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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The Real Reasons Newsom Has Failed All Californians

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While acknowledging that the outcome of the ongoing Newsom recall voting is anybody’s guess, it is worthwhile to imagine life in California if Newsom survives the recall and goes on to win reelection next year. Because the nonpartisan and growing opposition to Newsom and what he represents is not founded in “Trumpism,” nor is it the product of “out-of-state Republicans.”

The Newsom recall effort is a reaction, shared by independents and moderate Democrats, that California’s institutions are failing. Even life-long progressives are horrified by the appalling negligence and corruption that now defines governance in California. Examples of this are everywhere.

One may begin by imagining a future of endless fire seasons, where the air is so filthy that on any given summer day more than half the state’s residents can’t venture outdoors. Does anyone think announcing an electric car mandate will solve this problem, or that hiring state agencies to thin the forests will ever get the job done? There are solutions. Bring the timber industry back to the scale it operated at in the 1990s, and let them thin the forests and maintain the fire breaks, fire roads and transmission line corridors while supplying affordable lumber to Californians. That used to work fine, and with what we’ve since learned about forest management, would solve the problem and improve forest ecosystems.

Instead the policy, to be continued, is to make it impossible for property owners to ignite controlled burns or mechanically thin the undergrowth on their land, thanks to a tyrannical, Byzantine permit process that only the very wealthy and preternaturally patient applicant could ever navigate. Then once these residents are burned out of their homes, victims of the predictable cataclysms that are the result of thirty years of fire suppression, they’re subjected to a permit process to rebuild that is equally tyrannical, ensuring that very few of them ever get to return to the land they love.

And what of these electric cars that supposedly, as they proliferate, will suppress forest fires in lieu of responsible forest management? There’s nothing wrong with providing incentives to develop EV technology. But fossil fuel is still powering over 80 percent of California’s economy. Against that hard reality, the energy policies of the Newsom administration nonetheless intend to reduce CO2 emissions to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. Californians need to confront what it’s going to take to achieve this goal.

To cut CO2 emissions this much in just 8 more years means absolutely nothing that consumes energy is going to get built. The state will mandate urban densification at all costs. Suburbs will be subject to “infill.” New homes will be located in “transit villages.” Housing will be permitted that doesn’t include space for parking. Codes will be written to mandate smaller windows so structures won’t require as much energy to heat or cool, and light switches that shut off if their motion sensors think you’ve left the room. Natural gas hookups will be forbidden in new housing as California’s natural gas infrastructure is slowly dismantled, and any sort of suburban expansion on open land will be prohibited. Does this sound inviting?

It isn’t as if any major emerging nation – from China to India to Indonesia to Pakistan to Brazil or Nigeria – is going to bother with any of this expensive, extremist impracticality. They need energy, and they’re going to generate it by any means necessary.

If California’s enlightened policymakers really intended to set an example to the world, they would pursue an all-of-the-above strategy with energy development, and do it in a manner that is as efficient and clean and cost-effective as possible. That would be genuine altruism. Don’t hold your breath. Instead, the political machine represented by Newsom is not only shutting down natural gas power plants, they’re shutting down California’s only nuclear power plant, and demolishing hydroelectric dams. Expect ongoing power outages and electric power that costs several times more than it could in a rational market. Expect mandated appliances that are so energy and water efficient that they are hard to operate, break down often, require software “updates,” are leased instead of owned, and do a poor job.

Where there’s not much affordable energy, don’t expect much more water, either. California’s water infrastructure has been neglected for the past forty years, and a system that was designed for 20 million people is strained to the breaking point to serve 40 million residents. But if you want to build desalination plants and waste water treatment plants, you’ll need energy to operate them. And if you want to build off-stream reservoirs or recharge aquifers during wet winters, in order to pump water through the aqueducts to farms and cities during the dry years, you’re going to need energy. A lot of it. You’ll need energy to build and upgrade the system, then you’ll need energy to run the pumps. And that will jeopardize achieving the 40 percent reduction in CO2 emissions by 2030. So it will not happen under a Newsom regime.

Instead expect water rationing at a level of draconian enforcement that will even surprise the fanatics. Californians could have more water, but not under the Newsom political machine. This isn’t just no more lawns, it’s no more trees or hedges. No more showers under a flow sufficient to wash the shampoo out of long hair. No more washing machines that effectively clean clothes without damaging them. As for farmers, kiss your land goodbye. Sell it while you still can to hedge funds that will build solar farms. Consumers? Kiss your affordable food goodbye. No more row crops, no more fruit. Expect to pay twice as much for vegetables. And as for California’s dairy industry? It depends on water guzzling alfalfa to feed the cows, so goodbye cows. No more affordable milk. No more affordable cheese.

Newsom’s California will cram down every public investment in infrastructure, whether it’s energy, water, or transportation. He’ll get cover from climate change activists whose passions are divorced from quantitative reality. He’ll also get cover from orthodox libertarians and even many anti-tax activists, who either disapprove of any government spending on infrastructure, or, somewhat more justifiably, distrust the government’s ability to complete any public works project at a reasonable cost and in a reasonable period of time. It’s not like they don’t have a point.

It used to be that public sector corruption, deplorable though it was, would at least get you something good in return. You might spend twice as much taxpayer money as might actually be necessary, but at the end of it all, there would be a tangible benefit to taxpayers. The much criticized “Big Dig” in Boston is a good example. It took years longer and cost billions more than promised, but when it was done, people could get from downtown Boston to Logan Intl. in 15 minutes, instead of an hour and a half. But we don’t even have that level of competence any more.

And then there are the homeless. If laws prohibiting vagrancy, petty theft, intoxication, and sale of hard drugs could be enforced again, the deterrent effect would mean, overnight, that half California’s homeless would suddenly find find shelter with friends and family. The rest of them could be housed in inexpensive barracks in inexpensive parts of California’s cities. The billions of dollars saved could be used to help them. But that would disrupt the profits of the Homeless Industrial Complex. So in Newsom’s California, expect to see more chaos on our streets, as countless lives are allowed to be destroyed under the pretext of “compassion” and “liberty.”

When it comes to the basic needs of Californians, water, energy, food, shelter, transportation, and safety, the Newsom machine has failed completely. A future with Newsom and his people in charge would mean soaking taxpayers for additional billions – ok, tens of billions – on “affordable housing” and “permanent supportive housing,” while the cost of housing would remain prohibitive. They’d continue to build these boondoggles at a cost, well documented, of over 500,000 per unit, along with “innovative tiny homes,” only 64 square feet in size, at a total project cost of over $200,000 per unit.

Step back a moment and think about this. Even in California, a crew of honest tradesmen could go buy a 120 square foot shed at Home Depot for around $5,000, and for another $20,000, if not much less, they could transport it, put it on a foundation, install plumbing, electric hookups, a bathroom and kitchenette, hook it up to the utility grid and someone could move in. But no. These “tiny homes,” half that size, cost ten times that much, and we’re supposed to be thrilled.

This is what out-of-control corruption looks like. This is the true face of California’s “progressive” movement. It is a movement whose public rhetoric comes from smarmy politicians like Gavin Newsom and passionate grassroots activists, but whose financial and political power rests in the hands of monopolistic corporations and entrenched government bureaucracies.

Why not deregulate housing, invest in enabling infrastructure, and allow more construction on raw land on the perimeter of existing cities and along freeway corridors? Why not reduce the excessive building fees and eliminate unnecessary, crippling delays in getting projects approved? Why not quarry aggregate, mine lithium, extract natural gas, and log and mill timber here in California? These steps would take hundreds of thousands of dollars off the price of a new home. But they would also undermine the power of the special interests that profit from scarcity.

This is life in Newsom’s California. This is the future he offers you. Anybody would be better. If you don’t like Republicans, vote for Paffrath, who is a Democrat with bold new ideas. At his political core, Gavin Newsom represents corporate corruption. A machine that spews progressive rhetoric on the topics of climate change, race, and gender while completely failing to meet the basic needs of every Californian regardless of where they come from or what they believe.

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

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Explaining an Initiative to Fund Water Projects

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AUDIO/VIDEO: How do ballot initiatives bypass a negligent state legislature? Can ballot initiatives be used to fund water projects, so Californians will not have to experience water scarcity in the future? Can a ballot initiative be used to amend laws and regulations that have made it almost impossible to get approval and permits to construct water infrastructure in California? A 42 minute YouTube interview with Edward Ring on Mike Netter’s Town Hall.

An Agenda to Fix California

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As a recall election looms and embattled Governor Newsom fights for his political life, the political ads, as usual, are expensive pablum. That’s what we’ve come to expect, of course, but this election is nonetheless more than a referendum on a failing governor and failing policies. It’s a chance to think about what California could be. Instead of candidates pledging to “lower taxes on the middle class,” which obviously isn’t a bad idea, contenders for governor might discuss very specific policies they would champion.

Moreover, as voters cast their ballots and decide whether or not to keep Newsom in office, they might think about which candidates they’ll support in the future. Do they want to continue supporting political mannequins? Talking puppets that spout focus group tested cliches when you pull a string in their back? Or candidates that may be a little rough around the edges, but possess the courage, the vision, and the attention to detail that California needs now more than ever?

Here, being as brief but as specific as possible, are some ideas to solve some of California’s biggest problems. Most of them are controversial. It would be nice to find a politician with the guts to espouse all of them, without equivocation and without exception.

Problem: Unreliable and expensive energy:

Solution: Upgrade California’s natural gas powerplants to run at maximum efficiency and without being shut on and off. End the restrictions on natural gas hookups in new construction. Keep Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant open. Streamline the permit process for additional natural gas and nuclear power plants. Allow additional extraction of California’s abundant reserves of natural gas and oil. Relax if not repeal the CO2 emissions targets pursuant to AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. Continue to provide incentives for renewables, but recognize that an all-of-the-above energy strategy is an unavoidable necessity for developing nations with massive populations. Show the world how to do it in the most responsible manner possible. Restore abundant, affordable energy to Californians. Click here for more.

Problem: Scarce, expensive, rationed water:

Solution: Allocate a fixed percent of the state general fund to finance new investments in water infrastructure. Like energy, pursue an all-of-the-above strategy – runoff capture and storage, potable reuse of urban wastewater, off-stream reservoirs and expansion of existing reservoirs, percolation basins for aquifer recharge and recovery, and desalination. Invest enough to make the entire urban megapolis in Southern California independent of imported water. Streamline the punitive processes that make it take multiple decades to get projects approved. With all of this, again, set an example to the world of how to do it right. Restore abundant, affordable water to Californians. For more, go here, here, here, and here.

Problem: Congested, dilapidated, inadequate roads and freeways.

Solution: Recognize that smart roads are the future of transportation, not the past. Upgrade and widen all of California’s freeways. Recognize that automotive technology is in flux and repeal the zero emissions targets that prevent development of advanced hybrids. Develop protocols to designate smart lanes where next generation vehicles can convoy at high speeds. To make these investments cost-effective, reform the California Environmental Quality Act to reduce the time and expense of approving projects, and restructure CalTrans to outsource engineering and construction work to private contractors. For more, go here, here, here, here, and here.

Problem: Homes cost too much.

Solution: Increase the supply of homes by increasing density in the urban core, and building entire new cities along the 101 and I-5 freeway corridors and elsewhere. Quit pretending that California, a vast state that is only 5 percent urbanized, is running out of room for people. Leave existing suburbs alone and leave zoning decisions to local elected officials. Recognize that wood framed homes with reasonable outdoor space are what most families prefer, and that these homes are less expensive than metal and concrete multi-story structures.  It takes two weeks to get a subdivision approved in Texas, but it takes twenty years to do it in California. End the war on suburbia and eliminate the outrageous costs and delays for building permits. For more, go here, and here.

Problem: There is a crisis of law and order and homelessness.

Solution: Restore the ability of police and courts to criminally prosecute and incarcerate citizens for selling hard drugs, public intoxication, and petty theft. For those homeless that haven’t committed crimes, construct centralized shelters in less expensive parts of cities and require job training and sobriety as a condition of entrance. California has wasted tens of billions constructing shelters and “supportive housing” at a cost that averages nearly $500,000 per unit. This is incredibly corrupt and utterly futile. Use that money to build safe barracks and pay counselors and vocational instructors. Reopen the fire camps for the able bodied criminal homeless and put them back on the fire lines. Take back our streets. For more, go here, and here.

Problem: Our forests are incinerating themselves and the air is unbreathable.

Solution: Bring back California’s timber industry, which as recently as the 1990s was harvesting 6.0 billion board feet per year from California’s forests. Today, barely 1.5 billion board feet come out. Why weren’t there massive fires every year back in 2000? Because logging was keeping up with regrowth as recently as ten years earlier. But now, for over thirty years, it has been nearly impossible to log, to thin, or do controlled burns, at the same time as our fire suppression industry has become incredibly effective. The result is overgrown forests of tinder dry, overcrowded and stressed trees. Of course they burn like hell. The solution is to let timber companies reopen mills and start logging responsibly again. They will clear the powerline corridors and maintain the fire roads and fire breaks, just like they used to, in exchange for logging rights. Prevent fires. Create jobs. Generate tax revenue. Supply affordable, in-state lumber for housing. Win, win, win, win. Click here for more.

Problem: Our schools are failing low income communities.

Solution: Stand up to the teachers’ unions, by creating competition in public instruction. This can be accomplished by making it easier to open charter schools, and taking away the cap on how many charter schools can operate. It can be accomplished by creating education savings accounts for every parent of a K-12 student, allowing those parents to use that money for the school of their choice – public, charter, private, parochial, or even homeschool. Theoretically, such a program could be revenue neutral or even save the state money. At the same time, reform the public schools by requiring a longer period before teachers can earn tenure, by favoring merit over seniority in layoffs, and by making it easier to fire incompetent teachers. Other ways to rescue K-12 education in California would be limit union negotiations to pay and benefits and outlaw teacher strikes, and to empower parents to opt-out of exposing their children to sexually explicit or politicized instruction. Click here for more.

The tragic reality in California today is that an entire complex – progressive billionaires, public sector unions, powerful environmentalist lobbyists and litigators, with nearly universal support from the legacy media, social media, and academia – considers most of these solutions, if not all of them, to be extreme. They’re not. They’re moderate, common sense solutions to serious problems that are obviously not being adequately handled based on what this complex considers to be the conventional wisdom.

Imagine California’s future if these policies became reality. The solutions suggested here for energy, housing, and forestry would actually generate tax revenue, along with hundreds of thousands of good jobs. The solutions suggested for education are revenue neutral. To supplement private investment, the economic boom these solutions would impart to the state overall would generate the tax revenue necessary for public investment in water and transportation infrastructure.

Imagine a state where instead of importing energy from Venezuela, or electricity from coal burning states, or lumber from British Columbia, or lithium from West African mines owned by the Chinese Communist Party, we would be producing all of these essential resources right here. Imagine the prosperity this would create. Californians consume these resources. That is reality. And even if we streamline what are currently crippling regulations, extraction operations located here in California will respect workers and the environment far more than they are being respected anywhere else in the world.

On a foundation of new and broad based prosperity, California can then afford to leapfrog other states and nations. California can innovate with transportation tunnels under its cities. California can innovate with passenger drones occupying aerial lanes above its cities. California can fund research into fusion energy and satellite solar power stations. California can solidify its position as one of the wealthiest and most innovative places on earth, but at the same time a place where ordinary families have a chance again.

California can be a place where there is abundance instead of scarcity, pragmatism instead of ideology, and optimism instead of pessimism. These values used to define California. They can do so again. California’s future can be very bright indeed.

This is the conversation California’s candidates for governor should be having.

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

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How Unions Could Save America

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The general perception within Conservatism, Inc. and libertarian circles is that collective bargaining is a violation of the right of the individual to seek work without being compelled to join a union. That sounds good in principle, but there’s much more to the story.

A few years ago, the workers at a local grocery store chain in California went on strike. The reason they voted to strike was that management had implemented a new policy whereby most of the employees, including full-time career workers, had their hours reduced to fewer than 25 hours per week. At the same time, these employees had their health coverage taken away.

It’s easy enough here to simply proclaim that this is the free market working for the greater good. After all, consider the Walmart chain. By sourcing most of its merchandise from overseas, exploiting economies of scale, and offering minimal pay and benefits, consumers are able to purchase food and other goods at prices far lower than a local, unionized grocery store chain could possibly achieve. Survival of the fittest. Economic Darwinism. Creative destruction. What could possibly go wrong?

But when you talk with the people who decided to go on strike, the other side of the story becomes obvious. Not everybody is a freelance gig whiz who can move to a low-cost city while writing code at $100+ per hour to service clients all over the world. Some people just want to do an honest day’s work, earn enough to support a family, and live with dignity. And if they’ve put 30 years into a job, with a decade to go before retirement, and all of a sudden their hours are cut and their benefits are gone, who is going to stand up for them?

More than a century ago, the need for unions was more obvious. The industrial revolution had spawned a manufacturing economy where there were no protections for workers. Adults and children worked long hours in appalling conditions. The emergence of unions in those years was a necessary reaction. Unions played a vital role in securing the rights that workers today take for granted.

While it’s much easier today to adhere to pure free-market orthodoxy, the reality is that America is a mixed economy. The debate over how much government and how many regulations are appropriate is better served by recognizing that neither extreme—pure libertarian capitalism or pure state communism—is a desirable outcome.

Unions in America today come in many varieties. Public-sector unions, which elect the politicians who supposedly manage them, and live on the taxes we pay, may be more problematic than private-sector unions. But in either case, it would be a mistake for right-of-center political movements to not consider many of their members as potential allies.

Unions Don’t Need to Have Wings

The general perception of unions, backed up by plenty of evidence, is that they are invariably committed to left-wing politics. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Union membership, even in some of the most notoriously left-wing unions, is often right-of-center.

As reported in the Orange County Register in 2018, the California Teachers Association president admitted that about 35 percent of his membership is Republican. This is in a state where only 24 percent of voters are registered Republicans. The National Education Association teachers union study in 2006 found that 55 percent of public school teachers “leaned conservative.”

The politics of California’s teachers’ unions are unambiguous. Their campaign contributions favor Democratic candidates by a ratio that typically exceeds 20 to 1. Why isn’t it 2 to 1, or less, if you take into account independent voters? Wouldn’t that better represent the membership? And what if NEA spending represented its national membership? Instead of spending 5 to 1 in favor of Democrats in 2020, what if they had spent 55 percent of their money on Republicans? Wouldn’t that more accurately reflect the political sentiments of their members?

In California, up until the rise of the social media mega-billionaires, public-sector unions ran the show. Collecting and spending roughly $1 billion per year, California’s public-sector unions have perennial financial power dwarfing that of any other special interest group. But what if their spending reflected the sentiments of their membership instead of their leadership?

Why, for example, did the firefighters union leaders agree to send their members onto the streets of Los Angeles to march in solidarity with the United Teachers of Los Angeles? Does the ideological agenda of the teachers’ union actually align with the typical political leanings of the average firefighter in California? Probably not.

One may rightly ask why public-sector unions have made it their business to influence politics at all, rather than just concerning themselves with pay, benefits, and issues of job safety. But if they’re going to be politically active, might they at least focus on issues where they have expertise? Why aren’t California’s firefighting unions lobbying to bring back California’s decimated timber industry? Restoring California’s timber industry would create jobs, pay for forest thinning and clearing around the powerlines, fire roads, and fire breaks, and Californians would no longer have to import lumber from British Columbia.

When right-of-center pragmatic American activists are looking for allies to join their movement, it would be hard to find more powerful potential allies than, for example, the firefighters’ union. But who is asking? Why aren’t firefighters themselves demanding that their union focus on changing the regulatory environment so private timber companies can thin the forests, saving lives and the forests themselves? Why aren’t activists going to these union leaders and saying “help us, only you have the political power to stand up to the extreme environmentalists who have brought us to this point.”

Some public-sector unions have already moved right-of-center. This is exemplified in California by the police unions striking back politically against the new lunatic district attorneys who took office thanks to mega-billionaire campaign contributions and dirty campaigns that relied on attacking the incumbent while disguising the motives of the challengers. Crime-friendly idiots like George Gascón in Los Angeles and Chesa Boudin in San Francisco are the result, and police unions have had enough. Nationally, this move to the Right on the part of police organizations was demonstrated by their almost universal support for the reelection of President Trump.

Private-Sector Unions Can Offer Powerful Support to the Right

A fundamental conflict exists between conservatives and private-sector unions: Conservatives support right-to-work laws and private-sector unions see those laws as an existential threat. It’s hard to get past a disagreement that big, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth a try.

The approach would go something like this: We’re going to keep on fighting each other over the appropriate level of regulation to apply to private-sector unions, but meanwhile, we’re going to recognize together that America’s left-leaning establishment—co-opted by multinational corporations, mega-billionaires, and extreme environmentalists—is destroying the upward mobility of every working family in America.

This sort of rapprochement was evident in the long battle to open the Dakota Access and Keystone pipelines. After unions lobbied for years in support of these pipelines, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka was merely “unhappy” when Joe Biden killed it. Is that the best he can do? Trumka and his colleagues need to conduct a serious assessment of what kind of infrastructure is going to truly help the American worker. Not just the workers who get jobs to build the infrastructure, but the rest of America’s workers whose ability to pay their bills is enhanced when the right infrastructure is built.

Here is where unions can save America. Enabling infrastructure that socializes the cost of basic necessities—transportation, energy, and water—is a use of public funds and union workmanship that lowers the cost of living for everyone. When that happens, no matter how much they make, workers can do more with their money. All workers.

Union leaders must ask themselves, what is going to help everyone more: High-speed rail or wider and safer freeways? Wind turbines and solar farms, or clean natural gas power and safe nuclear power? Dead trees and water rationing, or water recycling, desalination plants, and new reservoirs?

The coalition that is currently running America into the ground is too powerful to be stopped without help from America’s powerful unions. If they want to save America for its middle class and aspiring low-income communities, right-of-center pragmatists and union leaders need to put aside their differences and fight together for the greater good.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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California’s Green Conundrum

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In 2006, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the landmark AB 32, the “Global Warming Solutions Act.” Determined to leave a legacy that would ensure he remained welcome among the glitterati of Hollywood and Manhattan, Schwarzenegger may not have fully comprehended the forces he unleashed.

Under AB 32, California was required to “reduce its [greenhouse gas] emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.” Now, according to the “scoping plan” updated in 2017, California must “further reduce its GHG emissions by 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030.”

The problem with such an ambitious plan is that achieving it will preclude ordinary Californians ever enjoying the lifestyle that people living in developed nations have earned and have come to expect. It will condemn Californians to chronic scarcity of energy, with repercussions that remain poorly understood by voters.

It isn’t merely that Californians will experience unreliable energy, as the percentage of energy generated from “renewable” sources continues to increase. That will eventually get sorted out, although at a stupendous cost. Battery farms will replace natural gas plants to fill in those times of day when there is no sun and insufficient wind, and over time, the entire solar, wind, battery, and “smart grid” infrastructure will get overbuilt enough to cope even with those months in the year when days are short and there isn’t much wind. It will cost trillions and despoil thousands of square miles of supposedly sacred open space, but it will get done.

The bigger problem is that this whole scheme is too space-intensive and too expensive to ever be scaled up to the level of abundance. To close the loop, “negawatts” will be required. That is, extreme conservation of energy solutions will become mandatory. This will affect every household, imposing LED lights, “smart” thermostats, “energy sipping” appliances, lights that turn themselves off when the sensors determine a room is empty. Every manner of intrusive, surveilled, algorithmic management of our lives will become mandatory. But it doesn’t end there.

Energy isn’t just required to run a household. It’s also necessary to run an economy. This is immediately obvious with respect to the future of California’s water infrastructure. According to the Public Policy Institute of California, “overall, water use accounts for about 20 percent of California’s electricity use and 30 percent of natural gas used by businesses and homes. This energy is used to supply, convey, treat, and heat water.”

Meanwhile, a rarely acknowledged fact about California is that, despite “green” ideology dominating public policy for decades, over 80 percent of California’s total energy consumption relies on fossil fuel.

This is the conundrum. California’s policymakers know that in order to fulfill their climate goals under the Global Warming Solutions Act, they cannot permit the growth of industry or infrastructure that may consume more energy.

The effect on water use is profound. Want to increase interbasin transfers, to deliver water from regions where water is abundant to regions where water is scarce? That, after all, was the realized intent of the California Water Project, one of the civil engineering marvels of the world. But why fix the collapsing aqueducts, or build additional pipelines and aqueducts, when that would require more pumping, and more pumping requires more energy? Why build desalination plants, when it takes a megawatt-year of electricity to desalinate every 2,000 acre feet of seawater? Why upgrade water treatment plants, when treating wastewater requires energy?

California’s green solution is to ration water consumption instead of generating more energy to produce more water. This priority is felt everywhere. Neglect the agricultural canals and let more runoff flow into the ocean. Decimate California’s once legendary agricultural sector. Squeeze the small farming operations into insolvency, and allow hedge funds to buy their land for pennies on the dollar. Replace a farming economy that delivers a diversity of row crops to the entire world with a few commodity monocrops that don’t require as much water, or turn the farmland into solar farms and nature preserves.

The impact on household water consumption is set to become equally severe. The state wants to reduce indoor water consumption to 55 gallons per person per day, then to 50 gallons per person per day, and eventually to 40 gallons per person per day. Ban virtually all use of outdoor water for landscaping. Promote, then mandate, “xeriscaping”—because it’s fun and responsible to send children out to play in the rocks. And hold on, anyway, isn’t having a private home with a private yard exclusionary and unsustainable and racist? Don’t laugh. They’re coming for you.

Californians, even during prolonged droughts, could invest in water infrastructure and maintain an abundant supply of water for farms and cities. But abundant water policies collide with the conundrum. To supply more water requires more energy. To supply more anything requires more energy. It won’t happen.

To implement California’s Global Warming Solutions Act, the state has raised an army of “carbon accountants.” They are charged with determining the carbon impact of everything. Want to bring back the timber industry in California? After all, there’s no better way to sequester carbon than to cut down trees and mill lumber. But wait. First the carbon accountants will have to calculate the net benefit. How much energy will the lumber trucks and the chainsaws require? What about the mills? What about the carbon absorption potential of the trees if they’re left standing? Blah blah blah. To be sure, this level of analysis can’t be done on a spreadsheet. Bring out the parametric database. Bring out the black box. Make sure you include a plethora of regression analyses. To do the “work,” hire PhDs by the dozens. Spend millions. Spend years.

Or never mind.

With a Sierra Club litigator looking over their shoulder, don’t expect carbon accountants to ever greenlight an industrial endeavor in California, unless it’s a solar farm, a wind farm, or a battery farm. And never mind the collateral damage of those projects. So let the forests burn. God forbid the timber companies might come in and clear out around the power lines, maintain the fire roads and fire breaks, and thin the undergrowth, all for free in exchange for the right to log again. That’s what they did up until the 1990s. Today? Not a chance. So burn baby, burn.

One way to address California’s green conundrum would be to embrace nuclear and hydroelectric sources of energy. After all, these power sources do not create any emissions. Keep the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant open. Raise the height of the Shasta Dam and immediately have more water and more electricity. But these solutions are anathema to California’s green elite. But why? Is there a “climate crisis” or isn’t there?

Of course, if the goal of green policy in California is to reduce the standard of living of normal residents, implement draconian controls over their lives, and move people out of spacious detached homes and into energy efficient apartments, this is not a conundrum at all.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Recognize that fossil fuel cannot be phased out precipitously and set an example to the world of how to, for example, use clean natural gas in a manner that is as efficient and sustainable as possible. Pioneer new designs for nuclear power stations. Build water infrastructure that guarantees more water for everything—not only the farms and cities, but the streams and rivers. Stop using visions of an apocalypse to limit our lives and line the pockets of environmentalist litigants. Proclaim abundance in all things to be achievable and desirable, and refuse to compromise. There is no conundrum. It is a self-inflicted lie.

As America’s dissident reformers focus on confirming election integrity, maintaining medical freedom, and countering the woke mob—as if that weren’t enough—the agenda of the environmentalist extremists moves relentlessly forward. What’s happening in California is moving East, crossing the Sierras and the Rockies, traversing the plains, and infiltrating every state house and county seat and city council in the nation. Propelled by fantasy and panic in equal measure, and manipulated by fanatics and shameful opportunists, the extreme green agenda must be recognized for what it is: a highly contagious misanthropic pathology that afflicts the young, the impressionable, the uninformed, the well-intentioned but misguided, the profiteers and the tyrants. Beware of them all.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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Here Come the DINOs

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How do you define a RINO? Definitions vary, but tend to go something like this: A Republican In Name Only is a member of the uniparty establishment. This means that politician is part of a ruling elite that is betraying the interests of Americans in almost every important area of policy. RINOs are compliant with the entire rhetorical message of progressive Democrats, from the reality of “systemic racism” to the “climate emergency.” They offer nothing unique or useful in the way of solutions to real problems, but merely go along with the Democratic policy agenda.

The entire value proposition of RINOs, if you want to call it that, is that somehow they’re able to moderate the worst excesses of the Democrats. So what? At their best, they just delay the agenda of what is possibly the most corrupt concentration of anti-American oligarchs and government careerists in American history. RINOs are worthless, not merely for their cowardice masquerading as moderation, but for their utter lack of alternative solutions.

DINOs, on the other hand, are something completely different. And the emerging breed of Democrats In Name Only coming out of California are something extraordinary. The policies these DINOs are promoting are stimulated by California’s status as a fully realized one-party progressive state. They see a dismal reality—unreliable energy, water rationing, traffic gridlock, unaffordable housing, out-of-control homelessness, rampant and unpunished crime, burning forests, and an increasingly worthless system of public education—and all of it is a consequence of progressive politics. They’ve realized that the progressives will do nothing but make these problems worse.

One of the earliest California Democrats to identify the failures of progressive politics is the noted urban geographer and economist Joel Kotkin. About 10 years ago, Kotkin’s observations of California politics led him to re-register as an independent, making this lifelong Democrat one of the original walkaways. In a recent essay published by the Claremont Institute, Kotkin describes the emerging political economy in the United States, California in particular. He writes:

“The reality of this grim future is already evident in places like California, where the climate change agenda has achieved near religious status and has produced policies that slow growth on the periphery, the one place where middle-class families could afford homes, dropping homeownership rates there for younger people far more than elsewhere.”

Kotkin’s landmark essay does a superb job of explaining the looming clash between the nationalist oligarchs of China and Russia and the globalist oligarchs in the West. It’s much bigger than merely a DINO manifesto. But Kotkin’s significance in the context of the rise of the DINOs is how he exemplifies a seismic political shift that has just begun—Democrats have become the party of a corrupt elite, and now those pragmatic and conscientious Democrats who reject the stupefying collateral damage are striking back.

Two young California politicians, both Democrats, are harbingers of a DINO movement that may completely transform politics in America. The first, Michael Shellenberger, ran for governor in California’s jungle primary in 2018 and came in 9th place. Shellenberger, a prolific writer, has just published a blistering essay that indicts California’s progressive Democrats for destroying the state.

Titled “Why I Am Not A Progressive,” Shellenberger’s essay is an exposé of the abandoned values and failed policies of progressives. Explaining how for decades he identified as a progressive because of their empowering values, Shellenberger writes, “But now, on all the major issues of the day, the message from progressives is ‘No, you can’t.’” He then describes the transition progressives made from a message of empowerment to one of disempowerment, writing:

“The reason progressives believe that ‘No one is safe,’ when it comes to climate change, and that the drug death ‘homelessness’ crisis is unsolvable, is [that] they are in the grip of a victim ideology characterized by safetyism, learned helplessness, and disempowerment. This isn’t really that new. Since the 1960s, the New Left has argued that we can’t solve any of our major problems until we overthrow our racist, sexist, and capitalistic system. But for most of my life, up through the election of Obama, there was still a New Deal, ‘Yes we can!,’ and ‘We can do it!’ optimism that sat side-by-side with the New Left’s fundamentally disempowering critique of the system. That’s all gone. On climate change, drug deaths, and cultural issues like racism, the message from progressives is that we are doomed unless we dismantle the institutions responsible for our oppressive, racist system.”

These are “Nixon Goes to China” moments. Shellenberger supports proposals that most Republicans, much less RINOs, fear to broach. Develop nuclear power. Confine and treat drug addicts and the mentally ill. Dare to pursue controversial policies that will solve the challenge of providing clean energy. Dare to acknowledge that “safe injection sites” are not only destroying the neighborhoods where they’ve been imposed on residents pursuant to the doctrine of “inclusive zoning,” but they’re also destroying the lives of the addicts themselves.

Perhaps the most surprising and potent expression of DINO disruption to-date is the emergence of 29-year-old Kevin Paffrath as a viable candidate for governor in the upcoming recall election of Gavin Newsom.

Consider Paffrath’s plan for the homeless (all of this can be found on his campaign website). He intends to use the National Guard to construct centralized shelters, which would enable the Guard, in conjunction with law enforcement, immediately to remove the homeless from California’s streets and parks. Compare this to Newsom’s plan to continue with and even expand the corrupt practice of constructing homeless housing at a cost of several hundred thousand dollars per unit, spreading them throughout suburban communities, with minimal behavioral conditions on placement.

Paffrath advocates restricting immigration to people who can support themselves without government assistance.

On water policy, he advocates more reservoirs, desalination, and even proposes building an aqueduct from the Mississippi River to the Colorado River and sharing the water with other states! If you like water, you have to like this guy. As he puts it, “We can create new jobs and solve problems instead of focusing on buying votes.”

Paffrath recognizes that it is impossible to transition to green energy immediately. He recognizes it is necessary to increase the efficiency of natural gas power plants and keep them open.

For almost every issue, Paffrath, the DINO, comes up with solutions that the average RINO would reject out of hand. He has evaluated the forest fire epidemic and correctly identified the difficulty of getting approval for controlled burns as one of the primary causes of California’s overgrown, tinder dry forests. And then he goes one step further, observing that the cost of controlled burns is $32 per acre, whereas it costs $1,500 per acre to fight a wildfire.

On education, Paffrath calls for “Future schools,” a model where partnerships would be formed with businesses to offer students a practical education including vocational training. He suggests these alternative schools can also accommodate homeless people and help rehabilitate prisoners.

Returning to the theme of common sense over and over again, Paffrath asks, “even if we were to spend money on infrastructure to reduce our traffic problems, why don’t we spend the money where we actually have traffic?” Bye bye, high speed rail. On housing, Paffrath has identified 482 separate regulations affecting home construction. His solutions are politically eclectic. He wants to deregulate to encourage more construction, including energy producing homes located near wind farms and solar farms (personally I’ll skip the home by the turbines). Yet he recognizes the importance of protecting existing local communities from having high-density housing forced upon them.

DINOs defy easy categorization. They are ideologically eclectic. Unlike the irrelevant RINOs, they have a bold and practical policy agenda. If DINOs of this caliber multiply across the nation and start to win elections, they will find themselves making common cause not only with smart disaffected Democrats, but with much of the Republican base. And that, as history has demonstrated, is a recipe for realignment.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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Birthrates, Immigration, and National Identity

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The United States currently has one of the highest proportions of foreign-born residents in its history. At nearly 50 million, over 15 percent of the people living in America were born somewhere else.

The hotly debated pros and cons of mass immigration tend to center on economic arguments (that immigrants either benefit or harm America’s economy) or cultural ones (that immigrants either enrich or undermine American culture).

It is impossible to take a position in these debates without inciting hostility from one side or the other. But no matter what position one may take, it is useful to look at immigration in the context of global population trends.

The official United Nations estimate shows global population rising from the current 7.8 billion to peak at 10.9 billion in 2100. But this projection is disputed by demographers Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson in their 2020 book “Empty Planet.” Taking data from numerous recent studies and official reports, nation by nation, their estimate has global population peaking at 9.0 billion by 2050 and declining thereafter.

Everything about this has profound implications. The authors cite urbanization as a central variable affecting population growth, claiming that “in rural settlements children provide farm labor, whereas in cities a child is just another mouth to feed.” More education, more access to healthcare, and a lower prevalence of religious influence are other reasons the authors claim that urbanization lowers birth rates.

True or not, the correlation is undeniable. In 1960, two-thirds of humanity lived in rural areas, and the total fertility rate (average number of children per woman) was 5.0. Today, nearly 60 percent of humanity lives in cities, and the total fertility rate is 2.5 and dropping almost everywhere.

In a 2019 interview to promote their upcoming book, authors Bricker and Ibbitson tick through the demographic trends by country and region. Some of the highlights are fascinating. China, where there are 60 million more men than women, “is going to get old before it gets rich enough to get old.” By the end of the 21st century, China’s population, currently 1.4 billion, could decline to 600 million.

This raises an interesting question. Which national demographic strategy is more perilous? To allow your population to age, and to cope with an inverted worker-to-retiree ratio? That is the strategy of the developed Asian nations. Or to engage in mass immigration to perpetually replace your younger generation, and to cope with the challenge of integrating people from diverse cultures? That is the strategy of the developed Western nations.

There is no glib answer to this question, despite the certainty of proponents on both sides. On the one hand, to welcome immigrants, even if the challenge of cultural integration is met, only defers the ultimate solution. As Bricker and Ibbitson point out, by 2050 there may not be any nations left on earth that do not have below replacement birth rates.

The only places left on Earth where birthrates are still very high is Africa, where the population is forecast to almost double to 2.5 billion people between now and 2050.

Sooner or later, every nation on earth will have to cope with the challenge of an aging population. One may hope that the benefit of automation will offset the shortage of workers, without that epochal shift in the human experience leading to unmanageable economic and civic turmoil.

The solution, if there is one, would be to try to do the best of both. Try to be the last nation to have to cope with an irretrievably inverted population pyramid, while also managing to preserve a national identity. For now, the first part of that is easy. Continue a policy of robust, if not mass, immigration. The second part is harder.

Maybe it’s necessary to maintain a healthy demographic balance between old and young, at least until we sort out the challenges of converting from a labor-intensive consumer society to a machine-intensive retiree society. It’s fair to admit that barring extraordinary cultural transformation, women in developed, urbanized societies where individual rights are protected, are choosing and will continue to choose to have children at below replacement rates. But who then do we invite to live in our nation, and how do we treat them? This is where the American people have been mistreated by their leadership.

America’s current immigration policies are flawed in at least two fundamental ways. First, they aren’t committed to bringing in immigrants who are highly educated and skilled, and come from cultures that adapt well to life in a liberal democracy. Admitting unskilled immigrants victimizes America’s lowest-income citizens, making their own upward mobility much tougher. It drives down wages and requires more government spending. This benefits corporations and government bureaucrats, but damages the nation.

The other fundamental flaw in America’s immigration policies is how immigrants are treated. In past centuries, this “nation of immigrants” was not a welfare state. The people who entered the nation, often Europeans who had to endure years of indentured servitude, had to work, or rely on their family members for support. To make things much worse, along with a comprehensive welfare state, American culture now trains immigrants—virtually all of whom are “people of color”—to believe they’re living in a racist nation, populated either by white supremacists, or at the least, whites who practice “unconscious racism.”

This is a grotesque distortion of reality, if not just a dangerous, opportunistic lie. Yet it is obsessively promulgated by America’s establishment elites, and it filters down to everything from public schools to corporate marketing campaigns. It trains anyone who isn’t white to believe they are inherently disadvantaged, and to believe that any failures or setbacks they may encounter in life are likely to have been the result of systemic racism.

This is a terrible way to integrate immigrants into America. This nation used to proudly proclaim itself to be a melting pot, where immigrant cultures dissolved into a unique American culture. It absorbed the flavors that everyone brought, but assimilated them into something originally defined by the founders—a nation committed to equality and freedom.

When people critical of mass immigration worry that it is changing the racial composition of the country, perhaps they shouldn’t be ridiculed. After all, there are few if any historical examples where this has been easy. Nonetheless, if race is their primary concern, they’re on thin ice.

But when people critical of mass immigration argue that, with rare and justifiable exceptions, immigration should be limited to those with the ability and desire to assimilate into our culture and contribute to our economy, they are standing on bedrock. These are completely different reasons for concern, and must be evaluated accordingly.

America can do both; maintain a youthful population while preserving its national culture and identity. But to do that will require an immigration policy that serves the American people, instead of corporations and government bureaucrats.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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The Future of Automobiles

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AUDIO: Will electric cars ever completely replace cars with internal combustion engines? Is it wise to mandate zero emission vehicles, which leaves no place for hybrids? What are the remaining technical challenges to making electric cars commercially competitive and environmentally sustainable? – 8 minutes on KNRS Salt Lake City – Edward Ring on the Rod Arquette Show.

Kevin Paffrath is a Serious Candidate for Governor

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There is a lot to recommend Kevin Paffrath for governor of California. Along with several Republicans, including Kiley, Cox, Elder and Faulconer, Paffrath is going to get a lot of votes. Not only is his presence on the ballot likely to increase the probability that Newsom is voted out of office on the Recall ballot’s question one, but because there are four viable Republican candidates, and only one viable Democratic candidate, Paffrath could very well end up becoming California’s next governor.

Paffrath would be a vast improvement over the governor we’ve got. If he ends up getting elected, it could represent a political realignment in California as significant as a victory by a GOP candidate. Paffrath has a lot to offer. He has Kiley’s brains, Cox’s business acumen, Elder’s charisma and communication skills, and if anything, his politics are to the right of Faulconer.

And unlike some of the many other candidates in the Recall, Paffrath’s candidacy is no joke. In the most recent poll, he leads the top GOP challenger, Larry Elder, 27 percent to 23 percent.

Consider Paffrath’s plan for the homeless (all of this can be found on his campaign website). He intends to use the national guard to construct centralized shelters, which will enable the national guard in conjunction with law enforcement to immediately remove the homeless from California’s streets and parks. Compare this to Newsom’s plan to double down on the corrupt practice of constructing homeless housing at a cost of several hundred thousand dollars per unit, spreading them throughout suburban communities, with minimal behavioral conditions on placement.

Paffrath advocates restricting immigration to people who can support themselves without government assistance.

On water policy, he advocates more reservoirs, desalination, and even proposes building an aqueduct from the Mississippi River to the Colorado River and sharing the water with other states! If you like water, you have to like this guy. As he puts it, “We can create new jobs and solve problems instead of focusing on buying votes.”

Paffrath recognizes that it is impossible to transition to green energy immediately. He recognizes it is necessary to increase the efficiency of natural gas power plants and keep them open.

For almost every issue, Paffrath sounds good. He has evaluated the forest fire epidemic and correctly identified the difficulty of getting approval for controlled burns as one of the primary causes of California’s overgrown, tinder dry forests. And then he goes one step further, observing that the cost of controlled burns is $32 per acre, whereas it costs $1,500 per acre to fight a wildfire.

On education, Paffrath advocates “Future schools,” a model where partnerships would be formed with businesses to offer students a practical education including vocational training. He suggests these alternative schools can also accommodate homeless people and help rehabilitate prisoners.

When it comes to high speed rail, Paffrath claims that his financial appraisal of the system reveals it won’t break even for at least 70 years. That’s probably still optimistic. As a financial expert, Paffrath is able to make accurate and revealing comparisons. The $100 billion price tag on the bullet train, probably an underestimate, is equivalent to three years worth of state income tax revenues for all income under $250,000 per year. As he puts it, “what would you rather have, a choo choo train for $100 billion, or no income tax on the first $250,000 dollars of income for three years?”

Returning to the theme of common sense over and over again, Paffrath asks, “even if we were to spend money on infrastructure to reduce our traffic problems, why don’t we spend the money where we actually have traffic? The high speed rail is estimated to cost $125 million per mile. Underground tunnels cost about $10 million per mile.” While Paffrath’s figures should be fact checked, again, he’s got the right idea. He goes on to suggest we construct tunnel systems under our major urban freeways, partially paid for with public funds and partially through user tolls. Individual drivers could pay to get places faster, and public busses could also cross the cities unimpeded by surface congestion.

As a real estate investor, Paffrath, like John Cox, correctly diagnoses the problem: He’s identified 482 separate regulations affecting home construction. His solutions are politically eclectic. On one hand he wants to deregulate to encourage more construction, including energy producing homes co-located near wind farms and solar farms (personally I’ll skip the home by the turbines), yet on the other hand he recognizes the importance of protecting existing local communities from having high density housing forced upon them. Worth asking: Kevin Paffrath, are you going to be ok when your real estate holdings drop in value, because you’ve solved California’s housing shortage and homes are finally affordable again? Deleveraging might be in order, if you’re serious?!

Paffrath acknowledges that California’s problems are interrelated and complex, and claims he has done the research and has the ability to connect the dots and solve them. Maybe not every one of Paffrath’s ideas will survive the light of day. Maybe if he’s elected he’ll encounter a solid wall of opposition from his own party. But somehow I get the impression this man will not back down, and has the potential to gather populist support behind his ideas.

One thing is certain. Kevin Paffrath even on a bad day would be a better governor than Gavin Newsom ever was. If I was a Democrat, I’d vote for him without hesitation. He combines nonpartisan centrist positions on the issues with what is probably the most thoughtful and comprehensive policy agenda of any candidate.

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

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