The education establishment self-destructs

As Mark Twain put it, "First God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards."

Until a few months ago, most people admired public school teachers. Not anymore. Teachers have declared war on students and their parents.

What teachers have done is part of a bigger picture, and it's not pretty. They have chosen to join professional sports, the media, higher education, and big corporations in a woke crusade against their own country and its traditions. Ironically, they have done as much damage to themselves as they have to the country.

In his Wealth of Nations (1776), Adam Smith wrote, "The greatest improvement in the productive powers of labor, and the greater part of the skill, dexterity, and judgement with which it is anywhere directed, or applied, seem to have been the effects of division of labor."

In other words: Stick to your knitting! Instead, teachers, school boards, journalists, actors, athletes, and CEOs have all decided it's their job to instruct the rest of us on how to remake our economy and culture.

Again, to quote Adam Smith, "[c]onsumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the customer."

Public school teachers, however, work not for their customers — i.e. students and parents — but for school boards, the government, politicians, and their unions.

In his 1962 book Capitalism and Freedom, Milton Friedman wrote:

If one were to seek deliberately to devise a system of recruiting and paying teachers to repel the imaginative and daring and self-confident and to attract the dull and uninspiring, he could hardly do better than to imitate the system of requiring teaching certificates and enforcing standard salary structures that has developed in the larger city and state-wide systems.

Needing only a push from us, public education is a rotting tree ready to topple.

The traditional definition of socialism is "government ownership and operation of the means of production." Public schools are owned and operated by the government. Our public school system fits that definition of socialism. Socialism always fails, and public schools fail for the same reasons.

Society has no greater duty than educating each new generation. Leaving it in the hands of government is a horrible mistake.

Public school teachers did not deserve the respect we gave them. It was possible only because of a lack of transparency. One positive result of teachers destroying the respect they had is that it's exposed who they've been all along. Their recent behavior has, at last, made the gravity of the situation crystal-clear and given us the resolve to do something about it. ____________________

◼ The education establishment self-destructs July 28, 2021

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.

Now is the Time to Get Serious About Nuclear Energy

If we altered our attitudes about nuclear energy, it would be a game-changer. https://t.co/pMziZUFgWe

— Ron Ross (@RonRoss88802732) July 20, 2021

While no other “carbon free” method of producing electricity comes even close to nuclear energy, climate change alarmists refuse to even consider the option.

If you do an objective benefit-cost analysis of nuclear energy compared to the so-called “green energies” of solar and wind you learn that green energies have serious time and space limitations. For example, you learn that with solar and wind there is a disconnect between when they’re produced and when they’re consumed. Nighttime and cloudy days happen, and the wind does not always blow, but the need for electricity goes on.

The only solution to those limitations is reliance on batteries. Batteries, of course, have their own problems. It takes at least an hour and usually eight hours to charge an electric vehicle’s batteries. It takes only five minutes to fill your gas tank.

In a recent Wall Street Journal article, “Solar Power’s Land Grab Hits a Snag: Environmentalists.” Samantha Gross of the Brookings Institution writes, “An energy system based on renewables is still an industrial-scale system, with large generation and transmission projects that people don’t necessarily want in their neighborhoods.” Mojave solar farms essentially displace the animals that were living there. Indian tribes have also protested against the projects. Several of the largest projects in the planning stages are in jeopardy of cancellation. In contrast, for access, oil and natural gas require only a 12-inch hole in the ground.

There is also a locational disconnect between the producers and users of solar and wind energy. For oil and gas, the most efficient logistical solutions are pipelines.

Top Articles 10 Reasons to Question the Election Are Masks About to Become Permanent? Classroom Cameras Won't Stop Big Education. This Will. COVID Authoritarianism Has Changed Our Polity Read More Isn't It about Time to Stop Lobbing Ridiculous Accusations at Trump? The Left's Contempt for the Masses COVID Authoritarianism Has ChangedOur Polity COVID Authoritarianism Has Changed Our Polity Democrats hate pipelines. On his first day in office, with no justification given, Joe Biden stopped cold the completion of the Keystone XL pipeline and, along with that, its thousands of high-paying jobs. We’re left with a half-completed pipeline along with rising gasoline and natural gas prices.

Wind and solar have become popular not because of any actual advantages but because leftists think and act like teenagers. They’re ruled by emotions. They fall madly in love for the flimsiest of reasons. For teenagers that lunacy doesn't last long. For environmentalists and their Democrat enablers, that emotional attachment can and often does last for decades. As Milton Friedman famously observed, “There’s nothing as permanent as a temporary government program.”

Still another policy disaster Democrats have foisted on us is ethanol. It is the most land greedy of the “green energy’ alternatives. Ethanol is a witches’ brew of politics, taxpayer confiscation, mileage reduction, and small-engine destruction.

We’re creating giant land footprints in a futile attempt to reduce our “carbon footprints.” Land footprints are real problems in the here and now. Carbon footprints are unproven, hypothetical problems in the distant future.

We now devote fully one-fourth of our corn-growing farmland to the production of ethanol. If we returned that land to growing food and fodder we would significantly reduce prices and the benefits would be felt far and wide.

An important ingredient of economic efficiency is that “resources flow to their highest valued uses.” Employing farmland to produce energy rather than food is a gross violation of that principle. Using valuable farmland for energy production is asinine.

Coercion is also a necessary part of the ethanol fiasco. In California, it's illegal to use ethanol-free gasoline on public roads. You can buy ethanol-free gasoline for your lawnmower at only a few locations and at prices even higher than California’s already highest prices in the country.

Federal mandates require virtually all gasoline to include 10 percent ethanol. There is pressure to increase that to 15 percent. Even the 10 percent gasoline reduces mileage because ethanol produces only 70 percent of the energy produced by gasoline.

Ethanol takes more energy to produce than it produces. It’s done for political, not logical or economic reasons, and we are less prosperous because of it.

California is obsessed with so-called “zero-emissions” transportation, i.e., electric vehicles. The state passed numerous laws, regulations, and subsidies in pursuit of that objective. But EVs are not currently free of carbon emissions. Fossil fuels (coal and natural gas) generate most of the electricity needed to charge their batteries. If nuclear energy generated that same electricity we could honestly say that EVs generate “zero-emissions.”

Even Elon Musk admits that there is not enough electricity generating capacity to allow widespread conversion to EVs. The only way there could be enough capacity is by resorting to nuclear power.

The last remaining nuclear plant in California is at Diablo Canyon and has been operating since 1985. It is the single largest power station in the state, generating ten percent of California’s electricity. Because of the state’s hostility toward nuclear power, it is scheduled to close in 2025. No one knows what will replace that generating capacity. It certainly will not be wind and solar. Cutting electricity generation by a tenth when the state already has barely enough electricity is criminal recklessness.

Until the past few years, blackouts and brownouts were almost unheard of. What’s changed? The answer is easy to find.

According to Robert Bryce, progressive politicians and their enabling voters have created a disastrous combination of “soaring electricity prices and ever-worsening reliability.” What’s bizarre is that it has all been deliberate. The left is obsessed with weaning humanity off its reliance on fossil fuels. Californians are now the proud possessors of the highest income-tax rates, highest sales-tax rates, highest gasoline prices, and highest housing costs in the country.

California already has laws on the books that mandate reducing “greenhouse emissions” 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030 and 50 percent by 2050. It is irresponsible to mandate an end to fossil fuel use when there is no viable substitute in place, at least not one they’re willing to entertain. If nuclear energy is off the table, blackouts will become a way of life. California will become a ghost state. Only leftists will be happy.

Michael Shellenberger, author of best-selling Apocalypse Never, recently tweeted that “the problems of nuclear power are not technological but political.” He added, “I’ve realized just how much of the problem comes down to energy density.” Nuclear energy is the energy densest of all the currently feasible alternatives.

If we altered our attitudes about nuclear energy, it would be a game-changer. We could reduce our carbon footprint to 1980 levels. We could stop killing birds with our windmills and solar energy sites. We could return all our fertile farmland to food production. And we could eliminate the labyrinth of costly subsidies and coercive regulations, most of which do far more harm than good. We could say goodbye to blackouts and electricity rationing and hello to energy abundance.

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◼ Now is the Time to Get Serious About Nuclear Energy July 17, 2021

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.

The inscrutable left

What are leftists afraid of? An easier question would be what are they not afraid of?

Here is a partial list of their fears: climate change, fossil fuels, Russia, maskless people, Republicans, carbon, death, words, Donald Trump, chemicals, freedom, masculinity, pipelines, meat, nuclear energy, national borders, guns, light complexions, binary genders, GMOs, debate, election audits, live births, utilizing natural resources, voter IDs, fracking, laughter, capitalism, free speech, private property, conservative values, opinions different from their opinions, pronouns, truth, statues, risk, glutens, mass extinctions, human history, order, triggers, rising sea levels, Christians, law enforcement, Israel, and traditions.

The breadth and depth of their lives are inversely proportional to the number of their fears. The walls close in on them. Their lives shrink to nothingness.

Among the wisest words ever uttered by a politician were FDR's "We have nothing to fear but fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." Leftists believe, "We have everything to fear, including fears beyond imagining."

Conservatives have trouble understanding the lunacy we see on the left. Having so many fears is a partial explanation. They have so many fears that their brains are depleted, leaving no capacity for rational thought.

Having so many fears shows they're preoccupied with their own existence, which to them is the center of the universe, a universe they believe is out to get them. Actually, the universe could not care less about them. Life is unfair. Believing they're the only ones whose lives are unfair is self-obsession, plain and simple.

The school of psychology known as "transactional analysis" argues that any persistent behavior must have a "payoff." A hybrid of psychology and economics, transactional analysis emphasizes payoffs, while economics emphasizes incentives. Is there a payoff for leftists for living fear-based lives? Could there be method to their madness?

Victimhood is a popular mindset on the left, perhaps the most popular. One payoff of feeling like a victim is that it lets them escape responsibility. Many leftists hate responsibility. Conservatives believe in individual responsibility. That's too tough a challenge for leftists.

The Democrats view the January 6 trespassing of the Capitol Building as "the worst threat to our democracy since the Civil War." For them, it wasn't just trespassing; it was an "insurrection." Lunacy doesn't obey the rules of logic.

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◼ The inscrutable left July 1, 2021

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.

The damage done by probability blindness

The Damage Done By Probability Blindness https://t.co/mCm4aG8IrI

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) June 17, 2021

As Bishop Joseph Butler said in 1736, "probability is the very guide of life."

The coronavirus has generated more blind fear than perhaps any other event in recorded history. That fear is blind because it ignores easily calculated probabilities.

The reported coronavirus deaths in the U.S. now stand at six hundred thousand. The population of the U.S. is approximately 330 million. When you divide deaths by the population, the number is less than two-tenths of one percent. As catastrophes go, that is a relatively small number.

There is a wide disparity of coronavirus deaths among age groups. That fact has been deliberately ignored by the authorities and the media.

Eighty percent of all deaths have occurred in the over 65 population even though that age group constitutes only 16 percent of the total population. The number of deaths in that group is 464 thousand. The total population of Americans 65 and older is 51 million. Dividing the deaths by that population gives you a probability of 0.0089, or nine-tenths of one percent.

Top Articles The Top Ten Pending Eruptions What Was California Thinking? Lester Holt: Poster Child for Media Bias The Fifty-Year War on America’s Soul Taking the Racism Test Read More Moral Legitimacy and the US Government Taking the Racism Test Taking the Racism Test The number of COVID deaths in the 49 and younger age group is twenty-seven thousand. The total number of Americans in that age group is 233 million. Again, dividing the deaths by the corresponding population gives you a probability of 0.00011, or one one-hundredth of one percent. A probability that small is often described as "not significantly different from zero."

Comparing the young and old age groups reveals that the 49 and younger age group's risk of COVID death is ninety times less than the 65 and older age group's.

There has been virtually no difference in policies in regard to various age groups. It has been the costliest application of a "one size fits all" approach ever.

There would have been far fewer deaths and much less disruption of our lives if the bulk of the attention had been focused on the over 65 age group. Rest homes should have been quarantined. Schools should never have been closed. Masks were unnecessary for anyone 50 or younger.

If health officials and the media had acted responsibly, they would have informed the public about these probabilities. They haven't even tried because their objective has been to raise anxiety, not reduce it.

Politicians and public health officials have a very low estimate of the intelligence of the general public and an extremely high (and unjustified) estimate of their own intelligence. They believe their deliberate concealment of facts is admirable.

We know far more now about the coronavirus than when it began, and what we know is very encouraging. Telling the public the truth, however, would expose health officials and the media for the politics behind their incompetence. They would have to admit that most of the pain and damage they've created has been totally unnecessary.

___________________________

◼ The damage done by probability blindness

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.

If you would like to comment on this or any other American Thinker article or post, we invite you to visit the American Thinker Forum at MeWe. There, you can converse with other American Thinker readers and comment freely (subject to MeWe's terms of use). The Forum will be fully populated and ready for comments by midday (Eastern time) each day.

Remember when leftists were obsessed with self-esteem?

Why, in a few decades, has the left's obsession flipped from self-love to self-loathing, from pride to shame?

During the 1970s the "self-esteem movement" commenced. According to Wikipedia:

The underlying idea of the movement was that low self-esteem was the root of problems for individuals, making it the root of societal problems and dysfunctions. A leading figure of the movement, psychologist Nathaniel Branden, stated, "I cannot think of a single psychological problem from anxiety and depression to fear of intimacy or of success, to spouse battery or child molestation that is not traced back to the problem of low self-esteem."

As is the case with most obsessions of the left, the self-esteem movement soon faded into obscurity. You no longer hear much about it. The problem was not with the goal of self-esteem. It makes perfect sense that self-esteem and self-confidence are useful in living our lives. The problem was that the left tried to achieve it in its usual simple-minded, ham-handed style.

We can earn real self-esteem only by overcoming life's challenges and disappointments. In contrast, the self-esteem movement's solution was to make life easier for children and take the possibility of disappointment out of their lives. The results were grade inflation, participation trophies, fear of competition, elimination of standardized testing, trigger warnings, and micro-aggressions.

Consequently, our characters have grown weak and fragile. Our culture has grown morbidly obese. Universities overflow with "snowflakes" and "safe spaces." Ordinary debate is taboo.

Human nature evolved to cope with hardships much greater than those we face in today's world. Our instinctual responses to modern life are out of sync with current conditions.

When there are no hardships such as those we've evolved to endure, one response is to create imaginary ones. When we no longer need to worry about where our next meal is coming from, we invent and exaggerate distant and unproven specters — e.g., "catastrophic global warming." We then overreact to minor problems that our forebears would have laughed at. Psyches built for primitive survival ironically struggle to survive modern-day abundance, comfort, and long life expectancies.

The left's plan to bolster self-esteem by making everyone weaker did not work. It did, however, help Democrats in their never-ending quest for more power.

But even creating weakness has not satisfied the left. Leftists not only want us to be weak but also want us to loathe ourselves. A guilt-ridden, shamed citizenry is much easier to control and manipulate. Happy people do not want their lives to be controlled by other people — e.g., politicians. Furthermore, it's far easier to get people to hate themselves than to love themselves.

The left now tells us, in no uncertain terms, that we are despicable people who reside in an irredeemably racist country, a country with a history we should be deeply ashamed of.

Years ago, leftists' obsession was to instill self-esteem in people who didn't deserve it. Now it's to instill guilt in people who don't deserve it and victimhood in people who don't deserve it. It seems that all they care about is making sure that whatever anybody gets is undeserved. ____________________

◼ Remember when leftists were obsessed with self-esteem?

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.

Righteous Recycling

Why should leftists bother to make recycling work when their real objective is reached merely by appearing to practice it?

 

Recycling is a leftist sacrament. It fulfills emotional needs for Democrats. They suffer deep-seated guilt from participating in a materialistic culture that they think results in widespread environmental harm. For them recycling serves as a kind of visible penance. Unfortunately, recycling leads to unintended consequences. 

 

A recent article in the Eureka, California Times-Standard began as follows: 

“The CRV situation in Humboldt County is a losing situation for everyone. 

Three major recycling centers in the county have halted all buyback programs for cans, bottles, and glass. 

Customers who pay 5 cents per can at the grocery or convenience store have a nearly impossible time getting that fee back.” 

“CRV” stands for California Refund Value. Two out of three of those words are bogus. Refunds have almost ceased and recyclables have little or no value. The program, however, epitomizes California. 

 

Californians are the truest believers in recycling. Over the decades the state has passed laws that use both force and bribery to increase recycling obedience. One such law pertains to glass, plastic, aluminum cans, and bottles. It requires merchants who sell beverages to charge customers an extra 5 cents for containers up to 24 ounces and 10 cents for containers above 24 ounces. 

 

The legislation enabling the program is the “California Beverage Container Recycling and Litter Reduction Act.”  It has been in effect since 1987 and is administered by the CalRecycle agency. 

 

The law requires supermarkets and other beverage dealers to reimburse the 5 or 10 cent deposits to anyone bringing in their containers, no matter where they acquired them. Milk, wine, and distilled spirits containers are exempt from the law. Beverage merchants must pay a fine of  $100 a day if they choose not to participate. 

 

As you might suspect the program has been something of a minor catastrophe. Part of the problem is that in California and elsewhere recycling has all but collapsed, partly because China stopped buying recyclables. The state passed the law based on the assumption that recycling would always be economically viable. 

 

Wildberries Marketplace, a local supermarket, has chosen to pay the $100 a day fine. According to manager Aaron Gottschalk , “We are here to sell groceries. We are not a recycling center. We felt it was a risk to the safety and sanitation of our store. We just knew we couldn't do it. Did we want to avoid the fee? You bet. But in order to avoid the fee paid to CalRecycle, we would have to fabricate a story and say we were doing something that we were not doing. We weren't going to make that choice and we're paying the fee.” 

 

Wildberries, in other words, is being forced to pay a $100 a day fine for being out of compliance with a law that is all but impossible to obey. 

 

Wildberries is where my wife and I buy most of our groceries. In a conversation with Gottschalk she was told, “Complying would cost us way more than $100 a day. We would have to take every bit of recycling offered to us and then truck it to Crescent City at our expense.” (Crescent city is 85 miles north of the store.) 

 

According to CalRecycle 50 retailers in Humboldt County are now obligated to redeem CRV containers in stores. Notably absent from CalRecycle’s list are Walmart, Target, and Winco. 

 

Most of the Humboldt County designated recycling sites are simply ignoring the rules—they aren’t taking in cans and bottles and they aren’t paying the fines. CalRecycle has been locked down for the past year so there has been no on-site enforcement. 

 

For all practical purposes, recycling has ceased. It simply is no longer economically viable. Supply and demand have turned against it. The price paid for recyclables is below zero, i.e. you have to pay to get someone to take it off your hands. As is the case with ethanol fuel, recycling can only thrive by way of coercion or taxpayer-funded subsidies. 

 

Lawmakers in California are aware of the mess they’ve created, but don’t assume they’ll do anything about it that makes sense. North Coast Assemblyman Jim Wood recently submitted legislation that would permit recycling centers to schedule appointments, something that’s currently prohibited. According to Wood, “These modest changes will by no means solve all the problems facing the bottle bill program, but they address a crisis in my district, and hopefully they will help other communities struggling with access to redemption centers.” Exactly how making appointments would solve any of the deeper problems of the program, he did not explain. 

 

Meanwhile ninety-five percent or more of what goes into recycling bins goes to landfills. That reality is something no one wants to talk about. It would be too upsetting. What we have is faux recycling. 

 

The left’s use of recycling as visible penance is similar to what Christian theology called “outward signs of grace.” That was an issue Saint Augustine addressed in the 4^th century. It dealt with the fact that others could not see if you had grace. Recycling is a modern attempt to cope with the same problem. 

 

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor who is currently a wealth manager. He can be reached at rossecon@aol.com. 

 

 

Other articles of interest on this topic: _____________________

◼ CalRecycle's Regulatory Abuse - Leonard Lang

◼ Expert accuses CA of the worst legal environment in the US - Leonard Lang

It’s Time To Revisit The Road To Serfdom

Recently my column "It's Time to Revisit The Road to Serfdom" ran on the American Thinker website. For whatever reason they left out some of the best quotes from the book. For your enjoyment, here's the full text.

It’s Time To Revisit The Road To Serfdom

Recently the books 1984 and Animal Farm have had a rebirth of relevance. They were written by George Orwell in 1949 and 1945.

Orwell’s books coined words and phrases that have become descriptive of what is happening now—doublethink, Ministry of Truth, Big Brother, thought criminal, Newspeak, and, of course, Orwellian.

Another book with a similar theme was written in 1944 by the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek— The Road to Serfdom. Hayek was born in Austria in 1898 and spent most of his life in England and America. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics in 1974 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1991.

Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm are fictional but the dystopias they describe have become disturbingly real.

Hayek’s Road to Serfdom, on the other hand, is a complete explanation of why attempts to achieve utopias always result into nightmarish dystopias.

A few of the book’s chapter titles reveal its theme:

The Great Utopia Security and Freedom Why the Worst Get on Top The End of Truth The Socialist Roots of Nazism The Totalitarians in Our Midst

In The Road to Serfdom Hayek warns us that once on that “road,” society is forced further and further along it. Each step requires an additional step. Eventually we end up as serfs.

He warns us “that democratic socialism, the great utopia of the last few generations, is not only unachievable, but that to strive for it produces something quite different.”

He warns us about politicians of the Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez type: “There are many people who call themselves socialists. . . who fervently believe in the ultimate aims of socialism but neither care nor understand how they can be achieved, and who are merely certain that they must be achieved, whatever the costs.”

Specifically, Hayek explains why socialism inevitably evolves into totalitarianism. First, well-intended socialist attempts to perfect a free-market economy lead to unforeseen problems. Then, centralized “solutions” don’t solve those problems, but create larger ones. Partial control is never enough. The end result is tyranny.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union some of its former member countries used The Road to Serfdom as a guidebook for what to avoid as they threw off the shackles of socialism.

The following excerpts from The Road to Serfdom show us Hayek in his own words:

It seems to be almost a law of human nature that it is easier for people to agree on a negative program—on the hatred of an enemy, of those better off—than on any positive task.

Many a university teacher during the 1930’s has seen English and American students return from the Continent uncertain whether they were communists or Nazis and certain only that they hated Western liberal civilization.

The machinery of monopoly becomes identical with the machinery of the state, and the state itself becomes more and more identified with those who run things than with the interests of the people in general.

Several contributory factors strengthen the tendency of collectivism to become particularist and exclusive. Of these, one of the most important is that the desire of the individual to identify himself with a group is very frequently the result of a feeling of inferiority and that therefore his want will be satisfied only if membership of the group confers some superiority over outsiders.

Everyone who has watched the growth of these movements in Italy or in Germany has been struck by the number of leading men, form Mussolini downward. . . who began as socialists and ended up as Fascists or Nazis.

It is hard to believe that those words were written almost 80 years ago. If you want to understand how the worlds of 1984 and Animal Farm can happen, read The Road to Serfdom.

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This article originally ran at American Thinker.

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.