Tag Archive for: California politics

Realigning California Will Realign America

The conventional wisdom among conservatives in most of the rest of America is that California is a lost cause. Rather than fight inside California, where you are up against the most powerful and monolithic alliance of progressive special interests in the world, dedicate resources to flipping purple states, and keeping red states red. But to invert a popular quote attributed to Nietzsche, even if you do not gaze into the abyss, the abyss will still gaze back into you.

California’s role in influencing the future of the entire country is unparalleled. In addition to its economic and demographic weight, California remains the epicenter of America’s media and entertainment industry, as well as its high-tech industry. Even if several American states defy the momentum of California’s political class, laws governing California frequently end up becoming federal policy. The abyss is coming for us all, and its epicenter is in California.

It is expensive to engage in public education in a state with a population of nearly 40 million, including 22 million registered voters. California’s political culture is almost completely dominated by social radicals and environmentalist extremists. But if the challenges to changing the political culture in California are daunting, the potential rewards are even greater.

There is an immediate financial incentive for conservatives to take the fight into the belly of the beast, which is that whatever money California’s well heeled public sector unions and progressive billionaires have to spend on defense in their own state is money that will not be used to swing close races in other states. The question then only becomes how to engage in asymmetric warfare to ensure that California’s progressives spend far more money on defense than their attackers spend on offense. In this manner, even if the political battle is lost, the money battle is victorious.

An example of this strategy is Proposition 32, waged in 2012 by conservative reformers attempting to force government unions to obtain consent from their members before they could spend any of their dues on political campaigning. A lot was at stake for these public sector unions, which in California spend an estimated $600 million on political campaigning and lobbying each two year election cycle. That’s a lot of money even in California. Voters rejected Proposition 32, but proponents spent $10 million, whereas the union defenders spent over $108 million. That’s $98 million that did not flow into the rest of the U.S. in the election of 2012.

In general, ballot initiatives are a good way to keep California’s progressive elites off balance and drain their treasuries. Qualifying a ballot initiative in California today will cost proponents between $5 and $10 million. But if it represents a serious threat to the environmentalist industrial complex, the woke tycoons, or the government unions, they will spend many times that amount to defeat it. And as proven as recently as November 2020, when eight of the nine state ballot propositions supported by unions were rejected by voters, California’s electorate should not be taken for granted.

California’s Electorate is Ready for a Change

This fact, that sometimes voters can surprise the experts and completely flip the political script in a state or a nation, is another reason for conservatives to refocus on California. Also unique to California is its demographic composition, which is likely to be mirrored in America within a generation. California’s population by ethnicity is roughly 40 percent Hispanic, 35 percent non-Hispanic white, 15 percent Asian, 5 percent black, and 5 percent multi-racial. Among Californians under 20 years of age, non-Hispanic whites are now less than 22 percent of the population.

Any effort to change political culture in California might benefit by first recognizing that the hardest bloc of big government supporters to convert are its diminishing cohort of white liberals. Living by the millions in inherited homes and thus not liable for either a mortgage or significant property taxes, they are exempt from the worst consequences of California’s failing institutions. For California’s financially secure white progressives, the rising cost for essentials is an inconvenience instead of an existential threat. They live in upscale neighborhoods where the public schools have better teachers and more resources, or, equally likely, they don’t have any school age children. And they are concentrated in areas where crime rates are low. California’s white voters support progressive Democrats because they don’t suffer the consequences of progressive Democrat policy failures. It’s much easier to believe the abstract Democrat mantras about climate change and systemic racism when more tangible challenges don’t exist. That’s the reality for millions of white progressives in California. Write them off.

When it comes to realigning California politics, white conservatives are already on board, and the white progressives are immovable fanatics. The future opportunity for conservatives in California today are Asians and Hispanics who are increasingly receptive to three primary messages: (1) Policies that create scarcity and high prices are by design, and only benefit crony capitalists, (2) public education at all grade levels in California is failing, and (3) punishing crime deters crime. With respect to scarcity and the cost of living, and also with respect to rescuing public education, deregulation to encourage competition is the answer. As for California’s crime problem, which like skyrocketing utility bills and lousy schools is disproportionately harming nonwhite communities, if criminal penalties were enhanced instead being scrapped as per the progressive agenda, crime would be deterred and eventually fewer criminals would need to be incarcerated.

Two misconceptions have driven unsuccessful efforts to change political culture in California. First, that the primary political concern of nonwhites, primarily Hispanics, are social issues such as pro-life sentiments, and second, that more generally, nonwhites favor bigger government. Neither of these assumptions are true. To be clear, California’s non-white residents care greatly about social issues, and are generally pro-life voters. And while their consistent support for Democrats might imply a big government bias, all it really indicates is that Democrats have made more alluring promises to nonwhites, while successfully stigmatizing Republicans as racist. Those promises have not been kept, and as the Democratic mantra of equity ascends into the stratosphere of absurdities, accusations of racism are wearing thin. The most urgent concerns for nonwhite voters in California, becoming more urgent all the time, are to live in a state with an affordable cost-of-living, good schools and safe streets. Consequently, efforts to realign California should target Asians and Hispanics, and should emphasize pro-abundance policies, school choice, and support for law enforcement.

When running the numbers, realigning California isn’t that far fetched. Not generally acknowledged is the fact that more voters in California in 2020 supported Trump – over six million – than any other state. More than Texas. More than Florida. Also largely missed is the fact that for all their money, the Democratic machine in California still misfires. In November 2020, 17.8 million voters cast ballots in California. In November 2022, only 11.1 million ballots were cast. This is an astonishing statistic. It belies the notion that the Democrat vote harvesting operation is consistently activated and effective. It also suggests that a Republican vote harvesting operation, had it been activated in 2022, might have led to surprising victories for Republican candidates across the state. And it suggests that if California’s conservative populist base, six million strong, were to consistently turn out and vote, it would not take a significant shift in the voting patters of Asians and Hispanics to flip California red.

Democrats in California are the party of big business, tech companies, environmentalist extremists, and government unions. Their self-serving policies have made the state unaffordable, punitively hostile to small businesses and independent contractors, with a public school system that’s a joke, and huge swaths of its urban neighborhoods that are now crime infested no-go zones. Nobody who is victimized by this reality is happy with it, and if they are offered credible alternatives they will dump the Democrat incumbents who created this mess.

What is happening in California is not only a threat that cannot be ignored. It is an historic opportunity for conservatives across America. As goes California, so goes the nation.

This article originally appeared in American Greatness.

Who Will Support California’s Populists?

A recent article published in the Kennedy School Review by American Affairs editor Julius Krein makes a strong case that conservatives have no future as a political force in America. The one flaw in this article, entitled “Can Conservatism Be More than a Grudge,” is it may be a little too pessimistic. It’s well argued and is a must-read for anyone serious about reviving conservative political power in places like California.

The only hope Krein offers is the power of populism, harnessing a multi-racial coalition of working-class and middle class Americans. But conservative populism, ascendant today in California, is about to be squandered by an establishment that lacks the leadership and authenticity to tap this extraordinary energy.

One of Krein’s understated but most powerful points regards patronage. He writes: “The Democratic coalition is no less incongruous than the Republican one. There are, however, two important differences between them. First, the Democratic economic base is composed largely of ascendant and prestigious economic sectors and firms, from Silicon Valley to Goldman Sachs, while Republicans are predominantly supported by declining sectors, like natural resource extraction. Second, the Democratic patronage system is coherent, even if the Democratic coalition is not. In other words, the Democratic Party is capable of using policy to directly benefit its various constituencies and to create new ones. Together, both of these factors ensure that Democrats’ patchwork constituencies have reasons to overlook their coalition’s internal contradictions. That is simply not the case on the Republican side.”

This single paragraph cuts to the heart of the Republican disadvantage, especially in California. “Using policy to directly benefit its various constituencies.” For examples, think no further than the ongoing “Blue city bailouts,” “green” mandates and infrastructure boondoggles.

These rivers of money enable Democrats to “overlook their coalition’s internal contradictions.” The Republicans have no such luxury. There’s no Silicon Valley coterie of billionaires with plans for everyone, and money to back it up. There’s no public employee union machine that, just in California, collects and spends nearly a billion dollars per year. California’s Republican big money, to the extent they ever have big money, comes from intermittent pop-up donors, willing to blow a few million on a pet project then disappear for another twenty years. Republican contenders often are dilettantes running vanity campaigns, or they’re vapid, underfunded establishment candidates, peddling Democrat-lite policies, thinking that makes them relevant. In a sea of pretenders, authentic candidates get stereotyped and dismissed.

Meanwhile, over the past year and by complete surprise, a grassroots populist movement has arisen in California. Out of nowhere, an army has formed, united in opposition to the symbol of Democratic one-party tyranny, Governor Gavin Newsom. In a few months, Newsom will fight for his political life in a special recall election. Disaffected Californians, by the millions, will vote against Newsom keeping his job, many of them indifferent to who replaces him. Newsom may or may not survive. But what’s next for California’s populist conservative movement?

One of the ways that Republican candidates to replace Newsom can distinguish themselves would be to embrace solutions to the problems that have put Newsom in trouble to begin with. These issues aren’t a mystery: Housing, homeless, education, law and order, water, electricity, transportation, forestry, to name the obvious.

Solutions to these issues are also not mysterious. Deregulate housing permits. End the disastrous “housing first” policies and instead give the homeless safe housing in inexpensive barracks where sobriety is a condition of entry. Repeal Prop. 47 which downgraded property and drug crimes. Build reservoirs, desalination, and wastewater recycling plants. Build nuclear power plants and develop California’s abundant natural gas reserves. Recognize that the common road is the future of transportation, not the past, and widen California’s freeways and highways. Let the timber companies harvest more lumber in exchange for maintaining the fire roads and power line corridors. Done.

Instead, the Republican’s titular frontrunner, Kevin Faulconer, has made a plan to cut taxes the centerpiece of his campaign. For this, big Republican donors are willing to spend millions of dollars. Imagine if Faulconer’s campaign centerpiece was spending public money efficiently on things that would make a difference: energy, water, transportation, while cutting spending in areas of failure by, for example, introducing private sector competition to the public school system, and releasing the timber industry to thin the overgrown forests? Imagine Faulconer betting his campaign on a promise to create millions of new jobs and lower the cost-of-living by making it easier to build homes and develop natural resources?

Don’t blame Faulconer. Blame the system that thinks the only “safe” campaign for a GOP candidate is to say they’ll lower taxes. Blame the conventional wisdom that polling and focus groups should govern political campaigns instead of leadership and vision. You can’t focus group your way to leadership. It has to come from the heart and the mind. Politicians have to be willing to challenge voters, defy the polls, and explain why what they believe is the right thing to do. They have to do the work of the policy wonk, and then translate the result into impassioned rhetoric while preserving the substance. They have to be willing to lose if their explanations are unconvincing, shouted down, outspent, or arrive before their time.

The saddest thing in this epic failure of leadership on the part of California’s Republican donors and the politicians they support is that as they concoct formula driven pablum in a futile attempt to out Democrat the Democrats, California’s populist conservative movement, coherent and active as never before, is not being offered anything that might motivate them to stay united and fight. This is a tragedy. Where is a new and daring contract with California? Where is a 21st century Fix California agenda? Where is the platform that dares to step on the toes of every special interest that owns the state – the public sector unions, the environmentalist lobby, the litigators, the tech billionaires, the Hollywood progressives, and every corrupted corporation and trade association that plays ball just to survive?

Without leadership, California’s populists will be offered solutions that are extreme. While the GOP’s handful of elected officials offer legislation that never makes it out of committee, that is, while these politicians go through the motions, and know they are just going through the motions, what could make a difference, ballot initiatives to fix all of the above – housing, homeless, education, law and order, water, electricity, transportation, forestry – are not given serious consideration.

Another two year cycle comes, another two year cycle goes. But this time, we will remember that there was an army, begging for logistical support. It costs as little as $10,000 to do legal work and file a California state ballot initiative with the California Attorney General. The filing deadline for something to appear on the November 2022 ballot is this August, because the entire process including signature gathering takes 15 months. Ten thousand dollars. Kevin Faulconer will spend more than that for just one 30 second spot in a major television market. Much more. So will his rivals.

Where are these initiatives? Why aren’t California’s trade associations putting some forward? Why aren’t donors funding initiative drafts to be filed for title and summary? Why don’t they get the process started, to provide populists – as well as potential big donors – with material to evaluate and possibly support? It’s cheap. Even the rivulet of ongoing GOP patronage can easily afford to do this. Just the dialog and excitement generated by a slate of initiatives that are filed and posted on the Secretary of State’s website, initiatives that might actually do some transformative good, would be worth the preparation expense.

Nature abhors a vacuum. Thanks to what is arguably negligence on the part of people who could do so much, demagogues and grifters will offer causes with extreme emotional resonance to California’s populist army. Causes guaranteed to animate about 5 percent of the population, while the other 95 percent either laugh at their Quixotic absurdity or cry at their wasted energy. Into this vacuum, California’s populist army will splinter and their energy will dissipate. Volunteers, fragmented and forsaken, will see their signature gathering energy wasted in the streets, with nothing to show for it but a suntan. And California’s Republican opposition will prove, yet again, that they are utterly irrelevant.

This article originally appeared on the website of the 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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Suggested Executive Orders for Gavin Newsom

Without criticizing the tremendous efforts that are already being made, here are some additional steps that California Governor Gavin Newsom could take to combat the spread of the COVID-19 virus. Some of these recommendations may run counter to the political momentum of California’s one-party state, but perhaps in these extraordinary times, they should be considered based solely on their efficacy.

(1) Suspend AB-5, the new law that prevents millions of Californians from working as independent contractors. This law, which has attracted fierce opposition from people of diverse ideologies, is particularly harmful during this crisis. AB-5 has already put hundreds of thousands either out of work or into legal uncertainty regarding their future, and now it’s preventing hospitals from hiring part-time freelance nurses, support staff, translators, phone counselors, and others.

(2) California’s regulatory burden placed on individuals who want to operate as independent service providers was oppressive before AB 5. Now is a good time for Governor Newsom to issue an executive order to revise occupational licensing requirements. In particular, permit nursing school graduates to fulfill their clinical rotation requirements using simulations instead of in-hospital rounds which have been discontinued during this pandemic.

(3) Immediately free California’s nursing schools to graduate as many nurses as qualify for certification. This would end the state Board of Registered Nursing’s attempt to use its authority unconstitutionally to limit new nurses and to control the schools that train them. The governor can immediately rein in this out-of-control agency, and allow 10,000 new nurses into frontline emergency medical positions.

(4) As the economy stalls, with sales tax and state income tax revenues set to take a nose dive, to forestall a complete financial meltdown of state and local government finances, implement a non-refundable 20 percent cut to compensation for all public servants, to take effect immediately and last until all sheltering restrictions are permanently removed. Apply the reduction to all forms of compensation including hourly pay, overtime, specialty pay, all forms of “other” pay, and salaries. Unlike during the budget crises of 2009 and 2010, most public sector workers are needed to continue to perform their jobs, so this time there will be no “furloughs” to accompany these pay cuts.

(5) In order to improve the ability of small businesses to survive, for all California businesses with fewer than 50 employees, suspend all state and local minimum wage rules that raise the minimum wage beyond the federal minimum wage.

(6) Require all school districts to implement online learning to the best of their capacities, and ban school districts from not offering online learning simply because not all students have access to the internet. Require all school districts to do the best they can.

(7) Suspend Prop. 47 which downgraded property and drug crimes, and resume enforcement of the laws that were superseded by Prop. 47. Employ the National Guard to construct tent compounds on publicly owned land in rural areas to incarcerate offenders.

(8) Use the National Guard to clear the streets of homeless people. Relocate them to established shelters and improvised new shelters. Require all public and private homeless shelters, including the new ones being improvised in recreation centers, hotels, and other public and private venues, to enforce sobriety and shelter-in-place mandates. Use the National Guard to relocate uncooperative offenders to supervised tent compounds on publicly owned land.

If one might search for a common theme to the policies of the one-party state that defines Gavin Newsom’s California, it would be that whatever big business and big labor want, big business and big labor get. Small businesses often fail because they cannot to adhere to the overdone laws and regulations that apply in California. When it comes to housing, apart from very high end luxury condos and mansions, California’s home builders can no longer profitably build housing without subsidies. The high cost of living and the decimated middle class are consequences of giving big business and big labor everything they want.

Another common theme embodied in California’s political culture is “protecting” the rights of every “marginalized” individual and every “marginalized” group no matter what the cost. This is seen everywhere, from keeping disruptive students in K-12 classrooms to permitting intravenous drug addicts to pursue their “lifestyle” unencumbered and in full public view. It is seen in rules, formal and defacto, that require “proportional” representation for every ethnic and gender identity, across every student body, corporate workforce, government bureaucracy, or government contractor.

All of this benefits big business, big labor, and big government (which in California is now merely a subsidiary of big labor). California’s one-party elites rely on leftist billionaires and public sector unions to fund a relentless public relations campaign assuring Californians that the one-party regime is fighting for them. But it isn’t. Rather the result of the one-party regime in California is high taxes, ruined schools, lawless streets, a crippling cost-of-living, and punitive regulatory obstacles to small businesses and independent contractors.

One of the great ironies of California’s political economy today is that California’s public servants could afford to earn less, if they earned less. Paying excessive pensions means fewer employees can be hired which means paying more overtime. Meeting these ever escalating personnel costs means there isn’t public money left anymore to fund infrastructure, which means home builders now have to pay infrastructure fees that add hundreds of thousands to the cost of homes. It also means fewer homes get built, reducing supply, which adds additional hundreds of thousands to the cost of homes. It is time to reverse this entire costly cycle, and public sector unions might cooperate in the process, if they truly care about all of California’s workers.

Governor Newsom, his ultra-rich compatriots, and California’s big labor bosses have done very well for themselves. And with every law they pass that only the wealthy and financially resilient can weather, their power and their profits grow. It is time for them to abandon their hypocrisy. It is time for them to either stand up for all of California’s workers, or admit the truth at last, that they are the party of privilege and wealth.

At a time like this, California’s one-party regime – along with fate itself – remind us how little power we often have over our own lives. But unlike the cruel fate of this pandemic, Governor Newsom can choose the course he sets for the rest of us. Perhaps he might consider this list, and extend some practical steps of mercy to millions of ordinary Californians.

This article originally appeared on the website California Globe.

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The Seven Deadly Sins of California’s Political Establishment

To be fair, California’s politicians aren’t alone in their quest to destroy America’s rights, freedoms, prosperity, culture, traditions, and pride. They’re just more advanced in their quest. But since what happens in California often ends up happening later in the rest of America, it’s important to highlight just how bad it’s gotten in the Golden State.

Just as a theologian might argue there are more than seven deadly sins that are fatal to spiritual progress, there are more than seven policy areas where California’s political leadership have fatally undermined the aspirations of ordinary Californians. But in the interests of brevity and clarity, here are what might be the most damning seven deadly sins of California’s political establishment.

Law and Order – Californians have prided themselves on being trendsetters in human rights, but the pendulum has swung too far. Thanks to Prop. 47, the “Reduced Penalties for Some Crimes Initiative” approved by California’s voters in 2014, it is nearly impossible to arrest and hold anyone for possession of hard drugs, so long as they claim the drugs are for personal use. Prop. 47 also downgraded the punishment for property crimes if the value of the stolen goods are under $950 per offense.

The consequence of these laws are public drug use and rampant theft to support these drug habits. Other ridiculous laws include AB 953, the “Racial and Identity Profiling Act” (2015), that requires police to fill out an extensive questionnaire after every encounter with a member of the public, even if it doesn’t result in an arrest. The purpose of this is to prevent disproportionate encounters with members of disadvantaged groups, and the consequence of it is fewer stops, fewer arrests, and more crime.

Environment – It’s hard to know where to begin when it comes to environmentalist extremism that tyrannizes ordinary Californians. Central to California’s central planning state is AB 32, the “Global Warming Solutions Act” (2006), and follow on legislation. These laws aim to reduce California’s net “greenhouse gas” emissions to zero by 2045.

To accomplish this, it is becoming almost impossible to develop land outside of existing cities in California, which is driving the price of land and housing to unaffordable levels. Next on the “climate change” agenda is to charge Californians for “vehicle miles traveled,” wherein everywhere people go in their cars will be monitored and taxed.

Well before AB 32 came along, though, California’s gone overboard with environmentalism. The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), passed by the state legislature in 1971, requires environmental impact reports to accompany any building permit. Since a separate report is required for every permit application, and since major building projects require approval from dozens of agencies, in California, the costs to file applications and pay fees often exceeds the cost of the actual construction itself.

Then there’s forestry management, taken over by environmentalist zealots who prohibited logging, suppressed controlled burns with byzantine application gauntlets and endless litigation, and turned California’s forests into tinderboxes.

Energy & Water – Californians pay among the highest prices for gasoline, electricity and natural gas in the United States, despite the fact that California has abundant reserves of oil and gas.

But instead of approving new refineries, more connecting pipelines, oil and gas drilling, and clean natural gas power plants, California’s policymakers are shutting down conventional energy in favor of “renewables.” Even clean, emissions free nuclear power is forbidden, as California’s last nuclear power plant, Diablo Canyon, is scheduled to be shut down by 2025.

Not only does this leave Californians without affordable energy, as they’re herded to the nearest retailer to purchase “demand response” appliances that don’t work very well, but utilities investing in renewables don’t have money left over to upgrade their power lines to better manage wildfires.

As for water, instead of storing more storm runoff behind dams and within aquifers, and investing in reuse and desalination, California’s turned to rationing. Starting in 2020, Californians will be restricted to 55 gallons of indoor water use per person per day, with that amount being lowered in subsequent years.

Transportation – Freeways in California are among the most congested in the nation, but instead of widening roads and building new freeways, California’s policymakers have declared war on the car. Never mind that cars are the future of transportation, destined to be entirely clean, autonomous, capable safely driving at high speeds while their occupants work, sleep, or entertain themselves.

Instead California’s political leadership remains committed to a high speed train that will never pay for itself, light rail when light rail ridership is in decline, and zoning that will make it impossible for people to park their cars where they live. California’s transportation policy is misanthropic and misguided. Meanwhile, ordinary Californians cope with super commutes on neglected roads.

Housing – Despite the fact that most young married couples, given a choice, would prefer to raise their children in a single family home with a yard, California’s elite have decided that single family homes and suburbs are “unsustainable.” This despite California sprawling over 160,000 square miles, of which only around 5 percent is urbanized.

Californians instead are expected to construct all new housing via high density “infill,” where there is minimal open space, parking is unavailable, and prices are sky high thanks to the artificially created shortage.

As noted, the costs to prepare permit applications and pay fees often exceeds the construction costs, notwithstanding the fact that high rise and mid rise construction always costs far more per square foot than what it costs to construct one or two story wood frame homes.

Homeless – In a state where you can’t build anything without paying fees that cost more than the construction costs, and where utility bills and other hidden taxes make the cost-of-living the highest in the nation, it should be no surprise that California has a homeless crisis.

Add to that the best weather on earth, and laws that permit public consumption of hard drugs and prevent detention of petty thieves, and you have a recipe for a homeless population explosion. Moreover, court rulings make it impossible to remove homeless encampments unless you can offer them “permanent supportive housing,” and rampant (totally legal) public sector and nonprofit corruption have driven the costs for such housing to exceed on average $500,000 per unit.

To top it off, state laws make it, for all practical purposes, impossible to incarcerate the mentally ill. If these laws and court settlements were overturned, overnight, half of California’s homeless would find shelter with relatives and friends, and the rest would get cost-effective help. But it’s a meal ticket for the corrupt public sector.

Education – Save the worst for last. This is perhaps the most unforgivable sin of all in California. Instead of teaching children to read and write, they are being indoctrinated. Instead of being held accountable, incompetent teachers are protected by union labor laws, and disruptive students are kept in classes in order to fulfill quotas designed to prevent “discrimination.”

The University of California, which – under threat of lawsuits – is about to abandon using SAT scores entirely, has already engineered its admissions policies to circumvent federal prohibitions on affirmative action. From higher education down through the K-12 public schools, leftist propaganda and identity politics are the goal of California’s unionized public education system, instead of teaching children the skills they will need to become more productive graduates.

This is the future that awaits America. It is a future abetted by a complicit media, an activist entertainment industry, a unionized public bureaucracy and public education system, and nearly every significant corporate and financial player. The political model it embraces is often labeled as socialist, but might more accurately be described as economic fascism – a merging of public and private, a partnership of corporations, oligarchs, and the public sector.

While people typically cringe at use of the term “fascist,” the fascism we’re seeing in California is not the hardcore fascism of WWII era Germany, but rather a soft fascism as envisioned by Aldous Huxley in his novel Brave New World. California’s citizens are being channeled into high-density apartments, forced to use mass transit, and increasingly made dependent on government subsidies, in exchange for the illusory freedoms of legal drugs and anything-goes gender exploration.

At the same time, Californians are deluged with fearmongering propaganda – a classic fascist tactic – concerning the rise of the oceans thanks to “climate change” and the rise of “white nationalism” thanks to President Trump. Both of these threats are preposterously overstated, but when that’s the only message you ever hear, it feels very real.

This 21st century fascism being pioneered in California touts itself as “anti-fascist” at every opportunity, but the system nonetheless fits the definition of fascism. It is corporate, collectivist, centralized, and autocratic. With an equally unhealthy and excessive fervor, it exalts the planet instead of the nation, and celebrates “diversity” instead of one culture. It punishes dissent, protects the oligarchy, and deludes the overtaxed, over-regulated, overpaying majority.

In a world where truth, justice, and the American Way still exist, an America that believes in God, or at least believes in good, evil, and some sort of ultimate accountability, what California’s elites are doing is literally sinful. Their path to salvation is simple:

Enforce common sense drug laws and punish thieves. Quit using environmentalism as a punitive religious faith and start logging the forests, building roads, drilling for oil and gas, and approving nuclear power plants instead of shutting them down. Stop extorting more money in permitting costs than it costs to construct homes, and start building them again on open land. Get vagrants off the streets, build cost-effective shelter for the truly needy, and put the mentally ill back into institutions. Fire incompetent teachers and hold our students to immutable, objective academic standards instead of filling their heads with divisive nonsense.

Americans would do well to look to California today, and whatever they’re doing, do the opposite. Before it’s too late.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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Public Sector Unions Should Support the Public Agenda

In a special election last week, Brian Dahle defeated Kevin Kiley in the race to become the next California State Senator representing District One, which sprawls north from the foothills east of Sacramento all the way to the Oregon border.

Both candidates were Republican members of the State Assembly, competing in one of the few safe Republican districts left in California. If you study their legislative voting records, all but the most committed conservative wonks would consider these men to offer pretty much the same positions on most issues. But Dahle had one decisive advantage – endorsements and financial contributions from public safety unions.

What is Brian Dahle going to do in return for this support?

In a perfect world, any organization of public servants would be non-partisan and politically neutral. But here in California, public sector unions don’t spend hundreds of millions every year to elect candidates like Brian Dahle out of political neutrality.

It would be bad enough if the only “political” agenda of public sector unions was to back pay and benefits packages that are, in the case of pensions, threatening to bankrupt every public agency in the state. But that’s hardly the case.

For example, earlier this year, why did International Association of Fire Fighters president Harold Schaitberger to lead 1,600 firefighters in solidarity with striking teachers in Los Angeles? Was his membership asked, or have they even thought about what unions have done to California’s public schools? Are they actually against charter schools, which often are the only hope for underprivileged children in California’s inner cities to get a quality education?

How does helping the teachers union continue to run our failing public schools somehow further the professional development and protects the pay and benefits of our firefighters?

When candidates seek the endorsement of public sector unions, it is common for them to complete a candidate questionnaire. The questions posed are fairly predictable. The teachers union may want to know the candidate’s position on, for example, charter schools or school vouchers. A public safety union may want to know the candidate’s position on the impact of recent criminal justice reforms.

But why shouldn’t the candidates question these unions?

Why shouldn’t a candidate, or a political party, reject union money and reject union endorsements unless they support the agenda and political platform of that candidate, instead of the other way around?

Why shouldn’t candidates offer a questionnaire to these public sector unions, and put the unions on the spot for a change?

Will these unions support ten percent of their pension system’s assets reallocated to fund revenue bonds for new in-state infrastructure? Will they support reducing their pension multipliers to pre-1999 levels for all future work?

And if the firefighters union can involve themselves in education policy, why should any political question be off limits? What about policies to lower the cost of living in California? Will the unions support CEQA reform? Will they support nuclear power? Will they support repeal of bleeding edge environmentalist mandates that have made homes unaffordable? As for education, will they support charter schools and school choice?

And why stop there? Will these unions support sensible immigration policies that emphasize merit over chain migration and the visa lottery? Will they reject and oppose all forms of discrimination based on group identity? Do they accept the necessity of getting tough with China, with all that entails?

Politicians in California have allowed public sector unions to become the most powerful special interest in the state. And the result is a state with crumbling infrastructure, mediocre public schools, and a public employee pension time bomb, along with the highest cost-of-living and the highest taxes in America.

Voters will support politicians that publicly challenge these unions to support across the board reform.

The recent Janus ruling has introduced another way to hold public sector union leadership accountable for the political agendas they support. Union members can quit. With that new leverage, conservative caucuses are being formed within public sector unions across America, including here in California. These conservative union members have been ignored for decades, but now they have a voice.

Public sector unions, which ought to be illegal, are going to be around for a long time to come. Politicians, voters, and union members should stop supporting the union agenda, and instead should demand these unions support the public agenda.

This article originally appeared in the Orange County Register.

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The Destruction of Venice Beach Epitomizes California’s Idiocracy

Venice Beach, California, used to be one of California’s great places. A Bohemian gem, nestled against the sand between big Los Angeles and the vast Pacific Ocean. Rents used to be a little lower in Venice compared to other coastal neighborhoods. The locals mingled with surfers, artists, street performers, and tourists. People from suburbs further inland migrated to Venice’s beaches on sunny weekends year-round. Venice was affordable, inviting, inclusive. That was then.

Today, Venice Beach is off limits to families who used to spend their Saturdays on the sand. It’s too dangerous. On the sand, beached seaweed now mingles with syringes, feces, broken glass, and other trash, and the ocean has become the biggest outdoor toilet in the city. Over a thousand vagrants now consider Venice Beach their permanent home. At the same time as real estate values exploded all along the California coast, the homeless population soared. In Venice, where the median price of a home is $2.1 million, makeshift shelters line the streets and alleys, as the affluent and the indigent fitfully coexist.

What has happened in Venice is representative of what’s happened to California. If progressives take back the White House in 2020, it will be America’s fate.

California’s cost-of-living is driving out all but the very rich and the very poor, a problem that is entirely the result of policies enacted by California’s progressive elite. They reduce to two factors, both considered beyond debate in the one-party state. First, to supposedly prevent catastrophic climate change, along with other environmental concerns, California’s restrictive laws such as the California Environmental Quality Actthe Global Warming Solutions Act, and Sustainable Communities and Climate Protection Act make it expensive and time consuming to construct new homes. These laws also decrease the availability of entitled land, which further increases costs to developers.

At the same time, California has become a magnet for the welfare cases of America and the expatriates of the world. According to a 2018 report (presenting 2015 data, the most recent available – ref. page 20) issued by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, of the 4.2 million recipients in America of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and Supplemental Security Income, an amazing 43 percent of them live in California, over 1.8 million people. And according to the liberal Public Policy Institute of California, as of 2016, California was also home to 2.6 million undocumented immigrants. Could California’s promise of health coverage for undocumented immigrants, or sanctuary state laws, have anything to do with this?

When you enact policies to restrict supply (to save the planet) and increase demand (invite the world to move in), which is exactly what California has done, housing has become unaffordable. Supply oriented solutions are relatively simple. Stop protecting all open space, everywhere, from development. Invest in public/private partnerships to increase the capacity of energy, water, and transportation infrastructure, instead of rationing water, “going solar,” and “getting people out of their cars.” Reform public employee retirement benefits instead of incessantly raising taxes and fees to feed the pension funds. It’s that simple.

Unfortunately, in California, nothing is simple. In 2006, the notoriously liberal 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Jones v. City of Los Angeles ruled that law enforcement and city officials can no longer enforce the ban on sleeping on sidewalks anywhere within the Los Angeles city limits until a sufficient amount of permanent supportive housing could be built. And how to create permanent homes for the more than 50,000 homeless people in Los Angeles? In 2016’s $1.2 billion HHH ballot measure was approved by 76 percent of Los Angeles voters, to “help finance the construction of 10,000 units of affordable permanent-supportive housing over the next ten years.”

The passage of Measure HHH raises many questions. Most immediately, why hasn’t much of the money been spent? As reported by NPR’s Los Angeles affiliate in June 2018, “so far only three of 29 planned projects have funds to begin construction.” Worse, the costs have skyrocketed. According to the NPR report:

“When voters passed the bond measure, they were told new permanent supportive housing would cost about $140,000 a unit. But average per unit costs are now more than triple that. The PATH Ventures project in East Hollywood has an estimated per-unit cost of $440,000. Even with real estate prices soaring, that’s as much as a single-family home in many places in Southern California. Other HHH projects cost more than $500,000 a unit.”

Spending a half-million dollars to build one basic rental unit to get one homeless family out of the rain sounds like something a bloated new bureaucracy might manage, and even in high-priced California, there’s no other way to explain this level of waste. What about the private sector?

A new privately funded development company, “Flyaway Homes,” has debuted in Los Angeles with the mission of rapidly providing housing for the homeless. Using retrofitted shipping containers, the companies modular approach to apartment building construction is purported to streamline the approval process and cut costs. But the two projects they’ve gotten underway are not cheap.

Their “82 Street Development” will cost $4.5 million to house 32 “clients” in a 16 two-bedroom, 480 square foot apartments. That’s $281,250 per two-bedroom apartment. Their “820 W Colden Ave” property will cost $3.6 million to house 32 clients in 8 four-bedroom apartments. That’s $450,000 per four-bedroom apartment.

Is this the best that anyone in Los Angeles can come up with? Because if it is, it’s not going to work. Let’s accept the far fetched notion that $5.0 billion could be quickly found to construct housing for the 50,000 homeless people in Los Angeles, and this could be finished within a few years. Does anyone think the growth in subsidized housing would keep pace with the growth in the population of homeless? Why, when California is a sanctuary state, a magnet for welfare cases, and has the most forgiving winter weather in America? One may take issue with the whole concept of taxpayer subsidized housing, but that is almost beside the point. There are more urgent strategic questions that aren’t being honestly confronted in California. For example:

Ten Tough Questions for California’s Progressive Elite

1 – Why is the national average construction cost per new apartment unit somewhere between $65,000 and $85,000, yet it costs five to ten times that much in Los Angeles to build one apartment unit for a homeless family?

2 – Is it wise to create subsidized housing that is of better quality than the apartments that many hard working Californians occupy and pay for without benefit of subsidies?

3 – Why hasn’t there been any attempt to get useful statistics on the homeless population, in order to apply different approaches depending on who they are? For example, how many of them are mentally ill, or criminals, or substance abusers, or sexual predators, or undocumented immigrants, or willfully homeless with other housing options, or hard working sane people who have encountered hard times (yes, “intersectionality” would exist among these categories).

4 – Why not immediately allocate open land to create campsites where the homeless can move their tents and belongings, to get them off the streets?

5 – Why not then study the refugee camps set up around the world, an activity where U.S. NGOs have in-depth expertise, and replicate these in areas of LA County where there is cheaper, available land? These semi-permanent structures are far less expensive than solutions currently offered.

6 – Does inviting millions of people from impoverished, politically unstable nations help those nations, when for every person who makes their way to California, thousands remain? And if not, why not directly help the people who are staying in those nations, which would be far more cost-effective?

7 – Wouldn’t it make more sense to moderate the inflow of unskilled workers across the border into California, in order to eliminate the oversupply of cheap labor which depresses wages? Wouldn’t that be better than mandating a higher minimum wage?

8 – Doesn’t offering welfare and subsidized housing to people capable of work make it unlikely they will ever seek work? While striking a balance is a compassionate necessity, has that balance perhaps been violated, since California is home to 43 percent of America’s welfare recipients?

9 – When will California loosen restrictions on land development and building code mandates, striking a balance between compassion for the earth and compassion for human beings, in order to bring the cost of new housing construction back down towards national averages?

10 – When will the elected officials in a major California city stand up to the litigants who use the 9th Circuit to impose rulings such as Jones v. City of Los Angeles, and take a case to the U.S. Supreme Court? While many homeless people have genuine stories of hardship and bad luck, must we be forced to cede to all of them our most desirable public spaces?

What has happened in Los Angeles is a perfect storm of progressive pressure groups and rent-seeking bureaucrats and profiteers, working together to amass money, power, and prestige. If they were efficiently solving the problem, that would be just fine. But they aren’t, and until they accept tough answers to tough questions, they never will.

As Venice Beach continues to reel from the impact of the homeless invasion, Los Angeles city officials are fast-tracking the permit process to build a homeless shelter on 3.2 acres of vacant city-owned property less than 500 feet from the beach. This property, nestled in the heart of Venice’s upscale residential and retail neighborhoods, if commercially developed, would be worth well over $200 million. Shelter capacity? About 100 people.

In a less utopian, less corrupt society, that single property could be sold, and the proceeds could be used to set up and monitor a tent city housing thousands, if not tens of thousands of people. But not in California. Under the warm sun, against the indifferent ocean, the idiocracy endures.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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California’s Green ‘Bantustans’ Are Coming to America

If the “smart growth” urban planners that dictate land use policies in Democratic states and cities have their way, the single family dwelling is an endangered species.

In Oregon, proposed legislation would “require cities larger than 10,000 people to allow up to four homes to be built on land currently zoned exclusively for single-family housing.” In Minneapolis, recent actions by the city council mean that “duplexes and triplexes would be allowed in neighborhoods that only previously allowed single-family housing.”

The war on the detached, single family home, and—more to the point—the war on residential neighborhoods comprised exclusively of single family homes, is on. And it’s gone national.

In California, ground zero for this movement, state legislation now requires cities and counties to fast track permitting for “accessory dwelling units.” This scheme will allow developers and ambitious homeowners to construct detached rental homes in their backyards, but since they’re called “accessory dwelling units,” instead of “homes,” they would not run afoul of local zoning ordinances that, at one time, were designed to protect neighborhoods from exactly this sort of thing.

“Smart growth,” however, began long before the home itself came under attack.

First there was the war on the back yard. Large lots became crimes against the planet—and if you doubt the success of this war, just get a window seat the next time you fly into any major American city. In the suburbs you will see a beautiful expanse of green, spacious, shady neighborhoods with lots designed to accommodate children playing, maybe a pool or vegetable garden, big enough for the dog.

But you will also see, plain and obvious, those suburbs that were built after the smart growth crowd came along. Tight, treeless, and grey, with homes packed against each other, these are the Green Bantustans, and there’s nothing green about them.

The image below shows homes packed roughly 15 per acre—including the streets—on private lots that are 40-feet wide by 80-feet deep. As of January, these homes were selling for $350,000. Such a deal! Smart growth!

Why call neighborhoods with mandated ultra-high density “Green Bantustans”? Because the Bantustan was where a racist elite used to herd the African masses during South Africa’s apartheid era. The commonality between the Green Bantustan and the Racist Bantustan becomes clear when you step back and ponder what is happening. In both cases, a privileged elite condemn the vast majority of individuals to live in a concentrated area designed to minimize their impact on the land.

But in America, the “smart growth” advocates aren’t racists, they’re misanthropic environmentalists.

The image below is fascinating, because at the same scale, it shows a neighborhood in the township of Soweto, once touted as a poster child for one of the most chilling warehouses for human beings in history. But notice the size of the lots—40 feet by 80 feet—are identical in size to that Green Bantustan in California. Also, please note, it’s probably much easier to get a building permit in Soweto.

In the name of “smart growth,” urban planners have succeeded in creating policy that has drawn lines around American cities, “urban service boundaries,” which make it nearly impossible to start new home construction outside these lines. While the purpose of these boundaries ostensibly is to protect open space, farmland, and wilderness habitat, not only are those goals only marginally fulfilled, but other negative unintended consequences abound. Consider the following:

Urbanization just takes a different form. Creating these greenbelts of protected open space mean instead of leapfrog development, you have super-leapfrog development. People who want to get out of the city now build and purchase homes on the other side of the greenbelt. Instead of suburbs on the perimeter of cities, you have exurbs, whole new cities, constructed just beyond the protected areas.

Quality of life is ruined in older suburbs. Homes within these cities are concentrated onto tiny lots in order to get as many people into each new development as possible. Often these new developments are imposed in the middle of semi-rural suburbs where the way of life for the people already living there is destroyed.

Traffic congestion gets worse. These dense new neighborhoods are designed to be “pedestrian friendly,” but what they really are is car unfriendly. There is no room to park, inadequate roads, and expensive light rail that most people can’t make practical use of.

Housing becomes unaffordable. The winners in “smart growth” are never people who need affordable homes, because prices always go up when you reduce the supply of developable land. The winners are those landowners lucky enough to have property within the arbitrary boundaries where growth is permitted, and the public sector bureaucrats who keep development within their jurisdictions, in order to collect property taxes and fees on artificially inflated home values.

Basic Facts Contradict the Arguments for “Smart Growth” 
If the proportion of land consumed by people, even in low density suburbs, is compared to the amount of land available for development, the case for high-density “smart growth” weakens. For example, even with nearly 40 million residents, California is a sprawling, relatively unpopulated state where harsh restrictions on land development are unnecessary.

Encompassing 164,000 square miles, California is only 5 percent urbanized. According to the American Farmland Trust, California has 25,000 square miles of grazing land (15 percent), 28,000 square miles of non-irrigated cropland (17 percent), and 14,000 square miles of irrigated cropland (9 percent). The rest, 54 percent, is forest, oak woodland, desert, and other open space.

The above chart depicts three urban growth scenarios, all of them assuming California experiences a net population increase of 10 million, and that all new residents on average live three people to a household (the current average in California is 2.96 occupants per household). For each scenario, the additional square miles of urban land are calculated.

As the chart shows, adding 10 million new residents under the “low” density scenario would only use up 3.2 percent of California’s land. If all the growth were concentrated onto grazing land—much which is being taken out of production anyway, it would only consume 21 percent of it. If all the growth were to fall onto non-irrigated cropland, which is not prime agricultural land, it would only use up 19 percent of that. Much growth, of course, could be in the 58 percent of California not used either for farming or ranching.

Two key points about these data bear emphasis. First, there is plenty of room for low-density development for millions of new residents, not only in California, but elsewhere in the United States. As shown in this example, moving 10 million people into homes on half acre lots, with no infill within existing urban areas, would only consume a small fraction California’s land area.

Second, even the dense scenario depicted on the first column the chart, cramming ten homes onto each developed acre, is not acceptable to the smart growth crowd. The policy goal in California, and elsewhere as noted, is to channel as much new development as possible into the confines of existing cities, and overwhelmingly favor multi-family dwellings over single-family detached homes.

“Smart Growth” is Not Smart, It’s Just Cruel

None of this is necessary. The idea that American policymakers should enforce urban containment is a cruel, entirely unfounded, self-serving lie.

The lie remains intact no matter the context. If there is an energy shortage, then develop California’s shale reserves. If fracking shale is unacceptable, then use safe land-based slant drilling rigs to tap natural gas in the Santa Barbara channel. If all fossil fuel is unacceptable, then build nuclear power stations in the geologically stable areas in California’s interior. If there is a water shortage, then build high dams. If high dams are forbidden, then develop aquifer storage to collect runoff. Or desalinate seawater along the Southern California coast. Or recycle sewage. Or let rice farmers sell their allotments to urban customers. There are answers to every question.

Environmentalists generate an avalanche of studies, however, that in effect demonize all development, everywhere. The values of environmentalism are important, but if it weren’t for the trillions to be made by trial lawyers, academic careerists, government bureaucrats and their government-union overlords, crony green capitalist oligarchs, and government pension-fund managers and their partners in the hedge funds whose portfolio asset appreciation depends on artificially elevated prices, environmentalist values would be balanced against human values.

The Californians who are hurt by urban containment are not the wealthy people who find it comforting to believe and lucrative to propagate the enabling big lie. The victims are the underprivileged, the immigrants, the minority communities, retirees who collect Social Security, low wage earners, and the ever-shrinking middle class.

In America, it used to be that refugees from California who aspired to improve their circumstances could move to somewhere like Houston and buy a home with relative ease. Watch out. That is changing. The masses are being herded into Green Bantustans, as America turns into a petri dish for the privileged upper class, backed up by a fanatical Earth First movement.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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