The Democratic Party and the city of San Francisco are officially dead. The acquittal of illegal alien, Jose Garcia Zarate, who shot Kate Steinle on the San Francisco pier in cold blood, has now officially killed the party of the common man and woman. A jury of her peers found him not guilty and this was a crystallizing moment to understand there is a clear choice – of life and death – between a Republican and a Democrat. Whereas Democratic San Francisco protected Mr. Zarate, the Republican Justice Department issued an arrest warrant. This isn’t about “sanctuary cities,” or stricter immigration reform, this is about protecting American citizens versus Democrats – the party of the left – who seemingly only lust for power and control reminiscent of Marx, Trotsky, Lenin and Stalin. The days of Scoop Jackson, FDR, Truman and Kennedy died in that San Francisco courtroom when the drug dealing, six-time-deported, zero-skilled, Mr. Zarate was acquitted.
It’s time for the Republican Party to stop wasting their majority in Congress and the CRP to stand up and fight, because you’ll never hear illegal immigrant advocates shed a tear for Ms. Steinle who collapsed and died in her father’s arms. Those are the Democrats who run California that decided it wasn’t a problem for her to die this way.
However, men like Republican consultant, Mike Madrid, who is now helping Antonio Villaragoisa’s gubernatorial campaign are also the problem. If he wants to cash a liberal Democrat’s checks then go become one, because he’s in the same class as McCain, Romney, et al who still believe that Democrats are just like us; but don’t have the ability or temerity to understand what ordinary people are up against anymore. We don’t have the option to opt out of the very laws that are supposedly passed on our behalf. And the Democratic supermajority in the legislature isn’t doing anything to protect staffers and female lawmakers from sexual harassment; Minority Leader Pelosi has now been accused of protecting sexual predators for decades.
Here is what Democratic policies that have run California and most major cities across America into the ground wrought on the citizenry’s backs for generations. San Francisco and other Democratic progressive cities have the “worst housing inequality in the nation,” according to Wendell Cox. Meaning, there are less homes to purchase at higher prices, which obliterates individual and family incomes while stagnating the economy of those cities. San Francisco Unified School District is becoming a real-estate investor to alleviate housing shortages by spending $44 million to develop the Francis Scott Key annex for teachers who can’t afford San Francisco homes or rental units.
Joel Fox has debunked Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez’s solution for the growing California homeless problem: taxing homeowners’ equity. Fox has detailed how taxing homes won’t solve the problem, possibly make it worse, and that Los Angeles now has the worst homeless problem in the U.S. The problem is so severe the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved in August a program to pay L.A. County homeowners up to $75,000 to house homeless people on their properties.
Natural gas is the most effective, clean, scalable, abundant and job-creating energy available. However, California is moving from this form of energy into unstable, unreliable and intermittent renewable energy, causing California to have the highest energy costs in the U.S. And California’s energy policies are killing fossil fuel investments and driving jobs out of the state according to the Frasier Institute. Moreover, AB 32, the global warming law isn’t causing emissions to dip, instead it’s the weather, but the environmental leaders in the Democratic Party, led by Tom Steyer, would never acknowledge this fact.
Our public schools – not all of them – but the majority are “unaccountable” and failing while the legislature wants higher taxes for “better schools.” No public official or school board has ever definitively defined what constitutes a “better school.” Unfortunately, the California School Dashboard revealed:
“Fifty percent of California schoolchildren can’t read at grade level, and for African American (AA) children, almost seventy percent failed to read at grade level.”
The CRP should make this the number one issue aggressively going after AA families and voters by showing the Democratic and teacher union-led California schools are failing you, your families and your children. If Democrats lose a sizable bloc of AA voters, they lose California, and eventually they lose the country.
As President Clinton’s first presidential campaign famously stated, “It’s the economy, stupid,” which propelled Clinton to the presidency. This issue still resonate, particularly when California’s economy is ranked 35th in the nation. Chris Reed writes, “California job creating incentives fall short – again,” and Dan Walters in CalMatters exposes disturbing budgetary facts facts that Mac Taylor, the Legislatures’ top advisor disclosed in November:
“Governor Brown, lawmakers and voters have made the state’s longer-term situation potentially even worse since off-budget debts, especially for pensions and health care for retired state workers have increased.”
To Brown’s credit he is now attempting to rectify the pension issue while defying his Democratic base in the process. Brown realizes cities like Los Angeles have underfunded pension liabilities totaling over $9 billion, and other California cities hold hundreds of billions in pension debt that will cut government services and raise taxes – otherwise bankruptcy is a strong possibility. Even once-thriving Ventura County is now losing jobs while government employment rises. The pension and job loss issues are where the CRP can gain crucial votes in deep blue California.
There are a myriad of other issues that Democrats are pushing that will hurt most Californians from the economic devastation the high-speed rail in the Central Valley will bring to having the highest taxes, worst roads, and over a trillion dollars needed for infrastructure improvements and construction. Additionally, California is ranked at the bottom or near bottom in business-friendly policies and the Democrats answers is to make suing President Trump, “a team sport.”
At one time Pat Brown, who built water systems, world-class highways and the best universities in the world, exemplified the Democratic Party. That isn’t the case anymore; instead a gentrified class of technology billionaires, climate enthusiasts and entertainment executives litter the Democratic Party; while Democratic-supporting unions ask for more tax payer dollars with less to show for their gains. California has real problems and if the CRP doesn’t stand up and support candidates who understand these issues and fight for them in the upcoming mid-term elections than they are doomed to irrelevancy that will spread across the U.S.
Todd Royal is a geopolitical risk and energy consultant based in Los Angeles.
