Boobus Americanus and the California Republican Party

Boobus Americanus and the sad state of the California Republican Party is the topic of this blog post.  I  think of myself as a political independent now. However for more than 10 years I considered myself as a Republican.  And while I do agree with some of their positions they are getting really bad.

For instance one of the ideas of California Governor Jerry Brown aka “Moonbeam” is a high-speed bullet train to nowhere that is a classic “white elephant”.  One California newspaper describes it as “The bullet train is still the same old, unneeded, overpriced, boondoggle it always has been, unlikely to attract enough customers to be profitable, unlikely to get more money from Washington on which it relies, and it still hasn't attracted a dime of private investment.”

The only people who support this idea are greedy pork barrel pigs feeding at the trough. And some of the surprising supporters of this idea are, guess who folks, California Republican legislators. They argue that it will create jobs.

I guess when it comes to those “limited government” folks that saying is just something that they trot out come election time when they tell the voters that “we want to get the government off of your backs.” Yeah right!  They want to get the government into your wallet so they can make money off of it. And they are not as enthusiastic about getting the government off of your back as they claim.

Another example is the California redevelopment law which Moonbeam himself helped to dismantle. Steven Greenhut was right when he said that Governor Brown was right and the California Republicans who supported redevelopment were wrong.  Chris Norby is one notable exception in that he was and is a fierce opponent of the law.

The law was designed to revive inner-city neighborhoods. Instead of its stated purpose, it instead turned a financial mess where officials subsidized auto malls and hotels to divert tax revenues that would go elsewhere.

True property rights advocates rightly despised redevelopment because it gave certain cities an excuse to take property via eminent domain and give it to developers who claimed at least that they had better plans for the property. Anything eyed by these agencies according to critics became blight.

From a competitive party in California to the political wilderness they now find themselves the California Republicans have done it to themselves.   A series of political blunders and plain old fashioned greed did them in.  As a result, the California Legislature is now heavily Democratic, almost to the point of being what is known as “veto proof” which means they can almost override any veto by the Governor. 

Party loyalists might claim that people like me left the Republican Party. That is not true. The Republican Party left me first. 

Stay tuned. More to come on Boobus Americanus and California in particular.