• Tag Archives California

  • California’s Typhus Surge Is Linked to Fleas, Feces, and Bad Economic Policies

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    Typhus is on the rise in Los Angeles, with its epicenter in downtown, where the city’s sanitation officials are struggling to respond to the nearly two thousand “cleanup requests” they get from locals every month.

    Like San Francisco, LA is struggling to clean up city streets of human waste—specifically feces—due to a lack of public restrooms and a growing homeless population.

    There was an average of 700 requests in the area in the spring of 2016, but officials now claim they receive about 1,900 cleanup calls per month thanks to the number of growing homeless camps. But the growing homelessness and sanitation nightmares have led to yet another crisis: a rise in flea-borne typhus.

    Between July and September, county officials identified at least nine typhus cases that originated in downtown. At least six of the infected were homeless, but central LA isn’t the only place at risk.

    Officials in the city of Pasadena, also located in Los Angeles County, claim 20 residents had typhus fever this year. Typhus cases have also been registered in Long Beach and Willowbrook.

    As the number of cases continues to rise, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors feels pressured to act. They recently voted on a pilot program to fight the illness in homeless encampments by adding more cleanup efforts, introducing more mobile showers, offering the homeless housing, and distributing hand sanitizer and flea repellent for people and pets.

    The crisis, which has already made 64 victims this year alone, has deeper roots. At least, that’s what 5th District Supervisor Kathryn Barger appears to claim.

    “When I drive through parts of my district and I see the living conditions on the street, it reminds me of a third-world country,” Barger said.

    Perhaps the fact that California falls behind every single state in the country when it comes to fiscal, regulatory, tax, and economic policies—much like many “third-world” countries—has something to do with the current conditions residents are now forced to grapple with.

    As the Cato Institute’s Freedom Index reveals, California’s suffocating regulatory environment has a series of very real and heartbreaking consequences.

    When it comes to land-use freedom, for instance, cities like Los Angeles have restrictive rules regarding housing supply and rent control, keeping builders from developing affordable housing and helping to artificially increase the cost of housing across the board.

    But bad housing policies are not the only cause of growing homelessness in Los Angeles. The state’s labor laws add insult to injury by making it difficult for employers to help those in need. With high minimum wage laws, no right-to-work policies in place, mandated short-term disability insurance, and prohibiting consensual noncompete agreements, job creation in California is dramatically held back, and the poor and low-skilled are unable to break into the labor market.

    In addition, occupational licensing also keeps entrepreneurs from entering the market due to the extensive cost associated with obtaining the mandated training and certification to perform simple services.

    With state lawmakers being so eager to get involved in every single affair, from banning straws to keeping residents on a budget from using scooters, it’s hard to see how these rules could be repealed—or at least reformed—anytime soon.

    As the founder and president of the Future of Freedom Foundation Jacob G. Hornberger explained, the root causes of homelessness in most major urban centers across the US are both minimum wage laws and zoning, two policies that are not only in effect in California but that have been revamped and strengthened again and again over the years.

    With California residents once again helping progressives stay in power in the region, we know these policies are not going anywhere. If anything, they will continue to receive widespread support from the newly-elected governor.

    For the time being, there might not be a government-backed solution to Los Angeles’ typhus outbreak, but if the city’s and state’s politicians really want to end homelessness, then repealing zoning and minimum wage laws would be a great start.

    Source: California’s Typhus Surge Is Linked to Fleas, Feces, and Bad Economic Policies – Foundation for Economic Education


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  • California’s Bill Restricting Speech Is Authoritarian

    Posted on by Azrael 1 Comment

    California is one step away from going down the unconstitutional road of government-mandated censorship of Internet speech. The California Senate and State Assembly recently passed S.B. 1424, the “Internet: social media: advisory group” act. This fake news advisory act is now on the desk of Governor Jerry Brown for his signature.

    According to Section 3085 of the legislation:

    The Attorney General shall, subject to the limitations of subdivision (d), establish an advisory group consisting of at least one member of the Department of Justice, Internet-based social media providers, civil liberties advocates, and First Amendment scholars, to do both of the following:

    (a) Study the problem of the spread of false information through Internet-based social media platforms.

    (b) Draft a model strategic plan for Internet-based social media platforms to use to mitigate the spread of false information through their platforms.

    It’s hard to imagine those voting for the bill were motivated by good intentions. In any case, good intentions are not enough. Is it hard to imagine the results of the law will be censorship of views that politicians disagree with and views critical of politicians?

    Most likely, Californians are not concerned about “fact-checking” content like “a mile is 5290 feet” or an appeal to form a flat Earth Facebook group; such content poses no threat to entrenched interests. Instead, “fact-checking” will be deployed against those who express doubt, for example, about climate change, vaccine safety, or “educating” children about gender dysphoria.

    In a world where most scientific studies can’t be replicated, a consensus should not be confused with an immutable fact.

    If you doubt that censorship is the aim of the bill, consider the even more draconian measures that an earlier version of the bill required. Social media sites would have needed to develop “a plan to mitigate the spread of false information through news stories, the utilization of fact-checkers to verify news stories, providing outreach to social media users, and placing a warning on a news story containing false information.”

    The First Amendment makes no provisions for government judging the validity of speech either directly or through mandated “fact-checking.” In legitimate cases of defamation, legal remedies are available, but the bar for a successful lawsuit is high.

    Concern over “fake news” is not new. Elbridge Gerry, who became the fifth vice president of the United States, despaired at the Constitutional Convention about the impact of “false reports”:

    The people do not want virtue, but are the dupes of pretended patriots. In Massachusetts it had been fully confirmed by experience, that they are daily misled into the most baneful measures and opinions, by the false reports circulated by designing men, and which no one on the spot can refute.

    There have always been “false reports,” but Thomas Jefferson believed in the wisdom of the public to discern the difference:

    It is so difficult to draw a clear line of separation between the abuse and the wholesome use of the press, that as yet we have found it better to trust the public judgment, rather than the magistrate, with the discrimination between truth and falsehood. And hitherto the public judgment has performed that office with wonderful correctness.

    What Jefferson observed in his time is no less true today. It is impossible to “fact-check” the limitless amount of Internet speech. It is no more possible to “fact-check” than it is to centrally plan; in either case, the power of reason is not able to deal with the unforeseeable complexity one would encounter. Knowledge, by its nature, is vast and decentralized.

    In Conjectures and Refutations, philosopher Karl Popper observed: “There are no ultimate sources of knowledge. Every source, every suggestion, is welcome; and every source, every suggestion, is open to critical examination.”

    In contrast, California’s politicians seem to believe only some ideas are welcome—if those ideas have been “fact-checked” by the heavy hand of government-sponsored boards.

    In his new discussion paper, “The Mirage of Democratic Socialism,” economist Kristian Niemietz of the Institute of Economic Affairs counts “more than two dozen attempts (not counting the very short-lived ones) to build a socialist society.”

    “They all,” Niemietz writes, “led to varying degrees of economic failure.” With that economic failure always came “varying degrees of repression and political authoritarianism,” as well as severe limitations on “freedom of choice and personal autonomy in the economic sphere.”

    Authoritarians, including so-called “democratic socialists,” must always suppress speech. Why? Human beings have boundless preferences and competing goals. These preferences and goals are sorted out by either socialist planners or impersonal market processes.

    As central planning fails, a scapegoat must be found. If only the people were united and working towards the same goals, our plans would succeed, reason the planners. Thus, observes Niemietz, all socialist regimes seek to enforce compliance with their plans:

    One of the most persistent features of socialism is the paranoia about imaginary saboteurs, wreckers, hoarders, speculators, traitors, spies and stooges of hostile foreign powers. These phantoms are always accused of ‘undermining’ the economy (although it never quite becomes clear how exactly they do that), which would otherwise work just fine. More generally, the oppressive character of socialist societies was generally linked to the economic requirements of a centrally planned economy. Socialist states did not oppress people for the sake of it. They did so in ways that enforced compliance with the aims of the social planners.

    In a future dystopian “democratic socialist” California, the search for “false information” could be weaponized against those arguing for free markets. After Google provides a censored search engine in China, they can no doubt use their new expertise in California to keep up with the latest laws.

    The Founders saw the press as an absolute necessity to keep government in check. In 1765, John Adams wrote that the people have “an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right” to “knowledge… of the characters and conduct of their rulers.” Adams explained why such knowledge is crucial:

    Rulers are no more than attorneys, agents, and trustees for the people; and if the cause, the interest and trust, is insidiously betrayed, or wantonly trifled away, the people have a right to revoke the authority that they themselves have deputed, and to constitute abler and better agents, attorneys, and trustees.

    What are the sources of crucial information about our “rulers”?

    None of the means of information are more sacred, or have been cherished with more tenderness and care by the settlers of America, than the press. Care has been taken that the art of printing should be encouraged, and that it should be easy and cheap and safe for any person to communicate his thoughts to the public.

    What if the news was “speculative” and unproven? No matter. Adams praised newspaper publishers, and to them he wrote:

    [W]hatever the tyrants of the earth may say of your paper, [you] have done important service to your country by your readiness and freedom in publishing the speculations of the curious. The stale, impudent insinuations of slander and sedition, with which the gormandizers of power have endeavored to discredit your paper, are so much the more to your honor; for the jaws of power are always opened to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing.

    Yet, as president, Adams couldn’t resist the human temptation to silence his critics. In 1798, Adams sang a different tune about the press as he signed the Alien and Seditions Acts, criminalizing the speech of his opponents, including Ben Franklin’s grandson.

    Ironically, in the process of criminalizing speech, Adams proved his earlier writings were correct: freedom of the press is always to be zealously guarded.

    California is on the verge of going down the slippery slope of placing authoritarian restrictions on speech. Whether Governor Brown signs the bill or not, a mindset—inimical to a free society—is on full display for the rest of America to see and, hopefully, reject.

    Source: California’s Bill Restricting Speech Is Authoritarian – Foundation for Economic Education



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  • California Considers Economic Suicide with Single-Payer Health Care

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    California Considers Economic Suicide with Single-Payer Health Care

    In the Dirty Harry movies, one of Clint Eastwood’s famous lines is “Go ahead, make my day.”

    I’m tempted to say the same thing when I read about politicians proposing economically destructive policies.

    Indeed, I sometimes even relish the opportunity. I endorsed Francois Hollande back in 2012, for instance, because I was confident he would make the awful French tax system even worse, thus giving me lots of additional evidence against class-warfare policies.

    Mission accomplished!

    Now we have another example. Politicians in California, unfazed by the disaster of Obamacare (or the nightmare of the British system), want to create a “single-payer” healthcare scheme for the Golden State.

    This Would Be a Catastrophe

    Here’s a description of the proposal from Sacramento Bee.

    It would cost $400 billion to remake California’s health insurance marketplace and create a publicly funded universal health care system, according to a state financial analysis released Monday. California would have to find an additional $200 billion per year, including in new tax revenues, to create a so-called “single-payer” system, the analysis by the Senate Appropriations Committee found …Steep projected costs have derailed efforts over the past two decades to establish such a health care system in California. The cost is higher than the $180 billion in proposed general fund and special fund spending for the budget year beginning July 1.

    …Lara and Atkins say they are driven by the belief that health care is a human right and should be guaranteed to everyone, similar to public services like safe roads and clean drinking water. …Business groups, including the California Chamber of Commerce, have deemed the bill a “job-killer.” …“It will cost employers and taxpayers billions of dollars and result in significant loss of jobs in the state,” the Chamber of Commerce said in its opposition letter.

    Yes, you read correctly. In one fell swoop, California politicians would more than double the fiscal burden of government. Without a doubt, the state would take over the bottom spot in fiscal rankings (it’s already close anyhow).

    Part of me hopes they do it. The economic consequences would be so catastrophic that it would serve as a powerful warning about the downside of statism.

    Accelerating their Slow-Motion Suicide

    The Wall Street Journal opines that this is a crazy idea, and wonders if California Democrats are crazy enough to enact it.

    …it’s instructive, if not surprising, that Golden State Democrats are responding to the failure of ObamaCare by embracing single-payer health care. This proves the truism that the liberal solution to every government failure is always more government.

    …California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom, the frontrunner to succeed Jerry Brown as Governor next year, is running on single-payer, which shows the idea is going mainstream. At the state Democratic convention last weekend, protesters shouted down speakers who dared to ask about paying for it. The state Senate Appropriations Committee passed a single-payer bill this week, and it has a fair chance of getting to Mr. Brown’s desk.

    I semi-joked that California was committing slow-motion suicide when the top income tax rate was increased to 13.3 percent.

    As the editorial implies, the state’s death will come much faster if this legislation is adopted.

    A $200 billion tax hike would be equivalent to a 15% payroll tax, which would come on top of the current 15.3% federal payroll tax. …The report dryly concludes that “the state-wide economic impacts of such an overall tax increase on employment is beyond the scope of this analysis.”

    California’s forecasting bureaucrats may not be willing to predict the economic fallout from this scheme, but it’s not beyond the scope of my analysis.

    If this legislation is adopted, the migration of taxpayers out of California will accelerate, the costs will be higher than advertised, and I’ll have a powerful new example of why big government is a disaster.

    If Single Payer Gets Enacted

    Ed Morrissey, in a column for The Week, explains why this proposal is bad news. He starts by observing that other states have toyed with the idea and wisely backed away.

    Vermont had to abandon its attempts to impose a single-payer health-care system when its greatest champion, Gov. Peter Shumlin, discovered that it would cost far more than he had anticipated. Similarly, last year Colorado voters resoundingly rejected ColoradoCare when a study discovered that even tripling taxes wouldn’t be enough to keep up with the costs.

    So what happens if single-payer is enacted by a state and costs are higher than projected and revenues are lower than projected (both very safe assumptions)?

    The solutions for…fiscal meltdown in a single-payer system…all unpleasant. One option would be to cut benefits of the universal coverage, and hiking co-pays to provide disincentives for using health care. …The state could raise taxes for the health-care system as deficits increased, which would amount to ironic premium hikes from a system designed to be a response to premium hikes from insurers. Another option: Reduce the payments provided to doctors, clinics, and hospitals for their services, which would almost certainly drive providers to either reduce their access or leave the state for greener pastures.

    By the way, I previously wrote about how Vermont’s leftists wisely backed off single-payer and explained that this was a great example of why federalism is a good idea.

    Simply stated, even left-wing politicians understand that it’s easy to move across state lines to escape extortionary fiscal policy. And that puts pressure on them to be less greedy.

    This is one of the main reasons I want to eliminate DC-based redistribution and let states be in charge of social welfare policy.

    Using the same reasoning, I’ve also explained why it would be good news if California seceded. People tend to be a bit more rational when it’s more obvious that they’re voting to spend their own money.

    Stay Golden

    Though maybe there’s no hope for California. Let’s close by noting that some Democrat politicians in the state want to compensate for the possible repeal of the federal death tax by imposing a huge state death tax.

    In a column for Forbes, Robert Wood has some of the sordid details.

    California…sure does like tax increases. …The latest is a move by the Golden State to tax estates, even if the feds do not. …A bill was introduced by state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), asking voters to keep the estate tax after all. …if the feds repeal it, and California enacts its own estate tax replacement, will all the billionaires remain, or will high California taxes spark an exodus? It isn’t a silly question.

    Of course billionaires will leave the state. And so will many millionaires. Yes, the weather and scenery are nice, but at some point rich people will do a cost-benefit analysis and decide it’s time to move.

    And lots of middle-class jobs will move as well. That’s the inevitable consequence of class-warfare policy. Politicians say they’re targeting the rich, but the rest of us are the ones who suffer.

    Will California politicians actually move forward with this crazy idea? Again, just as part of me hopes the state adopts single-payer, part of me hopes California imposes a confiscatory death tax. It’s useful to have examples of what not to do.

    The Golden State already is in trouble. If it becomes an American version of Greece or Venezuela, bad news will become horrible news and I’ll have lots of material for future columns.

    Reprinted from International Liberty.


    Daniel J. Mitchell

    Daniel J. Mitchell is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute who specializes in fiscal policy, particularly tax reform, international tax competition, and the economic burden of government spending. He also serves on the editorial board of the Cayman Financial Review.

    This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.



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