Local and State Initiatives – The Future of Policy in California?

/by

Grassroots activists in California point to the initiative process as a potent and underutilized last resort, capable of ushering in sweeping reforms. They’re right, but the initiative process is equally available to California’s progressives, backed by powerful special interests. And while the activist reformers talk, the progressives act.

How else to explain the hundreds of local ballot initiatives that are marketed to voters in California’s cities and counties every time there’s an election, which in aggregate soak taxpayers for billions in new taxes every year? In November 2016, out of 224 local tax proposals, voters approved over 70 percent, adding $2.9 billion in new taxes. In November 2018, out of 259 local tax measures, voters approved another estimated $1.6 billion per year in new taxes.

The vast majority of these tax measures are sponsored by special interests who stand to gain from their passage. In fact, many if not most local tax measures are supported by elected officials representing city and county governments, and they utilize the resources of their agencies to promote these measures. As California Policy Center President Will Swaim wrote in 2016, “Despite multiple legal decisions limiting the practice, municipal officials in California may be paying outside consultants to run the campaign to sell you on your local tax measure.”

The way public agencies get away with this is under the guise of “educating” the voters about the impact of new taxes. “Education,” of course, is a word with a broad range of defensible meanings, so when you get that flyer with a photo of terrified seniors or vulnerable children, along with “information” on how higher taxes will prevent such tragedies, know that your tax dollars are at work educating you to vote yes on more taxes.

Even if the “multiple legal decisions limiting the practice” of local government agencies campaigning for higher taxes in the name of educating the public were enforced, forces aligned with government would still represent an overwhelming political advantage. Whether they’re crony capitalists, bond issuers, or government unions, they want those taxes flowing straight back to them in the form of contract awards, underwriting fees, and higher pay and benefits.

To campaign for higher taxes, these special interests spend millions, and never quit. In terms of resources they can muster against their opposition, they are akin to the Galactic Empire in the Star Wars movies. Facing this Empire – these major corporations, these massive financial institutions, and the public sector unions – is a rag tag army of rebel activists, grotesquely outgunned.

That’s reality. But reality can change.

Open Source Initiative Logistics for the 21st Century

Critics of making online resources for initiative advocates readily available and replicable fear that reformers will be swamped by progressives making even broader use of these resources. The problem with that logic is that the progressives – and their powerful corporate, nonprofit, and government allies – don’t need these resources. They have more than enough money to put whatever they want onto local and state ballots, whenever they want, and they do.

At the state level, a citizens initiative backed by public employee unions threatens to undermine Prop. 13. At the local level, as noted, in every election there are hundreds of ballot proposals for new taxes and bonds. The danger is not that the Empire will steal the innovations of the rebels, because they’re already able to launch as many initiatives as they think voters can handle. They’re also able to fight the impact of initiatives in the courts, as proven by their success in undermining San Diego and San Jose’s pension reform initiatives, both of which were overwhelmingly supported by voters.

While the rebels dither over strategy, the Empire expands into new territory. In San Diego County, a local citizens initiative aims to require a public vote to approve or disapprove large housing developments in unincorporated areas. This will go before voters in March 2020, and expect more of these sorts of initiatives in front of voters in the future, along with other Empire compliant “progressive” measures such as rent control, forced high density zoning, and new regulations to enforce urban containment. Never mind that the effect of these measures are to keep the real estate portfolios of the wealthy soaring and render basic housing unaffordable to low and middle income working Californians.

The true challenge facing reform minded rebels is how to lower the cost of launching state and local ballot initiatives to compete with the progressive Empire. One innovator who has paved the way is Carl DeMaio’s Reform California project based in San Diego. Replicating this work across California would go a long way towards making reform initiatives not only a potent last resort, but a viable and affordable last resort. Some of the features pioneered by DeMaio include:

  • Offering officially sanctioned initiative petitions online that are downloadable and printable.
  • Preparing all initiative campaign materials on inexpensive websites.
  • Using a massive database of text numbers and emails to inexpensively solicit volunteers and petition signers.
  • Producing YouTube videos that provide clear and precise instructions to petition signers and signature gathering volunteers, as well as to volunteers who verify signatures.
  • Mobilizing volunteer activists, and carefully training them to perform verification of signed petitions.
  • Coordinating, nearly all of it through online communications, volunteer networks in every California county, in order to submit signed petitions in absolute compliance with all laws governing the process.
  • Utilizing professional signature gathering firms in a nonexclusive, consultative capacity.

There is no reason why these innovations cannot be adopted by citizen groups across California. And there is no reason why the organizations in the vanguard of adopting these innovations cannot share their templates with like-minded organizations throughout the state.

While a successful ballot initiative requires legal research and online expertise, the vastly greater cost is the fees charged by professional signature gathering firms. Using these firms to supplement volunteer signature gathering, instead of the other way around, turns the tables, and is a financial game changer.

Examples of Local Ballot Initiatives

Along with the San Jose pension reform initiative, and the San Diego pension reform initiative, there have been ongoing local ballot initiatives sponsored by TeaPAC, a volunteer organization based in Pasadena led by the tax fighter Mike Alexander. In recent years TeaPAC has placed three initiatives before voters offering them the opportunity to repeal their local utility taxes, in Sierra Madre, Glendale, and Arcadia.

An innovation that might constitute a mortal threat to the Galactic Empire, were it to proliferate to hundreds of cities and counties in California, is being pioneered by a small group of volunteers in Oxnard. Led by Aaron Starr, a local executive with a financial background including a CPA, this group aims to put not one, but five initiatives onto the local 2020 ballot.

The cost to qualify one local reform initiative, vs. the cost to qualify five local reform initiatives, is not linear. Typically when a signature gatherer succeeds in getting a registered voter to sign one ballot petition, they’ll be willing to sign the rest of them. And when campaigning for reform initiatives, there might be a benefit to having a slate of initiatives. Voters might find it motivating to know that they have a chance to support a coherent package of several mutually reinforcing reforms that offer the potential for dramatic improvements to their local governance.

As summarized in this article in the Ventura County Star on May 4, 2019, the ballot measures that Starr and his colleagues are circulating for signatures are:

Oxnard Fiscal Transparency and Accountability Act, which would make the city treasurer, an elected official, the head of the finance department.

Keeping the Promise for Oxnard Streets Act, which would deny the city certain sales tax revenue if it fails to maintain streets to specific levels.

Oxnard Term Limits Act, which would limit the mayor and council members to no more than two consecutive four-year terms.

Oxnard Open Meetings Act, which would require city meetings to begin no earlier than 5 p.m. and allow public speakers no less than three minutes to comment.

Oxnard Permit Simplicity Act, which would reform the permitting system with training, new guidelines and an auditing process that would lead an applicant to obtain a permit in one business day.

Clearly if all of these are passed by voters, they will have a comprehensive impact. Imagine the impact of dozens, or hundreds of groups of local activists, applying this same strategy of filing multiple initiatives, in jurisdictions throughout California.

How to File Local Ballot Initiatives

Whether you decide as a local elected official to embrace an independent citizens initiative, or launch one yourself, here’s how to get it done:

BACKGROUND

California Elections Code
Division 9: Measures Submitted to Voters, Chapter 3: Municipal Elections
Article 1: Initiative, Sections 9200 – 9226
https://codes.findlaw.com/ca/elections-code/elec-sect-9200.html

TIMELINE

Note: It is imperative to seek expert legal advice to verify the details of each step in this process.

1 – Draft ballot measure.

2 – Submit notice of intent to circulate for signatures and wording of measure to City Attorney for Title & Summary and approval to circulate for signatures (15 business days – this may vary).

3 – Have a petition for signatures created which meets all state legal requirements.

4 – Check city’s election code to see if there are any additional requirements or restrictions on petitions for local measures.

5 – Publish legal ad within 10 days (this may vary) of receiving Title and Summary which includes notice of intent and wording of measure in a newspaper adjudicated in the city.

6 – Begin gathering signatures either the same day or one day after receiving Title and Summary.

7 – Once the city attorney grants Title & Summary, the council may conduct a fiscal impact report and present the findings at an upcoming council meeting. Typically, the council is by law prohibited from taking a position on the measure.

8 – Proponents have 180 days (this may vary) starting the day after receiving Title & Summary to gather and submit required valid signatures.

9 – For a local tax repeal, the number of valid signatures required is 5% of the number of people who voted in the last gubernatorial election in that city. It is advisable to get 30-50% additional signatures since the registrar throws out so many signatures as invalid. The closer you can get to 50% the better, but anything less than an additional 30% is very risky.

10 – The city has 30 business days (this may vary) to then verify the signatures.

11 – If the signatures fail to qualify the measure, the city notifies the proponents and returns the petitions for them to check the validation results.

12 – Proponents have a very short period of time where they can challenge any of the signature results.

13 – If the signatures qualify the measure, the city notifies the proponents and schedules the measure as an agenda item for the next city council meeting.

14 – At the next city council meeting the council has the option to either enact the measure immediately, or schedule the measure for an upcoming election.

Ballot Initiatives Are California’s Best Hope

At the state and local level, it is clear that ballot initiatives are already a weapon of the corporate/progressive alliance that constitutes a real world version of the oppressive Galactic Empire in the Star Wars movies. But the rebel alliance can and must also wield this weapon.

Using modern online resources and networking activist groups across the state can save millions, even tens of millions, that would otherwise have to be solicited from donors and spent with signature gathering firms. Instead these firms can still be hired, but in nonexclusive consultative roles. And if enough bands of activists launch local ballot initiative projects all over California, these firms will still get plenty of work!

Along with the necessity to launch orders of magnitude more rebel sponsored local initiatives is the opportunity to launch multiple, linked initiatives in each locale, using Oxnard as the example. Doing this would introduce economies of scale both in the signature gathering phase as well as in the campaign phase, since these initiatives can be presented as a unified set of reforms that in aggregate will result in an immediate and transformative impact on local politics.

At the state level the potential also exists for a slate of linked initiatives, also co-marketed for signature gathering as well as during the campaign phase. These initiatives could offer transformative, constitutional changes affecting California’s policies in the areas of housing, the homeless, law and order, energy, infrastructure, education and pensions. They could be conceived in a manner to offer populist appeal to a broad constituency incorporating all ethnicities and income groups.

These slates of multiple initiatives, both at the state and local level, not only offer voters the chance to transform their communities in one election, they also offer politicians a political platform they can endorse both to support the initiatives and also to define their own candidacies.

California’s ruling class, those imperial aristocrats, have pushed the ordinary people of California to the limit. In virtually every area that matters, public education, housing, homeless, roads, utility costs, hostility to business, punitive fees to build homes or open businesses, ridiculously high taxes – California’s ruling class has taken from the working poor and given to the rich. They may wield absolute power today. But that can change overnight.

This article originally appeared on the website of the California Policy Center.

 *   *   *

 

 

 

 

 

 

Venice Beach’s Monster on the Median

/by

When President Trump arrived in Los Angeles on Tuesday, he had a few words to say about the city’s homeless problem. “We can’t let Los Angeles, San Francisco and numerous other cities destroy themselves by allowing what’s happening,” the president told reporters. “In many cases [building tenants] came from other countries and they moved to Los Angeles or they moved to San Francisco because of the prestige of the city, and all of a sudden they have hundreds and hundreds of tents and people living at the entrance to their office building. And the people of San Francisco are fed up, and the people of Los Angeles are fed up.”

In response, Mayor Eric Garcetti posted a video on social media in which he stated: “It is time for us to pause politics and not to demonize Americans who are on the street.”

Garcetti also warned the president that it’s not possible for authorities to “arrest their way out of the issue.” Instead, Garcetti would like “federal government aid to L.A. with surplus property or money to create additional shelters.”

But Trump better not release a dime of federal money until there’s a federal investigation that exposes how Los Angeles has wasted hundreds of millions on housing for the homeless in one of the most outrageous misuses of funds in American history.

Paradise Lost

To see just how ineffective homeless policy in Los Angeles has been to-date, and how Garcetti’s schemes will only destroy neighborhoods, wasting hundreds of millions of dollars, while doing nothing to solve the homeless problem, President Trump is invited to visit Venice Beach.

When you consider the population of homeless in Venice, estimated at around 1,000 people, you might not consider it to deserve the title “Homeless Hub of America.” You’d be wrong. Because what the Venice Beach homeless situation lacks in numbers, it makes up for in other ways.

First, consider Venice Beach itself, as opposed to the mean streets of downtown Los Angeles. If you want to sit on a warm beach all day, stoned on heroin and Xanax, or maybe just bask in an alcoholic stupor or savor a potent strain of weed, Venice Beach is for you.

In Venice Beach, you’re relatively safe. The well-heeled, clean-limbed residents aren’t going to form vigilante gangs and prey upon you. Quite the opposite. Most of them will look the other way, because they’re still struggling to reconcile compassion at any cost with reality.

In Venice Beach, the homeless can set up camp almost anywhere, and if this world class tourist destination is their choice, c’est la vie to those residents who’ve worked their entire lives to pay for the same privilege.

Bad Policies Exacerbate the Crisis

The fact that a place as beautiful as Venice Beach has been overrun with homeless people—with nothing the hard-working residents can do about it—is one reason it should be Exhibit A in the story of how bad policies have turned a manageable homeless challenge into an expensive, agonizing nightmare. But the corrupt, inept, utterly ineffective, shamefully self-righteous, scandalously hypocritical response of policymakers is what makes what’s happening in Venice Beach so exemplary.

The people interviewed for this article did not want their names used. The latest tactic the politicized homeless population of Venice Beach have adopted against anyone who objects to their presence is to have them “feceed,” that is, human excrement is deposited on their driveway, or at their doorway.

Once these homeless predators, networked by smartphones, find out where someone lives who has objected to their presence, watch out. These bold souls may expect a literal shit storm. One must ask: why don’t the police take a stool sample and save the DNA?

Then again, crime and punishment is different these days in California. Proposition 47, supported by an alliance of hardcore progressives and naïve libertarians, was passed in 2014. The measure was designed to eliminate “oversentencing.” In practice, that means if you steal anything worth less than $950, or if you make “personal use” of “most illegal drugs,” no matter how many times you are caught, you will face misdemeanor charges at best. Police call it the “catch and release” law.

Hello criminal. Hello drug addict. Welcome to Venice Beach, one of the most beautiful urban hotspots in the continental United States. Come on in. You don’t have to pay rent. You’re an “urban refugee.” Settle down. Do what you like. We can’t stop you.

YIMBYs and Other Useful Idiots

Not only are the residents of Venice powerless to stop criminals, drug addicts, drunks, and psychopaths from camping on their doorsteps, they are stigmatized as “NIMBYs” who lack compassion or awareness of their own privilege. Never mind how hard someone may have worked to live in an expensive and very beautiful neighborhood. It’s time to be “inclusive.” Shame on anyone who isn’t a YIMBY!

Behind pushing this narrative however aren’t the progressive activists, increasingly joined by their equally fanatical, equally delusional, libertarian allies. Those are just the useful idiots. This narrative of compassion at any cost is being pushed by powerful special interests who acquire power and profit from this game. After all, billions in taxpayer dollars are now being spent to help the homeless. But who gets most of that money? The middlemen.

Two projects planned for Venice Beach to help the homeless epitomize this scam, and justify its designation as the epicenter of homeless mismanagement gone wild. The first is a “temporary” shelter, a semi-permanent tent, which is being constructed on city owned property two blocks from the beach and boardwalk.

It is planned as a “wet” shelter, meaning any homeless person, no matter how deliriously wasted they may be, can stagger into this place and get a meal. If they’re really lucky, they’ll get a bed. Lucky, because while some 1,000 homeless people live in Venice Beach, this shelter will only have around 150 beds.

The cost? Some latest estimates put the total cost at $16 million, not including operating costs, nor including the value of the property, which could be sold for around $100 million. Imagine what could be done with that much money.

The Monster on the Median

But this $16 million tent is nothing compared to the other project proposed to “help the homeless” in Venice Beach. Dubbed the “Monster on the Median” by its detractors, this “permanent supportive housing” monstrosity will occupy 2.7 city-owned acres that are used currently for beach parking. It is in the heart of Venice, just one block from the beach.

Located amid one- and two-story residences and consuming the only parking area available to working families who stream to the beach after work and on weekends, this massive structure, planned to be up to five stories in height in some places, would house 140 units. Half of them will be offered to “artists” on low incomes, and the other half will be “permanent supportive housing” for homeless people.

And the cost?

Despite numerous public record act requests to the City of Los Angeles, the official estimate remains undisclosed. But other similar projects launched in Los Angeles to help the homeless came in at a cost of between $430,000 and $750,000 per unit. The “Monster on the Median” will almost certainly be in the $750,000 per unit range, for several reasons.

There is a high water table close to the beach. That, plus concerns about sea level rise affecting a structure so close to the shore, will compel extra work on the foundation. Also, the structure will be built to wrap 360 degrees around a parking garage in the center. This parking garage, unlikely to offer enough spaces to accommodate residents and visitors to the beach, will use an elevator—they call it “automated lift parking”—to deliver vehicles from the street level to the garage. Imagine the queues on North and South Venice Boulevard as people patiently wait to be hoisted up the car elevator. But why be practical?

If that weren’t enough, the structure actually will have to pass over the north end of one of Venice Beach’s scenic canals, completely covering a block of this historic amenity which is central to the identity of Venice Beach. Including the value of the property—the low estimate of the property value is $50 million—the “Monster on the Median” will cost an estimated $155 million, which comes out to $1.1 million per unit.

But that isn’t the end of the story. For example, there is also the story of how developers who build “permanent supportive housing” are exempt from normal zoning laws including height limitations, density maximums, setback requirements, parking space minimums, and even compliance with the California Environmental Quality Act.

False Compassion Breeds Official Corruption

It’s important to review these incentives, because it clarifies exactly why Venice is the epicenter of America’s homeless mismanagement crisis. Not only are homeless people incentivized to become homeless—since there is minimal law enforcement permitted, they can migrate to a beautiful place and take over. And then, in a brutal inversion of fairness, the people who live there are vilified for objecting.

But what about the land developers and the powerful nonprofit organizations? They have an incentive to see more homeless people. Because then they can build more structures that are exempt from the rules—justifiable or not—which govern all other construction.

Simple, very simple, math explains how preposterous—if not criminal—the situation in Venice has become. To house every one of Los Angeles County’s 60,000 homeless in the “Monster on the Median,” or similarly expensive structures, would cost $66 billion. Got that? Just to provide “permanent supportive housing” to the existing homeless in Los Angeles.

That’s Eric Garcetti’s “vision.”

Perhaps the tone of this commentary lacks compassion for the homeless. That would be a fair criticism. But not adequately explained in most reports on the homeless population is that the majority of the allegedly 60 percent of them who are simply people down on their luck, who don’t use drugs or commit crimes, have found shelter. They either stay with friends, family, occupy legitimate campsites, or stay in existing shelters.

The majority of the homeless who stay on the street, on the other hand, are drug addicts, alcoholics, or mentally ill, along with criminals and bums. They need to be rounded up, sorted by affliction, and treated in cost-effective compounds. There are examples all over the world of well-managed tent cities that cost a minute fraction of what the “Monster on the Median” will cost in Venice Beach. Put these compounds out in remote and inexpensive areas of Los Angeles County, and use the hundreds of millions in savings to offer humane treatment to these lost souls.

There is nothing compassionate about building million dollar apartments for a handful of homeless, condemning the rest of them to stay on the street. Venice Beach’s proposed Monster on the Median, an out-of-place, oversized, sterile box with a veneer of architectural flourishes, is corruption incarnate. It must never be allowed to exist.

President Trump has a background in property development. He likes to build things. But he has enough common sense to know you can’t build a Trump Tower, with gilded faucets and cathedral ceilings, to house homeless people.

Before the federal government sends Mayor Garcetti any more money to help the homeless, it would be a good thing to expose this unforgivable waste of money and hold people accountable. We can hope President Trump will demand Garcetti build homeless accommodations that cost literally 1/100th as much per bed, and build them in weeks, not years, and locate them in low cost areas of Los Angeles County, instead of on a world-class beach.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

 *   *   *

 

Politicians Who Accept Government Union Money Betray the Public

/by

Public sector unions should be illegal. They have very little in common with private sector unions, which, properly regulated, play a vital role in society. The differences between public sector and private sector unions are significant. For example:

1 – Private sector unions cannot be unreasonable in the demands they bring to negotiations with management, because if they ask for too much, they will bankrupt the company. Public sector unions, on the other hand, know that government agencies can simply raise taxes to fund their demands.

2 – Private sector unions negotiate with management that is either elected by shareholders or represents private owners of the company. Public sector unions negotiate with politicians who are often elected using campaign contributions that came from those unions. Politicians know that if they reject union demands, the unions will fight their reelection and replace them with a politician who will do what they want.

3 – Private sector unions are not generally pushing a political agenda that goes beyond their pay and benefits, their work conditions, and the practices specific to their industry. Public sector unions are unified in their drive for higher taxes, and more tax revenues allocated to pay and benefits for public employees. Increasingly, equally significant, and unlike private sector unions, public sector unions share an ideological agenda that favors bigger government.

The inherent political agenda of public sector unions is more pay and benefits for public employees, work rules that result in more government employees than might actually be necessary to efficiently perform government services, and more government programs and agencies in order to hire still more government employees who become union members paying union dues.

This is perfectly understandable. Organizations of all types seek to expand and grow. But translated into to the public sector, it means the political agenda of public sector unions is inherently in conflict with the public interest. They want to grow government, and when government programs fail, they want to grow government even more to fix them. And they are powerful enough to pursue this exact agenda, time after time.

The consequences in union-controlled California are obvious: high taxes, punitive regulations, financially stressed cities and counties, failing schools, and crumbling, inadequate infrastructure, to name a few.

These facts lead to a logical and completely nonpartisan conclusion – public sector unions should be illegal. And if they’re not illegal, than at the least, they should be exposed. Politicians of all parties should be willing to stand up to these unions, to refuse to accept their campaign contributions, and to explain to the public that public sector unions are NOT the same as private sector unions.

Any Conservative Taking Public Sector Union Money is NOT a Conservative

While opposing unions ought to be a nonpartisan issue, it is an issue that ought to be of particular concern to conservatives. After all, while liberals ought to be appalled at the inefficiencies introduced to government by the public sector union agenda, they’re not necessarily opposed to bigger government. But for conservatives, who support limited government, accepting public sector union money and endorsements is heresy. It is a violation of the prime directive. It demands expulsion.

Unfortunately, engaging in politics in California requires big money, and public sector unions have a lot of it. Approximately 466,000 people live within the average State Assembly District; twice that many live within the average State Senate District in California. Congressional Districts hold around 747,000 people, less than a State Senate District. And the big money to pay for these big races is all leaning in favor of big government liberals. So if you can’t beat them, join them?

This might explain the actions of Republican Assemblyman Tyler Diep, representing the 72nd Assembly District in Orange County. Now accepting contributions for his 2020 reelection campaign, Diep has already accepted over $20,000 from unions, most of them public employee unions. In return, Diep has already publicly embraced these unions. In one recent Tweet, he stated he is “proud to represent the many members of the Orange County Employees Association.”

It’s worth wondering whether or not Tyler Diep, a 36 year old Vietnamese immigrant, is fully aware of the havoc public employee unions have wrought on California’s politics. The Orange County Employees Association, for example, is affiliated with the Costa Mesa City Employees Association, which was bitterly opposed to the reform coalition that for a brief time held a majority on the Costa Mesa city council.

These reform minded councilmembers attempted to rein in the out-of-control pension costs and other compensation gaming that was breaking the city. But they were eventually outgunned and driven out of office because of the relentless onslaught of public sector union money. Public sector unions collect and spend over $800 million per year in California. No other special interest comes even close. And their agenda, invariably, is more money, more benefits, more work rules, and bigger government.

Things are back to normal in Costa Mesa these days. A pro-union majority controls the city council. The average full time firefighter in Costa Mesa now collects $256,000 per year in pay and benefits. Let that sink in. Two hundred and fifty six thousand dollars per year in pay and benefits. Is that unbelievable? Then download the spreadsheet – if you find any inaccuracies, please comment. Can taxpayers afford this, particularly since those costs will rise sharply over the next few years as CalPERS enforces their plan to nearly double required pension contributions?

Did Diep, whose district is adjacent to the one that incorporates Costa Mesa, think about this when he launched this Tweet, showing him rubbing elbows with members of Firefighters Local 3631? Has Assemblyman Diep thought about how he’ll stare down these union donors, and tell them he’s going to support a state constitutional amendment to right-size public sector pensions?

Everyone respects and appreciates firefighters, but taxpayers cannot afford to pay them an average pay and benefits package worth over quarter-million dollars per year. Assemblyman Diep lives in the city of Westminster, where the median household income is $60,426 per year. That is less than one-fourth what Costa Mesa’s full time firefighters make. It is unnecessary and unfair to taxpayers to continue to pay firefighters a quarter-million per year, no matter how much we respect them.

The reason they are over-compensated, along with most public employees, is because of the money they spend on political campaigns to elect the politicians with whom they then negotiate their labor agreements. As a former city councilman living in Orange County once said: “If I vote against that contract, the unions will spend a million dollars to oppose me in the next election – who else is going to come up with a million dollars?”

The Leftist Agenda of California’s Public Sector Unions

If the political problems with firefighter unions were limited to arguing over compensation, that would be quite enough. But earlier this year, California’s firefighters, in an act of stupendous and misguided arrogance, actually marched in solidarity with the United Teachers of Los Angeles. Is it financial ignorance, or actual adherence to a leftist agenda that motivated these firefighters to commit what many of us would consider the ultimate act of betrayal?

California’s children are California’s future, and teachers union leaders have all but destroyed the quality of education these children receive. They oppose charter schools, they oppose school choice, they oppose vouchers, they oppose extending tenure requirements, they oppose reform of work rules governing layoff and dismissal policies, and they support curricula that indoctrinates instead of educates.

Public safety unions may be making public safety too costly, but they have not destroyed the effectiveness of their own professions. The teachers union is guilty of precisely that crime – they have destroyed California’s public schools. Firefighters should be ashamed of having anything to do with the teachers union.

And Assemblymember Diep, particularly if he considers himself a conservative, should be ashamed of having anything to do with public sector unions. He should never accept another dime in donations from any of them. And before he even talks or meets with them, he should ask THEM to sign the following pledge:

THE AMERICAN PUBLIC SERVANT PLEDGE

(1) Americans First: We recognize that the interests of the American citizens we serve come first; before the interests of the government, government employees, or non-citizens.

(2) Citizens Before Government: We understand that sometimes government policies benefit ourselves and our union more than they benefit the general public, and we will always put the public interest before the interests of ourselves or our unions.

(3) Shared Sacrifice: During times of economic hardship or declining budgets, we are willing to make reasonable sacrifices, proportionate to what the general public is enduring.

(4) Same Rules: We do not expect our union to protect us if we have engaged in behavior on the job – through incompetence, negligence, or criminality – that would get us fired in the private sector, and we expect our union to refrain from protecting bad behavior of any kind.

(5) Same Benefits: We realize that our pension benefits far exceed private sector norms, that they are financially unsustainable and unfair to taxpayers. Consequently, for work we have not yet performed, we support reductions to our pension benefit accruals to pre-1999 multipliers.

(6) Political Neutrality: As public servants our calling is to be nonpartisan and politically neutral, and we expect our unions to limit their activities to collective bargaining.

How Vision Can Overcome Money

Being a conservative in California has to mean something. If you take money from public sector unions, the chief engineers of California’s decline, then being a limited government advocate, i.e., a conservative, means nothing.

There are two ways to cut through an overwhelming financial advantage. One is by being controversial. The other is by having a compelling vision. Controversy works quite well, as President Trump proved in 2016 when he beat 16 other candidates to secure the Republican nomination for President. Today Trump dominates the news cycle by feeding an infantile news corps Tweets that trigger Pavlovian responses which, if he were purchasing airtime, would by now have cost hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars.

You don’t have to be as controversial as President Trump to get air in California. Just tell the truth, then offer solutions, and let the media shriek and howl with indignation. Here are just few such nuggets:

(1) Truth: Public sector unions are an abomination to our democracy. Solution: They should be illegal.

(2) Truth: Overwrought environmental laws are the reason housing and utility costs are unaffordable. Solution: Many of them must be repealed.

(3) Truth: The teachers union has destroyed K-12 public education. Solution: School choice, school vouchers, charter schools, work rule reform, and eliminating teachers unions will restore quality and cost efficiencies to California’s K-12 educational system.

(4) Truth: Public sector pensions are too generous and too expensive. Solution: Public sector employee retirement benefits should be converted from pensions into Social Security, just like the citizens they serve.

Assemblyman Diep, along with anyone else, of either party, in California’s state legislature, is invited to proclaim these truths, and these solutions.

Assemblyman Diep, along with anyone else, of either party, in California’s state legislature, is also invited to offer the “public servant pledge” to anyone who wants to endorse them, especially the leadership of public sector unions.

Doing this would require personal courage and political vision. And while these steps are actually mild, moderate policy innovations, they would provoke vehement outrage from the establishment liberals and their media allies. This unwarranted and very public outrage, in turn, would awaken California’s voters, who would realize they have been conned.

They would realize that rather than being the planet killing bigots they were told to fear, conservatives are actually the people fighting for THEM, and liberals are the liars who hid behind slander, while they looted the resources of the entire state and oppressed its people.

This article originally appeared on the website of the California Policy Center.

 *   *   *

Public Sector Unions Buy Another “Republican” Politician

/by

As a force in state politics, California’s Republican party is, for all practical purposes, dead. Republicans hold only 11 of 40 seats in the State Senate, and just 18 of 80 seats in the State Assembly. Not one statewide office is in Republican hands.

California’s Republican party is so ridiculously tainted that even the respected, undeniably capable Steve Poizner, a life-long Republican, running for state insurance commissioner in 2018 as an independent, could not get elected. He was beaten by the scandal plagued Ricardo Lara, whose stellar qualifications as insurance commissioner include an undergraduate degree in Chicano Studies, followed by years as an Assembly staffer.

Apparently, California’s voters prefer to elect anyone, so long as they are not now, and never have been, a Republican. How it came to this is a long story, but the outcome can be summarized in one fairly short sentence: Democrats have successfully stigmatized California’s Republicans as racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic bigots, who, as if that weren’t enough, want to destroy the planet in order to please their evil capitalist donors.

In response to what is, to put it mildly, a despicable lie, Republicans in California have tried desperately to prove they’re not racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic bigots who want to destroy the planet in order to please their evil capitalist donors. But it’s hard to prove a negative.

When they’re not busy denying that they’re bad people, California’s Republicans play defense, opposing an ongoing torrent of Democrat sponsored legislation guaranteed to make California less affordable, more hostile to small business, less able to offer quality K-12 education, with more homeless encampments, fewer new homes, less law and order, but ever more absurd laws and onerous regulations.

Playing defense against a predatory, clueless gang of utopians backed by statist oligarchs is an important job. But when you’re a party of incorrigible bigots that control less than 25 percent of the state legislature, it’s an exercise in futility. California’s Republicans have to go on offense.

When Money Talks, Vision Walks

Unfortunately, engaging in politics in California requires big money. Approximately 466,000 people live within the average State Assembly District; twice that many live within the average State Senate District in California. Congressional Districts hold around 747,000 people, less than a State Senate District. And the big money to pay for these big races is all leaning Democrat. So if you can’t beat them, join them? Become a RINO?

This might explain the actions of Republican Assemblyman Tyler Diep, representing the 72nd Assembly District in Orange County. Now accepting contributions for his 2020 reelection campaign, Diep has already accepted over $20,000 from unions, most of them public employee unions. In return, Diep has already publicly embraced these unions. In one recent Tweet, he stated he is “proud to represent the many members of the Orange County Employees Association.”

It’s worth wondering whether or not Tyler Diep, a 36 year old Vietnamese immigrant, is fully aware of the havoc public employee unions have wrought on California’s politics. The Orange County Employees Association, for example, is affiliated with the Costa Mesa City Employees Association, which was bitterly opposed to the reform coalition that for a brief time held a majority on the Costa Mesa city council.

These reform minded councilmembers attempted to rein in the out-of-control pension costs and other compensation gaming that was breaking the city. But they were eventually outgunned and driven out of office because of the relentless onslaught of public sector union money. Public sector unions collect and spend over $800 million per year in California. No other special interest comes even close. And their agenda, invariably, is more money, more benefits, more work rules, and bigger government.

Things are back to normal in Costa Mesa these days. A pro-union majority controls the city council. The average full time firefighter in Costa Mesa now collects $256,000 per year in pay and benefits. Let that sink in. Two hundred and fifty six thousand dollars per year in pay and benefits. Is that unbelievable? Then download the spreadsheet – if you find any inaccuracies, please comment. Can taxpayers afford this, particularly since those costs will rise sharply over the next few years as CalPERS enforces their plan to nearly double required pension contributions?

Did Diep, whose district is adjacent to the one that incorporates Costa Mesa, think about this when he launched this Tweet, showing him rubbing elbows with members of Firefighters Local 3631? Has Assemblyman Diep thought about how he’ll stare down these union donors, and tell them he’s going to support a state constitutional amendment to right-size public sector pensions?

Everyone respects and appreciates firefighters, but taxpayers cannot afford to pay them an average pay and benefits package worth over quarter-million dollars per year. Assemblyman Diep lives in the city of Westminster, where the median household income is $60,426 per year. That is less than one-fourth what Costa Mesa’s full time firefighters make. It is unnecessary and unfair to taxpayers to continue to pay firefighters a quarter-million per year, no matter how much we respect them.

The reason they are over-compensated, along with most public employees, is because of the money they spend on political campaigns to elect the politicians with whom they then negotiate their labor agreements. As a former city councilman living in Orange County once said: “If I vote against that contract, the unions will spend a million dollars to oppose me in the next election – who else is going to come up with a million dollars?”

The Leftist Agenda of California’s Public Sector Unions

If the political problems with firefighter unions were limited to arguing over compensation, that would be quite enough. But earlier this year, California’s firefighters, in an act of stupendous and misguided arrogance, actually marched in solidarity with the United Teachers of Los Angeles. Is it financial ignorance, or actual adherence to a leftist agenda that motivated these firefighters to commit what many of us would consider the ultimate act of betrayal?

California’s children are California’s future, and teachers union leaders have all but destroyed the quality of education these children receive. They oppose charter schools, they oppose school choice, they oppose vouchers, they oppose extending tenure requirements, they oppose reform of work rules governing layoff and dismissal policies, and they support curricula that indoctrinates instead of educates.

Public safety unions may be making public safety too costly, but they have not destroyed the effectiveness of their own professions. The teachers union is guilty of precisely that crime – they have destroyed California’s public schools. Firefighters should be ashamed of having anything to do with the teachers union.

And Assemblymember Diep, as a Republican, should be ashamed of having anything to do with public sector unions. He should never accept another dime in donations from any of them. And before he even talks or meets with them, he should ask THEM to sign the following pledge:

THE AMERICAN PUBLIC SERVANT PLEDGE

(1) Americans First: We recognize that the interests of the American citizens we serve come first; before the interests of the government, government employees, or non-citizens.

(2) Citizens Before Government: We understand that sometimes government policies benefit ourselves and our union more than they benefit the general public, and we will always put the public interest before the interests of ourselves or our unions.

(3) Shared Sacrifice: During times of economic hardship or declining budgets, we are willing to make reasonable sacrifices, proportionate to what the general public is enduring.

(4) Same Rules: We do not expect our union to protect us if we have engaged in behavior on the job – through incompetence, negligence, or criminality – that would get us fired in the private sector, and we expect our union to refrain from protecting bad behavior of any kind.

(5) Same Benefits: We realize that our pension benefits far exceed private sector norms, that they are financially unsustainable and unfair to taxpayers. Consequently, for work we have not yet performed, we support reductions to our pension benefit accruals to pre-1999 multipliers.

(6) Political Neutrality: As public servants our calling is to be nonpartisan and politically neutral, and we expect our unions to limit their activities to collective bargaining.

How Vision Can Overcome Money

Being a Republican in California has to mean something. If you take money from public sector unions, the chief engineers of California’s decline under the Democrats, then being a Republican means nothing.

There are two ways to cut through an overwhelming financial advantage. One is by being controversial. The other is by having a compelling vision. Controversy works quite well, as President Trump proved in 2016 when he beat 16 other candidates to secure the Republican nomination for President. Today Trump dominates the news cycle by feeding an infantile news corps Tweets that trigger Pavlovian responses which, if he were purchasing airtime, would by now have cost hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars.

You don’t have to be as controversial as President Trump to get air in California. Just tell the truth, then offer solutions, and let the media shriek and howl with indignation. Here are just few such nuggets:

(1) Truth: Public sector unions are an abomination to our democracy. Solution: They should be illegal.

(2) Truth: Overwrought environmental laws are the reason housing and utility costs are unaffordable. Solution: Many of them must be repealed.

(3) Truth: The teachers union has destroyed K-12 public education. Solution: School choice, school vouchers, charter schools, work rule reform, and eliminating teachers unions will restore quality and cost efficiencies to California’s K-12 educational system.

(4) Truth: Public sector pensions are too generous and too expensive. Solution: Public sector employee retirement benefits should be converted from pensions into Social Security, just like the citizens they serve.

Assemblyman Diep, along with every one of his Republican counterparts in California’s state legislature, all 29 of them, is invited to proclaim these truths, and these solutions.

Assemblyman Diep, along with the entire GOP gang of 29 state legislators, is also invited to offer the “public servant pledge” to anyone who wants to endorse them, especially the leadership of public sector unions.

Doing this would require personal courage and political vision. And while these steps are actually mild, moderate policy innovations, they would provoke vehement outrage from the establishment Democrats and their media allies. This unwarranted and very public outrage, in turn, would awaken California’s voters, who would realize they have been conned.

They would realize that rather than being the planet killing bigots they were told to fear, Republicans are actually the people fighting for THEM, and Democrats are the liars who hid behind slander, while they looted the resources of the entire state and oppressed its people.

 *   *   *

The Enemies of American Infrastructure

/by

Between 2008 and 2019, China opened up 33 high speed rail routes, connecting 39 major cities along four north-south and four east-west main lines. The 18,000 mile network runs trains at an average speed of around 200 miles per hour. By 2030, the Chinese expect to double the mileage of their high speed rail network by expanding to eight north-south and eight east-west main lines. In less than 20 years, the Chinese have completely transformed their rail transportation network.

This is typical for the Chinese. China is also building three new airports – offshore. Dalian, along the north coast opposite the Korean peninsula, Xiang’an, on the central coast facing Taiwan, and Sanya, off the coast of Hainan Island in the strategic South China Sea. All three airports are to be built to the highest international levels, with 12,000 foot runways able to accommodate the Airbus A380, the world’s largest passenger airliner. All three are built on “reclaimed land,” i.e., the Chinese intend to bulldoze a few mountains into the ocean and flatten them into runways. And all three, from start to finish, will be built in under ten years.

China’s ability to construct big infrastructure, fast, is beyond debate. The Three Gorges Project, the largest dam in the world, created a deep water reservoir an astonishing 1,400 miles long. Its hydroelectric capacity of 22.5 gigawatts is the largest in the world. This massive construction project was done, from start to finish, in 12 years.

While China Builds, America Litigates

To argue that Americans don’t need high speed rail, or massive new airports on ocean landfill, or yet another massive hydroelectric dam, is beside the point. Americans can’t do any big projects. A perfect example is the Keystone Pipeline, which if it’s ever completed, will be capable of transporting 830,000 barrels of oil per day south from the tar sands of Alberta to existing pipelines in Nebraska. This pipeline has been tied up in permitting delays and litigation since 2008. Eleven years later, not one mile of pipeline has been built.

Even with aggressive support from the Trump administration, will Keystone ever get built? Not if an army of environmentalist plaintiff attorneys have their way. According to a recent report by PBS, as soon as a judge dismissed the most recent lawsuit against Keystone, another lawsuit was filed. Another construction season has been lost, another year of delay. Quoting from the article: “Representatives of a half-dozen other environmental groups vowed to keep fighting in court and predicted the pipeline will never be built.”

While Americans are divided over whether they support construction of the Keystone Pipeline, everyone supported quickly constructing towers to replace the World Trade Center towers lost in the attacks of 9/11/2001. One may assume that in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, designs, bids and permitting were fast-tracked, yet it took over five years before construction began. Freedom Tower, the dazzling replacement to the twin towers, didn’t open until 2014, over 13 years after the 9/11 tragedy.

By contrast, the Empire State Building was built in 14 months. And while Freedom Tower is undoubtedly constructed to higher modern standards, that should be offset by equally more advanced construction practices. A more current example would be the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. This mega-structure, more than twice the height of Freedom Tower, was built in just under six years.

America’s inability to build anything big has almost nothing to do with the quality of American engineering, or capabilities of America’s construction industry. Blame lies exclusively with American politicians, judges, government bureaucrats, and plaintiff attorneys. Nobody wants to throw away all environmental protections, but the process now in place of permit delays and litigation has paralyzed the nation. It has become extreme. Americans are wearing out infrastructure that was built decades ago. Thanks to permit delays and litigation, the costs of replacements and upgrades are prohibitive.

President Trump, who made his billions in the construction business, has done as much as he possibly can to cut regulations on builders, but without support from Congress or the courts, change is incremental. In late 2017, when announcing regulations he was eliminating, Trump stood in front of two piles of paper. One set of stacks, barely reaching his knees, represented the federal regulations in place in 1960. The other set of stacks, over seven feet in height, represented the totality of federal regulations in effect today. These regulations, upheld and expanded by courts and bureaucrats, serving as fodder for their delays and extortionate demands, are the reason America can no longer build anything big.

Unaffordable Homes? Thank Permitting Delays and Endless Litigation

Even housing starts are tied up in knots thanks to federal regulations, although differing regulatory environments in various states make a big difference. In California – which will be America if Democrats regain the White House in 2020 – it is nearly impossible to build homes.

A particularly egregious example of what California has in store for the rest of America is the proposed Tejon Ranch housing project that has been embroiled in permitting delays and lawsuits for over 25 years. This massive project, a planned community of over 19,000 badly needed new homes, would straddle Interstate 5 in the northwest corner of Los Angeles County. The developers have committed to set aside ninety percent of the land as a nature preserve, after which the NRDC, the Sierra Club, and the Nature Conservancy all withdrew their objections. But it only takes one: The “Center for Biological Diversity” has filed yet another lawsuit, and another year is lost.

Americans could build so much more, for less money, and in far less time, if balance were restored to the process of approving construction projects. The cost of permitting delays and litigation can literally double or triple the costs of construction, or worse. California’s Carlsbad desalination plant was constructed at a capital cost of $17,000 per acre foot of annual capacity; modern desalination plants in Israel (that require less electricity) are being constructed at a capital cost of just over $4,000 per acre foot of annual capacity, less than one fourth as much.

Everywhere on earth, nations are building big infrastructure and providing affordable housing for a fraction of what it costs in America.

If these environmentalists, bureaucrats, and plaintiff attorneys actually believe in saving a planet and a people desperately threatened by “climate change,” they’re being awfully impractical. How can Americans possibly build seawalls to protect them from the storm surges of a rising sea, or desalinate seawater to take pressure off the drought stricken rivers, if projects take decades instead of years, and cost many times what they might cost in other nations?

How, for that matter, since the environmentalists and the open-borders crowd are birds of a feather, can America add hundreds of millions to its population through a massive wave of immigration that hasn’t abated in over 30 years, yet make it nearly impossible to build homes or enabling infrastructure?

Competitive Abundance vs Rationed Scarcity

The prospects for abundance instead of rationed scarcity are good, if Congress and the courts were to support the president and enact meaningful reforms to a host of environmental regulations that have gone way too far. Nuclear power, clean fossil fuel, desalination plants, upgraded roads with high-speed “smart lanes,” high-rise agriculture, flying cars and spaceports. Entire new cities with millions of beautiful homes on spacious lots – none of this is out of reach. But it requires the kind of freedom that developers enjoyed in the 1960s, tempered to modern sensibilities, but with balance.

The consequences of not reforming America’s stultifying regulatory climate go beyond denying the American people a life of affordable abundance, delivered by competitive development of land, energy, and water resources. They spell the end of American preeminence, because while Americans spend trillions to pay unionized government bureaucrats and environmentalist attorneys, the Chinese are spending equivalent trillions on cost-effective infrastructure, with plenty left over to develop hypersonic missiles, brilliant pebbles, particle beams, etc.

Joel Kotkin, editor of NewGeography.com and perhaps California’s smartest Democrat, just published a column entitled “Will the Democrats End Up Saving California’s Republican Party.” He argues that “their [the Democrats] flawed, draconian positions on what to do about climate change have made things worse for ordinary Californians by raising housing and energy prices as well as chasing employers out of the state, but with only mediocre results.” In his conclusion, he explains what’s needed – in California and in the rest of America: “You need a positive program centered on reining in pensions, reform of schools, better attention to roads, promoting new houses in redundant commercial areas as well as the periphery and cuts in the cost of energy. Focus on these issues would expose Democrats as creatures of special interest — teachers unions, public employee groups, the renewable energy lobbies — whose power hurts middle-class homeowners, a group which has been drifting away from them for a generation.”

Kotkin’s analysis is accurate. “Public employee groups” and “the renewable energy lobbies” are special interests. If not one and the same, they are allied with the government bureaucrats and environmentalist attorneys who amass power and money every time they stop or delay another infrastructure project or housing development. They are sapping American wealth, oppressing the American people, and empowering hostile regimes around the world.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

 *   *   *

 

Inflation vs Deflation – Only One Choice

/by

Critics of government deficit spending correctly point out that perpetual debt accumulation is not sustainable. They’re right. But before they criticize an economic policy that aims to use inflation to whittle away the real value – and hence the actual burden – of accumulated debt, they’d be wise to consider the alternatives. Because there aren’t any.

Deficit spending has been touted as a potential driver of inflation, because only with devalued (inflated) currency can Americans hope to erode the real value of mounting levels of government debt. Continuing to print U.S. dollars, it is claimed, can only lead to too many dollars in the system, and hence a devalued dollar. We should be so lucky.

When American households join the Federal Government in spending more than they make, the only way to keep this up is to lower interest rates and increase the value of the underlying collateral. This second factor, the value of collateral, is particularly important for the American consumer, who has relied on home equity appreciation to enable ongoing borrowing which in-turn enabled ongoing spending beyond their means. The so-called financialization of the American economy over the past few decades has been specifically aimed at increasing the value of assets in order to stimulate more borrowing and spending.

The deflationary risk caused by debt accumulation becomes most acute if and when this asset-price bubble bursts. When the market value of the collateral suddenly becomes worth less than the amount of the loans outstanding, banks cannot extend new credit to the private sector, even at very low rates of interest.

Another way to put this is as follows: Liquidity is a function of two factors, money supply and collateral. But the impact of available collateral is far more critical to maintaining liquidity than the money supply. According to the most recent data from the U.S. Federal Reserve, in the first quarter of 2019 the total U.S. wealth, all sectors, totaled $98.3 trillion. What happens to the value of that collateral if banks cannot extend new credit? How is a deflationary spiral avoided when no new borrowing is possible, causing a collapse of demand to purchase assets, causing a compounding drop in the market value of those assets?

This is the cascading collapse of liquidity that was narrowly avoided in 2009. But with total market debt in the U.S. still hovering at approximately 343 percent of GDP, or not quite $80 trillion, it remains a threat to the American economy. Raising interest rates at this time risks the catastrophic possibility of a deflationary collapse, because if interest rates rise, borrowing and spending slow down, asset values drop because of reduced demand, and one after another, bank balance sheets show loan balances that exceed collateral value. Yet this is the alternative that deficit hawks apparently prefer to managed inflation. It is neither a more virtuous solution, nor is it necessary, nor would it work.

Even if raising interest rates does not trigger an economic calamity, it would merely continue the relentless transfer of wealth in America from the middle class to the investor class – Americans would not have borrowed so much if the economy had not become financialized, making everything cost far more. Inflation transfers wealth back from the investor class to the middle class, by eroding the value of their debt. Those responsible Americans who didn’t succumb to the debt temptation should think twice before rejecting the inflation choice. It won’t matter if your bank savings are intact when the banks fail.

How Can Inflation Be Managed to Benefit Ordinary Americans?

If one is willing to assume that inflation is a better pathway out of excessive debt than deflation, the prevailing challenge becomes how to ensure this inflation will benefit ordinary Americans. Since the 1970s, wage inflation has not kept pace with asset inflation. The challenge is to flip that ratio, so that asset inflation (and debt devaluation) does not keep pace with wage inflation.

If this can be accomplished, the cost of living for ordinary Americans will actually go down, even in an inflationary environment. Their wages will be increasing faster than the consumer price index, and the real value of their debt and interest payments will be declining. How can this be done?

As noted in a previous article, two key policy shifts are necessary to ensure wage inflation outpaces asset inflation and the CPI. First, get immigration under control so there is a sellers market for labor instead of a buyers market for labor. Second, relax the extreme environmental laws that prevent Americans from developing their own natural resources and upgrading their infrastructure. Relaxing these ridiculously excessive, punitive, misanthropic, misused and extreme environmental regulations will also dramatically lower the price of new homes.

Not only does increasing mining and drilling operations within the United States create more jobs, but it is a necessary step to take as domestic inflation equates to currency devaluation. By devaluing the dollar through inflation fueled by deficit spending and low interest rates, in-country development of natural resources becomes cheaper than importing them.

Managed Inflation is the Only Alternative

Critics of deficit spending act as if there is a choice to be made, that somehow the circumstances and givens that confront America’s policymakers are not unyielding, that somehow by harping on the virtue of living within our means, they can bend reality. But they can’t. The harsh reality is this: America’s federal government is locked into a pattern of deficit spending that cannot be stopped in the near future. America’s accumulated debt will either be smoothly resolved via managed inflation, or resolved catastrophically via unmanageable deflation that will cause an economic meltdown.

Moreover, federal deficit spending needs to increase. Now. Because putting aside the fantasies of all who would wish this weren’t so (libertarians, socialists, and nationalists all have such wishful thinkers well represented within their ranks), America is in a battle for global supremacy with the Chinese, who must be contained by the United States waging an expensive cold war that will last for decades. One does not have to be a “neocon shill” to recognize this sad fact. One only has to study history, and then observe the actions of the Chinese regime.

None of this macroeconomic reality is meant to absolve the American consumers who decided to sink into debt up to their eyeballs. It doesn’t excuse the students who chose to pay obscene amounts for college tuition, using borrowed money, nor does it excuse the loan sharks who extended them that credit, or the criminals who turned higher education into a money making scam. It is not meant to ignore the costly, useless “solutions” demanded and received by poverty pimps and identity fascists. It doesn’t let off the hook all those environmentalist fanatics and their opportunistic “green” crony capitalist puppeteers who tied our economy up in knots, nor does it forgive the public sector unions who made government services unaffordable and inefficient.

It just is what it is. Where do we go from here?

There is no palatable alternative. If America’s policymakers return to the feckless cowardice of the Obama years, appeasement will again define federal policy. Appeasement of the Chinese by neglecting our military readiness and a firm commitment to containment. Appeasement of the deficit hawks by raising interest rates, as if somehow without inflation we’re still going to whittle away $80 trillion in government and household debt. Appeasement that will turn the fate of the world over President Xi, and turn America into a debtors prison.

The United States needs to spend more on its military, it needs to spend more on its infrastructure, even if that means increasing the federal deficit. The United States then needs to restrict immigration and roll back extreme environmental regulations in order to ensure that wages inflate faster than the consumer price index. This managed inflation will not only whittle away the real value of American debt, but it will serve as a tool to reduce the real value of non-military, non-infrastructure related entitlement spending.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

 *   *   *

 

Deficits Are Secondary to WHAT You’re Paying For

/by

“I am not worried about the deficit. It is big enough to take care of itself.”
– Ronald Reagan

If you pay attention to the libertarian purists, President Reagan earns mixed reviews on his economic policies. After all, in 1983, the federal budget deficit exceeded 6 percent of GDP. But Reagan was untroubled by federal budget deficits for at least two reasons, and in both cases he has been vindicated by history.

Reagan’s priorities were to unleash the American economy, which he accomplished through deregulation, and to invest in American military supremacy. As the federal budget surpluses of the 1990s and the collapse of the Soviet Union can attest, Reagan had his priorities straight, and got the results he sought.

When it comes to deficit spending and the military challenges facing an American president, Reagan and Trump have a lot in common. Mostly through executive orders, and to some extent through legislation, Trump has deregulated the American economy. He has also successfully reinvested in America’s military.

To put this in perspective, Trump’s projected 2019 federal budget deficit of $960 billion is 4.5 percent the 2019 GDP projection of $21.2 trillion. And Trump’s projected 2019 defense budget of $716 billion is 3.3 percent of GDP. Military spending during most of the Reagan years was around 6 percent of GDP, and during his presidency the federal budget deficits averaged 4.3 percent.

Like Reagan, Trump took office having to clean up after a predecessor whose foreign policy amounted to feckless weakness and futile moralizing. Jimmy Carter faced Soviet aggression, Barrack Obama faced Communist China. Neither of them were taken seriously by these adversaries. Both of them neglected America’s military. But Trump’s mess is bigger than Reagan’s ever was.

To properly deter China, an expansionist, racist, fascist kleptocracy bent on world domination, a high-tech prison camp with 1.3 billion inmates, America’s defense budget should rise to the percentage of GDP that it was during the Reagan years. This would suggest that America’s defense budget for 2019 should rise to 6 percent of projected GDP, or increase by over a half-trillion dollars from $716 billion to $1.3 trillion. Although this increased spending would generate some offsetting new tax receipts, in 2019 it could hypothetically increase the federal budget deficit from the currently projected 4.5 percent of GDP to as much as 7.1 percent of GDP.

Without something approaching that level of new investment, the United States will struggle to maintain and upgrade its existing military assets and, at the same time, conduct fast-tracked investment in next generation strategic weapons.

Deficits Are Secondary to WHAT You’re Paying For

In an era where irony abounds, it’s particularly ironic that among Trump’s greatest critics are also those who are seizing upon the trendy new “modern monetary theory” (MMT) to claim that deficits don’t matter. An only slightly oversimplified summary of MMT would be the following: as long as the government has a monopoly on the issuance of currency, than the government can print as much money as it needs, and therefore deficits don’t matter. Just print more money.

There are plenty of lucid criticisms of MMT, but in one vitally important context, some critics miss the point. If resorting to MMT truly is unsustainable in the long-run, than what all that money is used for in the short run matters a great deal. According to economic sages on the left, such as Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, the federal government needs to print money – heedless of deficits – in order to pay free college tuition, free healthcare, and a host of other wonderful benefits. But while the American Left wins elections by promising more benefits, this is not the best use of funds.

To the extent military spending goes into the pockets of soldiers who spend the money in America, or send it home to be spent by their families in America, it has the same Keynesian benefit as more broadly distributed benefits such as free tuition or free healthcare for everyone. But reforming healthcare policy and dismantling most of the education bureaucracy are necessary prerequisites that might actually make increased government spending unnecessary in those areas. Military spending, on the other hand, has the salutary benefit of making America able to deter China. Spending on research and development for new strategic weaponry also delivers the Keynesian boost, while guaranteeing America’s military remains the most fearsome on earth, and yielding technological spinoffs that benefit America’s private technology sector.

The other place where deficit spending would yield strategic economic benefits is in infrastructure. Back in the 1930’s, after the last debt bubble collapsed, and America encountered a liquidity crisis, deficit spending put millions of Americans to work. Unlike the fraudulent “shovel ready” infrastructure scam perpetrated a few years ago by President Obama and his banker cronies, during the 1930’s the Americans built hydroelectric dams across the United States. They rolled out rural electrification projects. They upgraded America’s infrastructure to make the nation competitive in the 20th century. The infrastructure investments made in the 1930s are still paying dividends to the American people.

To be fair to President Obama, he did not create the paralyzing, extortionate shakedown that constitutes infrastructure approvals in 21st century America. These days, funding an infrastructure project feeds most of the money into the pockets of attorneys, environmental consultants, and government bureaucrats. Applications take years, and almost nothing ever gets built. For several decades, Americans have been living off of an aging infrastructure that was actually built 50-100 years ago.

Where the Economy is Headed is Bigger Than Any President

To be fair to President Trump, if the economy falls off a cliff, it will be the result of a debt binge joy ride that began in the 1980s. Unlike Reagan, who started his presidency confronting negligible national debt, Trump faces an accumulated federal debt burden nearly equal to GDP. But in a nod to the MMT gang, it is unlikely that more deficit spending will push the U.S. economy off a cliff, because for that to occur, international confidence in the U.S. Dollar would have to falter. And how could that possibly occur?

America is the only major economy on earth that has it all – a preeminent military, preeminent technology, the best universities, political stability, human rights, demographic health, abundant natural resources, and diverse industries. As for America’s debt burden, it is less problematic than the many financial challenges facing the European Union and the Chinese, which are the only other economies big enough for their currencies to challenge the U.S.

This is why President Trump is right to urge the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates. It helps people living in the United States to devalue the U.S. currency, and it is in the interests of the United States to experience high single digit inflation across all industries for many years. Devaluing the U.S. currency will force manufacturers to source raw materials and skilled labor domestically, creating more jobs and wealth. Moderate inflation will whittle away the real value of American consumer debt, as well as the real value of the debt burden that confronts American government agencies at all levels.

For all of this to work, however, fundamental changes are necessary in two areas of national policy. First, immigration will have to be further controlled, in order to turn the job market into a sellers market, bidding up wages at a faster rate than inflation. Second, extreme environmental laws and regulations will have to be repealed, in order to allow U.S. companies to tap America’s rich store of natural resources to replace foreign sources. Without these changes, currency devaluation could be a perilous gamble.

Economists who object to lowering interest rates fear that in an economic downturn, if interest rates are already too low, it will be impossible to rely on lowering them further in order to stimulate the economy. They’re right, but America’s economic prospects vs the rest of the world evoke the parable of the two men fleeing an aggressive bear in the woods. The survivor does not have to run faster than the bear, they only have to run faster than the other human. There is no nation on earth that is positioned even slightly as well as the U.S. to survive a global downturn.

There are contingency plans to inject liquidity in the markets in the event of a severe downturn. To ensure it is not a fool’s errand, however, a temporary fix, the United States has to use deficit spending to make investments that bring it into the 21st century – resilient new infrastructure, and military technology that leapfrogs that of our adversaries.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

 *   *   *

Defining Nationalist Environmentalism

/by

Earlier this year, an opinion columnist writing for the extreme leftist publication The Guardian, made the claim that “eco-fascism is undergoing a revival in the fetid culture of the extreme right.” His observations were in reaction to the New Zealand massacre, where the alleged shooter identified himself as an “eco-fascist.”

This accusation, that the “fetid culture of the extreme right” includes a significant cohort of genocidal eco-fascists, is gaining traction. Mother Jones just published a report entitled “Anti-Immigration White Supremacy Has Deep Roots in the Environmental Movement” that “highlights far-right extremists’ budding revival of eco-fascism.” That report reprises a New Yorker article from 2015 entitled “Environmentalism’s Racist History.”

Expect more of this from the establishment media: Right wing equals white supremacist equals genocidal eco-fascist. But where are they going with this new narrative? If their goal is simply to underscore the alleged danger presented by anyone right-of-center, is this truly the best approach? Because it doesn’t stand up to logic, and it risks exposing the illogic of most conventional environmentalist policies.

An interesting online commentator with over 450,000 subscribers on YouTube is 23 year old James Allsup. In only two years, his videos have been watched over 73 million times, and along with attracting nearly a half-million followers, he’s managed to get himself stamped as a right wing extremist and “white nationalist” by the usual suspects, the SPLC, the ADL, Media Matters, and others.

Without watching all of Allsup’s more than 200 videos posted to-date, it’s impossible to know exactly what he may have said that crossed some red line, wherever that line is drawn. But in his video just posted on August 22nd, he mocks the “white supremacist” label, correctly noting that virtually every mainstream media outlet in America is referring to President Trump as a white supremacist, and that conventional establishment wisdom holds that Trump’s hundred million supporters are also white supremacists. Allsup also amusingly notes that “white supremacy is not supported by science,” since East Asians consistently score higher than Whites on IQ tests.

When it comes to “eco-fascism,” however, Allsup’s recent video “Environmentalism is Now RACIST” not only mocks this new narrative coming from the left, but offers a four point summary of what he terms “nationalist environmentalism.”

Nationalist Environmentalism According to James Allsup

1 – Close the borders: More people means more resource consumption and more waste being generated. Fewer people generating waste means a cleaner national environment and fewer emissions that affect the global environment.

2 – Pivot from consumerism: Encourage fixing things instead of throwing them out and buying new ones, discourage wanton consumer spending, shift the culture away from buying mass produced trinkets they don’t need, encourage saving or investment.

3 – End foreign aid: Foreign aid encourages artificial population booms that are ultimately unsustainable, which in turn creates an impetus for refugee ‘crises,’ and diverts resources from domestic conservation efforts.

4 – Open up public lands: People disconnected from nature feel no need to preserve it; open up more non-commercially leased BLM (Bureau of Land Management) land for recreation and encourage good land stewardship in the public.

Allsup is on to something here. Nationalism is a term that has been weaponized by the Left to be associated with negative concepts: white supremacy, racism, xenophobia, supposedly misguided protectionism, etc. But there are alternative versions of defining American nationalism; inclusive nationalism, compassionate nationalism.

What the Left is now trying to do is weaponize the term “environmentalism” so that the only right-of-center, or, more aptly, the only nationalist version of environmentalism, is either to be a “denier” or an “eco-fascist.” Never mind that it is utterly reasonable for “deniers” to reopen the scientific debate regarding the causes of climate change and the level of threat it may represent to species and ecosystems. The stigma sticks, and now even if you’re not a “denier,” if you’re a nationalist, then you must be an “eco-fascist.”

This is absurd, of course. Allsup’s first point, close the borders, isn’t something you have to agree with categorically to get the point, which is this: No matter how responsible and sustainable you are, the more people exist on Planet Earth, the more resources will be consumed. Any American who is concerned about protecting America’s ecosystems can’t deny this simple fact, and it is the Left whose remedy is fascist.

The answer the Left has to flooding this nation with hundreds of millions of immigrants is to ration energy and water and space, cramming everyone into the footprint of existing cities, and tagging anyone who objects as both a “denier” and a “racist.” THIS is fascism, plain and simple. It’s a partnership between big government and very large, politically connected corporations, it tyrannizes and oppresses the masses, and for legitimacy it relies on scapegoating dissidents.

Consumerism built on bubbles of borrowing collateral is unsustainable

Allsup’s second point is also indisputably true, and is equally heretical. Multinational corporate growth depends not only on more people, it depends on more per-capita consumption. Especially in a financialized, debt driven economy, so-called growth depends on this, and the irony is that many leftist commentators and politicians deplore this model. Allsup is expressing a sentiment – reduce consumption – that ought to find a receptive audience among leftist environmentalists, and it is one that violates every conventional model for economic growth.

Immigration creates more consumers, urban containment (stack and pack cities) raises property values, this creates additional real estate collateral so people can borrow more to buy more products, and this enables more corporate profit. It isn’t sustainable and it certainly isn’t ecologically healthy. This is consumerism ran amok, and it typifies establishment culture. Another way corporations are trying to ensure ongoing consumption is by designing products that require upgrades and warranties and cannot be purchased but instead have to be “subscribed” to, meaning perpetual payments. This model of paying for products without ever owning them has moved from software to vehicles and appliances, and for most practical purposes, also applies to housing.

Imagine what will happen when corporations and the elites that control them decide they’re ready to move beyond the borrow and consume model for economic growth? What will they do with all the useless billions of people? It is not the alleged right-wing extremist’s alleged version of eco-fascism we should be worrying about, it’s the corporate left version that could turn genocidal. It would creep in before anyone knew what hit, wrapped up and sold as a climate crisis with cascade effects, or as an unforeseen escalation of any one of many endless wars.

Foreign aid does more harm than good

Finally, Allsup’s third point invites analysis, because it is the third leg on the stool. Along with mass immigration and rampant consumerism are the tragically flawed efforts of foreign aid. Allsup claims that foreign aid is the reason there is still rapid population growth in developing nations. He’s right. For example, most evidence gathered over the past 60 years suggests that Africa is a welfare continent in some of the worst connotations of that term. The average number of children in Somalia in 1960 was 7.3, but by the year 2000 that average had actually climbed to 7.6, suggesting that Western food aid and Western medicine lowered the death rate, and lowered infant mortality, but accomplished little in terms of female emancipation, or nurturing indigenous prosperity that correlates with lower birthrates. Somalia is typical.

Burgeoning Nigeria, a nation projected to have 410 million citizens by 2050, saw average fertility decline only slightly, from 6.4 in 1960 to 6.1 in 2000. Fertility in Ethiopia, destined to have nearly 200 million inhabitants by 2050, went from 6.9 in 1960 to 6.5 in 2000. Average fertility in tiny Uganda, where more than 105 million people are expected to reside by 2050, went from 7.0 in 1960 to 6.9 in 2000. Estimates for 2020 are just that: estimates. There is no hard evidence that the population rate of increase in sub-Saharan Africa will slow sufficiently for Africa’s projected population in 2050 to “only” reach 2.5 billion.

The ironic reality is that Africa quite likely would have been better off if no foreign aid, at least as it was formulated, had reached its shores after 1960. Not only did foreign aid play a vital role in enabling Africa’s population to have already more than quintupled since then and now, but to the extent that foreign aid was feeding people in nations that should have been developing their own rich agricultural potential, or providing medical treatment to people in nations that as a consequence had less incentive to train their own doctors, the aid instead went into the pockets of corrupt dictators who had no interest to invest in a brighter future for their nations.

Who are the true “eco-fascists”?

If eco-fascism ever takes hold in America, it will come from the globalist Left, not the nationalist Right. It is the Left that demands everyone on earth stop using fossil fuel, based on the preposterous lie that prosperity can be delivered without it. It is the Left that values compassion without conditions, without regard for consequences, and hence showers aid on dependent nations and dependent communities despite the fact that this aid only creates more dependency. It is the Left that preaches resentment instead of responsibility, and forced race and gender quotas instead of a meritocracy. None of this can last. All of this is nihilistic.

There is a vision of humanity’s future that is beautiful. But the Left doesn’t have a clue how to achieve it. This vision requires competitive economic development and innovation that rejects socialist intervention and also rejects the stultifying manipulations of multi-national corporate monopolies that seek to corner markets and squelch competition. What makes commentators like James Allsup so dangerous is they are recognizing that these are two sides of the same coin. Perhaps that’s why he’s just been banned from Twitter and Facebook.

The only difference is that a socialist cataclysm would be the result of corruption, evil, and incompetence, whereas if there is a corporate cataclysm, it is quite likely that many of them would know exactly what they were doing. And THAT is the eco-fascist threat that anyone, no matter what their nationality, should take seriously indeed.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

 *   *   *

The Real Reason Behind the Drive to Unionize Charter Schools

/by

Want to know another reason California’s teachers unions are desperate to unionize charter schools? They want the leverage to force these schools to participate in CalSTRS, because CalSTRS charges all its participants the same pension contribution rates.

This is a truly amazing, grotesquely unfair, astonishing scam. It means that new schools have to pay for the every financial mistake that CalSTRS ever made, and they’ve made plenty. CalSTRS is only 64 percent funded. CalSTRS is $107 billion in debt – that’s $238,000 per active member. Better get more active members!

Even CalPERS, the largest public employee pension system in the U.S., and one that has engaged in its own share of accounting gimmicks, doesn’t make its financially responsible participants pay for the negligence of its financially irresponsible participants. Every agency that relies on CalPERS has its funded ratio individually calculated. If a local governing board managed to negotiate financially sustainable benefits, or increased their contributions, or otherwise managed to do something right, they have a higher funded ratio, a lower liability, and make lower payments.

Not so with CalSTRS.

A grim gallop through the latest financial reports for CalSTRS will vividly illustrate just how royally CalSTRS will abuse any newcomer to their system, and you don’t have to look very far. Page two of the report for 6/30/2018 has a table displaying the 38.7 percent contribution rate – expressed as a percentage of pension eligible payroll – that participants pay. Employers pay 18.13 percent, the state kicks in another 10.33 percent, and the members – through payroll withholding – pay 10.25 percent.

Altogether, taxpayers – that is, the local employer plus the state – pay 28.5 percent of payroll to fund CalSTRS. That’s a lot, and the reason it’s so much is because CalSTRS has to collect extra to pay down that $107 billion unfunded liability. How much of the contribution is for that?

Good question. On page 4 that question is answered in the section entitled “Normal Cost Rate for CalSTRS 2% at 62 Members.” The relevant passage reads: “As of June 30, 2018, the Normal Cost Rate for the CalSTRS 2% at 62 members is 17.863%. We recommend the board adopt this rate.”

Got that? If you are entering the CalSTRS system with a fresh set of employees, without the baggage of missed earnings forecasts, or the history of scandalously undercharged contributions, you should be paying 17.9 percent of pension eligible payroll into the pension system in order to deliver a “2% at 62” pension to your employees. If the employee pays half of that via payroll withholding (they’re paying 10.25 percent currently, which is more than half), then the employer only has to come up with 9 percent.

Instead, if you join CalSTRS as a new agency participant, the required contribution is 38.7 percent of payroll, or 28.5 percent for the employer after taking into account the 10.25 percent contributed by employees via payroll withholding. That’s a pile of money. It more than triples the employer’s pension contribution, from 9 percent to over 28 percent. For nothing.

The astute reader will note that a new local “agency” would not actually pay 28.5 percent, since the state government pays 10.33 percent of that. This is true, which means actually the local employer’s pension contribution only increases from 9 percent to 18 percent in order to pay for the past mistakes of CalSTRS. It only doubles. For nothing. But the employer contribution is paid for by taxpayers, whether those funds are sourced locally or from Sacramento. To fund teacher pensions, taxpayers are paying triple what they would be paying if CalSTRS had been managed responsibly. And, for that matter, why should an employer’s “normal” contribution be 17 percent? Why not 9.2 percent, which would constitute an excellent private sector retirement benefit – 6.2 percent for Social Security and a 3 percent matching contribution into a 401K?

It isn’t as if CalSTRS didn’t know what they were facing. Scroll down to page 47 of the 6/30/2018 financials for CalSTRS and have a look at the table entitled “Historical Aggregate DB [Defined Benefit] Program Contribution Rate.” This is damning evidence. In 2009 CalSTRS knew they needed to raise their contribution rate to 32 percent (the green line), but they kept their actual collected contributions barely over 15 percent, less than half what was needed. Over the next few years they raised their required contributions marginally, not breaking 20 percent until 2014, then suddenly ramping them up to 25 percent in 2015, and then finally they began to charge over 30 percent of payroll, but not until 2017, eight years after they knew they had a huge problem.

This dismal failure to face financial reality is reflected in the growth of the unfunded liability for CalSTRS, as disclosed on page 24 of their financials. Back in 2008, CalSTRS was 87 percent funded, but one year later, in 2009, it was only 78 percent funded. By 2010 that had dropped to 71 percent, and the fall continued all the way through 2017, when they bottomed out (hopefully) at 63 percent funded.

Why did CalSTRS wait so long? And why, when participating in CalSTRS is a choice that new charter schools still have, would any of them, anywhere, ever want to make that choice?

This article originally appeared on the website of the California Policy Center.

 *   *   *

 

 

 

 

Big Tech Censors Strike Again

/by

Earlier this week YouTube banned three more independent commentators. James Allsup, “The Iconoclast,” and “Way of the World.” Their crime? Outspoken defense of Western Culture, which apparently is now considered “hate speech.” Taken together, the videos posted by these three commentators had been watched over 100 million times.

The most prominent of these newly banished, James Allsup, had over 450,000 subscribers. Thanks to this latest move by YouTube, America’s defacto Ministry of Truth, nearly a half-million Americans now have less reason than ever to believe their first amendment rights will be protected, and, by extension, any of their constitutional rights. Do the Lords of YouTube fear “right wing extremism?” Then they need to stop taking extreme measures that provoke extreme resentment. They need to stop engaging in fascist censorship.

For those of us who have never considered ourselves extremists, and who don’t necessarily agree with everything that James Allsup and these other banished commentators ever did or said, this is nonetheless a matter of principle. It is intolerable to allow private business interests to lobotomize our collective consciousness in pursuit of their personal political agenda. That should not be happening here, in a nation that considers freedom of speech to be one of its founding principles.

One independent commentator who hasn’t yet had his tongue ripped out by the YouTube overlords, Vincent James, posted a scathing reaction to this latest act of censorship. Quote:

“The CEO of YouTube recently came out and talked about how they have an obligation to bring you the news, how they have an obligation to push down fake news and prop up authoritative news sources, and this sounds a lot like a publisher, and not like a platform.”

Later in his video, he elaborates:

“This is a matter of free speech in a new public town square that is the internet. There is no soapbox in the middle of the town square any longer, ‘town square’ is social media. These social media companies have gotten by far too long with this protection and immunity by the federal government for what their users post.

There’s a whole community of people who smoke meth, and film themselves on YouTube. This is illicit material, and those videos aren’t being taken down. If YouTube and Facebook and Twitter and all these different media companies were responsible for the content we post, they would be sued into absolute bankruptcy a long time ago. They have this blanket immunity from the federal government because they promote themselves as platforms, as a blank piece of paper where anyone can post anything as long as it follows the law of the land where they reside.

The law of the land in the United States does not include hate speech as a matter of fact the supreme court has ruled on this multiple times unanimously. The ‘hate speech,’ the ‘unpopular speech,’ is the speech that needs to be protected the most.”

Many free speech advocates may disagree with some of the commentary Vincent James has offered, but he is absolutely right about the first amendment, and he is absolutely right about these social media companies. They are either platforms or they are publishers. They cannot be both at the same time. This is a matter that requires executive action, or an urgent court battle, or legislative remedy. Don’t hold your breath.

Silencing online commentators takes many forms. They can be completely terminated, which is something occurring with increasing frequency. But they can also be deboosted, or shadowbanned, where the traffic to their sites is reduced. Some of the ways this is done are through manipulated search results, removal from “recommended videos,” removal from trending topics, or by throttling down their bandwidth. Sites can also be demonetized, where ads are no longer served onto their pages, or, even more insidiously, partially demonetized, where ads still arrive, just fewer of them. Unwanted commentators can also be attacked by throwing them off of subscription platforms such as Patreon, or even by expelling them from the payment processors such as PayPal.

Anyone who doesn’t think this is happening, and happening disproportionately to conservatives, is ignoring a mountain of evidence. Here, compiled by Vincent James, is a list of websites that have been censored by the social media companies. Here, published earlier this year by American Greatness, is a similar list of politically incorrect vloggers, and here is a list of politically inconvenient climate information websites.

There are alternative platforms, at least until the SJWs apply enough pressure to those to make them engage in similar censorship. BitChute now hosts James Allsup, Way of the World, and The Iconoclast. But BitChute is buggy, slow, and has a bad search engine. Its global Alexa traffic ranking is 3,790. Think that’s good? YouTube is #2, right after #1 Google.

BitChute will improve. But it is a fantasy to pretend these alternative platforms will challenge the monopolistic reach of Google search, or YouTube videos. They will be stigmatized as a right wing ghetto, and they will barely show up on search results. As a result, they will not offer the viral, serendipitous discovery to open minded virtual wanderers. How many of us found many of these powerful alternative voices by accident? Unless the monopolies, who reach everyone, change their ways, that will never happen again.

When principles as fundamental as the First Amendment are violated, there are consequences. The immediate consequence is a rising fury and potential radicalization of every American who is watching this travesty unfold and sees the injustice, and sees either indifference or active misrepresentation coming from the establishment media and establishment politicians.

The more far reaching consequence is the fact that if this isn’t stopped, right now, and reversed, moderate conservatives and moderate nationalists will develop increasing sympathies for their more extreme counterparts. Why wouldn’t they? Every shred of content coming out of the mainstream media and entertainment, social media, corporate marketing, academia, K-12 public education, and nonprofit advocacy groups is globalist pablum. It’s sickening to watch, and now, we are expected to tolerate censorship of the alternative voices found online?

An article published last month by the BBC comes embarrassingly close to revealing the motives behind escalating online censorship. They write: “The more mainstream these narratives become, the greater the tension will be over whether they really are extreme or whether they represent acceptable political discourse, and the views of a substantial number of real people.”

“These narratives.” That is the threat. What if we don’t want open borders? What if we would like the facts, not a bunch of skewed BS, regarding how immigration policies affect our economy and our social cohesion? What if we want balanced opinions, or just hear the other side for a change, on the issues of multiculturalism, race, feminism, gender “equity” and social justice? What if we find an unrepentant critic of identity politics to be a breath of fresh air? What if we believe there should be a robust and honest debate over globalism, or over climate change?

Everyone knows what these social media companies are doing. They are trying to influence public opinion in favor of a globalist progressive agenda. No national borders. Anti-racist racism. Anti-sexist sexism. Gender “fluidity.” Corporate socialism. And of course, “TRUMP IS EVIL.” It’s working. But they must stop. Because if they do not stop, there will be a credible case to be made that the upcoming 2020 election results are not legitimate. Remember how the Democrats made that claim back in 2016, because Russian “bots” allegedly affected a few thousand votes? Determined social media manipulation of the entire online public square will affect millions of votes.

YouTube, and all the rest – back off.

 *   *   *