George Rebane
TechTest2014 examinees were feted at its annual Survivors’ Breakfast at Tofanelli’s this morning. The pictured six top scorers – David Bernadett, Lars Montagnaro, Patric Wells, Grant Clove, Sean Anderson, Alex Vobiril – received their scholarship checks that ranged in amounts from $6,000 to $300. Attending also were junior year students taking the test for practice, and an especially large contingent of parents. All test takers told us of their current plans for STEM careers, and received their obligatory TT2014 t-shirts with leftovers going to parents and SESF staff. SESF director Mike McDaniel again served as MC, and Executive Director Russ Steele distributed the filthy lucre to the well-deserving and grateful recipients. (Go to sesfoundation.org to check out the test they so ably ‘survived’.)
VA healthcare illuminates the future of Obamacare. The latest scandal has promised to be the yet smelliest of this administration’s scandals. It has even scared Democrats who have remained scandal-proof to date. But not all is well, the Big Government blinders are still firmly in place for our collectivist cadres who view this as just another minor aberration and growing pain that needs only a tweak here and there. For them all programs are still running hot, true, and normal headed for a world in which criticizing the state will soon be a hate crime. (more here)
‘Secrecy Cloaks Oil Trains’ reports the 23may14 WSJ. The perverse policies banning the building of new oil/gas pipelines have required orders of magnitude increase in the number of large oil trains rumbling through towns and metropolitan areas across America. For obvious political and security reasons the movement of these trains is kept secret. This is scaring hell out of local fire departments and emergency first responders who have no idea when to increase their readiness for the exploding holocausts which such trains have already caused. Big Government again demonstrates the evil outcomes of its policies given birth through corruption and/or ineptitude. (more here)
The increasing pain that afflicts America is felt in thousands of small communities across the land, communities filled with people who still try to work for a living, and those who remember what the country was like not so long ago. Here’s a typical cri de coeur from a small Michigan town on the shore of Lake Huron.
Nevada County’s ‘invisible’ barriers to commerce and property lifted their head higher than usual in the latest of expensive lawsuits in which the county is the defendant through ineptitude and corruption denied. Invisible? By that I mean invisible to our bigger government loving progressive neighbors. The law suit involves the building of a cell phone tower on a Lake Wildwood ridgeline the permit for which continues to be “improperly denied” according the court. Reported in the 23may14 Union (here), this is just a small stanza in the county’s Lyric of the Litigious Left that affects all residents. As a productive alternative, the county could fund a full court press in bringing wide area broadband to the region for a fraction of the cost that it is paying for defense lawyers.
[update] While hundreds of thousands of central valley acres parch and orchards are dying, the government is releasing massive ‘pulse flows’ of fresh water from California reservoirs into the Pacific Ocean so fish can have a proper water temperature as they swim to the ocean. This is beyond butt stupid (I would even call it criminal) policy and enthusiastically implemented by the country’s environmental know-nothings with the full backing of the government gun. Congressman Tom McClintock explains the matter in a piece titled ‘California Drains Reservoirs in the Middle of a Drought’ appearing in the 24may14 WSJ. And progressives have no idea why we think big government is necessarily evil, and bigger government even more so.
[30may14 update] Years ago I should have started an ‘I told you so’ category. Socialist French President Hollande’s current plan to roll back France’s income tax rates in order to increase government revenues would be a prime contender in that category. Candidate Hollande, in typical populist fashion, promised to his country’s sheeple to soak those filthy rich of their excess cash by raising the top tax rate to 75% for all earnings above €1M. The budget analysts dutifully projected the appropriate revenue increases into their treasury, and everyone sat back to wait for the new monies to start pouring in (because as every collectivist knows, income tax rates don’t affect the propensity to earn income). Bummer! Revenues fell by one third in the affected categories, and foreign investments plunged by almost 80%. After quickly wiping egg off his face, Hollande is now rolling back taxes, and with great relief is watching revenues start to go back up again – ‘Now what did I do with that damn Laffer curve?’ I will wager that the sumbich hasn’t learned anything from this, and will start raising taxes one mo’ time when France’s next financial tit gets in a wringer. For socialists it was ever thus – look no further than right here in California.
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