Rebane's Ruminations

Sandbox - 1mar20

[Is everyone ready for Biden in the stretch run, or the coronavirus' continuing impact on the securities markets?  All of it the fault of President Trump.  gjr]

Fair, Just, and Legal, Oh My! (updated 3mar20)

George Rebane

From the dictionary:

• Fairness: “the state, condition, or quality of being fair, or free from bias or injustice: evenhandedness.” “the quality of making judgments that are free from discrimination.”
• Justice: “the quality of being fair and reasonable”
• Legal: “appointed, established, or authorized by law; deriving authority from law; permitted by law; lawful.

We all a hear a lot about things like ‘fair share’ and ‘social justice’ today.  How many people using or listening to these notions really have any, and I do mean any, understanding of what they mean in the greater scheme of our society.  From my experience and the daily round, the answer is a firm NO.  Since in these pages I and most of our readers have a penchant for more semantical precision in their lexicon, I want to expand on what I believe are the utilitarian ways to think about and use such words.

First of all, each of these notions – fair, just, legal - must have meanings that justify their being composed of distinguishable literal strings.  Else why have them if they mean the same thing?  Here we’re interested in meanings that maximally distinguish, and thereby support a richer capacity to think, analyze, and express.

Before unpacking some more precise semantics, we again recall nobelist Kenneth Arrow who showed a long time ago that when there are more than two alternatives from which to choose that satisfy certain criteria, then there is no ideal or fair way to select among such alternative solutions (or candidates) that are guaranteed to satisfy, say, three people, let alone a group.  Arrow identified the criteria in his Impossibility Theorem (more here).  Subsequently, economist Amartya Sen identified the ‘liberal paradox’ which holds that in the distribution of goods and services within a society/economy there is always conflict between any such distribution policy and individual freedom.  This paradox was explained by Frederic Bastiat in his Triangle of Rights to security, liberty, and property, the weakening of any one immediately weakens the other two.

Dropout Derby - 29feb20

George Rebane

With Steyer's departure we now focus the race on Shortround the Billionaire, Bernie, and Biden.  After Tuesday a lot of people will start asking what Gabbard, Warren, Buttigieg, and Klobuchar are still doing in the race.  We had some contestants omit Steyer from their dropout sequence.

Fair Share Taxing

“Since this is an era when many people are concerned about ‘fairness’ and ‘social justice’, what is your ‘fair share’ of what someone else has worked for?”  Thomas Sowell.

George Rebane

Our socialist and proto-communist politicians have no policies to grow economies and generate wealth.  Instead, they buy their way into office by promising to take money from both Peter and Paul, and give it to their voters.  Trouble with that policy is that most of their voters turn out to be the Peters and Pauls.

The cry across the land, amplified by the lamestream, is that the ‘rich’ don’t pay their “fair share” of taxes.  Not only that, but included is the not-so-hidden message that the rich got theirs by taking what was rightfully yours.  This message works really well with those who can’t or won’t, and who still believe they are entitled to it all.  The Big Lie accompanying all this outrage is that America has an unfair tax system that favors the rich.  However –

Data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development show that the U.S. has the most progressive income tax system in the world, with the top 10% of earners paying 45% of all income taxes, including Social Security and Medicare taxes, compared with only 28% in France and 27% in Sweden. 

Economists Phil Gramm and John Early present the supportive data in their ‘Wealthy Americans Already Pay Their Share’.  The accompanying graphic shows how much the different earning groups pay as a function of their earned income and received transfer payments.

Add to this data that the top 0.1% of households paid a total of 45.1% in federal, state, and local taxes.  So how do we answer the ‘fair share’ question?  And why do we even ask it?   With our progressive tax system and generous transfer payment programs, our ‘poor’ are the envy of the world.  Why?  Because our battered capitalist economy still produces enough wealth to provide that envious QoL to those of us who can’t or won’t - enough wealth to waste on legions of government bureaucrats and ‘educators’ whose jobs (of last resort) primarily entail throwing sand into the gears of enterprise and commerce, and enough wealth to remain the white-hat hegemon of the world by keeping the bad guys at bay while giving entire continents a free ride on their security.

The socialists tell us that none of that is true or needed.  Government is the solution to all social problems, and more government is better.  And we don’t need no stinking military that is only used to create worldwide problems and support our country’s immoral imperialism.  Besides, everyone knows that tax rates don’t affect economic behavior – the filthy rich will keep working just as hard whether we tax ‘em low or tax ‘em high.  So high taxes will not reduce the wealth produced, but only redirect it through the government to more socially just uses.

With this logic, and the firmly held belief that the Laffer Curve is laughable, there really is no reasonable basis for any given level of taxation.  Who really needs to have more than a billion dollars anyway?  So in the final argument the notion of ‘fair share’ is moot.  In the near-term taxes should be raised to a level just short of armed rebellion.  And as the government succeeds in disarming the populace, there will be no need to stop raising taxes and confiscating wealth even when there is blood in the gutters, because that will not be government blood.

But then again you say, that can’t happen in America.

Ruminations – 26feb20 (updated 27feb20)

George Rebane

A coronavirus panic is being vigorously promoted today by the lamestream media in response to their Democrat congresscritter masters who are doing everything they can to somehow blame the whole thing on President Trump, and convince our light thinkers that his administration is doing not enough while leaving the whole country vulnerable to a killer pandemic.  These people with no other believable agenda to their name for November are simply sick.

[27feb20 update]  The fabric of civilization is gossamer thin.  That has been the message to us over the ages and also here over the years.  And as we have 1) become ever more dependent on the comprehensively interconnected ‘grid’ that lets us communicate, travel, shop, get healthcare, secure our communities, …, and 2) become ever more entitled to receive OPM-funded largess from governments, then the breakdown in any part of these complex supportive systems can create a catastrophic ripple of breakdowns.  Both of these factors make our civilization’s support systems brittle.  We are again in the process of getting a lesson in this.  But what should be most disturbing is that we have a political party that aims to make these already tendentiously fragile systems ever more interconnected, centrally controlled, dubiously funded, and therefore more brittle.

‘The Roots of Our Partisan Divide’ are illuminated by Christopher Caldwell, Harvard-educated senior fellow at the Claremont Institute.  He explains how the civil rights laws of 1964 and 1965 started the partisan rip, and how the courts have made these laws into an existential constitution that contends with the one bequeathed by our Founders.  Abetted by progressive judges, unelected bureaucrats took over – “The problem is that when the work of the civil rights legislation was done—when de jure segregation was stopped—these new powers were not suspended or scaled back or reassessed. On the contrary, they intensified.” 

Union columnist Terry McLaughlin wrote ‘Willing to take a risk on the New Way Forward Act?’, a piece of radical leftwing legislation (HR5383) that would, among other atrocities, allow the release of criminal illegal aliens back into our communities.  The Union, in its political correctness and without notifying Ms McLaughlin, changed her original text citing “illegal aliens” into “people living in the country without legal permission”.  Such editing is utter bullshit.  Illegal alien is the correct legal description of non-citizens illegally in the United States.  It is the progressive propaganda machine that seeks to obfuscate that correct label for their less-read share of Americans – in short, promoting a fraud.  Even ‘undocumented immigrant’ continues to promote the leftwing charade, which is today also used by chicken journalists on the Right (e.g. FN).  Few people still remember that immigration is legal entry into a country under a two-party contract, and that’s why ‘illegal alien’ correctly identifies those non-citizens among us illegally.  The Union should stiffen their editorial backbone.

Scattershots – 22feb20 (updated 25feb20)

George Rebane

Surprise! – school costs are projected to double their budgeted income.  Well, not really.  It’s only a surprise to our progressives who either skipped or failed Econ 101.  The 22feb20 Union cites a report by WestEd that projects the coming “silent recession” in our schools (here) This was known to most of us years ago (2008) when its first ignored signs became apparent.  The schools will “likely be running deficits soon because of factors like the rising rate of pensions, special education costs, and rising staff costs, along with the price of health care.”  With state socialism running wild and teachers’ unions sitting in the catbird seat, whoulda thought?  In Nevada County we are holding emergency meetings at the school district “in an attempt to get ahead of the possible (?!) problems.”  And guess what is the big unfunded gorilla in the room – can you spell ‘CalSTRS’?  As usual, no one is discussing cutting the schools’ ridiculous cost structure, but only how best to raise taxes to pay off the new bonds that must be floated to cover the deficits.

The mood of California’s disgruntled Democrats is correctly captured by our beloved liberal cartoonist Bob Crabb.  You see, they already control the state with an electorate of gimmes having voted in the Sacramento super-majorities, and a double dummy governor who’s competing with Bernie for the Time's cover picture of the ‘Socialist of the Year’.  But there’s a bit of northern California that still remains mostly Republican and conservative, and that must not be tolerated to complete a true-Blue, one-party state – any vestige of remaining representation of the knuckle draggers in Sacramento must be purged.  And Mr Crabb is up to promoting that in his cartoon which I filched from the pages of the 22feb20 Union.

The fair share between pay and profits, that is the consuming question for America’s socialists, who, of course, know the answer.  Jon Sindreu in the 22feb20 WSJ gives the issue a workmanlike airing (here).  There he points out that “there has been a lot of attention paid to how much of national income goes to profits instead of workers’ pay. Labor’s share of gross domestic product remained close to a postcrisis low in 2019 amid record corporate earnings, according to the latest U.S. data.”  And the stability between pay and profits during most of the 20th century started tilting toward profits, which predictably has gotten up the dander of our ‘workers, throw off your chains’ leftwing.  A deeper look reveals no untoward imbalance, save that since 1980 competition has forced industries to consolidate, and technology started replacing labor’s share of productivity contributions.  This, of course, has caused labor’s share of GDP to decrease since the remaining jobs are tending to a dumbbell shaped distribution of pay, with the big hump consisting of lower wage ‘commodity level’ jobs.  If we want to maintain and grow our QoL, then start thinking again of systemic unemployment, universal basic income, and perhaps even non-profit service corporations.

[23feb20 update]  One of the Democrat Big Lies is that Russia is backing Trump in 2020.  This not only a lie, but blatant idiocy for anyone to believe such tripe.  We have pointed out how Trump’s walk is what people should focus on, not his public talk about Russia which is firm yet relatively mild-mannered.  For those snuffies unfamiliar with public/private negotiations, this is what you do to maximize your position in deal making – talk softly while wielding a big stick.  As John Hinderaker explains in ‘You Don’t Need a Spy to Know Which Way the Russian Wind Blows’ - "Donald Trump is anathema to the rulers of Russia. Not only has he armed the Ukrainians, he has re-invigorated NATO by insisting that members take an interest in their own defense; stood up to and badly wounded Russia’s key ally, Iran; overseen an expansion and strengthening of American armed forces; and, most important, encouraged fracking and other development of U.S. oil and gas resources, which has kept down the global price of oil. … It is blindingly obvious that the Russians would prefer any Democrat to President Trump. All of the Democrats have promised to limit U.S. production of oil and gas, which no doubt sounds like pure insanity to Putin but is music to his ears. Equally important, they all vow to shrink America’s armed forces and never to use them under any foreseeable circumstances. And they all would pursue a soft line toward Iran." (more here and H/T to correspondent)

[24feb20 update]  There is a Sanders Silver Lining.  What many of us have been saying for years about the true social and governance objectives of the Democratic Party are now visible to all as the curtain has been pulled aside to reveal their true aims for a fundamentally transformed America.  It is clear that communism is the ultimate goal, and proto-communist policies, should Team Bernie et al prevail, are the first steps.  But first, our guns have got to go as the government’s guns come out to make us heel.

[25feb20 update]  Google full-page ad in the 25feb20 WSJ touting their cloud services has the banner – The Home Depot is solving for empowering doers to get more done.  Huh??!

From the immortal Robert Burns “O, wad some Power the giftie gie us/ To see oursels as others see us! …"  - Since George W. Bush I have been writing about the fundamentalist hijacked Republican Party. It is 2020 and the GOP Jihad continues on with the new moniker of the Trump Party. … Leaderless and adrift, the far-right hoards of white Republican religious purists are still trying to purge the country of decency, morality and moderation instilling their brand of anti-abortion and anti-immigration and science denial. … I understand the necessity of an opposition, but the Republicans are completely AWOL, in that regard. The Republican Party is becoming a group of fringe right-wingers lacking the moderation of centrists. Get ready for the Trump-Republican 2020 campaign of lies as they play to the wealthy, religious and conservatives. What a god-awful mess. May they self-destruct.  Ron Lowe, Nevada City (from Letters in the 25feb20 Union)

And in the same vein from Thomas Elias’ ‘California carrying the national economy’ , we learn that instead of all the growing problems the state has been having under decades of Democrat rule with workers and companies leaving, highest taxes/fees/regulations, welfare capital of the nation, illegals and gimmes arriving, and crap-infested cities full of indigent homeless and addicts living in the streets, and … .  All of that is wrong, and California is really “the envy of the nation” as we were told the other day by Governor Goofy Gavin.  Since the state has a couple or three counties that are home to major corporations raking gazillions of revenues from manufactories and server centers all over the world, all is well – better than well, it’s just peachy.  When county GDPs are tallied like that, then it’s easy to see how places like India and China can also have several small concentrations of outfits that produce enormous wealth which doesn’t accrue to the surrounding countryside where people are in dire straits.  Don’t know whether the arch leftwing columnist Elias is a bit teched, but he’s sure betting that his readers are.

Democracy Destroys the Electoral College

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 19 February 2020.  An edited version of this was published in the 7mar20 Union (here).]

The nation’s Left is again demanding that the country should give up its republican roots and become a democracy – something which our Founders warned us against and were careful to avoid when they gave us a constitutional republic, with Ben Franklin’s admonition “… if you can keep it.”  It’s doubtful that those fine points of civics and governance are still taught in our public schools.  What’s happening today in Virginia gives evidence of that.

Now that Democrats completely control what used to be a battleground state, their House of Delegates have “passed a bill that aims to do an end run around the Electoral College.”  When the governor signs it into law, Virginia will become the latest state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.  The compact calls for each member state to award all of its electoral votes to the candidate who gets the most votes in the national election – 50 plus percent will do the job, leaving the other 50 minus percent voiceless in a presidential election.

Virginia ratifying the compact will bring to 209 votes in the Electoral College that will be apportioned by a democratic majority, a compact that has already been enacted into law by 15 states and the District of Columbia, and is pending in all the other states.  When the total ratified reaches 270 out of the total of 538 Electoral College votes, we will have effectively done away with the Electoral College, and will then elect our president by plebiscite.  This major step toward a pure democracy will mark a dangerous milestone in the regress of America’s governance from what the Founders bequeathed us. (more here) and here)

Sandbox - 18feb20

[Well, my proposal in the 12feb20 Scattershots for a new Dem candidate reader participation contest heading into the convention went over like a fart in church.  It would have been fun to see how the perceived fortunes of Super-Tuesday's survivors changed over the next few months.  Oh well, ... sigh.  gjr]

Ruminations – 16feb20 (updated 20feb20)

George Rebane

Bernie will force employers to pay disabled workers the going minimum wage in his “disability rights” platform – according to socialist lights, it’s only fair.  No matter that repeal of Sec 14(c) of the Fair Labor Standards Act will no longer induce employers to fashion jobs for which the (mostly mentally) disabled can join the labor market, and with other workers provide a rewarding service.  And the rank and file Dems don’t understand any of it.

"Germany's experience is typical for bureaucratic climate policies, and it stands in sharp contrast to the American experience. The U.S., though heavily criticized for not signing the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, is curbing emissions today much faster than any country that actually did sign the agreement… U.S. carbon dioxide emissions have hit 30-year lows, even as global emissions have increased by 50% during the same period. And since 2005, natural gas has done more to reduce power sector dioxide emissions than all renewable energy sources combined, according to the Energy Information Administration."  (more here and H/T to correspondent)

Pocahontas has another plan, this one to stamp out foreign and domestic “disinformation” campaigns: punish those who disseminate misleading online posts about elections.  This includes holding responsible online platforms that let their users post such “disinformation”.  What this former Harvard pinhead professor misses is that disinformation campaigns have been a staple of elections for centuries.  Hardly any election has ever been held free of lies, libels, fabrications, mendacities, misrepresentations, fraud, … by opposing sides.  Before the internet there were pamphlets, newspapers, radio, and TV.  Is her sophomoric epiphany one more sign that our electorate has descended another couple of critical thinking rungs?  Thank you unionized public schools.

[17feb20 update]  George Boardman writes a good column (here) in the 17feb20 Union on NC’s economic development.  His review of our recent economic development history makes clear that the county and city governments contribute materially to the county’s slow/no economic growth. His lament, “Where are the jobs that pay a living wage and offer a meaningful career path?” will go on until we attract an educated population which won’t happen until we can offer good schools and desirable commercial amenities.  Our local politicians imposing their opinions on what businesses should be permitted and properly located continues to keep us as a backwater in a state that already has baked in anti-entrepreneurial policies.

[18feb20 update]  Rep Chris Murphy (D-CN) was doing a little foreign policy on the side with Ukraine.  Why he did it is more than a bit convoluted.  But even his own best excuse doesn’t contradict his meddling in America’s foreign policy, which is a clear violation of the old Logan Act that the Dems have been trying to pin on a number of Repubs.  I question the man’s ability to think clearly if he thought pulling a stunt like that would have no consequences.  Who else in his brain trust also advised that the surreptitious visit would be a good idea?

[20feb20 update]  One of the Dems’ big lies was again front and center in last night’s clown car debate – the economy is bad because there has been no wage growth for middle and lower class workers and minorities.  Now as I have mentioned, such lies are consequential because it drives decisions of people who are too lazy or simply are not able to think critically.  Here is what the Fed tells us about wage growth over the years.  The Dems continue to tell consequential lies that totally misrepresent the existential situation in America and around the world.  And their lamestream lackeys ignore, if not reinforce, the entire performance.  Instead, they focus on the make no-never-mind ‘lies’ that Trump spouts in his usual and regrettable braggadocio tweets.

The joys of capitalism.  A small innovative pharmaceutical company has come up with a vaccine for the corona virus in three hours after getting access to its genetic sequence.  The company developed an algorithm that works on such double helixes to find the proper gene to disable that will neutralize the COVID-19 virus.  Inovio Pharmaceuticals is now getting ready to mass produce the vaccine and have it ready for the market possible as soon as this summer.  That’s the kind of innovation free markets invite, and the candidates in the Dems’ clown car want to dismantle.  Remember, their mantra is that ‘you didn’t build that; you didn’t develop that, you didn’t …’ – it was all due to the great collective in the sky.  (more here and H/T to correspondent)

SETI’s Copernican Que (updated 22feb20)

“Where are they?”, Enrico Fermi

George Rebane

Since my previous foray into Fermi’s famous query, I have had occasion to reconsider the numbers that I generated when first applying copernican arguments to the sound of silence experienced by the various Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence efforts that started about the middle of the last century.  My conclusion was that, the albeit the dismal results I introduced on my blog (here) to explain away the SETI experience, these were still too hopeful.  This work definitely made me a graciously tolerated philistine among the dedicated throngs searching the heavens for evidence of ETI.  Unfortunately, what I present in the sequel will only reinforce my reprobate status.

As a result of that first investigation I was nevertheless fortunate and honored to be invited to join the informal group of SETI researchers by Dr Andrew Siemion, director of the Berkeley SETI Research Center at UC Berkeley.  Becoming more familiar with some of the ongoing efforts and literature generated by the hard-working stalwarts of that international cohort of professional astronomers, cosmologists, astro-physicists, …, I was motivated to return to the drawing board for another look at how we may explain the lack of success from so many ‘eyes’ pointed at the heavens for so many years, all collecting reams of data comprising mostly of inter-galactic and inter-stellar noise layered on the ubiquitous hiss of the cosmologic background, always there to remind us of our origins.  And all this from a galaxy that has spawned hundreds of millions of ETI civilizations and, most likely by far, is still teeming with most of these.  So why have we had no contact with them?  This is the perplexing Fermi Paradox.

To answer that question, support for a copernican perspective and approach to SETI were presented in ‘A copernican answers Fermi’.  (For other answers, read this.)  To review some of the salient factors, we again consider that we live in an 13.5G year-old galaxy that formed along with billions of others in that epoch after the Big Bang of 13.8G years ago.  The Milky Way (MW), containing north of 200 billion star systems, gave birth to our sun and its orbiting planets about 5G years ago.  Today, by all counts, we see that the MW is an ordinary galaxy like billions of others, and our sun is a very ordinary G-type main-sequence (G2V) garden variety star.  And its inventory of planets is of the type and with orbits replicated by eleven billion more exoplanets throughout the MW and countless other galaxies.  In short, there is no a priori reason to believe that we are anything special in the universal scheme of things – ergo the copernican perspective.

Interested readers can download a copy of the follow-on study here - Download TN2002-1v200221 .

Sandbox - 13feb20

[When the smoke clears after Super-Tuesday, I wonder how many of the Dems will still be running for president - both Biden and Warren are candidates for the dear departed.  Whoulda thought?  And how will Team Pelosi put a bullet in Bernie's candidacy?  gjr]

Scattershots – 12feb20 (updated 14feb20)

George Rebane

New Dem candidates contest.  I’m considering starting a new contest after the 3mar20 Super-Tuesday to predict/pick the Democratic Party presidential nominee.  The line-up would consist of the 3mar20 surviving candidates and ‘Other’.  Each Friday the contestants, who can enter at any time until 10 July (the last Friday before the Dem convention scheduled for 13-16 July), divide up 100 quatloos among the line-up and post them as comments under the appropriate contest status posting.  I will then update and post a tally of the total bet by each contestant for each candidate, and a tally of the candidates’ totals to date.  The winner will be declared on 16 July 2020, and determined by a pari-mutuel algorithm wherein the correct picking contestants divide up the total quatloos bet on a pro-rata basis on how much each bet on the Democratic nominee for president.  The prescient contestant garnering the most quatloos wins.  In the interval we will see how the candidates and the contestants fare as the convention draws nigh. Thoughts?

National Conservatism held its second conference in Rome on 4 February 2020. (more here)  According to its leading lights, such as co-founder Christopher DeMuth, “National Conservatism is a movement of public figures, journalists, scholars, and students who understand that the past and future of conservatism are inextricably tied to the idea of the nation, to the principle of national independence, and to the revival of the unique national traditions that alone have the power to bind a people together and bring about their flourishing.”  Its antagonists are “hegemonic progressives” who “seek to quarantine religious observance, traditional culture, bourgeois social norms and the family itself.” (more here)  This conference launched a fearsome counter essay, ‘This Is How Reaganism and Thatcherism End’ by Anne Applebaum in the arch-Left chronicle The Atlantic which sees national conservatism as a project for ideological troglodytes who do not understand the current of history.  Her accusations are against named people and institutions who are allegedly ready to do wrongs, but have yet to do so – they are simply judged as being pre-guilty and treated accordingly by “enlightenment rational liberals”, humanity’s desiderata.  To such progressives, national conservatism is “the creation of a new, kleptocratic authoritarian right that chips away at the institutions preserving democracy.”  Sounds like there’s enough here to give the movement a more thorough look.

Michael Bloomberg is an ideological chameleon and a moral cretin.  His latest sin is his confession of ‘racism’ in how he wrongly reduced NYC’s crime rate with his ‘Stop, Question, and Frisk’ program which saved thousands of black and Hispanic lives during the tenure of that policy practiced on the streets by police.  Why racist?  Well, because 95+% of the violent criminals were minorities, and were therefore the successful targets of SQF.  That, along with black lives matter, makes no never mind.  It’s the optics and politics that matter in proper progressive policies.  And such ‘racism’ to the light-thinkers, those who perennially return Democrats to urban administrations, is unacceptable enough to warrant going back to former levels of mayhem and murder.  Realizing his political priorities, Bloomberg promised never to do that again.  Another successful blow for social justice. (more here and here)

[13feb20 update]  Snowflakes melting in the workplace.  As expected, the sheltered generation is starting to buckle their knees in the realworld after having been lavishly sheltered through childhood and school, learning that they were the entitled class destined for a government guaranteed, happy and fulfilling life in a land where merit is optional, and possibly discriminatory.  ‘Mental Health Requests Strain Employers’ (13feb WSJ) reports that “managers and younger employees are struggling to adapt as a generation of people with higher rates of reported mental illness enter the workforce.  Many of these new workers are coming to offices from colleges and high schools where they received accommodations, such as extra time to take tests or complete assignments—in some cases from elementary school onward. They are confronting a world of work that operates under different legal standards and less-flexible pressures and deadlines.  Symptoms related to mental illnesses covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act—such as severe anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder—can be ambiguous, unpredictable, highly individualized and often invisible. That makes accommodating these disabilities one of the more difficult areas for employers, according to employment attorneys and disability experts.”  And then there’s technology-driven systemic unemployment.  Oi geweh!

Message to our CIC - Mr President, listen to your AG Barr and do us all a favor - your tweets are accomplishing what the Dems could never do on their own.  So please, shut the fuck up!!!

[14feb20 update]  The blindered grassroots of the Left continue to demonstrate that they know not where their party is leading them and our country.  The distance from Sanders, AOC, Warren, … to communism is a stone’s throw, as all of them openly embrace and tout socialism.  Today Democratic Party nabobs and its national leadership all acknowledge and fear the party’s one leftward lurch too far – some already call some of their clown car candidates communists.  However, if these foothills are representative, then our local looney lefties have no clue about all this, and continue to firmly believe that identifying the Dems’ alarming road to communism is only a “red herring” floated by “rabid Trumpists” as part of their “the sky is falling” alarums as “fake news”.  Ample confirmation of such ignorance is available from our comment streams - e.g. in the 14feb20 Sandbox.  Perhaps these locals should inform Team Nancy that all is well with the clown car, so that she and hers will stop polluting the public airwaves with their daily warnings of imminent collapse in November.  Still makes you wonder from where these people get their news.

Dropout Derby - 11feb20 (updated)

George Rebane

Competition is getting tough.  The Estonian Fox is soaring, and our dear departed Russ has pulled into second place by nailing Yang's dropout.  Anyone know what Bennet is still doing in the race?  [Update]  Apparently Bennet couldn't answer that question either, so he also bailed today.  The updated graphics are below.

 

GDP and Earth’s Temperature (updated 9feb20)

George Rebane

Most well-read people look at Gross Domestic Product as the gold standard of our economy’s performance.  And all know that GDP growth will cure almost all the ills we still see in the economy.  But when we take a deeper look at how the GDP statistic is concocted, we discover that it’s really a rat’s nest of formulas and calculations and selective capture of dubiously reliable data, that then pops out a number which, more often than not, must be rejiggered in a couple of months to give a new and improved version of itself.

We do have our own facts (updated 7feb20)

"A house divided against itself cannot stand." A. Lincoln

George Rebane

[This is the addended and updated transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 5 February 2020.]

The nationally prominent public figure and liberal Daniel Patrick Moynihan gave us the well-known shibboleth that "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts."  Moynihan was a man of many talents, serving as adviser to several presidents of both parties, Harvard college professor, ambassador to India and the UN, and as a four-term senator from New York.  He died in 2003, a bit too early to witness the rejection and even falsification of what at first reading seems like an eminently reasonable and widely applicable statement.

Today in 2020 we have long acknowledged and adopted the existence of at least two sets of facts, held by each side of a deeply polarized country.  That we do not agree on the facts which support our stands on public policies is the prime reason why we can no longer emulate that great Texas politician and 36th US president Lyndon Johnson, when he would put his big arm around an uncompromising opponent’s shoulder and utter the biblical invitation from Isaiah to “Come now, let us reason together.”  But the prerequisite for reasoning together is to have some common ground that usually begins by accepting some common collection of critical facts.

They’re Off!

George Rebane

President Trump delivered his best speech ever giving the nation its State of the Union.  He ticked off an impressive list of accomplishments that benefitted every corner and population segment of the country.  He did a masterful job in selecting and managing the events in the gallery that honored and represented the many deserving.  And there was nothing nasty in his words, presented themes, and visions for America’s future.  All this while the Democrats sat like sore pustules in their seats denying the uncomfortable truths of accomplishments while they have spent their energies in trying every sleazy trick in the book to bring this president down simply because he beat their Chosen One.

But the prize and truly historical moment of disrespect came at the end of the speech when Speaker Nancy Pelosi, sitting behind the President, visibly made a show of tearing in half her copy of the speech and throwing the pieces on her desk in full view of the American public.  With that Great Divide play she bet the ranch that Americans see their country and future through the jaundiced eyes of the radical left progressives.  To my knowledge, no American political leader has publicly so vehemently and visibly dissed another political leader in the history of our Republic.  I believe she will live to rue the day in the coming months, because we will see that planned and egregious tantrum over and over again as the election approaches.

The 2020 election season officially started tonight.

Sandbox - 2feb20

[Lots and lots to talk about as the Dems start their post-acquittal assault on President Trump.  Go for it, I have my usual $100 bet with my east coast pal, so I'm gonna watch the Super Bowl.  gjr]

Dropout Derby - 31jan20

George Rebane

Well, that sly ol' Estonian Fox completely outperformed this not so sly ol' Estonian fox by almost nailing Delaney's departure.  Even my dear departed pal Russ is outdoing foolish me; I thought the sumbich would drop out immediately after he sobered up from his announcement party - what has he been thinking (or drinking)?

Meanwhile back at the Senate

George Rebane

In the affairs of Man ignorance trumps plenty every time.

After hearing the Republicans expose all the exculpatory evidence the Dems withheld, their position now is 1) well OK, maybe our evidence against Trump is really not all that “overwhelming”, but 2) the real overwhelming evidence exists and will come out if we can continue the investigation and hear from our list of witnesses.  The president’s defense team’s position is 1) let’s use that overwhelming evidence of yours that took three years to develop, then 2) there’s no need to continue this investigation in the Senate, but if required, we have our own list of witnesses to be called.  Wanna play?

The lamestream media coverage has been all one-sided.  Last week they hung on every word from Schiff, Nadler, et al as they spun out their allegations, presumptions, beliefs, … without a shred of evidence that any of it constituted “high crimes and misdemeanors” or for that matter, any acts historically unique to this president in carrying out his duties.  When the Republican defense took the podium, the major lamestream outlets gave those arguments short shrift, and focused entirely on their new great hope, the presumed testimony of former national security adviser John Bolton.  (Attentive readers know that FN is the only voice of balance and reason against the phalanx of leftwing propaganda continually spewed by ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and MSNBC.  National news is not a level playing field.)

To give credit where due, the lamestream has perfectly performed as the public communications arm of Team Schiff and his House managers.  Nowhere do they inform their viewers that it was not Donald Trump but Joe Biden who pulled off the quid pro quo with Ukraine by threatening to withhold aid if they did not immediately (within six hours) fire the prosecutor investigating Ukraine’s Burisma on whose board sat energy naïf Hunter Biden raking in cartloads of cash.  That Obama-launched corruption was a ripe target for investigation to understand how our aid monies were spent.  But that was a politically incorrect endeavor, and therefore not considered by anyone outside the administration, most certainly not by Team Schiff.

Circling back to John Bolton, it interests me no end to follow the career of the former Trump staffer after he publishes his ‘kiss and tell’ memoir that claims to out at a most inconvenient time the confidential Oval Office conversations between him and the president of the United States, the man he was sworn to serve in a professional manner.  Who in hell would now engage Bolton in any kind of consulting or advisory capacity knowing that he has demonstrably defected in positions that demand confidence and trust?

Scattershots – 28jan20 (updated 2feb20)

George Rebane

Mizzou is tracking student class attendance in hopes of increasing academic standards.  This to me is mind boggling.  What kind of majors are today’s students pursuing that allows them to pass and graduate with spotty or no class attendance??  Don’t answer that.  This report on FN is no doubt unique; can’t see any lamestream outlet admitting to this kind of woke academics for whatever generation is now going through the progressive halls of ivy.  Another confirming factor as to why they come out dumb and compliant.  In my course of study, and I’m a lifetime student, I could not conceive of cutting class without getting detailed notes of the lecture and still expect to do well in the course.  None of the stuff that any of us studied in the bygone era could you skate to a decent grade by just cramming for the mid-term and final from some course text.  Every course had something unique (usually new research results) contributed by the professor that went beyond the text, and you could bet the ranch that one or more exam questions would require mastery of that special approach or technique.  The University of Missouri is now desperately tracking the whereabouts of students during their class hours in order to encourage regular class attendance.  What kind of majors are these pinheads pursuing?!

[29jan20 update] Trump’s Israeli/Palestine peace plan calls for a two-state solution.  The Palestinians are rejecting it on the basis of their not getting an authentic sovereign nation-state out of the deal.  Israel will not permit the new Palestine to have a military and the plan calls for the disarming of Hamas and Hezbollah.  Also Israel will have oversight of Palestine’s foreign policy and maintain control of a narrow band of territory immediately contiguous to its borders.  Given past history, the plan looks reasonable including its provision for a transportation tunnel connecting Gaza to the West Bank.  To me the sticking point in all these attempts has been the lack of an economic incentive for Palestinian Arabs to trade complete autonomy for riches.  For years I have argued that any proposed solution include making Gaza into a freeport.  Freeports come in various legal and operational configurations, but their main function is to cut red tape and taxes/fees so as to enable facile and free movement of goods between nations.  Gaza is conveniently located near the Mediterranean end of the Suez Canal, at one of the world’s trade crossroads.  Rebane Doctrine for world peace and prosperity calls for building a large harbor at Gaza (there are gazillions of tons of dirt, rocks, and sand nearby), and making that strip of land a cash cow for the Palestinian people.

Wanna see the turd in the pipe to progress in California?  The California Environmental Quality Act is one of the most egregious pieces of legislation that has proscribed property rights, free enterprise, liberty and progress in general in California.  All of it brought to you by the progressive socialists already successful in reducing California as one of the least desirable states in which working people, entrepreneurs, and job creators would want to put down roots.  Each successive study shows more self-reliant people leaving the state while the gimmes are pouring in.  Here's one of the more significant hurtles you have to clear if you want to build anything in California.

[30jan20 update]  ‘Civilization is History at Yale’ convincingly argues art critic and commentator Roger Kimball.  The university is drastically and dramatically changing its decades-long curriculum on western civilization that now has focused on the arts.  The claim of the progressive professors is that “great art is too white, straight, European and male”, so it’ll have to give way to the latest socialist cum communist agitprop.  Instead, as reported in the Yale Daily News, art history will now be taught from a wider perspective that emphasizes “Globalism, gender, class, race, capitalism, (and art’s) relationship with climate change will be a key theme.”  Given the mind-bending Orwellian tack already firmly ensconced in our public school curricula, it’s not a big leap to consider that our universities are now graduating people who embrace values and purposes that we used to connect with the Manchurian Candidate of yore.  And they are emerging by the thousands to begin careers in public institutions, politics, news media, education, and the entertainment industry.  'Lux et veritas' indeed.

[2feb20 update] ‘The Democrats May Have Lost – But They’re Still Smarter than You’ is a report on some analyses on the matter by Clarice Feldman in 2feb20 American Thinker.  Longtime readers know that our liberal commenters have touted their intellectual acumen viz us knuckle-dragging conservetarians et al.  Well, this article presents the opposite view, which “should not be too surprising. On the 22 General Surveys using the verbal ability scale since 1974, for every single one, conservative Republicans score significantly higher than the rest of the public combined. As for Republicans overall, they score significantly higher in verbal ability than democrats in all five decades, including the 2010’s combined. … In 1996, the GSS employed another module lifted from a standard 1Q test, one testing analogical reasoning. Again Republicans and conservative Republicans in 1996 performed significantly better on analogical reasoning than the rest of the public and significantly better than Democrats.”

Sandbox - 23jan20

[Sure would like to hear some candidate preferences from our leftwing readers.  Seems that no one here actually has a favorite whose creds they would put on display and defend.  Probably the safest route to avoid embarrassment ;-)  gjr]

On Western Civilization

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 22 January 2020.]

Across the globe western civilization is under an historic and relentless assault.  Today most countries – developed and developing – have adopted and practice many fortuitous aspects of western civilization with attributes and social norms developed in the west.  Nevertheless, the world’s leftwing institutions, in their work toward universal collectivization, see the stubborn survival of western culture, along with its mores and values, as the main impediment to achieving one-world governance of a homogenized global population.

Today the unifying objectives for this globalization effort are summarized in the United Nation’s Agenda 2030 (formerly known as Agenda 21).  This coherent effort is strongly denied, and identified as a fake news conspiracy by the progressive press.  You can make up your own mind on this by reading the UN’s globalization objectives, and comparing them to the public policies adopted and proposed by the Left’s political parties in the West.

When we examine the contributions of western civilization to humanity, we are overwhelmed by how the adoption of its tenets and practices dramatically increased standards of living, survival rates, and the quality of life across the globe.  It was western culture that was key to the ending of slavery worldwide, increasing literacy rates and access to education, emancipating women, and eradicating starvation along with many of our dreaded diseases. (more here)

Harvard historian and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Niall Ferguson, identifies key contributions of western civilization that include the notion of competition, the scientific revolution, property rights, modern science-based medicine, consumer societies, and the win-win rewards of the work ethic.  These are sometimes referred to as western civilization’s “killer apps”. (more here and here)

Ferguson points out that these apps “are all interrelated to developments that occurred concurrently in the West. Property rights and the work ethic of the West rise directly from Christianity. They stem from a respect for the person and their property, a rejection of corruption (theft via bribes to those in power), and respect for the laborer. Christianity isn't as pro-business as Judaism, but the Christian West thrived after it gained respect for business and allowed reasonable interest on debt. That led to consumer society, reinforced by the work ethic.

The scientific revolution wasn't possible before Christianity reformed to become less fundamentalist, though the belief that God was rational and study was morally acceptable, was only possible in the Christian world. In the Islamic world, to question Allah is to risk being murdered for blasphemy, (which explains) why science stalled in the Muslim world once the religion became a majority faith in any area. In Chinese society, the belief that everything is part of a complex, inseparable whole prevented development of math-based scientific laws. Only Christian society, that both permitted science beyond mere observation and belief you COULD develop such rules without risking your safety, explains why the West alone had a scientific revolution. And that led directly to modern medicine.”

The value and success of these so-called killer apps became apparent wherever their European and American practitioners showed how they worked.  As a result, over the last century they were quickly adopted by people of all cultures who understood them.  And as Ferguson points out, “The rapid rise of Singapore, Japan and South Korea after adopting these "killer apps" of prosperity show you don't have to be Christian or of a Christian derived culture to benefit from them.”  But today, Ferguson points out, Western predominance is waning since the world ‘downloaded’ and now uses these killer apps, “while the West has literally lost faith in itself.”

As a struggling Christian, I remain undeniably a child, student, and defender of Western Civilization.  Long time listeners to these commentaries know I am also a conservetarian, and view the world through the lenses of one who has survived both the catastrophic events of Stalin’s communism and Hitler’s Nazism. (more here) To me, these collectivist ideologies and their practice are not merely intellectual theories about how to organize society.  To millions of us they were existential, we experienced them in their unmediated raw form.  These experiences shaped me, and today in these commentaries, they shape my words in defense of the West.

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 – 21jan20 (updated 27jan20)

George Rebane

RL Crabb is prominent in today’s (21jan20) Union lambasting AB5, the latest socialist outrage from Sacramento. (more here)  This piece of dreadful anti-work legislation has finally caught enough of our liberal artsy-fartsy crowd to also get them squawking – less known, AB5 impacts at least as many of California's high-tech STEM consultants and freelancers.  Our cartoonist friend Bob Crabb’s distress (here) puts paid on what most of us have known about his true ideological colors – for shur he ain’t no middle-roader.  Regardless of his ire against the state’s Democrats – it’s akin to my ire against the state’s Republicans, but I don’t pretend to be a mid-roader – he cannot countenance the other side, even in the face of AB5.  “I also do not agree with those who want to steer clear of partisan politics. This bill is 100% Democrat. It was written by an assemblywoman who curses like a sailor and dismisses us as whiners who are too dense to understand how fortunate we are to have her party looking out for our well-being.  It passed on a straight party line vote. It was signed by a governor who just dedicated millions of dollars to enforcing it.  California Democrats believe they have little to fear from the riffraff at the bottom tier of workers. We are, after all, musicians, journalists, community theaters, and cartoonists. What are we going to do? Vote for Republicans? Ha ha ha!”  As you can see, regardless of the years of collectivist crap flowing from our Democrat legislature, Bob would not change his vote to give us bottom tier riffraff a chance to sell our services as we choose – a few eggs have yet to be cracked and sacrifices have to be made.

California leavin’ should be the title of a new musical lament for all those folks heading out of state.  But there’s enough of us disgruntled Golden Staters to take and remake the places where we land and put down new stakes.  An example is Star, Idaho, a small town near where one of our dear departed California expats and RR readers now lives.  Star’s population has more than doubled in the last ten years as couples like JT and Mary Jo Turnipseed (their real name, honest!) left SoCal and moved in to experience small town living at its best.  Well, no more.  “Now Star is grappling with some of the same problems the Turnipseeds left California to escape. The town’s main drag, where ranchers once drove their cattle, is clogged with traffic during rush-hour commutes. Sprawling subdivisions have sprouted up around farmland, as have new chain stores. The median home price has more than doubled to nearly $400,000 since 2010.” (more here)  The most amazing thing to me is still the utter blindness of our states overwhelming population of leftwing loonies who deny that any of this exodus is going on.  It mirrors exactly their grossly distorted perception of the realworld which is their daily drink from the lamestream.  For them, another sip of that Kool-Aid, and all’s right with the world.

The Harvard Reorganization Plan

George Rebane

Harvard has a plan to deconstruct our republic and rebuild it in their own image.  To launch a national dialogue on this initiative, the university’s prestigious law school has published ‘Pack the Union: A Proposal to Admit New States for the Purpose of Amending the Constitution to Ensure Equal Representation’ which we shall here call the Harvard Reorganization Plan (HRP).  For those unfamiliar, Harvard University is today perhaps the best endowed ($40.9B as of FY2019) premier academe of all things ideologically progressive and the fount of America’s leftwing thought.  For our liberals it is the mother temple of correct forward thinking – as declared in its motto ‘Veritas’, the institution publishes its works on stone tablets.

In the HRP, on their most recently issued tablet, their legal academics make an extensive and well-documented case for yet the most fundamental transformation, if not the complete abrogation, of what has been the United States of America.  This is a bottom up plan that will rip out by the roots our “republic, if you can keep it.”  The HRP proposes a devilishly convoluted route to replace our present form of governance with a pure democracy; using the leaks, holes, and soft-points of our otherwise carefully constructed Constitution to first create a minimum of 96 solidly leftwing new states out of what is now the District of Columbia – since DC is federal territory, this will require only a simple majority in the Senate to achieve.  Then with a newly constituted hard-Left Congress, the Constitution will be pro forma amended beyond recognition so that the result is the birth of a new United Socialist States of America (USSA).

On its first reading, HRP puts forward some very persuasive arguments for the founding of a new USSA.  But it is persuasive in a blindered and blinding manner.  And all of these arguments pivot on the siren song of “equal representation” - ‘one person, one vote’ - to be applied in a reorganized America to as many public policy decisions as possible.  The promise here is replicating the California template wherein cowardly politicians, rather than assume political risk and vote openly in the legislature, will throw the decision to a manipulable electorate so that the desired result can be credited to ‘the peehpul’.   Today the whole nation can see the fruits of that kind of a legislative dodge.

The purpose of this commentary is to invite readers to collect in one place their thoughts on the recommendations in the HRP and other similar plans that call for changing our democratic republic into a democracy.  In the sequel I list some numbered assertions, some of which I offer axiomatically, others as propositions, and perhaps a few as provable theorems.

1. The natural world (universe) has evolved over the billions of years to be an unequal, lumpy, more-here-than-there, highly discriminating, and therefore marvelously complex place that gave rise to equally unequal critters like Homo Sapiens Sapiens.
2. We are each identifiably unique in almost every dimension of being and doing that we can imagine. Therefore, if thrown into the same cauldron, we sort ourselves out very quickly as to those who can and will do what is the best, most, and/or quickest.  And we observe this as an attribute we share with all the more highly developed animals – the smarter the critter, the more differentiable it is from its fellows.
3. The belief in and the enforcement of unexamined and unqualified equality is unnatural, and gives rise to societies that cannot generate the wealth required to maintain a beneficial quality of life for any of its members, including the controlling elites.
4. Humans don’t know how to purposely manage large-scale, complex systems affected by random influences. While we can impact their serendipitous responses, we cannot beneficially control their behavior.  Mankind’s attempt to do so has always resulted in large-scale misery that precedes tragedy.  Central control of such systems requires much more knowledge than we have been able to assemble.  The eternal hubris of the Left is to ignore and/or deny this truth.
5. Nature’s answer to this conundrum is to distribute knowledge and control to the lowest levels (of agency found) in large systems. The leaf knows neither the nature nor purpose of the tree, and needs know neither to do a good job as a leaf, paying attention only to its immediate environment.  Even Rousseau and Marx caught a whiff of such an Elysian state of being in their philosophies.
6. Our Founders were astute students of human nature. They knew the histories of failed democracies, and to a man, sought to shield their new nation from a similar short-sighted fate.  Hence, the immortal words of Ben Franklin when asked what the Constitutional Convention had wrought – ‘A republic if you can keep it’, clearly indicating that future generations’ ability to sustain their bequest was to be western civilization’s Great Experiment of governance.
7. No reasonable person would argue that our Constitution is the perfect foundational document for a republic. Its flaws were already recognized when it was still being hammered on the anvil.  That’s why the Constitution was issued with built-in mechanisms by which it could be amended in a deliberate and orderly manner as new times would give rise to new values and thinking.  There is nothing deliberate or orderly in the manner HRP calls for rewriting the Constitution.
8. Bryan Caplan’s The Myth of the Rational Voter – Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies (2007) captured and quantified the recent experience in sustaining our Republic subjected to the vicissitudes of an electorate composed overwhelmingly of those who won’t or can’t grasp the issues about which they must choose. The results of this monumental study would not have surprised our Founders.
9. I submit that, were the measures outlined in the HRP to be initiated by the next Democrat controlled Congress, there would arise a spontaneous nationwide armed resistance to ‘save the Constitution’ and maintain the status quo. In short, reasoned national dialogue would break down in a similar manner experienced during the years before the War Between the States.

More later, based on our prolific and deep-thinking readers, and as other thoughts will undoubtedly arise in the fullness of time, I will add them to the list with attribution.

The Advent of Government's Mega-overreach

George Rebane

Those who pay attention were made aware that Sacramento is next preparing a bill that would tax companies doing business in California on the basis of the difference between their CEO and median worker pay. (more here)  Portland already passed such a tax regulation last year.  Now you may ask, what business is it of government, or any non-owner of a private company, as to what should be their pay scale.  What’s the reasonable basis for government to reach into a company’s operating policy and impose punitive measures if it doesn’t do what politicians and government bureaucrats dictate?  Actually, there is no reasonable basis for this, nor need there be as long as government threatens the use of their gun.

What should concern all of us right-leaners is what comes next if the court challenges to this new super-stupid law fail.  There is nothing then to stop government from constructively appropriating private corporations – first slowly, then rampantly - by extending their operational dicta to everything from how many products of what kind companies should make, how much of a ‘fair market’ price they should charge for them, what should be the pay for specific jobs, …, the list is endless once this tax regimen is accepted.  Companies would still bear the full measure of risk for such operating policies enforced from on high.  Such a mega-overreach of private businesses is exactly what Hitler did in the 1930s to extend the cold hand of national socialism over Germany.  (Our already left-leaning media didn’t then know how to report that because Stalinist communism had already appropriated all production in the USSR.)

The likelihood of this scenario being the actual death knell of open market capitalism in America is heightened by the lack of involvement and critical thinking skills of our electorate.  And here I’m not talking about those of today’s hard-leftists (like those who frequent RR comment streams); what should concern us all are those millions of mid-roaders and independents now inured to years of lamestream propaganda – those whose socio-political ideology is at best a soft mush that can be re/shaped by the most recent socialist slogan.

AB5 is a related super-stupid California law that has become the legislative analogue of swiss cheese given all the exclusions that it is in the process of incorporating.  We covered its introduction in ‘California’s latest dumb to dumber’.  And to remind readers that stupid governance in California is not restricted to any one sector, we brought SB419 to readers’ attention in ‘SB419 – Stupid becomes stupider’.  Ms Terry McLaughlin in the 16jan20 Union (here) gives a more complete treatment of the effects of AB5 since its passage.  I could go on to also review the impact of SB50 on local control of planning and restrictions on rent increases, but there's enough here to again communicate the ongoing disaster that is Sacramento.

It will be most interesting to read the leftwing's apologetics for all this insanity in California, because we know they are true believers in whatever comes out of Sacramento (fashioned in their image), even if they don’t have the ability to present a rational defense of their beliefs.