George Rebane
Instead of my regular KVMR commentary, News Director Paul Emery suggested we do a little one-on-one for tonight’s news program. So we sat down for a little gabfest about the election. Paul asked me for any surprises on the outcome, and chowder-head me responded that things went pretty much as I had expected, while completely overlooking my total disappointment and frustration with the failure of Prop6 – you know, the repeal of the most recent California gas tax bamboozle from Sacramento.
Prop6 went down to solid defeat in California in the hands of a partisan majority of voters that over the years has vacillated between insanity and terminal stupidity. CA already has the highest gas taxes in the land, much of them from previous initiatives promised by the lying sacks of s#!t in Sacramento that the taxes would go to fix CA’s roads and bridges. Well, what has happened is that these tax receipts go directly into the state’s general fund to finance an endless number of programs and purposes – e.g. bullet trains, smelt salvation, succoring illegal aliens, funding govt workers pension liabilities, attracting evermore of the nation’s welfare recipients, … – that continue to leave us in an ever bigger mess. And with already the highest gas taxes in the land, we continue to pay these fraudulent takings without even a peep.
So now our roads are really a mess, and that looks like a perfect opportunity for some capitol scumbags to go to the voters – over half of whom pay no taxes, and a third of whom get regular government checks – and ask them to dance another round of the SOSO samba. Only this time the bill will be even more smelly because it has a built-in ratchet that keeps upping it ad nauseum over the years. Those Californians who pay attention did put out the word on Prop6, pointing out that these new taxes will do nothing except increase the cost of transportation (especially for the poor), while once more destined for the state’s general fund to finance the ever greater insanities and inanities from Sacramento.
Defeating such an obviously fraudulent proposition should have been a no-brainer, hence it was designed precisely for those not so encumbered. But like Lucy with the football, our Charlie Brown electorate again fell for the ‘can’t you see all them chuckholes and cracks and … all of which need fixin’?’ And, of course, today all them cracks etc are way bigger and more numerous and easier to see than last time, so the state’s not so nimble numbnuts dutifully checked the proper box to keep the most recent and onerous gas tax in place as the scumbags are already planning the next tax to fix the roads and bridges – hell, why stop a perfectly good bamboozle designed exactly for the kind of voters we worked so hard to attract, ‘educate’, and put in place. No one out there in VoterLand asks what is the word for doing the same thing while expecting a different outcome.
Oh well, on the national scene things went a little better. The Dems won the House, but the best they can do there is start more dead-end investigations of President Trump and the Executive branch, with a possible impeachment swipe at Justice Kavanaugh. Republicans actually will welcome that kind of blatant congressional obstruction which will demonstrate to the country that just putting the new and more aggressive socialist Left in power is going to do nothing to get Congress legislating for the people’s needs.
President Trump’s first-half accomplishments re the tax cut, regulation rollback, foreign policy, and immigration will stay in place. The border will not be secured, and healthcare costs will continue increasing with the bastardized system now metastasizing like a cancer. It will be easy to focus the spotlight on the source of stagnation, and Trump will have something very solid and visible to run on in 2020. The lamestream will have a hell of time ramping up their Fake News Machine enough to hide the source of grit and gravel grinding in the gears of government.
Meanwhile, the Dems will also have to work out their Gerontology Optics Problem with a leadership headed by Nancy the Penultimate Facelift, and backed up by a crowd of cretins like Mad Max Waters, Elijah Cummings, Comrade Bernie, Vacuum Head Ocasio-Cortez, the ‘Capitalist Bones’ of Fauxahontas, True Colors DiFi, SlyEye Chuckie Schumer, all straight out of Central Casting. Every one of these will be on daily display filling countless screens across the land. In the meantime, Trump will have a solid Senate majority to confirm and emplace as many constitutional judges and justices as are on his lengthening short-list. All in all, not a bad night.
rebanesruminations.com 
265 responses to “The Election & RIP Prop6”
Todd, I expect Ginsberg will drag herself, if able, to the office for at least through Nov. 2020, hoping for a Dem Senate and a Dem presidency starting in Jan 2021.
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,,,yes gregory,,,we will keep Ginsberg on the court and in a comatose state if we have to in order to piss trumpski off!!!
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,,,trumpksi’s AG pick is a real weiner!!! gotta love the biblical references!!!
In an appearance last year on CNN, Whitaker laid out the plan he could now use to limit the Mueller investigation.
“So I could see a scenario where Jeff Sessions is replaced with a recess appointment,” Whitaker said in July 2017, “and that attorney general doesn’t fire Bob Mueller, but he just reduces his budget to so low that his investigation grinds to almost a halt.”
Whitaker also defended Donald Trump Jr.’s June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower with Russian officials promising opposition research against Hillary Clinton, stating, “You would always take that meeting.”
Sessions hired Whitaker as his chief of staff in September 2017 after his views about Mueller were public. Whitaker was then a former U.S. attorney who had run for the Senate from Iowa as a Republican in 2014, promising that he would vote for federal judicial nominees who have “a biblical view of justice.”
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M. Can’t read your posts. My free Sac Bee articles for the month has reached its limits. I voted to repeal the gas taxes, you owed to ncrease the gas taxes over the coming years. Cancelled out. I would call that a Mexican Stand Off.
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1472088162925216&id=217926015008110
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Posted by: M | 08 November 2018 at 08:50 AM
You didn’t even read your own link did you dugsKKi…..the part where they acknowledge how fast and loose California politicians play with these “inviolable” pools of dedicated funds? How they haven’t been earmarked for those projects that you were told that they were supposed to go to? How now they have to use money from a new tax to retire debt borrowed from money generated from an old tax that was taken for pet projects which should have, following your “logic” been paid for out of the general fund.
You don’t really believe that any “Firewall” will stop pilfering do you? Please tell me you’re not that simple minded?
Oh wait….it’s dugsKKKi…..a reliable useful idiot!
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Well, McCain drew a paycheck while not stepping foot in DC from Dec., 2017 until his death in the summer of 2018. Figure we can just keep paying Ruth while she heals up in the convelesant home. One less liberal on the court is a good thing.
Hope Ruth does not catch what Hillary got…’frequent faller miles ‘with broken wrist, cracked melon, broken foot, broken hand, broken thinker. SCOTUS is in session, right?
New Zealand is lovely this time of year.
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,,,toes,,,the point is that the state is working on keeping things running,,,
Analysis from 2017
The allegation is misleading. It’s true that California governors and lawmakers – of both parties – borrowed heavily from transportation-related accounts after the dot-com bust and during the recession. But the amount of borrowing never amounted to the $5.2 billion a year this package would produce. And most of the money has been paid back. The rest would be paid back in three years if the package is approved.
Republicans also say the state could produce that kind of money if the sales tax on car sales went strictly to transportation. But that money has never been earmarked for road projects in California. Under that logic, the sales tax on shoe sales would pay for sidewalks.
Still, even as state revenue has soared, the Brown administration and Democratic lawmakers continue to employ a recession-era budget maneuver that taps transportation dollars to pay off voter-approved transportation bonds. The general fund – which funds schools, social services and other functions of state government – typically also makes debt payments on school, water and other types of borrowing. By using money earmarked for transportation to pay for transportation bonds, the general fund is saving about $1 billion a year that can be used for other things.
Senate Bill 1 emerged last Thursday, the product of months of negotiations between Brown and legislative Democrats. Its provisions would increase gas and diesel excise taxes, create a fee linked to vehicle value, and impose a new fee on electric vehicles.
The measure also would repay, over three years, $706 million in transportation loans dating back to the 2002-03 budget year. Officials say that would close the books on some 15 years of borrowing from transportation accounts to prevent cuts to other programs.
State revenue soared in the late 1990s and early 2000s, prompting lawmakers to create the multibillion dollar Traffic Congestion Relief Program. Revenue, though, soon began to sag, and lawmakers borrowed more than $1 billion from the fund for the 2002-03 budget.
The tab continued to grow over subsequent budgets: Lawmakers suspended a rule requiring that the sales tax on gas go to transportation. When gas prices were high, they swept up some of the hundreds of millions of dollars in “spillover” revenue that otherwise would have gone to public transit.
Lawmakers got creative to try to pay the money back. In the mid-2000’s, then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and lawmakers approved tribal casino-expansions deals, with some of the tribes’ revenue-sharing payments to the state directed to pay off the road debt.
After the recession hit, lawmakers approved a series of complex fuel tax swaps, with the goal of providing relief for the general fund. In 2011, they overwhelmingly approved Assembly Bill 105, which directed truck weight fee revenue to pay debt service on Proposition 1B, the $19.9 billion transportation bond passed in November 2006.
In the current fiscal year, the budget directs $1 billion in weight fees revenue to help pay for $1.5 billion in Proposition 1B debt service. That would continue under the latest legislation.
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,,,another tidbit,,,
Q: What would the gas tax be now if it had been raised regularly with inflation?
California’s gas tax was first implemented in 1923 at 2 cents per gallon. According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s consumer price index calculator, when adjusted for inflation, that 2-cent per-gallon tax would be 30 cents now.
The last time the gas tax was increased was 1994, when it reached 18 cents per gallon. SB1 increased the tax by another 12 cents, bringing the state’s tax on gasoline to 30 cents per gallon.
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Posted by: M | 08 November 2018 at 09:21 AM
,,,toes,,,the point is that the state is working on keeping things running,,,
I thought the point was that there was a “firewall” that protected money to repair the roads…….but there isn’t is their dugsKKKi. This is another shuck and jive to appeal to halfwits like yourself who think the same old tricks won’t be employed the next time Uncle Gavin finds himself out of pocket!
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George
Why did you shut down the conversation on “Election night and I am really pi&&ed (again)!”
Just wondering. You seldom do that Hmmmmmm
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Dumbest thing I have heard today. I am most confifdent that there is plenty more where that came from,
“Joy Behar: Democrats Lost Senate Races Due to Gerrymandering”
https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/pj-gladnick/2018/11/07/joy-behar-democrats-lost-senate-races-due-gerrymandering
Was it Cortez who was babbling about eliminating the Senate, or was that some other a idiot? Probably the Huff-n-Puff Post.
https://m.facebook.com/RowdyConservatives/photos/a.217983685002343/1472813952852637/?type=3&source=48
Taxes: This makes sense. Dems are a glum lot so why shouldn’t they tax others who are not.
https://m.facebook.com/RowdyConservatives/photos/a.217983685002343/1472751486192217/?type=3&source=48
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PaulE 936am – I didn’t shut it down, I simply transferred here it to my most recent commentary of the election. You’ll note that nothing had to be omitted and the commenters switched without blinking. Sally forth!
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,,,littlebrownlumpfishthatlivesinmyDepends,,,
Prop. 69
Of those five measures, there is one that pertains directly to transportation and urban planning. Proposition 69 would require that funds generated by a 2017 gas tax increase be spent only on transportation projects.
It seems pretty straightforward.
https://cal.streetsblog.org/2018/06/04/breaking-down-prop-69/
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,,,yes toes,,, Senate races lost to gerrymandering and voter suppression,,,
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/08/democrats-republicans-senate-majority-minority-rule
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,,,the good news,,,
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/11/5/18058968/elections-2018-governors-races-gerrymandering-redistricting
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The left is whining that they had 40 million votes in the Senate races and the R’s only 31 million. What the stupids idiots don’t tell you is that California had 6 million of those and it was two democrats running. You think our schools teach anything?
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And another two million in New York’s race. So maybe there is no skewing at all.
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Repubs lost in Nevada County Todd (district 1, sheriffs race and more) the House with maybe 40 seats by the time it’s done, lost 6 governors. Brag away, you look really silly on this.
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Posted by: M | 08 November 2018 at 10:15 AM
,,,littlebrownlumpfishthatlivesinmyDepends,,,
Rent free dugsKKKi rent free….once a useful idiot always a useful idiot!
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Paul Emery, no you are the silly one. Trump won, SCOTUS ours, Senate ours, R’s have more victories the D’s. You really are dememnted.
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Is Nevada County still “ours” Todd?
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Punchy 1105am… maybe you could call up Van Jones and console him. After all, he’s heartbroken over the fact that there was no Blue Wave.
The Sheriff’s race was literally non-partisan.
The House race “win” in Nevada County was more driven by the heckler’s veto exercised by the Left which caused LaMalfa to skip this county, and I don’t blame him for that.
Then there was the “poll” up for weeks on theunion.com… LaMalfa or Denney? That had support for Denney 2:1 over LaMalfa, not the 51/49 locally (final numbers not in) and a polar opposite of the 2:3 against Denney that is the district wide result.
Denney was listed as an “Educator/Farmer”… and one campaigner pounding the pavement in downtown Nevada City told me flat out she taught at Chico State. Which she does not. Said campaigner also said he could not stand LaMalfa and was happy to have been part of the local “town meeting”, as one of the ‘gotcha’ questioners.
In fact, she’s not only not an Educator, she’s not a Farmer anymore as her parents (M&P were apparently both GOP) lost the farm a decade agi. And as her thesis won an award for best thesis in the CalState system… in Education… that puts a lie to her education being in Agriculture. And while it is good that she managed the award, Education in the CalState system does not attract the brightest bulbs in the basket.
In short, journalists lobbed softballs to Denney and her supporters.
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“Is Nevada County still “ours” Todd?”
Posted by: Paul Emery | 08 November 2018 at 11:42 AM
The County was arguably purple when I moved here a quarter century ago with the Gang of Four having taken out the conservatives from county government in something of a stealth campaign that was rectified in the next election.
It’s solid purple still. Which means everyone needs to make nice and treat your neighbors as you wish they would treat you and yours.
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“Here’s to Justice Ginsberg’s speedy recovery from her three broken ribs, having fallen in her office yesterday.”
I just assumed that she took a deep breath.
The thing I find most interesting about the Supreme Court is that there can be so much argument about the decisions. You’d think they’d simply look at the Constitution and any clearing up of the verbiage, and that was that.
If you want to change the founding documents via amendments, then go for it.
Perhaps I just have a misunderstanding of the point of the office, that’s certainly possible.
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So poor Dougie is afraid of coming to Nevada County to campaign and that’s why Denny is winning here. Really Gregory that’s at Toodish stretch if I ever heard one.
Not a peep Gregory about La Malfa being supported by the Farm Welfare subsidies which makes him a fake farmer.
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PaulE 1249pm – Wow! “fake farmer”, another great progressive definition that most likely makes over 75% of America’s farms owned and worked by fake farmers. Extending that appellation of ‘fake’ to other industries subsidized in some form would make most of the country that receives govt support a ‘fake economy’. I imagine this is a widely shared view among the ‘you didn’t build that’ progressives.
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scenes 1230pm
There’s the Constitution, federal law, state law, local law… then there’s all the regulations that are written to implement laws. Everyone is writing laws and regulations according to what their understanding is about what they can get away with.
It is complicated… especially when the Justices at the top decide the Constitution is living and might have grown some since the last time they thought about it. Originalists/textualists believe the Constitution is dead and in rigor mortis… but it’s still complicated.
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Let me get this straight George. You are contending 75% of Americans farmers are government subsidized. In your view is that correct.
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There’s no reason to think LaMalfa “is afraid” to come to Nevada County, Punch. He’ll just avoid it if he knows there will be people shouting and shaking paper, rather than people making their points and listening on all sides.
This was handled in the debate that was in or near Chico… he said something about traveling across his district, there was a malicious twittering in the audience and he made it clear he’d not be coming here, and why.
Yes, I think that’s worth a couple of percent of votes, and if you were honest about it, so would you.
Fake farmer… really, Paul. Corn, wheat, rice … all being grown in the US by “fake farmers”.
I’m perfectly good with a free market for all crops… one of the reasons I became a real libertarian Libertarian nearly forty years ago. What you are asking of LaMalfa is for him to unilaterally drive his great-grandfather’s business into the ground to be hated by his many partners who he would then have to avoid every Thanksgiving and Christmas at the dinner table.
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So….it’s your contention that “Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Will Retire from the US Supreme Court in January, 2019”
Is this what you’re trying to say?
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re: Gregory@1:03PM
I think that it’s complicated mostly to the extent that law, and the fractal possibilities therein, takes the place of culture.
If all interactions between individuals or groups of people needs to be codified in a state document somehow, then it becomes truly complicated.
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Paul, what percentage of corn, soybeans, wheat, rice and milk are produced under Federal control?
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Blue Mob Agent #1 sez : “Let me get this straight George. You are contending 75% of Americans farmers are government subsidized. In your view is that correct.”
It seems to me that the number is something like 40%, but that would be only in some sort of direct payment or crop insurance. Probably 100% of farmers are in some sense, but then most individuals are. It isn’t like you bought your Medicare.
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Mr. Fish: “Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Will Retire from the US Supreme Court in January, 2019”
Honestly, I expect they’ll ‘Weekend at Bernies’ the woman regardless of illness or dementia. There’s too much at stake if you view the point of the Supreme Court as a co-equal (or above) legislative branch of government.
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Gregory
So I assume you believe that our local organic farmers should be government subsidized so they can be competitive.
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Posted by: scenes | 08 November 2018 at 01:52 PM
She certainly can’t weigh that much……get some 40lb test line and turn the husk into a marionette!
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/2256/1635/products/5036_l_60515ad5-5e0d-41aa-8376-d79dce3ba0b3.jpg?v=1540496327
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Paul, why be so f’ing obtuse?
Fresh veggies are not controlled crops. Neither are crops like almonds.
Try growing rice, corn, wheat, dairy. Get back to me with the regulations you face. Let me know when you figure out “marketing orders”. Or how you could sell your soybeans to Asia without being under the federal thumb.
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Oh my. There will be time enough for counting when the voting is done. Local elections? How the county voted? Show me the final tally with breakdowns and lots of meaningful percentages, total voters, total votes, breakdown by precinct or area or zip code and then let’s talk. Some people get sooooo impatient. Interested to know how “we” voted for Senate.
Patience, grasshopper, patience.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10101865707249986&set=gm.509670709548433&type=3&theater&ifg=1
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1472787922855240&id=217926015008110
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She should have Hillary write the forward to her next book. Put that cow out to pasture.
https://www.theblaze.com/news/2018/11/08/democratic-sen-mccaskill-blames-fox-after-losing-re-election-calls-it-state-owned-news-channel
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AKC8pSFg1Vw
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Strange position from a so called Libertarian that you claim to be Gregory. Free markets right? What a hoot.
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George came up with the 75% number Scenes Check out Rebane 1:01
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“Strange position from a so called Libertarian that you claim to be Gregory. Free markets right? What a hoot.”
More abusive obtuseness from Punchy. I suspect you know you are punching well below the belt and the ref would toss you out of the ring were this under Marquess Of Queensbury Rules.
I’m against the farm regulations, Punch, the price supports, paying farmers to take land out of production, marketing orders that can force farmers to destroy crops, etc, etc. All of them. And I’ve made that clear from time to time.
But if you go into a such a heavily regulated business, you either comply or get taken into court. That’s the system that the New Deal ushered in.
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PaulE 129pm – Don’t put too sharp a point on it Paul, you get the idea (I hope).
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Check out the farm subsidy percentages, Scenes. Has nothing to do with the elections. Off to the Sandbox. With you.
But, since I am here…. I can just feel the love. So predictable they way they grasp at strawmen.
https://m.facebook.com/RowdyConservatives/photos/a.217983685002343/1472668182867214/?type=3&source=48
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re: BillT@2:58PM
https://www.cato.org/publications/tax-budget-bulletin/reforming-federal-farm-policies
“The federal government spends more than $20 billion a year on subsidies for farm businesses. About 39 percent of the nation’s 2.1 million farms receive direct subsidies, with the lion’s share of the handouts going to the largest producers of corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, and rice.1”
Although I can see an issue on defining ‘subsidy’.
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I was with Doug LaMalfa election day and he made phone calls here in the county. If ever there was a man that was not afraid of the mob it is LaMalfa. I attended the scream fest at Lamalfa and saw all of Paul Emery’s chicken shit friends there wearing their pussy hats and flashing the finger. Real classy pals you have PE. Anyway, farm subsidies were placed by FDR and for a good reason. It levels the playing field on food so there are not the ups and downs like the world had always seen. If PE wants to pay 10 bucks for a tomato, then go ahead and remove the subsidies. What an uninformed journalist you are PE.
Also if PE would take the time to read the county results as I suggested, he would see most of those local races were DTS candidates. Rather “purple”.
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Off to the Sandbox. With you.
oops, you are quite correct.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sa-hs0RbnP4
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scenes 140pm – … and that’s why God invented culture, and made us like living in such cohesive communities without having to write hernia packs of codes, regulations, and laws to cover conduct etc.
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Scenes, that is outrageous. Bleeping outrageous! Those federal green-back-a-dollars should be going public radio, a local valuable institution. Invaluable. Food one can live without. Not so without alternative community supported (mostly) radio.
Millions will die on or streets. They have already farmed out Big Bird to pay TV. A very slippery slope.
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District 1 House of Representatives Todd is not DTS. You know that.
So in your view Gregory’s assumption that LaMalfa avoided campaigning in Nevada County because of adverse audiences is wrong. Here is what Gregory wrote
“The House race “win” in Nevada County was more driven by the heckler’s veto exercised by the Left which caused LaMalfa to skip this county, and I don’t blame him for that.”
I assume you are saying Gregory is full of crap for saying that.
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Todd
I by my fresh veggies from local farmers Todd. How would eliminating subsidies effect those prices?
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