Rebane's Ruminations

‘America’s Schools (continue to) Flunk’

George Rebane

Speaking of ownership of public policies and government operations, the Democrats own America’s public schools.  They have had title for fifty years to what our children are taught, as they are subjected to somewhere from 12 to 16 years of leftwing ideologies, by unionized teachers and administrators who have laid waste to our school systems from coast to coast.

RR has carried the torch for school choice and public school reform during its entire existence.  I have worked with local public schools here and in SoCal to see firsthand who is doing what to whom, and witnessed their resulting work product.  In this regard, our local schools’ performance, along with what has been happening in California over the last decades, is faithfully recorded in the longitudinal data archive of the National Center for Educational Statistics, and they aren’t pretty.

Today we have the results from the 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress, which consist of tests administered to students around the country every two years.  A report on this is found in the 31oct19 WSJ (here) with the tagline, “Despite more spending, test scores fall and the achievement gap grows.”, which about says it all.

Digging into some of the more important results, we find that the smaller cohort of smarter students are pulling away from those not so smart, whose performance continues to degrade.  These latter are prime fodder for the progressive pabulum that extols the virtues of bigger government, more transfer payments, and dunning the existential benefits of individual enterprise, capitalism, and minimally regulated markets.  These cohorts of the poorly educated continue to feed the reliable Democrat voting blocks, whose subsequent existence is denied as they become (unemployed) adults – if you’re an American leftist, what’s not to like?

As examples, only 35% of the country’s fourth graders rated proficient in reading.  Overall math and reading scores are about level, save that the top students’ scores increased slightly less than the drop in the scores of the bottom decile.  The black/white learning gap remains dismally large.

Surprisingly (or not), 4^th grade scores increased only in Mississippi, but the real success story comes from Washington DC where charter school enrollments increased 60% since 2009, much to the chagrin of unionized ‘educators’ who felt the pressure to then increase performance in other public schools.  The unions’ answer to every such report of education deficits is to demand more spending for schools.  But spending increased 15% per pupil between 2012 and 2017 from its already (globally) rate, and the result has been no improvement as cited.  “Spending has been growing at an even faster clip over the last couple of years as government revenue has recovered from the recession.”

California, the state of the double-dummy educators, increased its education spending by $102B (more than 50%!!) since 2013 with absolutely no increase in student performance from its already bottom-barrel lows in the nation.  There it is joined by the other Democrat-dominated states – drumroll please – yes, New York, Illinois, and New Jersey.  Along with California, these states have also raised taxes for schools, all to no avail – the teachers’ and administrators’ pension funds suck up the new cash like a sponge.  The report concludes with – “Much of the money has gone to fund teacher pensions and administrative positions that pad union rolls. Maybe parents should go on strike to demand more accountability from the union-run public school monopoly.”

[Exit assignment - pay attention to the number and content of comments from our liberal readers.]

Sandbox - 31oct19

['In life it's important to know when to stop arguing with people, and simply let them be wrong.' - an old shibboleth with conditional wisdom.  Doesn't deciding when to stop arguing also depend on who all are listening to the argument?  gjr]

Sacramento Owns the Blackouts

“Can 40 million suffer third-world electric reliability without a political upheaval?” asks Holman Jenkins, 29oct19 WSJ

George Rebane

Northern Californians have now suffered multiple power blackouts in recent weeks and we are told by many that from here on this may become the new norm for our state – in other words, prepare your life to adopt the daily routines of third world countries where electric power is a sometime thing.  As opposed to all the now usual causes for these outages, ranging from climate change to a rapacious PG&E, I’d like to focus here on these blackouts as political events, and examine the new norm of power outages from that perspective.

Dropout Derby - 25oct19 update

George Rebane

Rep Tim Ryan (D-OH) dropped out of his "long-shot presidential campaign" yesterday stating, "I got into this race in April to really give voice to the forgotten people of our country: the workers who have been left behind, the businesses who have been left behind, the people who need health care or aren’t getting a quality education, or are saddled by tremendous debt, ... I'm proud of this campaign because I believe we’ve done that. We’ve given voice to the forgotten communities and the forgotten people in the United States."  What he really turned out to be was the voice of the people who forgot he got into the race.

One wonders what it was like to be part of his campaign team over the last several months as it almost immediately became obvious that he wasn't getting any traction then and had no promise of changing his circumstances.  Now expand that thinking to the, at least, more than ten remaining Democrat candidates with equal prospects.  How do their campaign workers feel as they show up for work in the morning; what thoughts about their PlanBs do they have going through their heads as they try to figure out why they shouldn't be going home early and look for a real job?  As you contemplate these deep thoughts, the updated scores of this little derby are given below.

Sandbox - 24oct19

[Power still out on Cement Hill with no wind, while Sonoma County burns.  Am looking for local readers' reports on the return of power.  gjr]

Scattershots – 23oct19 (updated 26oct19)

George Rebane

Gov Newsom is outraged about the price of gasoline in California.  He doesn’t understand why current prices in the state are well into the $4/gal range.  In the best wisdom he and his can muster, they all accuse the oil companies for price fixing as the answer – another swig from the ‘capitalism is bad’ bottle satisfies everyone in Sacramento.  None of those dumb schiffs have a clue about CA’s draconian fuel regulations, about our having to make our own gasoline from the one or two refineries that the econuts have not yet purged from the state with the most cars in the nation, about the cap-and-trade (2013) and other anti-CO2 programs we have going in addition to raising gas taxes again in 2018.  We are paying $1.50 more than the country’s median price per gallon.  Now the butt stupid Dems led by Newsom are going to “protect the public” by demanding that the state’s Energy Commission start an investigation on the matter, in addition to promising to launch legal actions against gasoline producers, distributors, and retailers.  (more here)

All this to a constant drumbeat from Sacramento that calls for raising fuel prices so as to drive Californians to ditch their gas-powered cars.  The 23oct19 WSJ reports, “The Governor last month ordered revenue to be redirected from the last gas tax hike, which was supposed to fund highway construction, to projects that ‘reverse the trend of increased fuel consumption and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.’  So Californians in the future can look forward to paying more to drive on deteriorating roads as they head to homes without electricity due to blackouts. How long will it take California voters to figure out that these are problems made in Sacramento by politicians?” (emphasis mine)  The Democrats feel sanguine that the answer is ‘never’ since they have assured that teaching the necessary critical thinking skills to their voter base were banished from our schools almost two generations ago.  

‘Apoplectic Democrats’.  A reader and correspondent who long-ago predicted the ‘Advent of Michelle’ (also known as 'The Second Coming') is now chortling in his beer.  The more centrist Dems (yes, there still are some of them remaining on the DNC) are going into panic mode about the make-up of their candidate clown car, and more so because their grass roots constituents have drunk the Kool-Aid about the likely ones from whom they will choose their nominee.  (For confirmation, read the progressive’s comments in these pages.)  So, since Hillary continues to blow her remaining tires, the DNC leaders are casting their eye on the former first lady who has a very recognizable last name.

Yesterday’s NYT and New Yorker had “articles about how centrist and establishment Democrats are apoplectic over what is happening in the Democratic Primaries. (more here)  Biden is fading, mentally and politically. He’s hanging on for dear life to a presumption coming into the primaries that he had what it takes, but he doesn’t. Bernie and Warren are viewed as gateway drugs to general election disaster. (For a brutal takedown of Warren’s electoral chances from a progressive view, read Why Criticize Warren? in Current Affairs.)  The others in the race all have problems, from stone cold boring to non-starters. Kamala Harris is the biggest disappointment, there’s no there there.  And there’s one person they both note who could walk away with the nomination, but doesn’t appear to want it.”  (standing ovation please)  Enter Michelle.

'Gentlemen, start your generators!' is the word from our politically punitive PG&E.  Power shut-offs are scheduled to start this (23oct19) afternoon.

[24oct19 update]  The relentless spread of dumbth in America is picking up speed.  These pages have documented the destruction of our country’s public education in the hands of progressive teachers unions and liberal politicians working hard to maintain their plantations of minority constituents over the last half century.  A just-released poll shows us that the First Amendment and free speech are in the sights of Millennials (“the dumbest generation”), and to a lesser extent supported by GenXers and Baby Boomers. (more here) Nearly 60% of Millennials think that the Constitution “goes too far in allowing hate speech in modern America”.  It should now be amended so that “government should be able to take action against newspapers and TV stations that publish content that is biased, inflammatory, or false”.  These are people who have passed way beyond the tipping point of being able to sustain our democratic republic.  All this confirms that the latest generations have absolutely no understanding of the concept of free speech, and will gladly vote themselves into tyranny. 

[25oct19 update] To confirm statewide assessments (starting with Gov Newsom) that PG&E management continues to be incompetent and corrupt, we read the report of the San Diego power company (SDG&E) that years ago anticipated the potential damage to their infrastructure from weather and fire.  They responded by burying major transmission lines, and reconfigured their distribution network into smaller clusters that could be more surgically shutdown should the need arise.  PGE, on the other hand, neglected all of this, paid their execs handsomely, successfully lobbied politicians and the PUC to turn a blind eye to their malfeasance, and is now forced to execute consumer shutdowns over large areas in which only a minuscule part experiences ‘high’ winds, the overwhelming remainder experiencing dead calm to light airs.  Meanwhile, we in the foothills await yer another blackout starting tomorrow.

‘Democrats good, Republicans bad’ – Propaganda Central

'As government expands, liberty shrinks!'

George Rebane

Our intrepid columnist George Boardman in the 21oct19 Union laid out (here) a carefully concocted list of stats.

• Democrat “districts” generate 63% of GDP, while Republican districts manage only 37%.
• Democrat household incomes increased 17%, while Republican HHs only increased 3%.
• Democrat “districts” have greater concentrations (“clusters”) of college degrees.
• Democrat “districts” contain 75% of our professional and digital worker jobs, while Republican districts contain mostly agricultural, mining, and low-skilled manufacturing jobs.

With these in mind, Mr Boardman’s clear message to our light thinkers is that Democrats are the party of goodness and light, containing the smart, wealthy, and productive, while Republicans are the party of the backward, ignorant, poor, and struggling.  The better read who understand the demographics of Democrats' long-controlled urban districts will have none of this.

What this little piece of nascent propaganda omits are data on what kind of people overwhelm Democrat districts, and those who are moving in vs. out.  He says nothing about the millions of our poor, dismally under-educated, criminal, and welfare recipients concentrated in urban areas who provide the sinecures for Democrat politicians.  And Mr Boardman doesn’t tell the reader about where the lion's share of wealth is produced in our service and digital economy, along with the rampant income inequality and humongous transfer payments in these ‘districts’ and ‘regions’ all of which give rise to the skewed statistics to make such selectively massaged messages possible.

Sandbox - 19oct19

[Trump keeps sticking his foot in it at every turn.  Now enough crap is starting to pile up so that a significant number of Rs are starting to voice opposition.  That can mushroom in the Senate and end his administration.  Right now the immediate pile consists of 1) Ukrainian pro quids per Mulvaney, 2) Abandoning Kurds in Syria, and 3) holding the G-7 in his Doral digs.  All of which could have been avoided if someone would only tell him, 'Mr President, STFU!!'  gjr]

Ruminations – 16oct19 (updated 18oct19)

George Rebane

Your choice always depends on the available alternatives, and available alternatives change.  That’s the realworld.

Fake news from the lamestream is a torrent and promises to become a tsunami as the election season swings into high gear.  CNN gives another egregious example of reporting exactly the opposite state of US military’s munitions stockpile (as stated by Trump), claiming its depleted state as they ignore their own solicited facts which contradict their TDS narrative (more here).  I would like our leftwingers to provide some balance here and show how a flagship conservative outlet reciprocates such reporting.

The Biden scandal pot is boiling over to include a slate of Democrat senators who have benefited from the Ukrainian deal which the then VP Biden was material in setting up.  The progressives keep piping that there was no corruption under Obama as the list of sins keeps growing.  Trump’s alleged wrongdoings are a trifle to the kind of foreign interference Ukraine bought and paid for during 2009-16.  Here is a snootful of the dirt as reported by FN’s Steve Hilton.

Biden’s kid gets rich on his dad’s name and job – that is the incontrovertible evidence.  Trump’s kids don’t get paid a dime and made their money in the family business before dad got to be president.  The most butt stupid arguments that Democrats are laying on their light thinkers is that Trump is willing to take political risks just for the sake of making some chump change.  And by God, it’s working; out there and in these pages they’re dumb enough to believe that tripe.

[18oct19 update]  Sens Sanders and Warren are the leading proponents of two new progressive economy busting programs.  First, Sanders' single payer Medicare for All (M4A) is a bill in Congress to establish that national healthcare program.  That there is no economically feasible way to pay for M4A was demonstrated in the 2018 study by Dr Charles Blahous of the Mercatus Center.  This analysis and finding has not been refuted, but it has been suppressed by the lamestream.  Then there’s the hokum from Sen ‘I got a plan’ Warren on her redo of Social Security which is another disaster for America that is again spelled out by Blahous in his recent ‘The Fallacies Underlying the Warren Social Security Plan’. 

‘San Francisco values’ are toxic to all who are subjected to them – now also encroaching on Nevada County.  SF’s progressive regulatory environment has now begun annihilating its restaurants which formerly did much to give the city its charm before the days of needles and feces.  “Labor costs and regulation are ruining a once-thriving industry. Congress should take it as a cautionary tale.”  The evidence just piles on that whatever progressives touch, eventually turns to shit (more here).

‘From Racism to Culturism’ (updated 18oct19)

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 16 October 2019.]

For some decades now, ‘racism’ and ‘racist’ have become a cachet in the Left’s narrative about the sins of the Right when other such appellations fail them.  Few people using such pejoratives can give a coherent definition of these terms, nevertheless they continue to serve a useful purpose to invoke the ire of their lightly read constituents.  Longtime listeners to these commentaries who have visited my blog know that I have a long history of being accused by my leftwing readers as a racist, among other unsavory things.

The nuance that such accusers of those like me miss is that I am a culturist, and not a racist.  Instead, as the years-long archive of my writings show, I am a child, student, and defender of Western civilization.  Western civilization is united by the formidable intersection of western cultures as practiced in the various countries of what today is known as ‘the west’.  And, absent my making any discriminatory remarks about people based on their DNA or gene set, that makes me and others like me culturists and apologists for culturism.

Yuval Harari, in his chapter ‘From Racism to Culturism’, concurs with and expands on this interpretation in his most recent tome, 21 Lessons for the 21^st Century (2019).  Yuval Noah Harari is a celebrated socio-historian and author of best-selling books on humanity, its history, worldviews, and future portents.  Perhaps some of you have read his Sapiens – A Brief History of Humankind (2014) or Homo Deus – A Brief History of Tomorrow (2017). In the following, the quotes I use come from his ‘21 Lessons …’ published earlier this year.

Totalitarian regimes have always sought to fundamentally transform their nations’ cultures when coming to power.  However, such transformations never succeed.  History shows us this most recently in the recoil of such imposed transformations to their native versions in the liberated Balkans and countries conquered by the former USSR.  The existence of a rich tapestry of cultures around the world has served us well, and their measured and unforced evolution will continue to serve mankind in these tumultuous years of technology paced globalization.

Are some cultures better than others?  Cultural relativists say no, but reality says yes. Harari writes “… few would see witch-burning, infanticide, or slavery as fascinating human idiosyncrasies that should be protected against the encroachments of global capitalism and Coca-Colonialism.”  When people judge others of a different culture on the basis of their display of cultural attributes, then that is NOT a racist judgement or racist behavior.  Such assessments are more accurately known as culturist behavior, and the person so disposed is a culturist, not a racist.  A culturist evaluates the relative worth of another culture based on cultural attributes that may be expressed or carried out by anyone of any race, and not on the basis of an individual’s racial make-up.

Traditional racism was firmly grounded in biological theories, in modern times even incorporating DNA and genes as the basis for attributed differences in such things as intelligence and morality.  This has been shown to have little scientific basis.  In Hariri’s words, “Today, in contrast, while many individuals still make such racist assertions, they have lost all of their scientific backing and most of their political respectability—unless they are rephrased in cultural terms. Saying that black people tend to commit crimes because they have substandard genes is out; saying that they tend to commit crimes because they come from dysfunctional subcultures is very much in.”

For political reasons, today’s progressives reject this understanding of culturism and continue to accuse culturists of being racists in order to serve their emotive narrative targeting the politically unsophisticated.  Describing another nation as a ‘s-hole country’ is definitely not a racist slur, but instead a slur on the country’s culture.  There is nothing inherent in the people of any country, no matter their racial make-up, that prevents them from practicing a more productive and enlightened culture to benefit their citizens.  In sum, “culturism has a much firmer scientific basis than racism, and particularly scholars in the humanities and social sciences cannot deny the existence and importance of cultural differences.”

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

[Addendum]  I revisit this distinction between racism and (my) culturism because now we have the left-of-center Yuval Hariri, an internationally respected scholar and author of relevant essays for the intelligent reader, who also concurs with what I have argued in these pages for many years.  Followers of Rebane Doctrine know my penchant for more precise and operational definitions, and may recall how my understanding of racist and racism was presented in ‘Who is a Racist?’ and ‘Racism and Racists Revisited’.  The caveat in all this is that with respect to the semantic accuracy of the definitions presented, we are technically all racists if we believe that the racial composition of individuals can now be determined from a detailed examination of their DNA.  To the extent we believe that this technology lets us characterize their aggregated physiological attributes, we are all racists.  But, of course, in the socio-political sense, as Hariri corroborates, that is not true.

Recalling Governor Newsom

George Rebane

California’s Governor Gavin Newsom has turned out as expected, an atrocious chief executive who has now signed a spate of bills into law that is taking the state ever lower in personal freedoms, property rights, and the ability to conduct business.  One of most destructive to enterprises, both for- and non-profits, is SB5, which totally restructures the ability to work as a consultant, and for companies to hire such temporary and part time talent.  The list from gun rights to consultants is filled with more legal and regulatory chuckholes than you can count thanks to our governor working hand in glove with our socialist legislature.

Many of us believe it’s time to recall Gavin Newsom, and there is a significant groundswell militating for such an event (more here).  Nevada County Republican Chairman Bob Hren sent out the following information about where you can go to sign the recall petition.

====

There are now four locations in Grass Valley to sign this recall petition.  Do so if you have not yet signed it!  All business are open from Tuesday thru Saturday.

Mustang Firearms, 10893 Alta St.

The Range, 13235 Grass Valley Ave, GV 

The Hunter's Blind, 671 Maltmn Dr. #1, GV

Harrington & Baldwin, mining equipment supply company, 470 E. Main St., GV

And, here is a map showing petition locations and events state-wide if you have friends and relatives elsewhere that wish to sign. 

https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?mid=1I8qpxC6YdrOc3mfJeK_-A1k7tlVvgdIQ&ll=39.22583449859598%2C-120.95512660659625&z=11

This map may not show some of the latest locations, so check the petition website for more updates.

http://recallgavinnow.com/

 

 

Power Outage – from a very scary viewpoint

George Rebane

Mr Cedar Moss declared himself to be one of Lenin’s “useful idiots” in this morning’s (14oct19) Union (here).  There the man actually celebrates the recent power outage and looks forward to a time when these become a regular occurrence in our lives.  For him, “there is something about all this that feels very right”, and he admonishes us to just “get used to it folks.”  Why is this man such an ardent connoisseur of third-world living where regular power outages, among other shortages, are a way of life, and a world from which those who can, will risk life and limb to escape?

Well, it seems that he and his believe that we in the developed countries don’t deserve to live in the “high privileged” first-world, and we should instead, through various self-flagellation practices, retreat from being a developed country, and “get at least a tiny glimpse of what so much of the world deals with everyday.”  As part of our absolution, he wants to “experience some inconvenience” on a regular basis, and advises that we “climb off our high-privileged horses and join the rest of the human race” - that “it is time we got over that one.”  In short, it is a social injustice for any culture to strive to be in the vanguard of showing how human lives can be lifted from the miseries of millennia.  The moss-bound Mosses of the world are totally ignorant of how the development of advanced (mostly western) cultures has aided in lifting all of the more backward cultures from their perpetual penury.

But what actually scares me in reading such calcified counsel from progressives like Cedar Moss, exhorting us to return to yesteryear, is that he is just the visible tip of an iceberg, the much bigger mass of which is there and invisible to the rest of us in our daily round.  Mr Moss represents possibly millions of such ignorant Americans whose lasting influence we only witness and subsequently suffer from on election days, when they elect slates of candidates like we have today in Sacramento.  Or worse, the powerful politicians we may get when we consider our futures under policies promised by the likes of AOC, Warren, and Sanders.  It is the Mosses of our country who may well bring about any of these dreadful dystopias.

The Split Pill Problem Solved

George Rebane

RR readers were introduced to the Split Pill Problem (SPP) in a passing Scattershots entry last summer.  The problem involved giving our puppy Puna her pain meds after her second knee repair surgery, and that evoked an interesting problem the solution to which turned out to have several features which generalize to and can illuminate other realworld problems.  Puna’s daily dose from the pill bottle was a half pill.  If I shook out a whole pill, I would split it and give her a half, returning the other half to the bottle.  On a day when a half pill emerged, I would just give the half.

The vet said to do that until the pill bottle was empty.  Given the random way in which whole and half pills emerged, I wondered how soon could I expect to get to a day when only half pills remained in the bottle and I would no longer have to split pills.  The solution turned out to be very interesting, which I have documented in a somewhat whimsical technical note that requires no math beyond grade school arithmetic to understand.  You can access the pdf here – Download TN1910-1_Split Pill Problem Solved

I’ll leave you with a piece of eye candy from the report that illustrates the graphical beauty of the SPP solution where it will be fully explained.  Enjoy.

Scattershots – 11oct19 (updated 13oct19)

George Rebane

Nevada City mayor Reinette Senum calls for the “dismantling” of PG&E during the windless Wednesday night protest in front of city hall.  “During the protest Senum questioned PG&E’s decision to shut off power, saying that although she supports the move in cases of extreme weather, it should proactively turn it back on when that weather doesn’t materialize.”  Whadda concept!  She got a bit lost when she advised us that “anything that we’re dependent on – water, power, banks – should be owned by the public.  PGE is already owned by the public about as much as it can be – public company and public monopoly.  But her and my bottom line is that today’s policy of power outages is not a solution to anything.  And did you notice the full page ad by the PGE workers union in today’s Union?  It basically said ‘don’t blame us for the butt stupid political decisions to turn off the power when dangerous winds don’t materialize.’ (more here)

Stupid people should not use wild rivers for recreation.  One woman who spent a night on a rock in the South Yuba from which she could have easily waded ashore, according to the incident commander, required two helicopters and a rescue team to hike in to get her off the rock.  I hope the Washington fire department at least got some training out of that woman’s idiocy.  The rest of her party were no brighter between the ears.  They drove a two-wheeler off road into the brush to their illegal campsite and got their truck stuck.  That was an extra task for the rescue team in order to get them out of there.

Sen Lizzy Warren continues to promise her intent to “remake capitalism”, and is drawing the support of big corporatists who see her socialism as the easy way for big established companies to use government to stifle competition.  It’s a good bet to make on the coming election – all upside, no downside.  An early action to endear them to a lot of people is their current amicus brief filing to SCOTUS opposing the President’s bid to rescind DACA, and maintain that Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act can be used to protect LGBT workers.  None of the worthies running these enterprises remember Lenin’s observation of capitalists ‘who will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.’

Government enforced green policies will grow the economy is the oft-heard progressive refrain on these pages and across the land.  More sober assessments note that, for example, subsidized EVs still make up only 1% of the car market of which 100% of them are sold at a loss to the manufacturers according to the auto industry.  No one here is saying that EVs will not be the desirable mode of personal transport when batteries finally become sufficiently capacious and cheap enough to make such vehicles for a profit that people will buy.  That day is not here yet.

[Later]  Sorry to see FN's gay, progressive afternoon news host Shepard Smith leave the network.  He was one of the major figures in otherwise right-leaning network who was unabashedly leftwing, and thus gave proof that FN was not at all like the lamestream and Dems like to characterize it as the network for xenophobics, homophopics, and neo-Nazis.  Although,  I wish that Smith would have been given an opinion hour to compete with the likes of Hannity and Tucker Carlson, since he almost always slanted his news delivery into an opinion piece more akin to what MSNBC would offer.  Now we have Bret Baier left as the mid-road news stalwart, and Chris Wallace as their liberal senior Sunday pundit doing weekly wrap-ups.

[13oct19 update]  Millennials are fleeing big cities and moving to America’s small towns. (more here)  They’re doing it for all the right reasons, and in many ways imitating Venezuelans fleeing their cities and even their country because of how years of socialism under Chavez and Maduro has brought a once rich land to its knees.  Today one of our most prominent Democrat anti-American congress critters, socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, has upped here ante to make the United States into a proto-communist country with her new bill ‘A Place to Prosper Act’ (HR4508) which has become the first legislation for her overall ‘Just Society’ program.  The details of this act promise to pauper the country – that is always the way of the Left, their programs promise prosperity and deliver poverty.  Important to note is that Sen Lizzy Warren endorses AOC’s latest insanity.  (more here and here)

Outrageous Outages (updated 10oct19)

George Rebane

Our power here in western Nevada County went out at 315am.  We set our phone alarms and got up at 630am, and started the generator.  Turning on our local KNCO, we were advised to remain calm, safe, and that everything in the region was canceled for the day.  A PG&E lady came on to read some prepared pap and informed us that power “may be restored” starting tomorrow noon.  Another local politico advised us all to “be patient”.

I have been continuously checking the winds, both current and predicted, and found that there was no wind, measured and predicted, in the Sierra for the next 48 hours that exceeded 10mph.  Whatever ‘high winds’ (20-25mph) there were to be, were on the central valley floor.  In fact, the entire northwest of the US is unusually calm, save for that small Sacramento Valley floor pocket of light winds.  Here in the Nevada City region it is DEAD CALM as is seldom seen – not even a leaf moving.  You can do your own checking here.

For all intents and “public safety” purposes, there is no evidence that power needs to be shut off in these foothills.  The outage, predicted and delivered, appears purely for punitive political purposes that is endorsed by a progressive leftwing government whose longstanding MO has been to get Californians to accept more and more abusive government control over their lives without so much as a murmur.  In a state where a free and independent people dwell, government and their monopoly utilities would at this time have turned power back on while broadcasting apologies for having turned it off for no reasonable purpose.

But long ago that ceased to be California, where we have been taught to hunker down and accept everything from the most onerous and useless/stifling environmental regulations, highest gas and fuel prices in the Union, sky high taxes, piles of human shit and needles covering our city streets and sidewalks, crumbling roads and bridges, welfare/homeless/illegal alien capital of the country, broken public education system, corrupt (and unfunded) public employee pension system, historical exodus of companies and middle-class wage earners, …, and more of the same on the way.

We now have an under-educated ‘woke’ electorate who are fed a daily diet of pap from our lamestream outlets, putting the blame for their dire straits on the state’s successful businesses and the well-to-do who can still afford to live here.  These are guilty of taking from the poor and giving to the rich, and according to all Democrat politicians (especially those in Sacramento and running for president) they must be squeezed much much more in order to redistribute their ill-gotten assets and achieve social justice in a fundamentally transformed America.

And now we are being conditioned to patiently accept the power distribution schedules of third-world countries as the latest new norm for our once golden state.

[10oct19 update]  California’s historic Great Blackout continues.  The people are finally getting sufficiently pissed since no one has seen any dangerous winds in NorCal that might affect public safety.  The PG&E officials are keeping a stiff upper lip and passing the bullshit. (more here)  Here in the Sierra foothills there has been no wind all night, and looking out my window at our forest, there is not a single leaf moving – dead air.  Our politically punitive punishment continues (The Federalist agrees).  Which brings us to the whole deal about the National Weather Service and NOAA.

Sandbox - 8oct19

[On the face of it I am not in favor of withdrawing US troops from Syria, especially viz the Kurds.  My own long-stated Rebane Doctrine is that the US must continue its role as the world's white hat policeman (hegemon) using responses and methods that will evolve with needs and time.  But before we continue hyper-ventilating on the withdrawal, can someone cite the exact parameters of Trump's withdrawal announcement - e.g. is it more than pulling a few tens of troops back from the 20-mile buffer zone?  gjr]

‘The Marginal Revolutionaries’

George Rebane

George Melloan, former deputy editor of WSJ’s editorial page and now syndicated columnist, has written an excellent review (here) in the 5oct19 WSJ of The Marginal Revolutionaries – How Austrian Economists Fought the War of Ideas (2019) by historian Janek Wasserman.  This is an extensively researched “group history of the Austrian School of Economics, from the coffeehouses of imperial Vienna to the modern-day Tea Party.”  From Melloan’s review, replete with lavish quotes from the book, it is clear that Wasserman’s work corroborates Der Führer (1944), Konrad Heiden’s first-hand history of the rise of Hitler, and the international and national brands of socialism during the first half of the 20^th century.

(I insert the following thoughts into the record because, as the astute reader has gleaned over the years, I am a student of the Austrian School which most closely represents my desiderata for economic order that is beneficial to a society.  This major segment of my belief system (credo) forms the foundation of my profound differences with and opposition to collectivism and its current resurgent socialist/communist forms in America and the EU.  Some of my previous commentaries on the above can be found here and here, expanded in their comment streams)

The Austrian School was founded by economists Carl Menger, Joseph Schumpeter, Ludwig von Mises, and Friedrich Hayek who met regularly in a little Vienna coffee house early in the 20^th century.  Their nascent revolution was marginal in the sense that during that same epoch that included the Great War (WW1) more formidable revolutionaries were also plotting and scheming in other Vienna coffee houses.  Communist regulars plotting the Marxist revolution were Nikolai Bukharin, Leon Trotsky, Vladimir Lenin, and Joseph Stalin.  Excluded from international socialists to form national socialism were Hitler who met with a variously attended group of the disaffected jobless, and after the war with a rapidly growing cohort of disaffected jobless veterans.  The Nazis and communists fought pitched battles and murdered each other in the night until Hitler’s side won, and the communists went underground in the west while Lenin et al were building the USSR in Russia.  Both forms of socialism would come to kill millions of their own citizens for various reasons that ranged from race to redundancy.

Scattershots – 4oct19 (updated 9oct19)

George Rebane

'My allegation stands true until you prove it false.'  The progressive's approach to debate and judicial process (see also Alinsky and Stalin's show trials).

An anti-American attribute of our Left is their imposition of process over performance in their planning and public policies.  The leftist always seeks to increase government’s scope of control and revenues through legislation/regulation that increases arbitrary requirements and (tax/fee) costs for civil activities, public and private.  This aspect of collectivist ideology is a reliable indicator of the, often hidden, political forces which promote a new law or regulation, i.e. process.  How it affects the performance of individuals or organizations is of secondary importance, or not at all a consideration when corporatists lobby and leftwing politicians legislate.

Gov Newsom’s signing of a new law giving California school districts more power to block charter schools and gratuitously requiring their teachers to become more credentialed (here) is a textbook illustration that supports the above generalized proposition about the Left.  Charter schools across the country have become one of the few remaining bright spots of our public education, and also the bane of leftwing teachers’ unions.  Why?  Because study after study shows that, more often than not, “test scores improve for all students when charters increase their market share.” (more here)  And that’s a no-no for Democrats, especially in dense urban areas like NYC and Boston with large minority populations.  The smarter that minority kids become, the less they tend to accept the ‘benefits’ of staying on the plantation and voting for ever more generous government handouts.

Ruminations – 3oct19 (updated 6oct19)

George Rebane

Former Union publisher Jeff Ackerman writes (here) that Californians today pay and average of $4.02/gal for gasoline while the rest of the country averages at $2.64/gal.  And the escapee to Oregon goes on to point out that all of this is self-inflicted pain that the state’s voters are way past having enough between the ears to change course as Sacramento does its best to accelerate dumb laws/regulations and spread our epidemic across the country.

Gun confiscation was again disguised at the Giffords/March for Our Lives “gun safety forum” in Las Vegas. The Dems are having problems coming together on which or whether to back such confiscation schemes as mandatory buybacks.  Even Moms Demand Action have stopped short of buybacks, which leaves Beto (of AR15/AK47 fame) and the klatch of radical socialists more isolated than ever.  Many of us hope Beto will double down on his ‘Damn right, we’ll take your guns!’

No more masks for Hong Kong protesters.  An old British colonial law is to be invoked to threaten protesters with eventual arrest when they reveal their faces to government operated face recognition software that is being installed all over China today.  Here we are considering doing the same, starting with neighborhood watch cameras for recording night time crime (and anyone else who is on the street after dark).  Soon after, we’ll be fighting daytime crime and questioning people who are recorded being out of their own neighborhoods.  Isn’t technology wonderful?

[4oct19 update]  Volker’s House testimony and release of tweets are the first real disclosures that may seriously put Trump’s tit in a wringer in the ongoing impeachment saga.  Trump is by no means the first president to seek and get foreign aid against political opponents for some horse trading.  But back then it was no big deal and a known prerogative of office.  IMHO, if the sought aid concerns a material revelation about the character of a political opponent, then I don’t oppose such information gathering.  However, I do oppose purchasing fabricated ‘evidence’ of an opponent’s bad character from foreign sources.

[6oct19 update]  Harvard on capitalism (here) - whouda thought?

Sandbox - 3oct19

[I did my best to remove some of the irrelevant and ad hominem comments from a couple of my topical commentaries.  Please continue posting your comments under the appropriate recent topical posts or in the Sandbox if I have not recently covered the topic of your interest.  Thanks. gjr]

Foreign Influence on the Rise

People are usually willing to accept the verdict of democratic elections only when all parties share the same national loyalties. - Yuval Harari, widely published historian (emphasis mine)

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regularly scheduled KVMR commentary broadcast on 2 October 2019.]

Let’s consider what has become an issue of great concern for most Americans and their political leaders – the impact of foreign influence in our elections.  To be sure, since time immemorial, nations, kingdoms, and all manner of jurisdictions have sought to influence the inner workings of each other to their advantage.  America has been no exception.  In modern times with facile mass communications across the globe, such influencing has become an ongoing geo-political game among today’s nations.  (more here and here)

The political analysis journal Foreign Policy tells us (here) that “ever since the Treaty of Westphalia, the idea of territorial sovereignty has been central to how most of us think about international politics and foreign policy. Although a huge amount of activity occurs across state borders, one of the chief tasks of any government is to defend the nation’s territory and make sure—to the extent it can—that outsiders are not in position to interfere in harmful ways. But for all the effort and expense devoted to keeping harmful influences out, sometimes countries wind up locking and bolting the windows while leaving the front door wide open.”

In the past the main paths for foreign governments to influence us was through enticing former prominent politicians with paid trips, ‘consulting’ contracts, and generous speaking fees.  Competent public relations firms would be hired to promote a candidate or cause.  There are, of course, platoons of professional lobbyists on K Street, and let’s not forget prominent DC think tanks and media journalists who can be bought and paid for with grants of special and/or exclusive access to the goings on and important people of the foreign power.  Finally, we have to include our universities that can be bought with appropriately fashioned ‘research grants’ to manufacture good reports about their benefactors.

Such well-oiled avenues of foreign influence have been focused on shaping our foreign policy to satisfy the interests of other nations.  We must always remember that the ultimate reason for messing with our elections is to influence our adoption of favorable foreign policies.  An important essay on such matters that reviewed how our own political parties become involved was published in the October 1932 issue of Foreign Affairs.  The procedural principles and political history recounted in ‘Political Factors in American Foreign Policy’ is especially apropos to today’s imbroglios between our political parties lobbing charges and counter charges of conspiratorial foreign influence on each other.

Blessed Milestones – 30 September 2019

George Rebane

The Rebane clans gathered this weekend in Nevada City to celebrate the marriage of granddaughter Fiona to Shawn.  The ceremony and festivities took place on Sunday at the Stone House, the town’s iconic restaurant and wedding venue that started life as a brewery in 1850.  This was preceded and followed by more breakfasts, lunches, and dinners for family and guests at the homes of our now local tribe.  It was truly a joyous occasion for the marriage of our third granddaughter.  This little missive contributes to the occasional summaries of the many blessings that Jo Ann and I have received over the years since we first met on 21 September 1959 as undergraduates at UCLA.  Make no mistake, enough of our road together has also had its inevitable unpaved stretches, but this is a happy recounting of a paved part.

As we gathered in the wonderfully redone venue with its large dining area, gathering rooms, bandstand and dance floor, and bar (and a very professional and competent staff of a local wedding planner and caterer), Jo Ann and I confirmed that we had the most birthdays of all the attendees.  The entire affair with all our kids, grandkids, great grandkids, more family, and friends came to be because of that chance meeting at the Pan Hellenic All-Pledge Dance at the beginning of the fall semester sixty years ago – we two are fortunate to be at the headwaters of a large causal basin of new lives, witnessing the many arrows that we have launched into the future.  The nearby photo shows us with our very involved great-grandmunchkins Lucy, Rae, Atticus, and Nell.

Our family has spread itself out over a wide spectrum of endeavors and locales.  Oldest daughter Sini and husband Roland head up our ‘Northern Tribe’.  Roland continues a long career at Microsoft Research on the bleeding edge of AI research.  Sini, a former software engineer, is a school administrator and semi-professional photographer.  Our ‘Southern Tribe’ picked up stakes last year and moved here to live in Nevada and Placer counties.  Daughter Teine closed her longtime organizing business in SoCal, and decided to start a new career in professional dispute resolution for which she is now in the middle of Pepperdine University Law School’s Masters of Dispute Resolution program, an area for which life has well-prepared her.

The grandchildren, all adults now, have dispersed themselves over much of the country.  Oldest granddaughter Claire (mother of the munchkins) lives in Denver with software engineer husband David.  One grandson Sean is an audio engineer working in Nashville for a leading audio production and processing enterprise.  Another grandson Lucas is a mountain climber and outdoor photographer working for a leading sports and camping gear company.  Another granddaughter Elizabeth is in the middle of a heavy-duty cancer research program at UCLA going for her doctorate in molecular biology and neuro science.  Another granddaughter Catherine, married last year, is a clinical trials administrator for a company in the Seattle area where she lives with her transport systems engineer husband Collin who works for a large international truck manufacturer doing autonomous vehicle development.

Fiona is studying and working in holistic health (that’s the best I can make of it).  She lives locally with her brand new hubby who is an electrician getting ready to get his contractor’s license.  Casting an eye over the lot of our ‘issue’ gives us much to be thankful for.  We look back and recall our decision to start young – we married before graduation against all advice – so that we could still be around to see the many fruits of our labors.  Thank the good Lord, it has worked out.