George Rebane
All eligible should vote?! In today’s (18oct18) Union ‘Hits & Misses’ we note the following – “HIT (from Editorial Board member Susan Rogers): To the massive turnout at the Miners Foundry for Indivisible Women of Nevada County's Get Out the Vote event. Even if you personally don't agree with the agenda of the group, any patriotic citizen should not have a problem with the concept of urging all eligible voters to vote.” (emphasis mine) Actually, many of us are not sanguine with that concept, so far as it involves voters ignorant of the issues on which they are asked to vote. To do your country and community a favor, please don’t vote on matters you don’t understand. As many have argued before, and we reinforce here, JUST being able to fog a mirror does not necessarily recommend your vote. More on this important (nay, critical) notion is available from Bryan Caplan’s The Myth of the Rational Voter (2007), whose arguments are more valid today than ever, and are expanded here, here, and here.
Tipping policy gone awry. In the 18oct18 WSJ Jennifer Levitz takes us through today’s world of tipping, especially for services that are simple, rote, and quick (here). For some unknown reason the tip percentages have grown over the years along with the increase in prices. I remember when 10% was a lavish tip, and then it inched up to 15% as the advertised industry average. Today it is not unusual to have people feel they must leave 20% or more to not be viewed as chinching the establishment. There is no evidence that today’s staff depend on tips for their take-home more than before. In fact, with today’s labor activism, higher guaranteed wages are now the norm. So, what don’t we as customers not understand about percentages and proportionality as we self-consciously look over our shoulder in a Starbuck’s coffee line when it comes time to pay (especially on a touch-screen tablet that offers very visible choices of ‘15%, 20%, 25%, No Tip’)?
Zero tariffs should be our policy argues the impressive coterie of economic pundits – Steve Forbes, Arthur Laffer, Fred Smith, and Stephen Moore. Their open letter to President Trump (here) recommends a “zero for zero” tariff policy under new agreements to be negotiated with our trading partners. This would be part of the “level playing field” which Trump has told the world that America wants, and in its achievement is willing to work toward “ zero tariffs, zero subsidies and zero nontariff barriers”. They argue that such “trade deals would result in an expansion of global commerce that would reduce poverty and add trillions of dollars to global economic output. In other words, zero-tariff trade deals will help make the U.S. and world economies great again. All the foreign aid programs in the world combined cannot improve the lives of the world’s poorest citizens more than freer trade.” At this point, I am still willing to assume that there is a definite method to the president’s apparent madness in unilaterally threatening selective trade wars to bring ‘unfair’ countries around to his way of thinking about opening global markets to free trade. Given the progress with certain countries, so far this strategy seems to be working, but a bit too slowly for many of us.
So why do they come? Over these past many years, I continue to be amused by our leftwing commenters. They strongly characterize RR as a blog with erroneous and politically unacceptable content. One that no one reads nor cares about, a blog with other commenters and readers of opposing views whom they repeatedly vilify with some of the most unpleasant verbiage available. They come with little or no apparent ability to contribute to or materially discuss the issues covered in these commentaries or in the remarkably lengthy comment streams that contain numerous well thought out and nuanced essays on an endless variety of subjects. Instead, these worthies come to deliver tirades of ad hominems, and continually embarrass themselves when they demonstrate their limited understanding of the topics, the arguments presented, or the conclusions offered. Why not instead drop their pearls of wisdom on more receptive shores? For the more conservative and/or libertarian readers (the ‘rightwingers’) these progressive darlings and denizens of socialism do provide an ongoing stream of entertainment. But the question remains – why visit and expose your intellect on a site which you claim has no audience (at least none that you care about), and on which you remain a laughing stock to the regulars who do frequent these pages? No matter this conundrum, our visitors of the Left remain welcome here, especially when they come bearing arguments worthy of considered rebuttal or even embrace.
[update] Tonight Mexico’s ambassador to the US, Gerónimo Gutiérrez, gave an extremely positive interview with Bret Baier on FN. He outlined how Mexico has now started working to inhibit Central American ‘migrants’ and ‘refugees’ from transiting his country to get to the US border and then illegally cross it. Our country’s leftwing has been a fifth column in their anti-American activities to maximize the influx of illegal aliens. These progressives have no intention of doing anything to promote immigration reform for the simple reason that the present broken system is working completely in their favor on a number of fronts ranging from the destruction of any remaining cultural unity in America to the bolstering of their core constituencies in our Latino communities. Democrats have definitely outed their longstanding policy of ‘Rule or Ruin’. As a bow on the ambassador’s interview, he gave high marks to the new NAFTA that President Trump has pulled off and assured everyone that Mexico will benefit from the new tripartite trading relationship. This, of course, is not going to be reported on the lamestream.
Louis Farrakhan’s latest anti-Semitic fusillade is being judiciously ignored by America’s liberal Jewish community. The leader of the Nation of Islam, that caters to the more radical black audiences in America, painted the Jews as akin to “termites” who quietly work to demolish the established political, social, and economic order to their ultimate benefit. This is a direct reference to one of Hitler’s favorite characterizations of Europe’s Jews that substantiated the Holocaust in the minds of Europe’s Nazis, fascists, and other benign onlookers. However, today all that vitriol along with Farrakhan are quietly ignored in the lamestream. This demonstrates where rage against anti-Semitism stacks up in the progressive value system. It is strictly ‘Politics Über Alles’, because the Left’s elites know the heavy black following that Farrakhan has, and it makes no sense to piss off the country’s African-American population before 6 November by attacking one of their established socio-political icons. Even moral values have a price and should only be selectively hoisted as needed to serve the narrative.
[19oct18 update] Tchaikovsky and Schumann right here in River City – well, actually in Grass Valley. Last night we attended the opening production in the Music in the Mountains winter concert series. It featured magnificent and thrilling performances of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto and Schumann’s Symphony #4. On stage at the NUHS Baggett Theater was the Sacramento Symphony under the direction of Maestro Andrew Grams – you really have to see this man conduct – who again confirmed that the Sac Phil is a world class orchestra. The star of the show was the young virtuoso violinist Angelo Xiang Yu. I have never heard this concerto played better. Yu’s phrasing, technique, and overall virtuosity was on display throughout the piece. His stage presence was superb – comfortable and enthusiastically projecting the joy of the music. We heard the entire performance au naturel – no sound system – just like in the old days, each instrument delivered its sound unadulterated. Well, there was a little problem when during the concerto’s andante movement one could just hear the theater’s air conditioning in the background – a word with the theater’s manager fixed that during the intermission. But overall, it was an outstanding performance to kick off MIM’s winter season. Along with In Concert Sierra, we are very fortunate to have two wonderful classical music organizations right here in Nevada County.
Pakistan is deciding whether to execute a 53-year-old illiterate Christian woman, now held on death row for eight years, for the capital sin of blasphemy. Several Pakistani jurists and politicians have been assassinated during this interval for daring to voice their opposition to the draconian Islamic law that is still on the books. Islamic fundamentalists and terrorist related organizations are threatening to shut down the country if Pakistan’s Supreme Court releases the woman on appeal. Pakistan is not the only Islamic country to demonstrate how ‘the religion of peace’ enthusiastically terrorizes the population of a country. However, what continues to be noteworthy is that our leftwing lamestream media covers such atrocities with a carefully deployed and selective sound of silence. That is not the case when Christianity is involved. Then their trumpets come alive to denounce that faith’s every infraction, overt personal expression, and its general recognition in the public square.
[20oct18 update] It seems we have received another backhanded accolade from our fellow blogger and graphic grandee RL ‘Bob’ Crabb. This time the gentleman takes RR to task for advocating that voters inform themselves about the issues on which they are about to vote. This tenet of Rebane Doctrine is totally anti-progressive, and therefore by implication anti-American. Our progressive elites and their grassroots echo chambers encourage their constituents to not bother with the details, and for everybody to just get in there and vote as you were told in the last liberal lamestream soundbite, or by the latest antifa street protest, or even someone from the bi-coastal cohort of collectivist celebrities. Mr Crabb’s ‘The Ayn Porkrind Fan Club’ is an entertaining read, but please don’t let your heads get too big because they hang on our every word, for this is the only place from which they get what to them are the alt-news and views that don’t fly in tight formation with their lamestream’s MSNBC, CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, … .
More from Mexican Ambassador Gerónimo Gutiérrez on the mass migration of Hondurans now rioting against Mexican police and border guards on the Mexico-Guatemala border. He stated, "We have evidence that this caravan is also very much politically motivated," in reference to the 4000-strong migrant caravan currently heading toward the U.S. border from Honduras. He added that the migrants themselves are likely unaware of their role in the political posturing. "They’re frequently tricked by human smuggling organizations.” Now who among you will be surprised if the whole thing is not organized and paid for by a Soros-sponsored organization? And then who will be more surprised if it comes out that the DNC is involved in marshalling these poor migrants and coordinating the timing of this march? Most certainly the progressive pundits are already doing their part by taking Trump to task for promising to secure our border and enforcing our illegal alien laws. It would futile to ask whose side are these people on, America’s or … . (more here)
Progressives lament America’s declining fertility rate which for us is not yet the problem it is for other developed (mostly western) countries. We have a huge pool of the systemically unemployed emplaced by progressive policies of running bad union-dominated public schools and welfare programs which give little reason for the unskilled and under-educated to seek work. As predictable as tomorrow’s sunrise are the misbegotten solutions that our Left is promoting to up our birthrate – more maternity leave to copy the European and Japanese models. (Recall that 2.1 live births per fertile woman produces population stability.) What these lefties fail to tell their lightly read constituents is that maternity leave is not a factor in increasing birthrates. All European and Japanese fertility rates keep decreasing even with their ‘lavish’ maternity leave programs. Today the EU’s is 1.60, Germany is 1.60, Japan is 1.44. The more informed know that the real goals of our progressives are to continue enlarging government and handicapping private enterprise with whatever works (pun intended).
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