Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and gospel of envy; its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery. Winston Churchill
George Rebane
George Boardman, our favorite left-leaning columnist and reader, writes a solid piece (here) in the 30apr18 Union on the effects of taxation on pot in California and our county. He even brings up the Laffer Curve (gasp!) to illustrate how higher tax rates lower govt revenues and give rise to black markets. As memorialized by countless citations, comments, and even vituperation in these pages, a sacrosanct tenet of progressive economic theory is that tax rates affect neither production nor consumption. Do we have here an epiphany in the making?
The Left is now all agog about how we can and should regulate AI – in its development and uses. The 30apr18 WSJ interviews three “AI experts” on the matter (here) who are really policy lawyers and demonstrate little understanding of AI as they counsel little to a lot of needed regulations. No one considers that we really need no additional regulation of productized AI because they are at best decision support systems always operating under a responsible human agent for whom all existing laws apply. It is the human who has the power to employ AI as a tool, and then be responsible for its employment under existing laws. Things can change later when the AIs become sentient and then sapient. (See also the post of my recent Union column on this topic.)
California’s progressive socialism has produced the state with the largest income inequality in the Union, and it’s on the rise as more and more middle-class wage earners are pulling up stakes and moving elsewhere. Joel Kotkin assembles some of this alarming data (H/T to reader) to give perspective to the Left’s claim that California is the model for tomorrow’s America. “Today, domestic net out-migration, even after declining in the early years of the recession, has more than doubled between 2013 and 2016. Even worse, according to a recent UC Berkeley study, over a quarter of Californians are considering a move, half of them out of the state, with the strongest proclivity found among people under the age of 50. And contrary to some progressive commentary, those leaving are not necessarily old or losers; according to IRS data, out-migrant households had a higher average income than those households that stayed, or of households that moved in to the state.” (more here)
What level of neurological deficits must a person have to still believe that Mueller's year-plus investigation has turned up the slightest evidence of Trump/Russia collusion that, if it exists, would have been leaked months ago? Why would that lot of liberal lawyers allow their fellow Dems to look like idiots as they repeatedly squawk evidence-free allegations on the media as 'proof' of Trump's guilt? (more here)
[1may18 update] The Mueller gauge is still on EMPTY, as the latest spate of leaks confirms. The list of ‘questions for Trump’ first leaked to the NYT, is an embarrassing fishing expedition that seeks nothing beyond the President’s recollections of his own thoughts about this and that, guesses at what other people might have been thinking, opinions about their pre-campaign activities, notions of the meanings of this or that concept or legal construct, … . In short, the man has found no definitive actions or occurrences involving the Trump campaign that would support the now tidal wave of lamestream allegations serving as desperate proxies for no evidence of a conspiracy with Russia to influence the 2016 election. When this is pointed out, all the leftwing choir is able to retort can be set to Lerner and Loewe’s ‘Just you wait ‘Enry ‘Iggins’, just you wait!’
California’s school kids have been had by the unionized public school teachers and leftwing politicians, as noted here for years. The progressives who have created this disaster refuse to even acknowledge it, guaranteeing that the future will be no better, and probably worse, than the past. Today 65% of our 8th graders are NOT PROFICIENT in reading, and 67% of them are NOT PROFICIENT in math. This places CA 36th nationwide in reading and math, and that itself is another disaster story – with stats like that, how did we place so high, and still have 14 states scoring lower. Oi weh! (H/T to reader and more here)
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