Your eyes on California Government

SEPT. 16, 2011

By JOHN SEILER

These are propitious times for California Republicans as they meet this weekend at their state convention in Los Angeles. In last fall’s election, they lost every statewide seat. And they barely held on to a minority of more than one third in both houses of the state Legislature.

But there is sunshine for a party that too often has stuck its head in the ground. Republican legislators stood rock-solid against any tax increases, making them heroes to California citizens and businesses. They finally realized — all of them   — that tax increases not only kill jobs and businesses, but destroy the GOP. They showed that even a dull elephant can learn.

Gone from the Legislature are such GOP tax-turncoats as Mike Villines and Abel “Unable” Maldonado.

Gone also from state politics is Gov. Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger. Starting from his 2002 socialist initiative to waste more money on after-school schemes, Proposition 49, he treated California Republicans like his mistress — seduced, betrayed, abandoned. He left behind a state whose median income crashed 9 percent in just his last four years, 2006 to 2010 — double the national crash of 5 percent. His tax increases and wild over-regulation, especially AB 32, turned California into the most anti-business, anti-jobs state in the country. After him, California’s record debt is compared to that of Greece. The Terminator terminated California.

Now he’s gone, leaving California like Hiroshima after Truman dropped the Big One. It only can get better.

But guess what moderates are telling the GOP? Be more like Arnold! Be moderate! The Bee reported of Charles T. Munger:

His influence will be on display this weekend as California Republicans gather in Los Angeles for their fall convention and begin discussing a Munger-inspired platform that downplays traditional GOP positions on gun rights, abortion and same-sex marriage.

The bow tie-wearing Republican has spent recent months shepherding a behind-the-scenes effort to adopt a more moderate California Republican Party platform.

So, according to Munger and his accomplices, the ideal GOP candidate would be exactly like Schwarzenegger, Villines and Maldonado. Where has Munger been? He should leave his mansion and mingle with us common folk out in the state’s cities, towns and barrios.

Gov. McClintock

In fact, the opposite is true. In the 2003 recall, I urged Republicans to shun Teddy Kennedy’s nephew-in-law and back Tom McClintock. Republicans told me, “Only Arnold can win.” They were wrong.

But just imagine if Tom McClintock, the most conservative candidate this state has produced in decades, had won in 2003. Instead of Arnold’s $15 billion bond measure on a March 2004 ballot, McClintock would have placed before voters a return of the Gann Limit.

From its passage in 1979 until it was repealed by misled voters in 1990, the Gann Limit allowed budgets to increase only by the combination of population growth plus inflation. It worked so well at balancing budgets that, in 1987, $1.1 billion in refund checks were mailed to state taxpayers.

A 2004 Gann Limit would have been approved by voters, working its magic again. During the boom years of the mid-2000s, taxes could have been cut — even as budgets kept growing. And because taxes would have been lower — under Gov. McClintock — the 2007-11 global recession would not have hit us as hard.

Gov. McClintock obviously would not have signed Arnold’s AB 32 global-warming delusion, which is slaughtering 1 million jobs. And Gov. McClintock also would never have imposed a record $13 billion in tax increases, as Arnold did in 2009, slamming state taxpayers again.

Under Gov. McClintock, instead of unemployment soaring to 12 percent as it did under Arnold, it would have dropped to around 4 percent, as it is in North Dakota, a business-friendly state.

Gov. McClintock would have restored the California dream — and the state’s Republican Party.

Rules for Republicans

So, here are some rules Republicans should adopt for nominating candidates for governor, the state Legislature, the U.S. Congress and other state offices.

1. No more billionaires with no experience in government. Repeating Arnold’s campaign schtick, last year eBay maven Meg Whitman — worth $1.3 billion — promised she would run California “like a business.” But government isn’t business. In business, you have to please the customer. He always can say no. By sharp contrast, government is based on coercion.

Government coercers murderers and other criminals into jail and a trial.  Taxpayers are coerced into giving up their hard-earned money. People and businesses are coerced through regulations. It’s totally different.

The only way to tell if someone is good at government is by seeing what he does in an actual office. That’s why wealthy businessmen, such as Arnold and Meg, first should take lower-level offices. Then we can see what they actually will do in office. I always say: Always watch what politicians do, never what they say.

Arnold, by sponsoring Prop. 49 in 2002, showed that if elected in 2003 he would be a socialist. That turned out to be the case. As to Meg, we can’t possibly know how she would have acted. McClintock, on the other hand, has a long track record of favoring smaller government, and of predicting disaster for a spendthrift state.

Bottom line: Shun the Arnolds and Megs and Mundels; back the McClintocks.

2. Recall Jerry Brown. Republicans should go on the offensive. As I wrote last month, it costs about $2 million to circulate recall petitions. This should be the entry-level ante of any aspiring millionaire. Let them prove their GOP bona fides by dumping Jerry. Instead of trying to turn elephants into donkeys, that’s what Mundell should be doing.

And if Steve Poizner wants back in the game, he should be doing the same thing. A recall would put Poizner at top of the heap of candidates in a replacement election.

Republicans need to become more mischevious.

3. Also put on the ballot — every ballot — tax cuts. Don’t make them big cuts. Put on, say a 1 percentage-point cut in the state income tax. Or a 1 percentage-point cut in the sales tax. At a minimum, such initiatives would deplete government-union funds that then wouldn’t be available for other attacks on Californians.

Or how about increasing the middle-class deduction? Right now, the top tax rate of 9.3 percent digs in at about $50,000 of income, which in this insanely expensive state is lower-middle-class. Put up an initiative to raise that to $100,000.

Meg Whitman is getting back into politics. She should sponsor a 1 percentage-point cut in the state sales tax. She could make a TV commercial in which she says, “I’m a billionaire and you’re not. But this tax cut would help you pay for clothing, books and other things for your kids. It wouldn’t help me at all. Vote to cut your own taxes.”

4. Put up gun-rights initiatives. Munger doesn’t like this and other “social issues.” That’s because he’s rich and can live in a safe place with guards. You can’t. You need a gun. The evidence is overwhelming of “More Guns, Less Crime,” as John Lott’s book puts it. Criminals easily can get guns to prey on disarmed citizens. The equalizer is when honest, law-abiding citizens get guns. Then criminals fear them, and crime goes down.

First, put up an initiative mandating “shall issue” conceal-carry gun permits. Currently, county sheriffs are given discretion on issuing the permits. “Shall issue” would mandate that the permits be issued to law-abiding citizens who meet qualifications, such as taking a gun course.

The issue is popular with voters. Just this year, sheriffs in Sacramento and El Dorado counties were elected promising much more permissive gun-permitting laws.

Here’s the campaign slogan: “Democrats want only criminals to have guns. We want you to be able to shoot back.” It’s a winner, Republicans.

5. Develop great Latino GOP leaders like Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval and New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez. Both back tax cuts and small government. Instead, the California GOP got stuck with Maldonado — who actually started out pretty well until he was seduced by Arnold.

Here’s an entry point. As Joel Kotkin recently wrote, the state’s “dominant ruling class” now consists of “public-employee unions, green jihadis, and Democratic machine politicians.” This policies of the “dominant class” have produce 12 percent unemployment, which especially has hit hard the Latino working class and its enterprising business class.

Kotkin talked to Salinas Mayor Dennis Donohue: “Today for many in hardscrabble, majority-Latino Salinas, home to 150,000 people, The Grapes of Wrath is less lyrical than real. ‘California,’ notes Donohue, a lifelong Democrat, ‘remains intent on job destruction and continued hyper-regulation’.”

Eventually, Latinos will get sick of the “dominant ruling class” making them promises, then giving them nothing but unemployment and despair.

And Latinos, however they vote, are more socially conservative than, say Munger and other supposed GOP saviors.

The question is: Will Republicans be there to give Latinos something more than Hollywood glitz and clueless billionaires?

Just a few ideas for Republicans this weekend. As Dylan warbled, “The darkest hour is right before the dawn.”

Tags: AB 32, Abel Maldonado, Arnold Schwarzenegger, California Republicans, John Seiler, Mike Villines