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George Rebane
Nevada County poet Molly Fisk, who is also a regular essayist on KVMR and a fine lady of the liberal persuasion, and I were asked to trade our commentaries for today. The idea was to have listeners maybe raise an eyebrow or two in fun as they heard familiar voices deliver unfamiliar monologues. Each of us wrote a piece to be read by the other which was broadcast today.
Here is the piece that I wrote on Calvin Coolidge for Molly to read.
As Christmas is the promise, Easter is the fulfillment. Oblivion vanquished, rejoice!
“Socialism is a
philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy.” Sir Winston Churchill
George Rebane
There’s good news and bad news about liberal states going to hell in a handcart. The good news is that the faster they implode, the more chance there is for even the most minimally informed electorate to come to their senses and turn away from socialism. The bad news is that minimally informed electorates seldom turn back from their race over the cliff.
And from a selfish point of view, being a resident of one of the worst states in this quandary, California will lead the way along almost every pernicious metric you can imagine. The most obvious one is net migration which Bill Watkins of Cal Lutheran University in his ‘California is in for World of Hurt’ calls the “canary in the mine” that gives advance warning to jurisdictions headed for failure.
Established residents of our state and others have been emigrating to greener pastures for years. But now, as the nearby chart shows, immigration is no longer able to stem the net outflow. Even poor people are leaving in droves, being hurt by the same innumerate idiots that they sent to Sacramento. Citing data from California’s Department of Finance, Watkins writes –
“California’s political class, led by Governor Brown, has been patting itself on the back for solving California’s problems. This celebration is ludicrous. What they’ve done amounts to a mere slowing down in a long-term political, fiscal, and demographic decline. … Demographic trends themselves are creating a crisis brought about by a population that is simultaneously losing its children and getting older, and to a frightening extent poorer. From 2000 to 2010, the percentage of Los Angeles’ population under 15 years old fell by 15.6 percent. This was the greatest decline of any U.S. major metropolitan area, and about double the U.S. average of 7.4 percent.”
In the 27mar13 WSJ Art Laffer and Stephen Moore take a broader national look (here) at how the blue states are headed into the toilet, and what the red states are doing to avoid the same fate. From independent Census Bureau sources they observe –
“You can tell a lot about prosperity in America by observing the places people are moving to and where they are packing up and moving from. New Census Bureau data on metropolitan areas indicate that the South and the Sunbelt regions continue to grow, while the Northeast and Midwest continue to shrink. … Among the 10 fastest-growing metro areas last year were Raleigh, Austin, Las Vegas, Orlando, Charlotte, Phoenix, Houston, San Antonio and Dallas. All of these are in low-tax, business-friendly red states. Blue-state areas such as Cleveland, Detroit, Buffalo, Providence and Rochester were among the biggest population losers.”
Laffer and Moore go into some detail to compare and contrast the tax and regulatory policies between the red and blue states. Part of the good news here is the clear contention between diametrically opposing economic policies of tax and control socialism, and low tax and regulation capitalism. They observe that “the contrast sets up a wonderful natural laboratory to test rival economic ideas.”
I don’t know how effective this display of successes and failures will be to the rank and file American workers and transfer payment recipients. But with great purpose our Founders did put in place a republic that can concurrently try out different approaches to make the country grow and prosper. The Left has been doing its level best to squash this diversity of liberty into one of centrally controlled homogeneous squalor. So far their success has been short of complete as we observe that “red states of the South and other areas of the country are moving forward with pro-growth tax reform, while California and the blue states of the Northeast are doubling down on Obamanomics and European progressivism.”
[30mar13 update] SESF published its first report on unfunded liabilities in 2007 and presented it to the Board of Supervisors. RR started warning its readers of the magnitude of debt facing Nevada County, California, and jurisdictions across the country. These reports were politely sniffed away by politicians and bureaucrats ignorant of what was owed. Now as Europe’s fiscal fractures are making daily news, and the magnitude of the Obama financial mismanagement of the country becomes clear, reports like this one – ‘The Debt Bomb that Taxpayers won’t see coming’ – in the 30mar13 WSJ are starting to clamor about the amounts that was committed by scumbag politicians end running their electorates.
None of this should be news to RR readers. The news is that it is only now being recognized in the media, but not yet by the public. And the progressives will be forever blind to what the public service unions have bamboozled from the public that their members were supposed to serve.
George Rebane
California’s Prop8 rescinded gay marriage in the state. The will of the people may now be overturned by the Supreme Court which is hearing the appeal to uphold Prop8 that in the interval was overturned as unconstitutional by lower courts. In this debate we recall that under California law, gay couples can already register domestic partnerships that provide the same rights and responsibilities as marriage.
So, as a couple of justices observed, it really comes down only to the use of the label ‘marriage’ when describing the association between homosexuals. Historically all cultures have reserved that label to identify the prime familial relationship between a man and a woman. Now the issue seems to be for the homosexual community to co-opt that label to also and with ambiguity identify their special relationship. It is no longer a matter of the rights and privileges that the relationship confers, they already have that.
As another side matter in this decision, the impact of same-sex marriages on children raised in such families is not known as is claimed by the usual activists promoting this new type of marriage. More here.
My preference is to retain the historical word ‘marriage’ in all languages to refer to the established union between a man and a woman. We make up new words for new ideas every day. Why can we not concoct a brand new label for the brand new relationship that the modern age recognizes between people of the same gender? The benefits to such unambiguous identification in all matters of social administration and intercourse would be enormous. One simple word would distinguish between the traditional societal norm and the newly imposed norm, and inform all of the exact nature of the so referenced couple.
After all, there is no intention to hide anything here, is there?
[5apr13 update] In
the comment stream below I introduced ‘garriage’ as the working label for gay
or same sex marriage in order to facilitate debate and discussion. Messing with an institution as fundamental as
marriage in its expansion to embrace same sex unions has unintended
consequences. Some of these are now
coming out in the media, even the lamestream, after chair of the Georgia
GOP Sue Everhart raised the benefits that straight people may gain when they game garriage. (She was instantly denigrated by the usual
liberal intellects like Stephen Colbert.)
With each passing day, more and more interesting possibilities open up for
non-homosexuals to become garried. The
most recent one I heard today was fathers garrying their sons and grandsons to gain
relief from asset transfer taxes that today don’t apply in marriages.
We can all now anticipate the elaborate patchwork of exceptions, codicils, and special provisions that will have to be appended to any law that will insist on calling such gay unions 'marriage' instead of giving them a unique and informative label. What a curiously deviant world progressive
thought provides us in so many areas of human intercourse.
“… invoking an infinity of unseen universes to
explain the unusual features we see in this one is just as ad hoc as invoking
an unseen Creator.”, Paul Davies, physicist
George Rebane
On these pages I have long advocated intelligent design (ID) as the most compelling idea that unifies science and certain philosophies/religions (here). A strong supportive argument for ID has been the idea that our universe is really a massive running program, that all that we are and perceive is the result of an ongoing cosmic computation. Physicists have posited this as a very plausible explanation of how things work when they look at matter, energy, and even time at the smallest of scales.
A stumbling block for the universe as a running program has been that no one was able to grapple with the configuration of such a humungus piece of code that could compute an entire universe right down to the interaction of the most basic pieces of what is called the Standard Model (which recently received additional credibility with the observation of the Higgs particle in the CERN super collider in Geneva). However, it now looks like this difficulty has also been overcome with the discovery of a very simple and short piece of code that can compute this and all logical universes.
Jürgen Schmidhuber introduced a simple ten-line code snippet to TEDx audiences recently that indeed can optimally compute the universe. He opened with –
“I will talk about the simplest explanation of the universe. The universe is following strange rules. Einstein’s relativity. Planck’s quantum physics. But the universe may be even stranger than you think. And even simpler than you think.” (the rest of the transcript and video is here)
This topic is difficult for secular humanists to consider primarily because it avoids the spot creation explanation of religious fundamentalists, explains all that science has observed, and yet allows for a “Great Programmer”, Intelligent Designer, or, if you will, God. So the secular humanists’ answer is to simply lump ID as another sneaky way to impose fundamentalist creationism on society, and then dismiss the whole thing out of hand. Next case please.
George Rebane
You know you’re old when you realize that there’s a good chance that your pets will survive you.
Benghazi is not going away. Hillary’s ‘what difference does it make?!’ tantrum in front of the Senate is coming back in spades to haunt (and worse?) this administration. Meanwhile, the WH continues to lie through its teeth claiming not to have silenced the survivors who are now being interviewed by Senators (here) and telling quite a different story of having been told to shut their mouths during the last five months. This adds more to the pile of evidence that Team Obama is corrupt, incompetent, and perverse. Readers hewing to the lamestream are being spared all this.
Stay tuned to see how Kerry handles the ‘it didn’t happen on my watch’ as the survivors tell us how the Libyan terror strike was mis-managed from the gitgo – Hillary call your campaign headquarters. And the liars still maintain that Al Qaeda is a shadow of its former self as it spreads and strengthens in ALL quarters.
DHS with MRAPs and billion bullet buys. Speaking of the lamestream, that branch of our Fourth Estate has achieved the status of your local high school newspaper as far as currency is concerned. For almost a year they have fastidiously ignored the news of what federal agencies are doing to apparently prepare for civil insurrection in America (here). Now we begin to see reports (here) in various outlets evincing surprise and finally acknowledging the obvious, much asked, and ignored questions. Not the brightest bulbs on the tree, but their progressive agenda does explain away why liberals are so out of touch when talking about current affairs. Sounding lame probably comes from restricting your news sources to the lamestream and their blogging echo chambers.
Cyprus taxes bank deposits. So, does anyone out there believe that the Tuesday taxing of Cypriot bank accounts will really be a "one-off", and that government money grab will not be repeated in other failing EU countries (here and here)? And is the Atlantic wide enough to prevent the progressives (and their Democrat surrogates) from succumbing to that disease on our shores, especially with the crowd that now 'works' at 1600 Pennsylvania?
"… there is no weakness without its admirer, so be not discomfited because your ways displease some, for they will not fail to be pleasing to others; nor let their approval of them make you vain, for still others will condemn them." Gracian #101
George Rebane
Britain’s biggest coal fired power plant is being forced by EU green standards and British government fines to convert to burning wood chips. But that’s just the beginning of what Idiots International is foisting on the Brits. The wood for the chips will come from the US where 4,600 square miles have been designated to be logged for this power plant. There the trees will have to be chipped and shipped thousands of miles across an ocean into special storage facilities built to house the ‘biomass’ until used. And the gory story goes on, a story which should not be read after a big meal while standing on a good carpet.
Next we move to Alabama where its Supreme Court has ruled in favor of a plaintiff suing the original manufacturer of a drug that has been off patent for years, and then taken by said plaintiff under a secondary manufacturer’s label. The secondary manufacturer is by law required to print verbatim the original manufacturer’s FDA vetted information on the drug, information which the plaintiff claims was misleading to the point of causing him harm. The broad application of such “innovator liability” will have a devastating effect on America’s ability to remain the leader in bringing new and innovative products and services to market. Again, a barf bad at the ready is recommended before reading this piece.
Exit question: These examples of our achieved state of obvious social madness have their champions claiming convoluted contortions of social justice being served. Who are these constituencies, and what kind of ideologies could be used to support such government diktats?
George Rebane
[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 15 March 2013.]
Cardinal of Argentina and Jesuit, Jorge Bergoglio, was elected Pope last Wednesday, the first from the Western Hemisphere to hold the Holy Office of Catholicism. He chose to be known as Pope Francis (the First), a name that fits his reputation and humble demeanor. His major tasks will be to straighten out the Vatican bureaucracy, also known as the Roman Curia, the standing of the Catholic priesthood, and halt the decline of Christianity in Europe and North America.
While the proportion of the world’s Christians has remained fairly constant over the last century, its center of gravity has overwhelmingly shifted from the north to south. The Pew Research Forum on Religion and Public Life reports –
“This apparent stability, however, masks a momentous shift. Although Europe and the Americas still are home to a majority of the world’s Christians (63%), that share is much lower than it was in 1910 (93%). And the proportion of Europeans and Americans who are Christian has dropped from 95% in 1910 to 76% in 2010 in Europe as a whole, and from 96% to 86% in the Americas as a whole.”
And even these statistics mask the actual declines in people who regularly attend church or even confess to believing in God. Protestant Northern Europe has become a Christian wasteland, and in North America secular humanism is making great strides in attracting both young and old away from the faith of their fathers.
Today in America the state is actively and selectively proscribing Christianity and purging its presence from public life. The ruling progressive mentality is dominant and has prescribed that we be sensitive to all religions in our midst save Christianity. When the perceived sensibilities of people of other faiths are somehow disrespected, there is an uproar in the media with America’s secular humanists lending their weight to restore those aggrieved. The only exception is the sound of crickets when a Christian or Christianity is disparaged or mocked.
Today Christians in America are a mobile bunch with over 50% having changed their religious affiliation at least once. And the churn continues as the overall numbers decline. To me that reflects an attitude that shopping religions is rapidly becoming the norm because people more and more are dissatisfied with what they learn or don’t learn during their encounter with this or that denomination.
As a Protestant Christian, I have seen that branch of the faith change markedly over my lifetime. Churches no longer feel that their theology, with its message of salvation and how to live, is sufficient to contain the faithful. Something different is required today if the pews are to be filled on Sunday. The overwhelming solution has been to adopt a new ‘contemporary’ style of service that concentrates on entertainment and expunges the wonders of Christian cosmology and theology from its sermons. ‘Sunday school light’ is the new liturgy in which a progressive ‘liberation theology’ focuses on current social issues during many Protestant and Catholic worship services.
The consequence is that altars have become rock band stages, the sacraments have been silenced, and an all-inclusive Christianity is the order of the day. The parishioner soon asks himself ‘is that all that there is?’, if so, then let’s go find a place that has a better band, cooler songs, and more skits to entertain us. If the church seeks first to be a social services club washed of irrelevant theology, then finding the best club is the order of the day. The Pew Forum describes it as “a very competitive religious marketplace.” And today that marketplace is more and more filled with Comfort Christians who cannot conceive of contending for what used to be their faith.
On an even bigger scale, respected scientists tell us (here) that the world is rapidly becoming an arena of clashing civilizations, each of which hew to one of the world’s great religious traditions. It is into that arena that the humble and evangelical Pope Francis now takes the Throne of St Peter as the de facto leader of Christians of all hues.
My name is Rebane, and I expand on this and related themes on georgerebane.com where the linked transcript of this commentary is posted, and where such issues are debated extensively. However these views are not necessarily shared by KVMR. Thank you for listening.
George Rebane
Capitalism works best when corporations must woo their customers instead of government.
There is something in the liberal mindset that does not understand ‘choice’ when applied to individual responsibility. In a recent comment stream one such reader stated –
“Do people actually choose to be poor? How many poor people would refuse a million bucks if handed to them by their daddies? Do people choose to die young because they can’t afford proper healthcare? Do people choose to be hungry or watch their children starve? Do people choose to be homeless and sleep under a tarp in the snow? Do people choose to be miserable? I think not. “Individual choice” is corporate double speak for the freedom to pollute, sell us products that are unsafe, and use our children as cannon fodder to rid the world of leaders and economic systems not to their liking, all in the name of profit. Don’t you get that you are being conned?”
Since the apparent answer to such ‘choose’ questions is NO, then that is sufficient reason to 1) require those not so afflicted be forced to sustain the afflicted, and 2) that there is a mysterious yet substantial connection between the notion of ‘freedom to choose’ and a nefarious catalog of corporate misbehaviors. Before going further, I want to emphasize that such a belief and its follow-on reasoning is a common thought pattern among our liberal brethren – the above commenter is not flying solo.
Astounding as it may be, it is clear that the liberal does not consider or understand the causal sequence of mediating events/states that is usually involved between a decision to do/be or not, and the resulting state of misfortune. They see it as a one step process – you either chose to, say, “watch your children starve”, or it was visited upon you by fate. And since no one would really choose misfortune, it had to be the result of spontaneous and pernicious fate, or worse, the inevitable outfall of capitalism, corporatism, Christianity, greedy enterprise, free markets, and other divers trappings of social injustice.
“The time has come,” the Walrus said./ To talk of many things:/ Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax—/ Of cabbages—and kings—/ And why the sea is boiling hot—/ And whether pigs have wings.” Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll
George Rebane
Older readers will recall President Lyndon Johnson’s famous use of that phrase as he invited opposing politicians to join him in deal making. Although history shows that after ‘reasoning’ with ol’ Lyndon you almost always walked out scratching your head, counting your fingers, and wondering after the health of your wallet. But it’s hard to say no to your counterparty when he issues a civil invitation to come and reason together about a disagreement you may have. It’s the penultimate invitation during a dispute that quickly achieves ultimate status, the more publicly it is issued.
In these pages we now have a significant history of debating literally every issue under the sun (well, almost); I have yet to find a single subject that has been out of bounds. Now that doesn’t mean that we always conduct ourselves in ways that generate light instead of contributing to global warming. But most of us do try to put our best foot forward instead of in our mouths.
In spite of that, we more often than not wind up talking way past each other, realizing that we are really trying to convince the anonymous middle road reader – I’m assured that they do exist – who pores over our deft arguments that firmly nail our stand. Quite often these arguments wind up sounding daft instead. So I’m going to list some steps that in my field have almost always led to a working compromise or even a meeting of the minds. And applying this discipline to the business side of things, I have seen amazement in people new to the approach. They are astounded by how easy it is to come to a closure – whether that means a working agreement, or a detailed understanding why none is possible, and where the ‘give’ must occur to make progress.
My consternation has always been that so few people understand or use this straightforward method to sort out their differences. And, as you may have guessed, I have found the people of various hues of collectivism to be most resistant to this process. So here are the steps –
1. What’s your objective or purpose in resolving the problem/dispute. This can be stated in words. All parties don’t necessarily have to agree on the objective, but they should know what each is trying to achieve.
2. How will you measure progress/achievement? What is the metric that will satisfy or confirm for you that you are either making progress or achieving your objective? The metric can be a proxy – e.g. number of marriage licenses issued for, say, the number of new households formed, or for the survival of the institution of marriage.
3. It would be useful if the parties agreed on the metric, even though their stated objective or purpose would be at variance.
4. Are some kinds of re/solutions unacceptable? Are there any constraints on the alternative solutions to be considered? What are they?
5. Generating alternative solutions is the hard part, and anyone can now participate, whether they agree on the objective or the evaluating metric.
6. Are there any data sources for input to the metric that will not be accepted – i.e. how will the input data be vetted. Here one can posit that some data set is correct, and return to its acceptance at a later time. Hypothetical data can also be used to determine the sensitivity of the metric to variations in or accuracy of the data – i.e. does it make a significant difference?
7. Put the ‘solutions’ through the metric. Calculate the value(s) of the metric(s) and see what kind of changes in the solution alternatives will help maximize (or minimize) the metric. At this point all parties should be closing in on agreement, or knowing why their effort is turning out fruitless. Learning will have taken place.
8. If there is a will, go back a few steps, change things and try again. But stick to the paradigm.
What if your counterpart doesn’t want to play this game? What if he just wants to shout his (baseless?) opinion past you. Then you know he’s not serious and has an agenda in the debate not based on any acceptable form of reason, and that he’s probably there to jack you around.
Once more –
1. State objective/purpose
2. Select/define progress measure
3. Constrain solution/outcome alternatives
4. Generate/present alternatives
5. Crank data for solution(s) through metric
6. Evaluate results
