California needs saving

California just mailed voters their General Election Official Information Guide. One cannot get past page 5 without realizing this is a “Das Kapital” rewrite updating socialism to the 21st century. Voters are being asked to finance their own destruction while at the same time “move forward” and “reinvest” in the future of government as the provider of equity and fairness and goodness.

There are the usual evidences of the socialist state: bonds for public schools and bonds for safe drinking water; bonds to protect wildlife and something called “public infrastructure.” There are bonds to build “affordable housing.” Sometime, just for fun, someone should build some “unaffordable housing.” Jeff and Elon and Bill could buy lot of nations, so a home would have to be particularly spectacular to be “unaffordable.” Whatever.

Vote “yes” and you can repeal laws that allow prisons to make inmates work. The one thing that must not be done is teach prisoners a lesson, even if it so simple as learning work skills. You can vote to raise your minimum wage beyond $20 and hour. You can even support efforts to take away from homeowners the right to ask for an open market rent before someone accesses their property.

There’s much more in the 144-page document, but it is published without the presidential candidate statements. For that you can access an online voter guide, if you know how and if you have the proper equipment.

California is a mail-in state, so everyone has a ballot with a return envelope. But people may drop the completed ballot in the mail, use a street-side drop-box, stop by any precinct, or for nostalgia’s sake, go to the polls on Election Day. The point is the government does not wish you to be inconvenienced for one second. Apparently, to have basic rules about voting might confused some people and challenge their right to do whatever.

If your answers to the Propositions 2 and 4 is “yes,” you just spent $20 billion, plus $16 billion in interest. Include a “yes” on Prop. 3 and anyone can legally marry anyone else. In California you can abuse sheep.

Prop. 34 is an excellent example of layered government obliteration of free markets. The federal government requires that 98% of the money allocated to the federal patient prescription drug program be spent on patient care. California guesses it will cost millions of dollars to enforce the rules, and the state wants the power to levy taxes on the firms involved in the prescription program.

Proposition 36 is interesting. Why is this on the ballot? The legislature could have passed a law to restore the Penal Code so people cannot steal up to $950 worth of merchandise and walk away with a ticket. Since the legislature has a recent history of legalizing dangerous drugs and street crime is out of hand, why didn’t the legislature fix this itself?

The answer is obvious. Eighty percent of the membership of the State Assembly and the State Senate, and all the constitutional officers of California, are Democrats. So people drafted a remedy, gathered signatures and forced this proposition onto the ballot.

Separating criminals from the law-abiding, the opposition to Prop. 36 says, will “reignite the failed war on drugs” and will waste “billions of dollars on jails and prisons.” What we need, they say, is “treatment and prevention.”

Putting criminals in jail “is a wasteful approach” that will “make California less safe” and is “too extreme.” It will rob money from “rehabilitation” and from “mental health” and worse yet, it is “being pushed by MAGA Republicans.”

One of the hints these aged arguments, remnant of the glory days of Gov. Jerry Brown, are losing ground is found in the list of people who signed the rebuttal to the “Oh My” chorus on the left. Jay King is the president of the California Black Chamber of Commerce.

In California, even the American mall is a dead idea, killed by rampant crime as much as by any other factor. And when the mighty mall cannot survive the breakdown of society, how can we expect the small business owner to do better? The fear of crime and having no law enforcement worries, and unites, the storekeeper in Watts with the manager on Rodeo Boulevard.

There is a subtle shifting of the political alignments forged during the second half of the 20th century. It is not limited to crime and the cost of doing business. It is seen by the same parents who keep their children from the mall, and now question the “necessity” of a $250,000 college education. It is seen in the stampede across the border as both businesses and families say California is too broken to fix.

If California were to break the spell of “Das Kapital” and opt for freedom, and Donald Trump and Steve Garvey were to win on Nov. 5, the churches would be filled with people chanting “Thank you, God,” for it would be a blessed miracle.