Rebane's Ruminations
November 2026
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  • [With today’s signing of the trillion plus ‘infrastructure bill’ the Democrat perfidy is made visible.  The bill contain1s so little (about $100B) for actually fixing roads, bridges, etc that municipalities are not prepared to issue massive new amounts of municipal bonds – usually a jurisdiction’s ‘matching funds’ to garner federal subsidies.  Therefore, the outstanding tax-free municipal bond prices are rising and their yields falling.  The infrastructure bill is yet another Biden travesty that misses the mark as the feds (the Fed) continue printing new money.  So the question stands – name ONE thing that Bumblebrain has done right.  gjr]

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  • George Rebane

    Recently the Ignatius Forum held a session on ‘The Future of Space’ at our National Cathedral attended by theologians, government space officials, private sector space entrepreneurs, and academics.  Among the latter was Prof Avi Loeb of Harvard who is also active in SETI and a member of the international SETI group (of which I am a member) administered by the Berkeley SETI Research Center.

    While the larger topic was finding ETs, a more focused topic of interest was how we earthlings bring the existence of ETIs into concordance with our notions of God and religion.  Prof Loeb is not a person of faith, but made it clear that “science and religion are not necessarily in conflict, as long as one is careful not to ignore the boundary between physics and meta-physics. … In finding advanced extraterrestrial intelligence, religion might simply reflect advanced science with a twist. Traditional religions described God as the creator of the Universe and life within it. They also suggested that humans were made in the image of God. But these notions are not necessarily in contradiction with science. A sufficiently advanced scientific civilization might be able to create synthetic life in its laboratories; in fact, some of our terrestrial laboratories almost reached that threshold. And with a good understanding of how to unify quantum-mechanics and gravity, an advanced scientific civilization could potentially create a baby universe in its laboratories. Therefore, an advanced scientific civilization might be a good approximation to God.” (more here with links to the forum)

    Long time readers will recognize this as a position much discussed over the years in these pages, especially as it relates to my position as a copernican viz science.  In that, Loeb and many other scientists are kindred spirits.  What impressed me is the Harvard astro-physicist’s stance on the perspective humanity should assume when it considers cosmic matters – these being humility, modesty, and calmness.  In the greater scheme of things we are not important enough about which to make a great fuss.  I have dwelled on the quantitative measures of our ordinary insignificance in my SETI paper (here) among other postings.

    In the final analysis of integrating religion, science, and an intelligent creator, I find nothing awkward or contrary in my particular understanding of Christianity as a faith compatible with civilizations across the universe.  It is a particularly comforting belief system to embrace as we seek to understand the Upanishad’s ‘Tat tvam asi!’

    Postscript – ‘Who am I?’ is a question often heard from people seeking to find a deeper significance to their existence.  It is the wrong question, and we already know its answer, since ‘who’ seeks to identify one as a particular member of a known set.  ‘Tat tvam asi!’ points to the much deeper question of ‘What am I?’, the question which seeks to know the essence of the set itself.

  • George Rebane

    A lot has been happening in the Rebane clan lately.  This has kept me from posting at my usual rate.  Not only that, but every time I look at the news, I get into a dour mood and get to feeling hopeless again.  One of my current books underway is VDH’s The Dying Citizen (2021) in which he gives an historical overview of citizenry over the ages that shines a light on how our current middle classes have adopted the mantle of serfdom without the slightest inkling of it.  Not only that, but a national dialogue about our society’s state and direction is proscribed today by the Left’s minions in public education, academe, and the media.  The writings of right-leaning pundits like Fred Siegel, Robert Nisbet, Joel Kotkin, and Charles Murray are off limits, and citing their studies, no matter how well documented, is now forbidden in polite leftwing company (as I also recently discovered here).

    In the past when I have found myself in such doldrums, the surefire road back has always involved ‘pushing squigglies’ on some new idea or invention.  So I dived into some financial engineering stuff on trading probabilistics of the kind pioneered by Didier Sornette – Why Stock Markets Crash (2003) – and John Casti.  (If you want to see a super-exponential, look at the recent behavior of the Dow, SP500, and Nasdaq.)  Hopefully, this work will lead into some proprietary IP.  But rummaging around with some ideas I discovered a new and handy use of the ‘WoRM formula’ beloved of artillerymen everywhere. (more here and here) It makes possible the extraction of distances and object sizes from photographs, and also allows graphic artists to correctly represent desired distances and sizes in the works they create.  I’ll write up the method so that interested readers can download a pdf of it.

    Macdonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinsky stated something pretty obvious to the country’s remaining thinkers about parents having failed their children who were killed in gang warfare and police shootings.  Telling the wrong truth and calling attention to parents of the wrong race can get a well-paid executive fired.  So Kempczinsky did what anybody who puts purse before principle would do, he groveled.  My takeaway is that the poor bastard had not made his ‘go-to-hell’ stash yet, and really needed the job.  (more here and here)

    COP26, the ongoing climate conference in Glasgow, has been the kabuki dance that I and most other sober observers predicted.  With leaders of major polluters absent, the rest are left to talk about utter crap like “multi-stakeholder decarbonization initiatives.”  Only people like Team Biden and its halo of flacks pretend to take any of this seriously.  Even Saint Greta of Thunberg dunned the affair as nothing but a “two-week long celebration of business as usual.”

  • George Rebane

    The puzzle continues.  About three years ago our cities were empty of indigents’ tents lining the streets and freeway underpasses.  What happened?  Where did all these people and their encampments come from?  If the numbers haven’t increased, then where did all of them live?  And if they have increased, what government policies or private sector factors increased their numbers so that now they dominate the downtowns of major cities across the land.  The only common denominator is the that those urban cesspools are and have been under Democrat administrations.

    The Big Question still stands about Bumblebrain's accomplishments.  Can anyone name JUST ONE thing that he's done right since he took office?  That now seems to be a question on more minds as we watch the Virginia governor election returns.

    [3nov21 update] Liberal Minds on Display #1 – Unless ‘Critical Race Theory’ is explicitly listed in a school’s curriculum, liberals and their lamestream will deny that any such subject matter is taught in that school.  The same goes for so many other hidden and denied leftwing initiatives and activities, such as ‘socialism’, the existence of which is denied in governance unless every facet of its definition is implemented.  They know that the surest (only?) route to successfully introducing their ideology is through subterfuge.

    Liberal Minds on Display #2 – What really makes my heart heavy and continues my eternal lament for our beloved country is that our land is full of Double Dummy Districts populated by voters so desperately ignorant that they keep voting for the same Democrat Tammany Hall look-alikes who continue to screw, blue, and tattoo them.  And they don’t have a clue.

    Socialist legislation on parade.  The Dems have to hold the ‘reconciliation bill’ hostage to the concurrent passage with the bi-partisan infrastructure bill because they, as all good socialists, know that voting separately on their outrageously priced ‘human infrastructure’ bamboozle would give it a snow ball’s chance in hell of passing.  Their only hope is that their constituencies continue  intellectually dense as ever, so that no one knows what is the real reason for the hold-up.  And can you believe that in light of that, Team Pelosi and Bumblebrain are comfortable to continue the lie that it is the Republicans who hold up passage of the bill to repair our highways, bridges, internet, etc?

    [6nov21 update]  A big hit to Virginia voters, and their kindred spirits across the land voting on rolling back everything from CRT, to vaccine mandates, to defunding police departments.  This is but a glimmer of hope on the sanity of the nation’s electorate pulling back from the progressive/communist policies cliff – nevertheless, all such glimmers enjoy a heartfelt welcome.  When the dust settles, we must remember that such one election does not necessarily assure a nation’s future.

  • [Happy End of Fire Season!  Exit question – what potion should one take to get excited about the World Series this year?  gjr]

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  • George Rebane

    One of the very dumbest things progressive Democrats have recently proposed is a wealth tax on appreciated but unrealized assets.  Everywhere it has been tried by the Left, it has not worked; it has instead reduced government revenues and distorted economies – e.g. Sweden, Germany, and France were posterchildren of such fiscal idiocies. (more here) Today our Democrats, always looking for something to screw up our economy, have attempted to import yet another bad idea as a ‘pay-for’ for their latest lavish vote buying plans.  Hopefully, this tax has been excised from the current version of this double dummy ‘human infrastructure’ bill.

    As a student of economics, over the years it has become clear to me that one of the paramount qualifications for becoming a leftwing economist is that you have to be totally ignorant of human nature, especially of their economic behavior.  We won’t even attempt to plumb the depths of intellectual depravity in the Democrats’ assertion that their multi-trillion dollar spending initiatives will be absolutely free – “It will cost zero.”  The real tragedy for the country is that half of Americans accepted this Big Lie, and that the Republicans gave their usual lame response to repudiate it.

    My own noodling on the wealth tax involved a niggling thought that the proposed wealth tax rates were not real, that they in effect had to be higher.  So I pushed a few squigglies, and sure enough, the real wealth tax rate is considerably higher than the rates publicized by the Democrats.  It’s a bit amazing that no Republican or even the conservative financial experts have picked up on this additional attribute of the stupid tax.  So here’s the drill as to how this tax will work on, say, an appreciated security you own.

    Your nominal wealth tax amount is the wealth tax rate applied to the appreciated amount (since last wealth tax paid).  However, the rub comes when you consider where to get the money to pay the wealth tax.  The correct answer is that investments pay their own taxes, whether capital gains, added assessments, or the wealth tax.  So now you must sell a fraction of your shares, pay the applicable capital gains tax on their appreciation, and then use the remainder to pay your wealth tax.  In short, it’s the value of the fraction of shares you must sell that is your real and effective wealth tax rate.  A little algebra using the appropriate tax and appreciation rates will let us derive that formula and do the calculations.  I share the results of this analysis with you in the spreadsheet figure below (click on it to enlarge).

    WealthTaxCalcs

    In the figure the blue numbers are input to create a wealth tax scenario at the indicated values, with the nominal wealth tax rate of 1%.  From the calculations shown in the figure the actual wealth tax rate comes to 1.67%, two thirds higher than the government advertised rate.  And paying this wealth tax annually reduces the investment’s annual appreciation rate from its nominal 7% to 5.33%.  When we examine what the actual wealth tax is over a range of wealth tax rates (from 1% to 3%) and capital gains rates (from 25% to 50%), then we see in the table the increased actual rates that go from 1.33% (a third higher) to 6% (doubled!).  These are plotted in the graph.

    It gets worse.  As shown in the upper right of the figure, we have a $1,000 investment currently appreciating at a nominal 7% rate for ten years, then liquidating it with a payment of 40% cap gains rate.  The net spendable amount then comes to $1,580 which yields a total ten-year return of 58.03%.  When we have the same amount with ten years of ‘1%’ wealth tax payments, we wind up with $1,381 or an appreciation of only 38.08% that amounts to a penalty of over 34% on what investors currently enjoy when paying capital gains taxes only on realized gains.  And we haven’t heard any of this from our rightwing media mavens.

  • George Rebane

    President Biden heads to Glasgow with an empty quiver this weekend in a futile effort to demonstrate that his administration is still hanging on to some vestiges of global leadership here and there.  Most nations have either written off the United States as a worthy ally, or most certainly as a hegemon to be respected.  And Bumblebrain accomplished all that by himself.

    Climate change is no longer on the list of important concerns for Americans, and even less so for people of other lands.  However, our leftwing lamestream media keeps up the drumbeat of global warming hysterics with lies ranging from the sublime to the ludicrous.  A major one that hits close to home is the progress of destructive wildfires, the frequency and size of which are supposed to be growing without bound due to manmade preventable global warming.  In Biden’s new spending framework there is $500B or so allocated for various green bamboozles designed to fool the foolish and enrich Democrats’ favorites.

    But as Bjorn Lomborg of the Copenhagen Consensus, reiterates what these pages have reported for years – the acreage of America’s annual wildfires continues to decline, and has been declining since record keeping was initiated in 1900 (see nearby graphic).  This fact has been quietly reported by the World Wildlife Fund, and vigorously ignored by our lying politicians, environmental activists, and media.

    WildfireAcreage

    In ‘Climate Activists Blow Smoke on Wildfire Fears’ (28oct21 WSJ) Lomborg cites data and again points out how the hysterical scenarios on climate change consistently fail to incorporate the most salient and significant factor that mitigates and ameliorates the predicted catastrophes – human adaptation.  In such loudly trumpeted forecasts, humans do nothing and quietly accept whatever nature has in store for them.  Over the millennia this never has been the case, and most certainly won’t be in a technologically and resource rich future that we can and are building for ourselves.

    What our average citizen has trouble parsing is the difference between the frequencies and size of wildfires, and the property damage done by wildfires.  In a 2016 study Nature reported, “Contrary to common perception, human exposure to wildfires increases in the future mainly owing to projected population growth in areas with frequent wildfires, rather than by a general increase in burned area.”

    Lomborg concludes – “Helping future wildfire victims has little to do with strict and expensive climate policies, and everything to do with simpler, cheaper measures like better forest management and building codes. There’s no good reason to terrify children with stories of apocalyptic firestorms.”  All of this will be ignored during the Glasgow kabuki.

  • George Rebane

    Record storm total at Casa Rebane measured out at 12.1 inches.  According to The Union this is a regional record for western Nevada County.  We were amazed that the power stayed on while the rain fell almost horizontally.  Home fires were kept burning; we’re blessed with acreage that supplies an ‘infinite’ amount of firewood.

    Liberal Minds on Display #1.  Union reader Terry Boyles wants cuts in military spending to help pay for the Democrats’ Debacle of the Trillions.  He argues (here) cuts are justified due to our military’s poor performance, and points out “the fact that our armed forces have achieved little in the way of real national security recently, after a string of failed foreign excursions.”  You think that our political leadership might have had just a tad to do with those failures?

    Liberal Minds on Display #2.  “Banning two-stroke engines over time is not a bad thing” opines Phil Carville in a 26oct21 Union ‘Other Voices’.  He cites the air pollution caused by two-strokers as the prime reason for going all electric.  What he and other liberals advocating such a future sooner than later is where does all this reliable electricity come from, and at what cost to both wallet, environment, and economy.  None of these proponents cite the energy losses required to convert one form of energy to another, and the multiple costs and pollution involved in such conversions. 

    [Here are some electrical energy conversion scribbles for the curious.  The world’s average fossil fuels net conversion efficiency of 33%, and that is further degraded by transmission and distribution losses of about 9.2% (CA) before it gets to the outlet that charges your battery.  And before your e-mower cuts a blade of grass, its motor works at most with only 80% of the energy that was used to (slow) charge the battery, and at least a 10% further loss in battery storage.  When you put it all together, the energy efficiency of your battery-powered appliance comes down to a generous net of about 20% – I’ve left out some other losses like in your house wiring.  More here, here, and here.]

    Liberal Minds on Display #3 – Union letter writer Ron Lowe frequently shares his thoughts with us.  In the 27oct21 Union he is (here) “convinced Republican Party leaders have adopted an authoritarian approach that demands ideological conformity to most any political or scientific posture.  There is no room for independent thinking or freedom of speech allowed.”  Really?!  Now this is exactly what our woke progressives have put in place in government, academe, and the country’s workplaces.  Anyone see the GOP having done any of this?  None of us want to live with the Ron Lowes, and would only want to talk to him about a peaceful separation.  But the Ron Lowes, for some reason, want us to stay.

  • George Rebane

    National Propaganda Radio did a hit piece on Oath Keepers yesterday morning, labeling them as a “radical right, anti-government paramilitary organization”.  The highly biased progressive slant presented was in line with today’s lamestream narrative trying to make the case that the 6jan21 Capitol riot(?) was organized by the OK in their attempt to overthrow our federal government.  I am not an OK member, and have only heard the standard reports on the organization and its doings.  Of course, all of these reports have been more than shaded by the outlet/individual who has done the reporting.  Wanting to find out more of what they actually believe, I went to their website to read about their organization, adopted charter/mission, and bylaws.

    Nothing I have read or heard from voices I consider reasonable has come close to painting these former members of the military and first responders as belonging to a radical right, anti-government paramilitary organization.  Save for the current efforts by our own rabid Left to nail OK as the organizers and leaders of the 6jan21 affair, there has been no evidence presented that these people have done anything of which they are currently accused by the Democrats and their lamestream.  However, the congressional investigation continues, and every possible filament, no matter how gossamer or tenuous, is made out as a portent of much more damning evidence to come.

    From their website and the public record, we learn that –

    1. OK are non-partisan, hewing to neither political party;
    2. Their guiding principle is to maintain the oath we all swore upon entering the military or becoming first responders – to “defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
    3. Instead of anti-government, OK is a dedicated pro-government organization; (As opposed to the existentially anti-constitutional Democratic Party and Biden administration.)
    4. There is nothing paramilitary about the OK, save that their members have acquired military and civil first responder skills, which they continue to preserve and share with other members and associate members.
    5. Under a constitutional government their activism as an organization is constrained to lawful demonstrations against what they perceive as unconstitutional actions and intents by our federal and various state governments and their agencies.

    As such, the OK is very much against the kind of neo-Marxist “fundamental transformation” of America into a socialist state as promised and demonstrated by the country’s leftwing factions led by the radical progressives of the Democratic Party.  OK members, like many more of us, believe that if the leftwing autocrats continue making ‘progress’, then there will come a time when our Left will commission the state police and security apparatus, and/or the military (given its current woke reorganization) to finally disarm the American citizenry and complete their planned road to our servility.  They know that the OK and other similar organizations would then seek to mobilize and organize the public against such an unconstitutional and rogue government.  After all, such a response is our heritage, and the most fundamental American tenet is to preserve our liberties.

    The proof of this pudding is that a liberty maintaining government of, by, and for the people is not afraid of citizens who retain the means to overthrow and reconstitute its government gone rogue.  A constitutional government would welcome the existence of supportive grassroots organizations such as the Oath Keepers and other assemblies of veterans and patriotic groups.  Since the Left historically has never trusted the people under their control, their ultimate success depends on the concurrent subversion of government institutions while they disarm the populace and discredit organizations assembled to defend America and its Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

    Evidence to the contrary welcomed.

  • George Rebane

    Victor Davis Hanson continues the ongoing study of how America is coming apart.  In ‘Is America Repeating the Cultural Split Between Rome and the Byzantine Empire?’ VDH lays out the parallels and answers the question in the affirmative.

    When the Roman Empire split into its western part centered on Rome, and its eastern part centered on Constantinople, the two halves took distinctly different approaches to governing their territories, with catastrophic results for Rome.  Rome’s hedonistic practices and passive acceptance of a “polyglot and often fractious” tribal cultures and religions (including versions of Christianity) soon focused people on the regional me and mine that came to vie with the you and yours.  By 600AD the disintegration that started around 450AD was complete.

    This was not the case in the east – “the glue that held the East together against centuries of foreign enemies was the revered idea of an ancient and uncompromising Hellenism—the preservation of a common, holistic Greek language, religion, culture, and history.”  The Byzantine Empire, as it then became known, held together for a thousand years after Rome, finally becoming so over-bureaucratized and corrupt that it was overrun by the Ottoman Turks in 1453AD, and Constantinople became today’s Istanbul.

    Today we see the definite analogue of such a split in our red/blue America.  Now “millions of Americans yearly self-select, disengage from their political opposites, and make moves based on diverging ideology, culture, politics, religiosity or lack of it, and differing views of the American past.”  Our conservatives are migrating to the interior, leaving both coastal areas to liberals.

    This is producing two distinct Americas.  “While red states welcome change, they believe America never had to be perfect to be good. It will always survive, but only if it sticks to its 234-year-old Constitution, stays united by the English language, and assimilates newcomers into an enduring and exceptional American culture.”  The more conservative traditionalists prefer states “where there is usually smaller government, fewer taxes, more religiosity, and unapologetic traditionalists.”  

    America’s Left prefers the blue state “bicoastal salad bowl” as their “model for immigration” where “newcomers can retain and reboot their former cultural identities”, and where “religion is less orthodox; atheism and agnosticism are almost the norm. And most of the recent social movements of American feminism, transgenderism, and critical race theory grew out of coastal urbanity and academia.”  Tribalism par excellence.

    VDH concludes with – “Our Byzantine interior and Roman coasts are quite differently interpreting their shared American heritage as they increasingly plot radically divergent courses to survive in scary times.  But as in the past, it is far more likely that one state model will prove unsustainable and collapse than it is that either region would ever start a civil war.”  From his mouth to God’s ear.

    So here again is the bottom line.  Today a lot of lip service is paid to ‘finding common ground’ and ‘coming together’ and ‘there’s more that unites us than divides us’, etc.  But for any of these attempts at dialogue to bear fruit, we must first and foremost recognize the gorilla in the room – the “radically divergent courses” that have been plotted and embraced by the tens of millions of polarized Americans which give rise to the Great Divide.  If these radically divergent courses are not resolved first, the rest will only continue the rehash of hot air.