when we must.  And we do it daily with American kids by the thousands when their parents are jailed or otherwise detained through legal proceedings.  We have done that for decades and today we keep hundreds of thousands of American kids in foster care separate from their parents.  But just focusing on the kids is not my point here.

America’s Left has found a new casus belli to attack the foundations of our republic.  Their goal, as stated here many times, is nothing less than the abrogation of America’s sovereignty as a nation-state (cf. Agenda21).  Let me start with some fundamental tenets of governance that I assign to Rebane Doctrine (continuing to collect these under this label and efficiently refer to them drives the local Left nuts; another benefit).

1. A nation-state is first and foremost sovereign only to the extent that it can determine and control the access of goods and people to its territory. Secure and non-porous borders through which ingress, including immigration, and egress are effectively controlled is an existential measure of its sovereignty.
2. Anti-American – a person who opposes American sovereignty 1) as an idea through impugnation, and/or 2) existentially by actively working to reduce/eliminate such sovereignty.
3. Anti-American sedition – activities intended to radically and/or rapidly change the existing character, make-up, and/or established order of America through extra-legal means.

Today the media is full of reports and interviews with progressive politicians unabashedly promoting open borders without (yet) daring to say it in those words.  What they volubly promote instead is a 1) catch, 2) keep the families together, and 3) then release policy for illegal aliens caught after surreptitiously crossing the border.  They are to be released on the basis of 1) having purposely violated US laws, and 2) on the fiction that all illegal aliens have a prima facie legitimate case for seeking asylum.

What gives lie to all this, and is known to our anti-American politicians is that only about 3% of the illegal entrants return for their asylum court hearings which would legitimize their stay in the US.  The other 97% know they have no leg to stand on, and that they would be taken into custody and deported were they to present themselves.  Their only hope for staying here is to remain a fugitive long enough until our anti-American Left (presuming the existence of a pro-American Left) can muster enough public opinion to force the federal government to designate them as the next 'DACAs' or 'Dreamers' or … in sufficient numbers so as to make their en masse deportation no longer feasible.  And voila! We have yet another new tranche of Democrat voters who have no love or understanding of the country into which they have infused.  Their loyalty is only to the globalist progressive cause and its visible political and opinion leaders who are bent on taking us to that new future.

Our Declining IQ Numbers

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 20 June 2018.]

Listeners to these commentaries over the years have heard me report on the advance of America’s national dumbth – a term coined by the late Steve Allen to describe the overall state of our understanding, interests, and intellectual acumen.  The reasons for this have been many, but mainly due to the de-emphasis of rigorous academics in our public schools over the last fifty years or so.  In any event, I was surprised to receive from a correspondent news of recent studies on the decline of IQs reported by our National Academy of Sciences, and other similar organizations in the developed world.

Ongoing longterm studies in Denmark, Britain, France, the Netherlands, Finland, and Estonia all corroborate the “downward trend” observed here in America.  First, let’s be clear that what we are talking about is not how much people know – people’s so-called knowledge base, which, of course, has also been declining over the same period.  But IQ is a prime measure of a person’s ability to process data, acquire knowledge, and make decisions.  This human attribute is critical to a society, especially technologically advanced societies, in that it directly impacts people’s ability to participate in our rapidly changing job markets.

During most of the last century our IQ scores were found to be increasing, something that came to be called the Flynn Effect by psychologists and people who keep track of such things.  IQ scores for men kept increasing until about 1975, and then something unexpected happened.  Continued testing showed that IQ scores started steadily decreasing among men born after 1975.

Detailed analysis showed that the decline was not due to a “long-believed theory known as the dysgenic fertility theory, which states that unintelligent people have more children, leading to a ‘dumbing down’ of society.”  No, research shows that the dumbing down was identified as caused by “environmental factors (which) could range from nutrition, changes in the educational system, less reading and more time spent online, (and) to changes in the media environment.” (more here, here, and here)

Others have acknowledged that we may also need to adapt IQ testing and “other traditional methods of measuring intelligence”, since times have changed and today “people are exposed to different intellectual experiences, such as changes in the use of technology, for example social media” which indicate that “educational methods need to adapt to such changes.”  But the bottom line is still that, in the aggregate and compared to their older generations, today younger people cannot do and/or readily learn to do the things that need to be done to operate a civil society.

These observations across a broad swath of developed western countries should sound an alarm that something has gone wrong with the way we as parents raise kids, and then how we as a society educate them to become the next generation of a productive, competitive, and advancing civilization.  However, there is also a danger that these warnings will be ignored or actually denigrated by political factions for reasons ideological that dictate a more homogenous world.

One political vulnerability of such research is that it continues to corroborate the longstanding differences in IQ based on race, showing that the mean IQ scores of Asians rank highest, followed by Caucasians, with the Negroid scores being significantly lower.  The American Psychological Association acknowledges these rankings despite “the absence of any adequate explanation of it, either environmental or genetic.”  (more here)

Finally, a strong corollary of all this is the increase of mental illness among young people in developed countries.  Alarming fractions of our youth are now regularly diagnosed and medicated for clinical depression and behavioral problems. (more here and here)  Statistics on the need for remedial education and teen suicide rates all tell different parts of the same story.  Among things like our public education system, we may also want to reexamine and change the way that well-to-do parents are today required to monitor and restrict our children’s activities, and how among the poorer strata, where broken families abound, kids are turned loose to find their own way on the meanest streets in town.

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.

Separating kids from parents

George Rebane

Now that the just released IG report about Russian collusion and Hillary’s emails took the wind out of Democrats’ sail, their next bag of hot air is blowing across the land from a timely pivot to blaming the Trump administration for separating illegal alien kids snuck over the border by their illegal alien parents who are now criminals according to longstanding US law.

When you are caught sneaking across our border with your kid(s), you are not an “immigrant” – now no longer adorned even by the politically permuting adjectives ‘illegal’ or ‘undocumented’.  You are simply an apprehended illegal alien fugitive.  That you broke our laws does not entitle you to an automatic smorgasbord of benefits and special treatment.

Having your offspring in tow does not suddenly make you exempt from the laws that prescribe how our native criminal parents are dealt with when they are taken into custody.  We don’t put their children in jail with them, and we don’t give adults a ‘get out of jail free’ card just because they have children.  What we do is take their kids and put them into appropriate foster care until their parents’ legal situation is resolved according applicable laws.  On any given day there are almost a half million children in foster care across America, and the turnover in that population is high.  Here is a summary of data on that from the Dept of HHS, ‘The AFCARS Report’.

Today, as part and parcel of the spread of national dumbth, progressives (and even some light thinking conservatives) are hyperventilating about Trump having invented a new policy for ripping children from the loving arms of parents who really did nothing wrong other than leave their shithole country, illegally transit other benign countries, and sneak across our border to live the American dream.  All they want is asylum, jobs and/or US govt checks, and amnesty.  What’s so bad with that?

The details of the applicable laws, the history of their enforcement, and the current situation is more complex than can be explained to attention-deficit audiences with other things on their minds.  All that they need to hear from lamestream outlets is that Trump is “cruel and immoral” and doing something never done before to jailed people, be they American citizens or illegal aliens.  Such reporting should keep the leftwing’s 'Resist Trump' pot boiling.

For a more measured and complete analysis of what’s really going on here, I recommend reading Rich Lowry’s ‘The Truth About Separating Kid’.

‘A copernican answers Fermi’ (updated 21nov18)

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” – A.C. Clarke’s Third Law

George Rebane

Last month we were encamped with two other couples at Hat Creek in northern California.  It was a delightful trip – the weather was fine, the food, drink, and the friends superb.  Actually, we’re all experienced “road warriors” having traveled much with each other over the last years.  This was our second trip to the Hat Creek RV Park which is located far away from cities and towns in the middle of a broad and very ancient volcanic caldera with walls reaching up several hundred feet.  Hat Creek is a quiet place with few people, but because it is located in a bowl, it is also quiet in the electromagnetic (EM) sense which is important to radio astronomers and people searching the galaxy for evidence of extra-terrestrial intelligence (ETI).

For that reason, the Hat Creek caldera is home to the Allen Telescope Array (ATA) that was built for the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute to support their ETI search program.  We men, of course, had to go visit the observatory since it was only about 1.5 miles from the RV park.  We drove over, went into the facility, talked to the staff, walked into the array of dishes, saw the data gathering and control equipment, and watched the obligatory video extolling the virtues of the radio observatory and its mission.  Then we took a lot of pictures, one of which you see here is a close up of one of dishes.

We were told that the ATA currently serves the radio astronomy needs of both the SETI Institute located in Menlo Park, and the Stanford Research Institute in Palo Alto.  The array signal feeds go directly to those locations for further analysis, and from there the surveillance directions for the array are transmitted.

After returning from our visit, my little feverish mind started recalling all the things I’ve been reading and thinking over the years about ETIs and the galaxy with multitudes of post-Singularity super-intelligences.  And the constant points that I always had to revisit was Drake’s formula for estimating the number of intelligent civilizations in the galaxy, and Fermi’s ‘Where are they?’ or ‘Where is everybody?’

Physicist Enrico Fermi’s question is even more poignant today than it was over sixty years ago when he first posed it to John von Neumann.  Because to date we have spent a lot of money and brainpower pointing sensitive radio telescopes at the sky, and we have heard nothing but radio noise – no sign of intelligent transmissions.  So, is there really anybody out there, or are we really alone?  What can explain the silence?

Sandbox - 17jun18

[Apologies again for that last sandbox getting a bit long of tooth.  Here's some fresh sand in which to continue those ever engaging discussions about the local scene - as we are told, 'All politics is local' (but let's not get carried away). ;-)  gjr]

Ruminations – 15jun2018 (updated 20jun18)

George Rebane

Headline, ‘Growth in US Leaves World Behind’ while the ECB continues to keep the ‘fragile economies’ of the EU on crutches with low interest rates.  Wonder why our lamestream considers this too insignificant to report?  One might almost think that they're afraid people will credit President Trump with some of this good news.

Judge’s ruling - Illegal aliens now know how to be turned loose in the US after crawling under the fence - just bring your kid along.  Wonder if this will invite or deter more illegals.

Macron wants to restore the ancien régime after Brexit, and make French again the official language of the EU.  Meanwhile English, and specifically American English, has become the world’s lingua franca in both commerce and diplomacy.  Maybe Monsieur le Président knows that French is the most rapidly shrinking developed country language worldwide.

California’s new enforced water restriction law is designed to make real in people's lives the global warming hysteria that the progressives’ politicized consensus science could not do.   It looks like you will be criminalized if ‘in this land of surf and sun, you still flush for Number One’.  Meanwhile we continue to oppose building new reservoirs and dump most of our fresh water into the Pacific. (more here)

Government cheating government – it turns out that “America’s great progressive political hope, NYC Mayor Bill deBlasio is essentially the nation’s pre-eminent slumlord.”  NYC’s affordable housing projects have been allowed to deteriorate while deBlasio has been “taking active steps to deceive inspectors and cover up its ineptitude and wrongdoing.”  We recall our mantra – in creating social problems, government is always guilty until proven innocent.

[16jun18 update]  Gary Litke in the 16jun18 Union (here) is among the county’s NIMBY legions who oppose building 28 new houses west of Grass Valley because “the agricultural, open space history of this property should be maintained in ways that would benefit someone other than residential real-estate developers.”  It continues to be lost on the local Litkes that Nevada County needs people who need places to come and raise their families here, do business with our merchants, send their kids to our schools, support our cultural offerings, and do all the things which have made Nevada County the desirable place to live that it has been.  Do all of these people not also benefit from such developments?  Today, we seem to be a draw primarily for people with, let’s say, a spectrum of alternative life styles based on cesspool SF values.  What are we offering to middle-class working families with traditional American values?

Mizzou’s comeuppance.  The university is in dire straits with student enrollments down 35%, and more graduating than wanting to attend.  It turns out that all that horsecrap in 2015 - when student activists banned free speech, got top administrators to leave, and made academics a politically correct supplementary offering - has convinced students and parents that the University of Missouri is a place to avoid, especially when other neighboring universities and colleges are doing their best to return to academics and offer an open environment for exchanging ideas. (more here and here)

[17jun18 update]  The naivete of The Economist.  This hoary ‘newspaper’ continues its lurch leftward, donning the trappings that so often today adorn the remarks of progressive naifs.  In its 16jun18 edition’s lead editorial (here) this auto-aggrandized paragon of journalism laments that the Singapore “agreement contains no binding North Korean commitments.”  More sober observers celebrated Trump’s first meeting with NK’s UFK as 1) the decades-awaited breakthrough meeting that defused what the Left itself had been aspirating as imminent nuclear armageddon, and 2) the potential for further talks that could lead to the normalization of that rogue regime and remove it as China’s pawn for irritating the west.

[19jun18 update]  Now here’s a bit of embarrassment for Mueller and his crack team of progressive yet unbiased lawyers finally investigating the Russia conspiracy angle which was their charge.  A Russian company charged in the conspiracy did not exist at the time of the alleged mischief, and the company is now fighting back - whoulda thought of that? - justifiably demanding Mueller’s evidence on which he based his indictment.  Red-faced and with pants down, Mueller is desperately petitioning the court for delays and gag order for submitting his supposedly unclassified evidence.  Oh my.  (more here)  H/T to reader.

[20jun18 update] 'My Lazy Summer as a Public Employee' by Jason Riley is another of a gazillion examples we see every day of government workers' gold bricking, hubris, inefficiencies, and incompetence.  All of it counsels letting government do something should be the choice of last resort when all other private sector means have been exhausted, including to consider not doing it at all if government is the only remaining choice.

Scattershots – 13jun18 (updated 14jun18)

George Rebane

Cal-3 is going to be on the November ballot. WaPo reports that “On Tuesday, the California secretary of state confirmed in a memo that Draper’s Cal-3 campaign attained enough valid signatures to earn a spot on the ballot Nov. 6. After more than 150 years of failed partition proposals, California voters will finally go to the polls to decide whether they want to relinquish their monopoly of the Pacific coast and become three new states.”  Venture capitalist Tim Draper’s old plan to cut California into six more ideologically cohesive pieces has been slimmed down with some apparent success.  No matter its fate at the polls, the proposition confirms again what RR has maintained over the years while vehemently being denied by the state’s Left – especially our lightly read locals.  People do want their voices heard by their government, and people do want to live with others whose values and mores are more than less like theirs.  Such existential diversity is anathema to the one-size-fits-all Left.

The Left’s campaign to enlarge national dumbth gets a boost from NYC’s mayor deBlasio reports Jason Riley in ‘The Attack on Educational Excellence’.  deBlasio wants schools with entrance test requirements, for which Hispanics and blacks are historically poorly prepared, to revert to the racial quota system, all in the name of “diversity”.  “In the upside-down thinking of affirmative-action advocates, academically rigorous schools should be more focused on achieving racial balance and less focused on maintaining high standards. Asian displays of academic excellence therefore become problematic. Asians are somehow to blame for outperforming others, and they are to be punished for the historical injustices that blacks suffered at the hands of whites.”  Occam’s rationale for deBlasio’s call to eliminate entrance tests is simply that ignorant minorities are easier to keep disgruntled on the plantation where their attitudes and votes can be readily manipulated.

Trump in Singapore.  Well, it turns out that it was really the media experts who were expecting a single-shot breakthrough at this week’s summit.  Leading up, they blamed Trump for expecting too much from the meeting, while Trump was telling the world not to expect much more than it would be the “potential” beginning of conversations which no other world leader had been able to launch with the North Korean dictators, while allowing them to become an ever bigger danger to world peace.  Now the Monday morning quarterbacks are decrying the President for not walking out with a definitive world-shaking treaty that in one swell foop rid the Ugly Fat Kid of his nuclear capability and made him into a well-behaved leader enjoying a recent epiphany on human rights.  Demonstrating that their Trump Derangement Syndrome knows no bounds, these self-pumped pinhead pundits are now manufacturing hypotheticals about all kinds of imagined bad things yet-to-come, and getting a jump on criticizing the President for those.  (Here is an example from the auto-profound Council on Foreign Relations.  The myriad pronouncements on the lamestream are too silly and stupid to even consider.)  Meanwhile, Trump continues to tell all that the process has just started, and no one has given away anything to anyone – i.e. going forward we will trust AND verify.

[14jun18 update]  The 500-page DoJ’s IG report on Hillary’s email server investigation has apparently been seen by select eyes only, and is promised to be made public later today.  From early and conflicting reports by sources such as AG Sessions, Rep Trey Gowdy, and the WSJ, it is unclear what kind of political bias IG Horowitz found or did not find.  The congressman concludes what most of us witnessed over the last two years, that the FBI’s treatment of Hillary and Trump have been profoundly asymmetrical.  Yet the WSJ reports, ‘DOJ Watchdog’s Clinton Report Finds Mistakes by Comey, No Political Bias’.  We can hardly wait to discover what kind of hoops the IG had to jump through to come to that conclusion.  An early and perhaps premature assessment is that the Deep State is fully engaged in defending itself.

[later]  Well, the 568-page hernia pack is now out for all to read, and it’s a doozer (download pdf here).  The report documents in exhaustive detail the prima facie bias expressed throughout the months of the FBI’s investigation of both the Trump and Clinton campaigns.  It hauls Comey, Lynch, McCabe, Strzok, and others over the coals, and then, and then, … FBI Director Christopher Wrey goes in front of the cameras this afternoon and does a reprise of Comey’s 5jul16 bullshit performance exonerating Hillary.  Wray goes through the exact same arguments of the damning evidence the IG’s investigation uncovered, and then announces a jaw-dropping conclusion that there was no hint of political bias shown by the investigators or during the course of the investigation – simply unbelievable how the man could keep a straight face delivering that copy.

Wray’s message essentially acknowledged that the FBI screwed up from start to end, and "we’ll hold people accountable", but the organization itself remains as untainted as ever and was not harmed by at least 18 months of continued incompetence and blatant documented bias.  Somehow screwing up the biggest investigation the FBI has had in decades should make no never mind in the minds of Americans.

More revealing were the sober, detailed, and very frank assessments delivered by House chairmen Trey Gowdy (R-SC) and Bob Goodlatte (R-Va) on Bret Baier’s FN Special Report.  Both men were incredulous of the way that the Deep State was now defending itself.  It’s worth watching this exchange here on YouTube.

Monopsony and the travails of capitalism (updated)

George Rebane

Monopsony - the market condition that exists when there is one buyer.

Nobody has said that capitalism is the perfect way to organize society and commerce; it has just beat the bejeezus out competitors since King Louis XVI lost his head in 1793.  But capitalism does have its inevitable warts.  I was reminded of one last night when reading the online edition of Prof Alan Blinder’s ‘What to Do When the Labor Market Stops Working for Workers’.  Blinder is a proto-socialist economist ensconced at Princeton, and often shares his views on capitalism with us in the pages of the WSJ.

The good professor is a fan of unions and no fan of the extra-union work-employer arbitration methods used in today’s corporate workplaces.  His point is that arbitration methods currently in use to resolve labor disputes puts the worker at a disadvantage when facing a squad of the company’s astute labor lawyers.  Blinder has a point there, especially when the worker brings nothing more than his easily replaced commodity skills to the workplace and expects more over time simply because he has put in the time.

The commodity worker is at a special disadvantage, as we would expect, when the employer is the regional monopsonist for the worker’s skills, and there are other workers who would be willing to do the same work for less – i.e. in that market such workers are willing to compete for the job by offering greater value to the employer.

Sandbox - 11jun18

[A left-leaning friend, and no friend of Trump, cites the WaPo's latest dire prediction of a coming debt-crash, what with all these companies buying back their stock, returning money to shareholders, and paying additional compensation to their employees.  Anyone else hunkering down?  gjr]

Kalifornia’s new service tax

George Rebane

State Senator Ted Gaines reports in the 9jun18 Union – ‘New bill slaps Californians with tax on services’ - of a piece of surreptitious legislation (SB993) quietly wending through Sacramento that will install yet one more layer of taxes that the people must add to the tribute that they already submit to succor the Sacramento Leviathan.  This new 3% tax on services will affect people directly and indirectly in more ways than we can count.

“Next time you visit a dry cleaner, hair stylist, manicurist, mechanic or any of the other countless services that we use day after day, week after week, you'll pay a new and additional three-percent tax for the exact same service. That's the last thing financially-stretched Californians need in this already unaffordable state. And history is clear that the three-percent tax will only creep up over time. … The damage wouldn't stop there. Small businesses contract out myriad tasks so they can focus on their core money making activity. They pay for computer services, payroll, janitorial, bookkeeping, legal services and more. Under this bill, they will be paying a premium for those services.”

The tax will give rise to a whole new bureaucracy charged with its administration that itself will cost over $600M annually, and employ a whole new tranche of government workers (aka parasites) whose benefit and retirement packages will require more millions taken into perpetuity from the shrinking corps of the state’s taxpayers.  In short, this will be another cancer upon the horde of cancers already afflicting the state’s fisc, and it will “further damage California’s faltering economic competitiveness and corrode our long-term financial health.”

We the people used to pay taxes for acknowledged needed services that were best provided by the collective, i.e. government.  Today new taxes are constantly added and existing ones are redirected for the sole purpose of sustaining and growing government (the employer of last resort).  When governments start exacting tribute from the people with impunity and for such clearly self-serving purposes, it has always signaled the onset of a rapidly evolving autocracy toward eventual tyranny.

Addendum:  As we have reported, California’s loss of productive middle-class taxpayers continues apace.  And the state is fast on the track to follow other high-tax socialist enclaves like Vermont (home of Bernie the communist) which has now initiated a $10K ‘Vermont relocation grant’ in its desperate attempt to replace its outflow of taxpayers by attracting new workers who can telecommute from the Green Mountain State (here).  Upon a moment’s reflection, it is clear that the $10K reward for moving there will only be taken by the innumerates who cannot calculate the horribly negative internal rate of return that this investment will have on their financial health.  Exit question – do companies really allow such double dummies to work from home?

Scattershots – 8jun18 (updated 9jun18)

George Rebane

That Ted Cruz is a strong anti-abortionist was claimed by a liberal friend and RR reader.  Moreover, the Texas Republican believes that “the continuum of human life begins at the moment of fertilization”, which means at conception.  By reasonable extension, this also means that Cruz is against any and all post-coitus contraception, since this might destroy a fertilized egg (although some eggs may be fertilized many hours after coitus).  I was not aware of that about Sen Cruz and asked my friend to provide some proof, which I promised to post.  He did, and you can inspect his submission here.

Illegal border crossings are down – that is the narrative that the Left (and their lamestream-locked local lackeys) are using to extenuate their criminality with the argument that ‘Dreamers’, illegal alien children (accompanied and unaccompanied), and other labeled groups of “immigrants” (now referenced sans the former ‘illegal’ or ‘undocumented’ modifiers) should be given amnesty to stay here forever, qualify for state offices, and soon obtain the vote (‘they pay taxes too’).  Well, border crossings are actually up since the folks south of the border became convinced that Congress and our courts would override President Trump’s enforcement of illegal alien laws already on the books.  According to the Border Patrol and Homeland Security, the year-to-year number of intercepted and arrested illegal alien families is up 435%, and the number of unaccompanied children is up 329%.  Fox News reported this; haven’t heard/seen it on any lamestream outlets.

Hillary Hodge’s run for District 3 Supervisor has so far garnered her 1,467 votes (to Dan Miller’s 1,713 votes).  Nevada County’s participation in beta testing the new Voters’ Choice Act will delay completing the tally until this coming Monday.  I presume that Dan Miller’s lead will hold and he will be re-elected.  But what I really find remarkable is that so many people actually voted for her.  Let me say at the outset that Ms Hodge is a nice pleasant lady and an upstanding citizen of our county.  But what I find astounding is that someone without any relevant education, total absence of experience, a demonstrated ignorance of issues, and no known life accomplishments (she admits to still coming to grips with being an adult) has the hubris to come in as an unknown, and do so well against the incumbent opponent whose attributes are diametrically opposite hers.  This speaks poorly for our county and, in extension, to our country’s voters who today are so ideologically rent that they will vote for a 2x4 with a painted face if it runs under their preferred party’s banner.  

[9jun18 update]  Union columnist Darrell Berkheimer delivered one of his liberal logrollers – ‘What should America do to be great again’ - in the newspaper’s 9jun18 edition.  He has concluded that America is no longer a great nation, and that is the fault of Republicans and President Trump.  He cites with alarm the upcoming report by the UN’s Human Rights Council, an assemblage dominated by the world’s worthless worthies (here), which contains an amplified and doctored list of America’s sores and carbuncles, leading Mr Berkheimer to conclude that we are indeed the worst of the worst among developed nations.  To be great again, Berkheimer prescribes that we reinstate “the freedom and opportunities to live a better life”, along with the “freedom to innovate” – freedoms which the Left has systematically been removing since the country’s post-war march to socialism was resumed by the Great Society in the 1960s.  Telling of Berkheimer’s prescriptions for America’s future are his mythical interpretations of the governmental “we” who used to “provide” for Americans.  And going forward “it's not just what we provide for those living now, but instead what we provide for the future — for our children, and the next generation after that.” (emphasis mine)  Unless I’m forgetting something fundamental about the greatness of America, it was not government, but the people who were free to innovate and provide for themselves that made us the most sought-after nation in the world.  Government’s constitutional role was to maintain a secure geography in which we could do all these things for ourselves.  Today the Berkheimers in America are working hard and with considerable success to reverse these roles.

‘Climate Change Has Run Its Course’

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 6 June 2018.]

Steven Hayward of UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies has put down some observations about climate change (here) that summarize what millions around the world acknowledge daily – namely that “climate change is no longer a pre-eminent policy issue. All that remains is boilerplate rhetoric from the political class, frivolous nuisance lawsuits, and bureaucratic mandates on behalf of special-interest renewable-energy rent seekers.” 

Now neither Dr Hayward nor, for that matter, these commentaries have been telling readers and listeners that climate change, formerly sold as global warming, is not happening.  Of course it is, and humans are no doubt contributing to this change, but we have nowhere near the impact on climate that hysteria mongers in politics and special interests have been getting all purple-faced about over the last few decades.  The supporting consensus or pseudo-science of climate change has failed to live up to the terrible predictions wrested from tortured data and dodgy computer models, neither of which can seem to get their stories straight.

Barraged by all the revelations of data doctoring and missed prognostications, the True Believers have tried all manner of approaches to convince the world’s nations to start economy-crippling decarbonization programs.  On national levels there have been a flood of laws passed to lower carbon emissions in both consumption and energy production.  But on the international level, since 1988 when the climate hysteria was launched with a series of highly publicized congressional hearings, the UN’s big global warming conferences have been an utter bust.  Since then, nations have gathered several times to pay lip service to reducing carbon emissions.  But after leaving the conferences and running the numbers on the impact of their promises, none of them have come close to living up to their carbon reduction commitments.  And many have actually increased their CO2 outputs.

As Hayward points out, “A good indicator of why climate change as an issue is over can be found early in the text of the Paris Agreement. The “nonbinding” pact declares that climate action must include concern for “gender equality, empowerment of women, and intergenerational equity” as well as “the importance for some of the concept of ‘climate justice.’ ”  Yes, you heard that right – the politically correct world is definitely pivoting away from the unconvincing consensus science about global warming to something more fuzzy and currently in vogue – social justice and identity politics issues of which there are an uncounted number just waiting to be raised into people’s consciousnesses.  Hayward calls this “the last gasp of a cause that has lost its vitality.”

The downward descent of such politicized attempts at central control was explained years ago in 1972 by political scientist Anthony Downs as “a five-stage cycle through which political issues pass regularly.”  The first cycle has experts and activists raising the alarm about a problem, which in then is picked up by the media as the next big story of “global peril and salvation”.  This establishes the peril’s priesthood – for global warming it has been Al Gore and Jerry Brown.  Third comes the sudden realization that fixing it is going to cost a lot of money, more than anyone had imagined.  In the fourth cycle people have become accustomed to the volume of the hysteria, have become convinced that no one can fund the solution, and quietly enter the last cycle, shifting their interest to other more recent and immediate things, which then completes the sequence.

Today no one is really interested in actual global warming solutions as shown by the direction of climate-related philanthropy from the green-leaning foundations.  These overwhelmingly fund only “mobilizing public opinion and opposing the fossil fuel industry.”  Hayward concludes that “treating climate change as a planet-scale problem, that could be solved only by an international regulatory scheme, transformed the issue into a political creed for committed believers. Causes that live by politics, die by politics.”

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 – 5jun18

[Bolton’s chief of staff Fred Fleitz is drawing fire for co-authoring (with 15 others) a report on Islamic radicalism in the US which claims that “80% of U.S. mosques were incubators for subversion or violence” and that the real war with Islam is “in reality a clash of civilizations.” (Whoulda thought?!)  But no one is drawing fire for spreading the blatant socialism now rampant across the land which is a demonstrated harbinger of totalitarian governance, examples of which have killed tens of millions in the 20th century and continue to do so today.  Go figger.  gjr]