Rebane's Ruminations
July 2014
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George Rebane

[Our regular DSL is still out.  This is posted using my iPhone hot spot feature.  Hopefully, ATT will install Uverse this afternoon.]

‘The Worldview that Makes the Underclass’ by Dr Anthony Daniels, a British physician widely published and much experienced in the trenches of society’s detritus, is an excellent summary of the message about our progressive society’s ills in Europe and here in America.  It is a worthy read, the kind that summons corps of collective crickets to respond.  You can also access the May 2014 Imprimis article here from the Hillsdale College archives page.

California’s insane public policies are again making national news (‘California’s Cap and Trade Revolt’) as a large cohort of the state’s legislative Democrats shrink back from AB32 implementations that now demonstrate what so many of us saw coming after the passage of that socialist weapon of economic mass destruction.  The California Clean Air Act was floated in on an historically thick cushion of lies delivered in statewide media and by local leftwing lackeys.  From the latter our own county was not spared.  Now it is becoming clear to even hardened progressives in Sacramento that AB32 is the most toxic thing to hit California since it became a state.  Here is a national take on how some Democrats are attempting to delay setting off the state’s cap’n tax IEDs (i.e. improvised in Sacramento).  It is such destruction of our liberties and California’s economy that keeps people dreaming of a State of Jefferson.

Sandy Springs, Georgia privatized everything.  Well almost, and maybe they crossed one bridge too far, but I don’t know … .  Read this and see what you think.

Common Core is loved by the teachers’ unions, why?  Well, it lets them argue that we should delay student and teacher performance assessment for indefinite future until CC has been used in schools long enough to generate sufficient data for additional studies – in short, CC is now their latest weapon to undermine reform.  We don’t want to prematurely start comparing student performances or fire really bad teachers until we have all the facts.  But that flies in the face of results from school districts like in Washington DC (more here).

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11 responses to “Ruminations – 1jul14”

  1. Gregory Avatar
    Gregory

    The problem Sacramento has with AB32 is that it was rammed through in a bipartisan (Democrats and RINOs) lovefest, where our politicians would be saving the world, with no pain. We’d have affordable, clean, renewable energy and show the way to the future to the rest of the world. Eight years later, the warming “hiatus” is still with us, NOAA has just, umm, revised their figures restoring the hottest month on record in the USA as July 1936, and the reality of AB32 being a massive tax on every Californian that drives a car or pays an electric bill is beginning to weigh on the minds of politicians who want to get reelected.
    An older airport bum of my acquaintance was subtly baiting me a week ago, bemoaning the tornado season and tragedy… “Earl, you do realize strong tornadoes have been decreasing?”. I caught an earful about deniers, Rush Limbaugh science, the usual. Whipped out the phone, googled “tornado trends usa” and picked a couple of interesting charts.
    “Here you go, Earl, strong tornadoes have been declining for years… and the number of tornadoes hasn’t been increasing”.
    Earl questions the source of the images, but it’s important to choose wisely… it was the National Climatic Data Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration… climate change central. No, he isn’t a budding “denier” now but he has figured out he’s being lied to more than he thought by the folks moaning over every day of inconvenient weather, and he’ll be a bit less smarmy the next time.
    Finally, Jeffie and Stevie are gloating over SCOTUS choosing not to make any comment over the AB32 low-carbon fuel standards. The reason you haven’t heard anything? Most of us who actually remember our civics classes know that the SCOTUS choosing to make no comment means very little besides they didn’t want to work on that case. Besides, that also means the Dems wanting to, umm, quietly postpone the costs inherent in AB32 can’t blame the Robert’s Court.
    Besides, the suit isn’t about the science, it’s about fuel suppliers wanting to sell fuel to Californians who will find high carbon fuels at a price disadvantage despite being cheaper on the open market. I guess Stevie and Jeffie are rejoicing Californians will not have the freedom to choose how to vote their wallets; after all, they might not vote the way Jeffie and Stevie want.
    In the meantime, polar ice area is about what it was in ’79
    http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
    and the summer melt season in the Arctic has its coolest start since modern instrumentation was put in place
    http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
    Enjoy, suckers.

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  2. fish Avatar
    fish

    I’d be careful Greg….if you keep bringing data to the discussion….you won’t get to hang out with the “cool kids”.

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  3. George Rebane Avatar

    re Gregory 1233pm – I already hear the crickets coming.

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  4. Walt Avatar

    Along with cap and trade, Ca. has another problem. water.(more like a lack there of,,,) The city of GV has been hurting for bucks for how long? Look at the gold mine it’s sitting on. ( literally) all those tunnels full of water, just waiting to be sold. Maybe a deal with Newmont is in order. It’s their tunnels that have the water.
    So where are the “share the wealth” LIBS? They may care to read this…
    http://news.yahoo.com/dry-california-water-fetching-record-182119533.html
    They may just bitch than someone is making a buck, and price gauging at that.
    LIBS would be more happy if the state just seized that water so no one could sell it.

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  5. Bill Tozer Avatar
    Bill Tozer

    Mr. Walt. I just got back from Beautiful Downtown Penn Valley, affectionately know as Penntucky outside the gate.. Saw the dentist, went to the nursery and checked out poor chicks at the laundry mat looking for a high roller like moi. Knight in rusted armor I am. Anyway, picked up that Marysville/Sutter County free newspaper and read that the New Bullards Bar Reservoir is drawing down and has sold H20 to the highest bidder. Front page stuff.
    Duh, we all knew this would happen. Spin it as greedy water companies or spin it as helping a needy neighbor.
    Water is gold here in the gold country, but the price of liquid gold down in the flatlands and beyond is fetching a fortune. You know, just like the Golden Rule. He that hast the gold maketh the rules.
    Yet another reason to slap a cease and desist order on the 2 mobile bum showers.

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  6. Bill Tozer Avatar
    Bill Tozer

    You hoo, Mr. Walt again. Noticed the link you provided included the city of Santa Barbara scrambling and bidding for water.
    If memory does not play tricks on me, Santa Barbara was the first city in CA (maybe) to build a water desalination plant precisely because of droughts and water shortages. Ironically it went on line the exact day Gov Brown declared the end of the last drought.
    So, they have their new state of the art desalination plant, tons and tons of salt water, and are prepared for a drought. I can’t figure out why in the world they would be in the bidding wars for potable or even non potable water. Were they bamboozled? Cue videos of the Music Man playing in the background.
    Have read of other coastal vacation spots having their plans for their very own high tech high flaluting low polluting mean green desalinater machines torpedoed by the eco-nazis crying Free Willey. Flipper is a mammal just like we are and clams need love too. Hey, drinking a cup of salt water each day ain’t going to kill ya. It might kill your bonsais, but bonsais have zero lobbies in DC or Sacramento.

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  7. Keen Observer Avatar
    Keen Observer

    George, the read on Sandy Springs, GA is fantastic! The biggest difference between private and public sector is accountability. Could you imagine the recent VA scandal occurring under the strict regulations that the private sector faces on a daily basis? The best part of that story is the significant amount of additional funds that the city is free to re-invest back into the community in a variety of ways, such as infrastructure and economic development. These investments then create a snowball effect, as a better developed city attracts residents, whom in turn bring more sales and property tax revenues. That would seem to be definitely more palpable than pouring any free dollars into the broken pension system that plagues government of all levels.
    There is a lesson to be learned here in privatizing government functions. However, this will be ignored by the traditional progressive, as privatization relieves government of a controlling influence, which is an evil to the quickly developing Orwellian style of progressive government.

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  8. George Rebane Avatar

    KeenO 254pm – spot on, your chosen moniker is well-deserved.

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  9. Russ Steele Avatar

    KO@02:54PM
    Grass Valley and Nevada City are struggling. How to we get them to see the light? If they did, this could help them attract more business to the community and help spur the economy.
    I sent the article to the GV and NC mayors. No feedback from the GV Mayor. NC Mayor said she is leaving and it is some one else’s problem.

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  10. Bonnie McGuire Avatar

    “So where are the “share the wealth” LIBS? They may care to read this…
    http://news.yahoo.com/dry-california-water-fetching-record-182119533.html
    They may just bitch than someone is making a buck, and price gauging at that.
    LIBS would be more happy if the state just seized that water so no one could sell it.”
    This is real interesting Walt. I wonder why we don’t hear any of it on the news. Glad those growing our food get water, and because of the cost it will cause prices to rise. Cause and effect. It’ll be interesting to see if the smelt and salmon deserve water more than people in the survival game. Those getting grant money recommending we destroy dams for the sake of migrating salmon. Their diminishing numbers used to be blamed on loggers, but during a visit to Canada, their gov said the decline was caused by increased seal populations resulting from laws preventing the seal hunting. The gov was going to try to use some kind of birth control on the seals to see if that would help the salmon. LOL. I’m not making this up. We read it in their newspaper.

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  11. Gregory Avatar
    Gregory

    George, I was in uncharted territory in 2007 when I first read the literature and decided the alarmist, activist scientist with axes to grind driving the IPCC process were doing the scientific equivalent to covering their ears and chanting “naaa, naaa, naaa, naaa…” when faced with quality research that continues to point to a significant climate role for the sun’s variations and aerosols.
    It’s quite clear now that, while CO2 emissions do have a warming effect, it is small compared to natural variations, and there is no catastrophic warming that solid and verified science has supported. Using unverified models has its place, but the models the scare is based on have now actually been shown to be in error and, as one really smart scientist who was incredibly entertaining in person once said,
    “It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.”
    It’s wrong, Jeff. It’s wrong, Steve. The correction is rolling towards you and the politicians you support, and the longer you put off taking the threat to your politics seriously, the harder you can expect to fall.

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