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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; California</title>
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		<title>Rick Perry: Restore the 10th Amendment, Restore Freedom</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/rick-perry-restore-the-10th-amendment-restore-freedom/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=rick-perry-restore-the-10th-amendment-restore-freedom</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 19 Dec 2014 05:54:47 +0000</pubDate>
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				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[California]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Texas]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=247758</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Former governor of the Lone Star State sheds light on the path to liberty at Restoration Weekend. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong style="color: #232323;">Below are the video and transcript to Gov. Rick Perry’s keynote speech at the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s 20th Anniversary Restoration Weekend. The event took place Nov. 13th-16th at the Breakers Resort in Palm Beach, Florida. </strong></p>
<p><iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/114532350" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>David, as we gather here for this 20th anniversary celebration of the Freedom Center, it was similar circumstances that this country found itself in when you had the first Restoration weekend in 1994. Two decades ago Republicans had swept into power in both of the Houses, a revolution that changed the balance of power for the first time, Cleta, in 40 years. Twenty years later, Republicans again have won historic victories in the midterm elections and once again we are controlling both houses of Congress. In addition to picking up eight seats in the U.S. Senate, we picked up at least a dozen House seats, three governorships, several state legislative chambers. Today, Republicans control 68 of the 98 partisan state legislative chambers. That is the most in the history of our party. And we stunned the pollsters. It was a beautiful thing. We stunned the pollsters even more than we stunned President Barack Obama, who apparently doesn&#8217;t realize that November 4 even happened. He&#8217;s too busy representing those who didn&#8217;t vote to listen to those who did vote. But even if he didn&#8217;t hear the message, the American people delivered one. They said enough of the slow growth tax policies, enough of the smothering debt, they said enough to this colossal bureaucracy that we&#8217;ve seen, and these agencies of government that all too often are unaccountable to the people. They rebelled against government-run healthcare schemes, against a President who refuses to secure the border, and against bureaucracies that are broken, arrogant and abusive of power. That&#8217;s what the American people said Tuesday. The American people made it clear. They want a clean break from the economic policies that have slowed our recovery at home, and the foreign policies that Jim did an incredible job of laying out that have weakened our standing abroad.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m here to say that a congressional majority is a terrible thing to waste. The power that has been newly granted by the people must be used wisely to serve the people, that it&#8217;s not good enough to state what we are against. We must articulate what we are for. The election results leave us with a truly once in a generation opportunity to usher in an era of renewal and reform. You are here tonight through your commitment to the Freedom Center, and you&#8217;re going to be on the front lines of this battle. One of the ideas that has returned to the fore of the conversation, to the forefront of people&#8217;s minds, if you will, is the proper place of states within our constitutional system. Indeed, we have spent the last six years challenging edicts out of Washington that amount to federal control of our classrooms, our healthcare, and our environment and our economy. Washington&#8217;s assault on state sovereignty and individual freedom is a well-documented assault on the Constitution and, in particular, the Tenth Amendment. Some have ridiculed the binding power of the Tenth Amendment, but, of course, Jay, without that amendment, the Bill of Rights would have been incomplete, and the Constitution would never have been ratified. The question is whether Republicans in Washington, now in control, will pursue Washington-centric solutions to the problems that plague us, or will they look to and empower the states.</p>
<p>It was the liberal Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis who called the states laboratories of democracy which &#8220;tried novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.&#8221; Yet Brandeis&#8217;s political descendants have forgotten that lesson. In fact, they flipped it around trying these grand experiments in federal power, ostensibly for the common good. I like that Tocqueville observed that in the American system the actions of the federal government would be rare, but the reality is the federal government is involved in all kinds of things the Constitution doesn&#8217;t empower it to do, while ignoring basic responsibilities like securing our border. And it&#8217;s the states that are pushing back against federal overreach and the courts are starting to take notice.</p>
<p>In the infamous Obamacare case of 2012, Chief Justice Roberts upheld the law, but the Supreme Court also struck down the mandatory Medicaid expansion as a violation of the Tenth Amendment. Now a new Obamacare case is about to be heard. It uses the letter of the law to challenge the federal government&#8217;s use of subsidies on many of these healthcare insurance exchanges. Now we know that the federal government overstepped its powers. We know that, partly because we know there is now a new smoking gun: One Jonathan Gruber, one of the architects of Obamacare. In less than a week&#8217;s period of time the Washington sin of prevarication has come to be known as &#8220;Gruber-ing.&#8221; He said repeatedly, I think, what is there now, six videos that we have, that the federal government had to lie to the voters because we are too stupid to know what&#8217;s good for us. That shows exactly why the states are so important to defending individual freedom; because the states have stood up to the abuses of federal power in Obamacare. The law, as a matter of fact, it may collapse upon its own weight.</p>
<p>So if the states are these laboratories of democracy, I would suggest to you that Texas has found the formula for success. You know, it&#8217;s interesting, some people call it the Texas miracle, and I tell them, I said it&#8217;s not a miracle. I can&#8217;t explain a miracle. This I can explain. This is really pretty simple. This is not rocket science. You don&#8217;t spend all the money. Keep the taxes low, a regulatory climate that is fair and predictable, a legal system that doesn&#8217;t allow for over-suing, and accountable public schools so you&#8217;ve got a skilled workforce. This will work. It&#8217;ll work anywhere. Jay, it&#8217;ll even work in California, I swear to God, I&#8217;m telling you it will. And the results have been rather stunning. When you look at job creation, one-third, one-third of all the jobs created in the United States in the last 13 plus years have been in the Lone Star State. Over the last ten years, we have created four times more jobs than the state of New York, we have created nine times more jobs than the state of California. And some would say well it&#8217;s because you have all of that energy, and I will suggest to you we are glad we have that energy. America is glad we have that energy. But it&#8217;s not singularly the energy boom, that&#8217;s only part of the reason for our success. We&#8217;ve added jobs across the spectrum – 228,000 workers in education and healthcare, 156,000 in professional services, 162,000 in hospitality services, 130,000 in trade and transportation, according to the Texas Public Policy Foundation. I am particularly proud of the fact that as of January of this year, Texas became the number one high-tech exporting state in the nation, passing up California and the famed Silicon Valley. And we&#8217;ve been continuing to reach out to give California companies the opportunity to relocate to the great state of Texas, companies like Toyota, who moved their North American headquarters to Plano this last year, companies like Space-X, and we&#8217;re going to keep doing it.</p>
<p>And my point is, I want the Golden State to succeed. We need California to be a powerful, successful country. That was a Freudian slip. We would really like to bring them into the United States and be a part of this country. You know, for ten consecutive years now, Chief Executive Officer magazine has chosen Texas as the number one state to do business, and, thanks to the governor of this state, Rick Scott, they are doing a good job to push us. Rick Scott is an extraordinary governor, and Floridians were really wise to put this man back into office again because he really understands what the future of our nation, the future of this state is all about, and the focus on creating that environment, where the citizens of this state will be free.</p>
<p>Freedom is what this is all about. It is in the pursuit of freedom, and, on average, there is a thousand people every day moving to the state of Texas because they are in pursuit of freedom. Freedom from over-taxation, freedom from over-litigation, freedom from over-regulation. That is what needs to be the powerful Republican message as we go forward inside the boundaries of this country. And here are some of the results of those policies. Our crime rate is now the lowest that it&#8217;s been since 1968. We&#8217;re shutting prisons down in the state of Texas, not building them.</p>
<p>What&#8217;s the result of good, thoughtful public policy? There are those that would stand up and say you cannot have a growing economy and take care of your environment. That is an absolute false lie. Nitrogen oxide levels are down 63 percent in the state of Texas in the last decade, ozone levels are down by 23 percent during that same period of time, our carbon footprint which, by the way, is not a pollutant, but is down by 11 percent during that period of time because we understand that, even if it is, we want to make sure that we&#8217;re doing everything that we can to make that environment as pleasing as it can be for the future generations, and that&#8217;s what we&#8217;ve done in the state of Texas. Part of that&#8217;s been because of policies that we&#8217;ve put into place to move old polluting types of engines, diesel engines, out of the fleets. Part of it&#8217;s been moving to that natural gas. That&#8217;s what can happen all across this country. This isn&#8217;t a miracle. It&#8217;s a model and it&#8217;s a model that will work anywhere. We are an increasingly diverse state. We got a little of something for everybody. We have Austin, Texas. As I told you, we are a diverse state. I refer to it as the blueberry in the tomato soup. And, David, I encourage you to visit from time to time. You can talk philosophy and tenure to the professors at the University of Texas. They would love to have you.</p>
<p>But, in all seriousness, can we do more? Yes. Should we try to do more? Absolutely. But what Texas shows is that with a rapidly growing economy all else becomes possible. Clearly Texas is a model that works, but we&#8217;re not alone. America has just experienced a great test of governing principles. In the days leading up to the 2014 mid-term elections, we were told that Republican governors were in trouble. You read it everywhere. You saw it on multiple outlets. Scott Walker&#8217;s public union reforms in Wisconsin, Sam Brownback&#8217;s tax-cutting in Kansas, Rick Scott&#8217;s pro-growth policies in Florida, all were going to be punished by the voters. For example, the campaign for America&#8217;s future said that seven Republican governors were now &#8220;being judged harshly by voters now that their right-wing policies had failed to deliver.&#8221; It went on to say that these states were laboratories for the kind of small government trickle-down economics that Senate candidates hoped to bring to Washington, impose on the nation, and there is a real danger that the failed experiments in these seven states will be brought to Washington by a Senate Republican majority. But the experiment wasn&#8217;t quite over, and the voters decided in a very powerful conclusion on November 4. Not only did six of those seven governors win re-election, but Republicans picked up governorships in solid states for Democrats like Massachusetts, Illinois, and even Maryland. And there were a lot of people, a lot of people that were responsible for those Republican victories including a number of you, if not all of you, in this audience tonight. Yet in the end it was the people who decided. They told fellow Americans that the experiment and conservative governance is a resounding success and they want more of it.</p>
<p>There were a few places that bucked the trend though. Jay, your California being one of them. See, I tell people, I say California, for example, is as liberal as Texas is conservative. But that is not an argument against federalism. In fact, California is an example of how the state&#8217;s Tenth Amendment powers work for liberals too. You think about this. California has some policies that no other state in the union have tried, and in most other states, don&#8217;t want to try. Take cap and trade, for instance. I mean, not even Barack Obama, in those heady early days of his first administration, could pass cap and trade, but California has it. And it&#8217;s making new companies like Tesla a lot of money, even as it is at the same time forcing a lot of companies out of that state.</p>
<p>Nearly 20 years ago, California also became the first state in the nation to legalize medical marijuana. In 2012, Washington and Colorado legalized marijuana entirely. This year Alaska, Oregon, and the District of Columbia followed suit. The governor of Colorado said that he regrets it. Most conservatives oppose it. The federal government&#8217;s still fighting it, and the United Nations said this week that legalizing marijuana violates international law. But that is the beauty of the Tenth Amendment. I&#8217;m telling you, that is the beauty of federalism. If states can make their own decisions on matters of general policy, then we can have the kind of political diversity among the states that gives meaning to the pursuit of happiness. People can vote with their feet, they can vote with their pocketbooks, they can invest their dollars where they want, and that gives states an incentive to attract them, and to innovate. The reason welfare reform became so popular nationwide was because it succeeded in Wisconsin. The reason state provided healthcare is unpopular nationwide is they proved that it was costly in Massachusetts.</p>
<p>Some states want to cling to policies for various reasons. California is addicted to spending. Therefore, it&#8217;s addicted to debt and taxes. So, there&#8217;s a result. It&#8217;s losing people, and entrepreneurs, and homeowners, and that is another benefit of federalism. You can do what you want in your state. But you are forced at some point to pay the costs.</p>
<p>So, how do we ensure that the states protect and, I might say, regain their Tenth Amendment rights? One way is by continuing to fight the encroachments of the federal government. Whether bad laws like Obamacare, bad spending like the stimulus of 2009, or bad faith in immigration policy, but beyond that we can take political action. We can show the American people concrete results, how states work better, how states compete against each other, and, I might add, better than the federal government could do. And that&#8217;s exactly how Governor-elect Larry Hogan over in Maryland, that was the point that he made. He laid out the data. He showed people in that state how many people had left the state, how many billions of dollars it was costing the state because of the bad policies. If we show people the difference between conservative policies and liberal policies, I happen to think they&#8217;re going to demand conservative policies almost every time just as they did last Tuesday. And when people understand, when people understand that they have the power to choose these policies, they&#8217;ll resist. They&#8217;ll resist any attempt by the federal government to take that power away. There is a reason that people and states are included together in that Tenth Amendment. Individual liberty has shone brightest when it&#8217;s been protected from big government. Only successful states are strong enough to protect our freedom from those in Washington who think they know better. States are the essence of our national motto e pluribus unum, from many one. That is the common creed of the David Horowitz Freedom Center that defends it every day. They defend it now and I will suggest to you they will defend it 20 years from now. And that is what each of us must fight for every day.</p>
<p>God bless you, and thank you all for coming and being a part of this.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.</b></p>
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		<title>ObamaCare Disaster in California</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/obamacare-disaster-in-california/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamacare-disaster-in-california</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/obamacare-disaster-in-california/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 01 Aug 2014 04:35:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[California]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Health Care]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obamacare]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[premium]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[skyrocket]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=237560</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Premiums skyrocket 22 to 88 percent in 2014. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/la-fi-obamacare-california-exchange-complaints-201405221.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-237563" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/la-fi-obamacare-california-exchange-complaints-201405221-450x299.jpg" alt="la-fi-obamacare-california-exchange-complaints-20140522" width="278" height="185" /></a>California’s experience with ObamaCare portends a dubious future for the nation. &#8220;The rate increase from 2013 to 2014, on average, was significantly higher than rate increases in the past,” <a href="http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-insurance-rates-20140730-story.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">said</span></a> Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones at a news conference Tuesday. Jones admitted that Californians endured premium rate increases ranging from 22 percent to 88 percent from last year to this year. &#8220;The rate increase from 2013 to 2014, on average, was significantly higher than rate increases in the past,&#8221; Jones added.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Unsurprisingly, younger Californians bore the brunt. Jones cites one region of Los Angeles County, where people age 25 paid 52 percent more for a silver plan than they had for something similar in 2013. Yet Jones was also forced to note someone age 55 saw a 38 percent increase in their premiums.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Jones, a partisan Democrat, isn’t sounding the alarm because of altruistic concerns for the residents of his state. Instead he’s pushing voters to embrace <a href="http://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_45,_Insurance_Companies_Required_to_Justify_Their_Rates_to_the_Public_Initiative_(2014)"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Proposition 45</span></a>, a ballot measure that would give him considerable control over the the pricing of insurance in the Golden State, allowing him and other government officials to reject price increases deemed “excessive.” “Unless Proposition 45 is passed or some other law is enacted to provide health-insurance rate regulation and the requirement that health insurers and HMOs justify their rates, we are going to continue to see dramatic year-over-year increases,” he warned.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;"><span style="color: #1255cc;"><a href="http://stophighercosts.org/our-coalition/">Californians Against Higher Health Care Costs</a></span>, a collation of businesses, healthcare groups, unions and civil rights organizations, adamantly oppose Prop 45. “The insurance commissioner is using this misleading report to promote a ballot measure that would give him vast new powers over health care decisions,” <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-29/california-health-insurance-rates-rise-up-to-88-in-14.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">said</span></a> Robin Swanson, a spokeswoman for the group. “Our coalition of doctors, nurses, labor unions and health care providers opposing the measure thinks that giving one politician the power to override decisions made by the state’s successful health exchange is the wrong approach to controlling costs.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">One wonders if they feel the same way about a politician named Obama, who unilaterally over-rode healthcare decisions enacted by Congress.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Charles Bacchi, the group&#8217;s executive vice president, echoed Swanson’s sentiment. &#8220;Health plans are focused on working with Covered California to provide affordable premiums during the upcoming open enrollment period, while Commissioner Jones is looking backward,” he said. &#8220;His analysis doesn&#8217;t take into account subsidies, enrollees who are benefiting from the ACA, or acknowledge how the ACA has substantially expanded coverage and benefits while also changing the way premiums are priced.&#8221;</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Jones believes otherwise. &#8220;We&#8217;re going to continue to see rates go up simply because &#8230; no one has the ability to stop excessive rates,&#8221; he said, further insisting the 2015 rate increases proposed by insurers will be lower than they might ordinarily be because the providers won’t want to offend the voting public prior to the 2014 election. &#8220;There would be a huge public outcry, and the public would respond at the ballot box,” Jones warned. &#8220;I have no question that what we&#8217;re going to see &#8230; will be much lower than would otherwise occur.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Unfortunately California, much like other states, can’t postpone reality indefinitely, even if they attempt to do so by fiat. As the <i>Wall Street Journa</i>l <a href="http://online.wsj.com/articles/sick-drawn-to-new-coverage-in-health-law-plans-1403656445"><span style="color: #1255cc;">explains</span></a>, those enrolled in new healthcare plans &#8220;are showing higher rates of serious health conditions than other insurance customers, according to an early analysis of medical claims, putting pressure on insurers around the country as they prepare to propose rates for next year.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The numbers are daunting, as 27 percent of enrollees who have seen doctors or other healthcare providers in the first quarter of this year are dealing with serious health issues including diabetes, psychiatric conditions, asthma, heart problems or cancer. That percentage represents an 11 percent increase over last year’s individual consumer market covering the same time frame—and more than double the 12 percent rate of those who were able to keep their former policies.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">&#8220;The findings provide the clearest picture so far of the health status of those who bought plans under the Affordable Care Act, and show a sharply bifurcated consumer insurance market—with sicker, and costlier, people in health-law plans and healthier people sticking with previous coverage,” the <i>Journal</i> adds.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Hoover Institution research fellow Lanhee Chen states the obvious reasons why. &#8220;The law’s one-size-fits-all regulatory regime, which requires insurers to offer coverage to all comers and prohibits pricing of coverage based on an applicant’s health status, was bound to increase the number of relatively sicker people purchasing insurance through the exchanges,” he writes, adding that healthcare exchanges &#8220;remain a haven for those who may consume more medical services than others.” Thus as Chet Burrell, chief executive officer of CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, concludes, “Over a period of time, the rates have to go up to catch up with the reality of who enrolled.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Proposition 45 apparently ignores that reality, along with a far simpler one: if a state makes it too onerous for an insurance provider, it will simply <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-California/2014/07/03/California-Ballot-Initiative-Would-Give-State-Control-Over-Health-Insurance-Rate-Increases"><span style="color: #1255cc;">stop</span></a> providing insurance for the people of that state.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Back in June, Anthem Blue Cross President Mark Morgan predicted the 2015 increase in premium rates for Californians would be less than 10 percent on average. “We will not have double-digit increases in our Covered California operations,&#8221; Morgan <a href="http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-anthem-rates-20140613-story.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">said</span></a> in a speech. &#8220;That&#8217;s a good indication of how we feel about the success of our early work, because there are other parts of the country where we are hearing 20% and higher.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The tradeoff? The narrowing of networks that limit enrollees’ choices of doctors and other healthcare providers that cannot be avoided. &#8220;These narrow networks are making a huge difference on affordability,&#8221; Morgan contended. &#8220;People value price above all else&#8230;. These narrow networks are really here to stay.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">A Kaiser Health Tracking Poll taken in February <a href="http://kff.org/health-reform/poll-finding/kaiser-health-tracking-poll-february-2014/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">belies</span></a> the notion that people prefer cheaper insurance and narrower networks. Once again bifurcation is the order of the day: at 51 percent, the public in general prefers broader networks to cheaper insurance. On the other hand, people who have been either uninsured or purchasing their own coverage and are most attracted to ObamaCare, prefer narrower networks and cheaper premiums.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">What is being lost in the overall argument is the fact that, no matter which side the public is on with regard Prop 45, California premiums are <i>still</i> going up. Jones added a little scaremongering to the equation in support of the measure, noting that after 2015, the “sky’s the limit” with regard to premium increases.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Yet what neither side is apparently willing to tell the public is that controlling the cost of insurance in any meaningful way may only last until the end of 2016. That’s when ObamaCare’s “risk corridor” provision, limiting losses incurred by insurance providers, expires. The risk corridor provision is the mechanism whereby insurance companies that made a profit would compensate those who didn’t. The premise behind the system was that an equivalent number of both would make the program revenue neutral and self-sustaining.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Unfortunately, if there are more “losers” than “winners,” the same Obama administration that has already played it fast and loose with the law claims they can appropriate billions of dollars of funds from other sources (read taxpayers) to maintain the program, despite the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service making it clear such a “diversion” of funds is impermissible. Earlier this year Congressional Republicans proposed repealing the risk corridor provision they characterized as an insurance company “bailout,” and the issue may still become an integral part of the 2014 mid-term campaign.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">For example, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) who is already vulnerable, is going to have to explain why 45,000 policy-holders in her state are facing premium <a href="http://www.shreveporttimes.com/viewart/20140730/NEWS01/140730002"><span style="color: #1255cc;">increases</span></a> between 10 and 20 percent next year, courtesy of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana, the state’s largest insurer. That would be the same Mary Landrieu who cast the deciding vote for ObamaCare and claimed that predictions of higher costs were a “pathetic lie” in a 2009 <a href="http://www.landrieu.senate.gov/?p=press_release&amp;id=1616"><span style="color: #1255cc;">speech</span></a> on the Senate floor prior to the bill’s passage.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Again it must be emphasized that such increases are occurring in California, Louisiana and elsewhere while the government backstop of risk corridors remains in place. Furthermore Americans should be clear on what they, as well as Prop 45, really represent: a government effort to control prices, <i>irrespective</i> of costs. Costs that were <i>also</i> imposed by government fiat, as any man in possession of an ObamaCare policy that <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/investopedia/2013/10/11/essential-health-benefits-under-the-affordable-care-act/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">requires</span></a> coverage for maternity care can attest. Costs that have been transferred to the public in general, as the more than <a href="http://news.coveredca.com/2014/04/covered-californias-historic-first-open.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">one million</span></a> Californians who qualified for subsidized insurance can attest. A full 88 percent of Californians enrolled in Covered California are eligible for such taxpayer-underwritten subsidies.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">One suspects fans of ObamaCare should cheer while they can. In addition to the expiration of the risk corridors, the imposition of the twice-delayed business mandate that forces companies to pay for their employees insurance or face fines for failing to do so, remains on its revised schedule. Businesses with 100 or more employees will have to cover those employees beginning in 2015, while businesses with 50-99 employees have until 2016 before they must comply with the law.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Assuming the lawsuit <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/07/30/house-approves-lawsuit-against-obama-over-alleged-abuse-executive-power/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">initiated</span></a> by the House challenging Obama’s unilateral re-scheduling goes nowhere. Assuming the more potentially disruptive ObamaCare lawsuits challenging the IRS’s right to provide subsidies on federally-run exchanges, in direct contradiction to the law&#8217;s wording that subsidies can only be provided on exchanges “Established by the state,” also go nowhere. And assuming the necessary demographic of younger healthier Americans offsetting the costs of older, sicker Americans isn’t as out of whack as is currently <a href="http://www.unitedliberty.org/articles/18427-obamacare-insurer-says-enrollment-numbers-skew-older-and-sicker-than-expected-and-tha"><span style="color: #1255cc;">reported</span></a>.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">That’s a lot of assumptions.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Patriots in Murrieta</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/matthew-vadum/patriots-in-murrieta/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=patriots-in-murrieta</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 10 Jul 2014 04:59:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Matthew Vadum]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[One small town uses the Left's own playbook to fight Obama's orchestrated border chaos. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/UTI1782821_r620x349.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-236007" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/UTI1782821_r620x349.jpg" alt="UTI1782821_r620x349" width="256" height="204" /></a>When President Obama began dumping busloads of newly arrived illegal aliens on small town America to force so-called immigration reform he probably didn&#8217;t expect residents of a small California city to take a heroic stand against his lawless assault on the nation&#8217;s immigration system.</p>
<p>But grassroots activists in Murrieta, California, near San Diego, have been using the Left&#8217;s own playbook against the Community-Organizer-in-Chief&#8217;s efforts to force an unprecedented loosening of the nation&#8217;s largely unenforced immigration laws. Last week the protesters used the tactics of civil disobedience by blocking federal authorities from bussing in hundreds of illegal immigrants who snuck into south Texas. The feds have vowed to don riot gear in order to transport the illegals to Murrieta but that has not happened yet.</p>
<p>The illegals turned back by angry crowds were bound for what federal authorities called a &#8220;housing facility,&#8221; but local residents say such a facility doesn&#8217;t exist in Murrieta.</p>
<p>Longtime Murrieta resident John Henry said it appeared federal officials intended to place the aliens in the local Border Patrol station, which has only five holding cells.</p>
<p>&#8220;There are no showers, and there&#8217;s only one toilet in each cell. There&#8217;s really no place to give them hot food and no beds. There&#8217;s nothing here for them&#8211;we literally don&#8217;t have any way to take care of these people.&#8221;</p>
<p>Henry added, &#8220;We additionally don&#8217;t have any places for these people to go after they are processed.&#8221;</p>
<p>Henry <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-Texas/2014/07/08/Murrieta-Residents-Obama-Admin-Flooding-Our-Streets-to-Force-Immigration-Reform"><span style="color: #0433ff;">told</span></a> Breitbart News that the illegals, unaccompanied minors and women from Central America, are being sent to Republican-supporting communities like his city to send those opposed to open borders a political message.</p>
<p>&#8220;The administration thinks that if it floods our streets, in small town America, they can force us into immigration reform,&#8221; he said. &#8220;These immigrants should not be here. The only reason that they are coming here is for political reasons.&#8221;</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;This is a small town &#8211; it&#8217;s mostly conservative &#8211; and the federal government knows that. The main reason a lot of us are out here protesting is because we do not want these people being dumped into our small town where we do not have programs or the resources to take care of them properly.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>Henry and his fellow protesters have been attacked by left-wingers who prefer hurling epithets to answering arguments.</p>
<p>In a Huffington Post op-ed, commentator Raul A. Reyes <a href="http://bit.ly/1oIZSAW"><span style="color: #0433ff;">smeared</span></a> the protesters as &#8220;anti-immigrant.&#8221; The protests themselves were motivated by &#8220;racism and xenophobia&#8221; and constituted &#8220;a shameful, sickening display of anti-immigrant sentiment.&#8221;</p>
<p>Except there is no evidence the activists were motivated by anything other than disgust at the Obama administration&#8217;s failure to enforce federal law. Nor is there proof that the activists were &#8220;anti-immigrant.&#8221; Anti-illegal immigrant, sure, but that&#8217;s an altogether different thing.</p>
<p>A group calling itself the Tequila Party is <a href="http://bit.ly/1qXugLh"><span style="color: #0433ff;">demanding</span></a> the activists be jailed for daring to protest.</p>
<p>California attorney Ruben Salazar, pro-amnesty activist Dee Dee Garcia Blase, and Nebraska attorney Shirl Mora James wrote a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director James Comey asking for an &#8220;outside investigation&#8221; of local politicians and law enforcement officials in Murrieta.</p>
<p>They accuse activists in Murrieta of being &#8220;homeland domestic terrorists (masquerading as patriots),&#8221; and claim that they were &#8220;obstructing federal law enforcement from performing their jobs and terrorizing small refugee immigrant children from Central America with racial slurs.&#8221;</p>
<p>Apparently civil disobedience is only acceptable when left-wingers do it.</p>
<p>Moreover, the Tequila Party doesn&#8217;t understand the meaning of the word <i>refugee</i>.</p>
<p>A refugee, under the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, a multilateral treaty that was ratified by the United States, is:</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;A person who owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of <i>race</i>, <i>religion</i>, <i>nationality</i>, <i>membership of a particular social group</i> or <i>political opinion</i>, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country &#8230; &#8221; [italics added]</p></blockquote>
<p>Barring evidence of persecution under any of the five specific grounds, these people are in fact economic migrants, as opposed to refugees. The fact that life is less than optimal in countries like Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador doesn&#8217;t make those who leave their countries to sneak into the U.S. legitimate refugees.</p>
<p>The chaos on the U.S.-Mexico border that is now being swamped by uninvited visitors has been a long time coming.</p>
<p>Obama and generations of leftist politicians before him have been using immigration to subvert the American system. In the 1960s the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) shepherded reform of that era’s immigration laws through Congress. The concept is simple: Flood America with people who don’t share Americans’ traditional philosophical commitment to the rule of law, limited government, and markets, in order to force changes in society.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s the <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/feb/1/piven-fiery-and-fearful/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Cloward-Piven Strategy</span></a> of orchestrated crisis as applied to immigration policy.</p>
<p>In the Sixties, Marxist academics and activists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven called upon activists to pack the welfare rolls in order to spread dependency, bankrupt the government, and cause uprisings against the capitalist system.</p>
<p>Overburdening government bureaucracies would cause “a profound financial and political crisis” that would unleash “powerful forces … for major economic reform at the national level,” they argued in their seminal 1966 <i>Nation</i> article.</p>
<p>Overwhelming local and state governments with illegal immigrants, who qualify for taxpayer-supplied benefits such as free health care, education, and housing aid, might make those governments so desperate that they throw their political support behind the kind of so-called comprehensive immigration reform that the Left favors. After all, when was the last time Congress refused a bailout to anybody?</p>
<p>Although the disorder at the border has been building over time, President Obama gave a green light to would-be illegal immigrants when he indicated he has no interest in enforcing U.S. immigration laws.</p>
<p>Obama has provided executive amnesty and work permits for illegal immigrants covered by the proposed “DREAM Act” that Congress has repeatedly rejected. That legislation, if enacted, would cover individuals who claim to have entered the U.S. as minors under their parents’ guidance.</p>
<p>The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a directive in August 2013 expanding that amnesty to illegal immigrant relatives of “DREAM Act” beneficiaries. DHS issued another directive in December 2012 reinforcing the existing policy under which almost all immigration offenses were deemed unenforceable absent a separate criminal conviction.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, local media <a href="http://blog.pe.com/news/2014/07/09/murrieta-no-more-flights-of-migrants-arriving-this-week-police-say/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">reported</span></a> late yesterday that no new arrivals are expected to fly into nearby San Diego for the rest of this week: &#8220;Murrieta police say Border Patrol officials notified them late Wednesday afternoon that there will be no flights of immigrants from Texas arriving in San Diego on Thursday or for the rest of the week.&#8221;</p>
<p>It&#8217;s a small, and likely temporary, victory.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Ethnic Studies = Social Justice</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mark-tapson/ethnic-studies-social-justice/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=ethnic-studies-social-justice</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 12 Jun 2014 04:40:03 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark Tapson]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=233558</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Political activism, not education.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/eth.gif"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-233562" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/eth.gif" alt="eth" width="336" height="136" /></a>As Latinos <a href="http://www.laweekly.com/informer/2014/01/20/latinos-about-to-overtake-whites-in-california-demographics">overtake</a> non-Hispanic whites as California’s largest ethnic group, a <a href="http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/13-14/bill/asm/ab_1701-1750/ab_1750_bill_20140214_introduced.pdf">bill</a> is now before the California state Senate which would require the Education Department to form a task force to study the implementation of a standardized ethnic studies curriculum in high schools across the state.</p>
<p>Sponsored by Assemblyman Luis Alejo, who has a bachelor’s degree in Chicano Studies from UC Berkeley, bill AB 1750 seeks to succeed where similar efforts to establish mandatory ethnic studies classes elsewhere have proven controversial – and failed.</p>
<p>Arizona, for example, <a href="http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2012/04/19/neither-banned-nor-allowed-mexican-american-studies-in-limbo-in-arizona/">passed</a> a law in 2010 to shut down a Mexican-American studies curriculum that included books which Attorney General Tom Horne <a href="http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2012/04/19/neither-banned-nor-allowed-mexican-american-studies-in-limbo-in-arizona/">described</a> as shockingly racist (even New Mexico state Rep. Nora Espinoza – herself Latina – called them “hate books”). Under a law forbidding classes “that advocate the overthrow of the United States, promote racial resentment, or emphasize students’ ethnicity rather than their individuality,” seven books were removed from high school classrooms to reside in the library (not banned, as opponents insist on describing it). Among them were titles such as <em>Critical Race Theory</em>, <em>Occupied America: A History of Chicanos</em>,<em> Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years</em>, <em>Pedagogy of the Oppressed</em> by Marxist activist Paulo Freire, and <em>Message to Aztlan</em> (Aztlan is a symbol for Latino activists who believe they have a legal right to the land the United States acquired from the Mexican-American War).</p>
<p>Tony Diaz, who co-founded the pro-ethnic studies movement Librotraficante to subvert the Arizonan law, says that anti-ethnic studies efforts are discriminatory and, curiously, “an attempt to turn colleges and high schools into finishing schools for corporations.” Diaz didn’t expound on why preparing students to succeed in the corporate workforce is bad or what it has to do with ethnic studies.</p>
<p>A movement to require Mexican-American courses in Texas recently fizzled out as well. Some Latino activists there <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/20/mexican-american-studies-texas_n_4309955.html">say</a> the public school curriculum reflects “institutionalized racism,” by which they mean that they resent being denied the opportunity to inflame students with their own anti-capitalist, racial supremacism.</p>
<p>Rodolfo Acuña, professor of Chicano Studies at Cal State University Northridge and author of the aforementioned <em>Occupied America</em>, claims to have worked on at least a dozen attempts himself to extend ethnic studies to public schools, but they never garnered legislative support. However, he said he doesn’t anticipate much opposition to the Californian bill. Assemblyman Alejo is <a href="http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-ethnic-studies-20140603-story.html">optimistic</a> too:</p>
<blockquote><p>California is moving in a different direction, one that recognizes and values the history of the people who make up our state. This will put California on the cutting edge — while other states are trying to abolish ethnic studies, we can standardize and incorporate it into high school curriculum…</p>
<p>We’re trying to incorporate the histories and knowledge of different communities that make up our state — not limited to communities of color. Ethnic studies should be seen not just as Latino — but Irish, Jewish, Filipino — there is no limitation.</p></blockquote>
<p>About California’s diverse student population, Alejo <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/03/california-ethnic-studies_n_4892111.html">says</a>, “We recognize those unique values and history, language and literatures – all of that should be included in California’s high school curriculum.”</p>
<p>Supporters say such a curriculum is necessary to help the burgeoning Latino student population feel better about themselves by delving into their own cultural heritage. Opponents say that such classes politicize students and breed ethnic resentment. Devon Peña, former director of the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies, <a href="http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/politics/2012/03/28/arizona-official-considers-targeting-mexican-american-studies-in-university/">smears</a> opposition as McCarthyism: “It’s just a witch hunt of a different color. Now, instead of going after the reds, they’re going after the browns.”</p>
<p>What, really, is ethnic studies all about? Ask proponents and among the responses you will find a common thread: <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/guideDesc.asp?catid=160&amp;type=issue">social justice</a>. Santa Monica High School teacher Kitaro Webb, for example, <a href="http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-ethnic-studies-20140603-story.html">says</a> that ethnic studies is about “civic engagement, responsibility and fighting for what you believe in.” “From its origins in the late 1960s, Ethnic Studies scholars have been <em>committed to issues of social justice</em>,” <a href="http://ethnic.uoregon.edu/">reads</a> the mission statement of the University of Oregon’s Ethnic Studies Department, which analyzes “<em>inequalities</em> as they relate to whiteness and white privilege.” The UC Berkeley Ethnic Studies Department’s mission statement <a href="http://ethnicstudies.berkeley.edu/ethnicstudies.php">reads</a>, in part: “Inquiries into the nature of racial, ethnic, and gender <em>inequality</em> are informed by <em>a commitment to social change and social justice</em>.” [emphases added] Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales, an <a href="http://www.sfsu.edu/~aas/tintiangco-cubales-allyson.html">Ethnic Studies professor</a> at San Francisco State and a “<a href="http://iseeed.org/about/founding_partners/">community-engaged-motherscholar-of-color</a>”, <a href="http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-ethnic-studies-20140603-story.html">says</a> that “What ethnic studies is really about is creating opportunity for young people to learn about themselves and the world around them and make the world a better place.” By making the world a better place, she means social justice, of course – the progressive euphemism for racial payback and wealth redistribution.</p>
<p>“It is unethical and unprofessional for teachers to use their power over students to get the students to be activists in support of the teachers’ political causes,” says Arizona Attorney General Horne. Absolutely right, but enlisting youth in the cause of social justice is the very <em>raison d’etre</em> of multiculturalist educators.</p>
<p>“For multiculturalists there is no unifying American culture” as James S. Robbins puts it in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Native-Americans-Patriotism-Exceptionalism-American-ebook/dp/B00APDCU4G/"><em>Native Americans: Patriotism, Exceptionalism, and the New American Identity</em></a>. “They define people within groups and cultures that are present in the United States but are not to be thought of primarily, if at all, as American.” Multiculturalism is the politics of victimhood, and its proponents must “rewrite history to serve as a platform for their endless grievances.”</p>
<p>I’m no community-engaged-motherscholar-of-color, and forgive my unfashionable belief in American exceptionalism and my politically incorrect yearning to see my country lead the free world into the future. Allow me to put forth a crazy concept: instead of aggravating racial division and radicalizing ethnic students to despise their adopted country and white people, I recommend we expel subversives disguised as educators and concentrate our educational efforts at the high school level on the following common-sense points:</p>
<ul>
<li>ground students in critical thinking skills and the crucial basics of math, science, and English communication expertise;</li>
<li>rather than explore what Alejo calls “the unique values and history, language and literatures” of a multitude of ethnicities, celebrate the history and values of the greatest country in the history of the world, the United States, and encourage our melting-pot unity as non-hyphenated Americans;</li>
<li>instill in students the conviction that individual achievement through competition and hard work will lead to personal and national economic success, while wallowing in the collective grievances of identity politics will lead only to poverty and racial division.</li>
</ul>
<p>Education is more than teaching about the world around us, as Prof. Tintiangco-Cubales put it. It’s certainly not about mobilizing political activists and promoting ethnic rage and economic envy. Education is about empowering young people of all ethnicities with the competitive intellectual tools to fulfill their individual potential and to make their own productive way in the world. <em>That</em> will make the world a better place.</p>
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		<title>Education Victory in California: Teacher Tenure Ruled Unconstitutional</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/education-victory-in-california-teacher-tenure-ruled-unconstitutional/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=education-victory-in-california-teacher-tenure-ruled-unconstitutional</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 11 Jun 2014 04:40:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
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		<category><![CDATA[students]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[teacher union]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tenure]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[unconstitutional]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=233737</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The court decision sending teachers unions across the country into a tailspin. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/kid_raising_hand_in_classroom_page-bg_15285.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-233739" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/kid_raising_hand_in_classroom_page-bg_15285-450x281.jpg" alt="kid_raising_hand_in_classroom_page-bg_15285" width="296" height="185" /></a>In a <a href="http://studentsmatter.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Tenative-Decision.pdf"><span style="color: #1255cc;">ruling</span></a> with major implications for the rest of the nation, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge has <a href="http://www.scpr.org/programs/airtalk/2014/06/10/37844/court-decides-vital-california-education-case/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">declared</span></a> that tenure, teacher disciplinary policies and seniority-based job protection as they currently exist in California public schools are unconstitutional. “Evidence has been elicited in this trial of the specific effect of grossly ineffective teachers on students,” Judge Rolf M. Treu wrote in his ruling. “The evidence is compelling. Indeed, it shocks the conscience.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Part of the compelling evidence in <i>Vergara v. California</i> was a “massive study” conducted in 2013 by <a href="http://studentsmatter.org/ai1ec_event/vergara-trial-day-3/?instance_id="><span style="color: #1255cc;">Dr. Raj  Chetty</span></a>, a William Henry Bloomberg Professor of Economics at Harvard. Treu noted that according to Chetty’s testimony, “a single year in a classroom with a grossly ineffective teacher costs students $1.4 million in lifetime earnings per classroom.” Harvard Professor Dr. Thomas Kane, who <a href="http://studentsmatter.org/ai1ec_event/vergara-trial-day-9/?instance_id="><span style="color: #1255cc;">based</span></a> a study of his own on Chetty’s groundbreaking work, came to equally damning conclusions. He testified that students in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) taught by a teacher whose competency level is in bottom 5 percent “lose 9.54 months of learning in a single year compared to students with average teachers.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Tenure and disciplinary policy work hand in glove in that regard. Attorneys for the advocacy group Students Matter, who <a href="http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2014/01/27/students-sue-calif-over-teacher-tenure-seniority-policies/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">filed</span></a> the lawsuit on behalf of nine public school students in 2012, successfully argued that teachers protected by tenure laws are virtually impossible to fire, no matter how bad they are. LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy reinforced that reality when he testified that it takes more than two years on average to fire a bad tenured teacher, with some cases taking as long as a <i>decade </i>to resolve. He further noted the costs for doing so can run between $250,000 and $400,000 per teacher.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Plaintiffs also insisted that the state’s tenure system, which grants teachers permanent employment after <a href="http://www.mercurynews.com/crime-courts/ci_25935432/l-judge-strikes-down-californias-laws-teacher-tenure"><span style="color: #1255cc;">approximately 18 months</span></a> on the job, is an inadequate amount of time to determine a teacher’s effectiveness. Dr. David Berliner, Professor of Education at Arizona State University, reinforced that notion <a href="http://studentsmatter.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/SM_Plaintiffs-Closing-Argument-Presentation_03.27.14.pdf"><span style="color: #1255cc;">testifying</span></a> that a probationary period of &#8220;three or even five years” would be far more effective. In his ruling, Treu noted that Berliner estimated as many as 1-3 percent of California teachers are “grossly ineffective.” Since there are approximately 275,000 teachers statewide, 2,750 to 8,250 of them fall into that category. Treu ruled that such a reality has &#8220;a direct, real appreciable and negative impact on a significant number of California students now and well into the future for as long as said teachers hold their positions.&#8221;</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Kane’s study revealed that most of those students affected by bad teachers are black and Hispanic. Black students are 43 percent more likely than white students to have a teacher in the bottom 5 percent of competency inflicted upon them, while Hispanic students are 68 percent more likely than whites to endure the same fate. The educational “deficits” arising from such “disparate impact” amount to 1.08 months of schooling lost every year for black students, and 1.55 months of schooling lost every year for Hispanic students, relative to their white counterparts. Kane noted that these disparities occur even when schools do not have predominantly minority student populations.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Kane further testified that the so-called “achievement gap” is exacerbated by this ongoing reality. “Rather than assign them more effective teachers to help close the gap with white students they’re assigned less effective teachers, which results in the gap being slightly wider in the following year,” he explained.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Seniority-based job protection, more familiarly known as “first in, last out,” contributes to the overall problem as well. It is the policy whereby any teacher layoffs are based on seniority rather than the competency of the teachers involved. Superintendent Deasy and former mayor Antonio Villaraigosa spoke out against the practice. So did Treu, who cited the iconic case of<em> Brown v. Board of Education</em> while tying seniority to tenure and discipline policies to reach his decision. “Substantial evidence makes it clear to this Court that the Challenged Statutes disproportionately affect poor and/or minority students,” Treu wrote.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">After ruling the statutes unconstitutional, he stayed all injunctive issues until they could be reviewed by an appellate court. He further noted it was the job of the state legislature, not the courts, to replace the current laws with new ones that “pass constitutional muster, thus providing each child in this state with a basically equal opportunity to achieve a quality education.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Unsurprisingly, the two teachers unions involved in the case plan to <a href="http://online.wsj.com/articles/california-teacher-job-protections-struck-down-in-students-suit-1402422428"><span style="color: #1255cc;">appeal</span></a> the decision. &#8220;We don&#8217;t believe the court is the place to be making these kinds of policy decisions,&#8221; said Frank Wells, a spokesman for the California Teachers Association who added that the ruling &#8220;is not going to help kids in badly managed school districts; it&#8217;s only going to make things worse. We are confident that we will prevail on appeal,” he added. Joshua Peshtal, President of the California Federation of Teachers, was also <a href="http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2014/06/10/judge-rules-calif-teacher-tenure-laws-unconstitutional/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">upset</span></a>. “We believe the judge fell victim to the anti-union, anti-teacher rhetoric of one of America’s finest corporate law firms,” he declared. Alex Caputo-Pearl, the president-elect of the Los Angeles teachers union, <a href="http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-teacher-protections-ruling-20140610-story.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">called</span></a> the decision &#8220;an attack on teachers, which is a socially acceptable way to attack children,” adding that instead of providing for smaller classes or more counselors, “you attack teacher and student rights.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Attorneys from both sides also voiced their opinions. “This is a monumental day for California’s public education system,” said plaintiff’s attorney Theodore Boutrous. “By striking down these irrational laws, the court has recognized that all students deserve a quality education. Today’s ruling is a victory not only for our nine plaintiffs; it is a victory for students, parents, and teachers across California.” Union lawyer James Finberg insisted the statutes prevent favoritism and politics from determining who is hired and retained, further claiming that three months is all that is necessary for administrator to make a “well-informed decision” regarding whether a probationary teacher should be kept on the job. Other lawyers representing teachers echoed the former sentiment, adding that socio-economic inequalities and school funding are far more important factors in determining the quality of an education.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Parties have 15 days to file objections. The California Attorney General&#8217;s office was non-committal. &#8220;We are reviewing the tentative ruling and consulting with our clients,&#8221; said Nick Pacilio, spokesman for Attorney General Kamala Harris. A spokesman for Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown declined to comment on the ruling.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Beatriz Vergara, for whom the suit was named, was one of nine students who said they filed the litigation because they were given teachers who lost control of their classrooms, and came to those classrooms unprepared to teach. The students also insisted that on occasion, some teachers told them they’d never amount to anything.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Both sides in this case do agree on one thing: this ruling will reverberate far beyond California. David Welch, a Silicon Valley technology entrepreneur and founder of Students Matter, has indicated his willingness to take on teachers unions in other states, especially states where teachers unions have been powerful enough to thwart legislative efforts to change the status quo. It is a status quo long defined by the symbiotic alliance between the Democratic Party and the teachers unions whose campaign contributions to the party elicit what is arguably the most transparent and despicable jobs-protection racket in the nation. A jobs-protection racket that has consigned millions of students, an increasing percentage of which are <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=1812"><span style="color: #1255cc;">inner-city minorities</span></a>, to decade after decade of sub-par education. It is a sub-par education that unequivocally “shocks the conscience.&#8221;</p>
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		<title>Why the Left Doesn&#8217;t Care about Bad Economic News</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dennis-prager/why-the-left-doesnt-care-about-bad-economic-news/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=why-the-left-doesnt-care-about-bad-economic-news</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dennis-prager/why-the-left-doesnt-care-about-bad-economic-news/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 14 May 2014 04:15:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Dennis Prager]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[California]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Democrats]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[economics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[prosperity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Unemployment]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=225462</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Americans' financial losses are the Democratic Party's gain. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/unemployment-1.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-225463" alt="unemployment-1" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/unemployment-1.jpg" width="298" height="197" /></a>This perception is wrong. It is their goals that are irreconcilable. And until conservatives, independents and the Republican Party understand this, it will not be possible to defeat the left.</p>
<p>Take economic indicators. Most conservatives talk and act as if bad economic news disturbs the left as much as it disturbs them. It doesn&#8217;t.</p>
<p>Almost everywhere the left is in control — in California, for example — the economic news is awful. But this has no effect on the ruling Democrats, the Los Angeles Times editorial page, New York Times economics columnist Paul Krugman or others on the left.</p>
<p>There is one overriding philosophical reason and one political reason for this. But before I identify them, permit me to note some of the economic facts of life in California.</p>
<p>Unless otherwise noted, the following data have been culled by Chapman University Professor Joel Kotkin, and published in the Wall Street Journal, the Orange County Register and elsewhere. (For the record, Kotkin is a self-described &#8220;Truman Democrat&#8221; who voted for the Democrat governor Jerry Brown of California.)</p>
<p>—In the last 20 years, about 4 million more people have left California than came in from other states. Most of those leaving are young families.</p>
<p>—In the last 15 years, one-third of California&#8217;s industrial employment base has disappeared. That&#8217;s 600,000 jobs that have disappeared.</p>
<p>—California has the 48th-worst business tax climate. (The Tax Foundation)</p>
<p>—California&#8217;s electricity prices are 50 percent higher than the national average.</p>
<p>—Middle-class workers, those who earn more than $48,000, pay a top income tax rate of 9.3 percent. That&#8217;s higher than what millionaires pay in 47 other states.</p>
<p>—California&#8217;s unemployment rate is fourth highest in the nation.</p>
<p>—From 2010-13, California produced fewer than 8,000 jobs, while the country added 510,000.</p>
<p>California faces enormous underfunded public employee pension obligations. (Bloomberg)</p>
<p>—An estimated 25 billion barrels of oil are sitting untapped in the Monterey and Bakersfield shale deposits. California is therefore sending billions of dollars to Texas, Canada and elsewhere to buy natural gas and oil that it could have produced itself.</p>
<p>—Twitter, Adobe, eBay and Oracle, among other major California tech companies, have moved many operations to Salt Lake City.</p>
<p>—Hollywood is doing more and more of its filming in Louisiana, Canada and elsewhere to avoid California taxes.</p>
<p>—Toyota just announced that it is moving its U.S. headquarters from Los Angeles to Dallas. This will eliminate 3,000 or more generally high-wage jobs.</p>
<p>—Occidental Petroleum recently announced that it is moving its headquarters from Los Angeles to Houston.</p>
<p>—Until relatively recently, half of the country&#8217;s top 10 energy firms — ARCO, Getty Oil, Union Oil, Occidental and Chevron — were based in California. Today, only Chevron remains, and it is gradually relocating in Houston. (Reuters)</p>
<p>—Houston has added nine million square feet of new office space. Los Angeles has added one million.</p>
<p>—Tesla will likely locate its proposed $5 billion battery factory, which would employ upward of 6,500 people, in Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico or Texas. According to greentechmedia.com, California &#8220;didn&#8217;t make the short list because of the potential for regulatory and environmental delays.&#8221;</p>
<p>—California&#8217;s Monterey Shale offers a potential employment bonanza for workers needing access to entry-level jobs in the high-paying energy sector. But California&#8217;s green lobby is striving to deny them that opportunity. (John Husing, chief economist of the Inland Empire Economic Partnership, Los Angeles Daily News)</p>
<p>Now back to our riddle. Why do these state-crushing economic statistics — nearly every one of which is the result of left-wing policies — have no effect on California&#8217;s Democrats, the Los Angeles Times editorial page, New York Times economics columnist Paul Krugman or almost anyone else on the left?</p>
<p>The answer is that they don&#8217;t care. Yes, of course, as individuals with a heart, most people, right and left, care about people losing their jobs. But in terms of what matters to the left and the policies they pursue, they don&#8217;t care. The left and the political party it controls do not care if their policies force to companies to leave the state (or the country). They don&#8217;t care about the coming high inflation caused by Quantitative Easing (printing money) — Krugman calls it The Inflation Obsession — or the job-depressing effects of high taxes, or energy prices that hurt the middle class, or compelling businesses to leave.</p>
<p>They don&#8217;t care because the left is not interested in prosperity; the left is interested in inequality and in the environment. Furthermore, the worse the economic situation, the more voters are likely to vote Democrat. The worse the economic situation, the greater the number of people receiving government assistance; the greater the number of people receiving government assistance, the greater the number of people who will vote Democrat.</p>
<p>Therefore, both philosophically and politically, the left has no reason to be troubled by bad economic news. And it isn&#8217;t. It is troubled by inequality and carbon emissions.</p>
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		<title>California Assembly Unanimously Passes Bill to Teach About Racial Significance of Obama</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/california-assembly-unanimously-passes-bill-to-teach-about-racial-significance-of-obama/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=california-assembly-unanimously-passes-bill-to-teach-about-racial-significance-of-obama</link>
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		<pubDate>Sun, 27 Apr 2014 14:25:04 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Barack Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[California]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=224208</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[He said that the 2008 election should not just be a footnote within textbooks,]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Poster_Obama_Child_Stalin.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-224209" alt="Poster_Obama_Child_Stalin" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Poster_Obama_Child_Stalin-243x350.jpg" width="243" height="350" /></a></p>
<p>California. <a href="http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2014/04/25/bill-encourages-schools-to-teach-about-racial-significance-of-obamas-presidency/">It&#8217;s like North Korea</a>, but with better beaches.</p>
<blockquote><p>A bill that passed the Assembly with unanimous bipartisan support Thursday encourages California schools to teach students about the racial significance of Barack Obama’s presidency.</p>
<p>The Assembly approved AB1912 with a 71-0 vote and no debate or discussion. It now heads to the state Senate.</p></blockquote>
<p>Of course there&#8217;s no discussion or debate. What&#8217;s there to discuss or debate?</p>
<blockquote><p>The bill by Assemblyman Chris Holden, D-Pasadena, asks state education officials to include Obama’s election in history and social studies standards laying out what students are expected to learn.</p>
<p>High school history students already learn about recent presidents. But Holden says lessons about Obama also should focus on what his election meant for racial equality and civil rights.</p>
<p>He said on the Assembly floor that the 2008 election “should not just be a mere footnote within textbooks, but rather focus on the significance of Americans overcoming our nation’s past and acknowledging that Americans are moving in the right direction.”</p></blockquote>
<p>No it should be the whole chapter. We can just stop teaching the 19th century, except for the Civil War and then cut right to Obama in 2008. It&#8217;s the new education.</p>
<p>How <a href="http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201320140AB1912">pathetically ignorant is the bill</a>?</p>
<blockquote><p>(a) The election of Barack Hussein Obama to the office of President of the United States was a historic step in the effort towards equality in the United States&#8230;</p>
<p>(h) In honor of <del>this milestone in civil rights</del> his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples, President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.</p></blockquote>
<p>Holder&#8217;s original text stated that Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize for being elected while black. This is the ignorant idiot who wants to dictate that schools teach about the greatness of Obama.</p>
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		<title>Should 98% of California Teachers Have Jobs for Life?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/should-98-of-california-teachers-have-jobs-for-life/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=should-98-of-california-teachers-have-jobs-for-life</link>
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		<pubDate>Sat, 26 Apr 2014 14:31:27 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[California]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Teachers Union]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=223313</guid>
		<description><![CDATA["The female pupil involved didn’t want to press charges."]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/NYC_Public_School_Teacher_Sex_Offenders.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-223314" alt="NYC_Public_School_Teacher_Sex_Offenders" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/NYC_Public_School_Teacher_Sex_Offenders-269x350.jpg" width="269" height="350" /></a></p>
<p>Forget the American Dream. <a href="http://www.city-journal.org/2014/cjc0411ls.html">Embedding yourself in a government job for life is the California Dream</a>, which under Obama is swiftly becoming the pathetic warped remnant of the American Dream, as Larry Sand reveals.</p>
<blockquote><p>In California, a public school teacher can be fired at any time without cause during the first two years of employment. After that, however, about 98 percent of teachers manage to attain tenure—or, more accurately, “permanence.” Principals make tenure decisions in March of a teacher’s second year, which means they have to decide whether to offer such job security to employees with just 16 months on the job&#8230;</p>
<p>Labor leaders pushed legislators to expand rights and entitlements for public school teachers—at the expense of educating kids. In the last ten years, only 91 teachers out of about 300,000 (.003 percent) who have attained permanence lost their jobs in California. Of those, only 19 (.0007 percent) have been dismissed for poor performance. Is it possible that Golden State teachers are that good? Such an astronomical permanence rate doesn’t square with the performance of California’s fourth- and eighth-graders, whose scores on National Assessment of Educational Progress tests persistently rank near the bottom&#8230;</p>
<p>That so many unworthy teachers remain on the job is a disgrace, and most teachers know it. In fact, in the National Council on Teacher Quality’s recent survey of teachers working in Los Angeles, 68 percent reported that “there were tenured teachers currently working in their schools who should be dismissed for poor performance.” Yet the teachers’ unions, defendants in the Vergara case, remain steadfast in defense of the status quo&#8230;</p>
<p>But if tenure goes, California Federation of Teachers president Joshua Pechthalt claims, “teachers will be conditioned into meek compliance for fear of losing their jobs. Academic freedom, the central reason for tenure, would be moot.” Academic freedom? If a K-12 teacher is teaching according to the prescribed state standards—soon to be national standards—what protections does she need?</p></blockquote>
<p>Academic freedom is a strange claim. A teacher isn&#8217;t an academic, despite the insanity of pushing to have teachers with graduate degrees. He or she is there to teach a curriculum. The idea that a teacher&#8217;s academic freedom should be protected is union cynicism at best and protectionism for teachers who push radical ideas in the classroom at its worst.</p>
<p>Teachers are employees. They should be &#8216;compliant&#8217;. A big part of the problem with the educational complex is that teachers aren&#8217;t doing their jobs.</p>
<blockquote><p>A former colleague of mine reportedly touched one of his middle school students inappropriately. There were witnesses, but the female pupil involved didn’t want to press charges. So administrators let the teacher cool his heels at the district office—the so-called rubber room—before sending him to another school, where he was accused of doing the same thing. Back in the rubber room, earning full pay, he was caught looking at pornography. Again, he was returned to the classroom and in short order was caught showing pornographic materials to female students. Last I heard, he was back in the rubber room, collecting full pay and benefits. He should be kept far away from young people, but thanks to California’s permanence and dismissal statutes, he’s been given multiple opportunities to abuse them.</p></blockquote>
<p>Here&#8217;s your academic freedom.</p>
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		<title>What of America&#8217;s Future?</title>
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		<description><![CDATA[Distinguished authors discuss the coming collapse of Big Government and how conservatives should respond. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong>Editor’s note: Below are the video and transcript of the panel <em>What of America&#8217;s Future?</em> at the Freedom Center’s West Coast Retreat, held at the Terranea Resort in Palos Verdes, California from March 21-23, 2014:</strong></p>
<p><iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/90698156" height="281" width="500" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p><strong>Brian Calle: </strong><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">So we have a very, two very distinguished authors today, and we have a continuing conversation, which is essentially about what is the future of America, and so I thought we would start by having a few opening remarks from both Michael and Charles and then we&#8217;ll do a little bit of discussion here and then we&#8217;ll open up to the floor with questions.  So Michael how &#8217;bout we start with you and you give your thoughts.</span></p>
<p><strong>Michael Lotus: </strong><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Sure the book is called &#8220;America 3.0&#8243; and of course there must be a 1.0 and a 2.0, right?  We, my coauthor and I have been for many, many years conservatives, libertarians, and tryin&#8217; to figure out what&#8217;s going to happen.  Is this current, very serious situation we&#8217;re in sort of the beginning of the end of the United States, or is some period we are going to survive and get through and reach new broad sunlit uplands?  And we decided that the second scenario is more likely; that there are fundamental strengths to the United States that are underappreciated and my coauthor is an anthropologist by training, and so we bring in a somewhat unusual set of analysis to this.  There is a French anthropologist – and I&#8217;ll say that speaking to a room full of conservatives in a sentence that begins there is a French anthropologist isn&#8217;t likely to have a happy ending, but this does. </span></p>
<p>There is a gentleman named Emanuel Todd, and Todd has an extraordinarily interesting analysis showing that the political frameworks that exist and the political ideas that exist in societies are highly correlated with the type of family life they live, and we are all speaking English.  Who in here is descended exclusively from people from England?  No one.  Okay.  The English-speaking culture is very powerful, and one of the things that makes it so powerful and enduring is it is what&#8217;s called the absolute nuclear family.  It&#8217;s the most individualist type of family.  People pick their own spouses.  They&#8217;re expected to leave the family home and start their own homes.  They don&#8217;t rely on extended family networks.  They rely on free association and civil society.  I could say more about this, but that&#8217;s the gist of it.  That&#8217;s made the United States and the other English-speaking countries very resilient, also very resistant to totalitarian-type ideologies.  You need to be very sneaky to get a totalitarian-type ideology past the English-speaking people and that&#8217;s what political correctness is and the modern progressivism.  It&#8217;s in the guise and wrapped in the flag of real American values and tryin&#8217; to sneak things in in a clandestine kind of way.</p>
<p>So why is it that things seem so bad right now?  Well what&#8217;s happening is the 20th century legacy economy, the industrial era economy of the United States, that&#8217;s America 2.0.  America 1.0 is the era of the founding, muscle power, animal power, small face-to-face government, the world of the founders.  The second version is falling apart, and the institutional arrangements that were made to accommodate it are also failing, and what happens when a system starts to fail is the people who are incumbents and benefit from it double down and try to be more coercive and to keep it going in that way, and that&#8217;s what we&#8217;re seeing now.</p>
<p>So the question isn&#8217;t whether or not the 20th century legacy state is going to disintegrate.  It&#8217;s a question of how and when and on what terms, and what we wanted to do is start putting on the table proposals for what the next stage is going to look like, and a key feature of this is the technology we have today, and that&#8217;s coming and is improving all the time, plays to the strengths of the individualistic network-type free-associating American character and American mindset.  What did we hear over this weekend?  It&#8217;s just simply amazing.  We hear black conservatives didn&#8217;t know there were any other black conservatives.  They found each other through the net, right?  We heard about counterattacking against attacks on people like ourselves who have our values using social media, right?  So these new tools, both politically and of course on the business side.<br />
I heard a talk the other day from a gentleman who was talking about business back-office functions moving to the cloud, and he was focusing on how programmers are gonna lose their jobs, which people always do, right? But what it means is the sophisticated possible back office computer technology that only big businesses can have now, the person with a one-person business is gonna be able to get virtually for free.  Okay.  So we&#8217;re gonna see fantastic improvements in what&#8217;s available to us to be productive, and so we need to move toward a government model that&#8217;s gonna facilitate that and make individual and startup-type businesses more possible, and I think I probably overstayed my introduction.</p>
<p><strong>Brian Calle:</strong> <span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Oh, you&#8217;re okay. </span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Charles?</span></p>
<p><strong>Charles Kesler:</strong> <span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Is this a question about the future?</span></p>
<p><strong>Brian Calle: </strong><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Yes.</span></p>
<p><strong>Charles Kesler: </strong><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Well, I have written about, a book about liberalism, American liberalism and unlike David Horowitz&#8217;s many books, the library really of books, very excellent books that he has written, David&#8217;s entrée in the subject really came from radicals, from radicalism, and what I am focusing on is mainstream liberalism, the liberalism of Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson and Obama.  And I think it&#8217;s the first book to try to put Obama in the context of his own Democratic Party and his own sort of liberal milieu as a leading Democratic spokesman, and my argument is that he aspires to be the fourth face on the liberal Mount Rushmore beside Wilson and FDR and  –</span></p>
<p><strong>Brian Calle:</strong> <span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Which is the cover of the book.</span></p>
<p><strong>Charles Kesler: </strong><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Right and LBJ, and that if ObamaCare &#8212; and today is the fourth anniversary of the passage of the Obama Care Bill &#8211; </span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">if Obama Care sticks, he&#8217;ll make it.  I mean that will be his sovereign contribution.  That will be a thing he&#8217;s remembered for.  The one sentence that every president gets would be he passed national healthcare, and in his own view that is the only triumph he is going to get I think.  He knows that the House of Representatives is unlikely to switch from the GOP.  The Senate might become Republican in this election year, and so that&#8217;s it, and he&#8217;s got to defend that to the last because his whole legacy is invested in that achievement, and it is from the liberal point of view a great achievement.  It&#8217;s something that liberals have been questing for for 100 years and no one was able to achieve before him, not FDR, not even LBJ.  I mean liberals got healthcare for the poor in Medicaid, healthcare for the aged in Medicare but not cradle-to-grave, as we used to say.  That only came really with ObamaCare.  That&#8217;s really his achievement.  </span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">But the problem is, he, as you may have noticed, his administration has run into some trouble, and the source of that trouble is that if you look at Europe today, you can see that the standard model of the welfare state is not working. </span>And the same problems are coming to America.  They haven&#8217;t quite hit us with force that they&#8217;re beginning to hit in Europe, but they&#8217;re coming to America.</p>
<p>And so I think liberalism really does face a crisis. In some ways it&#8217;s at its peak right now – I mean Obama persuaded us that liberalism could live again; that you could believe in progress again; that you could have breathtaking across-the-board rapid political change like the New Deal, like the Great Society.  That&#8217;s what he tried to do and in part did deliver in his first two years in office.  Now it&#8217;s all on the defense of trying to preserve those achievements.  But unfortunately, there seems to me two causes of I think what will be a kind of crisis for liberalism in the next few years.  One is fiscal – as in Mrs. Thatcher&#8217;s immortal words, the problem with socialism is you quickly run out of other people&#8217;s money, and we can&#8217;t pay for today&#8217;s welfare state much less tomorrow&#8217;s – welfare state, and the second crisis is philosophical because if you live on the campus of a modern university as I do, you see this a lot.  Liberals don&#8217;t really believe, avant-garde liberals, academic liberals don&#8217;t believe in right and wrong, justice and injustice anymore.  They&#8217;re thoroughgoing relativists or nihilists – so they can&#8217;t believe in liberalism.</p>
<p>They can&#8217;t believe that liberalism is really right in the old-fashioned sense of the term, and so it&#8217;s left as a kind of a hollowing phenomenon that gets more and more hollow every year, and all that&#8217;s left really is self-interest.  Liberals like liberalism because it gives power to liberals, and that fact I think is becoming more and more transparent, and so it seems to me that something has to give in the next few years, and we hope of course it&#8217;ll be in a conservative direction, but my analysis doesn&#8217;t make that inevitable.  I mean I think you could also move in a truly left-wing, much more openly socialist direction as well.</p>
<p><strong>Brian Calle: </strong><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">And that&#8217;s a good place to pause for a second, but we go to a lot of these conferences and we hear bad news and we live under President Obama and Harry Reid, and that&#8217;s bad enough news, but what is the breaking point?  Maybe Michael, I&#8217;ll throw this question to you and then Charles?  But what is the breaking point?  A lot of people have said we&#8217;ve already hit the breaking point –and you don&#8217;t believe that from your book –</span></p>
<p><strong>Mike Lotus: </strong><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Not yet.  No –I live in Illinois.  It&#8217;s much worse in Illinois and we still haven&#8217;t hit the breaking point yet.  So Mrs. Thatcher said you run out of other people&#8217;s money and Herb Stein said if something can&#8217;t go on, it won&#8217;t.  You&#8217;re absolutely right that the intellectual vision of liberalism is a non-realistic, areal vision and it can&#8217;t ultimately succeed.  They&#8217;ll always spend a lot more money than they can have and they do things &#8217;til they break.  Okay.  And we see that right now.  We see the deficits going up and the debt going up so fast that it&#8217;s ultimately going to break.  $130 trillion, whatever it is.  So the question isn&#8217;t when, it isn&#8217;t if there will be a massive, painful default to hundreds of millions of people who have been relying on this and who have basically done nothing wrong, expected to have Medicare, Social Security and other things and whatever Obama Care purports to give them, and they&#8217;re not going to get it.  </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">So the question is starting to put proposals in place to wind this up, basically have a national bankruptcy, and have an open process rather than one that&#8217;s done behind the table and done in a sort of crony capitalist fashion.  And I think it&#8217;s important to start proposing big and radical changes because you are going to get vilified and attacked, full-scale nuclear attack, no matter what you do.  One of the things we talk about in the book is breaking up the larger states that are going bankrupt.  They&#8217;re ungovernable.  Okay.  All the scholarships shows that thriving economies attend to be small, a few million people.  The genius of the founders was creating a federal system that allowed lots of local activity with a fairly minimal overlay to create a free-trade zone and a single unitary defense policy and let everybody play their own game, and we have to move back toward that.</span><br />
So the stress and ultimate giving way of this 20th century legacy state is an opportunity for us, even though it&#8217;s gonna be a difficult transition and it&#8217;s gonna be difficult to persuade people this is happening until very bad things are happening like welfare checks bouncing and things like that.</p>
<p><strong>Charles Kesler:</strong> <span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Yeah, I mean I think we live in a period when big thinking by conservatives is more necessary. </span>I mean Mark Levin&#8217;s book on possible constitutional amendments.  Michael&#8217;s book is very much worth reading for the picture he paints of what America could look like after we successfully negotiate this coming time of troubles. And knowing there is a possible future – this is really the nice thing about your book – knowing there&#8217;s a possible future encourages you, empowers you to think more radically –about what&#8217;s possible.</p>
<p><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;">Michael Lotus:</strong><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> </span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Right.  Right.  And it ties into your book too &#8217;cause your book is really the story of the 20th century liberalism which is always motivated by a vision.  They always have a vision, and how often are we just reacting?  Reacting tactically, reacting to their initiatives.  What are we caught up in?  Stopping ObamaCare.  Right?  We want to be initiating action.  One thing we need to do to do that, and my coauthor and my&#8217;s vision is to think through what the future would look like if we got our way.  One of the things that happens – try this with your friends.  You ask a conservative, and you say all right, things go our way; two, four, six, eight-year election cycles.  We elect great people.  We&#8217;ve got 42 governors.  We&#8217;ve got two terms of a great president.  We&#8217;ve got eight Supreme Court justices.  We get everything we want.  What does America look like?  What is the America where your grandchildren are starting school look like?  And they almost never have any picture.  They tend to say we gotta go back to something, or they&#8217;ll just start talkin&#8217; about Barak Obama again, and one of the things we did in our book that&#8217;s conscience is at the beginning of the book we say we go back 1,500 years to our cultural roots and we go forward to the Year 2040 to try to imagine one generation down the road. </span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">So in that span of time any one president is gonna be relatively modestly consequential.  So this is the only sentence in this book that will contain the name Barak Obama, and that required some self-discipline, but we all need to think that like that.  This guy has been elected twice.  We&#8217;re stuck with him.  Reagan said we aren&#8217;t going to defeat communism.  We&#8217;re gonna transcend communism.  We&#8217;re gonna transcend Barak Obama.</span></p>
<p>And by the same token, one of the very interesting paradoxes of this weekend is we hear two things; one big message and one more muted, and I think we should turn the volume up on the more muted one.  The big one is the menace of progressivism and what a threat it is to us and how destructive it is and how powerful it is and how it dominates this and that sector of American life, but the subtext is it doesn&#8217;t work.  It never works.  It doesn&#8217;t make people happy.  It doesn&#8217;t put food on the table.  It&#8217;s ruinous, and we know what happened.  The Soviet Union fell apart, and I was old enough to think when Reagan started talkin&#8217; to Gorbachev, he&#8217;s being duped.  The Russians, they&#8217;re the communists.  They&#8217;ve got thousands of ballistic missiles.  They&#8217;ve got the tanks.  They&#8217;ll never go away.  We&#8217;re just gonna have to be on guard forever and they went whoof.  This thing we&#8217;re up against is – Americans are smarter.  American progressives are smarter than Soviet communists.  What they&#8217;ve built is a little stronger.  Okay.  But the epic failure of that website, that&#8217;s a sign that these guys are taking on things so far beyond what they can dream of accomplishing that they&#8217;re gonna fail.  So we don&#8217;t wanna be standing there without a game plan when they fail.  We wanna be ready.  Just like Milton Friedman said, they don&#8217;t wanna turn to us &#8217;cause they know it&#8217;s gonna hurt.  We&#8217;re gonna have to get the inflation out of the system.  We&#8217;re gonna have to change the way we&#8217;ve done things.  They will turn to us when everything else has failed.  So we wanna be ready with the alternatives &#8217;cause everything is going to fail.</p>
<p><strong>Brian Calle: </strong><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">So let me turn to you for a second Charles.  So let&#8217;s assume – you said a couple minutes ago that it could go either way with the crisis of liberalism.  Sure they could fail and then we have this conservative resurgence in our country, but what&#8217;s the alternative and what&#8217;s the catalyst for that alternative where maybe things fail, and I mean for example, I mean Sally&#8217;s work on ObamaCare.  Say ObamaCare fails. </span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">I mean and the two options are single payer or going back to a more market-based system.</span></p>
<p><strong><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Charles Kesler: </span></strong><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Well I think on that narrow question, I think the left is already preparing the post-ObamaCare  debate.  I mean there is a lot of chatter on the left now, hearings in the Senate about single payer again because I think we&#8217;re set up now for a failure of ObamaCare. </span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">They may not wish it but I think it&#8217;s dawning on them that it&#8217;s likely, and so how do they react to that, and their reaction will of course be to blame it on the insurance companies, blame it on the surviving private part of the healthcare economy and say, well, we tried it.  We tried capitalism.  We tried free-market economics.</span></p>
<p>And now we have to go to, the only alternative is full socialist nationalized healthcare, the single payer plan, but I think in the larger question, where do they go?  The only way to pay for modern liberalism is with massive tax increases on the middle class. <span style="line-height: 1.5em;">That&#8217;s where the money is.  And so that&#8217;s the plausible alternative to turning towards a more conservative or free-market model of America, and a value-added tax, a wealth tax, there are disincentives to simply raising the income tax enormously or adding brackets, though they would be happy to do that I think. But to get the amount of money they would need you really have to socialize the economy. And in order to do that, that means more than 50 percent of the economy has to be run through the government. And the only way to do that is probably a massive new tax, a new kind of tax – On top of all the existing ones.</span></p>
<p><strong>Michael Lotus: </strong><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Which will provoke outrage and resistance and hopefully successful resistance, and if the resistance fails when they do it, socialism will fail in America at a lower level, and we&#8217;ll be more damaged and need to recover from a lower level, but it ultimately cannot work, and it especially can&#8217;t work in a country like ours.  You can get away with a little bit of socialism in Denmark where you&#8217;ve got a couple of million people who all eat the same food and they&#8217;re all cousins and they all get along and they all trust each other.  This is a county of hustlers.  This is a country of people who are individualists, and they cooperate by voluntary agreement, and when you tell them do it or else, and they don&#8217;t see what&#8217;s in it for them, they gonna resist it. </span></p>
<p>And I&#8217;ll just mention – we seem to be having a dramatic technical effect to my left here.  Whenever things get really bad and we start to see a major institutional failure in American life, mass political movements arise.  The progressive movement just didn&#8217;t come out of the blue.  It didn&#8217;t come off of flying saucers.  It came around because the transition from an agrarian to an industrial economy was incredibly disruptive, and millions of people wanted something different to happen.  They wanted the government to protect them when there were downturns because they couldn&#8217;t go back to the farm &#8217;cause there was no farm to go back to.  By the same token we&#8217;re gonna have change on that scale.<br />
It&#8217;s funny we saw the Tea Party start with the TARP bailouts, and I thought this is right on schedule.  Right?  In all mass political movements, just like the anti-war movement that ultimately at least got the draft repealed, right, and probably caused us to lose the Vietnam War, but mass political movements start out with enthusiastic amateurs who look like kooks, who then mature into more effective and more productive politicians and then they take over one of the major political schedules.  I think we&#8217;re more or less on schedule.  But yeah, it&#8217;s certainly the case we could get to a much more damaged level in America before we begin to turn it around.  I hope that doesn&#8217;t happen.</p>
<p><strong>Brian Calle: </strong><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">I think the NSA didn&#8217;t like what you were saying Charles, because they turned off your mike but we got you a hand mike.</span></p>
<p><strong>Charles Kesler:</strong> <span style="line-height: 1.5em;">President Putin?  President Putin? Who knows who&#8217;s listening?</span></p>
<p><strong>Brian Calle:</strong> <span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Yeah.  Who knows?  Let me play devil&#8217;s advocate for a second here.  Newt Gingrich in private conversations we have had when he comes into town and public conversations probably in front of this group on many occasions had said that California is the harbinger of things to come for the rest of the country.</span><br />
So let me channel the assertion, or challenge the assertion of both of you about the appetite for taxes.  I mean Californians in large numbers, I mean a large majority passed income tax increase and sales tax increases that affected not only the wealthy, but will also impact, or already are impacting, the middle class.<br />
So is there a new generation of Americans who have bought into this idea that we need to pay more in taxes because government should be bigger and doing more?</p>
<p><strong>Michael Lotus: </strong><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Well I don&#8217;t know why he thinks – California is a one-party state the way Illinois is and Massachusetts is.  There is no organized resistance to it.  So you&#8217;re punching into a vacuum here.  But another thing is this, if we had a federal government that had a less-heavy hand, different communities in this country are gonna want different levels of a welfare state, and people in Minnesota are gonna have more progressivism and more of a benevolent state than people in Texas, and we should have that diversity.  We have 320 million people.  We should have a wide variety of ways to do this, and if the Californians think we wanna not have offshore drilling in our seacoast.  I&#8217;ve never been to this part of California before.  It&#8217;s just so beautiful.  Why would anyone wanna leave, right? And I have to go back to Chicago.  It&#8217;s 30 degrees colder.  Say we just won&#8217;t drill &#8217;cause God forbid something should happen, right?  Well let them.  It&#8217;s their state, right?  So I don&#8217;t know if everyone is suddenly gonna buy into the idea that we&#8217;re gonna have to have more taxes across the nation.  I just don&#8217;t see that happening.</span></p>
<p><strong>Charles Kesler:</strong> <span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Yeah.  California is increasingly atypical I think.  But you also have the strangely unacknowledged fact that at the lower levels of political office in cities and in counties within California half of the elected officials are Republicans. I mean so the party which does seem dead as a statewide party, there are no statewide officeholders in California who are Republican. But there is a lot of local and county officeholders who are Republican, so at the grassroots there are still signs of life, and indeed real strength in the Republican Party.  So even in California it&#8217;s not impossible that if things get worse before they get better that you could see a kind of recrudescence of the Republican Party and even of some version at least of conservatism.</span></p>
<p><strong>Brian Calle: </strong>Let&#8217;s open it up to questions from the audience.  Michael?</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><strong>Audience Member:</strong> </span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">As a physician, there are other alternatives to the way that single payer can work.  I&#8217;m against them all, but the way it can work is not just by taxing people, but reducing services.  Reducing the opportunity of individuals to get their hips replaced or their knees done, cutting off expensive equipment for MS, cutting off chemotherapy if you&#8217;re over 60, and look at Medi-Cal in this state.  I mean as a physician we can&#8217;t afford to take care of these people.  They get absolutely horrible quality care, but they do have insurance, so that&#8217;s a way that single payer can work.  It&#8217;s devastating.  It&#8217;s not a system that anybody would really, any of us would want to be a part of. But it&#8217;s another alternative.</span></p>
<p><strong>Charles Kesler:</strong> <span style="line-height: 1.5em;">No, that&#8217;s quite true, and my wife, Sally Pipes, knows much more about the subject than I do, but her cousin who is a cataract surgeon in Canada was just told by a regional regulatory agency that he&#8217;s doing his surgeries too quickly, too many patients.  He is seeing too many patients, and so instead of an average wait time of five weeks, seven weeks, now there&#8217;s a, what is the? Five months. Five months a patient must wait for the cataract operation, and that&#8217;s to save money. Because the government doesn&#8217;t want to spend more. But there are plenty of patients who want them. But it&#8217;s an entirely amoral or immoral top-down bureaucratic nightmare.</span></p>
<p><strong>Michael Lotus:</strong> <span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Right.  The only way that we&#8217;re gonna improve delivery of healthcare is if we give people a voucher-like sum of money to then have it provided competitively.  That&#8217;s the only way anything is ever improved.  It&#8217;s the only way you ever drive cost down to drive innovation, and unless Republicans start perhaps at the state level proposing these types of alternatives and pushing them and proving them in the field so that people will believe in them then we&#8217;re not gonna get anywhere.  We&#8217;re just saying we&#8217;ll give it to you but not funded as much, you just look like a scrooge.  There is a guy who was running for the Senate in Illinois who lost to one of the old guys, a guy named Doug Truax, who I think we&#8217;ll hear from again.  Doug&#8217;s an insurance broker and he did some arithmetic and said for a fraction of what we pay for the – the overwhelming majority of people who are uninsured are in something like 30 locations.  They&#8217;re basically inner-city-type locations.  You could set up health clinics where you have young people come out of medical school.  You forgive their loans, and you have older doctors who are retired or close to it supervise them so you got the people with the brand new skills but who aren&#8217;t experienced, and the guys who are highly experienced and they&#8217;ll work.  It&#8217;s not gonna be that expensive and you can treat all these people.  You think this is creative thinking.  This will cost something like a tenth of what it would cost to do it through the ObamaCare-type approach.  We need to have 50 laboratories of democracies at least with these types of innovations coming, and we need to be thinking and proposing this stuff, &#8217;cause if we try to oppose ObamaCare with just, &#8220;please, stop!&#8221; It&#8217;s awful.  Stand in front of the train, we&#8217;re gonna get run over.</span></p>
<p><strong>Charles Kesler: </strong><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Michael&#8217;s book calls for what, 71 states?</span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><br />
</span></p>
<p><strong><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Michael Lotus: </span></strong><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Well it&#8217;s so funny, we wrote this thing and the stuff we mentioned supposedly happening 2040, we tried to be ultra-conservative, all this stuff started coming along.  California is ungovernable.  California should probably be multiple states, right? So we say three, and then a fairly realistic and well-supported effort to turn it into six starts makin&#8217; it into the newspapers.</span><br />
So it&#8217;s not like we&#8217;re just delusional.  These ideas are afloat out there in the world.</p>
<p><strong>Brian Calle: </strong><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Yeah.  Art Laffer in his book, his most recent book on California, suggests that California should be cut into multiple states, and then the gentleman you&#8217;re referring to, Tim Draper, the venture capitalist from  the Bay Area is going around the state.  I met with him last week and he&#8217;s hell bent.  This will and eventually has to happen.</span></p>
<p><strong><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Michael Lotus: </span></strong><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">One curious historical fact, when Texas came into the union the treaty provided that it could divide itself into five states without having to get permission from the federal government.  So if the Texans ever want to divide themselves up and gerrymander themselves, we&#8217;ll probably have two dark blue senators and four red senators, I mean eight senators all the Texas&#8217;s.</span></p>
<p><strong>Brian Calle: </strong><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">I&#8217;m afraid if we divide California into six states we&#8217;ll have 12 dark blue senators –It was a little bit of a commentary on what&#8217;s going on in Canada and the healthcare system there.  There are 60,000 or so I think he said refugees that would be coming to the United States would not be able to and a critique on how we need to be using those resources and the data coming out of the Canada system to help fight ObamaCare in the U.S.  I think that&#8217;s a fair.</span></p>
<p><strong>Michael Lotus: </strong><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">That&#8217;s a fair summary.  Yeah.  I mean it&#8217;s interesting too that we have Canadians fleeing to the USA.  We also have medical tourism, right? Where people are flying to India and all kinds of other places.  One of the things that happens to is you build up a bureaucratic monster and market forces start to eat at the edges.  As it gets worse and worse, people are paying their property taxes, but then they&#8217;re doing other things to educate their kids outside the public school system, right?  Or people are looking for tutoring and after a while you gotta hope they&#8217;re gonna say wait a second, why am I paying twice?  Right.  And that can be a point of entry to revolt against the system we have now.</span></p>
<p><strong>Brian Calle:</strong> <span style="line-height: 1.5em;">I mean, Norm go ahead.</span></p>
<p><strong>Audience Member: </strong><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">What you&#8217;re talking about, Michael, is sort of what Walter Russell Mead is talking about in his death of the blue state model. I see two difficulties in the transition from where we are now, 2.0, to 3.0.  The first is a huge debt overhang that&#8217;s already there and encased in law. The second is the sclerotic, purposefully sclerotic nature of our government. </span>And it&#8217;s very difficult, and then the founders set it up that way to get from where we are now to somewhere else.</p>
<p>And there are so many people with vested interest in the status quo. <span style="line-height: 1.5em;">It&#8217;s gonna be a huge revolution anyway, but hopefully a peaceful one, hopefully a political, strictly political one.  I think you&#8217;re gonna see – and thank you for mentioning Walter Russell Mead.  He&#8217;s great and we&#8217;re influenced by him, and it&#8217;s, we seem to be thinking along very similar lines.  You&#8217;re right.  The debt overhang is unbelievable, and so what&#8217;s gonna happen?  We say it&#8217;s gonna get repudiated.  It&#8217;s not gonna be paid.  So the only question is how is that gonna be worked out, and what&#8217;s gonna happen is we&#8217;re gonna see people losing their medical care and nickels and dimes and they&#8217;re gonna try to save money on the margins and your taxes are gonna go up and the quality of what you get is gonna come down, and we&#8217;re gonna basically be surfs and not get anything for our money.  </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Now I don&#8217;t know about you, but the American I live in is composed of people who tend to get irritated if their hamburger doesn&#8217;t have a tomato on it when they ask for it, and if their app on their phone doesn&#8217;t work exactly right they raise hell.  I&#8217;m hoping that if the basic things we need to live are being taken away from us we can get ourselves organized.  This event shows that people are getting themselves organized.  So hopefully they&#8217;ll be resistance to that throughout and we&#8217;ll be able to stop that kinda doubling down.  The rest, all the people who are incumbents who benefit from – that&#8217;s what happens every time there&#8217;s a major change, right? </span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">We fought a Civil War against a huge community of people who had a vested interest in something that was completely embedded in our society.  The first slaves were sold a few years after the first Europeans settled here, right?  That was part of America.  Then it went away.  We don&#8217;t wanna do it with armed conflict, but we&#8217;re gonna have to make a lot of that go away, and what you might do is the public sector workforce you tell &#8216;em look the money is not there.  The taxpayers aren&#8217;t gonna pay it.  The technology is letting people hide their money.  </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">You know bitcoin is like the ModelT of what&#8217;s coming.  Bitcoin is like this like thing that&#8217;s like what is it, but it&#8217;s gonna be harder and harder for the government to find the tax money from people who are determined not to let the government see it.  Okay.  We have the creepy state that spies on us all the time.  But some of those tools are gonna be available to us, and the government&#8217;s gonna have to get things by agreement.  So we&#8217;re gonna have to tell &#8216;em look, you&#8217;re gonna get so many number of pennies on the dollar of what you are promised, and they aren&#8217;t gonna like it and they&#8217;re gonna fight politically, and I see no other way it works out.  So we should be ready for them.  We should be ready with our proposals.  Here is what you guys are gonna get.</span></p>
<p>Well that ties back into the whole business of kind of losing the cultural battle &#8217;cause we haven&#8217;t fought it.  Really.  Charles&#8217; book shows that.  All the smart people, the novelists and the creative people all are on the left.  I never understood why that is, but we need to try to keep that from always being the case, and you&#8217;re right.  People are being energetic and creative about trying to solve problems who might say, well, of course I&#8217;m a liberal &#8217;cause I care about poor people.  That&#8217;s just &#8217;cause they don&#8217;t know who we are or understand what we are.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">And your point about the world decentralizing, that&#8217;s absolutely right, and one of the things we say in the book is our constitution is futuristic.  Woodrow Wilson thought it was outdated.  He might have been a tough fit for an industrial era hierarchical society, but we&#8217;re moving completely away from that.  What the founders actually lived with is kind of like the future we&#8217;re heading towards except we&#8217;re gonna be massively more productive.  Our work and our homes are gonna be located in the same place much more as they lived in.  The idea of a job, that&#8217;s like everyone gets a job where someone else owns the capital in a building away from where you live and you go there and come back and they write you a check, that&#8217;s gonna disintegrate.  I don&#8217;t know about you, but I&#8217;m not psychologically prepared for that new world yet.  I don&#8217;t know quite what it&#8217;s gonna be like, and our government certainly isn&#8217;t built to accommodate it.  So it&#8217;s gonna be big changes.</span></p>
<p><strong>Charles Kesler: </strong><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">But on the other hand, I mean the danger of excessive personalization, decentralization is that you retreat into a series of private communities and you lose the sense of a public good that you have in common. And so there are many scenarios where increasing decentralization goes with increasing centralization in government because people retreat into their private world of their friends and their work peers. And pay no attention to politics.  They lose any sense.  They are alienated from politics. And one of the differences with the founding period and today is that I think that&#8217;s much more prevalent today than it was then, that we&#8217;ve given up on that.  The market is much superior, and it&#8217;s so superior it can satisfy all of our needs for the playlists that we want, the kind of food that we want, the kind of television or movies that we&#8217;d like to see. So what do we need government for? And it maybe it&#8217;s easier to just turn your back on it than it is to overthrow it. And so one of the problems is it may be that in today&#8217;s hyper decentralized economy you lose the sort of critical mass you need to make a political revolution to make a political difference.</span></p>
<p><strong>Michael Lotus:</strong> <span style="line-height: 1.5em;">And I detect a fourth person on the stage.  Alexis de Tocqueville is the ghost speaking there a little bit.  But I quibble with this still.  I think that the network technology and the social media, which is gonna get better and better and better, doesn&#8217;t create a mirage of companionship and friendship and new association.  It&#8217;s real.  My coauthor and I did not meet in person once when we wrote the book, and we probably only had four or five hours of telephone communication over a year.  It was all email, and our friends who would look at things, it was all – there are people who I talk to every day who are very close to me, who are very dear to me who I never see in person, and those are real friendships, right?  And the black conservatives who found each other, this is fantastic, right?  These are real connections.  Okay.  And the means to do that are gonna get better and better.  So the prospect of the kinda Tocquevillian retreat into your personal world and shunning the outer world is certainly always possible, and there is always gonna be some of that, but I hope that that&#8217;s not going to be a general trend, and I don&#8217;t think the technology necessarily pushes us in that direction.</span></p>
<p><strong> Brian Calle:</strong> <span style="line-height: 1.5em;">I was in a conversation about this in the Bay Area this week with another venture capitalist who is actually starting a ballot initiative that would do not exactly what you&#8217;re proposing, not by congressional district, but by percentage of votes statewide.  So Democrats get 65 percent of the vote, they get 65 percent of the Electoral College that&#8217;s for that presidential nominee.  Likewise, Republicans get 35 percent, they would get 35 percent.  I&#8217;m not sure I would be ready to pass judgment as to whether or not it&#8217;s a good or bad idea just yet, but I would say we must look at this holistically, which is that if we do it in California where that might be beneficial to a particular party, what if they do it in Texas that way? Or what if they do it in Arizona that way?  And so I think you have to look at the consequences as a whole, but on face it&#8217;s more representative so it might be a good idea, but there are some proposals for that already floating.</span></p>
<p><strong>Charles Kesler:</strong> <span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Hmm.  Yeah.  I mean one of the downsides is it potentially opens you up for recounts in every district, whereas now you have a statewide recount which involves every district, but still it&#8217;s the aggregate total that you&#8217;re fighting over. The amount of chicanery possible. If every district has a delegate and the popular vote decides it, it would be enormously multiplied.</span></p>
<p><strong>Michael Lotus: </strong><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Right.  There is also a positive to the winner-take-all version because if you had it that it&#8217;s divided pro rata or divided by district in somewhere, you&#8217;re gonna be able to run national campaigns focused on national-type issues and not have to go to each state and seek to make local-type deals and the smaller states are gonna get left out entirely.  They&#8217;re not gonna be considered.  You can win the whole election from California, New York, Illinois, a couple of other places, and I think the system we have now forces you to pay attention to at least the medium-size states and try to get a few of those into your column.  So the Electoral College is something people always seem to not like, but I think it&#8217;s very much a not broke and don&#8217;t fix it part of the U.S. Constitution and I&#8217;m not super, super inclined to see it changed.</span></p>
<p><strong>Brian Calle: </strong><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">And on that note we are going to end.  Thanks very much to our two panelists.</span></p>
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		<title>How California Voters Raised the Price of Eggs Across America</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/how-california-voters-raised-the-price-of-eggs-across-america/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=how-california-voters-raised-the-price-of-eggs-across-america</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/how-california-voters-raised-the-price-of-eggs-across-america/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 08 Mar 2014 01:57:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[California]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cracking eggs]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=219844</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[If egg prices increase by 20 percent, people who face tight budgets at the grocery store will suffer.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/desepcion.jpg"><img class="alignnone  wp-image-219848" alt="OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/desepcion.jpg" width="420" height="420" /></a></p>
<p>In 2008, California voters endorsed Proposition 2 which banned the confinement of animals. California egg producers had to ensure that chickens had enough room to move around which negated so-called &#8220;factory farming&#8221; and would end up raising the price of eggs by 20%.</p>
<p>Obviously this was a problem for California agriculture which would have trouble competing on price with free agriculture. And there&#8217;s only so much of a market for fair-trade free-range organic chickens lovingly raised in a Quaker school by social justice experts on a strict diet of granola and NPR broadcasts.</p>
<p>And so California&#8217;s reds decided to instead <a href="http://american.com/archive/2014/january/california2019s-chicken-law-and-the-commerce-clause">raise the price of eggs across America</a>. Sounds fair, right?</p>
<blockquote><p>Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster (D) said Tuesday morning he has filed a federal lawsuit against the state of California over the Golden State’s new regulations on enclosures that house egg-laying hens. The regulations, Koster alleges, violate the constitution’s Commerce Clause.</p>
<p>California voters in 2008 passed a ballot initiative that require larger enclosures for egg-laying hens. Farmers in California worried the new rules, which would increase their costs, would put them at a competitive disadvantage with egg farms in other states, so the state legislature passed a measure in 2010 to require out-of-state producers to comply with California rules.</p>
<p>That, Koster says, is unfair to his state’s egg producers.</p>
<p>“If California legislators are permitted to mandate the size of chicken coops on Missouri farms, they may just as easily demand that Missouri soybeans be harvested by hand or that Missouri corn be transported by solar-powered trucks,” Koster said in a statement.</p>
<p>California farmers must begin complying with the cage law beginning in 2015, under the terms of Proposition 2. The legislature requires out-of-state farmers to begin complying with the same rules by the end of that year.</p>
<p>Koster’s office estimated that Missouri egg producers would have to pay $120 million to expand the size of their coops, and that production costs would rise 20 percent.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>That&#8217;s the whole point. The left can&#8217;t compete on product or price, but it can kneecap everyone else as long as it has control over populous states. Businesses and individuals can flee California, but they can&#8217;t escape its regulatory creep.</p>
<blockquote><p>The country is awash in ballot initiatives and legislative efforts to increase regulation of agriculture. Maine and Connecticut have passed GMO labeling laws, although they won’t go into effect until other states in the Northeast have passed labeling laws as well. Florida has laws outlawing the most common method of pork production. Several states have outlawed small chicken coops, and states have also banned the sale of foie gras and shark fins. Only California has had the chutzpah to impose the preferences of that state’s voters on the rest of the country.</p>
<p>Make no mistake about it, if egg prices increase by 20 percent, people who face tight budgets at the grocery store will suffer.</p></blockquote>
<p>But the people who make these laws won&#8217;t and California voters have become mindless stooges of the left. And if you buy your eggs with EBT cards, you don&#8217;t tend to care how much they cost because you aren&#8217;t paying for them anyway.</p>
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		<title>California May Pass Law to Protect Black People from Soda</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/california-may-pass-law-to-protect-black-people-from-soda/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=california-may-pass-law-to-protect-black-people-from-soda</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/california-may-pass-law-to-protect-black-people-from-soda/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 20 Feb 2014 21:39:46 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[California]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[soda ban]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=219315</guid>
		<description><![CDATA["Nearly half of Latino and African American children—will develop Type 2 diabetes.”]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/coke-black.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-219317" alt="coke-black" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/coke-black.jpg" width="400" height="226" /></a></p>
<p>Bloombergism is alive and well in California as another front is declared in the War on Soda. Apparently black people can&#8217;t be trusted to decide what they want to eat or drink on their own.</p>
<p>They must be protected <a href="http://freebeacon.com/california-considers-warning-labels-for-soda/">from their food choices by the nanny state</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>A bill introduced in the California senate would require warning labels for soda and give state bureaucrats the authority to inspect businesses to ensure compliance.</p>
<p>Sen. Bill Monning (D.) introduced the “Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Safety Warning Act” last week in the name of “public health,” which would prohibit selling soda or any sweetened drink with 75 calories or more without a safety warning.</p>
<p>“When the science is this conclusive, the State of California has a responsibility to take steps to protect consumers,” Monning said in a statement. “As with tobacco and alcohol warnings, this legislation will give Californians essential information they need to make healthier beverage choices.”</p></blockquote>
<p>And then we can outlaw and tax soda and prevent it from being sold&#8230; because that will make everyone healthier.</p>
<blockquote><p>The bill would “prohibit a person from distributing, selling, or offering for sale a sugar-sweetened beverage in a sealed beverage container, or a multipack of sugar-sweetened beverages, in this state unless the beverage container or multipack bears a specified safety warning.”</p></blockquote>
<p>So it&#8217;s a war on sugar then. Let the people drink unsweetened Kale.</p>
<blockquote><p>Vending machines would also have to display the safety warning, and require businesses to keep invoice records of all sugar-sweetened beverages “distributed, purchased, or sold,” for two years.</p>
<p>“The department and a local enforcement agency shall have the right to inspect, examine, and copy those records at any time during normal business hours for the purpose of ensuring compliance by distributors with the requirements of this article,” the bill said. “The refusal to allow a full inspection, examination, or copying of those records shall constitute a violation of this article.”</p>
<p>Failing to comply with the legislation would result in a $50 to $500 fine. If passed, the bill would go into effect July 2015.</p></blockquote>
<p>Our police state is nothing if not magnificently petty.</p>
<blockquote><p>Monning’s office said the bill is necessary for California’s “communities of color.”</p>
<p>“The health implications are felt most acutely by California’s communities of color, which are the largest consumers of these sugary drinks,” a press release said. “Unless the obesity epidemic is reversed, one in three children born after 2000—and nearly half of Latino and African American children—will develop Type 2 diabetes in their lifetime.”</p></blockquote>
<p>Isn&#8217;t that a concern for their parents? Oh I forget, California is their parent. California Uber Alles.</p>
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		<title>Obama Blames California Drought He Caused on Global Warming</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/obama-blames-california-drought-he-caused-on-global-warming/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obama-blames-california-drought-he-caused-on-global-warming</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/obama-blames-california-drought-he-caused-on-global-warming/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 16 Feb 2014 16:12:46 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[California]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ecoscam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Global Warming]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=218971</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I hear Global Warming was also responsible for ObamaCare]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/REUCALIFORNIADROUGHT.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-218972" alt="A stream of water trickles on the bottom of the Almaden Reservoir near San Jose" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/REUCALIFORNIADROUGHT-450x300.jpg" width="450" height="300" /></a></p>
<p>I hear Global Warming was also responsible for ObamaCare, the National Debt and Obama&#8217;s poor golf game.</p>
<p><a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/energy-environment/197119-house-looks-to-end-california-drought-that-gop-blames">Obama helped cause the drought in California</a> and now <a href="http://weaselzippers.us/173909-obama-to-link-california-drought-to-global-warming/">he&#8217;s going to blame Global Warming</a> and funnel more money <a href="http://washingtonexaminer.com/obama-to-link-california-drought-to-climate-change/article/2544008?custom_click=rss">to the Green Mafia over</a> a drought that the Green Mafia thinks doesn&#8217;t go far enough.</p>
<blockquote><p>The House will pass legislation next week that would restore the flow of water to farms, homes and businesses in California&#8217;s Central Valley, to help victims of what congressional Republicans say is a drought that is being made worse by the Obama administration.</p>
<p>In 2009, the Obama administration upset that agreement by requiring the diversion of water away from farmers and residents to help ensure enough water for salmon and a three-inch fish called the Delta smelt. The Obama administration justified this under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), but California Republicans say this decision led to a government-created drought for regions of California&#8217;s Central Valley.</p>
<p>The bill would require California to restore water deliveries to the Central Valley that were made under the 1994 Bay Delta Accord, which the GOP says was a compromise between residents, farms, environmentalists, and the state and federal government.</p>
<p>&#8220;Environmentalists have decided that fish are more important than the unemployed,&#8221; said House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). He said the bill &#8220;puts families before fish.&#8221;</p>
<p>Earlier in the day, the Obama administration said it opposes the bill and Obama would veto it if it made it to his desk.</p></blockquote>
<p>Obama has a better idea. Of course.</p>
<blockquote><p>Obama on Friday will travel to California to announce new executive actions to combat the state’s drought and will attribute the growing frequency of such conditions to climate change.</p>
<p>Obama will announce the expediting of $100 million in assistance for livestock producers, $60 million in food-bank funding for families affected by the drought and another $15 million for areas nationwide most severely harmed by dry conditions.</p>
<p>On a broader level, the president will use his trip to Fresno, Calif. to urge leaders to do more to fight climate change. The president will call for a $1 billion “climate resilience fund” in his budget next month, according to the White House.</p></blockquote>
<p>Just no actual water. But $1 billion for the Green Mafia&#8217;s Eco-Hoax that is impoverishing farmers and ranchers.</p>
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		<title>New York Times Claims Wealthy Leftist Mike Honda is the &#8220;Little Guy&#8221;</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/new-york-times-claims-wealthy-leftist-mike-honda-is-the-little-guy/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=new-york-times-claims-wealthy-leftist-mike-honda-is-the-little-guy</link>
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		<pubDate>Sat, 08 Feb 2014 15:34:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[California]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mike Honda]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=218111</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[“He bleeds little guy,” Dr. Gerston said.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/pelosi_honda.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-218112" alt="pelosi_honda" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/pelosi_honda-445x350.jpg" width="445" height="350" /></a></p>
<p>The New York Times approaches every story with a narrative. And its coverage of 17th district California Democratic primary is no different. This time <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/06/us/politics/tech-industry-flexes-muscle-in-california-race.html">it&#8217;s a story about a powerful 1 percenter</a> tech industry pitted against a working class Democratic rep.</p>
<blockquote><p>At a time when the tech industry has drawn a backlash in the San Francisco Bay Area, where the tech elite are increasingly portrayed as concerned with their narrow privileges at the expense of society at large, Mr. Honda’s supporters have labeled Mr. Khanna a “Silicon Valley groupie” whose wealthy donors are trying to buy a congressional seat.</p>
<p>For his part, Mr. Honda, a former public-school teacher, held several local and state public offices before going to Congress. He is a Japanese-American whose views on politics and civil rights were molded by his family’s internment during World War II. Over the years, Mr. Honda has nurtured many Asian-American political candidates, some of whom are in the 17th District, the first majority Asian-American district in the mainland United States.</p>
<p>Larry Gerston, a political scientist at San Jose State University, said that while Mr. Honda had supported the tech industry over the years, he had defined himself through his passionate campaigns for the poor, public education and civil rights. “He bleeds little guy,” Dr. Gerston said.</p></blockquote>
<p>Mike Honda&#8217;s net worth is in the upper six figures. It&#8217;s safe to say that he doesn&#8217;t bleed little guy. From 1971 and onward he held a variety of appointed and then elected offices.</p>
<p>And, more relevantly to the New York Times, he&#8217;s a reliable left-wing vote and shamelessly pandered to Muslims by comparing Japanese detentions to the treatment of Muslims after September 11.</p>
<p>Mike Honda has predictably come out against Israel and for Hamas. If Honda were forced into retirement by the tech industry, that would not be a particularly bad thing, but I&#8217;m not too confident it will happen.</p>
<p>Honda has developed deep roots with all the activist groups and they are going to come out in a primary election to support him. Honda might lose a general election, but he&#8217;s not going to lose a primary which brings out the most fanatical and mindless Dems to tech industry funding with some Obama people.</p>
<blockquote><p>A Republican candidate, Vanila Singh, an anesthesiologist who, like Mr. Khanna, is Indian-American, is also running in the solidly Democratic district.</p></blockquote>
<p>Good luck to Singh, who is already being tarred as anti-Muslim.</p>
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		<title>3X More Californians Lose Insurance Over ObamaCare than Get it Back</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/3x-more-californians-lose-health-insurance-than-gain-it-back-under-obamacare/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=3x-more-californians-lose-health-insurance-than-gain-it-back-under-obamacare</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/3x-more-californians-lose-health-insurance-than-gain-it-back-under-obamacare/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 27 Jan 2014 17:04:03 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[California]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[covered california]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obamacare]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[socialized medicine]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=217388</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Three times as many people have lost insurance as have gained it. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/9662616-large.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-217389" alt="9662616-large" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/9662616-large.jpg" width="380" height="269" /></a></p>
<p>ObamaCare was sold as a way of dealing with the uninsured and it&#8217;s been about as successful in that as the War on Poverty was in fighting poverty. Instead of reducing the ranks of the uninsured, in California, Covered California <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/01/27/California-s-Obamacare-Numbers-Look-Bad">has expanded them instead</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>By the end of October, the executive director of California&#8217;s Obamacare exchange confirmed that up to 900,000 people in the state would lose their current health insurance by the end of 2013&#8211;not including those who may lose it through their workplaces in 2014.</p>
<p>Many of those are among the 500,000 or so who signed up for Obamacare through Covered California by the end of 2013&#8211;about 330,000, according to McCormack. That also means that only about 200,000 previously uninsured people signed up for Obamacare.</p>
<p>As for the other 600,000 or so, no one know what happened to them&#8211;they are just uninsured. The state refused to participate in President Barack Obama&#8217;s proposed &#8220;fix&#8221; for those who had their policies canceled.</p>
<p>So roughly three times as many people have lost insurance as have gained it.</p></blockquote>
<p>We had to destroy the village to save the village to destroy the village, with the village being health care.</p>
<p>The left of course doesn&#8217;t care. From its point of view, the worse it makes its hybrid mix of government and free market health care, the readier the people will be for Single Payer and death panels and all the other fun parts of Socialized medicine.</p>
<p>Everything from the HMOs was leading up to the planned collapse of the health care system into a decrepit Third World mess overseen entirely by government bureaucrats and staffed entirely by union members.</p>
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		<title>Can a $12 Minimum Wage Reform Welfare?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/can-a-12-minimum-wage-reform-welfare/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=can-a-12-minimum-wage-reform-welfare</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/can-a-12-minimum-wage-reform-welfare/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 17 Jan 2014 19:24:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[California]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Illegal Aliens]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[minimum wage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ron Unz]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=215152</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[ Low end jobs aren't going anywhere.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/welfare1.gif"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-99211" alt="welfare1" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/welfare1-300x199.gif" width="300" height="199" /></a></p>
<p>The biggest thing for anyone on the left or the right to beware of is the assumption that if we push Lever X, people will predictably do Task Y.</p>
<p>The entire Great Society disaster and every liberal proposal afterward has been a master class in demonstrating that trying to manipulate people often produces entirely unexpected results, despite a supposedly reliable system of incentives.</p>
<p><a href="http://dailycaller.com/2014/01/10/12-an-hour-is-conservative-rocket-fuel-says-ron-unz/">And that&#8217;s the problem here</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>A nationwide minimum wage of $12 per hour would shrink government, aid families, curb illegal immigration, spur high-tech investment, and boost GOP support among working-class voters, says Ron Unz, the California libertarian entrepreneur who wiped out his state’s Spanish-only K-12 classes.</p>
<p>The $12 wage would slash the huge taxpayer subsidies now given to companies that hire low-wage immigrants, and move tens of millions of Americans into the middle class and sharply reduce the 47 percent of the population who are now completely or partly dependent on federal handouts, Unz told The Daily Caller.</p>
<p>The plan is also likely to get traction because it offers the public a good-news alternative to the business-backed campaign to triple the inflow of low-skill immigrant labor during the next decade. If implemented, the $12 alternative plan would instead flood American businesses with Americans who have dropped out of the workforce, and also push low-skilled illegals to the sidelines and eventually south of the border, he says.</p></blockquote>
<p>It&#8217;s an interesting &#8216;out of the box&#8217; proposal and I believe that Republicans do need to do a much better job of engaging lower income voters, though less so in California than in Pennsylvania or Ohio, but plans like these produce less predictable results.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s not as if we have a surplus of jobs to begin with. Yes there are too many people illegitimately claiming benefits or just dropping out of the workforce, but it&#8217;s not 1994. The economy is terrible and we don&#8217;t have nearly enough jobs.</p>
<p>An expanded minimum wage will mean businesses cutting jobs, instead of creating new ones. The argument that an expanded minimum wage will boost businesses that are operating with minimum wage workers and catering to low income consumers because they will have more to spend is debatable. There&#8217;s only so many cheeseburgers or 99 cent store products that people are going to  buy. And we&#8217;re seeing people saving more in this economy, instead of spending. And those who don&#8217;t save are not going to compensate for the extra cost of doing business in time to keep businesses from firing employees setting off a new spiral.</p>
<p>The people already hiring illegals to avoid paying them minimum wage and benefits will go on doing it and their numbers will grow. Furthermore in my experience, a lot of the people hiring Mexican illegals prefer them to American workers because they like the deference and the obedience. They don&#8217;t like American workers and they don&#8217;t want to hire them. It&#8217;s a problem that we&#8217;re not going to solve except through enforcement.</p>
<p>Finally, an expanded minimum wage may push some people off benefits, but it&#8217;s more likely to lead to workers giving up jobs instead of giving up benefits.</p>
<blockquote><p>This minimum wage argument is gaining ground among conservatives. This week, for example, conservative icon Phyllis Schlafly, called for an increase in the minimum wage. “Legislation to raise the minimum wage would elevate many low-wage earners above the income threshold that qualifies them for benefits and should result in reduced welfare spending,” said Schalfly, who earned the undying hatred of progressives in 1977 by blocking the Equal Rights Amendment.</p>
<p>“That’s a tradeoff Republicans could support,” she added.</p></blockquote>
<p>It should, mechanistically speaking, but given a choice, especially in California, a lot of those workers will give up jobs instead of giving up welfare.</p>
<p>The phenomenon has been seen before.</p>
<blockquote><p>Some of the companies who employ illegals “are competing on price with Bangladesh and India, and the only reason those companies are viable is that they are receiving massive subsidies from the U.S. taxpayer,” Unz said.</p>
<p>“Not only are they driving down the wage of native-born Americans, they’re also drawing much more money from the government than they’re providing in taxes,” he said.</p>
<p>But if the minimum wage is $12, executives won’t be able to build their business on cheap labor, and they’ll be forced to focus on higher-quality, high-tech, higher-productivity jobs don’t drain money from other Americans’ pockets, Unz said.</p></blockquote>
<p>Except a $12 minimum wage won&#8217;t do any of that. There&#8217;s a reason why American Apparel is pushing Legalize LA. A lot of the garment industry workers are already illegal. The same goes for meatpacking and agriculture.</p>
<p>A minimum wage won&#8217;t affect them unless the employers choose to pay it. Cheap labor will still go on being illegal labor.</p>
<p>And service industries, like fast food joints, which can&#8217;t be outsourced, will also feel the burn.</p>
<p>Finally Unz&#8217;s idea about high jobs is nonsense. A country the size of the United States can&#8217;t live off high tech jobs. It doesn&#8217;t work. And plenty of high tech companies find ways to drain money from taxpayers.</p>
<p>Low end jobs aren&#8217;t going anywhere. Only enforcement can prevent the flow of illegal aliens. And deregulation can make it cheaper for lower end businesses to do business.</p>
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		<title>Rich People Leaving California for Mysterious Reason</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/rich-people-leaving-california-for-mysterious-reason/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=rich-people-leaving-california-for-mysterious-reason</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/rich-people-leaving-california-for-mysterious-reason/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 15 Jan 2014 19:57:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[California]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Governor Jerry Brown]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=215177</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The budget makes no allowance for migrating millionaires. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/budget-jerry-brown-2014.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-215180" alt="budget-jerry-brown-2014" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/budget-jerry-brown-2014-450x253.jpg" width="450" height="253" /></a></p>
<p>It&#8217;s okay,<a href="http://americandigest.org/sidelines/2014/01/"> the 1 percent only pays</a> 41 percent of California&#8217;s income taxes. And half the state pays no income tax at all. No <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/business/networth/article/State-leaders-closely-watch-migrating-millionaires-5135090.php">one will even notice they&#8217;re gone</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>Prop. 30, approved by voters in November 2012, raised state income taxes retroactively to Jan. 1, 2012, on singles making more than $250,000 and married couples making $500,000. It raised rates by one, two or three percentage points through 2018, bringing the top rate on incomes above $1 million to 13.3 percent, the highest in the nation.</p>
<p>Bryan Goldberg, who founded the Bleacher Report sports website and sold it to Turner Broadcasting for about $200 million in mid-2012, is moving his primary residence from San Francisco to New York this year. A major reason, he says, is Prop. 30 and the way it was applied retroactively.</p>
<p>Lee Schneider, a hedge fund salesman who works from home, also cited Prop. 30 as the &#8220;deciding factor&#8221; for his move from Walnut Creek to Austin, Texas, in 2012. The California native had recently built a $2 million house at the foot of Mount Diablo and took a loss on the sale, but &#8220;I can make half of it back in one year of tax savings,&#8221; he says.</p>
<p>Schneider&#8217;s neighborhood in Texas, which has no state income tax, is full of cars with license-plate frames from California dealerships. On a flight from Austin to Los Angeles shortly before Christmas, 11 of the 12 seats in the emergency row were occupied by people who had moved from California to Texas, he says.</p>
<p>Gov. Jerry Brown&#8217;s budget proposal released last week estimates that Prop. 30 alone will generate $5.7 billion in additional income tax revenues in fiscal 2014-15. That represents 5.4 percent of total general fund revenue, projected at $106 billion.</p>
<p>The budget makes no allowance for migrating millionaires.</p></blockquote>
<p>I&#8217;m sure it won&#8217;t be a problem. Governor Moonbeam is a financial whiz. California&#8217;s financial problems have been solved and it&#8217;s now free to spend, spend, spend.</p>
<blockquote><p>The $155-billion budget proposal would increase general fund spending by more than 8%, to $106.8 billion.</p>
<p>&#8220;We&#8217;re putting $10 billion into the schools of California after years of drought and cutbacks and pink slips for teachers,&#8221; Brown said.</p>
<p>Brown defended a proposal in the budget to tap into the $850 million generated by new fees on polluters to help finance the troubled statewide high-speed rail project. Brown says the so-called bullet train will help California &#8220;pull together to form a greater community&#8221; and reduce greenhouse gases over time.</p></blockquote>
<p>Sounds fantastic. How much will this cost?</p>
<blockquote><p>Mr. Brown and his advisers have strongly affirmed their support for the planned $68 billion rail line</p></blockquote>
<p>That&#8217;s gonna require a lot of fees on a lot of polluters. And a small army of inspectors to fine people for polluting to fund a bullet train that will fight pollution and then more money to cover the pensions of the inspectors&#8230;</p>
<blockquote><p>Retirement benefits for public employees are underfunded by $218 billion, according to administration estimates, and the state has billions of dollars in other outstanding obligations and debts.</p>
<p>Brown on Thursday said there will be progress on teacher pension funds once people see the &#8220;disaster ahead.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>They did see the disaster ahead&#8230; and they voted for it.</p>
<p>Speaking of disasters <a href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB123500384765617949?mg=reno64-wsj&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB123500384765617949.html">ahead on the other side of the coast</a>&#8230;</p>
<blockquote><p>Mayor Bloomberg warned that raising taxes on high earners could drive them from the city. &#8220;One percent of the households that file in this city pay something like 50% of the taxes,&#8221; explained the Mayor. &#8220;In the city, that&#8217;s something like 40,000 people.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>Fortunately Bloomberg was replaced by a sensible Communist who ran on a platform of banning plastic bags, taxing the rich and eating pizza with a fork.</p>
<p>But it&#8217;s not like William Wilhelm Jr aka Bill de Blasio inherits a city deep in debt a<a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/is-new-york-city-the-next-detroit/">nd teetering on the edge of ruin</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>New York City debt doubled under Bloomberg to $110 billion. The interest on that debt is at $6 billion. Three years of interest on New York City’s debt equals the debt that drove Detroit into bankruptcy court.</p>
<p>With $90 billion in unfunded pensions and more retired city workers, in some branches of public employment, than active workers, New York City’s total liabilities exceed its assets by $125 billion.</p></blockquote>
<p>All we need now is a high speed train to San Francisco.</p>
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		<title>Killing the 1% Golden Goose</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/killing-the-1-golden-goose/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=killing-the-1-golden-goose</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 14 Jan 2014 05:14:18 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bill de Blasio]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[California]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[New York]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Taxes]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[wealth]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=215205</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why class warfare has no future.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/fr.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-215208" alt="NYC Mayoral Candidate Bill de Blasio Campaigns In Brooklyn" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/fr.jpg" width="280" height="255" /></a>Two years before Occupy Wall Street’s band of radical grad students set up their tents and cardboard signs in Zuccotti Park, Mayor Bloomberg warned the City Council against frivolous tax hikes. &#8220;One percent of the households that file in this city pay something like 50% of the taxes. In the city, that&#8217;s something like 40,000 people. If a handful left, any raise would make it revenue neutral.&#8221;</p>
<p>And then the 1 percent became the target of the left’s answer to the Tea Party. It wasn’t unusual to see bus riders wearing “We Are the 99%” buttons the way they had once carried I Heart New York bags.</p>
<p>New York City now has a radical leftist in Gracie Mansion, Bill de Blasio, a radical leftist City Council speaker, Melissa Mark-Viverito, and a radical leftist public advocate, Letitia James. The city is now run by the Working Families Party/ACORN and tax hikes will be used to finance generous payoffs to unions.</p>
<p>But the unions who rigged this election may never see those payoffs. New York City’s <a href="http://www.nytorch.com/?p=7841">unfunded pensions are</a> estimated as being as high as $136 billion. The crash may only be four years away.</p>
<p>The top 1 percent pay half the income taxes in the city and <a href="http://www.thenewyorkworld.com/2012/09/18/state-local-tax/">the top 10 percent</a> pay 71 percent. Drive them away with tax hikes for municipal union goodies and the unions will have as much trouble collecting even basic benefits from New York as they do from Detroit.</p>
<p>On the other coast, the situation is even worse.</p>
<p>That 1 percent pays 41 percent of California’s income taxes while half the state pays no income taxes at all. That’s an even worse ratio than New York State where only 39 percent pay no state income tax.</p>
<p>California’s <a href="http://reason.org/blog/show/caltax-california-wall-of-debt-at-4">unfunded liabilities are estimated</a> at $640 billion and the state is trying to dig its way out with taxes and spending sprees. Governor Jerry Brown is hoping to finance his $68 billion toy train with nearly a billion in carbon “credits” which companies must buy in order to do business in California.</p>
<p>Meanwhile the 1 percent and the 10 percent are unaccountably fleeing California. “Go West young man,” Horace Greeley advised. “Washington is not a place to live in. The rents are high, the food is bad, the dust is disgusting and the morals are deplorable.”</p>
<p>These days California is a lot like Washington and the arrow of opportunity has flipped around from west to east as those young men with a future and the companies they work for are fleeing the state.</p>
<p>California lost 5.2 percent of its businesses in 2012. <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/business/networth/article/State-leaders-closely-watch-migrating-millionaires-5135090.php">A San Francisco Chronicle story</a> describes an emergency row on a flight crowded with emigrants from California and Texas neighborhoods filled with cars with California license plates.</p>
<p>Brown and the liberal elites have insisted that the wealthy won’t leave because taxes go up, but it’s the wealthy that have the means to leave. Or as a Californian quoted in the article said about taking a loss on his new $2 million home, “I can make half of it back in one year of tax savings.”</p>
<p>California is experiencing an exodus of the wealthy and the working poor who have the most mobility. It’s the middle class that can’t afford to walk away from homes and businesses and is tied down and crushed by the left’s escalating war on the middle class.</p>
<p>The wealthy will weather Bill de Blasio and Jerry Brown or they will depart and take the tax base with them, leaving only the middle class to be squeezed dry to fund all the social workers, prisons, hospitals, schools and community centers of the welfare class.</p>
<p>Targeting the 1 percent kills the goose that lays the golden tax revenues and states and cities that are already close to the edge can’t afford to drive away their tax base. The welfare class is taught to blame the rich, but without the rich its lifestyle implodes, its social dysfunction increases and in the final phase of urban collapse, the middle class abandon their homes block by block and retreat to the suburbs as the city collapses.</p>
<p>There is no better demonstration of that than Detroit.</p>
<p>Detroit has the highest property taxes of the 50 largest cities in the country. Its property taxes are twice as high as the national average and barely half of property owners even bother paying property taxes. Five of the wealthier neighborhoods paid 15 percent of the city’s property taxes. Another 19 percent came from a handful of companies, including casinos and Motor City’s shaky automobile industry.</p>
<p>The population fled, the tax base shrank and the city raised property taxes which drove away more property owners leaving a shrinking tax base that had to be compensated for with higher taxes. The cycle left a bankrupt ghost town filled with abandoned properties and outlaw property owners.</p>
<p>To make up the difference, Detroit began borrowing more money. Under Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who was convicted of everything from racketeering to extortion, debt hit $9 billion while revenues plunged to nearly $1 billion. Income taxes fell from $378 million in 2000 to $245 million in 2010. At the same time, Detroit lost nearly 200,000 people; the worst implosion of an American city in the last decade.</p>
<p>One out of three people in Detroit is poor. Three of the top five employers in Detroit are the city government and the national government. Whatever middle class it has left consists of government employees and they are a net loss. They can never pay as much into the system as they take out of it.</p>
<p>The only liberal solution to the Detroit disaster is to expand its boundaries into the suburbs and tax the ones who got away. Similar regionalization proposals are being flirted with on a national level but they are nothing more than wealth redistribution schemes that only encourage the tax base to flee farther, destroying the city as a business center by transforming it into a regional financial plague instead.</p>
<p>In all its economic experiments, the left has refused to accept that there is no substitute for income generation and that when you kill the golden goose, you don’t get an unlimited supply of golden eggs.</p>
<p>Drive away the rich, destroy the middle class and all you’re left with is Detroit. 8 million New Yorkers depend on 40,000 millionaires and billionaires. The same California voters who supported Proposition 30 depend on the taxes of the very people they are taxing into leaving.</p>
<p>Wealth is not a crime and it is not redistributable. Money can be taken and put into a common pot, but the ability to perpetuate it through wealth cannot. That is a skill like any other and the practitioners of that skill are the only reason that the Jerry Browns and the Bill de Blasios have any money to play with.</p>
<p>The only thing separating Bill de Blasio from Detroit’s former mayor Dave Bing are those 40,000 of the 1 percent and if he kills the golden goose, the only egg will be on his face.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>Don&#8217;t miss <strong>Ann-Marie Murrell</strong>&#8216;s video interview with <strong>Daniel Greenfield</strong> on <em>Abandoning Iraq, </em><em>Robert Gates’ Revelations Confirm Horowitz&#8217;s “Party of Defeat,” How Americans Died For a War Obama Didn&#8217;t Believe In</em>, <em>The Release of Terrorist Lawyer Lynne Stewart</em>, <em></em>and much, much more:</p>
<p><strong>Part I:</strong></p>
<p><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/xwp_CUfwAss" height="315" width="460" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p><strong>Part II:</strong></p>
<p><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/TywIVHDnwxc" height="315" width="460" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe> <b></b></p>
<p><strong>To sign up for <em>The Glazov Gang,</em> <a href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.   </b></p>
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		<title>Welfare Recipients Take EBT to Disney World and Vegas</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/welfare-recipients-take-ebt-to-disney-world-and-vegas/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=welfare-recipients-take-ebt-to-disney-world-and-vegas</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/welfare-recipients-take-ebt-to-disney-world-and-vegas/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 13 Jan 2014 14:27:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[California]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Maine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[welfare]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=214984</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[You're on welfare, what do you want to do now? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Obama-Disney-1-19-12.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-214985" alt="Obama-Disney-1-19-12" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Obama-Disney-1-19-12-450x344.jpg" width="450" height="344" /></a></p>
<p>You just got on welfare, what do you want to do now? <a href="http://townhall.com/tipsheet/sarahjeanseman/2014/01/07/maine-welfare-cash-being-spent-in-disney-world-and-hawaii-n1773200?utm_source=thdailypm&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=nl_pm">Go to Disney World</a>. It&#8217;s cold out in Maine, but it&#8217;s really warm in Florida, just like back home in Somalia. Leave the polar vortex behind and catch some rays, <a href="http://theoptimisticconservative.wordpress.com/2014/01/08/welfare-as-transitional-living-at-disney-world/">withdraw some cash and enjoy the good life</a>.</p>
<p>Working people are paying for it.</p>
<blockquote><p>According to Department of Health and Human Service records, cash welfare users from Maine have spent $2.8 million outside of the state over the last three years – and not just in neighboring New Hampshire.</p>
<p>According to HHS records, the top recipients of Maine’s welfare cash are: New Hampshire: $1.4 million; Massachusetts: $360,000; Florida: $206,000; and New York: $100,000.</p></blockquote>
<p>New York&#8217;s tourism board really needs to do more outreach to Maine welfare recipients. We&#8217;ve got to pay for all the people Bill de Blasio is going to put on welfare. Maybe he can innovate welfare tourism.</p>
<blockquote><p>On Aug. 1, 2011, one or more EBT cards were used within a three-minute time frame to access nearly $500 in welfare cash at an ATM in Lake Buena Vista, Florida. That particular ATM happens to be located almost on top of the campus of Disney World Resorts.</p>
<p>On March 1, 2011, at 3:20AM, a Maine EBT cardholder accessed an ATM in Cape Canaveral, Florida, twice, withdrawing $400. The address of the ATM corresponds with Ron Jon Cape Caribe Resort.</p>
<p>Additional Sunshine State transactions occur at the Kennedy Space Center in Orlando, the Family Fun Center of Lakeland, and at North Miami Beach, Miami Beach, Vero Beach, Ormond Beach and Daytona Beach – all hotspots for Mainers on vacation.</p>
<p>The list goes on to include Las Vegas, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands and Four Seasons Resort Aviara in California.</p></blockquote>
<p>The Four Seasons Resort Aviara is a five star hotel. I couldn&#8217;t afford it, but I&#8217;m not a welfare recipient in Maine.</p>
<p>But don&#8217;t worry Governor Moonbeam, <a href="http://theoptimisticconservative.wordpress.com/2014/01/08/welfare-as-transitional-living-at-disney-world/">California is still number one</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>Californians have, of course, been the undisputed 50-state champions of transitional-living-fund spending across state lines.  At a stratospheric <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2010/oct/04/local/la-me-welfare-20101004">$69 million from 2007 to 2010</a>: well, can’t touch <i>that</i>, transitional-living-fund-wise.  The top out-of-state venue for poverty-stricken, transitional-living-fund-wielding Californians?  Las Vegas.  $11.8 million spent by starving California children, much of it at casinos and co-located ATMs.</p></blockquote>
<p>Remind me, wasn&#8217;t Obama lecturing CEOs about spending money in Vegas? I guess that doesn&#8217;t apply to his voting base.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
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		<title>California Mosque with Collapsing Ceilings, Raw Sewage, Claims Freedom of Religion</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/california-mosque-with-collapsing-ceilings-raw-sewage-claims-freedom-of-religion/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=california-mosque-with-collapsing-ceilings-raw-sewage-claims-freedom-of-religion</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/california-mosque-with-collapsing-ceilings-raw-sewage-claims-freedom-of-religion/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 12 Jan 2014 14:34:50 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[California]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mosque]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=215146</guid>
		<description><![CDATA["Freedom of religion is guaranteed by our constitution," said Saadi Nasim.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/l.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-215147" alt="l" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/l-450x337.jpg" width="450" height="337" /></a></p>
<p>I don&#8217;t really understand how living in an Islamic center that has collapsing ceilings and raw sewage is a part of the Islamic religion. Even the most far out Hadiths and Fatwas (and there are some really far out ones) don&#8217;t cover this.</p>
<p>But <a href="http://www.halalporkshop.blogspot.com/2014/01/muslims-vow-to-fight-back-proposed.html">political correctness usually trumps the law</a> when it comes to mosques.</p>
<blockquote><p>Masjid Noor has &#8220;serious structural integrity problems and potentially dangerous conditions&#8221; that were revealed during a late-December inspection by fire officials, said city prosecutor Trisha Aljoe.</p>
<p>&#8220;Floors and ceilings are collapsing in there, and extensive work is being done that needs a structural engineer.&#8221;</p>
<p>Aljoe added that raw sewage was present outside, along with mattresses and other evidence that people may be living in the structure.</p>
<p>The move to force the mosque out of the building has drawn criticism from at least one Bay Area Islamic leader who claims religious freedoms are being imperiled.</p>
<p>&#8220;I recently heard that the city of Richmond might be having talks to shut down the Islamic Center,&#8221; said Saadi Nasim, a community outreach coordinator at Al Sabeel mosque in San Francisco, in a Tuesday email to the City Council and Mayor Gayle McLaughlin. &#8220;First and foremost, freedom of religion is guaranteed by our constitution. I am confused how and why a religious (center) could be shut down.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>Freedom of Religion means that if Islam believed that its worshipers had to pray in mosques with collapsing ceilings and raw sewage, they might have a case. But even Islam doesn&#8217;t require that.</p>
<blockquote><p>Council members Nat Bates and Corky Boozé have expressed concern with the way the city has handled the situation.</p>
<p>&#8220;Being punitive toward a religious group without just cause is asking for nothing but problems with perhaps national negative publicity,&#8221; Bates said in an email this week to his council colleagues, adding that he is not abreast of all the facts of the case. &#8220;This mosque has been in operation for years without controversy, and there better be some strong reasons in suggesting the city shut them down.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>Collapsing ceilings. Raw sewage.</p>
<blockquote><p>Boozé, who has been the subject of numerous investigations by city Code Enforcement officials over his own allegedly substandard properties, said the matter was evidence that the Code Enforcement Department and Aljoe are &#8220;out of control.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;I visited the building this week, and to say it&#8217;s dangerous is a bunch of hogwash,&#8221; Boozé said. &#8220;The roof was leaking, there is some rot on the floors, but that is a huge building and the part they pray in has no problems.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>The honorable city council member apparently doesn&#8217;t understand how buildings work, despite owning a few. If the ceiling collapses on the top floor, the effect is going to trickle down to you even if you&#8217;re on a lower floor.</p>
<p>The Islamic center should not have bought a huge building if it doesn&#8217;t want to maintain it. But despite its huge size, <a href="http://www.yelp.com/biz/masjid-noor-richmond#hrid:2nxwz7Z3r_ADhVWxCuFxwA">there&#8217;s no room</a> for women.</p>
<blockquote><p>Alicia A. &#8211; I rarely give one star.  The reason for this masjid getting only one star is because this masjid.. as I found out upon asking only serves men.  Why you may be wondering?  According to the individuals I talked to because their isn&#8217;t enough space and no separate wudu area for the women.</p>
<p>This is a violation of the women&#8217;s right to attend the masjid for prayer- thus earning this masjid- one star.  I am severely disappointed in this masjid- as I was looking forward to attending Jummah and having another masjid I could access within a 10 minute drive of my house.</p></blockquote>
<p>On the bright side, Alicia avoided all the raw sewage.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
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		<title>Pedophile Made a Fortune Filing Disability Lawsuits in California</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/pedophile-made-a-fortune-filing-disability-lawsuits-in-california/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=pedophile-made-a-fortune-filing-disability-lawsuits-in-california</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/pedophile-made-a-fortune-filing-disability-lawsuits-in-california/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 05 Jan 2014 21:32:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[California]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lawfare]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lawyers]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=214515</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[He settled with the convicted child abuser for $10,000 — cheaper than hiring a lawyer.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/ADA-discrimination.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-214536" alt="ADA-discrimination" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/ADA-discrimination.jpg" width="380" height="285" /></a></p>
<p>This is <a href="http://www.ihatethemedia.com/ever-wonder-what-those-serial-ada-plaintiffs-are-like">how even the most well-</a>intentioned laws go through three stages.</p>
<p>1. The ideal &#8211; This is what the law is supposed to do</p>
<p>2. The bureaucratic &#8211; The bureaucrats get hold of it and make into an incomprehensible morass of regulations that everyone is in violation of.</p>
<p>3. The lawyerly &#8211; The lawyers find every loophole in the law and begin cashing in</p>
<p>In California, most laws skip right to <a href="http://www.laweekly.com/2013-12-05/news/jon-carpenter-child-abuser-ada-lawsuits/full/">Stage 2 which is how</a> things like this happen.</p>
<blockquote><p>In 2012, Jon Carpenter filed 257 lawsuits in L.A. County — more lawsuits than there were court days — under the Americans With Disabilities Act, a civil rights law intended to give disabled people the same access to places that everyone has.</p>
<p>Carpenter has sued 94 pharmacies for everything from steep ramps and failure to remodel access areas to lack of Braille or hearing-assistance technology for the blind and deaf.</p>
<p>Carpenter&#8217;s hearing and vision, Peters says, were perfectly fine.</p>
<p>California is a rare state that lets people who allege an ADA violation personally win pots of cash in court — $4,000 minimum per violation, plus attorney&#8217;s fees, which can reach tens of thousands of dollars.</p>
<p>Small businesses can be sued if the paper towel dispenser in the bathroom is too high; the customer counter is too tall; aisles are too narrow; or the grade of their wheelchair ramp is steeper than 3 percent.</p>
<p>But in California, defense attorney James Link says, those regulations run about 435 pages. &#8220;I had one case where the coat hook in the men&#8217;s accessible stall at a P.F. Chang&#8217;s was too high.&#8221;</p>
<p>Carpenter and his current attorney, Potter, almost always target mini-malls or small businesses, which must create parking spots for special vans like the one he drives. They also must provide parking lot space for a wheelchair to be lowered, and special signage. Get a detail wrong — even the color of the sign — and Carpenter can sue for $4,000 and up.</p>
<p>&#8220;We didn&#8217;t know that we needed a parking spot for a van,&#8221; says Avi Hadid, owner of a mini-mall at Western Avenue and Washington Boulevard. He settled with the convicted child abuser for $10,000 — cheaper than hiring a lawyer.</p></blockquote>
<p>The convicted child abuser thing is how Carpenter became a paraplegic. Carpenter injured himself to escape prison after molesting a number of 8-year-old girls.</p>
<blockquote><p>In the 1980s, Carpenter was arrested on multiple counts of aggravated sexual abuse and charged with molesting two 8-year-old girls. He was set free after serving less than two days of a one- to- 15-year sentence.</p></blockquote>
<p>Rather than cover his health care costs, the prison dumped him assuming that he was no longer a threat to anyone. But then he got taxpayers to subsidize his lawsuit spree.</p>
<blockquote><p>Disabled plaintiffs routinely ask L.A. Superior Court judges to grant them &#8220;fee waivers&#8221; to get out of paying the $435 court filing fee. Taxpayers pick up the costs, even for convicted felon Jon Carpenter.</p></blockquote>
<p>So what&#8217;s more profitable? Disability lawsuits or drugs?</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;California is the only jurisdiction on the planet that has minimum financial damages for claims of this nature,&#8221; Peters says, referring to the $4,000 floor. He estimates that 42 percent or more of the nation&#8217;s ADA lawsuits are filed in California. &#8220;There are lawyers who have moved from other states just to file these lawsuits here,&#8221; he says. &#8220;It&#8217;s more profitable than [selling] narcotics.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>Leave it to the government to really stimulate that economy.</p>
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