Monthly Archives: July 2021

Thanks to the blessings of decentralization, life can vary greatly in America depending on where you sit. Those differences are growing into a chasm of philosophical and practical contrasts between two basic models for the American future. Call them the California way and the Florida way.

On many critical questions facing our culture, our economy and our society, California and Florida offer radically different answers.

Should lots of new housing be built in the interest of affordability? California says no, Florida says yes. Should homeless people be allowed to turn public spaces into tent cities? California says yes, Florida says no. Should public elementary schools teach critical race theory? California says yes, Florida says no. Should gas be $4 a gallon? California says yes, Florida says no. Should biological males be allowed to dominate girls sports? Florida says no. California not only says yes, but it is trolling Florida by forbidding its employees to take state-funded trips to Florida, as well as 16 other states.

California fancies itself imposing its cultural values on other states and tackling global warming independently; Florida has a more modest view of what a state government does. People are voting on all of this with their U-Hauls. Californias population in 2020 shrank for the first time ever, by 180,000 people, whereas Florida had the second-highest increase in population, after Texas.

During the pandemic, California introduced some of the harshest lockdown measures in the country, crashing its economy, while Florida was among the first states to begin reopening, way back in May 2020, and has been almost entirely open since September. Disney World reopened in July 2020; Disneyland reopened at the end of April 2021. One survey found that Florida had the second-fewest coronavirus restrictions; California ranked 45th by the same measure.

Though Florida has the second-highest percentage of old people of any state, the death tolls look like they will come out about even. Florida stands 26th in COVID-19 fatalities (1,769 deaths per million) while California is 34th (1,614). Yet Californias economy is still suffering, its unemployment rate standing at 7.9 percent in May, the most recent survey. Florida hasnt seen such a high jobless rate since last August; its unemployment has stood below 5 percent throughout 2021.

Whether lockdowns are effective remains an open question, but there is no question that they bring economic calamity.

As for the psychological and emotional effects of locking children out of schools, we may never be able to measure the harm California did to its youngest citizens. The data firm Burbio, which has been tracking school reopenings, ranks California dead last on its index of in-person learning, with four out of five students learning remotely on average. Florida scored 95 percent in-person learning, third-best in the nation.

Relative to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (a Republican), California Gov. Gavin Newsom (a Democrat) seems to have gotten very little in exchange for this devastatingly high price. Widespread disgust with his leadership means he will be forced to present himself to voters in a recall election to be held on Sept. 14, although polling suggests he will probably hang on to the office to which he was elected in 2018 with a 62 percent majority.

Newsoms state has a horseshoe economy built to serve two classes of people: the rich and the poor. The middle-class sags, neglected, in the middle. Ordinary working families are all but being invited to go find another state.

Tightly restricted housing policies, high taxes and punishing, traffic-clogged commutes make California increasingly untenable for average earners as wealthy progressives buttress themselves behind high gates, go to work on glistening corporate campuses, and shrug at tax hikes, knowing their property values will continue to zoom upward because its so hard to get anything built.

On the other end of the income scale, a chilling phrase has entered common usage in the Golden State: sanctioned encampments. California has a colossal problem in homelessness, and it is determined to take steps to make it worse. Sanctioned encampments is a euphemism for taxpayer-funded Skid Rows, and Democrats who run California think theyre a great idea. California is mocking its middle class by simply removing grassy lawns, sidewalks and other public spaces that ought to be usable by the middle class and giving them to its underclass. (Great news, though: Some areas of the camps are socially distanced. So, no worries about diseases spreading through these places.)

Democratic Party activists and progressives keep pushing the state and its cities to be ever more indulgent toward the homeless.

Tent cities have popped up in both Northern and Southern California, public defecation is the norm in some areas and the progressive mindset says: Put out the welcome mat. Do so, and people will arrive on your doorstep: Despite having only 12 percent of Americans population, California has one-quarter of the countrys homeless. The more hospitable it becomes to hobos, the more of them it will attract.

In Los Angeles, the city is spending such a mind-boggling amount of money on tents $2,700 each, per month, or more than the average one-bedroom apartment costs to make the homeless comfy that even NPR was taken aback.

Nonprofit agencies calling themselves advocates for the homeless are the middlemen lining their pockets in this boondoggle, seeking and getting lavish government contracts to take care of things like providing portable toilets. The San Jose City Council keeps pushing, reports KPIX in San Francisco, to formalize the hands-off approach to some encampments which meet certain criteria such as not being near a school, not blocking streets or sidewalks and not being in a waterway. The city would also include hygiene and supportive services. Its already doing some of that by paying unhoused people to pick up trash in their encampments, and by providing porta-potties and wash stations.

Near the San Jose Airport, in the largest city in Northern California, hundreds of homeless people are squatting on a nearly mile-long stretch of territory as local and state officials shrug; only the FAA is complaining.

Middle-class Californians scratch their heads, glance at gasoline prices that are more than a dollar above the national average, and think: Seriously? This is what my tax dollars go to? Paying homeless people to pick up their own garbage? Paying homeless advocates $2,700 a month to install a tent in a parking lot?

With all of this wasted public expenditure, its no surprise that California is second only to New York in the category of highest marginal income tax rate. In overall tax burden, it ranks 10th-highest in the nation, according to one survey that ranks Florida as the fifth-lowest. Floridas budget is $102 billion; Californias is $262 billion. (Californias population is less than double that of Florida, 40 million to 22 million.)

Each year, more bad decisions get made on where to direct Californias billions. The Defund the police movement led to a reduction of funding of $150 million for the Los Angeles police, while San Francisco lawmakers stripped $80 million from the cops budget while proposing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to bolster the tent cities that look like social rust to everyone not trained in elite thinking.

The combined effects of a 2014 statewide referendum to reduce thefts valued at less than $950 to misdemeanors and a vow by San Franciscos leftist district attorney, Chesa Boudin, not to prosecute minor crimes is being taken as an engraved invitation by San Francisco shoplifters; the middle class suffers as favorite retailers such as Walgreens and Target say they are forced to close their doors.

Disorder has a way of feeding on itself. San Francisco has become the nations leader in property crime, and statewide murders were up 31 percent last year. (They were up 15 percent in Florida.)

Any visitor to Florida can tell you the state simply looks orderly. Florida municipalities use a variety of measures to discourage loitering on the streets, including arresting for trespassing, and it largely works: When was the last time you read about an epidemic of homelessness in Fort Lauderdale?

As a society, we shouldnt want people sleeping on the streets. If the police stop them from doing so, theyll either find someone to stay with or report to a shelter. It is an insult to the public for its government to simply ignore concerns about orderly streets out of fear that some advocacy group hoping for a fat payout will denounce its agents as mean for denying people the right to set up camp on the streets.

Maintaining basic order and the rule of law is the first duty of government; a healthy society depends on people feeling secure. Secure people are free to pursue their dreams.

Florida in 2020 feels reminiscent of California in the 1950s, writes Jacksonville resident Charles C.W. Cooke in National Review, calling it a place to which ordinary people are flocking in order to take advantage of the nice weather, good economy, open spaces and explosive construction.

California may be a dynamic and diverse state, but Florida is no slouch in either department, a place where youre equally likely to meet refugees from socialist Venezuela or socialist New York.

Florida is Americas freest state, according to a Cato Institute survey: No. 1 in fiscal freedom, No. 1 in educational freedom. Cato dubs California one of the least free states and flat-out dubs it the most cronyist state in the union, meaning government and its chosen allies work to milk the public purse for all they can.

Somehow Floridas lean government even manages to operate efficiently. British emigre Cooke writes that when I moved here from Connecticut, I walked in without an appointment and, within 18 minutes, I had two new license plates and two new drivers licenses, and my wife had registered to vote. This was typical.

Even the famous Florida Man news items of hilariously eccentric doings are a sign of healthy government: Due to sunshine laws, criminal proceedings and virtually everything else related to government are accessible on demand. Other states give us less to laugh at because they are less transparent.

A 2016 survey gave Florida a grade of A for providing online access to how it spends its taxpayer dollars; California got an F and was the worst-scoring state.

It wasnt long ago that America looked to California for guidance; even Ronald Reagan implicitly promised to spread the California way across the nation. Now California is a model only for dysfunction, and if Newsom attempts to follow Reagans path to the White House, hell be as much of a punchline as his predecessor, Jerry Brown, the man who first started to steer California on its present heartbreaking path.

No one from Florida has ever become president, nor has any Italian American. The success of DeSantis as governor of Americas model state suggests he could be the man to shatter both of those molds.

See the rest here:

California and Florida battle for the soul of a nation - New York Post

Austin, TX, 21 hours ago Dont Miss The Back Mic

An exclusive look inside Texas politics and policy, every Friday.

Governor Greg Abbott included property tax relief on the list of special session items, but a Texas Democrat has called on him to be more specific about the charge.

Rep. Richard Pea Raymond (D-Laredo) called on Abbott to include a $5 billion property tax compression of school district Maintenance & Operations rates similar to what the legislature did in 2019 to the special session agenda.

I have asked Governor Abbott to allow the people of Texas to vote on a property tax cut this November. We can do this by using $5 billion from the Rainy Day Fund, Raymond said in a press release.

If it passes and I believe it would pass with overwhelming support it would still leave at least $6.5 billion in the Rainy Day Fund.

Texas school finance system functions like a seesaw: as the states share of the funding increases the local school districts share decreases, reducing rates at the local level. The tax compression last session injected $5.1 billion toward reducing local tax rates.

Raymonds proposal would take similar shape.

Abbotts campaign announced Thursday he has accumulated a $55 million war chest. This comes after a 10-day fundraising period during which the incumbent governor raised $18.7 million.

Our record-breaking fundraising period is a testament to the success of the 87th Legislative Session and paints a clear picture of what matters most to Texans: freedom, opportunity, and economic prosperity, Abbott said in a release.

These values embody the spirit of Texas, and these values are what our campaign fights for every single day. Thanks to the generosity of our supporters, we will continue to secure an even brighter future for the Lone Star State by keeping Texas red and ensuring our state remains the greatest state in the nation.

Abbott is facing a three-person primary challenge between former state Sen. Don Huffines, conservative humorist Chad Prather, and outgoing Texas GOP Chair Allen West.

The Texas governors fundraising rush is likely at least partially due to the endorsement of former President Donald Trump.

The July semiannual filing deadline passed on July 1, but the reports are not due until July 15. Once that passes, the financial situation of the GOP gubernatorial primary and the challengers proximity to Abbott will become more clear.

About a year after the dire projection of a $4.6 billion budget shortfall, the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts now estimates a $5 billion surplus for the 2020-2021 fiscal year. He also projects about $8 billion more in available general revenue spending for the 2022-2023 biennium compared with his January estimate.

The legislature appropriated $116 billion in general revenue funds less than the $123 billion estimated by the comptroller this month.

The Texas economy rebounded strongly this spring as vaccination rates increased and the economy opened more fully, and we remain optimistic about growth in the near term as the states economy continues to return to pre-pandemic patterns, Comptroller Glenn Hegar, said in a letter to state leaders.

Hegar further projects an over $3 billion deposit into the State Highway and Economic Stabilization Funds over the next biennium the latter estimated to end the biennium with a balance of $12 billion.

Citing the global supply chain stress combined with increased demand for goods and the nations rehiring struggles, Hegar pumped the brakes on total fiscal optimism.

Until supply-side issues are resolved, economic output may remain below its potential, and rising costs could erode consumer purchasing power.

Read more from the original source:

The Back Mic: Democrat Calls for $5 Billion Property Tax Cut, Abbott Announces $55 Million War Chest, State Revenue Estimate Improves Fiscal Outlook -...

The Democrat/liberal motto is: If it aint broke, well break it!

Here is a list of broke: God, Jesus and any stance on Christianity; family unity; American patriotism, exceptionalism; education: public education; most colleges; preschool (in lieu of lowering taxes for mothers to stay at home with their children and teach them themselves); mostly all roads; Boy Scouts; Girl Scouts; elections; marriage; sexuality; civility; law and order; justice systems; legal institutions; civil service; the armed forces; truth; history; science; disciplining children with logical and natural consequences; work force; work ethic (brought to you by AFL-CIO); incentive to earn a living; entrepreneurialism; medical facilities; medical professions; taxation without representation; banking; fiscal responsibility; home ownership; liberty; communications: entertainment; mainstream media; movies; sitcoms; commercials; radio airwaves (NPR); newspapers (including The Tribune-Democrat); environmental (mis)management; fish and game sports; all sporting (except hockey, for now); Super Bowl; NFL; freedom of speech is equal to, lets just say, every Constitutional freedom outlined by our founders; sanity; respect for anything but themselves; race relations; wars on: poverty, drugs, terror, etc.; immigration; America; freedom; mental health; traveling; security; justice in general; accountability; fairness; self-sufficiency; presumptuous weather predictions; and, this just in: Olympics.

Just to name a few. Who wants to align with that debacle?

Politicizing everything and more, the left continues to divide America by way of the almighty American idol the television, technology and public education systems.

Paul told the Galatian church: I really wish that these people who weigh you down with corrupt counsel would mutilate themselves! Dittos from me.

Janet Lord

Jerome

We are making critical coverage of the coronavirus available for free. Please consider subscribing so we can continue to bring you the latest news and information on this developing story.

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Letter to the editor | Democrats will break it - TribDem.com

Inflation continued to be a problem in 1971, with forecasts showing an acceleration into 1972, which presented a growing political problem for Nixon.

Inflation continued to be a problem in 1971, with forecasts showing an acceleration into 1972, which presented a growing political problem for Nixon. Although inflation was unpopular, so were actions such as higher interest rates to moderate it. Those on the left had a simple answer: wage and price controls. On July 20, 1971, Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith, who had helped administer wage and price controls during World War II, testified before the Joint Economic Committee that there was really no choice in the matter because there was no combination of monetary or fiscal policies that could curb inflation without sharply raising the unemployment rate. Continuing, Galbraith said:

There is only one way to have an effective economic policy. That is to leave the monetarists and fiscalists to continue their academic quarrel and recognize that adequate employment and reasonably stable prices can only be reconciled by coming to grips with the wage-price spiral. That requires controls. The first step in getting an effective economic policy must be a general freeze.

Ironically, Galbraith, who was widely known for being a supporter of Keynesian economics, added that Mr. Nixon has proclaimed himself a Keynesian at the moment in history when Keynes has become obsolete. Galbraith thought that big corporations could now charge monopoly prices, which negated Keynesian policies.

Nixons CEA chairman Paul W. McCracken was alarmed by Galbraiths testimony and penned an attack on it in a Washington Post op-ed article on July 28. Wage and price controls would seriously erode personal freedom, McCracken said, and quickly collapse unless the underlying monetary and fiscal sources of inflation were restricted. He was also dubious about the governments ability to administer an all-encompassing set of wage and price controls.

What really set in motion the actions of August 15 was a demand by Britain to exchange $3 billion of U.S. dollars it held from running a trade surplus for gold. Although American citizens were prohibited from owning gold, the Bretton Woods system permitted governments to do exactly what Britain wanted to do. The problem was that the U.S. had only about $10 billion of gold at that time and had no intention of giving such a large chunk of it to the British. Every other country holding dollars would have instantly demanded gold as well and there wasnt enough to go arounda classic run on the bank.

See more here:

The Day That Richard Nixon Changed U.S. Economic Policy Forever - The New Republic

Over the past four decades, it has become common to refer to social rights as second generation rights as recent additions to the civil and political rights bequeathed by the European Enlightenment. This generational theory emerged in the 1970s as a kind of shorthand for categorising rights but soon took on a life of its own. This is a shame because it obscures the deeper and more interesting history of social rights.

Like civil and political rights, social rights stretch back to the eighteenth century, and arguably, much further. Throughout the medieval and early modern eras, poverty was considered a legal condition entitling the poor to assistance. Ironically, it was during the age of the Enlightenment that social rights lost much of their legitimacy. Neither the English Bill of Rights of 1689, which grew out of the Glorious Revolution, nor the American Bill of Rights of 1791, promulgated after the American Revolution, acknowledged them.

The French Revolution stands out as an exception and a quite significant one. Social rights appeared in the Jacobin rights declaration of 1793, promulgated just as the Revolution was sliding into the Terror. But these rights had already been proposed in 1789, well before Jacobins and sans-culottes sprang into existence. Whats more, they were proposed by individuals who would be considered conservatives or free-market liberals today.

Take, for example, the rights proposed by Pierre-Samuel Dupont de Nemours a free-market theorist, ministerial advisor under Louis XVI and direct ancestor of the American Dupont dynasty, which would fund neoliberal think tanks in the mid-twentieth century. He declared that All men have the right to assistance from other men and that society had a sacred debt to provide jobs for those who could work and subsistence for those who couldnt. Yet, he also believed that the best welfare policy a government could adopt was to spend little and let capital and labour drive the economy (laisser faire le peuple).

To understand this seeming contradiction, we must put aside anachronistic notions of the welfare state. Duponts social rights expressed his belief that a regenerated society could morally and economically regulate itself. Once property was secure (he called for property rights) and markets were free (the corollary of property), abundance would follow, lifting all boats. Social rights necessitated the duties to work and provide charity, but these were the responsibilities of individuals, not the fiscal-redistributive state.

Despite strong support, social rights were not included in the final draft of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789. But Duponts liberal-economic vision was widely shared and shaped early revolutionary policies with disastrous results. The more the economy was liberalised, the more unstable the situation became. After the monarchy was toppled and a republic was declared in 1792, revolutionaries had to draft a new constitution. Calls to include social rights came from all parts from radical sans-culottes, who also clamoured for price controls, to well-heeled moderates in the National Convention, who still believed that economic freedom would remedy deprivation. Even some anti-revolutionary Catholic priests were espousing social rights at the time.

This consensus on social rights papered over deep divisions over how to finance them. The Constitution of 1793, which included rights to work, subsistence, and education made society the duty-bearer. What society meant, however, was anyones guess. Did it refer to philanthropic individuals or the fiscal-redistributive state?

Lacking clarity, officials took matters into their own hands. They solicited, taxed, and extorted according to their predilections and the circumstances. As prisons filled up with enemies of the people and guillotines rolled into cities across France, the Jacobin constitution became associated with terror. What was, at its root, a problem of reconfiguring obligations for an egalitarian society was simplistically recast as the problem of social rights. When still another constitution was drafted during the conservative backlash of 1795, social rights were decidedly omitted.

Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, republicans were increasingly willing to adopt social provisioning measures, but only as a matter of government, not as a matter of right. Alexis de Tocqueville drove home this distinction in a speech to the National Assembly in the Revolution of 1848. Countering socialists, he drew inspiration from the Revolution of 1789, the social aims of which, he insisted, had been limited to introducing charity into politics. With charity, recipients dont have claims on givers. There is nothing [in the 1789 revolution] that gives workers a right in respect of the state [] nothing that authorizes the state to intervene in industry, to impose restrictions upon it. Socialists, for their part, had only minimal, if any, commitments to social rights. Many saw human rights as nothing more than bourgeois claptrap. Like the free-market liberals of the Enlightenment, they held a vision of a morally and economically self-regulating society. But unlike those liberals, they did not use the language of rights to express it.

For a variety of factors, social rights re-emerged in the twentieth century, appearing in constitutions in Europe and the Americas: Mexico (1917), Weimar Germany (1919), Ireland (1922, 1937), USSR (1936), and elsewhere. In his famous speech of 1944, Franklin Delano Roosevelt called for a Second Bill of Rights, which included freedom from want. Eleanor Roosevelt chaired the Commission on Human Rights at the United Nations, which included social rights in its draft of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. Despite the growing recognition of social rights, they remained contested, especially after the start of the Cold War. The French Revolution, I believe, can shed light on the reasons why.

The failure of revolutionaries to agree on the terms of obligation in 1793 (who pays and on what terms?) undermined social rights by facilitating the view that they lead to violence and oppression (the Terror). Many of the arguments levied against social rights in the twentieth century harken back to the Terrors aftermath, when liberals rejected social rights for the authoritarian risks they were thought to entail. In On Revolution (1963), Hannah Arendt concluded that attempts to resolve the social question through political means the rights of the sans-culottes are inevitably doomed to terror. Her view was echoed by Aryeh Neier, first Director of Human Rights Watch, who stated in his memoirs of 2001: Authoritarian power is probably a prerequisite for giving meaning to economic and social rights.

For critics of social rights, the French Revolution looms as a cautionary tale. But perhaps the real lesson is how important, yet difficult, it is to achieve a consensus on the terms of social obligation in a society based on equality rather than hierarchy. Social rights traversed the medieval and early modern eras; they stumbled through the modern. Rather than dismissing them as nave or dangerous, we might do better to reflect more deeply on our social contract on what free people owe each other as equal members of society. In practice, this means doing what historian Rutger Bregman did at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2019, when, before a crowd of billionaires, he distinguished between charity (stupid philanthropy schemes) and taxes. In the end, social rights depend not on altruism but on the obligation to pay ones fair share.

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What the French Revolution can tell us about the history of social rights - OpenGlobalRights