America’s Automotive Future

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Joe Biden, emulating trendsetting blue state governors like California’s Gavin Newsom and New York’s Andrew Cuomo, recently has declared that by 2030, new car sales must be 50 percent zero-emission electric vehicles.

The problem with this decree is that it violates the proverbial rule against the government picking winners and losers. It’s one thing for the government to subsidize energy research, or, for that matter, any pure research. Libertarian purists might object to that, but sometimes these public-private research partnerships can accelerate innovation and help keep American manufacturers competitive. It’s quite another thing, however, for the government to restrict what sort of technology powers our vehicles, because there’s no way we can predict how technology will evolve between now and 2030.

Without any help from the government, electric motors already look very good as a competitor for the next generation default automotive power plant. Their horsepower-to-weight ratio is better than the finest internal combustion engines. Electric motors are simpler in design and require less maintenance than internal combustion engines, and they last longer. And as anyone driving a high performance sports car has learned to their possible chagrin, the extraordinary torque delivered by electric motors means a mid-range Tesla almost always beats them in a zero-to-60 challenge.

But if electric motors are highly competitive candidates to replace internal combustion engines, the technologies available to generate electricity and store it on board an EV still have a long way to go. As legislators in California and New York ought to know, mandating a “zero-emission vehicle” is fraught with consequences they have yet to address. The electric age is coming, but it’s still a long way off.

The challenge of moving to zero emission electric vehicles underscores the bigger challenge, moving to a zero emissions industrial economy. According to conventional establishment wisdom, this is necessary to avoid a catastrophic collapse of planetary ecosystems. But unacknowledged in this establishment wisdom is that while moving to a zero emissions industrial economy may or may not prevent a global environmental catastrophe, making such a move prematurely guarantees a global economic catastrophe.

These numbers are so well documented it’s tiresome to have to repeat them, but here goes: According to the most authoritative source in the world, the BP Statistical Review of World Energy, in 2020 worldwide, oil provided 31 percent of all global energy, natural gas provided 25 percent, and coal provided 27 percent, for a total of 83 percent. Then the “zero emission” fuels, which are out of favor with environmentalists, were nuclear, providing 4.1 percent, and hydroelectricity, providing another 6.8 percent. Renewables, which would include wind, solar, and “carbon neutral” biofuel, all combined, only provided 5.7 percent of all energy produced worldwide in 2020.

Another easily verified and incontrovertible statistic concerns what ought to be realistic energy production goals worldwide. There are 332 million Americans, who in 2020 consumed 16 percent of all worldwide energy, despite representing only 4 percent of the total population on Earth. If everyone on Earth were to consume half as much energy per capita as Americans currently consume, which seems minimally reasonable, global energy production would have to double.

This is the implacable backdrop against which politicians like Biden, Cuomo, and Newsom crow about their brave and forward thinking electric vehicle mandates. Electricity is energy, but it has to be generated using some other type of fuel. And the “renewables” contribution to the global fuel supply remains insignificant, at the same time as there is an urgent need to rapidly increase global energy production.

This is why a political decision to lock personal transportation into all-electric modes, to the point of banning anything that is not “zero-emission” is ridiculous. Where will all this electricity come from? Never mind the challenges of zero emission power storage, either in the form of batteries, or fuel cells running on emissions-free hydrogen. And never mind the environmental footprint inherent in the manufacture and eventual reprocessing of these vehicle components. Those technologies are coming along, but they’re not here yet. Despite the inspired rhetoric from their proponents, they’re not abundant, they’re not cheap, and they’re not even very green. But what about the entire challenge of generating the emissions-free electricity that charges the batteries, or through electrolysis converted into hydrogen? Where will it come from?

When 83 percent of global energy still comes from combustibles, and only 5.7 percent of global energy comes from sources that environmentalists consider acceptable—as if the cradle-to-grave ecological footprint of solar, wind, and biofuel energy is actually “green”—it is a mistake to mandate zero emission vehicles. A recent example of this mistake is found in the fate of the Chevy Volt, one of the most innovative automotive designs ever to hit the road. The concept was simple enough, build a car with an all-electric drive train, and have an on-board gasoline engine that is only used to turn an electricity generator. Install a smaller battery and design the car to operate using battery power, or gasoline power via the generator, or in a combination of the two. For most duty cycles, Volt drivers would never use their gas engine since the battery gave the car a range of 70 miles. But with a full tank of gas, the car had a range of over 400 miles.

The Volt design, unlike more complex hybrids that have electric and internal combustion engines both delivering traction to the wheels, allowed the gasoline engine to spin at a constant RPM, since all it ever did was turn a generator. This allowed extraordinary fuel efficiency. The Volt concept could be extended to vehicle designs where the engine turning the generator runs on natural gas, or ethanol, or other carbon neutral biofuels, or even emissions free hydrogen. But by disqualifying any onboard internal combustion engine through a zero-emission mandate, not just the Volt, but all hybrids have been condemned to oblivion.

This is incredibly shortsighted. What if combustible biofuels can be produced in factories using algae? What if batteries at scale develop unacceptable safety records, or never achieve quick-charge capability, or there are global shortages of battery components, or the process to recycle batteries never becomes cost-effective? What if hydrogen fuel cells and hydrogen storage never quite achieves the cost and performance standards consumers expect?

The automotive world in 2021 is experiencing a proliferation of technologies. It is similar to the dawn of the automotive age, over a century ago, when early vehicles were powered by electricity, gasoline, and steam. Today, if the government gets out of the way, personal transportation appliances may find themselves in an intoxicating ferment of new ideas and technologies reminiscent of the early days.

Over the next few decades, car designs are destined to proliferate beyond recognition. They will often be modular, with detachable passenger compartments that can either drive on roads with a wheeled “skateboard” power unit sitting underneath, or they can be hauled through the air with an aerial drone unit attached to the top. On demand, they will drive themselves, allowing occupants to engage in activities no different from what people might do in any stationary room. Some of them will convoy in special lanes at speeds approaching that of high speed rail. And they may utilize fuels and power plants that we cannot yet imagine.

Without first resolving the global energy challenges that currently make increased use of fossil fuel inevitable, it is mere posturing to limit the choice of vehicle technologies to emissions-free EVs. Adaptation and innovation, in all forms and in all sectors, without the limitations of mandated solutions, is the quickest path towards a new and sustainable energy and transportation future.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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What Would A Centrist Do?

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The notion of centrism invites scorn from true believers. In many cases it is justified. A politician or person who just bends to the wind and prioritizes staying out of the crossfire, can often be accused of believing in nothing. Those in the so-called center deserve no respect if it is merely a hiding place for cowards and opportunists. But there’s another way to consider centrism.

Introduced as far back as 1976 by Donald Warren in his book, The Radical Center: Middle Americans and the Politics of Alienation, the concept of a centrist being a “radical” is based on the idea that a concrete, uncompromising political agenda can form that rejects extremism on the Right and on the Left. This concept is further explored in Ted Halstead’s more recent book The Radical Center: The Future of American Politics, published in 2002.

What Warren came up with in 1976, or Halstead in 2002, may or may not be applicable to America in 2021. But they expressed a powerful idea: The center does not have to be the refuge of cowards and opportunists. It can represent a vision and an agenda that is as revolutionary and as precise, if not even more precise, than the ideologies on the Left and Right that it rejects.

One of the liberating factors in proposing a radical centrist agenda is that it doesn’t have to adhere to ideological dogma from either extreme. It can focus on pragmatic policy solutions that rely on popular support and are designed to improve the freedom and prosperity of all Americans. There are other labels that might apply, although using them may muddle as much as clarify the notion of radical centrism. One of them is conservative populism. The choice of that label may be fraught, but it also provides familiar territory to anyone attempting to define a radical centrist agenda.

A centrist agenda could rest on common sense, facts and logic, and a pragmatic vision that aspires to come up with policies that benefit everyone rather than select special interests or identity groups. Such an agenda could acknowledge the good intent of policies motivated by concern over climate change or racial injustice, while exposing the hidden agendas that propel these movements. There’s nothing wrong with building resilience into America’s infrastructure to cope with catastrophic weather events—we’ve been doing that since the dawn of civilization. There’s nothing wrong with condemning racism—that, too, is consistent with the historical progress of the United States since its inception.

One of the problems facing conservative populists is the failure of center-right politicians, moderate Republicans and even many Democrats, to recognize that what conservative populists are asking for is not extreme. The obligation of conservative populists is to state unequivocally that their positions are moderate, despite how they are tagged by the establishment Left. It is a moderate, rational position to call for an all-of-the above energy strategy to address the energy challenges facing America and the rest of the world. It is a commonsense position to demand a colorblind meritocracy in American institutions, and a positive, patriotic emphasis in public education.

Across every facet of policy, ideas that are commonsense, moderate points of view have been stigmatized as right-wing extremism. The solution is not only to expose the hidden agenda of the Leftist establishment, but to occupy the center. It is a moderate, centrist position to acknowledge that America must control its borders, and to acknowledge that American citizenship bestows rights and privileges that cannot in any practical, equitable, or economically sustainable way be extended to every person that manages to cross into U.S. territory. Asserting these realities belongs in the center of political discourse. They don’t emanate from the extreme Right. They are centrist.

In compiling a list of centrist positions that need to be asserted as such, there’s a lot of ground to cover. It is not extreme, it is commonsense centrism to assert that young children in America’s public schools should not be trained to believe they can be any gender they wish to be. This is confusing to small children and has no place in elementary school curricula, if, for that matter, it belongs in any K-12 curricula. Similarly, it is commonsense centrism to recognize that while every individual deserves respect and compassion, regardless of how they express their sexuality, that doesn’t mean that people must be compelled to endorse every trending gender innovation. This is plain, simple, common sense—and there’s nothing extremist about saying so.

Similarly, it is commonsense centrism to recognize that if you decriminalize crime, and if you designate drug addiction as a lifestyle choice, you’re going to get more criminals and more drug addicts. Commonsense centrism would also recognize that if you legalize vagrancy, designating any tent parked on public property as constitutionally protected private space, and offer the homeless food and healthcare services for free and without conditions, you will remove any deterrent to vagrancy, attracting if not creating as many opportunists and predators among the homeless as genuine victims of circumstances beyond their control.

Awareness of incentives and their consequences should be one of the foundations of commonsense centrism, but somehow the policies and agenda that fall out of this awareness have become stigmatized as extremist. They’re not. If you pay people to remain unemployed, they will not work. If you approve students for graduation who can’t achieve minimum scores on standardized academic achievement tests, students will not study. If colleges and universities admit applicants without competitive academic skills, and if businesses hire and promote individuals based on their group identity instead of their qualifications, then students and workers will no longer apply themselves; they will no longer care if they’re qualified.

For the past few decades, and increasingly in recent years, these positions have been marginalized as right-of-center, if not extreme right-wing. They’re not. They are commonsense centrist positions. The people holding these positions need to calmly and relentlessly self-identify as moderate centrists. They need to demand that moderate politicians recognize them as such, and find the courage to support them.

What is known today as the American Right, or as populist conservatism, needs to occupy the center, giving it substance. They need to push the establishment Left firmly aside, into the extremist margins where they belong.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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Newsom’s True Opponents? Water and Fire

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Not quite one year ago, Gavin Newsom did something that took political courage. It was also the right thing to do. He removed from one of the state’s local water boards one of the most outspoken critics of a desalination plant proposed for Huntington Beach.

Unlike critics of desalination (once referred to as desalinization, and swiftly being rebranded yet again as desalting), Newsom understands a fundamental fact: When the Colorado Aqueduct reduces its annual contribution to the water supply of Southern California from over 1.0 million acre feet to zero, and the Delta pumps stop sending additional millions of acre feet of water down the California Aqueduct, in the midst of a drought that lasts not three years, but twenty years, all the water conservation in the world will not slake the thirst of Southern Californians.

Water conservation, when pushed to the limit, does more harm than good. It raises the price of water, since the entire operational infrastructure delivering water has a relatively fixed overhead that must be paid even when quantities delivered are reduced. It results in rationing, with consequences that are glibly dismissed. When lawns and trees die, more than “culture” is lost. Life is lost. Trees and lawns are life. They filter and cool the air, they nourish the human spirit. And every place you see a lawn, what you are really seeing is water resiliency. Surplus in the water system is healthy. Bend every fraction of surplus out of the equation, and when the prolonged drought comes, the system breaks.

Unfortunately, when it comes to water, Newsom hasn’t done nearly enough. California’s farmers and inland cities, especially in the San Joaquin Valley, are already experiencing extraordinary hardship. One more dry winter, and every Californian will endure similar trauma. Water politics are complicated, and every water engineering solution generates controversy, but the cause of this predicament is simple: California hasn’t invested in increasing the supply of water to cities and farms in over 30 years.

Water is running against Newsom in the upcoming recall election, and water is winning. When state regulators recently shut down access to water for every farmer that isn’t a mega corporation with mega wells and mega lobbyists, where was Newsom? When back in 2014 the California Water Commission was authorized via Prop. 1  to spend billions to increase California’s water supply, and then, eight years later, has built almost nothing, where was Newsom?

Why won’t Newsom call an emergency conference of legislators and stakeholders, put them in a room, and tell them: “Conservation is not enough. We’re not a communist dictatorship and we’re not a banana republic. Determine what investments in new infrastructure will produce another five million acre feet of water per year for our farmers and our cities, and don’t leave until you’ve agreed on the plan.”

If water is one of Newsom’s implacable opponents this year, imagine how much more formidable an opponent water will be next year. If Newsom survives the recall coming up next month, he’ll face another recall of sorts when he runs for reelection in November 2022. He’d better hope that it rains and it pours between now and then.

It’s fire, however, that is Newsom’s even bigger opponent this year, as he fights for his political survival. And on this, Newsom has nothing to show. After the devastating fires of 2020, Newsom’s reaction was to mandate more sales of electric cars. This is idiotic posturing, not because electric cars don’t have a place in our automotive future, but because they have nothing to do with the fires currently raging through California’s forests.

California’s fires are obviously worsened in their intensity by drought conditions. But the primary cause of these fires is a century of fire suppression, combined with a perfect storm of counterproductive policies: California’s timber industry is one quarter the size it was just 30 years ago, and a punitive, time consuming, bewildering, expensive permit process prevents effective efforts at forest thinning and controlled burns. California’s forests are dangerously overgrown. That’s why the trees are dying. That’s why we’re having superfires. Period. Fact. Any other explanation is denial and deflection.

Why hasn’t Newsom challenged the firefighters union, whose leadership had the audacity to drag their members into marching with the United Teachers of Los Angeles in January 2019, to instead use its political clout to reform forest management in California? Why didn’t Newsom expand the inmate firefighter programs, instead of cutting them back?

Newsom needs to do the right thing, regardless of whether or not any particular special interest benefits or is harmed by his actions. Here again, Newsom could call an emergency conference of legislators and stakeholders, put them in a room, and tell them: “We used to manage our forests, but over the past 30 years we’ve done everything wrong. So figure out how to reengage the timber and biomass industries to thin the forests, figure out how to get drug addicts and petty thieves off the streets and back onto the fire lines, make it easier for property owners to thin their land and do controlled burns, and don’t leave until you’ve agreed on the plan.”

That would be leadership. Get busy, Governor Newsom. You would not only save your political career. You’d save California. Water, and Fire, would be your allies instead of your enemies.

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

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Why the Newsom Recall is Nonpartisan

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If you’re searching for an accurate term to describe the Newsom recall effort, it’s not easy. With 48 percent of the electorate planning to vote for Newsom’s retirement according to the latest poll, and only 24 percent registered Republicans in California, characterizing the recall as a “Republican Recall” is inaccurate. But that’s not stopping California’s Democrats from doing that, because it works.

The demonization of Republicans in California has its origins in Prop. 187, championed in 1994 by Pete Wilson, the Republican governor at the time. Approved by 58 percent of the electorate, but later struck down in court, the measure would have prohibited undocumented immigrants from using social services, public schools, and public healthcare services except in cases of emergency.

Ever since, Republicans in California have been successfully stigmatized as racist. The next step in the demonization of Republicans in California came with Prop. 8, approved by 52 percent of voters in 2008. Defining marriage as between a man and a woman, and also struck down in court, the legacy of Prop. 8 is to taint California’s Republicans as not only racist, but homophobic bigots as well.

If these factors weren’t enough, California’s Republicans are now tagged as Trump supporters. Since California’s electorate is thoroughly conditioned to associate Trump with every negative right-wing stereotype imaginable, that, too, works.

No wonder we have a national politicians like Elizabeth Warren appearing on television ads in California, where she equates supporters of the Newsom recall with “Trump supporters across the nation attacking election results and the right to vote.” Warren goes on to say “now, they’re coming to grab power in California, abusing the recall process and costing Californians millions.”

Warren’s message, paid for primarily by Netflix founder and billionaire Reed Hastings, is a textbook example of the vacuous brilliance of anti-recall messaging. Every bit of it is false yet compelling, from its blatant distortions of current facts to the hollowed out half-truths that constitute its core premises.

Current facts, for example, completely contradict the idea that there’s any connection between what are, in any case, legitimate attempts to restore faith in voting integrity across the nation with the Newsom recall. Facts also contradict the idea that the Newsom recall is an “abuse of the recall process.” If it were just Trump Republicans who supported the Newsom recall, Reed Hastings and the SEIU wouldn’t be spending millions to oppose it.

The cold fact of political life in California is this: Republicans constitute less than one quarter of registered voters. Democratic demagoguery aside, things are complicated. There are millions of non-Republicans who support the recall. This same nuanced reality informs any historical analysis of partisan politics in California over the past few decades.

Prop. 8, for example, attracted 7.0 million “yes” votes back in 2008, at a time when there were only 5.3 million registered Republicans left in the entire state – and as if 100 percent of them turned out. Not only did millions of independents and Democrats support Prop. 8, but its presence on the ballot caused a split in the California Republican party from top to bottom on social issues that still exists.

What’s most misleading about recall opponents tagging it as a “Republican Recall” is that all of this is meant to distract voters from the failures of California’s ruling Democrats.

And what of the core premises of Democrats? Maybe Prop. 187 went too far. That doesn’t mean the immigration debate is over. When will honest Democrats, along with their allies in big tech and the media, acknowledge that at some point there is a practical limit to how many foreign refugees can settle in the United States? When will they admit that the real reason for lax border security is because it suits the agenda of government bureaucrats, corporations and financial special interests who want a surplus of labor and a shortage of public services? Millions more people mean more taxes to provide them more services, bigger government, cheap labor, and obscene profits for real estate speculators.

Similarly, when will honest Democrats along with their allies in the media acknowledge that somewhere, and we may debate with civility exactly where, there is a practical limit to how emphatically we must celebrate this week’s mandatory gender innovation of the century? One may argue that Prop. 8 was behind the times. But does that mean anything goes? Maybe, for example, it isn’t necessary to upend the entire so-called “binary” paradigm of gender when instructing first graders in the public schools, and maybe, just maybe, transsexual women should not be competing in women’s sports?

The Democratic party’s positions on these issues are themselves intolerant in the extreme. If you wish to question the efficacy of lax border enforcement and sanctuary cities, you are a racist. If you wish to question the entire transgender agenda, you are a bigot. And yet on these unreasonable premises, they’ve turned the entire Republican party radioactive.

Despite massive spending on misleading political ads, Gavin Newsom could lose. Because Californians of all backgrounds and lifestyles are realizing that Republicans aren’t to blame for the problems they’re facing. Republicans are politically impotent in California and they have been for nearly two decades. Crowing about supposed Republican extremism is a distraction from the real story.

Democrats are the reason California’s cities are overrun with homeless people, because Democrats are the reason that overregulation has made homeless shelters and homeless housing impossible to build at scale, or with any conditions for entrance. Democrats are also the reason that overregulation has made housing impossible to build without construction subsidies, and unaffordable to occupy without either rent subsidies or unusual personal wealth.

Everywhere you turn, it’s the Democrats whose policies have created the problems confronting ordinary Californians. Expensive, unreliable electricity. Water rationing. Public schools utterly failing low income communities. Congested, pitted roads that desperately need upgrades and expansion. Forests that are burning up because Democrats destroyed the logging industry and imposed regulations that make it almost impossible for landowners to do controlled burns or thinning.

The list of Democratic party failures goes on. And on. And on. And it has nothing to do with supposed Republican “bigots.” Gavin Newsom’s support from billionaires and unions representing public bureaucrats is not inexplicable. What constitutes a betrayal of private sector working families spells profit for the oligarchs, and empire building for the bureaucrats.

That’s the real message. One would think that Elizabeth Warren would understand at least half that story. Perhaps she does. But money talks.

This article originally appeared on the website California Globe.

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Cover Art from the Woke Bookshelf

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If you’re running an independent bookstore in the San Francisco Bay Area, what sort of window displays will bring in foot traffic? Conversely, what sort of window displays will not invite ideologically driven vandalism? Here, based on a colleagues recent trip to “Book Passage – The Bay Areas Liveliest Bookstore,” are a sampling of what you may expect.

To fully appreciate the politicization of the leftist literati, you have to view these cover photos. In this first example, notice the use of socialist realism in the cover art. Published by Simon and Schuster, the cover of “Kamala Harris, Rooted in Justice,” portrays a heroic profile. It uses bold, primary colors and incorporates patriotic images. From Britannica.com, consider this definition of socialist realism in art:

“Socialist Realism was also the officially sponsored Marxist aesthetic in the visual arts, which fulfilled the same propagandistic and ideological functions as did literature. Socialist Realist paintings and sculptures used naturalistic idealization to portray workers and farmers as dauntless, purposeful, well-muscled, and youthful.”

Well, dauntless and purposeful, anyway.

Where Kamala Harris got her own book, Elizabeth Warren and Nancy Pelosi, and others, are part of a series, “Queens of the Resistance,” brought to you by Penguin Random House. Might these books be fulfilling “propagandistic and ideological functions?”

One might also wonder why Elizabeth Warren is pictured raising a clenched fist, whereas Pelosi is merely crossing her arms. But in both cases, their countenance is dauntless, purposeful. They are “Queens of the Resistance.” But we’re just getting started.

 

In order to not merely showcase the resistance fighters, but to also identify the enemy, we have, courtesy of Seal Press, Ijeoma Oluo’s “Mediocre, The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America.” The summary of this book on its publisher’s website merits quoting in its entirety.

“What happens to a country that tells generation after generation of white men that they deserve power? What happens when success is defined by status over women and people of color, instead of by actual accomplishments? Through the last 150 years of American history — from the post-reconstruction South and the mythic stories of cowboys in the West, to the present-day controversy over NFL protests and the backlash against the rise of women in politics — Ijeoma Oluo exposes the devastating consequences of white male supremacy on women, people of color, and white men themselves. Mediocre investigates the real costs of this phenomenon in order to imagine a new white male identity, one free from racism and sexism. As provocative as it is essential, this book will upend everything you thought you knew about American identity and offers a bold new vision of American greatness.”

Got that? White male “supremacy” has had “devastating consequences” on everyone – women, people of color, even white men themselves! Whoever you may be, Ijeoma Oluo wants you to remember that the next time you whip out your cell phone, consume a life saving medication, drive a car, fly in a plane, vote in a democratic election, or assert your constitutional rights. Because “mediocre” white men had nothing to do with building any of these positive attributes of modern civilization.

And it gets even better.

The final pair of books offer a vision for America’s future leaders – way in the future. From the peerless Ibram X. Kendi, courtesy of Penguin Random House, we have “Antiracist Baby.” As the publisher puts it:

“With bold art and thoughtful yet playful text, Antiracist Baby introduces the youngest readers and the grown-ups in their lives to the concept and power of antiracism. Providing the language necessary to begin critical conversations at the earliest age, Antiracist Baby is the perfect gift for readers of all ages dedicated to forming a just society.”

Few objective observers would consider much coming from the mind of Ibram X. Kendi as “playful,” but maybe he’s making an exception for the children, oops, for the babies. Because it’s never too soon to start forming a young mind.

That sentiment is echoed in our last example, “Woke Baby,” from Macmillan. Written by Mahogany L. Browne, we may presume “Woke Baby” to be even more inclusive than “Antiracist Baby,” since “woke” would incorporate anti-discrimination and anti-prejudice in all of its toxic, systemic, pervasive forms. Or as the “Woke Baby” marketing verbiage tells us: “For all the littlest progressives, waking up to seize a new day of justice and activism. Woke babies are up early. Woke babies raise their fists in the air. Woke babies cry out for justice. Woke babies grow up to change the world.”

 

Given the Left’s mastery of communications techniques and their control of nearly all mediums of modern communication, you would think such ham handed material wouldn’t constitute the window dressing at an elite bookstore. As always, a useful way to put this into perspective is to imagine the flipside; books that extol the virtues of white men and expose the shortcomings of everyone else. “Donald Trump, Rooted in Justice,” “Ron DeSantis and Ted Cruz, Kings of the Resistance,” “Mediocre, the Dangerous Legacy of…” We dare not speculate any further. But there is a dangerous legacy on the Left – the flipside of welfare is crippling dependency, the flipside of Black Lives Matter is anti-white racism, the flipside of Antifa is violent insurrection.

President Biden, during his candidacy, expressed a naive but genuine ideal underlying critical race theory. He asked “what’s wrong with learning about other cultures and how to get along better?” He’s right. There’s nothing wrong with that. But anyone who has indulged in a conversation with an individual heavily invested in the progressive agenda knows it goes well beyond this benign motivation. People who buy books like this, apart from those of us who purchase them out of incredulous amusement, are living politicized, often fanatical lives. They have taken their ideology to extremes, extending it to the books they read to their infant children.

Call me a troglodyte, but I’ll stick with Dr. Seuss.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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Restoring the California Dream

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AUDIO:  A discussion of solutions to California’s policy challenges, with a focus on water and housing – 18 minutes on KUHL Santa Barbara – Edward Ring on the Andy Caldwell Show.

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Unheralded Flavors of Socialism

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The mantra of socialists, and the rallying cry that generates populist support for socialist movements, is the desire to make life better for ordinary citizens. The calls for a mandatory “living wage,” “universal health care,” housing and utilities as a “human right,” free education; the entire apparatus of the expanding welfare state are all manifestations of this goal.

To what extent the state provides services and entitlements to its citizens is an endless and necessary debate. It’s a debate that can’t be waged without also considering what citizenship itself ought to mean. What the state can afford for its own citizens is greater than what the state can afford if citizenship is secondary to mere residency. But lost in the question of what the state should offer, and who should be the rightful recipients, is a question that is too easily dismissed by partisans on both sides: when does state spending result in less authoritarian regulations and a lower cost-of-living?

If there were such a thing, and there is, then it might be possible to unite otherwise partisan factions behind certain projects that rely on state spending. This notion, anathema to libertarians and many conservatives, is in fact a way to fulfill libertarian and conservative goals. There is no better example than with respect to infrastructure.

In today’s political environment, of course, it is necessary to clarify the meaning of “infrastructure,” which has been corrupted beyond recognition. Infrastructure, properly defined, are the projects – primarily relating to delivering energy, water, and transportation services – where government funding pays for a significant portion of the construction costs in order to lower the burden on the consumers of these services.

To understand how government funded infrastructure can actually result in less regulation and a lower cost-of-living, consider the case of water services. Government policymakers have two directions they can take. They can fund construction of water supply and distribution infrastructure, or they can allow the private sector to take control of water supply and distribution. At a glance, the reaction from conservatives and libertarians is predictable: let the private sector do this. But the consequences of that decision are worth exploring.

The reality of water supply in any arid part of the United States, and that would include the entire southwest from Texas to California, is that amortization of construction costs constitute 70 to 80 percent of the cost of delivered water, whether to farmers or households. Whether the construction price tag is for new storage reservoirs or desalination plants, or even upgraded wastewater treatment plants to enable water reuse, this financial reality applies.

When evaluating the cost of project proposals being considered today, the question of socializing the construction cost or privatizing it has tremendous relevance to the end users. If government funds are used to pay 50 percent of the construction costs of water projects, or more, that translates directly into permanently lower costs to the future consumers of that water. So what happens if these costs are privatized instead?

The first result of privatizing the cost of water infrastructure investment is that there will be less investment and less construction. Investors will not touch a water project if they can’t sell the water at a profit, and if consumers can’t afford the water, there will be no sales. Therefore two consequences apply.

First, the state will have to ration water. The state will accomplish this with smart meters that monitor every drop of household or agricultural water consumption. The state will mandate the sale of internet enabled water conserving appliances that in every qualitative sense are burdens on the users. Low flow shower heads that make it impossible to rinse shampoo out of long hair. Faucets that automatically turn off every 10 seconds. Washing machines that damage clothes, take an inordinately long time to complete a cycle, and don’t do a very good job of cleaning. Government micromanagement of water consumption is an inevitable consequence of privatizing water infrastructure.

The other consequence of privatizing water infrastructure, perhaps even more ironic, is that there will be an equal if not greater cost to the taxpayer. Because water rationing and higher water rates accompany a privatized water system, the government will step in and offer financial assistance to low-income households to pay their water bill and to purchase water conserving appliances. With tens of millions of households ultimately receiving what will be permanent subsidies to their water consumption, the tax impact of privatization vs government funded water infrastructure is likely to be a wash.

This is a crucial point for libertarians and conservatives to ponder before they reflexively condemn government funding of legitimate public infrastructure. Critical questions that have to be asked are not just can the private sector do a more efficient job. That’s almost a meaningless question anyway, since the same civil engineering firms will be contracted with to perform most of these projects anyway; just in one case the payer will be the government and in the other case the payer will be private investors.

Instead the crucial questions to ask must include the following: Will privatizing these infrastructure projects lead to higher prices that will result in the government stepping in to ration and subsidize consumption? And if so, can our focus instead be on advocating for government spending on infrastructure that will create abundant and affordable supplies of water – or energy or transportation assets – so everyone can afford to pay for these essential services without subsidies and there will not be a necessity for the government to step in and micromanage our access to them?

Conservatives and libertarians that rightfully prefer less government intrusion in the lives of American citizens should realize that when it comes to infrastructure, the socialist agenda aligns with the agenda of the corporate Left. When infrastructure investment is turned over to the private sector, the ultimate result is more taxes and more regulations. They just come in the form of disbursed entitlements and subsidies to pay all the low income households who cannot, without government assistance, afford to purchase rationed, scarce water and energy, or pay to use the toll roads.

Socialists, for that matter, at least the ones who genuinely care about the welfare of those on the lower economic rungs of society, should recognize the scam to which they have succumbed. In the name of saving the environment and protecting the underserved, underprivileged, and disadvantaged, they are making life unaffordable for everyone. They may like the idea of more government subsidies, but they must recognize that these subsidies are only necessary because they turned over America’s infrastructure to private corporations. Was that really what they had in mind, as they marched in the streets to demand equity?

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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It’s Not a “Republican Recall,” Mr. Hastings

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Consumers of broadcast television were treated to a barrage of ads over the past week lambasting the “Republican Recall.” Revealed at the close of these ads was the source of major funding for the ads, Netflix founder and billionaire Reed Hastings. Compared to other Silicon Valley notables such as Mark Zuckerberg, who spent $400 million to tilt the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, Hastings flies mostly under the radar. But that’s changing fast.

Last year, Hastings contributed nearly two million to a dirty campaign that got George Gascon elected to Los Angeles County District Attorney not by extolling his virtues and qualifications, but by maliciously maligning the incumbent. Angelenos are paying an awful price, as Gascon implements a crime friendly regime that has aroused open rebellion among his subordinates and enraged so many residents that the vast county teeters on the precipice of political realignment.

Not content with supporting the problematic Gascon, Hastings now has his eyes on the whole state. But what motivates him to do this? Why is keeping Newsom in office so important to Reed Hastings that he’s willing to throw additional millions into a statewide political campaign? Hastings, like dozens of his progressive billionaire counterparts in the Silicon Valley, is not stupid. So what part of Newsom’s legacy is he so determined to protect, and what is it about the recall movement that he consider so toxic?

It’s fair to wonder the rhetoric you’ll hear from the fringes of any movement. California has its share of extremists and eccentrics, although it’s hard to imagine they’re any crazier on the Right than on the Left. But not only are the extremists on the Right in California given inordinate levels of attention and condemnation, they are portrayed as representing the entire Republican party. This is absurd and unfair, and Gavin Newsom has angered far more people than the small percentage of California’s conservatives that qualify as extreme.

Consider these basic facts relating to California’s electorate. As of February 2021, Republican statewide voter registration stands at a pitiful 24 percent. And yet two recent polls show voters almost split 50/50 on the question of a recall. The Emerson Poll, released on July 22, has 43 percent of Californians supporting a recall, vs 48 percent opposed, with 9 percent undecided. An LA Times / UC Berkeley poll released on July 27 is even closer, showing 47 percent supporting a recall vs 50 percent opposed.

You may interpret those results any way you like, but simile aside, you can’t call this a “Republican Recall.” Because Republican voters, even if they were monolithically in alignment, would only account for half of the people polled who support a recall.

Something else is going on. Reed Hastings, and the entire progressive elite that are, now more than ever, using their billions to swing state and national elections, are advised to reconsider the true sources of discontent with politicians like Newsom. As the summer wears on, and the forests burn, water rationing takes full effect, and the streets of every major city become even more impassable, here are some questions they might ask:

Why is Governor Newsom inviting the homeless and dispossessed of the world to come to California, when his plan to help them involves spending hundreds of billions to build shelters in the most expensive parts of town? How’s that going to work?

Why isn’t Newsom facing reality, acknowledging human nature, and recognizing that when you decriminalize crime and don’t get drug addicts off the street, your fair weather state becomes a magnet for every predator and drug user in America?

When the forests start burning again, will Newsom convene the lobbyists and legislators that have conspired for the last thirty years to destroy the timber, biomass, and cattle businesses in California and demand they negotiate a pathway to reviving these taxpaying, job creating, forest thinning industries?

When water rationing becomes extreme, will Newsom tell the truth to the environmentalists that have held up water projects for decades: that Californians cannot solve water scarcity merely through conservation, that it’s time to set an example to the world of environmentally sustainable desalination, water reuse, runoff capture, and yes, even expansion of surface reservoirs, and it needs to be done in years, not decades?

When blackouts and brownouts return on the hottest days, will Newsom have the courage to suggest maybe California can keep more of its clean burning natural gas power plants operating, figure out a way to keep Diablo Canyon operating safely for another thirty years or more, and, gasp, permit construction of new and modern nuclear power plants?

And as investment banks gobble up single family dwellings across the state, pricing ordinary working families out of home ownership, Newsom pushes to destroy “exclusionary” zoning laws, so these banks can demolish these homes to build fourplexes and fill them up with rent subsidized occupants. Never mind the neighbor who worked their whole life like a dog to pay their mortgage to live in a nice neighborhood. After all, they’re “privileged.” Their lives don’t matter.

Instead, Newsom, joined by his woke gang of billionaire allies, perseverate over “disproportionate outcomes,” demanding redress and restitution and reparations. Apparently they think that unaffordable housing, unreliable electricity, $5.00 per gallon gasoline, and rationed water, or forest fires that choke half the state in unbreathable filth, or power brownouts that last for days, or streets overran with criminals and drug addicts are problems of which only “Republicans” are unreasonable enough to object.

Gavin Newsom is fighting for his political life. Why he is getting cover from billionaires like Reed Hastings is anyone’s guess. Newsom, Hastings, and the entire moneyed ruling class in California are invited to ponder the preceding questions, and other questions of that ilk, and decide what they stand for. Don’t blame this recall on Republicans. Look in the mirror.

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

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Cry the Beloved California

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Back in the waning days of the apartheid era, South African Zulu Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi made an observation that echoes across the centuries. “We cannot have freedom if we don’t have bread.”

Such a predicament does not exactly repeat itself in California today, but there are echoes aplenty. Californians are oppressed, in different ways, for different reasons, than the blacks of South Africa during the apartheid years. But instead of demanding the equivalent of bread, in the form of affordable and reliable water, energy, and housing, Californians are divided into two warring tribes, with one side demanding pedagogy and policies oriented to critical race theory, and the other side rising up to stop them.

Meanwhile, in California today, water is rationed, energy is expensive and unreliable, and the prices of homes and rentals consume the incomes of all but the most fortunate.

It might be forgivable to obsess over issues of race and gender if California’s people of color, women, and gays were subject to anything remotely akin to the brutal regime of the Afrikaner. But California is the most tolerant state in the most tolerant nation in the most tolerant era in the history of the world. The hardships that members of California’s so-called protected status groups endure are indeed the result of systemic oppression. But this oppression is not the product of discrimination. It is caused by a ruling oligarchy and its retainers making the calculated decision that there is power and profit in denying economic opportunities to ordinary Californians.

There is utility in convincing Californians they are victims of phony oppression based on race and gender. It prevents Californians from uniting to fight their true enemies. An entire industry has been propped up in the service of this lie. The function of this industry is to identify a group, any group, so long as it isn’t white, straight, and male, and either demonstrate that this group does not achieve desirable things at a rate proportional to their percentage of the general population, or that they suffer undesirable things at a rate greater than their percentage of the general population.

This concept, disproportionate outcome, devoid of any normalizing nuances, is the tactical bludgeon used to demand a host of dysfunctional and epic shifts in policy. Defund the police. Empty the prisons. “Mainstream” students who should be expelled. Abandon advanced placement courses in the public schools. Construct prohibitively expensive low-income housing in the most expensive parts of town. Force people to sign diversity pledges and submit to sensitivity training. Rewrite history to accentuate the negative.

As these pointless excesses are carried out, they occupy center stage in the minds of activist proponents and activist opponents alike. Meanwhile, projects that might restore a reliable supply of electricity and water are denied with barely a squeak of protest. Reforms that might lower housing construction costs are shelved without comment.

None of this is happening by accident. Where there is scarcity, there is profit. Where there is rationing, there is power.

There was a time when there was nothing Californians couldn’t do. They built the best freeways, the best water infrastructure, and the best universities in the world. They exported energy and food, and led the world in aerospace engineering. But those men and women have come and gone.

Their descendants are a different breed. A new consensus exists among California’s elites, and it goes something like this: If we ration water, energy, and housing, prices go up but our costs stay the same. Since we are the ones who either privately own these productive assets, or wield public regulatory control over them, engineered scarcity will make us more money and we will wield even more political power. At the same time, our friends in Big Tech can embed surveillance devices in every water or energy consuming appliance, and into every modern home. Not only will this “help” people ration their consumption, but over time this will result in additional hundreds of billions in profits, with the added benefit of data collection and political monitoring.

What could possibly go wrong?

These are the overlords of California. Convincing even themselves, they feign concern over prejudice and the fate of the planet. But in reality their agenda evinces a misanthropy that would make an Afrikaner blush.

California’s reality today is one defined by owned, monitored space. Cars that watch you drive. Utility meters that track every drop of water or electron of energy you use. Televisions, phones, palmtops, virtual reality goggles, browsers, and social media accounts that watch, listen, and record your every move. This is the 21st-century version of apartheid. This is the high-tech Bantustan. You can’t see it. You can’t cross its border. But it’s all around you.

A famous book published in 1948 in South Africa during the heyday of post-World War II apartheid was Cry, the Beloved Country. In this desperate novel, the protagonist travels across South Africa, observing the inequalities and injustices tearing the nation apart.

But California’s inequalities and injustices are not rooted in racial prejudice. That is the great deception. That is the great distraction.

Californians must unite not to demand freedom from racial injustice, because they already have that freedom. They must demand bread. They must demand more water projects, more diverse and more conventional energy solutions, and fewer housing regulations to lower construction costs. That is the challenge that can unite them. That is the pathway out of poverty and that is the escape from oppression.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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CAGOP Should Not Burn Up the Recall Jungle

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The latest hot rumor, circulating among the disaffected rebels, the insiders, and the wanna-be insiders (guilty), is that the California State GOP is going to endorse Kevin Faulconer as the official Republican candidate in the upcoming Newsom recall election.

Officials at CAGOP have dismissed this rumor as unfounded, claiming the process has just begun and the outcome is uncertain. Apparently the party’s rules committee will convene later this week, and then the party’s executive committee will meet over the weekend. If these committees approve an endorsement process, then candidates will be asked to each collect 200 endorsements from among the roughly 1,400 party delegates. Since party delegates will be permitted to endorse more than one candidate, this was represented as a reasonable requirement.

But coming at the last minute, this is not reasonable. It’s also a flawed strategy. GOP voters who feel burned may stay home on September 14.

Candidates with strong ties to the state party organization and established relationships with party delegates will have a decisive advantage acquiring delegate signatures, especially since the petitions themselves, apparently, won’t be available until the party decides they’re going forward with an endorsement selection process. Therefore, if they’re only given a week or two to go track down delegates, it is possible that candidates that have already invested a lot in this contest will be froze out of even being considered.

One of the things that may elude officials at CAGOP is that in order for the recall ballot’s question one (should Newsom be recalled, yes or no?) to attract 50 percent plus one “yes” votes, the more candidates that are in the race, fighting all the way to the finish line, the better. Every candidate has some base of support that does not overlap with any other candidate. There are people who will vote for Larry Elder, or Kevin Kiley, who will not cast a ballot if their candidate is not on the ballot. Ditto for Major Williams or Kaitlyn Jenner. Some of these candidates might not poll very well. But the thousands of votes that only they can attract will make a difference if question one is a cliffhanger.

There’s also a faint whiff of rigging in the possibility of sudden new rules. Why now? Why not months ago, as soon as it was certain there would be a recall election? Candidates that are party outsiders, like John Cox, are going to have to drop everything to try to track down 200 delegates in a matter of days. Where is the respect John Cox deserves? This is a man who stepped up when nobody else was willing or able to step up. He invested his time and his fortune and earned a spot on the 2018 ballot against Newsom. Where was CAGOP back then? If there were better candidates, where were they? Why didn’t they run? In this recall, Cox was one of the first candidates to go to work. His television ads have relentlessly attacked Newsom. What’s that worth?

There’s more. Cox is good on the issues. While Faulconer’s polished campaign operation releases poll tested bromides about cutting taxes, Cox’s editorials are specific, talking, for example, about how housing prices cannot come down until construction costs are brought down through deregulating the building industry. Win or lose, John Cox deserves respect. People who dismiss his candidacy are invited to step up and run for office themselves.

What is the upside of the CAGOP endorsing a candidate, when the focus ought to be on question one? Consider the what-ifs. For example, what if the CAGOP endorses Faulconer? To suggest CAGOP would endorse anyone else insults the intelligence of anyone familiar with the dynamics of the state party. So how does this help? Does this somehow empower Faulconer to raise more money, which can then be deployed against Newsom to increase the chances that Newsom does not survive question one? That’s a valid argument, but it is a dangerous gamble. Faulconer does not excite the right wing of the CAGOP. Kevin Kiley does. So no matter how hard they try to legitimize it, if CAGOP proceeds with the endorsement process they will embitter thousands of grassroots supporters, they will burn off entire county committees; at the least they will derail what had been a growing opportunity to unite the establishment and the grassroots.

If CAGOP is trying to reimagine the party as more inclusive, capable of attracting independents and disaffected Democrats, they aren’t going to accomplish that objective by backing Kevin Faulconer. And to state this is not meant to take anything away from Faulconer. He is a moderate Republican who, theoretically, should be able to attract people on the fence. But his choreographed gestures and coiffed hair make him look like another Newsom. CAGOP needs excitement and authenticity, and for all his viability on paper, Faulconer is not exciting. It’s good he’s in the race. He’ll get votes that the other GOP candidates will not get. He will help in the quest to move the yes vote on question one to 50 plus one. But he is not a breakthrough candidate.

The candidate that represents a true opportunity to realign the state is Larry Elder. Not because Kiley, Cox and Faulconer aren’t good candidates, each in their own way. But because Elder is something completely new. He is passionate, persuasive, a professional communicator, a Los Angeles native, and an African American with the ability to unapologetically explain the virtues of conservative values to everyone. Larry Elder has the credibility and charisma that California’s Republicans need. He isn’t Newsom lite. He is a revolution. CAGOP should focus on getting Larry Elder past the roadblocks that a terrified bureaucracy have put between him and the ballot, and then just let every one of these worthy candidates fight it out.

This article originally appeared in the California Globe.

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