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  • Polling Phollies

    George Rebane

    We must always remember that more often than not the public mind is fickle, frantic, and foolish.

    No one can escape the polls during this election season whose results will be deemed cataclysmic by at least half of the American electorate, no matter who wins.  So all kinds of people from government, campaigns, and academia are attempting to peer into the collective public mind to determine its sentiment and portents.  The instrument of choice for this endeavor is the poll.  A poll is a type of survey which consists of applying a questionnaire to a sample of respondents drawn randomly from the population of interest.

    Polls are abundant, there being at least twenty of them prominently quoted on a daily basis.  To make sense of the plethora of divergent results, desperate people attempt to amalgamate them by various kinds of averaging each of which can stand about as much scrutiny as the legislature making laws, or worse, a bureaucratic brew drafting regulations.  Here I want to disabuse the reader of giving much credence to any of the, say, ten polls to which he is subjected on any given day.  The poll’s result is usually given by a set of percentages attached to alternative answers, percentages that are supposed to sum to 100% so that the waterfront is appropriately covered.

    To add credibility to the poll, the media also often include the ‘margin of error’ and the number of people questioned or the sample size.  As an article of faith the poll’s consumer is supposed to believe that the population was properly sampled and that the questionnaire was not loaded with agenda-driven queries meticulously wordsmithed.  For the present exercise let’s all join that body of the faithful and concentrate only on the claimed credibility bestowed by stated sample size and margin of error.

    [To continue reading this piece which goes on to contain numerical tables and graphics, please  Download Polling Phollies ]

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  • Playing with Amnesty

    George Rebane

    Amnesty – “an act of forgiveness for past offenses, especially to a class of persons as a whole”, Random House Dictionary (unabridged).  “an act of oblivion, a general overlooking or pardon of past offences by the ruling authority”, Oxford English Dictionary (unabridged).

    Amnesty for illegal aliens today has become the new third rail of politics for both sides.  On long established principle the Republicans will not countenance it from their politicians (save the special amnesty once approved by Saint Ronald).  The Democrats, aided by the lamestream, will do their damnest to implement it without using the word or letting their faithful learn of it (the latter being an unusually easy task).

    HolocaustTransportPart and parcel of the progressive propaganda blitz on amnesty is the dunning of Trump’s immigration policy speech in which he declared that 1) legalization of resident illegal aliens will be done according to existing immigration laws, and 2) the disposition of remaining illegal aliens will be addressed after the border is secured.  The rationale being that granting illegals amnesty by allowing them to shortcut the path to legalization, over those hundreds of thousands abiding by our immigration laws, is both unjust and motivates more illegal entrants, further breaking of our laws, and burdening the country’s fisc.

    For openly stating that part of his immigration reform policy Trump has been likened to Hitler herding Jews during the Holocaust.  The country’s leftwingers and socialists take every opportunity to remind their acolytes and the muddled mid-roaders that the fate of the fabled ‘eleven million’ under Trump will be midnight knocks on the door and cattle car trains full of Hispanics heading for our southern border.  Unfortunately, the nation’s aggregate critical thinking skills are not up to parsing this ridiculous image that is daily tattooed on such minds.

    But the bottom line is that any path to legalization, let alone citizenship, for resident illegal aliens that circumvents our laws is in fact amnesty.  The information-free thinkers must always be reminded that these people within our borders are not ‘immigrants’ in the normative sense of the word, since our country was not party to any agreement that permitted their surreptitious entry.  However, on these shores today that is not the dispensed wisdom; in the public square we, instead, pirouette with words few understand.

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  • Prop64 misses on RMJ legalization

    George Rebane

    It’s RMJ time again as we consider Prop64 that will appear on the November ballot and invite Californians to not only legalize the dear weed but allow adults to possess, purchase, transport, and give to another adult an ounce of marijuana, all for recreational purposes.  Moreover, Prop64 would “prohibit local governments from banning any indoor residential growing of marijuana, provided the crop does not exceed six plants.”

    I was motivated to get back to the MJ issue by Union columnist Terry McLaughlin’s article (here) in this morning’s (2sep16) edition of  the newspaper.  Terry’s article is a substantive and informative piece that unfortunately confuses the issues by introducing irrelevant asides about MMJ which really have nothing to do with the RMJ thrust of the proposition.  I will try to avoid a similar temptation in the sequel.  Full disclosure – Terry McLaughlin is also an ideological fellow traveler and a friend of both Rebanes.

    My position on legalizing MJ has been on record for years (see here), and I believe that the legalization of RMJ will come to pass across the land in the various forms determined by the lower jurisdictions of states and counties.  As readers know, I am a proponent of local control and governance to the reasonable extent possible.  However, Prop64 misses on several fronts as a positive step in this direction.

    When considering the legalization of RMJ we should keep in mind that it has been shown to be a ‘gateway drug’ to more serious narcotics like heroin as reported on a recent edition of 60 Minutes.  McLaughlin also cites some Washington state stats about “deaths in marijuana related car accidents” doubling since RMJ was legalized.  Additionally, it has been clinically shown that RMJ consumption by teenagers puts a permanent dent into the cognitive processing of their brainbones which at that age already do a poor job of assessing risks.

    What concerns me about the latter is the impact of Prop64 related sleaze whose proponents have fought to deny voters ballot information spelling out the proposition’s allowance of RMJ grows and media advertising of same.  The impact of airing Joe Camel has been established, especially on young people.  No rocket science is required to transfer that experience to a buxom Mary Jane on the boob tube showing how sociable and cool it is to light up or pop a brownie.  Apparently a California judge has put the kibosh on RMJ advertising, so hopefully that will no longer be an issue.

    The bottom line for me for opposing Prop64 is that it removes the element of local control.  We in Nevada County could no longer determine how/whether RMJ can be produced and consumed here.  Commercial Street in Nevada City already smells to high heaven during summer weekend evenings.  After Prop64 that could turn into an olfactory treat to filter out tourists and locals not disposed to such aromas.  In sum, I think a better proposition could be written to permit a more controlled and controllable way for consuming RMJ in California.  (Yes Virginia, even conservetarians are in favor of some level of government regulations.)

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  • ‘Misreading the Nordic Model’

    George Rebane

    [This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 31 August 2016.]

    For quite some time now Americans have heard the siren song of Nordic socialism performed consistently by our country’s Left from which more and more are actually outing themselves as socialists.  In this election season we have heard Senator Bernie Sanders promote the Nordic style welfare state with statements like, “I think we should look to countries like Denmark, like Sweden and Norway, and learn what they have accomplished for their working people.”  And in order to scoop up Bernie’s base, Hillary Clinton has echoed those sentiments as part of her promise to continue the policies of Barack Obama.

    Obama has also been quite open about his embrace of socialism, especially of the Nordic type as this year he declared, “In a world of growing economic disparities, Nordic countries have some of the least income inequality in the world . . . There have been times where I’ve said, why don’t we just put all these small countries in charge for a while? And they could clean things up.”

    In these commentaries I have reviewed the current status of the Nordics, concentrating especially on the fiscal unsustainability of their welfare policies, and the realities of their economies to provide the growth they need.  Recently the non-partisan Council on Foreign Relations has published an essay by Kurdish born Swedish scientist and author Nima Sanandaji who has studied and written extensively on Nordic polity and policies.  His most recent book – Debunking Utopia: Exposing the Myth of Nordic Socialism – presents compelling arguments backed by reams of data that expose a more realistic picture of how the Nordics got to where they are, and how their current performance should be compared, especially by Americans, on an apples-to-apples basis.

    (more…)

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  • Dump Trump and Pillory Hillary – 29aug16 (updated 1sep16)

    George Rebane

    OK, Donald Trump is beginning to sound more presidential as he sticks to the pillory Hillary script.  But I’m not sure of his new campaign leadership duo of Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway.  Today on Fox News Sunday Ms Conway was given an opportunity to showcase The New Donald while interviewed by Fox’s stealth liberal Chris Wallace.  Wallace was asked Conway a couple of loaded questions on Trump’s economic policy which Conway handled in due course, and then Wallace delivered the ‘clincher’ pointing out that there were “experts on the economy” who had given Trump’s policies a thumbs down – what did she have to say about that?  Conway was flustered, resorted to high blabberwocky on a side topic, and came out with egg on her face.

    According to Rebane Doctrine the correct answer to the Wallaces of the world on citing expert economists should have been, ‘Look Chris, it’s yesterday’s news that the Federal Reserve, the Congressional Budget Office, the Office of Management and Budget, and the long list of academic institutions specializing in economics have a dismal record in correctly analyzing economic policies let alone predicting the performance of real economies.  The best they have ever been able to do is debate what they see in the rear view mirror, and even there they cannot agree.  Let’s face it, there are no ‘experts’ in economics, so quoting what some odd group of economists thinks is a gratuitous exercise at best that people cobble together to support some agenda or other.  What’s your next question?’

    [1sep16 update]  For the record, I thought Trump’s immigration policy speech was excellent both in content and specificity (for this stage of the campaign).  While I question his ability to do all of his laundry list things on the ‘first hour/day in office’, even if he gets those processes started in the first 100 days will be a marked improvement.

    Looking to the other side, it is hard to tell what Hillary is running on save that Trump is bad, and that what Obama has done is good.  The elements of her plan forward seem to be missing.  And that the woman is deathly afraid of an already fawning press says it all about how much she fears shoes already dropped and those yet to come from her many scandals.  The humorous part here is the consistent denials by her acolytes that what we see is a fire that has given rise to the considerable smoke that blankets her campaign.  Nevertheless, she continues to prove that it is possible to fool most of the people all the time.

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  • Sandbox – 28aug16

    [Just got back from a little RV trip with friends and family.  We did the Bend, OR to coast, down the coast to CA, and back home again on good ol’ Hwy 20 circuit.  Connectivity still sucks in most of the RV parks, even the ones near bigger towns.  In the evening when everyone is attempting to stream videos, it feels like we’re back in the 300 bps modem days.  But we had good use from our cell provider’s LTE service.  The small coastal and mountain towns of both OR and CA have borne the full brunt of our rabid econuts abetted by the EPA and what was our justice system.  Beginning with Weed, CA, we saw lots of celebratory evidence of RMJ production and consumption.  Nevertheless, we had a great time with our pals and kids.  I’m thinking of establishing a 501c3 foundation to seek and sanctify the self-sacrificing soul who, in some long lost age, invented and introduced us all to Happy Hour.  I can just see the poor sot, alone for years and drinking himself silly, as he worked desperately to demonstrate and spread the word about a more joyful use for the late afternoon hours.  Such selflessness should not remain lost to history, but recognized by those of us who today follow (or is it wallow?) in his footsteps.  gjr]

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  • Buying Votes and Voters

    George Rebane

    [This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 17 August 2016.]

    Student debt and college costs are out of control.  Under the passionate paeans of progressives over the last decades, we have been taught that we’re equal enough so that everyone will benefit from a college education and therefore everyone deserves a college education.  A wider reading of this theology has also taught young people that everyone has a right to pursue their passion and then expect all practiced passions to command a more or less equal place in the compensated workforce.  Well, that ain’t necessarily so, but blindly pursuing such a value system has landed us in a world of hurt with more of it on the way.

    College costs that include tuition have increased about 4% annually, far outpacing inflation.  To enable everyone to go to college, government has taken over the student loan business, and now lends equally to all students with no thought about their ability to repay the loans.  Students majoring in art history and therapeutic recreation can borrow on the same basis as students majoring in physics or any of the other STEM fields.  Subsequently the art history and therapeutic recreation majors can’t get jobs while the STEM graduates are in high demand.  Each year there are about 1.3M openings in STEM fields, and fewer than half that many graduates in science, technology, engineering, or math.

    Such realworld inequalities in the marketplace have yielded a student debt exceeding $1.3T that continues to grow at almost 7% annually.  In ten years student debt will exceed $2.5T.  Today about 30M students attend college.  Of these, 22M students with outstanding loans are not making payments, with the inevitable result that at least half or over $600B of this debt will have to be written down and its repayment transferred to taxpayers. (more here)

    And what did we buy for all these billions?   According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York almost half or our recent college graduates are un- and underemployed in jobs that do not require their earned degrees.  With this y’all come policy only 48% of entering full-time students graduate within six years.  Almost all of these dropouts and miseducated former students have borrowed from the government, and their repayment rates are close to zero simply because they are not working or cannot earn enough to pay down their debts.

    More reasoned voices, such as finance academics S.P. Kothari of MIT and Korok Ray of Texas A&M, recommend incorporating credit risk into the student loan programs. (more here)  The short of it is that students with better job prospects who can pay off their debt would then more likely get bigger loans.  Listeners may recall that it was lenders ignoring credit risk that brought on the recent Great Recession from which we have yet to recover.  However, for some reason it is still deemed politically prudent to ignore credit risk when the government lends trillions to students with unemployable majors.

    To top this, along comes the next wave of promised socialism to make college free for everyone to pursue their value-free passions along with a carte blanche invitation to join the government bloat when the private sector rejects their skills.  This ‘free’ program is estimated to cost somewhere between $100-200B annually.

    As a conservetarian who has tracked institutions of higher learning and the evolution of the job markets, I don’t hold much hope for including credit risk to determine who should get to borrow how much.  This for the simple reason that the Left has too much to gain from the legions of graduates with lightweight majors from institutions, already hopelessly in bed with socialism in all its forms, that turn out young people totally beholden to the state for their upkeep.  These people daily demonstrate their fealty to the politicians and parties that promise to shield them from the uncertainties of the private sector through civil service jobs or rapacious regulation of their employers.  And some still wonder why democracies are so fragile.

    My name is Rebane, and I also expand on this and related themes on Rebane’s Ruminations where the transcript of this commentary is posted with relevant links, and where such issues are debated extensively.  However my views are not necessarily shared by KVMR.  Thank you for listening.

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  • Sandbox – 17aug16

    [Putin is making nice with Iran and Turkey, two competitors for the new Mideast hegemon.  That sure looks like the latest, and possibly the worst, Foxtrot Uniform of Obama's foreign policy, leaving Russia as the new 'go-to power' if you want to get anything done in the region.  When you decide to lead from behind, then the view never gets any better and the smell gets worse.  gjr]

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  • Dump Trump and Pillory Hillary – 13aug16

    George Rebane

    Democracies are stable only to the extent that they enjoy a cohesive ideological spectrum and in which questions are decided with close votes.  In such jurisdictions the alternatives decided are not inimical to each other, and everyone knows their vote on the matter counts.  In lopsided democracies the minority’s vote no longer counts, which then induces its members to start seeking an alternative body politic.

    Time for a fresh page of campaign revelations that present our country with possibly the most vexing election in its history.  Both sides can and do make the case that if the other is elected, then the America we have known and loved is down the tubes.

    Hillary released her 2015 tax returns carefully manicured for the 2016 election.  Trump is still hiding his under an IRS audit.  The Clintons tithed about a $1M of their $10M to charity.  What could be more generous in the eyes of the nation’s nebbishes?  Actually a lot when you discover that about 96% of that was donated to The Clinton Family Foundation.  And the other 4% came back with dividends to their Clinton Foundation, that cosa nostra cash cornucopia that funds the Clinton Empire.

    You heard about Hillary’s plan to get the economy kick-started, the same economy that from the other side of her mouth has been doing such a swell job of recovery?  Well anyway, she’s going to tax more of the bejeezus out of the rich and the corporations, and come up with $275B to fund “infrastructure” over the next four years.  I kid you not, that’s what that woman and her economists brain trust really believe will do it this time – yep, it’s all those “shovel ready jobs” that weren’t so shovel ready when Obama pissed away over $8T over seven years to get the economy up to an anemic 1-2% growth level.  And she’s gonna kick us back up to the 3-4% level in the next four years.  For the arithmetically challenged, that gal is going to spend 16 cents a year for every dollar Obama spent, and do in four years what Obama failed to do in 7.5 years.  How do you spell Double Dummy? – those are the people who believe her.

    I’m having a real hard time with Trump.  It doesn’t look like he is going to do much ‘presidential’ campaigning.  And now he’s let out that his Plan B is beginning to look good to him in case he loses – not a clever thing to start lipping off about while the RNC is already soiling their shorts.  What a choice, between a self-centered know-it-all whose clumsy pronouncements are grist for the lamestream that doesn’t even have to work hard to keep him off message, and a corrupt political hag who is beyond-the-pale demonstrably crooked, unaccomplished, evil, and stupid.  Oi weh!

    For your reading assignments I recommend Peggy Noonan’s insightful 13aug16 column updating the historical disconnect between our governing elites who make policies that cause untold hardships on their ‘little people’ while they and theirs remain immune above the fray that they construct around the world.  Also take a peek at Norm Sauer’s piece in the 13aug16 Union in which he summarizes some insights about international and national socialism vs nationalism (well-established in RR) that he gleaned from his (our) recent trip to Europe.  

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  • Congressional Reform Act of 2017 a la Buffett

    George Rebane

    A correspondent sent me this transcription from a Warren Buffett interview in which he assembled the whole list of things we have all heard piecemeal here and there.  This is something that I believe most Americans can get behind, and as history shows, when we overwhelmingly vote for something, it can come to pass in a hurry.  So when will we get off our fat butts?  Consider it, and then pass it on.

    "I could end the deficit in 5 minutes," Buffett told CNBC. "You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election.

    The 26th amendment (granting the right to vote for 18 year-olds) took only 3 months & 8 days to be ratified! Why? Simple!  The people demanded it. That was in 1971 – before computers, e-mail, cell phones, etc.  Of the 27 amendments to the Constitution, seven (7) took one (1) year or less to become the law of the land – all because of public pressure.

    Congressional Reform Act of 2017

    1. No Tenure / No Pension. A Congressman/woman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they're out of office.
    1. Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security. All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the American people. It may not be used for any other purpose.
    1. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all Americans do.
    1. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.
    1. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.
    1. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people.
    1. All contracts with past and present Congressmen/women are void effective 1/1/17. The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen/women. Congress made all these contracts for themselves. Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their term(s), then go home and back to work.

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