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  • Hardwiring the Right and Left

    George Rebane

    In my technology newsletters I recently encountered some buzz about clinical evidence differentiating the brainbones of liberals and conservatives – in short, you may be one or the other because that’s the way you’re wired up.  There has been a flurry of articles posted on the original research done on this thesis at the University College London – here is an example report, ‘Liberal vs. Conservative: Does the Difference Lie in the Brain?'

    Please note that the research is early stage, the sample size is small, and what characteristic attributes it identifies in the opposing ideologues is a reach.  For example, “liberals tend to be better at managing conflicting information, while conservatives are thought to be better at recognizing threats, …”.  This has been enthusiastically translated by some light thinking progressives to mean that ‘liberals can better handle uncertainty, and conservatives are driven by fear’.  Sweet.

    (more…)

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  • Memo to Obama on Gasoline Prices

    George Rebane

    The Chief Organizer claims he doesn’t know what’s made gasoline prices go through the roof, and he suspects that it’s all those “traders and speculators”.  So he has launched another investigation to ferret out these low lifes.  Predictably, it will turn up nothing in that quarter, and only repeat the performance of Clinton and Bush2 when they tried that diversionary bamboozle during high oil prices.

    USDollarIndex The real reason for the soaring price of gasoline is the plunging value of the dollar aided by our Federal Reserve’s ‘quantitative easing’ and low interest rate policy, and the fact that our politicians are evincing no clue as to how our debt and deficits will be managed.  S&P’s downgrade of our debt repayment outlook from ‘stable’ to ‘negative’ put a ribbon on it this week.

    But in the end Mr President, just have your mentors take a look at the US Dollar Index measured against a basket of the world’s leading currencies (more here)  It is down almost 10% from a year ago, thereby making everything we buy from overseas more expensive.  Pay attention Buttercup, we buy oil from overseas – more because of your domestic energy policies – and that dollar devaluation has itself contributed about a 40 cent increase to the price of a gallon of gas since last spring.  So cut the investigation smoke screen, we are not as dumb as you hope.

    If you want to help, get serious about cutting government spending instead of putzing around with economy stifling tax increases.  Our only road out of this mess is growth.

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  • The Diaz Case Continues

    George Rebane

    [This is the transcript of my KVMR-FM bi-weekly commentary recorded on 21 April 2011.  I have added a relevant addendum about information from a subsequent conversation I had with a Nevada County staffer.]

    Not many people have been paying attention to a complicated lawsuit whose defendants include Nevada County, Mr Greg Diaz, its initially appointed then elected Clerk-Recorder, and Aptitude, a Florida software company.  The whole thing would be forgettable, except for two things – the legal bills the county is running up, and the pile of unanswered questions that just seem to be getting more curioser by the week.

    Let’s back up.  ATPac, a software company located in Auburn, provided software and services to our county’s Clerk-Recorder office for about ten years before Mr Diaz arrived.  The software was used to handle, store, and retrieve county records.  In 2008 Mr Diaz decided that it was time to re-select the county’s record-keeping software vendor, and the county issued an RFP, request for proposal, and thereby opened up a bidding process which culminated with Aptitude replacing ATPac.  During the migration from ATPac’s software to Aptitude’s software, some irregularities occurred.  As a result ATPac sued, alleging that its intellectual property had been compromised by the county and Mr Diaz by allowing Aptitude to have access to its proprietary computer programs.

    The county and Mr Diaz denied doing anything improper, and under advice from county counsel, the Board of Supervisors authorized legal fees for a strong defense as both sides began pre-trial preparations to gather evidence and take depositions from involved parties.  A complication surfaced almost immediately when attorney Barry Pruett decided to oppose the incumbent Mr Diaz in the November 2008 election.  While not involved in the lawsuit, Mr Pruett had worked for the law firm representing ATPac in the lawsuit, he was familiar with the case, and made its already apparent irregularities an issue in the campaign.  Conservative bloggers Russ Steele of NC Media Watch and my Rebane’s Ruminations supported Mr Pruett, and liberal bloggers along with the county establishment supported Mr Diaz.

    (more…)

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  • Ruminations – 21apr2011

    George Rebane

    - No Amber Alert on Missing Refugees
    - Estonia’s credit rating upgraded

    ‘Climate Refugees, Not Found’  so headlines the 21apr11 WSJ report on millions of people who have gone missing with nary an Amber Alert issued in their behalf.  The egg just continues to accumulate on the faces of the True Believers, those politically bent devotees of catastrophic climate change that dwell beyond the pale of evidence.  The newspaper reports –

    In 2005, the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) published a color-coded map under the headline "Fifty million climate refugees by 2010." The primary source for the prediction was a 2005 paper by environmental scientist Norman Myers.

    Six years later, this flood of refugees is nowhere to be found, global average temperatures are about where they were when the prediction was made—and the U.N. has done a vanishing act of its own, wiping the inconvenient map from its servers.

    This would be just another laughable episode at the expense of the ignorant cum stupid, if only these folks didn’t have the state’s power of the bayonet on their side.  Since they do, and have every intention of using force to make their growing stack of crippling regulations stick, the joke is on the rest of us who are trying to create jobs, earn a living, and pay our taxes.  More climate change matters on NC Media Watch and Watt’s Up With That?

    An RR reader emailed to inform me that Estonia has passed America in its credit rating.  The rating agency Standard & Poor’s, which recently stated that our creditworthiness outlook was changed from ‘stable’ to ‘negative’, has announced that that little Baltic dynamo of capitalism and entrepreneurial fervor is being upgraded from ‘stable’ to  ‘positive’.  CNBC cites a Reuters report (here) that “the ratings agency said Estonia's ratings were supported by its strong public finances, political stability and sanguine economic growth prospects as exports recover sharply.”  Whooda thunk it?

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  • The Silence of the Jews and Christians

    George Rebane

    AlJazeerah In this season of Passover and Easter, our administration and its private sector cadres are promoting Islamists with an added twist.  Al Jazeerah, with its anti-Jewish and anti-Christian worldview, is now being recognized by the leftwing as a necessary and legitimate source of world news and considered opinion among the civilized nations.  In spite of their message being unchanged, there is now a push to bring the Middle East Islamist propaganda outlet into the mainstream, or is it into the lamestream in the west.

    In the 18apr11 American Thinker (‘A Passover Present From Obama’) James Lewis wonders “why American Jews and Christians are so silent today.  Has the Left managed to scapegoat them so badly that they dare not speak up?  Or are there millions and millions of people who are just looking for a chance to be heard?”

    I’m afraid that we will have to wait until November 2012 to answer these questions.  The silence today is not heartening.  (H/T to RR reader for the heads up.)

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  • “… because that’s where the money is.”

    You gotta get it from where it is, cuz you ain’t gonna get it from where it ain’t.

    George Rebane

    The President keeps pointing his accusing finger at the “rich” (those earning more than $250K annually) for being under-taxed and thereby keeping the nation from solving its financial problems.  That is a lying ruse to keep the sheeple’s attention from the actual taxes that he intends to increase on his hallowed middle-class – remember? those are the people he is forever promising to protect from higher taxes.

    WhereTheMoneyIs Well, taxing only the rich isn’t going to happen for the same reason that we still quote America’s iconic bank robber Willie Sutton.  Liberals are forever doubting the allocation and sourcing of the nation’s income taxes.  They can’t seem to come to grips with the fact that the top earners already pay the overwhelming fraction of income tax revenues to the governments – starting with the feds and going down the tax jurisdiction ladder (see the graphics in RR’s ‘As We Talk About Taxes and Skin in the Game’).

    California is on its fiscal last legs because it decided years ago to put the heavy part of its tax yoke overwhelmingly on its job-creating ‘rich’.  Now these people are thundering out of the state, and doing everything possible to deny our stupid and rapacious government additional monies to waste.

    Looking at the most recent IRS data available makes it clear where Obama and the progressives will go to get more money for their bamboozle named “tax reform”, the tax increases that they are now calling for daily.  Take a look at the nearby histogram filched from the 18apr11 WSJ, and then read the accompanying piece ‘Where the Tax Money Is’ that considers what if we just stick a gun in the faces of the rich and take ALL their earnings.

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  • Raising the Debt Limit and Bilge Water (updated)

    George Rebane

    Just for the record, I don’t want any RR reader to be bamboozled by the bilge water that the administration and Dems are trying to float on raising of the debt limit issue.  The word from the progressives, abetted by Bernanke and Geithner, is that if the debt limit is not raised this May, then America will default on its debt service, and the world will sink into financial chaos.  This is absolute bull crap floating in bilge water.

    1. The feds pull in over two trillion a year in taxes, etc.
    2. The US currently owes north of $14T which requires around $450B in annual debt service costs.
    3. With the current authorized debt limit of about $14.3T, we can still roll over debt and borrow to that level.
    4. Instead of defaulting on debt (and causing all that “chaos”) we can always pay our debt service out of current federal receipts – how?  By reducing the size of government along with the entitlement payments we make to our own citizens.
    5. No foreign/private lender needs to be stiffed, they will continue to get their interest payments regular as clockwork.  The overdue pain we cause ourselves will not concern our foreign or domestic creditors.
    6. Given the demonstrated discipline of NOT increasing the debt limit, foreign lenders will feel more, not less, confident in continuing to lend at our current debt limit.  The chances of getting their principal back would just go through the roof, instead of sinking into the mud.
    7. The politicians who have been lying to the voters about being able to afford current entitlement programs and solving the problem with taxing the bejeezus out of the ‘rich’ will be out on their collective butts, and have to get real jobs or sign up for transfer payments.

    So in the coming weeks, when we hear the socialists scream about ‘playing Russian roulette with the nation’s future’ and ‘putting the debt burden on the backs of the poor’, stand up and tell your electeds that you too know how to do the arithmetic of debt service and debt financing the country.  Defaulting on our debt service is not tied to what we do on raising the debt limit or not.  But it is tied to a certain political class hoping that you’ll drink the bilge water that they are serving up while you’re too busy to pay attention.

    PS.  For the aficionados, listen very carefully to what Bernanke and Geithner say about debt limit and defaulting.  Neither claims that refusing to raise the debt limit will cause problems.  Each only states a likely result of financial turmoil IF the US doesn’t make its debt service payments.  Both are counting that you will unthinkingly connect the wrong dots, and conclude that chaos is automatically linked to what Congress does on the debt limit in May.  But then, you all knew that.

    [update]  As if we rehearsed it, Standard & Poor’s this morning changed its outlook to “negative” on America’s ability to repay its debts (WSJ report here).  It isn’t so much that our economy still can support such repayments, it’s that we will not get our political act together in time to save the economy from its inevitable fate as we continue to borrow in the trillions into the indefinite future.  S&P simply says that it sees no evidence that we will make meaningful progress toward solving our fiscal crisis, and therefore advises us to standby for having our AAA credit rating reduced – and that’s only the first step.

    RR readers know when this happens our debt service costs will start soaring as interest rates go up.  For some time now someone around here has been musing about shorting government debt instruments – oh yes, c’est moi.

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  • The Kilogram and Judges’ Pay and …

    George Rebane

    KilogramStandard The standard kilogram – ensconced under glass in Sevres, France – is losing mass, and the world of standards is all a-twitter, as it should be.  For you see, “its only purpose (is) constancy.”  As Seth Lipsky points out in his ‘The Floating Dollar as a Threat to Property Rights’ in a recent issue of the Imprimis.

    Lipsky raises the interesting notion of why keep the kilogram (hence the pound, etc) constant. Why not let it float too according to the whims of government or your local butcher?  From there the thread of reasoning is connected to the floating value of the fiat paper dollar which has been the subject of much discussion in these pages over the years.

    This thread winds its way over to the laws on dealing with judges’ pay that the several states have each set up.  The common argument here is that, due to the separation of powers, judges’ pay may be set by legislatures, but not reduced by them.  And this launches a whole new dust-up that can grow into a tornado on setting the value of the dollar.  Since non-legislative branches and organs of government can diminish that value at their whim, thereby reducing the burden and buying power of the judges, what does it mean to keep such payment in “legal tender” constant?

    The question is not idle, and as Lipsky points out, there are court cases now pending on just that issue.  From there it is a short skip to property rights, and, using Kelo v New London, the connection is well made.

    Seth Lipsky’s short piece is a must read for anyone following the development and downfall of the nation’s fisc, and its broader effects on all of us.

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  • McClintock = Doolittle Redux ??? (updated 14apr2011)

    George Rebane

    At Tom McClintock’s 22mar11 town hall meeting our congressman 1) acknowledged my characterization of the spending cuts and related continuing resolutions as being insignificant pinpricks on the country’s fiscal gangrene, and 2) politely stated that my assessments were in error.

    Now that the mother of all CRs, citing $38.5B spending cuts, has been trumpeted across the land by both parties, it turns out that I, and others who take a more careful look behind the curtain, were right and continue to be so.  The cited amount is nothing but feathers and hot air composed of accounting gimmicks that in their most hopeful application still wind up showing that we are spending more this year than last, and that the long-term benefits – if any, since the jury is still out – will be less than $20B annually.  (For a quick summary of the “hokum” see the editorial in the 13apr11 WSJ.)  Talk about flys#%t.  (Apologizies for my more crude characterization of congressional output that bespeaks of its backwater origins.  But then, we do communicate a bit more clearly here in the mountains.)

    I strive with all the hope and reasoning power within me to believe that our congressman has not been turned by the Washington cesspool in which he now labors.  His predecessor was weak and became just another posterboy for the Democrats making fun of Republican hypocrites on spending.  In a private meeting Doolittle personally handed me a shovelful of BS on how congressional pork was dispensed.  We all have our moments and areas of ignorance, and that is what I will chalk up Tom McClintock’s misunderstanding of what he was describing and voting for, and not that he intended to deceive us.

    So, now as the battle on the debt limit and the FY2012 budget shapes up, we have the Republicans under Boehner’s leadership having in the main caved on spending reductions for FY2011 and their effective shadow into the future.  If Congress passes last Friday night’s bamboozle then we have essentially achieved nothing.  And President Obama’s mendacious speech today is beyond my willingness to refute; let the national commentators who are paid for their labors dissect that septic tank.

    As a tea party member, I cannot yet put anything that we support, in principle or substance, into the congressional Win Column.  Paul Ryan’s FY2012 budget proposal remains in the Hope Column.

    [14apr2011]  Congressman Tom McClintock's NO vote on the FY2011 budget travesty restores my long held view of Tom as a man of principle.  The compromise budget turned out to be even more putrid than originally advertised.  The actual FY2011 spending reductions reduced down to the order of $300 million and change.  The Democrats won this one walking away.  Boehner knows how to wear a suit pretty well, but he doesn't negotiate worth a crap.  Add to that Paul Ryan's YES vote, and then we really have a picture of a confused Republican Party.  Thank God for Tom's vote, he is not a Doolittle. Complete vote tally here.

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  • As We Talk About Taxes and Skin in the Game (updated 18apr2011)

    George Rebane

    WhoPays 

    Why would the bottom 50% ever vote for lower taxes??  The Democrats know the answer.

    [18apr2011 update]  Russ Steele of NC Media Watch pointed me to the following little milestone that highlights the above graphic.  The sheeple are being prepared.

    HHtransfersVStaxes

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4 comments on Hardwiring the Right and Left