Bullet [Train] To The Brain

Two news items inevitably caught my attention this week. In the early stages of a national election, both point out the need for liberal government to jam things down the public’s throat that they don’t need, don’t want, and can’t afford. One is about California, the other about the Obama administration. They both say a great deal about why liberals shouldn’t be in charge at the state or federal level.

IF YOU FIND YOURSELF IN A HOLE, STOP DIGGING. Commonsense advice which liberals routinely ignore.

First, we have California’s recent legislative action approving $4.5 billion in state funding for what many Californians call the Bullet Train to Nowhere. Anybody who has been conscious recently knows that California is for all intents and purposes bankrupt. The legislature brilliantly attempted to fix this problem by getting the $3.2 billion in federal funds which would have been lost if California hadn’t voted to throw bad money after worse to build a pie-in-the-sky train. In other words, a bankrupt state is getting money from a bankrupt federal government which is borrowing the money from China.

The picture accompanying this article is an artist’s rendering of the nonexistent train pulling into a nonexistent station in one of California’s bankrupt cities. Last year, the city of Vallejo filed for bankruptcy protection. Recently, Stockton, California followed Vallejo’s filing, becoming the largest city in America ever to file bankruptcy. Last week, the City of Mammoth Lakes filed. Not to be outdone, on Wednesday, the City of San Bernardino, population 210,000, added to the list. Two major credit rating agencies recently reported that 20% of California’s cities face bankruptcy within five years.

So what does a good government do when faced with major portions of its body politic going bankrupt? Spend more money. Currently, the first leg of the fast choo-choo is set to go from Bakersfield to Madera. That’s farmland. But even though the ecoweenies have badly damaged the Central Valley’s water supply by protecting a useless fish, there are still huge areas continuing to produce food items for America’s dinner tables. Those remaining stalwart farmers have been using every means available to them to derail this train. They have been temporarily successful in stalling it at least, because the proposed routes (there have been three so far) cut off farmers, their livestock and their crops from their daily activities and means of transport. In case you're wondering, they don't allow cattle on bullet trains (unless they're service or emotional support animals, I suppose).

But despite astronomical budget deficits and hearty opposition to the train itself, the geniuses in Sacramento went ahead with the project anyway. Why write bad checks by yourself when you have enablers in Washington DC who will help you out with IOUs? Three other states had the good sense to turn the federal high speed rail funds down because of budget deficits. Two of the three have instead cleaned up their fiscal houses and now have budget surpluses. But they won’t have super Casey Jones. How sad.

Never daunted, Governor Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown praised the legislature’s action and promised a quick signature from the State House. Says Brown: “The money is there. We have the capability in California in a $2 trillion dollar economy to finance this thing.” Well, the state had that economy before the train, and it is still billions of dollars in the hole. The estimated final cost of the high speed line is $68 billion (and you know how accurate government estimates are). Brown is another typical Democratic politician who believes that you’re not broke as long as you still have checks.

The second headline news that caught my attention was the reaction from the Obama administration to California’s brilliant move. Basking in the glow of other green initiatives and government glory such as Solyndra and LightSquared, the Obamists are positively orgasmic over California’s approval of the nation’s first High Speed Railway to Nowhere. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood took time off from praising the efficiency of China’s government by three-man dictatorships to extol the joys of the California action.

Here’s what LaHood had to say: “I congratulate the Legislature on taking this action, which will create thousands of jobs and strengthen the California economy. In the next 20 years, California expects more than 7 million additional residents. But, as the state’s residents know all too well, the highways between California cities are already congested, and short-haul takeoff and landing slots at Golden State airports are at a premium.” LaHood fails to notice that California is bleeding taxpayers and taxpaying businesses, so we can guess where those 7 million additional residents are coming from.

I have driven between the metropolitan Bay Area and the metropolitan Los Angeles area literally hundreds of times in my life. Interstate 5 is hardly congested, and I’ve had times in which I drove for half an hour or more before seeing another car. I drive because the waiting time and inconvenience of airports and airlines are outweighed by the convenience of traveling in my own car (though gas prices have changed that formula a bit).

Where does LaHood think these train stations are going to be located? They’ll be placed in exactly the same locations as the current airports. The congestion is not the travel time on either the airplanes or the trains, it’s the highways getting to the stations and airports. And whether the train goes 120 mph or 220 mph, the congestion getting to the stations won’t be any different. Then there’s the joy of leaving your car parked in high-crime areas while you take your high speed trip from crime-ridden Los Angeles to crime-ridden San Francisco. Poor San Diego has to wait for awhile.

So just remember next November that as California goes so goes the nation. Unless we make damned sure that the Democrats don’t win.

[+] Read More...

[-] Collapse Post...

Surprise! It’s Worse Than Predicted!

California Gov. Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown has just announced that his earlier prediction of a $12 billion budget deficit was slightly low. By about $4 billion. After vetoing the proposed budget that his own Democratic legislature considered tough but reasonable, the status quo of deepening debt continues. Brown had said that the proposed budget didn’t include sufficient tax increases to “balance” some minimal spending cuts.

As recently as January of this year, the state’s budget deficit was “only” $9.2 billion. It is now projected at $16 billion. The legislature had passed a budget that in theory at least would have “held the deficit line” with spending cuts and jury-rigging upward of certain state “fees.” Brown announced that he was vetoing the bill because it ignored the “hard choice” of raising income, sales and business taxes. At the time he signed the veto, he predicted that the deficit would remain about the same as he was preparing a ballot initiative which the voters could approve in June or November using his own calculations for raising taxes and cutting spending.

Brown has always been able to put his blinders on, do a few Buddhist chants, and convince himself that the real world doesn’t exist. Among the things he ignored were the cuts he did approve in state employee layoffs, reduced work hours for state employees (particularly the state prison system), cuts to state employee retirement benefits and required contribution to the pension funds for newer state employees. California has more lawyers than entrepeneurs, and Brown somehow didn’t foresee the intrusion into his plan via lawsuits, injunctions and federal interference which effectively blocked most of his cuts.

In an address during which he proclaimed that he was shocked--shocked-- to discover that the deficit had become even worse than he had imagined, Brown pandered to the public. Blaming the legislature for the additional shortfalls, he appealed to his liberal/populist base to “do what I can’t do and the legislature didn’t do.” He was talking about the not-yet completed budget proposal he will attempt to put on the state ballot for the voters to decide on.

A favorite liberal mantra came out during the speech. Do it for the children. “This [the additional deficit] means we will have to go much farther and make cuts far greater than I asked for at the beginning of the year. But we can’t fill this hole with cuts alone (most of which have not been implemented) without doing severe damage to our schools. That’s why I’m bypassing the gridlock and asking you, the people of California, to approve a plan that avoids cuts to schools and public safety.”

Brown also blamed “a crippling decade shaped by the collapse of the housing market and recession.” He neglects to mention that his fellow Democrats were instrumental in creating the economic mess he is now ostensibly attempting to fix. Businesses, the backbone of tax revenue, are fleeing California faster than bugs running from Raid. The worst thing a government can do in the midst of a recession and a lousy business climate is raise taxes, particularly taxes which make it more difficult for small and medium-size businesses to survive.

Brown proposes across-the-board tax increases as well as the ever-popular “millionaire’s” surtax. Like Barack Obama and the other Democrats, Brown simply doesn’t comprehend that those “millionaires” are largely business people whose income includes the income from the businesses that the taxes are crippling. Never having owned or run a business of his own, Brown is like most theorists who think “income” is the same concept as “salary.”

Most of the cuts he has proposed seem big (it’s a BIG budget), but they treat very gingerly the major source of the original and ongoing deficits—public employee benefits. That would be the public employees who are also union members, the unions being Brown’s single largest campaign contributors. The unions showed their gratitude during the first round of cuts by suing Brown and the state to retain all their bankrupting benefits and wage guarantees.

Now it’s important to be aware that Brown says that all the tax increases would be temporary. Temporary like the federal telephone excise tax that first went into effect during the Spanish-American War. Brown says that his temporary tax increases, if approved by the voters, would raise an additional $9 billion. Well, we already know how good his estimates are. The nonpartisan State Analyst’s Office says it would be more like $6.8 billion, and assumes that the economy will get no worse and not another single major employer will leave the state. Unless Brown is planning on deploying the California National Guard to the state borders, the business exodus will continue on an accelerating basis and net tax revenue will continue to decrease.

To punctuate his veiled threat if the voters don’t approve his ballot proposal, Brown says “I have a contingency plan which would automatically result in shortened kindergarten through twelfth-grade school schedules, as well as higher college tuitions at the state institutions.” I can’t help thinking that getting the kids out of the failed public schools and into the real world might actually be a true learning experience.

As a semi-related note, I can’t help mentioning that Brown is in some ways more successful than Barack Obama. Remember my articles about Goodwin Liu, the leftist UC Berkeley law professor whom the US Senate twice rejected for a seat on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals? Well, don’t cry for Liu, Argentina. Brown nominated Liu for a seat on the California Supreme Court, and he was unanimously confirmed this past September. Now, both the US Constitution and the California State Constitution are in danger.

[+] Read More...

[-] Collapse Post...

R.I.P. California

California rivals the federal government in the number and excesses of its multiple bureaucracies. Its legislature is the envy of left wing Democrats everywhere. It now has the perfect governor—Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown. It is still feeling the effects of the administration of blockhead governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

To paraphrase Hannibal Smith of the A Team, “they love it when a plan comes together.” The leaders and their faithful sheep have a plan that they think will make California green and wealthy. The citizens of Lotus Land have a nearly infinite capacity for self-delusion. Their plan is actually organized suicide by green pipedreams, regulation and taxation. The Rev. Jim Jones only needed to stay in California and wait another thirty years or so, and he could have been governor.

I’m going to list some of the most egregious excesses of California governance. But there’s method to my madness. Americans in general, and conservative Republicans specifically need an occasional reminder of what could happen to them in the other states if The One is re-elected president along with a Democratic Congress.

Those of us who live in the Central Valley are experiencing a double-whammy. California has been the breadbasket of America for nearly a century. But no more. The bureaucrats have decided that the preservation of an obscure species of fish that holds no known niche in the macro-ecosystem is more important than water for the amber waves of grain and jobs for agricultural workers. In the case of Delta Smelt vs. Human Existence, the useless fish wins. This has been a joint effort of the federal EPA and California fellow-traveling bureaucracies. California embraced the EPA restrictions and added a few of its own. No water, no crops. Simple, no?

At the same time the state, in conspiracy with the Obama administration, has decided to transform the state that was built by the automobile into the state that runs on rails. Exploiting the misery and unemployment brought about by the artificial Central Valley drought, the boys in Sacramento and the boys in DC are shoving a high-speed rail project down the throats of Californians. And they have cynically chosen the Central Valley city of Bakersfield as the first leg of the run.

The train is supposed to run from San Francisco to Los Angeles, but since the resistance to the project in those towns is minimal, they chose a starting place where objections to the project could be overcome by the desperate need for jobs. Clever, huh? And never mind California is essentially bankrupt. Federal funds are available, but the state must bear the largest share of the costs of the project, which in two years have escalated from $30 billion to $96 billion without a single track being laid.

Another California bureaucracy has a plan for all Californians. The California Air Resources Board has determined that 15% of all the cars on the California roads must be fully electric by 2025. The legislature and the two most recent governors think that’s just dandy. In a state where distances between routine destinations are measured in hours and minutes rather than in miles, the state has mandated automobiles which will travel no more than sixty to eighty miles before needing a time-consuming recharge. That’s fine for the denizens of San Francisco where nothing is more than five miles from anything else. But what about the rest of the state?

At least they’re requiring you to purchase an automobile which can be converted into a heat source (accompanying illustration). In the event the weather turns cold, just pull over, kick your car somewhere near the battery compartment, and you will generate a warm fire. Sometimes immediately, but in other cases it might take as long as a week for the blaze to get going, so be careful where you park.

The federal government imposed light bulb standards on all Americans. You are expected to buy a “green” light bulb which contains dangerous levels of mercury in order to use less energy. “Not good enough,” said California. Those not fortunate enough to live near a Wal-Mart will have to buy 60 watt bulbs that used to cost twenty or thirty cents, and replace them with a $3.00 bulb, manufactured in China The new 60 watt bulb actually puts out about 57 watts of ghastly light, while a 75 watt puts out about 63 watts. They also don’t fit right in your nicer lamps, and they look absolutely hideous in a chandelier. Just follow the greenie brick road, and don’t ask questions.

Then there’s law enforcement. Or maybe we should call it law observation. When rioters like the Occupy Movement or Oakland gangs celebrating a Raiders victory loot and pillage, the police are allowed to observe, but laying a hand on an out-of-control anarchist is police brutality. This is not the fault of the police. The governor sees assault and property damage as abstract concepts that don’t happen in his home. The big city mayors express open sympathy with the bums and thugs, give meaningless orders about protecting public property, then forbid the police to do anything “violent” to prevent the occupations. The police in Oakland are expected to react to thrown cement blocks, knives and Molotov cocktails with harsh words and mean looks.

As for border-hopping illegal aliens, welcome to California, land of the freebie and home of the goodies. Bop on over to your local DMV, get a license to drive (en Espanol), then drive around the building and register to vote yourself even more largess from the few remaining taxpayers in the state. If you're old enough, you can also apply for admission to the state's colleges and universities, paying in-state tuition denied to actual American citizens from the other states.

Criminals are welcome as well. The legislature is about to get rid of that pesky “three strikes” law that kept criminals in prison and out of the Occupy camps. It’s very humanitarian, allowing the rapists to have victims of the opposite sex which are unavailable to them in the Graybar Hotel.

I guess this is my way of saying that if you’re a conservative who doesn’t like any of the current Republican candidates for president, think carefully about sitting on your hands or voting for Barack Obama in the general election. Barack Obama and his merry band of socialists have a single goal: Make the rest of the United States just like California.
[+] Read More...

[-] Collapse Post...

California Does It Again

California is one of the states suffering from a huge illegal immigrant problem. California Democrats generally refuse to admit that there is such a problem, or even such a thing as an illegal immigrant. But on those rare occasions when they do admit both, their focus is always on businesses which hire illegals rather than the illegals themselves.

They are at least partially wrong philosophically, but punishing employers who hire illegals and taking steps to prevent further illegal immigrant hiring are excellent ideas. Cut off the potential of employment and you eliminate one of the major sources of illegal immigration. The broadest and most effective way of doing this is E-Verify. Legislation is pending before Congress to establish nationwide mandates requiring employers to utilize E-Verify.

In California, fifteen cities and counties have enacted mandatory E-Verify since 2007. The governmental agencies instituted the requirement from as little as using it solely for city/county employees to revocation of business licenses for private employers who do not use E-Verify. The cities are Mission Viejo, Temecula, Murrieta, Riverside, Santa Maria, Lake Elsinore, Wildemar, Lancaster, Palmdale, San Clemente, Escondido, Menifee, Hemet, San Juan Capistrano, Hesperia, Norco, Rancho Santa Margarita, and Simi Valley. San Bernardino County is the only entity to require E-Verify on a county-wide bases.

In addition, six other cities have drafted legislation requiring E-Verify and were ready to vote. Then the boom fell. Governor Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown and the open borders Democrats who run the state passed a statewide law prohibiting governmental agencies at any level from mandating E-Verify. After all, what's the point of being an illegal immigrant getting in-state tuition, grants and scholarships if you can't get a job after graduation because of E-Verify?

Ted Wegener, who played a major role in getting E-Verify passed for San Bernardino County, says: "It is very disappointing when you spend all the time, you go to your elected representatives and you get them to do something, and then at the higher level they squash you." Wegener's group, the Inland Empire Conservative Activists, was on its way toward getting E-Verify passed for Riverside and Orange Counties as well.

The open borders crowd reached down and pulled up its usual arguments. Sara Sadhwani of the California Immigrant Policy Center said "while a handful of cities in California and a handful of states across the country have moved to mandate the use of this kind of program, it's very misguided." In other words, an effective means of drastically reducing the incentive for errant employers to hire illegals is "misguided."

Assemblyman Paul Fong (D-Sunnyvale), introduced the bill to halt E-Verify because he believes it is an unnecessary burden on business. I'd like to know what "business" he is referring to. The burden is making sure that the company has at least one person (who could easily be an already-existing employee) who has access to a computer and a minimal knowledge of how to use the Internet. There are costs of E-Verify that are minimal compared to the private background checks any diligent private employer would use to determine the immigration and criminal status of a potential employee. But that doesn't stop Fong: "It is costly, time-consuming. It's unfair for big businesses and definitely for small businesses. Why make a flawed system mandatory?" Well, I guess we wouldn't want to be unfair, would we?

Naturally the supporters of the bill cited examples of how the E-Verify system "often" misidentifies U.S. citizens and legal immigrants. And of course they pulled out a poster girl named Jessica St. Pierre who was allegedly fired from her job because her name was not correctly entered into the E-Verify system. Anecdotal evidence aside, E-Verify claims to have an error rate of about 1%. Independent agencies make it more like 6% and dropping as data banks are constantly updated and improved. The concept that legitimate employees are being denied employment willy-nilly because of E-Verify is about as believable as Barack Obama's claim that his mother died because of a lack of medical insurance coverage.

I simply find it hard to believe that any reputable employer would fire a good employee after an E-Verify notification without first thoroughly checking the employee's own proof. If the employee is in fact a legal immigrant or American citizen, that's easily proven, and the information can be sent off to DHS and E-Verify for correction. A valued employee is unlikely to lose a job permanently because a clerk at a computer somewhere made an entry error.

Beside the alleged "financial burden on business," there are other costs to be considered and weighed against it. How about the cost of Medicaid and welfare programs for illegal immigrants? How about the loss in state tax revenues resulting from employers who hire illegals and pay them "under the table?" How about the cost of jobs lost for American citizens and legal immigrants? For that matter, how about the human cost of allowing unscrupulous employers to hire illegals and pay them less than minimum or comparable wages while putting them into working conditions that no citizen or legal immigrant would tolerate?

Brian Ambrose, who is an analyst in the Murrieta city manager's office, is perfectly happy with the voiding of his city's E-Verify ordinance. Says Ambrose: "We have not received a single phone call [reporting illegal immigrant hiring]--we did not believe there was ever a problem with illegal immigration here in Murrieta." Who is this mysterious "we?" The city manager system frequently ends up with the city manager's office being at odds with both the citizens of the city involved, and often misguiding the city councils which pass the ordinances. Concurrence is not causation. A lack of phone calls could mean a great many things, including the likelihood that illegal immigrants facing E-Verify knew the jig was up and it was time to get out of Dodge before they got caught.

So now, it's up to Congress. The left won't like it, but if the bill requiring E-Verify nationwide is passed, they can't complain that the states are interfering with the fed's sole power over immigration matters. Not unexpectedly, the E-Verify bill in the House of Representatives is being advanced by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas). But I take pride in pointing out that the former mayor of Simi Valley and now longtime Republican Representative Elton Gallegly of California is the co-sponsor.
[+] Read More...

[-] Collapse Post...

Falling-Out Among Thieves

The little guy you see peeping over the adult podium is California Governor Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown. He is trying to "grow in office." He just made a move as part of the attempt to balance California's out-of-control budget deficit. It won't sit well with Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats.

Now don't make the mistake of thinking that he's cutting funds for the high-speed trains to nowhere, or the budget of the watchmen hired to close the water spigots while protecting the Delta smelt. Nor is he trimming back on the drop-dead date for all of us to drive electric cars. Nope. He's requesting a 10% cut in Medicaid spending, which the Obamatrons are using to deflect attention from the massive debt Obamacare will cause. California has long been in the forefront of runaway spending on Medicaid (which is called "Medi-Cal" in California).

This puts the Obamacrats in a very difficult position. Brown is known as a liberal, pro-labor, pro-green, giveaway Democrat. Brown was also known for a very long time as being in the forefront of the health care reform movement. But both California and national Democrats are already singing the blues about Brown's proposed cuts. As you would expect, they are saying that the cuts would be devastating to California's most vulnerable residents (like illegal immigrants and generational welfare recipients).

California Representative Dennis Cardoza (D) is most concerned with reductions in funding for benefits for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Like Democratic legislators, for instance. In fact, Cardoza already wrote a heart-rending letter to the Director of CMS (the federal Medicare/Medicaid Services, which administers Medi-Cal), in which he cried "if the proposed cuts in the Medi-Cal rate go through, I am deeply concerned that providers of services for the disabled will have no option other than to close their facilities."

On June 27, Brown wrote a letter to the President that is just now coming to light. Says Brown: "California has enacted huge and extraordinarily painful spending cuts to clos eout multibllion-dollar budget gap. We did our part to reduce state and federal Medicaid spending by eliminating optional benefits, reducing provider payments and requiring beneficiary cost sharing." However, Brown also made sure to tip Obama to the political danger of tying his requested cuts to the debt-ceiling debates.

Brown cannot unilaterally cut Medi-Cal spending, since it must first be approved by state administrators and the federal government (Medicaid is largely state-funded, but receives joint funds from the feds). So far, the CMS director has been in sync with Brown, but California state and federal Democratic legislators are coming unglued. California has a $27 billion budget deficit which is by far the worst of any of the states. Norman Williams, a spokesman for the California Department of Healthcare Services said that Medi-Cal is the second highest expenditure in the state budget, and that cutting it must be part of the closing of the budget gap.

The proposed plan would include 10% reduction in Medi-Cal payments to hospitals, physicians, nursing facilities and other providers. Brown claims this would cut $623 million from the state budget in 2011-2012 alone. 7,000 residents would be affected, but for those 7,000 residents there are nearly 1,000 facilities to serve them. I'm having a little problem worrying that some of those facilities might have to close. Those fighting to stop the cuts say that as many as 150 facilities are likely to close. 150 out of 1,000. Sounds like there might be a recession and a bankrupt state behind the closures.

Jim Gomez, a lobbyist for the nursing-home-on-the-taxpayer-dime group California Association of Health Facilities says: "Many of the residents have been in the five or six bed homes for years with the same fellow patients and caregivers. Forcing them to move into larger regional centers or skilled nursing facilities, as some have proposed, would be a huge change in their life." I don't want to be a wet blanket, but many conscientious, hard-working taxpayers are now finding themselves out of work and out of their homes. It's tough all over. But at least the Medi-Cal patients have somewhere to go, even if it isn't what they're used to.

And now cometh the threats of litigation. Gomez's group has already filed a lawsuit and begun discovery in a case suing the state of California for its 2009 rate freeze, so if CMS approves the new cuts, Gomez says they might just add that to the pending case.

Despite himself, Brown has made a logical and necessary move. But that puts Obama in a position he despises--having to make an actual hard decision. Does he support a big-state liberal Democratic governor, or does he tell him to take a hike? Opponents of the plan say that giving California a free ticket to make large cuts in its Medi-Cal program would create an open season for other states to follow California's lead. That's a lot of government-dependent voters who might think twice about voting for Obama and the Democrats in the next election if their decades-long free ride is diluted. Brown has three years to recover from the backlash, Obama just a little more than a year. What to do, what to do.

I haven't had this much fun watching Democrats try to outmaneuver each other since Brown took on Bill Clinton for the presidential nomination.
[+] Read More...

[-] Collapse Post...

Hey, You, Get Outta My Lane!

I think I'm having too much fun writing this piece. It's not seemly to enjoy the discomfort of so many of my fellow Californians. But on the other hand, nah-nah-nah-naaaaah-nah. All the Prius owners have to join the rest of us peasants in the regular freeway lanes. The Department of Motor Vehicles finally pulled the carpool lanes out from under them.

This is irony piled on irony. Back in the seventies, under the leadership of then-governor Jerry Brown, the state government decided that it would create what it called "diamond lanes." Those foolish enough to commute to work with less than two people in the car had to drive in the regular freeway lanes, while those conscientious conservers of energy who carpooled got to move into the less-congested and therefore speedier diamond lanes.

About the only thing it actually accomplished was to increase state revenues because frustrated solo drivers sitting on a freeway that looked like a thirty mile long thin parking lot would pull into the diamond lanes to avoid being late to work. The fine for entering a diamond lane was higher than that for excessive speed, and about the same as those for vehicular manslaughter (well, I did exaggerate a little on that). Some diamond lanes were additions to existing lanes, which was at least somewhat reasonable. But many were simply traditional "all traffic" lanes that were striped and painted with the diamond label. Thus, already-congested freeways were slowed considerably. It was estimated at the time that more gasoline was wasted sitting unmoving on the freeway than was saved by carpooling and the diamond lanes.

Move forward about three decades, and the diamond lanes were opened up for those who were willing to spend big bucks for a low-powered, truly ugly car that doesn't use gasoline exclusively. A single driver in a Prius (and later all its imitators) could get that cute sticker that announced to the world "I'm a rich yuppie who can afford a car solely for commuting, and because I am eco-conscious and you're not, I get to drive past your snail's pace driving at sixty-five miles per hour, unimpeded by fools like you." Percentages of car-poolers haven't increased appreciably in thirty years, but there have been a lot more cars in those diamond lanes.

Jerry Brown is once again governor of California. Among his early-term Moonbeam actions is the termination of the diamond lane privileges for people driving those gas-guzzling Priuses (and other hybrids). The yellow sticker will no longer let you stick out your tongue at the peasants driving traditional vehicles. You must now purchase a car which is entitled to a white sticker. Those will be given out only to those who purchase all-electric or natural gas-powered vehicles. I'm going to rush out and buy a Tesla just so I can put a big, ugly sticker on the overpriced paint job. That way, when it runs out of juice ten miles short of my destination, it will be easy to describe to the Triple-A driver. "It's the bright red sports car with the big ugly white sticker parked five miles the other side of the post office."

Believe it or not, 10,000 of those white stickers have already been issued by DMV. But then, this is California. The sticker says basically the same thing as the yellow one. It should actually say something like "do you know how much coal and oil it took to produce the electricity that charged this car?" Or maybe "the production of this car required enough mercury to guarantee that all your grandchildren will have two heads, at least."

The original yellow sticker was supposed to be good only for the years 2005-2007, but the DMV and CalTrans kept extending the expiration dates. Owners of the vehicles figured their lofty status would go on pretty much forever. They didn't reckon with the all-new and improved Jerry Brown and the Green Weenies he brought into office with him. Now they'll have to turn in their overpriced hybrids and switch to some really overpriced vehicles. But then most of them are the rich yuppies who can afford to switch with no harm to their bank accounts. I just feel sorry for the few who bought the cars simply because they truly are fuel-efficient (at least at the gas pump).

Smug Californians account for about one-quarter of all hybrid sales in America. The numbers went down a bit last year, but the current government-created spike in gas prices have sped the numbers up. I'm guessing that means that people who can easily afford $5.00/gallon gas will lift their eco-friendly chins and buy one-quarter of the total production of all-electric and natural gas-powered vehicles. Their badge of honor will be the white sticker. And they are promised their special diamond lane privileges until 2015 (not counting the likely extensions).

Personally, I'm having some of my engineer friends design a solar-powered car that gets 1,000,000 miles to the gallon. It will hold two passengers for carpool purposes, and will be about the size of two Greyhound buses (if you include the panels). Top speed is expected to be about 30 mph, but that shouldn't prevent me from getting a diamond lane sticker, should it? Our biggest problem right now is dealing with the aerodynamics. Aimed for best effect, the panels tend to turn the car into a helicopter-like vehicle with no controls. We're bogged down right now with the engineering details, and we're still waiting for our federal stimulus funds.


[+] Read More...

[-] Collapse Post...

California Is Definitely Not Wisconsin

While Wisconsin gets ever closer to fiscal responsibility through its courageous elected Republican governor and legislature, California's governor makes a few dainty cuts around the edges of the state's monumental debt then proposes to put his so-called barebones budget on the ballot. Of course he hasn't even put the proposed budget together, and seems unwilling to act with the legislature to implement the changes recommended by the state's standing fiscal watchdog commission.

The people elect their representatives to carry out the broad wishes of the public, but leave the details to the "professionals" they hired to do the job. California's referendum process has for decades been the escape vehicle for elected officials unable or unwilling to do the tough jobs they were hired to do. They can talk about lofty goals, tightening the government belt, and serious budget cuts, but when it comes time to do what is necessary, they love to kick the ball back to the people. That way, if the solution doesn't work, they can blame everybody but themselves. If the solution does work, they can claim to have been prescient in forming the solution, and "men of the people" by giving the public the right to make the decision.

The referendum is one of those goofy procedures invented by the Progressives back in the Roaring Twenties to emulate direct democracy. But that doesn't mean that it works the same way in each of the states that adopted it. Wisconsin, the first Progressive state, hired a governor and a legislature last November to fix their financial problems and it looks as if that will happen. No referendum there. Californians also elected a governor and a legislature, and now the people are being asked to perform surgery on themselves because the doctors in Sacramento are too stupid or too cowardly to do it for them.

What's the big difference between the two states which both have strong Progressive pasts? Easy. Wisconsin voters elected a Republican governor and a majority Republican legislature. California elected Democrats for the corresponding posts. In order to do their jobs, they could either make draconian cuts in spending for state employees and terminate pie-in-the-sky green/liberal/leftist/cuckoo programs, or wet their pants and send it all back to the voters. The Wisconsin temporary stalemate can't happen in California since the Democrats hold the State House and both legislative chambers, and therefore fleeing to a Motel 6 in Arizona isn't a viable plan.

So Governor Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown and his fellow Democrats dither while California drowns. California has a standing independent citizen fiscal watchdog commission called The Little Hoover Commission. It makes recommendations to the governor and the legislature on the state's budgets. Since about the time that Jerry Brown's chief aide Gray Davis became governor (and got recalled), spendthrift commission members from both parties have merrily wandered down the primrose path with the tax and spend liberals. The commission is comprised of nine members--five appointed by the governor, two by the State Assembly and two by the State Senate. Arnold Schwarzenegger, an alleged Republican, held onto office long enough to have appointed all five of the gubernatorial seats. Three are fiscal conservatives from before Schwarzenegger discovered he was sleeping with a liberal Democrat. The other two are moderate to liberal on tax and spend. Needless to say, the other four members are all liberal to very liberal Democrats.

The crash has hit California extremely hard, and despite its former liberal tilt, the commission found that California's fiscal crisis has many of the same root causes as those of Wisconsin. So it has proposed huge changes to the state's employee pay, benefits and retirement scales. It includes freezing the current plan while creating a sustainable alternative plan. The plan includes specifically capping the calculation of benefits at between $80,000 and $90,000, creating retirement ages and lengths of service which do not encourage early retirement, and requiring employees to pay meaningful contributions to their own retirement.

Said the commission report: "The situation is dire, and the menu of proposed changes that include increasing contributions and introducing a second tier of benefits for new employees will not be enough to reduce unfunded liabilities to manageable levels, particularly for county and city pension plans. The only way to manage the growing size of California government's growing liabilities is to address the cost of future, unearned benefits to current employees, which at current levels is unsustainable."

That means that even the proposals made for future entrants into the public employment sphere will not be enough, and that the governor and the legislature need to take current benefits head-on. But you must remember that the governor is a Democrat, bought and paid for by the unions, particularly the public employee unions and the SEIU. Therefore, it is highly unlikely that any real changes will be made without a referendum, and unlike Wisconsin, right-to-work will never be put on the table.

Rather than analyze and tweak the commission recommendations, the Democrats immediately went into attack mode. Democratic spokesman Steve Maviglio was first at bat, saying "Shocker. Little Hoover Commission stacked with Schwarzenegger appointees wants to cut economic security of civil servants." Well, they aren't very civil, and they serve nobody but themselves. Further, if "economic security" means getting cushy jobs at outrageous rates of pay and catastrophic medical and retirement benefits, I suppose they're right. But if "economic security" means a decent job with decent pay and benefits combined with Civil Service protection, they're wrong and they're lying.

Unlike Wisconsin, California's seminal problem will not be solved any time in the foreseeable future. And that problem is the incestuous relationship of public sector unions and state government. The closest thing to agreement on changes from Governor Brown is that he says "I believe people should be working longer. I think 'institutional memory' is a good thing (and a typical "Brownism"--most of us would have said 'experience'). I don't have a problem extending how long people have to work." That addresses Brown's belief in government, not in reasonable compensation. And it's understandable. Brown was first elected three and a half decades ago as the youngest elected governor in the state's history, and was elected last year as the state's oldest governor. He has spent his entire life in government (including his youth at his father's home, former California Attorney General and Governor Edmund G. "Pat" Brown).

The official spokesmen for the Brown administration were a bit more restrained, and devious, in their comments about the Little Hoover Commission's report. "Our office is reviewing the Little Hoover Commission's findings. The Governor agrees that California faces serious challenges which is why he rolled out a comprehensive framework to reform pensions during his campaign." Well that's nice. A nebulous "framework." They're "reviewing" the findings. The governor "agrees" that there are serious challenges. But--action is noticeably lacking. And when the bankruptcy clock is close to running out, Brown and the Democrats will punt.
[+] Read More...

[-] Collapse Post...

California--Curioser And Curioser

Right now, Democrats are "running away" from Barack Obama in droves. Democrats hiding from a Democratic President. Here in California, we always do things differently. In the Golden State, the Republican candidate for governor is running away from the current Republican governor. There is one similarity, though. Like those Democrats, Republican Meg Whitman is running away from the governor because he's just too damned liberal.

Candidate Whitman is running on the concept that a government should be run like a successful business, not like an ATM. She is the type of Republican who will probably do very well in the general election in November, since she fits in with the majority in a state that overall tends to be moderate to liberal on social issues but looking for a sensible fiscal conservative to drag California back from the financial abyss. She's no movement conservative, nor is she a RINO. But next to the Governator, she looks like Calvin Coolidge.

Whitman has vowed to take on the unions, most particularly the fat public employees unions. She wants to cut taxes, but is even more adamant about cutting state expenses. She wants to see decent environmental concerns addressed without bankrupting and starving the state's major industries. She's only a very light shade of green, and that's in part from being around all that nice green money. While Schwarzenegger was busy ginning up green projects, making internal combustion engines into demons and pronouncing the advent of hydrogen-powered automobiles some time in this century while billing the taxpayers for them now, Whitman says that people must come before theoretical pollution control.

But the big break in the party came when Whitman announced that California can dig itself out of its budget hole by cracking down on waste, fraud and abuse in state spending. She has proposed a statewide grand jury that would investigate and indict those who have "fleeced the state treasury for billions of dollars. A key factor accounting for the massive overspending and continuing budget deficits is state government's failure to police itself well. A statewide grand jury would supply the real enforcement mechanism now lacking in state agencies and county grand juries."

Considering that she is implying at least criminal negligence, and that many of the spending disasters come from the governor's office, the Governator has decided not to endorse a candidate in the general election. In an ordinary year, the refusal of a Republican governor to endorse his proposed Republican successor would be a very bad thing. This year, not so much. It's not just that there is a strong opposition to tax and spend officials, but Republicans add enthusiasm to the mixture at the poll level by wanting to take a slap at Schwarzenegger for what they consider to be his surrender to the Democrats and various other liberals, most particularly the public sector unions and green weenies.

The Central Valley, once the breadbasket for half the western world, is blowing away with the wind because of the lack of water caused by the cutoff of supplies occasioned by the protection of a fish that serves no known purpose in the ecological scheme of things. Schwarzenegger announced that he supported the farmers and agricultural workers, but did absolutely nothing to help them get the eco-freaks off their backs and out of their lives. While other states have been actively defying the federal government, Schwarzenegger has essentially thrown his hands in the air in an attitude of "vot can I do?"

Yet somehow, "energy" funds seem to get spent at a breathtaking pace, and Whitman is demanding to know why. Her critics (most of them from Attorney General and Democrat gubernatorial candidate Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown's office) are asking what a statewide grand jury could do that county grand juries can't do. Whitman isn't a lawyer, but she plays one on the campaign trail. And she plays one rather well. That question is both naive and disingenuous. Statewide grand juries are not subject to the influence, partisanship and good-old-boy coziness of county grand juries. Business as usual isn't usually statewide business. Local fiefdoms merely perpetuate the "I got mine, up yours" attitude.

Scott Thorpe, executive director of the California District Attorney's Association, says that the statewide grand jury would be California's "only prosecuting authority that wasn't elected by the people," as if that's a bad thing. Thorpe plays on the tough prosecutor image held by the average voter, neglecting to mention that District Attorneys and their staffs are public employees participating at least in part in the waste Whitman wants to investigate.

In reply, Whitman spokesman Darrel Ng replied that the persistence of fraud shows that the current system doesn't work and that it's time to try something new. Says Riverside County District Attorney Rod Pacheco, "A state grand jury would have a broader perspective than local prosecutors and would tackle cases that are slipping through the system. There is fraud on a statewide level. People are not concentrating on it, and there is no mechanism to handle it."

Jerry Brown's office offered that they had filed a record 165 criminal charges against Medi-Cal providers in 2009 recovering over $200 million in twelve months. Whitman replied that it was about time, now what about the $18.9 billion that appears to have been mis-spent through malfeasance and/or misfeasance since 2000? That includes a $1.25 billion program in state education which failed to improve test scores, more billions in fraud in welfare and workers' compensation, and even a $3 to $4 billion cost overrun for San Francisco Bay Bridge reconstruction.

Whitman has also called for a reduction in state employees by 40,000 state jobs. Jerry Brown is more concerned about how many people would be employed by the investigative grand jury, naturally. I can't give you a figure myself, but I suspect the answer is "a lot fewer than 40,000." Brown has no plan, but says he'll cut governmental inefficiency (not by criminal investigations, apparently) by "bringing all sides together and not raising taxes without voter approval." Interestingly, Brown also supports an initiative to reduce the number of votes required to pass tax increases and bond measures.

Schwarzenegger, meanwhile, seems to think he can solve all the state budget problems by targeting the growing program of domestic care for the low-income elderly and disabled. He hasn't noticed that a thorough investigation along those lines showed that overpayments, fraudulent or negligent, comprised at most 1% of the total payments. While Schwarzenegger dithers and chases the home-helpers and Brown says to "come now and reason together," Whitman says: "We're going to put in great systems, we're going to find that waste, fraud and abuse, we're going to convene a grand jury, and if you rip off the taxpayers of California, we're going to send you to jail."

Lord, I hope we have enough jails.


[+] Read More...

[-] Collapse Post...

San Francisco Diary--Journal Of An Exile

The San Francisco Municipal Transit Authority (MUNI) is in deep financial distress. But San Francisco is "The City That Knows How." As a result of MUNI's latest belt-tightening measure, raccoons will no longer be allowed to ride the buses for free. Raccoons will now be charged the same rate as seniors and students. The picture shows indignant raccoons complaining to the bus driver who has just given them the bad news.

It all seems a bit unfair. The raccoons never complain about the buses showing up late, and don't object to the smell of the non-paying homeless people asleep on the benches. When the gang-bangers decide to have a turf war on one of the buses, the raccoons just hide under the seats until it's all over, and never say a discouraging word about MUNI. I intend to attend the next MUNI budget meeting as a representative of the Rights for Raccoons lobby. This is clearly unfair discrimination.

Meanwhile, MUNI will be meeting on March 30 to impose another round of service cuts and fare increases, and they're doing it by side-stepping the public and the state environmental review requirements by extending the "state of emergency" past the current June 30 expiration date. This past Friday, MUNI officials approved a plan to close the $12.1 million deficit for the remainder of this year by making deep service cuts and increasing the cost for those purchasing monthly express bus and cable car passes. The plan also includes nearly doubling the cost of senior and disabled monthly passes. And who is going to be expected to suffer the brunt of these draconian measures? Innocent raccoons.

NOTE: And speaking of MUNI, at least one member of the Board of Supervisors did not get his job immediately after being released from the lunatic asylum as "cured." Supervisor Sean Elsbernd has proposed a hugely popular city charter amendment to end the guarantee that MUNI drivers be the second-best paid drivers in the nation. Former mayor and notorious prior speaker of the California Assembly, Willie Brown, says "it's a slam-dunk win" for Elsbernd. He goes on to say "there is no way labor can explain why such a pay guarantee should be in the city charter, especially in these lean times. The best the drivers could do would be to put their own 'reform' initiative on the ballot and hope no one reads the fine print." As Brown says, everyone running for supervisor will have to choose a side, something most will be loath to do. The move opens the door for similar action on police and firefighter pay and pensions, particularly for the middle managers who earn as much as most big city mayors. Brown grudgingly declares "when it comes to crafty politics, Elsbernd goes to the front of the class."

NOTE: Well, the other shoe just dropped. On Tuesday, former governor and current attorney general Jerry Brown finally formally announced that he's running for governor. This will be a third-term run for Brown. Although California has a two-term limitation, Brown is exempt since he left the office before the term limitation was imposed. If he wins, he will now have the distinction of being the youngest elected governor in California, and the oldest elected governor in California history. It will also likely be the most expensive gubernatorial election in American history. He already has a $13 million war chest, and will be running against one of the two Republican gazillionaires who come from Silicon Valley.

Brown, whom Californians over the age of 45 remember as "Governor Moonbeam," has one of the longest and most visible political careers in California history. He has been the California secretary of state, the mayor of Oakland, the state attorney general, and a three-time Democrat competitor for president of the United States. That high recognition factor certainly helps him, particularly since the majority of California voters today aren't old enough to remember his first two terms. But there are plenty of us old folks around to make sure they get a good look at his political past.

More recently, the hand-picked successor and close personal friend of Brown's, Gray Davis, was recalled for his crazed spending and social welfare policies. How badly that might hurt Brown remains to be seen, since Davis was replaced by Arnold Schwarzenegger who quickly turned left and out-spent Davis while coming up with schemes even crazier than those of Davis or Brown. There's no incumbent to throw out, so the strong anti-incumbent mood of the country and the state may not have the effect it would if he were an incumbent. And his party is in power in the legislature, but not in the executive mansion.

Current polls show Brown and Republican Meg Whitman running neck and neck. But that could change overnight. Whitman has spent megabucks attacking her competitor, Jerry Poizner (who is the current state insurance commissioner and the only Republican holding statewide office). Whitman's name has been out there, while Brown was lying low. "Whitman has vowed to mount the largest opposition research effort in recent memory to remind voters of the 'target-rich environment' of Brown's long history as a career politician," says the San Francisco Chronicle. Of course, Brown will hit Whitman back with "political novice."

72 year old Brown shows no signs of slowing down, and this is likely to be a true donnybrook. Brown will slam Whitman for spending so much of her own money on the race, and Whitman will slam Brown for spending so much of the taxpayers' money in the past on his wacky projects. Whitman will no doubt hang the notorious Rose Bird around Brown's neck. Brown appointed Bird as chief justice of the California Supreme Court. She was so bad at what she did, and so clearly out of touch with the California law and electorate, that after an outrageous ruling in a death penalty case that nullified the death sentence of a cold-blooded murderer, she was recalled and replaced by the people, along with two of her fellow far left justices. More of Brown's judicial appointments were removed from office for various improprieties than those of any other prior or subsequent governors.

Brown is anti-death penalty in a state which is pro-death penalty. He promised, then and now, that despite his personal beliefs, he would support the law of the State of California. Nevertheless, as the current attorney general, he refused to argue the people's position in the Proposition 8 "gay marriage" case. As candidate for mayor of Oakland, he ran on a promise that the murder rate in that gang-heavy city would drop to one equal to Walnut Creek (a peaceful and relatively crime-free East Bay suburb). During his first year in that office, the number of murders increased from 60 the prior year to 109 in 2003. By the time he left, the murder rate had settled down, but still never went as low as the rate prior to his taking the office.

Note: Boo-hoo story of the day. San Francisco illegal immigrant supporters got out the violins for a local family which will be "torn apart" by an ICE determination that the wife intentionally overstayed her visa date. The City is to blame, say the advocates for the illegals. Despite an ordinance prohibiting the police from reporting minors who commit crimes to the feds unless they have been convicted, in the wake of several horrendous murders committed under that rule, Mayor Gavin Newsom ordered the police to ignore the ordinance and report any minor who is here illegally when the minor is arrested for a crime.

The thirteen-year old son of the wife was taken into police custody for assault and extortion for beating up a fellow student and robbing him. The hearts-and-flowers crowd's mantra is "but he only got 46 cents," as if that were some sort of defense. But while investigating the crime, the police discovered that Tracey Washington, the wife, and mother of the boy, is no longer entitled to be in the United States because her visa had expired in May of last year. So wifey and her two kids are being deported.

She will leave behind her husband of eleven months, Charles Washington, and his thirteen year old son from a prior marriage. Says Charles: "I feel like they've taken my right to have a family." Charles is black, and a natural-born American (as is his son). Tracey is white, and comes from Australia, where both her children were born. So naturally, they kicked off their show at the Asian Law Caucus. I don't get it. But, that's San Francisco.

Attempting to make the underlying cause of the deportation sound somewhat innocent, the lawyer for the family said "their hopes that [the illegals] could remain by virtue of the marriage to an American citizen were doomed by the 13-year old's schoolyard folly and the city's crackdown." After all, the victim was not seriously hurt, and the bully apologized. Isn't that sufficient to simply ignore California and federal law?

Tracey's argument for failing to file any requests to stay until December, 2009 (seven months after her visa expired) was the fault of the oppressive immigration laws and evil government bureaucrats. "The application cost several thousand dollars and a federal immigration office told them there was no filing deadline." But the law is clear, and they knew it. Applicants for permanent visa status based on marriage to a U.S. citizen must file the application within ninety days of entering the United States. The law is designed precisely to prevent illegals from searching out a potential husband or wife among the legal citizens. A huge number of those marriages are shams, designed solely to avoid the immigration laws.

Although I am not unsympathetic to their plight, these are not sweet innocents caught up in an oppressive law that they knew nothing about. The whole thing was calculated, and it failed. Too bad, so sad. The marriage was planned way back when the couple met in Australia, while the future husband was on a vacation six years earlier. Surely, they could have come up with a better plan over those six years. Washington says he cannot move to Australia because he also has a daughter here with whom he shares custody with a former wife. And that is our problem, how?

NOTE: San Francisco High Schools are going to be instrumental in preparing future race-baiters for the colleges and halls of academia. They will now offer courses in the ninth grade in ethnic studies. That's left-speak for "anti-caucasian" studies. As if they haven't just spent eight years being indoctrinated in "diversity," and "white ethnocentrism," and "Northern European arrogance," they will now get special courses in intensive hate studies. So far, only the state universities and colleges (not the University of California) have indicated that they will accept the courses for college credit. Naturally, San Francisco State University has offered to provide special assistance to the program. You know, SF State, the home of the black students riots, the militant Muslim Students Association, and physical attacks on Jews.

Says Jacob Perea, dean of the School of Education at SF State: "We're not really looking for the 4.4 GPA students. We're looking for the 2.1 or 2.2 students." That's what passes for "higher education." A bunch of half-wits being admitted to college so there will be a sufficiently large contingent of race warriors. Perea established the "Step to College" program at SF State. Included with his agenda, with the cooperation of the local high schools, is the provision that the ethnic studies program will give the students truly unearned credit toward college. Not only is the program "pass-fail," which would be bad enough. But nobody who enters the program can actually fail. If it appears a student is headed toward failure (and how stupid do you have to be to fail one of these courses?), he or she is simply "removed from the program." Which guarantees a 100% pass rate. This is how the post-racial liberal/progressive governments spend the taxpayers' money.
[+] Read More...

[-] Collapse Post...

San Francisco Diary--Journal Of An Exile

As promised, I'm going to continue with opening pictures of sights other than the ubiquitous Golden Gate Bridge (at least until I run out of them and return to the most notable symbol of the City by the Bay). Pictured is Coit Tower, visible from almost every spot from downtown to Fisherman's Wharf, high atop Telegraph Hill. In front of the tower is a statue of Columbus, holding out his hand toward the great unknown west. He thought he was looking toward China. Since the tower overlooks the largest Chinese community outside China, he might have concluded he was right if he came to The City today.

The legend, common even among San Franciscans, is that the tower was designed to look like a fire hose and nozzle to commemorate the role of the firemen who so bravely fought the destructive fire following the Great Quake of 1906. It's an understandable mistake. The tower was commissioned by society queen Lillie Hitchcock Coit in 1933. The grande dame donated one-third of her considerable fortune to the beautification of the city she so loved, and Coit Tower was among her bequests. Coit was particularly fond of Knickerbocker Engine Company Number Five which had rushed through the explosive demolitions to attempt to save as much of the Telegraph Hill area as possible. But the design itself had nothing to do with the fire companies. It was meant as an art deco symbol of The City, to be seen by all the ships entering the Bay on their way to their moorings. And it is, indeed, one of the most visible symbols of The City as ships enter the harbor, to be dwarfed by the Transamerica Tower only after the ships have rounded the northern shore before proceeding to their moorings on The Embarcadero.

The interior contains a brew of murals that don't seem to fit Madame Coit's basic beliefs. They are fabulous (as in "like a fable," not like Perez Hilton "fab"). Most were done as early examples of FDR's Public Works of Art depression program. Needless to say, the art was very left wing. But San Francisco, being San Francisco, and Lillie Coit being Lillie Coit, it ended up being a left-right joint venture in defiance of anti-communist outcry. After New York's Rockefeller Center destroyed Diego Rivera's Man at the Crossroads for its depiction of Lenin as a hero of progress, the demand went out for similar destruction of the Coit murals. Lillie stood firm--"Nobody is going to destroy my murals." And she meant it. Still available for view are Stackpole's Industries of California, in which Stackpole depicts himself reading a newspaper describing the destruction of the Rivera mural. Bernard Zakheim's The Library mural depicts a fellow artist crumpling up a local newspaper (The Chronicle?) while reaching for a copy of Marx's Das Kapital. Arnautoff's City Life shows a news rack prominently displaying The Daily Worker and The New Masses. Today it's all campy good fun, and in keeping with Dame Coit's wishes, it's all free to the public.

On Wednesday, the tower got a treatment unlike any it has ever had before. It became a giant movie screen, visible from Nob Hill, Russian Hill and the Wharf. In keeping with crazed San Francisco tradition, the whole dusk to dawn presentation commemorated the 1969 Indian takeover of Alcatraz Island. The producer calls it "a film feature for the spirit." At least he didn't say "The Great Spirit." Any Indians still hiding on Alcatraz would be able to see the projection, if they still have their Native American eagle eyes. Otherwise, binoculars would be in order. At least it wasn't Marxist, so I guess that constitutes a refreshing change.

Note: Sarah Palin's blockbuster hit is not faring well in San Francisco. Somehow, I'm not surprised. The venerable Chron headlines "Bay Area Not Maverick Enough To Read Palin Book." So a couple of rogues at Pajamas Media thought it might be a good idea to see what "smart" books made the shelves in San Francisco bookstores. While the Palin book is reluctantly displayed at the megastores, the independents just don't want to take room away from the more intellectual books that San Franciscans so love.

The Chronicle points out that the Palin book "Might as well have cooties. Hardly anyone wants to touch the thing, or even get close to it." They quote bookstore owner Nathan Embretson: "Our customers are thinking people. They're not into reading drivel." So let's take a look at the books which are prominently displayed at the independents, and which are so, so, intellectual.

Inside Job: Unmasking the 9-11 Conspiracies by Jim Marrs. Originally planned for a major publisher, the tome couldn't pass legal muster. After major revisions and editorial support, they still couldn't reach an agreement. Marrs found a minor paperpack publisher after the original publisher cancelled in 2003. Six years later, it's sitting prominently on the shelves of the independents.

Discovering America as It is by Vaidas Anelauskas. Anelauskas has been identified as a white racist anti-semite by several respectable journalists. A quote from the book reveals: "Only from people of that peculiar tribe can we expect such Talmudic hatred for humanity. There is even a famous saying that wars are the Jews' harvest." I seem to remember that this particular saying was very popular among Nazis and neo-Nazis.

The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood by Rashid Khalidi. A companion piece to Discovering America, from the viewpoint of jihadists rather than Nazis. When will those Jews just go away and leave decent folk alone?

On The Justice of Roosting Chickens: Reflections on the Consequences of U.S. Imperial Arrogance and Criminality by Ward Churchill. Expanding on a theme of Malcolm X, the unwashed, unshaven pseudo-Native American with zero academic credentials other than being fired by the University of Colorado for plagiarism, providing false information, and subversive activity, this is a fine leftist fantasy about terrorist America.

The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems by Van Jones. The communist race-baiting former Green Czar for his soulmate Barack Obama has simple solutions for complicated problems. Par for the course for simpletons.

Inner Paths to Outer Space: Journeys to Alien Worlds Through Psychedelics and Other Spiritual Technologies by various mushroom-shaped authors. "Those who regularly navigate the hyperspatial landscape that some have called the 'tryptamine dimension' have long suspected that the portals to inner and outer space may be one and the same. This book, a collaboration of the most cutting-edge shaman/neuroscientists working in this field, boldly explores this concept in a stunning tour de force." What more can I say?

And the list goes on, seemingly interminably. The Framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal by J. Patrick O'Connor; Fugitive Days: Memoirs of an Anti-War Activist by Willam Ayers; Ash Wednesday by Ethan Hawke (there's an "e" at the end of that name. I'm no relative of the sissy-boy actor, I assure you); Underground: My Life with SDS and the Weathermen by Mark Rudd; Cold Fusion: Challenge to U.S. Science Policy by Lyndon LaRouche (remember him?); and finally, J.Lo: The Secret Behind Jennifer Lopez's Rise to the Top by National Enquirer writer Sarah Gallick. They could have cut that last title to: J.Lo: The Not-So-Secret Behind.

I may be a bit of an academic snob, but I gotta tell ya, next to that list Sarah Palin is looking like Ludwig von Mises. You betcha.

Note: Among the multitudinous female candidates for public office, a new one has joined the fray. Meg Whitman is running for governor, and her first urban stop since announcing her candidacy in September is in San Francisco. The second Silicon Valley high-powered woman executive to throw her bonnet into the ring, Republican Whitman has left the Senate race to her counterpart from Hewlett-Packard. Whitman made her bones as CEO of e-Bay. Whitman made a good start by talking to her fellow business owners and execs at the St. Francis Hotel gathering of the Chamber of Commerce. So far, she is ahead in the preliminary Republican polls, and has already spent $19 million of her own money on the campaign. How come I never made that kind of money when I was a business executive?

Whitman is slowly emerging, but so far it's hard to tell if she's a moderate or a full-blown RINO. She is clearly pro-business, but her stands on social issues and government interference in private matters have not yet been fleshed out. An example of her biz-speak includes: "What is remarkable is whether people are talking about a spending cap or the growth of costs in the state, no one ever talks about the government getting more productive. Productivity metrics not in the nomenclature." The last I looked, almost every Republican and conservative was talking about government lack of productivity and how the job could be done better privately (and profitably), and if she means "government actions in places which belong to the private sector," we're all opposed. But those productivity metrics sound cool, don't they?

But she does have a serious image problem. The Sacramento Bee reported that she had registered to vote in California as recently as seven years ago, and only registered as a Republican in 2007. It took a week for her to respond to the charge, and during that interim, she was already labeled a carpetbagger and had developed a public image as a dilettante and a candidate with little previous interest in GOP politics. Her slow response was that she was a registered Republican who voted in Ohio throughout the 80s, but it may have been too late to change the immediate perception of her as just another opportunist who hasn't earned Republican loyalty.

The best candidate in the Republican field is the serious and successful conservative Tom Campbell. But he can't come even close to raising the kind of war chest available to Whitman or his other opponent, Steve Poizner. Though Poizner is a relative unknown like Whitman, he is also a former Silicon Valley success story, having started a couple of Silicon Valley high-tech firms, and selling SnapTrack for a billion dollars.

Most of the buzz about Whitman is related to her organizational skills rather than her political positions. Poizner said of Whitman: "She's a marketing expert. That's an important skill. I've hired a lot of these people. If folks want to re-brand the state, they'll vote for her. If they want to rebuild it, they'll vote for me." Sorry, Mr. Poizner, that honor should go to Campbell.

But still it's clear that she couldn't do any worse at destroying the state's once leading economy than RINO Schwarzenegger or her likely opponent in the general election, former Governor Moonbeam Jerry Brown. Although Brown's leftocrat party holds a thirteen point registration lead over Republicans, Whitman has shown as being in a dead-heat for the governor's job in several recent polls, including Rasmussen. For that reason she goes out of her way not to come off as a celebrity know-nothing running against a liberal machine. Ahnuld has damaged that image, perhaps forever. But she does attack professional politicians. "If the professional politicians had done such a great job in Sacramento, maybe California would be in better shape than it's in."

It's unlikely that any issue, even gay marriage, will be able to push the economic crisis off the top of the list of "fix it now" issues. And Whitman thrives on that. She says, with a large amount of veracity, that her experience running a large company can translate into success at a state capital held captive by strong union interests and an unruly legislature. Brown has never done much of anything except dither around in state politics, and his best friends are Hollywood celebrities, big unions, state employees, and ACORN.

Much about Whitman remains to be seen. But for now, it looks like she's a relatively sensible candidate who knows how to read a balance sheet and hasn't taken any radical views along with her on the campaign trail. And she won't be intimidated by Brown's dismissive snarl and snarky one-liners the way so many others have. This may turn out to be one of the more exciting contests in recent years.

Note: Gavin Newsom, illustrious missing mayor and former candidate for governor, is well known for his reluctance to fire any city appointee. But he just fired Stefanie Coyote (wife of renowned actor, drug advocate and general all-around lefty Peter Coyote) from her position as Executive Director of the San Francisco Film Commission. The $132,000 annual job is supposed to promote the desirability of San Francisco as a spot for Hollywood filming. Two years ago, she caused a major flap by making the Marine Corps jump through liberal, politically-correct hoops to film a recruiting ad featuring San Francisco backgrounds. The Marine Corps allowed that next time it would film in less hostile territory, like Berkeley.

Apparently, Newsom blindsided Coyote. She was away on a Thanksgiving leave, and got the news second-hand. I have to give Newsom credit--his action served up two turkeys on one platter. Attaboy, Gavin. There may be hope for you yet.

Note: Speaking of banana republics (We were speaking of banana republics, weren't we? Or was that an earlier column?). Banana Republic, the popular clothing store for yuppies who want to live in the South Seas in the 30s, is owned by The Gap. San Francisco's unemployment rate is approaching 17 percent, and Banana Republic is doing its part to alleviate that. At their main store on Grant Avenue, they just hired 39 greeters. Unfortunately, that doesn't actually help our unemployment rate, since 35 of the 39 hirees are neither Californians nor San Franciscans. In fact, they're not even Americans.

All 35 are visiting tourists or foreign students. Banana Republic insists that the minimum wage jobs were open to anyone, but no locals applied. Well, as your intrepid reporter, I must let you know that I have low friends in high places. I am friendly with several business owners in the nearby Westfield Shopping Centre where Banana Republic has its second largest San Francisco store. They all report daily applications from locals willing to take any job for any pay rate that's legal, and more than a few have mentioned that both Banana Republics had told them there were no jobs available.

Note: Not to be outdone by the local booksellers, Mad Mark Morford has his own opinion on Sarah Palin's blockbuster hit book. If you want to know his suggested usage of the book (he doesn't clarify if you should wait for the parperback or not), here it is: Top Ten Uses for Going Rogue.
[+] Read More...

[-] Collapse Post...

The Gay Mafia Is Out For Blood

From time to time, I've attempted to keep our readers updated on the very important legal battle in California over Proposition 8 (the Traditional Marriage Amendment to the California constitution). In summary so far, the California Supreme Court upheld the amendment and a lawsuit has now been filed in federal court claiming, among other things, that the law violates basic federal constitutional rights which override California's law.

After shopping all over the west coast for a Ninth Circuit federal judge who would allow such a lawsuit to proceed (it's called "forum shopping"), the anti-Prop 8 forces finally found a judge who held that the complaint was sufficient to go forward into a pre-trial phase. Now between thee and me, I am really wondering how smart the attorneys could be when they didn't start by looking in San Francisco first. After all, this is the City where a liberal federal judge ruled some years back that California's Anti-Discrimination amendment for all public employment was invalid. Judge Thelton P. Henderson, a Carter appointee, essentially held that the words of the U.S. Constitution in the Fourteenth Amendment were "unconstitutional." Forbidding racial preferences in public employment was somehow discriminatory to Henderson. That was too much for even the ultraliberal, slightly loony, and much-reversed Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker found that a cause of action upon which relief can be granted was present in this case, as well as a valid contention that federal law preempts the field in this area of civil law. A minimum of seven other judges throughout the circuit had previously found that no such cause of action existed and that the case was properly decided upon adequate independent state grounds. For the information of the legally uninitiated, the federal rule is that federal district courts must use the substantive federal law in a case which has been accepted for litigation, but must apply the local jurisdiction's procedural rules. Since Walker did not state in his findings specifically what was wrong with the California Supreme Court's ruling, it is conceivable that he found problems both with substance and procedure. But that remains to be seen.

Once a case has been accepted, it then moves into pretrial proceedings, usually including multiple legal motions. Walker's true colors have just come out. Not only was his original finding contrary to that of seven of his fellow judges, but now he has demonstrated that his rulings will go in favor of the anti-Prop 8 advocates. The plaintiffs were denied access to any "lists" which would show the names of every person who contributed in any way to the promotion and ultimate success of Prop 8 at every level of the state litigation. Walker has now found that the formerly protected "proprietary information" must now be released to the plaintiffs. The extremely tenuous and unprecedented ground that Walker bases this on is that if "any of the backers of Proposition 8 were motivated by discrimination, then the court can strike down the measure without having to decide if gays and lesbians have a constitutional right to marry [emphasis added]."

This is a breathtaking divergence from prior cases, and an insult to the integrity of the California appellate process. And it is a thuggish attack on the right of the people to advocate for legislation that might offend a "victim group." The value of this reprehensible tactic was already demonstrated in the Prop 8 campaign. Although every court in California refused to grant a motion for the release of this kind of broad fishing expedition, many of the official backers of the measure were on public record. Radio personalities, news reporters and private businesses which showed any affinity for Prop 8 were publicly "outed," boycotted, picketed and threatened. Several companies were forced to do penance by contributing to the anti-Prop 8 war chest. Several people lost their jobs. As Chronicle reporter Debra Saunders says: "Unless this ruling is overturned, the word will be out that sore losers who can't beat you at the ballot box and probably can't beat you in court can file a lawsuit designed to pry away proprietary information that they later can use to embarrass you."

There is no doubt that there were persons who contributed time and/or money to the campaign for Prop 8 are simply anti-homosexual. So what? If backers of a proposition have both personal and legal reasons for supporting a law, the only legitimate question remains is does the personal (and perhaps unlawful) purpose of some of the measure's backers in any way affect either the words or the intent of the actual legislation? Many activist homosexuals openly hate heterosexual traditionalists. If they backed a successful pro-gay marriage amendment, would that invalidate the measure? Regardless of what the very confused Walker may think, the answer is no. No matter how hateful the proponents of a measure may be, if the measure promotes a legitimate state interest, and violates no constitutional provisions by either word or effect, then the motivations of the backers is of no legal interest to the court.

Walker has demanded that lists of backers and all pro-Prop 8 strategy documents be turned over to the plaintiffs. Legal experts have so far been unable to find any previous court case which required such an onerous burden on the supporters of a ballot measure. Once again, those who cannot win at the ballot box or by healthy advocacy in the halls of the legislatures, resort to the courts to overturn the will of the people.

Essentially, what the court seems willing to do is to allow plaintiffs to argue that the motives of the proponents of a measure were not "sufficiently pure." There is absolutely no precedent for such judicial overreach, even in the crazed Ninth Circuit. Chief Justice Ron George of the California Supreme Court, who had ruled pre-Prop 8 that gay marriage was valid in California under the then-existing state constitution, ruled in upholding Prop 8's change in the state constitution that: "The issue [this time] is the right of the people to change the state constitution regardless of whether the provision is wise or sound as a matter of policy or whether we, as individuals, believe it should be a part of the California Constitution." Now that's the law.

The defendants (the People of the State of California) should immediately appeal this decision. If the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upholds the ruling, the People should then request an emergency hearing at the United States Supreme Court. Otherwise, it might be too late to protect the integrity of the electoral process. In most states, that action would be a given. But if you'll recall something I told you about awhile back, you'll know that it's not a sure thing here. The lead counsel for the People is one Jerry Brown, Attorney General of the State of California, and an active opponent of Prop 8. He has refused to recuse himself, and will not even go so far as to say that "regardless of ny personal opinions, I will vigorously defend the People of the State of California in this lawsuit."

The People of the State of California, the state and federal constitutions, and the law are all being given cards dealt from the bottom of the deck by expert crooks, liars and leftists. And none of them have considered what might happen if this travesty is allowed to continue. Prop 8 attorney Chuck Cooper said: "I cannot imagine that what is sauce for the goose will not also be sauce for the gander." Before you start applauding the judge's ruling, environmentalists and civil libertarians, consider that fact.
[+] Read More...

[-] Collapse Post...