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George Rebane
It’s funny when all the progressives dismissed Beto’s “Damn right, we’ll take your …!” as being his exit speech. Now they’ll have no problem finding other excuses why this patently unqualified asshole is no longer in the Dem’s line-up. Welcome to Mr fish as our new leader.
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George Rebane
Let’s start with Nancy Pelosi’s whopper proclaimed from the high altar of the House – “No one came to Congress to impeach the President of the United States. No one.”
Anyone who has been paying the slightest attention to American politics since 2016 knows that high on the do-list of all the country’s leftists, and most certainly of ALL Democrat congresscritters who successfully ran for office then and in 2018, is the impeachment of Donald J. Trump. These people, all burdened with advanced cases of TDS, give a new definition of zealotry. Their belief in the ‘democracy threatening’ evil of Donald Trump bypasses all forms of what we used to call reason and logic, where allegations now pass for evidence and their constant repetition is testimony to their verity. The claimed ‘justice and fairness’ of their now resolved faith-based impeachment process is ludicrous on its face, and will convince only people for whom their TDS is merely an epiphenomenon of more serious psychoses.
Moving on to Sen Elizabeth Warren’s just released ‘plan’ to tank the nation’s economy with her (and Bernie’s) Medicare-for-All single payer, nationalized healthcare program, we hear her proclamation that the proximal funding of this $30T+ $52T+ ten-year catastrophe will not require raising taxes on the middle class. Instead, she will squeeze the needed funds from our defense budgets, major increases in corporate taxes (remember, corporations don’t ‘pay’ taxes, their customers do), and launching the government’s unabashed assault on private property by robbing the assets of the wealthy who have already paid taxes on what they own. Were that the only sources of funding the destruction of our nation’s healthcare industry.
History, along with a pencil and a used envelope, will quickly inform any well-read person that those revenue sources will not suffice. The country’s real stash of cash and earnings are in the middle-class. If this atrocity ever makes it past Congress, then you can bet the ranch that the federales will quickly go after the assets of the not-so-wealthy and start massive tax hikes (a la EU) on the middle-class. Recall the years-long screeching about our healthcare costs by the progressives (and local leftwing loonies). With their claims of our high 12-16% of GDP current annual healthcare costs, they compare this to the 6-8% costs tallied by the EU nationalized healthcare countries (dubiously comparing apples and oranges).
Now consider that the US annual GDP is a bit north of $20T; that’s, say, $210T over ten years. The Pocahontas Plan will then mandate an over 50% increase (up to 25% of GDP) in our nation’s healthcare costs for openers, about which we have heard nothing but the sound of silence from our crack journalists. And if you add up all the other increased costs of social programs that Warren has planned for us, you’ll see that our fundamentally transformed government will be the two-thirds participating gorilla in the nation’s economy – these levels are reached by communists and dictatorships, and will require astronomical tax rates to fund from America’s then inevitably tanking future economy. The socialist elites will count on the nation’s carefully nurtured dumbth (see also below) to assure that none of the (middle class) sheeple will notice.
“We have gone straight past ‘new math’ and right to ‘woke math’.” This latest program of socialist acculturation has started in Seattle, and soon promises to come to a leftwing unionized public school near you. The main claim of the woke educators, who back this new turn to nurture the nation’s dumbth through the creation of new millions of innumerates, is that “Western mathematics, as the only legitimate expression of mathematical identity and intelligence (!!??), has been used to disenfranchise people and communities of color.” The new curriculum promises not only to leave the so-exposed young with little actual knowledge of how to do math, it will also serve to “radicalize young people with tales of oppression and groom them to be future social justice warriors themselves” as they learn “how math dictates economic oppression”. (Consider this in light of our country's current standing in math education and proficiency, and the damage already experienced from Common Core math.)
Such assaults on our society’s abilities to transmit knowledge and think critically are part and parcel of the promised fundamental transformation of America into a compliant herd that will have no alternative than to accept the dicta of a tyrannical and technologically savvy Leviathan. For they will have no skills which they have learned to be able to earn. Such people will not even be able to think of revolution, let alone have the capacity to plan a successful revolt. The road to the new dark age is being paved bit by piece as we are focused on every issue being cast in terms of ethnic identities, each illustrated as a tragic victim of western civilization. (more here)
According to my lights, these are the kind of world-class lies against which the Left’s trumpeted “lies” of Trump’s foot-in-the-mouth bombast and bravura cannot hold a candle.
George Rebane
Speaking of ownership of public policies and government operations, the Democrats own America’s public schools. They have had title for fifty years to what our children are taught, as they are subjected to somewhere from 12 to 16 years of leftwing ideologies, by unionized teachers and administrators who have laid waste to our school systems from coast to coast.
RR has carried the torch for school choice and public school reform during its entire existence. I have worked with local public schools here and in SoCal to see firsthand who is doing what to whom, and witnessed their resulting work product. In this regard, our local schools’ performance, along with what has been happening in California over the last decades, is faithfully recorded in the longitudinal data archive of the National Center for Educational Statistics, and they aren’t pretty.
Today we have the results from the 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress, which consist of tests administered to students around the country every two years. A report on this is found in the 31oct19 WSJ (here) with the tagline, “Despite more spending, test scores fall and the achievement gap grows.”, which about says it all.
Digging into some of the more important results, we find that the smaller cohort of smarter students are pulling away from those not so smart, whose performance continues to degrade. These latter are prime fodder for the progressive pabulum that extols the virtues of bigger government, more transfer payments, and dunning the existential benefits of individual enterprise, capitalism, and minimally regulated markets. These cohorts of the poorly educated continue to feed the reliable Democrat voting blocks, whose subsequent existence is denied as they become (unemployed) adults – if you’re an American leftist, what’s not to like?
As examples, only 35% of the country’s fourth graders rated proficient in reading. Overall math and reading scores are about level, save that the top students’ scores increased slightly less than the drop in the scores of the bottom decile. The black/white learning gap remains dismally large.
Surprisingly (or not), 4th grade scores increased only in Mississippi, but the real success story comes from Washington DC where charter school enrollments increased 60% since 2009, much to the chagrin of unionized ‘educators’ who felt the pressure to then increase performance in other public schools. The unions’ answer to every such report of education deficits is to demand more spending for schools. But spending increased 15% per pupil between 2012 and 2017 from its already (globally) rate, and the result has been no improvement as cited. “Spending has been growing at an even faster clip over the last couple of years as government revenue has recovered from the recession.”
California, the state of the double-dummy educators, increased its education spending by $102B (more than 50%!!) since 2013 with absolutely no increase in student performance from its already bottom-barrel lows in the nation. There it is joined by the other Democrat-dominated states – drumroll please – yes, New York, Illinois, and New Jersey. Along with California, these states have also raised taxes for schools, all to no avail – the teachers’ and administrators’ pension funds suck up the new cash like a sponge. The report concludes with – “Much of the money has gone to fund teacher pensions and administrative positions that pad union rolls. Maybe parents should go on strike to demand more accountability from the union-run public school monopoly.”
[Exit assignment – pay attention to the number and content of comments from our liberal readers.]
['In life it's important to know when to stop arguing with people, and simply let them be wrong.' – an old shibboleth with conditional wisdom. Doesn't deciding when to stop arguing also depend on who all are listening to the argument? gjr]
“Can 40 million suffer third-world electric reliability without a political upheaval?” asks Holman Jenkins, 29oct19 WSJ
George Rebane
Northern Californians have now suffered multiple power blackouts in recent weeks and we are told by many that from here on this may become the new norm for our state – in other words, prepare your life to adopt the daily routines of third world countries where electric power is a sometime thing. As opposed to all the now usual causes for these outages, ranging from climate change to a rapacious PG&E, I’d like to focus here on these blackouts as political events, and examine the new norm of power outages from that perspective.
George Rebane
Rep Tim Ryan (D-OH) dropped out of his “long-shot presidential campaign” yesterday stating, “I got into this race in April to really give voice to the forgotten people of our country: the workers who have been left behind, the businesses who have been left behind, the people who need health care or aren’t getting a quality education, or are saddled by tremendous debt, … I’m proud of this campaign because I believe we’ve done that. We’ve given voice to the forgotten communities and the forgotten people in the United States.” What he really turned out to be was the voice of the people who forgot he got into the race.
One wonders what it was like to be part of his campaign team over the last several months as it almost immediately became obvious that he wasn’t getting any traction then and had no promise of changing his circumstances. Now expand that thinking to the, at least, more than ten remaining Democrat candidates with equal prospects. How do their campaign workers feel as they show up for work in the morning; what thoughts about their PlanBs do they have going through their heads as they try to figure out why they shouldn’t be going home early and look for a real job? As you contemplate these deep thoughts, the updated scores of this little derby are given below.
[Power still out on Cement Hill with no wind, while Sonoma County burns. Am looking for local readers' reports on the return of power. gjr]
George Rebane
Gov Newsom is outraged about the price of gasoline in California. He doesn’t understand why current prices in the state are well into the $4/gal range. In the best wisdom he and his can muster, they all accuse the oil companies for price fixing as the answer – another swig from the ‘capitalism is bad’ bottle satisfies everyone in Sacramento. None of those dumb schiffs have a clue about CA’s draconian fuel regulations, about our having to make our own gasoline from the one or two refineries that the econuts have not yet purged from the state with the most cars in the nation, about the cap-and-trade (2013) and other anti-CO2 programs we have going in addition to raising gas taxes again in 2018. We are paying $1.50 more than the country’s median price per gallon. Now the butt stupid Dems led by Newsom are going to “protect the public” by demanding that the state’s Energy Commission start an investigation on the matter, in addition to promising to launch legal actions against gasoline producers, distributors, and retailers. (more here)
All this to a constant drumbeat from Sacramento that calls for raising fuel prices so as to drive Californians to ditch their gas-powered cars. The 23oct19 WSJ reports, “The Governor last month ordered revenue to be redirected from the last gas tax hike, which was supposed to fund highway construction, to projects that ‘reverse the trend of increased fuel consumption and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.’ So Californians in the future can look forward to paying more to drive on deteriorating roads as they head to homes without electricity due to blackouts. How long will it take California voters to figure out that these are problems made in Sacramento by politicians?” (emphasis mine) The Democrats feel sanguine that the answer is ‘never’ since they have assured that teaching the necessary critical thinking skills to their voter base were banished from our schools almost two generations ago.
‘Apoplectic Democrats’. A reader and correspondent who long-ago predicted the ‘Advent of Michelle’ (also known as 'The Second Coming') is now chortling in his beer. The more centrist Dems (yes, there still are some of them remaining on the DNC) are going into panic mode about the make-up of their candidate clown car, and more so because their grass roots constituents have drunk the Kool-Aid about the likely ones from whom they will choose their nominee. (For confirmation, read the progressive’s comments in these pages.) So, since Hillary continues to blow her remaining tires, the DNC leaders are casting their eye on the former first lady who has a very recognizable last name.
Yesterday’s NYT and New Yorker had “articles about how centrist and establishment Democrats are apoplectic over what is happening in the Democratic Primaries. (more here) Biden is fading, mentally and politically. He’s hanging on for dear life to a presumption coming into the primaries that he had what it takes, but he doesn’t. Bernie and Warren are viewed as gateway drugs to general election disaster. (For a brutal takedown of Warren’s electoral chances from a progressive view, read Why Criticize Warren? in Current Affairs.) The others in the race all have problems, from stone cold boring to non-starters. Kamala Harris is the biggest disappointment, there’s no there there. And there’s one person they both note who could walk away with the nomination, but doesn’t appear to want it.” (standing ovation please) Enter Michelle.
'Gentlemen, start your generators!' is the word from our politically punitive PG&E. Power shut-offs are scheduled to start this (23oct19) afternoon.
[24oct19 update] The relentless spread of dumbth in America is picking up speed. These pages have documented the destruction of our country’s public education in the hands of progressive teachers unions and liberal politicians working hard to maintain their plantations of minority constituents over the last half century. A just-released poll shows us that the First Amendment and free speech are in the sights of Millennials (“the dumbest generation”), and to a lesser extent supported by GenXers and Baby Boomers. (more here) Nearly 60% of Millennials think that the Constitution “goes too far in allowing hate speech in modern America”. It should now be amended so that “government should be able to take action against newspapers and TV stations that publish content that is biased, inflammatory, or false”. These are people who have passed way beyond the tipping point of being able to sustain our democratic republic. All this confirms that the latest generations have absolutely no understanding of the concept of free speech, and will gladly vote themselves into tyranny.
[25oct19 update] To confirm statewide assessments (starting with Gov Newsom) that PG&E management continues to be incompetent and corrupt, we read the report of the San Diego power company (SDG&E) that years ago anticipated the potential damage to their infrastructure from weather and fire. They responded by burying major transmission lines, and reconfigured their distribution network into smaller clusters that could be more surgically shutdown should the need arise. PGE, on the other hand, neglected all of this, paid their execs handsomely, successfully lobbied politicians and the PUC to turn a blind eye to their malfeasance, and is now forced to execute consumer shutdowns over large areas in which only a minuscule part experiences ‘high’ winds, the overwhelming remainder experiencing dead calm to light airs. Meanwhile, we in the foothills await yer another blackout starting tomorrow.
'As government expands, liberty shrinks!'
George Rebane
Our intrepid columnist George Boardman in the 21oct19 Union laid out (here) a carefully concocted list of stats.
With these in mind, Mr Boardman’s clear message to our light thinkers is that Democrats are the party of goodness and light, containing the smart, wealthy, and productive, while Republicans are the party of the backward, ignorant, poor, and struggling. The better read who understand the demographics of Democrats' long-controlled urban districts will have none of this.
What this little piece of nascent propaganda omits are data on what kind of people overwhelm Democrat districts, and those who are moving in vs. out. He says nothing about the millions of our poor, dismally under-educated, criminal, and welfare recipients concentrated in urban areas who provide the sinecures for Democrat politicians. And Mr Boardman doesn’t tell the reader about where the lion's share of wealth is produced in our service and digital economy, along with the rampant income inequality and humongous transfer payments in these ‘districts’ and ‘regions’ all of which give rise to the skewed statistics to make such selectively massaged messages possible.
[Trump keeps sticking his foot in it at every turn. Now enough crap is starting to pile up so that a significant number of Rs are starting to voice opposition. That can mushroom in the Senate and end his administration. Right now the immediate pile consists of 1) Ukrainian pro quids per Mulvaney, 2) Abandoning Kurds in Syria, and 3) holding the G-7 in his Doral digs. All of which could have been avoided if someone would only tell him, 'Mr President, STFU!!' gjr]
