George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular commentary on KVMR broadcast on 30 December 2015.]

Now that 2015 is drawing to a close I’d like to take a few moments for a personal look back at what was and what we might witness next.  It’s been quite a year, and 2016 promises to deliver excitement to the max.  Depending on how you look at it, the good or bad thing is that most people will not be paying attention.  Perhaps because they will be overwhelmed by the coming information tsunami of global and national happenings all wrapped around our election year that will bristle with historical contentions and polarities.

At home our national economy continued to limp along with also historically low growth rates since the Great Depression.  Comparing our economic metrics with those seen in the 1930s presents a startling resemblance.  Despite the happy dancing we saw projected from the White House, the country is still in what I have called Depression2, and this goes double for our own California.

Systemic unemployment is now somewhere in the 70 to 90 million range when we consider those looking for work, working part time at a low paying non-career jobs, or having given up all hope of ever working again.  The hokey unemployment numbers paraded for us are composed of tortured data all divided by a workforce number now at generational lows.  And we don’t even want to consider the wage stagnation given rise to by over-regulation, taxation, and advancing technology.

Obamacare continues to devastate our huge healthcare industry with costs rising beyond anything promised in the so-called ‘affordable care’ legislation.  Again clever statistics, a compliantly legislating Supreme Court, and costly ACA diktats, pending and strategically delayed beyond the election, have come to paint a totally different picture for those who cannot or will not look behind the curtain.

Globally we are witnessing a sea change in the world order with major actors – I’m referring to China, Russia, and fundamentalist Islam – taking advantage of the disaster that used to be called our foreign policy.  On all fronts American interests are being pushed back or completely eliminated.  At home and abroad our stultifying political correctness does not even allow us to name the obvious enemy of western civilization and America.  We are not fighting radical Islam now internationalized; instead we are claiming to fight some form of ambiguous and faceless ‘terrorism’.  Our military is micro-managed on the battlefields, and our Homeland Security Administration considers disgruntled American veterans to be the biggest threat to national security.

Back home, despite the hopeful messages from the liberal lamestream media, CA is a hopelessly indebted disaster area and the nation’s leading welfare state.  This month Governor Brown finally admitted to embracing Agenda 21 when he opposed the 20-year effort by Newhall Ranch to build 60 thousand homes and create tens of thousands of jobs (more here).  He unambiguously clarified the cause of our economic slide when he stated California’s real priority with, “Go live elsewhere, we’re cutting carbon here.”  With that we drive out our productive demographic, and encourage the immigration of indigents.

Yet in the coming year both the Left and the Right see hope that things will get better according to their individual and highly polarized worldviews.  In this I am grateful for the opportunity to share my conservetarian commentaries with you on KVMR, an unabashedly liberal media outlet staffed to a large extent by a cohort of good-hearted community volunteers.  Their tolerance of my bi-weekly screeds for these past years gives evidence that this station does indeed seek balance in its editorial content.  At their pleasure, I hope to continue bringing you different perspectives from an endless conveyor of issues that 2016 will deliver in abundance.

My name is Rebane, and in closing Jo Ann and I wish all KVMR listeners a healthy and prosperous new year.  The transcripts of my commentaries are posted on Rebane’s Ruminations and available as archived podcasts on KVMR’s website.  And as always, I remind you that my views are not necessarily shared by KVMR – thank you for listening.