Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force! You are
about to embark upon a great crusade, toward which we have striven these
many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers
of liberty loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our
brave Allies and brothers in arms on other fronts, you will bring about
the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi
tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves
in a free world. … General Dwight David Eisenhower, 6 June 1944.
George Rebane
NPR continues its coverage of Holder, DOJ assault on journalists, and IRS political targetings. Again they seem not to have gotten the word from their leftwing thought leaders here in Nevada County, those who tell us daily that the Obama scandals make no never mind, and are already relegated to the dustbin of history. Perhaps our locals should send NPR an email or two for a heads up on the error of their ways.
The local supes look like they’re going to continue wasting (aka pissing away) a half a million to maintain their program of code compliance harassment or enforcement, whatever. One supe even justified the low ROI from the program by comparing building code compliance expenditures with the sheriff’s department budget, citing that the latter also costs a lot and doesn’t return much money. Logic like that sure explains away the financial messes in which most local jurisdictions wallow today. I can already hear the hew and cry from our citizens if the county should stop sending its code enforcement cadres out into the hills – ‘No, please come and inspect me! I may have overlooked some code infractions that need correcting, and fees that I still need to pay. Puhleeeze!’ Makes all the sense in the world to equate the critical services provided by the sheriff and those of the county code compliance department (under the Community Development Agency, CDA), you think?
General planning season is fast approaching in Nevada County (see the 6jun13 Union). And peremptorily the CDA Director Steve DeCamp announced that “the county will not abandon the four central themes of the general plan — including fostering a rural quality of life; sustaining a quality environment; development of a strong, diversified, sustainable local economy; and planned land-use patterns (which) will determine the level of public services appropriate to the character, economy and environment of each region.”
I thought the general planning process was supposed decide what the ‘central themes’ of the updated general plan should be. Maybe the unelected CDA will just humor us and let us play a bit at general planning before they stick all of those “sustainable” things into the new plan that good sheeple are supposed to do. And one thing you can bet the ranch on is that the new plan will continue to make living more difficult in less populated areas. In any event, it will be more than interesting to see how we will ratchet toward the objectives laid out in Agenda21.
Further afield, we see Finland now joining France and the Netherlands in a renewed recession. All three are considered to be the economic “core countries” in the Eurozone. Of course, all three are also paid up practitioners in the continent’s society of solid socialists. Their economists tell us that there is no quick fix to the trouble these prudent northern Europeans have gotten into as they replicate their profligate southern neighbors’ Keynesian spending sprees to get their economies back on track. No one there, save the odd German or Estonian, seems to understand that anything that continues to grow its share of the GDP is not sustainable.
That ignorance is also endemic in the good old US of A. Obama continues to surround himself with top advisors who “share his desire for a diminished US role in the world.” Witness the shuffle of Susan ‘It was the video’ Rice into the top national security slot, and Mrs Nudge Sunstein herself as our new UN ambassador. All this while their national priorities enforce slow growth policies that usher new millions of the uncounted and uncountable into our pool of the systemically unemployed. (The LA Times reports the latest UCLA Anderson School forecast of unusually long-lasting slow economic growth.) But as long as the feds keep the PBT (print/borrow/tax) checks coming, these unemployed will remain a reliable voting block for the Obama agenda.
Finally a little stock trading esoteria. A bit more than one sixth of public company shares are traded in so-called ‘dark pools’, private markets in which publicizing trading results are delayed. Such trades are carried on by big financial houses like Goldman Sachs for big clients and for their own accounts. The problem is that dark pool trades do affect the price of the same stocks traded on very visible stock exchanges, but their effect is largely late and unknown to the rest of the market. From the 6jun13 WSJ, “The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Wall Street's self-regulatory body, last month sent 15 examination letters to operators of "dark pools"—lightly regulated, off-exchange trading venues that have been a rising concern for regulators and some investors as more activity shifts away from exchanges.”
My own feeling is that public companies should have ALL their shares traded publicly. Price and its dynamics are extremely critical communicators about the state of the enterprise. They should be equally accessible to ALL investors in ALL public companies – i.e. there should be no preferred classes of investors in the same class of stocks. Thoughts?
[7jun13 update] Breaking Bread edition #3 deals with marijuana issues, both local and national. It was taped last Wednesday in the NCTV studios. The program was hosted by Patricia Smith and featured four knowledgeable cannabis activists and experts. More information on viewing BB3 is available on the NCTV website.
rebanesruminations.com 
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