Archive for Politics

Living in California like I do has it’s advantages.  Take the weather for example – is there a place on earth with a more benign climate?  Doubtful.  Then there is the geography with it’s diverse and staggering beauty.  This place is seemingly a paradise;  yet people are leaving in droves for places like Texas, Idaho and Utah.

No offense Texans, Idahoans and Utah…people.  But Why?

Many are emigrating for economic reasons – everything costs more in California.  Others are leaving because despite its outward resemblance to paradise, California is not a very free place to live.  The Government here intrudes into almost every aspect of  life in one form or another.  As far as the economic factors I mentioned a sentence or two ago – these economic factors have underlying causes that relate directly back to government intrusion and overreach.  We pay high taxes on almost everything, pay taxes that are called “fees” on everything else, and finally we pay artificially high prices on housing, goods and services because of the cost of regulation.

The Progressive Utopia of California is a nanny state – it’s like having your mom always there telling you to pick up your socks and eat your brussels sprouts.  Always. There.  Except that your California Nanny State Mom is an alcoholic cat lady who is also schizophrenic.  And stupid.

Turns out people don’t like being told what to do and how to live and then being made to pay for it.  They experience a sudden realization that midwest winters, Texas summers, hurricanes and tornados don’t sound so bad.  If you can keep your money and the government will leave you the hell alone, that is.

The Progressive Utopia of California is a nanny state – it’s like having your mom always there telling you to pick up your socks and eat your brussels sprouts.  Always. There.  Except that your California Nanny State Mom is an alcoholic cat lady who is also schizophrenic.  And stupid.

Of course, Nanny State Mom only wants what’s best for you.   She only needs ordinances and laws to keep SOME people from making arguably unhealthy or unsafe decisions, presumably for the good of the public at large.  The rules start out being somewhat innocuous – things like mandatory automobile seat belt laws, mandatory motorcycle helmet laws, etc.  These rules mandating (or prohibiting) behaviors are rarely objected to because most people agree that they are “common sense” or “good ideas”.  However, if they are common sense or good ideas wouldn’t people do them on their own?  Why do we need a law?

So what happens when California Nanny State Mom has a few other ideas about what’s best for us all that might seem a little…how shall I put this…nutty?  Well now we’re gonna need a law.  Or two.  Or three…hundred thousand.

Because in the Progressive Utopia of California we can’t have people just doing whatever they want.  Does that seem like an extreme statement?  If you accept the premise of the Nanny State then it is not.  Because to accept that someone else, for whatever reason has the right to make decisions for you the only remaining question is how far are they allowed to go in enforcing those choices?  In the future Progressive Utopia of California all that is not forbidden will be mandatory.  And just exactly how is Mom gonna do that without her boot on your throat?

If it’s so bad, why am I still here?  The Prog Lib Dems who pull Nanny State Mom’s strings are telling me to get out.  They don’t want me or people like me here.  LaLaLaLaLa…I’m not listening to you, mom.  I was obstinate as a child and I’m not about to change.  Besides, the very fact that I may be an obstacle however small to full realization of the People’s Progressive Dystopian Banana Republic Hellscape of California is reason enough for me to endure and stay.  Well, that and the weather.

Discuss

July 4th, 1776: The Continental Congress adopts the text of the Declaration of Independence.

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Though Congress had voted in favor of actually declaring independence from Great Britain on July 2nd, Thomas Jefferson was selected to draft the document and after 2 days of writing and editing, the text was ratified on July 4th.  This was not a trivial act – it was an act of treason.  Were the revolution to fail, it would mean a death sentence.

Listen to a reading of the Declaration of Independence here.

Reflect for a moment today on what we have to be grateful for, because some men a few hundred years ago had the courage to draft and sign a document.

Cross posted at Men Out of Work Blog

Please tell me you know what D-Day is.  In case you don’t, go here.  Then stop whining about how tough we have it today.

Follow this link to the National WWII Museum website D-Day Timeline for an hour by hour account.  Here’s a sample:

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So – happy reading!  And enjoy!

So I read this today.  According to Matt O’Brien at The Washington Post WonkBlog:

Economists Have Discovered How Bad The Economy Really Is

Excerpt:

“…even though the unemployment rate tells us the most about the labor market, it doesn’t tell us the full story. All it does is show us how many people who are actively looking for work can’t find it. But that leaves out the “shadow unemployed” who want full-time jobs but have either given up looking for them or can only find part-time ones.”

So we have a lot of “underemployment” instead of unemployment.  Not to mention those who are employed full time in jobs of last resort because their are no jobs available for them in their chosen field and they need something to pay the bills.  You know – the engineer who works at Home Depot or the middle manager who is selling phones at the AT&T store, or the former factory worker who now a cosmotologist (at an 80% pay cut).

Huh.  Who Knew?  Oh…that’s right.  Everyone who doesn’t work for a newspaper.  Well, at least one guy who works (blogs?) for a newspaper knows.

Nothing to see here!  Move Along!

Cross posted at Cuana Enterprises Amazon Store blog, the Men Out Of Work Blog

It is the Official Observance of the beginning of The American Revolution in 1775.  240 Years ago yesterday were fought the battles of Lexington and Concord.

Could it happen again today?  Read this:

Seventy Two Killed Resisting Gun Confiscation in Boston.

That sounds like it could be ripped from today’s headlines.  I guess that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

California’s Leaders and Visionaries are lacking in leadership and vision.  Other than that, things are going great.

People are starting to notice that the “leaders” in California aren’t doing such a great job.  Over at The Daily Beast, Joel Kotkin does a nice job of making his case that California is becoming a feudal society of the very rich, the very poor and a vanishing middle class, with a liberal-socialist dominated state government that is incapable of dealing with any crisis large or small, no matter how much advanced warning they have.  The “no-growth” and “environment first” policies have resulted in a state whose crumbling infrastrucure is insufficient to support it’s burgeoning population.  Hell, it was insufficient 40 years ago during the reign of Moonbeam I, and now during the Weekend at Bernie’s administration of Moonbeam II and III we’ll be lucky if there’s water to flush the toilets.

What am I talking about?  THE DROUGHT!

Who could possibly have foreseen a drought?  Only anyone with a pulse, that’s who.  What are we doing about it?  Letting our lawns die.  Visionary!  More importantly what are we doing to alleviate the next drought?  Because there will be a next drought.  California’s history is basically a list of droughts that occur on a regular basis.  You can practically set your clock by them.  SO…are we planning a system of aqueducts like the Romans did?  Nope.  Are we building more dams and reservoirs for water storage capacity?  Nope.  We passed a bond measure (translation: borrowed money) to deal with the problem.  What are we building with the money?  A giant bureaucracy to create regulations on how we use water.  Problem solved!

It’s not that we can’t afford to do something about it.  God knows our politicos are shoveling the taxpayer’s money down various holes like a fireman shovels coal on a steam locomotive.  (Governor Brown: please don’t get any more ideas!).  Even with businesses and middle class taxpayers fleeing, there is still record tax revenue.  The state budget has more than doubled in the last 20 years.  So what’s the problem?  The problem is the mindset – what we chose to spend (and not spend) on.  The mindset about what ends are achievable and desirable versus those that are counter to the laws of economics, not to mention the laws of physics and indeed the laws of nature itself.

Some time ago I wrote that California needs leaders – Men to Match Her Mountains.  Or Women.  Women or Men with the vision to see what needs to be done and the courage to see it done.

I am not advocating mass disregard for the environment, but if you’re going to have forty million or more people live somewhere, they are going to have needs and those needs must be met.  Meeting those needs will leave a footprint.  Visionaries look forward and find innovative ways to meet challenges.  Yeah, we’ll leave a footprint or two.  But we can also tread lightly as possible and mitigate the effects of the things we need to do, the things that we must do.

There is nothing “progressive” about a mindset that says in order to move forward we must lower our standards of living and make do with less.  That we must aspire to less.  That we must scale back our dreams.  If that is what our leaders and visionaries are telling us, then they are neither leaders nor visionaries.

Trigger warning – it’s Monday and I’m cranky.  This could get profane.  Hide the children.

This post is about the drought in California – an unecessary drought.  I know many of you who are looking at California in your rear view mirrors, and your attitude is “so what?”  I still live here, so I care.

Yes, I care.  I wish our “leaders” cared as much as I do.  They obviously do not.  Either that, or they are monumentally stupid.  Two choices.    Well, I guess there is a third choice: they don’t care and they are monumentally stupid.  Come to think of it, that seems like the safest bet.  Yeah, I’m going with that.

I say that because there are some conditions here, both climatic and social that are so obvious ignoring them or otherwise failing to meaningfully adress them requires an absolute lack of mental acuity or ardent willfull blindness.

I made  a case a few months ago – read this and see if you agree with me;

California Politicos:  Need Water?  Build a Train

All the preceding is preamble to a long, well written piece in City Journal by Victor Davis Hanson that is worth ten minutes of your time:

The Scorching of California

Jerry Brown had a chance to do something about the drought the last time he was Governor – back in the 1970s.  But he and the rest of the “visionaries” in his administrations practiced a “no growth” mentality.  Infrastructure planning and implementation ground to a halt.  Because building new freeways would create more traffic or something.  And more dams would equal less water?  More likely “fish first, f*ck everybody else”.  Or maybe they believed “if you don’t build it they won’t come”.  News flash, Jerry – you didn’t build it and they came anyway.  And now we’re all screwed.

But hey – trains!  Just like Europe!  Problem solved!

…Big Government, having been kept out of the  bedroom (for now), lays siege to our backyards and hotel showers.  Of course, it’s For Your Own Good ®.

Remember a few years back when there was a big brouhaha over some states’ antiquated anti-sodomy laws and other laws dealing with inter-racial relationships?  There was a movement to identify and repeal these laws on the basis that they represented unwarranted intrusion of the governement into our personal lives – a position I support, BTW.  So these laws were wiped off the books, and the public at large now has freedom of sexual*ahem*expression without fear of the sex police breaking the door down to verify the correct techniques are being employed or that the participants’ genders meet statutory requirements.  Yay freedom!  U-S-A!  U-S-A!

So that’s all well and good.  We don’t need old outdated laws intruding on our freedom.  Nope.  What we need are some new laws intruding on our freedom.  Why?  Because in the Progressive Utopia of the 21st Century and Beyond we either will need to be protected from something or we will need our behavior modified to comply with the modern and correct norms of liberal groupthink.

Examples?  OK.  Take barbeque grills for example.  They are sources of pollution – they must be – look at all that smoke!  And the poor grillmaster!  Exposed to all those carcinogens!  Forced to sacrifice his health just so that others may partake of tasty meats.  It’s an injustice, and quite frankly I do not understand how we as a society can tolerate it.  Luckily, EPA to the rescue!

Backyard Burger and Wiener Roasts Targeted By EPA

Of course, they’re only studying it now, but it will be coming to your backyard soon enough I’m sure.  No need to thank the EPA.  They’re just doing their job.  Someone has to micromanage your life so you don’t hurt yourself.

Now go take a shower and wash off all that soot and grease.  Just don’t stay in the shower too long or we’ll have to modify your behavior.

EPA Wants to Monitor How Long Hotel Guests Spend In The Shower

Why hotel guests?  They gotta start somewhere, I suppose.

“First, they came for the hotel guests and I said nothing because I was not a hotel guest.  Finally when there was a bureaucrat with a clipboard living in my home taking notes while I showered there was no one left to stand up for me.”  – me in five years

So, as I said, the siege continues.  Certainly the government was pushed back out of the bedroom, but they’ve made it into the backyard and now they’re in the bathroom.  You know what’s right next to the bathroom?  That’s right!  The bedroom!  And you don’t want to know what’s going to happen when they get back in there!

Because in the Progressive Utopia of the 21st Century and Beyond, that which is not forbidden will be mandatory!