George Rebane

Heidi Hall is running for District 1 county supervisor, so think a lot of folks in Nevada County.  She is a well-spoken woman and a trained leftwing ideologue who currently has an unopposed soapbox provided by The Union newspaper.  Her weekly column keeps her in the public eye, and allows Union readers to hear her opinions on issues and proposed solutions to a variety of local and national problems.  I think this is an excellent way for voters to get to know a candidate, and I would not diminish her voice in any way.  What I would like though is for a potential candidate of a more conservetarian bent to also make a regular appearance in the newspaper’s op-ed pages.  Perhaps the two of them could even contend on some important local issues.

I don’t know what is preventing the early appearance of Ms Hall’s opponent in next year’s election.  Maybe it’s because three-term Supervisor Nate Beason has not made clear his plans for a fourth term.   I don’t know who would want to run against Nate if he throws his hat in the ring again.  And the longer he delays declaring his intentions, the more he assures that he will be the only candidate who will be able to defeat Ms Hall.  Bowing out later than sooner will give Heidi a leg up on the race.   In any event, if our supervisor decides to run again, and get the next major county building named after him, then I will once more support Captain Nate Beason, USN (Ret).

San Francisco, a murderous sanctuary city.  Actually, there are tens of cities and towns across the country that have openly declared and demonstrated that they not only will not abide certain federal laws, but will actually work to thwart their execution.  It should surprise no one that the lamestream and progressive pundits have never taken such jurisdictions to task for actively inviting and harboring illegal aliens.  You see, it’s OK for liberals to pick and choose which laws they want to follow – it’s a top-down thing that starts at the White House.

I wonder if it’s possible to use such a precedent at the county level.  There’s a lot of crap handed down to us from Washington and Sacramento that really runs counter to our best interests.  Why don’t we just pick and choose which laws are appropriate for us here in the Sierra?  We could list the bad ones and put them onto a 'Just Say NO!' referendum ballot.  Federal and state laws that don’t get 51% support will be ‘scrupled’ by Nevada County.  (A tenet or law to which exception is taken is said to be scrupled.)

The Greece and Iran deals that aren’t.  Politicians on both sides of the Atlantic are trying to convince their constituencies that they’ve solved some really tough problems when actually they’ve done nothing of the kind.  Both Merkel and Obama are celebrating their kicking the can down the road while their respective lackeys are singing hosannas.  Greece will grexit after more lenders get haircut, and Iran will get its nukes while increasing support for worldwide Islamic terror.  Nothing has been done to change these outcomes.

Time for a little CalPERS interest rate problem – sharpen pencil and break out the back of a nearby envelope.  CalPERS is trying to recover the several hundred billion dollars that it lost in the early years of this recession.  This is in addition to another unknown gazillion dollars of unfunded liabilities spread over California’s county and municipal jurisdictions.  Anyway, the pension fund manager drew a laugh several years back when it announced that all would be well with its planned 7.5% annual portfolio returns.  RR was among those chuckling as Sacramento drank the kool-aid.   We are told last year’s 2.4% performance is not a concern, since they’ll make it up with even bigger returns in the future.  Those who know a bit about recessions and economics also know that it’s the early years after the recession dip from which bigger than normal returns can be expected.  And even those don’t necessarily allow portfolios to recover to the pre-recession return history (more here).  In any event, what kind of returns must CalPERS receive to make up for the 2.4% blooper last year?

Let’s ask that question a bit more precisely using some hypothetical numbers.  If CalPERS wants to double its money in the next ten years, what annual return should it get?  The answer is 7.18%.  Now if in its first year it got 2.4% instead, then at what annual rate must its portfolio perform to make up for the blooper – i.e. to still double its portfolio in the remaining nine years?  The answer to that is 7.72%.  This is even higher than its la-la land 7.5% we were asked to believe when the markets were recovering from the 48% dip they suffered in 2008.  Given our higher debt levels, increased regulatory environment, lower new company formation rate, and general application of collectivist management principles over the coming years, there is little hope that markets will appreciate at such prodigious rates to solve the unfunded public employee pension deficits that blanket the country.

(The above problem is more illustrative if we consider what happens if such a blooper hits in the out years when there is less time to recover.  Say, the gods have smiled and we’ve been cracking along at 7.18% for eight years, and then suffer a 2.4% return in our ninth year.  What return rate is required in the tenth (last) year to hit our target of doubling the portfolio from its original amount nine years ago?  The answer to that is 12.2%.  But back to reality, what do you really think the chances are of pulling down 7.18% annually for the next ten years?)

[15jul15 update]  Jade Helm may also have a salutary purpose which is being presented to members of Congress but not the public.  To cover the bases, I have to include the possibility that we have had several successful border penetrations by one or more raghead groups (or their cartel proxies) on a mission to, say, destroy critical power distribution facilities across the country.  In the technical literature we read that taking down only nine specific facilities will damage the national grid to such an extent that it will take weeks to months to bring it back up.  The impacts on civil order and our economy would be devastating.

A legitimate purpose of Jade Helm would then be the training of coordinating federal and local police forces to quickly search and destroy such a group of Islamic  terrorists.  And, of course, the feds would like to have that done as quietly as possible without large public outcry/panic against our indigenous Muslim population.  This also explains why the feds are keeping Jade Helm under wraps as much as possible.  Giving such background info to the media would be sufficient to keep them from going national with such news or even assigning reporters to monitor the progress of JH-15.  Oh the price of political correctness.