As Someone Once Said

 [paraphrasing]

If you like your Swamp, you can keep your Swamp.

Political Bon Mots

In 1860 Joseph de Maistre wrote, "Toute nation a le gouvernement qu'elle mérite."  That usually gets translated as, "Every nation gets the government it deserves." 

I guess that in the case of a republic or democracy, that is true in a general and wholesale sort of way.

Surely the vast majority of the people of Russia and its satellites did not deserve Stalinist socialism, though...

And in that same red light, the people of California really don't deserve the Jerry Brown et al. version of Stalinist socialism. 

So the problem is not that the whole state gets the government that the whole state deserves, but that I, Crowndot, get the government that my neighbors deserve. 

Left Coast Twilight of History

On 25 September 2013, the California legislature passed AB10 to raise the minimum wage to $10 by 2016.  The bill was passed in both houses late on 25 September and was signed by Governor Brown the same day. 

The signing took place in Los Angeles, not California's capitol Sacramento.

The minimum wage in California is set to raise to $9 per hour on 1 July 2014.  The timing of the first increment is calculated to diminish the felt effect of economic damage until after the 2014 elections.  The minimum wage under the bill rises to $10 per hour 1 January 2016.

The only news stories I am finding as of this writing (26 September 2013, 0740) are the bullshit AP wire feed.  I heard but cannot find in text some audio from the signing ceremony (the first signing ceremony in L.A. -- there will be another one later in Oakland) in which Governor Moonbeam basically said, "Oh yeah, and screw you, California small businesses." 

I remember back in the Clinton years, in response to being asked about the economy-crippling consequences of her proposed health care bill, Hillary Clinton said, "I cannot be responsible for every undercapitalized business in the country."  Basically that is the Democrat party platform.  Screw the job creators.  Because to them, there's no way to turn the graft key on small business.  There's no payback to the party on supply-side economics. 

Minimum wage laws actually hurt low-income workers as a class.  As the minimum wage rises 25%, watch while hours and jobs are cut.  I would be surprised if the first $1 jump does not cost a quarter of a million entry level jobs. 

Just looked again for the off-hand remark at the first signing ceremony.  Can't find.  Well, Governor Moonbeam can't be responsible for every undercapitalized business in California, I guess.

Never letting a crisis go to waste

After a trip to Russia shortly after the revolution, during which he and others met for six hours with Stalin, American economist and engineer Stuart Chase reported saying, "'Why should Russians have all the fun remaking a world?"  The quote comes up in an interview in the January 2008 issue of  Reason  in which Nick Gillespie talks to Amity Shlaes, author of the history of the Great Depression, The Forgotten Man (Harper Collins 2007).

As a public service I offer this unguarded crystallization of policy, this clue to the mind of the old New Dealer, from one of his other books: 

1. A strong, centralized government.
2. An executive arm growing at the expense of the legislative and judicial arms.
3. The control of banking, credit and security exchanges by the government.
4. The underwriting of employment by the government, either through armaments or public works.
5. The underwriting of social security by the government – old-age pensions, mothers’ pensions, unemployment insurance, and the like.
6. The underwriting of food, housing, and medical care, by the government.
7. The use of deficit spending to finance these underwritings.
8. The abandonment of gold in favor of managed currencies.
9. The control of foreign trade by the government.
10. The control of natural resources.
11. The control of energy sources.
12. The control of transportation.
13. The control of agricultural production.
14. The control of labor organizations.
15. The enlistment of young men and women in youth corps devoted to health, discipline,community service and ideologies consistent with those of the authorities.
16. Heavy taxation, with special emphasis on the estates and incomes of the rich.
17. Control of industry without ownership.
18. State control of communications and propaganda.

- - -

I leave the cleansing of America from the poison of such socialism as an exercise for the reader.