George Rebane

• Gold mine not found
• US hearing loss epidemic
• Obama and technology acceleration
• California’s looming business exodus
• Ryan’s solo

*** This week Jo Ann and I were helping our friends look for their gold mine.  We never did find the mine.  Although, according to the extensive documentation my friend brought along, we did drive right through the property without noticing anything much different there than on any other stretch of the twenty-five miles of washboard that we traversed before ending up in the ghost-town of Bodie with a ton of German tourists.  Memo to file – never approach Bodie from the north; better yet, strike ‘from the north’.

*** U.S. facing possible hearing loss epidemic: study

One of three U.S. adults already suffers from some degree of hearing loss and the use of personal stereos and an aging population may create a hearing impairment epidemic, researchers said on Monday. …   A team at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore estimated that 55 million Americans have hearing loss in one or both ears, with men, whites and the least-educated most affected.

We already know that an alarming proportion of our adult workforce is both illiterate and innumerate.  The government will now have to rely more than ever on comic book style training manuals before hiring these people.  Private enterprise is hiring the remainder and/or shipping jobs overseas.

*** Today technology is accelerating which requires a higher pace of investment and risk taking to build new companies and products so that our economy can keep pace with the rest of the rapidly developing countries.  Senator Obama seems oblivious to this phenomenon and his solution to our economic woes is to raise taxes and tariffs.  He also believes that there is hope that laid off workers will get their old jobs back – no need to upgrade skills or change careers.  Do any of the Econ 101 students out there know what happens to investment capital when taxes are raised and risk-taking is punished?  (answer below)  It’s sorta like the sign on the wall of the failing sweatshop – ‘The beatings will stop as soon as morale improves.’   Please write or call that good-looking black guy with the sonorous voice promising change and hope – Harvard Law School taught him only how to redistribute existing wealth, not how to create new wealth.

*** California’s looming business exodus counts another member.  In today’s WSJ the CEO of Cypress Semiconductor Corp of San Jose reports that the company has already moved 7,000 out of its 8,000 jobs out of the state, and “we are moving jobs out of California as rapidly as we can.”  Our elected socialists are accelerating the process by promising to raise taxes even more on businesses.  These honorable idiots never understand that the government can take in more revenues from a growing economy bolstered by lower tax rates than making companies like Cypress pay 6% sales tax for investing in equipment which will keep jobs and profits in the state.  Of course the idiocy reaches nosebleed heights when we look at Obama’s “Emergency Economic Plan”.  Now there is a real shot in the shorts for the “permanent underclass” he claims to champion.  (See figure from 2aug08 IBD)  Little Known Fact Dept – Exxon alone pays more taxes than the bottom 50% of all American taxpayers (this doesn’t count the countless millions of non-taxpayers).

*** Ryan Tobin’s solo.  My young friend recently soloed – no mean feat as anyone who has learned to fly an airplane knows.  When, for the first time, you’re screaming down the runway alone, you know what playing ‘You Bet Your Butt’ is all about.  At 37 Ryan has decided to trade in an office career for one on the flight deck of an airliner, and has enrolled in a fast-paced commercial flight school in Texas.  Ryan is also an excellent writer and keeps friends and family up to date on his progress on Ryan Aeronautical – it’s worth a read.  Quoting the advice of our county’s most famous aviator, “Fly Safely”.