Rebane's Ruminations
March 2026
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George Rebane

Millionaire taxes on the rich don’t work.  Massachusetts tried that in 2023 and lost $4.2B in state revenues.  A large number of the rich just high-tailed it out of the state.  This is not reported in the lamestream media, so none of the Democrat voters know about it and will no doubt support the same stupid policies proposed by New York, Illinois, and California.  We must always keep in mind that it is the carefully conditioned ignorant liberal voter that votes for the sleazebags who come up with such insane pro-socialist public policies.

Trump is giving the Iranian ragheads five more days to open up the Strait of Hormuz, based on recently opened “good talks” with the regime.  The Iranians are denying that any such talks are ongoing.  In any case the markets went nuts this morning in hopes that the strait will soon be opened and the war ends.  The reality is that any talks with this regime will be as fruitless as they have been for the last almost 50 years.  The only acceptable end to the hostilities will come when the current regime is removed from power, and the Iranian people establish a new pro-western government.  Any other conclusion to the conflict will constitute a massive geo-strategic loss for the western countries and an unsurvivable political disaster for President Trump and his administration that will usher in the beginning of a socialist winter in the United States.

[24mar26 update]  Trump’s lead mid-east negotiators Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff should not be involved in any negotiations with Iran’s current regime of theocratic thugs.  Kushner and Witkoff have a good record negotiating with various Islamic parties who can be expected to keep their word in trust-but-verify agreements.  That cannot be said for the towelheads in Tehran who have been destabilizing the mid-east, lying and violating every agreement they have signed.  Trump’s using the Kushner/Witkoff team gives explicit and unwarranted credibility to the regime as being good-faith negotiators who share US/Israeli goals for a stable and prosperous region.  Such expectations expose our president’s continued naivete in negotiating with the likes tyrants such as Putin, Xi, Kim, and the Iranian theocrats.  There remains only one thing to negotiate – how the current thugs may be allowed to leave Iran in one piece.  Absent that, the clear alternative is that we kill them.  And to carry out such a negation requires substitution of one of our senior military hard-asses who can explain the matter to them with succinct clarity.  All other approaches will hasten President Trump’s political future as an obviously naïve post-election lame duck.

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6 responses to “Scattershots – 23mar26 (updated 24mar26)”

  1. scenes Avatar
    scenes

    Millionaire taxes on the rich don’t work. “

    It’ll be fun to watch the hullabaloo concerning any asset tax they cook up. Naturally, there’s no thought given to the side effects, but given that state and local government is run by Karens passing the talking stick in meeting rooms thinking up Good Ideas, you just never know what’ll happen.

    Step 2 is cooking up clawbacks and retro-taxes as them evil billionaires, whose money largely keeps financial markets liquid rather than buying Ferraris and big deli sandwiches, hightail it to lower cost states.

    You’d think my very favorite sort of billionaires, ex-wives and widows of real billionaires, would simply hand their fortunes over to po’ folks and the like rather than back insane progressive causes, but then they wouldn’t get invited to the good parties. I wonder if Laurene Jobs is planning on moving her residence to Florida if the “one-time” 5% tax hits. Gotta pay for all the administration surrounding healthcare for illegal aliens and the like ya know.

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  2. scenes Avatar
    scenes

    re: Iran…I haven’t kept track of it, and assume that any publicly available news is either wrong and/or incredibly incomplete, but I think the concept of killing off leadership is an interesting one. It’s a thing they understand, along with the concept of ‘hostage’, given the etymology of the word ‘assassin’. Ask me in ten years, if still living, on whether the whole adventure was a good idea or not. It’s one part a demonstration of Israeli political oomph in the US, one part a fear of giving a suicide cult The Bomb. These things don’t lend themselves to understanding via a paragraph or two or a thousand.

    re: ‘Thug’…overused here. These ‘thugs’ are basically the way governments have always worked since agriculture or large steppe tribes got invented. The Anglosphere, soon to be overwhelmed by vibrancy, might have gotten off the wheel for a bit, but I don’t expect that to last much longer.

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  3. Rebane Avatar

    re RH – a noteworthy comment by a progressive who illustrates the Left’s belief that the spendthrift Democrats have not contributed to the national debt over the decades. For them our current financial state is all due to the advent of Trump. Such is the debilitating severity of TDS.

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  4. scenes Avatar
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    From Ms. Hillbilly’s link:

    “The U.S. government is insolvent. That’s not hyperbole — it’s the conclusion drawn directly from the Treasury Department’s own consolidated financial statements for fiscal year 2025, released last week to near-total media silence. The numbers: $6.06 trillion in total assets against $47.78 trillion in total liabilities as of September 30, 2025.”

    What are the chances that the insolvency goes back decades and this is a non-story. 100%? Some greater amount? As usual, some gee-whiz thing trying to be painted on Trump. What on earth is wrong with people like Ms. Hillbilly? The sad thing is that a news organization picks up stuff like this because it makes good ragebait, probably rebroadcast on Daily Koz or something.

    Per Grok: “The U.S. federal government’s consolidated financial statements (accrual-based, prepared under federal accounting standards) show that its liabilities have exceeded its assets—resulting in a negative net position—for at least the past 25+ years, and likely much longer based on available trends. This situation has persisted and worsened significantly over time.”

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  5. scenes Avatar
    scenes

    re: rage bait

    That’s when you know you are over the target. It’s like psul’s persistent polls (PPP). Meaningless, nothing unusual, makes a headline for people indulging in doom scrolling.

    For me, I just ask two things of Trump…

    1. Remove every illegal alien from the country (and as an aside, gut the H1B program and it’s brethren).
    2. Kill DEI at every level accessible to the executive branch. No pervs in the military, make universities into meritocracies. Get drag queens away from the children. Hopefully shrink a bunch of .gov girl-jobs out of existence

    That’s it. The rest of it, including a financial crash or war, is just business as usual. Those two things in my list are civilization killers, everything else is noise.

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