California as the Bellweather of Republican Irrelevance

For my entire life I have heard constant talk about how what's hot in California will be the norm everywhere else in a few years.  Whether that is broadly true across the spectrum of human activities is doubtful, but California certainly is a pop culture leader.   It has also been the leader in politics.

The anti-tax revolution started in California with Propsition 13 in 1978, then was picked up by Conservatives across the country.  California had Republican Governors from the early 1980's until the late 1990's and Republicans dominated the legislature.  Nationally domination of Congress began the the mid-1990's.  

Both in California and nationally the Republican movement was marked by an absolute certainty they were right about all things, a disdain for ideas not their orthodoxy, and an unwillingness to compromise.

In California the movement began to collapse when they backed draconian immigration laws in the Mid-1990's and was accelerated by their inflexible ideological approach that gridlocked the legislature for years.  The obtructionist tactics of the Republicans fired up their base but over time aliented non-ideological voters.  Republican influence has gradually shrunk to the point that every state wide office is held by a Democrat and the Democrats have super majorities in both legislative houses. 

Nationally the Republican decline appears to have begun with the collapse of the economy in 2008 after years of dominating government.  They had a short revival in 2010, but their obstructionist tactics over the following 2 years have pushed more and more voters away from them, even as it fired up the true believers.

I imagine they are taking comfort from the fact they still hold the majority in the House, but I saw a statistic the other day that lumping together all the votes in all house races Democrats actually got half a million more votes than Republicans.  The only reason Republican's have a majority is because they gerrymandered so many districts to create protected havens for themselves.

I think the masterminds of the Republican party, the Rupert Murdoch, Karl Rove and the like, have  trapped the party in a spiral of obstructionist behavior that will continue to alienate voters and push them toward California style irrelevance.

The country would be better off if we had a rational and pragmatic Republican party, but I don't see anyone wresting control of the party from the manipulators at the top any time soon.

How to Control Public Sector Compensation

Politicians will never be able to effectively control public sector compensation in a democracy, since public employee organizations will always be much more involved than the average taxpayer.  Public sector compensation needs to be controlled by constitutional provisions that provide an automatic limitation to keep Government from overly burdening the private sector.

Every Jurisdiction authorized to impose taxes should be required to either:

1.  Adopt an ordinance explicitly linking public employee compensation to average private sector compensation within the jurisdiction, or

2.  Submit an audited report at least once every five years to the public comparing average private sector compensation within the jurisdiction with average public sector compensation (mean, median and mode).

Maximum compensation in every jurisdiction should be the amount paid to the highest elected official in the jurisdiction.

Public employees should be catagorized in two catagories:

1.  Career public servants who's compensation level is linked directly to private sector compensation within the jurisdiction.

2.  Learning experience positions paid at or near minimum wage.  Every citizen in the jurisdiction is entitled to such a position for a period of up to 1 year, after one year they can continue in the position but the longer they are in such position, the more controls on their behavior they must accept. 

Defense spending - The Public Must Lead the Politicians

In the aftermath of the election Washington has settled into the same partisan gridlock that marked the last couple years.  The relative power of Democrats and Republicans has shifted, Democrats may push through some modest tax increases on rich folks but likely without really addressing the problem that created our fiscal imbalance.  

The fundemental  problem is defense spending.  The deficit exists because we spend enormous amounts of money on defense but are not willing to impose the taxes to pay for it.  

Republican's caused the problem with tax cuts coupled with increases in defense spending by both President Reagan and President Bush II.  The economy blowing up after the Bush II years was just the icing on the cake.  

But Democrats are afraid to confront the problem.  They fear being painted as weak on defense, so in fact often go meekly along with increases in defense spending.  

Democrats need to suck it up and start engaging the public on what purpose our massive defense spending serves.  We spend, per taxpayer, 4 to 5 times more on defense than taxpayers of any country other than Isreal and a couple of tiny belligerent dictatorships in the third world.  It is not because we live in a dangerous neighborhood (like Isreal), most of those we perceive to be potential enemies are half a world away.  Much of our defense spending is on maintaining the ability to fight two wars on the other side of the world.  Why do we need the capability to fight wars on the other side of the world?  To protect our economic interests around the world.  We aren't the worlds cop, we don't step in when genocide is going on, we step in when our economic interests are threatened.

Osama Bin Ladin didn't send terrorists to bomb a synagogue or a church, he went after the World Trade Center as his primary target, and the Pentagon as his secondary target.  The building that represents our economic interests around the world and the brain of the military that protects those interests.

I don't really have a problem with us having overwhelming military superiority, I do have a problem paying extra to protect private investments around the world, when the wealthy folk that own those investments and are making lots of money have been paying less and less to support our defense spending even as our spending increased.

The Democrats need to ask themselves, would the average voting taxpayer, if he/she understood who was financing our military and who was benefiting, really have a problem with someone standing up to talk about the folks that benefit from our military paying a fair share for that benefit?  

But this is an issue, like gay marriage, serious career politicians won't touch with a 10 foot pole.  Two many vested interests with the money and lawyers to bury their political careers.  

If we want to really solve the deficit the public needs to lead the politicians into serious discussion about what we want our Military to do and who should pay for it.