The Democratic Washing Machine

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What on earth could this be referring to? Is it a metaphor? Is it to say the Democrats and their social justice cadres are washing away our history and traditions and culture? Is it conjuring the image of Democrat machine politics, selectively laundering corruption into barely legal schemes, backed by avaricious billionaires? Maybe it’s the Democratic media, brainwashing America’s gullible half?

No. Nothing so grand. The Democratic Washing Machine is just that. A washing machine. The sort of washing machine you’ll find on the display floors of retailers throughout California, coming soon to your state. An overengineered monstrosity, inflicting inconvenience and expense into something that for earlier generations had become easy and cheap.

The Democratic Washing Machine is so named because it was Democrats who decided to ruin a durable product in a mature industry. In the name of saving electricity and saving water, they couldn’t save just a little electricity and a little water. No, they had to force manufacturers to create a product that used almost NO water. And to save electricity, they turned the control panel on the washing machine into something resembling the bridge of a starship, with so many options you have to study a detailed manual to figure out how to even turn the device on. Do you want it to delay it’s start cycle to wait for a low electricity price today? Select option 7 from menu 3 unless it’s after 6 p.m., wherein you will select blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah…

Who came up with this crap? A Democratic Washing Machine in its default setting can take over an hour to do a single wash cycle, assuming you have successfully overrode its programmed predilection to connect to the internet and check the spot price of electricity before starting.

The Democratic Washing Machine is side loading instead of top loading, because that will save a few gallons of water, but your clothes flop around inside a drum that’s on a horizontal axis. Clothes get damaged and they don’t get very clean, and you have to get onto your knees on the floor to load and unload them, but hey, if you do this, the ice caps won’t melt, right?

Some especially overengineered Democratic Washing Machines, presumably taking their inspiration from the V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft, are top loading, and then once the lid is shut the drum rotates 90 degrees to establish that water sipping horizontal axis. Flop flop flop. But unlike a V-22 Osprey, the Democratic Washing Machine – although absurdly expensive – is not engineered to MilSpec standards. Things break. Better buy a warranty.

Did someone say “warranty”? How quaint. We don’t purchase washing machines anymore. We “subscribe” to our washing machines. This way, as the greenie/techie axis comes up with more “innovations,” the lucky consumer can install the new module, or receive an entire new unit. Sometimes upgrades can be remotely downloaded onto the platform (oops, “washing machine”), because we all know that washing machines need to be filled with chipsets and firmware and connected to the internet!

What is this madness? Since when was it in the interests of consumers to use washing machines that are confusing to operate, difficult to load and unload, do a poor job washing clothes, damage clothes, break down every few months, and inflict lifetime costs many times what legacy machines cost?

Blame the Democrats.

Yes, there is a Republican Washing Machine. Do you remember those television commercials showing a Maytag repair technician, sitting at an empty workbench in his shop, surrounded by shelves filled with unneeded spare parts, bored out of his wits? That was a rare example of honesty in advertising. Because in response to foreign competition, but before the Democrat coalition of greenies and techies got out of control, washing machines were built to last. Not for three years, or even ten years, but for thirty years or more.

The Republican Washing Machine takes 20 minutes to do a wash cycle instead of 60 minutes, it starts when you push the “start” button, it doesn’t take several seconds to “boot” its software systems because it doesn’t have any software systems, it’s lid is on the top so you don’t have to be a contortionist to load and unload it, it does a good job washing clothes, it doesn’t cost much, and it lasts forever.

Why? Because Republicans don’t try to micromanage our lives. Because Republicans don’t have the audacity to hide behind trial lawyers working for environmentalist mega-nonprofits and grasping high-tech “entrepreneurs” who want to force people to buy their components so they can get even richer.

The Democratic Washing Machine may not be a metaphor for liberal attempts to erase and rewrite our history, or for crooked machine politicians, or for the brainwashing media, but it is nonetheless a metaphor. It represents every overwrought, “wired,” overcomplicated product that’s being crammed down our throats. Ostensibly to save the planet, but actually merely to pad corporate profits with the support of Democratic politicians.

It has its counterparts everywhere.

Faucets that you have to wave your hands in front of to turn them on, wherein (maybe) they will issue eight thin, 1 mm diameter jets of water that can’t possibly rinse away soap, wherein they’ll stop after a few seconds and you have to start waving your hands in front of them again.

Light switches that look like a cell phone menu instead of a simple mechanical on/off switch, that once you’ve figured out how to turn them on, they turn off automatically after a few minutes unless you find the right option to disable that feature. Yes. These types of light switches are now required by law in new construction in counties throughout California.

And of course never forget that the Democratic Washing Machine is not only “washing” your clothes, it’s watching you. Collecting data designed to “help” you live a more productive and earth-friendly life. Expect a smart and observant Democratic Toilet in the near future.

Never mind that ALL indoor water used is by definition impossible to waste, since it flows to a treatment plant where it is either discharged right back to a river ecosystem or aquifer, or it is further treated and pumped right back uphill. What an inconvenient truth!

The sad fact is we could build appliances today that use the latest innovations to cut back on water and energy consumption without having to go to extremes, that are easy to use, that last even longer than the legacy products, and cost less. But we choose not to.

Blame the Democrats.

It’s time to push back, hard, against products that put consumers through these absurdities. Hang onto your legacy appliances. Call your appliance repairman. Maintain what you’ve got, because you surely will miss it when it’s gone.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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A Directory of Politically Incorrect, Algorithmically Suppressed Vloggers

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Anyone who doesn’t believe conservatives are being systematically suppressed by the communications monopolies of big tech is either not paying attention, hopelessly biased, or thoroughly brainwashed.

The process of suppression takes many forms. It isn’t merely suppression of conservative viewpoints on the major social media platforms (Google, Facebook, Twitter), but suppression of the related apps (Apple, Amazon), exclusion from the principal funding sites (Patreon, Kickstarter, GoFundMe), exclusion from the major online payment processors (PayPal, Stripe), and in some cases even access denial by the ISPs (AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner, Verizon).

In most cases, suppression has not been total. One of the first to be banished, Alex Jones, still has his “Infowars” website; one of the more recent casualties also survives online as a stand alone, the relaunched Milo Yiannopoulos’s “Dangerous” website. But in the monopolistic communications infrastructure of social media platforms, apps and funding sites, they don’t exist. If you don’t know where to look for these orphaned websites, you won’t find them.

Suppression of conservative content began in earnest after the 2016 U.S. presidential election, intensified further in the months immediately preceding the 2018 midterms, and further still with the wave of purges that took place in the Spring of 2019. This story has been told again and again, a very recent example would be testimony by Dennis Prager before the U.S. Senate on July 16th.

Finding the Vloggers Who Have Been Suppressed

It is impossible to track every conservative who has been suppressed online. For every major figure who is attacked, there are hundreds of minor figures who have also been attacked by the leftist complaint warriors and quietly deboosted, demonetized, shadowbanned, or just plain eliminated.

Here then, is a list of conservative YouTube vloggers that are still active on that platform. If you regularly view one of these channels, you will probably still see them recommended. But otherwise, even if you view similar content, it is unlikely they will appear as “recommended videos,” or if they do appear, fewer of them will appear, and those few will appear less often. Instead you will be referred to mainstream conservative channels, starting with Fox News. This shift began in April 2019, and is specifically aimed at limiting exposure to these independent platforms.

It is important to note that some of the content produced by some of the vloggers listed here actually do produce what most conservatives would consider as objectionable. It is not possible to vet the entire body of work of every one of the individuals on this list. What is remarkable, however, is how in a fair online universe, some of these vloggers should never have come under attack. The mischievous Milo Yiannopoulos, the diligent Tim Pool, and the impeccable Dennis Prager come to mind. There are many others for which there is literally no case to be made for their suppression. But so what? What if some of this content is truly offensive and objectionable? Should it be suppressed?

One fledgling attempt to circumvent the biased online monopolies is the video platform BitChute. While the site has risen to an impressive worldwide Alexa ranking of #4,065 (the YouTube monopoly is ranked #2), it still has bugs and glitches. But BitChute’s community guidelines explicitly endorse freedom of expression, and at least so far, a commitment to unbiased policing of content. On the question of suppression, BitChute’s website says “The mere fact that an idea is disliked or thought to be incorrect does not justify its censorship.”

Standing on that principle, the ideal online media platform would treat all websites equally, allowing them to rise and fall based on viewer preference, or as the cliche aptly puts it, “in the marketplace of ideas.” With all this in mind, and based on the admittedly nebulous principle that the enemy of your enemy is your friend, here is a list of the “reactionary right” vloggers as catalogued in a report published in the Fall of 2018 by the left-of-center organization Data&Society:

The Reactionary Right on YouTube according to Data&Society

James Allsup – 452,936 subscribers, 72 million views

Carl Benjamin (Sargon of Akkad) – 964,511 subscribers, 297 million views

Owen Benjamin – 262,712 subscribers, 51 million views

Taleed Brown (That Guy T) – 96,997 subscribers, 6 million views

John Canales (Mouthy Buddha) – 142,512 subscribers, 10 million views

Mike Cernovich – 77,704 subscribers, 2.6 million views

Lauren Chen (Pseudo Intellectual) – 364,058 subscribers, 34 million views

Mark Collett – 93,694 subscribers, 9 million views

Steven Crowder – 4.0 million subscribers, 817 million views

Dave Cullen (Computing Forever) – 410286 subscribers, 97 million views

Marcus Follin (The Golden One) – 95,822 subscribers, 12 million views

Nicholas Fuentes (America First) – 37,731 subscribers, 0.7 million views

Jean-François Gariépy – 47,262 subscribers, 4 million views

Faith J Goldy – 105,799 subscribers, 6 million views

Timothy Gionet (Baked Alaska) – now totally banned from YouTube

Rebecca Hargraves (Blonde in the Belly of the Beast) – 130,787 subscribers, 7 million views

Sam Harris – 339,111 subscribers, 5 million views

Brooks Heatherly (No Bullshit) – 651,990 subscribers, 136 million views

Jeff Holiday – 105,671 subscribers, 9 million views

Matt Jarbo (Mundane Matt) –  134,698 subscribers, 89 million views

Felix Lace (Black Pigeon Speaks) – 532,341 subscribers, 59 million views

Ezra Levant (Rebel Media) – 1.3 million subscribers, 452 million views

Chris Maldonado (Chris Ray Gun) – 605,475 subscribers, 92 million views

Gavin McInnes – 349,149 subscribers, 41 million views

Mister Metokur – 305,538 subscribers, 53 million views

Stefan Molyneux – 919,197 subscribers, 276 million views

Antonia Okafor – 5,841 subscribers, 0.2 million views

James O’Keefe (Project Veritas) – 311,027 subscribers, 42 million views

Henrik Palmgren and Lana Lokteff (Red Ice TV) – 327,959 subscribers, 46 million views

Jordan Peterson – 2.2 million subscribers, 110 million views

Brittany Pettibone – 125,716 subscribers, 8 million views

Tim Pool – 574,254 subscribers, 98 million views

Colin Robertson (Millennial Woes) – 54,299 subscribers, 5 million views

Joe Rogan – 5.8 million subscribers, 1.4 billion views

Dave Rubin – 1.0 million subscribers, 219 million views

Martin Sellner – 26,040 subscribers, 1.4 million views

Ben Shapiro – 792,908 subscribers, 47 million views

Lauren Southern – 716,792 subscribers, 59 million views

Richard Spencer – 2,454 subscribers, 111,345 views

Ayla Stewart (Wife with a Purpose) – 11,776 subscribers, 652,907 views

Jared Taylor (American Renaissance) – 113,447 subscribers, 12 million views

Annand Virk (Bunty King) – 66,984 subscribers, 0.5 million views

Andy Warski – 245,152 subscribers, 45 million views

Tarl Warwick (Styxhexenhammer666) – 380,464 subscribers, 182 million views

Paul Joseph Watson – 1.7 million subscribers, 400 million views

Blaire White – 520,103 subscribers, 65 million views

Milo Yiannopolous – now totally banned from YouTube

Other Members of the Reactionary Right according to Data&Society

James Damore – former Google employee, author of “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber”

Larry Elder – Larry Elder Show

Andrew Klavan – The Andrew Klavan Show

Michael Knowles – The Michael Knowles Show

Candace Owens – Candace Owens Show

Dennis Prager – founder of Prager University

Can the Online Conservative Presence be Effectively Suppressed?

Since the latest assault on internet free speech, many of these YouTube channels have seen their referral visits drop by 50 percent or more. But there remains a fluidity to the conservative presence online that may be impossible to suppress. First because many of these channels are so big that shutting them down would provoke an uproar, as happened this past May when YouTube used out of context remarks made by Carl Benjamin to temporarily delete his account. Benjamin – whose channel is called “Sargon of Akkad” – has nearly a million subscribers and has delivered nearly 300 million videos.

Other channels are even bigger. The inimitable Paul Joseph Watson has delivered 400 million views on his YouTube channel; Ezra Levant’s Rebel Media has delivered over 450 million views; Joe Rogan’s channel has delivered well over a billion views. Moreover, the traffic trends are dramatic – Jordan Peterson, whose informed but politically unwelcome candor on gender issues catapulted him to worldwide fame, had just over 90 million views when last reported on in April, he’s now delivered over 110 million views.

If the conservative presence online is protected by dozens of too-big-to-squelch pundits with burgeoning audiences, it is also protected by thousands, if not tens of thousands of much smaller content producers who are perpetually researching and posting, producing a torrent of content that can’t possibly be contained. For every Joe Rogan or Paul Joseph Watson, there are a thousand lessor known conservative pundits such as Fleccas Talks or Blue Collar Logic, diligently posting and building their audiences.

In some ways, the biggest advantage favoring online conservatives is the fact of their suppression. While some “conservative” or alt-right content may indeed be objectionable, all of it is granted cache by virtue of it being forbidden. And when so much of what conservatives post online is not only true, but in direct contradiction to what is being routinely spewed forth from the approved mainstream sources of news, it triggers feelings of betrayal in the hearts of fair minded, truth seeking liberals. They have their so-called red pill moment. They walk away.

The issue of internet censorship is only one significant fraction of the transformations heralded by digital technology and artificial intelligence. A troubling article published this summer in American Affairs Journal entitled “Algorithmic Governance and Political Legitimacy,” explores the ways in which algorithms could become even more faceless arbiters of misguided policies than the faceless bureaucrats of the last century.

The challenges facing society wrought by technology, and the leftist dominated monopolies that currently control technology, reach well beyond free speech. But despite the ongoing AI enabled crackdown on free speech, the nature of the internet itself may yet defy containment. It may yet fulfill its original promise to deliver irrepressible truth and freedom to the people in America, and everywhere else in the world.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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The Opportunity Cost of Shutting Down Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant

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For nearly 35 years, Diablo Canyon Power Plant has pumped just over 2.0 gigawatts of electricity onto California’s power grid. Unlike hydroelectric power, which has good years and bad depending on rainfall, or solar and wind power which depends on sunshine and wind, Diablo Canyon’s nuclear reactors generate this electricity 24 hours per day, 365 days a year.

But Diablo Canyon’s days are numbered. In January 2018 California’s Public Utility Commission voted to shut it down. Barring legislation to countermand this decision, by 2025 Diablo Canyon will cease operations, making California a nuclear free state. Is this a good idea?

Anti-nuclear environmental groups, as reported at the time in the Los Angeles Times, “hailed the decision, which was expected after 17 months of filings and debate, but also were concerned about what type of energy sources would be used to replace Diablo’s electricity.”

Good question. Especially since environmental groups are the groups one might expect to be most concerned about “greenhouse gas,” and the only way wind and solar power can operate is by having natural gas power plants to spin into action every time the wind falters or the sun goes down.

The alternative to natural gas backup is to overbuild wind and solar farms and store the excess energy with batteries. An interesting comparison would be to see what battery storage capacity would be required to replace the power Diablo generates during off peak hours of 12 hours per day.

The following chart projects a $12 billion price tag, based on a cost of $500 million per gigawatt-hour of battery farm storage. This cost estimate relies on data from several parallel projects at the 2.0 gigawatt-hour Moss Landing energy storage facility currently under development on the Central California coast. 

While battery storage costs are declining rapidly, with some experts projecting prices at one-fifth current levels within 10-20 years, others are not so sanguine. And battery costs aren’t the only consideration. Balance of plant costs – siting, distribution infrastructure – and California’s obstructionist construction climate will also pile on costs.

How Many EVs Could Diablo Canyon Recharge Every Night?

If Diablo isn’t shut down, of course, it isn’t necessary to invest $12 billion (or more) in battery storage to scoop up sun and wind dependent intermittent renewable energy and save it for nighttime charging. But either way, assuming California’s policymakers achieve their goal of filling our roads with battery powered vehicles, how many miles could they travel based on tapping into 12 hours of Diablo Canyon’s 2.0 gigawatt output?

As the next chart shows, the metric we’re going to be getting used to when evaluating mileage efficiency from EVs is not “miles-per-gallon-equivalent,” but the far more descriptive kilowatt-hours per 100 miles. And based on US EPA data, most EVs on the road today require around 25 kilowatt-hours to travel 100 miles. That equates to 4 million miles per gigawatt-hour. Taking into account 12 hours of 2.0 gigawatt output from Diablo Canyon, that’s enough to power a fleet of EVs driving 96 million miles per day. How does that compare to the total mileage driven each day by Californians?

According to US Federal Highway Administration data, the Californians log per capita vehicle mileage of 9,053 miles per year. That means California’s nearly 40 million residents are driving nearly one billion miles per day. Nonetheless, Diablo Canyon alone could power enough EVs to put quite a dent into that total. Nearly 10 percent of all driver mileage could be powered by EVs charged overnight by electricity produced by Diablo Canyon.

To make the opportunity cost of shutting down Diablo Canyon even more stark, one might ask what the cost would be to use solar panels and batteries to replace Diablo Canyon’s off-peak nocturnal output? The next chart shows those estimates, based on a rock bottom price of $1.00 per watt of solar panels. That is a best-case number pretty much forever, since land acquisition, engineering, labor, racking, connectors, utility interties, distribution infrastructure – along with the price of the actual panels – make this a mature industry.

As an aside, the less said about wind power, the better. Wind power is an abomination, slaughtering birds, bats, and insects at a rate which would destroy the planet in a few years if it were ever developed to any meaningful scale, not to mention the visual blight, the hideous quantities of materials, or the physical and psychological illness the inescapable low frequency thrum triggers in humans and animals.

As shown above, it would cost about $18 billion to develop renewable assets using solar and battery technology to replace the overnight EV recharging capacity of Diablo Canyon. If California’s vehicles were electrified, this capacity is sufficient to power 10 percent of California’s automobile mileage. And this is exactly half the story – Diablo Canyon operates 24 hours per day, not just at night to charge EV batteries.

It is interesting – or depressing, depending on one’s ability to confront these scandalous miscarriages of policy with equanimity – to wonder why environmentalists, who think we have barely a decade to “decarbonize” before the planet is lost, are so intent on shutting down Diablo Canyon.

The only sane way to sell renewable energy is to make it cheaper than fossil fuel and nuclear power. But the flawed policies and phony accounting that are used to present renewables as competitive need to be replaced by honest analysis.

It should be obvious that if renewable energy was truly less expensive, every nation in the world would be turning to renewables instead of building, as fast as they possibly can, more coal, natural gas, and nuclear power plants.

The single most significant variable affecting the economic viability of intermittent renewable energy is storage costs. Maybe batteries will eventually come down in price to, say $50 per kilowatt-hour, i.e., $50 million per gigawatt-hour. And if and when that happens, maybe it will make economic sense to convert to 100 percent renewables. And maybe then, instead of having to sow fear and panic in the media, and weaponize brainwashed elementary school children for photo ops with politicians pushing “green” energy, states and nations will adopt renewables because they really are the cheaper alternative.

If we are entering the electric age, where not only lights, PCs, refrigerators and air conditioners use electricity, but also space heaters, water heaters, cooktops, and vehicles – not to mention cyber currency – then we’re going to need more electricity at a time when “renewables” aren’t ready for prime time. And if the urgent imperative to rush into this decarbonized electric age is to supposedly save the planet, why are we shutting down Diablo Canyon?

In the meantime, Diablo Canyon is a sunk cost. Ratepayers long ago covered the construction bill for Diablo Canyon. But these reactors, instead of continuing to generate 2.0 gigawatts of clean, carbon free electricity for decades to come, are going to be shut down and subject to expensive decommissioning costs. Those who sincerely believe in the need to decarbonize energy need to join with those who support economically sound energy policies, to demand Diablo Canyon stay open.

This article originally appeared in the California Globe.

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Will Unions Promote Defined Contribution Plans the Way They Promote Pensions?

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The virtue of a defined contribution plan is that once the employer has made their contribution, the employer’s obligation is fulfilled. The employee’s retirement benefit is based on a “defined” contribution – typically some fixed percentage of their base pay – that money is invested, and the retiree lives on the accumulated savings and interest. Often, with the same amount invested, these plans can offer participants a more lucrative retirement than a pension.

Given the potential of defined contribution plans to sometimes outperform pensions, why are public employee unions seemingly focused almost exclusively on the alternative, the so-called “defined benefit” pension? Far more common in the public sector, these defined benefit plans offer the retiree a guaranteed “defined” amount in the form of fixed payments for as long as they live, usually adjusted upwards each year for inflation. What the employer has to contribute to the fund is undefined and fluctuates as needed to maintain those promised payments.

The problem, however, with defined benefits is they were sold as costing taxpayers very little, when in fact the employer contributions over the past twenty years have soared. To say those undefined employer payments to the pension funds have “fluctuated,” in order to keep those defined benefits flowing, is to indulge in the understatement of the century.

Back in 1999, during the internet bubble, when California’s public employers consented to an increase to the value of their promised defined benefits of well over 50 percent, the pension funds claimed it wouldn’t cost anything. The stock market was roaring, and apparently would roar forever.

Today, despite years of relentless increases to the required pension contributions by employers, most of California’s major public employee pension funds are only about 70 percent funded, with steep annual hikes in required contributions scheduled for the next several years. There is no end in sight.

So while a defined benefit may protect a retiree from mortality risk, where they outlive their savings, or market risk, where they happen to retire during a prolonged bear market and their savings evaporate, under the defined benefit plan all that risk is shifted to the taxpayer.

The cold fact that confronts California’s public employee pension systems is this: Their plans, which today are only around 70 percent funded despite the longest bull market in U.S. history, will not be able to financially withstand several years of poor returns on investment. The longer it is before defined benefits are right-sized to the capacity of state and local government to make contributions, the larger those benefit cuts will be.

Meanwhile, many government employers offer defined contribution plans to supplement defined benefit pensions. Given the precarious financial state of pensions, these defined contribution plans should not be attended to as an afterthought.

Some Defined Contribution Plans Are Better Than Others

Wading successfully through the arcana of retirement finance is a tedious exercise, but too much is at stake to avoid making the attempt. And it seems that California’s government unions, which have been universally consistent in making employee pensions run on autopilot, have not been nearly so proactive to ensure their members find the right defined contribution plan.

Since 1958, government employees have had the opportunity to make tax deferred contributions to retirement savings accounts as authorized by IRS Section 403(b). But these early 403(b) plans were marketed to public employees by insurance companies that had already been selling similar plans as tax sheltered annuities.

So far so good. But these plans, which are still aggressively marketed by insurance agents to public employees, carry much higher costs. Most of them have an entry fee – paid back to the salesperson as a commission – as high as 11 percent. Many of them have earnings that capped at rates as low as 3 percent. It isn’t uncommon for them to have a surrender charge as high as 15 percent. All of them charge annual maintenance fees – usually hidden from the plan participant – typically far in excess of more competitive mutual fund based plans that have emerged more recently.

An example of a good plan is the 403(b) option known as Pension2, offered by the California State Teacher’s Retirement System (CalSTRS). Pension2 offers a variety of low-cost index fund options and only charges annual administrative fees equal to 0.25% of the participant’s account balance. But Pension2 does not have an aggressive sales force pushing its product – which of course is one of the primary reasons the product is such a good deal. Other low cost 403(b) options are offered by Fidelity and Vanguard.

Why aren’t the unions encouraging their members to invest in these products? Maybe because the California Teacher’s Association offers its own 403(b) plan, which has an annual administration fee of $95 per participant – regardless of fund balance. By selling its own retirement product, the union loses its ability to act as a credible advisor to its members.

Another excellent option for public employees who want supplemental defined contribution benefits is an IRS 457(b) plan created by their employer in conjunction with a financial firm. Los Angeles Unified School District’s 457(b) plan administered by Voya won an award from the National Association of Government Defined Contribution Administrators (NAGDCA) for excellence and innovation. This excellent 457(b) plan is a good alternative to the 27 403(b) plans being sold to LAUSD educators, mostly by insurance companies.

Why isn’t the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) recommending this plan to its members? Recent history would suggest that UTLA thinks its members are undercompensated, and one easy way to improve teacher compensation is to reduce the overheads they pay on retirement savings.

While other unions have agreed to LAUSD automatically enrolling employees in their award-winning 457(b) plan UTLA has steadfastly refused. So instead of protecting member savings, salespeople pushing obsolete, needlessly expensive versions of a defined contribution plan continue to ply the halls of California’s schools.

Edward Ring is a co-founder of the California Policy Center and served as its first president. This article first appeared on the website of the California Policy Center.

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The Coming Socialist-Libertarian Feudalism

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Wishful thinking among many libertarian and socialist idealists is that an alliance might form between them. After all, members of both ideologies believe that anything goes when it comes to sex and drugs, neither of them believe in national borders, and both are repelled by conservative ideologues.

The problem with such an alliance of idealists, of course, is that at the core, the socialist believes in big government and the libertarian believes in no government. No matter how you further define those core beliefs, they are incompatible. But the powerful special interests behind the libertarian and progressive movements, respectively, are not idealists, they are pragmatists. And in the dirty realm of real world politics, socialist and libertarian elites have formed a powerful alliance.

Infatuated with the window dressing of personal liberty, ignoring the ultimate collision their worldviews portend, socialist and libertarian mega-donors back candidates and causes that share common goals – the densification of American cities, mass immigration, “free” trade, and a hands-off policy with respect to big-tech communications monopolies.

Urban “densification” is one of the most transformative, cruel, epic policy trends in American history. And hardly anyone is talking about it.

In a recent article by Joel Kotkin, a moderate Democrat, he refers to “conservative free market fundamentalists” as the group that’s “advancing plans that would divorce capitalism from the small property owners whose pieces of property secure the system’s popular support.” Kotkin is referring to libertarians who favor “densification” of cities because they support the property rights of those who own the land and choose to build high density housing.

What the libertarians are doing, while ideologically pure, is absurd. Just because you own a half-acre property, you’re not allowed to demolish the single family home on that property in order to build a 20 story building. For the same reason, you can’t demolish that home and build a rent-subsidized fourplex. In the real world, there are zoning laws that restrict property rights to protect the neighbors! These zoning laws are what people rely on when they purchase a home in a neighborhood filled with similar homes.

Kotkin writes: That [densification] includes California State Senator Scott Wiener’s effort to force high-density on residential areas by allowing fourplexes on virtually any parcel, which produced one of the strangest alliances in recent political history. Free market advocates—many of them funded by the Koch brothers—linked arms with left-wing and green activists reprising the arguments made in the Soviet Bloc against middle-class single-family neighborhoods.”

Densification is going to destroy tranquil residential neighborhoods, everywhere, and it is backed by socialists in the name of providing affordable housing, by environmentalists in order to prevent sprawl, and by powerful financial special interests who benefit from a real estate bubble. Libertarians support densification on principle, without even recognizing that they are ignoring – much less opposing – the flip side of densification, which are new policies to suppress land development outside of the “urban containment boundary.” Densification, also known as in-fill, or “smart growth,” will never provide sufficient new housing to make homes affordable unless it is balanced by similarly relaxed approval processes for homebuilding on open land.

The topic of “smart growth” exposes another special interest favoring densification, the Silicon Valley high tech industry. California’s Silicon Valley is an epicenter not only of concentrated political and economic power, it is also one of the world’s largest ideological fermentation tanks containing potent strains of socialism, progressivism, and libertarianism. And in this “do no evil” caldron of visions, plans, and stupefying power, innovators are building the “internet of things,” so that not only shall we live in stack and pack housing, we will survive on algorithmically managed micro sips of water and energy. And depending on what time we run our clothes dryer, we will pay a bit more or a bit less depending on the spot market price for electricity and water – such a libertarian concept!

More immediately visible is Silicon Valley’s control over the online universe – search results, video suggestions, remarks on Twitter, posts on Facebook – where two salient facts elude libertarians. First, the companies that now control the online universe are monopolies, and the big five – Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook – are the five biggest companies in the world based on their stock market capitalization. Equally important, these companies have been having their cake and eating it too, insofar as they receive an exemption from liability due to their status as a “platform,” yet exercise biased censorship on platform contributors as if they were a publisher. Each of these facts have consequences. Monopolies do not make for healthy market economies. Platforms cannot be publishers. But where are the libertarians?

The vision shared by socialist and libertarian oligarchs alike is what Kotkin refers to as a “Wall Street-dominated rentership society…” where “people remain renters for life, enjoying their video games or houseplants when not coding or doing gig jobs.”

This vision is not only furthered in densification policies that are fruitless in terms of making housing affordable but dazzlingly effective in turning nearly everyone into apartment renters, but also in the internet of things. In the future, you will not own your clothes dryer, or any other major appliance, nor will you own your car, much less video games and software services. Instead you will “subscribe” to these gadgets, so you can receive the latest updates and services. “Subscriptions” will replace lease payments, loan payments, and warranties. Owning anything will become increasingly impossible. Green conservation mandates will ensure compliance. But hey – you’ll be able to watch algorithmically curated videos on your refrigerator!

It is a fatal misconception to consider pragmatic socialists as indistinguishable from communists. Socialist nations, particularly those Northern European ones that are frequently cited by defenders of socialism as exemplars distinct from hellholes like Venezuela, are not ruled by politburos. These socialist nations are ruled by an influential cadre of extremely wealthy, propertied elites, who manage public opinion through their ownership of the primary media sources and through their donations to any effective politicians, regardless of their party. Does this sound familiar?

From this it follows that it is also a fatal misconception to overstate the differences between America’s elite socialist oligarchy and America’s elite libertarian oligarchy. In both cases, they subscribe to the policy of mass immigration, at the same time as they support environmentalist conventional wisdom that condemns Americans to pay taxes to fund the settlement of these tens of millions in rent-subsidized apartments crammed on to every lot that flips, in every neighborhood where people aren’t wealthy enough to hire attorneys to stop it.

Is it even possible for a populist libertarian movement to offer meaningful support to a conservative American political agenda? Or will their “thought leaders” continue to please the donor class, writing predictably bland justifications for free trade, open borders, urban densification, and out-of-control communications monopolies? Will libertarians support privatization to the point where a meter runs every time anyone steps onto a public road, and perpetual subscriptions replace ownership? Why not?

Where do libertarians draw the line? Will they accept Libra, the new cyber-currency that Facebook is about to launch? Will they squawk when cyber-currencies issued by mega-corporations dominate commerce? Will they care when monopolistic “private” companies erase not only the speech platforms of dissidents, but their ability to use their proprietary cyber currency? Why not?

Libertarians don’t have an fully realized political ideology, they have a perspective. As a perspective – smaller government – they are a useful part of the mix. But libertarians aren’t recognizing the real world limitations on libertarianism, or they would choose sides. They would rebel against the donor fueled Socialist-Libertarian Axis. They would ask: Will you fight to preserve your nation and your culture, or won’t you? The libertarian and socialist elites have made their choice, and are working together under the assumption that nations and culture don’t matter, only profit and power.

The only viable, real world version of a libertarian ideology ought to be unrecognizable and troubling to the idealist. It is corporate controlled feudalism that incorporates just enough socialist populist demands to avoid an unpleasant conflagration. The beneficiaries of this political economy are the super rich and the myriad poor. In this world, nationality means nothing, heritage is irrelevant, and the middle class and mid-sized companies alike are exterminated. Tradition and culture become a commercialized afterthought, micro-marketed to the various vestigial niches along with soap and virtual reality.

Idealists do not govern America today. Rather it is a pragmatic axis of socialist and libertarian oligarchs, each with their own gullible constituency, moving together towards a futuristic version of feudalism.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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How “Release Time” Causes Taxpayers to Fund Government Unions

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Based on an estimated total membership of 1.1 million and average dues per member of around $700, California’s public sector unions collect and spend approximately $800 million per year. The impact of the June 2018 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in the case Janus vs AFSCME may have chopped around $50 million off that annual total, by eliminating the union’s ability to collect agency fees from non-members. Nonetheless, California’s public sector unions still collect a stupefying amount of money every year, and remain one of the most powerful special interests in the state.

The long-term impact of the Janus decision has yet to be felt. Will California’s public sector unions slowly lose membership? Or will they retain or even grow their membership by being more accountable to their members, or, equally likely, by continuing to make quitting the union an exercise in bureaucratic futility so daunting that few try, and even fewer succeed?

The Janus case, and union dues, however, are not the only areas where reformers should direct their attention. While union dues account for the vast majority of total union revenue, another way that taxpayers support public sector unions is through so called “release time.” The total value to California’s public sector unions of the release time subsidy statewide is surprisingly high – just for California’s K-12 public schools, the value of this subsidy could be estimated as high as $100 million per year.

Release time is the practice whereby government employees take time off from their government jobs to work instead for the union. California’s unionized public school districts provide good examples of how this works.

The typical arrangement has two components, “Association Release Time,” and “Presidential Release Time.” The Association Release Time agreement permits the union to recruit agency employees to stop working in their government roles and work for the union instead, while the agency continues to pay all employment costs and has to hire substitutes. Typically the total number of workdays subject to this agreement are limited to between 50 and 200 per year. Sometimes the union covers the cost of the substitutes.

The Presidential Release Time agreement permits the union to remove the union president from their agency job during the term of their presidency. Typically the union will reimburse the agency for half the president’s salary, while the agency will still be responsible for paying 100 percent of the president’s benefits. The agency will also have to find and pay a temporary replacement employee to perform whatever job the union president had been performing prior to taking office.

The process of adding up these costs is not difficult. Searching for the key words “Release Time” on the PDF documents of collective bargaining agreements will quickly lead to the relevant sections. These collective bargaining agreements are found on nearly every California school district website.

Using some of the collective bargaining agreements negotiated for Orange County’s public school districts for examples, the provisions for release time can be found as follows:

  • Agreement Between Capistrano Unified School District and Capistrano Unified Education Association, For the Period July 1, 2016 to June 30, 2019 (page 45-46).
  • Agreement between Irvine Unified School District and Irvine Teachers Association Effective July 1, 2018 to June 30, 2020 (page 52).
  • Saddleback Valley Unified School District Agreement with Saddleback Valley Educators Association, July 1, 2015 – June 30, 2018 (page 9)
  • Newport-Mesa Unified School District Newport-Mesa Federation of Teachers  Collective Bargaining Agreement, July 1, 2017 – June 30, 2020 (page 9)

The formula to calculate the annual cost to the school district of presidential release time varies depending on the exact language in the collective bargaining agreement. But here is a representative example:

Annual cost of president’s salary less portion (typically half) reimbursed by the union, plus the cost of the president’s benefits, plus the cost for a full time replacement for the president. Depending on the amount the agency was paying their employee who was diverted to become the union president, and depending on the details in the collective bargaining agreement, the costs to the school district are about $100,000 per year.

The formula to calculate the annual cost to the school district for association release time varies depending on how many release days are authorized, and whether or not the union reimburses the school district for the cost of the necessary substitute employees. A reasonable estimate of these costs would be an additional $50,000 per year. It is important to note that in many cases, especially in California’s larger school districts, the costs to a district for release time may be well in excess of $150,000.

While $150,000 per year may seem an underwhelming amount, in many cases, especially in California’s larger school districts, the costs to a district for release time may be much higher. Moreover, this subsidy is sufficient to handle much of the day to day business of the union, which makes one wonder what all the dues revenue is used for.

Cumulatively, the value of this subsidy is not trivial. In Orange County, for example, there are 28 K-12 school districts. This means that in just this one county, and just in the government subsector of public K-12 education, the union subsidy for release time can be estimated at around $4.2 million per year.

Statewide, given there are 977 K-12 school districts in California, the total value of the release time subsidy could be estimated at well over $100 million per year. And then there are all the other sectors of California’s state and local government agencies where the release time subsidy has been negotiated. Even if only the 186 school districts in California that have over 1,000 enrolled students were paying a subsidy equal to $150,000 per year or more, that would still amount to nearly $30 million per year.

It would be interesting to explore whether taxpayer subsidized union release time is even constitutional, since it represents spending taxpayer money to benefit what is arguably a private interest. The fact that a union represents public employees shouldn’t necessarily mean that union isn’t a private organization. It is unlikely – ok, utterly impossible – that California’s state legislators might consider this possibility, but it remains a legitimate question for the courts.

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

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The American Left is Racist, NOT President Trump

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Here we go again. Politicians and pundits are falling all over each other trying to condemn President Trump yet again for some insensitive, allegedly racist Tweets.

As Hong Kong teeters on the brink of mass insurgency against the fascist mainland government, and Iran’s brutal theocracy accelerates their nuclear weapons program, the top story this week is “Trump is a racist.”

How do the news anchors and commentators who spew this Trump-bashing pablum, day after day, year after year, do so with a straight face?

If we must obsess over race and identity, and apparently we must, it is the American Left where you will find the racists, not the White House.

First of all, since the Tweets were deleted, here is their exact text:

“So interesting to see how ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose government are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly…

…and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how…

…it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!”

Three Tweets, posted at 5:27 a.m. on July 14th, 2019

The one inaccuracy, in these tweets, the implication that all four of these congresswomen are immigrants (only one of them is an immigrant) should not blind anyone to Trump’s message: There is no evidence whatsoever that the nations from which these “progressive Democrat Congresswomen,” presumably AOC, Tlaib, Omar and Pressley (or their families or ancestors) originated, offer anything that the United States might emulate in order to become a better nation.

These women are invited to visit Latin America, the Middle East, or Africa, and find even one nation where they would rather live.

Democrats are the Racists

More to the point, however, it is not President Trump, but rather these congresswomen, and by extension, the entire extreme Left wing of the Democratic Party, who have made RACE the currency of their political careers.

Among her countless gaffes, inaccuracies, and astonishingly ignorant proclamations, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has said that “Latinos must be exempt from immigration laws because they are ‘Native’ to US’.” Nothing racist about that.

Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib of “Impeach the Motherf*cker” notoriety, has demanded Speaker Pelosi dole out House committee assignments based on race. Nothing racist about that.

Ilhan Omar, who among other things has claimed that “Israel has hypnotized the world,” and that “may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel,” also said “This is not going to be the country of the white people.” Nothing racist about that.

As for Ayanna Pressley, she’s on record as saying “I’m not naive. All politics is about identity.” Along with “We don’t need any more brown faces that don’t want to be a brown voice. We don’t need any more black voices that don’t want to be a black voice.” Nothing racist about that.

And what about House Speaker Pelosi, the white-bashing white aristocrat who said that “her grandson’s birthday wish was to have brown skin and brown eyes”? Does anyone respect this pandering nonsense?

Meanwhile, the racist, anti-white rhetoric of the Democratic Party, echoed by the leftist media and leftist “woke” corporations, is matched by policies that harm the very people of color these Democrats supposedly champion.

Does anyone truly believe there isn’t a causal relationship between fifty years of welfare spending and the destruction of the black family, where only one third of black households with children have a father and mother? Ah, but the “traditional family” is obsolete!

Does anyone really think affirmative action – an explicitly racist practice – does “people of color” any favors, when it lowers academic standards to admit them into universities where they lack the academic skills to compete with their classmates? Ah, but create undemanding “ethnic studies” majors and turn them all into left-wing activists!

The biggest crime committed by the racist Democrats is the destruction of America’s public schools, where the leftist teachers unions have stifled innovation and accountability. The worst impact of the union grip on public education has been felt in low income “communities of color.” Ah, but don’t fix the system, just demand more money from taxpayers!

President Trump is Not a Racist

What President Trump has done is to challenge the narrative, built up over the last 50 years and getting worse all the time, which claims white people can’t say anything critical to “people of color.” All white people can do is be sorry, hand out more benefits, and do whatever else they’re told (by Democrats) to do. To object to anything coming out of the mouths of Democrats “of color” is a “racist” transgression that ends careers and destroys reputations.

The problem with silencing an entire generation of white people in the name of fighting racism is that while they have been silent, extreme environmentalism, anti-white racism, and creeping socialism have swept across American culture, taking over our schools, universities, entertainment and media industries, our corporations, and government at all levels. Unchecked, this will destroy the country.

It’s not racist to point out that mass immigration of unskilled people who are overwhelmingly non-white will result in social and cultural turmoil, so long as the entire culture is now geared towards teaching them a leftist lie that they are victims of white oppression.

It’s not racist to point out that the reason for disparate educational outcomes, where Whites and Asians outperform Blacks and Hispanics, is more likely caused by the destruction of the traditional two parent family than by racism.

It’s not racist to explain that affirmative action was an indulgence we could afford when “protected status groups” only comprised 10 percent of the population, but is something that will destroy our institutions when “protected status groups” comprise more than half the population.

It’s not racist to assert that the racist use of racial quotas in hiring, promotions, academic admissions, and contract bids, will exclude the more qualified in favor of the less qualified, sowing bitterness and cynicism into the hearts of everyone affected by it, at the same time as it undermines the capacities of every school, business, and government agency in America.

It’s not racist to question why the overwhelming majority of immigrants to America for the past several decades speak Spanish, when we are supposedly trying to “celebrate diversity.”

And it’s definitely not racist, or condescending, or inappropriate, to condemn in the harshest terms the socialist drivel and ignorant vitriol that passes for policy agenda, simply because it comes from congresswomen “of color.”

One of President Trump’s greatest gifts to the American people is that he doesn’t care if socialist demagogues and their allies call him a racist. He has given voice not to racism, but to a long overdue pushback against Democratic demagogues who shut down debate by screaming “racism” at anyone who questions them.

It is the Democrats, in their divisive and racially obsessed rhetoric and in the impact of their supposedly well-intentioned policies, who are the real racists.

This article originally appeared in American Greatness.

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Why “Smart Growth” is Neither Smart Nor Growth

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AUDIO:  An in-depth discussion of California’s policies of “stack and pack” and how they are cruel, unworkable, and very profitable for California’s wealthy elite – 20 minutes on KUHL Santa Barbara – Edward Ring on the Andy Caldwell Show.

New Legislation Will Mandate CalState Students Take Ethnic Studies Class

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The axis of public sector unions and the identity politics industry has come up with a new way to increase their power and profits – force college students to take a class in “ethnic studies” if they want to graduate.

To do this, AB 1460 was introduced earlier this year by California State Assembly Member Dr. Shirley Weber, a San Diego Democrat who, prior to being elected to the Assembly in 2012, was a Professor of African-American Studies at San Diego State University. The bill has passed the assembly and is currently being considered in the state senate.

An outspoken critic of this bill is Dr. Tony Lima, who taught economics at CSU East Bay for 37 years. Lima has posted online a six page takedown of AB 1460. He writes:

“Cal State University (CSU) is today graduating students who cannot do basic algebra, supposedly a requirement for admission to the university. They also cannot compose a paragraph, much less an entire research paper. Once the CSU has figured out how to teach those two R’s, they can take the time to guarantee full employment for ethnic studies faculty.”

He backs up this assertion with sobering data on the performance of California’s K-12 public schools. Referencing the U.S. Dept. of Education’s National Assessment of Educational Progress, Lima recounts how California’s ranking vs other states has fallen steadily in recent decades. For example, eighth grader performance in math went from 29th among states in 1992 to 44th place in 2015. Writing scores dropped from 28th place in 1992 to 36th in 2007. Science scores fell from 37th in 1996 to 43rd in 2015. Reading fell from 32nd 1998 to 38th in 2015. In every category, California’s K-12 schools have gone from bad to worse over the past 25 years.

What’s this really about? Will mandating an “ethnic studies” course make CSU graduates more employable, more skilled, more productive? Remember, this is the Cal State system that in 2017 dropped algebra as a prerequisite to satisfy the math requirements they need for graduation. So as Cal State’s college graduates move away from numeracy, what are they moving towards?

Here are examples of what “ethnic studies” majors actually study, drawn from department webpages for Cal State East Bay, Cal Poly, and Sacramento State:

“Ethnic Studies is an interdisciplinary approach to the study of the cultures, languages, historical, and contemporary issues relating to African Americans, Asian Americans, Chicana/os-Latina/os, and Native Americans.”

“Apply inter- and multidisciplinary, comparative, and intersectional approaches to critically analyze discourses, practices, and institutions that maintain structural inequality.”

“Design and implement research projects that account for the limits and potentials of humanities and social science methodologies and acknowledge competing frameworks of knowledge.”

“Explain the concepts of colonialism, decolonization, genocide, environmental racism, and/or resilience as foundations of indigenous epistemologies and sovereignty.”

So much jargon. So many code words. “Chicana/os-Latina/os.” “Structural inequality.” “Competing frameworks of knowledge.” “Environmental racism.”

It shall be interesting if AB 1460 passes, and approximately 100,000 CSU students per year are forced to take these classes. It might even be beneficial for ethnic studies professors and lecturers to have to deal with CSU students who resent having to pay for a class that won’t offer them a single useful post-graduation skill.

Will these instructors be prepared for the occasional brave student who can’t conceal their sarcasm when asked to always say Latino and Latina (unless of Latinx is in vogue on the campus in question)? Or when said student laughs in the instructor’s face when corrected and informed that this week it is no longer “Latino/Latina/Latinx,” it’s “Chicano/Chicana”? Or when a student raises their hand and asks a series of questions to this effect: Why aren’t we told to say “Chicanx,” shall that be next? Or will we have to say “Chicanx/Latinx”? There will be one in every class who stands up and asks these sorts of questions with unconcealed contempt, and for every student who stands up and speaks, there will be dozens who think it.

How will the ethnic studies instructors cope with a White or Asian student who stands up in class and tells the instructor, accurately, that they have been victims of “structural inequality” their entire lives; that they would be attending Harvard on a scholarship if they happened to be a “person of (non-Asian) color?”

How will these “ethnic studies” instructors cope with engineering students openly scoffing at their attempts to stigmatize objective scientific inquiry as merely one of many “competing frameworks of knowledge?”

And how will the instructors react to students of color from low income households who stand up and explain that the only “environmental racism” they’ve ever encountered is having to pay twice as much for (renewable) energy as their counterparts in other states?

Maybe it will be a good thing for AB 1460 to pass. Because it will expose the entire student body of the Cal State system, the vast majority of whom have common sense, to the absurd, convoluted, perpetually angry and patently ridiculous nonsense that constitutes “ethnic studies” in America academia, and by extension, the entire liberal establishment.

And to be clear: Students of color, especially the majority of them who had never considered taking an “ethnic studies” class because they were trying to get an education, not an indoctrination, will be forced into these classes and find themselves making common cause with their White and Asian (not of color) classmates. They will see, more than ever before, how the academic Left is intellectually mediocre, morally ambivalent, bitterly divisive, bereft of practical ideas, pathologically obsessive, and emotionally hypersensitive. They will walk away.

Bring it on.

Indoctrination, however, isn’t the only goal of AB 1460. As Dr. Lima carefully explains, this is about money, jobs and power. Despite assertions to the contrary by advocates for passage of AB 1460, ethnic studies faculty were hired over the past decade at a far higher rate than other CSU faculty. But across the CSU system there aren’t nearly enough ethnic studies faculty to teach classes in ethnic studies to well over 100,000 students per year. At a typical workload of two 65 student classes per semester, over 800 new faculty members would have to be hired. To put this in perspective, in the fall of 2018 the CSU system only had 13,000 full time faculty.

In a rare display of fortitude by a member of academia, CSU Chancellor Timothy White (a “man” whose surname has terrible optics) has come out against passage of AB 1460. Maybe he’s trying to do the academic left a favor, because he anticipates the backlash it will provoke among every student that prefers to spend their tuition money to acquire useful skills.

Whatever the reason, White has invited predictable retribution. Change.org now has a petition online entitled “Demand CSU Chancellor Timothy White to Support AB 1460.” “Demand.” Of course. Excerpt: “We demand that Chancellor White stop his campaign against Ethnic Studies, Gender and Women’s Studies, and Queer Studies. He has demonstrated ill disdain for curriculum offerings, faculty expertise, and activism by Ethnic Studies faculty.”  “Ill disdain.” Is there any other kind?

Maybe Chancellor White just happens to care more about preparing students for the real world, which means classes in accounting, engineering, computer science, nursing, and the like.

Compliance with AB 1460 would cost around $80 million per year in pay and benefits for the new instructors. The money and facilities necessary to implement AB 1460 would come out of other departments, or taxpayers would have to increase the budget. And while hiring another 800 ethnic studies instructors might only add around another million per year to the union’s coffers, these 800 individuals would have a far greater propensity to become activists for the union than, say, another engineering professor.

But who needs engineering professors, or the future engineers they will train? California needs more human resources managers and community organizers. Every woke ally knows this.

This article originally appeared in the California Globe.

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The South China Sea of the Moon

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If you want to control maritime traffic between the most populous nations on earth, you have to control the South China Sea. Over one-third of all global shipping passes through the South China Sea, transporting raw materials, fuel, and manufactured goods to and from the great economies of Asia, China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan. The South China Sea is also resource rich, with abundant fisheries and vast reserves of oil and gas waiting to be tapped beneath its shallow waters.

On the surface of the New World of the 21st century, the Eighth Continent, otherwise known as the Moon, there is another area of even greater strategic significance than the South China Sea – the water-rich polar regions of the moon. Controlling this portion of the Lunar surface could be a prerequisite to more quickly establishing a permanent presence in space. Confirmed less than a year ago, these water resources are frozen in the shadows of the craters, especially around the lunar south pole.

Much has been made of the potential for humans to colonize Mars. With abundant water, a thin atmosphere, a 25 hour day, and mineral resources, it certainly is feasible to eventually colonize Mars. But in our enthusiasm to launch a Mars mission, we risk overlooking the strategic imperative to establish bases that can access water resources on the moon. Here are benefits of such a moon base:

  • Only four days from Earth vs a minimum of 90 days to reach Mars.
  • Only one-sixth Earth’s gravity vs Mars having one-third Earth’s gravity, meaning far less fuel required to lift payloads off the lunar surface.
  • No atmosphere, meaning landing on the lunar surface requires less complex spacecraft engineering and less maneuvering payload.
  • Strategically located with military benefits including platform to launch killer satellites in retrograde orbits around Earth.
  • Land based which creates ability to establish a harder target, far less vulnerable to attack compared to space stations orbiting Earth or the Moon.
  • Water and minerals sufficient to generate habitat atmosphere, rocket fuel, and raw materials for base infrastructure.
  • By virtue of the polar location, it is possible to set up solar power collectors on the lunar peaks that can generate continuous power.
  • Capable of becoming self-sufficient base from which to launch robotic mining expeditions to asteroids, as well as shipping lunar-sourced finished goods back to Earth or to build a Mars colony.
  • Potential to become source of materials with which to build satellite solar power stations in Earth orbit, along with limitless other manufacturing possibilities.

Where the South China Sea has strategic archipelagos of islands, the polar regions of the Moon has strategic archipelagos of water rich craters. Principle among these, with the lunar south pole forming a bullseye almost dead center inside it is the Shackleton Crater, named after the Ernest Shackleton, the first human to explore Antarctica. Sprinkled around Shackelton are other strategic craters, Sverdrup, Haworth, Shoemaker, and Faustini.

As the image below shows, surface ice is concentrated at the Moon’s south pole. Because portions of the craters in the Moon’s polar regions are in permanent shadow, ice is able to form without getting burned off. There is also surface ice detected on the Moon’s north pole, although surveys so far show much less of it by comparison.

When talking about strategic risks and opportunities, it is important not to get mired in the technology of our time and ignore the unknown unknowns, those unforeseeable technological breakthroughs that will leapfrog existing economic and military barriers. The islands of the South China Sea are now fortresses, occupied by the Chinese military. But these fortresses cannot withstand a surgical strike using hypersonic projectiles, or particle beams, or a swarm of attack drones, much less from systems we can’t yet imagine.

Meanwhile, however, possession is nine-tenths of the law. The Law of the Sea, much like the laws and treaties currently governing development in outer space, is just words. When an international tribunal at The Hague ruled against China in 2016 with respect to their illegal occupation of the islands of the South China Sea, the Chinese shrugged their shoulders, and deployed another missile battery.

Notwithstanding technological breakthroughs that surely will occur in the next fifty years, the presence of water on the moon means that the primary resources necessary for rocket fuel, along with water and atmosphere for human habitats, do not have to be lifted off of earth. In the here and now, these craters have compelling strategic value.

Not only is the South Pole of the Moon a strategic site because of its water resources and potential to generate uninterruptible solar energy, it is near the location of Moon’s South Pole-Aitken basin, a massive crater stretching 1,240 miles across the far side of the moon. Scientists have recently determined there is a deposit of extremely dense material buried in the moon – possibly the remnants of a massive asteroid that crashed into the moon to form that crater. The potential mineral riches in this crater offer additional motivation to establish bases on the South Pole of the Moon.

China has taken notice. It is not coincidental that their recent, and first, successful Chang’e 4 moon landing was in the center of the Aitken basin, also only a few hundred miles from the Moon’s South Pole. China’s not alone. India intends to land a rover on the Moon’s South Pole this September. Even a private spacefaring company, Blue Origin, owned by Amazon titan Jeff Bezos, has announced its intention to send its Blue Moon lander to the lunar south pole.

The technological spin-offs that accrued to America’s space programs of the 20th century are well documented. America’s investments in the Apollo program, in its heyday exactly fifty years ago, hastened the development of the integrated circuit, dramatic advances in rocketry, “remarkable discoveries in civil, electrical, aeronautical and engineering science,” complex software, lightweight and incredibly durable composite materials, and, for a few specifics—everything from CT scanners to liquid-cooled garments to freeze-dried food.

Surely an accelerated program to establish bases on the moon would help ensure American technological preeminence in the 21st century. But that’s not the only reason to do it.

Bases on the South Pole of the moon are a critical towards establishing a military and economic presence in outer space. They are the source of raw materials for exploration further into the solar system; they also constitute the high ground in the great game back here on Earth. NASA has announced plans to send astronauts to the lunar South Pole by 2024. Hopefully that will not be too late.

The space lanes of tomorrow, like the sea lanes of today, will have choke points, ports, supply chains and trading hubs. The South Pole of the Moon is the South China Sea of Earth. And just like the South China Sea, it will be stealthily and deceitfully occupied and militarized by a foreign power, a fait accompli, unless we get there first.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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