Tag Archives: california

The trouble with a one party state

California is now a one party state.  This has been the big issue of the 2016 election.  It smacks of communist party rule, and is degenerative to society in so many ways.  During my campaign, I want to address Democratic Party dominance, how its entrenched their position in the state, and how its damaging society as a whole.

First is the legal entrenchment.  In 2010, California adopted the open primary rule, meaning only the top two vote getters in the primaries get to advance to the general election.  So this year, we didn’t get to vote for any Republicans except the president.

That Kamala Harris would become our next Senator was a foregone conclusion and a coronation.  There was no GOP candidate, only a runner up Democrat who ran to her left.

This scenario has left Republicans folding their tents and given the Democrats the keys here, they don’t even run campaigns anymore.  This leaves us with a political machine which has no debate.  Only one big machine, with ladders and favors to apparatchiks.  My 37th district has a congresswoman who’s a 4th generation dynasty of appointees.

One could say that, well, this is because California is a diverse electorate which does not fall for racists.  But they would be wrong.  As I’ve pointed out before, Trump made inroads to Blacks and Latinos that have flummoxed the Republican party for decades.  He basically cracked the race code.  Those cracks were evident earlier, when Democrats thought blacks would join them in fighting against Prop 8 (outlawing gay marriage) but they wound up being its most fervent supporters.  And I think that all peoples and races share some basic core values which make them natural Republicans.  Issues like Family, Law and Order, Work Ethic, Public service.

So why are so many voting Democrat?  The answer is social – the other dimension a one-party state entrenches power.  For this I have mostly anecdotal evidence.  But it’s assumed around Los Angeles that nobody, and I mean NOBODY, could vote for Donald Trump.  All the worst lies about him are assumed to be true, people around here are literally suicidal that he’s won.

You’d say, well who cares, but the fact is that you can’t support Donald Trump, you can’t even give him a fair hearing, without constantly getting into arguments.  Conversations start with “at least we all hate Trump, right?” or “I can’t believe how anybody could vote for that rapist”.  And when they see you not nodding in enthusiastic agreement, then the argument starts.

It’s not just annoying.  It’s damaging to democratic society.  Indeed it bares light on the Democrats’ strategy that goes all the way back to the Antebellum days – they treat their base like a plantation, and instead of resorting to reasoned arguments turn to slanders and violence on anyone who doesn’t support them.

So part of our early strategy in this run is to come out of the closet as Trump supporters and Republicans.  We need to come out, stand proud, and even if some of us didn’t vote for Trump, at least demand a fair hearing for him.  I share an opinion with a number of friends and acquaintances that, regardless of who we voted for, we still accept the other candidate and want to give them a fair hearing.

We can start with that simple premise.

 

Considering a congressial run in the GOP

FINALLY! A Secular non-tea-party Republican has run a successful campaign!

I know. Record screeching to a halt. What?  Yes.  Trump’s victory forever changed the GOP.  It dissolved both the Tea Party and the Evangelicals in one blow.  Yes, of course he made overtures to them during his campaign.  And he will fulfill promises to them.  But both Tea Party conservatives and hard evangelicals campaigned as hard against him with their #nevertrump as any Democrat.

Meanwhile, in his simple populist message Trump made inroads to Black and Latinos that have flummoxed the Republican party for decades.  He basically cracked the race code.  And I want to build on that.  Trump’s victory is a blow to PC culture which might actually grant us a real discussion among each other as Americans.  And I think that all peoples and races share some basic core values which make them natural Republicans.  Issues like family, Law and Order, Work Ethic, Public Service.

It’s these issues Trump laid the groundwork for.  If we can build on this, and really push forward a new Republican agenda of enlightened classic liberalism, we could go into the 21st century making it the greatest one yet.  And we can go into it with a consensus that really represents America.

Once again, California is a perfect starting point for this visionary future.

In his Victory, the Death of the Democrats

The Republicans reel from the dissolution of these wings which they depended on for their mass base.  But they will recover.  And they will come out stronger than before, ready to handle this century of challenges.  Already a new generation of anti-PC secularist militants sympathetic to Trump are organizing.  Mind you, these are not your leftist secularists.  We do not begrudge people their religion, we don’t attack their beliefs, in fact we enshrine their right to behave as they see fit.

The Democrats, unfortunately, are still saddled by their militant wings, which are pulling the party ever more into irrelevance.  One would think their base would see the error of their ways after Trump’s election, and drift away from identity politics and branding everyone and everything as a racist.  They are not, and in fact are doubling down on their politics.

But this is the symptom of a party that has been in power too long and has not needed to become self conscious.

I was a lifelong Democrat.  I worked for the Democrats in a number of campaigns, I see how they behave, especially in my home state of California.  I consider myself of the vein of such Democrats as Chuck Schumer, Jim Webb, and Jerry Brown.

But with Trump’s election, I’m flipping to the Republican party.  Because Trump effectively took over those wings of the Democrats, and now they are part of a GOP conversation.  I want to be a part of this dynamic conversation they are having.  The Democrats stopped having a conversation, and I fear there is not much for them as a party at this point.

This will be the first of many articles about my stances on various issues.  The major question at this point is how to run as a GOP candidate in California, which is effectively a one party state.  I would like to discuss how it became a one party state, how damaging this setup is to our politics and our society, and how we can reverse this trend.

Making hay in a drought

In response to the ongoing drought in California, our esteemed politicians have closed down beach showers.  This is a classic PR Stunt, as beach showers aren’t even a drop in the bucket of our water usage.  Nay, it effectively INCREASES water use, since everyone will just have to take (much more wasteful) showers at home.

PR stunts abound in our current water crisis, whether from Democrats using cheap stunts to pretend we’re saving water, or visiting Republicans telling us we need to relax environmental regulations and destroy even more of our natural rivers to feed our thirst.

Ironic that such PR stunts are making political hay out of this crisis.  When making literal hay is a big part of it.  I’ve been saying this for years.  Alfalfa – i.e. hay – is one of California’s main crops, and to my knowledge it requires about three YARDS of water a year.

It barely gets any mention in the press, but occasionally it does leak out, like in last week’s TED Radio Hour.

And yet, even the title “Will Our Demand For Food Threaten Our Supply of Water?” is misleading.  Here, let me quote them: “…the biggest consumer of water in California is alfalfa. Alfalfa alone uses more water than all of the humans in California combined, and most of it is shipped overseas.”  So this isn’t about us needing food, it’s about allowing completely wasteful crops to be grown, and not even for domestic consumption.

The more you delve into the statistics, the worse it gets.  Unfortunately I’m not a paid researcher, so you can look this up yourself, but I read it costs about $500 worth of water to grow about $100 worth of hay.  So we’re even SUBSIDIZING this wasteful crop.

And I’m not even gonna bother talking about rice.

When it comes to water usage, only 20% is urban, and about 80% is agricultural.  And when you subdivide urban use further – set up some kind of ladder of necessity – you’ll find we need even less.  Drinking, bathing, washing – these take nothing.  Irrigation of lawns starts taking more water.  Heck, even growing decent crops doesn’t take much water if you do it properly.  Eating meat takes water to grow the hay, but hey, let’s make some hay here and stop subsidizing hay production!

The answers are plenty.  Israel has much more of a water shortage than California, they even thought they could only support 2 million people with their water resources.  They now are a population of 9 million, and you know what?  Their public beach showers are AMAZING.  They don’t even have flow restrictors on their faucets, you know why?  Because it’s BULLSHIT.

It’s been the implicit thrust of this blog for a long time now.  The main issue in America is people are more interested in feel-good solutions than asking hard questions and looking at the big picture.  Maybe that’s the doom of America, that clinging such a philosophy as a symptom of our well-being will send us right out the other end of an apocalypse.

But I’d like to think there’s an alternative.