The Consequences of Centrally Planned Compassion

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Sixty years ago, when California was governed by people who were sane pragmatists, homes were affordable and very few people were homeless. To support new housing, government funds were focused on building enabling infrastructure. California’s freeways and expressways connected new suburbs to urban cores, and the California Water Project delivered abundant water to the growing population. As a result, industry, jobs, and people poured into California, attracted by the beautiful weather and the low cost-of-living. Back then, California was the best place on earth to live.

For at least the last twenty years, California politics have been controlled by leftist ideologues. Their policies are impractical, the consequences are insane. Homes are unaffordable and entire cities have been taken over by homeless encampments. California’s infrastructure is neglected, and the ability of private developers to profitably build homes that normal people can afford has been destroyed by overregulation. In 2020, for the first time since achieving statehood over 170 years ago, California’s population actually declined.

How California’s politics devolved between 1960 and 2020 to put the state into its current predicament is a long story, but two overriding principles governed the descent into madness and dysfunction: a preference for central planning and misguided compassion. With compassion as the moral imperative driving concern over poverty, racial injustice, and, more recently, climate change, California’s politicians turned increasingly to central planning to solve these crises. And because central planning does not work, and has never worked, the crises have just gotten worse.

The evidence used to justify California’s centrally planned, supposedly compassionate polices is “disparate outcomes.” The power of this concept derives from its quantifiable, quasi-scientific veneer. As soon as a statistic is discovered that identifies how some group has collectively achieved less than some other group, a moral imperative is created to correct the injustice. In terms of groups with which to construct these statistical bludgeons, there is infinite material: men vs women, cis vs trans, straight vs gay, and white people vs people of color. In all cases, the former is the privileged oppressor, and the latter is the disadvantaged, underprivileged victim.

It is easy enough to see the appeal of these concepts to leftist ideologues. The compassionate, collective response to injustice requires a powerful, centralized government response, in order to correct the injustice and uplift an entire community to the status it deserves. But both of these key concepts, compassion and a centrally planned solution, are deeply flawed. Central planning is inherently flawed. Compassion is flawed in its execution.

The obligations of compassion must include a recognition of human nature. When disparate group outcomes are mitigated, and equality is enforced by the state, it creates an incentive for mediocrity and indifference. This is because under enforced equality, the worse a group performs, the more it will get, and the better a group performs, the more will be taken from them. So why work?

The Moral Necessity of Economic Stratification

Comparing how California handled housing sixty years ago compared to today can help explain why central planning to eliminate disparate group outcomes is a fool’s errand. The much maligned reality of housing sixty years ago was that it was economically stratified. To the extent this was driven by redlining and other racist policies, this stratification was immoral. But well established laws now prohibit racial discrimination. What was not immoral, however, was the overall concept of economic stratification. How this worked requires a moral defense.

Using local zoning laws to create stable neighborhoods, California’s suburbs were able to develop in a predictable pattern around every city. All of it was market driven. Close to the urban core, higher density housing including apartments were built. Further from the center of town, neighborhoods with detached homes were built. On the periphery, larger homes on larger lots were built. There were exceptions, but the market, relying on the stability of zoning laws, drove the process. For example, some cities had neighborhoods with larger homes on larger lots that were situated very close to the urban core. But in those cases, these homes were highly sought after and were more expensive than similar housing on the urban periphery. Occasionally, low density neighborhoods in particularly desirable spots became economically untenable and were rezoned. But this happened organically, judiciously, and locally, and not through centrally planned edicts.

The point isn’t merely that all of this worked economically because politicians had not yet created unaffordable housing through overregulation. The point is there was a moral worth to this economic stratification. People who lived in inner city apartments knew that if they worked hard they could save money and buy a detached home in a suburban neighborhood. People who lived in suburban neighborhoods knew that if they worked hard, they could move into a bigger home with a bigger lot. All of them relied on zoning to protect the ambiance of whatever it was they’d worked for and achieved so far. And people who were out of work or were marginally employed might end up on skid row, where residential hotels charged by the week for a room.

This is not the description of a perfect world. But it worked better than what we have today. As a percentage of the population, homelessness was far less, and homes were affordable. People across all income groups had the ability to invest and build multi-generational wealth. What is happening today in the name of compassion for the homeless is yielding only failure. Billions have been spent. Billions more will be spent. And it is making the problem worse.

The Compassionate Destruction of Venice Beach

A harrowing example of what is being done to California by its politicians in the name of compassion is the destruction of Venice Beach, which used to be one of the most charming neighborhoods in Los Angeles. The estimated number of homeless living in this three square mile district now exceeds 2,000. Despite a median price for homes in Venice Beach at over $2.1 million, instead of relocating homeless to shelters in less expensive parts of Los Angeles County, homeless shelters and “permanent supportive housing” is being constructed in the heart of Venice Beach at staggering costs.

Currently there are eleven homeless housing projects either proposed or already built in Venice Beach. The cost to taxpayers for these projects is estimated in the hundreds of millions. At best, they will house 700 people, barely one-third of the homeless currently living in Venice Beach. One of these proposals, the Reese Davidson Community, is to be built on a 3 acre parcel currently used for community beach parking. It will have 140 units, at an estimated cost of well over $100 million. This is insane.

Voters and politicians sincerely motivated by compassion need to reflect carefully on these costs, which are fairly typical. Imagine how much could be done with $100 million, if it was spent on shelter housing in less expensive places. But thanks to the compassionate value of inclusion, and the allegation that people who work hard to pay exorbitant prices to live in Venice Beach are “privileged,” the zoning laws that lead to economically stratified neighborhoods have broken down. And it gets worse.

Obviously offering free housing in a community located along a beach in Southern California just creates a magnet for even more people to arrive, unhoused and unemployed. But with the passage of Prop. 47, California has effectively decriminalized possession of hard drugs and petty theft, and to the extent laws remain on the books, Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon is not adequately enforcing them. And thanks to the federal “Housing First” mandate coming out of the Obama administration in 2009, no shelter or supportive housing project can receive public funds if they make sobriety and job training a condition of admittance. More insanity.

Venice Beach today is a crime haven. A recent report by the Venice Beach Public Health and Safety Committee found that the homeless shelters and “housing hubs” located in Venice Beach have been the source of the majority of police actions. But with the besieged LAPD short on officers and funds, and with a crime-friendly District Attorney, nothing can curb the rising crime. The reality of these housing projects is that if they were a private business and were generating this number of police responses, they would be shut down. The model is broken.

How to Solve the Homeless Crisis and Make Housing Affordable Again

The current direction of homeless and housing policies in California will lead either to an economic crash as the burden of government subsidies and entitlements finally becomes unsustainable, or, perhaps worse, California’s middle class will be utterly destroyed as “inclusive” zoning destroys residential suburbs. Subsidized investors will purchase and demolish detached homes, replacing them with apartments where people will live for free and with no conditions on their behavior. Only the very wealthiest neighborhoods will be able to afford perpetual litigation to chase away these developers. The incentive for people to work will disappear.

There is an alternative to this dismal future. Policymakers can learn from the example of 1960s California. They can learn from the mistakes that were made, of course, but they can also restore the best practices that made California such a wonderful place to live. They may recognize that almost everybody, regardless of ethnicity, aspires to raise families in detached homes in spacious suburbs. Biased surveys that make claims to the contrary omit a crucial opening phrase from the question: “IF you could afford it,” would you prefer to live in a detached home with a yard? That’s a big IF.

Instead of seeding intact neighborhoods with scandalously expensive subsidized housing projects that turn into crime infested drug dens, local authorities should be able to enforce stricter laws against intoxication, vagrancy and petty theft. They should be able to move offenders out of otherwise pleasant neighborhoods and into supervised, inexpensive tent encampments where they can sober up and get put to work. Central planning from Sacramento should not be imposing one-size-fits-all homeless and housing solutions on California’s cities and counties, especially since the “solutions” coming out of Sacramento are just making problems worse.

To solve the housing shortage, which is politically contrived, the laws that are cordoning off California’s cities and only permitting development inside preexisting boundaries must be scrapped. California is not running out of open space, and claiming that expanding cities causes climate change is a preposterous lie. Deregulate the housing industry, and spend public money on freeways and water projects instead of high speed rail and subsidized housing. Abandoning those boondoggles will free up tens of billions to build new enabling infrastructure.

There is no reason why Californians cannot have the same opportunities that were available to their grandparents, two generations ago. But they need to recognize that “compassionate” polices that only result in increasing the numbers of homeless people, tragically addicted to drugs and crime, is not compassion. And central planning designed to rescue victims of “disparate outcomes” will merely serve to make everyone oppressed, as it destroys the motivation and ability for people to pursue individual achievement.

These are tough realities, but acknowledging them can lead to beautiful outcomes.

This article originally appeared on the website of the California Globe.

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How a New Governor Can Save California

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The chances that California Governor Gavin Newsom will have to fight for his political life in a special recall election are nearing 100 percent. With signed recall petitions and donations pouring in faster than ever, proponents have already collected 1.4 of the 1.8 million signatures they’ll need to turn in by March 17.

This nonpartisan, grassroots movement against a corrupt governor and a corrupt ruling class offers encouragement to the rest of America. If a sitting governor can be forced to defend his record in a recall election in California, the biggest, bluest state in America, then there is no politician, anywhere, that’s immune from a recall campaign. And the tactics used offer precedent setting examples others can follow.

Typically ballot initiatives must employ paid signature gatherers. In today’s market these paid petition circulation firms can charge as much as $10 per signature, although the price can vary considerably. It isn’t unusual for a campaign to enter into an agreement that starts at a lower price, but as time runs out and – as is often the case – harassment by operatives hired by the opposition becomes more intense, the price shoots up into the $10 per signature range. For powerful special interests like Uber or Lyft, or the California Teachers Association, or various industry groups, paying this much for signed petitions is not a problem. But for a grassroots recall campaign, it is unthinkable.

Instead, neither of the two committees working on the Newsom recall have relied on paid signature gatherers. Instead, to-date the volunteers working for the original recall committee, Recall Gavin 2020, have gathered over 1.1 million signatures. It is difficult to overstate the significance of this achievement. Prior to this, the most productive volunteer signature gathering efforts in American history – both in California – would include the 2014 attempt to force a referendum on AB 1266 (a state law mandating transgender bathrooms), where despite narrowly failing to qualify, about a half-million signatures were gathered by volunteers. To find anything of similar scale before that requires going all the way back to 1978, where estimates of the volunteer share of signatures to qualify California’s famous Prop. 13 (limiting property taxes) are also around a half-million.

The Recall Gavin 2020 volunteers have collected more than twice as many signatures as these previous records. And they have over 5,000 volunteers working every weekend to collect more.

The other unconventional method to gather signatures is being employed by the more recently formed recall effort, the Rescue California committee. Using targeted direct mail, they are sending recall petitions and reply envelopes to millions of Californians. Results so far indicate this is a cost-effective alternative to paid signature gathering. According to Rescue California, they will complete the direct mail objective of mailing 3.5 million households by February 7, and so far they have received over 270,000 signed recall petitions thru these direct mail efforts. Based on the timing of the mailings, with half of them still to be delivered and a significant proportion of the rest just received, the committee expects to collect additional hundreds of thousands of signed petitions over the next few weeks. According to Dunsmore, these direct mail petitions are validating at an extraordinary rate of 98 percent.

Success catalyzes success. If there was a tipping point in this recall campaign, it would probably be in early November, when two things happened. On November 6 the campaign was granted a 120 day extension to gather signatures, based on their appeal that COVID-19 restrictions hampered the ability for volunteers to circulate petitions. Also around that time, the campaign announced they had gathered over 700,000 signed petitions. With more time, and an already impressive total of signed recall petitions, money and support began to pour in.

At this point it appears almost inevitable that a very public trial of Gavin Newsom’s conduct as governor is about to begin. By extension, this recall election will put on trial the entire ruling class and super-majority party Newsom is part of, and the failed policies they have perpetrated on ordinary working Californians.

This recall election will also, of course, be an opportunity for new candidates with new ideas to challenge Newsom and everything he represents.

What Will Newsom’s Challengers Stand For?

An establishment Republican, busily rounding up donations and endorsements, is the former mayor of San Diego, Kevin Faulconer. But while any Republican would be a better governor than Newsom, Faulconer’s record and his rhetoric suggest he would not challenge the core premises that are used to justify California’s current policies and power structure.

Another candidate certain to run in a recall election is Jon Cox, a businessman who defied the skeptics by winning enough votes in the 2018 jungle primary to go head-to-head against Newsom in the general election. While Cox only won 38 percent of the vote against Newsom, he was grossly outspent and didn’t have the name recognition he’s subsequently earned. Cox has good positions on the issues, and would shake things up. But is he popular enough to convince 50 percent of California’s voters to reject Newsom?

A dream candidate, of course, would be someone with the star power that Schwarzenegger had, but less willing to give up when the going got tough (to be fair, in his first year as governor, Schwarzenegger tried to do all the right things, but California’s GOP did not back him up). There are dream candidates out there. Larry Elder, for example, the “Sage of South Central,” has spent a lifetime expressing his deep convictions, as well as building a constituency that would passionately support his candidacy. Will Larry run?

But this recall goes beyond finding a popular candidate that Californians may find preferable to Newsom. A new entrant without money or name recognition can also win if they offer compassionate but practical solutions, expressed without rancor but also without equivocation or compromise. Here are questions to ask any candidate to replace Gavin Newsom. Their answer in every case should be an emphatic Yes.

Questions to Ask Any Candidate Who Claims They’ll Save California

Are you willing to direct your attorney general to fight to overturn Jones vs the City of Los Angeles, the flawed court ruling that requires homeless people be offered free “permanent supportive housing” before they can be removed from their public encampments?

Are you willing to build state-ran encampments where able-bodied drug addicts can be hauled off and given the help they need for pennies on the dollar, or are you willing to allow the Homeless Industrial Complex to keep on raping taxpayers and solving nothing?

Are you willing to tell the truth, that we ought to drill for more natural gas here in resource rich California to create jobs, since we import so much of it anyway? Will you prevent the destruction of California’s natural gas distribution infrastructure?

Are you willing to keep the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant open?

Are you willing to stand up to the teachers’ union and fight for school choice via universal vouchers, and not settle for incremental “compromises” that get nowhere?

Are you going to fight to bring back logging to 1990 levels (triple what it is today) so we can thin the forests and at the same time the timber companies will clear around the power lines and maintain firebreaks and fire roads like they used to, at no charge?

Will you tell the truth about open space, that we are NOT running out of it, and fight to bring back streamlined permitting for subdivisions on open land along the major freeway corridors up and down the state?

Will you spend public money on water infrastructure – reservoirs, aquifer storage, desalination, sewage reuse – instead of putting Californians onto water rationing?

Will you invest in widening and extending California’s roads and freeways instead of wasting it on high speed rail? Do you understand that smart cars and passenger drones are just around the corner, making roads the most versatile transportation investment?

Will you tell the identity politics warriors and social justice warriors they’re barking up the wrong tree, that California is not “racist,” and that if they truly want to help they can encourage individuals to take responsibility for their lives?

These are bold positions which if translated into policies will make a positive difference in the lives of ordinary Californians. Explaining the compelling rationale for these policies will build consensus among voters. This means an articulate, uncompromising new governor could bypass California’s corrupt state legislature and take every one of these positions to the voters in the form of state ballot initiatives.

With the right leadership, California can be transformed within a few short years. That is what this recall campaign provides the opportunity to do.

Forcing Newsom to defend himself in a recall election is going to be a tremendous accomplishment, but it is less than half the battle. Offering a coherent alternative to what Newsom and the oligarchy he represents has done to Californians is the vital other half of this struggle.

The necessary flipside of rejecting Newsom is an alternative political agenda that must find a candidate to carry it. An agenda that can turn the tide in the belly of the blue nation, deep blue California.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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When Centrism Becomes Extremism

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Joseph Overton died before his time in 2003, when the 43 year old died in an ultralight plane crash. But he achieved immortality when the political concept he first described as the “window of discourse” became posthumously known as the Overton Window.

What Overton refers to is the spectrum of political discourse that ranges from unthinkable ideas to those that are generally accepted and popular. Political commentator Joshua Trevino characterizes the milestones in this spectrum as starting with unthinkable, moving to radical, then acceptable, then sensible, then popular, then policy. One useful interpretation of Overton’s concept is that it explains how someone can propose an idea that is unthinkable or radical, and to the extent it occupies public discussion, even in its rejection, the acceptable window of discourse shifts slightly in the direction of the unthinkable or radical idea.

The New York Times referenced the Overton Window in a 2019 article that praised 2016 presidential candidate Bernie Sanders for popularizing the previously unthinkable ideas of Medicare for all, a 70 percent top tax rate, “sweeping” action on climate change, and abolishing ICE. But the Overton Window does not merely explain how previously radical ideas can become acceptable or even popular. It also explains how previously acceptable ideas can become unthinkable. This reality is what confronts right-of-center Americans today.

How Rational and Moderate Policies Became Unthinkable

Because the Overton Window concept was the product of a scholar working for the Mackinac Center, a Michigan based free market think tank, many of the online descriptions of it offer ominous examples of how it is being effectively used by the American Right. School choice and tax policies are usually the prime exhibits: Watch out! If they say we should use tax funds more effectively, they’re really just softening you up for lowering taxes on rich people! If they promote charter schools, the next thing you know they’ll be trying to abolish all public school funding!

It is true that right-wing policy wonks have used the Overton Window concept to dissect policy choices into specific tactical increments that aim towards a more strategic goal. But their efforts, and their successes, are insignificant when compared to the victories by America’s Left. Backed by virtually all the established institutions – academic, corporate, media, finance, and now, apparently, even the intelligence community and the military – what was once considered rational and moderate is now unthinkable. The examples are obvious, but the Overton Window has moved so far, we sometimes have to work to recognize them.

The transformation of the Democratic party over the past few years is a perfect illustration of how the Overton Window has made dramatic shifts. With institutional backing, mainstream Democratic thought includes the following truths: America is a systemically racist nation. Gender is disconnected from biology. Climate change is an existential threat to human survival. Endless permutations of truisms deduce from these urgent core premises, and to fix them, all of them, any means necessary are often justified.

Climate change, and the broader environmental movement it now catalyzes, offers a good example of just how far Democrats have strayed from their roots. To illustrate this, consider the work of Edmund “Pat” Brown Sr., the democratic governor of California from 1959 to 1967. This tremendously productive politician was a political moderate, a builder, who gave California the infrastructure they’re still relying on today.

During the 1950s and 1960s, under Pat Brown’s leadership, freeways and water projects were built that were the marvel and envy of the world. While some of the projects began under Pat Brown were completed during the term of his successor, Ronald Reagan, after that almost nothing got built. California is living with a freeway and water infrastructure designed for a state with 20 million people. Building a new dam or a new freeway in California today is unthinkable.

There isn’t any rational reason why Californians, who have only urbanized about five percent of their gigantic state, could not expand their cities and suburbs, and build new connecting freeways. There is no compelling case why Californians cannot construct massive new offstream reservoirs to capture storm runoff to restore water abundance to the state’s residents. If these things were done, homes would again be affordable to ordinary working class Californians, and water wouldn’t have to be rationed. And while the true reason for artificial scarcity in California is because it is making powerful special interests filthy rich, the reason the voters don’t rise up like a seismic wave and demand change is because the Overton Window has shifted.

Today, if you suggest California needs a new freeway, or a new reservoir, or pretty much anything that disrupts nature – like, say, reviving the timber industry to thin the overgrown forests – you are a “denier.” You are a psychopathic menace, the moral equivalent of a holocaust denier. Climate change is real, and to cope with climate change, we will need to abandon rural areas, live in high-density housing, use public transportation, take short showers, and eat meat substitutes.

To suggest we should not have to live this way has become unthinkable.

The Censorious Reaction to Moderate Centrism

To challenge all of these policies, not just those that supposedly cope with climate change, it is vital to reject the charge of extremism. There is nothing extremist about taking common sense positions that advance the interests of ordinary Americans over the interests of an oppressive elite. It is a moderate, centrist sentiment to want to build new freeways to accommodate all those smart cars that are just around the corner, or to want to allow building of affordable homes in spacious new suburbs to accommodate America’s growing population.

Moreover, it is a moderate, centrist sentiment to reject the notion that America is systemically racist, or that gender is connected to rather than disconnected from biology. It is moderate, and centrist, to reject the premises of America’s mainstream Left, and all of the implications of those premises, because they have become extreme.

When absurdity and oppression are cloaked in reason and virtue, and are systematically moved into the “acceptable,” “popular,” and then “policy” realms of discourse, that doesn’t change the fact that they are absurd, or oppressive. And eventually the absurdity and the oppression becomes so obvious that rebellion builds. This rebellion is what brought America the Trump presidency, and all the establishment’s increasingly desperate and patently dishonest positioning of the Trump rebellion as an expression of “white supremacy” will not put an end to it.

Perhaps by calling Trump’s nonwhite supporters a product of “multiracial Whiteness,” the Trump haters have done us a favor. What on Earth does that even mean? Absurdity abounds. And in its abundance, absurdity becomes increasingly recognizable.

The relentless and escalating censorship being practiced by Big Tech and the establishment media, along with the ongoing canceling of dissent by corporations and academia, are designed to stamp out rebellion. They are designed to prevent the Overton Window from being pulled back into the realm of common sense.

Put another way, now that the establishment has gotten the Overton Window positioned exactly where they want it, what they fear is any shift in what is “acceptable political discourse.” An article published in July 2019 by the BBC made the establishment position embarrassingly plain on the threat represented by right-of-center narratives, writing that “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.”

“Acceptable political discourse,” expressing “the views of a substantial number of real people.”

We’d better closely monitor and manage that, hadn’t we?

What members of the Trump rebellion must remember is not only that they are not extremists, but that the term “moderate” no longer carries the tepid connotations it once did. To be a moderate centrist today is to have common sense. To be a moderate centrist today is to reject the extremism of the mainstream establishment. In today’s upside down political culture, moderate centrism has become stigmatized as extremism. But common sense, moderate centrism is only extreme insofar as it presents a mortal threat to America’s corrupt ruling class, who have betrayed the nation and the people who made possible their lives of wealth, privilege and power.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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Newsom Recall Moves Relentlessly Towards Qualifying

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With exactly one month left to gather signatures, the effort to force California Governor Newsom to fight for his political life in a special election appears on the verge of success.

Back in June 2020, against the advice of every political expert in the state, a group of volunteers began circulating a recall petition. The chances they would gather 1.5 million verifiable signatures were considered negligible. But they had several advantages previous volunteer efforts lacked.

For starters, the recall committee had access to thousands of volunteers who had already participated in an earlier effort to recall the governor. Before running out of time in February 2020, that recall campaign, while unsuccessful, had gathered over 350,000 signed petitions. That may not have been anywhere close to the number required, but was nonetheless an impressive achievement that required a well coordinated statewide effort.

When the new recall petition was approved for circulation in June, this army of volunteers was not only trained, but reenergized by Newsom’s response to the pandemic. His heavy handed approach, of dubious benefit, was added to a litany of preexisting complaints about his governance.

Another advantage this recall effort had was its skillful use of online resources. Even ten years ago, when smartphones were just beginning to become ubiquitous, these tactics could not have had the same impact. But by June 2020, it was possible to immediately offer virtually any registered voter a downloadable petition along with written and video information on how to print it and fill it out. It was also possible to coordinate volunteer efforts on social media groups, aggregate and map locations to get petitions or turn them in, and publicize rallies and signing events. The campaign did all of these things.

Another break came in mid-summer when Orrin Heatlie’s volunteer committee began working with Anne Dunsmore, a veteran political consultant. Dunsmore, who was involved in the successful Gray Davis recall in 2003, has a reputation for taking on campaigns against the odds. She quickly established momentum with her parallel committee.

Since then the synergy between these committees has put them on the brink of complete success. Using the same firm to process and verify signed petitions, but employing different strategies, Heatlie’s Recall Gavin 2020 committee of volunteers and Dunsmore’s Rescue California committee of professionals are on track to have gathered 1.4 million signed petitions as they enter the second week of February and the final month of collection. Because it is impossible to eliminate every petition that may be improperly completed or otherwise ineligible, the goal of the campaign is to collect 1.8 million signatures in order to be certain that at least 1.5 million will be verified.

How these signed petitions break down by source reveals unprecedented success with not one, but two unconventional means of signature gathering. Typically ballot initiatives must employ paid signature gatherers. In today’s market these paid petition circulation firms can charge as much as $10 per signature, although the price can vary considerably. It isn’t unusual for a campaign to enter into an agreement that starts at a lower price, but as time runs out and – as is often the case – harassment by operatives hired by the opposition becomes more intense, the price shoots up into the $10 per signature range. For powerful special interests like Uber or Lyft, or the California Teachers Association, or various industry groups, paying this much for signed petitions is not a problem. But for a grassroots recall campaign, it is unthinkable.

Instead, to-date the Recall Gavin 2020 volunteers have gathered over 1.1 million signatures. It is difficult to overstate the significance of this achievement. Prior to this, the most productive volunteer signature gathering efforts in history would include the 2014 attempt to force a referendum on AB 1266 (transgender bathrooms), where despite narrowly failing to qualify, about a half-million signatures were gathered by volunteers. To find anything of similar scale before that requires going all the way back to 1978, where estimates of the volunteer share of signatures to qualify the famous Prop. 13 (limiting property taxes) are also around a half-million.

The Recall Gavin 2020 volunteers have collected more than twice as many signatures as the previous records. And they have over 5,000 volunteers working every weekend to collect more.

The other unconventional method to gather signatures is being employed by Dunsmore’s Rescue California committee. Using targeted direct mail, they are sending recall petitions and reply envelopes to millions of Californians. Results so far indicate this is a cost-effective alternative to paid signature gathering. According to Rescue California, they will complete the direct mail objective of mailing 3.5 million households by February 7, and that so far they have received over 270,000 signed recall petitions thru these direct mail efforts. Based on the timing of the mailings, with half of them still to be delivered and a significant proportion of the rest just received, the committee expects to collect additional hundreds of thousands of signed petitions over the next few weeks. According to Dunsmore, these direct mail petitions are validating at an extraordinary rate of 98 percent.

Success catalyzes success. If there was a tipping point in this recall campaign, it would probably be in early November, when two things happened. On November 6 the campaign was granted a 120 day extension to gather signatures, based on their appeal that COVID-19 restrictions hampered the ability for volunteers to circulate petitions. Also around that time, the campaign announced they had gathered over 700,000 signed petitions. With more time, and an already impressive total of signed recall petitions, money and support began to pour in.

Reports just filed with the California Secretary of State, combined with disclosures from committee spokespersons indicate the two committees together have already raised over $3.4 million. Rescue California has raised $2.3 million from over 13,000 contributors, and the Recall Gavin 2020 committee has raised over $900,000 from several thousand donors as well.

Leaving nothing to chance, Rescue California has just added a paid signature gathering effort for the final 4-5 weeks, using funds provided by a group of Silicon Valley donors. For those observers who felt relying merely on volunteers and direct mail was a risky approach, this decision – made possible by the recent surge in donations – further increases the probability of success.

It appears inevitable that a very public trial of Gavin Newsom’s conduct as governor is about to begin. By extension, this recall election will put on trial the entire ruling class and super-majority party Newsom is part of, and the failed policies they have perpetrated on ordinary working Californians. This recall election will also, of course, be an opportunity for new candidates with new ideas to challenge Newsom and everything he represents.

The nation, and the world, will be watching.

This article originally appeared on the website California Globe.

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How Legislators Can Reopen California

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There are smart ways to protect the vulnerable and reopen businesses and churches and schools, but California’s legislators continue to do nothing. Instead, edicts issued from the governor’s office have the state in an ongoing lockdown, despite growing evidence there are safe alternatives.

Last month an event held in the Sacramento area, “Re-Open Cal Now,” offered local elected officials from all over California access to attorneys, economists, and medical experts who presented information on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and how to safely cope with it. From the start, it was smeared as being a partisan “super-spreader” event. Facebook refused to allow promotional ads, claiming the agenda included “dangerous content.” Not one, but two email services, MailChimp and then MailLite, banned event organizers from using their platform. But none of these accusations were true.

The event admitted only 115 in-person attendees and was held in a 24,000 square foot covered but outdoor equestrian center. As a consequence of all this extra space, booked at significant extra cost, extreme social distancing was observed. As for partisanship, over 25,000 people have viewed the event online so far, and the only thing “partisan” about the event was its commitment to finding solutions to end the lockdown.

The most revealing, and controversial, of the panels during this three day event was the one that featured medical experts. These medical doctors and epidemiologists provided information on COVID-19 treatments that have been ignored and even suppressed by the media and the mainstream medical community. Without delving into the reasons for this, which are at best inexplicable and mystifying, public policy experts and local elected officials are invited to watch these presentations. They are invited to ask themselves: Why is COVID-19 unique among diseases that have confronted humanity, in that early stage outpatient treatments are not only ignored, but have arguably become forbidden topics?

As Dr. George Fareed described in his segment, in any pandemic there are four essential policy responses: (1) contagion control, or social distancing to slow the spread, (2) early home treatment to reduce hospitalizations and deaths, (3) late stage hospitalization, and (4) vaccinations to develop herd immunity. As anyone with more than a passing familiarity with the COVID-19 pandemic will confirm, stage two has been ignored.

It isn’t necessary to examine the merits or fallacies underlying the many early stage treatments that have been proposed to conclude something is wrong with this picture. There are many drugs and therapies that practicing doctors claim can prevent this disease from worsening, causing death or chronic disabilities. They include Hydroxychloroquine, Azithromycin, Doxycycline, Ivermectin, Zinc Sulfate, vitamin C, vitamin D, Quercetin,  Fluvoxamine, intracellular anti-infectives, antiviral antibodies, corticosteroids, immunomodulators, antiplatelet agents and anticoagulants, and many, many more.

Are all of these drugs effective in treating early stage COVID-19? Probably not. But why has discussion regarding their efficacy been suppressed? Equally important, why has an entire early stage treatment protocol for COVID-19 been neglected?

Dr. Fareed presented a chart that adheres to a template used in medicine to treat most infectious diseases. That chart, reproduced below, shows “innovative early sequenced multidrug therapy for COVID-19 infection to reduce hospitalization and death.”

Based on the testimony of hundreds of U.S. doctors who have treated tens of thousands of patients, many early stage therapies for COVID-19 are effective. While these doctors back in mid-2020 could only rely on positive clinical results, there is now a growing body of evidence from controlled studies that confirm the efficacy of early stage treatments. In his presentation, Dr. Fareed presented evidence as well from nations that have widely employed early stage, outpatient treatments for COVID-19. Various drug protocols were used, depending on the country, but in all cases, their national death rates from COVID-19 are far lower than in the United States.

In the face of mounting evidence that early stage treatment is one of the most effective ways to cope with this pandemic, and has been almost completely ignored, why aren’t California’s elected officials demanding answers from the establishment medical community?

The Cost of Misinformation, The Benefit of a New Approach

Imagine California today if the medical community and policymakers had emphasized all four elements of pandemic response, instead of only three. Imagine how much we would have learned by now if doctors everywhere had been encouraged to prescribe early stage therapies for their COVID-19 patients, instead of just sending them home to either get well or worsen to the point where they required commitment to an ICU.

It is impossible to know how many lives and livelihoods might have been saved if early stage therapies were encouraged instead of suppressed, but Californians deserve answers. And now, with at least some official recognition that some of these early stage therapies do work, along with vaccines rolling out by the millions, it is time for a new approach.

One creative way to begin to safely unlock Californians has been proposed by Assemblyman Kevin Kiley, who late last year proposed that individual counties adopt a “Healthy Communities Resolution.” The intent of the resolution (read full text) is to allow each county to “respond locally to the COVID-19 virus in accordance with our local data and circumstances,” and to allow this response to be “tailored to geographically separate areas.” So far ten counties have adopted this resolution.

In Sacramento County, however, just to illustrate what Kiley and others are up against, Supervisor Susan Frost’s attempt to introduce the Healthy Communities Resolution was opposed 4-1. She couldn’t even get someone to second the motion so they could debate the topic and vote on it. Her opponents claimed that to selectively open portions of the county based on neighborhood conditions was “racist.” And with that magic word, end of discussion.

Kiley’s resolution also calls for school districts to “safely open all schools as soon as possible and provide in-person instruction to the greatest extent possible without further delay.” And it isn’t just classroom instruction, but sports, where pressure is building to reopen. Just a few days ago, San Diego high school athletes filed a lawsuit that aims to force California to join 47 other states that have already resumed active high school sports. Support for this lawsuit has grown overnight into a grassroots movement. On Facebook, the “Let Them Play CA” group has acquired over 50,000 members in less than a month and continues to rapidly add participants.

The Teachers Union Has a Chance to Do the Right Thing

To call the California Teachers Association one of the most influential special interests in California politics is something most informed observers would consider beyond serious debate. But why aren’t the leaders and the members of the all-powerful CTA trying harder to reopen California’s public schools?

From their website, some of the primary elements of the mission of the CTA are to “improve the conditions of teaching and learning; to advance the cause of free, universal, and quality public education for all students.”

Surely everyone can agree, including the members of the CTA and their leadership, that what has happened over the past year has been a disaster for California’s K-12 students. They might also agree this disaster has had a disproportionately negative impact on students living in low income zip codes. So why isn’t the CTA pushing harder to reopen schools? Why isn’t this powerful organization demanding answers regarding the incomplete pandemic response? Why aren’t they adding their voice to the growing calls to roll out early stage COVID-19 therapies, so Californians do not have to live in deathly fear of infection, and so herd immunity can be quickly achieved?

Why isn’t the CTA, for that matter, observing the experiences of charter schools such as the Orange County Classical Academy, where creative measures to reduce the chances of contagion have been effective, and in-person classes were never interrupted? Why is the CTA condoning the ongoing, disastrous deficiencies in instruction, whereby, for example, in Los Angeles Unified School District, the school day only runs from 9 a.m. till 2:15 p.m.? It is to be expected that the CTA will look out for the concerns of their members, but in recognition of the hardships facing everyone, why aren’t they urging their members to work harder during this pandemic, instead of cutting their hours?

Back in the summer of 2020, the United Teachers of Los Angeles, affiliated with the CTA, demanded $250 million to reopen schools in LAUSD. And instead of sticking to the basics of pandemic safety, they used the pandemic as a springboard to demand an end to all the structural disadvantages they have identified as facing low income students. But is this the time for that? Or shouldn’t we just get those kids back to school, and then get back to worrying about these issues of social justice?

Since the summer, not much has changed. According to a scathing report published in the California Globe in January, Governor Newsom’s latest attempt to reopen schools goes something like this: “If a school district promises to re-open schools by mid-February, it will get an additional $450 to $750 per student in funding.”

If there ever was a time for Californians to come together to share the risks and challenges presented by a crisis, this is it. The CTA should take Newsom’s deal, they should open the schools up immediately, they should permit sports to resume, and they should accept that perfect is the enemy of good enough. And as self-proclaimed advocates for the underprivileged, they might also join those of us who want to know why medical experts denied all of us access to information on early stage COVID-19 treatments, abetted in that denial by some of the biggest corporations in the world.

By allowing individual counties to manage reopening, and by demanding that health officials support for better early stage therapies, California’s legislators can ease the state out of lockdown. It cannot come a moment too soon.

This article originally appeared in the California Globe.

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Robinhood, Reddit, and the Cram Down of Economic Populism

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Short sellers claim there is a moral and economic worth to their trade. They supposedly keep the market honest by exposing overvalued stocks, thereby preventing “irrational exhuberance” from creating stock bubbles.

If that was all there was to it, they’d be right. Stock bubbles tend to eventually pop, and when they do, worst case, the collateral they represent implodes, the loans that the collateral enabled go into default, and trillions in debt fueled liquidity is erased in a cascading downward spiral. And just like that, the economy collapses into a deflationary depression that makes the 1930s look like a cake walk. There are good reasons we don’t want to demonize short sellers indiscriminately, or drive them out of the market.

What’s happening with Robinhood and the Reddit mob, however, exposes the gritty reality behind the high-minded justifications for short-selling. Yes, short-sellers play a vital role in regulating stock market levels. But the world of short-selling is an elite club, rife with intrigue and shady players and deliberate market manipulation. And when an online mob crashed the party and pissed in the punchbowl, suddenly the bouncers came to life.

This is the point to emphasize: Reddit and Robinhood didn’t do anything that elite Wall Street hedge funds haven’t been doing for years. They just did it publicly, using an online mob of small players, and were indifferent to the impact it would have on elite institutions that have become accustomed to raking billions in profits out of the market. When interlopers play by the rules, they’re still interlopers. Time to change the rules.

Here’s what happened. A short sale refers to a contract whereby an investor borrows shares of a stock from a broker and sells those shares at their current price. The investor now has the money from that sale, but within an agreed period of time they have to pay the broker back with shares, not money. This works out well for the investor if, as a short-seller anticipates, the stock price goes down. When the price falls, the investor uses a portion of the money they made (by selling the stock they’d borrowed from the broker) to repurchase those shares at the lower market price, then they keep what money remains as profit.

The risk the investor takes is that the stock will not drop in price, but go up in price. When all goes according to plan, if an investor borrows 100 shares from a broker and sells them for $100 each, they now have $10,000 and they owe 100 shares to the broker. If the price drops to $50 per share, they buy back the 100 shares for $5,000 and keep $5,000 in profit.

That’s not what happened, to put it mildly.

So-called institutional shorts are disclosed on stock profiles in a vital statistic called “short as percent of float.” The “float” refers to the number of shares in a company that are available for public trading. The “short” in this context refers to the number of shares that have been sold in a short sale, meaning they will have to be repurchased. If the “short as a percent of float” is a high percentage, this indicates the short seller hedge funds have targeted this stock, expecting its price to fall, so they can make millions, or billions, in profits when they repurchase the shares at a lower price.

Oops. Here’s where the Reddit mob and the Robinhood online brokerage come into the act.

In a series of posts over the past few weeks that gathered momentum on Reddit, thousands of small investors on the zero-fee upstart trading platform Robinhood started buying stocks that had been shorted by institutional investors, driving the price up instead of down. Most notable among these stocks was GameStop, which was trading at under $40 per share as recently as January 21, but thanks to an online mob of buyers, peaked at $468 per share just a week later on January 28. Other similarly targeted stocks also shot up in value.

Reaction was swift. Staring at tens of billions in losses, with no end in sight, Robinhood was pressured into halting purchases of some of the most affected stocks. The subreddit channel “r/Wallstreetbets” was briefly taken down. But for some, it was too little, too late. One of the hedge funds, Melvin Capital, closed their short position and incurred losses rumored to be in the billions. Others are hoping to ride out the storm, at risk of having to close their positions at a cost of additional billions, if not tens of billions.

But why is it that trading is halted on a publicly traded stock in order to protect billion dollar hedge funds? Apart from its audacious transparency and brazen simplicity, what did the online mob do wrong? How the regulators react to this new kid in town will speak volumes. Who deserves protection? Wall Street? Or Main Street? Billionaire traders? Or dangerously aggregated bands of bit players with their keyboards and their Robinhood accounts?

Reaction to the reaction was also swift, and telling. In a show of unity that is yet another harbinger of populist realignment coming to America, political opposites Donald Trump Jr. and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez spoke with one voice. Both recognize the hypocrisy. Both consider the system rigged. And they’re both right.

Short Sellers Aren’t Doing Their Job, Anyway

Halting trading and shutting down a financial message board is problematic when it is done to arrest a slide of the entire market. But this was done to induce a downturn in the value of select stocks, specifically to protect select Wall Street firms. Good luck justifying that. But there’s a larger issue.

If short-sellers keep the market honest by preventing overvalued stocks, why are stocks so overvalued? Consider the big tech stocks, since they’ve become so concerned about eliminating competitors in the name of protecting us from hate speech and misinformation:

Amazon shares have a price/sales ratio of 4.8 and a trailing price/earnings ratio of 96.3. Google has a P/S ratio of 7.6 and a P/E of 36.7. Apple has a P/S ratio of 9.1 and a P/E of 43.3. Facebook has a P/S ratio of 9.9 and a P/E of 31.0, and Twitter has a P/S of 11.0 and a P/E of 21.9.

A “normal” price/sales ratio for a stock is between 1 and 2. A “normal” price/earnings ratio for a stock is around 15. If big tech stocks were trading at normal, historically sustainable sales and earnings ratios, they would collectively lose trillions in value. They are not alone. The so-called superbubble in asset prices has never been bigger, and “short-sellers” aren’t doing a thing to effectively counter it. There’s a reason for this.

Short sellers don’t necessarily target overvalued companies. They can’t. The market is not rational enough to permit short sellers to do the job they claim they have a moral mandate to do. Short sellers target companies that they think will go down in value, for whatever reason. Those reasons can be based on deliberately spread rumors as easily as financial metrics.

What’s really happening is investors are terrified of a deflationary spiral, which can only be triggered one thing – a massive crash in the value of collateral. Overvalued stocks, bonds, and real estate are the assets that collateralize what has become the biggest borrowing binge in the history of the world. As long as asset values don’t crash, the party will go on. Keeping asset values rising, no matter what, is the motivation behind policies ranging from the Green New Deal to immigration to foreign entanglements. Examine these policies through that filter. Much will be revealed.

Online innovation and online freedom has just ran into another wall. On this new front, the financial front, expect new regulations, periodic shutdowns, and more censorship. It will be to keep us safe. It will be to protect unsophisticated investors. It will be another part of the new normal.

This is what we can expect from Biden’s financialized economy, ascendant now over Trump’s productivity economy. Biden’s model consolidates wealth at the top, while flirting with a catastrophic economic crash. Trump’s model offered a sustainable way out, rewarding productive enterprise at every scale.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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School Choice Initiative Quietly Gathers Support

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In the November 2020 election, California’s powerful teachers’ unions spent over $20 million promoting Prop. 15, which would have increased taxes on commercial properties. Other unions, mostly in the public sector, spent another $17 million to promote Prop. 15. But voters weren’t buying it. Prop. 15 failed.

Overall, in November 2020, California’s government unions spent nearly $70 million to promote or oppose state ballot initiatives, and almost all of that spending was unsuccessful. While a couple of union supported ballot propositions were approved by voters, they weren’t high priorities, attracting only around $200,000 in union spending.

This result presents a paradox. Why is it that public sector unions, which collect and spend nearly $1.0 billion per year in revenue, mostly from dues, and use that money to make or break the political campaigns of nearly every member of the California State Legislature, and which in similar manner control nearly every city council, county board of supervisors, school board, and governing board of transit districts and fire districts and transportation districts – you get the picture – why couldn’t they impose their will on California’s electorate when it came to ballot propositions in 2020?

Consider these results on key initiatives, all contrary to the will of California’s government unions: 52 percent of voters rejected increasing property taxes, 56 percent rejected “no bail” laws, 57 percent rejected the reinstatement of racial preferences, 58 percent supported the rights of independent contractors, and 60 percent rejected rent control.

In this paradox there is opportunity. California’s voters are no longer the predictable bloc that government unions have relied on for the past 2-3 decades. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, the rebellion against union power exemplified by voter rejection of union supported ballot measures may not be the beginning of the end, but it is definitely the end of the beginning. Voters are finally waking up, fitfully shedding years of indoctrination.

And why shouldn’t they? California has it all – a diverse economy, rich natural resources, deep water ports on the Pacific Rim, the best universities, the epicenter of high tech, and the finest weather on the planet – and yet its governance is a mess. The public schools are failing, the mismanaged forests are burning up, income inequality and poverty are among the worst in America, housing is unaffordable, and the urban downtowns are overran with drug addicts and predators.

All of this can be quickly fixed by good governance. The answers for correcting these failures are not elusive, nor are they partisan. Repeal extreme environmentalist regulations that have made it impossible to construct affordable housing without subsidies. Restore laws against intoxication, petty theft, and vagrancy, and watch half the homeless population suddenly find shelter with friends and relatives. Help the rest in inexpensive supervised encampments where sobriety is a condition of entrance. Bring back the timber industry to thin the forests and create jobs. But why aren’t these fixes implemented?

The reason is equally simple: Government unions, government contractors, powerful “nonprofits,” monopolistic corporations, and big tech companies acquire power and profit by never solving these problems. And along with the insane amounts of money they deploy to manipulate public opinion and fund political campaigns, they rely on a thoroughly indoctrinated electorate to support their dysfunction – an electorate that is the product of unionized public schools.

This is a brilliant scam. Two generations of K-12 students have emerged from California’s public schools with relatively undeveloped skills in math and English, but steeped in the secular religion of class envy, pointless and bizarre race and gender theory, and a host of related maladies that can be accurately summarized as the politics of resentment, and the rejection of personal responsibility for collective victimhood.

This scam works so well because it creates a monstrous mental distraction, a mind-bending narrative that goes something like this: we are all victims of oppression by the white patriarchy, so naturally we’ll assume that our unaffordable homes, lack of good job opportunities, and burning forests are their fault. It won’t even occur to us that the people teaching us to hate the white patriarchy are the same people whose policies are truly to blame for the problems we face.

Rescue Education, Rescue California

In the galaxy called California, if government unions are the Death Star, citizen sponsored state ballot initiatives are The Force. And in Southern California, a growing group of experienced activists are using The Force to craft a ballot initiative that will strike at the heart of government union power by implementing school choice.

Moreover, unlike tepid iterations of school choice that have been unsuccessfully attempted in California in the past, or successfully approved in other states, this initiative is crafted to completely blow up the union monopoly on public schools. Proponent Michael Alexander, president of the California School Choice Foundation based in Pasadena, identified four key provisions:

1 – An Education Savings Account (ESA) would be created for every K-12 student in California.

2 – These accounts would be credited annually with each student’s pro rata share of Prop. 98 funds (40% of the California General fund). This amounts to approximately $10,000 per student per year.

3 – The parents of K-12 students will be able to direct that money to a participating school whether it’s a public, charter, or accredited private or parochial school.

4 – The money, if unspent, would accumulate to be used for college, vocational, or any other accredited educational expense.

This is a bold proposal, with a lot still to be worked out. But by taking the form of an initiative constitutional amendment, and with thorough legal vetting, it has the potential to fundamentally transform K-12 education in California. Alexander identified areas of vulnerability that the initiative, once it reaches final form, will need to address.

Popular support for an initiative that rescues public education in California will require it to eliminate some of the current state curriculum mandates. These would include inappropriate and controversial forms of sex education, poorly conceived teaching methods such as Common Core math instruction, and politicized history and social studies curricula such as the 1619 Project.

Alexander also noted the potential of accreditation to be used as a weapon against qualifying schools to receive ESA funds, explaining that the initiative would have to include language prohibiting the state legislature from changing existing accreditation criteria. He also mentioned the threat whereby abuse of due process could be used to shut down new schools set up to compete with the public school monopoly. For example, a cursory examination by a biased state official could immediately lead to a suspension of the school’s right to receive ESA funds, leaving them no ability to operate and retain students.

What makes this school choice concept attractive is its bold simplicity. Unlike more tepid solutions that infatuate the wonks, it doesn’t require “means testing” or some other exclusionary criteria. Every K-12 student is eligible. This rewards low income families that currently must take their chances in a charter lottery, where in most cases their number will not be picked, but it also rewards middle income families that struggle to pay both property taxes and tuition to a private school.

The success of charter schools, from the Alliance Network in Los Angeles, to the Orange County Classical Academy, along with countless others, illustrates how a school choice ballot measure with real teeth could dramatically improve public education in California. Because suddenly fantastic schools like these would be able to rapidly open up, everywhere, competing with the decrepit unionized monopoly system.

The plight of parochial schools which face declining enrollments as fewer families can afford the tuition is something as well that could be transformed overnight by the right school choice initiative. And recent innovations in distance learning, pod schools, and micro schools, necessitated by the COVID-19 lockdown, have taught millions of parents in California that there are preferable learning alternatives to traditional public schools, and they’re getting better all the time.

If Michael Alexander and his team intend to successfully qualify a school choice initiative for the state ballot in November 2022, they’d better not waste a minute. In only a little over a year from now they will need to have an initiative approved for circulation by the state, so they can begin collecting signatures from registered California voters. It may take several months between the time the initiative is first submitted to the state for review and when final approval is granted. That means Alexander already has less than a year, more like nine months, to navigate a complex process that starts with an idea and ends with a product that has survived multiple revisions, legal reviews, all the while earning and retaining support from donors and grassroots activists.

There is a new cultural factor at work in California that makes this effort worth while. Billions of dollars and decades of indoctrination are not having the manipulative impact they once had. California’s voters are ready for hope and change.

This article originally appeared in the California Globe.

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Movement to Recall Newsom Offers Hope to the Nation

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Gavin Newsom may not be the worst governor in the history of the United States, but he is a figurehead for what is definitely the worst ruling class this nation has ever seen. The elites that prop up hapless tyrants like Gavin Newsom are utterly self-serving, filthy rich, and concerned only with appearances and power.

California is a political and financial stronghold for the progressive oligarchy that controls America. But California also has some unique characteristics that could result in it becoming a center of opposition to this progressive oligarchy.

To begin with, California has a critical mass of voters that understand exactly what they’re up against and will enthusiastically fight for change. California delivered 6.0 million votes for Trump in 2020, more than any other state. Texas, still a Red state, only had 5.9 million Trump voters last year, and battleground Florida only had 5.8 million Trump voters. Within California, the Trump contingent may be a minority, but there are a hell of a lot of them, and they’ve all had it with Gavin Newsom and everything he represents.

There’s another advantage California has, one that may seem counter-intuitive. California is America’s first wholly multi-ethnic state, with 39 percent Latino, 37 percent White, 15 percent Asian, and 6 percent Black, and 3 percent “American Indian and other.” The point here? California has already become America’s future. But despite this fact, and the supposed inevitability of Democrat rule that it portends, the dissent currently roiling California is not coming exclusively from the White minority. That wouldn’t explain voting results on some of California’s key 2020 ballot initiatives, where 52 percent of voters rejected increasing property taxes, 56 percent rejected “no bail” laws, 57 percent rejected the reinstatement of affirmative action, 58 percent supported the rights of independent contractors, and 60 percent rejected rent control. None of these margins would have happened without significant contributions from nonwhite voters.

For now, the multi-ethnic character of California’s electorate still guarantees victories for Democrats that rely on “anti-racism” and the “climate emergency” to secure votes. But those rhetorical weapons convince white voters as easily as they convince nonwhite voters. And if anything it is the nonwhite voters that are waking up to the fact that this rhetoric is a masquerade, a con, a distraction, a way to keep the ruling elite in power and deny the aspirations of ordinary people.

It doesn’t take a lot of digging to find evidence that California’s ruling class, its one-party state, its supposedly enlightened progressive oligarchy, have betrayed the people: Unaffordable housing. Record homelessness. Rising crime. Failing schools. Independent contractors thrown out of work. Burning forests. And now, a locked down population while the prisons are emptied.

The answers to these failures are not elusive, nor are they partisan. Repeal extreme environmentalist regulations that have made it impossible to construct affordable housing without subsidies. Restore laws against intoxication, petty theft and vagrancy, and watch half the homeless population suddenly find shelter with friends and relatives. Help the rest in inexpensive supervised encampments where sobriety is a condition of entrance. Implement school choice and break the destructive monopoly of the teachers’ union. Further protect the rights of independent contractors. Bring back the timber industry to thin the forests and create jobs.

What part of this agenda would be anathema to anyone based on their race, gender, or position on climate change? None of it. The reason this agenda is not implemented is because wealthy Californians are making billions of dollars milking the system. As more and more candidates, of all backgrounds and ideologies, step up to demand effective solutions, all the money in the world will not protect these special interests. Oligarchy in America, hiding behind progressive nostrums, is approaching its high water mark. Where will the tide turn first? Don’t be surprised if it’s in California.

This is why the movement forming to recall California Governor Gavin Newsom may have been initiated by Republicans, but has gathered support from everyone. A nonpartisan, multi-ethnic coalition is forming in California that is going to demand practical solutions instead of more corruption. They are going to hold these negligent, self-serving politicians accountable and replace them, starting with Gavin Newsom.

With over 1.2 million signed petitions already collected, and tens of thousands more arriving daily, the chances that Gavin Newsom will have to fight for his political life in a special recall election have never been higher. How the proponents have built a powerful coalition of committees is an example of innovation that offers a new model for qualifying initiatives, recalls and referendums, one that will not be restricted to billionaire corporations or one-party legislatures.

According to lead proponent, retired sheriff Orrin Heatlie, the volunteer signature gathering army that has been growing all summer is now deploying over 5,000 people every weekend to gather signatures. “They’re tired but they keep plugging along like they always have,” said Heatlie, adding that “more and more people volunteer as they learn about the progress of the movement.”

The latest counts, confirmed by representatives at both of the main recall committees, indicate over 200,000 signatures have already been collected via a direct mail effort, and over 1,000,000 signatures have now been gathered by volunteers. The original volunteer committee, the California Patriot Coalition led by Heatlie, has been active since June 2020. The committee running the direct mail campaign, Rescue California led by Anne Dunsmore, has only been doing mass mailings for a few weeks.

Using direct mail instead of professional signature gatherers is a risk that appears to be paying off. Paid signature gathering campaigns currently face the multiple obstacles of COVID restrictions on where they can set up, as well as the impact of AB 5 which destroys the traditional business model of hiring signature gatherers as independent contractors. Even before these new hurdles were added, the costs for signature gathering had already gone up because the number of firms able to do statewide campaigns consolidated at the same time as the number of well-funded special interests willing to pay whatever it takes increased. For example, Uber, or the real estate industry, or the association representing dialysis clinics, and others, can easily spend tens of millions of dollars on a signature campaign. But activist groups rarely have unlimited funds.

This is why the synergy generated by the original committee, the California Patriot Coalition, which successfully recruited a grassroots army, combined with the innovative approach of direct mail being used by Rescue California, may become a precedent setting breakthrough to be emulated in future initiative qualification campaigns.

“It is exciting to see the response to our effort,” said Anne Dunsmore when reached for comment. “We are way ahead of our projections, and we absolutely expect to reach our goal of 700,000 signed petitions via direct mail. The signed petitions we receive are validating at the astonishing rate of 98 percent, each response averages over two signatures, and we also have received donations from over 8,000 people, including over 500 in the past week.”

Dunsmore also recognized the tremendous contributions of the original recall committee, saying “We are enormously pleased with our partnership with the California Patriot Coalition and their volunteer effort.”

A key member of the California Patriot Coalition is Robin McCrae, who echoed Dunsmore’s sentiments about the synergy between the two committees, saying “we are all well intentioned, passionate people who care about making change for the better and we all have a common goal and common purpose and our parallel efforts will get the job done.”

With thousands of active volunteers, managing the logistics and messaging of the group is a challenge. Heatlie explained how that challenge was recently complicated by Facebook. “We have 75 local Recall Gavin groups on Facebook with over 200,000 members,” said Heatlie, “and in the days following the events on January 6 in Washington DC, all of our administrators were locked out of posting or commenting on posts. Over 150 of our administrators and regional managers were locked out of their Facebook groups. The ban won’t lift until January 23rd.”

The irony of Facebook leaving these group pages up but locking out the administrators is that the group leaders lost the ability to screen user posts and comments. This meant the risk of non-administrators leaving posts or comments that might offend Facebook went up, not down, by virtue of their ban. “If violations were entered on our Facebook pages,” said Heatlie, “we couldn’t remove them anymore.”

Opponents of the recall point to incendiary comments online, attributable to a few people and often posted in the heat of the moment. But a few objectionable comments only represent a minute fraction of the vast movement behind the recall. It is worth wondering who is helped when Facebook prevents recall organizers from even moderating their online forums.

McCrae offered additional thoughts that might summarize the motivations of the vast majority of recall supporters when she said “The heart and soul of this recall are hard working volunteers who are dedicated to saving California. They are fighting for the right to work, to save their businesses, and protect their freedom from government overreach. They recognize that California is no longer thriving. Our beautiful state is deteriorating and we are trying to save it.”

Dunsmore summed up the opportunity represented by tapping tremendous grassroots energy and supplementing that with traditional professional campaigning. “We are working together with passion, but not reckless passion. That’s hard when people are coming up with policies that are so atrocious and polarizing. When something is really important and it’s bad, you can’t just get mad, you have to fix the problem with a level head.”

What Newsom faces with this recall is a new coalition. A populist movement that is growing in political and logistical savvy every day, allied with a group of seasoned professionals who dove in against the odds to support them. There are many politicians in California that have, at least in the minds of millions of voters, failed to recognize and correct the challenges facing Californians. As they watch the “walls close in” on Newsom, they may rest assured they will be next.

Americans who voted for Trump for all the right reasons – his common sense approach to critical issues that would have been considered moderate only a few years earlier – should take heart from what is happening in California. They should recognize that everybody wants affordable homes and excellent schools, that everybody wants law and order, that everybody wants common sense environmental laws that don’t, for example, leave overgrown forests to burn like hell every summer. This has nothing to do with ideology or ethnicity. Recent voting patterns in California prove this. It only requires bold and practical political agendas, level-headed passion and persistence, outspoken leadership, and recruitment based on principles that are as uncompromising as they are inclusive.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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Newsom Recall Gathers Momentum

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With over 1.2 million signed petitions already collected, and tens of thousands more arriving daily, the chances that Gavin Newsom will have to fight for his political life in a special recall election have never been higher. How the proponents have built a powerful coalition of committees is an example of innovation that offers a new model for qualifying initiatives, recalls and referendums, one that will not be restricted to billionaire corporations or one-party legislatures.

According to lead proponent Orrin Heatlie, the volunteer signature gathering army that has been growing all summer is now deploying over 5,000 people every weekend to gather signatures. “They’re tired but they keep plugging along like they always have,” said Heatlie, adding that “more and more people volunteer as they learn about the progress of the movement.”

The latest counts, confirmed by representatives at both of the main committees, indicate over 200,000 signatures have already been collected via a direct mail effort, and over 1,000,000 signatures have now been gathered by volunteers. The original volunteer committee, the California Patriot Coalition led by Heatlie, has been active since June 2020. The committee running the direct mail campaign, Rescue California led by Anne Dunsmore, has only been doing mass mailings for a few weeks.

Using direct mail instead of professional signature gatherers is a risk that appears to be paying off. Paid signature gathering campaigns currently face the multiple obstacles of COVID restrictions on where they can set up, as well as the impact of AB 5 which destroys the traditional business model of hiring signature gatherers as independent contractors. Even before these new hurdles were added, the costs for signature gathering had already gone up because the number of firms able to do statewide campaigns consolidated at the same time as the number of well-funded special interests willing to pay whatever it takes increased. For example, Uber, or the real estate industry, or the association representing dialysis clinics, and others, can easily spend tens of millions of dollars on a signature campaign. But activist groups rarely have unlimited funds.

This is why the synergy generated by the original committee, the California Patriot Coalition, which successfully recruited a grassroots army, combined with the innovative approach of direct mail being used by Rescue California, may become a precedent setting breakthrough to be emulated in future initiative qualification campaigns.

“It is exciting to see the response to our effort,” said Anne Dunsmore when reached for comment. “We are way ahead of our projections, and we absolutely expect to reach our goal of 700,000 signed petitions via direct mail. The signed petitions we receive are validating at the astonishing rate of 98 percent, each response averages over two signatures, and we also have received donations from over 8,000 people, including over 500 in the past week.”

Dunsmore also recognized the tremendous contributions of the original recall committee, saying “We are enormously pleased with our partnership with the California Patriot Coalition and their volunteer effort.”

A key member of the California Patriot Coalition is Robin McCrae, who echoed Dunsmore’s sentiments about the synergy between the two committees, saying “we are all well intentioned, passionate people who care about making change for the better and we all have a common goal and common purpose and our parallel efforts will get the job done.”

With thousands of active volunteers, managing the logistics and messaging of the group is a challenge. Heatlie explained how that challenge was recently complicated by Facebook. “We have 75 local Recall Gavin groups on Facebook with over 200,000 members,” said Heatlie, “and in the days following the events on January 6 in Washington DC, all of our administrators were locked out of posting or commenting on posts. Over 150 of our administrators and regional managers were locked out of their Facebook groups. The ban won’t lift until January 23rd.”

The irony of Facebook leaving these group pages up but locking out the administrators is that the group leaders lost the ability to screen user posts and comments. This meant the risk of non-administrators leaving posts or comments that might offend Facebook went up, not down, by virtue of their ban. “If violations were entered on our Facebook pages,” said Heatlie, “we couldn’t remove them anymore.”

Opponents of the recall point to incendiary comments online, attributable to a few people and often posted in the heat of the moment. But a few objectionable comments only represent a minute fraction of the vast movement behind the recall. It is worth wondering who is helped when Facebook prevents recall organizers from even moderating their online forums.

McCrae offered additional thoughts that might summarize the motivations of the vast majority of recall supporters when she said “The heart and soul of this recall are hard working volunteers who are dedicated to saving California. They are fighting for the right to work, to save their businesses, and protect their freedom from government overreach. They recognize that California is no longer thriving. Our beautiful state is deteriorating and we are trying to save it.”

Dunsmore summed up the opportunity represented by tapping tremendous grassroots energy and supplementing that with traditional professional campaigning. “We are working together with passion, but not reckless passion. That’s hard when people are coming up with policies that are so atrocious and polarizing. When something is really important and it’s bad, you can’t just get mad, you have to fix the problem with a level head.”

What Newsom faces with this recall is a new coalition. A populist movement that is growing in political and logistical savvy every day, allied with a group of seasoned professionals who dove in against the odds to support them. There are many politicians in California that have, at least in the minds of millions of voters, failed to recognize and correct the challenges facing Californians. As they watch the “walls close in” on Newsom, they may rest assured they will be next.

This article originally appeared on the website California Globe.

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How Libertarians Aid and Abet Oligarchy

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The list of reasons Trump is no longer President of the United States is endless. In a close election, any significant factor can be cited as the straw that broke the camel’s back. And in the years and months leading up to November 2020, there were some very big straws. Nonstop harassment by a Democratic House of Representatives and Democrat operatives embedded in federal agencies, an unbroken four year streak of media mudslinging, partisan censorship by online communications monopolies, opportunistic laws, court rulings and administrative edicts designed to increase the number of Democratic votes, and literally billions in partisan donations specifically targeting voters in Democrat-heavy cities in swing states.

Fraud as well? Sure. But the election was rigged with or without fraud.

The presence of a libertarian presidential candidate? Also yes, though difficult to prove.

When it comes to the loss of GOP control of the U.S. Senate, however, one single event stands out from the pack. The candidacy of libertarian candidate Shane Hazel, who threw the battle between Republican David Perdue and Democrat Jon Ossoff into a runoff. It is true that maybe Perdue could have won his runoff if various external events hadn’t affected turnout on 1/05, but that’s beside the point. If Hazel hadn’t been a spoiler, there would not have been a runoff.

Perdue only needed 0.3 percent on November 3 to win. To suggest that Hazel wouldn’t have attracted another 0.3 percent of Republican votes, when Hazel garnered 2.3 percent of all votes, is lunacy.

Shane Hazel deserves the spotlight for causing this debacle, and apparently he’s relishing the attention. In an article published in Reason shortly after the November election, responding to criticism over his decision to use his candidacy to force a runoff, said “Give me your tears. They are delicious.”

Was Hazel fully aware of what he was saying? Did he understand the full impact of what he’d done?

Libertarians who assert that their candidates have a right to run for election are correct. They do. But exercising that right when it literally costs Republicans control of the U.S. Senate is not a responsible use of that right. It’s a destructive adherence to ideals over reality. It reflects the same libertarian mindset that claims online communications platforms with monopoly powers are merely exercising their rights as private companies when they demonetize, shadowban, deplatform individual content creators, and now, even deplatform entire platforms.

Right-of-center Americans, of which libertarians are only one segment, are correct to be disillusioned by the performance of the Republican party. For that matter, despite the many obstacles, nearly all of them unfair, Trump himself could have done some things differently. But despite the imperfections of the party and its leader, they’re going to be sorely missed.

Will Shane Hazel, and every other smug libertarian spoiler bent on sabotaging the prospects of Republican candidates, find it “delicious” when the Biden administration and a wholly owned U.S. Congress begin to impose their vision on America? Maybe they will. After all, legalized drugs, open borders, “free trade,” privatized, owned space, destruction of single family zoning and online censorship by monopolies are all policies supported by libertarians, progressives and neoliberals alike. It is also the agenda of America’s multinational corporations, in an irony that ought to be obvious by now to ordinary voters.

Republicans in 2020, for all their flaws, were not the favored party of corporate America. And unlike Democrats, by and large they had not succumbed to the oppressive agenda pursuant to combating “climate change” and “systemic racism,” both of which are designed to further the power of big corporations and big government.

Maybe, ultimately, it is inaccurate to claim libertarians care about a decentralized economy. What libertarians fail to appreciate is that America can be just as thoroughly dominated by big corporations and powerful oligarchs as it can by big government. The fascist marriage of big government and big corporations has erased the necessary tension between those two primary centers of power in America, a tension that was necessary to preserve individual freedom and the competitive prospects of small and emerging businesses.

So maybe libertarians need to be rebranded. Maybe they’re not “libertarians,” but fascists that favor top-down rule as long as it’s “corporate” instead of “government.” Yeah yeah, we know the disclaimers. “We decry crony capitalism. We deplore corporate welfare.” Problem is, libertarians, the corporate invasion of society has progressed well beyond these favored tropes. America’s transition to a corporate oligarchy is nearly complete. And in that process, libertarians like Shane Hazel have been a big help.

Down here in the real world, the impact on ordinary Americans is the same. We are owned. We are not free. And all the permissive drug laws and open borders and big tech enabling in the world will not make us free. Shane Hazel. At best, like every other libertarian politician in America, is a progressive dupe. At worst, and consistent with political theory, he is an economic fascist. How does that sound to you Shane? Is it delicious?

In a scathing essay published last week in American Greatness, “paleolibertarian” Illana Mercer thoroughly deconstructs the ongoing libertarian defense of big tech censorship. More importantly, she exposes the fallacy of considering the state to be the only potential source of tyranny, and calls for “fresh theoretical thinking.” She writes:

“Discrimination, aver the libertarian-minded among us, is the prerogative of private property. Or, so we console ourselves. We’re safe. After all, aggression for aggression’s sake, as we libertarians have long maintained, is the modus operandi of the state, not of free enterprise. Yet, here we are! In more effectively banishing people and their products from the market, private multinationals are posing a serious competition to the State. And therein lies the rub. Fresh theoretical thinking about the meaning of Deep Tech begins with an understanding that we live and labor under tyrannical corporate statism, or tech-dominated statism.”

Shane Hazel is now intending to run for Governor of Georgia in 2022. Let’s be perfectly clear: This man is a troll. His odds of ever winning an election are near zilch. But he will get plenty of attention, and along with others like him, he may destroy the Republican party. And while Shane Hazel probably doesn’t look in the mirror and say “I’m a fascist,” that is what he is enabling with his antics. Him, and every other libertarian that isn’t willing to come to terms with the consequences of their actions.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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