Government Unions and California Ballot Propositions

Californians voted on twelve state ballot propositions on November 3. On nine of these propositions, California’s government and private sector unions spent significant amounts of money, over a million in five cases, and over ten million in two cases. But of these nine, the unions only got their way on one of them, Prop. 19, which changed some of the rules on how property taxes are applied. And Prop 19 was not a high priority for the unions, with barely over $100,000 in contributions, mostly from Firefighter unions. The big bucks in favor of Prop. 19, over $41 million, came from the real estate industry.

And if it weren’t for Prop. 19, California’s unions would have logged a perfect record on November 3, losing every battle. The real story on November 3 is that California’s tech moguls, and big business, in that order, are willing and able to spend California’s unions into the ground when they decide that’s what is necessary to protect their interests. Before reflecting on the implications of that staggering fact, it’s worth having a closer look at some of the battles.

The chart shown below summarizes total spending in support and in opposition to the twelve ballot propositions on November 3. As reported by the California Secretary of State, unions, mostly government unions, spent $68 million on ballot propositions. That is based on information updated through October 17, and does not include in-kind contributions, so the actual spending was higher. The biggest fight, by far, was in support of Prop. 15, which would have required commercial properties to be reassessed at current market values for assessing property taxes.

It’s no secret why passing Prop. 15 was a priority for government unions. Ever since the legendary Prop. 13 was passed back in 1978, it has been blamed for government budget deficits in California. Leaving aside the fact that administrative bloat, mismanaged overtime, and financially unsustainable pensions are the real reason for budget deficits, or the fact that inflation adjusted tax revenues in California have always kept pace with population growth despite the impact of Prop. 13, the relatively low property taxes that businesses pay in California is one of the last, if not the last, competitive advantage left for business in what is otherwise the most hostile business climate in America.

Protecting California’s businesses, however, is not a priority these days for California’s unions. The California Teachers Association, the California Federation of Teachers, and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) joined with their local chapters and other unions to pony up nearly $38 million to push Prop. 15. And joining these union in a rare defeat was over $10 million in funding from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Advocacy PAC. Zuckerberg’s PAC, along with other Zuckerberg controlled entities, drenched the political soil across America this election season, including $400 million to “get out the vote” in key swing states. But when you’re able to spend $400 million the way most of us buy a cup of coffee, you can water the world.

As the last few election cycles are making increasingly obvious, if you pair the deep pockets of government unions with the even deeper pockets of big tech, you’re going to get whatever they want. But Prop. 15 was an existential threat that backed California’s businesses, big and small, into a corner. Apparently not all of them are ready to flee to Texas, because led by the California Small Business Roundtable that kicked in $31.7 million, they came up with just over $60 million in opposition spending. Prop. 15 failed, only getting 48 percent of the vote. This time.

There were other mega-fights on November 3, most notable the limited war waged by big tech against AB 5, which took the form of Prop. 22. Limited war, because instead of repealing AB 5, a smashmouth union power play that turned most of California’s over two million independent contractors into employees overnight, the big tech rideshare companies chose to only bail themselves out.

It wasn’t as if these companies didn’t have the wherewithal to come up with a more comprehensive reform. The war chest they amassed in support of Prop. 22 was almost ridiculous – almost, because nothing is ridiculous any more when it comes to the power of big tech – Uber kicked in $51 million, Door Dash threw down $51 million, Lyft added $47.5 million, Instacart was good for $31 million, and Postmates spent $11.5 million. All told, the rideshare industry raised $192.7 million to protect their interests.

Fighting against Prop. 22 were all the unions, with the biggest contributions coming from the SEIU and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Over $16 million of the $18.6 million spent against Prop. 22 came from unions, but it was a lopsided battle from the start. Prop. 22 passed easily, with 58.6 percent of the vote.

Another big spend by unions this election cycle was the SEIU’s support for Prop. 23, which would have imposed new regulations on dialysis clinics and presumably opened the door to unionizing them. But where the SEIU spent almost $9 million, the renal care industry spent a whopping $104 million, with much of this money coming from out-of-state.

One of the most visible of the propositions on the November 3 ballot was Prop. 16, which would have brought back affirmative action. It’s not clear why affirmative action is even required in California, since virtually every established institution in the state desperately adheres to proportional representation whenever possible. And while the unions came up with $1.7 million to support this bill, another $17.5 million came from private donors, including $5.5 million from M. Quinn Delaney – who along with her wealthy husband Wayne Jordan are among California’s premier limousine liberals.

The defeat of Prop. 16 is perhaps one of the most encouraging signs in the 2020 election, because despite being outspent by more than ten-to-one, the opponents prevailed. Californians saw Prop. 16 for what it was, a transparently racist meal ticket for trial lawyers, “equity and inclusion” bureaucrats, and the victim industry, masquerading as anti-racism. With only 42 percent of Californians voting yes, it wasn’t even close.

Another fight worth mentioning was the sad fate of Prop. 20. Losing badly with only 38.3 percent of the vote, it would have restored tougher penalties for drug and property crimes. Backed to the tune of $3.0 million by law enforcement unions, supporters for Prop. 20 were outspent overall, although not by much. Leading the charge against Prop. 20 was $2.3 million from Zuckerberg’s PAC, and $2.0 million from Patty Quillin, whose husband Reed Hastings is the founder of Netflix. This power couple is better known for donating $2.2 million to the victorious campaign of George Gascon, the idiot who destroyed San Francisco, and who is now going to reprise his role as district attorney to destroy Los Angeles.

Overall, unions did not do well on ballot propositions in California this election season, despite maintaining their grip on nearly every other manifestation of political power in the state. The real takeaway is the fact that big tech has consolidated its power and is firmly established as the new top dog in California politics. So far, the decisions they’re making are not encouraging. They looked out for their own, in the case of Prop. 22, ostensibly to protect the rights of their drivers to remain independent contractors, while leaving all the rest still victims of AB 5. Mark Zuckerberg, who has enough money to hire a private security force that could probably defeat the armies of small nations, saw fit to take down Prop. 20, apparently indifferent to the ongoing chaos on the streets of every major city in California.

To conclude with the obvious, how unions and tech billionaires decide they want to influence politics from now on is going to be decisive. But apart from the police unions peeling away from the pack to support Prop. 20, there is no sign that the coalition that already broke California – unions, government bureaucrats, extreme environmentalists, litigators, and liberal activists of every stripe – will be anything but more powerful with the arrival of politically active tech billionaires. There are only two political forces that can match this sort of firepower. Other business interests, when confronting an existential threat, as shown by the massive opposition to Prop. 15 and Prop. 23, and populism, as shown by the landslide rejection of Prop. 16.

In most cases, if they chose to, these special interests could pursue an enlightened course of action. The law enforcement unions were right to back Prop. 20, and they should try again. While the tech billionaires haven’t done much of anything right just yet, it would only take one of them to shake the system. Maybe school vouchers will be the disruptive cause that attracts real money from Silicon Valley. And if the environmentalist leadership listened to their members, instead of just talking down to them and addling their minds, we would already be logging responsibly in California’s forests to thin the tinder, instead of encouraging our feckless governor to cope with wildfires by calling for more electric cars.

With only a few exceptions, on the dozen ballot initiatives they faced, California’s voters made the right choices. This is an encouraging development. If only a few more special interests put common sense and the common welfare in front of their blinding ideologies and billion dollar enterprises, the political landscape in this state would swiftly realign.

This article originally appeared on the website California Globe.

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America’s Union Agenda at a Crossroads

The war for the soul of America is mirrored in the war for the soul of its major political parties. The establishment Democrats contend with a progressive insurgency, the establishment Republicans contend with a populist America First insurgency. And the bipartisan corporate glue that connects the establishment Democrats to the establishment Republicans means they have more in common with each other than with their respective insurgencies.

Polling and voting results indicate that more than nine out of ten registered Republicans consistently favor the America First policies ignited by Donald Trump. On the other hand, the loss of seats in the House of Representatives by Democrats this November suggests that most registered Democrats will support a Republican before they’ll support the Democratic Socialist agenda.

Both factors – that Republican voters overwhelmingly embrace America First principles and reject globalism, and that, at the least, a majority of Democratic voters apparently reject far-left ideology, makes the Democratic party the new primary home of the establishment, and hence more attractive to billionaire donors and corporate multi-nationals. America’s billionaires and boardroom titans also realize that it is easier to coopt a far-left agenda, particularly with respect to social issues where they can exploit the synergy between, for example, “diversity” mandates and open borders, or environmentalist mandates which disproportionately harm small emerging potential competitors. Hiding behind this moral rhetoric, they amass more profit and power. There is no such opportunistic synergy to be had with Republican “America First” voters, no inauthentic gambit to exploit, so of course the big money now goes to Democrats.

This begs the question: Which party now represents the American worker? The Democrats, which is now the party of billionaires? Or Republicans, whose voters have rejected the moneyed elites that used to run their party, and have attracted a rainbow coalition of working class voters?

Do America’s Unions Care About American Workers?

This question, which political party in America is more likely to implement policies that benefit the American worker, ought to be one of the very first preoccupations of America’s union leadership. For the past several decades, including this most recent election, 90 percent of political contributions from America’s unions went to support Democrats.

But why now? For the first time, ever, unions have a political alternative in the America First movement. For the first time, there is a movement, and an American president, who has successfully implemented policies that have benefit workers instead of investors; labor instead of capital. In core areas, immigration, trade and environmental policy, Trump’s actions have helped American workers. If union leaders did not notice, union workers did.

As reported in Politico last October, “despite a bevy of national union endorsements for Biden and years of what leaders call attacks on organized labor from the Trump administration, local officials in critical battleground states said support for Trump remains solid.”

There’s no doubt that growing union membership depends on a union-friendly labor secretary, and a union friendly majority on the U.S. Supreme Court. Trump did none of those things, so why was he popular with unions?

Democratic strategists and liberal pundits would claim that union workers are won over by Trump’s alleged xenophobia, that they are anti-immigrant. This is a predictable and very convenient way of excusing what actually happened. As the multi-national corporate establishment wormed its way into controlling both political parties, U.S. policies increasingly harmed the American worker. The evidence is written across the decades. Offshoring jobs, importing cheap immigrant labor, and shutting down the economy in the name of protecting the environment. But why would unions stand for this?

Part of it is their historical ties to the Democratic party. Part of it, to be sure, is the Republican party’s commitment – albeit half-hearted – to right-to-work laws and in general to reining in the power of organized labor. But there’s much more to this picture. America’s union leadership knows that if the wages and benefits of the American worker improve because of government policies, instead of because of union negotiations and strikes, then unions will become irrelevant.

This hidden agenda may explain why unions won’t publicly admit that increasing the supply of labor lowers the value of labor, or that offshoring jobs – and shutting down coal mining and hydraulic fracking – destroys the lives and livelihoods of workers. All of that is true, but these hardships drive desperate workers to resort to the collective power of unions. The worse things get, the more workers will turn to a union.

How America’s Unions Could Help the America First Movement

The only way America’s union leadership will renounce this cynical calculation is if union members demand changes. There are two simple choices America’s union leadership have to make. First, are they fighting for the American worker, or are they fighting for all the workers in the world? Second, are they willing to shut down American jobs and American economic security in order to supposedly save the environment, or are they committed to a balanced approach that creates millions of jobs and trillions in additional GDP?

In both of these choices, unions in America are choosing between nationalism and globalism. But the moral case they might make for globalism is thin. It doesn’t benefit the rest of the world if America becomes such a hollow shell of an economy that it can no longer exert global leadership. It doesn’t benefit the vast majority of foreign workers if a small percentage of them migrate to the United States. It doesn’t help the ability of emerging economies, anywhere, if cheap and clean fossil fuel is not developed and used, everywhere. And it certainly doesn’t benefit anyone if the United States bans fossil fuel, but China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Nigeria, Brazil, and every other demographic heavyweight nation on earth keeps on using it.

The point here is that the moral argument for globalism may be sound good at its core – we all want to see everyone on earth achieve prosperity as soon as possible – but its implementation is rotten. Globalism as it is envisioned today by corporate multinationals is nothing more than economic imperialism. The Left used to understand that. Perhaps the far left still does. But the establishment Democratic party either does not understand this or they understand it perfectly well but want the donations to keep pouring in from their corporate allies.

The good news for unions, if they’re willing to stand up for the American worker again, is that by embracing realistic restrictions on immigration and by supporting an approach to environmental policy that balances the needs of the planet with the needs of the workers they represent, they’re not making a moral compromise. The vast majority of workers in the rest of the world are indifferent to the fact that a minute percentage of them can or cannot emigrate to the U.S. The development of cheap and clean fossil fuel is an all-of-the-above energy strategy that will more rapidly lift everyone in the world out of poverty. In turn, that will slow population growth and ultimately help the environment. Soon enough, leapfrog technologies such as fusion energy will power the world, and the unwarranted panic over using fossil fuel will be forgotten.

Unions in the United States should reassess their political allegiances. Are they truly willing to continue to support a political party dominated by corporate globalists whose power and profits depend on reducing the standard of living of American citizens? Or will they demand America First policies on immigration, trade, and the environment? To do so would restore their credibility with their membership, and, given their not inconsiderable political clout, hasten the day when America’s politicians and political bureaucracies are again responsive to ordinary Americans.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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Will America’s Politically Disenfranchised Unite?

By now most America First conservatives have recognized the common agenda of libertarians and progressives. They have significant differences, of course, for example, progressives are pro-union while libertarians prefer employee choice, but on most of the biggest issues their agendas now align.

This alliance, however, is a mismatch, for two reasons. First, because progressives have far more money and institutional power, and second, because progressives are serious, whereas libertarians tend to favor symbolic gestures.

The result of this is a one-sided alliance where the only time libertarians see elements of their policy agenda move from theory to reality is when it also serves the interests of progressives. For example, libertarians:

– Support “free movement of peoples” but can’t prevent expensive welfare programs that attract economic migrants.

– Support “free trade” but are indifferent to the impact that cheap foreign labor and foreign subsidies have on eliminating manufacturing jobs for Americans.

– Support the right to be a homeless drug addict, but can’t prevent government hand-outs which attracts more homeless drug addicts, or taxpayer subsidized developments to give them free housing.

– Support “upzoning” residential neighborhoods but don’t prevent developer subsidies or greenbelts that strangle the growth of cities.

– Oppose government funded infrastructure which stops new freeway construction or projects to increase the water supply, but can’t prevent subsidized rail transit projects or water rationing.

– Support the right of big tech platforms to censor free speech, with no apparent recognition that these companies have built monopolies and are manipulating public opinion.

The common thread in all these examples is that libertarians are unable to recognize that when only half of a principle they support is adopted, it makes only makes things worse. The other half of the principle of open borders is no welfare state. The other half of the principle of free trade is fair trade. The other half of the principle of personal freedom is personal responsibility. The principle of reducing zoning restrictions inside cities is to also reduce them outside of cities. And so on. Libertarians support the progressives where their principles supposedly align, but progressives take part one and ignore part two.

Progressives are using libertarians, and the libertarians still haven’t caught on. You will now find progressive “thought leaders” welcomed at conferences funded by libertarian billionaires. These progressives sit on panels where they expound on the virtues of open borders, free trade, urban planning, sentencing reform, and “free market” solutions to climate change. Libertarian attendees fill the conference rooms – at least they used to, before life in the age of COVID, and they will again – clucking with approval and deliriously happy to have found “common ground” with the cool kids.

And when libertarians get their turn to speak at these events, expect them to, for example, expound on the ability for anyone in America to build their own search engine, internet service provider, alternative internet backbone, and cell phone manufacturing plant, because that’s how we overcome censorship. Throughout this foray into fantasyland, progressives nod indulgently, thinking to themselves, why rock the boat? Of course Big Tech operates monopolies, and we don’t normally like monopolies. But Big Tech isn’t censoring us, they’re censoring them.

The negative consequences of libertarian naivete should be obvious. As noted, their think tanks and lobbyists skew policies in critical areas towards outcomes that favor the progressive agenda. And their candidates for office often spoil the prospects for Republican candidates, most recently in Georgia on November 3, where U.S. Senate candidate David Perdue, a Republican, fell 0.3 percent sort of a majority because Libertarian Shane Hazel snarfed up 2.3 percent of the vote. Anyone who thinks Perdue wouldn’t have picked up one in seven of the Hazel voters if Hazel had not been in the race is probably….a libertarian.

Trillions, Billions, Millions – The Money Trail

To properly understand what America First conservatives are up against, it’s important to follow the money. Progressives, collectively, have literally trillions at their disposal. Just the top ten richest individuals in America have a cumulative net worth of $974 billion. Review the list – Bezos, Gates, Zuckerberg, Buffet, Ellison, Ballmer, Musk, Page, Brin, and three Waltons. Anyone there who isn’t a progressive? Maybe Musk. Maybe the Waltons, and then again, maybe not.

What about the biggest companies in America? Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook, Walmart, Johnson & Johnson, JP Morgan, Visa, Procter & Gamble. How might the political leanings of these conglomerates be characterized? Hint – click on their names to have a look at their “Diversity & Inclusion” policies. Rarely have search results appeared so fast, or so consistently at the top.

Where there’s money, there’s also the urge to spend it: Think Zuckerberg, laying down $400 million to “get out the vote,” the Biden vote, in select cities in swing states. Zuckerberg can spend $400 million the way the most of us buy a cup of coffee. And then there’s Soros, Bloomberg, Steyer, and dozens of others willing to lay down millions, if not hundreds of millions, to steer public policy according to their will.

If the progressives now control trillion dollar chunks of American wealth, and they do, libertarians control billions. The libertarians that immediately comes to mind are Charles Koch and his late brother David, whose support of “right-wing” organizations earned them years of enmity from progressives. But the Kochs, and the organizations they funded, were never devoted to America First conservative ideology, they were devoted to globalism, and libertarianism, in that order.

That would explain why the Koch network withheld support for three Republican U.S. Senate candidates in 2018. One of them, Dean Heller, who was the incumbent U.S. Senator in Nevada, subsequently lost to Democrat Jacky Rosen, endangering the GOP’s razor thin majority. More recently, Charles Koch was quoted in the Wall Street Journal as saying “partisanship was a mistake.” That’s because the common ground libertarians have with progressives is now in the open. But the Koch money, and libertarian money in general, was never anywhere close to the scale of progressive wealth.

Last of all in line for money are the America First conservatives. As candidates, they will face progressives who will use their trillions to destroy them, as libertarians withhold their billions and at best, stand on the sidelines. If these America First conservative candidates are lucky, they’ll raise a few million, mostly from small individual donors. Very few wealthy individuals have been willing to step up. If it weren’t for the personal magnetism and powerful message of Donald Trump, and the populist movement he ignited, there wouldn’t be an America First movement. It would lack critical mass. It would be irrelevant.

Globalism Unites Libertarian and Progressive Elites

Before Donald Trump was president, before there was MAGA, before Americans realized their national sovereignty was at risk, it was easier for the elites to maintain the illusion of competition between Republicans and Democrats. Libertarians and progressives, for that matter, and especially at the grassroots, were far more focused on the issues where they disagreed. But then in came Trump, totally unexpected, terminating the Transpacific Partnership negotiations, withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accords, increasing border security, approving the Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines, demanding trade reciprocity, pressuring NATO allies to pull their weight, and standing up to China.

These actions threatened wealth. They threatened every trillion dollar and billion dollar interest group in America. They served notice, for the first time in decades, that the American people mattered more than America’s super rich. And with this, the progressive trillions and the libertarian billions found the ultimate common ground, their mutual commitment to globalism. But they may have grossly miscalculated.

Even if their preferred candidate, Joe Biden, takes office in January, his announced cabinet choices may have finally awakened the progressive grassroots. His appointees are a combination of Wall Street kingpins and Obama administration military interventionists – uniparty neocons wearing blue. His administration may be expected to resume exporting jobs, importing welfare recipients, and starting wars. Meanwhile his progressive policies on the environment will make housing and energy unaffordable across the nation, and his progressive polices on “system racism” will create more racial tension while solving absolutely nothing.

There is a possibility that a Biden presidency will split the progressive grassroots. Many of them will start to realize that Trump might not have been so bad after all. Some will look at Biden’s unabashedly corporate, globalist, neocon cabinet and have a Red Pill moment. They will realize that corporations are taking over the world and the privilege of American citizenship is not something to lightly discard. Others, and we are already seeing this, will be Hispanics and Blacks who will recognize that Biden’s globalism is a bigger threat to their upward mobility than Donald Trump’s MAGA movement, and they will join the growing number of Hispanics and Blacks who are already a big part of the America First grassroots. Their defection will realign America, and the America First wing of the Republican party will retake control of Congress in 2022 and Trump, or his handpicked successor, will win the presidential election in 2024.

This is the most benign of scenarios if Biden and his China beholden globalist gang take office, and it is not unlikely. But there are other possible outcomes. What is extremely unlikely is that the progressives in America unanimously accept a Biden presidency. It is possible the most toxic among them, the communists, the anarchists, and the hardcore BLM and Antifa militants, will reject the Biden regime as illegitimate, and intensify their violence with a clarified target – all corporate wealth, all federal power. And there is a possibility that the most hardcore among the American right, the militias, the Three Percenters, and others, will align with these progressive militants in an alliance against a common foe.

The corporate elites that circled the wagons and did everything they could to destroy Bernie Sanders in the primaries and Donald Trump in the general election have installed a president who is a transparent sham. They have shown everyone who is really in charge. That may be a miscalculation with historic consequences.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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Grassroots Group Fights for Common Sense Water Policies

The Great Valley of California, variously referred to as the Central Valley, or, north of the Delta as the Sacramento Valley, and south of the Delta as the San Joaquin Valley, is one of the geographical wonders of the world. Nearly 450 miles in length and around 50 miles wide, it stretches from Redding in the far north to Bakersfield in the south.

Many Californians take the Central Valley for granted, if they think about it at all, but that unconcern is unwarranted. It is a unique combination of great weather, fertile soil, an annually replenished snowpack in the Sierra Nevada mountain range to its immediate east, and – thanks to visionary builders in the 1950s and 1960s – it is blessed with the most extensive, ingenious system of water engineering in the world.

Thanks mostly to the Central Valley, California’s farmers produce “a sizable majority of American fruits, vegetables and nuts; 99 percent of walnuts, 97 percent of kiwis, 97 percent of plums, 95 percent of celery, 95 percent of garlic, 89 percent of cauliflower, 71 percent of spinach, and 69 percent of carrots and the list goes on and on.” All of that is endangered today, because California’s policymakers are not taking the appropriate steps to cope with recent droughts.

The history of California, based on accounts dating back to the earliest settlements, and before that, based on physical data such as tree rings, is characterized by periods of intense droughts. Regardless of whether or not we are experiencing unusual climate change in this era, droughts lasting years, or even decades, have always been part of life in California.

The response to California’s four year drought (that wasn’t broken until the very wet winter of 2016-17) consisted almost exclusively of water rationing. Allocations to farmers were slashed, and urban residents were compelled to reduce their consumption by at least 25 percent. Meanwhile, projects to increase the supply of water, or maintain the existing system of aqueducts and reservoirs, were minimized.

This is evident in the water bonds passed by Californians during and since the drought years. Voters approved Prop. 1 in November 2014 and Prop. 68 in June 2018, for a total of $11.1 billion in spending on water. But of that, only $1.9 billion was allocated to reservoir storage, and only $3.5 billion for other water infrastructure.

In November 2018 voters rejected an $8.9 billion water bond, Prop. 3, that would have allocated $2.7 billion towards water infrastructure and $0.6 billion to reservoir storage, along with $1.6 billion to “other supply/storage” (primarily sewage reuse and aquifer storage). The bill, receiving 49.4 percent yes votes, was narrowly defeated, mostly because the Sierra Club opposed its use of funds to repair the Friant-Kern Canal.

This bears reflection. A compromise water bond package that allocated $3.9 billion to habitat restoration, nearly half of the entire proposed funding, was nonetheless rejected by the most powerful environmentalist organization in California. This cornucopia of hydro-pork, a bill that would have funded Salton Sea restoration, and would have turned the Los Angeles River back from a flood culvert into a scenic urban river, a bill that literally had something for everyone, was not good enough for the Sierra Club.

But water scarcity in California is not inevitable, and water rationing is not the only answer. Through investment in additional above and below ground storage to capture storm runoff even in dry years, along with investment in wastewater recycling and desalination, it is possible to guarantee Californians a perennial supply of abundant, affordable water, while still retaining more than enough to maintain the health of California’s ecosystems.

The Grassroots Resistance to Water Rationing

While urban residents contend with short showers and needlessly dying shrubbery, California’s farmers face an existential threat to their lives and livelihoods.

Beginning in January 2020, pursuant to the California legislature’s recently passed “Sustainable Groundwater Management Act,” Central Valley farmers are required to reduce the amount of well water they use to irrigate their crops. Then in March 2020, California regulators set new rules that further reduce how much river water farmers can take.

Obviously it makes no sense to drain aquifers dry, or divert the entire flow of a river for irrigation, but these two regulations hitting farmers at the same time is a perfect storm. Suddenly farms that have operated for generations face the possibility of having to shut down operations. And in to pick up the pieces, flush with subsidies, are renewables “entrepreneurs” who aim to carpet the southern San Joaquin Valley with solar farms.

In response to this potentially fatal squeeze on Central Valley farm families that have helped feed the world for generations, one woman, Kristi Diener is fighting back. Diener and her husband are partners in a 3rd generation family farm that grows garlic, onions, tomatoes, almonds, cotton, hay, wheat, grapes, safflower; a little of everything depending on water allocation and crop rotation.

If the Central Valley is ground zero for farm production in America, and it is, then Five Points, where the Dieners farm, is the epicenter. This rural crossroads, located about 20 miles southwest of Fresno, is in the heart of the 879,000 acre Federal Central Valley Project. If adequate supplies of water aren’t restored, i.e., if the Sierra Club and its Silicon Valley benefactors have their way, farms will disappear from these vast expanses of bountiful land. Instead, the acreages will be carpeted with solar panels, producing electrons instead of food.

In 2015, the third back-to-back dry year in a drought stricken state, after watching 27,000 acre feet of water get released into California’s Stanislaus River to save 23 (twenty three) steelhead trout, Diener decided to start a movement.

Five years later, with no money, Kristi Diener’s “California Water for Food and People Movement” has 14,200 members on a Facebook group where they share information and ideas dedicated to restoring common sense and humanity to California’s water policies. Based in California’s Central Valley and agricultural heartland, this group includes thousands of farmers, along with families in farm communities on the front lines in the fight against the green tyrants. They are very well informed. But they haven’t been able to stop the ongoing attacks on their lives and livelihoods. Consider this recent post on their Facebook page:

During November [2020], knowing we could be heading into a multi year drought, northern reservoir managers continued to release water through the Delta, and into the Pacific Ocean anyway. Environmental regulations say the flows are necessary to produce a rebound of endangered Delta smelt and Chinook salmon, yet zero of either species have been collected in all of the latest trawling surveys, where they spend several days a month searching in more than 200 spots. This practice of releasing water and hoping fish improve, has been unsuccessful for nearly 30 years. Both species are close to extinction.

Even with little to no rain to speak of in November, an amount of freshwater equal to a year’s supply for 3,031,560 people for a year, was emptied from storage and added to the supposedly rising sea level. It is equal to 987,836,857,560 gallons (987.8 billion) or 303,156 acre feet. Last week State Water Project contractors, who provide water for 27 million people and 750,000 acres of the most productive farmland on Earth, were given their initial allocation of 10%. Put another way, 303,156 acre feet was sent to the ocean for failing fish-saving policies in one month with little rain, while contractors received 422,848 acre-feet to share among 27 million people and 750,000 acres of food production.

Diener was reached earlier this week for an interview. Her observations and insights reveal a person who is not only living with the consequences of California’s choice to neglect water infrastructure and instead ration water, but also someone very well informed. Here are her remarks:

When did you form the California Water for Food and People Movement?

We founded the movement in April 2015 and it was about three weeks after Brown imposed the 25 percent restrictions statewide. People were skipping showers and not washing their cars. People were actually saving their shower water. Some people were turning in their neighbors. We were living water-poor lives, and then the California branch of the Bureau of Reclamation under Obama announced that 27,000 acre feet were going to be released from New Melones reservoir to help 23 steelhead trout make it to the ocean. This was the last straw.

What is the goal of your organization?

California’s water policy and regulations and projects, federal and state, the endangered species act, it is all so complex and overlapping it is like a foreign language. Our goal is to take the information and present it in a way that people can identify with so they can see how these issues relate to and affect them personally. For decades farmers have been unjustly portrayed as an industry that grabs more than their share of water for profit. Farmers are multigenerational and they just want to farm. They do a poor job of defending themselves because that’s not their forte. We want to give agriculture an additional voice, to show how water is distributed, what it costs and how it’s used, to present all the parts that are routinely omitted in most water articles. We want to try to correct the myths that are routinely circulated; that water is wasted, that water is subsidized. We need to have people understanding the complexities of California’s water system before policies and proposals are put out there for voters to make a decision about.

How do you go about reaching people and making a difference?

We try to be proactive when opportunities present themselves to submit public comments on proposed public actions. We try to take action as a group and be heard whenever possible. We coordinate almost everything through Facebook, where we are able to do a lot of collaborating through posts and messages. Because many candidates run for state and local positions without understanding the complexity of California’s water laws and regulations, we have built a reputation as a group people can come to for the facts and the truth about water. We help candidates formulate water platforms for their campaigns. We offer whatever knowledge we have so if someone gets elected they will carry that knowledge to office.

How would you characterize the role of environmental organizations in California?

It depends on the organization. We all want clean air and water. We all want pristine streams, rivers, lakes. Very few among us are not environmentalists. But when you get to the radical environmentalists you get groups that are political activists. They often destroy the environment to get an outcome that’s favorable to their agenda. The Sierra Club routinely leverages the environment as a tool to achieve an agenda; they are anti-capitalism, pro big government, pro dependence on government, they are about power and control. You can see that with so many nonprofits. The NRDC [Natural Resources Defense Council] has more than 500 environmental attorneys. They brag about the number of lawsuits they have ongoing at any time. They are notorious for the sue and settle cases. The Friends of the River is now involved in a lawsuit against raising Lake Shasta Dam. Political activists that start in these radical groups later gain positions of power in government.

What are some examples of harm environmental organizations have done to the environment?

We just lived through four million acres being destroyed by wildfires and they burn hotter and longer because of the lack of thinning. There are almost no controlled burns or logging anymore. These environmental organizations have been on the front lines of lawsuits that keep people out of the forests, and now all those species are gone. These fires are just the beginning of the damage when you have poor forest management. We’ve had smoke filled air and destroyed habitat, and we’re lucky there hasn’t been a lot of rain because at least there’s a chance to get in there and mitigate some of the damage. We have fire encrusted ashy ground that cannot absorb rainwater sending sediment and toxins directly into the streams and rivers and reservoirs.

Any other examples of how extreme environmentalism has been harmful?

Another example comes in the form of the Biological Opinions. The Biological Opinions (among other things) regulate how much water is captured into storage through pumping at the south end of the Delta after all of the upstream water rights, needs, and in-Delta consumption usages have been met. If water that has flowed through the Delta is not pumped into storage and saved before it meets the ocean (and I’m not talking about water needed for outflow to prevent saltwater intrusion), the 27 million people south of the Delta who rely on it to meet their supply needs have little to no water.

For the epicenter of our nation’s food supply in the Central Valley, and for the domestic purposes of the lower 2/3 of the state, the Biological Opinions that govern pumping are crucial. The first Bio Ops were written in 2008 for smelt, and 2009 for salmon, but based mostly on science conducted in 2004. These “Opinions” are just that: opinions. “It is our opinion that if you operate the pumps like this, it will spur a rebound of endangered Smelt and Chinook Salmon.” These first Opinions were a massive failure. These fish are now nearly extinct, and they have been devastating to farmers and families too. The Trump administration expedited updating the federal Opinions in 2018, completed them using the best scientific minds and data, and signed the Record of Decision for their implementation in February 2020. But Governor Newsom’s administration along with the radical environmentalists sued to stop them less than 24 hours later.

That action really makes one ask, what are they really trying to do? You have these Opinions intended to produce a rebound of fish, and subsequently take massive amounts of water away from people and food producers, but the Opinions fail to meet their goal. New Opinions are signed that use the latest and best scientific data for a real shot at saving these fish, and return some of that water back to humans. But they sue to keep the old Opinions in place? Were the original Opinions really about recovering fish or controlling water?

The damage from operating the pumps according to the 2008 and 2009 Biological Opinions has been devastating. Not only are these endangered fish not being protected, but we have land subsidence, aquifer collapse, lack of groundwater recharge, degradation of drinking water quality, blowing dust, an increase in cases of Valley Fever, and thousands of fewer acres of farmland in production (which absorb CO2 and recharge groundwater through irrigation). Economically, water rates are rising (use less pay more), farm jobs have been lost, water conveyance infrastructure is being damaged such as canals that are sinking, and the California Aqueduct is buckling.

What sort of message do you think would resonate with Californians in order to change the policies that are harming your community?

Right now, water is being squandered. We used to sail through droughts lasting five, six, and seven years without noticing a thing. Our water security is now being compromised for environmental causes. Many of these policies are taking the water under the guise of producing a rebound of endangered delta smelt and chinook salmon, yet neither population has improved, nor has any fish species been delisted after nearly 30 years. We need to manage outflows, and demand accountability from the environmental experiments for the water taken out of the human supply. We need the ability to store more water in wet years. And for heaven’s sake, we need to support our farmers who feed us three times a day with food that is safe, fresh, and affordable.

How will the California Water for Food and People Movement Make a Difference?

We want Californians to know that there is plenty of water for everybody. We have always had biblical rains alternating with back to back dry periods.  That is normal and that is why we constructed the most magnificent system of water capture, conveyance and delivery in the world. How we manage that system dictates how we meet user needs.

We can’t wait until legislation or ballot measures or water related bonds hit to empower the public with the information they need to make good decisions. If we try to educate the public with the complex back story at that time, we’re too late.

This article and interview originally appeared in the California Globe.

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California’s Cruel Green Cramdown

A few years ago a provocative book by Rupert Darwall entitled “Green Tyranny” made the case that climate alarm is more about power and control, and less about the climate or the environment. Darwell’s reasoning, echoed today by a growing number of economists and environmentalists such as Bjorn Lomborg and Michael Shellenberger, concludes that environmental extremism, especially now that it is amped up with climate alarm, is disastrous to both the environment and the economy.

It’s actually worse than that, however, because the economic misery inflicted by extreme environmentalism only afflicts middle class and low income people. Wealthy elites are either indifferent to the costs, or make hefty profits. In America, California is ground zero for green tyranny. If Joe Biden actually manages to take office in January 2020, every state will have to contend with what Californians have endured for decades.

There’s a reason that in California it costs so much to rent an apartment, or buy a house. There’s a reason why bills for gas and electricity are so high, and why water bills are so expensive, and why sometimes water is even rationed.

The green tyrants of California explain away the punitive cost-of-living endured by ordinary residents as the result of capitalism, racism, and white oppression, or maybe they just blame Republicans. To-date, with a majority of Californians, this nonsensical, obsessive distraction still works. But it’s wearing thin. The real reason everybody in California suffers from a high cost of living is extreme environmentalism, translated into laws that benefit the wealthy and connected, and impoverish everyone else.

Extreme environmentalists have made it almost impossible to get permits to build new homes. California has five times as much land used for grazing cattle than land used for homes and businesses, but all that land is off limits because of environmentalist restrictions.

Extreme environmentalists have made electricity expensive because the only new sources of electricity have to be from wind and solar power, even though California has plenty of natural gas which is clean and cheap. Environmentalists are even making the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant shut down in a few years, even though it generates almost 10 percent of California’s electricity supply.

Extreme environmentalists won’t allow any new water storage, preventing Californians from capturing more runoff from winter storms. Up and down the state, new dams that could guarantee Californians always have affordable and plentiful water are stopped by environmentalists. They won’t even allow desalination plants to be built on the coast, plants that could produce millions of acre feet of fresh water.

Environmentalists have practically destroyed California’s timber industry, which is the real reason its overgrown forests are burning. They have also made it impossible to operate mines and quarries so Californians have more affordable and abundant building materials. And all of this takes away good jobs.

David vs the Green Goliath

An apt metaphor for the green tyranny that grips California is the story of David and Goliath, although the metaphor breaks down when considering David’s ability to sling a stone into Goliath’s unarmored forehead, to deadly effect. The Green Goliath that terrorizes California is a coalition so powerful that only a massive populist rebellion can stop it.

At the head of this leviathan are massive environmentalist nonprofits, with budgets that collectively amount to hundreds of millions of dollars annually. They include the Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Pacific Institute, Earthjustice, the Friends of the River, and many others.

The body of the Green Goliath is a vast assemblage of constituencies, including the high-tech industry, corrupted cronies and profiteers in all facets of business and construction, the entertainment and media complex, every major public utility, the full spectrum of academia from kindergarten to graduate schools, the financial sector, leftist billionaires and multi-billionaires, and the entire government bureaucracy.

Against this array of institutional might, outgunned and outfoxed, and always, always, playing defense, are California’s trade associations. Examples of these beleaguered institutions are the California Building Industry Association, the California Forestry Association, the California Cattlemen’s Association, and the Agricultural Council of California. These organizations and others fight a holding action against the Green Goliath, losing ground every year.

As for populist rebellion against the green tyrants, entrants are few. The simple fact that “climate change” objectives, even if you believe in their urgency, are not furthered by the actions of the green tyrants, is lost on most Californians. But maybe that can change.

In 2015, the fourth back-to-back dry year in a drought stricken state, after watching 27,000 acre feet of water get released into California’s Stanislaus River to save 23 (twenty three) steelhead trout, one Californian decided to start a movement.

Five years later, with no money, Kristi Diener’s “California Water for Food and People Movement” has 14,200 members on a Facebook group where they share information and ideas dedicated to restoring common sense and humanity to California’s water policies. Based in California’s Central Valley and agricultural heartland, this group includes thousands of farmers, along with families in farm communities on the front lines in the fight against the green tyrants. They are very well informed. But they haven’t been able to stop the ongoing attacks on their lives and livelihoods. Consider this recent post on their Facebook page:

During November [2020], knowing we could be heading into a multi year drought, northern reservoir managers continued to release water through the Delta, and into the Pacific Ocean anyway. Environmental regulations say the flows are necessary to produce a rebound of endangered Delta smelt and Chinook salmon, yet zero of either species have been collected in all of the latest trawling surveys, where they spend several days a month searching in more than 200 spots. This practice of releasing water and hoping fish improve, has been unsuccessful for nearly 30 years. Both species are close to extinction.

Even with little to no rain to speak of in November, an amount of freshwater equal to a year’s supply for 3,031,560 people for a year, was emptied from storage and added to the supposedly rising sea level. It is equal to 987,836,857,560 gallons (987.8 billion) or 303,156 acre feet. Last week State Water Project contractors, who provide water for 27 million people and 750,000 acres of the most productive farmland on Earth, were given their initial allocation of 10%. Put another way, 303,156 acre feet was sent to the ocean for failing fish-saving policies in one month with little rain, while contractors received 422,848 acre-feet to share among 27 million people and 750,000 acres of food production.

This is typical behavior, thanks to the green tyrants, and it’s getting worse.

Beginning in January 2020, pursuant to the California legislature’s recently passed “Sustainable Groundwater Management Act,” Central Valley farmers are required to reduce the amount of well water they use to irrigate their crops. Then in March 2020, California regulators set new rules that reduce how much river water farmers can take.

Obviously it makes no sense to drain aquifers dry, or divert the entire flow of a river for irrigation, but these two regulations hitting farmers at the same time is a perfect storm. Suddenly farms that have operated for generations face the possibility of having to shut down operations. And in to pick up the pieces, flush with subsidies, are renewables “entrepreneurs” who aim to carpet the valley with solar farms.

A Completely New Way of Thinking is Required

It wouldn’t be so bad if more water stayed underground and more water stayed in the rivers, if overall there was more water available. But when California’s rains falter for a few years in a row, it is impossible to satisfy environmentalists and farmers. Invariably, the farmers lose. But why not store more water, to capture storm runoff even in dry years, and to reserve more water in reservoirs that was captured during the wet years?

This is where the environmentalists have forced Californians into a lose-lose scenario. Californians have to restrict their water use, thanks to the environmentalists, but they are also prevented from increasing the supply of water, thanks to the environmentalists.

An example of this is the proposed expansion of Lake Shasta, California’s biggest reservoir, by raising the height of the dam 18 feet. Just with that incremental increase, this steep sided, deep water reservoir would be able to yield a half-million additional acre feet of fresh water every year. This cool water could be used to send pulses down the Sacramento river, helping fish populations, and it could be transported through aqueducts to farmers south of the delta. But environmentalists have used endless lawsuits to block this project for years. It is unlikely to ever be completed.

Down on the Southern California coast, another example of environmentalist power plays out, in the City of Huntington Beach, where a proposed desalination plant has been fighting for nearly 20 years for approval. Despite the environmental issues associated with desalination being thoroughly addressed in the modern design that is proposed, environmentalists have stopped this project in its tracks. It, too, is unlikely to ever be completed.

It’s not just water. The exact same cruel green cramdown plays out in every sector. There are countless examples of how environmentalist litigators and lobbyists have tied the economy of California up in knots, imposing politically contrived scarcity on the people. Until Californians can recognize that they don’t have to live like serfs, that affordable abundance can be achieved while making acceptable tradeoffs between environmental protection and economic growth, the green tyrants will reign supreme in the golden state. So goes the nation?

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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Realigning California & The Newsom Recall

AUDIO:  A review of ways to restore affordability and quality of life to California, followed by a discussion of the campaign to recall Governor Newsom, an effort that has already made history – 21 minutes on KUHL Santa Barbara – Edward Ring on the Andy Caldwell Show with guest host Stephen Frank.

Citizen Initiatives Transform Oxnard Politics

California’s ballot initiative process allows citizen activists to bypass politicians who are controlled by special interests. The ability for citizens today to connect and organize using online resources means it has never been easier for a determined group of individuals, without access to big donors, to nonetheless successfully qualify reform measures for the ballot and put them before voters.

A current example of this is the ongoing RecallGavin2020 campaign. This volunteer organization is already half-way towards collecting enough signatures to force Governor Newsom to defend his position in a special recall election. The 800,000 signed recall petitions collected so far, all by volunteers, is already in record territory. These volunteers have made history.

What can be done statewide can also be done locally. Back in 2019, in Oxnard, a small group of activists, led by Aaron Starr, a local executive with a financial background including a CPA, began working to qualify five reform initiatives. The audacity of their effort to qualify not one, but five reform initiatives was noteworthy at the time, as reported in a California Policy Center article “Citizen Reformers Set to Transform Oxnard’s Politics.”

With the November 2020 election over, what has happened in Oxnard sets an inspiring example for reform activists in every city and county in California. Following through on their plans, Starr’s group, dubbed the “Coalition for Moving Oxnard Forward,” have seriously disrupted business as usual in the City of Oxnard. For each of the five reform measures they proposed, they gathered 8,400 verified signatures (10 percent of the city’s voters), qualifying all of them for the November 2020 ballot. Here is how each of them fared:

The action began back in January of this year, when the Oxnard City Council began to take countermeasures against the five reform measures, all five of which had been qualified by then to be on the November 2020 ballot. The first of these reforms to be targeted was term limits. To cope with this potential threat to the tenure of these elected officials, they gamed the system by quietly adopting the term limits measure as law, removing the need for it to be on the ballot. They then voted to place their own watered down version of term limits onto the earlier March 2020 primary ballot, marketing it as “strict term limits,” in order to fool voters into supporting a measure that would supersede the genuine term limit reforms that they’d adopted as law.

Got that? The replacement measure, diluted but sold to voters as a tough reform, passed easily. It’s now being challenged in court.

These sorts of machinations by California’s elected officials, so many of whom are wholly owned by public sector unions and other special interests, are nothing new. Expect it.

Oxnard residents were able to vote on the remaining four reform measures, but not before the City Council sued to keep three of them off the ballot. In all three cases, the proponents were able to obtain a court order forcing the city to keep them on the ballot.

The only one that the City of Oxnard did not sue to keep off the ballot was the Measure F, dubbed “Permit Simplicity.” The motivation for this reform ought to be obvious to anyone trying to navigate the review process with most local governments in California. As the proponents put it:

“Getting a permit at Oxnard City Hall can be bureaucratic, time-consuming and costly, whether one wants to replace a water heater, remodel a home, build a tenant improvement, or expand a business. The solution is Permit Simplicity – a streamlined, safer process that enables next-day permit issuance – a program built upon a successful model implemented ten years ago in Phoenix, Arizona, the country’s fifth most populous city.”

Despite a hard fought campaign by the city against Measure F, it narrowly passed.

Oxnard civic reform activists may have slightly overreached with Measure L, “Financial Transparency.” Some of the much needed provisions of this measure included requiring city expenditures and monthly financial reports to be posted on the city’s website, along with invoices, purchase orders, submitted bids and solicitations for bids. It also required the city to use an independent auditor to conduct performance audits and to oversee a whistleblower program. The measure even made the city treasurer, an elected official – hence accountable to voters – head of the Oxnard Finance Department.

In the face of city opposition that argued strenuously against this last provision – that the elected treasurer would run the city’s finances – Measure L was defeated. But the reformers weren’t finished.

One of the big difficulties local government watchdogs face is the ability for city councils to hold meetings during the day when most private citizens are themselves working and unable to attend. Another tactic used by city governments to undermine the ability of citizens to effectively critique council actions is to blindside the attendees with new information presented by staff during council meetings.

Oxnard’s Measure M, “Open Meetings,” addresses both of these problems and others. It requires council meetings be held no earlier than 5 p.m. on weekdays. It requires staff presentations be videotaped and posted in advance of meetings. It also extends the time for individual members of the community to comment from one minute to three minutes, and allows them to present videos or PowerPoint slides.

These provisions were designed to reduce the travesty of city staff and councilmembers pushing their agenda through with minimal public awareness or input, something that is all to common in California’s cities and counties. Oxnard’s voters agreed, passing Measure M with an overwhelming majority.

Saving the most creative for last, Measure N, the “Fixing Streets” ballot measure required the city to either bring its streets up to a pavement condition index rating of 80, or be forced to terminate the half-cent sales tax increase adopted in 2008. There was an irony to the city’s opposition to this measure, because when streets are regularly maintained, moisture doesn’t go through cracks in the road surface which causes accelerated deterioration which is much more expensive to repair. But where the city could not see what was in its best interests, voters could, approving Measure N by a close but comfortable margin.

Where there’s an organized offense, there’s the capacity for defense, and opposition from Oxnard’s citizen reformers made the City work hard to pass their own Measure E, yet another new tax. Predictably, the lengthy ballot title for this measure was designed to maximize its appeal to voters. It reads:

“Shall an ordinance establishing 1 and 1/2 cent sales tax to maintain 911 emergency response times, natural disaster, public health/emergency preparedness; prevent fire station closures; address homelessness; attract/retain local businesses/jobs; keep public areas safe/clean; secure Oxnard’s long-term financial stability; maintain general services/infrastructure; requiring annual audits, public disclosure of all spending; providing $40,000,000 annually until ended by voters, used only for Oxnard, be adopted?”

What civic minded voter can refuse that appeal? The measure passed, but at 53.9 percent in favor and 46.1 percent opposed, not by a landslide.

The true motivation for the City of Oxnard to want more taxes ought to be clear by now to anyone remotely familiar with what really drives out-of-control spending by California’s local governments, pay and benefits for public employees. But that’s another story.

What the citizens of Oxnard did, successfully passing three local measures – Permit Simplicity, Open Meetings, and Fixing Streets – will make an immediate difference in how that city is governed and how local officials will now be more responsive to the citizens they serve.

Consider all of the local ballot measures that faced voters in Oxnard’s Ventura County this past November. Nearly everything on that ballot was a new tax or a new bond pushed by local elected officials. Oxnard’s citizen sourced measures stand out as the sole examples of reformers taking the initiative. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

In a state where nearly every city and county is ran by government unions and billionaires, it is still possible to make a difference with ballot initiatives. In Oxnard, they’re thinking big, recognizing that rapid and transformative change requires not one, but multiple initiatives. What they’re doing can and should be replicated by serious reformers everywhere.

Note: Here are links to the complete drafts of the four reform measures put before Oxnard voters on November 3: Measure F, Measure L, Measure M, Measure N. For questions about these reforms, use the Contact Us form on the website of the Coalition for Moving Oxnard Forward. An earlier version of this article appeared on the website California Globe.

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The Agenda to Realign California Politics

When it comes to California’s political dysfunction, over and over, the story’s already been told. Failing schools, crumbling infrastructure. Highest taxes, highest unemployment, and highest cost-of-living. Hostile business climate. Crippling, punitive regulations and fees. Widest gap between rich and poor. Burning forests, lawless streets. Record numbers of homeless. Unaffordable housing. Water rationing, electricity blackouts. And on and on. We get it.

When it comes to California’s political hierarchy, again it’s a familiar story. The Democrats run almost everything. The political spending by government unions and leftist billionaires, overwhelmingly favoring Democrats, leave the GOP hopelessly outgunned financially. The political bias of literally all the online and legacy media leave the GOP without a voice.

This is the context through which it is indeed surprising and impressive that CAGOP logged some significant wins in the recent election. Critics of CAGOP’s performance, and they are many, downplay the CAGOP’s victories – including flipping four U.S. Congressional seats and beating back a partial repeal of Prop. 13 – and instead remind everyone how Democrats remain in absolute control of the state legislature, all higher state offices, and almost every city and county. But the CAGOP had far less money, and they faced relentless media hostility. It’s a wonder they ever win anything, anywhere.

So what’s next for CAGOP? Or more to the point, what’s next for all Californians who agree regardless of their party affiliation that life in California could be better, much better, and that current government policies are to blame?

The answer to this question must go beyond the fundamentals without dismissing their importance. CAGOP has worked on registration and built a base of trained volunteers. With limited resources they set priorities and won most of the races they targeted. While mistakes were made, the other side also makes mistakes. It is not simply a question of competence, it is a question of resources.

So CAGOP has to continue doing the mundane work of building a party infrastructure, and with limited resources they have to continue to engage in political triage. But what can CAGOP do that transcends the basics? What themes can they adopt, what policies can they promote, and what tactics can they employ to enflame the passions of millions of Californians? How can CAGOP trigger a populist wave that fully understands and rejects the failures of California’s Democrats, and instead fights for solid, exciting alternatives?

For starters, CAGOP cannot identify a problem without simultaneously proposing a solution. And a unifying theme that should accompany proposed solutions is that nearly everyone wants the same result, regardless of their party ideology. That would mean acknowledging that Democrats – at least the idealists among them – have always had good intentions. But their policies have failed and it’s time to try something new.

Equally important, CAGOP needs to propose big solutions. Incrementalism is boring, costs too much to sell (because it’s so boring), and takes too long to make a difference. CAGOP needs to propose dramatic changes in policies that will terrify the Democrat elite. They need to propose solutions that will attract billions in opposition political spending, and then highlight how much money the Democrats are spending to stop their ideas. They need to literally use the heavy spending by the Democrats as a weapon against them.

Solving the Problem of Failing Schools

The issue where CAGOP can immediately seize the initiative and build a populist movement with the potential to immediately grow into an electoral supermajority is with public education. The teachers’ union has squandered much of its political capital by insisting on a near total lockdown of K-12 public schools in California, at the same time as private schools and a significant number of public charter schools have remained open.

The performance of California’s public schools was already dismal, especially in low income communities, even before COVID came along, but the innovations spawned during the shutdown have made the case for school choice more compelling than ever. What CAGOP needs to advocate are school vouchers. Anything less than total school choice via school vouchers would be a half-measure, unable to generate bold excitement and unlikely to solve the problem. Everyone in California wants K-12 schools to successfully educate children. So issue vouchers that parents can redeem as homeschoolers, or in micro-schools and pod-schools, or for private academies, parochial schools, charter schools, or traditional public schools. Turn the entire education establishment on its ears. For the children.

There are other compelling issues that can, like public education, be honestly promoted as nonpartisan solutions that will benefit all Californians. California’s neglected infrastructure is a prime example, because the quality of California’s water, energy and transportation infrastructure is what enables economic growth and broadly distributed prosperity. The challenge with infrastructure that it requires several fundamental shifts in policy that are difficult to distill into a coherent package for voters. But one at a time, CAGOP can advocate a transformative agenda for water, energy and transportation, with the priority falling on water.

Solving the Problem of Neglected Infrastructure

CAGOP should back a $50 billion water bond, with the proceeds used to increase the annual water supply by at least 5 million acre feet. The bond would be crafted to allocate 100 percent of the funds to either the production, collection, or distribution of water. For example, California’s aqueducts and levees would be restored. Southern California’s urban water districts would achieve nearly total water independence through a combination of desalination plants and treatment plants with the capacity to convert 100 percent of wastewater to potable water. The various proposed surface storage projects, including Pacheco, Sites, and Temperance Flat reservoirs would be fully funded and expedited. The height of Lake Shasta Dam would be raised the proposed 18 feet. In this grand bargain, water abundance would be achieved in California, allowing environmentalists and farmers to receive their desired allotments, and urban users would no longer face rationing.

Here is a hypothetical list of the specific expenditures that would increase California’s annual supply of water by over 5 million acre feet:

1 – Build the Sites Reservoir (annual yield 0.5 MAF) – $5.0 billion.

2 – Build the Temperance Flat Reservoir (annual yield 0.25 MAF) – $3.0 billion.

3 – Raise the height of the Shasta Dam (increased annual yield 0.5 MAF) – $2.0 billion.

4 – So Cal water recycling plants to potable standards with 1.0 MAF capacity – $7.5 billion.

5 – So Cal desalination plants with 1.0 MAF capacity – $15.0 billion.

6 – Desalination plants on Central and North coasts with 0.5 MAF capacity – 7.5 billion

7 – Central and Northern California water recycling plants to potable standards with 1.0 MAF capacity – $7.5 billion.

8 – Facilities to capture runoff for aquifer recharge (annual yield 0.75 MAF) – $5.0 billion.

Total – $52.5 billion. Increased supply – 5.5 MAF.

On the issue of energy, CAGOP can pursue a strategy that doesn’t seek to completely derail California’s commitment to renewables, but makes obvious and necessary adjustments. For example, CAGOP should fight to keep Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in operation till the end of its useful life, which with regular upgrades could be several more decades. CAGOP should repeal the rush to restrict the use of natural gas. And CAGOP should require renewable energy providers to guarantee to any public utility customer a continuous, year-round supply of energy, and build that into their pricing, so that renewables do not unfairly drive other energy providers out of business.

When it comes to transportation, CAGOP can reliably expect grassroots support to mothball the bullet train project, but CAGOP should at the same time propose the funds that would have been allocated for high speed rail be redirected into transportation projects. Nearly all of California’s interstate highways need to have lanes added and resurfacing. Why isn’t I-5 three lanes in both directions from LA to Redding? What about Highway 99 and Highway 101? CAGOP should also advocate for more research and development of “smart lanes” or “hyperlanes” where high speed electric cars can run on autopilot. That innovation, along with passenger drones, is just around the corner, and if California is determined to be a leading edge state, developing these next generation roads for next generation cars is far more prescient than high speed rail.

Solving the Problem of Affordable Housing and Helping the Homeless

The other big issue, arguably bigger than everything mentioned so far, is housing and the homeless, and the interrelated issue of how to take back the lawless enclaves across California where tens of thousands of homeless have congregated. The first step is to rebalance the housing market. CAGOP must make it clear that “infill,” or “smart growth,” whereby nearly all the growth in housing stock occurs within the footprint of existing cities, is not going to solve the problem. Using taxpayer dollars to build subsidized multi-family dwellings in established neighborhoods is a divisive, futile exercise that only benefits opportunistic developers who build them at a cost of around $500,000 per unit. There are terrific alternative solutions that would actually work.

For less money, the enabling infrastructure of roads, parks, and utility conduits can be extended onto open land on the urban fringe. Why are the rolling hills east of San Jose still cattle ranches? If they’re so steep, why does San Francisco even exist? Why aren’t new towns springing up along the entire Highway 101 and Interstate 5 corridors? It’s just grazing land. You could build ten million homes on big lots in these areas of California, and you would barely make a dent in the remaining open space. CAGOP needs to advocate laws that clear out the obstacles to constructing entire new cities. CAGOP needs to make absolutely clear to voters that the reason homes cost so much is because of excessive laws, regulations, fees, and politically contrived scarcity of available land. Housing is indeed a human right, but the obligation of government is not to construct free housing, but to create the regulatory environment where private, unsubsidized builders can again make a profit building affordable homes. They do it in Texas. We can do it here. For example:

Ways housing could be more appropriately developed in California:

1 – Eliminate all forms of government subsidies, incentives or waivers to any developers. All players in the housing industry should be unsubsidized, and playing by the same set of rules.

2 – Stop requiring diverse types of housing within the same development or neighborhood. Mixing high-density, subsidized housing into residential neighborhoods devalues the existing housing, and this social engineering is unfair to existing residents who have paid a high price to live there.

3 – Roll back the more extreme building codes. Requiring 100 percent of homes to be “energy neutral” or include rooftop photovoltaic arrays, for example, greatly increase the cost of homes.

4 – Lower the fees on building permits for new housing and housing remodels. Doing this might require pension reform, since that’s where all extra revenue goes, but until permitting costs are lowered, only billionaire developers can afford to build.

5 – Speed up the permitting process. It can take years to get permits approved in California. Again, the practical effect of this failure is that only major developers can afford to build.

6 – Reform the California Environmental Quality Act as follows: prohibit duplicative lawsuits, require full disclosure of identity of litigants, outlaw legal delaying tactics, prohibit rulings that stop entire project on single issue, and require the loser to pay the legal fees. Better yet, scrap it altogether. Federal laws already provide adequate environmental safeguards.

7 – Make it easier to extract building materials in-state. California, spectacularly rich in natural resources, has to import lumber and aggregate from as far away as Canada. This not only greatly increases construction costs, it’s hypocritical.

8 – Increase the supply of land for private development of housing. Currently only five percent of California is urbanized. There are thousands of square miles of non-farm, non critical habitat that could be opened up for massive land development.

9 – Engage in practical, appropriate zoning for infill and densification in urban cores, but only after also increasing the supply of open land for housing, and only while continuing to respect the integrity of established residential neighborhoods.

The issue of housing segues naturally into the issue of the homeless, now estimated at around 150,000 in California. Experts on the homeless divide them into three groups, the “have nots,” the “can nots,” and the “will nots.” The have nots are people who have had a series of economic or medical catastrophes and usually with some help from friends or friendly agencies they get back on their feet. But the majority of unsheltered homeless in California belong to the other two groups. The “can nots” are people who are disabled or mentally ill. They are typically incapable of living independently. The rest, constituting the majority of the unsheltered homeless in California, are “will nots.” These are people who have been attracted to, for example, the beaches of Southern California, where they can live on the streets year-round, taking advantage of free food in the shelters, a vibrant drug scene, and laws that have effectively decriminalized theft up to $950 per day, as well as possession and consumption of virtually any recreational drug including methamphetamine and heroin.

The solution to the problem of California’s homeless starts by recognizing that the obligations of compassion do not extend to tolerating theft, intoxication, or vagrancy, much less physical drug addiction as a “lifestyle.” People who live this way do not need indulgence, they need help. The current practice of building shelters on some of the most expensive real estate on earth, without even performing background checks or requiring sobriety, is a disgraceful waste of money. There are very specific steps that can be taken, as follows:

1 – Challenge the ruling Jones vs the City of Los Angeles in court, with the objective of redefining “permanent supportive housing” as inexpensive tents and community kitchen and bath facilities, located in the least expensive parts of counties. This will make it possible for homeless people to be relocated to safe shelter immediately, instead of having to wait until tax subsidized developers build them “supportive housing” at a cost of $500,000 per unit (or more). Any politician that runs for office that does not commit to overturning or dramatically clarifying the Jones ruling does not care about the homeless and is not serious about solving the problem.

2 – Revise the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act of 1967 that made it nearly impossible to incarcerate the mentally ill. It is not compassionate, nor is it a constitutional obligation, to permit someone who is obviously deranged to live on the streets where they are easy prey for criminals and perpetually tormented by mental illness. At the very least, these victims need to be taken off the streets and moved to facilities where they can be observed and treated if necessary. If they are not found to be seriously mentally ill, they can be placed in inexpensive shelters.

3 – Sponsor a referendum on Prop. 47 which downgraded drug and property crimes. It is absolutely impossible to police California’s streets if criminals are allowed to steal up to $950 of property every day, and never face more than a misdemeanor charge. Similarly, it is a recipe for chaos to tolerate public consumption of opiates and amphetamines and other hard drugs. CAGOP must emphasize that it is not compassionate to allow people to descend into the hell of addiction, and when drug addicts move into public spaces and become disruptive, it is reasonable to arrest them.

It is important to emphasize that California’s homeless problem will be significantly reduced if the supply of housing is increased and appropriate penalties are restored for vagrancy, petty theft and possession of hard drugs. Once housing is more affordable and once the “will not” contingent of homeless realize the party is over, California’s population of unsheltered homeless will become manageable. They can then be helped in facilities built in inexpensive areas, so that all of them can be accommodated, and the money that is saved can be used to treat their substance abuse, their mental illness, and provide job training.

Solving the Problem of Wildfires

There are a lot of issues that matter very much to some Californians, but the choice of issues here are those that matter very much to all Californians. Another example of such an issue is prevention of wildfires. This issue – how to prevent catastrophic wildfires – like all those already mentioned, has an obvious solution. And as with the other issues, there are powerful special interests that don’t want anything to change.

The problem is we have become expert at fire suppression, at the same time as we’ve reduced our timber industry to a fraction of its former size. The result are overgrown, stressed, tinder dry forests. The solution to preventing catastrophic wildfires, at least in California’s conifer forests where most wildfires occur, is to revive the timber industry. Modern logging practices do not destroy forest ecosystems, and in fact can be beneficial to the ecosystems. California’s timber industry needs to expand from the current annual harvest of 1.5 billion board feet to 4.5 billion board feet.

If the size of California’s timber industry were tripled, the amount of wood being harvested from the forests would almost be equal to the rate at which the forests grow each year. Using a mix of clear cutting on a 50 to 100 year rotation, combined with so-called “uneven age management” in more sensitive areas in order to preserve important groves and other valuable ecosystems, California’s overgrown forests could be quickly restored to health. There are many benefits to such a transformation:

1 – The clear cut areas, never more than 1-2 percent of the forests, would provide temporary meadow which actually helps wildlife populations.

2 – The logged areas are immediately mulched with new trees planted in furrows that follow the elevation contours, meaning all storm runoff percolates into the aquifers.

3 – The properly thinned forests no longer use up all the precipitation. Currently, the trees in California’s overgrown forests drink all the rain, often allowing none of it to run into the streams or percolate into the aquifers, and they’re so dense they’re often stressed and dying anyway. If California’s forests were thinned down to healthy historical norms, millions of acre feet per year would be added to California’s water supply.

4 – The timber companies, at their expense, will thin the forests, maintain the logging roads which are also fire breaks and used by firefighting crews, and cut away trees and brush that encroach on power lines. Currently all of those roads, fire breaks, and transmission corridors are overgrown because the timber companies have been chased out and there aren’t funds to do this maintenance from any other sources.

5 – Thousands of good jobs will be created, and instead of costing taxpayers money, it will generate tax revenue.

California’s fire seasons exemplify much of the political dysfunction that grips the state. And confronting the special interests that prevent progress does not require denying the values that these special interests have used for years to maintain their credibility with voters. It doesn’t harm the forests to bring back logging. Wildlife biologists have argued the exact opposite, that modern logging will save the forests, not only from wildfires that literally threaten to obliterate California’s overgrown forests, but even by revitalizing the ecosystems so wildlife can thrive.

The Coalition that CAGOP Can Build If They Offer Bold Solutions

This theme, that we want the same things the Democrats say they want but have failed to provide, offers CAGOP power and credibility that money can’t buy. By not only identifying the failures of the Democrats, but by taking on the exact same challenges and offering practical, obvious solutions, CAGOP can build a populist supermajority in California.

Imagine the excitement that candidates can generate when they announce their commitment to legislation and ballot initiatives that will solve the biggest bipartisan challenges facing Californians. School vouchers will liberate millions of school children from a failing public school system that is under nearly monopoly control of the teachers’ unions. Overnight, competitive schools will be opened, offering a diversity of programs so that every parent has the freedom to choose a curriculum that will maximize the chances for their children to learn and have a bright future. Parents that homeschool or form micro-schools will get reimbursed, making that option feasible for far more parents. Private schools as well will thrive, as parents who couldn’t previously afford the quality of a private school will now have that opportunity.

California’s public schools receive approximately $15,000 per student per year from taxpayers. Why not give that money to the parents instead in the form of a voucher, and let them redeem it at the school of their choice? $15,000 per student equates to a $300,000 per year budget for one classroom with 20 students. That sort of budget will lease a pretty good classroom and a pretty good teacher, with plenty left over for educational materials. It is the 21st century. It is time to turn public education in California upside down, and start something new and wonderful for the next generation.

Imagine the enthusiasm that will greet a serious proposal to create water abundance in California. $50 billion in general obligation bonds is plenty of money to increase California’s annual water supply by 5 million acre feet, since additional financing could come from revenue bonds attached to the ratepayers who would purchase the water, along with federal assistance. Imagine the relief Californians will feel when electricity bills stop rising inexorably to keep pace with renewable portfolio mandates, simply because Diablo Canyon stayed open, we didn’t destroy our natural gas infrastructure, and renewable electricity producers had to price the cost to provide continuous power into their contracts with the utilities. Imagine being able to drive safely up and down California’s widened and resurfaced freeways for less cost than what was proposed to be squandered on the bullet train.

It gets better. Imagine being able to afford homes again. Imagine that anyone with a decent job could once again afford to purchase a new home on a spacious lot, instead being a mortgage slave merely to own an overpriced home on a lot so small you can’t fit a swing set or trampoline in the back yard. Imagine new cities and suburbs up and down Interstate 5 and Highway 101. Imagine all those beautiful residential suburbs spared the divisive stress of having multi-story, multi-family, tax subsidized apartment buildings sprinkled randomly into the neighborhoods to house people who in a fair society could find a job and buy a home of their own.

And better still, imagine homeless drug addicts and alcoholics getting treated in facilities that are safe and inexpensive, instead of being allowed to destroy their lives while eating in shelters nestled in the middle of beachfront communities where people work like hell to pay their mortgages. Imagine the mentally ill taken off the streets and given treatment. Imagine California’s neighborhoods, parks, shopping districts, public squares, transit systems, sidewalks, alleys, underpasses and beaches given back to the local residents, shoppers and tourists.

And finally, imagine a state where a revived timber industry along with streamlined procedures for controlled burns and building firebreaks and removing biomass means a state where the air isn’t fouled for weeks on end every summer, as cataclysmic infernos drive thousands from their homes and rack up billions in damages.

This is an agenda that will attract every parent of a K-12 student in California. It will attract business and labor interests who want the economic growth. It will attract every family that wants to live in a home with a yard without having to go broke to do it. It will attract every person who doesn’t want to live with water rationing, or unreliable and expensive electricity, or endure clogged freeways. It will appeal to homeless advocates, if they’re honest about what needs to be done, and it will gain the passionate support of every resident of every community currently besieged by homeless encampments.

This agenda is not ideological, it is practical. It mingles libertarian solutions, such as using the private timber industry to solve the problem of forest fires, with government solutions, such as issuing general obligation bonds to guarantee abundant water. While it is certain to enrage some environmentalists, others will acknowledge key facts in favor of this agenda: new suburbs in the age of electric cars and telecommuting do not cause climate change, nor does nuclear power, there is plenty of open space in California to accommodate a few thousand additional square miles of urban civilization, timber extraction is the only practical way to thin overgrown forests and hence save them, and abundant water means, for example, we can refill the Salton Sea, we can send bigger freshwater pulses down the rivers and through the delta, and we can replenish our aquifers.

The biggest foes of this agenda will be the teachers’ unions. Good. Make the fight about this fearsome gang of leftist agitators who care more about indoctrinating children to harbor racial resentment than about encouraging them to take individual responsibility for their lives. The California Teachers Association is the most powerful political special interest in California, although in recent years the leftist billionaires of Silicon Valley are challenging them for the top spot. But these tech billionaires can also be targets of this fight. Why are the Big Brother tech billionaires, along with the entire Democratic leftist establishment headed by the California Teachers Association – and the Sierra Club – being allowed by California’s voters to do everything wrong?

CAGOP can offer freedom, enlightenment, prosperity, abundance, and safety – everything the Democrats have taken away from Californians. They can adopt a platform that embraces school vouchers, infrastructure investment and practical approaches to water, energy and transportation challenges, regulatory reform to stimulate urban expansion and affordable new suburbs, sensible and cost-effective solutions to the homeless crisis, and a revitalized timber industry to curb the risk of wildfires and create thousands of jobs.

The CAGOP can offer solutions. They can be bold. They can go on the attack, on behalf of all Californians. And they can win, to everyone’s tremendous benefit.

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REFERENCES

How to Save California’s Forests, October 2020

The Battle for California is the Battle for America, October, 2020

How to Realign California Politics, September 2020

The Wondrous, Magnificent Cities of the 21st Century, March 2020

California’s Progressive War on Suburbia, February 2020

The Boondoggle Archipelago, November 2019

The Density Delusion, August 2019

America’s Homeless Industrial Complex – Causes & Solutions, July 2019

The Opportunity Cost of Shutting Down Diablo Canyon, July, 2019

California’s Regulatory Hostility Prevents More New Homes, July 2019

Defining Appropriate Housing Development in California, February 2019

Towards a Grand Bargain on California Water Policy, August 2018

California’s Transportation Future – The Common Road, July 2018

California’s Transportation Future – Next Generation Vehicles, May 2018

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

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The Libertarian Path to Democrat One-Party Rule

recent article in the Washington Examiner titled “Maybe the libertarians weren’t so irrelevant after all” just scratches the surface of the challenge posed to conservatives in America by the Libertarian Party. To state the obvious, America is a two-party system. When you split the anti-socialist vote, the socialist wins.

When elections are close, and three of America’s last six presidential elections have been decided by razor thin margins, the spoiler doesn’t have to be relevant to be “relevant.” When electoral votes are decided by margins of a few thousand, a one-percent shift to a third party changes who wins.

As Washington Examiner columnist Tiana Lowe put it: “In Arizona, Jorgensen has more than 50,000 votes, with 98% of total votes counted. Biden leads Trump by fewer than 15,000 votes. In Georgia, Jorgensen’s total is nearly six times Biden’s lead. In Wisconsin, it’s nearly double, and in Pennsylvania, it’s almost the same story.”

In the six states where Trump is reportedly losing by the thinnest margins, the impact of the Libertarian candidate either flipped the election to Biden or very nearly did. Notably, the Green Party candidate was not present on the ballot in any of these states except for Michigan, where he only won 0.2 percent of the vote. As the chart below shows, if the voters who’d opted for Libertarian presidential candidate Jo Jorgenson had chosen Trump instead, Biden would now be losing in Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin, and his lead in Pennsylvania would be just 2,263 votes.

One common argument ventured by Libertarians whenever they are accused of being spoilers is that the people who vote for them are often Democrats, or they are Republicans who weren’t going to support their party’s candidate this year anyway. So, if there had not been a Libertarian candidate, these people wouldn’t have voted at all. Given the success of the NeverTrump movement in convincing some Republicans to abandon Trump, the second half of this argument has some validity. But what about the rest of it? Can Libertarian candidates take votes away from Democrats

This question became especially acute in Georgia’s senate race, where Libertarian candidate Shane Hazel threw the battle between Republican David Perdue and Democrat Jon Ossoff into an upcoming runoff. Perdue earned 49.7 percent of the vote against Jon Ossoff’s 47.9 percent. Did Shane Hazel’s 2.3 percent performance cost Perdue a victory? Probably.

Here’s some of Hazel’s “key messages” as submitted to Ballotpedia:

#EndTheWars – It is long past time to bring the men & women in service home. Undeclared unconstitutional never ending war is used to enslave Americans through debt and taxation. 20 years of war is enough death & destruction for a life time. It is time for Peace.

#EndTheFed – Both democrats & republicans have enslaved every American for generations to come thru a $23,000,000,000,000 debt owed to a faceless, unaccountable international banking cabal that is growing at over $1 Trillion a year. It is time for Free Markets

#EndTheEmpire – The bureaucratic DC cabal is deployed in 150 countries around the world, for the interests of international aristocrats, not Americans, and they need to be exposed and removed. Wars, Taxes, Policies, “Laws”, Permits, Debt are all out of control and must be abolished. It is time for Liberty.”

These talking points—regardless of their coherence or lack thereof—do not attract Democrats, not because there aren’t certain sentiments here that you might have also heard last year from Democrats like Bernie Sanders, (I-Vermont) Tulsi Gabbard, (D-Hawaii) and others. They don’t attract Democrats because “free markets” and “liberty” are known to Democrats as far-right code words.

On the other hand, most everything Shane Hazel has to say in his “key messages” appeals to Republicans. To suggest this candidate didn’t attract 0.3 percent of Republican votes, when he garnered 2.3 percent of all votes, is lunacy.

In a fawning article at Reason, Hazel had this to say to people critical of his role in throwing the Georgia Senate race into a runoff: “Give me your tears. They are delicious.” Apparently Hazel, and the folks at Reason, think this is funny.

Hazel went on to say, “We have principle on our side, we have a great understanding of economics, of peace . . . and when we articulate those things firmly and with no compromise outside our echo chamber, we can do amazing things.”

But even if Hazel has “a great understanding” of economics—which is debatable—does he understand how libertarian “principles” fall short in the real world?

The problem with fighting for limited government on principle is simple—your influence will be decisive, often providing the extra shove that represents the tipping point, but only when the Left and the corporations agree with you.

The Libertarian adherence to principle over practical outcomes helps explain the otherwise paradoxical alliance between the Left and the corporate elites in America. When Democrats advocate a policy where there is Libertarian agreement “on principle,” the winners are leftist pressure groups and big business. But it is a very select list, with critical adjunct policies also advocated by libertarians that are completely ignored.

This is why Libertarians are having a decisive influence on densifying America’s cities through “infill,” but are ineffective when it comes to preventing taxpayer-supported subsidies for the new construction, or enabling development via urban expansion onto open land.

It is why Libertarians successfully oppose government-funded infrastructure projects “on principle,” which stops new freeways from being built but does not stop construction of subsidized light rail or high-speed rail; or stops new dams and desalination plants but does not stop water rationing and mandatory purchases of new “water conserving” appliances that cost a lot, don’t work very well, and break down often.

It is why Libertarians successfully oppose laws that might get drug addicts, psychopaths, and vagrants off American streets, but cannot prevent compassion brigades from providing them free amenities which only attracts more of these unfortunates, nor can they prevent opportunistic developers from coming in to build tax-subsidized “supportive housing” for them at a cost of over a half-million per unit.

Libertarians support “free movement of peoples” on principal, but have no impact whatsoever on the growing welfare state that is a magnet for economic migrants to come to the United States. They support “free trade” without first insisting on reciprocity. And on principle, Libertarians have stood on the sidelines as left-wing billionaires in the Silicon Valley used their online communications monopolies to manipulate what information Americans had access to in order to destroy a sitting president. Because “on principle” these companies are privately owned. So what if they’re monopolies, using their power to swing a presidential election?

We see a common thread to all of these policy outcomes: multinational corporations, international banks, and billionaire investors do well. Ordinary Americans do not. Libertarians have not adequately confronted the fact that their economic “principles” are put to good use when they serve the agenda of corporate globalists, but are indeed irrelevant when they do not.

Worse yet, Libertarians like Shane Hazel claim to want an end to foreign wars, but fail to recognize that rising nations will fill the vacuum wherever Americans withdraw. Even more to the point, they give President Trump zero credit for being the first American President since Jimmy Carter to not start a new war. Trump deescalated tensions all over the world. Biden is bringing back the warmongering Bush-Obama team. Trump stood up to the military-industrial complex, a fact lost on Libertarians.

Which gets us back to the core issue: What did these Libertarian candidates think they were going to accomplish by spoiling the Republicans’ chances? It is quite likely that if Libertarian candidates hadn’t run in the battleground states, Trump would have won the election. It is also possible that Shane Hazel, by forcing a January runoff, could cost Republicans control of the Senate.

One may assume that Hazel, the Libertarian Party, the Reason Foundation, and all the rest of the assorted “libertarian” think tanks and billionaire donors are quite pleased with themselves. They may be the reason that, come January 20, Democrats control the White House and both houses of Congress.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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Yes, Total Deaths in U.S. ARE Up in 2020

Making the rounds on social media and alternative news websites is the story about a Johns Hopkins study that claimed COVID-19 deaths are overstated. The work in question can still be found on the Wayback Web Archive here. It measured total U.S. deaths from all causes during 2020 and concluded that these deaths – from all causes – were not greater than deaths in previous years.

Skeptics were quick to pounce. For example, in this report, an alternative content provider led with the headline “Study: Absolutely NO excess deaths from COVID-19.” Then when Johns Hopkins pulled down the study, the plot thickened. Here is a typical reaction to that, “Johns Hopkins Publishes Study Saying COVID-19 Deaths Overblown, Then Deletes It.”

When Johns Hopkins took the study down, they published an explanation which only clarified some of the issues raised by the study. To the main point, which was that deaths from all causes in the U.S. are not higher in 2020 than in previous years, Johns Hopkins wrote “This claim is incorrect… according to the CDC, there have been almost 300,000 excess deaths due to COVID-19.”

But Johns Hopkins did not explain, or even speculate, as to where the author of the retracted study (which really was just an article in their newsletter, not a study) got their figures. But there’s a fairly likely explanation, because this isn’t the first time something like this has happened this year.

Back in July, a meme went viral claiming, ironically, that “COVID-19 Cured Pneumonia.” As noted in an article investigating this meme, the data used by the author of the meme was “CDC Reported U.S. Pneumonia Deaths 2019-20” through March 25, 2020. They showed these deaths on a graph where the line representing current year pneumonia deaths was clearly way below the lines showing prior year pneumonia deaths. Ergo, the CDC was reclassifying pneumonia deaths as COVID deaths to inflate the COVID death statistics.

Except they probably weren’t, or if they were, it was not nearly to the extent this meme inferred. What the author of that meme did, and apparently what the author of the article published by Johns Hopkins did, was fail to take into account the 10 week lag between when deaths are reported first reported for a given week, and when all the deaths in that week are finally collected and tabulated. Typically, only about 25-30 percent of deaths in any given week are logged and reported by the CDC in the immediate following week. Only after 8-10 weeks, after that many weekly updates, are 95+ percent of deaths in any given week reported and known.

This means that for any point in time, a graph where the CDC’s current year data is superimposed against their prior year data will only show an accurate comparison if you ignore the most recent ten weeks of current year data. Those weeks will always show a downward curve because all the data for those recent weeks is not yet received by the CDC.

The author of the article published by Johns Hopkins did have a useful insight, however, by focusing only on “deaths from all causes.” This eliminates the question of misclassification and merely asks the question: are more people dying this year than in previous years, or not?  The CDC issues reports weekly, and each time they arrive in spreadsheet format, showing how many people died, per week, for every week preceding the week of the report. Here, for example, is a link to the CDC’s weekly report for the week ended 11/24.

Presented below is CDC data on U.S. deaths from all causes for this year. It graphically depicts the data from 23 weekly reports from the CDC, starting on week 25 (the week ending 6/24), through week 47 (the week ending 11/24). Each report is one line on the graph. The vertical axis represents the number of deaths, the horizontal axis represents weeks in 2020.

Note how each week of data plummets towards zero as it plots the more recent weekly total deaths. Note as well how the earlier weeks, where all data has been collected, show these lines all converging. This shows graphically how the CDC’s weekly reports do not provide complete totals for the weeks immediately preceding each of their reports. Only the data 8-10 weeks behind any CDC weekly report can be relied on to show how many people actually died.

With this knowledge, we can now reliably compare weekly deaths from all causes in the U.S. in 2020 and compare it to the averages for those same weeks in previous years. The next graph, below, does this, but uses a two year horizontal axis to allow a clear visual representation of the historic cycle in previous years, where deaths go up in the winter and down in the summer. To make this clear, the horizontal axis starts on October 1, which is the beginning of flu season, then tracks 104 weekly data points, representing two flu seasons over two full years. The choice of two years is also helpful to track COVID’s impact, since it did not follow the typical trajectory where deaths peaked in winter.

As can be seen, there are six years of prior year data that track in close formation. The 2017-2018 flu season stands out as the most severe, with deaths peaking in January at nearly 70,000 per week. Overall, during the peak weeks of flu season over the past six years prior to 2020, total deaths in the U.S. rose to not quite 60,000 per week, then dropped in mid summer to around 50,000 per week. That is the normal progression.

Against that backdrop, the dark blue line, which represents total deaths from all causes in 2020, offers a very different curve. Flu season was normal, with deaths plateaued around 60,000 per week for several weeks in January and February. But then deaths spiked dramatically in March and April of 2020, during a time when typically deaths from all causes start to cycle slightly downwards. The sharp peak in April clearly shows that something very alarming was happening, with the week of April 15 peaking at 78,821 deaths, around 15,000 deaths higher, or 46 percent higher, than what should have been typical for that week.

Further review of this graph shows what was referred to as the 2nd wave of the COVID pandemic, when total deaths peaked again at 63,867 on the week of July 29, roughly 12,000 deaths higher, or 23 percent higher, than what should have been typical in the middle of the summer. But here is where it gets interesting. Based on the CDC’s time lag in getting information, the accuracy of the 2020 curve is only available through mid-September. The numbers already reported show deaths from all causes still well above the previous six years, but it is too soon to know if they will continue to rise or not. That is where we stand right now.

To dispense with these graphs, and return to just numbers, the question remains: If the author of the article published with Johns Hopkins was mistaken, and they were, then exactly how many excess deaths are there really in 2020, from all causes, compared to prior years? We can know this with relative precision for 2020 through the CDC report for the week ended September 16.

For the calendar years 2014-2019, through September 16, the number of deaths from all causes (adjusted for population growth) was 1,991,648. For 2020 through September 16, the number of deaths from all causes is 2,302,633. This means that over the 37 weeks of 2020 through September 16, there were 310,985 more deaths in the United States than should be expected based on the averages from the six preceding years.

This fact, that during 2020, 310,000 people in the United States are dead who, if this were a normal year, would still be alive, means that at the very least we are not dealing with a hoax. And while the pandemic shutdown may be killing jobs and robbing thousands of people of their will to live, suicides alone cannot begin to explain the spike in deaths back in April, when these lockdowns had barely begun, and total deaths were 46 percent above the average for a normal week in April.

The point of this analysis is not to suggest the measures that government officials – federal, state and local – have taken are the correct measures. Some states have done better than others at managing this crisis, and most everyone has had to deal with unknowns and uncertainties in a situation where the stakes could hardly be any higher. And for those who are conspiracy minded enough to think this disease is not all that serious, based on the fact that most of its victims are older people with serious preexisting health conditions, then they ought to be conspiracy minded enough to realize that if this pandemic doesn’t get everyone into line, then the next one will be engineered to be deadlier. How much of a skeptic do you have to be these days to consider the chance that COVID-19 spontaneously arose in a Chinese “wet market” vs the chance that it was engineered and spread deliberately to be an even bet?

Ultimately, however, in an age when you can’t trust anything coming from the media, and less than ever from the government, maybe this analysis is a useful way to remind us all that even if we’re dealing with official misinformation on almost everything that matters, that doesn’t mean that everything we’re fed, every single time, is false.

It is probably a reasonably safe bet that the data presented by the CDC on weekly deaths from all causes in America is accurate, once you take into account the lag in getting all the data compiled. And it is also reasonable to question alternative media as diligently as we question official media. We live in an age of information war, and as in any war, both sides have their inevitable share of charlatans, hacks, and just plain careless players.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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