Publisher’s Note: Just returning from visiting my eldest daughter in Oregon. A beautiful state but I would never live here, we entertained moving to the Rogue River area in 2003 but were fortunate in moving to Sandpoint, ID instead.
On another note, we were gob smacked by the number of weed stores in Eugene alone. And, of course, as I predicted the state would swoop in and tax the shit out of it, regulate the dog balls off of it and encourage a black market to take up the slack once the MJ started to price itself out of conventional prices in the underground.
The local communist weekly covered this here:
“Oregon has 571 licensed marijuana retailers, which comes out to one for every 7,385 Oregonians. There’s roughly one for every 4,425 people in Lane County, and retailers are just about as common as cracks in sidewalks. With a market that is becoming increasingly saturated and competitive, the dire financial situation of some retailers shows that the cannabis industry is evolving and moving into the mainstream.”
Read the article to get an idea of the regulatory feeding frenzy by the usual government suspects to tunnel their regulatory tentacles into the corpus of this local business.
The visit reinforced something that has been bugging me for years. I know that root causes for complex problem sets tend to be multivariate and have a complex ripple effect to and from the nexus of the observed phenomena.
If you want to severely reduce the influence of communism, government supremacism and deep throating of the deep state by ordinary humans, get the government out of education…
If you have not been to the range in a month, you are underperforming. -BB
“Higher education is the only product where the consumer tries to get as little out of it as possible.
– Arnold Kling, “College Customers vs. Suppliers”
“When students celebrate the absence of education, it’s tempting to blame their myopia on immaturity. Tempting, but wrongheaded. Once they’re in college, myopic, immature students can unilaterally skip class whenever they like. Why wait for the teacher’s green light? For most students, there’s an obvious answer: When you skip class, your relative performance suffers. When your teacher cancels class, everyone learns less, leaving your relative performance unimpaired.”
“We’re mediocre at teaching what we measure, but great at teaching what we don’t measure” is comically convenient… Should we believe teachers are better at achieving unmeasured afterthoughts?”
“Incidentally, the marriage market is probably the strongest reason to pay for expensive private schools. Going to Harvard may not get you a better job but almost certainly puts you in an exclusive dating pool for life.”
― Bryan Caplan, The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money
There is the Deep State and the deep state.
The former is the credentialed nomenklatura both in the bureaucracy and politically appointed robed government employees numbering approximately 3300 making over 200k a year to rubber stamp the expansion of the Federal government in the star chambers. There is a reason more than 90% of cases are pled down and over ninety percent of all Helots who seek a jury trial are convinced in a system that overwhelming favors the ability of the government incinerate any lone defendant that dares defy the system. Then you have the 1.8 million Federal “workers” (my friend refers to most of these workers as being on assisted living), part of the 12-million-member mob of government employees in the US today. Of these you have at any one time between 7,500 and 8,000 employees occupy Senior Executive Service (SES) positions across the U.S. government. Career SES employees comprise approximately 90% of the government’s SES workforce (with non-career SES employees comprising 8.5% and limited appointees comprising 1.5%). Vermin like Peter Strzok and his confreres at the FBI are an example of this untouchable class in the Federal hierarchy.
That is the composition of the Deep State.
The deep state is the vast oceans of government employees at every level to include the myriad remora organizations and the vast army of apparatchiks at schools from the K-12 mind laundries to the communist finishing schools known as universities. And then what Stalin and his ilk would call the useful idiots, the family, friends, and neighbors who actively support government violence at every level to include the 19,000 police departments from the local to the federal level that provide the muscle for the government to hit, steal and terrorize to fulfill its single mission of occupation and zookeeping.
Tens of millions of former humans whose allegiance to the Stockholm Syndrome and the Milgram phenomenon followed by a police state chaser inform every advocacy they spew and mewl about.
In Vichy France, they were known as collaborators.
I would suggest that a large part of this fealty and weaponized feelz are a result of the vast “education” complex in the US university education outside of STEM. Nothing galvanizes the communist movement and its invasion of every crack and crevice of moral society than the vast alien enterprise of professors in the “liberal arts” who have no grasp of real economics, history nor a modicum of decency or morality with access to the vast legions of skulls full of mush and tender inexperience. The infestations of these credentialed collectivists are a virus on humanity.
Bryan Caplan wrote a book recently that speaks to this with alacrity and crackling wit.
Caplan makes a case broken down like so:
- Education mostly signals traits, rather than building them. Specifically, school signals intelligence, conscientiousness, and conformity, all of which employers want in their workers. The education wage premium is real, but most of it would exist even if we didn’t have as much schooling.
- Education largely fails at its intended goals, both at training people with practical skills and making their lives more profound.
- If you accept 1 and 2, it’s pretty much guaranteed that society spends too much time and money on education. We should eliminate subsidies, and I don’t agree with Kaplan notion to reduce or tax, simply stop subsidizing the nonsense altogether.
Again, Caplan shows that a huge chunk of the college premium is just having the degree, not what you learn while getting the degree. This is the Signaling view. The college degree signals important information to potential employers about your employability: intelligence, conformity, and conscientiousness (discipline, work effort, punctuality).
Right, yet the person who gets 119 credits out of 120 and doesn’t graduate can’t translate the “learning” to a job that requires the one credit deficit to be remedied.
I think Kaplan does a devastating critique and when you harness that to the astronomical debt non-STEM graduates accrue, the question seems to have one answer that is the least bit believable, the degree does not have the value the college alleges.
You run another existential risk, you may send your children off to college and they will not only be in tremendous debt, have learned little and imbibed in some very bad behaviors but they may become completely brainwashed to become Marxian government supremacism for the rest of their lives, immune to logic and common sense.
I will be discussing the absolutely curious phenomenon of the NON-REPRODUCIBILITY of government funded research in another essay.
“A 2015 study estimated that America spends $28 billion annually on irreproducible preclinical research into new drug treatments. Economics policy, education policy, and environmental policy are all informed by scientific findings, half of which could be junk science. The irreproducibility crisis is a public policy crisis. We need new spending priorities, new regulations, and new policy initiatives to reform scientific research — and the way government uses scientific research.”
Defund the American university from any tax dollars, funded debt or bonds and you will critically damage the ability of the state to produce its vast legions of Goebbels-gargling boosters and collaborators.
“Once everyone can enrich their souls for free, government subsidies for enrichment forfeit their rationale. To object, ‘But most people don’t use the Internet for spiritual enrichment’ is actually a damaging admission that eager students are few and far between. Subsidized education’s real aim isn’t to make ideas and culture accessible to anyone who’s interested, but to make them mandatory for everyone who *isn’t* interested . . .
“The rise of the Internet has two unsettling lessons . . . First: the humanist case for education subsidies is flimsy today because the Internet makes enlightenment practically free. Second: the humanist case for education subsidies was flimsy all along because the Internet proves low consumption of ideas and culture stems from apathy, not poverty or inconvenience. Behold: when the price of enlightenment drops to zero, remains embarrassingly scarce.”
― Bryan Caplan, The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money
As far as the deep state is concerned, I don’t think the inertia contained within the government is really it, or at least not the largest part of it. I think there are non-government entities that use the government as a tool for their own ends, and that they are the largest driving force where policy and decisions are concerned. Those within the government benefit from relations with them, and minorly from the power of their positions, but they are far from free to use that power as they alone will. I think every man who becomes president gets slapped with the hard dick of reality, and becomes very scared soon after taking office as he is made aware of the real situations.
Also, as far as education is concerned, I think as a “professional student”, I’m particularly qualified to comment. The biggest things I’ve noticed are below:
1. 75% of the student population is addicted to Adderall. A very large portion of them have social anxiety, oftentimes to a crippling degree.
2. Many of the students cannot read or write. Those that can have such poor writing skills as to be considered barely literate.
3. The non-STEM fields are completely worthless. The level at which these people are taught and learn at is the same as was in middle or high school a couple of decades ago.
4. The STEM fields have been largely dumbed-down. They also have been injected with cultural marxist influences and propaganda.
5. The ability to think critically has been utterly eradicated from the latest generations during k-12. By the time they get to higher education, they simply are not interested in it.
6. The student population is extremely nice…overly so. They don’t have an aggressive bones in their bodies. There is no sense of competitiveness or motivation to excel.
7. The instructors all have government and mega-corp grants for research. This is the focus of their energy, not teaching their students. I’ve even had an instructor that farms his students, giving them research projects and representing them as his own in the scientific community.
8. There has been a move toward communistic grading policies. All fields now enjoy mandatory team projects in just about every class where other people are responsible for your grades.
Eugene Oregon, is Marxist west and north. . East and south are plain ol’ redneck. They/ we don’t really care what the Queen or her court say or think.,
Is it even rational to think the Queen’s going to allow cannibus, without getting her cut, not a chance. The “rules” have changed many times in the past year. Not even the poopoo can keep up with them.
You know when the “mans broke””he/they allow,the vices in with the intent to tax, were a broke state, a broke nation.
Disappointing you didn’t make it,south,,for,a,range day. No worries, time and visiting family are important.
I’m amused that you wouldn’t consider living here. Rogue Rivers a sleepy little town with lots of outdoor activities, especially if you’re into any form of water sports, or world class fishing.
Don’t thinkI’d be interested in living below 4000 ft, I’ve heard it said that 90 percent of the socialist/marxist exists in Oregon live within 25 miles either side of I-5. I’ve never researched it,
Lastly Oregon education is rated near the bottom of the states. Go figure.
We’re off to,the coast,” Brookings” deep sea,fishing and crabbing for awhile. A couple of my old Navy room ages live there, will be good to visit with them.
Dirk
Dirk: Have fun in Brookings. I do not miss the Curry County and Brookings political hacks and their useful idiots, but I still have dear friends there. Up here in Rawles Land, public education is also near rock bottom. But, with their sports, pep rallies and politically correct feel-good “educators”, they all sit around and say: “…this is fine”. Stay safe.
DTW, were waiting on our grandson, who now isn’t going. Oregon’s on fire, Medford, Grants Pass, and Klamath are,socked in with heavy heavy smoke, perhaps 1/4 visibility. Brutal on my eyes and lungs.
We’re,bottom fishing Friday,,and salmon fishing the Rogue, out of gold beach a couple,days..,
I’ve,become very interested in Oregon’s IPA beer breweries, the best beers I’ve ever drank, and I’ve had the pleasure of drinking beer around the world.
Both Brookings and Gold Beach each have at least one new brewery. When I’m not fishing, I’ll be touring the breweries, don’t think I’ll go any further up the coast the Bamdon, this trip.
Temps consistent in the 70s. And we’re actually staying in the port of Brookings camp ground right on the bay.
I HUST read that their were five earth quakes 125 miles out off of Brookimgs this morning. No tidal action.
Tic Toc.
Dirk
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Having a trade and handcraft skills not that long ago was considered honorable.
From my earliest cognitive reasoning, 8 years old all I wanted was to be a welder. A fine trade which regardless of the state of the deep states influence and the advent of crony capitalism aka artificial price discovery, aka wealth transfer tyranny, I was always able to secure employment and generate system D income or barter. ( that’s the great thing about learning a trade or skill involving hand craft work, you end up in all sorts of crossover crafts and associated skill sets. Which accentuates ones exposure to other trades. I presently operate a small metal fabrication shop out of my two car garage, along with a Forge where I produce various forged edged weapons and practical items. I’m 100% debt free, as I used my proceeds and barter to slowly acquire machine tools, equipment for metal forming, along with a set of welding machines both stationary and gas driven.
I can not exemplify the robust essential elements of these skills and tools, along with my self taught knowledge, which I enhance steadily from building a library of documents and trade skill technical books.
The family to tribe to community value of my resources is invaluable. I make every effort to assist my friends and neighbors whenever possible, rarely accepting monetary compensation, and only at a minimum of fiat value to assuage those who insist on giving me money, so as not to insult their sense of dignity. Usually if its monetary, I say ill take $20 so I can take my wife to dinner. That always gets a grin and chuckles)
Over time, from when it began in the mid 70’s, the thinking that if you did not get a college education you where worthless, and having a skilled trade was an indication of your unwashed station, in this hideous kind of class war created by the intelligentsia and assisted by the Amerikan Nomenklatura. They new what they where doing with this cultural Marxian class struggle, it set back the industriousness and ingenuity, creative motive power initiated during the amazing hand craft hey day of Colonial America.
Gone in 60 seconds…
Ad it turned out, high grade NDT level and other critical weldment metal joiners became rare as hens teeth, and the generational tribal knowledge of welding best learned as on the job training thru knowledge passed on from welders to welders, was lost.
In the process, the cultural marxist convergence of “human resources” in the industry, had literally zero knowledge, or care, about a guy like me for instance, work history regarding my very wide range of skills and knowledge. Because I wasn’t granted human legitimacy from the intelligentsia shake down system.
Along with these barren vagina SJW’s who appointed themselves gate keepers, to block highly skilled none degreed craftsman from spoiling their big fish in little pond power over low skilled workers who where captives of a system of indenture, because they didn’t have the skill sets and experience to be self determining enough to walk out for better opportunities.
Its class warfare writ large.
I can not express the disbelief of some of these human resources mandarins, about my 46 year work history as a welder, metal fan guy.
As it worked out, this trade has been very good to me. It was the wisest decision I ever made. I’m in my late fifties, everything, from my house and land, to everything I own, is all 100% bought with cash on the barrelhead. I have no debt. Big fat Zero. I’m fully retired, I accrued approximately $175,000 in tools and equipment up to this time.
All with a formal 7th grade education.
Not too shabby for a nothing with no sheep skin.
And I’m the dirt person and Deplorable they despise, who they threaten to liquidate, as the neo-bolsheviks today call out to Kulak me and my fellow unwashed racist mouth breathing white supremacist trash.
This is very important stuff to understand, because as a dirt person, to be aware of my station in the Marxian scheme of things, we are considered the most dangerous Americans alive. No other threat, existential, exists to these scalawags’ and their useful idiots aka cannon fodder.
That speaks volumes regarding our natural God given power of consent, indomitable spirit, motive and industrious power. There are none like us. As long as us dirt people exist, Liberty lives on within us and is passed down, and its contagious nature, it is an example for others on Earth everywhere, a shining beacon Liberty and primal natural rights trump all other power.
I believe in simplest terms, the agenda to destroy the working skilled class is a major perogative, the Fabien”s intent has always been to destroy the creative self sufficient industrious people. In this all else flows, raw naked power is then achievable, the destruction of America then a sure thing thus so goes the rest of the human race, and darkness is complete, the majority of it easily liquidated to secure all wealth resources and power into their hands.
Personally. I’m not impressed with these tyrants. They fall far short of the true ability to reach the ends of their Long March. I believe they live in a fantasy, their “utopian” vision is delusions of grandeur of cognitive dissonance writ large out of whole cloth for 30 pieces of silver and a Faustian bargain making it impossible to turn delusions into reality.
Sure, their are cunning puppet masters and keepers of the ideology. Die hard true believers.
Sure they are shit stirrers and psychopaths, their sycophants human lemmings and plain old crooks grifters and scumbags of the lowest order. The whole construct is predicated of double think and hive mind mentality, with all the drawbacks and insanity of deranged idiots.
Even so, the timeless evils of greed and averise, hubris and supremecy, are double edged swords having swung back infecting and destroying any actual means to rule the west.
The interesting thing about President Trump is how easily, quickly, and effectively he and his trusted allies have turn back the clock in so many areas of power and resources such took decades and vast wealth to acquire. Who knew such people existed who had the means to outfox the gate keepers who held all the keys guarding all the doors?
Which leads to some interesting practical possibilities. In the process of deglobalizing our sovereign economic realities, and the burgeoning efforts of disarming the regulatory branch, hopefully securing the southern border with both physical and preventative action, and who what all comes next turning back the clock of The State, something I’ve heard nobody comment on, is MAGA, for all its possibilities of the interests of the people first, it gets us many layers closer to Abolition of the State.
Indeed, what Trump has accomplished with peaceful redress and the amazing color revolution of November 9th, 2016, one hell of a pile of regulatory diktat and centralism has been breeched, cast aside, the respective agencies stripped of their unaccountable powers they garnered out of whole cloth to terrorize and “eat out our existence”.
And every erg of that illegitimate power removed, is one step closer to possibly one day eliminate a substantial part of the leviathan, we do not have to resist defy and fight against.
There’s some real possibilities here. Temp has 2 years, possibly four more after that to fight and win against our enemies of our Liberty. I’m thankful, grateful for such things as the entire Bundy/Finnicum patriots suddenly exonerated in full. The pulling out of so many critical transglobal UN schemes to end run the primal Liberty of our culture, following the money and withdrawing from wealth transfer “treaties” whose specific purpose is to strip mine us dirt people of our intrinsic wealth and resources, and on top of that insult to our freedoms and unfettered economic activity, pay for the “privilege” of our slavery to the State and its globalist partners in tyranny.
I think it is safe to speculate, left to our own devices, these acts of redress by Trump would probably require use of violent defiance and withdrawal of consent.
The thing about this is al these things must be got rid of in some fashion before secession from The State is to be won. Or at the least, something resembling minimum intrusion of some form of self governance of and by the people is obtained.
MF, I continue to appreciate your objective points of view. The Trades, are indeed a valued skills sets.
Most importantly your point of living debt free, is commendable as a younger man I lived recklessly, used credit, “after all the TV taught me, that credit was good” like you I’m almost debt free, I owe a mortgage, but nothing else. I’m paid off in about five six years.
While my retirements are from the public employee sector, I fully expect to see even those retirement sources dry up in time. Until then, I’m gonna live the rest of my life like I stole it.
I’m going out of this world with my body broken and tired, and will have spent every penny I earned. I’m not interested in leaving large chunks of change to my children, they’re responsible, young folk who are not awaiting daddies and mommies money.
I’ll leave a couple houses to them, a bunch of guns, and associated tools and kit. Enough prep gear to keep them alive, for years if they head to the ranch and hunker down, when it’s time.
As I pack for this trip, I subconsciously packed a case of 556, 20 mags, an m4 a keltec shotgun, 250 rounds, and a 308 long range gun with 250 rounds. A glock 21 and a glock 30 with 15 mags.
All without even giving the issue any thought. Seems like this is my standard travelload anymore.
Crazy times, these are.
Dirk
Hear you!
Its can’t have too much fire power time. I’ve arrived at the stage where if I can not carry a high capacity large frame pistol with ex mags, and, my favored combat rifle in the truck, I will not go there.
The funny thing here, its the day you aren’t armed you will need to be. That’s what it all seems to be like these days, shit could drop in the pot and the world becomes an unhealthy place at any moment. Trump and MAGA, us dirt people, because the last few regimes turned the intelligence apparatus inward to watch for enemies, potential enemies, and get a jump on us and a violent redress, by themselves false flagging their own violent “revolution”, in an attempt to preempt us, therefore set in motion government resources which they could not expect any other way, and use said resources against a dirt peoples revolt, or none. Because they don’t have the man power to win, we have too many small infantry combat arms, there’s simply way more of us than can be stopped by hoplophobes disarming us, which at a stage, will also back fire. Like everything they do.
I’m thinking they are thinking, with a palace coup, or JFKing Trump, they can get a demographic of 25-40% of the .mil to go along with declaring martial law, and probably deputize shit like MS13, drug cartel solders, etc, along Matt Bracken’s EF&D.
Looking like Trump is going to take a whack at the 12 family bankster cartel aka the fed. That should make assassinating POTUS a distinct possibility.
If the fuckers pull off some coup, they will declare martial law so fast it will make normies and the unprepared brains fry.
Like Ol Remus says: “Stay away from crowds”
You can not and do not have enough ammo.
I’m grateful every day to live in rural America. I can’t imagine the die off and madness if worse comes to worse. There’s too many people in too small a space existing on a just in time infrastructure of services and supplies. From food to fuel. It could rapidly crumble in a day or two.
I keep thinking not anti-fragile, and desperation sets in very fast if water and food is not there. Any coup, it wont have or most likely give a crap, about disaster assistance except for the chosen and protected. Let alone weaponizing food and water, critical services.
Something gonna pop here soon . Just has that aura about things. To think the globalists’ and associated regimes and actors, they will go quietly, is a bet you can’t take.
I truly believe, if it was not for us who are suitably armed, a vast plurality, we would be in a gulag or having a dirt nap long ago.
Thing is, great things are in the wind: events, zeitgeists, 4th Turnings, Ragnorak even. There’s an after in these things. What if enough of us who believe in small or no gov, come out the other side, what do we do to protect our sovereignty and liberty? The day of the large state leviathan is toast, its been an unmitigated disaster on a scale makes it almost incomprehensible beyond statistics of genocide and war, detrimental to every idea precept and applied liberty.
What’s next? Does the FUSA fracture into small nation states, like William Lind’s VICTORIA! 4th generation civil war between these small sovereign nation states.
Do we end up in a generational tribal/insurgency, everyone for themselves, dystopia?
The best will ever written consists of ten words:
Being of sound mind and body, I spent it all.
I thought you were in Arizona. It is interesting that you chose to move near here in northern Idaho. I know Sandpoint better than Coeur D’Alene as my work with a major transportation company required many hours in that area. Though I rarely had young people working with me, I have observed few had the ability to think on their own. Over the years I have seen many of these people advance in the company. They have shown that they really are as dumb as a box of rocks but vindictive. One such was put in an official position over me and we butt heads until I retired. When he was in the ranks, he could not even make a decision on where to eat lunch. (When out of town we had meals and lodging compensated.) When he became my supervisor he must have spent many wasted hours looking through Company rules to find an excuse to bully me and have me fired just before retirement.
As I have had to work most of my life alone, I have had to use the term, “improvise, adapt, and overcome”. In the last 20 years, I have seen many not able to think through a new problem without direct supervision. With that said, the younger generations do not know how to THINK. But, they sure know how to scheme and play the blame game! I think I am most fortunate that I am older. I have been taught by the “old timers” in the craft. Even the company officials of 35+ years ago were competent and got my respect. Now, the younger politically correct generation is running things, I am reminded of a quote from an older member of my craft… “And they continue to make money in spite of themselves”.
I am not concerned about society and economy collapsing. It would best for all if it did. I am concerned that the society and economy will continue its slow but engineered decline as to make North Korea look free.
I vehemently agree with most of what you said here. The only point of disagreement is that many of these companies aren’t really making money, and certainly not wealth. It’s all pyramid schemes these days. If you look at the financials for the public companies, they are typically in pretty bad shape. They rob Peter to pay Paul until they’re bought out by a conglomerate or go bankrupt, protected by the gubment. The few exceptions wouldn’t wouldn’t make money without the government protecting their quasi-monopolies from the little guy that, in a free market, could do it better.
The transportation company makes a LOT of money. A very wealthy investor bought it a few years ago.