That’s now happening in California — although not along the same fault lines, of course. Steven Greenhut writes:

“Yet the fading of Republican power has not led to an era of Kumbaya. In fact, the state Capitol recently has been plagued by some of the ugliest and most divisive political battles in years as Democrats fight one another over ethnic-related issues. A new bill that recently passed a Senate committee is likely to keep the hostilities boiling.

“The flashpoint was in March, after Asian-American legislators backed away from their previous support of SCA 5, a constitutional amendment that would have asked voters to repeal Proposition 209. That was the 1996 statewide initiative that banned racial and ethnic quotas in the state university systems and other public facilities.

“Asian-American voters feared that their kids would face discriminationin university admissions if the new measure passed — and they put pressure on their legislators to back off. But some of SCA 5’s supporters, who remain intent on reviving the issue, were livid at how it all played out.”

Read the rest here.

I also think that Gov. Jerry Brown currently is the only one who can keep a lid on a massive feud inside the California Democratic Party. He’s an elder statesman now, respected by everybody in the party. He knows everybody and everything. He knows all the buttons to push to keep things going and everybody happy.

But this is his last election. And he’ll be a lame duck after the November election.

Then watch the sparks fly in this Family Feud.

I well remember his first presidential bid, way back in 1976 when he was a young governor of 38 and I was a younger political writer of 21 on my college newspaper, the Hillsdale Collegian. We’ve come a long way together, Jerry and I.

I naturally backed Ronald Reagan for president. Unfortunately, he lost the GOP nomination to Gerald Ford.

But I kept an eye on the Democratic nominees. The most prominent among besides Brown:

* Sen. Scoop Jackson of Washington state, called the “Senator from Boeing” for always favoring big defense contracts for his state’s biggest employer.

* Alabama Gov. George Wallace, the segregationist. Although Wallace really was a populist, favoring whatever the people supposedly wanted: integration early in his career, then segregation, then integration later on. He was a reminder that Democrats belonged to the party of slavery and Jim Crow.

* Sen. Birch Bayh of Indiana, like Brown a young, progressive Democrat.

* Rep. Morris Udall of Arizona, an environmentalist. When my family took a trip from Michigan to Washington, D.C. in July 1972, we visited our local congressman, Rep. Bill Ford, D-Mich. He took us to an event in the Capitol at which Udall spoke. Udall was pretty funny, a kind of Grand Canyon Jimmy Steward, and told some political anecdotes.

* Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter, the eventual Democratic nominee and presidential victor over Ford. He ran as New South candidate, who rejected segregation and worked for racial reconciliation, showcased by his capital city, Atlanta.

Brown’s campaign

Of Jerry Brown during that campaign, my impression from Michigan and extensive reading of both the liberal and conservative press (I had stopped watching TV almost entirely) was that he a flaky Californian playing on his image of youth and supposedly having “new ideas.” His actual slogan was, “The Man of the Future, Who Respects the Past.” See what I mean?

(In 2016, his slogan should be, “The Man of the Past, Who Respects the Future.”)

Back forty years ago was still the era when my Baby Boom generation (born 1946-65) still was young. We even were Time’s “Man of the Year” at the end of 1966. No Joke. So, yes, I was “Man of the Year” 47 years before Pope Francis was named “Person of the Year.”

Back in 1976, Brown, although too old to be a Boomer, was considered a quasi-spokesman for “youth.” He had “new ideas” and “energy” and “spoke for young people,” etc.

As in his other campaigns for president, in 1980 and 1992, Brown started off slow but picked up steam and finished strong. But not strong enough to win the nomination. I think that’s because Democrats eventually got tired of the blather from the eventual nominees — Carter in the first two races, Clinton in 1992 — and wanted someone different. They cottoned on to Brown’s combination of Jesuit erudition (sometimes badly remembered), Zen intensity, “Small Is Beautiful” schtick, patrician heritage from his governor father and general flakiness.

It’s a formula that Californians have embraced six of the seven times he ran for statewide political office, and likely will do so again next year for his re-election.

Given that Brown is healthy, Reagan won two elections as a senior citizen, and apparent Democratic leader Hillary Clinton is an aging Boomer, Brown at 78 might have a chance. If he runs, Brown would campaign on the California “comeback” he keeps talking about, continuing to tout it as a national model.

Assuming he remains healthy, I think he’ll go for at, at a minimum giving me something to write about and endless chuckles. Not that I would support him. But I can’t ask much more of politicians.

I nominate this as the theme song for Brown’s presidential run. It’s from the cult 1968 movie, “Wild in the Streets.”

By Chriss Street

The  “Misery Index” is inflation plus the unemployment rate. For example, today the U.S. unemployment rate is 7.9 percent and inflation is 1.7 percent. So the “Misery Index” (rounding off) is 10 points.

Anything above 10 points is considered a tough time for the economy.

This measure of national pain peaked at 21 points in 1980, the last year of the disastrous administration of President Jimmy Carter, then trended lower under the next four presidents: Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

But the downward trend was broken in President Obama’s first administration due to $5.3 trillion of deficit spending; $3 trillion in expanded bank lending and $1.3 trillion in Quantitative Easing by the Federal Reserve Board as economic stimulus; and rising commodity inflation.

However, a major counter-trend was housing, as home prices crashed beginning in 2007. Because housing actually dropped in price over the last four years, the Consumer Price Index measure of inflation has been substantially understated. That has been especially the case in California, the epicenter of the housing crash.

Misery rising

With housing now leading energy, food and health care inflation, consumer purchasing power is shrinking and employers will be laying off workers as sales drop.  The Misery Index during President Obama’s first term rose only to 10 points. And in California, with an unemployment rate 2 percentage points above the national average, the Misery Index rose to 12 points.

But with deficit-spending continuing and a recession looming, the Misery Index is about to soar.

The last time America engaged in this type of government “stimulus” followed President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s 1964 declaration of the War on Poverty.  What began with the passage of the Medicare expansion of Social Security and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act morphed over the next 16 years through the Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations into a smorgasbord of bloated social spending for powerful political and corporate cronies.

The resulting build-up of inflationary pressures and job destruction drove the Misery Index from an average of 7 points under Johnson to 16 points under Carter.  The Industrial Heartland of Midwest America was transformed into the Rust Belt. The inflation, especially to home prices, sparked the 1978 tax revolt in California when voters enacted Proposition 13, limiting property tax increases to a maximum of 2 percent a year.

The tax revolt continued in 1980 as disillusioned voters swept Ronald Reagan into office with a tough-love mandate that steadily drove down inflation over the next 28 years.

President Obama successfully advocated for a huge expansion of deficit spending on education and healthcare as an economic stimulus.  The Congressional Budget Office projects that, when he leaves office in 2017, over his eight years in office his administration will have engaged in $7.5 trillion in deficit-spending and the national debt will almost have doubled.

Obama’s formula of deficit spending and money printing stimulus is being copied by governments around the world.  The McKinsey Global Instiutute Commodity Price Index for food, raw material, metals and energy prices has risen over the last four years to historic highs, and continues to climb. 

During the same period in the United States, the price of a gallon of gasoline rose by 132 percent and has continued to rise for the last 33 days in a row.  Over the last two years, the accelerating costs of food rose by 8.1 percent.

Raging inflation has not been reported by the media, because the Consumer Price Index over-weights the cost of housing as 41 percent of the Index.  The Obama Administration’s Misery Index is only up to 10 points, because housing costs actually fell by 3 percent.

New housing bubble

But cheap money from the Federal Reserve is beginning to fuel a new housing bubble.  The year-end CoreLogic Residential Property Report found: “December marked 10 consecutive months of year-over-year home price improvements, and the strongest growth since the height of the last housing boom more than six years ago.” CoreLogic predicts home price will rise by 8.6 percent this year.

That’s great for California homeowners happy to see lost equity be restored. But it’s not so happy for new homeowners or renters.

The last Federal Reserve Board Open Market Committee minutes demonstrate that several members are concerned that if the Fed had to push up interest rates by selling some of its bonds to stop inflation, there might be “significant capital losses” that “distort financial markets.”

Few Americans are aware that the Fed’s massive bond purchases not only drove interest rates down, but also pushed up the value of the Fed’s bond holdings.  The U.S. Treasury made an “$88.9 billion  Portfolio Profit” last year from the Fed.

If the Fed needs to push up interest rates by selling bonds, the U.S. Treasury will suffer hundreds of billions of dollars of “Portfolio Losses” and the financial market will panic.

With inflation about to force the Fed to raise rates, the Misery Index is about to soar well above 10 points. And it will be even higher in high-unemployment California.

CHRISS STREET & PAUL PRESTON
Present “The American Exceptionalism Radio Talk Show”
Streaming Live Monday through Friday at 7-10 PM
Click here to listen:  http://www.ustream.tv/channel/american-eceptionalism-news

Stay Connected on our Websites:  www.aexnn.com and www.agenda21radio.com