Posted on 04/07/2006 6:57:55 PM PDT by StoneColdGOP
The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy: it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups. Nine-tenths of the economic fallacies that are working such dreadful harm in the world today are the result of ignoring this lesson.
— Henry Hazlitt,
Economics in One Lesson
In the 60-plus years since Henry Hazlitt pounded out on his pre-computer-age typewriter those lines from his classic contribution to economic and conservative literature, the world has demonstrated their wisdom repeatedly, and not only with regard to economics. In virtually every area of public policy or, for that matter, politics, each passing day provides new evidence that the realms of wisdom and foolishness lie in the alternative courses of either, a, seeing questions and proposed solutions, as best we can, in their full context, as opposed, b, to focusing narrowly on their immediate effect for a particular group while ignoring anything broader, deeper, longer lasting. Case in point:
Throughout the 1990s, state Senator Tom McClintock, now a candidate for California lieutenant governor, tirelessly championed repeal of California’s Vehicle License Fee, popularly known as the car tax, “a tax,” McClintock said at the time, “that long ago ceased to bear any resemblance to its original purpose and intention. It [VLF repeal] would remove a strong disincentive in current law that keeps motorists from shedding older, higher polluting automobiles. It would provide a significant spur to economic activity by reducing the cost of new vehicles in California. It would reduce costs to California families of what is a practical necessity in the Golden State: the family car.” The senator thus cited the most obvious benefit of dumping the car tax: reducing the too-heavy burden government places on families and all car owners by taxing a practical necessity. He also, however, cited several less obvious reasons to end the tax:
• good government (policies that cease to serve their original purpose should be discontinued; if politicians want their current purposes served, they should justify that to their bosses [i.e., the voters] and, if they can, pass a law to serve them on its own merits),
• eliminating a law perversely working against the state’s anti-air pollution policies, and
• spurring the economy.
By 1998, with the state’s coffers overflowing, Governor Pete Wilson and the Legislature began a phased-in car tax reduction that eventually reduced the tax by two-thirds. Democrats, of course, opposed the change vehemently, their field of vision, as always, tightly constricted to see only the effect of lower taxes on their own power. But, perhaps surprisingly, VLF repeal was also opposed within the business community. A $150 million business tax reduction bill was under consideration at the same time and business leaders reportedly feared cutting the VLF would exhaust support for tax cutting overall, defeating their business tax cut. Now, however, estimates say cutting the VLF has so far saved Californians $25 billion, with about 40 percent of the savings going directly to business. A business’s van fleet that now costs its owner $7,000 or $8,000 in annual vehicle license fees would cost $21,000 or $24,000 if Democrats — and powerful elements of California’s business community — had had their way. The difference between McClintock’s steadfastly supporting, and others’ steadfastly opposing, the policy change, was McClintock’s proficiency, that others lacked, in “the art of economics”: in “looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy.”
The Republican Alternative
Restoring respect for the broad view in public policy is at the center of what Republicans traditionally offer voters. It is, in a sense, their stock in trade. If they are going to win not merely this or that election, but win any serious measure of control over the political direction of California, it must be on this basis: by convincing a majority coalition that the long term matters as much as the short term, that we must think not just of this or that group that stands to reap immediate benefits from a policy, but of all the people and the effect the policy will have on them. The Grand Old Party can never compete with Democrats in bedazzling voters with narrowly-drawn promises to make their every dream come true, and of ending every irritant, through the use of state power. The Dems own the monopoly on short-sighted use of brute force to achieve immediate objectives for particular groups while ignoring long-term effects on the whole population. Demagoguery is the Democrats’ private preserve.
Tom McClintock knows this instinctively and therefore doesn’t shy away — when most other politicians would pass — from the often difficult, sometimes tedious, job of explaining, patiently and thoroughly, the detailed results likely to come from enactment of complicated policies. But like Ronald Reagan, McClintock brings to this task a powerful ability to articulate even arcane truths in terms everyday people can understand. He manages not only to make his points — the Republican Party’s traditional message — understandable, but to show its strength precisely by presenting the broad context from which the message emanates and the reasons it is worth our while to consider the big picture.
“Our generation,” McClintock tells audiences, “must study politics that we may restore the liberty that our parents and grandparents expect us to pass on to our children and grandchildren. If we fail, what history will demand of our children and grandchildren, in a society where their only right is to their own thoughts, is simply unthinkable. And be assured, history will find it unforgivable. A generation that is handed the most precious gift in all the universe — freedom — and throws it away — deserves to be reviled by every generation that follows — and will be, even though the only right left to them is their own thoughts. But if we succeed in this struggle, we will know the greatest joy of all — the joy of watching our grandchildren secure with the blessings of liberty, studying arts and literature in a free nation and under God’s grace, once again.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, isn’t that worth devoting the rest of our lives to achieve?”
As a note in passing, for anyone who might consider these words over-stated, the idea that our “only right is to [our] own thoughts” was expressed in pretty much those terms by Sheila Kuehl, evidently as her guide to what is and what is not morally permitted for government to do to people.
Consistent underestimation
Understandably, McClintock’s willingness, even eagerness, to go where superficial political wisdom fears to tread, provokes uneasiness, and a consistent habit of underestimation, especially among grizzled political veterans. In his memoir, Lyn Nofziger recalls an early talk he had with political campaign veteran Bill Roberts who was running Ronald Reagan’s first gubernatorial race in 1966. “There’s something out there,” Nofziger said after returning from a trip with Reagan. “I don’t know what it is but there’s something between Reagan and the people. He’s going to be elected governor and someday he might even be president.” Roberts, who, Nofziger wrote, “looked on Reagan as a not very smart right-wing actor,” answered by saying, “Oh Lyn, what will the poor soul do if he’s ever elected governor?” What, indeed?
Roberts misinterpreted Reagan’s simple charm and lack of the politician’s usual air of self-importance as a sign of simple-mindedness, a mistake not made with McClintock who has for far too long shown a thoughtful, thoroughly com- petent grasp of difficult issues to allow it. But behind this first mistake, many experienced politicians also mistrust the voters’ ability and willingness to do the relatively harder work of understanding conservative ideas and policies. The people, they seem to assume, like bread and circuses, and candidates just waste their time boring the crowd with thought- through positions and lofty ideas. As Dick Armey reportedly once quipped, “Republicans fear being misunderstood by the voters; Democrats fear being understood.”
This lamentably cynical assumption seems to be at work in the endlessly repeated phrase “California is too liberal to elect a conservative statewide,” believed wholeheartedly no matter, it seems, how many statewide elections conservatives win in California — most recently, in 2003, by Arnold Schwarzenegger (the Schwarzenegger then presented to voters, not the one he has since become). McClintock, like Reagan with Bill Roberts, suffers from this “too conservative to win” prejudice. The voters, it is assumed, want only to be entertained and won’t sit still for serious political truth-telling. Thus the pundits were surprised when voters reacted favorably to McClintock during and after the recall. With the show-business professional Schwarzenegger appearing in stark contrast to the careful, thorough, policy-wonk McClintock, it was evidently assumed no one would even notice the senator.
But they did notice him. Surveys continue to show they not only noticed but liked him. They like precisely the integrity they perceive in his determination to tackle tough issues honestly; they like it that he tells people what he believes, skipping the usually de rigueur practice of saying only what voters are supposed to want to hear; and they like the strength of character he displayed in refusing to back down when the whole establishment demanded he terminate his gubernatorial candidacy. All of this vindicates McClintock’s faith not only in conservative principles as issuing in policies that work, but his faith in the American people as ready, willing, and able to seek out and embrace those true principles in leaders who sincerely believe them and will honestly work to implement them. This is a large part of that “something” Nofziger saw, though he couldn’t define it, “between Reagan and the people.”
Popularity, funding
Tom McClintock entered this election year running for lieutenant governor with 80 percent name ID and the best ratio of favorable to unfavorable ratings among voters, at about three- to-one, of any statewide political figure. Second highest is Dianne Feinstein at about two-to-one, with — for comparison purposes — the governor and the re- emerging Jerry Brown, for instance, at about one-to- one.
For the first time in a statewide race, McClintock has good reason to expect to face with adequate funding his Democrat foe in November. He has developed a nation-wide direct mail funding base from the springboard of national attention his recall candidacy attracted. He now has more than $1 million banked — more than he spent in his whole 2002 race for state controller — and expects to have $2 million by the time June campaign reports come out. While McClintock faces no competition for his Party’s nomination, Democrat lieutenant governor candidates John Garamendi, Jackie Speier, and Liz Figueroa promise an expensive and probably divisive primary battle. While Garamendi is widely considered the front runner, he reports less cash on hand for his campaign than McClintock, and Speier has raised more than $2 million to use against Garamendi between now and the June 6 Primary.
In 2002, with less than half his current name ID and no funds for the campaign’s home stretch, McClintock received more raw votes and a higher percentage of the total statewide vote cast than any other Republican. He lost by a razor-thin 45.4 to 45.1 percent margin, with a difference of 16,811 votes out of more than 6.5 million cast separating him from Democrat Steve Westly.
McClintock expects to be able to raise between $3 and $5 million on his own for this year’s general election campaign. Those totals will increase markedly if the governor, who, of course, has his own tough re-election battle to fight, is able to produce the “full funding” for McClintock’s campaign that has been promised. Whoever the Democrat nominee is, he or she will be amply funded, but Steve Westly was able to fund his race from his own very deep pockets four years ago, and he is in office only by the election equivalent of a flip of the coin, though he opposed a then-woefully underfunded McClintock. The Democrat nominee for lieutenant governor will enjoy no such advantage this year.
Issues
Among the first things Democrats will do if they re-take the governor’s office — count on it — is reverse the three big policy victories achieved near the beginning of the Schwarzenegger governorship: rescinding Gray Davis’s tripling of the car tax, repealing the law allowing driver’s licenses for illegal aliens, and the partial reform of California’s non-functional, anti- business workers compensation system. Republicans, probably, can only hope that Democrat candidates come out and admit, before election day, that these are their goals. On the other hand, if tough primary fights develop at the top of their ticket, pledges to do these things — things that, in their hearts, they desperately want to do anyway — might well be heard as the competing camps seek ways to distinguish themselves from their rivals so as to win over the rabidly left-wing Democrat base.
In any event, the car tax, illegals’ driver’s licenses, and workers comp reform should always be front and center in every Republican campaign, illustrating concretely just what are the real stakes in this election. Tom McClintock will be particularly well positioned to lead with these issues since he has already led with them, most obviously the car tax, for years. He also has developed a great issue for dividing the opposition in his early consistent leadership to overturn in California the devastating anti-property rights Supreme Court Kelo decision. A surprising number of prominent Democrats, including many down-the-line liberals, oppose Kelo, knowing that it is their own constituents whose houses will be bulldozed to aid commercial interests.
What Democrats will want to talk about, of course, is education, calling it underfunded and unloved by Republicans. But their record here is one of unmitigated demagoguery, and Tom McClintock is just the one to point it out. The issue for Californians is not merely, as it is for Democrat candidates, the size of the education budget. The real issue for most voters is the quality of education all those dollars buy. In terms of process, that translates into asking how many of our dollars make it to the classroom. The answer, under Democrats, is: not many.
Consider some recent history. On May 17, 2000, the ACLU filed a class-action suit eventually representing more than a million California students, accusing the state of depriving poor, nonwhite, and immigrant children of adequate school supplies. Mother Jones, of all publications, reported on the suit in late 2004, noting that San Francisco school children were being sent home without homework “because there weren’t enough books for students to take home.” In addition, MoJo reported, other features of these schools included “chronically clogged toilets, water fountains with discolored and foul-tasting water, mice-infested classrooms without heat.” Hence, the ACLU’s 2000 lawsuit. How did our education-loving Democrats respond? Let left-wing Mother Jones tell the story:
... then-Governor Gray Davis, a Democrat who claimed education was his top priority, hired a high-priced law firm to fight the suit, dragging it out over four years and ringing up close to $20 million in legal fees. The state’s tactics included lining up experts to testify that textbooks and heat were not crucial for learning, and subjecting students, some as young as eight, to days of harsh questioning, often reducing them to tears.
But soon after taking office, California’s Republican [!!!!] governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, called off the dogs. By August, a $1 billion settlement had been reached in [the ACLU case] Williams v. California. The state agreed to immediately spend $188 million to buy books for and make repairs at the lowest- performing schools. The settlement also creates a system for students and teachers to lodge complaints about substandard conditions, and imposes a 30-day deadline for resolving them.
Does Tom McClintock address this issue? Consider excerpts from an op-ed he wrote last May, when Republicans were proposing only $10,084 per student on education compared to the more than $11,000 provided in the latest Schwarzenegger proposals.
Maybe — as a temporary measure only — we should spend our school dollars on our schools. I realize that this is a radical departure from current practice, but desperate times require desperate measures.
The governor proposed spending $10,084 per student from all sources. Devoting all of this money to the classroom would require turning tens of thousands of school bu reaucrats, consultants, advisors and specialists onto the streets with no means of support or marketable job skills, something that no enlightened social democracy should allow.
So I will begin by excluding from this discussion the entire budget of the State Department of Education, as well as the pension system, debt service, special education, child care, nutrition programs and adult education. I also propose setting aside $3 billion to pay an additional 30,000 school bureaucrats $100,000-per-year (roughly the population of Monterey) with the proviso that they stay away from the classroom and pay their own hotel bills at conferences.
This leaves a mere $6,937 per student, which, for the duration of the funding crisis, I propose devoting to the classroom.
To illustrate how we might scrape by at this subsistence level, let’s use a hypothetical school of 180 students with only $1.2 million to get through the year.
We have all seen the pictures of filthy bathrooms, leaky roofs, peeling paint and crumbling plaster to which our children have been condemned. I propose that we rescue them from this squalor by leasing out luxury commercial office space. Our school will need 4,800 square feet for five classrooms (the sixth class is gym). At $33 per foot, an annual lease will cost $158,400.
This will provide executive washrooms, around-the-clock janitorial service, wall-to-wall carpeting, utilities and music in the elevators. We’ll also need new desks to preserve the professional ambiance.
Next, we’ll need to hire five teachers — but not just any teachers. I propose hiring only associate professors from the California State University at their level of pay. Since university professors generally assign more reading, we’ll need 12 of the latest edition, hardcover books for each student at an average $75 per book, plus an extra $5 to have the student’s name engraved in gold leaf on the cover.
Since our conventional gym classes haven’t stemmed the childhood obesity epidemic, I propose replacing them with an annual membership at a private health club for $39.95 per month. This would provide our children with a trained and courteous staff of nutrition and fitness counselors, aerobics classes and the latest in cardiovascular training technology.
Finally, we’ll hire an $80,000 administrator with a $40,000 secretary because — well, I don’t know exactly why, but we always have.
Our bare-bones budget comes to this:
5 classrooms: $158,400;
150 Desks @ $130: $19,500;
180 annual health club memberships @ $480: $86,400;
2,160 textbooks @ $80: $172,800;
5 C.S.U. Associate Professors @ $67,093: $335,465;
1 Administrator: $80,000;
1 Secretary: $40,000;
24% faculty and staff benefits: $109,312;
Offices, expenses and insurance: $30,000.
Total: $1,031,877.
This budget leaves a razor-thin reserve of just $216,703 or $1,204 per pupil, which can pay for necessities like paper, pencils, personal computers and extra-curricular travel. After all, what’s the point of taking four years of French if you can’t see Paris in the spring?
The school I have just described is the school we’re paying for. Maybe it’s time to ask why it’s not the school we’re getting.
Tom McClintock commands a bully pulpit, to borrow Teddy Roosevelt’s apt phrase. He can address the issues, engage the people, get a crowd cheering, as well as or better than any Republican statewide figure, including the governor. He does not, however, suffer from the governor’s history of loud talk followed by no action, with the resulting loss of credibility it has brought our chief executive. McClintock, on the contrary, is known precisely for saying what he means, for working to keep his promises, and for insisting on real progress and suffering no false measures, no papering over, no phony Potemkin Village charades to fool the people while the politicians really do nothing.
A final point: the usual pattern is for all down- ticket races to fade into oblivion behind the glare focused at the top. A measure of that is inevitable, but this year Arnold Schwarzenegger has a particular problem with his GOP base. He must feature Tom McClintock prominently in his campaign, especially whenever he wants to send messages to rank-and-file Republicans. He has no other way of firing them up to go to the polls. He knows McClintock can do that, as well as contribute a sense of integrity to the “ticket” that the governor has lost the ability to supply himself. And the senator knows a Schwarzenegger victory is the best way to bring about his own. He will do whatever he can, without compromising his integrity, his strongest political asset, to insure a Schwarzenegger win.
McClintock’s lieutenant governor candidacy gives Republicans a chance to recover from the squandered opportunities of the recall, a chance to make their bedrock case to the voters: look beyond the demagoguery to the complete effects of government, remember all the people and stop listening only to the loudest special interests, especially government union bosses. That is California GOP politics, 2006, in one lesson.
PING!
McClintock Ping List.
Please freepmail me if you want on or off this list
Check the date on the article.
As is worth pointing out, no Republican since (Conservative) Mike Curb in 1978 has won the Lieutenant-Governorship of California (and he upset the hopelessly leftist and clueless Merv Dymally, the sitting 'Rat incumbent, whom is now back in the Assembly today).
Ooops. I knew most of it looked familiar. But it's always a good read!
My apologies to anyone I pinged who found it too repetitive.
Well, he knows how schools operate and why they don't work.
Well, he knows how schools operate and why they don't work.
-----
He also knows how our LIBERAL LEGISLATURE operates and why it does not work !!!!
BUMP
Bump!
Tom is a friend of mine - he and my wife had dinner last we were in Santa Claria - be nice.
He and YOUR WIFE? Where the heck were you? At the YMCA??? (grin)
iss-typed, I was there too
Tell him we're hopin he can get some of the same far-sighted, trusting and unselfish backers that Ronnie Reagan had!!!
Something to keep in mind.
BTTT
^
BTTT
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.