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  • KVMR Interview

    George Rebane

    I was recently invited to be interviewed on KVMR’s ‘The Sages Among Us’ program by its co-host Keith Porter.  This program has been regular fare on our local FM station for several years.  Readers may recall that I also had a regular commentary on that station for almost 14 years.  Keith is an excellent interviewer and radio host, and guided me through the half-hour program with nary a hitch, after which he did an excellent job editing the audio into its finished form which was broadcast on 19 June 2024.  More numerous and detailed episodes of my past continue to be available in the My Story category of RR access from the right panel.

    For readers interested in the short form of my variegated bio, the episode is now offered as a KVMR podcast (here).  Looking at its general purpose URL, I don’t know how long it will be available in that format.

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  • Inflation? Most people don’t have a clue.

    George Rebane

    Evidence rolls in daily that Americans in the large do not have a clue about what is inflation and how it affects their financial wellbeing and quality of life.  This wholesale ignorance is constantly being reinforced by our news media of all political colorations and the Democratic Party.  The egregious journalists mostly congregate on the Right since they have no hidden agenda to hide the meaning and impact of inflation today spawned by Bidenomics.

    The confusion arises from the use of the single misleading ‘inflation’ to variously describe three distinct and separate attributes of inflation – inflation level, inflation rate of change, and the change in inflation’s rate of change.  (Mathematically these are known as simply the first three derivatives of inflation’s price curve – respectively the zeroth, first, and second derivatives.)  The figure below illustrates.

    InflationTypes

    Today we hear all kinds of reports citing inflation numbers that totally confound the average American – ‘inflation was xx% under the previous administration’, ‘inflation is now higher/lower, ‘inflation is going up/down’, ‘inflation is slowing’, and so on.  What almost no one understands is that claims that 'inflation is going down' is a bald-faced lie designed to fool the light thinkers.  Whatever the current level of inflation – i.e. Biden's 9% increase in market prices (here) – it is already baked in.  You will continue paying them and they will NOT go down as long as demand increases and supply does not.  So Team Biden's propaganda that they are 'reducing inflation' (#1) is utter BS; even if they reduce the inflation rate (#2), the current level of inflation will remain and prices will still go up.

    Nobelist Milton Freedman and his forebears long ago advised us that inflated price increases are always a monetary phenomenon in which the government ‘prints’ and releases more fiat money into an economy to chase the same amount of goods and services, hence prices increase and we call the whole thing inflation.  The overall impact of inflation has always been that prices only ratchet up (increase monotonically) over time, and consequently the dollar in your pocket inevitably buys less stuff tomorrow than it does today.  But that is only the beginning of the story of government misuses of inflation to abuse and steal from its citizens.  Historically, great empires have inevitably laid themselves open to collapse and/or invasion by diluting/cheapening its money to the point that people no longer want to use it as the medium of exchange, unit of account, and store of wealth.  Hence, the economy’s wealth generation grinds to a halt and tax revenues can no longer pay for implementing public policies including maintaining its sovereignty with secure borders and an able military.

    The real story of inflation is much more opaque.  Inflation is really a multi-level tax levied by governments that can no longer openly increase tax rates, so instead the steal money from their own citizens.  Notice that over the years the general level of people’s wealth has not increased much, if at all.  To be sure, enormous wealth has been generated in our economy by the commercial/industrial sector due to the invisible hand of market capitalism and ever-present competition.  And along with that, the quality of life for the broad population has increased by the introduction and affordability of all kinds of new products and services generated by corporations and entrepreneurs to whom justifiably the overwhelming majority of the new wealth accrues, since they are the ones who successfully invest their own monies and undertake the risks such ventures demand.  In spite of that, a large share of the population still lives paycheck-to-paycheck and has precious little saved for discretionary spending, investments, or a rainy day.  Increasing their debt and succumbing to more government welfare is their only alternative.

    Looking under the hood of our economy and taking note of how our government inserts itself to gather tribute from the unsuspecting masses, it becomes clear that it is Big Brother run by sleazebag politicians and their deep state bureaucracies that effectively and continuously scrape off any ‘excess wealth’ that may accrue to the unsuspecting on main street who are lulled by a constant stream of bread and circuses from our political betters and their elites.  The whole program of mollification begins with a public education system that guarantees our young will be carefully taught to believe in the largess of government and the evils of private enterprise.

    Two years ago I presented RR readers with the chapter and verse of how all this perfidy is executed in the public square.  You can and should review ‘Inflation Tax – Silent Rape by Government’, it will put some scary meat on the bone of the above arguments.  Unfortunately the bottom line here remains immutably unchanged.  We witness no awareness of all this by our friends and neighbors – you have yet to see protesting throngs with pitchforks and torches demonstrating in front of government buildings across the land.  (Also check out this post's comment stream.)  No one is aware of what is being quietly vacuumed from their wallets by the various levels of government ranging from local to federal.  All is well, just reduce your carbon footprint and embrace DEI wherever it may next be introduced – behave yourself.

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  • Sandbox – 17jun24

    ["Relocation firm moveBuddha looked at searches for 100,000 moves just this year, and five of the top ten were people looking to get out of the Golden State for almost anywhere else. "5 of the top 10 exit metros are in California, the firm reported on Monday. 'Los Angeles has the highest interest in outbound moves, with 42% more outbound inquiries than runner-up San Francisco. Per capita, the prize goes to San Francisco.'" (more here)  And NPR reported this morning that Sacramento's legislative rock apes are planning to start paying farm field workers their regular pay is they are prevented from working by a "natural disaster" like a heavy rain, flood, cold weather, etc.  The given reason is that we (Californians) want to "earn their trust" and stay in their goodwill.  Of course, the added taxes required and increased debt encountered from all this will just goose the state's exodus rate.  gjr]

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  • Trump’s November Chances

    George Rebane

    Oi Weh!  Like everyone else, I’ve been keeping a beady eye on the Trump and Biden campaigns for this November’s election.  And supporting Trump vs Biden, I’ve been rooting for every sign that the Lip from the Hip is making the gains that show up in the polls.  But then there are the legions upon legions of double dummies out there who don’t have a clue about Bumblebrain with his overarching incompetence and evil intentions for America.

    In any case, I finally decided to formally calculate my own current belief (probability) that the former president will reoccupy the White House next January.  The queasy feeling in my stomach was explained away when the answer came back just north of 0.45 – Trump is still the definite underdog.

    The process used to correctly compute one’s subjective probability is based on the individual’s Risk Tolerance Function generated from his formal expression of monetary utility that is basic to decision theory.  Once extracted (a separate process), the RTF is then used in a sequence of accepting/rejecting reference gambles under systematically modified payoff odds until convergence at the so-called indifference point which then yields the sought-after measure of belief/probability.  The process does not appeal to pre-judgement of any probabilities, just the contingent based decisions to accept/reject bets (that the target event comes/is true) for significant dollar amounts within the decider’s personal financial spectrum and his current net worth.  The process named ASPE stands for Automated & Secure Probability Elicitation.

    Anyway, the 0.45 number does not make me feel good, and I sincerely hope that new information and results develop during the summer, that upon recalculation, will push my belief significantly above 0.50.

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  • Those Pesky Estonians

    [Living under the armpit of Russia (czarist, communist, thugocracy), its perennial nemesis, Estonia is and has been an enthusiastic member of NATO.  As a small yet leading high-tech country it spends more than its required 2% of GDP on defense, and has been the first to respond with men and weapons in the fight against the traditional enemies of western culture.  Its latest venture has been to develop an AI-based family of combat drones that cost up to an order of magnitude less than those supplied by the big guys like the US et al.  The defense news periodical Defense One has published the following here.   gjr]

    How Estonia is becoming a hotbed for drone warfare

    Projects include experimental loitering munitions that cost a fraction of U.S. equivalents.

    Sam Skove

    Staff Writer

    JUNE 11, 2024 12:59 PM ET

    TALLINN—With a close eye on Ukraine’s use of drones, Estonians are fielding new kit, changing doctrine, and revamping training for unmanned systems in case they also have to repel a Russian invasion one day. 

    Estonia — a country with a population of just 1.3 million — is also being uniquely thrifty, working to field systems whose price is often orders of magnitude cheaper than similar U.S. systems. Defense One got a close-up look at these efforts on a trip funded by the Estonian ministry of defense. 

    At the center of many of these efforts is Aivar Hanniotti, the military’s point man for everything related to drone technology and development. He took the job in January, and is already well known in Estonia’s bustling drone industry. 

    Hanniotti’s team is working on a long list of updates to Estonia’s drone and counter-drone tools. Much of the work is done by members of Estonia’s Defense League, a part-time volunteer organization that serves as a military auxiliary force. Hanniotti himself is a member. 

    Estonian civil society is heavily engaged in supporting Ukraine, and many Estonian Defense League members help Ukrainian units by delivering supplies to them, like drones. This puts them in touch with Ukrainian troops, who pass on information, said Hanniotti, and this access to battlefield experience helps drive innovation.  

    Among the projects linked to Ukraine is the “Angry Hedgehog,” a plan to field a domestically produced short-range loitering munition similar to Ukraine’s first-person-view drones.

    The drones will have a custom warhead and a range of up to nine miles, said Hanniotti. They will be equipped with artificial intelligence to guide them the last mile to a target, an increasingly popular countermeasure against Russian jamming. 

    Hanniotti said the drone will cost under 1,000 euros, and use European-manufactured components. It will undergo further tests in June 2024, and Estonia also aims to deliver 1,000 of them to Ukraine to test their use in combat. Formal fielding may occur next year.

    The price is far less than similar short-range loitering munitions, like the $94,000 Rogue One. Hanniotti said the aim was to have a drone that was “good enough,” rather than one tricked out with the latest in tech. 

    Other projects include a Estonian-made hand-held drone detection system, which Hanniottii is working to field to every squad starting sometime next year, he said. Such systems are widely used in Ukraine, and are also coming to the U.S. Marine Corps. 

    Yet another project seeks to develop a cheap missile for taking out drones. One missile, which so far exists only as a concept, has a theoretical price of 2,000 euros. The price is one-tenth the cost of the APKWS missile, one of the cheapest anti-drone missiles. The planned missile, which is to rely on commercially available parts, will be tested at the end of this year, Hanniotti said. 

    Other projects are virtually free, such as an Estonian Defense League-designed tool that takes the inputs from passive radio-detection systems and plots them on a map to identify probable enemy locations. 

    The Estonian drone push isn’t all low-cost initiatives. Between 2024 and 2027, Estonia will spend 220 million euros (about $238 million) on loitering munitions, out of a total outlay of 529 million euros for indirect fire systems, according to a briefing by Oliver Tüür, director of the Defence Planning Department at the Estonian Defense Ministry.  

    Estonia is planning a special unit to operate loitering munitions, Maj. Andrei Šlabovitš told Defense One last year, in what may be the first dedicated loitering-munition unit fielded in a NATO army. 

    New technology brings new questions, from what tactics to use to what units should use them. Estonian infantry squads, for example, have begun experimenting with drone operators who scout ahead for hidden enemies. 

    The Estonian army is also testing how to use drones to support its artillery. Hanniotti said that they are experimenting with linking artillery fire control officers with drone units to reduce the time it takes to target enemy formations. Estonia’s dense forests, however, pose a problem by blocking drone signals, Hanniotti said. 

    Hanniotti said other experiments have included using the Android Tactical Awareness Kit to mark targets for artillery, but the system—like many sent to Ukraine—has proven vulnerable to GPS jamming. 

    Hanniotti is also involved in developing a designated unit for operating short-range surveillance and attack drones. Ukraine operates these types of units in large numbers, but the concept is still new for NATO militaries. The U.S. does not operate short-range drone units, although Army experiments have tested the concept informally. 

    New tech also needs new training, and Estonia plans to launch a drone training center this year. The center will also serve as a test range for new electronic warfare technologies. 

    Many U.S. efforts parallel Estonia’s, including an Army initiative that aims to  field a short-range loitering munition by 2026. U.S. plans, though, generally move slower than Estonia. The Army, for example, will allocate just ten hand-held drone detectors to a division, according to a 2025 budget request, while Estonia is aiming to give one to every squad. 

    One explanation may be the quasi-civilian nature of the Estonian Defense League, Hanniotti said. 

    “In the Defense League, we are used to getting by with small funding,” he said. “We are all motivated—and we would like to have fast results.” 

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  • Scattershots – 10jun24 (updated 20jun24)

    George Rebane

    Government inevitably corrupts and/or badly screws up the projects it initiates in the public sphere.  This thesis has been a common RR thread for years and forms a basic tenet of Rebane Doctrine.  The 9jun24 WSJ has a short and succinct column, ‘Your Government at Work’ by Andy Kessler that summarizes this ongoing process of ineptitude.  And, of course, our government is not the only one charged; it is a common trait of all large bureaucracies operating without proper incentives and feedback.

    Women’s basketball phenom Caitlin Clark didn’t make our Olympic team, it turns out, because she wasn’t diverse enough – i.e. white, straight, European, and all that.  The given bullshit reason was the claim that her fame would disrupt the historical somnolence with which women’s basketball has been received in the Olympics.  And all this in the face of multiple efforts to promote a more broad and enthusiastic reception of the sport’s distaff participation.  So now the public pushback has caused the sport’s political hacks to instate Clark as a first alternate in the event one of the twelve chosen can’t play.  Can you imagine the mentality of the jerks who made the decision to exclude her in the first place? (more here)

    [11jun24 update]  Pelosi pleads pretermission about J6 security preparations for the Capitol.  Finally, the former Speaker admits that a mass protest with unknown consequences was long anticipated at the Capitol by both the DHS and the FBI for the Senate’s 6jan21 electoral vote certification.  Neither agency issued a timely intelligence report on this, and “Congressional leaders, including Pelosi, chose not to deploy the National Guard early over concerns of ‘optics’ amid 2020’s Black Lives Matter riots, according to a 2022 GOP report.”  Meanwhile, everyone including then President Trump got blamed for the Capitol breach, even though he was perfectly in his rights to encourage his supporters to protest the certification – there is no evidence that he directed the demonstrators to enter the building or do anything illegal. (more here)

    [12jun24 update]  ‘Sports Should Unify, Not Divide Us’ writes Clay Travis in a compelling piece featured in the recent issue of Imprimis (here).  He again illustrates the deep evil that the woke Democrats have unleashed on the land – in this version another piece of established western culture targeted for destruction to achieve their dissolution of America.  And it boggles my mind to realize that these people walk and live among us as they do their dirty work while we remain ignorant and/or indifferent about the impact of their labors.

    [13jun24 update]  Ignorance on parade.  In a recent Union Jo Ann pointed out the asymmetric street level responses of the Left vs Right when addressing public policies they don’t like.  As evidence abounds, the Left likes to riot, burn things down, and in general favor violence instead of more peaceful means.  Local leftwing worthy Daryl Grigsby writes in today’s Union (here) that my sweetie is totally wrong in her observation.  His cutting response alleges equity in that conservatives are “silent as election workers are harassed and threatened, promote divisive language, and see anyone seeking basic human dignity as Marxists.”  And, of course, J6 “was an attempt to burn down democracy”.  His intellectual coup de grace was citing the 1921 Tulsa massacre when white Jim Crow Democrats “burned down 1400 black homes and businesses, murdered over 300 African-Americans, destroyed the black business district, …”  Reaching back over a century and then missing the politics of his own white racist forebears is the best counter he can offer?  Point, set, match!

    [20jun24 update]  Democracy on the block.  The Democrat sleazebags continue telling their know-nothing constituents that Trump and the Republicans will kill democracy in America if they get elected.  Meanwhile it's the progressives who now actively thwart democracy wherever they find it.  Check this that just came out of Sacramento.

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  • Sandbox – 2jun24

    [A Clarion Call for Rearmament – “Sen. Wicker, ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee, rolled out a report detailing why America’s military budget is inadequate for the “world in which we find ourselves.” America’s military isn’t equipped to deal with potential wars on two continents at once, much less the new threats in space and from artificial intelligence. Mr. Wicker proposes an additional $55 billion for the Pentagon in 2025, a total of $950 billion, as part of a new ‘generational investment.’” (more here)]

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  • America’s Dystopia has Dawned

    Dystopia has dawned – Trump convicted on all counts.  The greatest American travesty has happened in my lifetime.  I have seen my country slide from its heights of glory to the now confirmed beginning of its dark age from which recovery to its former self is unlikely.  With evil and corruption now firmly ensconced in our government, it is doubtful that my children will ever again witness America in its full promise as the shining city on a hill. (more here and here)

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  • Terry McLaughlin: A better policy on homelessness

    [Ms Terry McLaughlin is a longtime regular columnist for The Union and contributes well researched and written reports on current issues and happenings (quite often vocally proscribed by our local liberal contingent).  Her columns are always factual exhibiting high journalistic standards now mostly lost from the industry.  Recently she attended an important town forum on the homelessness problem focused on Nevada County and contributed an excellent report to Barry Pruett’s Sierra Thread blog (here).  However, she seldom if ever injects her own opinions into her reporting.  As her friend I know that her perspectives are well thought out, and I requested she write a follow-on piece in which she would state her own perspectives on this important issue.  She kindly submitted the following.  gjr]

    Terry McLaughlin

    Despite enormous sums of tax money being provided to “solve the homeless problem”, the size of the unhoused population is only growing and increasing.  How that tax money is being spent and who is benefiting from it is an issue for another discussion, but it appears that we, as taxpayers, are not getting any “bang for our buck”, and those who are homeless are not getting the help they need.

    A very small subset of the homeless population is the “working poor” who have truly hit upon a serious economic problem, either because of employment layoffs, large unpaid medical bills that have saddled them with debt from which they cannot recover, or other similar experiences.  People in these situations, who do not suffer from mental illness or substance addiction, will most likely transition out of homelessness successfully, either because they were able to find new employment, family or friends offered temporary housing, government benefits allowed them to find reduced-rate housing, non-profit organizations came to the rescue with temporary aid, or other similar methods of assistance.   A very small number of those who are homeless fall into this category.

    As discussed by both Nevada City Police Chief Dan Foss and Grass Valley Police Chief Alex Gammelgard during the community forum sponsored by the Sierra College Foundation, the main causes of homelessness are mental illness and substance abuse and addiction, whether it be drugs or alcohol.   Both chiefs agreed that the problem of homelessness will never be solved until we deal with the underlying causes that created the situation in the first place.

    (more…)

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  • Memorial Day 2024

    MemorialDay2012

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