George Rebane

Clarification of the 1^st Amendment kudos to Union publisher Don Rogers for explaining again that the ‘free speech’ amendment applies ONLY to what our government cannot do to limit communications, no matter how wise, dumb, outrageous, … the message may be.  Private parties that control/own media and entertainment outlets are free to limit any and all speech that goes over such outlets, and that includes even the regulated ones.  Our leftwing neighbors, of course, neither understand nor tolerate the exercise of any such rights that conflict with their ideas.  You should read Mr Rogers’ ‘Fictions of Free Speech’, especially if you are one of those who really knows what people should be able to see, hear, and read.

‘Believers Need Not Apply’ observes Sohrab Ahmari, WSJ’s editorial writer in Europe.  “Does liberalism have any room left for Christians and other believers? The question has been posed countless times, and each time liberals answer more decisively than the previous: No. … Progressives have triumphed spectacularly over faith and tradition. Now they are targeting conscience itself.”  The new levels of behavior control sought by the Left now approach those last witnessed in 17^th century Puritan New England under the vigilant eye of the Reverend Cotton Mather.

People are beginning to react to the Alt-Left’s return to segregation as covered here in ‘Safe Spaces, Federalism, Great Divide – A Progress Report’.  Commenting on Jason Riley’s ‘50 Years After Loving v. Virginia, Colleges Embrace Segregation’, Daniel Zeidner writes here in the 16jun17 WSJ – I wonder if the same people who somehow, strangely and sadly to many of us, consider it “progress” to have separate graduation ceremonies, separate standards, rules and housing for people by race, gender, sexual orientation or some other identifier would consider it progress if the universities also provided separate bathrooms and water fountains for people by race, with “white” and “people of color” over the indicated bathroom doors and fountains?

The last few days the news hereabouts has been that Nevada County ERC Executive Director Jon Gregory will seek new opportunities at Five Star Bank in Sacramento.  The Economic Resource Council has been a low/no performer in the county for some years now.  With our anti-development mentality it does not take imagination to understand why our doldrums continue.  As for Mr Gregory, his departure reminds me of the one-liner, ‘Already working on my second million; gave up on the first one.’

California’s Left intends to plow new ground with its push to Single Payer healthcare in the state.  Besides considering the ensuing insanity it would shower over California’s $1T debt and unfunded liabilities, and the guaranteed DMV-style delivery of services, has anyone considered how many more freeloaders seeking ‘free healthcare’ the state would attract?  We already vie for the country’s home of record for the most welfare recipients, illegal aliens, and an abjectly ignorant electorate, now let’s pound another nail into our golden coffin. (more here)

On a brighter note, let’s go to Mars.  SpaceX founder Elon Musk tells us how in a recently published research paper that he has been telling audiences about for the last few months.  (more here)

[17jun17 update]  Again Ramirez says it all.

[18jun17 update]  Over the years a favorite riposte of liberals to the free market nostrums offered on these pages has been: name one country where you have seen this or that public policy work.  They choose to ignore Exhibit A, the capitalistic foundation which has made America great and the destination of the world’s poor, oppressed, and entrepreneurial.  But what they refuse to offer in turn is an example of where their collectivist policies have worked in any country that is not secured/subsidized by America and/or dependent on state-owned extractive industries for their unsustainable sustenance.  Yet they continue to believe that a nation’s ability to create wealth is independent of its confiscatory tax and market-stifling regulatory policies.  The entire thrust of the Great Divide is to achieve an environment in which the collectivists and their lightly read constituents can practice what they preach without forcing the rest of us at gunpoint to follow their road to destitution and tyranny.

[19jun17 update]  George Boardman in today’s 19jun17 Union waxing eloquent (here) on the coming tranche of tax increases to fix CA’s infrastructure appears to believe that federal funds flowing to CA are not taxpayer monies first vacuumed up by Washington.  He duns Trump’s program of federal seed money to attract local private investments for repairing our roads, etc.  Mr Boardman considers the feds’ not funding CA’s whole repair bill as “passing the buck” to the states.  So where does he think the fed would have gotten the money in the first place?  What Mr Boardman and other tax-promoting observers in the media fail to ask is how much of the already highly taxed fuel, registration, and other related fees actually go to their promised use in expanding and maintaining our infrastructure; and more importantly, how much of those monies have seen such legitimate uses in the past.  All newly purposed tax hikes should be evaluated in light of that performance by a lying government.  Supposedly center-stripe columnists should take note.

It’s the law in DC, Maryland, and most of the NE coast that only government and criminals are able to carry guns.  The recent GOP baseball practice shootings highlighted this again.  It was serendipity that Rep Scalise’s security detail was present to defend the MOCs; no one else was armed save the leftwing looney.  ‘When seconds count, the police are minutes away.’  The lamestream’s continuing coverage of ‘gun violence’ never seems to point out that almost all of it occurs in historically Democrat controlled urban areas with the most draconian gun control laws.  And their continuing debasing of the 2^nd Amendment will only affect the law abiders, most of whom live in smaller towns, rural areas, and the ‘fly over country’.  It is really guns in the hands of these people that our (and all) governments fear.  Politicians learned long before our Republic that they and the criminals are birds of a feather – both work deviously to relieve people of their wealth and property.

Re Millennials, Public Education, and American Apprenticeships – “The largest problem of skills in the US today isn’t a shortage of young workers with specific competencies.  Instead it is a need for more general cognitive skills that give workers the ability to adapt to new circumstances and new jobs.  In that area, American schools are not competitive with their international competitors – and more apprenticeships won’t help.” MIT economist Dr Eric Hanushek, Hoover Institution of Stanford University.  (more here)