George Rebane
Windpower works when energy markets are deregulated. Texas continues to make news. “The roots of Texas’ renewables boom go back to 1999, when then-Gov. George W. Bush and a Republican-dominated legislature overhauled the Texas power market. The free market-oriented deregulation broke the grip of most monopoly utilities that controlled generation, transmission and retail sales of electricity and introduced competitive auctions for wholesale power.” (more here)
China again snubs President Obama as it forces him to deplane from the utility exit on Air Force One as it arrives for the recent G-20 international conference on world economics. Our president has become the most scorned and disrespected national leader in decades, a fact that is more and more difficult for the lamestream to cover up and deny. National leaders from Russia, Turkey, Philippines, Iran, China, Great Britain, … have variously shown their disregard for our leadership and national interests as the true mettle of Obama became known over his terms in office.
If you want to persuade people, try ‘altercasting’ suggest modern psychologists and sociologists. Altercasting is “a persuasion technique in which one person characterizes another as a certain type of person in order to encourage him or her to behave in a desired manner.” In the modern manner, this new techniques was thought to have been developed recently. Within a longer view altercasting people has been in constant practice since before biblical times, and since then it has been known by its more familiar name as bullshitting. (more here)
Education spending runs even more amuck if Obama has his way to rewrite law to increase federal control over education. The US spends the most per pupil with absolutely dismal results – our bang per educational buck ranks last in the world among developed nations. Part motivation for this is to make it more difficult to operate charter schools which continue to give union run schools a black eye. And, of course, the whole thing is to do another end-run around Congress and the long established Title 1 funding in effect since 1970. The details are bizarre. (here)
Nevada County government continues to gum up local development as reported by Ms Rachel Helm in the 3sep16 Union. In her column (here) she takes us over the trail of tears she went through with the county to split her 10 acre parcel into two already zoned 5 acre parcels. That little operation which should have taken less than a month actually took over two years and cost her over $43,000. But the fun didn’t end there. What the county then did to prospective buyers when she tried to sell it is another story that makes this saga worth a read, mostly because it gives us a look at what goes on with our Rood Center bureaucrats day in and day out. “Is there any wonder that there’s a shortage of housing for buyers looking for a home in Nevada County that comes in under $500,000.” Contrary to what our supervisors assure us about the ease of development in the county, the reality is quite different and we do it to ourselves.
[8sep16 update] From investment pundit Bill Mauldin's current newsletter –
Thomas Jefferson once said, “I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.” As a preview of next week’s letter, let me assert that current monetary policy is a tax on the middle class and retirees by unelected government officials. A relatively minor tax on tea was ostensibly the trigger for the American Revolution. Perhaps the Boomer generation should once again man the barricades, this time in protest of something really damaging to the future of the country.
[10sep16 update] Blind to socialism. Ever wonder why the Left does NOT wonder why socialism is such a disastrous form of governance wherever it is practiced, with the magnitude of delivered public pain corresponding directly to the scope and level of implemented socialist policies? Beyond the historical examples now successfully kept from millenials’ education (‘capitalism is the cause of all the world’s ills’), we have the most recent examples of socialist disasters staring us in the face with Greece, Brazil, and Venezuela. To that you could add Cuba since that island prison has again bloomed on the radar of public attention. In the face of two centuries of damning evidence, the Left still insists on pursuing Mankind’s fulfillment down dark alleys seeking ever larger versions of the tentacled leviathan that can reach into every aspect of its citizens’ lives. And to maintain this pursuit they need ever dumber constituencies to keep them in power.
