Newsom’s Charisma Overcomes Dahle’s Truths in a Rigged Debate

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For the best description of Gavin Newsom’s behavior during his debate with gubernatorial challenger Brian Dahle last Sunday, one must go all the way back to Hunter Thompson’s unforgettable book Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail in 1972, where he compares a career politician on the scent of the presidency to a bull elk in a mating rut. Here is a snippet of Thompson’s arresting prose:

“The dumb bastards lose all control of themselves when the rut comes on. Their eyes glaze over, their ears pack up with hot wax, and their loins get heavy with blood. Anything that sounds like a cow elk in heat will fuse the central nervous systems of every bull on the mountain. They will race through the timber like huge cannonballs, trampling small trees and scraping off bloody chunks of their own hair on the unyielding bark of the big ones. They behave like sharks in a feeding frenzy, attacking each other with all the demented violence of human drug dealers gone mad on their own wares. A career politician finally smelling the White House is not much different from a bull elk in the rut. He will stop at nothing, trashing anything that gets in his way.”

Against such potent political hormones, cascading through Newsom’s whole lanky body these days with the force of the Los Angeles River after a monsoon has dumped ten inches of rain onto the San Gabriel Mountains in under an hour, Dahle never had a chance.

Even if Dahle could have mustered sufficient combative eloquence to butt heads with Newsom in rut, the setup was rigged. In a fair staging, the candidates are placed on opposite sides of the set, with the moderators in the center, usually facing them. Thanks to organizer bias likely masquerading as budget constraints, this debate had two tables, both facing the camera, with the candidates at one table and the moderators at the other. The tables were angled to make it easier for the moderators and candidates to see each other. At the candidate table, Newsom had the outside spot. Throughout the debate, this put Dahle at a major disadvantage.

Instead of both candidates being in identical and therefore neutral positions, Dahle was sandwiched between the moderators and Newsom. He was forced to either turn his head towards the moderators or towards Newsom, and could never speak to them both at the same time. Newsom, on the other hand, turned in his chair to practically face Dahle, looming over him whenever he tried to speak. It was reminiscent of how Trump hovered behind candidate Hilary Clinton in the second presidential debate of 2016. But don’t expect the same approbation to fall on Newsom.

Hectoring Dahle like a schoolboy, Newsom used his height advantage as well as his positioning to lean into Dahle’s personal space with impunity, often making points with hand gestures that moved well beyond the halfway point of the table to almost, but not quite, make Dahle involuntarily flinch. It was a masterful display of dominant body language, facilitated by the sponsors of the debate either through disgraceful negligence or willful hostility towards Dahle.

One must wonder why a public broadcasting service, funded by taxes along with tax deductible donations, can’t even muster impartiality when the chances that Dahle, whose campaign account through the most recent reporting period ending 9/24 had a balance of $408,000 compared to Newsom’s $23.2 million, has about as much chance of an upset as walk-on athletes from Newsom’s favorite Waldorf school have of fielding a football team and beating the Los Angeles Rams. And it wasn’t just the stage that was rigged. Throughout the debate, as Newsom, leaning in, repeatedly interrupted Dahle, the moderators made no attempt to give the candidates equal time to speak.

With all that said, even if Newsom was so old he’d need transplants to maintain his pompadour, and was not entering the springtime of his presidential political rut, Dahle was outgunned. Several times he got trapped in places where with more experience he would have been able to score points. One tough example of this was when Newsom goaded Dahle into focusing on and defending a gas tax holiday, when it appeared Dahle was about to make a much more powerful point about California’s supply gutting regulatory war on refineries and drilling.

Another area where Dahle got backed into a corner, with Newsom getting help from one of the moderators, was on the question of whether Proposition 1 would permit late term abortions. Dahle all but let them assert that Prop. 1 does not do that, when in fact the language is ambiguous. If legal experts who are pro-life have concluded that Prop. 1 will permit late term abortions, that should be good enough for Dahle to run with. He should have forcefully declared his belief that Prop. 1 will permit abortions up until birth, and he could have immediately – without taking a breath or permitting himself to be interrupted – to ask Newsom why even abortion at “only” six months is not grotesque. He could have described a six month old fetus and challenged Newsom to defend killing it.

Instead, the moderators used the abortion discussion to segue into asking Dahle if he is for the death penalty, and again Dahle appeared indecisive. If Dahle has gone on record as supporting the death penalty, which the moderators implied, then he needed to own it. He could have explained the grisly, psychopathic, hideous, murderous crimes that earned these criminals a death sentence and challenged Newsom to explain how these criminals should be spared while innocent babies are killed. It’s not a contradiction to support the death penalty while also being pro-life. Unless there is no difference between a murderer and a baby, what’s contradictory is amnesty for killers and death for fetuses.

Over and over Dahle was outmaneuvered by Newsom with the complicity of the moderators. A telling moment was during the segment on public education, where Newsom said he “took offense” at Dahle’s criticism of California’s K-12 system of public education, where, as Dahle pointed out, “seventy percent of kids can’t read at their grade level.” Watching Newsom in this moment was revealing. As the hormones of his presidential rut surged through him, you could see a vicious curl to his mouth and hear a vicious edge to his voice. That it would surface in this moment should be no surprise. Newsom is owned by the teachers union, one of the most powerful special interests in the state, an organization in complete denial of the harm they’ve done to a generation of students.

Republicans Have Solutions – But They Have to Own Them

If politicians like Brian Dahle, and the California Republican Party he represents, want to have any chance to regain political power they will have to lean in to the issues where they’re being challenged. They have to openly and loudly reject the premises of the Democratic establishment.

“Climate change” is not the reason California’s forests are burning. It’s because California’s Democrat controlled legislature has destroyed the timber industry at the same time as it has made it all but impossible to graze livestock, do controlled burns, or mechanically thin the forests. They’re overgrown tinderboxes. Why didn’t Dahle make this point, raising his voice while doing so?

Similarly, Newsom’s blather about creating jobs could have been countered by Dahle interrupting and reminding Newsom that California has the highest rate of poverty in the nation. Dahle was right to point out that companies are leaving and residents as well are fleeing to other states, but why, when Newsom rattled off some vague story about “public-private and public-public partnerships” to revitalize Kern County, Dahle should have interrupted him to state the obvious: If you want to create good jobs in Kern County, start drilling again for oil and gas. Quit sending our money and our best jobs to Nicolás Maduro.

It is impossible to tepidly call for more oil and gas drilling, more refinery capacity, more logging, more nuclear power plants, and more reservoir storage. These things must be done. It is not possible to sort of and partially hold the teachers union responsible for ruining the public schools. They are unequivocally responsible. Instead of letting Newsom, again with help during the debate from the moderators, claim that Proposition 47 (which decriminalized crime) didn’t cause more crime, dispute that highly debatable assertion, and remark that even without Prop. 47, district attorneys like the idiotic George Gascon in Los Angeles are actively working to make our cities unsafe.

It is a moderate politician that is outspoken and explicit in their support for clean fossil fuel, safe nuclear power, off-stream reservoirs, responsible logging, and school choice. It is a moderate politician that calls for putting criminals in jail, and moving homeless people into centralized, cost-effective and safe shelters. It is a moderate politician that calls for deregulation in order to enable more competition between businesses which will drive down costs for everything, including housing. And any politician with an ounce of decency knows that a late term abortion is one of the most ghastly forms of murder imaginable. So no. No late term abortions. Make Democrats defend abortions up to six months, which is appalling enough.

These are the solutions that Newsom accused Dahle, and his party, of lacking. California’s Republicans have to be promote these solutions without apology or compromise. They are not extreme, even though they shatter every premise and piety of the Democratic machine. The politically and environmentally correct “solutions” that have been imposed on Californians by Democrats are nothing but a facade to empower special interests. Solutions exist. They’re scary. Own them.

Newsom won last night. He won because he is slick, as Dahle pointed out. He won because the debate itself, right down to the seating assignments, was rigged in his favor. He won because he spoke his party’s line with the conviction of an accomplished thespian, whereas Dahle’s truths were sincere but lacked theatrical passion.

But let’s be real. Even if Dahle destroyed Newsom, leaving his political carcass, reeking of rut, wasting on the roadside, Dahle would still be financially outgunned by more than 50 to 1. An advantage like that can turn a comatose candidate into a winning competitor. Just consider the zombie who two years ago became U.S. President. That’s what overwhelming support from established special interests can do in politics. Newsom’s no zombie. Newsom is a bull moose, in the full flush of his political life, lusting for the prize.

California’s Republicans must change the terms of the discussion. They must build their platform on a foundation that doesn’t merely reject, but ridicules and replaces the fundamental assumptions of the Democratic party, their media allies, and the special interests that are mopping up the state. Only then will they attract the support they need to win.

This article originally appeared in the California Globe.

Alternatives to San Francisco’s $1.7 Million Public Toilet

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If you want to know where California’s headed, dragging the rest of America in its wake, consider the $1.7 million single public toilet the city is going to install in the Noe Valley neighborhood. Don’t hold your breath, by the way, because if we’re lucky, the toilet will be available to the public sometime in 2025.

Everything about this toilet fiasco exemplifies how the system has broken down in California, failing normal working people in order to benefit special interests. To begin to identify these special interests, you can start with the California Assemblyman who obtained these funds from the state, Democrat Matt Haney.

Haney’s running for reelection this November, against another Democrat in this ultra Blue seat in an ultra Blue state. A quick scan of Haney’s top ten political contributors, all of whom made the “small contributor committee” maximum donation of $9,700, were either government employee unions such as the California Teachers Association, or unions representing employees of contractors that do mostly government work, such as the California State Association of Electrical Workers. Every one of them.

Like nearly every Democrat legislator in the one-party state, Haney owes his political career to government unions. It’s easy enough to verify this. Go to the California Secretary of State’s campaign finance website and scan through the 2022 data on donations to candidates.

This data, overwhelming in its consistency, demonstrates another sad truth about “democracy” in California. Haney, like nearly every other Democrat in California, doesn’t have to work hard to raise money. Republicans, on the other hand, have no choice, because they’re not owned by government unions who spend hundreds of millions every year on politics. Republicans have to perpetually organize grassroots fundraisers, collecting a little here and a little there, never getting ahead. That’s normal, by the way. But not for Democrats. Thanks to government unions, the financial advantage Democrats have in California is so one-sided it’s amazing any Republicans get elected. In return, Haney, along with his counterparts, does what he’s told.

In that context, spending $1.7 million on a single toilet makes sense. Why not spend hundreds of thousands for designs, permits, reviews, materials and labor? Why not stretch the process out for years in order to prolong the period at the taxpayer trough?

Wasting this much money on one public toilet is an example of how California’s governing class has broken the social contract and betrayed the people they’re supposed to serve, but it’s unfair to single out public sector unions as the only reason this has happened. Government unions have an inherent conflict of interest, since success for them involves more members and more money for their members, and that success can be had even if the policies they implement are complete failures. In fact, failures for society are often huge victories for government unions. California’s ruined system of public education is a perfect example of this. The worse things get, the more money is demanded and received. But government unions are only part of the reason California is broken.

This can be easily seen in how California’s homeless crisis is being managed. After squandering well over $10 billion, the state’s homeless problem is worse than ever. Public bureaucracies to supposedly help California’s “unhoused” are bigger than ever, which is a big win for the government unions. But also at the trough are powerful nonprofits and politically connected developers and construction contractors. Using environmental regulations, labor laws, misguided laws that have effectively decriminalized drug use and petty theft, and the federal “housing first” policy that denies funding for drug treatment or job training until “supportive housing” is provided, these special interests have spent billions of dollars on projects and programs that have done more harm than good.

The story of the $1.7 million single toilet is also a parable for California’s housing crisis. There’s no reason housing should be unaffordable in California that isn’t the result of special interests feeding at the trough. California is a vast state, over 163,000 square miles, that is only 5 percent urbanized. Along with tremendous reserves of open space on which to build new homes, California is rich in the natural resources necessary to build homes and roads. But regulators have reduced California’s timber industry to less than a quarter of its size only 30 years ago (the real reason they’re having catastrophic fires – overgrown and overcrowded forests), and are on track to completely eliminate the state’s oil industry. No trees, no lumber for houses. No oil, no asphalt for roads.

Shortages of land and lumber, both of which have to be imported from other states and nations, are politically contrived and unnecessary. But that only begins to explain California’s unaffordable housing. Exorbitant costs for permits and fees, excessive planning requirements, the inevitable environmentalist litigation, and unreasonable building code mandates (“carbon neutral” new homes) add hundreds of thousands of dollars to the cost of a home in California.

The alternatives are not mysteries. Deregulate the timber industry, along with oil and gas, and loosen the restrictions that prevent new construction on raw land. Roll back the expensive new building codes, reform the laws that facilitate endless litigation, and lower the punitive costs for building permits and fees. Invest public funds in new roads, along with practical water and energy infrastructure instead of relying on rationing and “renewables” to power civilization in the 21st century.

Alternatives to treat the homeless are also not elusive. End the “housing first” scam and give the homeless a choice: either sober up and get treatment for addiction and mental illness, in a safe but inexpensive shelter constructed on inexpensive real estate, or go to jail. These solutions worked in the past and they will work again, as soon as politicians find the courage and the character to stop taking political contributions from special interests that benefit from chaos and corruption.

As for the $1.7 million toilet, Haney should apologize to the City of San Francisco and give the money back to the state. But Haney is a cog in a machine he didn’t create. In the compromised world of San Francisco politics, the best we might hope for is a thorough accounting of why this toilet costs this much, and why it takes so long. That might generate public demands for a streamlined, less expensive process.

There ought to be a zero-cost alternative, but the one available to San Franciscans is fraught with its own controversy. As reported by NBC Bay Area, “according to the San Francisco department of public works it has a deal with the company JC Decaux to provide self cleaning public potties for free in exchange for advertising revenue made from the units. These free public toilet kiosks are already sprinkled throughout the city, with more on the way.

Nothing is perfect, unfortunately. These free toilets in San Francisco have been targets of vandals, they have been frequently disabled, and turned into dens for drugs, sex, and even squatting. Moreover, the San Francisco bureaucrats who negotiated the deal with JC Decaux did not diligently solicit new bids when the contract with the city came up for renewal a few years ago. But these reality checks just point to even more dysfunction from the top down. The corrupt bureaucrats, the decriminalized crime, the unaccountable criminals.

San Francisco is a beautiful city. California is a beautiful state. But its leaders, state and local, are doing everything they can to ruin it.

This article originally appeared in the Epoch Times.

One Toilet to Cost Taxpayers $1.7 Million – Welcome to California

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AUDIO: The City of San Francisco has received state funding of $1.7 million to construct a restroom in the town square of the Noe Valley neighborhood. It will have one toilet. The preposterous price tag exemplifies the gridlock and inefficiency-by-design that characterize California, a state owned by special interests. Edward Ring with Kara McKinney on Tipping Point (segment begins at 40:15).

https://www.spreaker.com/user/oneamericanewsnetwork/tp-102022-oantp1806

Algorithms Cure Gerrymanders, But Politics Remains

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With the midterm elections just a few weeks away, across California politicians have had to scramble more than usual to compete in redrawn districts. The new district boundaries were the product of the “2020 California Citizens Redistricting Commission,” which was formed to eliminate partisan politics from being a factor.

Partisan politics is not really the issue in California, however, since Democrats have wielded nearly absolute political power in the state for nearly 30 years. So why is it that the final district maps are so contorted?

Have a look at California’s new U.S. Congressional Districts, using an image taken from the final maps page on the California Redistricting Commission’s website and presented below. Sadly, because the contortions are so intricate, the image only shows those districts in the Los Angeles area. Do these districts follow logical lines of geography, or are they a bit twisted?

Congressional District 42 is a prime example of a district drawn in defiance of logic. Its southern end is down in Long Beach, but as it stretches to the northeast it thins to a sliver to take in a slice of Lakewood and Bellflower, then widens a bit to incorporate parts of Downey, then bends northwest to take in Huntington Park at its northern end. What machinations went into defining CD 42? It wasn’t logic.

CD 45 is similarly bent, but in a reverse arc. It starts in the south in Fountain Valley, then moves northwest to take in Westminster, then turns back to the northeast to accommodate Buena Park, then continues moving east to grab parts of Yorba Linda. Across Los Angeles, and across the state, examples of pretzel shaped districts are plentiful.

There is another way to shape the districts our politicians represent. The capacity to use algorithms that manipulate geographic units at the precinct level to shape districts with equal numbers of residents and logical boundaries is well established. Several resources immediately available online document this: A 2021 math thesis “Repairing Redistricting: Using an Integer Linear Programming Model to Optimize Fairness in Congressional Districts” is one example that deigns to explain its concepts in plain English. Further good references can be found here, and here.

A 2022 study posted on ScienceDirect titled “An algorithmic approach to legislative apportionment bases and redistricting” is also readable and discusses some of the challenges, as well as how software developed just in the last few years can solve them.

For example, when directing an algorithm to iterate a set of district boundaries while maintaining equal populations and solving for convex edges and minimizing the cumulative length of the polygons formed by the districts, the user must specify the initial geographic centers of each district. With multiple solutions possible, this placement affects the results. While the latest software copes well with this challenge, moving the centers automatically as it iterates towards a solution, one would think defining centers is a subjective choice that could be left to a nonpartisan commission. After all, geographic district “centers” ought to mean downtowns of the larger cities.

At every level, geographic logic eluded California’s redistricting commission, as evidenced by this map of California’s new State Senate districts.

In the Los Angeles area, SD 34 is a prime example of illogical boundaries. It starts in Santa Ana, moves north into Anaheim, the marches northwest through Fullerton, then northeast to top out in La Habra, while adding, through an isthmus barely 500 feet wide, a peninsula of constituents in the neighborhoods of Colima and Leffingwell.

These gyrations – have a look at SD 30 and SD 22 before turning from the above map, bearing in mind the entire state is just as weird – are not necessary. In a 2019 paper “Automated Congressional Redistricting,” the authors describe “swapping algorithms” that exchange voters by swapping boundaries to rationalize the shape of districts while retaining the same populations in both districts. This can be part of the iterative process. Why, for example, wouldn’t SD 30 absorb the Colima and Leffingwell neighborhoods from SD 34, while SD 34 picked up the preposterously contrived peninsula of SD 37 in northern Fullerton, while SD 37 grabbed portions of Rancho Santa Margarita from SD 38, and so on?

The answer is not blowing in the wind. It’s special interests, even in this one-party state, demanding districts in which they believe they can control the elections. Have a look at the champion for mangled district boundaries, the California State Assembly:

When it comes to California’s new State Assembly districts, almost every one of them has ridiculous boundaries. Not only are they all so crazy you can hardly tell where one begins and another ends – ref. AD 54, 62, 64, 65, 67, 73 – there are an abundance of inexplicable micro shifts of district boundaries, where just one street juts into another district.

For example, AD 67 shoots a finger west into AD 70 on Pacific Avenue, and only Pacific Avenue. For some reason, 16 homes on the south side of Pacific Avenue are in AD 67. The homes on the north side of that street are in AD 70, as is the Union Pacific property just south of their backyard fences. Why?

This is found all over the place. Just a few blocks north, six properties on the west side of Magnolia Avenue are part of AD 70, poking into AD 67. Moving east, five properties on Gylah Lane are part of AD 73, poking into AD 59. Across town to the northwest, six properties on the south side of Slauson Avenue are part of AD 64 which pokes into AD 56.

These microscopic, down to a half-street, shifts in boundaries are not by accident. They are evidence of retail political horse trading that is the obsessive, antithetical opposite of relying on algorithms. Or to be more accurate, algorithms were used aplenty in this down-to-the atoms exercise in what was purported to be a disinterested redistricting process, just not the right algorithms.

The home page of the California Redistricting Commission provides a clue as to what really went on as these boundaries were hashed out. There are 11 photographs, all in a row, each of them with a portrait of someone who is part of a different identity group. It is a diverse and inclusive home page montage, which is a fine and laudable ideal. Why not? Get everybody into the picture. But how that translates into district boundaries is not so pretty.

What the California Redistricting Commission wanted to ensure, and hopefully it was done with more decorum than was recently displayed by a suddenly infamous trio down in Los Angeles, was to make sure there was proportional representation, primarily by ethnicities. Getting proportional representation for the GOP was not a priority, because the GOP has no power.

Ethnic voting blocs, on the other hand, have a great deal of power, at least until they don’t. Democrats want to ensure they create districts that award seats to their designated power brokers in the Hispanic, Black and Asian communities. Because these communities are still reliable Democratic voters, this is a sound political strategy.

The day may come, however, when ethnic voters are as fragmented politically as white voters are. That will be a very good day for California, because it will mean issues that transcend race, affecting everyone, will be more important to voters than the Democratic litany about how they are disadvantaged and require Democrat politicians to protect them.

If that happens, there should be nothing standing in the way of partitioning California’s congressional, state senate, and state assembly districts into something resembling a checkerboard, instead of a jigsaw puzzle.

This article originally appeared in the California Globe.

The Ideological Centrality of Infrastructure

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The word infrastructure requires careful definition these days. Leftists have recently repositioned the word to describe not pipelines and power grids, and the like, but social services and public education. Where Leftists trod, moderate Democrats and RINOs have followed, muddying the meaning by imposing a broad concept onto what ought to be straightforward and tangible. This isn’t a trivial problem, because infrastructure, traditionally defined, demands painful clarity from ideologues committed to limited government.

For example, if you are going to build a pipeline to transport natural gas from wells to refineries, and thence to end users, you have to lay the pipe in a route that minimizes material waste. The same reality holds true for high voltage power lines, or freeways, or railroads. Without the ability of government to exercise eminent domain, it would be impossible to secure easements to build these necessary assets.

Even infrastructure that is built with private funding, such as toll roads, can’t be constructed without eminent domain. Without that legal authority, one private landowner, occupying a small parcel in the path of a project, could stop the project cold.

The moral worth of eminent domain falls along a continuum, and where the line is drawn between justified vs unjustified use is subjective. Necessary pipelines, aqueducts, and power lines are to one end, sports stadiums and urban renewal to the other. And even in those less justifiable categories, history is filled with examples of glorious rebuilt cities arising atop decaying slums, and only the arbitrary use of power made them possible. But we don’t have to go that far. We’re just trying to keep the lights on.

Regardless of your ideology, if you want your nation and the civilization it represents to endure, you have to make infrastructure a focal point of your philosophical deliberations and your political agenda, not a boring afterthought. Green ideology, now morphed into climate change extremism, backed by the most powerful institutions on Earth, has corrupted the infrastructure discussion in dangerous ways. They have stigmatized the upgrading or construction of virtually every conventional version of traditional infrastructure. New natural gas and oil pipelines, new refineries or reservoirs, aqueducts, power plants and freeways are all off the table, and we can’t even fix the old ones. Meanwhile, the infrastructure they’re building, oriented towards “renewables,” is extremely expensive and obviously inadequate.

If you’re a Democrat or a RINO, you don’t challenge green ideology. You don’t dare. Conventional infrastructure is not only environmentally incorrect, it’s also racist. The logic goes something like this: Low income neighborhoods are near infrastructure that pollutes because the pollution makes the area less desirable, lowering home values. People of color are disproportionately in low income households, therefore pollution disproportionately harms them, therefore infrastructure is racist.

That branch of libertarian ideology one might dub “Libertarianism Inc.,” pays close attention to these pieties. I recall attending a conference sponsored by libertarian mega donors a few years ago, where one of the sessions was striving to find common ground between libertarians and progressives on the issue of housing. The room was filled with earnest libertarians who seemed desperate to curry favor with the progressives on the panel. One of the popular refrains heard that day, and many times since, was that single family homes must be abolished because we must not subsidize the car. Home equals car equals road equals subsidies.

This again is pretzel logic, but now you’re playing defense on several fronts. Single family homes are “exclusionary” (translation, racist), they are unsustainable, and the infrastructure to support them drains public funds. If that isn’t enough, those public funds are now, and now more than ever, coveted by powerful public employee unions who want that money to increase their pay and shore up their pensions.

The Case for Cost-Effective Infrastructure

The argument in favor of government investment in infrastructure is not subtle. If you don’t subsidize enabling infrastructure, you will instead subsidize every household that can’t afford the higher prices that come with scarcity. In the 1950s and 1960s California was a magnet for working families (today it’s a magnet for drug addicts, vagrants and criminals) because the state government spent up to 40 percent of its general fund to build freeways, reservoirs and aqueducts.

At the same time, a deregulated private sector did its part. Energy companies were permitted to drill and refine oil and gas. Utility companies were encouraged to build natural gas and nuclear power plants. Timber companies maintained fire roads and kept high voltage transmission line corridors cleared, while harvesting and milling lumber for construction. This was a highly functional interplay between public and private interests, and the result was an environment where every basic necessity of civilization was abundant and affordable. Homes went up along with schools and parks, companies poured in to offer jobs, and everyone in California prospered.

Today the entire equation is inverted. Forty years of neglected infrastructure has led to clogged freeways, rationed water, expensive and unreliable energy, and needlessly expensive building materials. The policy response to these shortages is to zone high density multi-family “infill,” hoping to cram new residents into the footprint of existing power, water and transportation assets. Every basic necessity is now unaffordable to normal working families in California. Even food prices are rising and it’s going to get much worse, because irrigation water and fertilizer require forbidden infrastructure. Instead of fixing these mistakes, “infrastructure” is redefined as government subsidized “affordable housing,” school lunch programs, and other expensive social services that would not be necessary if genuine infrastructure were delivering affordable abundance.

The special interests that benefit from scarcity are hiding in plain sight. Public entities collect higher property tax revenue as assessments rise. Public utilities earn higher absolute profits as their regulated fixed profit percentage is calculated on far higher unit prices. High tech firms sell mandated chip sets and software that are built into “smart” appliances, and appliance manufacturers find a whole new market as existing and very durable legacy appliances are deemed obsolete before their time. Renewable energy companies sell mandated EVs, solar panels, wind turbines and batteries, nearly all of it them sourced from China. But even all this is overshadowed by how contrived scarcity creates new frontiers for financialization.

As interest rates go up, the amount any buyer can afford to borrow goes down, but the price of housing remains stable. Why? Because this time, hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, and institutional investors are buying everything in sight. In some cases they’re buying entire subdivisions. Cash rich, these corporate investors don’t finance their purchases, and therefore are indifferent to high interest rates.

In an era of practical investment in enabling infrastructure and reasonable instead of punitive, prohibitive regulations, the cost to build homes would drop, artificial scarcity would not exist, prices would drop, normal people could still afford homes, and America’s last great avenue for ordinary households to build generational wealth would remain intact.

Infrastructure that enables affordable abundance also benefits small businesses because it makes it easier for them to compete with larger firms. Companies that are part of an oligopoly don’t care how much their inputs cost, or how onerous regulations may become. This is one of the biggest misconceptions spread by leftists. Businesses that dominate their sectors will just pass higher costs on to their captive customers, and they welcome more regulations. They’ve realized that more regulations will help them crush emerging competitors. That’s why they’ve moved their support to the Democratic party and embraced the Green New Deal.

What a paradox. Subsidized infrastructure – along with deregulation – helps small companies compete with big companies, fostering decentralization of private wealth and a higher percentage of financially independent individuals.

Do libertarians really want to offer cover for plutocrats and the oligopolies they control? Is that the version of capitalism and competitive enterprise they embrace? Whenever a common sense infrastructure project is proposed, the green team is out to stop it. Backed by leftist billionaires and every major media property, the greens will smear the project and litigate in court. And if the outcome is nonetheless uncertain, since a lot of people recognize the need and are willing to fight for, say, more water, more energy, more roads, libertarians come in and tilt the balance to kill the project. On principle, they’ll object to any element requiring eminent domain, or use of public funds.

It’s hard to frame the ideological case for infrastructure in a seductive way. But its presence, and its absence, is felt everywhere. If principled libertarians supported infrastructure, that certainly would not preclude them from participating in revealing audits to compel more efficient use of public funds. If they reject the projects on principle, fewer get built, and those that do will lack another layer of public scrutiny.

Ultimately, libertarians have a choice: They can cozy up to progressives, exploiting the superficial synergy that finds green ideologues and small government ideologues united in stopping infrastructure projects. But then they’ll confront instead an even bigger government, funding an even more expensive, more expansive, more exploitative “infrastructure,” requiring even more subsidies. Instead of helping to fund practical conventional solutions to deliver abundant water, energy and transportation, the government will pay for smart water meters and smart appliance rebates, a renewable energy grid with all that will require, mass transit, affordable housing and housing subsidies, and social programs for the many who are economically disenfranchised by this unaffordable new world. It’s going to be one or the other.

This article originally appeared in American Greatness.

Nury Martinez is Imperfect. Who isn’t?

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Those of us who are perfect, which apparently includes just about everyone living in California today, have of course never had a mean thought, much less said something mean spirited. Not once in our lives have any of us committed such an unforgiveable transgression. And from this pristine perspective, for any of us to have ever thought or said something that was not only mean, but racist, is completely beyond any realm of possibility.

Therefore it is appropriate that the collective weight of 40 million virtuous Californians should descend without mercy on Los Angeles Councilmember Nury Martinez, whose recent conduct has deviated from the standard of perfection that the rest of us so effortlessly adhere to.

Martinez is not alone in her misbehavior. Also guilty, because they did not immediately silence her, and evidently had also “kept the conversation going with derogatory comments of their own,” are councilmembers Gil Cedillo and Kevin de León.

Now that Martinez has already resigned, and Cedillo and de León fight for their political futures, maybe it would be useful to put this incident into a more realistic context.

In the imperfect world in which we live, everyone says mean things. And given the microscopically demanding behavioral standards of 21st century America, everyone in some way is now a racist as well. Nobody is perfect, which means everybody is guilty. To paraphrase Lavrently Beria, Stalin’s ruthless police chief, “show me the person, and I’ll show you the racist.”

So what was said in this private meeting, where these Los Angeles city councilmembers spoke candidly, unaware their words were being recorded for public consumption?

The title of this article in the Los Angeles Times, describes part of what was said: “Nury Martinez also makes crude comments about Jews and Armenians in leaked audio.” That sounds bad. Was it?

In the course of discussions over the redrawing of council district boundaries, Martinez said “the judios [jews] cut their deal with South L.A.” As the Times explains, “Martinez was responding to former Los Angeles County Federation of Labor President Ron Herrera, who had concluded, ‘I’m sure Katz and his crew have an agenda,’ referring to former state Assemblymember Richard Katz.”

Later in the conversation, allegedly anti-Armenian comments surfaced. Here again from the Times is the apparent extent of those remarks:

“Martinez also spoke about Assemblymember Adrin Nazarian, who is of Armenian descent, and Councilmember Paul Krekorian, the first Armenian American to be elected to public office in Los Angeles. ‘He also wants his guy elected,’ said Martinez, referring to Krekorian. ‘So he needs a district that Adrin Nazarian could win it. That’s what they want. They want to assure, they want to be reassured that they have, not an Armenian district in the Valley, because that doesn’t exist, but they want as many Armenians in that district as possible to be able to play.’ Martinez added that she didn’t know whether Nazarian could get elected in a ‘pretty white’ district. ‘Now, I don’t think Adrin … gets elected. If a white, a reputable white businesswoman was in that district … [it] is still pretty white. But that’s on them,’ she said. ‘I’m not — I’m not cutting that deal with anybody because I don’t know. I don’t know that he can win.’ Later in the conversation, Martinez was attempting to identify Areen Ibranossian, a former chief of staff for Krekorian who is now a senior advisor to Rick Caruso’s campaign for mayor. Someone in the room asks, ‘What’s his name? What’s he look like?’ She said he’s ‘the guy with the one eyebrow.’ ‘I like him,’ Martinez said, adding that he is married to a friend of hers. When Martinez couldn’t recall his last name and asked what it was, Cedillo responded, ‘It ends in i-a-n, I bet you.’

Wading through this excerpt from the LA Times report doesn’t show anything that justifies the title. Crude? Where? The reference to Ibranossian’s unibrow? The fact that ethnic groups in a big city constitute factions attempting to influence urban policy? The fact that these insiders have a savvy grasp of these power relationships and need to talk about the political implications and how they shall respond?

Unless you subscribe to woke standards of conduct that are unreasonable and unattainable, nothing happened there. The defendants are innocent.

Which brings us to the fatal transgression, which were Nury’s comments about Councilmember Bonin and his adopted son. Yes, these remarks were mean, even racist (gasp!). But there is something at work here that needs to be identified, because it explains a lot of behavior that is inordinately attributed to racism, when in fact all that is actually animating much of it is normal resentment or animosity.

When we don’t like someone, it is not unnatural to privately or even publicly insult them, and it is also not unnatural when voicing an insult to grasp onto the target person’s ethnicity or sexuality. We are taught this is unthinkable, but in real life, it’s a common inclination. Perhaps it’s an inclination we might resist, and should resist, but it happens all the time with many people.

When someone yields to this inclination, it doesn’t prove they are racist, it only proves they’re angry with or dislike whoever it is they insulted. This is easily illustrated by considering political or ideological confrontations. A liberal might insult a black conservative, calling them an Uncle Tom, or worse. A conservative might similarly insult a black liberal. But in both cases, these people aren’t necessarily racist against blacks, because if they were, they wouldn’t turn around and feel personal warmth and admiration towards those other black individuals whose politics agree with theirs.

It is hard to know to what extent personal animosity, resentment, or merely bitter political rivalry animated Nury’s remarks towards Los Angeles Councilmember Mike Bonin. But I know this: Mike Bonin has destroyed large segments of Los Angeles, because he is a front man for a corrupt coalition of bureaucrats, powerful nonprofits, and politically connected developers who have fleeced the City of Los Angeles for billions in order to make the homeless problem worse, not better. Slavishly adhering to the failed “housing first” doctrine, which requires any homeless person to be offered free housing – with no conditions on their behavior – before you can get them off the street, much less treat their afflictions.

Policies Bonin fights for have turned Los Angeles into a magnet for every drug addict, criminal predator, and vagrant in America. For example, policies Mike Bonin supports have all but destroyed Venice Beach, and yet Bonin sanctimoniously scolds the outraged residents for lacking compassion. As if it is compassionate to let thousands of people kill themselves with drugs and alcohol, steal to support their habit, and ruin the lives of working families whose neighborhoods have been inundated.

I don’t like Mike Bonin. I don’t like his politics or his attitude. And it wouldn’t surprise me if other people who know him better than I do, dislike him even more than I do. So if they have yielded to the temptation to inappropriately chastise him for his vanity and preening self-righteousness and demonstrative virtue signaling, that’s not because they’re racist or homophobic, it’s because they’re human.

Without being able to locate a transcript of whatever it is exactly that Nury Martinez had to say about Oaxacans, other than that the word “tan feo” figured into her remarks, I can’t say much. Tan feo in English is literally translated as “so ugly” and was erroneously translated by the outraged media as “they’re ugly.” But what she said may not have been about anyone’s appearance but rather about the situation in that neighborhood.

To speculate further, what Martinez may also have been feeling is the justifiable resentment that many well established Mexican American’s now feel towards the completely unregulated flood of immigrants pouring into California from Southern Mexico and Central America. If Martinez, de León, and Cedillo are not perceiving that sentiment from their Mexican American constituents, they’d better try harder to read the room. Otherwise they may witness a political realignment that will end every one of their careers, no matter how perfect they are.

Ultimately what Nury Martinez did, in a conversation she thought was private, merits an apology. Nothing more. The outrage machine is an orchestrated show, with actors who never learned what an earlier generation of parents taught their children: sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.

If every person making such a fuss about Nury Martinez were held to the standards they’re holding her to, there would be no fuss, because there would be nobody left.

This article originally appeared in the California Globe.

Republicans Unveil “The California Promise” – Does it Matter?

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No state in America is more thoroughly dominated by one party than California. The State Senate has been controlled by Democrats for over 30 years, with Republicans currently holding only 9 of the 40 seats. Since 1992 the State Assembly was in Republican hands only once, in 1996, and today GOP politicians occupy only 19 of the 80 seats. Starting with Governor Newsom, every higher office is held by a Democrat.

One might think the state of the state would give voters pause. But rumors of realignment are greatly exaggerated. So far, the voting blocs that constitute a reliable supermajority for Democrats are durable and overwhelming. And voter motivation, notwithstanding the Democrat’s bloviating saturation campaign to vilify Republicans as racists and sexists, is economic.

The least heralded but biggest example of this are white liberal boomers and their descendants, living in the inherited homes they grew up in, protected by their lineage and by Prop. 13 from the prohibitive cost of housing for everyone else. By the millions, they vote Democrat because the Democrats haven’t hurt them, and Republicans are scary.

The next sizable bloc of Democrat voters in California are employees of state and local governments and public utilities. Taking into account retirees, active employees, their spouses and their adult children, they represent several million voters. All of these households collect pay, benefits, and pensions that are lucrative enough to shield them from the worst impacts of California’s cost-of-living. And while some of them are dimly aware that California is unaffordable because of Democratic polices, they’re acutely aware that Democrats do whatever public employee unions tell them to do. They’re not about to disrupt that arrangement.

Also voting Democratic by the millions are those Californians who have given up any hope of succeeding in life without government assistance. By and large, these voters are the least aware that in a deregulated economy with adequate enabling public infrastructure, they would be able to afford a life of comfort and dignity without government assistance. On the other hand, this is the bloc most susceptible to Democratic demonization of Republicans as heartless ogres who will strip away the safety net.

And then there are the elites. Entertainment moguls. Tech billionaires. Those workers in the digital economy who collect high salaries and vest stock options. These workers include the in-house activists who write the algorithms that regulate search results and online content. With money and influence far out of proportion to their numbers, California’s elites are reliable Democrat voters.

This is California’s electorate. They are either minimally affected by the crime, homelessness, poor schools, and high costs for everything, or they are devastated by it but convinced the only answer is more taxes, more government, more spending, more subsidies, more services. And if that’s your mentality, Republicans truly are the ogres that want to steal your lunch.

How Republicans Are Responding

This is a near hopeless situation. It’s the reason Republican donors have abandoned California. But one encouraging fact emerges. Ethnic demographics has very little to do with Democratic domination in California, despite the “anti-racist,” racist drivel that emanates from hard-left activists and the workshops of pragmatic political consultants. As described, for the most part, California’s voters choose Democrats for economic reasons.

Recognizing this underscores the futility of merely pointing out how Democrats are killing California’s economy, because they’re not. So far, Democrat policies are only killing certain sectors of California’s economy – agribusiness, energy, and small businesses. These sectors are powerful, but they nonetheless represent a small fraction of California’s overall economy and a small fraction of California’s electorate. Most of them are already Republicans. But again, there are encouraging elements to this story, because eventually, once the Democrats have thoroughly throttled California’s ability to deliver energy, water and food to everyone, the electorate will finally turn on them.

When that happens, the Republican litany of Democrat failures will find more receptive ears. Even the media will perk up, and begin to hold Democrat politicians accountable for the policies that led to the catastrophe. But to avoid a “solution” that is even worse than the status-quo, i.e., to avoid a descent into Democrat driven desperate rationing and even more taxes and regulations, the Republicans will need to offer a coherent alternative. And they need to start doing that now.

To that end, the California Republican Party has launched “The California Promise.” While the online presence of this campaign is minimal, and the online home of the campaign is little more than a splash page, it’s a start. For each of the bullet points listed on the California Promise website, here are some suggestions:

An Affordable California: Repeal the Global Warming Solutions Act and all subsequent legislation. Develop California’s oil and gas reserves and expand refinery capacity. Keep Diablo Canyon open till at least 2060 and sue the federal government to deregulate nuclear power.  Eliminate laws that restrict construction of single family homes on open land. Put mass transit and HSR funds into upgrading and widening freeways across the state. Repeal mandate to ban sales on non EVs.

A Safe California: Put initiatives on the ballot to repeal Prop. 47 that downgraded drug and property crimes. Construct minimum security prisons to incarcerate inmates convicted of minor crimes and put them to work on forest thinning and conservation projects.

A Quality Education: Implement school vouchers so parents have the option to choose private, charter, or parochial schools.

A Solution for Homelessness: Direct the California Attorney General to challenge Jones vs City of LA and other 9th circuit rulings that deny the ability of police to get vagrants off the streets. Build inexpensive shelters and expose the corruption of the Homeless Industrial Complex which has solved nothing and wasted tens of billions of dollars.

A Reliable Water Supply: Put the Water Infrastructure Funding Act of 2022 on the state ballot so voters can have a chance to decisively solve water scarcity in California.

A Fire Safe California: Bring logging and milling back to California. Guarantee equipment loans so private companies can quickly reestablish operations in California’s forests. Radically streamline the regulations that prevent property owners from thinning, logging or grazing livestock on their properties.

That barely scratches the surface, of course. What CAGOP has put up there is a good start, but it isn’t enough. Not only will more specific detail be helpful, at some point CAGOP will have to make truly bold assertions.

For example:

“There is no climate crisis, renewables are not any more sustainable than so-called non renewables, and special interests have hijacked the environmental movement. While we care about the environment, we intend to revisit every single environmentalist inspired law and agency and we intend to scrap anything that we find excessive, redundant, corrupt, or based on false premises.”

That mouthful, as well, barely scratches the surface. And millions of people agree but are afraid to say so.

Maybe it’s going to take an entirely new generation of politicians to stand behind assertions this radical. It’s sad that we live in a state where fearmongering over an alleged imminent climate catastrophe is considered normal and is encouraged, while suggesting – with ample evidence if you know where to look – that the planet is not gravely imperiled, is considered radical and is condemned. But these are the times we live in.

When the lights go out, and they will, California’s voters are going to be looking for decisive answers. The issues CAGOP has highlighted in their California Promise provide a sufficiently comprehensive taxonomy. But within each category, offer not only specifics, but radical change. The ship needs to turn away from the iceberg, not merely slow down.

This article originally appeared in the California Globe.

With Money for Mudslinging, Democrats Mop Up California

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If you have a look at the contributions flowing into the California Democratic Party and compare them to the contributions that the California Republican Party attracts, it isn’t even close. For this election season, January 1, 2022 through September 24, the Democrats have collected $19.1 million, and the Republicans less than half that, $9.5 million.

Even this understates Democratic power, however, because the Democrats were sitting on a substantial war chest, and the Republicans were not. As of 9/24, the California Democratic Party reported $29 million in available cash; the Republicans, only $4.0 million. Going into the final weeks, California’s Democrat state party has seven times as much money as the Republican state party.

If you have a look at the ads the Democrats are running to ensure their dominance over California politics, that isn’t subtle either. They are mudslinging as hard as they can, and it works, because it has always worked.

In every quasi-competitive race, examples of Democrats wielding both overwhelming spending supremacy and underhanded campaign tactics are plentiful. For example, in Assembly District 7, Democrat Ken Cooley has raised $1.6 million through 9/24, while his opponent, Republican Josh Hoover has raised $650,000. And money talks.

In a barrage of mailers and television ads, Cooley claims Hoover “stands with extremists who want to outlaw abortion with no exceptions for victims of rape and incest,” and that Hoover “has spent his entire career working for extreme, far-right politicians…” and “helped them echo and advance Donald Trump’s dangerous agenda.”

This first claim is cleverly misleading. By saying Hoover “stands with extremists,” and then saying those extremists want to outlaw abortion with no exceptions, it implies that Hoover wants to outlaw abortions with no exceptions. But that is not Hoover’s position, it is the position of some of his supporters.

As for Hoover’s alleged association with “extreme, far-right politicians,” this is an inaccurate portrayal of Hoover’s previous bosses, Kevin Kiley and Mimi Walters, who are both measured politicians with impeccable character. Cooley, on the other hand, is a machine politician who once worked for Ron Calderon, a Democratic politician who spent 3 1/2 years in prison after being convicted of accepting bribes.

But Hoover’s campaign doesn’t have enough money to tell that story. The same money disadvantage shows up everywhere. In contested Assembly District 27, Republican Mark Pazin has collected $733,000 in contributions through 9/24, Democrat Esmeralda Soria has collected nearly 1.4 million. In the supposedly contested Senate District 16, Republican David Shepard raised $425,000 and as of 9/24 had $30,000 left. Democrat Melissa Hurtado raised $2.3 million and has $546,000 left. These disparities are typical.

When it comes to top offices, the financial advantage Democrats wield over Republicans is laughable. Newsom’s campaign account had a 9/24 balance of $23 million, 53 times as much money as Brian Dahle, the Republican challenger, whose ending cash balance on 9/24 was $408,000.

The same story applies across every race for high office. For Lieutenant Governor, the Democrat’s 9/24 cash was $4.0 million, the Republican had $9,000. For Secretary of State, Democrat’s 9/24 cash was $920,000, the Republican’s was a whopping $102. For Attorney General, on 9/24 the Democrat had $2.1 million, the Republican had $711,000.

You can’t win campaigns with no money, and California’s Republicans have almost no money. It’s a bad joke, more so as the Democrats use all that money to portray themselves as weak underdogs, fending off Trumpian hordes.

The race for AD 40, another close one, is a rare case where there is near parity in contributions. Republican Suzette Valladares, perhaps benefitting from incumbency, has raised $912,000 through 9/24, only slightly behind her Democrat challenger Pilar Schiavo at $1.02 million. But have a look at the dirt Democrats are throwing on the Republican:

‘The incumbent is a Republican who traffics in Trump’s Big Lie. Valladares opposes the right of women to decide when they will become a parent. She also takes credit for blocking CalCare, which would have expanded healthcare coverage to all Californians.”

Unpacking these allegations is a representative excursion into the Democrat strategy: If you have any concerns about voter integrity, you are participating in “Trump’s Big Lie.” If you have any concerns about aborting six month old healthy fetuses with no restrictions, which is California law, you are against a woman’s “right to choose.” And if you don’t want to see the state government take over the entire health care system – and nobody had the slightest idea how that would be implemented – you are against providing health coverage to all Californians.

The vacuous absurdity of these allegations ought to be self evident. When pigs fly, the California Legislature will do anything that truly jeopardizes a woman’s right to choose an abortion. California’s health care system already has layers of coverage beyond what Obamacare offers, and it isn’t going anywhere. As for voter integrity, a successful Democratic political consultant and expert on the California voter file recently told me, laughing as he said it, that the file is a joke, rife with inaccuracies. He would know. But if anybody cares about voter integrity, just call them a conspiracy theorist, and move along.

The disparity in fundraising in California between Republicans and Democrats is systemic. If you go to the California Secretary of State website and download the “Contributions Made” spreadsheet, you will see who is giving to the state Democratic Party. This analysis will debunk any suggestion that Democrats are protecting California’s citizens from the big bad corporations. AT&T, $791,000. Blue Shield, $1.47 million. California Apartment Association, $1.19 million. California Dental Association, $800,000. California Real Estate PAC, $2.06 million. California Medical Association, $1.18 million.

While corporations donate substantial sums to the Democrats – because Democrats win and wield power – the corporate agenda is balkanized. They want access and they have specific and disparate priorities. Not so with the government unions. They have an unwavering common agenda: more government, more government workers, higher pay for government workers. Any politician that challenges that agenda is targeted via a unified union effort and is defeated. With that power, of course, government unions now control all policy decisions in Sacramento and throughout California.

California’s public sector unions collect and spend nearly $1.0 billion per year. They donate hundreds of millions every election cycle to political campaigns, and almost every donation is to a Democrat. If they make donations to Republicans, it is in the handful of safe Republican districts where they want to make sure they control the Republican.

The big players at the state level, donating directly to the Democratic party, should surprise nobody. Cal Fire, $330,000. California Federation of Teachers, $235,000. California Professional Firefighters, $478,000. California Association of Electrical Workers, $450,000. California State Council of Laborers, $170,000. California State Council of Service Employees, $605,000. California State Pipe Trades Council, $250,000. California Teachers Association, $845,000. Faculty for Our University’s Future, $178,000. SEIU affiliates, $627,000. Sheet Metal Workers Local Union 104, $235,000. Southwest Regional Council of Carpenters, $300,000. State Building and Construction Trades Council, $625,000. And dozens of smaller union contributions.

With hundreds of millions to spend every year on politics, California’s government unions are everywhere. It’s easy enough to go to the California Secretary of State’s website and see who is contributing to the campaigns for Governor, other high offices, or the senate and assembly candidates, or the ballot initiatives. But government union influence only begins there. It extends into every city and county, every special district and every school board. There is not one race in California where government unions aren’t interested in the outcome, so long as the successful candidate will then be in a position to “negotiate” over pay and benefits for public employees. And if that were all, that would be bad enough.

Unfortunately, the agenda of government unions is increasingly in alignment with the broader economic agenda of California’s business oligopolies and major individual donors. They share a common interest in creating scarcity through excessive laws and regulations. The enhanced enforcement apparatus means more jobs for public sector workers. The new regulations mean more barriers to entry and more expensive compliance requirements for smaller emerging companies that lack the scale to withstand the new rules. And the politically contrived scarcity, in all things, means higher demand driven revenues and more profits for those corporations left standing.

This is the world that a virtually unassailable coalition of special interests in California has created. To protect their empire, they massively outspend Republican candidates, using their cash advantage to dirty them all as racists and climate deniers. It works.

This article originally appeared in The Epoch Times.

How Republicans Can Earn National Supermajority Status

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If you want to reduce crime, bring back affordable energy, get America’s southern border under control, and once again teach children academic fundamentals in the public schools instead of brainwashing them with politicized garbage, you might support Republicans merely because they aren’t Democrats.

This isn’t a bad argument, but it isn’t enough to turn the tide.

After all, Democrats make the same argument. If you hate racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, want to save the planet from climate change and save America from fascists, you will vote for Democrats because they aren’t Republicans.

It doesn’t matter that the argument against Democrats has substance, and the argument against Republicans does not. Almost every major legacy and online media property is shilling for the Democratic party, thus turning their declared perception into reality for millions of Americans.

As a result, if all Republicans have got to offer voters is “we aren’t them,” Democrats will finish turning America into California in short order.

How does the Republican party reunify, project a shared vision that attracts independent voters (and Libertarians), cut through the media bias, and start winning by landslides all over America?

Why hasn’t the GOP attracted tens of millions of independent voters? Estimates vary, but according to Pew Research, in 2020, independents were 34 percent of registered voters nationwide, more than Democrats at 33 percent, or Republicans at 29 percent.

The first step is to realize that while it is probably more effective for politicians to speak in moderate Reaganesque tones, they must never equate measured speech with RINO appeasement. Republicans need to make radical assertions if they want to appeal to serious conservatives, as well as attract independents. That shouldn’t be difficult. Telling the truth in America today is a radical act.

With that in mind, it’s time for Republican candidates to quit hedging on the big issues. Here are some soundbites that ought to be coming out of the mouths of every GOP candidate in America:

People who commit crimes are criminals, not misunderstood victims. They have to be put in prison to protect society. In prison they can overcome substance abuse, get an education, learn a trade, and may eventually reenter society as productive citizens.

We fire district attorneys who don’t prosecute criminal acts. We will not apply double standards of any kind to law enforcement and we will hold criminals responsible for their actions regardless of their identity and background.

We are not in a “climate crisis.” There is no “climate emergency.” We will only support public infrastructure that yields obvious economic benefits.

Clean fossil fuel and nuclear power are not going to destroy the earth. We need more of both. We will stop subsidizing and mandating “renewables.”

Homeless people cannot take over our cities. Building “supportive permanent housing,” with no conditions, is a corrupt scam. We will use that money instead to swiftly move the homeless into shelters, mental hospitals, and jails, depending on their afflictions.

We will overcome the environmentalist assault on single family homes. We recognize that mandating high density housing and “infill” to the exclusion of building new suburbs is an unbalanced and unhealthy approach. There’s plenty of land in America.

We’re going to stop exporting jobs. We will eliminate tax incentives that encourage American companies to source raw materials and manufacture products overseas. We will eliminate regulations that discourage domestic production.

We’re going to stop importing welfare recipients. We will get our borders under control again and from now on we will admit immigrants solely based on merit.

We will pursue anti-trust enforcement in any industry wherever oligopolies have formed. These run the gamut from agriculture to social media.

We will withhold Section 230 protection from any online communications platform that censors content protected by the 1st Amendment.

International corporatism and international communism are two sides of the same coin. We oppose both.

We will win the 21st century space race.

We will reassert and protect private property rights and free enterprise.

Transgender treatment on any minor is an atrocity. We make it a federal crime.

We support private schools and charter schools, and we will break the teachers union monopoly on public education.

Our public schools are going to teach children to be proud of their country.

American school children will learn that if they are honest and work hard they can look forward to a bright future, no matter who they are.

America is the least racist, least sexist society in the history of the world.

In a nation that wasn’t being destroyed by special interests, these would not be radical statements: There is no climate crisis. We must use fossil fuel. Jail criminals. Take back our cities. Teach students useful skills. Stop sexualizing children. We love our country and our traditions. Statements like these need to be repeated constantly and unequivocally, because they challenge not the details, but the foundations of modern leftist politics. Leave quibbling over details to RINOs and “Mod Dems.” Candor will expose their vapidity.

It isn’t necessary to support everything on this list, or any common sense list, in order to join the fight for a radical agenda that restores relevance to the Republican party. Ronald Reagan’s big tent approach in the 1980s put the Republicans in firm control of Washington DC for many years. Whether or not that coalition was the best we could do, it delivered enough power to transform the nation. Republicans can do this again.

The entire premise of a Republican big tent strategy should be that a supermajority of Americans have realized that common sense has become radical. To win, everywhere, Republicans merely need to assert, in a measured, moderated tone, words that have been stigmatized as radical in defiance of reality.

Republicans can win national supermajority status by leaning in to these supposedly forbidden assertions. The civil war for the soul of the Republican party may be unresolved, but at least they’re having one. The Democratic party, riven as well with rival factions, is nonetheless not in a state of civil war. It is wholly owned by an economic elite that wants to erase American pride, identity, tradition, sovereignty, prosperity and freedom.

America’s Democratic party is beyond redemption, and with increasing momentum, Americans are recognizing this. All Republicans have to do is offer an alternative. These radical sentiments, which in a sane world would not be radical at all, are that alternative.

This article originally appeared in American Greatness.

Can’t Afford California? Thank an Environmentalist

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The world that we invented, from an environmental perspective, is now getting in the way of moving these projects forward.
– California Governor Gavin Newsom, August 11, 2022

This moment of candor, coming from a man who seems determined to be the most environmentally correct politician in the world, was with reference to water projects. But Newsom, and anyone else paying attention to California politics, knows that for every major project, of whatever type, environmental regulations and litigation are getting in the way of moving them forward.

That’s life in California, and when even Governor Newsom starts to complain, you can bet the problem is real. Environmentalism run amok isn’t just stopping infrastructure projects and destroying economic opportunities for millions, it’s even harming the environment.

That isn’t hard to miss, if you look around. Notice the dead or dying trees in front of homes, businesses, or in the traffic medians on the boulevards of major cities? Thank environmentalists, who for decades have successfully blocked any projects that might have drought proofed our water supply and eliminated the need to triage urban water use.

Are you sweltering in neighborhoods adjacent to fields turned into heat islands, where toxic plastic rugs have replaced natural turf, supposedly to save water and hence save the planet? Are your kids coming home with torn ligaments and synthetic particles embedded in their skin and clothes, because they competed on these fake lawns? Thank an environmentalist.

Have you been forced to burn LED lights, all of them equipped with cheap transformers, and noticed the unhealthy impact of spending half your life exposed to their oscillating flicker? Wouldn’t you prefer to have access to the newest warm, safe energy-efficient incandescent bulbs instead of having them banned? Thank an environmentalist.

Are you using battery powered blowers, mowers, pruners and weed whackers that are clearly not ready for prime time? Do you enjoy having to obsessively charge and discharge them and store them according to demanding specifications so they don’t burn out after six months? How’s that working out for you? Thank an environmentalist.

Have you been stranded in your EV, waiting for an hour or more to get to a charger and get recharged? What do you do when it rains so hard it’s hazardous to charge an EV, or when you can’t find a charging station, or you don’t have hours to wait to add range to your car?  Someday, EVs may be practical, safe and affordable. But why are they being forced upon the public today? Thank an environmentalist.

None of this stuff helps the planet. There ought to be plenty of water and energy to allow Californians to live with comfort and dignity, but instead of building enabling water and energy infrastructure, sue-happy environmentalists stop every project in its tracks, while their cronies profit from sales of marginal products that use far more resources and ultimately leave a bigger environmental footprint.

Does anyone really think astroturf, or LED lights, or lithium batteries, can be “sustainably” manufactured and recycled? What about thousands of square miles being smothered with photovoltaic cells, wind turbines, and battery farms? What about electric vehicles? In most cases, the manufacture, impact, and maintenance and replacement requirements of “renewables” consume orders of magnitude more resources than conventional energy.

In California, the entire economy is critically damaged thanks to extreme environmentalism, starting with housing. In the old days, homes were built with lumber that was logged and milled in California. Water heaters, cooktops and space heaters used natural gas extracted from California wells, and electricity came from an in-state mixture of hydroelectric, natural gas and nuclear sources. Water came from a system of reservoir storage and interbasin transfers via aqueducts and pumping stations that remains a marvel of the world. The new roads and freeways were constructed out of a combination of government operating budgets and bonds. The land homes were built on was rezoned without litigation or onerous delays and fees.

On this foundation of government funded enabling infrastructure and less regulations, homes were affordable. Back then, California worked for ordinary people. It became a magnet for people from all over America and the world. Those days are gone. Thank an environmentalist.

There’s a reason homes cost almost twice as much in California as they do in the rest of the nation. Getting land approved for development takes years if not decades, during which at any point the permit can be denied by any number of agencies or deterred by endless environmentalist litigation. On top of land scarcity is water scarcity, also politically contrived, which prevents many housing developments from even being proposed.

Then there is the cost of lumber and concrete, products that used to come from local sources that competed for customers. But with California’s lumber harvest down to a quarter of what it was only 30 years ago, and the virtual impossibility of opening new quarries, home builders have to import their materials from other states and nations, driving costs way up.

Adding to the cost of homes as well are the environmentally-correct appliances now required, that are energy and water efficient to a fault. Equipped with sensors, software that requires updates, and connected to the internet, these hyper-efficient machines cost twice as much as they otherwise would, don’t last very long, and do a poor job. And what about those “low flow” faucets and shower heads that barely release water, and turn off automatically before you’re done with them?

There’s nothing wrong with designing greater efficiency into appliances. But these appliances go well beyond the point of diminishing returns, and the only beneficiaries are crony manufacturers and tech companies. Thank an environmentalist.

The counterproductive impact of environmentalism defies reason. It’s not just the colossal, destructive footprint of supposedly renewable products or sources of energy. It’s land management. Thanks to environmentalists, in California’s forests and woodlands , in order to log, graze livestock, do controlled burns or mechanical thinning, property owners confront an obstacle course of regulations and permit requirements coming from several agencies at once. Many of the regulations are in conflict with others; it is an expensive and protracted process that very few can navigate. And so the overcrowded forests burn.

This is perhaps the most egregious example of counter-productive environmentalism. Bigger than their war on nuclear power and natural gas. Maybe even bigger than their success in making California unaffordable and inconvenient for all but the super rich. For the last 30 years, as CalFire snuffed out every small fire they possibly could, every practical means of thinning the forests to compensate for fire suppression was made nearly impossible. Thank an environmentalist.

California’s forests are approximately seven times as dense as they have historically been for millennia prior to these atrocious circumstances. In previous centuries, because they weren’t overcrowded, the forests survived droughts more prolonged than the ones we experience in this century. But today, the rain we get can’t even percolate into the ground. The crowded trees desperately absorb every drop, and it still isn’t enough, because where one tree used to grow, seven trees are competing for the same nutrients and moisture. This is why the trees are dying. This is why we have superfires.

When California’s forests have burnt down to the dirt, and ash laden silt is eroding into every stream and river in the state, thank an environmentalist.

It should go without saying that environmentalism is an important value to incorporate into public policy. We may thank environmentalists for getting the lead out of gasoline, and saving the majestic Condor, to name two noteworthy achievements that happened right here in California. But environmentalism becomes a negative value when its primary benefit is only to line the pockets of environmentalist litigants or pad government bureaucracies or enrich crony businessmen.

Today there is no balance. Environmentalism in California is out of control because it empowers a powerful coalition of special interests. The interests of the planet, as well as the interests of California’s striving humans, have become secondary. Newsom’s criticisms are helpful. Now they need to be followed up with action.

This article originally appeared in The Epoch Times.