Rebane's Ruminations

‘Democracy Dies in California’

“To impose a new burden on fast-food restaurants, the state plans to ignore the constitution’s right of voters to review laws.”

George Rebane

California suffers a continuous stream of social, economic, and political disasters.  All of these are formulated, brought to bear, and implemented by the state’s virulently anti-American Democratic Party.  Most of the public policy tragedies arrive unknown and unannounced to the state’s shrinking share of maker residents.  The takers don’t care since they know that all the wealth transfer programs, no matter how scurrilous, all go to buy and pay for their votes.

The latest of these promises an historic change in how California’s referenda will now be treated.  Slated to go into effect tomorrow (1jan23) – “The law creates a state council to dictate wages, working conditions and benefits, among other things, for fast-food workers who aren’t unionized. The law is intended to coerce fast-food franchises to surrender to the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).” (here)

What’s different is that this law was passed late in the legislative session to deny Californians any reasonable review of the matter.  However, an astute watchdog organization, Save Local Restaurants, has gathered over a million signatures on a petition opposing the referendum and filed it with the state.  According to California’s constitution “a law is required to be put on hold once a referendum petition with enough signatures is filed.”

The constitution is very specific about this 1911 amendment which reserves “to the people the power to pass judgment upon the acts of the legislature, and to prevent objectionable measures from taking effect.” Once a referendum is filed, “no such act or section or part of such act shall go into effect until and unless approved by a majority of the qualified electors voting thereon.”

The state is ignoring its constitution, and has stated it will “temporarily” implement the law until the signatures are verified, a task that will be completed sometime in October 2023.  At that time the law will either be withdrawn or made permanent.  Such an unconstitutional, temporarily-in-effect provision has never been attempted before.

If allowed to stand, this legislative tactic – passing bills late in the legislative calendar in order to limit their opponents’ ability to stop them from taking effect - will become yet another tool and precedent for our monopoly political party to continue its destruction of California.  Sleazebags on parade.

The only remaining hope on this is an order by a state judge prohibiting enforcement of the law until a hearing is held in two weeks.  Else “businesses would have to temporarily comply even though the laws may be later suspended once signatures are verified and eventually overturned by voters.”  So it is no surprise that we continue to witness large numbers of our businesses and people vote with their feet by leaving California.

Peeking Into Progressive Minds

George Rebane

As most RR readers know, the Rebanes have been in local leftwing crosshairs for some years now.  Jo Ann’s prominence in Republican circles - Nevada County Republican Central Committee, President of Nevada County Republican Women Federated, ... - and her long hitch on the Union’s editorial board have reserved for her a regular ration of opprobrium from our Left.  In today’s (29dec22) Union she garner’s the paper’s Hits & Misses column headline – ‘Miss to Rebane’s comment on immigrants’.  Thereunder reader Richard Howell writes, “To Mrs. Rebane’s comment (12/23) ‘… five million illegals and hundreds of thousands of known got-a-ways(sic) invade our country?’  Actually, 5+ million were intercepted trying to cross illegally into the U.S.  Perhaps next week she can write a ‘Hit’ comment for our border patrol under President Biden.”

Can’t rightly tell whether the man is terminally bamboozled by the lamestream’s misreporting our border crisis, and thinks that the 5+ million were denied entry, or that when illegals are intercepted by the border patrol on our side, they then have broken no laws and it’s OK for them to be turned loose and stay here.  And wanting a hit for Biden is beyond ludicrous – the president who has created the most porous border in the country’s history, and is personally responsible for tens of thousands of migrant and America’s drug overdose deaths that continue to mount daily.

Also right below was the following letter from a George Roberts to the editor labeled ‘Misguided immigrant comments’.

I just finished reading Joanne Rebaine’s (sic) hits and misses holiday rant (12/24) about the asylum seekers.  She must have special glasses to have spotted specific “sex traffickers, fentanyl dealers and terrorists.”  Sort of like Trump’s “rapists and murderers.”  I don’t have those special holiday glasses.  All I saw were some poor, cold, hungry, scared but hopeful human beings.  I think the Christian bible would call them the most vulnerable and precious of god’s children.  “Feliz Navidad” to Ms. Rebaine.(sic)

It is clear that Mr Roberts belongs to the country's tens of millions of news nebbishes who don’t have a clue about what’s really going on at our southern border and its follow-on impact across the entire land.  The lamestream media has so effectively papered over the ongoing tragedy that it’s coverage and communication to a large population, one with purportedly free speech rights, will be studied for years by anthropologists, sociologists, and political scientists as one of history’s most effective campaigns of large scale propagandized fake news.  The Third Reich’s Göbbels and the entire Soviet ‘truth’ nomenklatura were not able to convince even a smidgen of their populations to their versions of ‘truth’ (Pravda).

The dimensions of Roberts’ ignorance are immeasurable.  He hasn’t an inkling that the overwhelming share of illegal aliens from all over the world come not as asylum seekers, but only economic opportunists (including criminal) who take advantage of Biden’s abandonment of America’s national security.

But dear reader, we must remember that the final and perhaps greatest tragedy and threat to our  republic is that the country is swarming with mind-mangled people like Richard Howell and George Roberts.

Scattershots – 26dec22 (update 29dec22)

George Rebane

Christmas 2022.  Jo Ann and I were again blessed to be in the bosom of our family on Christmas eve and Christmas day.  The whole affair took place at daughter Teine and Dave’s house (head of our Southern Tribe) in Alta Sierra.  Teine organized and put on dinner on the eve, Christmas brunch, and big Christmas dinner.  In attendance were also granddaughter Fiona (with child) with hubby Shawn and their daughter Maybelle, grandson Sean and wife Bella (with child) who arrived late on Christmas eve, driving in one day from snowbound Denver where they live (as part of our Eastern Tribe) along with granddaughter Claire, hubby, and four more great-grandchildren.  Throw into that mix two male dogs and a Maine Coon cat, and you get a rough idea of all the goings on in the house and yard.  Our Northern Tribe, headed by daughter Sini and hubby Roland, was snowbound in their Seattle area home along with their timely assembled kids Elizabeth, Lucas, and Catherine with hubby.  Needless to say, a lot of inter-tribal texting and sending of pics went on the whole time.

‘Into each life some …’  The regular reader will have noticed a drop-off in the frequency of RR posts.  As reported before, Jo Ann and I came down with Covid during Thanksgiving week.  And that malady has lingered with us, mostly me, over the last month.  I had some health issues (inevitable in your 80s) start earlier in the year which Covid compounded.  So anyway, we’re getting tested for this and that, and dragging a mite in the process.  Hope to be back online sooner than later.

[28dec22 update]  Our beloved Union is in the hands of junior varsity journalistic philistines.  Their new managing editor Elias Funez showed his hand in today’s edition by writing a very long, self-adulatory op-ed (here) that leaves no doubt the man either failed Introduction to Composition 1A, or never even gave it a try.

Given my extensive history covering wildfires over my now 17 years of newspaper reporting, It didn’t take me long for me to connect the dots between my penchant for producing breaking news coverage, live video, and print photography.

And I was finding out that not just her, but many many others as well. My live feeds had now have become a resource where folks were exchanging information in real time, and with many other members of the community.

There’s much more to lament about this man’s talents in running a newspaper.  I also recommend RR readers take a look at the newspaper’s completely revised website (here).  This monstrosity is basically broken – e.g. it will not accept former account holders, and does not even feature the paper’s Opinion (op-ed) section.  It appears to now start focusing on syndicated writers with a distinct leftward lean.  More about this later.

[29dec22 update]  ‘ICE Admits It Has ‘No Records’ For Hundreds Of Thousands Of Illegal Immigrants Released With Electronic Monitors’  The evidence of government incompetence and criminal fraud pours in daily.  The Biden administration has assured their various departments and agencies fomenting and promoting the illegal alien invasion that they will not be touched by the formerly ‘long arm of the law’.  Future favors accrue to the bureaucrats enabling the now bulging pipeline of future Democrat voters. (more here)

Christmas - 2022

Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.  Matthew 1:23

George Rebane

[This Christmas message first appeared here in 2019 and was repeated last year.  It still bears repeating.]

Another tumultuous year is ending with celebrations for peace and joy.  The Rebanes count themselves among the diminishing number of American Christians who still wish their family and friends, and RR readers of all persuasions a season of remembrance and reflection on what has been bestowed on this third planet, circling a modest star, making its way with billions of similar stars in a galaxy that populates this universe with uncounted trillions of other such galaxies.  Christmas still reminds many of us that we are among the blessed in our seeming insignificance.

Sandbox – 19dec22

[A continuing miss to Fox and other conservative outlets for not bringing up and highlighting daily ‘the border is secure’ lies of the anti-American Biden administration and presidency.  No president in our history has purposely or otherwise done so much damage to our republic as has this functional idiot in the White House.  gjr]

Enduring Impact of Imported Cultures

George Rebane

As we anticipate the horrendous impact of abandoning Title 42 for managing the current tsunami of illegal aliens crossing our southern border, George Mason University economics professor Garett Jones comes out with The Culture Transplant (2022), a major essay on the enduring impact of cultures brought in by America’s immigrants.  In the book review (here) we read –

… cultural traits can persist for generations after migrants arrive in a new country. Newcomers don’t simply assimilate to their new homes; as the book’s subtitle puts it, they “make the economies they move to a lot like the ones they left.” It’s a thesis that is at once highly provocative and a restatement of common sense: Poorly chosen immigrants can undermine a country’s success; cultures don’t disappear when people move from place to place.

A point long made in these pages, the presentation of this research underlines the damage, not only possible, but to be anticipated from the hordes of millions of illegals that have been released with no effective controls into all corners of our land.  More ominously –

… even after four generations in the U.S., immigrants continue to hold attitudes toward trust that are significantly influenced by their home countries. On a host of other matters, such as family, abortion and the role of government, fourth-generation immigrants on average converge only about 60% of the way to the national norm. “Overall,” Mr. Jones contends, “that low level of conformity is a bad sign, unless you think most immigrants come from countries with better political attitudes than Americans currently have.”

The bottom line is that immigrants from bad and backward countries don’t leave their cultures behind.  They continue to embrace and practice them here, especially when they gather in ethnically homogenous enclaves.  The resulting disunity impedes the falsely touted assimilation, and gives lie to the progressives’ chant that ‘Our diversity is our strength.’  In this shibboleth Jones writes “you’re hearing the cultural equivalent of second marriages: a triumph of hope over experience.”  As demonstrated over the centuries, first and foremost, people like to live with their own kind, no matter where they locate.

In this work Prof Jones has introduced a migration-adjusted SAT (state, agriculture, technology) score which usefully predicts the assimilation attributes of our immigrant ethnicities – e.g. predicts more than 60% of modern day income differences between the groups as derived from their countries of origin.  It turns out that the technology component of SAT is the most impactive.  Correlating with their home countries -

Technology also seems to be the best long-run predictor of government quality. So the main story seems to be about technological development persisting over time, and of people bringing their technological capabilities to new places. 

Continuing to allow uncontrolled entry of millions of illegals portends a cultural and existential disaster for America – “These concerns are immediate and tangible, not preoccupied with the effect of immigration generations from now. To address some of the more compelling worries, we might start placing greater emphasis on skills, perhaps implementing a points system, as Australia, Canada and the U.K. do, to grade potential immigrants.”

But first and foremost, to implement any of these factors into an immigration policy that sustains America, we have to secure our borders.  This is also understood by our neo-Marxist and anti-American elites who will fight tooth and nail to maintain our borders in their current dysfunctional state that promotes, nay invites, the uncontrolled invasion by millions of illegals who will implant their own counter-cultures in this fair land.

Ruminations – 8dec22 (updated 15dec22)

George Rebane

Trump in 2024?  Hard to see how the man can get nominated by the Repubs, no matter how hard he might try.  His latest mis-pronouncements on the Constitution and having his business found criminally guilty of fraud provides a tipping point for the lamestream to finally castigate him cause, and the Republicans to unite in his finally being too tainted to touch.  None of this says that Trump won’t run as a splinter party candidate.  For a prayer that he won’t, we should all light a candle.

Christmas consideration.  Jo Ann and I put up our porch Christmas lights yesterday.  Today we got this tongue-in-cheek from a fellow bourbon drinking neighbor. “I don’t mean to be a grinch however....to those of you who are placing Christmas lights/decorations in your yards, would you please avoid anything that has Red or Blue flashing lights together? Every time I come around the corner, I think it's the cops and I have a panic attack. I have to brake hard, toss my glass of Jack Daniel's out the window, fasten my seat belt, throw my phone on the floor, turn my radio down, and push the gun under the seat. All while trying to drive. It's just too much drama, even for Christmas. Thank you for your cooperation and understanding.”

[15dec22 update]  Here is a short on-the-mark commentary of VDH on FTX's scumbag Sam Bankman-Fried and Elon Musk, the hero of Tesla, SpaceX, and now Twitter.

Sandbox – 5dec22

[Much appreciation for the concern shown by commenters to our pace of Covid recovery.  We have discovered for ourselves that all the stories about how it drains you of energy, and the time it takes to get back to normal are true in spades.  We felt the symptoms and tested positive on 21 November and got over the low point three days later.  But since then it’s been a real drag – every chore that requires moving your butt drains you.  Yesterday morning we did a big grocery shopping which laid us low.  Afternoon nappy-poos are a must.  This morning I tried a turn on the treadmill at half speed; could only last 15 minutes.  But we do sense that day by day we’re getting better; if we could only pick up the pace a little.  gjr]

Twitter blackout

George Rebane

Last week Elon Musk released a tranche of Twitter internal communications to conservative blogger Matt Taibbi.  Since then, more has been released through Taibbi.  These missives between top and middle management at Twitter during the summer and fall of 2020 are damning evidence of how the Democrat Party, government agencies, and corporatist entities worked hand-in-glove to deflect the election toward Biden by censoring and discrediting the Hunter Biden laptop evidence of high-level corruption and government influence peddling.

As RR and its regular Ruminators have long-cited and argued, this case of carefully constructed and directed lies was most certainly the biggest ‘irregularity’ from which the 2020 election suffered, and still gives cause for many of us to consider that President Trump would have been re-elected had the laptop imbroglio received the timely national coverage it deserved.  Many legal minds and national commentators opine that the significance of how the Biden laptop was censored and propagandized makes Watergate look like a walk in the park.  I strongly agree.

Here we have two distinct issues at work – laptop evidence of Biden family corruption, and corporatist cooperation with political opposition to influence the outcome of a national election.  These working together gives a perfect example where 2+2=5, and why the DNC and Democratic leadership pulled all stops to bury the evidence before voters could hear of it.  The details of the story, especially as it involves collusion of the FBI (weekly meetings with Twitter) and a cadre of former intelligence officials, make for movie material reading (more here).  And, of course, the case is not closed yet if congressional Republicans will grow a pair and open a wide-ranging investigation in January.  Stay tuned.

Finally, what this illustrates once more is another example of how Americans live in two distinct and separate worlds.  Those light readers who consume mainly lamestream media will not have even heard enough to give this matter a second thought.  More observant leftwingers continue to consume the lies that there is no there there; most certainly not of government censorship since Twitter is a private company.  Of course, Twitter’s close coordination with the Biden WH and FBI, as the evidence now shows, is never mentioned in the leftwing outlets’ reports.  Through corporatism the government has been overwhelmingly involved in First Amendment censorship.

For a coda, put this coverage and the polarization it maintains in the context of finding common ground, of coming together again, or of the oft-repeated notion that there are more things that unite us than separate us.  No there aren’t.  (More here)

Scattershots – 1dec22

George Rebane

China’s nationwide Covid lockdowns.  Does anyone have any reasonable explanation for this supremely stupid policy that will NOT avoid the inevitable nationwide pandemic, destroys the nation’s economy, and gives rise to riots that increase popular opposition to the CCP and its governments?  All pandemics will end through herd immunity – natural or vaccine mediated.  There are no effective Covid vaccines, and none on the horizon.  When the lockdowns are inevitably lifted, the disease will rage just like it has everywhere else.

More black mayors celebrated.  As Jason Riley points out here in the 30nov22 WSJ, the worst thing that can happen to a city or community is to elect a black mayor.  America’s decades old record of such unfortunate election outcomes clearly demonstrates a strong correlation of economic downturn and soaring crime rates when leftwing black community governance is ensconced.  And yet they keep doing it, while bitching about everything from police brutality, horrible public education, to racist allocation of state and federal largesse to the local weal.  The motto of our black communities has long been ‘vote the same, then expect change’.

The League of Women Voters is a partisan Democrat shill.  Looking at the political affiliation of its members over the last decades demonstrates its firm position in America’s progressive politics.  Things in the LWV started turning left in the 1970s when Jo Ann was on the board of the Ventura County LWV.  Having early lost credibility as unbiased sponsor of national presidential debates, the organization pulled in its horns to focus on non-partisan bamboozles delivered at the local levels.  And today, Ms Fran Cole, head of the Nevada County LWV, attempts a ludicrous counter argument in the 30nov22 Union – ‘Let’s set the record straight; the League of Women Voters is a political non-partisan organization’.  In it she goes on to twist the record into a pretzel, following the well-established Alinsky model in the Democrats’ communication kit.  For openers she argues that today’s overwhelmingly leftwing LWV members can set aside their political proclivities and provide unbiased reporting on issues and conduct similarly neutral candidate forums.  The latter is contradicted by legions of Republican candidates in recent years who have refused to take part in such one-sided kabukis.  The former is something unknown in the field of psychology, and not accepted as unbiased by any broad-based audience (starting with the leftwingers themselves).