George Rebane
More signs of our times. SESF Executive Director Russ Steele and I along with our brides attended a robotics competition last Sunday at the Folsom campus of Intel Corporation. One of the teams competing was from Nevada Union HS, and we were there to root for the home team. They did quite well, but I’ll let Russ fill you in on the details since he is preparing a piece on the event. SESF has been deeply involved in STEM education of our county’s youth. SESF writes and funds the annual TechTests and TechTestJrs merit exams, give seminars on taking tests, and run the TechMentor program for special students. But nationwide things are not looking all that good, since our K-12 school systems turn out overwhelming numbers of kids who can’t read, write, or reason (more here and H/T to a reader for this latest heads up).
The leftwing mobs protesting free speech on campuses are growing more brazen as witnessed at UC Berkeley yesterday. Now violence is becoming the norm with fires, rocks, and broken windows as the campus police stand by helplessly not certain whether to enforce the law or run and hide. One of my current books has been Der Führer (1944) by Konrad Heiden, a detailed history of the rise of Adolph Hitler and National Socialism in prewar Germany. Today’s headlines reflect mirror images of how our radical (or is it normal?) Left dispatches its ideological opponents similarly to how the SA brown shirts shut down opposition to the Nazis even before they were known as Nazis.
Today one of NPR’s daily hit pieces on Trump featured a Democrat senator opposing Judge Gorsuch for being "out of the mainstream" since he is not a supporter of Roe v Wade. Mainstream? Yes, as the litmus test the senator cited that 80% of Americans support RvW. Someone should inform the beltway sequestered politician that 99.9% of RvW supporters have no clue as to what that law actually provides for, and what factors comprise its deceptively named ‘women’s healthcare’ issue.
A learned friend and RR reader sent me a couple of documentaries, both rather long and informative, but that’s the price of completeness. The first entitled ‘Death by China’ covers the enormous problem of jobs and China’s impact on America’s growing systemic unemployment. This, as longtime readers will recognize, is one of RR's seminal themes which the data presented in this video corroborates.
The second documents the abhorrent science behind the global climate change hysteria. RR has presented detailed analyses of the so-called global warming issue, among these being our lack of a workable atmospheric science upon which we can build reliable general circulation models (GCMs). The interviewed scientists take us through the latest in the development of climate data, the known science, and the dysfunctional GCMs which are used to create the catastrophe graphics to fuel the politics and policies of central planning and globalization. The documentary – ‘Doomsday called off’ – should be of special interest to the liberal bobbing heads who can do nothing more than interminably parrot ‘Consensus science! Consensus science! Consensus science! …, Aaaawkk!’ Spoiler alert: Besides the dreadful condition of the GCMs, you’ll learn that histrionics based on surface temperatures just won’t do. (for more, search RR with ‘global warming’)
[update] And this just in on how companies, especially the highly regulated ones, view employees as the cost they are, and then do everything they can to keep such costs flexible so that they can respond to the ups and downs of the marketplace. The solution increasingly adopted by firms is to hire contractors to fill needs which may not be permanent. 'The End of Employees' details this approach which is alarming to many workers of moderate and/or limited skill sets. All of this is of a piece (see the China report above) with factors that exacerbate our growing systemic unemployment.
[3feb17 update] ‘Replace ObamaCare, Don’t Rename It’ advises Phil Gramm, former senator and chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, because “trying to cure all the program’s ills will only make them worse – and the GOP will get the blame.” He also informs us that Obamacare added only 2.3M to the private insurance rolls, and those at a cost of $29,130 each. Why? Because the normal accretion (even after failed Hillarycare) to such rolls occurs after each recession without any help (interference?) from government. The main effort here is to repeal Obamacare’s impact on taxes, rationing, coercion, and economic stagnation. The GOP’s solution should have a more cost-efficient pre-exisitng conditions proviso, improve Americans’ ability to keep their insurance when they get sick or change jobs, and provide Medicaid block-grants to the states. “If they try to do more, they will be in danger of only changing the name of ObamaCare. They would then own a program that is (still) detrimental to freedom, fiscal responsibility, and economic growth.”
[5feb17 update] Readers informed me that some of the liberals’ local leading lights went into histrionics responding to my 4feb17 column ‘Calexit and the Great Divide’ in The Union (and here). It’s hard to tell whether these worthies are really smarter than their effluent indicates and just playing to their information under-loaded base, or whether they share in those deficits. The critiques underscored a gross misunderstanding of the US Constitution along with what I said in my column. The former is abundantly evident in these pages, and the latter is a perennially seminal characteristic of the progressive – ‘We know what you really meant.’ Armed with these, critics proceeded to fabricate their version of my column.
The most astounding aspect of their denials is that they all missed the Calexit gorilla in the room as the most prominent exemplar of the Great Divide. This movement, now attempting to gather over half million signatures, was the highlight of my column. And they totally missed it, apparently because the sheltered channels through which they are ‘informed’ never mentioned that little embarrassment to those globalists who have denied the now fully grown schism in the land.
Among the many things of which I was therein accused was the new charge that I am now also “craven” for “enjoying the benefits of American values while trying to deny those benefits to posterity.” You literally cannot make this stuff up, but they can; it is of a piece of the Left’s growing assault on the Trump presidency.
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