Rebane's Ruminations

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.)

‘A Short History of American Medical Insurance’ (Addended)

George Rebane

If there is a problem in the land, consider government guilty of its cause until proven innocent.

And that RR tagline applies doubly to the current cost of healthcare in America.  A short history of how we achieved healthcare costs that rank highest as a percentage of GDP is provided (here) by John Steele Gordon, nationally prominent author and economic historian.  Our healthcare costs have soared from 3.5% of GDP in 1930 to about 15% in 2015, indicating that “per capita medical costs in the United States have risen by a factor of 30 in 90 years.”

Speaking to a Hillsdale College audience, he opens with the reminder - “Whenever one segment of an economy exhibits, year after year, inflation above the general rate, and when there is no constraint on supply, then either a cartel is in operation or there is a lack of price transparency—or both, as is the case with American medical care.”

The history of real diagnostic and curative medicine actually began around 1930; prior to that physicians provided little benefit in those functions, and relied on the body’s own immune and restorative abilities to heal the patient.  But at the beginning of the Great Depression medical science had advanced enough to start providing remedies, albeit costly, that really did save patients from some dreaded diseases and injuries.  The expense of these new treatments launched the field of “hospital insurance” – dominated by Blue Cross and Blue Shield (for doctors’ fees) which broadened to what today we call medical or simply health insurance.

Hospital insurance paid only for services rendered while the patient was in the hospital.  It paid the complete hospital bill no matter its amount or treatment, thereby causing patients and doctors to make expensive hospital stays longer rather than shorter.  Government succumbed to doctor and hospital lobbies to keep service levels and prices up.  This gave rise to a special category of highly regulated (as non-profits) insurance companies.  And off we went onto the regimen of cost-plus payments to hospitals and doctors.  Given this scheme, there was no impetus to contain costs since these were actually withheld from the customers (patients) who had no information nor motive to shop for better prices for received services.

Then came wartime wage and price controls which forced companies to compete for workers from an already scarce pool, not through wages, which were fixed, but through fringe benefits which launched ‘free’ health insurance.  There’s a lot more important detail about how the various government departments, greedy politicians, and well-heeled lobbyists worked together to permanently keep America’s healthcare from responding to the normal markets which tremendously increased our quality of life in all other sectors of the economy over the decades.

The solution from here is not a ‘single payer’ comprehensively nationalized healthcare.  Gordon points out that “our federal government already runs three single-payer systems—Medicare, the Veterans Health Administration, and the Indian Health Service—each of which is in a shambles, noted for fraud, waste, and corruption. Why would we want to turn over all of American medicine to those who have proved themselves incompetent to run large parts of it?”  Instead he outlines a number of “far better and cheaper alternatives”.  I won’t steal any more of his thunder here but invite you to read his eye-opening essay on the topic.  Gordon concludes his piece with –

Finally, we need to get the practitioners of modern medicine to recognize an age-old reality: there is no cure for old age itself. Maybe someday we’ll be able to 3-D print a new body and have the data in our brain downloaded to it. But for the time being, when the body begins to break down systemically, we should let nature take its course. … There are enormous forces arrayed against these economically sensible reforms. Defenders of the status quo are the most potent lobbyists in Washington and the state capitals. This is not to mention the leftist proponents of single payer, who favor whatever will increase the power and scope of government. So it won’t be an easy fight. But at least we have one thing on our side—Stein’s law, named after the famous economist Herbert Stein: “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”

[Addendum]  I was in a rush to get this posted before another scheduled chore would interrupt.  What I failed to mention is that the Dems are playing ACA and healthcare as their only card in this mid-term election, and blaming Republicans for the baked in shortcomings of Obamacare, such as the rapid rise in healthcare costs.  The question many conservatives have had lately is whether President Trump is overplaying his ‘immigration, immigration, immigration’ hand.  I would advise our president to also point out that the defections from the multiple ‘migrant caravans’ are occurring only because he is making real his intent to use every legal means available – including active military – to stop the planned illegal bums rush across our borders.  These people aren’t going home or staying in Mexico because their road is a long one.  But what our president should really emphasize is what he has accomplished for our economy – that should make the greatest impact on those voters who have the capacity to understand the basics.

In any event, I am among the few who believe that knowing how our healthcare became so expensive and remains so is important.  Unfortunately not that many people give a big rat’s ass about that as they demonstrate their concern by limiting their healthcare knowledge to five or six publicized slogans.

The Migration Mess (updated 28oct18)

George Rebane

[This is the updated transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 24 October 2018.]

A recently updated dictionary defines ‘migration’ as the “movement of people to a new area or country in order to find work or better living conditions.”  And not by accident, this sounds like something all good-hearted people should encourage and support.  Today we are suddenly presented with the prospect of over 5,000 Central Americans having mysteriously been massed and marshalled to march north illegally through three countries with the objective of overtly overwhelming our southern border controls, and illegally forcing their way into the United States to become wards of the American taxpayer.

Sandbox - 19oct18

[WASHINGTON—President Trump is elevating the issue of immigration, which drove his 2016 campaign, with the aim of animating Republican voters in a midterm election that threatens to derail his agenda if Democrats retake the House.  Mr. Trump’s latest comments came Thursday as he warned about an “onslaught” of migrants reaching the southern U.S. border with Mexico and threatened to deploy the military if the caravan isn’t stopped.]

Subtle Whims of Change – A Socialist Trifecta

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 10 October 2018.]

Things have become very strange and different since Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump.  Of the many outrages the Left has proclaimed since November 2016, the most recent one comes on the heels of the Kavanaugh confirmation from none other than the current titular head of the Democratic Party.  The nightly videos of leftwing mobs in the streets stopping traffic, assaulting pedestrians, harassing customers in places of business, and screaming epithets at people they think do not share their interpretation of recent events has now become the norm.  Hillary herself calmly explained the situation to an interviewer yesterday, telling us that today it is impossible to be civil with people who oppose her desired direction for America.  Therefore, the incivility we witness on the streets and in the media from the Left is totally justified.  Moreover, according to her, civility can only return when the Democrats retake control of Congress.

To support this objective and control the national conversation, progressive corporatists are now planning ways of censoring speech on the internet – to bring about what they call “good censorship”.  The dilemma that companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube see is a tension between the American tradition of our being “an unmediated marketplace for ideas” which “prioritizes free speech for democracy, not civility”, and the European tradition wherein government ensures “well-ordered spaces for safety and civility” that “favor dignity over liberty and civility over freedom.”  The corporatists favor our migration toward the European model and claim that “all tech (aka social media) platforms are now moving toward the European tradition.”

In this chilling grand scheme of things for elitist planning and control, Google sees its new role as “the guarantor of civility” describing its new functions as the editor and publisher of allowed content.  All this has come to light in a leaked document from Google that structured a recent conversation between major corporation executives.  In response, Google still claims to be a “neutral platform”, and that the document does not describe new directions and policies, but is merely a product of some “internal research”.  (more here and here)

To complement such content censorship comes California’s latest attempt to control commerce on the internet through a new set of regulations signed by Governor Jerry Brown.  Under the confusing label of ‘net neutrality’, the intent is to make the internet into a utility under government political control to determine who can transmit how much data, for what purposes, and at what price.  The intent is to take market demand out of the equation for data-intensive services provided to the consumer.  To be sure, this progressive initiative violates not only constitutional norms but also all kinds of established interstate commerce laws, which is why the Department of Justice has now brought suit to have California continue to comply with federal law and regulations.  (more here)

Working hand-in-glove with the corporatists is the movement of Millennials – those partially and under-educated 20- and 30- somethings – who are shifting markedly leftward into the Bernie Sanders and hard-socialist wings of the Democratic Party and the new Progressive Party USA that has recently calved from the Democrats.  Many of these Millennials, even those who work on Wall Street, no longer understand the necessary foundations of capitalism and what makes a market economy work.  According to polls, one of their prime concerns is the general notion of economic inequality that such free-wheeling markets produce as they also raise the living standards of our poorest, and cause the opposite, with even more inequality, where such markets are proscribed by governments and corruption. (more here)

These Millennials somehow miss the socialists’ policy prescriptions that have always promised to create a new world, based on government induced altruistic behavior, where risk and reward no longer go hand-in-hand.  A world without inequalities where people will still labor to provide today’s goods and services, with little regard to how much they earn or what profits they will be allowed to keep.  Today more and more of our Millennials are striving to bring about a new socially just America that will be planned and controlled from on high by well-meaning elites.  And in this happy world no one will be heard to complain, because such communications will be automatically censored for the good of us all.

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 – 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.

Ruminations – 1oct18 (updated 3oct18)

George Rebane

The Dem scumbags’ last-minute sexual assault case against Judge Kavanaugh has cratered, but having no depth limit to their mores and methods, they are now on a new “temperament” tack, attempting to disqualify him on the basis of “partisan bias” since he had the temerity to defend himself and his family by calling out the scumbags on the Senate judiciary committee.  The lowlifes are setting new and historical records by the day.

Everyone will have to have a Real ID sooner of later, and the DMV is the local issuing agency.  Columnist George Boardman tells us (1oct Union) that he is starting the process of getting one.  Last January I was the first one to apply for my Real ID through our local DMV, and it was strictly a Keystone Cops affair, they had no idea what they were doing and screwed up the whole thing.  It took me six weeks to get my new driver’s license with the Real ID issued, and I had to monitor and prompt their activities the whole way.  It was finally issued by the state’s fraud department in Sacramento that oversees the confirmation of your application, supporting documents, and background check.  For Mr Boardman’s sake, I do hope that the DMV has gotten its act together over the last nine months.

Everyone notice that New York state is trying stay the exodus of their successful producers by quietly proposing new lower tax rates for (gasp!) the rich.  All this after their socialist governor Cuomo explained to his double dummy constituents that the reason people were leaving New York in droves was their sudden discovery of better weather in Florida and Texas.  We have to always remember that according to progressive economics, a jurisdiction’s tax rates do not affect its commercial activity and economic decision making – want more gummint revenues? just raise taxes. (more here)

[2oct18 update]  Amazon raised its minimum wage to $15/hr and is lobbying the feds to make that the law of the land.  NPR and other lamestream outlets are happy dancing in the streets.  None of them realize that this is just clever corporatism that increases labor costs for the small guys still trying to compete with Amazon.  When $15 is the new national minimum, guess what's going to happen to all the prices.  There is no free lunch, since such arbitrary raises don't increase productivity, they must inevitably raise prices.  (Later from the 2oct18 WSJ) "Mr. Bezos’s $15 wage would be a lot more praiseworthy if he hadn’t combined it with a plea for government to raise the labor costs of his competitors. Beware when big business conspires with big government."

Union cartoonist Bob Crabb (he and Jo Ann are also on the newspaper’s editorial board) wrote a column today (2oct18) in which he again declared his mid-road political sentiments and decried California’s ‘jungle primary’ (here).  Mr Crabb would rather have an “instant runoff” that features all candidates wherein the voter is allowed to select first and second choices that can then determine a winner with just one election.  My preference for the instant-runoff is a rating system wherein the voter can allocate different points to each candidate in the complete list of registered candidates.  The points thus given are normalized, and the candidate with the highest total point-count wins.  Among California’s many progressive maladies, our system is so sick that we continue to be forced to vote only for the Democrats’ Tweedledee and Tweedledum – more cleverly Bob nails this November’s choice as between “Tweedelstein and Tweedeleon”.

The senior scumbag from California, Senator Dianne Feinstein, doesn't want to vote on Judge Kavanaugh's confirmation this week.  Why? because it doesn't give her enough time "to consider all the facts" from the FBI report.  Not only that, but she doesn't want the report's contents made public.  Whoulda thought?  Not only does the Dems' delay derby continue, but the Feinstein, Schumer, Pelosi, ... crowd want to be the only ones to report and interpret what the FBI report says.  Those paying attention already know that the FBI is essentially interviewing those already interviewed, and will in no case draw any conclusions or make any recommendations.  Besides, there will be nothing in the report that will change any preconceived Democrat minds which have calcified on rejecting the nomination from the moment it was announced.

[3oct18 update]  No one says it like Michael Ramirez.

Most Americans are distressingly ignorant about many important things, starting with our country's governance and government.  And these are the people the Left's elites toy with as if they were naive children.  A recent national survey (here) by the Woodrow Wilson Institute, no rightwing outfit by any measure, found that only one in three Americans can pass the citizenship test.  To our local leftwing loonies, pointing out such a travesty instantly identifies you as a radical rightwinger, racist, multi-phobic, and on and on.  From this group of the less than lightly read the Left hopes to cobble together the majorities that would allow it to reclaim the House and perhaps the Senate.   For these people will believe most anything, including that the Cold War was caused by climate change.  (H/T to reader)

Escrow the Witch Hunt (updated 29sep18)

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary that was broadcast on 26 September 2018.  It is an augmented version of the previous RR post, ‘Mueller’s “Witch Hunt” Metric’.  An edited version of this commentary was also published in the 29sep18 Union (here).]

Even with the ongoing Kavanaugh confirmation hysteria, the Russia collusion investigation by special counsel Mueller continues to elbow its way into the lead stories of the news cycle, and rightly so.  Should Mueller find some material evidence on impactive collusion or, now the add-on hunt for obstructing justice, then that would have an immediate and material impact on the prospects of President Trump completing his first term.

Today we continue to have the usual Trump enemies like James Clapper, John Brennan, and James Comey appearing daily on leftwing media endlessly rehashing their charges that President Trump colluded with the Russians to get elected, and then engaged in various nefarious acts to obstruct investigations that would bring him to justice, a road that would lead to immediate impeachment and possible conviction by the Senate to remove him from office.

The lack of any evidence to substantiate such allegations does not have any impact to slow the beat of the media propaganda drums that today continue to convince the nation’s voters that Trump is guilty as alleged.  Trump and his supporters respond by calling these evidence-free allegations and the seemingly interminable Mueller investigation a witch hunt.  Basically, they accuse Mueller and his Democrat supporters of following a policy that the investigation will continue until some culpable evidence is found, and the nation along with the administration will be kept on tenterhooks until that time.

Ruminations – 21sep18 (updated 26sep18)

George Rebane

Fall equinox (22sep18, 1845PDT) observance preparations should be completed in time by the devout and/or deluded for tomorrow evening’s passage of the sun directly overhead (somewhere) at the equator on its journey south for our fall and winter seasons.  (This is a public service announcement.)

Scattershots – 14sep18 (updated 16sep18)

George Rebane

Judge Ken Starr, special prosecutor of Clintons fame, is pushing his new book Contempt that details the in and outs of the Clinton investigations.  On FN last night he made the surprise announcement that he and his team almost indicted Crooked Hillary who was questioned by Starr for all her dirty doings and wasn’t able to help matters by telling her interrogators over 300 times that she had forgotten all about the salient goings on in her shady past.  We know that she gathered strength from Starr’s ethical conduct – he knew she was crooked, but by his high standards for evidence that was lacking, he did not go forward with the indictment.  Meanwhile, Hillary went on to embellish her reputation as a bad ass bitch who was not and still is not accountable to anyone.

Sen Feinstein has been sitting on a letter she received last July that supposedly has the telling dirt on Judge Kavanaugh.  The anonymous letter is rumored to detail something from Kavanaugh’s high school years that would torpedo his SCOTUS nomination.  California’s scumbag senator has been sitting on this apparently nothing-burger deciding to threaten to reveal it now that everything else the Dems have tried has not worked.  So she kept this scurrilous script for a last minute desperation Hail Mary lob into the gears of the Senate, stating that she has given it to the FBI, and all things on the Kavanaugh confirmation should grind to a halt until the FBI completes its hoped for investigation.  This is how scumbags operate.

Puerto Rico has been the closest thing to a shithole country that the United States has had the pleasure of dealing with since the Spanish-American War.  Its culture is distinctly Latin, with all that this unfortunate baggage entails.  For generations its population, US citizens all, have had one of two objectives – make it on the island’s take in corruption, or make it to the US.  Nobody there considers the island and its established power structure as anything fixable.  But still, our progressive elites today are convincing their light-thinking lackeys that PR’s problems started with Trump not giving enough federal aid after Hurricane Maria devastated the island – that is blatant BS.  Sixty years ago it was already a place to leave as Leonard Bernstein made clear in his West Side Story.

[16sep18 update]  The lyrics to 'America' that I originally posted here from a website turned out to be considerably abbreviated.  As a commenter pointed out, a critical phrase was omitted.  Upon further research, there were even more phrases left out.  It turns out that there were at least two versions of lyrics to this and other WSS songs.  Anyway, I have deleted the incomplete version and give you a link to a site that seems to have the complete versions from both the Broadway show and the 1961 film.  The message re Puerto Rico remains unchanged.  (Enjoy the video here.)

Scattershots – 10sep18 (updated 11sep18)

George Rebane

What’s wrong with this picture?

The Left likes to make lying a pastime unique to Republican politicians, especially President Trump.  None of them probably noticed that literally all of the Dems’ leading lights on the Judiciary Committee told whoppers when they grilled Judge Kavanaugh in their vain attempts to pry something loose that wasn’t there.  One of them claimed Kavanaugh’s nomination should be thrown out because he was nominated by a president who is an “unindicted co-conspirator”, which Trump is not.  And another one claimed to be the modern-day self-sacrificing Spartacus for releasing committee documents against committee rules, documents that the committee released to him the previous day.  But the lying demagogue just had to have his grandstand for the cameras.  (It turned out that the document in question to show Kavanaugh’s racism was a nothing-burger that indicated exactly the opposite.)  The other Democrats on the panel all did their best to bamboozle their constituents when it came their turn, and given the nature of their constituents, some were undoubtedly successful.

NPR’s daily dump on Trump featured author Bob Woodward talking about his new book.  The interview revealed either how little Woodward knows about executive decision making, and/or the severity of his TDS.  Those familiar with how an executive uses staff for solving problems knows that asking the right questions (formulating the problem) and generating good alternative solutions are the most difficult parts of the process.  Woodward and the mainstream are now citing how a staffer surreptitiously took a supposedly disastrous letter off the president’s desk before he could sign it.  The truth of the matter is that the letter (to South Korea on trade), clearly marked as a draft/WIP,  was one of several alternatives for the president’s review.  Then Woodward takes the president to task for asking ‘why do we have NATO troops in Europe?’ and the same question for South Korea.  Trump is represented here as a double dummy for ‘not knowing the answer’, and SecDef Mattis’s proper answer is characterized as making things clear to an ignoramous.  The real ignoramous is Woodward and Team Lamestream, who have no idea that asking ‘zero base questions’, especially when concerning long unquestioned totems, is a fundamental task of an experienced executive in the process of taking critical decisions.

The Coddling of the American Mind describes the cognitive fragility and brittleness of today’s young.  The just-released book written by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt - two lifelong Democrat academics - raises yet another alarm about how the progressives have managed to screw up an entire generation plus of Americans with massive deficits in being able to “understand nuances” of arguments, and being totally intolerant and fearful of any idea, concept, or notion that questions or goes counter to their carefully taught intellectual and socio-political underpinnings.  This, of course, is massively denied by the country’s Left as witnessed even in these pages.  Neither author is able to suggest a ready remedy to bring these millions of mind-mangled minions back into the realworld.

California proves itself once more “100% certifiable” as a government of grifters sustained by an electorate of malleable idiots.  Our progressive Democrats now mandate that the state get 50% of its electricity from renewables by 2030, and 100% by 2045.  The impact of all this will be utility bills through the roof that will devastate the unsubsidized poor and drive more wage earning taxpayers to other states.  Only the coastal elites will not notice the economic devastation.  Today Californians already pay the highest rates for electricity which have increased more than 25% since 2013.  Given the natural gas-powered back-up plants required, the heavily subsidized wind and solar alternative will not even make a noticeable nick in reducing CO2.  (more here)

[11sep18 update]  Global alarmists claims refuted by another score of credentialed experts in their individual fields.  The details can be accessed on Russ Steele's blog here.  His report concludes with "The well-documented invalidation of the 'three lines of evidence' upon which EPA attributes global warming to human-caused CO2 emissions breaks the causal link between such emissions and global warming."  Worth checking out as we continue doing battle with the politically motivated True Believers in consensus science.

This year's 9/11 memorial will again be held at the gravesite of Ambassador Christopher Stevens in Grass Valley this morning.  The Nevada County Republican Women Federated maintain the ambassador's grave, and regularly observe various anniversaries there throughout the calendar year.

Ruminations – 4sep2018 (updated 7sep18)

George Rebane

Rapidly decreasing sperm counts in western males.  The trend is now over 40 old and presumably contributed to by some ‘endocrine disruptor’ chemicals in the plastics we use. (here)  Now that is a real shot in the shorts because low sperm counts are also harbingers of all kinds of other maladies in men as reported at a recent conference in Sweden.  The Singularity cannot arrive too soon. (here)

The Senate hearings to empanel Judge Kavanaugh are once more illustrating the trademark thuggery of the Left when they cannot have their way through established civil procedures.  Police this morning have arrested over 20 people who attempted to disrupt the hearings when Dem members of the Judiciary Committee failed with their own attempted disruption to again demand tens of thousands of irrelevant and supernumerary documents which will not impact their publicly declared opposition to Kavanaugh one whit.  Astute readers will remember how the Left went nationally ballistic in 2016 when candidate Trump hinted that he might protest election irregularities for which some DNC instigated rumors were already coming to light.  Instead, they have demonstrated for the last two years what real political disruption looks like in the wake of a legal and duly conducted election won by someone they don’t like.  More later.

Disingenuous Dems.  Given what the reading public already knows about Judge Kavanaugh, does anyone really think that the Dems on the Judiciary Committee really believe what they are saying about the nominee, especially that his confirmation to SCOTUS will destroy America as we have known it???  If enough Americans believe that tripe, then this may finally be the real litmus test giving fair warning that we should immediately form an active federal commission to start working toward a peaceful Great Divide.  If not, then can we not assume that these Dems are simply evil in what they are trying to purvey to their least read and intellectually innocent constituents?

OK, time for some giggles on this auspicious day.  A guy goes into a bar in New York where all the bartenders are robots.  The guy sits down at the bar and the robot asks, “What will you have?”.  The guy replies “Whiskey.”  The robot brings back his drink and asks, “What’s your IQ?”  The guy says, “168”.  The robot talks about physics, space exploration, and medical technology.

After the guy leaves, he pauses at the street corner and thinks about what he just encountered.  And the more he thinks about it the more curious he gets, so he decides to back.  Another robot asks, “What’s your drink?”  The guy answers, “Whiskey.”  The robot returns with his drink and asks, “What’s your IQ?”  This time the man replies, “100.”  The robot talks about NASCAR, Budweiser, LSU football, and All-star wrestling.  The man finishes his drink, leaves, but is so interested in this ‘experiment’ that he decides he’ll try again.

He enters the bar and, as usual, a third robot asks him what he wants to drink.  The man replies, “Whiskey.”  The robot brings the drink and asks, “What’s your IQ?”  This time the man answers, “50.”  The robot leans in real close and slowly asks, “So, are you people still unhappy that Hillary lost?”

[5sep18 update]  Social justice as it is.  (H/T to correspondent)

NYT RIP.  With its publishing an anonymous editorial of extremely scurrilous content today (here), the Gray Lady has hammered the last nail - from the inside - into its coffin as ‘the nation’s newspaper’.  Henceforth we can anticipate its resurrection as The Nation’s Tabloid.

[7sep18 update]  Sen Ted Cruz (R-TX) gave good account of the Dems’ behavior in the Kavanaugh hearings, and it further illustrates how the media are shortchanging an already shortchanged electorate.  Sen Cory Booker (D-NJ) is the Judiciary Committee’s poster child of a grandstanding demogauge spewing BS.  Ms Robin Diel does an excellent job summarizing the Senator Cruz’s remarks in the 7sep18 Union (here).

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 – 25aug18 (updated 31aug18)

George Rebane

That Lady Justice today only wears a patch over one eye is apparent to at least half the country.  Mueller’s ongoing investigation, along with the FBI et al investigations that preceded it, gives clear and compelling evidence to the bloom of corruption that has compromised our justice system over the last decade.  Kim Strassel’s ‘When Justice is Partial’ in the 24aug18 WSJ compiles a short and bitter summary of what has gone down.  And here is the strong letter to follow by Canadian Conrad Black.

Mueller’s "Witch Hunt" Metric

George Rebane

According to Rebane Doctrine, there’s a definite way to hold Mueller accountable for an alleged witch hunt without affecting the current claim that his investigation needs to continue because he’s on to some developing evidence that could resolve the question he was commissioned to answer – Was there any criminal collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia that was either illegal and/or affected the outcome of the 2016 election?

1. Mueller puts all the evidence to date into an ‘envelope’ that supports his contention that he is being prudent and professional in continuing an investigation that to date has claimed no culpable evidence, or evidence relevant to his charter.
2. The ‘envelope’ is sealed and entered into escrow with a reliable third party not privy to what is being escrowed, say, a specific federal court. The escrow instructions state that the contents of the ‘envelope’ be made public when the Mueller investigation is formally concluded.
3. Inspection of said contents at the conclusion of the investigation will then either support Mueller’s current contention that he has probable cause to continue the investigation, or show that he had nothing culpable to that date, and was simply proceeding on a ‘hail Mary’ basis with the hope that something significant might later turn up – i.e. confirming that at least up to the present he really is continuing to conduct a witch hunt.
4. Depending on how the investigation ends and what verbal assurances (under oath?) Mueller makes upon entering escrow, his reputation and fate will be determined either by the court of public opinion or a court of law. Mueller has no reasonable basis for refusing to enter into such an arrangement given that he has conducted the commissioned investigation, and is continuing it because it shows some promise of producing evidence of criminal Russian collusion.
5. In any event, with such information in escrow, the investigation can now proceed under the explicit expectation that Mueller has something that constitutes a reasonable basis for continuing the investigation without the need to release any supportive and/or compromising intermediate results.

Luxury Communism, the Siren Song

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 22 August 2018.]

Among an alarming fraction of today’s younger generation, capitalism has become a dirty word, and communism has lost all of its historical barnacles.  Along with socialism, today communism is viewed by our millennials as a more socially just system, a version of which should replace capitalism as our society’s organizing principle for wealth generation and commerce.  Millennials, also known as Gen Y, are the generation born between the early 80s and the late 90s.  Today they number about 80M in the US, and academically they have tested and demonstrate themselves as not our brightest generation.  (more here)

When they assemble to support politicians like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Maxine Waters, and Alexandra Ortega-Cortez, they frequently become an unruly and violent mob to express their anger through assaulting university speakers they don’t like to smashing shiny store windows representing the capitalistic wealth of our nation. (more here)

Today there is rising the idea of a ‘fully automated luxury communism’ or FALC that paints a future of humanity living lives of leisure in harmony with communally-owned advanced technology that does all the work and produces all the wealth that is equitably shared by the people.  In that world, no longer is anyone stressed striving to labor in order to own property that makes possible the good life.  Today, organizations such a Plan C are expanding young memberships, inviting these to work for a world “centered on the commons” in which people will ‘naturally’ behave unnaturally as altruists.

Spokespersons such as Aaron Bastani of Novara Media teach listeners that “there is a tendency in capitalism to automate labor, to turn things previously done by humans into automated functions, … in recognition of that, then the only utopian demand can be for the full automation of everything and common ownership of that which is automated.”  Bastani sees FALC achieving something closer to that — “a society with collective control over its own high-tech, work-reducing gadgets. He believes what little work will be necessary in the future, such as optimizing 3D-printers and agricultural robots, will be organized much the way editors currently manage Wikipedia — in a decentralized, non-hierarchical fashion.”  Students of history recognize this as the achievement of the Marxist/Leninist communist ideal in which all humanity lives in unregulated harmony after the then superfluous state has withered away.

But what none of these pied pipers talk about to their eager young audiences is the nature of the path required to get us from here to there.  After listening to the animated exhortations of over-zealous speakers, these audiences, innocent of history, leave such emotional rallies to gather in the streets to proclaim the advent of their new world.  But what none of them realize nor are prepared for is the draconian aftermath that must now come when the exhilaration and excitement of street demonstrations end.  Then must begin the real fight, or as Bastani says, “if you want this, what you need to do is seize the means of production. We need to get automation and make it subordinate to human needs, not the profit motive. It’s about seizing the bakery rather than stealing the bread.”

Then will begin the long civil war required to take what’s not yours and kill those who resist such takings.  The road through the way station of socialism to communism has never been an easy one.  Revolutions such as occurred in Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba, and many other lands, all took long, slogging years of civil war that spread wholesale misery across the land and took lives of millions, and then in the aftermath of devastated economies and terrorized societies, destroyed the lives of uncounted more millions for decades to come.  And in the end, for some reason not taught in our schools, the halcyon days that Marx and Lenin promised never came to pass in lands and among peoples who abandoned the fundamental rights to personal property, individual security, and shared liberty.

This is the real battle for the hearts and minds of Americans in which we are now engaged.

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.

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.

Scattershots – 14aug18 (updated 15aug18)

You can get away with a lot of  illiberal theatrics and demands in a liberal society, and one of the great, eternal challenges for democratic governments is to figure out how much one can tolerate before the forces of illiberalism corrode the liberal order.  Jonah Goldberg (2018)

George Rebane

‘Google gives back’ gushes the 13aug18 Union reporting that the company “invests $100K (gasp!) for Nevada workforce development”.  The affair lasted one day and was a marketing event for the company’s business software under the guise of “helping Nevadans develop digital skills needed for job placement and advancement”, which ‘development’ in one day is a joke.  But it did give Reno’s JOIN, a government sponsored workforce development agency, a little feather in their cap – at least they’re doing something.  Meanwhile, Google got a real PR boost and advertising multiplier by spending less than they accidentally drop off their loading docks on any given day.  The real news to note was the mention of Nevada’s net yearly migration rate of 5.5% - #2 in the nation – ably boosted by emigrants from California driven out by our state’s butt stupid palette of public policies, regulations, and taxes.

Trump’s ‘the press is an enemy of the people’ understood contextually is something that has needed to be said and explained in more detail than possible in a punchline tweet.  The few center right news outlets, compared to the legions of leftwing outlets, survive primarily because of their outsized audiences who frequent them for the markedly more comprehensive coverage of what’s happening than is available in the carefully self-censored lamestream media.  A local confirmation of that over the years have been RR’s leftwing readers whose comments reveal that they first ‘hear’ of events, ideas, and happenings from RR commentaries and its commenters.  They then label and attack the same as products of a few isolated and fevered far-right brains from these foothills, being completely unaware of the related national reportage and debates.  If CNN, MSNBC, HuffPost, NYT, … didn’t cover it, then it never happened.  When such news coverage blankets the country, then Americans who are already overly challenged, under-educated, and busy with their daily affairs are effectively propagandized from one perversely ideological perspective.

Today's contribution from our cartoonist RL Crabb, filched from the pages of the 14aug18 Union, is a view from the purported mid-road vantage that appears to suffer a bit from Bob's ongoing bout with TDS.  I wonder what pinned dolls he would have pictured with Obama had he been so inclined.

Speaking of the lamestream’s promotion of the ‘white supremacist threat’, it turns out again that there is no such threat simply because the number of white supremacists in the country is insignificant.  Their only voice is the one manufactured and given to them by the Left which needs an ideological bogeyman against which to play their socialist siren song.  The weekend’s ‘Unite the Right 2’ march of the 20 gave ample evidence of that, as it also demonstrated the alt-Left’s ability to marshal mobs of counter demonstrators, numbering in the thousands, whose hate-filled prescriptions for the United States and its leadership were duly recorded on numerous videos, of course, not aired on the lamestream.

“Curmudgeon” nobelist VS Naipaul (Literature, 2001) died over the weekend.  Naipaul had the courage to observe that all cultures are not of equal worth or quality, and “unapologetically insisted on the universality of Western beliefs.”  For this he was vilified by progressives as a racist.  Naipaul identified “the idea of the individual, responsibility, choice, the life of the intellect, the idea of vocation and perfectibility and achievement” as the tenets of a “universal civilization” contributed by the west that stood in stark contrast to the Islamist world’s “philosophical hysteria”.  This hysteria has yet to be recognized and denounced by the Left, whose elitists see it as a manageable and existential force that can be used to weaken and bring down western civilization.

[15aug18 update] Sen Fauxcahontas Warren (D-CT) finally exposed her communist destination for us by introducing legislation in Congress that would launch the biggest government grab of private property in the country’s history.  She describes it in ‘Companies Shouldn’t Be Accountable Only to Shareholders’ in the 15aug18 WSJ.  There she instructs us that “American corporations exist only because the American people grant them charters. Those charters confer valuable privileges—such as limited legal liability for their owners—that enable businesses to turn a profit. What do Americans get in return?”  Well, for openers, the answer to that is EVERYTHING that we see around us.

Her Accountable Capitalism Act would remove corporations generating more than $1B annually from shareholder control and make them assume “fiduciary responsibilities beyond their shareholders”.  The new order would make such businesses into “benefit corporations” under a hodgepodge board and management structure which is guaranteed to completely truss up for-profit enterprises in new deep layers of regulation and litigation.  More specifically, “Benefit Corporations fundamentally change how a company is permitted to act. In addition to creating shareholder value like other for-profit companies, a Benefit Corporation must provide a general public benefit, namely, a material positive impact on society and the environment as a whole. Specific examples include providing low-income individuals or communities with beneficial products or services, preserving the environment, promoting economic opportunity, and improving health in the community.”

If that socialist cum communist has her way, then ‘Venezuela here we come’ will be the new tune on everyone’s lips.

The Democratic Party is now our openly declared socialist party in fact and deed.  It has finally realized the reason the Socialist Party of America closed its doors in 1956 – ‘the Democrats are adopting all of our social goals’ – as its former members migrated to their new political home.  Today, according to a just released Gallup poll, almost three of five Democrats view socialism favorably over capitalism, and confirm that ‘Democrats are Officially the Party of Socialism’.  But you can bet the farm that once they get back in power, they ain’t stopping there (see Fauxcahontas above).

Bar to Employment is Lowered

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 8 August 2018.]

Used to be that for most jobs you had to show some serious education and experience in your background in addition to good appearance and character.  And things really got tougher during the depths of our last recession, employers could be real picky about whom they hired.  Well things have now changed, and the change confirms the new growth track that our economy has taken since the 2016 election.

According to some leading staffing firms, we hear of companies now hiring people, not necessarily on the basis of what they know, but how motivated and teachable they appear to be.  One such large firm “estimates one in four of (its over 10,000) employer clients have made drastic changes to their recruiting process since the start of the year, such as skipping drug tests or criminal background checks, or removing preferences for a higher degree or high-school diploma.”  Of course, one demonstration of teachability and motivation is what kind of skillsets you’ve been able to garner on your own.  (more here)

Several staffing firms are even turning down clients who are not aware of today’s jobs landscape, and refuse to budge on tight salaries, required education, and relevant experience.  Their message to such employers is “we can’t help you fish for the few underpaid or unaware applicants (still) left out there.”

Before we start celebrating this new twist in the employment picture, let’s consider the kind of people, specifically voters, that such hiring practices will produce.  Pre-educated hires will be taught a very narrow and focused set of skills in their new workplaces – initially, just enough to do the job.  From where would they then get the breadth that a broader education provides about our country, societal issues, basic civics, and fields other than the one in which they have landed?  My concern is that prematurely terminating an education will produce a lot of what may be called one-tune piano players – good at what they do, but knowledgeable in little else.

We already see examples of that when we look at today’s wealthy and prominent entrepreneurs who quit school early, pursued their dreams, and were successful beyond their wildest hopes.  And now that they’re rich, their uninformed opinions on matters way outside their fields are valued as if they were oracles on Mt Olympus.  But the overwhelming fraction of today’s young early hires will not become rich, and they will have to pick up their broader knowledge of the rest of the world and its happenings from backyard BBQ conversations, and whatever time they can spare after work from family and TV.  Not a promising path to becoming an intelligent voter, and a very promising way to become someone who will base their vote on a silver-tongued politician’s unexamined and most recently broadcast sound bite.

So let’s turn the page from this hiring surge and consider what more and more experts are saying about the longer term prospects for jobs, people who understand the increasing role of intelligent machines in the workplace.  As you have heard in these commentaries, machines are replacing humans at an increasing rate in all kinds of tasks imaginable.  In the latest (7aug18) issue of Forbes, Dr Kiran Garimella, chief scientist & CTO at a high-tech company, writes ‘Job Loss From AI?  There’s More to Fear’.  He points out that we have already started the transition from human to machine workers.  And the skills most “immune to AI” are also “the most impervious to mandatory formal training methods because they stem from innate passion or prodigy-like natural skills. Examples are higher math, theoretical physics, the higher levels of art and music, and so on.”  In short, not too many of us are blessed with those passions and natural skills, and even those workers will see “their role will become either minimal or move up the cognitive scale.”

Personal relevance remains the overarching issue.  Contented people have always found a good answer to ‘what do I do that sustains the community of which I am a part?’  When that question no longer has an answer, then social order becomes brittle, and all futures look uncertain and not very promising.  How many voters even now understand enough to prepare for such a future?

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.

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.

Today’s Employment and Entrepreneurship

George Rebane

So here’s the drill.  In our risibly insane land we have the following three factors in some kind of convoluted and crazy collision when it comes to work and making workplaces.

In today’s economy unfilled jobs abound by the millions.  Construction jobs not requiring a college education are near the top of the list, and would be an ideal place for young people to get into the workplace and even make an excellent career of it.  But our young have been rejecting these opportunities at ever greater rates.  Laura Kusisto tells us that “Disinterest in construction work is contributing to a labor shortage that has meant fewer homes built and rising prices—possibly for years to come” in her 31jul18 piece ‘Young People Don’t Want Construction Jobs. That’s a Problem for the Housing Market’.   The numbers tell the story – “nationally, the share of young construction workers declined nearly 30% from 2005 through 2016”.

Then we have progressives in urban areas doing all they can to raise minimum wages in their cynical campaign to keep their constituents on the plantation.  It has been known for over half-century that raising minimum wages destroys exactly the jobs that allow the young and poor to enter the workforce and/or start climbing out of poverty.  But today where in the Trump economy the unemployment rates for minorities are at historical lows, liberal politicians are even invoking the Constitution to provide the fundamental argument for raising minimum wages.  Jason Riley of the Manhattan Institute explains the matter in his ‘Does the Constitution Mandate Minimum Wage Hikes?’, as he describes “a misguided court ruling (that) ignores the history of labor laws intended to keep blacks from working.”

And finally, we have to consider the best part of our overall immigration problem.  Professor Edward Lazear of Stanford looks at what kind of immigrants benefit America the most and serve our country’s national interests.  The answer, he presents with numbers to match, are the young and educated who are standing in line for legal immigration into the US.  These are the people who overwhelmingly will fill valuable jobs to keep America competitive, and these are the same future Americans who will start the businesses and enterprises to keep the country prosperous and generate jobs for us natives who are not so prone to undertake the risks of entrepreneurship.  In his ‘Send Us Your Young, Your Educated’ Lazear argues that “there is an excess supply of potential immigrants.  The US should be smart about whom it chooses.”

But half of our country is either too cynical or lacks understanding of why America should continue to grow and prosper as the world’s font of capitalism and free enterprise.  Their progressive narrative calls first and foremost for admitting immigrants who will become reliable leftwing voters and dilute extant American culture on the way to something economically and socially more like the country from which they chose to flee.  And the last thing these same socialists wish to promote are public policies that shrink the plantation by enabling more people, especially minorities, to lead lives that don’t depend on regular checks from the government.

Trumporama – 30jul18 (updated 1aug18)

George Rebane

These thoughts are motivated by a letter2editor in today’s Union by Richard Van Steen.  There this gentleman, who has graduated from TDS to TAD, tells us that all Americans who don’t want President Trump immediately impeached are traitors, pure and simple – kinda like the stuff he has between his ears.

Lately I’ve been a bit hard on our president’s foot-in-mouth twitter feeds and his tariffs derby (now beginning show some promise), so as one consigned to the nation’s population of irredeemably deplorable traitors, I should at least weigh in my ‘stubborn ounces’ to list some of the benefits we are enjoying in the new era of Trump.

Ruminations – 27jul18 (updated 28jul18)

George Rebane

The Opioid insanity.  We now are in courts suing the big pharma makers of opioid pain killers, accusing them of being the cause of the tragic opioid deaths epidemic across the land.  Big pharma neither delivers nor gratuitously promotes the delivery of opioids to those who die from their reckless use.  In the dissemination chain, the distributors and prescribing physicians are getting a pass from the righteous Left; why?  Because the Left is only interested in deep pockets which big pharma enjoys, and the leftwing sleazebag lawyers will enjoy a big hunk of those monies if they get the desired verdicts from stupid juries.

Big high-tech corporations lean markedly to the Left.  Most people with 3-digit IQs know that. So now we have these leftwing corporations bolstering their leftwing agendas by “shadow banning” conservative tweeters.  A list of Republican congress critters who promote Trump have already presented evidence of exactly this when they discovered that suddenly their accounts could not be found on Twitter.  Meanwhile the land’s lamebrains still believe the Zuckerbergs and Dorseys claiming that these social media sites are “platforms for free speech”.

The current Song of Socialists performed by talking heads is that ‘We’re not there yet’, when asked to talk about Trump’s progress toward everything from rapprochement with Russia, to denuclearization of the Fat Kid, to the promise of a new world trade order that benefits the US.  These deep thinkers are trying to convince their audiences that the administration and all Republicans are out there busy stocking up on firecrackers for the big celebration tomorrow night on the Capitol Mall, when that is not even close.  Bad mouthing what Trump gets done every day is the only thing left that they have to offer, because the Left has nothing short of Plan Venezuela to offer Americans.  And about that they know to keep their mouths shut.

[update] Speaking of the Great Divide, H.W. Crocker III writes ‘America’s Next Civil War Will Be Worse Than Our Last’.  He brings out some good comparisons between the America of 1860 and what we are today, but he does not call out the real important differences that have brought us beyond the tipping point.  And most significantly, if people break out their shootin’ irons this time, then the war will truly be a civil war and not the War for Southern Independence misnamed.  (H/T to reader on the article)

[27jul18 update]  Prescribed burns make all the sense in the world, and are worth the risk of unexpected losses.  But our federal and statewide governments are literally too stupid, and their politicians too cowardly to plan and execute prescribed burns.  It is a simple trade-off that politicians and lawyers have purposely made complex, and for them, profitable.  Through over-zealous fire abatement policies, we have let our public lands become over grown to an extent that nature has never permitted.  So when the expected wildfires come, they cause extraordinary damage to life and property at costs orders of magnitude above what controlled prescribed burns would cost.  And yet we continue year after year to spout fire prevention pabulum to homeowners in fire areas and suffer the ensuing wildfire, without doing anything to attack the fundamental cause of the fires – too much fuel too densely distributed in easy reach of the foolish and felonious.  (All this in the last great century of Man.)

Anti-Kavanaugh hyper-hysteria grows.  Sen Corey Booker (D-NJ) announced today (FN) that he opposes Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination on the basis that both the judge and his nomination to SCOTUS are “evil”.  He stongly exhorts his fellow Dems that there is “no middle ground” on opposing this nomination, you’re either for or against “evil”.  This is truly a twofer for Republicans – another Dem shows himself to be deranged in his service in Washington (why elect more of them?), and the confirmation that the Team Schumer/Pelosi has run out of substantive ammo, which they never had, to stop Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation by the Senate before the midterm elections.

Scattershots – 23jul18 (updated 26jul18)

George Rebane

In ‘Our country’s future relies on embracing those escaping brutality’ by Ms Judith McCarrick of the Immigration Action Alliance we find some pearls, among them –

• “That migrant parents have broken immigration laws to (surreptitiously) cross our borders is untrue.” Why? Because the legal immigration process is difficult and takes time, and because AG Sessions denies asylum “claims from seekers of protection of gang violence and abusive spouses.”
• “No law mandates that children and parents be separated at the border.” Our immigration and domestic laws specify exactly that when criminal parents are arrested and taken into custody.

These and more like them in her 23jul18 Union piece put Ms McCarrick in the running for the highly competitive designation as Blithering Idiot, 1^st Class.  Unfortunately, given the extensive competition in our county, her latest contribution does not make her a shoo-in.

Kudos to Union columnist and RR reader George Boardman for his timely, comprehensive, and correct vent on the lack of leadership at all levels in our county to expand broadband in our foothills.  Mr Boardman details the sordid history in ‘Bright Fiber, Verizon show what happens when leadership is lacking’.  In that piece he reinforces the recent cri de coeur of the Union's editorial board, and again corroborates the seminal RR dictum, ‘To find the cause of any problem in society, presume that government is guilty until proven innocent.’  Hard to lose with that approach.

[24jul18 update]  Nevada City has now approved 12 pot stores for health reasons.  That’s the same argument the city’s mamas and papas used to deny bringing the town into the 21^st century with appropriate cell phone coverage (let alone broadband).  Consulting their sidewater science, they continue to conclude that cell towers on selected town building will fry the brains of local citizens.  With ample evidence at hand about whom they seat on their city council, many claim that said brains have already been fried for years. (more here)

Two diametrically opposite interpretations of the just released (and deceitfully redacted) FISA application for a warrant to wiretap Carter Page.  All on the Left see no fraud involved and ample evidence for the warrant in the application.  These people don’t think it was material to reveal that the Steele dossier - the prime argument in the application - was scripted, bought, and paid for by Democrats for Hillary.  All on the Right point to the extensive evidence that confirms the fraudulent nature of the application and subsequent FBI testimonies about it.  Within a larger framework, this again proves that no rapprochement is possible, since the opposing parties cannot even agree on the basic facts germane to any subsequent productive conversation.  (more here)

[26jul18 update]  SF Board of Supervisors again certified itself as first class idiots by passing a resolution to screen out insurance companies that invest in fossil fuel businesses.  This because such investments promote climate change, the fight against which the city considers itself among the world’s foremost champions.  So here is a burg, with a history of demonstrably bad decisions and public policies that is drowning in druggies, bums, and their accumulating offal while driving out tourists by the thousands and causing untold losses to their hospitality industry, now preening its deranged ‘values’ for all to see al they attempt to dictate how their insurers should manage their portfolios in order to keep premiums competitive. (more here)  San Francisco values on parade.

Democratic Socialists = proto-communists

Some mistakes are just too much fun to make only once.

George Rebane

The left-leaning Associated Press reports ‘Democratic socialism surging in the age of Trump’.  The article is a well-written, comprehensive review of what the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are and their recent growth spurt as the Democratic Party lurches hard Left.  (We note that know-nothing local lefties are still in denial about that.)  What they are - according to the AP, other observers, and now even some dues-paying members - is socialists, plain and simple.  But even that doesn’t go far enough.

DSA’s paid up membership has surged from about 6K to 45K in the last year or so, and now includes in its ranks more than a handful of Democrat politicians running for office.  DSA used to be “on the fringes of the liberal movement’s farthest left flank.”  Today they are a “significant force in Democratic politics” that overwhelmingly dominates the public direction the party has taken and openly advertises as its future.   On the DSA’s website we find, and AP corroborates, that there is “little distinction” between ‘democratic socialism’ and just plain good old-fashioned ‘socialism’.  But wait, there’s more to this telling.

When you read the DSA constitution, you learn that “its members as socialists reject an economic order based on private profit and share a vision of a humane social order based on popular control of resources and production, economic planning, equitable distribution, feminism, racial equality and non-oppressive relationships.”  In short, they are really a new and improved modern day movement of communists who are temporarily hiding under the more acceptable socialist label.  When the time is ripe, they will dispense with this half-way house and co-opt the political pimple that today still calls itself the Communist Party USA (CPUSA).

The real question is how far will the Democratic Party play along with this headlong rebirth of communism via the waystation of socialism.  Many Democrats, and we all know who they are, have already thrown in their lot with the DSA, and many more Dems are standing by, nervously fingering their hats as they prepare to toss them into the DSA ring.  The times, they surely are a-changin.

The only speed-bump on the road to complete government control of everything seems to be the label ‘socialist’ that some Dems running for office fear that “people do associate (socialism) with bad things in history”.  Now if we can only hurry up and convince these inconvenient history troglodytes that socialism was really not all that bad, and that we’ll do it right this time around, then we’ll have it made in the shade.  Why?  Because our government educational system has already taught the younger generation that capitalism is bad and socialism is good, and the lamestream media is reinforcing that daily.  It's those damn older folks who can still remember yesterday who are the problem.

You can bet the farm that the Deep State “patriots” are already all socialists since their livelihood depends on it.  The only kerfuffle slowing things down is the current lack of a definitive Democrat leadership behind which the young and stupid can join ranks.  Current Dems jockeying for position, like Schumer, Pelosi, Sanders, Warren, Biden, and Waters come across as marginal work products from some second-rate embalming school.  It’s the new cohort of the likes of Ocasio-Cortez, Kaniela Ing, Kamala Harris, etc who are the emerged and unabashed socialist face of the Democratic Party.  And the platform to which they all have signed up sees the abrogation of the Constitution and its defined voter franchise as Job One.