George Rebane
The pressure from the local Left mounts on Sheriff Keith Royal who is slated to introduce Sheriff Mack during a major speaking event in Nevada County on 18 October next. While Sheriff Royal has given no explicit support to the constitutional sheriffs movement, of which Sheriff Mack is a founder, just that he has agreed to introduce Sheriff Mack has enraged our progressive platoons. It will be most interesting to see how our politically astute elected lawman handles this conundrum as he looks forward to standing for the office again next year. (Judi Caler of ROAR emailed this announcement today on the upcoming event.)
Government schools registered yet another new performance low. This morning NPR announced that California’s reading scores for 3rd graders are in. Another significant yearly drop. In San Joachin County scores dropped from a dismal upper 30 percentile range down to around 33%, and Sacramento county suffered a drop from 46% to 42% of these youngsters who had learned to read. The significance of this is that if a student does not learn to read by the 3rd grade, the likelihood is low that he will ever become a literate person. And we continue to pump out millions of illiterates every year into a workforce in which they simply have no chance to qualify for a job. The progressive educators celebrate these results because these ignorant legions do add to the growing cohort of reliable voters for the Democratic Party.
Why not join the funding of Obamacare with the funding of the nation’s other ‘entitlements’? Isn’t that what Obamacare really is, another entitlement? Why treat it separately when the deficit reduction debate heats up in a few days. Entitlements are the 800lbs gorilla of mandated government expenditures, and keeping them whole gives no hope for reducing deficits, let alone approaching a balanced budget. I have no idea why the Republicans have not made that obvious connection instead girding their loins to assault Mount Obamacare as a separate objective that is also happens to be this administration’s holy grail. Throw that damned cup into the bin with all the other spending programs that are driving the country into the mud.
Last Wednesday we taped the fifth edition of ‘Breaking Bread’ at the NCTV studios. The topic of BB5 was the Trans Pacific Partnership multi-lateral trade agreement. Eric Tombs hosted the show which will air this Sunday and then be available online. I was one of Eric’s guests in that discussion. The remarkable conclusion was that we all had problems finding any good parts to the secretly negotiated agreement, especially how it will aid America’s small and medium sized businesses. Each of us thought that this was a genuine example of corporatism for the benefit of central planners and the big business interests that are trying to become super-national entities with their own laws and courts that supersede the legal rights of sovereign nation states.
The Public Citizen takes a dim view of the TPP. The official story is given here on the US Trade Representative’s website.
BTW, NCTV is now fighting for its life. There are plans for going forward in a new format, but everything is up in the air until the existing board decides how it will exit. The official word on the subject is given on the station’s website; stay tuned.
[update] Reader Michael Anderson informs us (here) that Sheriff Royal has announced that he will not be introducing Sheriff Mack on 18 October. Apparently Sheriff Royal called Jeff Pelline to confirm this decision who then posted it on his blog (here).
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