Denise Cross / flickr

Though it means nothing for 2016, the 2020 presidential election may be decided by popular vote — or at least that’s the timeline given by one of the main proponents.

As it stands now, there really is no national election for president, rather 51 elections (including Washington, D.C.), where electors are doled out by the states/D.C., with the winner needing at least 270 electoral votes.

But most states are a foregone conclusion. Would blue California really go for a Republican? Or would red Mississippi chose a Democrat?

In most instance, no chance, so that gives a disproportionate share of attention by presidential candidates to a relatively small group of states like Florida, Ohio and Virginia.

National Popular Vote is pushing to replace the current race to 270 with a simple majority of the popular vote. Bay Area campaign and election lawyer Barry Fadem, who is working with NPV, says this goal can be achieved by 2020.

How Close Are They, Really?

It may seem like a farfetched idea, but the movement is halfway there. Ten states, including California, have ratified the measure (D.C. has signed on as well). Once enough states have ratified the interstate compact to represent 270 electoral votes — a majority — the county will move to the popular vote.

Last week, the Arizona House of Representatives approved the measure. And although it hasn’t voted yet, two-thirds of the Arizona Senate are sponsors. And there are several other states where at least one chamber has approved.

The way the law is structured, the (Constiutionally-mandated) electors of the states that have ratified the compact would choose the candidate who won the popular vote. Therefore, states that didn’t sign on are free to not participate, but they wouldn’t have enough electoral votes to matter.

The theory is that these states would ultimately fall in line, as they’d then have no incentive to stay under the current system once a majority starts with the popular vote.

Why Go Through This Trouble?

Many voters are still upset that in 2000, Republican George W. Bush beat Democrat Al Gore for president by winning the Electoral College while losing the popular vote. While this is largely Democrats who are upset, supporters of the losing candidate would be sour in any similar situation.

“The disadvantages of the current system, of course, are first that you can have an election where the winner of the popular vote loses the election,” said Norm Ornstein, a resident scholar the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute. “It happened in 2000, without many repercussions, but the next time? Watch out.”

Swing states like Florida, Ohio and Virginia have a disproportionate influence on the general election. There are 12 or so states where candidates spend most of their time because the rest are viewed as forgone conclusions. According to NPV, no campaign events were held by the 2012 presidential candidates outside of these 12 states during the general election.

“Two-thirds of the states now are irrelevant, since they are firmly blue or red, giving all the focus to a small number of competitive ones and distorting the election,” Ornstein.

Downsides

Critics have said that a close election could result in a national recount (“take Florida in 2000 and multiply by 50, with a hundred times the number of lawyers,” said Ornstein), but that the federal government really isn’t equipped to handle a recount of that magnitude.

“The federal government does not conduct elections,” said Kyle Kondik, the managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a non-partisan political publication from the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. “So if there was an election that was so close a recount was required, it would have to be a 50-state recount. That sounds challenging.”

There’s also a concern that attention would shift from swing states to heavily-populated areas, like Los Angeles or New York City, on the theory that time-strapped candidates would plan visits to the densest areas to reach the most people at once.

But NPV contends that the densest cities still only make up a small part of the population. According to Census data, the 30 most heavily-populated cites account for only about 12 percent of the population — nowhere near a majority.

Is It Even Constitutional?

While something that fundamentally changes how the president is elected will likely be challenged in court, Fadem says “a Constitutional amendment is not required,” pointing to language in the Constitution giving each state the right to decide how to direct its electors.

At this month’s state GOP convention in Sacramento, the California Republican Party approved the charter of the Log Cabin Republicans of California by an 861-293 vote, making it an officially recognized party organization. Much of the attention following the vote has focused on the political consequences: How the chartered club can help with the party’s re-branding and outreach to the state’s gay and lesbian community.

“This is about working together to win elections in California,” John Musella, the club’s incoming chairman, said in a recent press release. “Being officially recognized sends a strong signal that the Republicans’ ‘Big Tent’ has room for everyone. Our chartering in California should serve as an example of how every Republican organization can stand proud and work together.”

The political impact is significant, but that’s hardly the most important part of the story. In an era when pundits describe politics as hopelessly divided, a group of outcasts succeeded in changing the hearts and minds of their adversaries. The Log Cabin Republicans didn’t just win a charter — they won a major argument in the culture wars in California.

“Seventy-five percent of the body — 75 percent — overwhelmingly affirmed our place in the party,” said Charles Moran, past president of the Log Cabin Republicans of California. “The Republican Party has moved away from fighting those ideological battles and is now focused on winning elections.”

Gays once “the ultimate enemy”

The party has come a long way since those past “ideological battles.” The state party once was led by such Log Cabin opponents as Rep. Bill Dannemeyer, Rep. Bob Dornan and the Rev. Lou Sheldon. Only two decades ago, any association with the gay club was considered toxic in a GOP primary. It’s been 15 years since moderate Republicans joined conservatives in campaigning for Proposition 22, the state’s 2000 defense of marriage initiative that was passed by 61 percent of voters.

And it’s only been seven years since Proposition 8, which also banned same-sex marriage, was passed by 52 percent of state voters.

“In the 1980s, I was afraid to walk around the state convention alone,” Frank Ricchiazzi, a longtime Log Cabin Republican leader, told the L.A. Times in 2012. “I could see the hatred in the eyes of some of those people.”

Back in the late 1970s, when gay Republicans began to organize, they faced off against GOP Assemblyman John Briggs, who had proposed a 1978 initiative to ban gays and lesbians from teaching in public schools. Proposition 8 lost, getting 42 percent of the vote.

“I assume most of them are seducing young boys in toilets,” the conservative Orange County lawmaker said in defense of his Briggs Amendment, according to Gustavo Arellano’s book, “Orange County: A Personal History.” San Francisco, according to Briggs, was nothing more than “the moral garbage dump of homosexuality in this country.”

Although the measure failed, thanks in part to opposition from Ronald Reagan, it still didn’t lessen the rhetoric from some California Republicans.

In the 1980s, Congressman Bill Dannemeyer led the charge with his work, “Shadow in the Land: Homosexuality in America.” He thought “AIDS was God’s way of punishing gays” and described gays and lesbians as “the ultimate enemy.” According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Dannemeyer believed gays would “plunge our people, and indeed the entire West, into a dark night of the soul that could last hundreds of years.”

1998 Senate race

In the 1990s, the Rev. Lou Sheldon, leader of the Traditional Values Coalition, was at the height of his power. He helped elect Republicans by distributing 4 million voter guides to California churches.  Sheldon routinely cited the threat of “homosexuals” in his literature and held conferences to mobilize like-minded conservatives. A 1991 symposium at the Disneyland Hotel drew spirited opposition from gay and lesbian activists, five of whom were arrested for disrupting the event.

Throughout the 1990s, Sheldon was a central player in GOP politics, while any association with the Log Cabin Republicans could be used as a hit piece against Republicans. In the 1998 U.S. Senate race, GOP Senate candidate Matt Fong was criticized in the primary for receiving support from the Log Cabin Republicans. Fong, considered a moderate, received the club’s backing despite his support for the Defense of Marriage Act. Ironically, the Log Cabin Republicans raised $8,000 for Fong who, in turn, donated $50,000 to Sheldon’s anti-gay group.

“Rev. Lou is a friend,” Fong said of the donation, when it was unearthed for the general election against incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer. “We were working on the Defense of Marriage Act initiative that he was contemplating. It is an act that was supported in principle by President Clinton. I support the defense of a traditional marriage.”

Fong lost the 1998 election to Boxer, 53 percent to 43 percent. The son of longtime Democratic California Secretary of State Marge Fong Eu, he died in 2011 at age 57.

Two years after Fong’s defeat, in 2000 Republican State Sen. Pete Knight authored Proposition 22, a 14-word initiative to ban gay marriage.

The campaign was managed by GOP political consultant Rob Stutzman. He told columnist Debra Saunders polygamy might be next because “there’s a logical extension to it … if you accept the premise that marriage should be whatever relationships people want to enter into.”

Prop. 22 was endorsed by U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who came in second that year for his party’s presidential nomination to future President George W. Bush. In 2008, McCain garnered his party’s presidential nod, but lost to Democrat Barack Obama. Both McCain and Obama opposed same-sex marriage; in 2012, Obama changed his position and backed it.

Barney Frank

Hostility from the right was matched by hostility from the left. Some in the gay and lesbian community viewed the Log Cabin Republicans as “self-loathing” at best or traitors at worst.

“I now understand why they call themselves the Log Cabin Republicans: Their role model is Uncle Tom,” openly gay Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., wrote in 2012; he left office in 2013. “Twenty years now I’ve been hearing why the Log Cabins are gonna make the Republicans better and they’ve been getting worse.”

Frank was referring to “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” the 1852 novel that helped spark the Civil War; the title character, a slave, is excessively subservient to his white masters.

Yet this month, instead of prominent party leaders using their convention speeches to attack the “homosexual lifestyle,” they embraced the state’s gay Republicans.

“They have been solid soldiers in their fight against leftist tyranny in California,” said California’s Republican National Committeeman Shawn Steel. “I would welcome them in our organization. … I am proud to have them in the California Republican Party.”

H/T to OC Weekly & LA Times for archives. 

JFK is remembered for the New Frontier, for staring down Khrushchev over Cuba, for early civil rights actions, for “Ich bin ein Berliner,” for youth, optimism and Jackie.

The Gipper is remembered for making America again “stand tall,” for “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!,” for restoring prosperity and for being the Great Communicator with a dash of Hollywood style.

The question I keep wondering about is: Why hasn’t any Republican since advocated Reagan’s economic recovery plan, which won him a landslide over President Carter in 1980, then propelled the country to strong economic growth that lasted until President George H.W. Bush raised taxes in 1990, sparking a recession? Indeed, the Reagan policies even were followed for the most part by President Clinton, who first raised taxes in 1993, then cut taxes three times with Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich from 1995 to 2000.

Reagan program

Reagan’s program was simple:

1. Cut taxes 33 percent across the board. Working with Democratic House Speaker Tip O’Neill, Reagan settled for 25 percent — good enough for government work.

Note that Reagan did not seek “targeted tax cuts,” “tax cuts only for the middle class” or some other complication. It was simple: 33 percent (25 percent in practice).

2. Stable money, with gold kept at about $350 an ounce. Helping Reagan was Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, a Democrat first appointed by Carter, then re-appointed by Reagan.

3. Spending restraint. Reagan was less effective here, as spending actually rose 90 percent during his eight years in office. Hence the record deficits of that day. Much of the problem was that Reagan built up defense spending to push the Soviet Union into bankruptcy, which worked. There’s no Soviet Union today, and current defense spending — even if one thinks that’s the right amount — is 40 percent what it was under Reagan.

Clinton also worked with Gingrich to restrain spending, resulting in the brief budget surpluses of the late 1990s.

4. Regulation and bureaucracy reform. Reagan could have done more here. But as the late Nobel economics laureate Milton Friedman used to point out, Reagan was the only post-World War II president who actually cut the number of pages of federal regulations.

All the other presidents, including Republicans Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford and the Bushes, increased the regulations all of us must obey, upon penalty of fine or an orange jump suit. And the last Bush, George W., brought into law one convoluted economic package after another, culminating in the financial crash of Sept. 2008.

Contrast

Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign came up with “Believe in America: Mitt Romney’s Plan for Jobs and Economic Growth” — 160 pages of details nobody read, even me.

Can anybody remember anything from his economic plan — from this tome or from his stump speech or TV ads, which used the “Believe in America” theme? Which always reminded me of the “I believe in America” opening scent from the first “Godfather” film.

The point is: Why do Republicans always praise Reagan, and want to be associated with him — but don’t run with his popular and successful economic plan?

Happy Birthday, Mr. President!

The main reason for this, however, isn’t the behavior of California Republicans. It’s both a broad ideological trend and specific emerging problems in the Democratic coaltion.

The trend I refer to is the increasing emergence of tech libertarians in state politics. The rich ones are a potent source of money and lobbying clout. The young ones in Silicon Valley and elsewhere are a niche voting group likely to turn out on Election Day. They have little faith in government. Even if they’re mostly Democratic now, they’re not Dems because they want the leviathan to get bigger.

The specific emerging problems for Dems have to do with the fundamentally different agendas of key party factions.

The battle is already in the open between Asian Democrats and black/Latino Democrats over a return to explicit racial favoritism in UC admissions policies.

But with every year, we inch closer to the political equivalent of the Big One, in which Latino Democrats conclude Latino kids are not well-served by their lawmakers’ reflexive support of public education policies that value the interests of majority-white teachers unions over majority-Latino student bodies.

A crucial example of this can be seen in the race for state superintendent of public instruction. Former L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa avidly supports reformer Marshall Tuck over incumbent/CTA tool Tom Torlakson. Villaraigosa has been a quasi-mentor to a generation of California Latino pols in their 20s and 30s. John Perez may still be a CTA/CFT lackey, but a lot of these emerging Latino pols are likely to be closer to Villaraigosa than to his fellow Angeleno Perez. Gloria Romero, another L.A. Dem, may yet be vindicated for her depiction of the priorities of the school system as being the biggest California civil rights issue.

Eager to excuse Donnelly’s abject racist stupidity

But even if all these issues break well for the GOP in California, will the party take advantage? A month ago, I’d have said yes. Now, after watching the mixed reaction to gubernatorial candidate Tim Donnelly’s abject racist stupidity about Neel Kashkari, his Indian-American opponent, I am far less sure. A party whose rank-and-file doesn’t grasp the need to cast this guy out of the village is doomed.

I wrote about Donnelly’s idiocy in the U-T San Diego:

“Donnelly could have cruised to the runoff simply by repeating over and over that Kashkari played a key role in the Troubled Asset Relief Program — the unpopular big-government scheme that Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama implemented to try to shore up the economy in 2008 and 2009.

“Instead, Donnelly has chosen to be a race-baiter. He has repeatedly depicted Kashkari as an advocate of extreme Islamic Sharia law because Kashkari once spoke at a conference in which Sharia finance was the focus.

“This is ridiculous. Kashkari is a Hindu of Indian descent who advocates free-market capitalism — not a Muslim cleric seeking religious control of government institutions.

“It is also odious, because Donnelly evidently hopes to gather votes from Californians by encouraging the idea that all people with dark skin whose ancestors hail from Asia are crypto-terrorists.

“Sadly, this may be something that Donnelly actually believes.”

And even if he does believe it, based on the online comments and emails I’ve seen, lots of GOPers are eager to forgive him for it.

Both Donnelly, Kashkari are ‘imperfect’

As well as some people who should know way, way better. FlashReport gave big play Sunday to a piece on the governor’s race in which author David Salaverry suggested there was some sort of moral equivalence between Donnelly’s Sharia manure and Kashkari’s criticizing Donnelly for taking government perks and being a bad businessman.

They’re both “imperfect” GOP candidates, you see.

Get used to being marginal, California Republicans. If you’re this obtuse, you deserve it.

This is not a defense of Kashkari. It takes chutzpah to run for the Republican nomination for governor in the largest state after admitting to voting in 2008 for the epic walking debacle that is Barack Obama. But at least Kashkari is not a racist dolt.

Like Tim Donnelly.

“The U.S. homeownership rate, which soared to a record high 69.2 percent in 2004, is back where it was two decades ago, before the housing bubble inflated, busted and ripped more than 7 million Americans from their homes.”

Home ownership is at an 18-year low. That takes us back to 1995, under President Bill Clinton.

And the 2004 “high” number was only because of the Bush-Greenspan “bubble economy” based on massive deficits from wild spending, lower interest rates, easy money and lax lending rules from Fannie and Freddie. Even Bush’s tax cuts were bogus because they were temporary.

Obama — who should be remembered as Bush III — has continued the anti-middle class policies of Bush II.

Humorously, Obama has been touring some areas boasting about how he was helping the embattled middle class. Well, he could start by repealing the 2 percentage-point FICA tax increase of Jan. 1 this year, which he agreed to with “anti-tax”/really tax increase Republicans in the House. And which boosted the middle class’s taxes by $1,000 a year. Then he could agree to repeal Obamacare. Then…

Oh, what’s the use. If you’re in the middle class, both parties just want to gouge you to line the pockets of themselves and their Crony Capitalist masters.

By Chris Reed

The fallout from the April 15 terrorist attack at the Boston Marathon continues. Initially, the primary reaction was tired partisan attempts to imply the fault was either somehow a) the president’s fault because of his foreign policy or b) the Republicans’ fault because of the sequester. Then the focus was on the mainstream media’s series of gigantic mistakes on alleged key developments in the investigation — something longtime MSM critics found both enjoyable and unsurprising.

But now that one suspect has been killed and another is in custody, and the big thinkers are divining what it all means and how we should react as a nation, watch out.

At least for civil libertarians and for fiscally sane policy wonks who watch local government in California and elsewhere, the consequences of the attack are likely to be troubling and disappointing.

Enabling those who seek executive power without limits

On the first front, the attack has encouraged the advocates of the surveillance state and emboldened those who believe limits essentially no longer apply to the power of the executive branch.

It is one thing to believe that every effort should be made to track the communications and activities of suspected terrorists. But it is another thing to believe that there should be literally no limit on the amount of information the government is allowed to clandestinely collect on everyone else, even the obviously innocent. And it is wholly another thing to believe that the U.S. government has the right to kill not just foreign suspects but U.S. citizens abroad without trial or due process — especially when those Americans are not engaged in activity posing an imminent threat to U.S. interests.

Yet neither party truly opposes this assertion of near-unlimited government power. Democratic objections to the George W. Bush administration’s excesses vanished when he left office — even as the Obama administration in many ways exceeded Bush 43’s overreach. Republican objections to Obama’s policies — at least from GOP veterans who were mega-hawks post-9/11 — seem expedient and insincere.

Just six weeks ago, however, Sen. Rand Paul demonstrated that the American public didn’t want unlimited government power and a president to be judge, jury and executioner. The first-term Kentucky Republican’s filibuster over the Obama administration’s stunning claim of unlimited drone assassination power won broad support from the U.S. public, according to polls, and prompted a rare concession from the Obama administration: Attorney General Eric Holder’s statement that the federal government did not have the right to rub out Americans in America who weren’t threatening anyone.

For civil liberties, war on terror worse than normal war

But Boston has blunted Rand Paul’s message. The case for a government security apparatus unconcerned with constitutional niceties once again seems strong to many shaken Americans.

The warnings of my former Orange County Register colleague, the late Alan W. Bock, seem more prophetic with every year.

In the run-up to the beginning of the U.S.-Iraq war in 2003, Bock told me that wars are always an occasion for governments to vastly increase their power and to expand the dimensions of what is allowable conduct, but that the war on terrorism might be particularly destructive to liberty.

Bock believed that the undefined, apparently never-ending U.S. global war on terror triggered by 9/11 might leave the federal government in a default mode in which it never stopped seeking expanded power.

A decade later, a Republican president and a Democratic president alike have shown Bock’s fears were valid.

When veneration of public-safety officers carries a literal price

The other fallout to fear from the Boston terrorist attacks may seem far more parochial and seemingly minor. But it is neither petty nor minor. It is the strong possibility that the heroism of the “first responders” to the bombings will translate into additional political clout for public-safety unions who are in many cases the main threat to the financial stability of cities and counties in California and across America.

The veneration going to law-enforcement officers and firefighters is similar to that accorded our military service members since the Persian Gulf War in 1990-91. But those in the military haven’t been able to use this veneration as a club to win labor agreements that provide automatic raises from the government even as it pursues bankruptcy, as is the case with public-safety workers in San Bernardino.

After 9/11, this veneration reached extraordinary extremes. It provided political cover in an era in which pension spiking and manipulation at the behest of police and fire unions exploded at the local government level, enabled by the dot-com boom filling pension-fund coffers. In that period, when I wrote skeptically about public safety pensions at the Register, the terrible events of that Tuesday morning in Manhattan in late summer of 2001 were often thrown back at me. This was nothing new in Orange County, where public-safety employees know they will get the benefit of the doubt because of their images.

Now the veneration that police and fire personnel count on is revving up once again.

But while appreciation for the heroism of first responders is appropriate, political exploitation of that appreciation to pry money from tottering cities and counties is crass and depressing. Unfortunately, based on what we’ve learned in California, such exploitation is an absolute certainty in coming months and years.

For those who believe in liberty and solvent local government, the fallout from April 15 is to be dreaded.

By John Seiler

Supposedly the economy has been recovering for three years, with the stock markets setting new records. But all those numbers are based on inflated dollars.

The United States was on the gold standard from 1789 until President Nixon foolishly imposed his Nixon Shock program in 1971. Doing so caused the massive inflation of the 1970s, with the price of gold rising from $35 an ounce in 1971 to $80 in 1980.

A quasi-gold standard then existed from 1981 to 2001, with gold averaging about $350 an ounce, although it fluctuated a little.

After 9/11/2001, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan panicked and debased the currency. Gold’s price soared to more than $1,700, although in recent weeks it has crashed to around $1,400. In any case, it’s still way above the $350 average of the two decades from 1981-2001. That’s why gasoline costs four times what it did in 2000.

What if America had stayed on the gold standard? How would stocks have performed? The following chart shows the Dow Jones Industrial Average pegged against gold.

As you can see, the DJIA dropped for the past decade, although it has blipped upward recently. Far from the economy making progress, even during the supposed “boom” of the early 2000s, there has been a continuous decline.

The early Bush years, 2001-06, supposedly were years of strong growth. In fact, as the chart shows, the market was declining. Far from being a “free market” president, he was anti-capitalist. He went on a wild spending spree; let Greenspan inflate the dollar; hyper-regulated the economy with Sarbanes-Oxley; and even his tax cuts were worthless, as they had an expiration date.

The Obama years continued the Bush disaster. Although the past few months show the DJIA increasing, as the chart also shows, against gold; that might be because of gold’s sharp decline. We’ll see if that lasts.

By contrast, the Clinton years were quite good. The early Clinton tax increases of 1993, still bragged about by him and his partisans, brought stagnation, as the chart shows, from 1993-95. But in 1996, Clinton agreed with Republicans controlling Congress to cut capital gains taxes — and the dot-com boom soared.

Today in 2013, we’re basically at the same economic level we were in 1995. It was 18 years wasted.

By John Seiler

Tony Quinn gets things partly right when he writes in a Fox & Hounds article, “Are Republicans Finally Learning to Count?“:

“But now some Republicans at last want to face that reality and make some changes.  I call them the Republicans Who Can Count.

“The Republicans Who Can’t Count were on full display in 2012. Presidential nominee Mitt Romney ran the most vitriolic anti-immigrant campaign in the primaries; Asian and Latino turnout and straight ticket Democratic voting in the general election was the highest in history. Some GOP legislators in battleground states thought the way to victory was to repress minority voting; African Americans turned out in states like Ohio and Florida at historical records.  GOP pollsters modeled a voter turnout that did not exist and ended up looking like fools on election day when a flood of Democrats showed up and dealt their candidates defeat after defeat.

“Now the Republicans who can count are moving to take over the party with a mission to stop alienating the fastest growing parts of the American electorate, and also to stop running fringe candidates whose only goal seems to be to turn off moderate voters.”

It’s true the GOP is having problems attracting Latino voters. It’s likely to continue to do so no matter what it does. Voting patterns generally are locked in for families and ethnic groups for generations. It’s hard to change them.

And he ignores an even bigger constituency: The Republican “base” that wants not to “reform” immigration, but to end it entirely. If they’re alienated, then the GOP can’t win, either.

The immigration restriction “base” for the GOP is like public-employee unions are for the Democrats in California. They’re the strongest faction. The only way to get around them is to lie to them.

McCain-Kennedy

Hence, Sen. John McCain co-sponsored the McCain-Kennedy immigration amnesty in 2005. He downplayed that in his 2008 presidential run. After he was wiped out by Obama that November, then re-elected to the U.S. Senate in 2010, he went back to pushing amnesty.

Just Tuesday, an “angry crowd” confronted McCain over his pro-amnesty agenda:

“Sen. John McCain defended his proposed immigration overhaul to an angry crowd in suburban Phoenix….

“McCain hosted two town hall meetings in Arizona, during which he defended his immigration plan to upset residents concerned about border security….

“During a heated town hall gathering in the Phoenix suburb of Sun Lakes, McCain said the border near Yuma is largely secure, but he said smugglers are using the border near Tucson to pump drugs into Phoenix. He said immigration reform should be contingent on better border security that must rely largely on technology able to detect border crossings.

“McCain said a tamper-proof Social Security card would help combat identity fraud, and noted any path to citizenship must require immigrants to learn English, cover back taxes and pay fines for breaking immigration laws.

“‘There are 11 million people living here illegally,’ he said. “We are not going to get enough buses to deport them.”

“Some audience members shouted out their disapproval.

“One man yelled that only guns would discourage illegal immigration. Another man complained that illegal immigrants should never be able to become citizens or vote. A third man said illegal immigrants were illiterate invaders who wanted free government benefits.

“McCain urged compassion. ‘We are a Judeo-Christian nation,’ he said. McCain’s other town hall meeting took place in Green Valley, south of Tucson.”

That’s the Republican “base,” and it’s not going away. I’m sure the “base” also was amused at getting a Sunday School lesson on “Judeo-Christian” morality for someone who, as noted, hid his position on amnesty during his 2008 campaign and his 2010 Senate re-election campaign. Oh, and he was part of the Keating Five banking scandal crooks.

Can’t win scenario

So, Republicans can’t win with the immigration restriction “base,” and can’t win without ’em. At about half the party’s strength, this “base” is far greater than any potential new Latino votes that might be garnered by embracing amnesty.

McCain himself got a scare. In 2004, McCain had no primary opponent. But in his 2010 Senate primary, challenger J.D. Hayworth grabbed 32 percent of the vote largely by pointing out McCain’s pro-amnesty record (see YouTube below). In pro-military Arizona, war hero McCain is Senator-for-Life. But a 32 percent challenge is serious.

Quinn also should have pointed out, as I often have, that since Reagan left, the GOP has run one dud candidate after another for president beginning in 1988: the Bushes, Dole, McCain and Romney. And their campaigns have been risible. Meg Whitman ran a better campaign than Romney.

The GOP’s only chance is for an overall federal and state government default to be blamed on the Democrats. Which is coming.

By John Seiler

The stock markets supposedly have been bumping up against the records they scored in 2007, before the crash during the Great Recession. Except it’s all phony.

The U.S. markets are denominated in dollars. But the dollar’s value has been plummeting since 2001, when then-Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan panicked after 9/11 and began a huge round of inflation. Later, current Chairman Ben Bernanke continued the printing binge, what’s now called “quantitative easing.”

The only real value of something is its cost in gold. Paper currencies — now really digital blips on the computer screens of central banks — are easily manipulated. They come and go. Anybody still use Confederate dollars or reichsmarks? How’s the Zimbabwean dollar doing lately?

Except for the Civil War, the United States was on the gold standard from 1789 to 1971, our period of greatest growth.

Since going off gold, we suffered “stagflation” — stagnation plus inflation — in the 1970s, and have been suffering it again over the past decade.

If we still were on the gold standard, here’s what the stock market’s performance really would look:

Notice how the market’s rise (in gold terms) began right after President Reagan took office in 1981 and instituted stable money and tax cuts.

Then notice when the crash began: right after the post-9/11 panic by Greenspan. President George W. Bush also has to be blamed for his wild spending; and for his dumb tax cuts, which as we recently learned, were “limited” and “expired,” bringing massive new tax increases in 2013.

Bush also went along with the inflationary policies of Greenspan and Bernanke; and President Obama has gone along with Bernanke’s policies.

Likewise, during the past 12 years, Republicans and Democrats have passed control of the houses of Congress between them. So both parties are to blame. Remember when “conservative” and “small-government” Republicans voted for Bush’s spending spree? And Democrats, of course, imposed Obamacare.

By contrast, Bill Clinton’s years in office began in 1993 with a tax increase and a slowdown of the market. But when the Gingrich Republicans took control of Congress in 1995, Slick Willie made deals with them to  start cutting taxes and spending, restoring the bloom of the boom — what’s called the dot-com boom of the late 1990s.

Next, look on the chart at the current price of the market, and note when it last was there: in 1990. Basically, there has been no growth the past 23 years. Sure, some computer and other high-tech companies have done extraordinarily well. But most of us have not.

This also is a major reason why the California state budget and many municipal budgets have been running red ink. The economy hasn’t grown at all, so revenues couldn’t keep up with inflation.

The country won’t recover until almost everything done by Congress and the presidents of the past dozen years is repealed.

By John Seiler

Denying California voters an opportunity to see the two in action, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., refuses to debate her Republican opponent, Elizabeth Emken. This is what happens when one party takes over a state

Yet Feinstein needs to be confronted on her disastrous 20 years in the U.S. Senate. During the last 17 years, there has been no increase at all in household incomes. True, Republican Congresses of those years, as well as President George W. Bush, bear a great deal of responsibility.

And in the last four years of President Obama’s presidency, during which Feinstein and her fellow Democrats also controlled the U.S. Senate, U.S. household incomes crashed by 8.3 percent.

But consider this: Since DiFi went to the U.S. Senate 20 years ago, Democrats have controlled the White House 12 years (1993-2000; 2009-2012), Republicans eight years (2001-08).

Democrats have controlled DiFi’s U.S. Senate nine years (2003-04; 2002 — after the Jeffords defection; and 2007-12). Republicans have controlled the Senate 11 years (1995-2001; counting 2001 as Republican before the Jeffords defection; and 2003-06).

And Democrats have controlled the U.S. House of Representatives six years (1993-94; 2007-2010); while Republicans have controlled the U.S. House 14 years (1995-2006; 2011-12).

So, Democrats have had plenty of opportunity to fix the economy. In particular, in 2009-10, they controlled the whole kit and kaboodle: the presidency, the House and the Senate with a filibuster-proof supermajority of 60.

Democrats could have done anything they wanted. They could have cut the deficit to zero; instead we’ve had four years of $1 trillion-plus deficits. They could have reduced the national debt; instead they zoomed it up to $16 trillion. That’s $16,000,000,000,000.00.

Blaming Bush

The Democrats keep blaming Bush. Fine. He was a disaster. But he’s been gone four years.

Ronald Reagan inherited an economy worse in many ways. If you’re old enough, remember 13 percent annual inflation and 20 percent interest rates? The “misery index” — inflation plus unemployment — was way over 20 percent. Yet within two years of the Gipper’s inauguration, the economy was humming with growth above 5 percent.

And Democrats keep demanding that “the rich” pay more in taxes. They don’t tell you that, for them, “the rich” are those making $250,000 a year, including S-corporation businesses. These are the small businesses that are the engine of jobs growth. Due to the vagaries of the tax code, these corporations are charged at the personal tax rate. So jack up the “personal” rate and you take away the profits small businesses use to expand and create jobs.

I’m not a fan of Mitt Romney at all. And his tax cut plan doesn’t make any sense now that he says it will be “revenue neutral.” But one way he scored big time in last week’s debate with President Obama was by emphasizing that America needs to cut taxes to stimulate growth.

Feinstein probably figures that, in a debate with Emken, the same topics would come up. And DiFi might do as badly as the president — or worse. The president can’t avoid debates. DiFi apparently can. Maybe we need an initiative mandating debate participation.

So it’s left to me to analyze Emken’s economic plan. It’s actually pretty good, with some caveats. At least there’s no way it could make things worse than the past 20 years.

Tax cuts

The key to economic growth right now is tax cuts — with no offsetting increases like Romney wants (for now). Tax cuts increase economic activity, boosting investments and jobs creation. President Kennedy explained this in the early 1960s, back when Democrats still understood something about economics.

His tax cuts were enacted in 1964 after he was killed, producing a massive economic boom that only ended when his fool successor, President Johnson, imposed a surtax in 1968.

And unlike Bush’s stupid 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, which keep expiring and casting uncertainty over the economy, JFK’s tax cuts were permanent.

DiFi, of course, like Obama backs jacking up taxes on “the rich.” Under “Issues” on her Web site, I couldn’t find anything on economics. But she has a strong record in the Senate of increasing taxes.

By contrast, Emken says:

“I believe tax rates are already too high in this country. And, with the weakened economy, we cannot ask American families to pay more in taxes. I believe we need tax reform that makes our tax structure more competitive against overseas sources. By lowering the tax rates for businesses, corporate investment and capital will return to the country. That will stimulate growth and provide greater tax revenues.”

That’s pretty good. Her policy paper on tax reform goes further:

“For example, Dianne Feinstein joined her fellow Democrats in voting for the “Buffett Rule.” The Buffett Rule is a political gimmick. It promotes “fairness” by making an unfair comparison between income taxes and capital gains taxes. It also distracts from the truth that capital investment is actually taxed at least four separate times under our tax code….It’s no wonder that it seems like the only ones investing in America are the Chinese.”

I would add that Feinstein herself is immensely wealthy. Socking us with higher taxes just keeps the rest of us down, unable to rise up economically and politically.

Emken provides specifics:

* Simplify the tax code and make it flatter and fairer.

* Broaden the tax base by repealing loopholes and shelters.

* Make the 2001 tax cuts and the death tax repeal permanent.

* Reduce the corporate tax rate to make it competitive.

* Provide strong incentives to repatriate foreign earnings by adopting a territorial tax system.

* Create a domestic system that encourages savings and investment in America.

That’s all OK. Except it’s to complicated to close “loopholes and shelters,” and takes up to much political capital. If you reduce rates enough, then the “loopholes and shelters” don’t mean as much.

Tax reform is important, but can wait until a better time. For now, the country needs to get moving again — through simple tax cuts.

Tax rates

What tax rates does Emken want? Right now, the top U.S. tax rate is 35 percent; but that would rise to 39 percent should the Bush tax hikes expire in January, as Obama and DiFi want.

Emken says:

“The international average is 26 percent. The U.S. tax code should not contain any rate higher than 25 percent, with lowest rates reserved for domestic business.”

Excellent. But won’t that increase the deficit? Romney’s problem is that he wants his tax cuts to be “revenue neutral.” Meaning tax cuts for some would be offset by tax cuts for others.

Emken takes a different approach:

“Everything I’ve proposed adds to economic opportunity and market stability, two important factors in job creation and economic growth.  Any loss in revenue from the current tax base should be more than offset by the increase in job creation, which provides a greater number of taxpayers. Again, we’re not fighting over small slices of pie; we’re making a bigger pie. I’ve also called for a thorough review of every federal department and agency to see where we can save money. I will work relentlessly to reduce government spending.”

That’s exactly how things would work.

Cuts

And she’s right, of course, that cuts to government must be made. Anybody who’s ever been in government knows that every department is larded with massive waste.

What agencies would Emken eliminate? Unfortunately, she’s vague here:

“My approach is different. I want a top to bottom review of every agency, requiring metrics that measure results and value for invested tax dollars. Those programs that aren’t producing need to be made to produce. And those that have no possibility of returning value for invested tax dollars should be discontinued. As a cost efficiency expert, I spent a good portion of my career implementing these practices in the private sector.”

But the private sector isn’t the government sector. Government exists to waste.

The best thing to do is to eliminate whole agencies. Otherwise, like cockroaches, the bureaus and their inhabitants just swarm back.

She should start by calling for eliminating the two agencies that Ronald Reagan promised to get rid of in 1980, but didn’t get around to doing because he was busy reviving the economy and winning the Cold War: the Department of Energy and De-Ed, the Department of de-Education. The free market provides us plenty of energy at a fair price; recent increases and distortions in oil and gas prices are caused by government interference.

And ever since the feds took over education policy in the late 1950s, test scores have fallen nationally, the kids becoming dumber by the minute. Programs like Bush’s No Child Left Behind and Obama’s Race to the Top only have made matters worse, with more government bureaucratic strings tied to every dollar “given” to local schools.

Conclusion: A decent plan

Emken’s economic plan is fundamentally sound, favoring pro-growth tax policies that would get the country moving again. As with most office seekers and holders, she doesn’t want to offend constituencies whose federal largess would be cut. But because of the massive deficits and debt, cuts will be coming no matter what.

If taxes are increased, as DiFi and Obama want, the economy would be smashed into another recession, perhaps worse than the last one. The deficits and debt would get even worse. A Greater Depression could hit, as businesses and jobs fled America for China, India and other countries that believe in caring and feeding businesses, instead of stepping on them.

Emken has close to zero chance of winning in November. That’s just the reality of California. But it’s unfortunate that her ideas on the economy, at least, aren’t being heard as part of the policy mix because a U.S. Senator in office too long refuses to step up to the podium and debate.