Rebane's Ruminations

Kamalanomics = Bidenomics on steroids

[This piece was published in the op-ed section of the 4sep24 Union as one of their Other Voices columns (here).]

George Rebane

Since ‘smarts’ and ‘poor’ don’t always correlate well, the financially burdened will again suffer the most if and when Kamalanomics kicks in and amplifies the terrible mistakes of Bidenomics.  From the Democrats’ published record Kamalanomics is a socialist-ingrained misinterpretation of economics that views wealth creation as a zero sum game in which businesses, entrepreneurs, and the wealthy are characterized as “corporate monopolists” and “oligarchs” – in short, they only take money from the middle and lower income classes which must then be forcefully redistributed by government.

As President Obama assured the country’s successful entrepreneurs who do create wealth and provide jobs for the rest of us, “if you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that.”  For our progressives it is always the wise and munificent hand of government that actually does the business building and job creation.  Absent government intervention, to our leftwing all else is “trickle-down economics” where some wealth eventually and grudgingly dribbles down an uneven playing field to those less fortunate.  And, of course, the playing field must then be continuously leveled to “grow the middle class out” through still more laws, regulations, fees and higher taxes on the wealth creators to insure that the “greedy billionaires” and “well-heeled” pay their “fair share” in amounts known only to government bureaucrats.  The inevitable result is that everyone’s cost of living goes up and quality of life diminishes.  Check the government data on the impact of Bidenomics over the last 3.5 years.

The exact opposite happened under President Trump according to the Dept of Commerce and IRS.  His deregulation measures and tax cuts resulted in very low inflation and gave rise to 70% faster real wage growth that specifically benefitted our Hispanics and blacks as compared to Obama’s eight years of government-shackled historically slow growth.  However, during Democrat administrations the prime beneficiaries of job growth are new legions of government workers who in the large add sand into the gears of the nation’s commerce and GDP growth.  Biden’s claimed recent creation of 15 million jobs overwhelmingly consists of government hires and those of the inevitable recovery from rebounding COVID job shutdowns.

Now on the road to “happiness and joy” President Harris promises to control inflation under Kamalanomics through policies such as:

• National price controls on goods and services that inevitably result in shortages, distribution disruptions, and lower quality goods and services;
• Nationalized (single payer) healthcare – unsustainable wherever practiced while reducing access and services;
• A 66% increase in corporate taxes always paid for by customers through higher prices and by workers with lower wage gains;
• Capital gains tax will increase to income tax levels (39%+) that will inhibit and distort America’s investment landscape;
• Destruction of small businesses by taxing owners for unrealized capital gains – cash they don’t have and to get they must liquidate their businesses;
• Digitizing the dollar (falsely promoted as “crypto currency”) so that our money’s future as a store of value, medium of exchange, and unit of account will be strictly monitored and controlled by government diktat and the Federal Reserve. (Kiss gold ownership goodbye.)  For all intents and purposes private property will then be no more (recall that you own something ONLY to the extent that you can dispose of it as you wish).

Liberals don’t understand how human (e.g. investor) behavior is impacted through reducing reward while increasing and/or maintaining risk.  They believe that tax rates don’t impact risk taking.  Progressives demonstrate daily that they have no idea about the sources and levels of risk encountered in starting a business.  Moreover, liberals have no inkling that increasing taxes from their already current highs will actually decrease government revenues – Democrats believe that simply imposing higher tax rates on the private sector will automatically bring in more money.  And that lowering taxes (yes, even on the ’rich’) have never resulted in higher government revenues or increasing our quality of life.

In sum, we have already been told enough about the kind of democracy and freedom that Democrats controlling Congress and the Executive will deliver under Kamalanomics – just look at the countries with all-encompassing autocratic central governments.

STEM education and careers – not for everyone

George Rebane

Our socially destructive culture has long done a number on students with the extraordinary capacity to study and make it in STEM careers.  Part of the socialist agenda for the US is to impress in the population a belief that we are fundamentally all equal, with all of us capable of anything as long as the state suppresses the bad angels of discrimination with which we, especially the whites, are burdened.  And to accomplish this we need to make sure that Billy and Jill grow up in an environment of mirror-fogging equity instead of merit-based equal opportunity in which today DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) is the chosen form of politically acceptable social environment.

Unfortunately, the realworld is fashioned on quite a different landscape where our capacities have developed differentially.  Today diversity is recognized, but in a highly qualified manner and under precisely and politically prescribed circumstances.  Diversity that leads to differential capacities to perform, especially in the cognitive areas, is not only rejected but also proscribed in some places by laws that may lead to incarceration.  Again, science confirms that in almost all dimensions that describe us we are created unique and develop unequally, and in some dimensions these differences are systemic and cannot be overcome by bending the twig according to the dictates of DEI.  

Nationally recognized scholar and political scientist, Harvard/MIT educated Dr Charles Murray, has written an illuminating essay about the extraordinary and special requirements for success in STEM education and subsequent careers.  His ‘The Roots of STEM Excellence - Finding and developing one of our rarest and most precious human resources is a paramount goal.’ here in the 30aug24 WSJ will now be vilified by all the usual leftwing suspects bent on reducing America into a second-world country.  In this piece he continues reporting on research that established the human diversities we reported on in his previous work Facing Reality: Two Truths about Race in America (2021) which was equally attacked and rejected by the Left. (more here)  (I wrote a Union column on it at the time which could not be printed for reasons its then publisher took great pains to explain to me over one of our lunches.)

The basic thesis Murray presents is that success in STEM requires cognitive abilities that are relatively very uncommon.  The cognitive abilities demanded are present in only the top 0.01% or one in 10,000 people – it’s just the way the cognitive cookie crumbles.  The bottom line is that just being dedicated and working hard will not cut it as it does for almost all other professional pursuits.  It’s the equivalent of not being able to make it in the NBA if you’re short or in the NFL if you’re skinny and slow.  Not everyone has what it takes to make it in any desired career – the playing field is not level, and it was ever thus.  This is diametrically contra to what is told to our K-12 students in progressive public schools.

To nail the point and outline the problem, I will quote some paragraphs from the cited essay by Charles Murray.

The task is to identify those with STEM talent when they are young. The good news is that standardized tests expressly designed to measure cognitive ability are an efficient way to do so. They are accurate, inexpensive, resistant to coaching and demonstrably unbiased against minorities, women or the poor. Those conclusions about the best cognitive tests are among the most exhaustively examined and replicated findings in all social science.

The bad news is that admissions offices of elite universities ignore this evidence. They use “holistic” admissions algorithms that treat tested cognitive ability as just one of many desirable traits. That isn’t necessarily an educational disaster for the next generation of brilliant performers in the social sciences, humanities and nonacademic majors. They can develop their potential in an ordinary college or even without college. The STEM fields are different, for two reasons.

First, the raw cognitive demands are greater in STEM than other disciplines. People who are merely in the top few percentiles of overall cognitive ability don’t face insuperable obstacles in rising to the top of non-STEM fields given enough determination and hard work. Nothing in their college courses is impossible for them to learn if they try hard enough. That’s not true in STEM. Much of the advanced math required for performance at the top of STEM fields is literally impossible to learn for anyone without math ability deep into the top percentile. Determination and hard work can’t compensate.

The Kamala interview that wasn’t

George Rebane

Last night CNN’s prerecorded 18-minute interview with Kamala Harris, with attendant training wheels Walz, was a giant nothing-burger – a disappointment but not a surprise.  While Kamala was asked some decent questions, she predictably dodged all of them as did her partner in perfidy.  What galled me the most was how she was allowed to bullshit her way out of the question about her manifold and desperate flip-flops on policies she championed in 2019 and her new ones with which she now apes Trump.

Her response to this line of questioning by Dana Bash was that “My values have not changed.”  And I almost gagged when Bash allowed her to skate with that.  Bash’s next question should immediately have been, ‘That may be, but the whole country has witnessed you doing 180s on your previously championed policies, and it will be your policies and not some ephemeral values that will impact the American people.  On what new evidence did you base your policy pirouettes?’ – or something in that vein.  Kamala’s lame answer again confirmed the low opinion that Democrats have of their loyal, yet demonstrably and reliably ignorant, constituencies who regularly swallow such answers with nary a qualm.

This brings me to my general complaint about the dismal state of today’s journalism that primarily includes the conservative media like Fox News.  Starting with lead political anchor Bret Baier, none of them are either smart or quick enough to follow up Democrats’ stated allegations about Republicans, wrong-headed realities, etc with ‘Sir, you’ve just stated an unsubstantiated allegation to my question ‘On what did you base your claim that …?’.  Please tell us again on what evidence do you base this and similar allegations you have made.’  Always ask for evidence when offered allegations.

Such a follow-up question will inevitably expose bullshit, and may even lead to a more productive discussion.  Instead, our stalwarts of the Fourth Estate just calmly soldier on to their next question to receive a similarly dissembled response by the progressive pundit/politician being interviewed.  And in the end, the interview has again turned into a non-interview in which the devious interviewee’s non-responses were not even exposed.  We viewers (well, some of us) expect to receive such performances on CNN, MSNBC, ABC, … .  But having to regularly consume them on outlets that attempt to champion the Right is downright nauseating.

'Democrats’ Deception May Win the Presidential Election Again'

[This commentary by Gerard Baker, former editor and now editor-at-large of the WSJ, appears in the 27aug24 edition of the newspaper’s op-ed pages.  It succinctly nails a fundamental tenet of Rebane Doctrine numerously repeated in these pages over the years.  (“…, you can fool all the people all the time.”)  Since the publisher invites it to be shared on Facebook, I offer this respectfully purloined version below in its entirety; the original may be read here. gjr]

Gerard Baker

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

Mario Cuomo’s adage has been updated and adapted by his successors in the modern Democratic Party. The duality they present to voters either side of an election is a deception that has defined American politics and culture for the past 20 years.

As they campaign for office, they present a kind of idealized version of themselves to the electorate as mainstream Americans, seeking merely to bring a little unity and compassion to a fundamentally great country in need of reform. Once in office they act as if they have a mandate to remake a benighted country, to reorder an unjust system, to replace American exceptionalism with European social democracy, and to rewrite the nation’s values with the precepts of their cultural Marxism.

They campaign, to borrow the late governor’s taxonomy, in the poetry of Robert Frost. They govern in the prose of Herbert Marcuse.

Last week in Chicago we got the poetry, a Frostian pastoral of Democrats posing as regular Americans, honest toilers in a darkening landscape (of their own making, as they didn’t tell us). They propose only to enlighten with their benevolence.

I don’t mean poetry in the literal sense. With a few exceptions the quality of our political oratory is dire—and plumbed the usual depths last week. We have reached the point where even the actual poetry is prosaic, as the left’s unofficial poet laureate, Amanda Gorman, demonstrated with another of her recitations of platitudinous banalities and leaden progressive nostrums delivered in her trademark phony iambic meter.

The “poetry,” such as it was—Michelle Obama’s speech was the only moment of the week when the oratory came close to matching the ambition—was figurative, an attempt to paint colorful images of the promise of another Democratic presidency.

Its centerpiece was the semifictional self portrait of the presidential candidate herself. In her own biography-heavy, substance-light acceptance speech, Kamala Harris presented herself as that familiar image from popular story telling—“the happy warrior,” the all-American fighter for our nation’s finest objectives—the tough prosecutor who waged war on crime just as she will wage war on illegal immigration; the proud patriot, product of a classically diverse, American, immigrant family; the commander in chief, ready to face down America’s enemies abroad; the staunch friend of America’s allies—Israel, especially—unafraid to use the military’s “lethal” force in their support, as she explicitly reminded us.

This verbal illusion of American iconography was reinforced by the crowd’s chants of “USA! USA!” like ecstatic fans at the Olympics, and a waving sea of red white and blue “USA” placards.

But the poetry last week came also in the constantly retold personal narrative that was the real theme of the convention. The winsome second gentleman telling cute stories about gawky first dates and tasty brisket like something from the pages of a 1950s yearbook; saccharine testimonies to Ms. Harris’s innate goodness from childhood friends and professional acquaintances; above all, that Giant Middle American Cliché made flesh himself—Gov., sorry Coach, Tim Walz—practically pulling the high-school football playbook out of his back pocket and urging the nation to vote for him so he could go out there one more time and win just one for the Grifter.

Is anyone fooled?

The answer, I am afraid, is yes. Every time.

President Biden is only the most recent example. The lifelong centrist Democrat who campaigned as a regular Joe promising to do his best to heal a divided and damaged country in 2020, promptly became the vessel for a Bernie Sanders policy agenda, splurged trillions in expansive government spending and championed the left’s continuing cultural reformation of America. He prepares to leave office apparently convinced he belongs in the pantheon of great social reformers next to Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson.

Barack Obama reminded us in his speech how successful his own self-portrayal was in 2008 as the unifying figure who could bring cohesion and order to a nation battered from the chaos of war and financial crisis, but who again governed, thanks to rigid internal party discipline, to implement an agenda that produced seemingly irreversible shifts in the economic and social fabric.

Above all we were reminded how far Democrats managed to move the needle in government in their direction along the political spectrum by the appearance of those two aging icons from another epoch—Bill and Hillary Clinton. Mr. Clinton’s presidency, which ended a little more than two decades ago, now looks to most Democratic activists like an exercise in political reaction. If many of its ideas were preached on a university campus today, they would probably get the speaker canceled.

Republicans also pitch themselves in campaigns as unifying centrists but in office they have too often lacked the ambition or determination actually to govern as Republicans. It is to his credit—and a reason he is widely loathed—that Donald Trump bucked that trend.

Does anyone doubt that a Harris presidency would continue the Democratic pattern of divergent pre-election promise and postelection reality? Will a President Harris more closely resemble Candidate Harris from last week’s convention than Vice President Harris from the last four years or Candidate Harris from 2019? If you think she will, then it isn’t poetry you’ve been reading. It’s a fairy tale.

Kamala’s Terrifying Speech

George Rebane

Kamala Harris’ speech at last night’s Democrat convention was terrifying in its unusually professional delivery and its absolutely vapid content.  That lady has surely learned to read a teleprompter.  But the scariest impact of her acceptance speech were the early returns of enthusiasm with which it was accepted by voters outside the convention center.

“The Vice President spoke with authority and admirable brevity (for) 37 minutes. … Kamala Harris introduced herself to the American public on Thursday, and her presentation was much like this week’s Democratic convention: well delivered, confident and optimistic, and mostly devoid of policy substance. Whether she can keep this up, unexplained and unexposed, for the next 12 weeks will determine whether she becomes America’s 47th President.”  This according to the 23aug24 WSJ (here).

But the real problem will be Trump and the Republican response between now and November.  Thomas Sowell’s warning is worth attending.  In his tempest fugit column (here) he admonishes “Republicans better get on the ball.  They haven’t made the case against Harris, (and) the clock is ticking.”

Instead of responding with “political jargon or snappy quips” wrapped in insults, the rebuttals should be a la Reagan, timely and in plain English.  “There are some Republicans today who seem to understand that. But they are not running in this year’s presidential election. Perhaps they may run in 2028. But there is such a thing as a country declining to the point of no return.  Four more years of disastrous Biden-Harris policies, at home and abroad, can take us past that fatal point.”

Bottom line, as they anticipated the 2022 ‘red wave’, the Republicans should never again underestimate the share of our fellow Americans who will swallow hook, line, and sinker the Democrats’ socialist swill.  Donald Trump does not once more need to demonstrate how he can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

America’s Downward Spiral – A Revealing Snapshot

George Rebane

Date Everything - Rebane Doctrine

In this election year which promises to be a political milestone (watershed?) two significant neo-Marxist messages from Democratic politicians blanketed the country yesterday.  Presidential candidate and VP Kamala Harris told the nation that her economic program (here) going forward would be based on government price controls in order to control inflation.  And Rep Ro Khanna (D-CA17) wrote an excellent article (here) in the 17aug24 WSJ contrasting his and VP candidate Sen JD Vance’s (R-OH) views on industrial policy.  Both progressive politicians cannot see America’s private sector making the country’s economy work without massive participation by the federal government that involves more regulatory controls, more directed subsidies, higher taxes on industry and ‘the rich’, and a heavily unionized workforce blessed with ‘living wages’ and price controls.

Rep Khanna’s piece is well written and very convincing to an audience mired in ignorance about economics, finance, human behavior, and the history of socialist governance here and abroad.  Unfortunately about two out of three Americans are so burdened as they attempt to make sense of the current daily tsunami of political punditry.  Khanna’s essay is both effective and impactive through the way he erroneously characterizes conservative thought, policies, and its ideological tenets.  He constructs excellent strawmen (i.e. lies) which are then readily demolished by his adroit wordsmithing.

One of the prime fallacies both Harris and Khanna promulgate is that government price controls actually work in managing a national economy to the benefit of its citizens.  Each presents that as an axiomatic notion of truth requiring no evidence to support it.  Central to their message to the benighted is that fixing prices does not affect supply and stifle economic growth.  The common thread from both politicians is that the Democrats have been and are the competent stewards of our economy who build factories and make jobs for main street.

No one of the Left understands any of the basic science of how nature manages complexity.  Their ideas about how complex economies work is based on a small trove of simplistic slogans and shibboleths that are demonstrably wrong.  And principles like ‘you cannot control what you cannot measure’ is also beyond their ken.  They still have no idea how primitive are our methods of collecting relevant, accurate, and timely economic data, and then using it to fashion information that would come close to supporting correct policy decisions made by a cohort of centrally controlling technicians.

As a coda to the above riff, I want to remind present day readers, most not all that interested in the view from my perch, that a prime motivation of this blog is to insert a collection of my observations into the great archive in the cloud – ‘the internet is forever’ – which may someday be dredged up by future data archeologists studying the mentality of the citizenry that allowed their great nation at its apex to go to hell in a handcart.

Scattershots – 16aug24 (updated)

George Rebane

The UK is on the threshold of totalitarianism.  To illustrate the devastating slippery slide that comes with socialism, one of Europe’s oldest democracies has now descended into prosecuting its citizens on the basis of thought control.  Not only is free speech in Great Britain’s past, but their hubristic bureaucrats promise to threaten foreigners outside their borders with extradition is they overstep the new restrictions on newly disallowed publicly expressed opinions. (here, here, and here)

‘Islam and the Future of the West’.  Islamophobia is a clearly warranted reaction to the long-standing writings and recently reinforced statements by leaders of trans-national Islam.  “Any reading of the Koran, as Robert Spencer, Raymond Ibrahim, Ali Sina, Ibn Warrak, Rebecca Bynum, and a host of other excellent scholars make abundantly clear, will reveal ayah after ayah commanding acts of grotesque violence against unbelievers. The reward for the martyrs who have been slain in service to Allah will be peace, loveliness, and virgins with pear-shaped breasts, as stipulated variously in Sura 44:45-55 and 78:31-36 of the Koran.” (more here) According to our neo-Marxists defending your culture against the promised and ongoing Muslim onslaught is ignorant and despicable racism.

“Inflation is down!” trumpet our lamestream media outlets.  NPR even coordinates its ‘news’ items with featured programming subjects in promoting this jaundiced view of the nation’s economy.  In their coordinated support of the Democrats’ campaign talking points, the Left’s lightly-read legions are spared the difference between ‘inflation level’ and ‘inflation rate’ in the constant cacophony they consume daily.  Contrary to what they experience in their wallets, they are led to believe that prices are actually going down in this Biden/Harris economy.

[16aug24 update] Dems move to red states.  The conspiracy to soil the remaining states not embracing socialism is in full swing.  There is now an organization called MoveIndigo -  MoveIndigo encourages Democratic flight to swing districts with Republican congressmen, often in swing states. Its goal is to “reset the balance in our country” and elect a more “representative” government. That’s doublespeak, but the group has also put it plainly: “It only takes a few Democrats moving to crucial toss-up districts . . . to take control of the House”—even to have “a profound impact on the Presidential race. (more here)  None of the migrating progressives are smart enough to ask what has made their selected red state so desirable compared to the shithole state they are abandoning, and moreover, what makes these leftwing double dummies think that the arrival  of more like them will not turn their new home also into the same kind of socialist quagmire they abandoned.

[update]  Georgia non-citizens registered to vote.  The Heritage Oversight project interviewed residents of a large apartment complex in Norcross, Georgia asking its residents 1) were they registered to vote, and 2) were they citizens.  14% answered that they were non-citizens who were already registered to vote. (more here)  With this kind of evidence of what is most likely happening to some extent all over the land, it was a very reasonable and legitimate request to Georgia SecState Brad Raffensberger by Trump to have their vote counts checked to discover more legal votes that may favor him.  There was never any demand to “overturn” the Georgia election.  Restricting voting to America’s legal voters is trumpeted as ‘voter suppression’ by our leftwing sleazebags, and their lightly read constituents lap up this ongoing lie.

Scattershots – 4aug24

George Rebane

Kamala Harris is a DEI VP and now is a DEI candidate.  That was made clear when Joe Biden told the nation that his VP pick would be a “black woman”.  The lamestream media has now added that to their repertoire of Trump attacks for reminding the country of her qualifications for making Biden’s cut.  Of course, she was also a DEI office holder for all her previous positions before being anointed VP.  But now that progressive attribute has suddenly become tabu even as formerly compliant corporations are dropping DEI among their criteria for employment. The hypocrisy of the leftwing media is both unfathomable and unending.

The Project 2025 policy book was composed by Heritage authors many of whom were Trump cabinet members and advisors.  It mostly contains policy recommendations that conservatives believe.  One of Trump’s recent bevy of mixed messages – another one of his lipshots - is that he rejects P2025 in toto.  That is plainly not true, but it is just more grist for the Democrats’ mill in mischaracterizing what Trump proposes and what the document contains.  For example, being purveyed on the lamestream is the report that ‘90% of Americans’ are opposed to it.  That is a specious argument instigated by the Left’s media mouthpieces.  Ninety percent of Americans don’t know what P2025 is and much less what it contains; they are again just mouthing what the lying liberal outlets are telling them.

Vance’s cat lady remark - In a 2021 interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson, then-Senate-candidate Vance complained that the U.S. was being run by Democrats, corporate oligarchs and "a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too." (more here)  On its face the statement is true, and it’s also true upon deeper examination.  The lamestream’s actual attribution to Vance is that he claimed women and couples who have children are ‘worth more’ (to society) than those who are childless.  Well of course.  All other things being equal when comparing such cohorts, it’s not rocket science to acknowledge that our species would come to an end were it not for children being conceived, brought to term, and raised to adulthood, if for nothing else than to provide humankind continuity.  But such arguments are too deep to be pondered in the public square, and again advantage Left.

Climate Change Liars Unrepentant

George Rebane

As part of its overall evil intents for the future of America, the Democratic Party is comprised of the copious material liars on our political landscape.  Almost every pronouncement by their minions is refuted by the government’s own statistics ranging from inflation, the economic impact of the recent tax cuts, to border security.  However, their lies about climate change, upon which to base adoption of their destructive public policies, are almost certainly the most harmfully impactive on our quality of life.

In today’s WSJ internationally recognized climate researcher Bjorn Lomborg, of the Copenhagen Consensus and Stanford’s Hoover Institution, writes ‘Polar Bears, Dead Coral and Other Climate Fictions’ in which he outlines some of the major lies that persist in the public mind through the daily efforts of Democrats, their lamestream media, and progressives in general.  Some examples –

• There is no extinction danger to polar bears. Since hunting them has stopped, their populations have surged.
• Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is not being killed by rising temperatures, but instead has recovered itself to new record levels since the hurricane that damaged it in 2009.
• Small Pacific islands are not being swamped by rising sea levels, but instead are increasing in area due to natural processes involving the dynamics of old coral.
• “Killer heat wave” deaths are being misrepresented by a factor of 25. Their death rate has actually declined worldwide due to the rising prosperity provided by technology.  Cold kills 25 times more Americans, and that due mainly to our country’s climate policy boosted high energy costs.

Activists do the world a massive disservice by refusing to acknowledge facts that challenge their intensely doom-ridden worldview. There is ample evidence that man-made emissions cause changes in climate, and climate economics generally finds that the costs of these effects outweigh the benefits. But the net result is nowhere near catastrophic. The costs of all the extreme policies campaigners push for are much worse. All told, politicians across the world are now spending more than $2 trillion annually—far more than the estimated cost from climate change that these policies prevent each year.

Telling half-truths while piously pretending to “follow the science” benefits activists with their fundraising, generates clicks for media outlets, and helps climate-concerned politicians rally their bases. But it leaves all of us poorly informed and worse off.

California does not teach kids to read

'All people are naturally political animals.  Politics is a dominant factor in how we run our daily affairs in both the public and private spheres.  The individual who sniffs that they are above or not concerned with politics is simply delusional or worse.   For humans politics is fundamental.'  Charles Krauthammer paraphrased.

George Rebane

In the 22jun24 WSJ we learn that California public schools are even worse than what we have discovered over the years since Great Society policies were launched in the late 1960s.  Former English teacher Daniel Buck, now at the Fordham Institute, writes ‘California Will Teach Kids Anything Except How to Read’, wherein he describes the latest neo-Marxist turn of the screw on children entrusted to the state for their education.  The bottom line of our grade school reading curricula is that “Gender ideology, social justice and Marxist ideas are all welcome in the classroom. Phonics isn’t.”

Most recently – “In 2021 the state ignited a brawl over its mandated ethnic-studies curriculum. Its content and instructional practices have roots in 1960s activism against American hegemony; the goal is to “liberate” students from the oppressive forces of capitalism, patriarchy and settler colonialism.

In 2023 California implemented a new mathematics framework, the first edition of which included “whiteness” and “social justice” as topics for instruction. The goal was to raise the “sociopolitical consciousness” of students—in math class. A revised framework was notably less political but required teachers to use a quantifiably ineffective approach to teaching called “discovery” learning, where students must be left to “discover” their way into long division or algebraic equations.”

As we have long pointed out in these pages, the evil Democratic Party needs legions of double dummies ‘graduating’ from progressive run academe to assure the re-election of socialist politicians whose ideology and the impact of their policies are not understood by their usual cohort of constituents.  This beat, not only goes on, but becomes stronger by the year.  An example staring us in the face daily is the output of polls showing enormous support for our Bumblebrain president.  One wonders who are these tens of millions of very light thinkers who walk around in a brain fog with no ability to give a reasonable basis for their political beliefs.

Inflation? Most people don’t have a clue.

George Rebane

Evidence rolls in daily that Americans in the large do not have a clue about what is inflation and how it affects their financial wellbeing and quality of life.  This wholesale ignorance is constantly being reinforced by our news media of all political colorations and the Democratic Party.  The egregious journalists mostly congregate on the Right since they have no hidden agenda to hide the meaning and impact of inflation today spawned by Bidenomics.

The confusion arises from the use of the single misleading ‘inflation’ to variously describe three distinct and separate attributes of inflation – inflation level, inflation rate of change, and the change in inflation’s rate of change.  (Mathematically these are known as simply the first three derivatives of inflation’s price curve – respectively the zeroth, first, and second derivatives.)  The figure below illustrates.

Today we hear all kinds of reports citing inflation numbers that totally confound the average American – ‘inflation was xx% under the previous administration’, ‘inflation is now higher/lower, ‘inflation is going up/down’, ‘inflation is slowing’, and so on.  What almost no one understands is that claims that 'inflation is going down' is a bald-faced lie designed to fool the light thinkers.  Whatever the current level of inflation - i.e. Biden's 9% increase in market prices (here) - it is already baked in.  You will continue paying them and they will NOT go down as long as demand increases and supply does not.  So Team Biden's propaganda that they are 'reducing inflation' (#1) is utter BS; even if they reduce the inflation rate (#2), the current level of inflation will remain and prices will still go up.

Nobelist Milton Freedman and his forebears long ago advised us that inflated price increases are always a monetary phenomenon in which the government ‘prints’ and releases more fiat money into an economy to chase the same amount of goods and services, hence prices increase and we call the whole thing inflation.  The overall impact of inflation has always been that prices only ratchet up (increase monotonically) over time, and consequently the dollar in your pocket inevitably buys less stuff tomorrow than it does today.  But that is only the beginning of the story of government misuses of inflation to abuse and steal from its citizens.  Historically, great empires have inevitably laid themselves open to collapse and/or invasion by diluting/cheapening its money to the point that people no longer want to use it as the medium of exchange, unit of account, and store of wealth.  Hence, the economy’s wealth generation grinds to a halt and tax revenues can no longer pay for implementing public policies including maintaining its sovereignty with secure borders and an able military.

The real story of inflation is much more opaque.  Inflation is really a multi-level tax levied by governments that can no longer openly increase tax rates, so instead the steal money from their own citizens.  Notice that over the years the general level of people’s wealth has not increased much, if at all.  To be sure, enormous wealth has been generated in our economy by the commercial/industrial sector due to the invisible hand of market capitalism and ever-present competition.  And along with that, the quality of life for the broad population has increased by the introduction and affordability of all kinds of new products and services generated by corporations and entrepreneurs to whom justifiably the overwhelming majority of the new wealth accrues, since they are the ones who successfully invest their own monies and undertake the risks such ventures demand.  In spite of that, a large share of the population still lives paycheck-to-paycheck and has precious little saved for discretionary spending, investments, or a rainy day.  Increasing their debt and succumbing to more government welfare is their only alternative.

Looking under the hood of our economy and taking note of how our government inserts itself to gather tribute from the unsuspecting masses, it becomes clear that it is Big Brother run by sleazebag politicians and their deep state bureaucracies that effectively and continuously scrape off any ‘excess wealth’ that may accrue to the unsuspecting on main street who are lulled by a constant stream of bread and circuses from our political betters and their elites.  The whole program of mollification begins with a public education system that guarantees our young will be carefully taught to believe in the largess of government and the evils of private enterprise.

Two years ago I presented RR readers with the chapter and verse of how all this perfidy is executed in the public square.  You can and should review ‘Inflation Tax – Silent Rape by Government’, it will put some scary meat on the bone of the above arguments.  Unfortunately the bottom line here remains immutably unchanged.  We witness no awareness of all this by our friends and neighbors – you have yet to see protesting throngs with pitchforks and torches demonstrating in front of government buildings across the land.  (Also check out this post's comment stream.)  No one is aware of what is being quietly vacuumed from their wallets by the various levels of government ranging from local to federal.  All is well, just reduce your carbon footprint and embrace DEI wherever it may next be introduced – behave yourself.

‘The End is Near’

George Rebane

Were we to discuss really serious topics beyond Trump’s trials and Biden’s lies, I can think of one no more important than that brought up by Victor Davis Hanson in a recent interview (here).  We have extensively covered the various national and geo-strategic factors that portend to end America’s run as the world's leading democratic republic, economy, and white hat world hegemon.  However, most of our neighbors neither care nor are aware of what’s happening.  As witnessed on these pages, if anything, they are more interested in Stormy Daniel’s testimony and various topical policy atrocities launched by our doddering idiot for president and Democrats at all levels of government (especially California).

This is not to say that there is no traction to the warnings issued by our more thoughtful political leaders and commentators (e.g. here) – so far, a sparsely populated bunch.  Today more people are starting to take notice that there is now in the offing a likely “extinction” of the United States we have known.  Letter writers (here) to serious publications like the WSJ acknowledge the current deterioration of America’s defense posture and industrial might, and are showing concern.

Material arguments summarize as follows –

• The US industrial base to make things from ships to medicines to machine tools is essentially gone.
• Our military is tragically under-manned and woke-corrupted with traditional cadres of enlistees no longer willing to join, let alone make military their career. Our country can no longer find enough people willing to fight for it.
• Our unimaginable national debt and reckless social spending programs are destroying the dollar and unseating it as the preferred currency for international commerce.
• Our open borders and illegal alien import policies are destroying the remnants of America’s public cultural cohesion with new levels of unassimilating multi-culturality never before witnessed in a sustainable and geographically compact jurisdiction.
• Our traditional allies in Europe and Asia are aware of America’s weak (non-existent?) leadership and feckless foreign policy, and are seeking alternative geo-strategic relationships that serve their national interests.
• Our electorate is split and largely ignorant of the issues facing the nation; and are in no shape to unify and support reasonably coherent policies to attempt a return to a usefully educated, economically healthy, fiscally sound, geographically secure, and culturally unified sovereign nation-state. Over half of us don’t care and want an autocratic global government run by elites, and the remainder want to return to a liberal constitutional government based on free-market capitalism.
• By passing laws, regulations, and prohibitive tax rates in a transforming neo-Marxist society, we no longer educate a sufficient cadre of high-end (STEM) workers with needed skillsets or provide them the means to produce wealth in an open-market capitalist economy.

So instead –

   

‘The Intellectuals and Socialism’

George Rebane

F.A. Hayek was one of the world’s foremost economists and a giant among the original thinkers of the 20^th century.  In this post I want to interest readers in his ideas and works with a short discussion of one of his small and often overlooked monograms – The Intellectuals and Socialism - published in 1949, the year I arrived on these shores.

From the monogram currently published by the Mercatus Center of George Washington University we read,  “Friedrich A. Hayek, who won the Nobel Prize for Economic Science in 1974, is best known for the book the Road to Serfdom (1944), which has been widely translated.  Receiving doctorates in law and economics from the University of Vienna, Hayek served on the faculties of the universities of London, Chicago, Freiburg, and Salzburg.  (His major books may be seen here.)  Hayek has attracted a growing body of scholarship, and in February 2000 a writer in The New Yorker observed that ‘it is hardly an exaggeration to refer to the twentieth century as the Hayek century.’”

One of the main lessons from the monogram is the reader’s ability to distinguish between the purveyors of ideas variously, and often carelessly, labeled as ‘theorists’, ‘experts’, and ‘intellectuals’.  The first two are people who originate ideas and those who are actually able to implement ideas by applying their skills.  However, it is the countless intellectuals with whom we should concern ourselves.  They are overwhelmingly of the Left and populate our media, academe, institutions, and bureaucracies.  Hayek defines them as follows.

“The term "intellectuals," however, does not at once convey a true picture of the large class to which we refer, and the fact that we have no better name by which to describe what we have called the secondhand dealers in ideas is not the least of the reasons why their power is not understood. Even persons who use the word "intellectual" mainly as a term of abuse are still inclined to withhold it from many who undoubtedly perform that characteristic function. This is neither that of the original thinker nor that of the scholar or expert in a particular field of thought. The typical intellectual need be neither: he need not possess special knowledge of anything in particular, nor need he even be particularly intelligent, to perform his role as intermediary in the spreading of ideas. What qualifies him for his job is the wide range of subjects on which he can readily talk and write, and a position or habits through which he becomes acquainted with new ideas sooner than those to whom he addresses himself.” (emphasis mine)

The intellectuals are the distributors and champions of ideas formulated by the elites.  They are drawn to the Left and socialism primarily because of its simplistic utopian vision of the future.  This is opposed to the Right’s ideology having always emphasized individual liberty and its manifold benefits.  In short, the Left’s intellectuals distribute simple easy-to-understand, high-level ideas to the masses, while those of the Right attempt to communicate their more complex ideas of, say, liberty, individual effort, and market capitalism on a person-to-person basis.

We are a Republic, NOT a Democracy

George Rebane

The country’s socialists and globalists have found the corruption of language to best serve their purpose of blinding Americans to the critical aspects of our society and culture.  First and foremost is today’s established custom of considering precise semantics to be somewhere between irrelevant and unimportant, and most certainly politically incorrect.

As an example, many of us have come to accept open borders on the basis of promoting ‘immigration’, firm in the knowledge that today’s invasion of illegal aliens from countless countries violating our law is somehow similar to the process that populated our empty lands in days gone by, for are we not a country of immigrants?  No one from the highest levels of government to main street wants to acknowledge that immigration is a two-party process between willing participants – a pact between a discriminating government and the alien seeking residency in a new land.  Using the correct legal term ‘illegal alien’ to describe those wading across the river (formerly also known as wetbacks) has now become proscribed and not for proper use in a public forum.  Instead the naked term ‘immigrant’ is now the norm in lamestream media, and the right-of-center outlets barely use the appended ‘illegal immigrant’, all preferring more obfuscating labels like ‘migrant’ to describe the foreign lawbreakers crossing our borders.

Other similar examples can be offered to illustrate the desecration and demeaning of our language over the last several decades.

Perhaps the most egregious and dangerous of such examples is the new idea promoted by collectivists, especially of the woke variety, that our nation is a democracy that promotes (civil) equality.  Our Founders were keenly aware that democracies, promoted under the banner of indiscriminating equality quickly devolve into autocracies cum tyrannies.  This is the reason that they conceived and formed our nation to hold liberty sacrosanct within a constitutional republic, governed under a document that severely limits the powers of government.  As the thinking reader knows, universal equality and liberty are incompatible.  Our founding principles recognize and promote equality in the sense that we Americans are equal only under our laws and in the eyes of God.  Elsewhere, most certainly in our Constitution, equality is not mentioned and liberty is supreme.

Our socialists know this truth, and have twisted our public education, abetted by the media, to preach their unquestionable glories of equality cum equity in all things.  The damage to our republic that this perversion has caused was already evident almost sixty years ago.  Dan Smoot was one of the nation’s leading conservative commentators back then, and in 1966 he recorded this very clear and succinct 10-minute commentary about the real difference between a democracy and a constitutional republic (here), and the danger of our citizenry remaining confused about the two.  Today that confusion has been replaced by total ignorance.

Lamestream Media’s New ‘Unprecedented’ Low

George Rebane

Catherine Herridge, the nationally acclaimed and respected investigative reporter formerly with Fox News, was fired by her current employer CBS News who also seized her confidential files (more here and here).  This move is unprecedented in the journalistic industry for all the obvious reasons.  The dismissal and seizure of materials is pursuant to her current investigation of the Hunter laptop scandal, and it has the Oval Office fingerprints all over it.  Formerly a respected national news organization, CBS has now become another lamestream corporatist hack with plummeting ratings.  But it does know on which side its bread is buttered.  In the interval, The Daily Mail reports (here) that CBS claims it has returned the stuff it seized upon her dismissal and denies firing her because of her current work.

As expected, the other lamestream outlets (e.g. MSNBC) remain silent on the matter.  Even outlets like Fox, for some mysterious reason is silent and forfeits its “…, and still unafraid” tagline.  One thing unreported but certain is that all heads-up journalists will remove their remaining confidential source files from their corporate workplaces.  The CBS action will now have a chilling effect not only on what topics and issues journalists will cover, but also on the willingness of important news sources to come forward with the assurance that their identities will be kept confidential by reporters they formerly trusted.  And all this promises to add another layer of implicit censorship on honest and impartial reporting to an industry already in disrepute.

They are VERY different from us

George Rebane

I view with reinvigorated alarm today’s broadcast joys of socialists, wokesters, liberals, and leftwingers in general celebrating the $400M+ fine demanded of Trump for what is termed his  committing ‘civil fraud’.  They uniformly and unanimously agree with the ‘legal basis’ on which the New York attorney general prosecuted and the judge adjudicated the Trump trial.  All these people look forward to a totalitarian state in which capitalism is banned, the beneficial mechanisms of market pricing, and the ownership of private property are dispensed with.  That is exactly the harbinger that letting the verdict stand will foster across the land.  (And students of our Founders and Bastiat know that the fundamental rights upon which our personal security and manifold liberties are based will also disappear.)

The other cohort of people celebrating Trump’s fine are those too stupid to think through these ramifications.  All their little TDS sotted pea brains can muster up is that if it hurts Trump, it must be good.

Nevertheless, some on the Right still believe that we can find common ground to reunite as the America of yesteryear – this even though no such path has been identified.  RR invites these worthies to step forward and illuminate us with their vision of how we regain E Pluribus Unum.  (And here is info on a related and contributing problem in our land.)

Border Bill Smoke and Mirrors

George Rebane

The ongoing debate in the Swamp about how to fix the border comes down to two competing bills – HR2 and the Senate's ‘bipartisan’ travesty being foisted on the unknowing.  The only true border security bill is HR2 as illustrated in the graphic comparison below provided by the Heritage Foundation.

California Stupid Perseveres (updated 10jan24)

George Rebane

As a part of its latest bevy of idiotic laws and regs, Sacramento continues its perennial attempt to remove the Second Amendment from the Constitution for those of us living in California.  It has passed a new restrictive law (currently appealed) that prevents the state’s CCW holders from carrying their concealed guns in 29 new public areas.  The explanation given to our sheeple is that the new law will save human lives, when in reality it will do anything but that.

The law is nothing less than the latest incremental ratchet to constructively remove firearms from the hands of law-abiding citizens.  However, it does communicate to the mentally deranged killers and terrorists that now here are more areas in the public forum which for them are free-fire zones where they can wantonly murder and create mayhem with no fear of being opposed by a legal gun.

The state’s claim that CCW holders are perpetrators of mass shootings is utterly without merit or evidence.  What the FBI data have consistently shown is that CCW holders are the safest and most responsible gun toters in the nation.  A recent study reveals that sworn law enforcement  officers, already a responsible and trustworthy cohort, are still six times more likely to murder someone than a gun-carrying citizen holding a CCW permit. (more here and here)

But being able to peddle that kind of pabulum to Californians confirms again that as an electorate we suffer from a widespread, massive, and chronic intellectual deficit (aka are butt stupid), which explains why decade after decade we vote for corrupt politicians of the anti-American evil party to make our laws and administer our beautiful state.

[10jan24 update] 'California Stupid Perseveres and Amplifies' - Now the troop of Democrat Socialists in Sacramento are again pushing through a tax on assets.  This is supposed to make the 0.5% Californians who already ante up 40% of state revenues to now start paying their "fair share". (more here)

The Sins of Trump

George Rebane

2024 will be a tumultuous year that will tax all of our ‘goodwill toward men’.  The world is full of wars, incipient wars, and hot spots.  In America we and much of the rest of the world will be focused on our November national election.  And embedded in the run-up to that election will be the indictments and trials of former President Trump and the impeachment and scandals of the Biden administration.  RR commenters of all stripes have circled the ‘sins of Trump’ barn innumerable times over the last couple of years.  Here, for the record, I want to enter my own take on Trump’s sins.

Ignorance Meets Evil

George Rebane

Here is an example of gross ignorance that begets the evil in our land.  This letter to the editor by a rabid leftwinger in the 6dec23 Union illustrates the historical gulf that separates us into two nations with irreconcilable ideologies.  The correspondent does not make a single assertion that speaks truth – where/when did Trump do anything that he claims?  And he is joined by tens of millions of like- and no-minded Americans.

&&&&&&

Let’s refresh our memories on what Trump said last week in a speech:  “We pledge to you that we will root out the Communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical-left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country—that lie and steal and cheat on elections. They’ll do anything, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America and to destroy the American dream. The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous, and grave than the threat from within. Our threat is from within.”

We will never vote for Trump because he and his MAGA extremists want to dump American democracy, dump “We-the-People” pluralism, and replace it with white Christian nationalism implemented by their authoritarian cult leader. It's dangerous and un-American.

Trump’s disastrous presidency can be summarized with these 9 acts:

• passing huge wealthy and corporate tax cuts (pushing us 8 trillion $ further in debt),
• separating children from their parents at the border,
• basically ignoring covid,
• appointing unqualified ideologues to the Supreme Court and lower benches,
• damaging our global alliances, especially with NATO,
• promoting hatred against minorities, especially Blacks, Mexicans, Muslims, LGTBQ,
• attacking democracy through gerrymandering and suppressing votes,
• attacking women’s reproductive freedoms, and
• promoting an insurrection on January 6.

Will our election be safe from the GOP’s cheating and intimidation? Will Trump’s 91 felony counts assure us his dictatorial ambitions will not come to light?

Voters' memories will need to be refreshed.

Robert Gould, Nevada City 

Scattershots – 19nov23

George Rebane

Trump’s intent to deport illegals here less than two years is considered by the looney tunes lamestream as being “extreme”, and further evidence that he intends to destroy our democracy.  So the questions again are 1) is it illegal/unconstitutional to deport aliens who have entered the country illegally?, and 2) what length of residency by the illegals qualifying for deportation then is not extreme?  It’s idiotic to put this threshold at zero, since then the invitation goes out to the world that just getting your wet butt across the river and hiding out for a bit is all that is necessary for permanent residency, qualifying for all the benefits, and more.  This is exactly what today’s illegal aliens making their way to the border are betting on.

If you use the same or similar words as Hitler used to describe his enemies, then you are automatically a fascist, Nazi, … .  This is the twisted reasoning that Trump’s opponents are telling their under-educated constituents who are innocent of history and the uses of language.  Now I’m not a proponent of Trump’s own record of shooting off at the lip.  But to tell the double dummies out there that such usages are proof of Trump’s sinister political ideology and governance when elected does not serve the county well.  But it is one more bit of evidence that benefitting the country has never been the intention of the woke progressives and other collectivist fellow travelers.

Most journalists like to be the recipients of leaks – well almost.  When pressed in public, these reporters immediately do a little back-tracking by telling us that they are not in favor of leaks that are illegal, immoral, or unethical.  The question this raises for me again is ‘what is our right to privacy?’  While the Constitution contains no express right to privacy, legal scholars do cite “the most obvious protection of privacy in the Bill of Rights is the Fourth Amendment, which protects individuals in their persons, homes, papers, and effects from "unreasonable searches and seizures" by the government.”  The restriction ‘by the government’ should give us pause, because it doesn’t say anything about your neighbor prying into your affairs and broadcasting his findings.  Other students of the law cite the Basic or Common Law of Privacy – “The right of privacy is: the right of a person to be free from unwarranted publicity, the unwarranted appropriation or exploitation of one's personality, the publicizing of one's private affairs with which the public has no legitimate concern.”  So who does the warranting and assessing legitimate concerns?  To me it sounds like the issue of privacy is another plank in the full-employment platform for the country’s lawyers.

Scattershots – 11nov23

George Rebane

‘Biden Keeps the Billions Flowing to Iran’ details Joe Biden’s ongoing treachery to undermine America and its allies.  I am completely flummoxed as to why that treasonous asshole in the White House is not arrested immediately with House impeachment proceedings pending.  He is openly and actively aiding and abetting a sworn enemy of the US who daily attacks our military installations in the middle east and makes war on our allies.  And we have enabled the mullahs to amass over $35B of supposedly sanctioned petro-dollars to fund their ongoing efforts to become the new hegemon of the region.

And SecHS Alejandro Mayorkas is still out of jail.  The sumbich has been bald-faced lying about our southern border being “secure” for years now, and the lamestream swallows and rebroadcasts that swill.  We see evidence of that right here on RR where our leftwing readers don’t have a clue of what has been happening with the illegal wetback influx of millions.  All they can focus on is allegations of Trump having claimed 2020 election irregularities and overpricing his real estate holdings to willing buyers, both of which he is perfectly free to do in this land of the free and home of the brave.  Meanwhile the most corrupt administration in the country’s history continues unhindered to dismantle the American Republic and implement its socialist agenda.  For the leftwing electorate it is the epitome of ignorance if there ever was one.

The Reprobate Republicans (updated 27oct23)

George Rebane

[This article, sans update, was published here in the 25oct23 issue of The Union.]

Recently I attended a luncheon sponsored by a local Republican club that featured as speaker one of the party’s eight candidates for US Senate.  She gave a barnburner talk outlining all the familiar iniquities of the Democrats both in Sacramento and Washington.  Specifically, she reprised the Democrats’ work in

• Always raising taxes;
• Issuing more stifling regulations;
• Mismanaging the economy;
• Indoctrinating Neo-Marxism in the media, education, and entertainment;
• Watering down critical curricula in our schools – dumbing down students;
• Rewarding criminals and punishing victims;
• Promoting trans-gendering in schools, denying parental rights to raise their children;
• Maintaining wide open borders for illegal alien entry;
• Projecting foreign policy weakness, inviting bad actors to make war;
• Etc, etc.

The problem with her enthusiastic rhetoric was that her Republican audience knew all that stuff, and most could have given that speech themselves.  What was sorely missing, and has been missing for years at such gatherings, is recognition of the dire straits the party is in, and what would be required for its resurgence in California.

Recounting the above list yet one more time is nothing but imitating a long-playing echo chamber which might be of interest to those conservatives who don’t pay attention to what is going on in the country and the world.  The problem is that most of those folks don’t show up at such luncheons and meetings.

So, the Republican Party, irrelevant statewide and nationally chaotic, continues to ignore the fact that it can right none of the liberal and woke wrongs without first regaining its stature as a recognized can-do political force in the country.  Endlessly repeating and pointing out the passing signposts to socialism has done nothing to change the direction of the country, and doing the same thing over and over again only confirms the definition of ignorance.

If Republicans are not putting their energies into planning and making progress on the party’s road to resurgence, then the rest of it will only be an ongoing stream of empty rhetoric growing weaker with the passing years.

[27oct23 update]  An added thought.  Given how other states are adopting our public policy insanities, California’s cancer has been aggressively metastasizing across the land.  The reason is clear and hangs on ‘other people’s money’ that can best be understood in light of what Garrett Hardin (q.v.) taught us about the behavior of commons (more here and here).  California has been very successful in taxing ‘the rich’, regulating the bejeezus out of everyone, and getting the feds to pony up every time we get our tit in a wringer, that it seems like a good idea for the folks in Ohio and Nebraska to copy.  As our snowballing national debt attests, with everyone piling on, this commons awaits its inevitable fate.

Ruminations – 7oct23 (updated 15oct23)

George Rebane

‘Taking a Closer Look at the Vaunted Scandinavian Welfare States’ (here)  Here is a little wisdom for our leftwing readers who embrace ever more socialism based on their shared belief that it works in the Scandinavian countries.  Well not quite as this piece from the Mises Institute makes clear.

Sacramento’s socialist sleazebags are illegally end-running California’s citizens in their perennial effort to raise more taxes and gut Prop 13.  The sad part is that the state’s population now consists of such a large proportions of double dummies, that they will believe Newsom’s lies and vote us deeper into a financial crisis in November 2024.  The Howard Jarvis organization is fighting back. (more here and here)

[15oct23 update]  You shouldn’t have to be too bright to understand when someone says an acknowledged enemy is ‘smart’, it's an assessment of their cunningness.  And it doesn’t mean they support or side with the enemy.

Scattershots – 4oct23 (updated 8oct23)

George Rebane

Detracking America.  "’Detracking’ is an increasingly popular proposal among socialist educators that attempts to reduce the degree to which students are separated by academic ability. It typically takes the form of removing advanced course offerings or delaying the introduction of these offerings. Supporters claim that marginalized students are often wrongly placed—or place themselves—in less advanced courses and that these students often stay on a less advanced curricular path.” (more here)

The daily confirmation arrives in truckloads that the Democratic Party is truly the evil anti-American party, aided ably in their quest to destroy our republic by harebrained Republicans who can’t get their act together.

‘The Data Prove Government Is Spending Too Much’  Americans for Tax Reform recently launched the Sustainable Budget Project from which we read - “The U.S. national debt recently passed $33 trillion, more than 120% of gross domestic product. Left-wing politicians assert that Americans are undertaxed, but the data show that the government spends too much.”  Americans for Tax Reform has offered a very practical rule by which to construct sustainable budgets – limit the budget increases to “the rate of population growth plus inflation.”  Bottom line – “If government grows faster than this rate, then it is growing faster than what the average taxpayer can afford.”  (more here) 

[8oct23 update] Estonia advises Ukraine.  "“You can’t bribe a computer,” Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas told me. When it’s time to rebuild, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky should heed these words. Estonia—a member of the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization—is No. 1 in providing government services digitally, according to the United Nations; first in democratic development among 29 postcommunist countries, according to Freedom House; first in international tax competitiveness, according to the Tax Foundation (the U.S. is 22nd); and sixth in the 2023 Index of Economic Freedom, according to the Heritage Foundation (the U.S. is 25th). It has the most startups per capita in Europe, and its 15-year-olds top the Continent in reading, science and mathematics." (more here)