Rebane's Ruminations

Scattershots – 16dec18 (updated 20dec18)

"Distrust of experts is the cornerstone of science."  Richard Feynman

George Rebane

CA’s revenue model is a disaster as we bid adieu to Gov Moonbeam (he got the name in the 70s when he proposed the state start its own NASA).  70% of state revenues come from personal income taxes, and half of these (i.e. 35%) are paid by the top 1% of earners.  These monies come from feast-or-famine earnings, making state financial planning virtually impossible.  Dems believe in corporations bearing a heavy tax burden, and that CA has been awash with big corporations.  What’s wrong with this picture as the state’s know-nothing electorate keeps sending ever more functional idiots to Sacramento?  And what does the exiting Moonbeam say? - "CA's next governor is going to be on the edge of a cliff."

NPR told us in detail this morning that it is America’s responsibility to reduce wait-times for hordes of asylum seekers encamped on the other side of our southern border.  It doesn’t matter at what rates these thousands of hopeful migrants arrive there, the lamestream tells Americans that it is their government’s job to expand immigration handling facilities and staff so as to minimize inconvenience and discomfort to aliens who demand entry into our land.  The whole narrative is sold to our nebbishes as the need to stop the US from violating some kind of human rights if foreigners are not processed lickety-split at our border crossing points.  The not so hidden message being that if they have to wait, then it is their right to enter illegally, at which point we either let them disappear into our population, or register them and start taking care of them indefinitely.

[18dec18 update]  Single Payer fake news is revealed once more.  The socialists promoting socialized medicine all over the world have to convert the US to that government-run system, else it continues to give lie to all their efforts to run such programs in other countries.  Dr Scott Atlas, senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, writes ‘Single Payer’s Misleading Statistics’ in which he takes apart the fake news which the lamestream and its (also local) acolytes tout about how poorly the US is doing viz the other more enlightened countries with nationalized healthcare.  Well, for openers Dr Atlas shows that “mediocre US rankings in infant mortality and life expectancy have little to do with health care quality.”  He goes on to reveal the many kinds of apples-to-oranges comparisons that fake news purveyors have relied on for years to convince many Americans that since government has screwed up so many other things it has commandeered, our healthcare industry should also be put under its care and management.

Caltrans is the latest expert on climate change.  The 18dec18 Union reports (here),  “Caltrans has released two Climate Change Vulnerability Assessments as part of an effort to understand how and where climate change may impact the State Highway System, a news release states.  The assessments evaluate risks, including extreme temperatures, increased precipitation, storm surge, wildfire risk and sea level rise. … Extreme weather and its associated costs are expected to become more pronounced and more frequent in the future as a result of climate change. … Caltrans has developed an interactive mapping application for public use, which shows impacted locations and the climate model results. … The reports and the interactive mapping application can be accessed (here).”  Note physicist Richard Feynman's caution above.

‘DeBlasio Sees Too Many Asians’ – Yes indeed, NYC’s DeBlasio is another hard-left politician who supports socially destructive diversity through blatantly racist policies - once more proving that sacrificing racism on the altar of diversity is no sin.  The mayor argues that the merit-based admission process to the city’s eight elite high schools is unjust because Asians make up more than 70% of their student bodies, whites about 20%, and Latinos and African-Americans coming in around 5%.  Hizzoner displays his critical thinking and numeracy skills by pointing out that “only 10% of Black or Latino students get offers from the specialized high schools even though they account for nearly 70% of the city’s high school population.”  Well, no kidding.  As part of its contribution to national dumbth, NYC’s 3-8^th graders overall are less than 50% proficient in English and math, while for black students only one in three and one in four are proficient respectively in English and math.  And once more, the Left continues to do what it can in every sphere of public policy to promote America-last policies on the world stage.

[20dec18 update]  Pulling out of Syria.  This is a big step in the implementation of our Mideast policy.  I usually weigh in on such happenings, and here’s my two cents of Rebane Doctrine.  Unless we want to completely abandon the Mideast to let them settle their affairs with only Russian and Chinese meddling, I think Trump is making a mistake in pulling out the remaining 2K US troops from Syria.  This move will give ISIS a second wind to retrench as Turkey et al will attack our Kurdish allies in Syria – ISIS will stand aside and watch its enemies beat crap out of each other.  I am a longstanding proponent of Kurdistan, and see a strong Kurdish state made from contiguous pieces of Iraq, Syria, and Turkey as contributing mightily to Mideast stability, and acting as the bulwark against Iran’s establishing its strategic ‘arc to the Mediterranean’.  The new Kurdistan would stand smack dab in the way of that, and having their own nation would bring an end to the Turks’ decades long fight in their south-east with Kurdish militants.

The US staying in Syria to maintain the current power balance is a hell of a lot better politically and logistically than pulling out and then having to go back in for a number of reasons, all bad for US interests.  But if we decide to leave the Mideast altogether, then the Turks and Iran will probably wind up going to war over who will be the new regional hegemon.  We will lose the trust of the regional semi-allies – Saudi Arabia, Gulf States, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt – we still have left, all of whom will seek other accommodations with Iran, Turkey, Russia, and China.  And then we’ll have to go back in later to protect Israel, which will be totally on its own in the region.  Are we then going to abandon Israel to use its nuclear capability to defend itself, or will we have to go back in at multiples of the political, dollar, and human costs to keep our promise to the Jewish state?  President Trump hasn’t told us what his druthers are about our staying in the region, or pulling up stakes and letting radical Islam have a real go at dominating the entire Mideast.  All things considered, a bit by piece pullout is not the answer to any problem.

CA Exodus Denied

George Rebane

The exodus of the producers and the productive from California has been a recurring theme on RR ever since the Democrats assumed total control, turned the state into the nation’s home for welfare recipients, started raising taxes and fees as if there were no tomorrow, and opened its gates to illegal aliens.  Essentially, the Democratic super-majority has turned the state into a sanctuary from sanity.  Among the reams of data presented to buttress the exodus argument, a reader sent me the graphic below that highlights just one aspect of nationwide migrations – and these are NET migrations – from/to our country’s prominent metropolitan areas (more here).

This shows that from LA alone we have a net outflow of 46,720 people per year.  And do you think these are the gimmes who think they’ll get more sanctuary protections and better government bennies from some other state?

Scattershots – 10dec18 (updated 13dec18)

George Rebane

Laffer lives, tax rates do affect people’s behavior.  French president Macron and his government have discovered that over the last couple of weeks, and are now retreating from the attempt to wean their country from fossil fuels by boosting the price of such fuels for French consumers and workers.  The monetary losses already suffered in the country’s economy, and therefore tax revenues (France already has one of the world’s highest aggregate tax rates) have yet to be totaled, but the sum could easily be in the billions of dollars.  The bottom line is that no one any longer believes that their government’s tax increases will have any positive impact on global warming.  None of this is a lesson to or understood by America’s Left.

Schumer was for border security before he became a champion of open borders.  It’s hard to believe that Senator Chuck had such sentiments about illegal aliens, and told us all that “illegal immigration is wrong, plain and simple.”  Today only a shrinking share of courageous Republicans can say the words which so forcefully came from the mouth of one of Democrats’ leading forked tongues in 2009.  You can see the senator’s Georgetown Law School two-minute summary of the topic here.  How come every voter in the US has not seen this little video?

Our local lefties are happy dancing in the streets celebrating Nevada County’s role in California’s recent Blue Wave, and ascribing all kinds of community bennies to the advent of coastal progressives moving into these foothills.  What’s astounding about that celebration is the celebrants’ claim that our county is therefore taking part in all the good things cultural and economic in which California is supposed to already lead the country.  None of these people are aware of the real stats on California’s decline culturally, commercially, and into criminality.  The exodus of middle-class workers, retirees, and businesses continues unabated, and unreported by the lamestream.  Kinda reminds one of the progress reports that always adorned the pages of Pravda in the old days of the USSR, and to a great extent still do under Putin.

George Boardman again lambasts LaMalfa (here).  Our favorite Union columnist and stalwart apologist for the Left on these pages singles out our congressman for his rice farm subsidies that the recent (dreadfully misnamed) ‘farm bill’ promises to continue.  The cleverly crafted conclusion that Mr Boardman bestows on his readers is that Doug LaMalfa somehow stands out as the leading leech of farm subsidies which are distributed far and wide across the land.  Moreover, our columnist again implies that it would be a simple matter for LaMalfa to decline his subsidies were he only made of stiffer stuff.  (I leave it to the reader to decide how much of this is fake news viz opinionated commentary, as also found on these pages.  For the record, RR has been and remains opposed to farm subsidies and corporatism.)  But nowhere does Boardman profit his audience by telling them that 85% of the farm bill is the carefully camouflaged food stamp welfare bill – that would mangle the carefully crafted message.  In fact, there are over 40M Americans on food stamps, more than the 37M population of Canada.

‘History Ended in 1945’, so argues James Dobbins, former assistant SecState who now holds the Distinguished Chair in Diplomacy at the RAND Corporation.  He maintains that “undoing the postwar order could produce global depressions and frequent wars.”  This has been a general theme of Rebane Doctrine, and has been debated here for years.  I found the following excerpt as a particularly strong endorsement for continuing capitalism, the Westphalian world order, and America as a global hegemon.

Yet in a larger sense, the “end of history” came in 1945. Since then there have been no wars between major powers and few between smaller states. The business cycle has been moderated if not eliminated. The subsequent seven decades saw almost continuous economic growth, lifting nearly half the world’s population into the middle class.

These accomplishments are based on two basic, widely accepted norms of international behavior: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s territory, and thou shall open thy markets to all equally. The norms were buttressed by numerous postwar institutions—the United Nations, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, now the World Trade Organization. Equally important, the norms were backed by U.S. military and economic power and the attractiveness of the American political and economic model.

Trump’s NDA payoffs.  Quite often Non-Disclosure Agreements are part of quid pro quo contracts.  Why is Trump singled out for such a contract that involved alleged events before he became a candidate, and the effect of which on the election is debatable and yet to be demonstrated?  Didn’t Hillary also pay staff (possibly with government or campaign funds) to scrub servers of contents which definitely would have had an impact on her electability including potential criminality?  No one has made a peep about that.

[13dec18 update]  Apple to build $1B, 15K job facility in TX - “ choosing Austin as its marquee job-creation locale” - among other locations across the country.  Progressives (especially the looney local lefties) need to strap on yet another set of blinders in order to continue denying the Great California Exodus that is moving producers and the productive out of state. (more here)

Nevada County Economic Development – WIP

George Rebane

In recent years the county’s economic development could be charitably described as slow, or even somnambulant if examined more closely.  To promote economic development, the county established the Nevada County Economic Resource Council (ERC) and has been among its steadfast sponsors.  The ERC has launched various initiatives and activities designed to serve its commitment “to ensuring a thriving, attractive business environment in Nevada County.”  (more here)  I had an opportunity to work with the ERC a few years back during which I came to understand the organization, its membership, and the issues that surround business development in our community.  RR has included the ERC’s performance in its commentaries.

Both the county government and the ERC regularly revisit how better to develop and serve local businesses.  The most recent of such efforts involved engaging Larry Burkhardt, a former ERC executive director, as a consultant to examine the state of the county’s economy and make detailed recommendations on how to proceed.  The work product of Mr Burkhardt’s consulting contract was the 20-page 2017 report innocuously titled ‘Development of Performance Metrics and Related Organizational Matters’.  Its author describes the report as follows -

The attached report contains background information along with some level of evaluation of the ERC by a small cross section of the community’s leadership.  It follows with goals, objectives and strategies intended to re-focus on the basics of economic development; a workplan; budget; performance metrics; and finally recommendations regarding Board structure and practice. 

I'm a bit surprised that this report got so little publicity when received by the ERC and submitted to our Board of Supervisors.  The only mention of Mr Burkhardt's involvement in such work appeared in the 7sep17 Union (here).  The report was made known to me by a colleague who has also been involved with the ERC over the years.  He sent me a copy which can be downloaded here.  Download ERC final report 1117

Not everyone I talked to found the report to be exceptionally revelatory or contain material that has not been hashed over before.  From my side, I found the report to contain the most specific metrics, recommendations, and projected costs of a plan forward that I have seen.  This does not mean that I wholly endorse Mr Burkhardt’s take and recommendations, but I do find the report to be a useful and readable stake-in-the-ground from which to launch productive discussions on the county’s economic doldrums and alternatives on how to proceed.  Readers taking part in such discussions should at least be familiar with the points raised in the report.

California Wildfires – Some Reflections

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.  Isaac Asimov

George Rebane

The combined body count of the Camp and Woolsey Canyon fires has topped 100 with an additional 1,000 missing.  Perusing the lamestream media without second thought, one comes away with the understanding that, at best, the fires are one of the regular unpreventable disasters that regularly visit California’s wild lands due to natural causes out of our control.  At worst, we learn that the fires are really due to global warming which now has created the conditions for these inevitable holocausts.  Moreover, they could be prevented were we only to implement the prescribed surefire policies to stop, or even roll back, global warming.

As a lifelong (60+ years) California resident and a student of its land, weather, and horticulture, I join with those who have a radically different view of the state’s regular wildfires and public policies that can greatly reduce their frequency, magnitude, and cost to life and property.

The state’s weather record shows two centuries of periodic droughts which have dried the forests, given rise to infestations by various critters, and to wildfires mostly caused by lightning strikes.  The fall ‘Santa Ana’ winds have always done their best to spread the fires, but with limited success until modern times.  Why?  Over the ages our forests evolved not only to survive fires, but actually require their regular occurrence to continue their life cycles.  The major characteristics of the age-old forests was the irregular density of trees (into copses) that prevented long distance/perimeter burns and which densities were maintained by the burns that did occur.  A little technical reflection quickly explains why such configurations became the survivable ‘steady state’ configuration of the forests.  (A more detailed look at the changes in the Sierra forests is documented by George E. Gruell in the rather pricey Sierra Nevada Forests: A Photographic Interpretation of Ecological Change Since 1849.)

Then arrived the hubristic Regulatus Californicus who knew better than the established natural order.  Starting in the 1960s and building on Smokey the Bear (born in 1944), this rapidly evolving breed of humanity quickly latched on to ‘saving the ecology’ as their raison d’etre for launching an unheard level of regulatory controls over peoples lives and property, enforced by an ever-enlarging Leviathan in Sacramento.  In the 1970s they discovered catastrophic climate change to add to their causus belli on the rest of us Californians.  They initially took the wrong tack and argued ‘global cooling’ with the advent of a new ice age, caused by CO2 and other atmospheric gases linked to humans that were supposed to be reflecting too much sunlight.

But even with the state’s growing dumbth, it was hard to harness cooling as an adequate basis for enlarging the regulatory state.  So it was time to reverse the role of these gases from reflecting sunlight to retaining earth’s build-up of heat, and the great greenhouse gas gambit was born with CO2 now starring in its new role.  Some scientists quickly pointed out that we knew very little about earth’s carbon cycle and even less about long-term climate modeling, and most certainly not enough to reliably calculate (aka blame) any temperature changes on CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere.  These scientists were quickly shouted down, and their grant monies to study the carbon cycle dried up.  And that has been their fate as the UN’s IPCC gathered the willing technocrats under its well-funded umbrella and became the voice of preventable man-made global warming.

The ‘true believers’ aka fanatical ecological nutcases, or simply econuts, now had a real arrow in their quiver – consensus science interpreted through selective faith-based lenses.  And they have been off to the races ever since 1995 when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published its first report – an evolving set of documents that now have had to be redacted, rewritten, revised, and re-issued many times over the years so as to keep the desired narrative in line with the vagaries of uncooperative weather patterns.

In the interval, the nation’s politically imperious progressive wave continued to grow as reflected in the staffs of federal regulatory agencies and, more importantly, in all elements of California governments ranging from Sacramento down to local leftwing NGOs funded to propagandize, monitor, and report on the state’s progress toward becoming 'green'.  And that, of course, included prohibiting any intervention, save heroic fire prevention and suppression efforts, in fostering the growth of high-density forests complete with huge ground level accumulations of duff and slash (“organic waste”).  All this has been done in the name of preserving the econuts’ vision of the natural order of fauna and flora on government lands, while in reality doing exactly the opposite as they created a wholesale unnatural order of wildland preservation never before seen on this earth.

And the bittersweet comedy continues unabated, as our progressive elites, in California and elsewhere, continue to blame the current spate of wildfires on climate change, even as they begin to evince micro-epiphanies, albeit sub-rosa, about the reality that decades of unnatural forest fuels build-ups is actually the dominant contributive cause of the devastations we have witnessed in recent years.  However, these leftwing central planners have yet to develop a public-ready narrative to effectively deflect the raw truth so that Californians – econuts and their voting legions of double dummy compliant constituents – can discover the cause of these holocausts by simply looking into a mirror.

(The Rebanes' up-close and personal experience with California wildfires was reported here, here, and here.)

Do California Wildfires Serve a Greater Purpose?

George Rebane

Over 40 dead and counting, plus thousands of buildings and homes burned, plus hundreds of thousands of acres of trees and wild critters of all kinds killed, plus untold amounts of public monies pissed away that could have been used for many better things for the common good.  And all of this as the result of an annually recurring insanity put in place by well-meaning econuts through programs that started long ago with Smokey the Bear.  Today the epidemic of this seeming ignorance has become endemic.

Once upon a time the U.S. Forest Service’s mission was to actively manage the federal government’s resources. Yet numerous laws over the last 50 years, including the Endangered Species Act and National Environmental Policy Act, have hampered tree-clearing, controlled burns and timber sales on federal land. (13nov18 WSJ)

Today the Agenda21 driven political divide has been augmented by the use of ‘climate change’ to double down on dumb forest management policies.  Moonbeam Brown has led a chorus of progressive pundits and their legions of true believers, claiming that preventable man-made global warming is the cause of all the recent catastrophic conflagrations (more here).  Again, the data does not support such emotionally charged political arguments; there is no scientific basis for a causal link, only a political one. (more here, H/T to reader)

President Trump’s message about governments mismanaging our forests is spot on, no matter how crudely it might have been delivered.  We have to reduce the tremendous fuel loads in our forests through active programs of undergrowth clearance, harvesting timber, and prescribed burns.  One only need to look at the circa 1850 photos of California forests to understand what humans have done over the last 150+ years.  Back then trees in the mountainous west grew in copses separated by open spaces – lightning started forest fires burned only a few copses that had grown too close together, but that was it, the fire didn’t spread and go on burning miles of trees.  It took human foolishness to encourage cheek-by-jowl growth through aggressive firefighting.  Forest thinning wildfires were outlawed, but never stopped.

Now our ecological betters, using the government gun, have created critically flammable environments wherever they could identify an endangered critter or flower or fungus or … .  Put that together with population growth that has built homes and towns in the former wildlands, and anyone with an ounce of critical thought knows that the annual chance of disastrous wildfires quickly approaches certainty.  The reality is that the forests and chaparral will burn, no matter what.  The only choice we have is whether it will burn economically when and where we want it to burn, or whether it will burn when and where we can least afford to have it burn and at enormous cost.

The right choice should be an easy one.  So why hasn’t it been made?  There may be several reasons, but one of the most plausible explanations for our decades-long insanity in choosing badly is that such wildfires also serve a greater political purpose to aid the ongoing fundamental transformation of America.  If we consider public policies encouraging such annual holocausts in that light, then one can make the plausible case that our devastating wildfires are really the result of totally rational decisions toward an end which eventually will serve a greater common good – these wildfires are just another form of the eggs which must be cracked before our central planners can deliver their promised omelet.  It's worth a discussion.

[16nov18 update]  An environmentalists’ epiphany??? 

After decades of butting heads, some environmentalists and logging supporters have largely come to agreement that forests need to be logged to be saved. … Another dangerous factor, land-management experts say, is that forests have become overgrown with trees and underbrush due to a mix of human influences, including a past federal policy of putting out fires, rather than letting them burn. Washington has also sharply reduced logging under pressure from environmentalists. (more here)

Is liberalism really anything different from mental illness?  Why did it take decades for these people to recognize a solution known to the rest of us for over a century?  How many other such practical approaches to commerce, land use, and recreation do these people continue to deny America?  Does this epiphany represent some light at the end of this insane tunnel?

The Election & RIP Prop6

George Rebane

Instead of my regular KVMR commentary, News Director Paul Emery suggested we do a little one-on-one for tonight’s news program.  So we sat down for a little gabfest about the election.   Paul asked me for any surprises on the outcome, and chowder-head me responded that things went pretty much as I had expected, while completely overlooking my total disappointment and frustration with the failure of Prop6 – you know, the repeal of the most recent California gas tax bamboozle from Sacramento.

Prop6 went down to solid defeat in California in the hands of a partisan majority of voters that over the years has vacillated between insanity and terminal stupidity.  CA already has the highest gas taxes in the land, much of them from previous initiatives promised by the lying sacks of s#!t in Sacramento that the taxes would go to fix CA’s roads and bridges.  Well, what has happened is that these tax receipts go directly into the state’s general fund to finance an endless number of programs and purposes – e.g. bullet trains, smelt salvation, succoring illegal aliens, funding govt workers pension liabilities, attracting evermore of the nation’s welfare recipients, … - that continue to leave us in an ever bigger mess.  And with already the highest gas taxes in the land, we continue to pay these fraudulent takings without even a peep.

So now our roads are really a mess, and that looks like a perfect opportunity for some capitol scumbags to go to the voters – over half of whom pay no taxes, and a third of whom get regular government checks - and ask them to dance another round of the SOSO samba.  Only this time the bill will be even more smelly because it has a built-in ratchet that keeps upping it ad nauseum over the years.  Those Californians who pay attention did put out the word on Prop6, pointing out that these new taxes will do nothing except increase the cost of transportation (especially for the poor), while once more destined for the state’s general fund to finance the ever greater insanities and inanities from Sacramento.

Defeating such an obviously fraudulent proposition should have been a no-brainer, hence it was designed precisely for those not so encumbered.  But like Lucy with the football, our Charlie Brown electorate again fell for the ‘can’t you see all them chuckholes and cracks and … all of which need fixin’?’  And, of course, today all them cracks etc are way bigger and more numerous and easier to see than last time, so the state’s not so nimble numbnuts dutifully checked the proper box to keep the most recent and onerous gas tax in place as the scumbags are already planning the next tax to fix the roads and bridges – hell, why stop a perfectly good bamboozle designed exactly for the kind of voters we worked so hard to attract, ‘educate’, and put in place.  No one out there in VoterLand asks what is the word for doing the same thing while expecting a different outcome.

Oh well, on the national scene things went a little better.  The Dems won the House, but the best they can do there is start more dead-end investigations of President Trump and the Executive branch, with a possible impeachment swipe at Justice Kavanaugh.  Republicans actually will welcome that kind of blatant congressional obstruction which will demonstrate to the country that just putting the new and more aggressive socialist Left in power is going to do nothing to get Congress legislating for the people’s needs.

President Trump’s first-half accomplishments re the tax cut, regulation rollback, foreign policy, and immigration will stay in place.  The border will not be secured, and healthcare costs will continue increasing with the bastardized system now metastasizing like a cancer.  It will be easy to focus the spotlight on the source of stagnation, and Trump will have something very solid and visible to run on in 2020.  The lamestream will have a hell of time ramping up their Fake News Machine enough to hide the source of grit and gravel grinding in the gears of government.

Meanwhile, the Dems will also have to work out their Gerontology Optics Problem with a leadership headed by Nancy the Penultimate Facelift, and backed up by a crowd of cretins like Mad Max Waters, Elijah Cummings, Comrade Bernie, Vacuum Head Ocasio-Cortez, the ‘Capitalist Bones’ of Fauxahontas, True Colors DiFi, SlyEye Chuckie Schumer, all straight out of Central Casting.  Every one of these will be on daily display filling countless screens across the land.  In the meantime, Trump will have a solid Senate majority to confirm and emplace as many constitutional judges and justices as are on his lengthening short-list.  All in all, not a bad night.

Scattershots – 13oct18 (updated 17oct18)

George Rebane

Liberal Union columnist Darrell Berkheimer has been delving into the availability of housing in Nevada County.  Today (13oct18 here) he reports that we don’t have enough "affordable housing" in these parts to attract low income families and wage earners, and also make the county more attractive and welcoming to our already large homeless population - “paths to affordable housing must be provided (the homeless) as well as others wishing to live here.”  A good part of the blame he puts on those stupid developers who can’t figure out where the profits are, and “continue to place emphasis on single-family homes for what has been termed the ‘nuclear family’” of which there are precious few left in the country, and apparently of which we already have too many in Nevada County.  He either doesn’t understand the notion of low-cost housing viz affordable housing, and/or the regulatory and cost hurdles that developers must negotiate to build anything in our county.  But, in spite of these problems, Mr Berkheimer does think that the county should become proactive in going after developers in the attempt to convince them to plow through the process anyway, and take the risk in building marginally profitable (if that) affordable housing.  The wonders of a progressive mind at work making Nevada County safe for San Francisco values.

Ms Heather MacDonald, political analyst and author at the Manhattan Institute, was interviewed (13oct18 WSJ) regarding her new book The Diversity Delusion.  Ms MacDonald is one of those refreshingly independent thinkers who, after law school at Stanford, had to wend her way to epiphany by spending her early professional years through clerking for Justice Stephen Reinhardt, volunteering for the Natural Resources Council, and working at the EPA.  She laments what the progressives and other flavors of the Left have done to demolish undergraduate education, especially in the fields of western civilization.  Specifically, she highlights the bloom of lowered standards and newly established majors “focused on identity and oppression” with freshly minted majors, like ‘Social Justice’, coming in the burgeoning field of neo-Marxism.  She sees all of this as leading to a final national confrontation – “One of the great achievements of Western European civilization was to move beyond tribalism, to nation-states, to concepts of citizenship that transcend tribal identity, and we’ve been playing with fire for the last 40 years in thinking we can keep this ethnic warfare thing at a low simmer rather than a hot boil.”

The Union’s Editorial Board advises every franchised citizen to ‘Get educated and vote’ (13oct18) – “everyone who can legally vote should.”  What the good souls at The Union don’t help the reader with is how to get educated in a manner that enables critical thinking about the diametrically opposite prescriptions and policies offered by today's strong ideologues, some obviously tinged and others in more subtle ways.  As many scholars and thinkers (see previous entry) now tell us, the ability to think critically is no longer taught nor even possible by graduates from most of our colleges and almost all of our high schools, simply because they no longer have to learn the knowledge base which enables such thought should even the tools for it be available.

Nevada County’s high school test scores are a disaster.  Only our local liberal contingent is satisfied, since generating generations of such graduates over the last 40 years is just the planned grist for their voting mill.  When others lament this educational deficit, the local liberals point to the Ghidotti Early College High School which ranked #1 in the state tests – why? Because they have a total of only 163 self-selected smart students of which 44 took the cited test.  For the rest we have dropping scores that reveal one of three students is below grade level in reading, and more than two thirds are below grade level in math.  And believe it or not, statewide Nevada County is above average.  Talk about California leading the nation – to where?

[17oct18 update]  What’s happening to destroy STEM and STEM-related education and research in America is even worse than I have been tracking over the recent years.  NSA and NIH, originally launched by Congress to keep us in the lead in physical and health sciences, have now become institutes of identity equalization to satisfy the progressives social justice goals.  H/T to Russ Steele (see his 506pm comment below) for pointing out the latest report on this disaster-in-progress as reported in the City Journal (here).

Scattershots – 7oct18 (updated 10oct18)

George Rebane

Great Divide pieces are beginning to appear all over the place as a result of what the Left revealed of itself during the Kavanaugh confirmation conflagration.  This alienating trend is some years in development and was picked up early in these pages (much to the denial and denigration of the local know-nothings).  Today we see articles about the socio-political chasm in the country appearing in places like USA Today and WaPo, neither bastions of conservative thought.  The more important aspect of these reports is that they now lament the absence of any plausible common ground on which national healing may begin, and that for the simple reason that there is none if you want to rule out such commonalities as both sides still agreeing to drive on the right side of the road. (more here)

This ‘Quote of the Day’ by columnist Burt Prelutsky from the LA Times was sent to me by a correspondent.  Talk about nailing it.  "Frankly, I don't know what it is about California, but we seem to have a strange urge to elect really obnoxious women to high office. I'm not bragging, you understand, but no other state, including Maine, even comes close. When it comes to sending left-wing dingbats to Washington, we're Number One. There's no getting around the fact that the last time anyone saw the likes of Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein, Maxine Waters, Kamala Harris, and Nancy Pelosi, they were stirring a cauldron when the curtain went up on 'Macbeth'. The five of them are like jackasses who happen to possess the gift of blab. You don't know if you should condemn them for their stupidity or simply marvel at their ability to form words."

[9oct18 update]  Hallelujah!  California's fiscal condition ranks 42 in the nation.  And here all of you thought the Dems had driven us to the bottom of the barrel.  Looks like there's still room to go, and CA's gimme voters are just the ones to elect the team that will get us there (see also previous entry).  The Mercatus Center of George Mason University gives the particulars here.

[10oct18 update]  Some of us should have no public voice according to an alt-Left commenter in The Union known to us all.  For years my newspaper columns and radio commentaries have been on the local Left’s prohibition list; now since Jo Ann is on the newspaper’s editorial board and one of its regular columnists, she has joined me in the Left’s planned proscription when their power becomes comprehensive.  The comment under her recent column, ‘Oh yes, I believed’, reads, “I'm sad this ran in the town that we now call our home. It's changing, though, which I guess is what leads to stuff like this.”  We note that such attacks have never been on the substance of what was offered, but always the meta-complaint that such alternative viewpoints are still permitted by a community that has not yet completed its mandated transition to a politically correct and uniform mindset.  These are the same people who will then march us to their re-education camps and ‘psychiatric hospitals’ (or worse), as they have done so many times all over the world.

An evening with Victor Davis Hanson (updated 10oct18)

George Rebane

Last Saturday evening we loaded some friends in the car and headed for the Grand Sheraton in Sacramento to attend a fundraiser for Congressman Tom McClintock.  We’ve known Tom for years and continue to support him in our neighboring congressional district.  The evening featured a talk and Q&A with Victor Davis Hanson.  Professor Hanson is “an American classicist, military historian, columnist, and farmer. He has been a commentator on modern and ancient warfare and contemporary politics for National Review, The Washington Times and other media outlets.”  He is also an award-winning, endowed senior fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.

I have been a student of VDH for many years, and along with our friends, we were not going to pass up this opportunity to hear him in person.  Well, the lavishly catered evening turned out even better than expected.  We got there early and ran into the congressman in the hall, and after greetings and conversation who should walk up but Prof Hanson.  Tom greeted him warmly, graciously introduced me, and then left the two of us to chat.  We had a wonderful one-on-one for almost thirty minutes as we and the gathering crowd waited for the ballroom doors to be opened.

McClintock called the event to order, gave one of the best introductions that I have heard from a politician at his own fundraiser – a concise but warm welcome, proper summary of his guest's vitae, and mercifully short thank-yous to the event’s sponsors.  The good professor took to the podium and delivered a 30-45 minute talk that framed today’s national politics from an historical perspective, and then detailed the events and political tactics that have so split the country into factions that share few social objectives and no longer effectively communicate with each other.  After that, he took questions for about an equal period of time.  No one felt rushed, and there was plenty of time to delve deeper into the issues - a wonderfully cordial and informative evening.

It was no surprise to me from our private conversation and his invited talk, that the good professor’s historical interpretations and political observations flew in fairly tight formation with the Rebane Doctrine tenets published in these pages.  (In other words, we are both “alt-right” birds of a feather according to the local lefties who disparage yet track every word in these pages.)  I’ll conclude this report with a selection of Dr Hanson’s observations and talking points.

1. Obama’s administration was the most scandalized administration in recent memory.
2. Judge Kavanaugh’s rebuttal of Judiciary Committee Dems was on the mark, and of better ‘temperament’ than shown by Justice Ginsburg viz the Trump election.
3. The right of the accused to be presumed innocent until proven guilty has been thrown out by the Dems and the media with the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings.
4. CA is now an Orwellian state in which the middle-class has the nation’s highest tax rate, 20% of Californians live in (official) poverty, with one-third of the nation’s poverty stricken taking up residence in CA.
5. “Those who rule in California are never subject to their own ideology.” (e.g. Pelosi, Feinstein, Newsom, …)  “They can afford to be liberal at someone else’s expense.”
6. “Fences work and have always worked.” Examples – Israel today, Great Wall of China, Maginot Line, Zuckerberg’s private residence, … .  (Fences are militarily known as fixed field fortifications, they are cost-effective and work only to the extent that they are also manned.  They are NOT a ‘build and forget’ part of any defensive infrastructure.)
7. CA has the best natural water resources, and has had the best waterworks in the world, which began deteriorating and proving insufficient for California’s growth in 1983 when further expansion was halted.
8. President Trump has “restored the idea of deterrence” and put in place the best foreign policy and team in recent memory.
9. The US is becoming, or has already become a tribal nation.
10. The new “Socialist Democratic Party” has replaced the former Democratic Party.
11. There no longer exists any visible ‘common ground’ in the national debate between the global socialists and nationalistic capitalists – i.e. the Great Divide is already forming.
12. There is a very slim chance that our electorate will see the light in time to pull the nation out of its death spiral into global socialism.

[10oct18 update]  VDH has summarized the Kavanaugh confirmation affair that also gives lie to the charge that President Trump somehow dissed Dr Ford in his speech recounting the distressed lady's dreadfully fractured testimony to the Judiciary Committee.  His piece - 'One Ford Narrative Too Many' - examines the entire episode from a larger perspective and is worth a read.

Local socialist labors on the Economy

George Rebane

On this Labor Day our Union columnist George Boardman takes a particularly dim view of the state our economy and its workforce (here).  He recounts economic news only to continue the socialist narrative of envy and promote some dismal legislation, while decrying the evil and uncaring capitalist system under which Americans are forced to suffer.  Mr Boardman is not breaking any new ground here with his reportage of the dire straits of the American worker – that kind of news has come from the Left like clockwork since at least the roaring 20s, and reached an apex when the federal government put and kept the county mired in the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Along with the Pelosi, Schumer, et al school of economics and social justice, Boardman discounts the sea change in economic growth and unemployment under President Trump.  What he chooses to trumpet is how the Left sees our workers fairing, abetted by the false flag stats that horribly misrepresent the quoted official US poverty rate of above 14% (with some more rabid leftwing outfits claiming a 28% to 50% rates) that compares poorly with other OECD countries (here).

Ruminations – 17aug18 (updated 19aug18)

George Rebane

Obama’s PPD-20 has hamstrung America’s ability to defend and counter cyberattacks against us.  President Trump is recalling that Presidential Policy Directive to “ to push decision-making authority down the chain of command, could empower military officials to launch more frequent and more aggressive cyberattacks against adversaries like Russia and Iran.”  (more here)

2017 saw 72,287 opioid overdose deaths in the US.  That’s like a jumbo jet crashing every weekday, and it beggars stats on all other human-induced deaths like attributed to ‘gun violence’ and motor vehicle accidents.  America’s murder capital Chicago apparently leads the way here also with progressive policies stifling its LE agencies’ abilities to intervene.  Blacks account for more than 50% of opioid deaths, and, of course, gun deaths on Chicago’s streets.  Progressives care not a whit (actually spelled with an 's') for black lives; for them all such deaths are useful when recognized, and not to be wasted in blaming the whole thing on conservatives.

Arrest of ISIS terrorist and multiple re-entrant Omar Ameen in Sacramento confirms again that our immigrant vetting process is totally broken.  The feds admit that vetting a refugee depends on the story they tell, and not on any required 3^rd party documentation, which either does not exist or will not be provided if the refugee thinks it will be pejorative.  Counter to lamestream claims, President Trump has been correct in his assessment of this.

Russian online influence on America’s thinking about issues and candidates has turned out to be less than insignificant according to recent analysis of foreign placed ads and social media accounts, so reports Bruce Levey of the Institute for Justice (here).  He also points out what we've known for years, that we and other nations place such ads in each other’s jurisdictions whenever it suits our interests to attempt to influence other countries’ decisions.  Bottom line, Russia's influence in our 2016 election was bupkus.

Dumbest cartoon in a coon’s age was published in the 17aug18 Union.  Have no idea how this got by the newspaper’s editorial policy.  Nothing against the paper publishing anti-Trump stuff, but this contribution is simply butt stupid, and doesn’t reflect well on how The Union thinks of its readership.

[More]  Our intelligence institutions (including the retirees) are now totally political.  The letter signed by former intelligence heads claiming that Trump limited Brennan’s speech by revoking his clearance is both false and butt stupid or worse, evil since it is designed to bamboozle the tens of millions of light-thinking Americans.  As President Trump observed, Brennan’s voice will now be louder than ever.  Let’s see how long these newly minted politicians will keep up that spiel.

[18aug18 update]  In ‘The Press Abets a Coverup’ (18aug18 WSJ) Holman Jenkins contributes an incisive and revealing recounting of our intel community’s shenanigans designed to oppose Trump, but that plausibly gave him the necessary push over the top in 2016.

[19aug18 update]  Kudos to columnist (19aug18 Union) George Boardman for outing Mike Dent, director of the county's Department of Child Support, Collection and Housing.  Mr Dent is a prime exemplar of the double dummies ensconced in government.  He is seeking bids to build and operate a homeless shelter for the winter, but doesn't have a clue how much it costs to run such a shelter through the cold months - hence, no bids to build one.  It really irks me and many others that our tax monies have to be diluted to pay the salaries and retirement benefits for the likes of the mentally dented Dents out there.

The Ninth Circuit Court on CCW and Open Carry

George Rebane

Recently a three-judge panel of the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the “U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment guarantees a right to openly carry a gun in public for self-defense, finding that Hawaii overstepped its authority to regulate firearms possession outside the home.” (more here)

This ruling brought up questions on how we Californians, especially those with Concealed Carry Weapon permits, will be impacted.  Since CCW permits are issued by county sheriffs, in a private communication I asked our Nevada County Sheriff Keith Royal –

1. Will current non-CCW permit holders in California now have open-carry included in their 2^nd Amendment rights?
2. What is the impact of the present rulings on existing Nevada County CCW policy?
3. Will California’s sheriffs come out with one unified coherent interpretation of how this impacts our 2^nd Amendment rights, or will we wind up with county-specific interpretations that may or not arbitrarily criminalize the unwary who cross county boundaries, or will everyone remain silent on the matter and let Californians just take chances sorting it out by themselves (sort of like the MJ situation between feds, state, and counties)?

With Sheriff Royal’s permission I share his response with our readers –

“Our current laws stay in effect until a court of competent jurisdiction finds the laws of the State unconstitutional or the laws are changed by the legislature.  Our State Sheriff’s attorney has advised us that the case was remanded back to the trial court to proceed.  Chances are that the case will again end up back before the 9th Circuit for an “en banc” panel review, and based on the outcome, may invalidate California’s current laws and/or then be appealed to the US Supreme Court for final determination.  We have been advised things remain status quo at this time.  Stand by to stand by. … As an FYI, the 9th indicated that the 2nd Amendment does not pertain to or cover CCW’s.  We’ll just (have) to wait to see how it all works out.”

Due to the sheriff’s last observation about the 2A and CCWs, I offered that “it does cause me a bit of puzzlement why the 9th indicated that the 2A doesn’t pertain to cover CCWs.  CCW permit holders are the most law-abiding people in the land according to FBI crime stats.  Sworn LE officers have a very low crime rate, but one that is still SIX times higher than that of CCW holders, and the 2A doesn’t cover (them)?”  Sheriff Royal’s response to this was - 

“Interestingly, the three judge panel were all repub. appointees. I think when this issue comes back to the 9th, they’ll render an opposing decision because the majority of that court is liberal leaning thus forcing the issue to the Supreme Court. In light of the soon to be composition of the Supreme court, you may see the ultimate decision be supportive of open carry.”

So, per Sheriff Royal’s counsel, the open carry and CCW provisions will remain unchanged, and it will be business as usual as we “stand by to stand by.”  Question asked and answered.

Ruminations – 15jun2018 (updated 20jun18)

George Rebane

Headline, ‘Growth in US Leaves World Behind’ while the ECB continues to keep the ‘fragile economies’ of the EU on crutches with low interest rates.  Wonder why our lamestream considers this too insignificant to report?  One might almost think that they're afraid people will credit President Trump with some of this good news.

Judge’s ruling - Illegal aliens now know how to be turned loose in the US after crawling under the fence - just bring your kid along.  Wonder if this will invite or deter more illegals.

Macron wants to restore the ancien régime after Brexit, and make French again the official language of the EU.  Meanwhile English, and specifically American English, has become the world’s lingua franca in both commerce and diplomacy.  Maybe Monsieur le Président knows that French is the most rapidly shrinking developed country language worldwide.

California’s new enforced water restriction law is designed to make real in people's lives the global warming hysteria that the progressives’ politicized consensus science could not do.   It looks like you will be criminalized if ‘in this land of surf and sun, you still flush for Number One’.  Meanwhile we continue to oppose building new reservoirs and dump most of our fresh water into the Pacific. (more here)

Government cheating government – it turns out that “America’s great progressive political hope, NYC Mayor Bill deBlasio is essentially the nation’s pre-eminent slumlord.”  NYC’s affordable housing projects have been allowed to deteriorate while deBlasio has been “taking active steps to deceive inspectors and cover up its ineptitude and wrongdoing.”  We recall our mantra – in creating social problems, government is always guilty until proven innocent.

[16jun18 update]  Gary Litke in the 16jun18 Union (here) is among the county’s NIMBY legions who oppose building 28 new houses west of Grass Valley because “the agricultural, open space history of this property should be maintained in ways that would benefit someone other than residential real-estate developers.”  It continues to be lost on the local Litkes that Nevada County needs people who need places to come and raise their families here, do business with our merchants, send their kids to our schools, support our cultural offerings, and do all the things which have made Nevada County the desirable place to live that it has been.  Do all of these people not also benefit from such developments?  Today, we seem to be a draw primarily for people with, let’s say, a spectrum of alternative life styles based on cesspool SF values.  What are we offering to middle-class working families with traditional American values?

Mizzou’s comeuppance.  The university is in dire straits with student enrollments down 35%, and more graduating than wanting to attend.  It turns out that all that horsecrap in 2015 - when student activists banned free speech, got top administrators to leave, and made academics a politically correct supplementary offering - has convinced students and parents that the University of Missouri is a place to avoid, especially when other neighboring universities and colleges are doing their best to return to academics and offer an open environment for exchanging ideas. (more here and here)

[17jun18 update]  The naivete of The Economist.  This hoary ‘newspaper’ continues its lurch leftward, donning the trappings that so often today adorn the remarks of progressive naifs.  In its 16jun18 edition’s lead editorial (here) this auto-aggrandized paragon of journalism laments that the Singapore “agreement contains no binding North Korean commitments.”  More sober observers celebrated Trump’s first meeting with NK’s UFK as 1) the decades-awaited breakthrough meeting that defused what the Left itself had been aspirating as imminent nuclear armageddon, and 2) the potential for further talks that could lead to the normalization of that rogue regime and remove it as China’s pawn for irritating the west.

[19jun18 update]  Now here’s a bit of embarrassment for Mueller and his crack team of progressive yet unbiased lawyers finally investigating the Russia conspiracy angle which was their charge.  A Russian company charged in the conspiracy did not exist at the time of the alleged mischief, and the company is now fighting back - whoulda thought of that? - justifiably demanding Mueller’s evidence on which he based his indictment.  Red-faced and with pants down, Mueller is desperately petitioning the court for delays and gag order for submitting his supposedly unclassified evidence.  Oh my.  (more here)  H/T to reader.

[20jun18 update] 'My Lazy Summer as a Public Employee' by Jason Riley is another of a gazillion examples we see every day of government workers' gold bricking, hubris, inefficiencies, and incompetence.  All of it counsels letting government do something should be the choice of last resort when all other private sector means have been exhausted, including to consider not doing it at all if government is the only remaining choice.

Scattershots – 13jun18 (updated 14jun18)

George Rebane

Cal-3 is going to be on the November ballot. WaPo reports that “On Tuesday, the California secretary of state confirmed in a memo that Draper’s Cal-3 campaign attained enough valid signatures to earn a spot on the ballot Nov. 6. After more than 150 years of failed partition proposals, California voters will finally go to the polls to decide whether they want to relinquish their monopoly of the Pacific coast and become three new states.”  Venture capitalist Tim Draper’s old plan to cut California into six more ideologically cohesive pieces has been slimmed down with some apparent success.  No matter its fate at the polls, the proposition confirms again what RR has maintained over the years while vehemently being denied by the state’s Left – especially our lightly read locals.  People do want their voices heard by their government, and people do want to live with others whose values and mores are more than less like theirs.  Such existential diversity is anathema to the one-size-fits-all Left.

The Left’s campaign to enlarge national dumbth gets a boost from NYC’s mayor deBlasio reports Jason Riley in ‘The Attack on Educational Excellence’.  deBlasio wants schools with entrance test requirements, for which Hispanics and blacks are historically poorly prepared, to revert to the racial quota system, all in the name of “diversity”.  “In the upside-down thinking of affirmative-action advocates, academically rigorous schools should be more focused on achieving racial balance and less focused on maintaining high standards. Asian displays of academic excellence therefore become problematic. Asians are somehow to blame for outperforming others, and they are to be punished for the historical injustices that blacks suffered at the hands of whites.”  Occam’s rationale for deBlasio’s call to eliminate entrance tests is simply that ignorant minorities are easier to keep disgruntled on the plantation where their attitudes and votes can be readily manipulated.

Trump in Singapore.  Well, it turns out that it was really the media experts who were expecting a single-shot breakthrough at this week’s summit.  Leading up, they blamed Trump for expecting too much from the meeting, while Trump was telling the world not to expect much more than it would be the “potential” beginning of conversations which no other world leader had been able to launch with the North Korean dictators, while allowing them to become an ever bigger danger to world peace.  Now the Monday morning quarterbacks are decrying the President for not walking out with a definitive world-shaking treaty that in one swell foop rid the Ugly Fat Kid of his nuclear capability and made him into a well-behaved leader enjoying a recent epiphany on human rights.  Demonstrating that their Trump Derangement Syndrome knows no bounds, these self-pumped pinhead pundits are now manufacturing hypotheticals about all kinds of imagined bad things yet-to-come, and getting a jump on criticizing the President for those.  (Here is an example from the auto-profound Council on Foreign Relations.  The myriad pronouncements on the lamestream are too silly and stupid to even consider.)  Meanwhile, Trump continues to tell all that the process has just started, and no one has given away anything to anyone – i.e. going forward we will trust AND verify.

[14jun18 update]  The 500-page DoJ’s IG report on Hillary’s email server investigation has apparently been seen by select eyes only, and is promised to be made public later today.  From early and conflicting reports by sources such as AG Sessions, Rep Trey Gowdy, and the WSJ, it is unclear what kind of political bias IG Horowitz found or did not find.  The congressman concludes what most of us witnessed over the last two years, that the FBI’s treatment of Hillary and Trump have been profoundly asymmetrical.  Yet the WSJ reports, ‘DOJ Watchdog’s Clinton Report Finds Mistakes by Comey, No Political Bias’.  We can hardly wait to discover what kind of hoops the IG had to jump through to come to that conclusion.  An early and perhaps premature assessment is that the Deep State is fully engaged in defending itself.

[later]  Well, the 568-page hernia pack is now out for all to read, and it’s a doozer (download pdf here).  The report documents in exhaustive detail the prima facie bias expressed throughout the months of the FBI’s investigation of both the Trump and Clinton campaigns.  It hauls Comey, Lynch, McCabe, Strzok, and others over the coals, and then, and then, … FBI Director Christopher Wrey goes in front of the cameras this afternoon and does a reprise of Comey’s 5jul16 bullshit performance exonerating Hillary.  Wray goes through the exact same arguments of the damning evidence the IG’s investigation uncovered, and then announces a jaw-dropping conclusion that there was no hint of political bias shown by the investigators or during the course of the investigation – simply unbelievable how the man could keep a straight face delivering that copy.

Wray’s message essentially acknowledged that the FBI screwed up from start to end, and "we’ll hold people accountable", but the organization itself remains as untainted as ever and was not harmed by at least 18 months of continued incompetence and blatant documented bias.  Somehow screwing up the biggest investigation the FBI has had in decades should make no never mind in the minds of Americans.

More revealing were the sober, detailed, and very frank assessments delivered by House chairmen Trey Gowdy (R-SC) and Bob Goodlatte (R-Va) on Bret Baier’s FN Special Report.  Both men were incredulous of the way that the Deep State was now defending itself.  It’s worth watching this exchange here on YouTube.

Kalifornia’s new service tax

George Rebane

State Senator Ted Gaines reports in the 9jun18 Union – ‘New bill slaps Californians with tax on services’ - of a piece of surreptitious legislation (SB993) quietly wending through Sacramento that will install yet one more layer of taxes that the people must add to the tribute that they already submit to succor the Sacramento Leviathan.  This new 3% tax on services will affect people directly and indirectly in more ways than we can count.

“Next time you visit a dry cleaner, hair stylist, manicurist, mechanic or any of the other countless services that we use day after day, week after week, you'll pay a new and additional three-percent tax for the exact same service. That's the last thing financially-stretched Californians need in this already unaffordable state. And history is clear that the three-percent tax will only creep up over time. … The damage wouldn't stop there. Small businesses contract out myriad tasks so they can focus on their core money making activity. They pay for computer services, payroll, janitorial, bookkeeping, legal services and more. Under this bill, they will be paying a premium for those services.”

The tax will give rise to a whole new bureaucracy charged with its administration that itself will cost over $600M annually, and employ a whole new tranche of government workers (aka parasites) whose benefit and retirement packages will require more millions taken into perpetuity from the shrinking corps of the state’s taxpayers.  In short, this will be another cancer upon the horde of cancers already afflicting the state’s fisc, and it will “further damage California’s faltering economic competitiveness and corrode our long-term financial health.”

We the people used to pay taxes for acknowledged needed services that were best provided by the collective, i.e. government.  Today new taxes are constantly added and existing ones are redirected for the sole purpose of sustaining and growing government (the employer of last resort).  When governments start exacting tribute from the people with impunity and for such clearly self-serving purposes, it has always signaled the onset of a rapidly evolving autocracy toward eventual tyranny.

Addendum:  As we have reported, California’s loss of productive middle-class taxpayers continues apace.  And the state is fast on the track to follow other high-tax socialist enclaves like Vermont (home of Bernie the communist) which has now initiated a $10K ‘Vermont relocation grant’ in its desperate attempt to replace its outflow of taxpayers by attracting new workers who can telecommute from the Green Mountain State (here).  Upon a moment’s reflection, it is clear that the $10K reward for moving there will only be taken by the innumerates who cannot calculate the horribly negative internal rate of return that this investment will have on their financial health.  Exit question – do companies really allow such double dummies to work from home?

‘Climate Change Has Run Its Course’

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 6 June 2018.]

Steven Hayward of UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies has put down some observations about climate change (here) that summarize what millions around the world acknowledge daily – namely that “climate change is no longer a pre-eminent policy issue. All that remains is boilerplate rhetoric from the political class, frivolous nuisance lawsuits, and bureaucratic mandates on behalf of special-interest renewable-energy rent seekers.” 

Now neither Dr Hayward nor, for that matter, these commentaries have been telling readers and listeners that climate change, formerly sold as global warming, is not happening.  Of course it is, and humans are no doubt contributing to this change, but we have nowhere near the impact on climate that hysteria mongers in politics and special interests have been getting all purple-faced about over the last few decades.  The supporting consensus or pseudo-science of climate change has failed to live up to the terrible predictions wrested from tortured data and dodgy computer models, neither of which can seem to get their stories straight.

Barraged by all the revelations of data doctoring and missed prognostications, the True Believers have tried all manner of approaches to convince the world’s nations to start economy-crippling decarbonization programs.  On national levels there have been a flood of laws passed to lower carbon emissions in both consumption and energy production.  But on the international level, since 1988 when the climate hysteria was launched with a series of highly publicized congressional hearings, the UN’s big global warming conferences have been an utter bust.  Since then, nations have gathered several times to pay lip service to reducing carbon emissions.  But after leaving the conferences and running the numbers on the impact of their promises, none of them have come close to living up to their carbon reduction commitments.  And many have actually increased their CO2 outputs.

As Hayward points out, “A good indicator of why climate change as an issue is over can be found early in the text of the Paris Agreement. The “nonbinding” pact declares that climate action must include concern for “gender equality, empowerment of women, and intergenerational equity” as well as “the importance for some of the concept of ‘climate justice.’ ”  Yes, you heard that right – the politically correct world is definitely pivoting away from the unconvincing consensus science about global warming to something more fuzzy and currently in vogue – social justice and identity politics issues of which there are an uncounted number just waiting to be raised into people’s consciousnesses.  Hayward calls this “the last gasp of a cause that has lost its vitality.”

The downward descent of such politicized attempts at central control was explained years ago in 1972 by political scientist Anthony Downs as “a five-stage cycle through which political issues pass regularly.”  The first cycle has experts and activists raising the alarm about a problem, which in then is picked up by the media as the next big story of “global peril and salvation”.  This establishes the peril’s priesthood – for global warming it has been Al Gore and Jerry Brown.  Third comes the sudden realization that fixing it is going to cost a lot of money, more than anyone had imagined.  In the fourth cycle people have become accustomed to the volume of the hysteria, have become convinced that no one can fund the solution, and quietly enter the last cycle, shifting their interest to other more recent and immediate things, which then completes the sequence.

Today no one is really interested in actual global warming solutions as shown by the direction of climate-related philanthropy from the green-leaning foundations.  These overwhelmingly fund only “mobilizing public opinion and opposing the fossil fuel industry.”  Hayward concludes that “treating climate change as a planet-scale problem, that could be solved only by an international regulatory scheme, transformed the issue into a political creed for committed believers. Causes that live by politics, die by politics.”

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

Scattershots – 29may18 (updated)

George Rebane

The Great Divide debate continues as muddled as ever.  We refer to leftwing commenter jon smith’s 134pm re my 1104am in the 26may18 Sandbox.  The man(?) is apparently not aware of the years-long Great Divide debate in these pages and in the national dialogue (also referenced here, see RR’s ‘Great Divide’ category).  In this debate the Left has always taken the position that the country is to remain unified and continue its progress toward a socialist state.  The Right’s position has been to acknowledge the growing and irreversible ideological chasm, and therefore counsels adoption of a new form of republic to keep alive the Founders’ idea that the US would go forward as a multitude of ‘laboratories of democracy’, each governing according to their interpretation of the Constitution, and each implementing ‘best practices’ from other states as needed.

The Right has suggested various solutions for the Great Divide that range from partitioning existing states (e.g. SoJ movement) to forming coalitions of states into a confederacy of like-minded regions.  The Left, as also witnessed here, has always been in vehement denial of such peaceful solutions, claiming that these are treasonous, and retorting with the dictum, ‘My way, or the highway’ for those opposing their promotion of Agenda21 collectivism.  Well, at least that was so until alt-Left Californians recently started floating the idea of the state’s secession from the Union.

What one can draw from these lopsided opposing attitudes is that the Right would very much like to be relieved of those Americans who embrace the Left’s insane public policies that are leading us to tyranny through an economic morass and growing autocracy.  And conversely, we see the Left rejecting any such separation and/or change in direction, seeking instead to keep the wealth producing Americans under their heel while denying the ideological leaning of the these wealth producers.  What gives lie to their demogauging is that, if they really believed the Right to be an economic burden that is being shouldered by the Left, they would be more than happy to relieve themselves of such a burden through a Great Divide that provides appropriate economic isolation of the two schools of economics.  In short, we would be happy to be rid of them, but they don’t want to be rid of us.

California’s education woes continue.  The 29may18 SacBee reports (here) that more primary and secondary school teachers left the state (most to Texas) than we were able to attract and/or graduate from our colleges.  Census data shows that in the 2003-16 interval California lost a net of 18,000 teachers in such an out-migration.  All of this, of course, makes no nevermind to Sacramento’s collectivist chorus and their local lackeys who just continue singing ‘All is Well, All is Well’ louder than ever.  Those of us who point out our educational calamity are simply dismissed as ‘gripers’.  (H/T to reader for the heads up on this report.)

[update] On Bob Crabb’s blog I responded to Steve Frisch’s under the ‘History Regrets Itself’ post as follows – “Well, here's a revelation.  I didn't know that the Left considered Trump and Hitler to be so much alike that it would take "mental gymnastics to differentiate Trump from Hitler."  And the chasm continues to grow.”

Attempting to post my comment, I ran into a new feature of the Security Question that compels the commenter to answer a simple arithmetic problem – in my case it was supplying the answer to 10+8 – before the comment is accepted.  Instead of being able to type in the answer as usual, the site now supplies a list of possible answers from which, presumably, the commenter is to select the correct one.  In my case the supplied list contained only the numbers 12, 10, 15, 6, and allowed no other direct entry.  Since my education in this case was demonstrably deficient, I couldn’t post my comment, and am here reduced to lamenting that I may have run into a sample of Common Core math on a liberal site that would put so many of us at a disadvantage.  I assume Mr Crabb’s regular readers have no problem with this new challenge.

When will Mueller’s criminal collusion investigation (aka “witch hunt”) end?  The Left’s answer has been the easy one – it will end when Mueller finds something from which he can make a criminal case against President Trump, and not a day before.  The rest of us are hoping for a more reasonable termination the time of which we can only guess.  But it turns out that we can do better than that if we appeal to a method published way back in 1993 by Professor J. Richard Gott.  Gott applied what we in these pages may term ‘Copernican reasoning’ to derive a formula that calculates the probability that a minimally known process will terminate between now and a specified future time.  Here the minimal knowledge required is only the age of the process, or how long it has been in operation.  I have used Gott’s result and expanded on it in my work over the years – a version of it is summarized in ‘… and this too shall pass’.  (and more here)

So, what are the chances (probability) that Mueller’s investigation will stop in the next month, four months from now, before the election in November (in the next 5 months), …?  Accepting 20 months as the acknowledged duration of the ongoing investigation, we can use the appropriate Gott-Rebane formula to compute the following graph of the increasing probability of termination over the numbered future months.  As we see, the chances are one out of five that Mueller will hang it up before the election.  Now you can make book.

George Boardman’s California

George Rebane

Intrepid left-of-center columnist George Boardman is one of our county’s recognized students of the human condition who regularly shares his observations and interpretations in the op-ed pages of The Union.  RR is proud to also number him among our regular readers and commenters.  In his 14may18 column – ‘California shines again, much to the annoyance of our critics’ – he paints a salubrious picture of California that goes a long way to explain why our Sacramento socialists see nothing wrong with what they have done to our state over the last few decades.  Not only that, but their sharing Mr Boardman’s view will not cause the loss of even a smidgen of momentum in our headlong rush towards the People’s Republic of California (perhaps even unto its status as a sovereign nation-state).

Mr Boardman’s analysis is supported mainly by ignoring the growing dumbbell shape of CA’s income demographic.  As I pointed out in ‘Solar Panels …’ and ‘California’s Common Core …’, the state’s population is growing slowly, mainly by the steady ingress of the welfare-seeking poor and succor-seeking illegal aliens, along with a thin cohort of knowledge workers joining the state’s unique high tech sector.  The slow growth rate is due to the concurrent exodus of middle class workers (especially in the second quintile) who can no longer afford to live here due to the low wages that their limited and rapidly redundant skill sets command.  What is left behind is a small hump on the high earnings end and a large hump on the low/no earnings end supported by government checks.  The middle earnings area is on its way to becoming a wasteland that is devastated by California’s high taxes and countless regulations which increase every aspect of our cost of living.

Now, what Mr Boardman points out but does not lament is that the people leaving California are of the vaunted middle-class that the Democrat politicians all celebrate and claim their policies are designed to help.  Well, you can’t get more Democratic than California, and that’s where the real rubber meets the road on socialist policies.  Pointing out that no one really wants to go live in North Platte, Nebraska is not exactly an example of keen insight.   Most people know the decline of regions generating wealth through agriculture, that require fewer and fewer workers, which actually started about 125 years ago.  Yes, cities are where the country’s wealth is generated in the modern age.  However, the record of Democrat governance of America’s urban areas is an ongoing and growing tragedy of the human condition.

To understand this as a socialist (or thereabouts?), Mr Boardman should examine the history of California’s Gini Index that measures the equality of income distribution – e.g. CA’s Gini Index is one of the nation’s highest and rose 18.2% during 1979 – 2012.  As technology accelerates and California attracts more and more low/no earners (1 of 3 US welfare recipients live in California), the Left-fostered income inequality will continue to ramp upward.  Given the strong correlation between income and critical thinking, the Democrats see perpetuating such inequality as a virtuous cycle that ensures their hardening grip on power as the dumbbell demographic accentuates.  California is now home of the coastal well-to-do who can still afford the taxes and increased costs, and those legions of the poor who rely on government transfer payments to make ends meet.

Finally, that the fewer rich, who are sufficient to operate the California companies commanding margins which make the state’s GDP one of the highest in the world, should be no surprise to those who mastered Econ 101.  However, all that will also end when even the rich must eventually sell Sacramento the rope with which they will be hanged.

Solar panels - the latest California calamity

George Rebane

California’s collectivist calamites just keep rolling in.  The latest in the works is the Great Solar Panel Sidestep – a new government mandated, contractor supported dance that will push low cost housing, now already out of reach, even further into the land of the bureaucratically impossible.  As observed from outside our state’s borders, “California is often where bad ideas spring to life these days, and they’re worth highlighting lest they catch on in saner precincts. Consider the state Energy Commission’s decision this week to mandate solar panels on all new homes. Meanwhile, Democrats bemoan the lack of affordable housing. Hmmm, maybe there’s a connection?”

But his latest really takes the cake – you can run the numbers yourself, but here’s the back of the envelope version of the California Energy Commission's mandate for all new homes.  Start with the “average cost of a rooftop solar panel system today is $18,840, which amortized at a 5.5% interest rate over 30 years is $107 a month.”  Add to that an average of about $400 annually for government inspections, cleaning and maintaining the system, to get a total monthly cost of $140, or $1,680 annually.  The advertised benefit is $80 monthly off the already outrageous cost of California electricity, making the net negative out-of-pocket $720 annually.  An earlier smokescreen claimed that the initial cost would be recovered by such savings in 30 years.  Now the cat is out of the bag – this bamboozle costs a lot out the gate, and keeps costing forever (even if it last 30 years).  Given the low cost of energy in America, California’s solar energy only benefits leviathan and corporatism.

Meanwhile, California housing costs average between $50K-$75K per unit more than in the rest of the country, and a government specified ‘affordable housing’ unit costs an unaffordable $332K.  Building low cost housing in California is prohibited by more laws and regulations than can be counted.  This is “why hundreds of thousands of middle-class Californians are fleeing. In 2016 Arizona welcomed twice as many Californian refugees as Mexican immigrants. California’s labor force last year expanded by a mere 1% compared with 2.2% in Nevada and Arizona. Sharing a border with California is a gift that keeps on giving.”  (more here)

California’s Common Core Catastrophe

George Rebane

In these pages we have long lamented California’s adoption of the Common Core curriculum standards, especially in the teaching of math in K-12.  H/T to longtime RR reader and discussant Greg Goodknight, who points us to an important just-published essay on Common Core performance in California since the standards were adopted in 2010 and fully implemented in 2014-15.  The piece – ‘California’s Common Core Mistake’ – written by W. Evers and Z. Wurman of the Hoover Institution contains a crisp summary of the educational catastrophe that CC has bestowed on California and the nation in preparing our young people to enter STEM careers so demanded by the AI-driven shift in required workforce skills.

The whole mess started with California having the widely acknowledged highest math teaching standards in the nation throughout the 1990s and into the early 2000s.  The keystone of it all was preparing the maximum number of the state’s public school students to take Algebra1 in the 8^th grade.  Evers and Wurman present copious charts and graphs of the data showing the progress of California students before CC, and then the disaster that befell when the curriculum was dumbed down after CC mandated postponing Algebra1 until the 9^th grade.  And who was hit the hardest by this curricular retreat? – the poor and minorities, of course.

A cynical but totally rational explanation for this Left-promoted, government induced travesty is that the CC curriculum will surreptitiously yet reliably stifle the growth of a more numerate and critically thinking electorate, which then will be more compatible, susceptible, and compliant to the socialist nostrums that now and eternally will gush out of our one-party Sacramento in a steady stream.

The 21st Century Progressive Dating Game (updated 9may18)

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.  Mark Twain

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 2 May 2018.]

For millennia females in all cultures were shielded by their families.  Marriages were arranged for commercial or political benefit, love was optional and came later if at all.  Extra marital trysts and affairs were di rigeur at all levels of society.  Females were treated as chattel, to be kept on the shelf in a perfect condition for display until a desirable customer came along.

In the west, the female perquisites of love and, therefore, choice began to emerge during the Renaissance in the 1400s, and blossomed during the French Enlightenment (ca 1740).  Although almost all proper marriages were still arranged, or at a minimum still required the blessing of the prospective bride’s closest senior male relative or appointed male guardian.  As the years passed, requiring the male imprimatur became totally optional in the most developed nations during the 20^th century in the aftermath of the Great War.  This signaled the liberation of both partners, giving each gender the freedom to go through a semi-formal game of ‘pick and choose’, during which a number of prospective partners were given the ‘try before you buy’ treatment.  The dating game was on between boys and girls of all ages.

Ruminations – 30apr18 (updated 1may18)

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and gospel of envy; its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.  Winston Churchill

George Rebane

George Boardman, our favorite left-leaning columnist and reader, writes a solid piece (here) in the 30apr18 Union on the effects of taxation on pot in California and our county.  He even brings up the Laffer Curve (gasp!) to illustrate how higher tax rates lower govt revenues and give rise to black markets.  As memorialized by countless citations, comments, and even vituperation in these pages, a sacrosanct tenet of progressive economic theory is that tax rates affect neither production nor consumption.  Do we have here an epiphany in the making?

The Left is now all agog about how we can and should regulate AI – in its development and uses.  The 30apr18 WSJ interviews three “AI experts” on the matter (here) who are really policy lawyers and demonstrate little understanding of AI as they counsel little to a lot of needed regulations.  No one considers that we really need no additional regulation of productized AI because they are at best decision support systems always operating under a responsible human agent for whom all existing laws apply.  It is the human who has the power to employ AI as a tool, and then be responsible for its employment under existing laws.  Things can change later when the AIs become sentient and then sapient.  (See also the post of my recent Union column on this topic.)

California’s progressive socialism has produced the state with the largest income inequality in the Union, and it’s on the rise as more and more middle-class wage earners are pulling up stakes and moving elsewhere.  Joel Kotkin assembles some of this alarming data (H/T to reader) to give perspective to the Left’s claim that California is the model for tomorrow’s America.  “Today, domestic net out-migration, even after declining in the early years of the recession, has more than doubled between 2013 and 2016. Even worse, according to a recent UC Berkeley study, over a quarter of Californians are considering a move, half of them out of the state, with the strongest proclivity found among people under the age of 50. And contrary to some progressive commentary, those leaving are not necessarily old or losers; according to IRS data, out-migrant households had a higher average income than those households that stayed, or of households that moved in to the state.” (more here)

What level of neurological deficits must a person have to still believe that Mueller's year-plus investigation has turned up the slightest evidence of Trump/Russia collusion that, if it exists, would have been leaked months ago?  Why would that lot of liberal lawyers allow their fellow Dems to look like idiots as they repeatedly squawk evidence-free allegations on the media as 'proof' of Trump's guilt? (more here)

[1may18 update]  The Mueller gauge is still on EMPTY, as the latest spate of leaks confirms.  The list of ‘questions for Trump’ first leaked to the NYT, is an embarrassing fishing expedition that seeks nothing beyond the President’s recollections of his own thoughts about this and that, guesses at what other people might have been thinking, opinions about their pre-campaign activities, notions of the meanings of this or that concept or legal construct, … .  In short, the man has found no definitive actions or occurrences involving the Trump campaign that would support the now tidal wave of lamestream allegations serving as desperate proxies for no evidence of a conspiracy with Russia to influence the 2016 election.  When this is pointed out, all the leftwing choir is able to retort can be set to Lerner and Loewe’s ‘Just you wait ‘Enry ‘Iggins’, just you wait!’

California’s school kids have been had by the unionized public school teachers and leftwing politicians, as noted here for years.  The progressives who have created this disaster refuse to even acknowledge it, guaranteeing that the future will be no better, and probably worse, than the past.  Today 65% of our 8^th graders are NOT PROFICIENT in reading, and 67% of them are NOT PROFICIENT in math.  This places CA 36^th nationwide in reading and math, and that itself is another disaster story – with stats like that, how did we place so high, and still have 14 states scoring lower.  Oi weh!  (H/T to reader and more here)

Scattershots – 9mar18 (updated 10mar18)

People want to have their soul in the game.  In that sense, decentralization and fragmentation, aside form stabilizing the system, improves people's connection to their labor.  N. Taleb

George Rebane

‘Trump’s Hoover Temptation’ appears to be real and, to me, scary.  The only thing that would keep the world from spiraling into another Smoot-Hawley abyss is that today countries have many ad hoc trade relationships with each other such as the new TPP from which the US withdrew.  But we’re still the economic gorilla on this planet, so it’s hard to tell what will really happen.  My own hope is that Trump has the guts to replace Gary Cohn with some equivalent anti-tariff voices like Kudlow, Laffer, or Graham.  The Dems, of course, are cheering on Trump’s tariffs, hoping that they will cause enough economic chaos to dent the GOP’s chances in November.  For today's Dems it's always party above country.

Californians, take what you will but … (updated 8mar18)

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 7 March 2018.]

California is a mess.  There is not enough time in this short commentary to describe all the ways in which our state has fallen to the bottom of the barrel, but I will attempt to summarize some of the more visible areas.  And the scariest thing for our future is that most Californians don’t have a clue about the dire straits of our state.  California has been effectively under one party control for so long that in this election year most people have forgotten there are alternatives.

Let me start by pointing out some facts that you may have missed because our media has also been flying in tight formation with the architects of our multiple maladies, and they aren’t about to point a finger at all the things that have gone wrong on their watch.  Because if you do find out, then you’ll start asking all kinds of questions, and pretty soon you’ll vote the bums out of office.  Then where would they be?