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  • Time at the Tea Party (updated 8aug2011)

    When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work, because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation. – Peter/Paul Principle (expanded version)

    George Rebane

    TimeMagazine110815 Time, America’s premier leftwing news magazine, is going all out to cast the conservatives and their ideas as the debt debacle devils in the recent and ongoing debate.  Its 15aug11 issue features articles on the country’s fiscal woes and ‘How the Tea Party Hijacked America’.  The latter is actually a back-handed compliment to the enormous impact that the tea party movement has had and promises to have on our politics.  Michael Crowley writes the featured piece that firmly establishes that the tea party movement is definitely not in Republican control, but instead is a major burr under its blanket.  His leading tagline and takeaway is that the tea party is a “populist movement underestimated by both parties has shown that it’s here to stay.”

    This assessment goes a long way to explain away the almost hysterical flood of articles from the progressives that the tea party movement is a rapidly waning force on the country’s political landscape, and that it may self-destruct even before the 2012 election.  This line is picked up in the hinterlands’ blogosphere by the mindless followers of the lamestream.  Meanwhile the founder/leaders of the various tea party factions, like Mark Meckler of the Tea Party Patriots, are getting more and more national air time, as incredulous hosts of TV commentary programs embarrass themselves trying to entice out some slip-of-the-tongue that might connect the tea parties to social issues or the Republican party (see also the comment streams on RR).  Crowley goes on –

    In January, Senate majority leader Harry Reid predicted that the Tea Party would soon “disappear.” Now, having pushed Reid’s party into a deal few people would have thought possible a few months ago–trillions in spending cuts, possibly with no new taxes–the Tea Party is more convinced than ever that its facts and its tactics are the right ones. And its influence is hardly waning–something Reid is the first to admit. The Tea Party’s sway in Congress, Reid lamented as the Senate approved the debt deal on Aug. 2, “has been very, very disconcerting … it stopped us from arriving at a conclusion much earlier.”

    Barack Obama has long promised a post-partisan environment in the capital. But he never imagined that a minority of Americans would come to play such an outsize role in the public conversation. Polls may show that Americans overwhelmingly want more compromise in Washington, but the Tea Party’s leaders–and the roughly 25% of Americans who consider themselves Tea Party supporters–are primed for more confrontation. The debt fight, believe it or not, is probably just the beginning.

    What continues unexamined is the basis for the tea parties being labeled as “rightwing” or “far right” organizations. As confirmed on these pages, those descriptors are supposed to be true just because the left repeats them with increasing frequency, while themselves claiming to be “in the middle”. Crowley’s article sheds no light here.

    (more…)

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  • The Christmas Yet to Come

    George Rebane

    [This is the transcript of my regular bi-weekly KVMR-FM 89.5 commentary aired on 5 August 2011.  It was recorded on the morning of 4 August 2011 before the markets took their 6% historic swoon.  As has been reported for some considerable time on RR, this market reaction is expected and reflects how the world assesses governments firmly on the socialist path to economic destruction, which always precedes worse things.  As we head into Depression2, the 21apr34 Chicago Tribune cartoon is as prescient today as it was when first published during Depression1.]

    If we believe the media pundits, the country has let out a collective sigh of relief that America has dodged the fiscal bullet.  We don’t have to worry about defaulting on our debts.  Entitlements and other transfer payments will be paid, and we can now merrily skip down the middle of the road into a less stressful future, having demonstrated that bi-partisanship is again alive and well.

    Nothing could be further from the truth, which in the coming year will become a rarer commodity than it is today.  The compromise debt limit bill that the President signed into law this week is an extremely clever victory for the progressive wing of the Democrats, their cries of ‘Oh no, don’t throw me into the briar patch!’ notwithstanding.

    After all the hullabaloo of the last couple of months, the country’s liberals got exactly what they wanted.  But to make the bamboozle work, they can’t let the cat out of the bag until after the election.  Well, maybe just before the election.

    So how do we know that the country is still firmly headed for the ‘fundamental transformation’ that President Obama has promised us.  For starters, we get to keep borrowing at essentially the same breakneck rate; our national debt will increase by more than 50% to over $23T in ten years.  The promised $917B spending cuts are a fantasy scheduled to begin in the foggy future under a Congress that is not beholden to anything done today.  So the country’s profligate behavior has not changed one iota.

    (more…)

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  • California Now Federalized (updated)

    George Rebane

    CaliforniaBroke For the last years I have been telling RR readers that California was heading toward becoming a ward of the federal government – in short, federalized (e.g. here).  As with many major and momentous changes, I believe this was apparent to anyone who had a facility with arithmetic, and understood the basics of how wealth is produced.  It turns out that such skills are at a premium, hence we bloggers do provide some modicum of early warning and added value to the received wisdom from the mainstream (and lamestream) media.

    One of these major media outlets in California is, of course, the LA Times.  And the worthies down there are finally starting to put things together.  In their 4aug11 issue they report –

    The dirty little secret is that California’s current state budget is not $85.9 billion, the size of the much-debated, deficit-plagued general fund. You’ve got to add in the special funds ($34.2 billion) — much of them fed by fees dedicated for specific purposes — plus bond money ($9.4 billion). That totals $129.5 billion, but it still ignores federal dollars.

    The real state budget includes an additional $79.2 billion in federal largesse, representing 38% of total state spending. This brings the grand total to $208.7 billion.

    So the state of California is getting a nearly $209-billion spending program while putting up less than $130 billion itself.

    So that is how far things have progressed.  The state’s socialists still crow in satisfaction that California sends more dollars to Washington than we get back.  While that is true, we must remember that those dollars are sent there under extreme duress (aka at gunpoint).

    And what really seals our fate is that every one of those federal dollars comes back with an ‘owner’s manual’ telling us exactly how it should be disposed of and/or spent.  The only leeway that the feds have left for us in Sacramento is the ability to continue hurting ourselves in every imaginable way possible.  And this our legislature and governor are doing with a relish as they proudly demonstrate California’s “leadership” in how a state can mismanage its affairs.  Soon Washington will even take that away from us and assume our comprehensive mismanagement from across the country.

    Please stay tuned.  (H/T to RR reader for the link.)

    [update] A reader just emailed me the following story in the 3aug11 City Journal on the federally funded California high speed rail boondoggle.  Such screw-ups in policy and execution continue bathing California, and this is just one of many examples illustrating the points made above of how two levels of government collide in costly incompetence.

    And reader georgef (see his comment below) emails that –

    … this is the “plain language” version of the new GASB-35 (Download GASB-35 Plain Language 7-28-11 Pension Accounting and Financial Reporting) standard.  The previous drafts have been circulated for years; you can see the compromises necessary to get this result.

    The discount rate topic is probably beyond the average reader but it is the essence of this level analysis.  The actual upper limit of a pension cannot be predicted due to spiking, use of unused vacation, and sick time which boost the last year of a retroactive calculation.

    The triggering event will be the required disclosure of GASB-35 amounts about the same time as the federal financing is reduced.  The ability to borrow will be very limited.

    That this California debt can only be handled by the feds – either by hopeless lending or destroying the dollar – should give some pause to those readers who consider it hyperbolic that California is already federalized.

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  • We Are the Real Terrorists

    George Rebane

    Truthout.org has published a major article ‘Breivik's Fundamentalist War on Politics, and Ours’ which is a progressive manifesto, and itself a declaration of war on conservatives and their politics.  Author Henry Giroux (one of truthout’s “news analysts”) forges every connection imaginable between Breivik, the Norwegian mass murderer, and anybody to the right of Hugo Chavez.

    There is no doubt in the minds of truthout.org subscribers (this 501c3 solicits funds every month) that the greatest danger to America comes from “fundamentalists”, which is the labeled can into which all people like me (you?) are thrown.  Coming from leftwing sources like the White House, and now these people, the "terrorist" label is starting to sound like a drumbeat.

    Missing from the fundamentalist toolbox is the necessity for self-reflection, thinking critically about the inevitable limitations of one's arguments, or being morally accountable to the social costs of harboring racist ideologies and pushing policies that serve to deepen racist exclusions, mobilize fear, and legitimate a growing government apparatus of punishment and imprisonment.  What connects the moral bankruptcy of right-wing Republicans who embrace violent imagery in order to mobilize their followers with the mindset of extremists like Breivik is that they share a deep romanticization of violence that is valorized by old and new fundamentalisms, whose endpoint is a death-dealing blow to the welfare state, young people, immigrants, Muslims, and others deemed dangerous and, so, "disposable."

    After reading Giroux’s piece, a simple perusal of RR comment streams quickly reveals that our leftwing compatriots here are exactly of a piece with the worldview and philosophy of this leftist ideologue.  The opinions expressed on truthout.org are not to be dismissed, since their stable of contributing authors includes many (most?) of America's progressive luminaries.  This is their home stomping ground, and their readers are collectivist intellects who can master the sometimes thick porridge that the site pours out.

    A remarkable telltale of their firm position on the political spectrum is the fairly frequent pace of publications that take even the Chief Community Organizer to task – maybe he’s not that bad after all.  So if you do happen to be a little to the right of Hugo, pour yourself a stiff one, send the young’uns out of the room, and wade in.

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  • The Debt Deal – Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained (updated 2aug2011)

    George Rebane

    Now you’re free to believe that last night’s debt limit deal between the Repubs, Dems, and President is a solution to any of the ills our country faces.  But you would be wrong, because nothing has changed except another little shot of morphine to ease our cancer’s pain.

    The deal, which may not even pass Congress, will continue to increase our national debt, ignore meaningful deficit reduction, and enlarge government over the next ten years.  The deal also sets up the Dubious Disciples – a committee of twelve, evenly split among Dems and Repubs – to manage kicking the can some more when it meets later this year.  The piddling cuts will not mount to a hill of beans in the grand scheme, and both sides will expect to get more of what they want from the next baked in crisis – Repubs real spending cuts, Dems real tax increases.

    The credit rating arguments have been specious.  This deal will not affect them one iota, and will even affect less the lenders’ propensity to buy Treasuries.  Those bonds will sell or not based on the relative risk that the world’s borrowers present.  Uncle Sam, believe it or not, still seems to be sitting on top of that dung heap.

    So this little exercise was all done for the politics of 2012.  And it will be a politics with a gaping, smoking hole where America’s ideological middle used to be.  Each side will accuse the other of stretching their ideological boundary away from the center, and each side will be right.  The progressives caught the conservatives napping in 2008 – Bush2 had damaged the right much more than anyone thought.  And then when all was set for the socialist road to utopia, up rose the people in the tea party movement and made history in 2010.

    But our real destination has not changed since the country decided that it could borrow, tax, spend, and regulate our way into a prosperous and secure 21st century.  To change that destination will require a real crisis.

    Dilbert1107

    [2aug2011 update]  Congress has passed the compromise bill to raise the debt limit, and a promise to cut a tad of spending way out there in Neverland.  The tea parties are not happy about anything save introducing the idea that we should at least talk about spending cuts when we promise to increase borrowing.  Without going out on too much of a limb, I predict that the spending cuts from this legislation will not amount to one tenth of the projected (by whatever bamboozle you care to quote) $2.4T.

    (more…)

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  • Perhaps Muslim-Themed Ethics Training Next (Updated)

    George Rebane

    This from truthout.com, my favorite website for socialist cum communist news and commentary.

    Air Force Pulls Christian-Themed Ethics Training for Nuclear Missile Officers After Publication of Truthout Report
    Jason Leopold, Truthout: "The Air Force, in response to a report published by Truthout earlier this week, has pulled a Christian-themed training session that used a quote from an ex-Nazi SS officer and numerous passages from the New and Old Testament to teach missile officers about the morals and ethics of launching nuclear weapons… David Smith, chief of public affairs of Air Education and Training Command at Randolph Air Force Base in Texas… said the ethics training has been in place for '20-plus years' and the decision to remove it was made on Wednesday after Truthout's report was published."
    Read the Article

    It is always entertaining to see the attempt to develop and ground our morals and ethics within an oblivion-based theology like secular humanism.  They never answer why should humans not behave and develop exactly within the rules of, and in harmony with ‘nature’?  Everything else does.

    Why not then embrace Darwinian ethics to the fullest.  If not, we know there is at least one active religion that practices Darwinian theological evolution for those still insisting that man is transcendent.  Would it make us more comfortable to know that the fingers on our nuclear trigger have the ethical training in which Islam's selfless martyrs are immersed?  Maybe we'll let Iran teach us what that is like.

    [update]  A little more perspective never hurts.  Inroads of Islam in American thought in this YouTube video.

     

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  • Debt Crisis – The knives are still out

    George Rebane

    This weekend President Obama has told ol’ Harry to cool it and reinserted himself into the debt limit talks.  I think that the tea party message has finally gotten through, though not in its entirety.  Leaked compromises still consist of immediate debt limit increases that won’t be matched by spending cuts until many years down the line, if then.  If Obama gets gets a second term, all bets on the economy and fiscal responsibility are off – spending increases, tax increases, regulatory increases, and limitless borrowing – next stop Depression 2.0.  Come to think of it, this is about much more than upping the debt limit, maybe that’s why the knives are still out. 

    The current standoff has been perfectly captured by Nevada County’s RL ‘Bob’ Crabb in the cartoon below that first appeared in the 30jul11 Union where we regularly enjoy his political and social insights.  (Bob also makes lexicographic contributions as a commenter on these pages.)

    RLCrabb110730

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  • CCB Lite passes – 218 to 210 (updated 30jul2011)

    George Rebane

    Cut, Cap & Balance Lite just passed the House 218 to 210 with no Dems voting for it, and 22 Repubs opposing it.  The tea party backed Repubs came and took the heat to the end, they would not vote for an increase in the debt ceiling.  Why?  Because our continuing to borrow with no plan to pay back is what will pull the country down, and even CCB Lite won’t fix that.  That is what will cause our credit rating to be downgraded, not the piddly crap going on in Washington this weekend.

    So now we have the ongoing Beltway game that’s over the heads of most Americans –

    - The President bloviates (nothing scorable),
    - The House Legislates,
    - The Senate Kills Bills.

    Academic political scientists are telling us that there is less overlap between the Dems and Repubs than there has been since the 1890s (the beginning of the American progressive movement).  However, one thing we can all celebrate in this epochal national debate on how we citizens want to relate to government is that these bills focus on the real ideological differences between our political parties.  There is no pork appended to any of these bills CCB and CCB Lite.  Therefore there is no back room deal making and back slapping as votes are traded ONLY for the purpose of insuring re-election.

    As Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid goes into the weekend to pass his smoke-and-mirrors cuts alternative, for the first time in 30 years the issues on the national fisc and governance are singular, clear, and complete.  No cuts?  Yeah, you heard the way he added savings to his spending cuts column from the presumed halt of the mid-east campaigns.  Well, the Repubs can come back with a ‘I’ll see ya and raise ya’, and claim that we could have had NASA launch a $30T program to put a man on the Sun in this decade.  And since we’re not going to do that, we’re going to cut $30T from future budgets.  Put those cuts in our column please.

    [update] Without debate, the Senate killed it.  BTW, H/T to RR reader who sent the following –

    Conservative star Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) ripped Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for the fantasy savings in his budget plan.

    “Let’s pass a bill to cover the moon with yogurt that will cost $5 trillion today. and then let’s pass a bill the next day to cancel that bill. We could save $5 trillion.”

    Great minds and all that.  I guess my little fantasy was not that far off the heavy thinking going on in Washington during these hours.

    [30jul2011 update]  I'm happy to report that our congressman Tom McClintock was one of the 22 Repubs voting NO on CCB Lite.  These one shots to reduce spending by a skosh over ten years along with no provision for stopping the national debt going up forever are a joke.  Such legislation will give our creditors no greater comfort, and therefore not affect our credit rating one way or the other.  'Give us more money so we can pay our interest on what we already owe you, and forget about getting back the  principal.' is what passes for fiscal policy in Greece.

    930AM – Just received this document (Download S_627 Extended version_29jul11) from Congressman Tom McClintock that analyzes CCB Lite, gives the rationale for the congressman's no vote, and outlines a future course of action.

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  • Cultural Rights

    George Rebane

    [This piece is actually the expansion of ‘Discussing Norway and Breivik’ which invited a reasoned conversation about the recent terror massacre.  In there I included 25 notions related to that atrocity, and to the growing public debate on multi-culturalism and Islam that is ongoing in Europe and starting in America.  Here is my contribution to the first on this list of 25 that invites other views.]

    OK, let me take a stab at #1 – The right of a culture to endure and thrive in its homeland.

    To give some structure to what follows, I accept that a society is “a system of human organizations generating distinctive cultural patterns and institutions and usually providing protection, security, continuity, and a national identity for its members.”  In short, a society is unified by a government that is sovereign over a territory and has a population that views itself as members of one or more cultures.

    A culture is a set of attributes that are expressed, maintained, and valued by groups of people that may belong to one or more societies.  The minimal set of such attributes are language, religion (or worldview), ehtnicity, traditions, values, mores.  The strength of a culture depends on how many such attributes are acknowledged, shared, and enforced.  Most of such attributes are not codified and pass from generation to generation through families and interaction in intimate mono-cultural communities.  Therefore, a culture is what its adherents say it is, and the survival of the cultural meme requires the maintenance of one or more critical masses of such subscribing populations.

    I covered the basic arguments for the modern status of culture in ‘Liberty’s Twilight’ and ‘Multikulti and ‘people like me’’.  And since we are here talking about rights, another slippery concept, I point you to the piece on Rights and Privileges that was included in the university course on critical thinking that I taught to journalists and media producers.  With this background, let me dive in.

    The short answer is that a culture, as a group of people, has no intrinsic rights.  Only the members of a culture – the people as individuals – have rights.  Therefore, if a culture can be maintained by individuals acting in concert while exercising their individual rights, the culture survives so long as its members wish.  Cultures die through dilution of its critical masses, dilution that is caused by people leaving and/or by extra-cultural people arriving to forcefully comingle.

    What is usually omitted in such considerations is the right of people to gather exclusively, and to discriminate who belongs and who doesn’t – in sum, the right to exclude whom they wish by legal redress or simply through shunning.  And since these rights exist only to the extent that they are maintained by force, a supportive government is required.  But to repeat, governments do not directly guarantee cultures (since they are not codified), but only provide a society’s legitimate guns to guarantee individual liberties that may be used to maintain a culture.

    So the bottom line is that a culture has no intrinsic ‘right’ to endure, let alone thrive, in its homeland or anyplace else.  A culture survives only to the extent that it is actively practiced and protected by individuals coming together in a manner which to them provides value and enhances their quality of life.

     

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  • ‘Minority Rules’ or Why Bloggers Blog

    George Rebane

    MinorityRules Rensselaer Polytechnic researchers have discovered a dynamic network model that explains how a minority opinion can become a majority opinion when certain tipping point parameters are exceeded.  In the internet age this process has also been labeled ‘going viral’, and many of us have seen and studied its technical properties.  The RP researchers have been able to identify the tipping point as being somewhere around 10% minority opinion holders when the network of communicants is sufficiently connected.  (more here)

    With modern media the spread of ideas enjoys a very dense network of connections over which compelling opinions and notions travel and become influential.  This would also apply to the spread of memes.

    I guess bloggers in some way sense this and keep up their incessant efforts to put out thoughts they hope will gain some traction out there.  Of course, many of these thoughts are also re-transmissions of things they heard elsewhere, modified somewhat, and then passed on.  Again we come back to the secret life of memes (see also the work of Richard Dawkins and Julian Jaynes).

    In sum, the spread of memes is a very non-linear process – hence the notion of a tipping point – and goes a long way to explain why poorly polling politicians keep plugging along, and sometimes even catch a breeze from a seemingly unknown quarter that blows them into office.  Now the system sciences are starting to develop explicative models that may some day soon evolve into predictive models (heaven help us then).  I look forward to this work being connected to the research reported by Bryan Caplan in The Myth of the Rational Voter.

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116 comments on Time at the Tea Party (updated 8aug2011)