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Healthcare Myth-making: Scandinavian Medicine and The Shell Game

It’s amazing.  Did you know that there are adults who actually believe in the prosperity-generating potential of the robbing-Peter-to-pay-Paul principle of governance?  It’s like the “shell game”.  If the peanut under the shell represents wealth, then shuffling it about through taxing schemes will magically produce more peanuts.  Right?

Wrong, if one stays clear of the hallucinogenics and other intoxicants, and has the mental maturity beyond a preteen.  Clinging to the illusion isn’t much different than insisting on the corporeal existence of Santa Claus.

The shyster logic isn’t understood to be shyster logic among those “feeling the Bern” and within the Democratic Party hive.  It’s holy scripture.  Santa Claus is real to them.  Translation: Socialism is great!  It’s no accident that the subjects in the 2 previous sentences begin with “S”.

No better example of the phenomena can be found than the unbridled faith in “socialized medicine”, Obamacare, “single payer”, the “public option”, and similar disfigurements of the language.

Of course, while appealing to the feeble-minded, the idea of a fat dude falling down a chimney delivering “free” goodies without any concept of cost may not be so convincing to the sober-minded.  So, the equivalent of the North Pole must be created.  For health care, and all things tax-and-spend, it’s Sweden or, more generally, Scandinavia … which also has the added advantage of being not too far from the North Pole.

But as in all dreams, one must awaken.  Bernie Sanders invoking Sweden/Scandinavia may be more Santa Claus than the reality of mom and dad running up the credit card debt for the goodies placed under the tree.  His image of Scandinavia is  sheer fantasy.

The case of Robert Nielsen in Denmark, above, is instructive.  He proudly boasts that he’s been on Danish welfare since 2001.  He owns his own co-op apartment and eschews work. (4)  This rise of dependency has shocked many Danes.  It’s a problem spanning many Scandinavian countries.

The “Carina” (a psuedonym) story also outraged many  Danes.  She, 36 and a single mother, has been on welfare since age 16, currently receiving $2,700 a month.  Many Danes are thinking the formerly unthinkable – welfare reform.

Karen Haekkerup, the minister of social affairs and integration, in 2013 exclaimed,

“In the past, people never asked for help unless they needed it.  My grandmother was offered a pension and she was offended. She did not need it.  But now people do not have that mentality. They think of these benefits as their rights. The rights have just expanded and expanded. And it has brought us a good quality of life. But now we need to go back to the rights and the duties. We all have to contribute.”(4)

There are more problems than the refusal to wean from the government teat.  Sweden is forced to grapple with difficulties associated with a bountiful healthcare teat.  One unavoidable problem arises from the necessity of implementing the “California DMV” model of provisioning government medical care.  You’ll be assigned a client ID number, a priority number, take a seat and … wait.  It’s how government naturally responds when confronted with millions of users for all things advertised as “free”.

(LA DMV office, 2014)

In Sweden, patients, like cattle,  are herded into monolithic facilities like the one below.  Everyone is assigned a district (landsting) and must utilize it’s hospital.  In many cases,  there ‘s only one per landsting.(1)

(Sodersjukhuset, Stockholm hospital, 2014, by Arild Vagen)

Since “free” outperforms price, public (government) eviscerates private care.  The remaining private medical operations are heavily regulated by the state.  They might as well be “public”. (1)

Another of the ways that the DMV-style of healthcare adapts to the crowd seeking “free” is the ranking of patients.  Government prioritizes according to “future taxpayer value” and similar numbers-driven analytics.  Woe be to you if you’re old and need a procedure normally assigned to the aged.(1)

Government behavior will produce a sinking sensation when one hears “wait times”.  Emergency room wait times are 5-7 hours during the 9-5 slot and only Monday through Friday.  Beware: Don’t get sick or injured after-hours and on weekends. Furthermore, sickness and injuries should be avoided during the public employee vacation season of June to August.(1)

“Wait times” for a general practitioner are typically a month.   It’s worse for specialists.  If your son is experiencing gender-identity difficulties, the surrender to surgery may have already occurred in the 18 months before seeing a child psychiatrist.(2)

Klaus Bernpainter, Swedish healthcare expert, captures the situation in an anecdote.

“When I moved to the U.S., our family health insurance took three months to kick in. One of my family members broke a leg in this period. We found a ‘five-minute clinic’ half an hour away, had the leg X-rayed, straightened and casted, with no waiting time — all for $200 cash. That kind of service is non-existent in Sweden.”(1)

Of course, the whole thing is executed by functionaries with the caring and affection of a protected, tenured DMV counter clerk.(1)

(Still from the 1962 film adaptation of Franz Kafka’s The Trial.)

If you can’t apply the word “panacea” to Scandinavian healthcare, what about Scandinavian education?  Well, their education Borg could be confused with our own.  Sweden’s math and reading scores, according to OECD numbers, are more dismal than ours.  For all of Scandinavia, they’re treading water with us.(5)

Much of the freebie government stuff has become a problem for them, and many in the upper northern latitudes know it.  Yet, many Americans trek on up to places like Copenhagen  and Stockholm and return with sugar plums dancing in their heads.  Many natives have a different point of view.  They notice the decline, and the depressing realization that they’re living off the fumes of the past.

Freebie-Scandinavia didn’t always exist.   For example, Sweden was one of the poorest countries in Europe, hence all the 19th-century immigration to places like Minnesota and a football team named after them.  Starting in 1870, an economic renaissance began.  Free-market reforms on taxes, tariffs, and property rights produced a surge of prosperity.  Sweden experienced the highest GDP growth in the industrial world from 1870-1936.(3)

Then, something happened on the way to the future.  Forgetting the legacy in the late 60s and 70s, they embarked on an escalator of soaring taxes, spending, and welfare rolls, with the attendant rise in crime, drug addiction, welfare dependency, and red tape.  In 1976, Time Magazine summarized what many Norse were thinking, “Growing numbers are plagued by a persistent, gnawing question: Is their Utopia going sour?”(3)  Indeed.

And those “feeling the Bern” and the pandering, identity-politicians of the Democratic Party want us to jump on board the sour-utopia train.  Much of the Trumpophobia is rooted in the fantasy of Scandinaviophilia.

We’d be much better served by keeping in mind Friedman’s old maxim TINSTAAFL – There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.  The fact is, politicians can’t bring on the eschaton and its paradise.

RogerG

Sources:

(1) “The Truth About SwedenCare”, Klaus Bernpaintner, The Mises Institute, 7/10/2013, https://mises.org/library/truth-about-swedencare

(2) “Sweden’s healthcare is an embarrassment”, The Local, se, Johan Hjertqvist is President of Health Consumer Powerhouse, a Swedish-based organization which compares healthcare systems around the world (This is an abridged version of an article originally published in Swedish bySvenska Dagbladet.), http://www.thelocal.se/20150127/swedens-health-care-is-a-shame-to-the-country

(3) “No, Bernie Sanders, Scandinavia is not a socialist utopia”, Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe, 10/15/2015,https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2015/10/15/bernie-sanders-scandinavia-not-socialist-utopia/lUk9N7dZotJRbvn8PosoIN/story.html

(4) “Danes Rethink a Welfare State Ample to a Fault”, Suzanne Daley, NYT, 4/20/13, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/21/world/europe/danes-rethink-a-welfare-state-ample-to-a-fault.html

(5) “Scandinavia Isn’t a Socialist Paradise: If you’re looking for a prosperous European country to emulate, don’t look to the high-tax social democracies of Scandinavia. Check out Switzerland, instead. ”, Kelly McDonald, The Federalist, 8/11/15, http://thefederalist.com/2015/08/11/scandinavia-isnt-a-socialist-paradise/

(6) “The strange death of social-democratic Sweden”, The Economist, 9/16/10, http://www.economist.com/node/17039151

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The Distressed Working Class and the 2016 Election

Understanding the 2016 election requires something more involved than a 140-character tweet or an abbreviated Facebook post.  Much has been written about the white working class in the lead up and aftermath to the Trump victory.  The video is an AEI panel discussion with J.D. Vance and Charles Murray on the topic from October of 2016.  First, watch the conversation and then read the essay below it.

Our politics seems increasingly disjointed as many see the electorate as disparate victims’ groups.  Some call it “identity politics”.  A semi-official status as “victim” normally follows an intense period of political activism.  The process was evident for unionized workers, all sorts of hyphenated Americans, and gays (now to be added to the “hyphenated” category).  Did the 2016 election cycle insert the “white working class” to the list?  Can it claim addition to the growing list of the “oppressed”?

Indeed, something significant has been happening to the white working class; something ignored by the culturally powerful.  It’s a story of the isolation and ignorance of the culturally influential from the everyday lives of average working Americans.  It’s a story of the negative impacts of an insular elite’s popular causes on people outside the elite redoubts, in a place I call “middle-America”.

Middle-America is an entity culturally, economically, and geographically defined.  Culturally, middle-Americans are least likely to experience haute couture and an Ivy League setting.  Dining preferences ranges from a good steakhouse to a bar/grill to fast-food.  Economically, they occupy the rungs hovering around the poverty line to blue collar, wage-earning incomes.  Geographically, they reside in areas conducive to their livelihoods.  They increasingly have been weeded out of the now expensive coastal enclaves and gentrified, trendy inner-city neighborhoods.  More and more they are identified with the vast stretch between the Appalachians and the West’s Coast and Cascade Ranges.

Middle America is a swath of the country in distress.  Socially, many middle-Americans are mirroring the experience of the African-American underclass.  Marriage rates are down; illegitimacy is up.  Church attendance is down; social pathologies like drug use and crime are up.  Unstable families more and more characterize life for many children.  Educational attainment is stunted.  Workforce participation by males is in decline.  The upshot is an evisceration of human capital that will be handed down to the next generation. (1) (2)

Factors like the decline of private-sector unions aren’t the cause as some claim.  The decay of these unions is a symptom, like all the rest, of a broader blue collar malaise.

These conditions are far removed from the cultural and economic elect.  They congregate in particular aesthetically pleasing nodes on the west coast and in places like Vail, Co.  They dominate financial and media centers and the surrounding neighborhoods, and college-centered communities.  Their children predominantly experience stable, intact families.  While church attendance is increasingly rare, values of hard work associated with formal education are stressed.  The backstop of strong families gives them a leg up in a world they’ll increasingly dominate.

Today, the two slices of America rarely intersect.  In the past, as recounted in the works of Charles Murray and Robert Putnam, they did.  It was common for the wealthy to rub elbows with workers and the poor.  Residential districts weren’t far apart and frequently shared the same schools, stores, and churches.

“Deindustrialization” has shattered this unity.  Some factories, the mainstay of some communities, have closed as economic weight gravitated to centers of financial services, technology, and higher education.  An outlook, distinct and secluded, has developed within each group. (2) (4)

Beliefs, as a consequence of isolation, begin to take hold among the two slices of the population.  Of particular note are the ideological obsessions and prejudices of the emerging upper class.  J.D. Vance makes reference to the slights of “hillbillies” and “rednecks” as acceptable language in conversation among so-called sophisticates.

Environmentalism has come to replace Christianity as a focus of near worship among cultural and upper class elites. (5)  It may be speculation but the attraction of the ideology probably has much to do with aesthetic cleanliness and neatness, just taking the form of environmental purity – thus the love affair with recycling, climate change, almost anything labeled “sustainable”, biodiversity, the preservation ethic for public lands, etc.

Furthermore, a formally educated elite has a predilection for the rule of “experts”, a foundational tenet of progressivism.  Environmentalism’s prescriptions lend themselves to the rule of “experts”.  Of course, the “experts” tend to be themselves.

The consequences of these views being translated into policy for those outside the elite enclaves is profound.  Yet, these effects aren’t maturely appreciated by this class of self-anointed “betters”.  For the elites, the forests are in essence parks that are to be treated as recreational preserves for the REI-crowd.  For a blue collar worker, the woods represent jobs and the stuff that fills a Home Depot.  Different perceptions, but it’s the REI-crowd who has magnified influence beyond their numbers.

The whole gamut of environmentalism’s causes has deleterious effects on working people and their communities.  Their safety-net is threatened as tax revenues decline.  Jobs disappear, only to be replaced by unemployment checks and part-time work.  Communities watch the housing stock deteriorate and store fronts board up.

Why?  One possible answer can be directed at the policy prescriptions whose origins lie in the perceptions of a particular, insular cultural elite.

The elite’s response to anyone harmed is a galling condescension and social engineering.  Opposition is ridiculed.  People experiencing the negative fallout will be directed into the “proper” behaviors and “proper” occupations.  Their children will be directed into the “proper” thoughts.   The near totalitarian dimensions of the outlook is obvious.

The political dimensions are equally obvious.  The blue along the coasts, and in the urban and college islands, corresponds with the cultural elite (map above).  The red is everyone else.  The Trump movement was a revolt, a revolt of middle-America against the condescension and effrontery of a cultural claque residing in “blue” America.

It will be interesting as the Democrats try to reshuffle their ideological deck to make it more appealing to blue collars.  I’m reminded, though, of the adage about lipstick on a pig.

RogerG

Sources:

(1) Losing Ground, Charles Murray

(2) Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, Charles Murray

(3) Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, J.D. Vance

(4) Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis, Robert D. Putnam

(5) “Diversity in Environmental Organizations”, Sierra Club, 9/9/14, http://www.sierraclub.org/planet/2014/09/diversity-environmental-organizations

 

 

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Middle America’s Invasion: Donald Trump Becomes President Donald Trump

(Trump takes the oath, Jan. 20, 2017)

I support Trump with reservations. I opposed him in the primaries but voted for him, with reluctance, in the general. I retain my doubts. My observations aren’t those of a Trump zealot nor those of the rabid left. Clearly put, his election was a gathering of middle-America in opposition to the growing ascendancy of an insular, self-anointed elite.

By “middle-America”, I mean those people not graced with membership in one of the fashionable victims’ groups. It’s “middle” also geographically. As a glance at the election map indicates, Trump’s success was founded on a citizenry not privileged with residence on the trendy coasts, nor in a densely-packed urban agglomerate, nor a college cocoon.

If America is divided, the growing gulf lies between the insular places of swank values and their pet issues and the aspiring social middle scattered in “flyover country”.

Those outside the bubbles aren’t enamored by the chic but smothering outlook of the “beautiful people”.  Inside the bubbles, lefty progressivism is the catechism.  

The “Lefty” part of the reigning dogma in the blue archipelagos is a single-minded belief in the Marxist dictum of material conditions being all-determining in human relations.  Thus the lefty fixation on equalizing material conditions, and almost everything else. Surprise, that requires mammoth government.

The alliance of the left with government is a natural one.  The left needs power to transform people and society.  They need a cadre of enforcers and self-proclaimed “experts” to meddle into lives and shape a new society.  It’s what Obama and the Democrats tried to do while constrained by the limits of republican government.

Those of the left are totally oblivious of the Orwellian trap depicted in Animal Farm.  Painted on the side of the barn is the pigs’ new maxim, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”  In the Soviet Union it was called the “nomenklatura”.  In America, today, it’s called the administrative state.  It’s a metastasizing power base increasingly shielded from democratic accountability.

The “progressive” element is the conviction that  government is the most important agency for the achievement of a person’s highest potential.  For progressives, power is ensconced in a self-anointed class of elites – those so-called “experts”.  In reality, their grasp on wisdom is highly suspect.  Many are corrupted by progressive ideology and excessive self-confidence.   It’s the reason that “climate change” fits so neatly into their platform.

Furthermore, “potential” is left nebulous – tailor-made for the accretion of power into the state.  The state becomes isolated, unaccountable, and far removed from the vast middle of the country, where we find the sort of people who pay and receive little benefit.

Trump’s constituency is the real forgotten man and woman not so privileged by the adoring gaze of lefty progressives and their shock troops of “experts”.  The real forgotten American is only a target for social engineering.

Funny thing about this isolated elite: they don’t know themselves to be so parochial. They’re completely unaware. Self-reflection isn’t one of their strengths. They were blinkered by an ideology – leftist progressivism – that was ever-present in their environs, and few other places. In the end, they were blindsided by an election.

Interesting turn of events.

RogerG

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The Reaction to My “California Exodus” Cartoon

 The cartoon (above) from one of my Facebook posts seems to have elicited quite a spirited response from a couple of my friends. I respect their affection for California. As nearly a 3rd generation Californian, I can’t help but care about its prospects as well. And its prospects are troubling. I don’t relish saying this. The situation is widely documented. Here’s a brief synopsis from the National Center for Policy Analysis: http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=21859.
Also, below is a PBS “Intelligence Squared” debate on the topic. Take a seat, grab a cup of coffee, and view the debate. It’s fascinating.

RogerG

 

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A Recommendation: “The Witness”, a Documentary

Now playing on Netflix is “The Witness”. It’s a compelling account of a brother’s attempt to understand and explain his sister’s murder and its treatment by the media at the time and in the years since. The story is one of an assumption about the condition of our society being imposed on an actual event, with the attendant distortion and invention of facts. It becomes an urban myth, and doesn’t do justice for the victim, the victim’s family, and our society.

The 60s were rife with all manner of social critique. Leaving any judgment of the criticisms aside, sometimes incidents were shaped to fit these commentaries. Thus, events became fictionalized to some extent.

Having experienced the 60s up close and personal, a common complaint at the time, and articulated in a variety of ways, was the alleged dehumanization of our society. The story of the murder of a young woman was crafted to fit this premise. Actually, the real story is quite different.

Questions arise. If the real story diverges from the contrived version, are any pertinent lessons to be gleaned different from the ones assumed?  How often does this happen?  What does this situation say about the nature of our media? What does it say about the media’s herd instinct to naively follow the lead of a single media outlet, notably the NY Times?

Interesting questions. Watch the film.

RogerG

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Why is California the Bluest of Blue States? Part II

Part II: Blue Policies Make for Bluer States

(Sen. Kamala Harris and Rep. Mike Pompeo during Pompeo’s confirmation hearings, January 2016.)

It didn’t take long for California’s newly-minted Senator, Kamala Harris, to display the animating concerns of California’s insular governing class.  The confirmation hearings of Mike Pompeo for CIA Director gave us a perch to view the political island of California at work.  It quickly became apparent that all other matters pale in significance to sexual orientation and the Sierra Club’s environmentalist demands .

Without a whiff of humility or scientific caution, while being oblivious to the more relevant Age of Terror threats, she raised “climate change”.  She asked,

“CIA Director Brennan who spent a 25-year career at the CIA an analyst, a senior manager, a station chief in the field, has said that when CIA analysts look for deeper causes of rising instability in the world, one of the cause those CIA analysts see is the impact of climate change. Do you have any reason to doubt the assessment of these CIA analysts?”

She further burrowed in,

“In the past you have questioned the scientific consensus on climate change. Nevertheless, according to NASA, multiple studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals show that 97% or more of actively published climate scientists agree that climate warming trends over the past century are extremely likely due to human activities. In addition most of the leading scientific organizations worldwide have issued public statements endorsing this position. Do you have any reason to doubt NASA’s findings?”

Doctrinaire positions on sexual orientation matched Harris’s passion for “climate change”.  Again, Pompeo had to sit through the following query,

“Your voting record and stated position on gay marriage and the importance of having a quote un quote traditional family structure for raising children is pretty clear. Um, I disagree with your position, but, of course, you are entitled to your opinion. Um, I don’t want to that, however, to impact your opinion on that matter—the recruitment or retention of patriotic LGBT women and men in the CIA, some of whom, of course, have taken great risks to their lives for our country. Can you commit to me that your personal views on this issue will remain your personal views and will not impact internal policies that you put in place at the CIA?”

Why the insistence on ramrodding anything LGBT and “climate change” into national security?  The awkwardness of the issues in a hearing on the CIA should be apparent to anyone not blinkered by partisanship.  But they are the common obsessions of the governing interests in California.  These interests became governing interests when once in power they drove out the base for opposing views and interests.  Their policies helped create the conditions for their dominance.  Blue begets blue.

The policies of the state’s governing class are actually a set of politicized aesthetics.  They are a collection of fashionable standards of thought and beauty of particular powerful factions in the state.  It’s a litmus test ranging from growth control, environmental purity, victimization, and stamping the Hollywood sitcom version of urban life on the whole state – and the nation if they get away with it.   Of course, all of it hinges on the mirage of the omnicompetent state.

Some of the factions merged as NIMBY/drawbridge suburbanites united with environmentalist partisans.  The alliance paved the way for growth control ordinances, CEQA, the California Coastal Commission, activist local planning boards, expanded powers for state and local agencies, and rising housing prices as if on a booster rocket.  The effect is great for people with already attained wealth and homes.  It’s not so great for those wanting to join them.

The rich are in a class of their own.  They can afford whatever the Frankenstein housing market presents.

Jacked-up prices on the coast push the housing market into the interior.  But people looking for cheaper housing will not escape the reach of the environmental lobby and its rich and powerful patrons.  They’ll face jacked-up utility bills due to the necessity of air conditioning.  On the map of electric rates below, the dark color follows the borders of the state.

The state’s energy markets are a state-run extortion racket forcing home buyers to pay $500/month or blanket their roof with solar panels.  The utility companies are at the mercy of the state’s environmentalist godfathers and forced to play along.  The state’s ratepayers and taxpayers are on the hook for all the subsidies.  It’s a massive robbing-Peter-to-pay-Paul gambit in a game of musical chairs.  No wonder many have thrown up their hands, loaded up the U-Haul, and headed east.

Accepting longer commutes for cheaper housing may prove to be no bargain either.  The environmentalist reach will grab you at the pump.  The state has the highest fuel taxes in the nation.  Just crossing the state border saves you 25-38 cents per gallon.

Don’t think taxes are the end of it.  The boutique fuel markets within the state, with its state-mandated blends, distorts the markets and pushes up prices. (8) (9)  There’s no end to it.

If the car should ever wear out, which it will on the poorly maintained roads, replacing it will be costlier than most any other state.  California ranks as one of the worst to buy, operate, and maintain a car.   It is next to dead last according to the Huffington Post. (10)

One-time, state-imposed costs (fees and taxes) at the time of purchase are some of the highest in the nation. (12)

In no ranking is California among the cheapest for buying a car, or almost anything for that matter.

Need I say anything about taxes?  California has set herself up as one of the worst, to add to all the other “worsts”. (16)

It certainly isn’t a welcoming place to do business.  It’s not breaking news to find California dead last in surveys of the best and worst states for business.  One CEO was quoted as saying, “States like California just don’t get it.  At the rate they are going, who’s going to pay the bills with such an anti-business, leftist government and businesses leaving every month for Arizona and Washington state?”  Another exclaimed, “California has been running businesses out of the state for years, and, in fact, their policies are getting worse. Class-action lawsuits abound, and it’s a crazy environment for small business out there.”  Such comments are so common, and its been true for so long, a person can be excused for responding with “ho-hum”. (13)

But such nonchalance hides a deeper reality: nobody gets a real job off a poor person.  You need rich people and business people.  An economy is more than the entertainment and tourism industries and Silicon Valley.  Any economy so narrowly contrived will increasingly become feudal with the prosperous in their coastal castle-keeps in a sea of peasant poverty.

Once again, the eastward trek continues.  Left behind is the supportive base for the disease.

Woe be to you if you happen to live in California and take your Christianity seriously.  Woe be to you if you believe the Holy Scripture to be holy.  The LGBT lobby is on the prowl, with the state’s legislature and governor as sidekicks.

Prop 8 – the 2008 effort to define marriage as a traditional one – had the misfortune of appearing on the “California” ballot.  The state is a hornet’s nest of LGBT activism.  The abuse heaped upon Prop 8 supporters rivaled Kristallnacht.  More than individuals, entire and long-established Christian denominations were targeted as if they were synagogues in 1938 Germany.  (14)  Like German Jews of the 30’s, Christians might feel more comfortable elsewhere.  No doubt, Christians make up a large portion of the U-Haul clientele.

Leaving no stone unturned, the power of the state’s LGBT hive is now aimed at Christian colleges.  Already, youngsters in the public schools are required to be exposed to the hive’s agenda and sexual activity.  With SB 1146, faith-based colleges will face lawsuits and the withdrawal of financial aid for teaching and practicing their faith.  There used to be an exemption, which is not likely to last much longer. (15)

Everyone must bend a knee to the hive.  Religion, by definition, must have some relation to timeless truths.  There’s little room for a zeitgeist here.  The normalization of homosexual conduct demands the embrace of the LGBT zeitgeist by a Christianity going back to the cross and further to Genesis.  It all must give way to the zeitgeist.   Too much of the Bible is an embarrassment to the hive.  Accommodation to the hive’s agenda by Christianity essentially works out as a suicide pact.  For Christians who actually believe their Christianity, it may be healthier to leave the state.  Many have.

High taxes, abusive energy costs, hostility to business and Christianity lead to a combination of fear and loathing for the not-so-golden Golden State.  The welcome sign has been removed for the striving, enterprising, family-oriented, and Christian crowds.  Those left behind are increasingly more accepting of this hostile agenda.  The political playing field is steeply tilted blue.  The tilt is getting steeper by the day.

RogerG

Sources:

(1) http://www.theblaze.com/news/2017/01/12/dem-senator-grills-pompeo-on-climate-change-in-confirmation-hearing/, “Dem Senator grills Pompeo on climate change in confirmation hearing”, The Blaze, 1/12/17

(2) “California Prepares to Throw Climate-Change Skeptics In Jail. Meanwhile, They Allow Violent Criminals To Go Free.”, Hank Berrien, The Daily Wire, 6/2/16, http://www.dailywire.com/news/6263/california-prepares-throw-climate-change-skeptics-hank-berrien

(3) “California Senate sidelines bill to prosecute climate change skeptics”, Wash Times, 6/2/16, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jun/2/calif-bill-prosecutes-climate-change-skeptics/

(4) “California to investigate whether Exxon Mobil lied about climate-change risks”, LA Times, Ivan Penn, 1/20/16, http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-exxon-global-warming-20160120-story.html

(5) “Virtues of journalism are at stake in project by Columbia’s Energy and Environment Reporting Fellowship”, Crain’s Cleveland Business, Richard Osborne (former reporter, editor, publisher, Cleveland Journalism Hall of Fame 2007), 1/26/16, http://www.crainscleveland.com/article/20160126/BLOGS05/160129864/virtues-of-journalism-are-at-stake-in-project-by-columbias-energy

(6) “InsideClimate News: Journalism or Green PR?”, Jillian Kay Melchior, NRO, 12/22/15, http://www.nationalreview.com/article/428878/environmentalism-advocacy-journalism-who

(7) “Kamala Harris Grills CIA Nominee Pompeo on Gay Rights and Climate Change”, Weekly Standard, 1/12/17, http://www.weeklystandard.com/kamala-harris-grills-cia-nominee-pompeo-on-gay-rights-and-climate-change/article/2006261

(8) “Why California gasoline is so expensive”, Dan McSwain, San Diego Union-Tribune, 2/3/16, http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/columnists/sdut-why-california-has-higher-gasoline-prices-2016feb03-story.html

(9) “Car Buyers Beware, Cheapest And Most Expensive States For Unexpected Fees”, Forbes, Jim Henry, 6/29/14, http://www.forbes.com/sites/jimhenry/2014/06/29/car-buyers-beware-cheapest-and-most-expensive-states-for-unexpected-fees/#f45371677f5e

(10) “Most (and Least) Expensive States to Own a Car”, Elyssa Kirkham, Huffington Post, 3/21/16, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gobankingrates/most-and-least-expensive_b_9516846.html

(11) “Tax-Friendly Places to Buy a Car”, Mark Solheim, Kiplinger, 4/7/06, http://www.kiplinger.com/article/cars/T009-C000-S001-tax-friendly-places-to-buy-a-car.html

(12) “Most (and Least) Expensive States to Own a Car”, GoBannkingRates, 3/21/16, https://www.gobankingrates.com/car-loans/most-least-expensive-states-own-car/

(13) “Survey: California still worst state for business”, Editors, OC Register, 5/23/16, http://www.ocregister.com/articles/california-716365-states-business.html

(14) “The Price of Prop 8”, Thomas M. Messner, Heritage Foundation, Backgrounder #2328 on Family and Marriage, 10/22/09, http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2009/10/the-price-of-prop-8

(15) “Does This New Bill Threaten California Christian Colleges’ Religious Freedom?”, Thomas Berg, Christianity Today, 7/5/16, http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2016/july-web-only/california-sb-1146-religious-freedom.html

(16) “Best and Worst States for Taxes 2016”, Forbes, http://www.forbes.com/pictures/emeg45ehhij/no-45-california/#391c3d67e3cd

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Trump Is Making Hypocrites on the Right

Let me get this out of the way: I voted for Trump, probably for the same reason as many other voters.  The election was a choice between a Republican and another  Democrat promising to continue the leftward lurch of the country.  My vote for Trump was a stopgap vote.

Yet, it is undeniable that Trump has twisted some on the right, especially at Fox News, into knots.  Trump appears to have a conservative core, with a whole lot of inconsistencies and contradictions attached.  At times, he is incoherent.  At other times, he is a petulant boor … and incoherent.  Still, the Trump adulation  has turned some on the right into sycophantic apologists  for everythingTrump. They have become what Trump is, seemingly unaware of the contradictions, hypocrisies, and buffoonery.

My favorite example is Sean Hannity.  For years, before the rise of Trump, he proudly proclaimed, “I am a conservative, not a Republican”.  He was a booster for everything Reagan.  Today, he’s a mouthpiece for everything Trump.

In 1988, in the VP debate, Bentsen said to Quayle, “Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.”  Well, Hannity, I knew Reagan.  Trump is no Reagan!

Reagan was a free trader but had to make compromises in the reality of governing.  Nothing new here.  Reagan’s characteristic free trade bonafides were clear when he said in 1986, “Our trade policy rests firmly on the foundation of free and open markets. I recognize . . . the inescapable conclusion that all of history has taught: The freer the flow of world trade, the stronger the tides of human progress and peace among nations.”  His protectionism in autos and electronics were adjustments to political realities.

Where’s Trump vis-a-vis Reagan and trade?  In debate he said, “Because I did disagree with Ronald Reagan very strongly on trade. I disagreed with him. We should have been much tougher on trade even then. I’ve been waiting for years. Nobody does it right.”  Trump’s egotism is boundless.  Only he can do trade right.

And to do it right means “protectionism” – undoubtedly – even if Trump can’t bring himself to use the word.  Neither can Hannity.  As Trump goes, theTrumpkins mindlessly go.  People like Hannity just kicked Reagan overboard to be replaced by their new infatuation – Trump.

Anything and any person not glowing in their praise of Trump will set off derision.  Does anybody doubt Hannity’s many interviews of Trump to be softball?  Megyn Kelly had the temerity to mention it alongside Clinton’s puff interviews.  Hannity went ballistic on Megyn on Twitter, “@megynkelly u should be mad at @HillaryClinton Clearly you support her.”  The love of Trump trumps network comradery.

Let’s leave aside Hannity and turn to Tucker Carlson.  Trump mouths the AFL-CIO line on trade and jobs; Carlson pushes a question that would make any government-loving liberal economist beam in envy: “Will driverless cars soon put Americans out of work?”  I know, I know.  It’s just a question.  But the line of questioning is Luddite.  When did automation become the bete noire?  I suspect the simple-minded influence of Trump.   Take a look.

Trump thinks that free trade sacrifices jobs.  It’s not a huge leap to think that automation does as well.  The new economic catechism seems to demand government power to determine what to produce, how to produce, and who to sell it to.  Socialism anyone?  The Trump knot has become Gordian.

Lost in the Trump-love is the Reaganite fusion of free market economics, social traditionalism, and a masculine foreign policy.  Prior to Trump, people on the right were aware that automation doesn’t produce a net loss of jobs any more than the invention of the automobile in the 30-40 years from the internal combustion engine to Henry Ford’s Model T.  Smoot-Hawley left its own foul taste.  Trump gives us the chance to repeat the lunacies, and the lemmings follow in his wake.

RogerG

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Why is California the Bluest of Blue States?

Part 1: Changing Demographics and Political Orientation

One question looms large after the 2016 election: How did California become such a blue bubble,  and so unrepresentative of most of the nation?  One answer lies in the preconditions for turning a state from twice electing Ronald Reagan for governor into a lock for the Democratic Party and consistently pushing its presidential candidate over the top in the national popular vote. (2)  The fact is, the place is different from its 60s persona.  As the author D.J. Waldie said in a LA Times piece, “How do we understand California when it’s not Californian anymore?” (5)  Quite so.

One factor affecting the state’s politics is its transformed population.  It’s not just the growth of certain population categories.  It’s also the decline of others.  These conditions are a backdrop to an altered political orientation.

Granted, actions by the now shrunken Republican Party have magnified the trend.  Dilatory and half-hearted outreach to Latinos contributes.  Also, party decisions to avoid the state, while understandable to some extent, has meant surrendering it to the opposition.  The Democrats are the only ones active in this playground.

Yes, it’s a one-party state.  But Republican negligence pales when compared to a tidal wave of changing demography as the driver.  The state has a population more receptive to the identity politics and victim-mongering so characteristic of one of the nation’s most zealously left-wing state parties.

The state’s population is more immigrant-centered.  Promises of low taxes, small government, and robust nationalism isn’t likely to find much appeal to an increasingly immigrant population, one largely unfettered from assimilation expectations.  As the immigrant component has grown, the native Californian sector has declined in relative numbers.  Any increase in population for the state is due to foreign immigration, not domestic in-migration.  In fact, domestic in-migration is negative by 720,611 from 2004-12 for example.  In other words, more people have left for other states than have moved into it from other states.  As of 2010, the foreign-born accounts for 27% of the state’s total population. (5)

The exodus is concentrated among the middle class and families, constituencies more receptive to Republican-like appeals.  Certainly, the high cost of housing, energy, high taxes, and fewer status-raising jobs has taken its toll.  (7)  These are the kind of things that discourage families.  The chart illustrates the phenomena by age group from 2004 to 2012.  The bar extending below the center line is out-migration.

The 40-54 cohort is people in their wage-earning prime.  The 0-15 are youngsters tied to their parents, i.e. families.  (7)

If you need more proof, look at the next chart.  It shows the labor force status of out-migrants.  The largest sectors among the exodus are “Employed” and “Retired” (like yours truly).  It’s people with jobs, and likely to get other jobs, like the middle class, who are leaving. (7)

Examining out-migration from an income level reinforces the nature of the exodus.  The chart below breaks it down. (7)

The conclusion: The state’s middle class is increasingly looking elsewhere.  With them goes Republican votes.

Do the changing demographics, in fact, show in the political orientation and behavior of the state?  While correlation isn’t causation, the coincidence of the trends is at least interesting.  A connection is highly probable.

When was the last time California voted Republican in a presidential election?  Answer: 1988.  In the last 3 presidential elections, the Democrat garnered at least 60% of the vote (2008, 2012, 2016).  In those 3 elections, the Democrats won 31-34 of California’s 58 counties.  Not only that, and more importantly, they won the populous and vote-rich counties along the coast … overwhelmingly.  The figure below shows the coastal counties to be most fervently Democratic.  The next figure distorts the counties to show the weight of their voting numbers. (1)

The coast overwhelms anything to the east of the Coastal Range.  Cleary,  the coastal plain is all blue.  A glance at LA makes clear how blue a California coastal city can be.  Take a look at the map from the 2012 election. (8)

It is even more pronounced when you move up the coast to the Bay Area and the environs of Nancy Pelosi.

Even Orange County isn’t immune from the trend.  In 2016, Clinton won the county by 5%. (4)  The tidal wave is washing over the last Republican outposts in the state.

For the near term, Republican prospects can’t be described as rosy.  No Republican officeholder is safe.  Things might get worse before they get better for the R’s.  Yet looking over the horizon, things might look a bit different.

The middle of the country between the Appalachians and Sierras are in a no mood for California politics.  They comprise a potentially election-winning block for the Republicans.  If they unite, they can discipline California’s left-wing zealotry.  They can save California from itself, as well as rescue the rest of the country.

A middle-America alignment could gain control of immigration and reduce the receptive critical mass for identity politics and victim-mongering.  As the state’s and the country’s demographics begin to gel, upward mobility and assimilation will take care of the rest of the pandering.

Republicans can only hope that the middle-America block remains solid for a long enough time, while Republicans jettison their “whites only” brand.  Their message of real prosperity and upward mobility, as opposed to the Democrat’s message of government dependency and serfdom, should have appeal beyond the white enclaves.  Really, it’s a message for everyone.

Republicans get busy and develop a broader appeal.

RogerG

Sources:

(1)  “California’s Political Geography”, Eric McGhee and Daniel Krimm, Public Policy Institute of California, Feb. 2012, http://www.ppic.org/main/publication_quick.asp?i=1007

(2)  wikipedia.org – Calif. votes 2008, 2012, 2016

(3)  Ballotpedia, ballotpedia.org/United_States_congressional_delegations_from_California

(4)  LA Times, 11/9/16, “Orange County voted for Democrat for the first time since the Great Depression”

(5)  LA Times, “California demographic shift: More people leaving than moving in”, Nov. 27, 2011, by Gale Holland and Sam Quinones

(6)  “Land of Inequality”, Troy Senik, NR online, 3/10/14, http://www.nationalreview.com/article/371796/land-inequality-troy-senik

(7)  “California’s Migration Problem: “Good Luck Movin’ Up Cause I’m Movin’ Out””, Carson Bruno, Hoover Institution, 7/21/13, http://www.hoover.org/research/californias-migration-problem-good-luck-movin-cause-im-movin-out

(8)  “Interactive database: How did your precinct vote for president?”, LA Now, LA Times, 11/13/12, http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/11/presidential-election-interactive-map.html

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A Discussion in the California Bubble

If you want to watch a discussion in a bubble, watch this “roundtable” of talking heads on San Diego’s KPBS. Whether the subject is immigration or climate change, it’s an echo chamber that is far removed from the rest of the country.

Some facts and opinions won’t penetrate the membrane. Fact: Science is not a primer for the pet ideologies of California’s governing class. Fact: The debate over “climate change” is robust and certainly not settled. Fact: The value of so-called sustainables (energy) is not all positive. Anyway, how can we honestly evaluate them while they are heavily subsidized, protected by a cocoon of regulation, and alternatives are bashed into pulp? Fact: California’s nullification of immigration law is blatantly unconstitutional.  We fought the Civil War over that issue.  California’s position lost.

This kind of insular discussion can only occur in a cloistered MAS – mutual admiration society – that is a PBS studio on the California coast.

RogerG