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TAKING CHARGE

Taking Charge

 

Photographs of President Trump often include a portrait of Andrew Jackson in the background, looking over the current president’s shoulder. This is no accident. From the beginning, The Trump administration seems to have channeled Jackson as if he were a spiritual essence haunting the White House. Jackson’s tenure as president was marked by political turbulence and controversy. Perhaps his greatest contribution was to avoid a civil war and hold the union together over the concept of nullification. Breaching the previous understanding of the U. S. Constitution as the supreme law of the land, South Carolina declared the Tariffs of 1828 and 1832 null and void within that state’s boundaries. South Carolina viewed its rights as a state to be superior to those of the Federal Government on the grounds that states had the right to nullify federal laws within their own boundaries.

Although a southerner, Jackson, with authority granted from Congress signed the Force Bill in 1833, which authorized the president to collect the tariff. The concept of nullification slept for 28 years until the Civil War. There was a revival of the argument, that the states had formed a compact. The reason the states are called states has to do with the view that they retained a certain amount of sovereignty over their own existence and could ignore the federal government. The Confederate states argued that the rights granted the federal government were revocable. They paid the price in dead and generations of wasted human capital until the current modern era. Indeed, each state has an executive, judicial, and legislative branch in the same vein as the federal government. Jackson thwarted the effort of South Carolina to nullify the federal government tariff.

Today, we have a desperate left-wing in states again broadly trying to defeat a President by nullifying law. The Left has banded together to form a compact of their own. The National Public Vote law passed by many states requires that each state agreeing to the compact will honor the popular vote result even if it conflicts with the electoral college. President Trump beat Senator Hillary Clinton by winning the electoral vote although she polled about 3 million votes more. The Democrats are unhappy because they have been burned twice recently by this phenomenon. The last time it happened was when George Bush defeated Al Gore in a closely contested election. Before that, the last such circumstance was in 1888. The National Public Vote law may be illegal. But the courts will decide the next time there is a conflict between the two kinds of votes. Since Trump has appointed the last two Supreme Court justices, and there is a fairly solid Republican core of five usually reliable justices, it is unlikely the nine-person court will go for a coup and rule against the primacy of the electoral college.

Governors of the Left have been a little more successful at thwarting federal law by not providing information on illegal aliens and not turning over criminals in custody no matter how severe the crime. That story is not finished.

The most recent left-wing attempt to thwart the President has been the agreement among a group of states to go their own way in opening up their state quarantine orders. California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, and Colorado have agreed among themselves that they will coordinate the stages reopening their states to education, commerce, and the usual routine business of people currently fettered by the orders of the state governors. Siting’s of large numbers of beach goers in California show that the people may decide for them. For his part, the president has ceded the operation of each state to the governors, although he still remains hands on regarding the administration of certain federal responsibilities.

Reopening the states have devolved into a partisan tool. Democrats are apparently willing to stop commerce in their states for the purpose of sabotaging the economy just enough so that Trump has difficulty getting re-elected. Trump, for his part, is intent on getting the economy going for just the opposite reason. Trump’s communicating ability with his supporters in arenas are threatened by a prolonged closure of close contact. That any leader in America would hurt people in this way for political gain shames the country. They are biting on what they see as a no-loose scenario. If Trump violates the states quarantine guidelines, they will say that Trump caused X amount of deaths, whatever the figure is at a given moment in time before the November election. If states remain closed and the economy does not rev up soon, they have the argument that it is Trumps fault, as they tie him, no matter how unfairly, to the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. From here on in, it will be necessary to trust the American people with good judgment.

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TILT THE BOARD AND RUN OVER THE LITTLE GUY

California, Oregon and the State of Washington (also known as the Left Coast) are known as left-wing elitist bastions controlled by one-party Democratic majorities. They have sold their futuristic world-based electorates on climate scares, imminent environmental disasters, abortion restrictions, government compassion and other modern slogans granting passage to the favorable future. But they are the Democrats, the party of compassion—that is until you encroach on the turf of the moneyed class. Then it becomes the party of the rich.

 

Proof of this lies in a National Review article by Michael Gibson who reports that “San Francisco has virtually banned new housing. It forbids apartments of all shapes and sizes, limits the number of units per property, caps the number of small “shoebox” units to a few hundred and has outlawed building anything higher than 40 feet in 80 percent of the city.” He goes on to say: “The medium price for a one-bedroom rental is the highest in the nation, at $3700 per month. To buy a single-family home, a starter home with flaking and rotting surfaces, a family needs $1.5 million on average and had better be paying cash. The cost to construct a single new apartment unit is over $700,000 nearly triple what it was a decade ago.”

San Francisco has robbed its citizenry of the means to live in their own city. Teachers, police, and other emergency personnel can’t afford to live in the city they protect. Through environmental and historical preservation rules and regulations, the city has made it nearly impossible to build new shelter. The city government accommodates this arrangement. The canary in the coal mine is African Americans. Their population has gone from 13 percent in 1970 to 5 percent today. When did the Democrats become the party of racism? Perhaps a little affirmative action is due our friends in the cable car city.

 

In another article in National Review, Kevin D. Williamson describes how Aspen, Colorado has become a play center for “billionaires and baristas.” Millionaires need not apply. You haven’t got what it takes to break into this elite spot unless you own something really big or important—a football team, a large dotcom corporation will do nicely. Another legal monopoly insulates the moneyed class from the rest of society. The baristas are regarded as a needed exception to the rule. Lesser mortals need not apply.

 

Portland, Oregon is undergoing a similar transition to an elitist playground. What it is becoming is the result of spillage from some of California’s lesser lights who have left the Bay area for cheaper, more politically neutral territory, not unlike the homey places some of them grew up. Portland has the virtue of being an incipient San Francisco. In an effort to trump the agents of change, the governor of Oregon, Kate Brown, placed the territorial designation intended by the Trump Administration as an “Opportunity Zone” on some of the most valuable property in Oregon. The purpose of the opportunity zones was to help develop impoverished and blighted inner cities by making tax concessions to developers in the area who were least likely to need any help. She placed the opportunity smack dab in the middle of the most prosperous growth area in downtown Portland. No doubt, this was intended as a smackdown of Trump Administration Populism, despised by the ruling class, and also the effect was to give impetus to cheaper construction of expensive properties, many of which would have happened anyway. Other than spiting Trump, a part of the motivation for the curious designation was the Governors desire to benefit the city’s client construction companies, which in turn rewards the city with “affordable housing.” Cheap housing is not possible in much of the downtown environment, so the Federal advantages cover some of the extra cost of the affordable housing. Affordable housing is in the eye of the beholder though, and for sure, affordable in the swank area does not even enter into the conversation of the homeless lying in tents in the street below. Another strategy redistributes the poor to the better-off  outlying area of town so they reap the benefits of suburban life and learn from the example of middle class Portlanders. It is a condescending approach to social engineering that will fail as the affordable homes become less affordable over time.

 

Sadly, the egalitarian spirit which once limited the elites to their closely held property has been lost. Now the monopolistic tendency reinvents itself as a modern version of the serfdom of the Middle Ages in which a large castle surrounded by a moat separates the producers from the users. Human behavior remains the same. Uniting with those with whom you have something in common and separating from the “other” is a common value of wealthy elites. They might make the argument that it is genetics, but why bother. They have it and you don’t. Some separation is a quality of the huddling effect our ancient ancestors felt when they were small in number, couldn’t explain much about their environment, and heard the growling of sharp-toothed carnivores off in the distance during the night. The fear of the unknown has been translated into its modern equivalent.

 

The nature of huddling is also a power move. It gives the appearance of elevating the one in charge at the expense of the obedient servant. To the elite, it gives the false impression of security. But security is an illusion. Just ask Marie Antoinette. Actually, you can’t. The legal exclusion of the larger piece of society as determined by power and wealth through legal means, will only put the revolution off so long.

 

For most people, living in San Francisco does not have great value. Average citizens make themselves happy or unhappy, wherever they are. But the use of legal means to determine a narrowing of the human race, is fundamentally undemocratic. It is a spreading disease of bad faith. The social contract is a myth, but we live together in a common desire for peace. There is a struggle going on. Rules still apply, but only barely. The practice of not enforcing laws as a matter of acquiring political mileage is another step backward. Those who profess opposition to exclusion are often the leaders of the most exclusive clubs. In Los Angeles, the golden triangle of Beverly Hills, Holmby Hills, and Bel Air lie well above the day to day events of the common folk in the smog filled low lands. But here is a lesson. You must look the part and act the part. Just ask Charles Belk. A black man with upright A-credentials as an upstanding citizen was humiliated and arrested while walking black in Beverly Hills. Officers on the scene identified him as the perp in a Citibank robbery. He matched the description of the thief—a tall, bald black man. Turns out there are more than a few of those in LA. However, none of the others were handy, so Mr. Belk became the catch of the day.

 

The quintessential modern mote is found in the State of Washington. Bill Gates and a host of Microsoft digital cowboys have come to rest behind the safety of Lake Washington. Reputedly, Gates has drilled a hole for access to the grounded earth through the hills backstopping his estate. Mountains and water are visual proof of the landed plutocrats running a portion of the left coast not generally accessible to the public.

 

The holy alliance between elitist Democrats and America’s version of the landed gentry is an ever-expanding growth opportunity for two parasites feeding off each other in an unholy symbiotic arrangement that marginalizes everyone else. It is as if the plutocrats where ahead in the game, dumped the board, and announced, “I win.”