Tag Archive for: infrastructure

More Infrastructure is Key to Lowering Home Prices

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Housing. Shelter. Room at the Inn. A hearth and a home. From the moment neolithic humans emerged from caves to build structures in the open, atop a defensible hill or along a life giving river, having some place warm and dry to call home has been a primal necessity and a prerequisite for civilization.

This imperative is not lost on California’s legislators and elected executives, or its litigators and judges. In response to a chronic housing shortage in the state that has only worsened for the last several years, in the 2023 legislative session California’s state lawmakers approved and Governor Newsom signed a host of new laws designed to facilitate construction of new housing.

According to the law firm Holland & Knight, more than 32 new housing oriented statutes take effect on January 1st, 2024. There are 4 new laws to streamline the process of acquiring building permits, 7 that enact specific housing related exemptions to CEQA, 6 that impact “density, land use, and planning,” 3 that incentivize more construction of Accessory Dwelling Units, 2 designed to empower a greater role for state agencies to enforce housing law, 7 to reduce obstacles to construction of more affordable housing, 3 to reduce the required number of parking places to accompany new housing, and more.

If you’re a housing wonk, you may spend days analyzing these new statutes. But it doesn’t take an expert to identify a fundamental flaw in all this legislation, motivated perhaps in equal measure by good intentions and sops to subsidy guzzling politically connected developers who bankroll reelection campaigns. The flaw is simple: California’s state legislature created a housing shortage by engineering a regulatory environment that made it almost impossible for unsubsidized developers to build homes that people could afford. Instead of fixing that, they’re just imposing more laws and regulations.

There are plenty of things they could have done to rectify what has become a structural barrier to building affordable market housing. They could relax zoning laws that all but prohibit housing on open land outside of existing cities, instead of strengthening these defacto “greenbelt” cordons around every city. They could also mandate a cap on local building fees to some percent of a new home’s sale price, and they could restrict to county attorneys general and the state attorney general the ability to file CEQA lawsuits. These two steps, which are currently embodied in a ballot initiative that a pro-housing PAC – with the unsubtle name “Californians for Homeownership” – are attempting to qualify for the November 2024 ballot, would encourage more unsubsidized private sector developers to try to build and sell affordable homes while still making a profit. The state legislature has the power to do this without a ballot initiative, and they should.

Meanwhile, however, there is an even more fundamental obstacle to making housing affordable in California, and to explore the remedy is to challenge ideological schisms that limit innovation and impede consensus. California needs more energy, water, and transportation infrastructure. And even if they were not operating in a hyper-regulated environment, the job of upgrading and expanding infrastructure is beyond the capacity of private investment.

The economic argument goes something like this. The cost to build, for example, an aqueduct to transport winter floodwater from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to capacious and quick-charging storage aquifers in the San Joaquin Valley, is so great, that if 100 percent of the construction cost was paid for by a private company, the ratepayers who eventually consumed that stored water would pay a price too high for low to moderate income households to afford. Agricultural clients might be able to grow pistachios and almonds, which fetch a high price per pound, but tomatoes, which bring in less revenue per ton, would disappear from California’s fields. The principle expressed by these examples extends to all enabling infrastructure. When end-users have to pay too much for energy and water, the standard of living goes down, the cost of living goes up, and economic activity falters.

Californians thus have to answer a tough question: Do they want to businesses to leave and residents to struggle financially, or do they want to subsidize the cost of public works in order to bring down the amount that private partners have to recoup from ratepayers? In the 1950s and 1960s, the so-called Pat Brown Democrats answered this question unequivocally. The State of California built the most magnificent system of water storage and interbasin transfers in the world. It built the best network of universities in the world. And it built freeways and expressways that connected every corner of the state and facilitated an era of spectacular growth. There was surplus energy and water, the state was affordable, and millions of people moved here to follow their dreams.

That’s over now. What’s changed? It isn’t so much that Californians aren’t willing to spend massive amounts of public money on infrastructure. The problem is the choices they’re making are terrible. They’re not pouring hundreds of dollars into enabling infrastructure, but rather into disabling infrastructure. Instead of upgrading our natural gas pipelines, retrofitting our natural gas fired power plants with advanced combined cycle turbines, building an LNG terminal in Ventura County, and drilling for more – all activities that are so inherently profitable that the private sector could pay for nearly all of this expansion – instead the state legislature has declared war on natural gas, is bent on killing the industry, and is spending or planning to spend tens of billions to subsidize solar farms, battery farms, and offshore wind. These are all technologies that remain unproven at scale and may be obsolete within a decade or two. There’s more.

Instead of permitting desalination plants on the Southern California coast, plants that could be built with a minimal infusion of public funds, or developing creative ways to divert flood waters from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta while at the same time reinforcing century old levees, California’s state legislature is going to build a 45 mile long tunnel under the Delta to transport water from just one river, the Sacramento, to southbound aqueducts. The estimated cost for this gargantuan undertaking is $20 million.

Which brings to mind a third hideous example of hideous waste, High Speed Rail, which was sold to voters as a system that would get passengers from San Francisco to Los Angeles in two hours flat, and only cost $30 billion to build. Estimated travel time has inexplicably expanded to over four hours, and total estimated cost is now over $130 billion. Will it ever get built? Pat Brown Democrats would have upgraded our railroads, widened and resurfaced our freeways, maybe – gasp! – even built a few more freeways, and spent a fraction as much doing it.

Again. What happened? The problem isn’t necessarily that leaving projects to public agencies breeds inefficiency. It does. For that matter, in a hyper-regulated environment, which California certainly is, inefficiency and cronyism is bred into private sector corporations as well. But something bigger is at work, which might be properly described as the spirit of the time. In the 1950s and 1960s there was a consensus that California needed to grow, that development was a good thing, and the state government went to work to build practical energy, water and transportation infrastructure that made everything else possible. The farm economy grew. Suburbs expanded around the old cities, and homes were affordable. The state thrived.

The spirit of the time is very different now. The consensus among California’s elite is that the state has grown quite enough, at the same time as literally everything affecting land development, land management, or energy and water policy has to be evaluated through the filter of the climate crisis. Hence “renewables” to the exclusion of clean, ultra efficient advanced natural gas power. Hence water rationing instead of investment in practical water supply infrastructure. Hence trains, light rail, and high-density housing instead of new roads and new suburbs. No wonder everything costs so much.

What ought to be blatantly contradictory in all this is how counter the result is to all the human values that California’s elites purport to cherish. We need extensive infrastructure because it fosters private sector freedom and growth. When the public subsidizes energy and water infrastructure, and deregulates land development, ownership is decentralized. When infrastructure is inadequate and prices soar, the only winners are the corporations and rentiers, who invest in the artificially inflated assets and artificially overvalued commodities, making excessive profits as the consumers struggle.

And so then we come full circle. The state government, having failed to invest on the front end to make life’s essentials within the reach of ordinary Californian households, finds itself captured by politically connected corporations that prosper when prices are high, and at the same time finds itself now spending more public money merely to subsidize, in perpetuity, those millions of low and lower-middle-income households who can’t pay their rent or their mortgage. What great irony.

A condensed version of this article originally appeared on the website of the Pacific Research Institute.

A Libertarian Case for Public Works

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Libertarians are a diverse lot. Some are stone cold anarchists, prepping in remote hills for the day when governments fail and a blood dimmed tide is loosed upon the world. And then at the other extreme there are libertarian billionaires and their paid for intelligentsia, rationalizing everything from erasing national borders to legalizing opium.

It’s a strange mix. Some libertarians bristle at the suggestion they might support open borders, while staunchly defending the natural and inalienable right for people to choose to mainline heroin. Others would have that exactly the other way around. If there were a convention of libertarians, and someone asked the true libertarian to stand, they would all stand up, and not one of them would be fully in agreement with any other one.

This is the fractious gang that nonetheless at times will run third party candidates who manage to attract enough votes to swing elections in battleground districts. Despite convoluted denials, these close elections almost invariably tilt Left if a libertarian candidate runs a viable campaign. But it’s in the intellectual sphere where policies are imagined and policies are defended where libertarians have the most political influence.

Libertarian ideologues inform the well funded factions who justify neoliberal policies that import cheap labor and export jobs to nations where labor is cheaper still. From some of the most well heeled libertarian policy shops, bought by billionaires, libertarians strive for additional relevance by making common cause with progressives. Legalize drugs. Open the borders. Of course there is a climate crisis. And of course this attempt by libertarians to ingratiate themselves is used and abused by progressives, who know better than to ever trust a Social Darwinist!

If there is one broad area of agreement among libertarians, however, it might be regarding the general principle of limited government. And in the messy real world where politicians who actually get elected have to operate, the principle of limited government must find expression in policy. It’s boring to be a wonk. But unless you turn the destiny of your nation over to the murderous clarity of authoritarian warlords and dictators, it’s the wonks who design the policies that determine your future.

So in recognition of the role libertarians play in defining an ideological foundation that translates into policy, here is a libertarian case for public works. The goal of government spending on infrastructure is to help fund practical projects that yield long-term returns on investment in the form of a lower cost of living: water, energy and transportation infrastructure with proven value and durability. Up until a few decades ago, that goal was generally fulfilled. There may have been wasteful spending, but the projects delivered obvious public benefits that last for generations.

Today, unfortunately, the government is committing hundreds of billions of dollars to subsidizing wind turbines, solar farms, battery farms, and surveillance infrastructure to “help” Americans conserve energy. The result of these programs will be to raise the cost-of-living. What America needs is to deregulate the energy sector, removing constraints on the development of practical, cost-competitive energy technologies, and without spending a single tax dollar, let private companies compete to sell abundant, affordable electricity and transportation fuel. But with water and transportation, however, it’s more complicated.

Even with deregulation, the inherent costs to design, build and upgrade the broad, smart-car enabled roads and freeways needed to bring America’s transportation infrastructure into the 21st century are higher than the average driver can afford. With water, particularly in the arid Southwest from Texas to California which nearly 100 million Americans call home, the costs can be even higher. Massive projects to transfer water between basins, recycle water, capture storm runoff, and desalinate water can only be built at costs that millions of ratepayers cannot afford. Policymakers have to make tough choices.

They can impose scarcity on the population, igniting general inflation that victimizes working families. They can make energy and water cost so much that small businesses fail, more manufacturing goes overseas, and only big corporations survive by passing on to customers the costs of excessive regulations and politically elevated costs for inputs. That is current policy. It consolidates wealth in the hands of an ascendant oligarchy, and is marketed to gullible Americans as a necessary sacrifice to cope with the climate crisis.

In this economic strategy, the government has to spend billions to subsidize low income households that cannot possibly afford to pay for their electricity, natural gas, or gasoline, or to drive on toll roads, or to purchase food that costs more because the irrigation water cost more. The government has to build housing because the regulatory environment, combined with the shortage of entitled land and available water has made housing unaffordable. These become permanent subsidies, costing hundreds of billions, if not, over time, trillions of dollars. They consume a growing share of state and federal budgets, requiring higher taxes and taking away funds from other spending options. But there is an alternative.

If the government instead subsidizes the capital cost of road improvements and water supply projects, the required investment by private sector partners is reduced proportionately. This reduces the amount ratepayers will have to spend for water and transportation, at the same time as it lowers the overall cost-of-living by reducing the costs for these basic inputs. Since even with water, more than half the price the ratepayers are charged is to amortize the capital investment, using general tax funds to lower the necessary amount that has to be recovered by the private utility will significantly lower the cost to the consumer.

This is the libertarian case for public works. It is based on the assumption that once a generation the government makes a significant investment in water and transportation infrastructure upgrades, building assets that can last 50 years or more before requiring significant retrofits, and that these costs, while seeming wasteful or extravagant in the moment, are far less than the cost of providing permanent subsidies to households that cannot possibly survive in a totally privatized system.

These assumptions are far from beyond debate. But this gives rise to additional nuances. To what extent can regulations be abolished to lower costs to the private sector? At some point, the private sector probably can deliver water and energy at a price that even low income households can afford. But what is sacrificed in order to achieve this? It ought to be credible to assert, for example, that anthropogenic CO2 will only assist humanity and ecosystems, by creating a slightly warmer world with air that fertilizes plants far more efficiently. But to suggest that industries in general can go back to polluting the air, water and land with the impunity that defined their emergence two centuries ago is absurd. Externalities exist, no matter where reasonable people draw that line, and managing them adds cost.

The 1950s and 1960s was the last golden age for public works in the United States. Resuming the momentum established by the great public works projects of the 1930s, we built dams and aqueducts, interstate freeways, and a power grid that delivered an oversupply of water, energy, and road capacity. But for the last half-century we have been coasting on those assets, and we have wrung as much conservation out of the system as can be achieved in a nation that continues to grow its population. It is time to build again.

Libertarians can play a powerful role in influencing America’s infrastructure strategy in the near future. They can support totally private solutions, but must recognize that will involves costs so high that it will require government subsidies to low and even middle income households that may last in perpetuity. Or they can support public investment to lower the percentage the private sector has to invest and recover when financing infrastructure, which will trigger one-time public investment, with the ripple effect of lower costs throughout the economy.

This article originally appeared in American Greatness.

The Courage to Find Common Ground

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The power of polarizing issues, inflamed by social media, has reduced opportunities for Americans to work together to achieve objectives about which they normally would agree. Bitter disagreement among Americans on issues ranging from vaccination policy to policies governing abortion, immigration, critical race theory, and gender, leave them barely willing to work together on anything.

One area of broad agreement, however, is infrastructure. Nearly all Americans agree that infrastructure, as it is traditionally defined, needs new investment. Freeways, bridges, railroads, dams, aqueducts, seaports, airports, transmission lines, pipelines; all of this needs to be maintained and upgraded. Trillions need to be spent.

But even on issues where there is potential agreement, solutions are now filtered through the lens of polarizing ideologies. What is today’s definition of infrastructure? Is it physical assets, or something more ephemeral? Do infrastructure priorities have to be established based on restoring race and gender equity, or by concerns about climate change? Should some infrastructure deliberately be allowed to deteriorate, to avoid “induced demand” and the unsustainable consumption that would result?

Debate over these questions, waged by politicians already alienated from one another on unrelated issues that are nonetheless far more relevant to their constituents, has paralyzed America’s ability to upgrade its infrastructure. Navigating a pathway out of this paralyzing morass takes more than just compromise, it takes the courage to adhere to controversial premises.

Chief among these is to reject the idea that legislated scarcity is the only option to combat climate change. In every critical area of infrastructure there are solutions that can enable a future of sustainable abundance. To embrace this premise does not require us to dismiss concerns about climate change, it merely requires us to stand up to policy demands from climate activists that are obviously flawed, if not impossible.

In California, environmental regulations have brought infrastructure investment to a standstill. Without expanding energy, water, and transportation infrastructure, it is nearly impossible to build housing, the cost-of-living is punitive, water is rationed so food is overpriced, the overall quality of life is reduced, and the money that ought to be paying skilled workers to operate heavy construction equipment instead goes into the pockets of environmentalist lobbyists, bureaucrats, litigators, and activist nonprofits.

To change direction, Californians can rebuild their energy infrastructure in a manner that doesn’t violate environmentalist principles, but instead balances environmentalist concerns with the interests of its residents. Why aren’t Californians, who in so many ways are the most innovative people in the world, approving and building safe, state-of-the-art nuclear power plants? Why aren’t they developing geothermal power, since California has vast untapped potential in geothermal energy? Why haven’t California’s legislators revived the logging industry they have all but destroyed, and brought back clean power plants fueled by the biomass of commercial forest trimmings?

Californians can also change direction on their water infrastructure by adopting an all-of-the-above approach. They can build massive new off-stream reservoirs to capture storm runoff. Even in dry winters the few storms that do hit California yield surplus water that can be captured instead of allowed to run off into the Pacific. These off-stream reservoirs could also feature forebays from which, using surplus solar electricity, water could be pumped up into the main reservoir, to then be released back down into the forebay through hydroelectric turbines to generate electricity when solar electric output falters. Why aren’t Californians recycling 100 percent of their urban wastewater? Why aren’t they building desalination plants?

These are solutions that may not be perfectly acceptable to environmentalists, but they’re also not hideous violations of environmentalist values. They should be defended by their proponents without reservations, but also with a willingness to spend extra to mitigate what can be mitigated. Civilization has a footprint, and we can only pick our poison. The solutions favored by environmentalists, such as wind turbines, battery farms, EVs, biofuel plantations, and solar farms, have environmental impacts that are arguably even worse than conventional solutions.

Another potentially polarizing issue—achieving “equity” with infrastructure—doesn’t have to be dismissed by proponents of practical infrastructure investment. If the pipes in Los Angeles public schools are still leaching toxins into the water students would otherwise be drinking, then invest the money and fix the pipes. If inadequate funding for water treatment plants in low income communities in California’s Central Valley means they are not operating, or cannot expand their operations, then increase the funding. But at the same time don’t lose sight of the fact that if there is more energy, and more water, that will benefit everyone, especially low-income households, no matter where they are and no matter what other challenges they may confront.

Finally, it shouldn’t be controversial to restrict discussions of infrastructure to infrastructure, but it is. Here is an area where, once again, establishing the terms of the discussion requires adhering to a controversial premise, which is that discussions of “infrastructure” need to be restricted to the traditional definition. Basic infrastructure, offering surplus capacity instead of scarcity in the critical areas of energy, water, and transportation, creates the solid foundation upon which all the other amenities of a prosperous and equitable society may flourish.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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Finding Common Ground in California

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In California, environmental regulations have brought infrastructure investment to a standstill. Without expanding energy, water, and transportation infrastructure, it is nearly impossible to build housing, the cost-of-living is punitive, water is rationed and food is overpriced, the overall quality of life is reduced, and money that ought to be paying skilled workers to operate heavy construction equipment instead goes into the pockets of environmentalist lobbyists, bureaucrats, litigators, and activist nonprofits.

Californians nonetheless agree that infrastructure, as it is traditionally defined, needs new investment. Freeways, bridges, railroads, dams, aqueducts, seaports, airports, transmission lines, pipelines; all of this needs to be maintained and upgraded.

But despite agreement on the goal, more than ever, solutions are filtered through the lens of polarizing ideologies. What is today’s definition of infrastructure? Is it physical assets, or something more ephemeral? Do infrastructure priorities have to be established based on restoring race and gender equity, or by concerns about climate change? Should some infrastructure be deliberately allowed to deteriorate, to avoid “induced demand” and the unsustainable consumption that would result?

Debate over these questions has paralyzed California’s politicians. Navigating a pathway out of this paralyzing morass takes more than just compromise, it takes the courage to adhere to controversial premises. Chief among these is to reject the idea that legislated scarcity is the only option to combat climate change. In every critical area of infrastructure there are solutions that can enable a future of sustainable abundance.

For example, Californians can rebuild their energy infrastructure in a manner that doesn’t violate environmentalist principles, but instead balances environmentalist concerns with the interests of its residents. Why aren’t Californians, who in so many ways are the most innovative people in the world, approving and building safe, state-of-the-art nuclear power plants? Why aren’t they developing geothermal power, since California has vast untapped potential in geothermal energy? Why haven’t California’s legislators revived the logging industry they have all but destroyed, and brought back clean power plants fueled by the biomass of commercial forest trimmings?

Californians can also rebuild their water infrastructure by adopting an all-of-the-above approach. They can build massive new off-stream reservoirs to capture storm runoff. Even in dry winters the few storms that do hit California yield surplus water that can be captured instead of allowed to runoff into the Pacific. These off-stream reservoirs could also feature forebays from which, using surplus solar electricity, water could be pumped up into the main reservoir, to then be released back down into the forebay through hydroelectric turbines to generate electricity when solar electric output falters. Why aren’t Californians recycling 100 percent of their urban wastewater? Why aren’t they building desalination plants?

These are solutions that may not be perfectly acceptable to environmentalists, but they’re also not hideous violations of environmentalist values. They should be defended by their proponents without reservations, but also with a willingness to spend extra to mitigate what can be mitigated. Civilization has a footprint, and we can only pick our poison. The solutions favored by environmentalists, such as wind turbines, battery farms, EVs, biofuel plantations, and solar farms, have environmental impacts that are arguably even worse than conventional solutions.

Another potentially polarizing issue – achieving “equity” with infrastructure – doesn’t have to be dismissed by proponents of practical infrastructure investment. If the pipes in Los Angeles public schools are still leaching toxins into the water students would otherwise be drinking, then invest the money and fix the pipes. If inadequate funding for water treatment plants in low income communities in California’s Central Valley mean they are not operating, or cannot expand their operations, then increase the funding. But at the same time don’t lose sight of the fact that if there is more energy, and more water, that will benefit everyone, especially low income households, no matter where they are and no matter what other challenges they may confront.

Finally, it shouldn’t be controversial to restrict discussions of infrastructure to infrastructure, but it is. Here is an area where, once again, establishing the terms of the discussion require adhering to a controversial premise, which is that discussions of “infrastructure” need to be restricted to the traditional definition. Basic infrastructure, offering surplus capacity instead of scarcity in the critical areas of energy, water and transportation, creates the solid foundation upon which all the other amenities of a prosperous and equitable society may flourish.

This article originally appeared in the California Globe.

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Unheralded Flavors of Socialism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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Public Infrastructure is not a “Progressive” Abomination

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President Biden spent a surprising amount of time during his belated first press conference talking about infrastructure. Many of the points Biden made echoed remarks Trump has also made. Paraphrasing from the transcript, about 53 minutes into his press conference, Biden said:

“We are now ranked 85th in the world in infrastructure. The future rests on whether or not we have the best airports that are going to accommodate air travel. Ports that you can get in and out of quickly. What’s the first thing that business asked? What’s the closest access to an interstate highway? How far am I from a freight rail? Is there enough water available for me to conduct my business?”

Biden’s solutions won’t be ideal. If work is authorized by Congress, it will be padded with hundreds of billions going to the public bureaucracies and to the inevitable environmentalist litigants. The work itself will be done under project labor agreements that will also add hundreds of billions in costs. And additional hundreds of billions will be wasted on absurdities, such as “sequestration” projects to inject CO2 into underground caverns.

If Trump were able to manage federal investment in infrastructure in a 2nd term, he would have set more useful priorities. He would have prioritized airports, seaports, roads, rail, the power grid, and he would have fought the pet projects of environmentalists and their corporate allies. He would respect labor, but he’d be a tough negotiator, and he would have hammered on the construction contractors to keep prices down.

Trump also would have streamlined the expensive bureaucratic process, something he pursued throughout his first term. A key moment in that effort was a press conference in 2017 where he stood next to two piles of printed regulations. The first, four stacks of pages about a foot high, was labeled “1960.” The second, five stacks of pages about eight feet high, was labeled “Today.” This crippling level of bureaucracy is a big part of why American infrastructure has fallen so far behind.

When trying to define the optimal role of government and the threat posed by progressive ideology, public infrastructure is being unfairly attacked. A practical policy agenda for conservatives would be to enthusiastically support public investment in infrastructure, but at the same time, to fight inappropriate infrastructure and to fight the entire system that has developed to make infrastructure cost far more than it should.

An apt comparison to illustrate good vs bad infrastructure can be found, predictably enough, in California, where the cost effective public works of the 1950s and 1960s stand in stark contrast to the billions wasted today on projects that either have no practical benefit or spend decades in the planning and approval process and never get built.

In 1968, in a process that took only five years from concept to completion, the San Luis Reservoir went online in Central California. Constructed at a cost in today’s dollars of $2.3 billion, this massive off-stream reservoir has a capacity of 2.0 million acre feet. It is a vital storage link in the massive California Water Project, an engineering feat almost unrivaled anywhere on earth. Today, a proposed sister reservoir, of equal size and design, has been approved and in the concept stage for over a decade, with hundreds of millions already spent on “planning.” Facing additional years of litigation and bureaucratic inertia, it is currently projected for completion in the 2030s at a cost, undoubtedly underestimated, of $5.2 billion. It will probably never get built.

This transition is complete: Government getting public works were done on time and at a reasonable cost back in the 1960s, public works today are for the most part neglected. The projects that do get completed often offer little in practical benefit to society, at costs that are scandalously overblown. This transition from useful to useless is not restricted to water projects in California. It is a story that has been repeated across America.

The fight that needs to be waged is against the three headed monster that has stopped sensible public works in its tracks: out-of-control environmentalist litigants, a byzantine and contradictory array of crippling regulations distributed through countless regulatory agencies, and labor unions that have become unreasonable and often complicit in backing projects of marginal value.

Unfortunately, the movement that might be most effective in that fight for badly needed new infrastructure, America’s conservatives, faces withering ridicule and “principled” objections from libertarians. Today, according to many influential libertarians, if you favor appropriate public investment in infrastructure, you are a progressive.

This is ridiculous. Obviously there should be a vigorous debate over what sort of infrastructure justifies public investment. But at some point, the role of government is to socialize the costs of amenities that the private sector is unwilling or unable to provide. Freeways and water projects are examples where public investment at the least needs to supplement private investment, in order to prevent imposing a prohibitively high cost to the consumer.

The solution for libertarians, apparently, is for the private sector to build everything, including infrastructure. But how does this work, when someone attempting to build a freeway must negotiate with ten thousand separate private landowners? How can any ribbon of public infrastructure, whether it’s a freeway, a railroad, a pipeline or an aqueduct, possibly ever get built without recourse to eminent domain?

These concepts, public investment and eminent domain, are anathema to libertarians. But while conservatives should recognize the value of libertarian philosophy – limited government – the operative word is “limited” government, not “no” government. America’s infrastructure has been neglected for decades, and libertarians are not helping.

Moreover, this philosophical schism isn’t just about infrastructure. It’s about finding a balance between public and private ownership, while honestly confronting the inevitable fact that finding a perfect balance is impossible. Shall the government – allied with powerful corporate interests and billionaire “philanthropists” – set aside 30 percent of the land in America as protected wilderness? Because that’s what they’re trying to do, and most of us would consider that overkill. Conservatives should join with libertarians in opposition, not because some land shouldn’t be preserved in public trust, but because 30 percent of all land is way too much.

What conservatives must admit is that libertarian values may be a vital part of any governing philosophy, but they’re not the only value. Conservatives, who are accused of this all the time, should own up to their belief in a strong government. The critical, difficult question is for what, and how much? Libertarians, in their purity, largely avoid this meeting with reality.

Once you’ve gotten out of the way the delusion that conservatives don’t want a strong role for government, it’s easier to assess the true threat coming from progressives. In the case of infrastructure, progressives join with conservatives to want more of it, but what do they want? They want to continue to tie all development up in knots as part of their extremist positions on environmental and labor issues. They want development to include useless projects, or projects hopelessly skewed towards creating “equity,” and “environmental justice,” instead of projects that benefit the most people for the least amount of expense. But that’s just small element of the progressive threat.

The priority for progressives is directed at social issues, with “solutions” that require a grossly inappropriate expansion of government. Moreover, it is the role they envision for government that is of more concern than expansion per se. Progressives are attempting to divide the nation into groups separated by race and “gender,” they are attempting to train the individuals in these groups to resent members of other groups, they are promoting a narrative that taints America as an inherently racist and oppressive society, and their goal is to use the government to enforce equal outcomes, “equity,” across all identifiable groups, regardless of the cost.

This lunacy, being promoted by progressive activists and their opportunistic cohorts across nearly every American institution constitutes an existential threat to the liberty and prosperity that to-date we have taken for granted. It represents an expansion of government beyond the wildest nightmares of conservatives and libertarians alike.

Perhaps it is healthy for libertarians to urge conservatives to question public spending on infrastructure and other national priorities. And perhaps conservatives need to acknowledge libertarian concerns, while at the same time fighting hard for government spending on infrastructure that the nation badly needs, and fighting against useless projects and wasteful spending.

If supporting public funding for infrastructure is “progressive,” fine. In that context, libertarians may use that term to stigmatize conservatives. But the true progressive threat to America is far bigger than whether or not the federal government spends a trillion dollars on infrastructure. Along with powerful allies – who are using them – progressives are actively working to reduce the rights and freedoms of American citizens, along with their prosperity and their sovereignty. Right now, they’re winning.

For the first time in history, a huge cross section of America’s elites, using progressives as powerful pawns, are not working in the interests of the American people or the American nation. They have pledged their allegiance to international corporations and transnational institutions. The solution for conservatives that love their country is not to eliminate government. It is to take their government back, and use it to again represent the interests of the American people.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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Libertarians and Public Infrastructure

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Shane Hazel is the most famous libertarian in America. Now known as “The man who cost Republicans the U.S. Senate,” Hazel achieved his instant national fame, or infamy, depending on who you ask, by running as a Libertarian last November against David Perdue and Jon Ossoff in the Georgia’s U.S. Senate race. Hazel earned 2.3 percent of the vote, which threw into a runoff the race that Perdue had come within 0.3 percent of winning. Perdue lost the runoff, and the rest is history.

In defeat, Hazel scored a remarkable victory. He served notice to Republicans that if their congressional voting record is comparable to liberal democrats, and Perdue’s was, they’ll get knocked off by a third party candidate that promises to uphold the U.S. Constitution. That’s a tough lesson.

If your preference is to reform the Republican party from the inside, thus preserving its viability against an even more dangerous Democratic party, it’s hard to accept the decision by Libertarians to run candidates in close races. Hazel appeared to rub it in when Reason quoted him saying “Give me your tears. They are delicious.” In response, in several recent articles I referenced Hazel, in unflattering terms, as a prime example of how Libertarians are enabling Democrat victories.

These criticisms, directed at Libertarians in general, and Hazel in particular, earned me an invitation from Hazel to appear on his podcast. We spoke a few days later, on February 25. During an 81 minute back-and-forth, two things became clear to me. First, for all his apparent bombast, Hazel is a sincere man, whose political activism is inspired by deeply held beliefs. To make this observation has consequences. Hazel cannot be dismissed merely as a spoiler. He has serious intentions and a productive way forward is to have a serious conversation.

The second take-away from talking at length with Hazel was that although we shared something very fundamental in common – love for our country and respect for its constitution – on matters of policy there areas of agreement, such as 2nd amendment rights, but also areas where a lot of further discussion is warranted.

One of those areas, which in the online discussion with Hazel I described “as a flashpoint philosophically because what would it mean if we didn’t have them,” is the existence of public utilities. This is a good place to start an ongoing debate with Libertarians, because brings the issue of public and private space into sharp relief and offers concrete examples.

California’s water project, one of the biggest water infrastructure projects ever built, is a timely example. Built primarily back in the 1950s and 1960s at a cost, in 2021 dollars, that is unimaginably cheap, this complex of dams and aqueducts moves millions of acre feet from snow watered reservoirs in Northern California to cities and farms in Southern California. Without the California Water Project, the urban megapolises of the San Francisco Bay Area and all of coastal Southern California including Los Angeles and San Diego would not exist, nor would millions of acres of farmland in the San Joaquin and Imperial valleys.

Notwithstanding that many critics of California’s contemporary politics would be thrilled if the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles did not exist, the California Water Project is a massive public work, which, like America’s interstate highway system, and most major airports, was constructed with taxpayer funding and enables millions of people to fly, drive, and drink water. Are public works the best way for a society to sustain urban civilization?

To explore this question, set aside the notion that urban civilization is unsustainable. It’s here. While one model of the future might see a benefit in existing cities becoming less densely populated instead of even more densely populated, short of apocalyptic disaster scenarios, cities will remain, and the millions that live in them will require energy, water, and transportation conduits.

In California, attempts to expand water infrastructure, or even maintain what we’ve got, are met with opposition from two sources: powerful environmentalist pressure groups, and anti-tax activists, many of them libertarians.

The Battle for Desalination

Taking water from the ocean and turning it into fresh water is a proven way to guarantee an uninterruptible supply of water in an arid region. From Saudi Arabia and Israel to Singapore and Australia, desalination plants around the world are already producing billions of tons of fresh water every year. California’s southern coastal cities, situated in drought prone areas, could benefit from desalination plants.

In a rare display of political courage and common sense, California Governor Gavin Newsom has been working to finally grant permits to construct a second major seawater desalination plant on the Southern California Coast.

Concerns about desalination along with the responses could occupy volumes, and have. But the notion that there is any sort of consensus among environmentalists that seawater desalination is a bad choice is false. Every option to supply the resources required to sustain urban civilization is fraught with tradeoffs. With Californians possibly facing yet another drought, desalination offers a way to take pressure off countless stressed ecosystems upstream.

Economic arguments offer a more credible case against desalination, but can fail to acknowledge the variability of the market price for water. In drought years, municipal water purchasers and farmers with perennial crops have paid well over the price for desalinated fresh water, which for San Diego’s Carlsbad plant comes in at around $2,000 per acre foot. To be sure, this price is well in excess of the wholesale price for water in wet years, which can drop well under $500 per acre foot. But for an urban area such as Los Angeles, situated on an arid desert located 500 miles or more from its sources of water, adding the expensive but certain option of desalinated water to a portfolio of water procurements is a prudent bet.

Water supply resiliency is not merely dependent on weather. Even if a Sierra snowpack reliably forms winter after winter for the next several decades, residents of the Los Angeles Basin still depend on three aging canals, precarious ribbons that each stretch for hundreds of miles. Earthquakes, terrorism, or other disasters could shut them down indefinitely. In an average year, 2.6 million acre feet of water is imported by the water districts serving the residents and businesses in California’s Southland counties. The 701 mile long California Aqueduct, mainly conveying water from the Sacramento River, contributes 1.4 million acre feet. The 242 mile long Colorado River Aqueduct adds another 1.0 million acre feet. Finally, the Owens River on the east side of the Sierras contributes 250,000 acre feet via the 419 mile long Los Angeles Aqueduct.

A Libertarian Makes the Case for Desalination

In a recent book “Winning the Water Wars,” published in 2020 by the Pacific Research Institute, author Steven Greenhut concludes the solution to California’s water challenges is to pursue an all-of-the-above strategy that embraces abundance, or as he puts it “feeding more water into the plumbing.” He writes: “In addition to building more surface and groundwater storage facilities, California can deal with its water problems by building ocean desalination plants and increasing its commitment to wastewater reuse and other innovations.” If Greenhut, who talked with countless experts while researching his book, and who is a confirmed libertarian, can support the economics of public and private investment in desalination, anyone can.

A series of California Policy Center reports in 2018 expand on the concept of water abundance. Part two of the report, “How to Make California’s Southland Water Independent for $30 Billion,” surveys existing investments in desalination and wastewater reuse and comes up with the following capital budget: $7.5 billion to build the treatment plants to annually recover and perpetually reuse the 1.0 million acre feet of wastewater that currently is still treated and released into the Pacific Ocean. Another $15 billion to build desalination plants with a combined capacity of another 1.0 million acre feet per year. And $7.5 billion to upgrade and optimize the capacity to capture runoff, mitigate the capacious aquifers beneath the City of Los Angeles, and use them all for water storage.

This is the sort of water project that should be animating California’s politicians. There are 5.1 million households in the three counties that would benefit from this scheme – Los Angeles, Orange, and Riverside. A $30 billion capital improvement bond would cost each household $384 per year. If revenue bonds were to pass half the cost to ratepayers – a reasonable burden that would bring even desalinated water down to an affordable consumer price – the general obligation bonds would only add new taxes of $192 to each household. Debt like this is referred to as “good debt,” because it yields tangible and lasting benefits to taxpayers. “Bad debt,” by contrast, is the $100 billion or so that would be necessary to complete California’s proposed “bullet train,” a nearly useless make-work project that will be obsolete before it’s even done.

Is There a Practical Alternative to Public Utilities and Public Works?

Opponents to public works correctly point out that the use of eminent domain to acquire the right-of-way for power lines, aqueducts, and freeway corridors is a violation of property rights. But these objections, to be constructive, have to answer the inevitable question they raise: How are we going to build power lines, aqueducts, and freeway corridors, if we don’t authorize the government to implement eminent domain to compel recalcitrant property owners to sell?

Principled opposition to eminent domain, and principled opposition to using public funds, makes sense if it the process is abused. Somewhere between an aqueduct that must exist to prevent millions of people from dying of thirst, and a clear abuse of power taking the form of acquiring and demolishing an established residential neighborhood to enable private, subsidized developers to come in and build high rises, a line is crossed. But the challenge should be finding that line, not condemning any form of eminent domain, or any publicly funded infrastructure.

Establishing adequate infrastructure to support urban civilization should rely on private interests when possible, although it is important to recognize that corruption and waste can also infect a private corporation. Instead of fighting public matching funds on principle, since these funds are necessary in order to make infrastructure investments financially viable for private civil engineering firms, why not fight the regulatory burdens, the environmentalist pressure groups, and the litigators, who are a big reason why these projects cost so much?

The biggest impediment to Californians achieving water abundance, along with energy abundance and abundant, affordable housing, are “environmentalist” pressure groups that purport to speak for everyone who cares about the environment. These groups have tied infrastructure development and housing development in California up in knots for decades. They should be getting no help from libertarian tax-fighting groups, but they are.

There are 40 million Californians now living in a state with public infrastructure sufficient for a state of 20 million people. They are living off assets that were constructed two generations ago, and attempts to expand or upgrade the conveyances that make urban life possible are met with blistering opposition from environmentalists, abetted by libertarian tax fighters. Resilience is gone from the system, and the only solution policymakers can offer is rationing of everything, monitored by big tech. That is the toxic byproduct of this ideological purity. The cure is worse than the disease.

What Californians have been living with for decades is coming to America.  It is accurate to say that most Republicans have been complicit in the rollout of endless new regulations and unsustainable public boondoggles. The solution, however, cannot simply be neglect. A policy agenda that walks away from public works because they violate libertarian principles must offer a viable alternative. Shane Hazel, as his political aspirations migrate from U.S. Senator to Governor of Georgia, is invited to present alternatives. Specificity is encouraged.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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The Enemies of American Infrastructure

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Between 2008 and 2019, China opened up 33 high speed rail routes, connecting 39 major cities along four north-south and four east-west main lines. The 18,000 mile network runs trains at an average speed of around 200 miles per hour. By 2030, the Chinese expect to double the mileage of their high speed rail network by expanding to eight north-south and eight east-west main lines. In less than 20 years, the Chinese have completely transformed their rail transportation network.

This is typical for the Chinese. China is also building three new airports – offshore. Dalian, along the north coast opposite the Korean peninsula, Xiang’an, on the central coast facing Taiwan, and Sanya, off the coast of Hainan Island in the strategic South China Sea. All three airports are to be built to the highest international levels, with 12,000 foot runways able to accommodate the Airbus A380, the world’s largest passenger airliner. All three are built on “reclaimed land,” i.e., the Chinese intend to bulldoze a few mountains into the ocean and flatten them into runways. And all three, from start to finish, will be built in under ten years.

China’s ability to construct big infrastructure, fast, is beyond debate. The Three Gorges Project, the largest dam in the world, created a deep water reservoir an astonishing 1,400 miles long. Its hydroelectric capacity of 22.5 gigawatts is the largest in the world. This massive construction project was done, from start to finish, in 12 years.

While China Builds, America Litigates

To argue that Americans don’t need high speed rail, or massive new airports on ocean landfill, or yet another massive hydroelectric dam, is beside the point. Americans can’t do any big projects. A perfect example is the Keystone Pipeline, which if it’s ever completed, will be capable of transporting 830,000 barrels of oil per day south from the tar sands of Alberta to existing pipelines in Nebraska. This pipeline has been tied up in permitting delays and litigation since 2008. Eleven years later, not one mile of pipeline has been built.

Even with aggressive support from the Trump administration, will Keystone ever get built? Not if an army of environmentalist plaintiff attorneys have their way. According to a recent report by PBS, as soon as a judge dismissed the most recent lawsuit against Keystone, another lawsuit was filed. Another construction season has been lost, another year of delay. Quoting from the article: “Representatives of a half-dozen other environmental groups vowed to keep fighting in court and predicted the pipeline will never be built.”

While Americans are divided over whether they support construction of the Keystone Pipeline, everyone supported quickly constructing towers to replace the World Trade Center towers lost in the attacks of 9/11/2001. One may assume that in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, designs, bids and permitting were fast-tracked, yet it took over five years before construction began. Freedom Tower, the dazzling replacement to the twin towers, didn’t open until 2014, over 13 years after the 9/11 tragedy.

By contrast, the Empire State Building was built in 14 months. And while Freedom Tower is undoubtedly constructed to higher modern standards, that should be offset by equally more advanced construction practices. A more current example would be the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. This mega-structure, more than twice the height of Freedom Tower, was built in just under six years.

America’s inability to build anything big has almost nothing to do with the quality of American engineering, or capabilities of America’s construction industry. Blame lies exclusively with American politicians, judges, government bureaucrats, and plaintiff attorneys. Nobody wants to throw away all environmental protections, but the process now in place of permit delays and litigation has paralyzed the nation. It has become extreme. Americans are wearing out infrastructure that was built decades ago. Thanks to permit delays and litigation, the costs of replacements and upgrades are prohibitive.

President Trump, who made his billions in the construction business, has done as much as he possibly can to cut regulations on builders, but without support from Congress or the courts, change is incremental. In late 2017, when announcing regulations he was eliminating, Trump stood in front of two piles of paper. One set of stacks, barely reaching his knees, represented the federal regulations in place in 1960. The other set of stacks, over seven feet in height, represented the totality of federal regulations in effect today. These regulations, upheld and expanded by courts and bureaucrats, serving as fodder for their delays and extortionate demands, are the reason America can no longer build anything big.

Unaffordable Homes? Thank Permitting Delays and Endless Litigation

Even housing starts are tied up in knots thanks to federal regulations, although differing regulatory environments in various states make a big difference. In California – which will be America if Democrats regain the White House in 2020 – it is nearly impossible to build homes.

A particularly egregious example of what California has in store for the rest of America is the proposed Tejon Ranch housing project that has been embroiled in permitting delays and lawsuits for over 25 years. This massive project, a planned community of over 19,000 badly needed new homes, would straddle Interstate 5 in the northwest corner of Los Angeles County. The developers have committed to set aside ninety percent of the land as a nature preserve, after which the NRDC, the Sierra Club, and the Nature Conservancy all withdrew their objections. But it only takes one: The “Center for Biological Diversity” has filed yet another lawsuit, and another year is lost.

Americans could build so much more, for less money, and in far less time, if balance were restored to the process of approving construction projects. The cost of permitting delays and litigation can literally double or triple the costs of construction, or worse. California’s Carlsbad desalination plant was constructed at a capital cost of $17,000 per acre foot of annual capacity; modern desalination plants in Israel (that require less electricity) are being constructed at a capital cost of just over $4,000 per acre foot of annual capacity, less than one fourth as much.

Everywhere on earth, nations are building big infrastructure and providing affordable housing for a fraction of what it costs in America.

If these environmentalists, bureaucrats, and plaintiff attorneys actually believe in saving a planet and a people desperately threatened by “climate change,” they’re being awfully impractical. How can Americans possibly build seawalls to protect them from the storm surges of a rising sea, or desalinate seawater to take pressure off the drought stricken rivers, if projects take decades instead of years, and cost many times what they might cost in other nations?

How, for that matter, since the environmentalists and the open-borders crowd are birds of a feather, can America add hundreds of millions to its population through a massive wave of immigration that hasn’t abated in over 30 years, yet make it nearly impossible to build homes or enabling infrastructure?

Competitive Abundance vs Rationed Scarcity

The prospects for abundance instead of rationed scarcity are good, if Congress and the courts were to support the president and enact meaningful reforms to a host of environmental regulations that have gone way too far. Nuclear power, clean fossil fuel, desalination plants, upgraded roads with high-speed “smart lanes,” high-rise agriculture, flying cars and spaceports. Entire new cities with millions of beautiful homes on spacious lots – none of this is out of reach. But it requires the kind of freedom that developers enjoyed in the 1960s, tempered to modern sensibilities, but with balance.

The consequences of not reforming America’s stultifying regulatory climate go beyond denying the American people a life of affordable abundance, delivered by competitive development of land, energy, and water resources. They spell the end of American preeminence, because while Americans spend trillions to pay unionized government bureaucrats and environmentalist attorneys, the Chinese are spending equivalent trillions on cost-effective infrastructure, with plenty left over to develop hypersonic missiles, brilliant pebbles, particle beams, etc.

Joel Kotkin, editor of NewGeography.com and perhaps California’s smartest Democrat, just published a column entitled “Will the Democrats End Up Saving California’s Republican Party.” He argues that “their [the Democrats] flawed, draconian positions on what to do about climate change have made things worse for ordinary Californians by raising housing and energy prices as well as chasing employers out of the state, but with only mediocre results.” In his conclusion, he explains what’s needed – in California and in the rest of America: “You need a positive program centered on reining in pensions, reform of schools, better attention to roads, promoting new houses in redundant commercial areas as well as the periphery and cuts in the cost of energy. Focus on these issues would expose Democrats as creatures of special interest — teachers unions, public employee groups, the renewable energy lobbies — whose power hurts middle-class homeowners, a group which has been drifting away from them for a generation.”

Kotkin’s analysis is accurate. “Public employee groups” and “the renewable energy lobbies” are special interests. If not one and the same, they are allied with the government bureaucrats and environmentalist attorneys who amass power and money every time they stop or delay another infrastructure project or housing development. They are sapping American wealth, oppressing the American people, and empowering hostile regimes around the world.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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