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  • California Election Results Summary

    CAelection 

    [H/T to RR reader for nailing this timely synopsis.  Also, an excellent interactive results compendium from the WSJ can be seen here.]

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  • Vote! but only IF …

    George Rebane

    Election Day.  Everyone in the country is exhorting everyone else to vote regardless of whether they are informed on the issues and candidates or not.  I thought I would continue on the road less travelled by asking you to vote only on ballot items about which you feel informed – leave the others.  And if, after these past two years, governance and public policy are still not your thing, then stay home and don’t mess things up doing something for which you are not prepared.  There, I said it.

    RLCrabb101102 

    Frequent RR visitor RL (Bob) Crabb has another one of his clever and thought provoking cartoons in today’s Union (here) and reproduced above.  “Republicans in the wild” indeed.  The first panel says it all about those unshaven, gun-toting knuckledraggers whose intellects seem to be formed in their spinal chords somewhere below the navel.  Not only that, but they’re the ones who keep happy hikers and nature lovers of more progressive persuasions at bay with the selfish and threatening protection of their private property.  My, my.

    Unfortunately, studies and polls show that Republicans in the wild and otherwise don’t vote their numbers.  As I have reported, Gallup’s most recent polls report that self-declared sentiments across the country come to about 40% conservative, 40% independent, 20% liberal.  So the ballot box may not provide an accurate count of these rascals.

    My only editorial quibble with Bob’s cartoon is the last panel which I would modify to read, “Assuming that voters understand what they’re voting for, we’ll know by tomorrow.”

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  • Prop 25 – A Poster Child of Sleaze

    George Rebane

    This election season has seen more than its share of voter pandering and false advertizing.  My vote for the winner of sleaze in that department are the proponents of California’s Proposition 25.  I was again reminded of this as we watched the last game of the World Series this evening.  The ads promoting this proposition mention only that California legislators late in passing a budget will not get paid until they pass one and send it to the governor for signature.  It makes a big deal of ‘We’re gonna dock their pay until they deliver.’  That sounds real good to the mildly informed and frustrated voter.

    But the sleazebags are really out there to stick to all of us, and counting on the ignorant and uninformed to help them do it.  The pay docking is a smoke screen for the real intent of Prop25 which is to pass a constitutional amendment that reduces the requirement for passing a budget – which may mandate (but not include) all kinds of tax and fee increases – to be reduced from a two-thirds majority to a simple majority.  Is this not really government promoted constructive voter fraud?

    This, of course, will let the leftwing progressives go beyond the pale with their tax and spend policies and will put in place a Peter/Paul Principle on steroids.  I don’t know what we could do to make the state sink faster than defeat Prop23 and pass Prop25.  We are determined to federalize California.

    Exit question – What comes after bankrupt?

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  • Paul Emery on Proposition 19

    [The following commentary on California's Proposition 19 – 'the new marijuana law' - was submitted via email by RR reader Paul Emery, News Director at KVMR-FM 89.5 who often comments on these pages.  My own views on Prop19 are available here.]

    Paul Emery

    Thanks George for giving me the opportunity to express my opinion of Proposition 19.  Here are some basic observations.

    There are striking parallels between alcohol prohibition during the Great Depression and marijuana prohibition during our current Great Recession. The lessons learned from the repeal of Prohibition have a lot to tell us about the marijuana policy choices that we now confront. The Eighteenth Amendment was supposed to put an end to the evils of alcohol. Instead it created a gigantic black market, with unprecedented levels of crime and corruption,

    Two main reasons for the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1933 were that during the Great Depression there wasn't enough money available for an endlessly escalating war on alcohol, and that it is unsustainable in a democracy to prohibit a substance used by large percentage of the population.   Can we afford it now?

    To quote Jesse Ventura "When you prohibit something, it doesn't mean it's going away; it means it's going to be run by criminals."

    Over a hundred million Americans have used marijuana–more than 40 percent of the adult population. The war on drugs is mainly a war on marijuana. In 2008, police made 850,000 marijuana arrests, with nearly 90 percent of those for possession.

    Source: "Crime in the United States 2009," FBI Uniform Crime Report (Washington, DC: US Dept. of Justice)

    If a government’s legitimate use of state power is based on the consent of the governed, then at what point does marijuana prohibition — in particular the federal enforcement of prohibition — become illegitimate public policy?
     

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  • Ruminations – 29oct2010

    George Rebane

    The chronicle of the young but mighty Tea Party Movement (TPM) has been started and is being presented as a multi-part series starting in today’s 29oct10 WSJ (here).  Because the TPM is truly an American grass roots phenomenon, the recounting of its birth and today’s adolescence is a bit of a mish-mash.  The article goes into some detail on the internal mudslinging that inevitably arises out of a multi-factioned and effectively leaderless movement.  Some of this has even spilled over to RR (here and here).  What we tea partiers are still looking for is those big oil (or substitute your favorite) company checks that will turn our simple heads and march us lemming-like off the ideological cliff.  Ain’t America great?!

    The nation’s CCO in the White House is now also being referred to as “Hey Dude!” – that’s dude like in dude ranch.  Has anyone noticed the real reason why no progressive wants to talk about the Dude’s landmark legislative achievement Obamacare.  Recall that this triumph was to reduce deficits, lower the national debt, let you “keep your healthcare provider”, not lead to rationing or functional ‘death committees’, lower healthcare costs (if you’re not indigent), reduce insurance premiums, not destroy the health insurance industry, not drive medical care providers out of the industry, … .  As the bill was going through the sausage factory (aka Congress), these were known as blatant lies to everyone in the country except those following socketpuppet Pelosi’s pie-eyed admonition for us to wait until it was passed before anyone could really tell what was in there.

    Well, it’s been out for some time now and we’re still discovering new landmines and their ripple effects.  I predict that Obamacare’s stench will continue growing until it is (hopefully) repealed.  Today only the Republicans want to remind us of this atrocity as they continue to put the damn thing back into the Democrats’ trophy case after every time they sneak it out.  Not even the duped acolytes in the lame stream media want anything to do with it.

    More of the same can be said about the economic Viagra that was foisted on the nation.  Again the Dems don’t want to handle this limp willie, and the few who can, now loudly remind everyone that they didn’t vote for it.  Remember the cold panic of what would surely happen to the country if the Chief Dude didn’t stimulate right then and there? Of the $871B, or was it $814B, or …? that was allocated over that winter weekend, the monies have dribbled out ever so slowly in dribs and drabs to fund “shovel ready” projects that even our President later admitted were then non-existent?  (This President is really going after FDR’s record on the truth meter.)  I’m not sure whether Nevada County qualified for a drib or a drab, but the nearby chart shows how the county has fared by its own accounting.  Regardless, our unemployment remains firmly well north of 10%.

    NCARRA101029 
    Let’s see now, 100K people live in the county, 306M live in the country.  That figures to 100K/306M = 0.0003.  And 0.0003 times $814B is about $266M.  Can you possibly imagine $266M dropped on Nevada County?  Getting that much OPM, we wouldn’t sober up for two weeks.  But to date we have received only about $5M, which is a little less than 2% of our pro rata share.  Any way you look at it, we got screwed, blued, and tattooed.  But that seems to be the national norm and what next Tuesday’s election is all about.

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  • Prop19 – They smoked it when they wrote it (updated)

    George Rebane

    It’s hard to take seriously California’s Proposition 19 that would make law the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010.  This law would allow all the would be happy people in the state to grow up to 25 square feet of maryjane for fun and profit.  Well, the fun part has been pretty well established, but the profit seems to still have a question or two connected with it.  But that’s where the comedy starts for those pushing Prop19.

    MJuses 

    Now before going any further, let me state that I am for the de-criminalization of drugs (here).  And if that means that at least the production-to-consumption pipeline of some drugs should be legalized, then let’s puzzle out a good way and do it.  Continuing the losing war on drugs has only benefitted the producers (e.g. cartels) and the people in the justice system trying to stop them and their customers.  Talk about a perennial jobs act for both sides of the legal divide.

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  • A Peek Into a Cozy Nest

    George Rebane

    Corporategovernance Yesterday afternoon the Northern Sierra Air Quality Management District held its scheduled Board of Directors meeting at the Helling Library.  I attended as the only representative of ‘the public’.  Actually, I went there to witness our local AQMD’s deliberation on CARB’s AB32 new diesel regulations that threaten to and probably will drive out of business droves of small enterprises that operate diesel powered equipments at the onesy and twosey levels.  They will not be able to afford the modifications to bring their engines up to CARB’s controversial codes.

    This agenda item got short shrift because these regulations are a statewide mandate and there is not much that local AQMD’s can do about them.  But I was there for the full two-hour plus discussion of the public nuisance issue that has come out of Sierra Pacific Industries’ operation of its electricity co-generation plant in Loyalton.  SPI was represented by two of its operating executives.

    The biomass co-generation plant is another one of those green projects that has had a hard time getting off the ground.  In fact, SPI wants to cut its losses, stop the grief, and sell the plant.  The problem is that the Sierra County facility employs twenty people and is an important source of tax revenues for the county.  On the surface, burning locally available biomass from the forests to reduce fire danger and generate about 20 megawatts of electricity when operating at capacity seemed like a good idea.  But then government stepped in and soon the plant was forced to import a good fraction of its biomass fuel from Sacramento area landfills on the other side of the Sierra.

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  • Stiff ‘em or Serve ‘em

    George Rebane

    Hard to come up with another alternative.  Do we stiff the Chinese and then fight them?  Or do we stick by our obligations to them as our prime creditor, and become an economic colony of China to pay off our debt?  You know, sort of like we were in the 18th century to Britain, to whom we didn’t owe a penny.

     

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  • Is CARB Simply Incompetent?

    George Rebane

    Evidence is mounting daily that the California Air Resources Board is grossly incompetent – this in addition to having all the other diseases and ailments that normally infect big powerful government bureaucracies.  The SF Chronicle reported (here) over two weeks ago that –

    California grossly miscalculated pollution levels in a scientific analysis used to toughen the state's clean-air standards, and scientists have spent the past several months revising data and planning a significant weakening of the landmark regulation, The Chronicle has found.

    All this continues to give a bigger lie to the “benefits” of implementing AB32 that our politicians (including our RINO governator) have been ramming down our throats for the last three years.  But did this latest revelation cause even a ripple in the propaganda about this landmark command and control legislation?

    Today AB32’s backers fear most of all that passage of Prop23 will halt their plans for growing government, increasing taxes, adding to the regulatory burdens for business, and in general taking California into federal receivership as a failed state.

    For the few who do pay attention, toting up CARB’s crap on this legislation paints an unbelievable picture of hubris and incompetence.  Consider just some of the visible aspects of how this agency has misadministered AB32.

    • Lied about then rejected the Legislative Analyst’s Office report on the negative economic impact of AB32;
    • Employed a self-proclaimed ‘scientist’ Hien T. Tran who lied about his missing doctorate to develop CARB’s draconian diesel diktats based on faulty data and analytics.
    • CARB’s chairwoman Mary Nichols covered up Tran’s lack of qualifications and erroneous results, apparently because she liked the power it gave her agency to increase its regulatory scope.
    • Hired Charles River Associates to redo LAO’s work and produce a better result.  Then covered up CRA’s report when it reported that AB32 implementation would have a negative impact on California’s economy.
    • Continued to publish and promote AB32 benefits (especially about “cleantech” jobs and economic impact) that it knew to be either totally false or at best unsubstantiated.
    • And now it turns out that its internal analytics arm has blown (by hundreds of percent) every important prediction it has made (and the state’s leftwingers have and continue to tout) about the ‘impact’ on California if AB32 is not fully implemented.

    One wonders what it will take to do a complete top-to-bottom house cleaning at CARB.  Apparently its administrative and technical incompetence is not a factor here as long as the agency keeps pumping out politically consumable garbage that can be sold to its gullible constituencies.

    In the meantime, all California voters have to slow down this rogue bureaucracy is Proposition 23.  Please inform yourself and vote YES on Prop23, it is the biggest decision since Prop13 that California voters will be asked to make.

    (Both RR and NC Media Watch have provided extensive coverage on the shenanigans related to AB32 and Prop23.  In addition, Russ Steele’s NCMW is the best local source on all things related to climate change.  Search on ‘AB32’, ‘Prop23’, and ‘Proposition 23’.)  H/T to RR reader for pointing to the SF Chronicle piece.

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  • Multikulti and ‘… people like me’ (updated 24oct2010)

    George Rebane

    Chancellor Merkel’s very public admission that Germany’s multiculturalism experiment has “utterly failed” is an opportunity, widely taken, to reconsider the various meanings and functions of culture and multiculturalism.  Over the last week the thoughtful and thoughtless media have covered the subject from its many sides with the possible exception of what I will attempt to explore here.  Specifically, no one wants to penetrate that last layer of political correctness and ask what kind of ‘rights’ should people have to monocultural environments of their choice.

    SwissLangMap I covered much of the dynamics of multicultural societies and the problems of their governance in ‘Liberty’s Twilight’, and here I build on those arguments with which I assume the reader is familiar.  But now we address monoculturalism.

    The prime function and possible benefit of a culture to its adherents is a stable social life that may range from a stasis of creativity to creative liberalism (in the classical sense).  A strong culture allows effective and broad-based prediction of behavior, and maximally uses such widely applied social expedients as shame and shunning to enforce its behavioral norms.  The requirements for institutional policing are minimized in such a monocultural society because in essence each member is a natural and ubiquitous enforcer of such norms.

    In collectivist societies a state imposed monoculture is the order of the day that requires the operation of an extensive ‘justice’ system to coerce, corral, and control its citizens to behave within the dictated norms.  The intent of such governance is to break down the individual cultures that the regime inherited in its ascendancy, and wind up again with a new and politically correct monoculture.  But here, as was in the former USSR, Yugoslavia, and Iron Curtain countries, the resulting monoculture is foreign and repugnant to all but the ruling elite – who among themselves practice their own private culture that is still different from the enforced public one.

    As history shows, whenever given the opportunity, people immediately revert to their traditional cultures and seek to gain control of territories, ancestral or otherwise, wherein they would be free to reestablish a more current form of their monoculture.  Humans have considered such monocultural environments to be of unequalled value, enough to fight and risk all, even from the most desperate of situations and vantage.  Humans have always considered it most important to live and raise their children among other people like themselves.

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16 comments on California Election Results Summary