Rebane's Ruminations

A Nation to Transcend Stupid?

George Rebane

The Atlantic usually contains ideas that are antithetical to the perspectives with which I interpret what happens in the world.  A longtime and dear friend, who leans a bit to my left, forwarded to me an essay with which he concurs “with 90% of the points made in this article (regardless of the source!)”  After reading it, I must admit to a similar concordance.  The piece – ‘WHY THE PAST 10 YEARS OF AMERICAN LIFE HAVE BEEN UNIQUELY STUPID’ – by Jonathan Haidt, social psychologist and NYU Professor of Ethical Leadership (here).

Dr Haidt is described variously as someone who “has attracted both support and criticism for his critique of the current state of universities and his interpretation of progressive values. He has been named one of the ‘top global thinkers’ by Foreign Policy magazine, and one of the ‘top world thinkers’ by Prospect magazine. He is among the most cited researchers in political and moral psychology, and is considered among the top 25 most influential living psychologists.”

In the cited essay, Haidt uses the Tower of Babel metaphor to interpret what has happened to America in the last two decades as “the fractured country we now inhabit.”  Like many of us, he sees that “something went terribly wrong, very suddenly. We are disoriented, unable to speak the same language or recognize the same truth. We are cut off from one another and from the past.”  Regular RR readers will recognize these longstanding themes in these pages.

The author goes on to outline “the rise of the modern Tower” in concert with the rise of the smartphone, the internet and its extremely influential social networks which now unite the various thoughts and ideas of several billion people.  For Haidt “the high point of techno-democratic optimism was arguably 2011, a year that began with the Arab Spring and ended with the Occupy movement. … For techno-democratic optimists, it seemed to be only the beginning of what humanity could do.”  Then things started going downhill as “humanity rebuilt the Tower of Babel.”

The problem, as dissected by Haidt, began as social media weakened “at least three major forces that collectively bind together successful democracies: social capital (extensive social networks with high levels of trust), strong institutions, and shared stories.”  He then goes on to detail how the Left has dominated the various institutions, specifically the media and academe.  He abets this argument by citing James Madison in Federalist #10 on “the innate human proclivity toward ‘faction’, by which he meant our tendency to divide ourselves into teams or parties that are so inflamed with ‘mutual animosity’ that they are ‘much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to cooperate for their common good.’”  

But since then, thanks much to social media, the Tower has fallen and the factions no longer communicate.  The hows and whys of the fall are of some considerable interest to those of us who claim to pay attention.  He even details how closed groups of “jerks” dominate discussions and debates on the various blogs.  I won’t go on giving you clips of Haidt’s expansion of that very recent and ongoing history.  Suffice it to say that Haidt also agrees that we are at least two distinct countries – with appropriately differentiated cultures, languages, histories, values, … - sharing a common border.

What struck me as a significant shortcoming in Dr Haidt’s contemporary ontology is his apparent ignorance (neglect?) of some significant findings by sociologists that dovetail with teachings from the systems sciences.  He argues that ‘Democracy after Babel’ will require a ‘redesign of democracy’ that includes reforms in three categorical areas – “three goals that must be achieved if democracy is to remain viable in the post-Babel era. We must harden democratic institutions so that they can withstand chronic anger and mistrust, reform social media so that it becomes less socially corrosive, and better prepare the next generation for democratic citizenship in this new age.”

When expanding on these areas, it is not clear at all that Haidt’s recommendations do not require the enlargement of our already encompassing government(s).  How else would democratic institutions be “hardened”, social media “reformed”, and the “next generation prepared” for a more compliant and compatible “democratic citizenship”?  What Haidt misses is the underlying truth that for large complex systems to remain viable, they need to be decentralized – they need to be based on a structure of distributed control and knowledge.  In this universe, nature does not support large systems that are centrally comprehended and controlled.  On Earth, the evidence for this abounds when we open our eyes and understand what we see in the natural world.

The alternative approach to successful societies in the post-Babel era, missed by Haidt, is to abandon globalism and work to enlarge the community of sovereign nation-states to have members with much smaller and more culturally cohesive populations.  I have lost track, but somewhere in the archives of such sociological studies are solutions that identify ideal national populations to be in the five to ten million range, and comprise of jurisdictional units that are not larger than 50,000.  This kind of global structure of independent states and free peoples would promote specialization, trade, and the ready transfer of ‘best practices’, as one people sees how another people have a better solution for a common problem.

Leftwing Journalism (Addended)

George Rebane

Reading this morning’s (28apr22) Union, I was both startled and disappointed when I came to the paper’s weekly Hits & Misses column (here).  Publisher Don Rogers usually places his contributions at the bottom, and there we saw –

MISS (from Publisher Don Rogers): To the kind of free speech as uttered by bullies, liars, abusers, propagandists, trolls, rumor-mongers, gossips and other asses lurking in social media, including the new owner of Twitter.

Now, it’s been no secret for decades that there is a great asymmetry between the reportage from our neighbors on the Left and Right.  (The published literature on that could fill a library.)  We have covered this phenomenon going on 15 years now.  Recent leftwing journalistic atrocities include the multi-year unabashed and still ongoing reporting of the Great Russian Collusion for which there is not a shred of evidence.  In a similar vein, material events of national importance are thoroughly buried in what is now correctly known as the lamestream media.  An example of that is the Hunter Biden laptop scandal which revealed influence peddling that included payoffs to the “Big Guy” principal, now in the White House, whose influence was peddled.

Such evidence-free, evidence-hiding journalistic behavior is to be expected in the national press, but not so much from local outlets in markets where the writers and readers know each other.  This is why I was surprised to read Don’s pre-emptive swipe at Elon Musk.

Readers may recall that I consider Don Rogers a respected friend, among the many I have on the port side.  However, his published Miss is so out of character of the man I know on two counts.  First, Musk’s stated intentions to open up Twitter to uncensored free speech should be welcomed by all who support our First Amendment, especially those who supposedly deal in ‘Truth’ as journalists claim in their code of ethics.  And second, Musk has yet to do anything at Twitter that would justify anyone to categorize him on Roger’s list of misfit communicators.  So why launch such a pre-emptive editorial attack that looks so much like gratuitous pandering to the county's growing progressive faction?

In expressing all this consternation, I am reminded that The Union is a privately owned enterprise, and has wide latitude in what kind of news and editorial content it is free to publish.  I don’t think that the above Miss crossed any libel lines, but I do think that Don Rogers does step over the bounds of editorial prudence when he joins the ranks of the country’s leftwing lemming chorus, all howling their imagined portents of Elon Musk single-handedly about to bring American democracy to an end by opening up Twitter to free speech.

Addendum:  Leftwing journalism cannot survive as a co-equal in an open market of ideas.  In such an environment, collectivist thought withers away into a dry shell of an echo, infrequently encountered and never taken seriously by those open to the greater wash of ideas that inundate the public square.  This is to be corroborated by the establishment of a very visible crutch that will henceforth support the already limping lamestream.  The Biden administration will seek to ensconce a permanent Ministry of Truth (aka Disinformation Governance Board) to oversee and variously censor ideas, opinions, happenings, and facts that counter the neo-Marxist narrative of socialism that has become the dissonant chorus from the Left. (more here and here)  The leader of these quenchers of free speech will be Nina Jankowicz, a renown incompetent in all but partisan zealotry, which she has demonstrated throughout her career (more here).  This woman is the carefully chosen poster-child for fettered discourse in the land.

Doing Healthcare Right

George Rebane

There’s no doubt about it, we don’t do healthcare right.  As every leftwinger likes to point out, we pay more for healthcare per patient and per capita than any other developed country with liberal governance.  Their solution is to nationalize America’s healthcare industry – aka adopting a ‘single payer’ system.  Given our inability to do bureaucracies right, every proposal to nationalize winds up raising our cost of healthcare and hiding such increases under variously camouflaged wealth transfer, money printing, and federal borrowing programs.

None of the proposed solutions are sustainable in the sense that they are able to keep a constant level of healthcare services within a non-increasing total cost share of GDP.  As documented numerous times in these pages, this is nothing new.  Even the progressives’ poster-child countries for nationalized healthcare have not been able to fashion or operate sustainable healthcare systems – they’re all reducing services and/or eating up bigger shares of their GDP.  None of these systems can last forever, as they continue kicking the cost can down the road.

Our private, semi-subsidized healthcare system is still the best in the world for delivering clinical care, new medicines, technology advancements, and innovative medical procedures.  Where we screw up badly is how we handle all the back-office stuff confirming the levels of delivered care and arranging for their payment through multiple agencies and from multiple sources.  That bureaucracy is enormously costly and screwed up to a fare-thee-well.  And folding these legacy processes and procedures within today’s bureaucratic mindset into a nationalized structure promises to deliver chaos on steroids.

McKinsey & Company, through its Center for Healthcare Reform, has completed a massive study of our healthcare industry, and identified specific improvements through which we could save more than $250,000,000,000 annually.  They have published their findings in a 76-page report titled ‘Administrative Simplification: How to save a quarter-trillion dollars in US healthcare’.  This is probably the most important new finding to come along that can move the healthcare debate off dead center and save enormous amounts annually.  You don’t have to read the entire thing to get the important details of how and where these savings will be realized.  The report begins with a 6-page executive summary with graphics that gets you up to speed.  Read it so that you’ll know what you’re talking about the next time you decide to sound off about healthcare reform.  (H/T to correspondent)

 

Should They Still Honor Your Wishes?

George Rebane

Many people of means make charitable donations and bequests with caveats attached that they are told will be honored after they die.  But not all people think that should be so.  The practice of subverting the will of the dear departed has a long history.  The Ford Foundation, founded in 1936 by Henry (died 1947) and Edsel (died 1943) Ford, is a good example of such radical repurposing that many such bequests have suffered.  In the Ford Foundation case, the transformation started soon after Henry’s death and was directed by its trustees so far afield by 1976 that its then chairman Henry Ford II resigned in disgust.

So, here’s the question – to what extent should the departed donor wishes to charities be honored?  We here consider only cases where the donor conditioned his donation subsequent to receiving bona fide and legal assurances in writing that his monies would be managed and dispensed according to his agreed upon wishes.  In short, the donation/bequest was made as part of a two-party contract.

Historically, there has been a debate in how much and for how long charitable organizations should honor their donors’ wishes.  As early as 1789 Thomas Jefferson weighed in to James Madison his strong opinion on donors setting aside real estate in perpetuum for a designated religious or charitable purpose.  Jefferson said, “The Earth belongs to the living, and the dead have neither powers nor rights over it.”  It might be a stretch, but one can see that sentiment applied to land, the desired uses of which may change over the passing decades as the country grows.

Leftwing political theorist Emma Saunders-Hastings teaches at Ohio State that philanthropy is a “deeply political activity” which gives the rich an outsized sphere of influence in a democracy, especially “in public life and by putting in place paternalistic relationships between donors and their intended beneficiaries."  In sum, it promotes inequalities that should have no place in democracies.  In her recent Private Virtues, Public Vices (2022) she argues against the notion wherein ‘donors claim to know, better than gift recipients, how their monies should be spent, placing donors’ ideas about what is best ahead of those of the beneficiaries.’

To many of us such a view about perpetuating donor values is a natural and acceptable given.  Donors give to an institution either because they believe in the concordance of their values with those of the institution, or they believe the institution is trustworthy and capable of promoting the donor’s values as prescribed and agreed upon.  Saunders-Hastings also has problems with the lion’s share of large donations coming from the rich whose values are definitely not those of the common folk, and therefore will perpetuate inequalities into the indefinite future, unless … .

Saunders-Hastings appears also being blind to a fundamental tenet of the nature of mortal humans.  Most people who are capable of enduring works see these as an extension of their being for those still living after they die.  Those with charitable instincts often see their wealth as delivering a twofer after they are gone – continuing to provide for a common good, and serving as a living memorial to a life well-lived and wealth well-placed.  To date, America has benefitted greatly from such donors of a wide range of means, who are not necessarily the claimed out-of-touch plutocrats. (more here and here)

But we return to the main question – when the donated money was left in trust, is it ever ethical for society to then later violate that trust; and, if so, under what conditions should that be possible without communicating fraud to potential donors and shutting off the funding of good works?

What is Faith?

So, what is faith?  “Faith is believing in something you know isn’t true. — Tom Robbins, author.  Think about it: If the “something” you believe in is actually provably true, you wouldn’t need faith.”  So writes Tom Durkin in the 14apr22 Union.  From this I can’t really tell if here we have the misguided quoting the more misguided.  Robbins is clearly off the rails.  Belief in a tenet (proposition) is the assessment of its verity which can measurably vary from 0 (certainly FALSE) to 1 (certainly TRUE), where either extreme will reject falsifiability (i.e. new evidence) in the mind of the believer.

Robbins definition is cognitively impossible (i.e. insane).  However, in our daily round we all operate heavily on the basis of faith, since many/most(?) of the things in our knowledge base we hold to be true are really based on the fidelity of the intermediaries who brought that knowledge to us.  By experience or experiment we have confirmed a fairly small share of our knowledge base.  Technology today allows us to reason correctly in such unreliable environments through the use of belief networks, whether applied formally or informally.  Beliefs between 0 and 1 are falsifiable by the incorporation of new evidence.  So, in the correct common usage of ‘faith’, we understand it to consist of beliefs which cannot be falsified.

And as we conclude this reflection, we must always remember that beliefs are subjective, and therefore vary in their measure of verity from person to person (depending on the series of belief networks they have solved in traveling their particular world line).  What to one individual may be compelling evidence to support/reject a tenet, may not be at all acceptable to another.  Thus endeth the epistle for today.

Scattershots – 21apr22 (updated 24apr22)

George Rebane

Re Rise Gold’s opening of the Idaho-Maryland mine, Union columnist Terry McLaughlin writes an excellent summary of the cost/benefit factors in the newspapers 21apr22 edition.  I’ve been on the fence leaning toward opposition of the project.  Terry’s clear, complete, and concise column helped me resolve toward opposing the project.  It’s definitely worth a read (here).

2017 corporate tax cuts have now demonstrated that they paid for themselves.  Beyond they gave the economy a boost, raised real wages for middle class, and attracted more capital investment to increase the nation’s productive capacity.  As a collateral benefit, the rate reduction also greatly reduced the usual tax avoidance stratagems that always accompany high tax rates.  In short, the working of the Laffer Curve has again been demonstrated, as has been the error of all predictors – starting with the CBO - of massive government revenue losses.  Now, you’ll hear none of this from the lamestream media where all you’ll get is that the anti-American Biden wants to raise corporate rates to some progressive ‘fair share’ level.  This is guaranteed to take us back to slow and no growth, especially when combined with the rest of Democrats’ butt stupid economic nostrums. (more here and here)

[22apr22 update] ‘If I were the Devil’ broadcast on 5 April 1965 is one of Paul Harvey’s most memorable commentaries.  The legendary radio commentator (syndicated from 1951-2008) looks more than a half century into the future and nails it.  He spelled out then what we all have experienced as the signs of our time.  Definitely worth a listen today (here) as we contemplate our nation's downward spiral.  (H/T to correspondent)

[24apr22 update]  The recent Earth Day should be remembered for marking 52 years of utterly failed predictions by the climate hysterics.  Doesn’t that just frost your external plumbing?  (more here and H/T to reader)

'How America Became La La Land' describes Victor Davis Hanson in some detail.  I would really like to see some of our leftwing readers respond to ANY of the points that VDH makes.  If the past serves the present, that is not to be; for they are all blind or ensconced in Terminal Denial Land.

Sandbox – 20apr22

[Had a wave of nostalgia reading ‘The Last of the Afternoon Newspapers’ by Peter Funt.  The last two are located in Livingston, Montana serving about 4,500 readers.  During my 10-13 age in Indianapolis, I had two paper routes - first one in the city where I carried a large canvas bag of papers strapped across my shoulder, and second one in the suburbs where much bigger saddlebags were permanently on the back rack of my balloon tire Schwinn.  As a kid I worked hard for the $5/week that sometimes was left over from my collections after I paid the Indianapolis News route manager for the newspapers I ordered and sold – every kid was a little businessman who was assigned a territory in which he had to market, deliver, and collect.  It was one of my early lessons about the real world of business.  Have any RR readers had a paper route somewhere in their past? gjr]

Central Bank Digital Currencies a'comin'?

George Rebane

The powers that be have quietly initiated the process to change all fiat monies into central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).  Plenary sessions among the G7 have demonstrated that most countries are ready to change their money into ‘programmable crypto currencies’.  The US and UK are leaders of this movement as the means to enlarge the power of governments and control the inevitable destruction of their circulating fiat monies.

To understand how CBDCs work, consider that when implemented, we will all have personal accounts with our country’s central bank (e.g. our Fed) which will then enable control of the amounts, dispensing, and programming the use of the new nationalized crypto currency.  This essentially follows what Red China is doing now (‘the Chinese model’).  The totalitarian gorilla in the room is the programmability of CBDCs.

Depending on TBD laws, regulations, and power-motivated propensities, your particular CBDCs can be programmed to enable and/or deny you, on a day-to-day basis, the freedom to use the money as you will.  Say, that the government doesn’t want you to consume a certain product (e.g. fatty foods) because you are overweight.  It can then make your CBDCs unable to pay for such prohibited products and services.  The same can be said for travel restrictions – the government, or even the permitted airline, can make it so that you cannot purchase tickets that take you to a destination proscribed for you personally.

In essence, CBDCs will then no longer be money in the sense that today’s money is fungible as a store of value, unit of account, and medium of exchange.  Your particular CBDCs will then become the equivalent of government-controlled vouchers purposed dynamically for what your employer or a state agency grants you privileges.  Are you beginning to get the picture?  (more here, here, here, and here)

PS. The astute reader will realize that programmable CBDCs can totally collapse the ‘property side’ of the Bastiat Triangle, thereby also collapsing the ‘security’ and ‘liberty’ sides. Can everyone imagine work-around black markets and barter economies? 

‘Poking the Bear’!?

George Rebane

It appears that under the leadership of our pusillanimous president the west has quietly buried MAD (mutually assured destruction).  Today we tremble in fear of the Butcher of Moscow every time he even hints that he has nuclear weapons which he might use if we don’t let his genocide in Ukraine continue unhindered.  So, what does he think we keep in all our land-based and seagoing silos, bagels?

For decades MAD, augmented by forceful US military interventions, held back the Soviet bear.  None of the communist dictators waved their nuclear warheads in our faces, because they knew we would just wave back with ours – both knew not to play a lose-lose game.  That didn’t mean that the communists didn’t try to surreptitiously stick nukes under our noses.  But when discovered, they always understood the meaning of MAD and pulled back. 

Both were satisfied to continue advancing their foreign policies by propaganda and the kind of brushfire wars that George Kennan outlined in his 1946 ‘Long Telegram’.  And in these, we didn’t just send in weapons and other military aid, we and our allies often put boots on the ground.  When necessary, we demonstrated our ability to kick the bear in the butt and not just poke him.  Under US leadership we did this until the USSR collapsed in spite of its decades long attempts to demonstrate the glories of communism and make it work.  Today no more.

Under the clearest moral imperative since Hitler’s 1939 blitzkrieg invasion of Poland, we balked and prevaricated in full knowledge of Putin’s intent to invade Ukraine (as now admitted by our CIA), and continue to do so in the face of the ongoing slaughter of the innocents.  We have yet to send in the heavy weapons that Ukraine needs to counter the Russian (Red) army’s fielded heavy weapons and their air/missile superiority.  Every time we even intimate that we will do so by calling Putin a war criminal, he rattles his nukes and Team Biden dives under their desks.

I would love to hear our leader strap on a pair of balls and respond to Putin’s threat of ‘uncertain consequences’ with a public guarantee of some uncertain consequences of our own should he continue to irritate the Eagle.  According to Rebane Doctrine, one such uncertain consequence would arise were we to promise to supply Ukraine with tactical nukes if Putin would ever pop one of his on Ukrainian territory.  The bottom line here is that we should exhume MAD, a mutually understood and implemented foreign policy strategy that for decades proved its war-limiting mettle, and as a reminder, bears that behave badly should always be poked.

Without MAD, none on Bumblebrain’s A-team has a clue on how to stop Putin from taking the next hunk of neighboring territory after he’s allowed to negotiate a ‘peace’ that further decimates Ukraine.  Why would he not?  As with all tyrants whose regime beggars its citizens, Putin must always have a foreign aggressor against which to rail, and explain to his people why they are in dire straits.

He is Risen!

George Rebane

Hearing that strong assertion, the Christian answers joyfully, ‘He is risen indeed!’

For us, Christmas is the promise, and Easter its fulfillment.  The summation of all Christianity is Christ’s covenant in the promised transcendence of Man, all concentrated into one simple declaration – ‘He is risen!’  Without this, our faith is a fraud; with it, Christianity promises Man to become an unending part of God’s love of all Creation.

This is RR's annual message celebrating Easter.

‘Separation of church and state’

George Rebane

On this Thursday of Holy Week my bride Jo Ann, who is a member of the Union’s editorial board, had her ‘Hit’ published in the 14apr22 edition of the newspaper’s weekly Hits & Misses column.  It read – “Hit to celebrations this week of Easter and Passover.  These observances in our community help maintain our culture and remind us of our country’s Judeo-Christian roots.”

Well, this did not sit well with Laurent Clark, a local anti-American progressive, who definitely considers Jo Ann’s sentiment one root to far according to today’s secular humanist tradition police.  Ms(?) Clark responded today with her letter titled ‘Separation of church and state’ (here) –

This week Ms. Rebane has used The Union’s “Hits and Misses” section to foist her brand of religion on everyone in the vicinity, doing so with a subtle comment that the Easter and Passover celebrations,“help maintain our culture and remind ‘us’ of our Judeo-Christian roots.” … “Us” may remind her that she overstates her opinion by inferring that all of “us” are encompassed within her religious ilk. She further suggests that “us” as a culture should be thankful for those alleged “roots” — an arguable stretch of an opinion. … She might better refer to her brand of religion as a group, sect, clan, etc. and recognize that the rest of “us” may have our own sect, clan, or group, to worship within, as we please … or not.

One is hard put to discover any ‘foisting’ or even anything about "her brand of religion" in Jo Ann’s hit.  We also note that those who did well in American history are familiar with the role Judeo-Christian tradition played in our country’s birth and beyond.  And the last time I looked, The Union was already a privately owned media outlet and not an inseparable mouthpiece of the state, allowed to still practice what passes for vestiges of free speech in today’s America.  But it is revealing to note that progressive statists today consider all organs of the Fourth Estate as responsible for hewing to the Left's socialist narrative.                    

Ruminations – 15apr22 (updated 16apr22)

George Rebane

Twitter’s poison pill to dissuade Elon Musk from taking the company private and making it truly a universal platform for free speech.  Democrats and other socialists are mortified, with many of their media lackies quickly declaring that only with more “mediation” (aka censorship) of online speech can we sustain democracy.  Not long ago such a statement was palpably unbelievable; today not so.  Here is a link to find out more about the types of most commonly used poison pills.

RR’s characterization of the liberal mind is confirmed multiple times daily.  Here is one from this morning’s letters to the 15apr22 Union by a Ms/Mr/Xcritter Nory Fussell – The year 2021 ended with 745 billionaires, up from 614 in 2020. Many billionaires pay little or no taxes. We suffer the lie of backbreaking “inflation” while corporate profits skyrocket.  Progressives don’t cause this.  Wars continue to break out, the military budget continues to grow, and our chief export is weapons of war. This is not the work of Progressives but of soulless men, put mildly, suffering an acute anti-social personality disorder.  Infrastructure crumbles. You lose power, heat, and essential services. Look what you pay at the pump, while oil executives laugh and rake it in. The economic war against you is raging — it will only get worse.  Progressives, perhaps imperfectly, work toward health care, education, and basic human needs. The oligarch party (you know who they are!) rages flat-out lies about race, class, gender, even about a violent insurrection. They offer no solutions to your needs.  Apparently (unbelievably!), a fairly large percentage of you are moved more by fear, anger, victim-hood and divisiveness. In one generation, how did the USA lose so much?

[16apr22 update]  Our economists and other economic analysts are hyper-ventilating about 3.5M workers they claim will not re-enter the post-Covid job market.  They tell us this deficit – consisting mostly of lowly paid women with no college - will be permanent.  Rebane Doctrine advises them not to worry.  As we have repeatedly noted, systemic unemployment has been slowly growing for years, and will continue to do so as cheaper and more capable technology replaces more expensive and unreliable workers.  And even the short-term deficit will be easily handled by the influx of illegal aliens as they get settled into their new homes and look for work.  From my perch, our continuing problem will be to mollifying the growing horde of the chronically irrelevant and systemically unemployed from revolting to relevance. (cf rising crime rates and more here)

Giving until it hurts?  FN and The Blaze cite IRS records (here) showing that Bumblebrain and FLOTUS gave $17,400 or 2.8% of their 2021 income to charity.  Kamala and SHOTUS upped them a mite, and gave $22,100, but only 1.3% of their 2021 income to charity.  These laughable amounts are not all that laughable as records have shown for years that leftwingers don’t give much to private charities – their charity operates with OPM.  This has been much studied (here).  And as socialists they believe that government should be the sole provider of succor to its citizens.  Nevertheless, Americans continue to give through private charities amounts that are multiples of what the deficit-spending, vote-buying government dispenses.  For the record, as grateful entrepreneurs we, and many of our friends, are blessed to be able to give up to 40% of our earnings to worthy causes.  This tallies to several times the amounts that our progressive elites and leaders let escape from their tightly zipped wallets.

 

The Jewish Question

George Rebane

In his ‘Passover and the Constitution’,  Professor William Galston writes “The Jewish festival teaches that liberty is only possible with tradition and order.”  These are not the mainstay criteria nor governance objectives of today’s American progressives.  Galston is a political science academic who now resides as a senior fellow at the very liberal Brookings Institution in its Governance Studies program.  His linked article appeared in the 13apr22 WSJ.

In the rabbinical tradition of studying the Talmud and the Torah, Dr Galston does not always present the most understandable prescriptions – there’s always ‘on the other hand’.  Here the point that seeks exposure is that sustainable freedom can only be achieved and exercised in an environment of mutually accepted order.  And mutual acceptance is passed on as an inherited tradition, a social legacy from previous generations.  Jews formalize this tradition in the course of the traditional Seder (order) that is central to the celebration of Passover (freedom).

“This raises a classic issue—the relationship between order and freedom. Some schools of thought view them as antitheses—the more order, the less freedom, and vice versa. Libertarians want to minimize government constraints to maximize liberty. Anarchists carry this thesis to its inevitable, and self-refuting, conclusion. … In the Jewish tradition, by contrast, order makes freedom possible. In the absence of a framework—a law, a text, a tradition—we cannot act freely. Not only are we plunged into debilitating doubt, but our decisions also collide with those of others. The actions of others rarely coordinate harmoniously with our own. And when they don’t, all are prevented from acting as they choose. Without a framework of social order, every individual can seek freedom, but none can achieve it.”  If this sounds like a bit of ‘you can have any color you want, as long as it’s black’, then so be it.

However, a little meditation on the freedom/order dichotomy reveals again that in an enduring communal setting no member can act with total freedom; several times a day our fist inevitably comes to within an inch of others’ noses.  So, all of our communal freedoms are in fact circumscribed.  And respecting where the fences are, by what authority they were so placed, and who abides by them, defines the area in which we and our neighbors can practice our ordered freedoms.

Socialist Economics

George Rebane

A Brief History of Equality (2022) is the latest issue of socio-economic wisdom from the socialist-celebrated French socialist economist Thomas Piketty.  You might recall that Piketty gave us Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013), his magnus opus comprised of “an 800-page book turbid with equations and numbers of all kinds, … is regarded as a game-changing weapon in the war to wrest wealth from the rich.”  Therein he introduced the world to “the central contradiction of capitalism” which elicited worldwide acclaim from collectivists of every stripe – progressives, Marxists, communists, … .  Its dense arguments made the tome’s 2.5 million copies sold as one of the most unread books of all time.  Nevertheless, adulatory columns and commentaries without end graced the pages and programs of the mainstream media.  With all those equations, it appeared that someone had finally put the demise of capitalism on a firm scientific basis.

The piece de resistance of ‘Capital’ was introduction of his signature inequality r > g, stating that the rate of return on capital always exceeds the growth rate of its underlying economy.  In a nutshell, that was his ‘central contradiction’ to which I return in a bit.  But as Tunku Varadarajan of the American Enterprise Institute explains (here), “Thomas Piketty attempts to lure readers unable to scale the mountain of ‘Capital’” with a series of socialist principles that would create equality (think social justice) by “flattening the wealth curve.”

Piketty does admit that there has been an historical movement toward equality along many dimensions – status, gender, race - since the late 1700s, but still not enough “to brag about.”  These gains have not been achieved by the increase in access to material wealth made possible by capitalist, profit-seeking entrepreneurs, but instead by revolutionary politics and class struggle.  “Efficient production, shrewd investment, or the genius and dynamism of innovators are sideshows”, because “all creations of wealth in history have issued from a collective process”.  For Piketty, this process has not only included but also depended on “the international division of labor, the use of global natural resources”, and most importantly “the accumulation of knowledge since the beginnings of humanity”, all blessings of the global collective.  Varadarajan correctly concludes from these claims that Piketty “is pure Bernie Sanders or AOC” and “may even be to their left.”

Sandbox – 12apr22

[Happy days are here again – California plans to introduce the 32-hour work week with 40-hour pay.  Another product of socialist economics and its new monetary theory coming to a job site near you. gjr]

Militarizing local LE agencies

George Rebane

Last week’s Union had a couple of items that piqued my ire.  One included the display of a grim array of new militarized riot control gear that our Grass Valley police will now have at the ready to put down any protests they deem will violate public order and safety. (more here) The other item was the newspaper’s editorial board, in their 8apr22 Our View column (here), clutching their communal pearls about the recent Sacramento shootings and lamenting that “we’re nowhere near knowing the steps we need to take to reduce the number of shootings in this country.”

Ruminations – 8apr22

George Rebane

Were I a senator, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson would not have received my vote for her SCOTUS confirmation.  Given the part of her record we are allowed to see, she is by no means the best pick for her legal acumen and rulings.  The lamestream has unabashedly lied about her treatment at her somewhat embarrassing Senate hearings.  But in the final analysis, I would have passed on her because she is a racist pick that peremptorily eliminated over 95% of the field of qualified jurists, most of whom more qualified than she.  (more here)

The Union continues to deny the Hunter Biden laptop scandal in words and pictures (see its 8apr22 op-ed).  Its publisher maintains that there is no there there in which evidence of Biden family corruption abounds, and its overwhelmingly leftwing political cartoons are selected to support the newspaper’s position.  Our local paper makes no never mind that major lamestream players are now tiptoeing back their earlier denials and election year censorship which most definitely had an impact on the nation’s 2020 election. (more here)

WSJ’s Kim Strassel expands on the Biden scandal in her ‘Apologies for Hunter Biden’s Laptop’ where she writes – “Although some Republicans are immediately characterizing all this as “corruption,” the more specific issue (and always the focus of the Johnson-Grassley probe) is national security. Hunter Biden spent years entwining the family in questionable ventures in Ukraine, Russia and China, even as his father’s biggest foreign-policy concerns are Ukraine, Russia and China. This history raises legitimate questions about counterintelligence and extortion, even as it puts a spotlight on how honest President Biden has been in claiming no knowledge of his son’s doings.”

What is truth?

George Rebane

Contrary to common wisdom, in addition to your opinions you can also have your own facts, history, science, logic, sense of justice, fairness, equity, evil, beauty, and, of course, truth.  Rebane Doctrine

Two friends of ours tackled the notion of ‘truth’ in recent issues of The Union.  Jan Tannarome (‘Facts vs Beliefs’) and Terry McLaughlin (‘What is truth, exactly?’) in which each argued the existence of propositions that are universally and unambiguously assessed as being true.  Ms Tannarome leans to the left, and Ms McLaughlin is a conservative.

Tannarome harbors the pejorative view of ‘belief’ as being inimical to a kind and just society.  She writes, “And no matter who is using belief as a weapon or as a shield, this is unforgivable. It is unforgivable on a scale of such magnitude that I can’t think of anything worse at this juncture in our human evolution. I will borrow a phrase from a frequent contributor to this newspaper’s pages and say that using belief as a shield or a weapon is the mother dog of all political mischief, all social and cultural malfeasance, all justification for hatred and its many offspring.”

McLaughlin, while never actually defining ‘absolute truth’, believes it to exist and goes through a litany of misguided notions about truth ranging from relativism, through pluralism, to beliefs.  She writes, “Why is it important to embrace the concept of absolute truth? Because life has consequences for being wrong. … Today, many people seem to fear publicly and honestly stating facts and truth. … If we wish to heal the present divides within our country, our neighborhoods, even our families, we must be willing to share in truthful and honest discourse.”

From my perch (see also my credo) I join with those who have a more precise and, perhaps, technical understanding and definition of belief.  The commonly accepted definition of ‘belief’ is a faith-based proposition.  (Here a proposition is a statement or assertion that expresses a judgment or assessment.)  As such, a belief requires no reasonable basis.

A more nuanced, and technically correct definition, holds that there are two kinds of beliefs – faith-based and falsifiable.  In that sense a person’s worldview or ontology consists of a set of propositions or beliefs which may all be falsifiable or also include some that are faith-based and beyond the pale of reason.  Over the years RR readers who have followed my sermons on Bayesian inference and non-monotonic reasoning know that I and most people of my ilk and background embrace an ontology that consists wholly of potentially falsifiable beliefs.

For the more technical/philosophical reader, the Bayesian measure of verity of a proposition is its probability of being verifiably true.  This measure ranges between zero (impossible proposition) and one (axiomatically true).  Verity measures between zero and one may be updated (by Bayes theorem) with the introduction of new evidence.  Faith-based verity measures at zero and one are immune to new evidence and the ministrations of Bayes.  (more here, here, and here)

Unfortunately, as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so is belief in the mind (heart?) of the believer.  The pithy shibboleth at the top summarizes the realworld basis for our nation’s polarization, and its negligible prospects for restoring e pluribus unum.  IMHO too many of us paint our views of the world with faith-based colors.  Such people believe in absolute truths beyond those immediately subject to multi-party verification.

An example of such an absolute truth is the proposition that 2+2=4 which can be immediately verified during an ongoing discourse by everyone present who can count.  Claimed absolute truths that are limited to citations of past third-party verifications are immediately open to contention which cannot be resolved in the moment, and therefore give rise to the above pithy shibboleth.  And it is in the moment, that is ripe for taking decisions, that one must accept or reject available paths forward when multiple contending truths (beliefs) do battle – absolute truths have no place is such arenas.  It was ever thus.

With this understanding one can appreciate why appeals based on Rodney King’s ‘Why can’t we all just get along?’ fail to unite us.

A better course to resolve disputes would be to admit the pithy shibboleth and focus on discovering common aspects in the differing utilities held by contending factions.  Without such a basis for dispute resolution expect no light, only heat. (more here and here)

The Evil Party continues self-validation (updated 6apr22)

George Rebane

A reader posted the link to conservative writer David Horowitz’s essay ‘Understanding the Progressive Mind’.  Here he points out that “too many conservatives fail to appreciate the radical evil that lies at the heart of progressivism by, e.g., giving progressives credit for good intentions and assuming that the disasters caused by their policies are inadvertent.”  We have made the case for years that these disasters have been anything but inadvertent.

A more compelling argument as to the evil that imbues the basis of the Democrats’ objectives, means, and methods is on display today with our policy to do everything politically possible, within the context of NATO, to diminish and delay military support to Ukraine.  This perfidy is accomplished with the lamestream propagandizing Biden’s lauded fear/desire not to prompt Putin into pushing the WW3 button.  Few people understand more thoroughly than Garry Kasparov the impact this prevarication has on Russia’s foreign policy and future expansionist aggressions under Putin.  Kasparov’s op-ed, ‘Biden Told the Truth, Putin Has to Go’, in the (paywalled) 4apr22 WSJ is an important analysis of the West’s response to date.  He makes the case that “Ukraine’s sacrifice will be in vain if the West’s moral confusion gives Russia a chance to regroup.”  I’ve decided to make it available to RR readers here - Download Kasparov 4apr22 op-ed

[6apr22 update] Insulin price controls - butt stupid socialist economics on parade.  Don’t know exactly where the needle lands on their stupid-to-evil scale, but the Democrats’ Affordable Insulin Now Act will have exactly the wrong impact on every part of the R&D-to-pharmacist counter cycle.  In the longer term everyone, especially the diabetics, will be hurt as the monies will be mal-distributed between patient, government, big pharma, insurance companies, and, yes, ultimately the taxpayer.  This is yet another Democrat vote buying program directed at the desperate, destitute, deluded, and dumb.  (more here)

Ruminations – 3apr22 (updated 5apr22)

George Rebane

‘Birthing people’ is yet the latest addition to the Democrats’ newspeak, in their ongoing and evil intent to reduce the information carrying capacity of English.  Birthing people replaces the use of ‘mother’ and ‘woman’ in describing a human capable of giving birth to a baby.  It ambiguates the meaning of the referent, and requires the use of 15 ASCII characters vs the 6 or 7 characters needed for the shorter and more precise terms.  (See also 'Democrats' Newspeak - 13jan22')

The ending of the Russo-Ukraine War is a growing issue in today’s diplomatic and political deliberations regarding aid to Ukraine and Russia’s reaction to such aid.  Talking heads and experts are predicting that the war will go on for at least a month and no longer than three months.  Reasonably assuming that the war is a minimally known process, what is the probability that the war will actually end in the oft-cited two-month period.  Well, R-G theory (here) has an answer for such questions.  Using today’s duration of the war (which began 24feb22) as 38 days, the desired probability computes to about 0.26 or one out of four.  Additionally, 0.45 is the probability that the war ends in the next 31 days, and 0.29 is the probability that it continues past 92 days.  Place your bets.

[4apr22 update]  Putin’s future looks less than dim, no matter the course he now takes.  If he continues his totally useless and failed aggression in Ukraine, he will probably get a bullet in the head from the nomenklatura.  If he withdraws from Ukraine under some bullshit bravado, he’ll get a bullet or be sent to the Hague for war crimes.  Most likely a bullet since his definitive removal will be a condition for the lifting of sanctions and normalization of Russia’s relations – the sanctions are devastating the country both economically and socially.  If he pops a nuke, he’ll definitely get a bullet and/or be hog-tied and shipped to the Hague in a packing crate.  There are too many powerful and rich people in Russia who cannot countenance Putin’s disaster taking away their stash and trashing Mother Russia.  And I think Putin knows all this.

[5apr22 update] The 5apr22 Union reports of a useful idiots gathering (here) to remind us that America is still woefully short on civil rights, and that voting is difficult in many/most states.  Here we’re told of our guilt as being the “whitest county in California”, and “it’s also one of the more conservative counties in California,” so “it’s important for folks in this county to know that our privilege and easy access to voting is not universal across the United States.”  This hot flash comes from a cohort of the most under-informed leftwing activists in the country.

‘Genes vs. Culture’

George Rebane

This is the title of a landmark essay on the American condition by Lawrence Mead, Professor of Politics at New York University, published in the March/April 2022 edition of Chronicles, flagship publication of the Charlemagne Institute.  Continuing the work of Charles Murray et al, Professor Mead makes the case that “conservatives face a juggernaut determined to transform society in the name of equity. In order to fight it, they must have the courage to state the truth: There are real differences, both genetic and cultural, between races and sexes.”

The essay presents a compendium of information about the racial and cultural differences inherent in the people who today populate the United States.  Almost everything that is cited is currently censored in today’s land of the free and home of the brave.  That we compliantly accept this is ongoing evidence of the country’s continuing decline toward autocracy cum tyranny.

When I wrote ‘Equity Denies Reality’ and also submitted it to The Union, its publisher told me in so many words that the subject was too hot to be handled in our rapidly bluing Nevada County.  It would generate way more heat than light, and besides, our publisher’s own worldview did not countenance the presentation of such government data - not all that the government gathers and archives is suitable for sheeple fodder.

The main thesis this forbidden research and recorded data supports is that we are a variegated citizenry in an historical melting pot that has yet to melt into a homogenous amalgam when it comes to individual propensities and capabilities which are identifiably and unambiguously still distinguished by genes and culture.  Denying this, and making it public policy to lie about it over the past fifty years has done untold harm to our e pluribus unum work in progress.

I strongly recommend both Murray’s Facing Reality: Two Truths about Race in America (2021) - source of graphic - and Mead’s ‘Genes vs. Culture’ in order to understand the quantitative details about the nature of our divisions, and how today's Left seeks to capitalize on these as we march toward the Great Divide or the global Great Reset.

Sandbox – 2apr22

[I have a hard time trying to imagine the proposed meeting between Zelensky and Putin.  One is an heroic leader of a small country besieged by a world-class dictator, kleptocrat, and thug who, in addition, openly seeks to murder the man with whom he will negotiate.  How in hell will the two talk to each other when Putin is the unprincipled tyrannous maximus who has gratuitously attacked his neighbor with the demonstrated intent to kill as many civilians as he can in order to bring Ukraine to its knees?  How do you talk to a man who wants you dead and has several hit squads in the field under orders to kill you?  gjr]