Rebane's Ruminations

Scattershots – 29nov19 (updated 30nov19)

George Rebane

Recent correspondence with Russ Steele - astute observer of the human condition, especially in Washington DC and Sacramento – brings to mind some thoughts about two particular items.

Gov Gavin Newsome confirms his scumbag politician credentials by issuing an executive order “meant to sharpen the state’s focus – and its spending – on global warming.”  Basically, his new meddling in California’s already maximally meddled public funds is going to redirect new tax receipts and fees from fuel and vehicle registrations on the progressive environmental agenda to further punish California’s economy.   He is bamboozling Californians by not using the money to fix and maintain our state’s dilapidated roadways, and he’s reaching into the drastically underfunded government employee pension funds (CalPERS, CalSTRS, UC) to induce them to further neglect their mandate  to max investment returns by redirecting existing funds to vehicles that serve the progressive propaganda narratives.  These are some of the many ongoing ‘bait and switch’ uses for directed taxes that we have been suffering from years of Democrat controlled Sacramento.  (there's more in the paywalled SacBee) 

Michelle Obama presidential chatter ascending. (more here)  The Dems are more than desperate with their clown-car load of unwinnable candidates who daily recite and sing socialist sonnets and paeans that promise to enrich the nation’s envious – those of us who are short on education, marketable skills, money, and/or gumption.  So from the wings we have had other prominent Democrat hopefuls start throwing their hats into the ring – Bloomberg, Steyer, Patrick, … - with high hopes that the DNC and Team Pelosi will pull the plug on the clown-car and offer voters a more sane looking and centrist Democrat in November.  And then there’s Michelle.  From my perch, it is hard to identify a more unqualified and unattractive candidate for president from the longer list of still sidelined Democratic personages on the national scene.  Here is a kept woman with absolutely no accomplishments to her name.  Well, maybe two.  When wife of a rising state senator, she was placed into a hospital administration job doing ‘critical’ work for $300K a year.  It was so critical, that when she left for greener pastures on Pennsylvania Avenue, no one was hired to replace her.  And then there’s her famously bust school lunch program that crashed and burned when she was First Lady.  Yet the Dems may still consider the American electorate fundamentally stupid enough to vote for her on name recognition alone, if for nothing else than relief from alternatives such as Sanders, Warren, …, and, of course, ol’ uncle silver-tongue Joe.

[30nov19 update]  Socialists are systemic liars.  They succeed in their destruction of lands and economies only because they dangle what seems as an attractive ‘easy way out’ to the huddled and great unwashed who can always be induced to yearn for something for nothing.  Today these socialist scumbags, concentrated in the leftmost wing of the Democratic Party, are floating more free-money plans than their constituents can count.  They point to the European model and make it all look like a slam-dunk as soon as they’re voted into office.  Overwhelmingly, most of these voters know nothing of the EU’s socialist goings on.  They wholeheartedly believe Democrat candidates who “insist that America could afford a European-style welfare state if only it taxed the rich more heavily.”  However, today “Europe’s beleaguered middle class knows better.”  The bottom line, as demonstrated time and again by OECD data, is that the middle class always pays.  Why?  Because that’s where the money is; the rich don’t have enough and are mobile when you start raping them.  And when the successful leave, the pie shrinks, and governments wind up trying to wring milk out of turnips.  To give a hint of their desperation, the EU governments max tax rates at north of 50% which kick in at the workers’ median income levels.  To that are added all kinds of other “social insurance contributions” topped off with a very regressive VAT of around 21% on ALL consumer goods.  On top of that there are federal real estate taxes that heavily impact people trying to retire and the young attempting to get into their own homes.  And the most hidden of all are payroll taxes on employers which reduce the wages for all European workers. (more here)

Schwab is the latest big corporation to climb aboard the Great California Exodus express.  It is now moving its corporate headquarters from fetid and fecal San Francisco to Texas, one of the nation’s go-to states with much lower costs and much lower taxes.  Schwab management saw the Democrat handwriting on the wall twenty years ago, and since 2000 has reduced its California workforce by 90%.  In Texas Schwab’s employees “can have a higher standard of living, and more after-tax income, at the same salaries.”  Meanwhile the once golden state continues spraying its companies across the country like out of a fire hose.  The rush out is now of epic proportions, about which the lamestream is silent, as are the local leftwing lackies in denial.  In the last two years alone, “660 California companies have moved 765 facilities out of the state since 2017. This includes 10 corporations that have moved their headquarters out of San Francisco.”  And guess what, the Democrat dimwits in Sacramento split between not knowing what’s happening, and not knowing what causes it. (here)

‘Does America Still Have a Common Creed?’  Stanford historian and Pulitzerist David M. Kennedy now worries “that the country no longer agrees on a shared identity of purpose.”  Regular readers know that RR has recognized this as a fundamental factor in our approaching Great Divide, and has answered that question with a firm NO!  And in these pages, the collectivist commenters have done their part to confirm that answer which is now even shared by Prof Kennedy and more mainstream academicians and observers of the American scene.  Kennedy repeats our common theme that “societies that have deep, chronic, intergenerational ethnic differences inside the same body politic don’t have particularly encouraging histories. … The basic human instinct to prefer one’s own kind to another is impossible, I think, to eradicate entirely.” Therefore forging “a coherent society out of people who are different in their origins and aspirations is a project, and a fragile one. America’s capacity for absorption has been exceptional.”  And today that capacity is almost all but gone, with no one professing a clue as how we might retrieve it.

Commenter ‘Robert Cross’ (presumably a sackhead) provides an iconic example of today’s leftwinger in the hustings, in addition to a continuing revelation into the workings of the liberal mind.  (His 1052am comment is good place to start.)  His lexicon is limited to what his national lamestream press du jour purports it to be – to most words and concepts he references, he cannot give a cogent definition – and his attempts at logic wander in a nether world that ranges between tortured and non-existent.  For example, he evinces no knowledge of and provides no record of responding to any of the extensive and referenced points my readers and I provide when we meet in the field of ideas - to illustrate, he could have contended any of the above-raised issues, instead he launches a well-oiled personal ad hominem.  We of the conservetarian persuasion are demonstrably constant champions in various degrees of free market capitalism, personal responsibility, entrepreneurial spirit, private property, limited government, textual constitutionalism, individual liberty, and America as a sovereign nation-state and a first-world hegemon.  However, the Robert Crosses of the land, as attested by years of their writings and the policies of their political leadership, daily demonstrate their affinity for the politically correct hive mind, homogenous culture, central planning and control, conformal collective action, ever larger government, identity politics, reducing the private sector, Marxian economics, and the dissolution of America’s sovereignty into a global government.  And the most important aspect of the latter belief system is that it cannot be nor dare it be substantively defended by either its national braintrust or any of its grass roots constituents (as again demonstrated in these pages).

Happy Thanksgiving - 2019

Jo Ann Rebane: Thanksgiving reflections from my childhood 

My family lived in Alhambra (southern California) and so did my maternal grandparents, my bachelor uncle, and my paternal grandmother.  We always dressed up for any meal at my grandparent’s house, especially Thanksgiving.  Daddy wore a suit, Mama wore a nice dress, and my sister and I often wore matching dresses that my mother had sewn for us, and of course our good shoes.

Grandma Clara was a fine cook, roasted a turkey to perfection, made tasty smooth gravy, and was a master of flaky pie crust which usually had a pumpkin filling.  The dining room table was set with Grandma’s fine china decorated with little yellow flowers, thumbprint Fostoria crystal goblets, and white linen table cloth and napkins.  My Grandparents sat at either end of the table.  My mother sat between my sister and me with our backs to the buffet while Daddy sat between his mother and my uncle on the side of the table facing us. 

The Thanksgiving table scene could have been straight out of the above Norman Rockwell painting.  Grandpa Charles sat at the head of the table and to my right.  Between us was a card table where the side dishes resided.  After my father said grace, Grandpa, a butcher in his youth, conducted the ritual sharpening of the carving knife against the steel.  Then he proceeded to create perfect slices of white meat and laid them on the edge of the turkey platter.  He released the drumstick and skillfully worked between the tendons to separate the dark meat. 

My job, which I took seriously, was to serve a portion of each side onto each plate after Grandpa had placed the turkey on it and then pass it along.  Conversation centered on school and church news, sports, and my uncle’s recent experiences in the Navy.  After the meal, Grandpa excused himself to listen to the ball game on the radio (before TV).  Daddy followed his little girls into the front room to read the newspaper, or watch us color, and also read when we were older.  Clean up was conducted in the kitchen with Grandma washing every dish, pot and pan, Mama rinsed, and my uncle did the drying, often flourishing the dishtowel like a matador’s cape.  

Later the adults played canasta at a card table set up in the front room where a fire crackled in the fireplace.  This was followed by the best part of the day - for a late snack we each made our own turkey sandwiches on good bread onto which I liked to put on lots of mayonnaise, crispy lettuce, and pickles.  After that we all said good night and Daddy drove us home in the dark.

Dropout Derby - 27nov19

George Rebane

Wayne Messam (who??) drops out.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/20/democrat-wayne-messam-dropped-out-of-the-2020-presidential-race.html

President Warren’s War on America

George Rebane

You can only control that which you can measure.

Democrat candidate Elizabeth Warren has drawn up extensive plans to reduce the United States into a socialist second world country on its inevitable slide into full blown communism, which is the ultimate goal (whether they call it that or not) of at least half of today’s long list of the party’s progressive wannabes.

Among her many-pronged assaults on our country, her recent one on changing the face of its K-12 education is worth looking at.  Its focus is closing the “black-white achievement gap”.  The Dems have had our school system by the throat since around 1970 when the Great Society’s liberal reforms started arriving in the nation’s unionized public school classrooms.  A lot of damage can be done and has been done over the last half-century. (more here) Checking performance via the established battery of standardized tests, the results have not been good for a nation desperately trying to maintain its white hat lead in the international technology competition with bad actors like communist China.  And in the area of educational achievement, the black-white gap has grown as one of its many measured dimensions.

This is more than embarrassing for Democrats who cannot reasonably place the blame on lack of education funding, or the quality of teachers, or the Left’s destruction of black middle-class culture.  So President Warren will solve the problem by doing away with all those pesky tests that measure and highlight leftwing public policy failures.  She will nationalize the so-call ‘Madison Model’ which calls for an unreasonable increase of $800B over ten years in school funding, strengthening of teachers’ unions, and putting a brake on the growth of public charter schools that outperform their unionized versions.  Oh yes, and did I mention that she will do away with all those finger-pointing tests, which according to then Madam President will “level the playing field” between the races, and “ensure that every student has access to a meaningful, high-quality public education”?

What needs to swept under the rug that covers the leveled playing field are realities like “only 34.9% of Madison students are proficient in English, well below the statewide average of 40.9%. But in Madison only 10% of African-American students are proficient in English, compared with 57.2% of white students. Only 79% of African-American students graduate from Madison public high schools within five years, compared with 94% of white students.” (more here)

Then why it’s advertised as the Madison Model is also beyond comprehension, since the Madison Metropolitan School District spends an “avalanche” of cash averaging $15,241 annually on each of its 27,000 students while continuing to be “plagued by one of the worst racial achievement gaps in the state and perhaps the country.”  Nevertheless, future President Warren has studied the model and pronounced it good, and today gives us all fair warning that she plans to similarly afflict the remainder of this fair land.

From my perch Elizabeth Warren is by far the most dangerous politician in America, not only for the grim array of cynically destructive plans she has outlined for us, but because she really has a chance of being nominated next summer as the Democrats’ candidate for president.  And she then has a chance of being elected because the country today suffers from an intellectual deficit so vast that half of our electorate tell pollsters that capitalism is bad, and they would like to give socialism a shot at making everything as good as the Democrat socialists describe in their daily dose of campaign promises.  What’s more, Donald Trump has a chance of making that a reality if, in the interval, he manages to stick his foot deeper into his mouth.

And this all could happen if the Democrats finally get some purchase on their years-long campaign to oust President Trump.  However, anyone who thinks people like Sanders, Booker, Harris, Buttigieg, have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting the nomination are smoking funny stuff.  We all know that the DNC and Team Pelosi are sweating bullets about a number of serious roadblocks to 1600 Pennsylvania – beyond their clown-car of candidates, they have locked and loaded a slate of devastating public policies like Medicare for All and versions of the Green New Deal.  Their disdain for private property and wealth will require more than a back flip too far for them to countenance b/millionaire candidates like their sideline of Bloomberg, Steyer, and Yang.

And now they have a new worry, as two recent polls (rejected by progressives here) show that more than one out of three black Americans approve of Trump’s doings.  That itself can be devastating because the Dems have always considered African-Americans to see the party as their succoring liege lords as long as they stay on the plantation and vote reliably.  The reality is that “even 20 percent African-American support for Mr Trump would all but dismantle Democratic Party presidential hopes for 2020. Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election with 88 percent of the black vote. That was about a six-point falloff from Barack Obama’s share of the black vote in 2012.” (more here)

So keep an eye on Pocahontas, we already know that Injun speaks with forked tongue, but her promises about the new road she wants to lead us on is way more scarier. (more here)

Democrats’ Big Lie #4687

George Rebane

That Republicans suppress minority voter turnouts continues as the perennial Big Lie by the Left, and forms a staple of how Democrats maintain their minority plantations, especially in the blighted urban areas they have controlled for decades.  Today’s election hysteria is based on the blatant lie that in Georgia “it was the voter suppression, particularly of African-American communities, that prevented us from having a (black) Governor Stacey Abrams right now” according to Corey Booker.  Fellow demogauges Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg piled on with equivalent statements – “partisan voter suppression … dictates the outcome of elections before the voting even begins.” 

Now these are the kind of real Big Lies that actually do impact peoples’ behavior, in this case convincing minorities that their votes won’t matter because the Republicans have already stolen the election.  The facts, suppressed by the lamestream, are exactly the opposite – “… Black and Latino turnout nationwide last year hit a record high for a midterm election despite voter ID requirements, registration checks, and limits on early voting in some states. Turnout increased 13.4 percentage points for Hispanics (40.4%), 11.4 percentage points for blacks (51.1%), and 11.7 percentage points for whites (57.5%) from 2014, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.”

And in Georgia the purposely hidden count was shouted down by charges that qualified minority voters were “purged” from the rolls.  Another lie which “had scant impact on minority turnout: A larger share of blacks (59.6%) voted than whites (56.1%) last year. Black turnout in Georgia increased 16.6 percentage points from 2014 versus 11.3 percentage points for whites, and Ms. Abrams received 90% more votes in Atlanta’s Fulton County than the Democrat did four years earlier.”

When it comes to lying to the American public, the Left has dominated that turf for decades for the simple reason that they represent themselves as the voice of the aggrieved and wanting, defending those who can’t or won’t from those who can and do.  Therefore people must be told they are aggrieved, and public policies must fashioned to keep them wanting.  It was ever thus.  (more here)

 

Cancer Researcher at Work

George Rebane

It’s time for one of my infrequent Proud Grandpa sessions.  Granddaughter Elizabeth is a project lead doing cancer research at UCLA.  Her work continues in the fight against Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM), a particularly deadly form of brain cancer that took the life of our granddaughter and her cousin Ellen at the age of 14.  The research is part of her work toward a PhD in neurosciences.  Today she is at the Society for Neuro-oncology conference in Phoenix presenting her work, a project she actually started during her undergraduate studies, to the cancer research community.  The photo shows her with a storyboard illustrating her research and the published paper on which she is the lead author.

Elizabeth is part of our Northern Tribe from the Seattle area.  Today she lives in Westwood (home of UCLA) literally three blocks from the first apartment that Jo Ann and I rented after we married while still undergrads.  Elizabeth is the fifth in our family to get degrees from UCLA, and will be the second to earn her PhD from there.  Grandma and Papa (prenom de famille) couldn’t be prouder of this arrow into our future.

Sandbox - 22nov19

[In addition to all the other issues that need to be covered, I draw your kind attention to the 22nov19 update of the most recent 'Ruminations'.  gjr]

Millionaires Surtax on Steroids

George Rebane

Should the Democrats win in 2020, the country will suffer a spate of confiscatory tax increases on virtually every aspect of our economic activities.  One of their recent additions to taking your earnings and belongings is the Millionaires Surtax sponsored by Sen Van Hollen and Rep Beyer of Maryland.  This would levy an additional 10% tax on all earnings above $1M for individuals and $2M for married couples.  The envy-driven of the land would approve with the snort that ‘what does anyone need with so much annual income?’

What the great unwashed miss is that such a tax on income hits a wide swath of middle-class earners when they have a rare or once-in-a-lifetime income event that they have been planning and working hard for over perhaps most of their lives.  Families that have risked, built, and worked a small business or saved and lived long in an appreciated home or investment real estate that they then finally sell to establish their retirement nest egg; it is these folks who will be hit hard when they receive their income spike in any one given year.  It is that nest egg which they have planned to prudently invest to provide for their not-so-spectacular subsequent annual income stream that no longer comes close to qualifying for such a ‘millionaires surtax’.  But during that payoff year, the federal government swoops in and treats them as if that windfall represents their regular income stream.

And that is just a bit of what our socialists on steroids will do. “Democrats these days are also proposing to raise the regular income-tax rate, the corporate-tax rate, the capital-gains-tax rate, the dividend-tax rate, the death-tax and payroll-tax rates, while creating a new wealth tax, a new financial-transactions tax, a new carbon tax and a new pharmaceutical tax, even as they would repeal 100% business expensing and the 20% income exclusion for so-called pass-through firms.”  And this is just the beginning, since we haven’t mentioned new taxes on already taxed assets.  Asset taxes on what you already own are meant to take down your private property to a value level that the government thinks is the most that people should own.  Think about that. (more here)

Van Hollen, Beyer, et al, and the phalanx of Democrat presidential candidates all parrot the eternal etude to envy – “fair share”.  Their message continues that it has been the country’s wealth-producers who have caused the poor to be poor, and through their “greed” – in earning what they earn, and having what they have – are denying them “a fair shot to succeed”.  Here in their own words, “The new revenues would finance investments needed to build a more dynamic economy where everyone has a fair shot to succeed, instead of a dynastic economy based on existing wealth. And it’s supported by patriotic millionaires who agree they should do more to give others a better chance to achieve similar success.”  From Lenin’s mouth to God’s ear.

Ruminations – 21nov19 (updated 22nov19)

George Rebane

Those creative Dems on Team Schiff have again expanded the definition of ‘evidence’.  The initial expansion qualified 'allegations' for inclusion. And from yesterday’s hearings we learned that ‘perceptions’ have now joined the ranks of culpable evidence.  For those paying attention, ‘feelings’ are waiting in the wings, and are next to shoulder and again lighten the burdens of what we formerly knew as evidence.

Last night’s Democratic debate was kabuki komedy taken to a new level.  Moderated by four fierce femmes, crack journalists all, from (gasp!) MSNBC, the carefully staged candidates were repeatedly lobbed fuzzballs like, ‘We all know Trump is a brazen and corrupt scumbag, who has done this (insert allegation), and that (insert allegation), …, and even this (insert allegation); what other things can you add to his sins, and how would you be a better president if elected?’

Someone with a caring and sympathetic heart should really show Uncle Joe to the Senior Statesman Suite at a first class Baltimore assisted living center.  He doesn’t deserve what his ‘friends’ are doing to him in the public forum.

The current desperate push to to embrace preventable man-made global warming (aka climate change) is causing its science-free adherents and echo chambers to cite and regurgitate ever more ridiculous reasoning supposedly from 10,000+ “climate scientists” warning of civilization’s impending doom that can only be saved through ample applications of central planning and socialism.  A more sober assessment of all this (‘Climate ‘Science’ Riddled With Dishonesty, Incompetence’) comes from Dr Walter Williams, economics professor and syndicated columnist.  It’s definitely worth perusing with cup of coffee in hand.  (H/T to correspondent)

[22nov19 update]  The Left’s assault on education and America’s public schools continues full speed ahead.  Yesterday in Howard County, Maryland the school board redistricted school boundaries so as to cover their collective asses and once more denigrate underachieving black kids with a policy that explicitly says ‘black kids can’t learn’ - they will not benefit from better teachers and schools.  To equalize test performance scores between a mostly white district and a mostly black district, the school board redrew district boundaries so that smarter white kids will be bussed longer distances into badly performing black schools, and vice versa.  The school board doesn’t give a big rat’s ass about the kids, black or white, but only covering their political butts from criticisms of “inequality”.  So they gave up on the black kids and will now ‘equalize’ the test scores by bussing more kids longer distances, thereby winding up with lower scores from both districts which, however, will be more equal.  All this is going on while we’re pissing and moaning about the House impeachment circus, which takes up all the news bandwidth.  Try to find a SINGLE Democrat congress critter who will point out this atrocity.

Underwriting China’s Bad Behavior

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 20 November 2019.]

While our country is embroiled in the fight to oust a duly elected president on yet to be established evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors before voters have a chance to weigh in on the matter next November, a much more realistic threat to our fortunes and future continues to grow without any effective defense in sight.  Few Americans know of communist China’s strategic designs that include the relegation of America into a second-rate power in developing and employing the technologies that provide for our national defense and overall quality of life.  However, the few people who do follow national affairs are aware of China’s doings regarding the proprietary intellectual property they have stolen from our defense and private sectors, and how they continue on that same course today more effectively than ever before.

The Senate permanent sub-committee on investigations just released an extensive bi-partisan assessment report in excess of 100 pages titled ‘Threats to the US Research Enterprise: China’s Talent Recruitment Plans’.  It details how the US has for years failed to counter China’s enterprises to recruit scientists, acquire research, and maintain an ongoing program that compromises the fruits of our taxpayer funded research and development programs conducted in our universities and by our private enterprises.  The investigation’s findings criticize numerous federal science-funding agencies including the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, the Energy Department, and many more than can be listed in this short commentary.

The basic MO of the Chinese government is to operate euphemistically named “talent recruitment programs”, more than 200 of these hire both visiting Chinese nationals and American citizens, numbering over 7,000 that include Nobel laureates.  These scientists and engineers are contracted and paid to transmit the fruits of their US-based research to Chinese agencies that then disseminate the information to the Chinese military and industries which compete with US companies in international commerce.  These surreptitious technology transfers amount to plain old thievery for hire, and according to the Senate report, our failure to stop them “continues to undermine the integrity of the American research enterprise and endanger our national security.” (more here)

The main Chinese extortion of technology program is called the ‘Thousand Talents Plan’ under which researchers in America are bought and paid for the benefit of communist China, which has openly stated that it intends to be the world hegemon well before 2050, and along the way to become the global leader in science, technology, commerce, and military power.  The Thousand Talents Plan, almost all of it effectively funded by US taxpayers through its $150B annual support of federal STEM R&D appropriations, is well on its way of meeting China’s global strategic objective.

What should be even more galling to Americans is highlighted by Roger Robinson Jr, a think tank CEO and former senior director on President Reagan’s National Security Council.  In his recent article ‘Why and How the US Should Stop Financing China’s Bad Actors’, he details how the global capital markets, dominated by the United States, provide China with the direct financial support through trade and security markets that fuels their current rapid progress toward global primacy, as they violate almost every principle and value of western civilization.

Robinson states that “it is an empirical fact: the majority of American investors are unwittingly funding Chinese concentration camps, weapons systems for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), and more. This is because the U.S. has no security-minded screening mechanism for our capital markets, which have roughly $35 trillion under management.”  And in the main, these investors include America’s pension funds for teachers and government employees, along with the billions of dollars from university endowments.  Investors whose talk preaches climate change and green investments, as their walk pours untold billions into the treasury of the world’s biggest tyranny and polluter.  And there’s much more to learn here than time allows, but I hope that some of this news will invite listeners to do their own research and act accordingly.

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.

Democrats’ Big Lies #4685, 4686

George Rebane

California’s Cris de Coeur continue.  The state’s Democrats deny that the state has been steadily diving for the bottom, and has already reached it in the many sectors of fiscal and social performance.  This Big Lie is dutifully picked up by all the local leftwing lackeys who must echo the narrative out of Sacramento.  This morning we read a plaintive lament (here) in the 20nov19 Union by Alyssa Mayo, a native Californian who states, “I am as middle class American as they come.  But because I live in California, I am surviving … far from thriving.”  She goes on to list the nationally known grievances about our state, also highlighting that “every day, I watch people that I respect and love leave California.”  (In the last decade the Rebanes have bid good-bye to 11 families of friends and relatives who have struck out from California for greener pastures.)  Ms Mayo’s big concern as a “silently struggling” sufferer is shared by most, not progressively blind, that “California will get worse. I don’t know what the next downhill slide will be.  But I’m sure that it will result in losing more hard-working Americans in this state.  For those of us who remain, feebly bucketing out the ever-growing rising water, we will continue to hope for a miracle.  A miracle to save our home.  A miracle that may never come.”  My suggestion to the ‘silent suffers’ is to abandon hoping for that miracle, and instead do something radically different next time in the voting booth.  We don’t have to continue placing our futures into the hands of incompetent scumbags.  Continuing to do the same thing and hoping for a different result has never worked.

In ‘The Big Lie About Charter Schools’ David Osborne of the Progressive Policy Institute (an established Democrat policy think tank) debunks the bamboozle that Democrat candidates have been foisting on their constituents for at least a couple of decades.  This year the standard refrain that charter schools ‘siphon off the funds of public schools’ has reached crescendo from the throats of Dem presidential wannabes.  First, charter schools are public schools, but of the type that don’t have fatten the wallets of teachers’ union leaders and staff.  Charter schools set their own teachers benefit packages and curricula to create schools where parents want to send their children.  We all should remember that the Democrats are bought and paid for by the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association whose income is diminished by every kid who leaves a broken unionized public school.  The actual financial impact is negligible and/or minimized by various convoluted ‘make whole’ programs at the state level, but it all sorts in Osborne’s article.  The bottom line that’s a shot in the shorts for the unions is their mismanaged and mostly unfunded teachers’ pension programs.  These rely on more younger teachers paying into the expanding ponzi scheme from which the retiring teachers’ pensions will be drawn.  And that’s where the under-performing unionized schools don’t have anywhere else to turn.  So put the claims of Warren, Sanders, and even ol’ Uncle Joe about charter schools into perspective when they tell you (perhaps at tonight’s debate) that charters take money away from public schools.

Sandbox - 15nov19

[From the comment stream under 'America Askew' it's interesting to note that no one cares much about how California's electorate is composed.  California is not the only state that both invites and enables voting by the disenfranchised among us.  Please post your belated concerns under the referenced commentary, and your 'here's why I don't give a crap' hereunder.  gjr]

Scattershots – 15nov19

George Rebane

‘Schiff’s Obstruction Theory’ is a particularly revealing analysis of constitutional law and its SCOTUS interpretations by David Rivkin and Lee Casey, two well-respected lawyers with White House experience who practice appellate and constitutional law in Washington DC.  A key point in their analysis is Schiff’s reluctance to formally adjudicate his claimed evidence of presidential obstruction of justice.  “If (Schiff) were confident in his legal position, he’d want to put the case to a judge.  Yet he seems desperate not to.”  Schiff’s main and legally intractable argument circles the contention that it is an impeachable offense for a president to resist impeachment.  The detailed expansion of this important constitutional interpretation about the role of separation of powers in an impeachment process is worth knowing, especially if you’re going to debate the matter in a reasonable manner.

Teachers union leader Glenn Sacks has come up with “the cure for what ails America’s schools”.  And as we would expect, the man has not a clue about the real ailments of our public schools, for the simple reason that he has not looked in a mirror.  In his 15nov19 lecture (here) he details all of the extra “clerical work and other chores (that) sap educators’ limited time”, and provides the simplistic and proven ineffective solution – “hire more support staff” (aka new union members).  Nowhere does he even hint at how the unions have increased the teachers’ list of clerical tasks and “other chores”, and nowhere does he mention that his solution will require more funding for schools already misspending their large allocations of taxpayer funds.  And to put a ribbon on it, nowhere does he recognize that the new progressive parenting prescriptions have led to the breakdown of the students’ social contract with how they respond to teachers and how they behave toward each other and the school’s infrastructure while on campus.

‘170 Years of Earth Surface Temperature Data Show No Evidence of Significant Warming’ by T.K. Bjorklund of the Dept of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Houston presents a somewhat technical but still accessible discussion of evidence that our current climate hysteria is way overblown.  This is one of a legion of papers by learned skeptics of the politicized global warming alarums promoted to substantiate more restrictive and expensive collectivist public policies from ever larger and more intrusive governments.  I look forward to our leftwing readers’ comments that address the substance of Dr Bjorklund’s presentation.  (H/T to reader.)

America Askew – 14nov19

George Rebane

The 14nov19 Union reports (here) that an unlicensed illegal alien, Joaquin Lopez Pinto, a Honduran national, killed his passenger on Hwy 49 when he ran off the road and hit a tree.  For that he was charged with a misdemeanor vehicular homicide and driving without a license, and given a suspended sentence with two years’ probation.  We are also assured by DA Chris Walsh that “this conviction won’t affect his immigration status” since the “low-level offense would not trigger the interest of federal immigration officials.”

To at least half of Americans such cases illustrate the corruption of our judicial systems at all jurisdictional levels.  We are aghast that the sumbich was not taken into custody and deported back to Honduras.  But the other half will see nothing wrong with such a response to multiple criminal behaviors by people who don't belong here.  And that is also the half which denies that such illegal aliens regularly give rise to undetected voter fraud.  Why?  Because they point out that such voter fraud no longer is investigated or prosecuted in our land – therefore it doesn’t exist.

To register and vote in California, all you need for ID is a street address and a driver’s license, SS number, or state ID, none of the acquisition of which require proof of citizenship that is accepted on the basis of just a personal attestation.  The entire schema has been and continues as a blatant invitation to augment Democrat vote counts during elections.  And that is why it is only the leftwingers – progressives, liberals, Democrats, … - who vehemently oppose any effective procedures to vet a person’s bona fides as a legitimate franchised voter.  And the icing on this putrid public policy is that implementing any such verification procedures will somehow inhibit the participation of minorities in our elections.

The Silence of Socialists

George Rebane

This morning’s cartoon in the 12nov19 Union (filched below) was a heartening surprise.  Our leftwing political cartoonist Bob Crabb is possibly the first from his political pole to recognize the Great California Exodus frequently covered here and recognized nationally.  The state’s socialists, echoed by our local progressives, are in terminal denial that California is losing its wealth creators and attracting the country’s transfer payment dependents and illegals to keep the population growing.

This reminded me of the many other issues about which our Left does not want their voices heard – for the simple reason that they have nothing reasonable to say and their usual apologetics to their cognitively challenged core constituents sound utterly foolish in the public forum.

This country-wide sound of silence starts at the national level where congressional Democrats have totally given up legislating and are focused solely on removing a president they know they cannot defeat at the polls; most certainly not with anyone still riding in their clown car of current candidates.  Even their own brain trust has let it be known that they are seriously looking for a Plan B, someone who will have at least a snowball’s chance in hell come next November should their almost four-year effort to impeach fail.

California is already a lost cause.  Its decades of one-party rule has left one third of its population without a voice as its socialists continue to tax, price, and regulate out the last vestiges of individual effort, initiative, and enterprise.  The message from the Sacramento socialists continues to be ‘my way or the highway’.  And millions of productive Californians respond by choosing the highway as each additional and more insane than the last diktat issues from the statehouse.  Our lefties have nothing to say about that in the public debate, save that the more looney ones deny that it is happening.

On the national scene the Democrats present us with a list of freebies designed for those legions who can’t or won’t.  No one with a functioning intellect knows how to contend with or pay for the proposed Medicare for All, Green New Deal, Free College, Open Borders, Wealth Taxes, Welfare for Illegal Aliens, … .  These pages witness the response of the national Left – none want to address these issues, and instead focus only on what they consider ‘evidence’ for impeachment and President Trump’s standings in the most recent polls.

For years I have pointed out in my commentaries policy questions and principles to which our leftwing readers will not respond, and instead either ignore or side-step the relevant issue.  A textbook example of this can be found in the response from the Left to my recent commentary on income inequality. (here)

Debating relevant and substantive issues for the country has never been a strong suit of our progressive Left.  They cannot understand, let alone offer, a cogent structure of the relationships of influences and causes which impact the outcomes of a public policy.  Not being able to go deeper, they simply respond by repetition of a strong opening assertion and expect that to carry the day.  This is akin to their concept of social justice and justice in general, where widely and frequently trumpeted allegations are taken as proxies in good standing for evidence.  When we compare the national experience of our socialists’ sound of silence with what history records that has been experienced in other lands under collectivist assault, then we find that it was ever thus.

Ruminations – 8nov19 (updated 13nov19)

George Rebane

Progressives moving to suburbs and small towns after they have soiled their coastal urban areas.  Almost half of San Francisco residents now want to leave the shithole city.  These people – overwhelmingly ignorant and anti-capitalist - are like locusts and will also devastate their new homes wherever they land.  The process will not take place overnight, but it will be inexorable, especially if their states continue to adopt the disastrous policies of California.  Nevada County turning ‘blue’ is a poster child for this migration of socialists blind to socialism.   (more here, here, and here)

James Dean lives again through the magic of CGI (computer generated imagery) in an upcoming movie. (here)  In my field we foresaw the resurrection of dead, iconic movie stars almost 40 years ago when then nascent CGI technologies made their way into smaller companies that started servicing the movie and TV industries. (My own company and Hughes Aircraft were the first two west coast companies to establish the then advanced computer graphics labs for defense work.)  The current owners of these movie stars’ estates will have a chance to cash in again.  The impact of such a CGI resurrection on opportunities for today’s myriads of living actors is TBD.

University of California prepares to abandon academic meritocracy.  The Left’s constant push to compromise America’s future is making additional inroads in a field they pretty much have dominated and devastated our educational systems with their ‘social justice’ organizations now threatening to sue UC if it continues to use standardized testing (think SAT and ACT) as a basis for admittance.  As always, these anti-American warriors use the bogus argument that meritocracy discriminates against minorities.  Has anyone taken a walk on a UC campus lately?  Does anyone think that developing any realworld system - inventing an algorithm, writing a program, or building a bridge - will benefit from fewer or incompetent STEM graduates?

‘California’s Disastrous State Illustrates Limits of Progressivism’ writes Victor Davis Hanson in his lates review of how our state has been turned into a third-world wannabe in the hands of the resurrected Socialist Party of America who still use their old name of Democrats.  Unfortunately, the limits of progressivism will be achieved when California becomes a social wasteland toward which it is now accelerating.  And the local idiots still think it's only some obscure foothill codgers who hallucinate about the state's long downfall.

[10nov19 update]  My skepticism about the reality of preventable man-made global warming is nicely summarized in this article written by climate scientist Dr Jay Lehr.  It incorporates most of the factors that I have addressed over the years about the global warming issues as part of Rebane Doctrine.  (H/T to reader)

[13nov19 update]  Apropos to the above update, another Democrat has outed a previously hushed truth about the public positions and policies of progressives.  Sen Mazie Hirono (D-HI) publicly admonished Americans “to fundamentally change the way they think about climate change” – more specifically, she urged that people “believe in climate change as though it’s a religion, it’s not a science.” (more here)  This, of course, has been a major Rebane Doctrine tenet about preventable manmade global warming in these pages for years.

Sandbox - 8nov19

[So what's Bloomberg's entry into the Dems' presidential race going to do to the Dropout Derby?  Will there be a rush to the exits by those who can't get traction?  How will the current 'Final Four' go after the new white billionaire vying for office?  gjr]

Income Inequality Revealed (addended)

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 6 November 2019.]

Income inequality in America has become a hot button issue.  People in the street are being convinced daily that the inequality is somehow morally reprehensible since they are made to believe that the inequality comes from the rich stealing from the poor.  And to nail this notion into people’s heads, we are told that the top fifth or quintile of households’ average earnings are 17 times more than the average of the bottom quintile.  The problem with this number is that it is a blatantly false statistic. 

Scattershots – 3nov19 (updated 6nov19)

George Rebane

Our increasingly dysfunctional school system makes itself felt every time any of us uses a text editor such as MS Word, or one embedded in some app such as the TypePad comment box.  The programmers who write the code that edits what you type are really drawn from a class of dimwits who are not very familiar with the English lexicon, contemporary American usage, spelling, and most certainly grammar.  And yet they blithely generate code that, for example, will take an obvious usage of a plural and make it into an erroneous singular possessive.  What’s really astounding about the de minimis qualifications of these turkeys (most certainly all of them wet behind the ears) is that they live in the 21^st century where our technology driven language continually morphs into novel word forms, yet their software continues to reject anything new that the writer seeks to use or compose, and instead imposes a garden variety proximity algo which converts the desired string into something out of a 20-year-old Webster’s dictionary.

The recent lackluster GDP growth numbers are now trumpeted by Democrats as something, anything to use against the stellar performance of the economy since Trump took office.  Their attempt to convince their constituents (who don’t even know the three branches of government) and fellow hangers on that such GDP growth is the important and impactive number that tells the real tale.  What they completely miss is that Main Street’s conception of the economy is formed of much more pragmatic data that people can experience where they live, shop, and work.  And there they see the real picture composed of record low unemployment, especially for minorities.  They see more open jobs wanting workers, they experience steadily rising wages, continuing low inflation and interest rates for their mortgages and debt, and enjoy store shelves filled with goods that they can afford.  They understand why consumer confidence numbers are so high because they are living daily in that sector of commerce.  And then they have to put that together with an editorializing ‘news’ reporter on some lamestream outlet telling them that Trump ‘lied’ when he promised them 3% GDP growth.  What all these TDS pundits don’t understand is that to the man-in-the-street GDP is at best just a confusing proxy for an economy, one that never trumps direct experience.

The Great Divide is both dunned and promoted by the Democrat brain trust.  They cannot abide the thought of separating themselves from the cash they drain from the country’s middle class, small businesses, retirees, and the wealthy who would abandon them in a heartbeat were life possible under an alternative form of governance than the fundamentally transformed America now promised by our Left’s proto-communists.  And yet the double-dummies continue to pursue a transparently partisan inquisition to overturn the 2016 election.  Even the November issue of the leftwing The Atlantic prominently laments that ‘Americans Hate One Another. Impeachment Isn’t Helping’, wherein they report – “According to a growing body of political-science research, Americans largely no longer feel a shared sense of national identity. Democrats and Republicans see their political opponents as enemies with totally incomprehensible beliefs and lifestyles. On impeachment, members of the two parties see things radically differently, not just because they have dissimilar political opinions, but because they have entirely divergent views on how to approach life. The vicious impeachment fight ahead may further exacerbate polarization in America, leaving Republicans, Democrats, and everyone in between feeling even more suspicious of one another.” (emphases mine)  And the local leftwing loonies continue to believe that serious consideration of a Great Divide was invented in these foothills and remains a mental masturbation for some solitary and senile seniors.  (and more here)

[4nov19 update] Big tech companies in the Bay Area subsidizing housing is breathlessly reported by some liberals as vindication of capitalism transforming into altruistic collectivism – a long-held dream by all socialists.  I addressed one of our local breathless types in the last Sandbox with this - What some light (non?) thinkers miss is that CA’s state govts have put big tech’s tit in a wringer with its no growth and anti-housing policies so that the employees they need no longer have affordable housing available to them within commuting distance. So their PlanB is to pay such employees astronomical wages, or attempt the alternative of subsidizing their housing costs. None of this is altruistic or intended to alleviate the state’s mid-class housing shortage or provide homes for the homeless. Lefties, desperate to find any salutary evidence for socialist governance, will grasp at any straws, no matter how fantastic, to sustain their perpetually absurd narrative.

More homeowners are staying put longer.  This is the big finding from looking at the country’s real estate inventory numbers (here and google ‘homeowners stay put’).  Given the general shortage of housing in many states – on steroids in CA – this creates a problem for new home buyers, especially the middle-class folks trying to locate near their jobs.  Even though mortgage rates are low, the appreciation of house prices in a demand driven market makes the tax bite huge for sellers seeking to upsize for growing families or downsize for empty-nesters.  So people are staying closer to 20 years in their homes, where ten years ago their average stay in a house was about 10 years – hence, slower sales and a depressed housing market.  And all this is created by your state and local governments with their anti-development laws and regs as the economy is booming with jobs, wage growth, and consumer confidence at their highs.

‘Government is the problem’ has been a constant message in these pages since the launch of RR in 2007.  The examples provided by me and our right-leaning commenters over the years are legion and a matter of record – and, as seen above and below, they continue pouring in.  A more precise form of this truth is that ‘Upon closer examination, almost every one of society’s problems can be traced back to poor public policies adopted, implemented, and enforced by large self-serving, disconnected governments and their incompetent bureaucracies.’  In view of this history, today I am advancing ‘Government is the problem’ to axiomatic status in the Rebane Doctrine.  Recall that in reasoned apologetics an axiom is a statement of self-evident truth that requires no further proof in the logical development of an argument.

Sen Warren and her multifarious ‘plans’ illustrate a problem with ‘self-evident truths’, and nowhere more visibly than in her plan to nationalize America’s healthcare industry.  It is clear to me and mine that we share dismally few self-evident truths in common with her and hers.  Over the last days more and more people are taking a closer look at what her ‘Medicare for All’ proposal entails.  And an alarming number of people from both parties today conclude that the woman is either delusional or extremely ignorant about the ways and means of government operations.  Besides providing little to no realistic basis for paying for the $5T+ annual cost of this monstrosity that would double the federal budget, her ‘free healthcare is a human right’ fantasy would markedly increase the country’s cost of healthcare from what it is today.  And it would immediately bring to bear the EU’s practice of rationing (actually, every government-run health system in the world rations care”), and firmly ensconce ‘death panels’ at all levels in the attempt to contain runaway costs. (more here)

[6nov19 update]  The Big Lie has ALWAYS been the fundamental plank in the platform of collectivists – aka, socialists, communists, and the Democratic Party.  Their eternal goal is to form a comprehensively pervasive leviathan government that directs all human behavior into an amalgam of a compliant society based on Huxley’s Brave New World model.  Realizing that such organization for society is only preferred by those who neither ‘know’ nor ‘can’, they have perfected the Big Lie over the last century since Bolshevism first revealed that it was based on the Big Lie.  Today Democrats are the inheritors of American socialism that maintains socialism’s goal and the Big Lie in its well-oiled public relations and political toolset.  A commenter offers just one more piece of evidence of this in an admonishment by ABC’s Joy Behar for Dems to hide their true political intentions until after they are elected (here).  WSJ’s liberal columnist William Galston in his ‘Elizabeth Warren’s Health-Care Hara-Kiri’ takes Sen Warren to task for prematurely revealing her ‘Medicare for All’ catastrophe.  Note the response to all this from our progressive commenters.

A brief note on the formerly unbelievable level of national dumbth – the evidence just keeps rolling in.  According to current polls, fewer than 20% of Americans state that they do trust the federal government, yet over 50% of them prefer policies that would immensely enlarge it so as to control and provide for more of their lives.  We have known for some decades that our population in the aggregate (>95%) is innumerate.  After two generations of unionized public schooling, we now have daily demonstrations that we are a nation with few if any remaining critical thinking skills.  And this not because our genetically influenced intelligence levels have suddenly dropped, but simply because our government-managed knowledge base about reality continues to shrink.  At this point it’s always proper to cue Thomas Jefferson’s ‘A nation ignorant and free, that never was and never shall be.’  Bottom line - the Democrats have a winning strategy.

Dropout Derby (updated 1nov19)

George Rebane

It's funny when all the progressives dismissed Beto's "Damn right, we'll take your ...!" as being his exit speech.  Now they'll have no problem finding other excuses why this patently unqualified asshole is no longer in the Dem's line-up.  Welcome to Mr fish as our new leader.

Democrats’ Big Lies #s 4682, 4683, 4684 – Three Recent Biggies (updated)

George Rebane

Let’s start with Nancy Pelosi’s whopper proclaimed from the high altar of the House – “No one came to Congress to impeach the President of the United States.  No one.”

Anyone who has been paying the slightest attention to American politics since 2016 knows that high on the do-list of all the country’s leftists, and most certainly of ALL Democrat congresscritters who successfully ran for office then and in 2018, is the impeachment of Donald J. Trump.  These people, all burdened with advanced cases of TDS, give a new definition of zealotry.  Their belief in the ‘democracy threatening’ evil of Donald Trump bypasses all forms of what we used to call reason and logic, where allegations now pass for evidence and their constant repetition is testimony to their verity.  The claimed ‘justice and fairness’ of their now resolved faith-based impeachment process is ludicrous on its face, and will convince only people for whom their TDS is merely an epiphenomenon of more serious psychoses.

Moving on to Sen Elizabeth Warren’s just released ‘plan’ to tank the nation’s economy with her (and Bernie’s) Medicare-for-All single payer, nationalized healthcare program, we hear her proclamation that the proximal funding of this $30T+ $52T+ ten-year catastrophe will not require raising taxes on the middle class.  Instead, she will squeeze the needed funds from our defense budgets, major increases in corporate taxes (remember, corporations don’t ‘pay’ taxes, their customers do), and launching the government’s unabashed assault on private property by robbing the assets of the wealthy who have already paid taxes on what they own.  Were that the only sources of funding the destruction of our nation’s healthcare industry.

History, along with a pencil and a used envelope, will quickly inform any well-read person that those revenue sources will not suffice.  The country’s real stash of cash and earnings are in the middle-class.  If this atrocity ever makes it past Congress, then you can bet the ranch that the federales will quickly go after the assets of the not-so-wealthy and start massive tax hikes (a la EU) on the middle-class.  Recall the years-long screeching about our healthcare costs by the progressives (and local leftwing loonies).  With their claims of our high 12-16% of GDP current annual healthcare costs, they compare this to the 6-8% costs tallied by the EU nationalized healthcare countries (dubiously comparing apples and oranges).

Now consider that the US annual GDP is a bit north of $20T; that’s, say, $210T over ten years.  The Pocahontas Plan will then mandate an over 50% increase (up to 25% of GDP) in our nation’s healthcare costs for openers, about which we have heard nothing but the sound of silence from our crack journalists.  And if you add up all the other increased costs of social programs that Warren has planned for us, you’ll see that our fundamentally transformed government will be the two-thirds participating gorilla in the nation’s economy – these levels are reached by communists and dictatorships, and will require astronomical tax rates to fund from America’s then inevitably tanking future economy.  The socialist elites will count on the nation’s carefully nurtured dumbth (see also below) to assure that none of the (middle class) sheeple will notice.

“We have gone straight past ‘new math’ and right to ‘woke math’.”  This latest program of socialist acculturation has started in Seattle, and soon promises to come to a leftwing unionized public school near you.  The main claim of the woke educators, who back this new turn to nurture the nation’s dumbth through the creation of new millions of innumerates, is that “Western mathematics, as the only legitimate expression of mathematical identity and intelligence (!!??), has been used to disenfranchise people and communities of color.”  The new curriculum promises not only to leave the so-exposed young with little actual knowledge of how to do math, it will also serve to “radicalize young people with tales of oppression and groom them to be future social justice warriors themselves” as they learn “how math dictates economic oppression”.  (Consider this in light of our country's current standing in math education and proficiency, and the damage already experienced from Common Core math.)

Such assaults on our society’s abilities to transmit knowledge and think critically are part and parcel of the promised fundamental transformation of America into a compliant herd that will have no alternative than to accept the dicta of a tyrannical and technologically savvy Leviathan.  For they will have no skills which they have learned to be able to earn.  Such people will not even be able to think of revolution, let alone have the capacity to plan a successful revolt.  The road to the new dark age is being paved bit by piece as we are focused on every issue being cast in terms of ethnic identities, each illustrated as a tragic victim of western civilization. (more here)

According to my lights, these are the kind of world-class lies against which the Left’s trumpeted “lies” of Trump’s foot-in-the-mouth bombast and bravura cannot hold a candle.