CaliforniaComment.com

I have combined this blog with my other blogs in one grand, new site. Click here if you dare: JohnSeilerBlogs.com

Dear Constant Blog Reader:

I currently maintain three blogs, but am considering combining them. They are this blog, CaliforniaComment.com, and JohnWayneCounty.com.

Combining the blogs would make it easier for me to do the computer maintenance needed, such as screening comments. (I approve all comments except spam.) That would leave me more time to write more blogs.

My original thinking was that three blogs — national, state, and local — would let readers decide what they wanted to read. Someone in New York City, for example, might not want to read local news about Orange County. And someone in Orange County might read my local comments, but not care what I think about the Iraq war.

But I’ve been thinking that, when I read blogs, I just skip over those items I’m not interested in. And I recall that some of my favorite columns from late Mike Royko were his local observations of Chicago, where I never have lived.

So, please let me know. Type something in the comment section below. Or email me: john@johnseiler.com

I’ll be deciding in a few days.

Yours,

John

In office almost four years now, Arn/Old has become tedious and old. Hence, my new name for him: Arn/Old.

We get the same old schtick: The egoism. The pretensions to grandeur as the head a phony California “nation-state.” The bombast from his days as a pro-wrestler — I mean bodybuilder. The ties to the annoying Kennedy family. The posturing over how he tries to balance the budget, but never does. The endless, pointless increases in spending. The “caving in,” to left-wing Democrats, of whom he’s really one.

He’s old.

He’s Arn/Old.

Arnold is flying to London to hobnob with his new best buddy, Tony Blair, Britain’s worst prime minister ever, who is leaving office. Because he can’t run for U.S. president, Arnold recently has fashioned himself as head of a “nation-state,” California. That’s more of his Hollywood hype. The U.S. government so dominates our lives that the states have become mere administrative districts. By contrast, a nation-state is, by definition, independent of other nation-states.

Well, when Arnold is in London, he should stay there and run for prime minister. The Brits don’t have a birth requirement for their elected supremo. So he can become a citizen, get elected PM, get nuclear weapons, and the rest.

Michiganders are finally figuring out that the their state is in the cross-hairs of the nutty politicians sent to Washington by California. Detroit News editorial page editor Nolan Finley writes:

To hear Congress’ California dreamers yapping, you’d think all that stood between American motorists and cars that can go coast to coast on a gallon of gasoline is the stubborness of the American auto industry.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her California colleague in the senate Dianne Feinstein seem convinced that Detroit has the time and technology to produce perpetual motion vehicles, but simply doesn’t want to spend the money to make them.

So their strategy is do demonize the automakers.

He then goes on to note that the Detroit automakers have spent billions on new technology to build cleaner cars:

Since the mid-1960s, vehicle tailpipe emissions of hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide and oxides of nitrogen (NOx) have decreased in the U.S. by 99%, 96% and 99%, respectively. Carbon dioxide emissions at GM’s North American factories were cut 23 percent between 2000 and 2005.

Over the last 30 years, GM has improved its passenger fleet fuel economy by 133% and its light truck fuel fleet fuel economy by 75%. This year, GM offers 24 vehicle that get 30 mpg or more.

GM is rushing to bring to market the Volt, which will use zero gasoline and produce zero emissions.

Good points.

I would add that this is really is a new Civil War: The old Industrial Belt states vs. the California Granola Tyrants — Pelosi, Feinstein, Boxer, Arnold Schwarzenegger-Shriver-Kennedy, etc. The California Granola Tyrants want everybody to be forced out of their cars into smelly mass transit, while they ride around in their big SUVs, shouting orders at us.

California has one of the worst-run state governments in the nation. The budget hasn’t been balanced in years. The schools perform poorly and are getting worse. The state is up to its neck in debt.

Now the Citizens Compensation Commission just gave the top state elected officials 2.5% raises, with the attorney general and schools czar getting 5% raises. That means A.G. Jerry Brown, who is trying to destroy the state through lawsuits halting development, just got a raise far more than most ordinary Californians will get this year. And schools czar Jack O’Connell, presiding over a statewide cesspool of illiteracy, got the same raise.

These raises stem from the Citizens Compensation Commission, which voters foolishly enacted in 1990 with Proposition 112. But in a democracy, only the Legislature, or the people directly through initiatives, should set pay. The “independent” CCC, which also sets legislators’ salaries, conveniently insulates the Legislature from attacks by the public for such profligacy.

The CCC should be abolished.

Arnold is on the cover of Time magazine this week, boosting his “post-partisan” agenda. He’s paired with Mayor Bloomberg of New York City. “They’re both socially liberal Republicans who have flourished in Democratic political cultures,” writes Time.

Except New York City is almost another country to most Americans, and California is becoming like that. Bloomberg really still is a Democrat, and Arnold is married to America’s Democratic royalty, the Kennedys. Arnold also has “flourished” only by spending wildly, something that now is crashing down on him.

The scheme both Bloomberg and Arnold are pushing — massive new government controls on our lives to reduce the supposed, but really nonexistent, human cause of global warming — is both nutty and tyrannical. Maybe Bloomberg didn’t notice because his own hot rhetoric keeps him warm, but NY City has had record low temperatures this year, as his own Bloomberg News Service reported.

Arnold is “post-partisan” only because Republicans don’t like him and he would find it difficult winning a GOP primary for U.S. Senator.

The Time story and both politicians also ignore that the U.S. Constitution’s institution of the electoral college inevitably splits the country into two — no more and no less — major political parties. That’s because the presidential race is based on winning states, not the majority vote (in almost all cases). Win a state and you get all its electoral votes, the losers get nothing. In 1992, Ross Perot got 19 percent of the vote nationwide, but no electoral votes at all. His Reform Party faded away.

Arnold is just another flash-in-the-pan, who will be quickly forgotten. Along with Time magazine itself, which is fading out fast. With uninsightful stories like this one, it’s no wonder.

Flashreport is running my analysis, using the famous Seiler’s Law, of the California state budget. Click here.

(Thanks, Jon.)

As noted on my last post, I’ve been wondering how Arnold ended up adopting a socialized medicine scheme similar to that of his 2006 opponent, Phil Angelides. Then I remembered that the Oct. 7 debate last year. After Angelides had been describing some new socialist programs he wanted to impose, Arnold responded, “I feel a little bit like I’m having dinner with Uncle Teddy at Thanksgiving.” He was referring to the Most High Socialist Senator of Massachusetts, Teddy Kennedy.

So a month later Arnold easily beats Angelides. Then Arnold goes to Thanksgiving again with Uncle Teddy in November 2006. It must have gone like this.

Uncle Teddy (chugging a Chivas Regal): So, Arnold, congratulations on your victory.

Arnold (sipping schapps and waving a lit Cuban cigar): “Danke Schoen, Mein Onkel.”

Uncle Teddy (more Chivas): “Hiccup. California is ready for socialized medicine. Just use the model of your fellow Republican here in Massachusetts, Mitt Romney.”

Arnold: “Nein, Danke. I grew up with sozialiam in Auztria. No goot.”

Uncle Teddy: “But Austria was a dirt poor country back then. Surely, California, the wealthiest place on earth, can afford to help those few who don’t have insurance, with some taxes on everybody else.”

Arnold: “By Gott, I think he’s got it!”

Uncle Teddy: “How about a spin in my car?”

Arnold: “Jawohl!”

At this point, they go outside and get into an Oldsmobile, with Uncle Teddy behind the wheel. Uncle Teddy drives the car off the bridge at Chappaquiddick, but this time his passenger survives.

A good question is: How did Arnold come around to supporting socialized medicine, in the form of his “universal” coverage scheme? Just last year, he attacked Demo opponent Phil Angelides for proposing a similar scheme. Arnold won in November, then himself took up the Angelides plank in January.

Arnold is known for putting in hard hours for what he wants. Imagine the untold hours he put into winning bodybuilding championships, pumping iron over and over, again and again injecting steroids into his veins.

So why didn’t he do his homework on his socialized medicine scheme? As Dan Walters notes, the scheme violates both state and federal law. Did Arnold find that out, then go ahead and do it anyway? Why? What really happened?