Rebane's Ruminations

Ruminations – 8nov19 (updated 10nov19)

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)

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.

Sacramento Owns the Blackouts

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

George Rebane

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

Outrageous Outages (updated 10oct19)

George Rebane

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Agenda21 to SDGs to Agenda 2030

George Rebane

RR has covered the Agenda21 story extensively over the years primarily in its role as a template for leftwing objectives that their politicians’ public policies seek to fulfill.  (see 'Agenda 21' category) This non-binding UN initiative was formalized in 1992 and signed by over 100 nations.  The US (under Bush1) became a signatory.  A21’s objectives and means of achieving them on the level of local jurisdictions was and continues to be taught to government officials and properly politically oriented NGO staffs through a global network of ICLEIs.

ICLEI or the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives was launched under the aegis of A21.  The ICLEIs almost immediately began distancing themselves from the A21 relationship as the latter’s objectives started to be highlighted by various rightwing media outlets, politicians, and conservative blogs as harbingers of global autocracy.  The goals taken in toto were an antithesis for the retention of sovereign nation-states as the fundamental structure of world order.  A21 called for an authoritarian global government whose operational goals were actually to markedly lower human population, reduce its consumption of earth’s resources, and restrict people’s access to most of earth’s land area and natural resources.

This obviously made A21 and all references to it anathema to most Americans, and made connecting A21 to the Left’s globalist narrative a no-brainer.  Hence, the Left immediately launched a nationwide denial campaign, claiming that A21 was really some hare-brained Big Brother conspiracy cooked up by the Right.  Their proof of that was showing that none of their public policies which existentially abetted A21 objectives, actually called out A21 or mentioned A21 objectives in the laws and regulations they passed and their publicized desiderata for future legislation.  In short, A21 had to be banished from the public mind.  And so it was.

Today the objectives of A21 are all alive and well, but they have had to be repackaged by the UN under the new rubric of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and wrapped into its newly introduced Agenda 2030.  The clear hope is that within such new adornments, the public will be bamboozled a bit longer as the global Left continues to fashion and form ever more restrictive boundaries through SDG-supportive public policies, all of which need an ever larger state to administer and enforce them.  And, of course, all that will cost much more than we are used to paying now, hence the new levels of mandated tribute to Leviathan will be justified as fulfilling part of humanity’s overall moral imperative in its march into the globalist 21^st century as prescribed by Agenda 2030.  The beat goes on.  (more here, here, and elsewhere – google ‘Agenda 2030’)

Steven Frisch answered, yet again (updated)

George Rebane

Mr Steven Frisch is one of, if not the, leading leftwing intellectuals in the northern Sierra.  He earns his keep as CEO of the Sierra Business Council, a cynically named non-profit, progressive NGO that promotes all manner of leftwing policies and causes in this part of California.  SBC also consults to regional government jurisdictions and agencies in their implementation of ‘sustainable development’ as most easily discerned by the recommendations contained in the UN’s Agenda 21 objectives and the initiatives promoted by its derivative ICLEIs across the land.  RR has covered A21 issues for many years and devotes an entire category to it under which are gathered the relevant commentaries and postings.

Mr Frisch has seen fit to visit these pages with some regularity to debate issues with which he does not agree in my commentaries and in the attendant comment streams.  As a liberal and progressive, his approach to debate is primarily to either misrepresent what has been written, or to attack strawmen that he constructs with the standard liberal shibboleth, ‘We know what he really meant.’  The sequel of this post amply illustrates this mode of attack.

In past screeds Mr Frisch has called me ‘unpatriotic’, ‘un-American’, ‘traitor’, ‘racist’, …, and recommended my departure from everywhere that ranges from Nevada County all the way to shores of the USA.  In my turn, I consider the two of us to have been brought up and now live in different universes.  With some assuredness, lavishly documented here over the years, I can state that Mr Frisch knows next to nothing of the areas in which I claim some expertise.  I’m sure he reciprocates that sentiment.

My response to Mr Frisch here is motivated by an extensive comment that he saw fit to post this morning under ‘Scattershots – 12aug19’.  It is reproduced hereunder in its entirety, along with my responses interleaved in italics.

Scattershots – 12aug19 (updated 14aug19)

George Rebane

A long march to protest over-regulation in California is planned to start on 13 August in Vinton (the northern terminus of Hwy 49) and wend its way through 300 miles of rural mountain and hill country roads to end in Oakhurst on 25 August.  It will be done in daily segments which takes it through Nevada City/Grass Valley on 16 August.  People are asked to join it and/or encourage the marchers as it passes through their communities.  This grass roots civic action is the latest expression of desperation with encroaching governments at all levels that daily increase their constraints and constrictions of movement and use of public lands a la A21.  It’s to be seen how such efforts will be received and persist in a state that no longer reflects our inherited culture and values from a fast-fading America.  More here.

President Bill Clinton’s 1995 SOTU speech to Congress on his “illegal alien” policy.  Since Clinton spoke, the situation has gotten orders of magnitude worse with today’s unlawful ‘undocumented immigrant’ policies and programs promoted by our anti-American Left.  Take a look at this 90 second video, it is one that Republicans should play continuously until November 2020, if they had the balls.  Sadly, that will never happen.

[13aug19 update]  ‘Never Again’ Means Nothing If Holocaust Analogies Are Always Off Limits. This WaPo op-ed is one of the most ignorant pieces of writing I have read in a coon’s age.  Author Danya Ruttenberg attempts to excuse AOC’s comparison of our deporting illegal aliens to Hitler sending Jews to their deaths in concentration camps.  Such comparisons are especially damaging and divisive to the mildly educated minds that populate our land and now embrace socialism, they don’t have the historical background to parse the ridiculous analogies Ruttenberg presents in her column.  You have to read it yourself to understand the new directions of the Left’s propaganda machine.  Is this another one of their Big Lies?

[14aug19 update]  That Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a good looking yet abysmally ignorant shill for the DNC’s radical left wing is known to all who pay attention.  She was elected by the fewest of voters from her district, and receives campaign contributions from fewer still – 10 in the first half of 2019.  Her re-election campaign is funded by unknown sources outside her district, and she is handled by equally mysterious agents who consider her and her ‘Squad’ as extremely useful idiots used to manage the internal dynamics of the Democratic Party in fashioning its image as the election season heats up.  (More here)

Scattershots – 6aug19 (updated 11aug19)

George Rebane

The true costs of ‘renewable energy’ are both unaffordable and hidden. Those of us who can do arithmetic have known the unreported high costs of renewable wind and solar power for years, and how the climate calamity acolytes and the lamestream have suppressed reporting the costs of making the world work with renewable energy.  Mark Mills of the Manhattan Institute writes a short, fact-filled piece on the matter in the 6aug19 WSJ (here).  He cites the work of the International Renewable Energy Institute based on the demand forecasts of the International Energy Agency.  The bottom line is that if you take into account the ‘cradle to grave’ costs and environmental impacts of spreading solar and wind power production worldwide, then humanity will have an existential disaster on its hands.  The amount of mining, transport, construction, and waste elimination required swamps all conceivable benefits from such ‘clean power’ which will turn out to be the dirtiest and most expensive that we can attempt to buy.  As an example, “building one wind turbine requires 900 tons of steel, 2,500 tons of concrete and 45 tons of plastic.  And these materials will have to be mined, manufactured, and assembled in not so very nice places according to the Sydney-based Institute for a Sustainable Future.  None of this is known to our garden-variety progressives (some in these pages) who continue to mindlessly tout subsidized ‘clean energy’ and claim its unrealizable economic benefits.

‘1984’ has arrived on campuses.  “Bias response teams” are now an established institution on most college campuses, and the disease is spreading rapidly.  Christian Schneider reports (here) on “a chilling look inside colleges’ systems for reporting and policing offensive speech.”  The growing archive of such petty incidences of one student snitching on another, often unsuspecting, student is testimony to another of the progressive-promoted illiberal insanities in our society.  Reading the record of cited incidences is simply mind-boggling to most of us.  The accused offenders are then required to present themselves to the schools’ administrative “diversity” panels for examination of their violations.  As with sexual abuse allegations, there is no appeals process, and such allegations go on the students’ records which may later be used to impact careers and other life-opportunities in these looney tunes times.  For all this, go thank your local leftists who have enthusiastically made all this possible, and continue to do so with every ballot they mark.

[update]  Tonight on FN we saw an ugly leftwing mob assembled across the street from Majority Leader McConnell’s house with signs and flood lights screaming unspeakable epithets at the senator and people to “Stab him through the heart!” and “Cut his fucking throat!”.  How many lamestream outlets showed this?  How many rightwingers have gathered to put on a scene like that in front of Democrat politician’s house?  Biden and Booker both stated that they want to “beat up” President Trump; how many Republican politicians have ever come even close to such violent language against a Democrat President.  And none of these are isolated incidents carried out by some backwater communists, these are carried out regularly by mainstream leftists all across the country.  In progressive circles and in their lapdog lamestream media President Trump is regularly referred to as a “white supremacist”.  Where is the evidence for that?  I join with Victor Davis Hanson and most other conservative commentators in declaring that I have never met a rightwing white supremacist, nor do I know of anyone who has ever met such a person.  Yet the lunatic Left continues to accuse all of us daily of being white supremacists.  (check RR comment streams)  It is these insanely cynical asymmetries that confirm our having passed the tipping point and promoting the Great Divide.

[8aug19 update]  To further confirm the tsunami of censoring conservatives that is sweeping the country’s media, Twitter concluded that the video I reference above was too damaging to the progressive narrative about who actually are purveyors of hate and violence.  CNBC reports that “Twitter locked Mitch McConnell's campaign Twitter account, Team Mitch, for posting a video of a profanity-laden protest outside of McConnell's home in Louisville, Kentucky.”  (more here)  You literally cannot make this stuff up – politically motivated censorship is now a daily happening, most of it not visible.

[10aug19 update]  ‘Shaming’, even FN doesn’t understand the meaning of the word, and plays patsy to the Dem candidates’ attempt at that in their desperate attempts to intimidate President Trump.  These political sleazebags, now joined by Uncle Joe, are all claiming a direct causal relationship between Trump’s public speech and the El Paso and Dayton killings.  This is supposed to shame the president.  People who still care about the language know that a person accepts shame only when 1) he acknowledges the veracity of the allegations against him, AND 2) the society around him also embraces the same allegations.  Neither of those conditions exist for Trump re the massacres, nor the 100M+ Americans who are paying attention.  The desperate scumbags who seek to make such ludicrous claims stick don’t have a clue about this, and are mainly relying on the segment of their constituents who are innocent of current events and most other things that quality education delivers.

[11aug19 update]  Leftwing dumb is definitely a terminal mindset. Any kind of discussion with them is nigh impossible because they fail the basics of an IQ test that asks questions about whether this is like that, and if not, what is the difference.  Years of examples of such deficit thinking are archived in RR comment streams, and today we see it in the comments under Jo Ann’s recent Union piece (here) about the treatment LaMalfa received at the hands of the leftists when he visited here.  The Union leftwing commenters equate the crowd’s cries of ‘Lock her up!’ at Trump rallies with their own thuggish behavior of shouting down a congressman of the opposite party.  They haven’t a clue that one set of voices is in support of the speaker, and the other set of voices is meant to disrupt a speaker trying to respond to his audience.  To those pinheads these two situations are identical, and they consider their loutish behavior as Democrats to be a proper response to the Republican audience’s behavior at a Republican rally.  Is there someone with even garden variety smarts on the other side who can see a profound difference here?  Exit question: how often do you see Republicans do that when a Democrat comes to speak?  (I don't usually comment on Jo Ann's columns, but this time the number of butt-stupid responses was overwhelming.  H/T to GregG and ToddJ for their valiant attempts to explain the matter in that comment stream.)

Anything to undermine America (updated 7jul19)

George Rebane

The Democrats and their lamestream media are now in high gear doing anything and everything they can to undermine this administration and weaken the US in the eyes of its adversaries.  The first and most important victims of the Left’s lies are their constituents relegated to the low end of the bell curve on smarts.  As evidence, they are so bamboozled by the sleazebags that only 17% of them believe that Trump’s tax cuts benefit them, when IRS data shows that almost everyone benefited from the tax cuts.

And to put a ribbon on it, only 47% of Americans believe that Trump’s policies pulled the economy out of its Obama doldrums of under 2% growth, making no never mind of the fact that when Trump took over the GDP growth rate jumped over 60% and has remained there.  The lamestream has made certain than none of these light thinkers ever hear of Obama’s famous prognostication, “To get the GDP to grow at 3% again will require a magic wand.”  Well, our current president most certainly has that magic wand, which today’s market underlined by finishing the highest June gain in over 80 years.  (For the non-investors, the summer months beginning with June are historically the doldrum months on the stock markets.)  In spite of all this, the Dems have convinced 53% of Americans that Trump is mishandling the economy.

On the foreign policy front, Trump has exposed longstanding and dramatic shortcomings in our agreements for trade, mutual defense with allies, nuclear proliferation by rogues, and border security.  For decades America’s position in each of these areas was being taken advantage of by nations who saw us as weak and without direction.  Trump has changed all that, and in every area he has gotten people off the dime and things moving.  Now the feckless Democrats are criticizing him and telling their know-nothings that Trump is not doing any good because he hasn’t solved all the decades-old problems in his first two years in office.  And none of them, not a single one, has anything better to offer than to stick our head back in the sand and let friend and foe steal us blind.

In the meantime, the Democrats have totally abandoned their former positions and goals, as they have wrapped themselves in socialism to tout Marx’s message to the masses of the western hemisphere, ‘Workers of the world unite.  You have nothing to lose but your chains!’  And where do you think that all of this uniting of the workers will take place as our formerly porous borders disappear completely?

[2jul19 update] This painting by Jon McNaughton titled 'National Emergency' says it all.  (H/T to reader)

[3jul19 update] A regular reader suggests that to better understand what the Democrats in Congress and our own leftwing socialist commenters share as worldviews and objectives to strive for can be found in the Jacobin Magazine.  Take a look at the real meaning of free speech as we celebrate an independence they are working to take away.

[7jul19 update]  Here’s another big lie pushed by one of our favorite communists, Umair Haque, who writes ‘The origins of America’s unique and spectacular cruelty’.  America is the one nation in the world that has THE preeminent culture of altruistic giving to those afflicted and less fortunate.  Yet this propagandist exercises his 1A right to constantly reel off lie after lie about America, Americans, and our role in the world’s community of nations.  The importance of his thought is that it is shared by almost all the Democrat presidential candidates who daily echo his words.

Ruminations – 22jun19

George Rebane

Another feather in the Millennials’ intellect.  They are having a hard time finding places to live – buy, rent – due to the housing shortage and sky-high rents.  The cause, invisible to them and their progressive mentors, is nothing but governments at all levels doing their best to regulate open market housing development down to a politically correct trickle.  And these dummies keep voting for Democrats.

Liberalism isn’t what it used to be.  We conservetarians have known that for some years now, but things are really hitting the fan when liberal national and local columnists are beginning to notice the Democrats’ rush to socialism, and then starting to practice the organizational rites of collectivists in herding their own.  These matters are explained by Michael Blechman in the 21jun19 WSJ and our own Darrell Berkheimer in the 22jun19 Union.  Meanwhile the local know-nothing lefties continue their vehement denial that they are goose-stepping to Marxism.

Wind and solar energy costs continue to decrease, but making that electricity cost competitive requires upgrading our power transmission grid with new lines that can take the energy from where it’s generated to far off places where it’s needed.  Guess what’s standing in the way of building these power lines? – you guessed it, government.  As per one of the most effective Rebane's Rules is still – if society has a problem, government is the cause until proven otherwise.  (more here)

Progressives celebrate prohibitive usage of public properties.  I had a bit of schadenfreude noting how our leftwingers view the existential takings of public lands from the people by progressive governments implementing Agenda21.  These mini-minds admonish those of us complaining of increasing restrictions and costs to use such properties as opposition to the ‘people’s ownership’ of public lands.  The designation and then restriction of public properties usage has been the hallmark of socialists cum communists.  The Left has never recognized, let alone acknowledged, that you own something only to the extent that you can dispose of it as you wish.

Scattershots – 14jun19 (updated 20jun19)

George Rebane

Proto-socialists on parade.  I noticed in the 14jun19 Union’s lead op-ed another example of a good-hearted, light-thinker wailing about our country’s unequal distribution of wealth, and its pitifully inadequately small government.  A Ms Becky Goodwin laments that no “millionaire” attended her kids’ college graduations to pay off their student loans, and why should such largess be a sometime thing instead of a universal benefit across the land.  She gives no evidence of understanding how such inequalities contribute to the overall wealth and weal of a nation.  As a devoted leftist, she eschews private charities and wants all such benefits to come from a much larger government that gets such monies from taxing the bejeezus out of rich folks who just happened to belong to what was known as the middle class (more here).  The country is chock full of these proto-socialist Beckys who deny the label but would eagerly vote for every Bernie, AOC, and Green New Deal that comes their way.

Growing populism and middle-class anger.  If there’s any hope for liberal governments, then it may well begin with what VDH summarizes in his ‘Why Are the Western Middle Classes So Angry?’  He outlines six “gripes” that are also part of RR’s mantra –

• Illegal immigration and open borders have caused institutional chaos and cultural compromises – e.g. multicultural identity politics.
• Globalization that has enriched Western elites who have “outsourced, offshored, and ignored their own industries and manufacturing.”
• The viral explosion of unelected bureaucrats at all levels of government consisting of sinecured, feedback-proof regulators, planners, auditors, inspectors, and adjustors.
• The global lamestream media reaching and indoctrinating billions rather than practicing what was known as ethical journalism.
• The post-educational academia that now functions as a “shrill agent of cultural transformation … charging more for less learning.”
• “Utopian social planning”, a la Agenda21, that has “increased housing, energy, and transportation costs.”

VDH concludes that “because elites have no answers to popular furor, the anger directed at them will only increase until they give up—or finally succeed in their grand agenda of a non-democratic, all-powerful Orwellian state.”

Who ‘Deserves’ to Go to Harvard?, asks our favorite Heather MacDonald of the Manhattan Institute (see also here).  This paragon of academia, that enjoys a $39,000,000,000 endowment made possible only through the largess of western capitalism, is now teaching its students that, in fact, capitalism contains “systemic inequities”, and the “capitalist ethos” is false because it teaches that “we deserve to win because of our skill, our hard work, and our contributions.”  Not at all, maintains Dean Rakesh Khurana, because in reality capitalism is a zero-sum game that rewards its players simply on the roll of Fortuna’s dice – remember “you didn’t build that”.  Khurana most recently disseminated this blather at Harvard’s commencement in a speech which pointedly ignored that his “parents emigrated to the U.S. from India, one of the events leading him to conclude that at least 85% of his current status is due to circumstances beyond his control. His parents presumably came to the U.S. because they saw opportunity, not “systemic inequities.” That opportunity arises from Western civilization’s accomplishments: the rule of law, property rights, freedom of expression and inquiry, and the relative absence of corruption—all matters about which Mr. Khurana was silent. This civilizational inheritance allows social mobility and wealth creation unimaginable in most of the non-Western world.”  Read MacDonald’s article for the full story.  (H/T to correspondent)

‘Socialist’ Nordics are moving toward private healthcare – what a revoltin’ development!  As we have reported for years, free healthcare is unsustainable, and its dive into the mud is slowed only by providing fewer and slower services.  The answer to it is - seatbelts please - private healthcare funded through private health insurance.  Daily Signal reports that quiet trend has been going on for years with increases in such insurance purchases by 7% of Norwegians, 4% of Swedes, and leading the way, 22% of Danes who have been able to augment their ‘free’ healthcare.  A good piece, that covers what is offered to whom, when, and for how much in various countries our socialists are trying to emulate, is detailed here.

[17jun19 update] Our broken Constitution and legal system.  SCOTUS upheld the cynical double jeopardy provision that our Constitution specifically prohibits.  The Daily Caller reports,  “The Fifth Amendment’s double jeopardy clause prohibits multiple prosecutions for the same offense. An exception to this rule called the separate sovereigns doctrine allows state and federal governments to bring successive prosecutions for the same crime. Monday’s decision leaves the doctrine in place, meaning any person Trump pardons remains exposed to state prosecutions.”  The only reasonable conclusion here is that our Constitution does not apply equally to the federal government and those of the several states.  The ‘separate sovereigns doctrine’ and the entire quagmire of a sub-rosa administrative law legal system give continued evidence that our legal system is both broken and corrupt.

Cap & Trade slush fund.  Years ago when CO2 cap & trade was first proposed, I and my fellow climate change skeptics predicted that such monies would soon be used for all kinds of other progressive vote-buying give-aways by Sacramento.  Well, that day has arrived (more here).  The scumbags in the state legislature, who have claimed CA is flush with cash, can’t hide the truth any longer and have to go after money wherever they can find to fund their follies, or just to keep minimal government services going.  RR readers, of course, know what the response of the local lefties was to such predictions. (H/T to reader)

[20jun19 update]  My new favorite communist is Umair Haque. I have reported on his virulently anti-American essays before.  This prolific, yet amazingly ignorant, ultra-left ideologue is published regularly on Medium.com which is an outlet primarily by and for Millennials, and therefore deserves a regular look-see by those seeking to keep up on their thought and sentiments.  Umair’s (that’s how he signs himself) latest mind bending contributions are ‘(Why) There Was No Jackpot at the End of Capitalism’s Rainbow’, ‘The Pattern of the 21^st Century is Predatory Collapse’,  and ‘The Soviet Union of Capitalism’.  Enjoy your visit.

Trump’s Immigration Policy

George Rebane

Our current immigration policy, such as it is, hails and invites illegal entry from distant lands, favors meritless chain migration without end, and offers entry to only one of eight immigrants who have skillsets that would make them productive members of our workforce.  Additionally, its proponents seek every opportunity to provide amnesty and a fast path to citizenship for the 11M to 20M illegal aliens already in the land.

Trump’s proposal is for more than half of our new immigrants to possess skillsets that are scarce and needed, reduce chain migration to a third of the total, and require all legal immigrants to have some knowledge of English and be able to pass an elemental civics test about the US and its forms of governance. (more here)  It is moot on the resident illegals, knowing that this aspect will be resolved through extensive negotiations with the Democrats who look forward to these millions enlarging its constituent voter base.

But all progressives, led by Pelosi and Schumer, have immediately attacked the Trump plan as obviously being against the strategic interests of the Democrats in their massive lurch to the left.  Their main argument, a la Madame Speaker, is that America has never enforced merit-based immigration, and that the generations of the 19^th and early 20^th century immigrants, who contributed so much to America’s greatness, would never have been allowed in had Trump’s policy been in place then.  This claim is false from a number of perspectives, and again exemplifies the low intellectual esteem that Democrat leaders hold their core supporters, and by extension, the country’s undecides – Team Pelosi considers them all as slogan-swallowing, double dummies.

To make matters worse, the Dems’ arguments are even too difficult for some Republicans (including the vaunted Judge Napolitano) to counter.  The truth of the matter is that when those millions from Europe and Asia arrived in generations past, they ALL possessed skills that allowed them to immediately enter our workforce as its newest productive members.  Taken within the context of predominant workforce skillsets of those times, all the arriving immigrants had the ability to start jobs that they already knew how to do, or for which their skill extensions were easily acquired.  (BTW, Mollie Hemingway, senior editor of The Federalist, was the only one who grokked that historical factor on an FN panel – track her career, she is one astute female.)  In our age of specialization, advanced technology, and automation, such jobs for the under-educated from third world countries are much harder to find, thereby putting those English-absent immigrants at a great disadvantage and make them prey for criminals and other low-lifes ready to take advantage of them and make their advent a net cost to our society.

The other factor of which Team Pelosi is ignorant or willing to dissemble is the merit-based immigration policies we have had in place since WW2.  For example, refugees from war ravaged Europe were let in only on the basis of satisfying three major criteria – having US-needed skills, being sufficiently healthy, and having a political record with no taint of communist or fascist support.  These requirements were relaxed in the post-Vietnam era when immigration policy began to support party-specific voter agendas.  As cited above, workforce merit factors in for only one out of eight legal immigrants, and, of course, zero for those most welcomed above all who are adept at climbing dilapidated fences and fording rivers.

So Trump’s totally pro-American immigration policy proposal has little chance of becoming law under the current federal government's make-up, but contributes yet one more litmus test to distinguish between the pro- and anti-American factions in our land.

Iconic Incoherence on ‘Immigration’

George Rebane

That is the best that can be said about ‘Trump’s approach on illegal immigration won’t solve the problem’ by columnist and one of our readers, George Boardman, in the 15apr19 Union.  He blithely blames the whole border security problem on President Trump “who created the current crisis” for political reasons.  Mr Boardman is known for his solidly established views from the left shoulder from which he occasionally forays to visit the center stripe.  But in this latest offering he ventures further into the weeds with claims such as –

• Trump has labeled “all illegal immigrants as criminals that threaten the security of the most powerful nation on earth.” (emphasis mine) Everyone knows that the most powerful nations cannot be so threatened.
• Trump is “siding with racist-driven hardliners who want to shut off all immigration, especially from Third World countries.” (emphasis mine, but who are these racist-driven hardliners?)
• After WW2 “the end of colonial rule didn’t deliver the promised benefits to Third World nations when the US became the economic powerhouse of the world.” (Where has this man studied?  All data show exactly the opposite – life in 3^rd world countries that embraced models of western governance made and continue to make enormous strides in all dimensions in quality of life for their citizens.  The culturally deficient suffered.)

Mr Boardman seems to be innocent of the more salient causes of illegal entry across our southern border.  Ted Kennedy’s role in launching chain migration and Third World preference quotas through his Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 is a major omission.  And nowhere does he even hint that the Democrats are the major beneficiaries of the increase of America’s Hispanic population – both illegal, and most certainly the ongoing illegal migrations.

In the middle of his piece Mr Boardman shows a welcome awareness that illegal migrant hordes do cost taxpayers somewhere in the $100-300B range annually.  And he correctly offers “that’s a high price to pay to fill agricultural and other low-paying jobs”, especially if we want to “retain the core values of America, and control our own destiny.”

However, knowledge of America’s governance should inform Mr Boardman that there is nothing Mr Trump or any president can do to solve our border crisis, save fulfill his constitutional duties to secure the nation and execute current immigration laws.  Congress, dominated by globalist anti-American Democrats, will not do anything to slow the migration of illegal aliens.  Today the Left is active in Mexico and central America through their NGOs, mega-sponsors, and activists forming up cohorts, numbering in the thousands of women and children, for the perilous journey north.  These migrants are motivated, not by Trump’s efforts to secure the border, but only by Democrat promises that our president will be thwarted from doing exactly that; and, that once across, only American taxpayer-sponsored succor and sanctuary awaits them.

Progressive propagandists like Mr Boardman (presumably) see none of this, else they are part of our Left’s openly pursued policies to create a post-American continent in whose history the United States will be seen as a sordid chapter of humanitarian insult, that will then have been corrected by the socially just march to inevitable socialism.

Reconquista Revisited

George Rebane

Last night on FN, Tucker Carlson interviewed Juan Hernandez, a Mexican government official currently serving as the Guanajuato Secretary of Migration, on Mexico’s policy of permitting central American trans-migration through their country to the US border.  The official pointedly avoided addressing the harm that Mexico’s official behavior does to the United States.  (more here) The part of the interview that was most revealing concerned Reconquista – the return of lands that Mexico lost to the United States in 1848.  In the 20^th century Mexico and pro-Mexican politicians in this country have openly declared that the lands will be returned bloodlessly by immigration and out-breeding our European descended whites.  In recent decades they have added cross-border migration of illegal aliens to their plan to enlarge and spread insular and non-assimilating latino communities in the US.  (Google also Mexifornia and other writings by Victor Davis Hanson.)

Tucker Carlson reminded Mr Hernandez of some of his past statements on the matter.

“We are betting Mexican-Americans will think ‘Mexico first,’ even unto the seventh generation.”

“Mexican immigrants to the United States are going to keep one foot in Mexico. They are not going to assimilate in the sense of not being Mexican.”

“We recognize the Mexican population is 100 million in Mexico and 23 million who live in the United States. We are a united nation.”

RR has covered Reconquista in these pages for over a decade, presenting concordant views by other commentators, academics, and politicians expressed through print and the media.  The Left, especially its local light-readers, have vehemently denied that any of this is happening.  Their main argument has been that there is nothing to worry about because all Mexicans – no matter how arrived – will quickly assimilate into ordinary Americans holding the same loyal sentiments with the rest of us.  The visible evidence does not support that argument.  The overwhelming share of American latinos vote with and for the anti-American leftwing, promoting policies and initiatives to diminish the sovereignty of the US.  Today’s initiatives focus on keeping borders porous, amnesty to all illegals, and voting rights for all US residents.

Given the ongoing flow of supporting evidence and the vigorous denials by our Left, it is not unreasonable to conclude that for all intents and purposes, Reconquista has been the national policy of Mexican governments since the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed on 2 February 1848.  However, never until the globalist tilt of the anti-American Left in recent decades have the Mexicans had a strong ally working in their behalf in the United States.

Democrats’ 2020 Platform Previewed

George Rebane

Ever since Trump was elected president and the national Left mobilized their efforts to destroy his administration and unseat him, I’ve been bitching and moaning that the Democrats offered no alternative programs to implement that would “fundamentally transform” America as promised.  Well, the time has come to stop complaining because in recent months after the 2018 election the Democrats have more than filled a cornucopia of initiatives, proposals, programs, and promises to construct several election platforms for any political party dedicated to steering America into a socialist state.

This was made clear to me when I received the notes that a friend used in his talk to an organization the other day.  Its perusal reveals an extensive list of things we may expect were the country to hand over control of the executive and legislative branches to our anti-American Left (anti-American in the sense that they don’t like the America of the past nor the direction it was going before they came along, hence their need for a fundamental transformation).

Without further ado, here is the laundry list of items the Democrats want to afflict on the country starting in 2021.  It is presented as received with minimal editing.

NZ Massacre – the Left’s new perfect storm

“Conservatism is corporatism in disguise.  I want no part of it. … The nation with the closest political and social values to my own is the People’s Republic of China. … Conservatism is dead, thank God.”  Australian Brenton Tarrant, NZ shooter

George Rebane

The Christchurch massacre has been covered extensively and also received an initial go-through by RR commenters.  As always happens in the coverage of such massacres, they are characterized as ‘insane’, ‘the acts of a deranged person’, and ‘senseless killings’.  I have always thought that we’re missing something significant about these mass killings when we dismiss them as such.  Years ago, I gave my own take on these killers of the Islamic persuasion in ‘Of Ragheads and Racism’.  However, it should be clear that those sentiments are not restricted to terrorists of only one persuasion; there is a lot happening in this world which requires a wider and more detailed look.

Great Divide – it’s a’comin’

George Rebane

The Democrats have re-outed themselves as the resurrection of the Socialist Party of America, now with detailed near-term policy objectives to make the country into a socialist state over the next two decades.  To achieve this, their plan calls for the certain election of a proto-socialist President in 2020, with a supportive Congress to follow directly.  The only thing standing in the way is the re-election of Donald J Trump, and this possibility has driven the Democrats and their media lackeys into a state of political hysteria not witnessed in the history of our republic.

The Democrats are justifiably convinced that the only way to get one of their own into the White House is to prevent President Trump from completing his first term in office, and to do it in such a way as to deny the country any additional beneficial policies like those he fostered during the last two years.  In the process, perhaps the biggest lie from the Democrats circles around their constant narrative that Main Street and the poor have not benefited at all from Trump’s policies, and only the ‘rich’ have enjoyed this president. 

The Left knows that Americans are very focused on the President’s walk and not his talk.  The other countless lies from the Left maintain that no one likes the man, Americans don’t like what he’s done, and they don’t like what he will do going forward.  Were that really the case, then leftwing politicians such Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Elijah Cummings, Adam Schiff, and Mad Max Waters would not have to continue making fools of themselves every day in front of the cameras; believing their own words, they could just lay low, continue to introduce socialist legislation, and watch The Donald self-destruct.  But that clearly is not the case, and they are all sanitarily scared that the electorate will sense the truth if they tone down their investigative histrionics – no, no, no, the Cavalcade of Diversions must go on.  (BTW, one of RR’s favorite historians and observers of the nation’s churn is coming out (5mar19) with A Case for Trump, his new book that confirms and expands the points made above.)

In the meantime, more and more people today see the fiscal and social havoc that the progressives have created across the country, especially in states like New York, New Jersey, Illinois, and poster-child California.  Victor Davis Hanson addresses our home state in his 27feb19 ‘California’s Rendezvous With Reality’ that pretty much destroys the la-la land lies with which the state’s progressives are trying to paint over each of the new social, environmental, regulatory, and fiscal cracks that continue to widen.

In concert with this national charade, even some of the more observant on the Left are beginning to understand that our ship of state is no longer holding a steady course into the future.  Even progressive thinkers are beginning to consider new political configurations for the United States.  These governing structures range from new breakaway states, through “mega-regions” based on coherent economies (here), to political units hearkening back to the historical city-states of Europe (here).

However, as we continue to shout past each other in the manner much documented in these commentaries and comment streams, the Great Divide debates are starting to embrace a new and more ominous timbre.  Two WaPo reporters have noticed that pundits from both sides today see the country at loggerheads that have not been witnessed since 1860, the eve of our previous ‘civil war’.  When considering the prospect of a shooting war, a recent poll found that “more than 40 percent of Democrats described such a conflict as "likely," compared with about 25 percent of Republicans.”  Even our venerable VDH has voiced his portents, asking, "How, when, and why has the United States now arrived at the brink of a veritable civil war?" (more here)

(H/T to readers and correspondents who share my concerns.)

None dare call it treason

George Rebane

‘Microsoft workers’ letter demands company drop Army HoloLens contract’.  Microsoft “workers” (not employees) are the latest of progressives working at high tech companies to protest doing work for the DoD in defense of America.  Other companies like Google have already turned down defense work in which they could make a significant contribution to national security.  (H/T to reader)

This marks the latest twist in the country’s downward spiral from global exceptionalism and hegemony.  The 75-year Pax Americana is rapidly coming to an end as other bad actors in the world see how our younger generations, especially those with STEM and related skillsets, have been ideologically fashioned in over two generations of leftwing schools and academe.  Lenin’s words, “Give me just one generation of youth, and I'll transform the whole world.”, have never sounded truer as they ring across the land.  And we have given him two generations, and are now beginning to reap the fundamentally transforming whirlwind.

Employees who make such demands actually evoke two important notions about our 21^st century social order.  First, that such people mean to withhold strategically valuable skills from contributing to the defense of the order that made possible their education, jobs, and general well-being.  And because such skills are not easily attained by the population at large, these people have a special responsibility to their fellow citizens who work in supportive industries and non-tech fields providing their support for the sustenance of America, and thereby deservedly enjoying their globally-preeminent quality of life.  And finally, these STEM workers contribute materially to creating the wealth that enables us to care for our poor and indigent at levels that are the envy of the world.

The second aspect to notice about such a presumptuous protest letter from a company’s employees is that they actually believe in the collectivist (socialist/communist) principle that workers at a private company have the intrinsic right to specify and “demand” what work the company will and will not do.   In a country founded on the principles of free markets, capitalism, entrepreneurship, and individual liberties, telling someone else what they may or may not do legally with their property is an abhorrent concept and a blatantly deplorable behavior.  Hundreds of thousands of Americans have died to keep our land from coming under such mob rule.

If a private sector employee does not like the work his employer legally undertakes, he has the alternatives to resign, to respectfully request that management changes policy, or suck it up and continue trading his labor for wages in a professional manner.  His employer does not operate a charity, a psychobabble support group, or an enterprise to satisfy someone’s concept of ‘common good’.  An employee’s job is sustained only to the extent that it contributes to the enterprise being able to attract and serve a sufficient customer base in a highly competitive marketplace.

These lessons have been absent from our schools for over a half century.

Unsustainable Socialism

If it hasn’t happened, it won’t happen. - Progressive shibboleth

George Rebane

The conversation hereabouts circles the ‘sustainability of socialism’ barn as regularly as turning the pages of a calendar.   Ever since the French revolution we have always lived with socialists who in past years were harder to spot, at least until Marx and Bastiat published their pro- and con- apologies.  In those years socialists living in capitalist countries did their best to hide their socio-economic credos as they sought to fashion public policy, and letting the word ‘socialism’ be connected with their proposals was the ultimate taboo and an almost certain kiss of death.

Not so any more.  We are now almost 50 years into a public education system the common thread of which has been to turn out socialist-friendly graduates.  Most recently this subterfuge has been replaced with the educators’ blatant promotion of socialism accompanied by a revised history that strongly recommends it to young minds.  And so today we have at least two generations of 'educated' voters who are convinced that everything anti-socialist they hear in the public forum is fomented by the rightwing fascisti and their greedy capitalist running dogs.

Border Security’s True Colors (updated 20feb19)

George Rebane

For some years I have been pointing out to readers that America’s Left has a totally different outlook on the function of US borders, especially the one with Mexico.  I don’t claim to be flying solo in this interpretation, since several nationally prominent commentators of the Right have expressed their similar views and continue to do so today.  The bottom line on this observation, with loads of supporting citations, is that our Left sees the southern border as the perfect political tool for their work in the fundamental transformation of America into the peerage of socialist states preparing for the globalist future.

This objective could not have been more clear than what was reported by host Scott Simon on NPR’s Weekend Edition this morning.  The program regularly presents segments promoting progressive causes and viewpoints.  Today their daily anti-Trump dump featured an interview with Gil Kerlikowske, US Customs and Border Protection Commissioner under President Obama.  The entire message was of a piece in which Mr Kerlikowske strongly maintained that Trump’s declaration of a national emergency at our southern border is a gratuitous political stunt to get money to build “his wall” because in reality there is no emergency at our Mexican border. (more here)

Kerlikowske then went on to outline some stats stating that the real emergency existed in 2000 when more than 1.2M crossed the southern border, and today only 400K are coming across annually, thereby making such yearly ingress of illegals most certainly not an emergency but more like business as usual.  He also pointed out that most of our drugs come in surreptitiously through legal ports of entry, and therefore we shouldn’t concern ourselves with the lesser amount of drugs coming in across fences and rivers.

The only problem he saw with today’s border operations is that there are not enough immigration judges to hear all the illegal aliens’ pleas to become permanent US residents.  During the entire course of the interview – one like so many others with leftists – there was not even a hint of hundreds of thousands of illegal border crossings being evidence of a border security problem.  The Left’s only existential and acknowledged problem is that these illegal entrants couldn’t be processed fast enough to get their permits to stay here.  In the de juris case then, these people can now be formally designated as ‘illegal immigrants’ because by allowing them (inviting them?) to readily cross our border, the US government has entered into the required, albeit de facto, two-party agreement with them as acknowledged immigrants.

So think about it.  The Democrats have stepped out with a clear pronouncement that today it should be our accepted policy that 400K unvetted illegal aliens should be able to easily cross our border and enter our broken immigration system which has been purposely maintained only to build and buttress the Dems' voting pool, and, more importantly, increase its immediate representation in Congress.

Few people understand the real reason the Dems oppose an accurate census of US citizens as required by the Constitution.  We have adopted the custom of allocating seats in the House of Representatives on the basis of a state’s share of the country’s residents, NOT its citizens – although being a citizen is still a requirement for voting, but the Dems are working hard to also remove that ‘barrier to democracy’.  So grab an envelope and do the numbers.  It’s not hard to see that with concentrations of illegals in big population ‘sanctuary’ states, the number of representatives for already leftist states like California will increase.  And these seats will be filled by leftwingers, voted in by an ever-DECREASING share of franchised Democrat voters from each congressional district.  But no one understands this, the confusion abetted by the lamestream’s narrative that requiring a statement of US citizenship on the census questionnaire will unfairly inhibit the minority vote.

And these, dear readers, are the true colors of the Democrat Party in the early 21^st century, ever more visibly on display with each passing day.

[20feb19 update]  Great Divide reflections: >85% conservatives and Republicans believe there is a national emergency at the border; >65% of liberals and Democrats believe there is no border emergency.  The Right is astounded at this disparity and wonders how a nation with such a polarized outlook on such fundamental matters can continue, let alone function.  On the other hand, with no such concerns the Left believes the Right is just ignorant and evil, and needs to be brought to heel by whatever means it takes.

Idiots (Evil?) on Parade (updated 18feb19)

George Rebane

I claimed that the photo of all the congressional critters who support the Green New Deal will become iconic to both the Left and the Right, of course, for diametrically opposite reasons.  I'm not sure that all of the pictured 40 are demonstrably stupid, such as AOC; no doubt many of them intend to use the GND to fundamentally transform America.  These people I consider somewhere between cynical and just plain evil.  I'll post better images of GND supporters as they become available - these really deserve to be in RR's archive.

[18feb19 update] And the GND supporters in Congress just keep coming.  Besides the major Dem presidential candidates, the count is now up to 64 in House and 9 in the Senate.

 

The Illuminated Great Divide (updated 13feb19)

George Rebane

Every now and then one of our progressive commenters takes the time to offer some thought-out remarks that shine a bright light on the hopeless nature of our country’s Great Divide.  The most recent came from a leftist reader who call himself Robert Cross.  Mr Cross often takes me to task in opposing every facet of my socio-political ideology that he claims to understand.

Under ‘Progressive Pilgrims’ Progress’ we engaged in a thread that he launched with the astute lament that I blamed most of the country’s problems on progressives and their socialistic policies.  I encouraged him to read my extensive apologetics supporting such an assertion and responded in part –

"But your main takeaway should be that the overwhelming share of societal problems are directly attributable to the various expressions of hubristic collectivism - and in the US today that happens to be virulent progressivism."

This motivated Mr Cross to ‘put pen to paper’ and deliver a speech that V. Lenin could easily have made in 1917 from the back of a truck to a crowd of Russians gathered on a blustery snow-covered Moscow street.

 

The Green New Deal (updated 8feb19)

A rose by any other name would smell … .  Wm Shakespeare

George Rebane

Well, the last bits of doubt about our Democratic Party have been swept away by the new House resolution describing a fundamental transformation of America (Barack Obama, call your office).  The Green New Deal, sponsored by AOC and Senator Ed Markey (whom we have met on these pages), is socialism writ large.  So large in fact that the reporter interviewing AOC on NPR this morning had a hard time keeping from audibly gulping as he asked the feather head details and sources of funding for the individual mandates of the GND.  She, of course, had no answers other than taxing the bejeezus out anybody and everybody in the land who could still create wealth after the proposed strictures derive their power from the barrel of a gun.

So what do these two socialists propose in their fundamental transformation?  You can read the resolution here, and some more expanded analysis here, here, and here; but let’s just lay out a few of them in short form for the sake of discussion.

• US carbon neutral in 10 years. “…this would mean a complete remake of American electric power, transportation and manufacturing.”
• Guaranteed government job for all. “… provide all members of our society, across all regions and all communities, the opportunity, training and education to be a full and equal participant in the transition, including through a job guarantee program to assure a living wage job to every person who wants one.”
• Government control of all medium and large corporations. “Employees would elect 40% of directors, who would be obliged to consider “benefits” beyond returns to the owners.”
• Vastly higher taxes. Top rates for death taxes, income tax, and payroll taxes would increase markedly.  Also proposed is the institution of a “wealth tax” on assets.
• Government take over of industries like healthcare, insurance, manufacture of certain products like pharmaceuticals, etc.

Now all this is based on the fundamental socialist tenet that tax rates do not affect economic behavior.  This belief by the Left is totally immune to historical data, including what France just had to rescind, and what has made NK, Cuba, Venezuela, … what they are today, and what caused the downfall of the USSR, and the massive shifts in the economies of China, Vietnam, … .

So there you have it.  Just keep your eye on the slated 40+ Democrats who sign up to sponsor this resolution – their true colors will wave proudly.  And also see how many more Democrats will be looking at their shoes while mumbling something about not belonging to the new socialist party of America.  Our Founders are spinning in their graves.

[8feb19 update]  It appears that Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may turn out to be the liberal loon for all seasons.  Both sides of the aisle seem to be happy dancing at the advent of this good looking 5-star ignoramus.  The Dems claim that her GND plan is just a negotiating “anchor” point stuck into the land of the ludicrous, a strategic starting point to get people dickering with each other about where we should really wind up.  Their hope is that any surviving putrid pot of progressive public policies will still be close enough to the GND anchor, and by comparison will look good to their light thinking constituents who will then support it as a ‘compromise’ with the Right.

Meanwhile, the Republicans are convinced that AOC (along with mini-minded Markey) have handed them the penultimate political prize for 2020.  WSJ’s national correspondent Kim Strassel details the blessings in her ‘The Socialist That Could’, and offers a succinct summary of “AOC, the secret Republican weapon for 2020.”

It’s a GOP dream, especially because the media presented her plan with a straight face—as a legitimate proposal from a legitimate leader in the Democratic Party. Republicans are thrilled to treat it that way in the march to 2020, as their set-piece example of what Democrats would do to the economy and average Americans if given control. The Green New Deal encapsulates everything Americans fear from government, all in one bonkers resolution.

And can you imagine the profusion of optics AOC has already provided and will provide during the next 18 months for Republican ads.  This woman has turned out to be a horn of political plenty for the Right that is scaring hell out of the Democrat leadership – “They should be scared. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez is a freight train gaining speed by the day—and helping Republicans with every passing minute.”

Given all this political largesse, my concern now is for AOC’s safety.  The RNC should offer to share with the DNC some of the costs for added security for the congresswoman.  No conservative in the land wants anything to still her voice, or deter her from advocating the clear path she has set out for America.

Globalization, Globalism, Globalists, and Governance

George Rebane

RR commentaries have defined and used globalism and globalization interchangeably to mean the political and commercial progress toward a one-world government as long proposed by the United Nations and its proponents, and especially by those espousing the UN’s Agenda21 program (q.v.) promulgated by its worldwide network of ICLEIs (more here and here, and see also RR’s ‘Agenda 21’ category of commentaries).

In recent RR comment stream exchanges, a couple of our leftwing readers reminded me, correctly, that most of the public understands ‘globalization’ to refer to the trade and commerce aspect of companies rapidly expanding to do business across national borders.  Moreover, that this same cohort, which includes our commenters, doesn't connect ‘globalization’ with today’s concurrent efforts by the international collectivists to abrogate the Westphalian order of nation-states and unite humanity under a one-world government.  Merriam-Webster defines globalization as “the development of an increasingly integrated global economy marked especially by free trade, free flow of capital, and the tapping of cheaper foreign labor markets.”  Clearly the focus and intent here is in the fields of commerce and not unified governance.

Yet M-W and others define ‘globalism’ as “a national policy of treating the whole world as a proper sphere for political influence”, and “the attitude or policy of placing the interests of the entire world above those of individual nations”. Here we definitely overlap into the area of politics and governance.  And people who are ‘globalists’ are those who share such an “attitude”, now on the track to one-world governance.  This has been the sense in which RR commentaries have interchangeably used ‘globalization’ and ‘globalism’, along with ‘globalist’.

So, in the interest of continuing our tradition of precise definitions (which so vexes the Left), I will henceforth use the following definitions in my commentaries and comments –

Globalization - the development of an increasingly integrated global economy marked especially by businesses and commercial institutions in sovereign nation-states expanding their products and services across national boundaries in conducting free trade, free flow of capital, and the tapping of cheaper foreign labor markets.

Globalism – the ideology that treats the whole world as a unified sphere of political influence, and promotes institutions which place the interests of the entire world above those of individual nations, with the ultimate goal of achieving a one-world government.  A globalist is a person embracing such an ideology.

These definitions will be included in the next edition of RR’s Glossary & Semantics.

The Real Issue That Divides Us (updated 27jan19)

George Rebane

Conservetarians believe in global diversity and national cohesion; progressives believe in global conformity and national diversity.  The former resists global autocracy, the latter sustains global autocracy.

Nationally prominent commentator and executive WSJ editor Gerald Seib recently wrote ‘The Wall Marks a Deep Cultural Divide’ (in the 21jan19 WSJ) a piece describing attributes which divide America that focused on “character differences”.  In his piece Seib said, “One question asked whether immigration adds to the character and strength of America by increasing its diversity and bringing in new talent, or detracts from American character by putting burdens on government services and creating language barriers”, and then cited the disparate responses of the Trump and resist-Trump supporters.

While I agreed with Seib’s subsequent analysis, I felt that he did not reach deep enough to a more basic, revelatory, and explanatory level (in the sense of being able to reliably predict derivative attitudes and behaviors).

I emailed Mr Seib a brief explanation of my critique: Mr Seib - Our divide goes much deeper than can be discovered with pabulum questions about “American character”.  If these surveys were structured and administered so as to discover what kind of future world order Americans would like to see the US being a part of (i.e. Westphalian sovereign nation-states vs a peerage of jurisdictional fiefs of a global government), then the answers would be more revealing (and reliably predictive) as to the respondents’ attitudes about border security, immigration policy, cultural diversity, paths to citizenship of illegal aliens, etc, since all these are dependent on how people value culturally cohesive (vs fragmented) nations, and whether/how such a community of nations should continue to organize the world’s peoples.