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  • Ruminations – 15apr22 (updated 16apr22)

    George Rebane

    Twitter’s poison pill to dissuade Elon Musk from taking the company private and making it truly a universal platform for free speech.  Democrats and other socialists are mortified, with many of their media lackies quickly declaring that only with more “mediation” (aka censorship) of online speech can we sustain democracy.  Not long ago such a statement was palpably unbelievable; today not so.  Here is a link to find out more about the types of most commonly used poison pills.

    RR’s characterization of the liberal mind is confirmed multiple times daily.  Here is one from this morning’s letters to the 15apr22 Union by a Ms/Mr/Xcritter Nory Fussell – The year 2021 ended with 745 billionaires, up from 614 in 2020. Many billionaires pay little or no taxes. We suffer the lie of backbreaking “inflation” while corporate profits skyrocket.  Progressives don’t cause this.  Wars continue to break out, the military budget continues to grow, and our chief export is weapons of war. This is not the work of Progressives but of soulless men, put mildly, suffering an acute anti-social personality disorder.  Infrastructure crumbles. You lose power, heat, and essential services. Look what you pay at the pump, while oil executives laugh and rake it in. The economic war against you is raging — it will only get worse.  Progressives, perhaps imperfectly, work toward health care, education, and basic human needs. The oligarch party (you know who they are!) rages flat-out lies about race, class, gender, even about a violent insurrection. They offer no solutions to your needs.  Apparently (unbelievably!), a fairly large percentage of you are moved more by fear, anger, victim-hood and divisiveness. In one generation, how did the USA lose so much?

    [16apr22 update]  Our economists and other economic analysts are hyper-ventilating about 3.5M workers they claim will not re-enter the post-Covid job market.  They tell us this deficit – consisting mostly of lowly paid women with no college – will be permanent.  Rebane Doctrine advises them not to worry.  As we have repeatedly noted, systemic unemployment has been slowly growing for years, and will continue to do so as cheaper and more capable technology replaces more expensive and unreliable workers.  And even the short-term deficit will be easily handled by the influx of illegal aliens as they get settled into their new homes and look for work.  From my perch, our continuing problem will be to mollifying the growing horde of the chronically irrelevant and systemically unemployed from revolting to relevance. (cf rising crime rates and more here)

    Giving until it hurts?  FN and The Blaze cite IRS records (here) showing that Bumblebrain and FLOTUS gave $17,400 or 2.8% of their 2021 income to charity.  Kamala and SHOTUS upped them a mite, and gave $22,100, but only 1.3% of their 2021 income to charity.  These laughable amounts are not all that laughable as records have shown for years that leftwingers don’t give much to private charities – their charity operates with OPM.  This has been much studied (here).  And as socialists they believe that government should be the sole provider of succor to its citizens.  Nevertheless, Americans continue to give through private charities amounts that are multiples of what the deficit-spending, vote-buying government dispenses.  For the record, as grateful entrepreneurs we, and many of our friends, are blessed to be able to give up to 40% of our earnings to worthy causes.  This tallies to several times the amounts that our progressive elites and leaders let escape from their tightly zipped wallets.

     

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  • The Jewish Question

    George Rebane

    In his ‘Passover and the Constitution’,  Professor William Galston writes “The Jewish festival teaches that liberty is only possible with tradition and order.”  These are not the mainstay criteria nor governance objectives of today’s American progressives.  Galston is a political science academic who now resides as a senior fellow at the very liberal Brookings Institution in its Governance Studies program.  His linked article appeared in the 13apr22 WSJ.

    In the rabbinical tradition of studying the Talmud and the Torah, Dr Galston does not always present the most understandable prescriptions – there’s always ‘on the other hand’.  Here the point that seeks exposure is that sustainable freedom can only be achieved and exercised in an environment of mutually accepted order.  And mutual acceptance is passed on as an inherited tradition, a social legacy from previous generations.  Jews formalize this tradition in the course of the traditional Seder (order) that is central to the celebration of Passover (freedom).

    “This raises a classic issue—the relationship between order and freedom. Some schools of thought view them as antitheses—the more order, the less freedom, and vice versa. Libertarians want to minimize government constraints to maximize liberty. Anarchists carry this thesis to its inevitable, and self-refuting, conclusion. … In the Jewish tradition, by contrast, order makes freedom possible. In the absence of a framework—a law, a text, a tradition—we cannot act freely. Not only are we plunged into debilitating doubt, but our decisions also collide with those of others. The actions of others rarely coordinate harmoniously with our own. And when they don’t, all are prevented from acting as they choose. Without a framework of social order, every individual can seek freedom, but none can achieve it.”  If this sounds like a bit of ‘you can have any color you want, as long as it’s black’, then so be it.

    However, a little meditation on the freedom/order dichotomy reveals again that in an enduring communal setting no member can act with total freedom; several times a day our fist inevitably comes to within an inch of others’ noses.  So, all of our communal freedoms are in fact circumscribed.  And respecting where the fences are, by what authority they were so placed, and who abides by them, defines the area in which we and our neighbors can practice our ordered freedoms.

    (more…)

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  • Socialist Economics

    George Rebane

    A Brief History of Equality (2022) is the latest issue of socio-economic wisdom from the socialist-celebrated French socialist economist Thomas Piketty.  You might recall that Piketty gave us Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013), his magnus opus comprised of “an 800-page book turbid with equations and numbers of all kinds, … is regarded as a game-changing weapon in the war to wrest wealth from the rich.”  Therein he introduced the world to “the central contradiction of capitalism” which elicited worldwide acclaim from collectivists of every stripe – progressives, Marxists, communists, … .  Its dense arguments made the tome’s 2.5 million copies sold as one of the most unread books of all time.  Nevertheless, adulatory columns and commentaries without end graced the pages and programs of the mainstream media.  With all those equations, it appeared that someone had finally put the demise of capitalism on a firm scientific basis.

    The piece de resistance of ‘Capital’ was introduction of his signature inequality r > g, stating that the rate of return on capital always exceeds the growth rate of its underlying economy.  In a nutshell, that was his ‘central contradiction’ to which I return in a bit.  But as Tunku Varadarajan of the American Enterprise Institute explains (here), “Thomas Piketty attempts to lure readers unable to scale the mountain of ‘Capital’” with a series of socialist principles that would create equality (think social justice) by “flattening the wealth curve.”

    Piketty does admit that there has been an historical movement toward equality along many dimensions – status, gender, race – since the late 1700s, but still not enough “to brag about.”  These gains have not been achieved by the increase in access to material wealth made possible by capitalist, profit-seeking entrepreneurs, but instead by revolutionary politics and class struggle.  “Efficient production, shrewd investment, or the genius and dynamism of innovators are sideshows”, because “all creations of wealth in history have issued from a collective process”.  For Piketty, this process has not only included but also depended on “the international division of labor, the use of global natural resources”, and most importantly “the accumulation of knowledge since the beginnings of humanity”, all blessings of the global collective.  Varadarajan correctly concludes from these claims that Piketty “is pure Bernie Sanders or AOC” and “may even be to their left.”

    (more…)

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  • Sandbox – 12apr22

    [Happy days are here again – California plans to introduce the 32-hour work week with 40-hour pay.  Another product of socialist economics and its new monetary theory coming to a job site near you. gjr]

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  • Militarizing local LE agencies

    George Rebane

    Last week’s Union had a couple of items that piqued my ire.  One included the display of a grim array of new militarized riot control gear that our Grass Valley police will now have at the ready to put down any protests they deem will violate public order and safety. (more here) The other item was the newspaper’s editorial board, in their 8apr22 Our View column (here), clutching their communal pearls about the recent Sacramento shootings and lamenting that “we’re nowhere near knowing the steps we need to take to reduce the number of shootings in this country.”

    (more…)

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  • Ruminations – 8apr22

    George Rebane

    Were I a senator, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson would not have received my vote for her SCOTUS confirmation.  Given the part of her record we are allowed to see, she is by no means the best pick for her legal acumen and rulings.  The lamestream has unabashedly lied about her treatment at her somewhat embarrassing Senate hearings.  But in the final analysis, I would have passed on her because she is a racist pick that peremptorily eliminated over 95% of the field of qualified jurists, most of whom more qualified than she.  (more here)

    The Union continues to deny the Hunter Biden laptop scandal in words and pictures (see its 8apr22 op-ed).  Its publisher maintains that there is no there there in which evidence of Biden family corruption abounds, and its overwhelmingly leftwing political cartoons are selected to support the newspaper’s position.  Our local paper makes no never mind that major lamestream players are now tiptoeing back their earlier denials and election year censorship which most definitely had an impact on the nation’s 2020 election. (more here)

    WSJ’s Kim Strassel expands on the Biden scandal in her ‘Apologies for Hunter Biden’s Laptop’ where she writes – “Although some Republicans are immediately characterizing all this as “corruption,” the more specific issue (and always the focus of the Johnson-Grassley probe) is national security. Hunter Biden spent years entwining the family in questionable ventures in Ukraine, Russia and China, even as his father’s biggest foreign-policy concerns are Ukraine, Russia and China. This history raises legitimate questions about counterintelligence and extortion, even as it puts a spotlight on how honest President Biden has been in claiming no knowledge of his son’s doings.”

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  • What is truth?

    George Rebane

    Contrary to common wisdom, in addition to your opinions you can also have your own facts, history, science, logic, sense of justice, fairness, equity, evil, beauty, and, of course, truth.  Rebane Doctrine

    Two friends of ours tackled the notion of ‘truth’ in recent issues of The Union.  Jan Tannarome (‘Facts vs Beliefs’) and Terry McLaughlin (‘What is truth, exactly?’) in which each argued the existence of propositions that are universally and unambiguously assessed as being true.  Ms Tannarome leans to the left, and Ms McLaughlin is a conservative.

    Tannarome harbors the pejorative view of ‘belief’ as being inimical to a kind and just society.  She writes, “And no matter who is using belief as a weapon or as a shield, this is unforgivable. It is unforgivable on a scale of such magnitude that I can’t think of anything worse at this juncture in our human evolution. I will borrow a phrase from a frequent contributor to this newspaper’s pages and say that using belief as a shield or a weapon is the mother dog of all political mischief, all social and cultural malfeasance, all justification for hatred and its many offspring.”

    McLaughlin, while never actually defining ‘absolute truth’, believes it to exist and goes through a litany of misguided notions about truth ranging from relativism, through pluralism, to beliefs.  She writes, “Why is it important to embrace the concept of absolute truth? Because life has consequences for being wrong. … Today, many people seem to fear publicly and honestly stating facts and truth. … If we wish to heal the present divides within our country, our neighborhoods, even our families, we must be willing to share in truthful and honest discourse.”

    From my perch (see also my credo) I join with those who have a more precise and, perhaps, technical understanding and definition of belief.  The commonly accepted definition of ‘belief’ is a faith-based proposition.  (Here a proposition is a statement or assertion that expresses a judgment or assessment.)  As such, a belief requires no reasonable basis.

    A more nuanced, and technically correct definition, holds that there are two kinds of beliefs – faith-based and falsifiable.  In that sense a person’s worldview or ontology consists of a set of propositions or beliefs which may all be falsifiable or also include some that are faith-based and beyond the pale of reason.  Over the years RR readers who have followed my sermons on Bayesian inference and non-monotonic reasoning know that I and most people of my ilk and background embrace an ontology that consists wholly of potentially falsifiable beliefs.

    For the more technical/philosophical reader, the Bayesian measure of verity of a proposition is its probability of being verifiably true.  This measure ranges between zero (impossible proposition) and one (axiomatically true).  Verity measures between zero and one may be updated (by Bayes theorem) with the introduction of new evidence.  Faith-based verity measures at zero and one are immune to new evidence and the ministrations of Bayes.  (more here, here, and here)

    Unfortunately, as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so is belief in the mind (heart?) of the believer.  The pithy shibboleth at the top summarizes the realworld basis for our nation’s polarization, and its negligible prospects for restoring e pluribus unum.  IMHO too many of us paint our views of the world with faith-based colors.  Such people believe in absolute truths beyond those immediately subject to multi-party verification.

    An example of such an absolute truth is the proposition that 2+2=4 which can be immediately verified during an ongoing discourse by everyone present who can count.  Claimed absolute truths that are limited to citations of past third-party verifications are immediately open to contention which cannot be resolved in the moment, and therefore give rise to the above pithy shibboleth.  And it is in the moment, that is ripe for taking decisions, that one must accept or reject available paths forward when multiple contending truths (beliefs) do battle – absolute truths have no place is such arenas.  It was ever thus.

    With this understanding one can appreciate why appeals based on Rodney King’s ‘Why can’t we all just get along?’ fail to unite us.

    A better course to resolve disputes would be to admit the pithy shibboleth and focus on discovering common aspects in the differing utilities held by contending factions.  Without such a basis for dispute resolution expect no light, only heat. (more here and here)

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  • The Evil Party continues self-validation (updated 6apr22)

    George Rebane

    A reader posted the link to conservative writer David Horowitz’s essay ‘Understanding the Progressive Mind’.  Here he points out that “too many conservatives fail to appreciate the radical evil that lies at the heart of progressivism by, e.g., giving progressives credit for good intentions and assuming that the disasters caused by their policies are inadvertent.”  We have made the case for years that these disasters have been anything but inadvertent.

    A more compelling argument as to the evil that imbues the basis of the Democrats’ objectives, means, and methods is on display today with our policy to do everything politically possible, within the context of NATO, to diminish and delay military support to Ukraine.  This perfidy is accomplished with the lamestream propagandizing Biden’s lauded fear/desire not to prompt Putin into pushing the WW3 button.  Few people understand more thoroughly than Garry Kasparov the impact this prevarication has on Russia’s foreign policy and future expansionist aggressions under Putin.  Kasparov’s op-ed, ‘Biden Told the Truth, Putin Has to Go’, in the (paywalled) 4apr22 WSJ is an important analysis of the West’s response to date.  He makes the case that “Ukraine’s sacrifice will be in vain if the West’s moral confusion gives Russia a chance to regroup.”  I’ve decided to make it available to RR readers here – Download Kasparov 4apr22 op-ed

    [6apr22 update] Insulin price controls – butt stupid socialist economics on parade.  Don’t know exactly where the needle lands on their stupid-to-evil scale, but the Democrats’ Affordable Insulin Now Act will have exactly the wrong impact on every part of the R&D-to-pharmacist counter cycle.  In the longer term everyone, especially the diabetics, will be hurt as the monies will be mal-distributed between patient, government, big pharma, insurance companies, and, yes, ultimately the taxpayer.  This is yet another Democrat vote buying program directed at the desperate, destitute, deluded, and dumb.  (more here)

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  • Ruminations – 3apr22 (updated 5apr22)

    George Rebane

    ‘Birthing people’ is yet the latest addition to the Democrats’ newspeak, in their ongoing and evil intent to reduce the information carrying capacity of English.  Birthing people replaces the use of ‘mother’ and ‘woman’ in describing a human capable of giving birth to a baby.  It ambiguates the meaning of the referent, and requires the use of 15 ASCII characters vs the 6 or 7 characters needed for the shorter and more precise terms.  (See also 'Democrats' Newspeak – 13jan22')

    The ending of the Russo-Ukraine War is a growing issue in today’s diplomatic and political deliberations regarding aid to Ukraine and Russia’s reaction to such aid.  Talking heads and experts are predicting that the war will go on for at least a month and no longer than three months.  Reasonably assuming that the war is a minimally known process, what is the probability that the war will actually end in the oft-cited two-month period.  Well, R-G theory (here) has an answer for such questions.  Using today’s duration of the war (which began 24feb22) as 38 days, the desired probability computes to about 0.26 or one out of four.  Additionally, 0.45 is the probability that the war ends in the next 31 days, and 0.29 is the probability that it continues past 92 days.  Place your bets.

    [4apr22 update]  Putin’s future looks less than dim, no matter the course he now takes.  If he continues his totally useless and failed aggression in Ukraine, he will probably get a bullet in the head from the nomenklatura.  If he withdraws from Ukraine under some bullshit bravado, he’ll get a bullet or be sent to the Hague for war crimes.  Most likely a bullet since his definitive removal will be a condition for the lifting of sanctions and normalization of Russia’s relations – the sanctions are devastating the country both economically and socially.  If he pops a nuke, he’ll definitely get a bullet and/or be hog-tied and shipped to the Hague in a packing crate.  There are too many powerful and rich people in Russia who cannot countenance Putin’s disaster taking away their stash and trashing Mother Russia.  And I think Putin knows all this.

    [5apr22 update] The 5apr22 Union reports of a useful idiots gathering (here) to remind us that America is still woefully short on civil rights, and that voting is difficult in many/most states.  Here we’re told of our guilt as being the “whitest county in California”, and “it’s also one of the more conservative counties in California,” so “it’s important for folks in this county to know that our privilege and easy access to voting is not universal across the United States.”  This hot flash comes from a cohort of the most under-informed leftwing activists in the country.

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  • ‘Genes vs. Culture’

    George Rebane

    This is the title of a landmark essay on the American condition by Lawrence Mead, Professor of Politics at New York University, published in the March/April 2022 edition of Chronicles, flagship publication of the Charlemagne Institute.  Continuing the work of Charles Murray et al, Professor Mead makes the case that “conservatives face a juggernaut determined to transform society in the name of equity. In order to fight it, they must have the courage to state the truth: There are real differences, both genetic and cultural, between races and sexes.”

    RacialIQs

    The essay presents a compendium of information about the racial and cultural differences inherent in the people who today populate the United States.  Almost everything that is cited is currently censored in today’s land of the free and home of the brave.  That we compliantly accept this is ongoing evidence of the country’s continuing decline toward autocracy cum tyranny.

    When I wrote ‘Equity Denies Reality’ and also submitted it to The Union, its publisher told me in so many words that the subject was too hot to be handled in our rapidly bluing Nevada County.  It would generate way more heat than light, and besides, our publisher’s own worldview did not countenance the presentation of such government data – not all that the government gathers and archives is suitable for sheeple fodder.

    The main thesis this forbidden research and recorded data supports is that we are a variegated citizenry in an historical melting pot that has yet to melt into a homogenous amalgam when it comes to individual propensities and capabilities which are identifiably and unambiguously still distinguished by genes and culture.  Denying this, and making it public policy to lie about it over the past fifty years has done untold harm to our e pluribus unum work in progress.

    I strongly recommend both Murray’s Facing Reality: Two Truths about Race in America (2021) – source of graphic – and Mead’s ‘Genes vs. Culture’ in order to understand the quantitative details about the nature of our divisions, and how today’s Left seeks to capitalize on these as we march toward the Great Divide or the global Great Reset.

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