Colman's Year 2018 Predictions, and My Take

California Political Review reprinted an interesting article about predictions for 2018.

This is another wild election year coming our way, and there will be massive conflict, confrontation, and political upheaval coming our way. There are plenty of opportunities for victory and opportunities, too.

I provide my responses to these predictions, with the hopes that they will amount to something.

By Richard Colman, California Political News and Views   12/26/17

What will happen in 2018?  Here is a list of predictions:

–The Democrats will come within three seats of taking control of the U.S. House of Representatives.  If the Democrats put up enough moderate House candidates and enough combat veterans, they will take control of the House.

The Democrats are not invested in "moderation" at this point, since their agenda makers have become so radical and radicalized. The DNC Chairman and Vice-Chairman are completely entrenched in corporate and progressive liberalism. How much worse can it get?

Democrats are on track to win seats in the House, but they are going to face losses in the US Senate.

–In the California legislature, the Democrats will lose their two-thirds supermajority in one or both houses of the legislature.

Yes. In fact, that ha already happened, although I am not sure that those results will stick after the November 2018 election.

–California will experience a decline in population among residents in the state legally.

It's already happening.

–Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, will be elected governor of California.  His election will be helped by the votes of Republicans and independents.

I don't want this to be true. UGH! I will not vote for Gavin Newsom. No way! Never, not going to happen. I am supporting Travis Allen for Governor. I wish that all the other Republicans in the CA Governor field would drop out and get behind Travis.

–In a statewide ballot proposition, California’s 2017 gasoline tax will be repealed.

YES! The numbers are already there.

–The drought of 2017-2018 will continue, perhaps for three or more years.

–A statewide ballot measure to sell bonds to increase California’s water-storage capacity will pass easily.

Didn't we already vote for a similar bond in 2014? Now the voters and the political powers that be want more money? Unbelievable!

–Gov. Jerry Brown’s plan for a high-speed rail connection between Northern and Southern California will die.  So will Brown’s plan for water tunnels in the area of the San Joaquin/Sacramento Delta.

YES! I sure hope this one comes true. What a billion dollar boondoggle. This plan must be taken out for good. Shame on Governor Brown putting his selfish legacy ahead of the needs of California's citizenry.

–The California Republican party will modify its platform and slowly emerge from its coma.  The Republicans will offer huge tax breaks to non-union firms that build new homes.  

How does the platform need to be modified? Last time I checked, voters around the country did not run to Trump because of the RNC Platform. All of the cosmetic changes to the California GOP platform are not going to bring in more voters. California Republican elected officials need to stick to the platform, keep their promises, and reach out with real caring to different communities all over the state.

–California Republicans will offer a $995-a-year health plan that includes dental and vision care.  The plans will apply to households with incomes of $60,000 a year or lower.  Fees will rise as income levels rise above $60,000.  The plan will offer vouchers, good at a clinic or hospital of the patient’s choice.  To qualify for the plan, all adult members of households must have jobs.  The plan will fail in the state legislature.

This specific prediction must have been fed to him by a policy wonk in Sacramento. I would sign up for this plan if it does become law. I think it's a great idea of they can arrange fiscally responsible, pro-liberty principles to make such plans possible.

–Tax increase in California will be much harder to pass because of the new federal limit on the deduction for state and local taxes.  The new limit for 2018 and beyond is $10,000 per year.  Under the old system, there was no limit.

Wow!

–Tolls on San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge will go to $8 per trip.

No surprise there. The Bay Area political class believe that money grows on trees, and the uber-rich are also uber-leftist (and they have the private, innovative sharing economy like Uber). They want to pay more money to the failing political machine?

I say let them! While at it, I hope that these sections of the state will formally declare themselves a separate state and rid us of their undue, overburdening influence in our state politics.

–The U.S. Supreme Court will rule that mandatory collection of union dues is unconstitutional.

Yes. That's an easy one to call, since Neil Gorsuch is a fully infused successor to Justice Antonin Scalia, who was targeted forced union dues during the final years of his tenure on the Supreme Court. I have long waited for this reform. Public sector unions should not exist.

–Vladimir Putin of Russia will be overthrown in a coup

One can only hope. I would like to see what information or trends that Colman is referencing to justify this prediction. The only news that would make this prossible is that one of Putin's challengers was recently barred from running for some reason. Such electoral corruption breeds contempt for a contemptible process.

–Efforts to offer citizenship to Dreamers, the children of illegal aliens currently living in America, will fail.

PLEASE, make this so! YES! Si se puede, DEPORT!

And there is one more prediction:  Some of the above predictions will be wrong.

Humility is a strong point, and Colman demonstrates it.

James Lacy Slams Fired OC Weekly Hacks for Attempt to Silence Him

James Lacy is a California conservative commentator who has provided refreshing insight on political developments in Washington DC, across the country, and even in California. He has spoken on local public television about the state of the California Republican Party, but has maintained respectable optimism for conservatism's long-term gains.

Lacy supported President Trump early on, too, and was unfazed by damaging reports in the media as well as the heavily slanted polling in Hillary Clinton's favor. The disparaging mockery of the left-wing media elites never distempered him, despite their best efforts.

Trump won, we are all winning, and the media is losing big time in terms of ratings, revenue, and respectability.

Of course, Lacy's dreams and determination have not stopped the diminished, corrosive liberal media from attacking him with abandon. Their unethical efforts to write nasty hit pieces against political opponents have become so overt, it's amazing that anyone takes them seriously, or treats them even level above parody mags like MAD or National Lampoon.

When Lacy wanted to discuss and learn more about the new leadership for the flailing Alt-Media rag LA Weekly, Gustavo Arellano threatened him with a hit piece by muck-raking has-been R. Scott Moxley.

California Political Review reports:

There is a controversy on social media going on regarding the new ownership of the LA Weekly newspaper.   But Gustavo Arellano, a former writer for the OC Weekly and Voice of Orange County ...

Lacy is too charitable. Arellano refused to lead his failing alt-media rag, since all the pot and porn ads aren't bringing in enough money. The owners of the OC Weekly old La Cucaracha Arellano to cut the overpaid staff by half. Gustavo offered to cut his own salary as part of a different means to save the other hack writers. The ownership said "No!", and Arellano decided to quit.

Wow! Just thinking about it show what a win-win that was! The owners gut the staff, and Arellano threw himself on the funeral bier for added fun. So much winning.

Now, about LA Weekly, last week's headlines announced that a new company had taken over that alt-weekly, and terminated nine of the editors and reduced the office to one staffer.

Lacy commented on social media about this, but Arellano seemds to have a problem with other people exercising their First Amendment rights:

[He] threatened me from participating in the debate on social media by tweeting to me after  I made a comment:

“But with you popping in, don’t get @RScottMoxley interested!”

Should we really be scared of former SoCal award winner Moxley, though?

Lacy continues:

R. Scott Moxley describes himself as a person whose “award-winning investigative journalism has touched nerves for two decades.”  Moxley’s pieces include very negative exposes, often targeting conservatives, like me.  So, what Arellano was conveying to me in his tweet, now deleted, and blocked from his account, is that if I had anything more to say about the LA Weekly newspaper ownership issue, that I could draw a retaliatory negative story from his friend Moxley at the OC Weekly.

Arellano has a habit of attacking people in the social media sphere, then retreating, deleting, and finally blocking those whom he has criticized. Not much courage there, folks, and his influence is diminishing considerably by the day. Where is he writing now? At least we don't have to settle for his anti-Trump, anti-conservative, anti-American rants in print anymore.

Journalism is great when it “touches nerves” and exposes hidden truths.  But journalists are quite shameful individuals when they threaten to use their contacts to suppress public participation in debate.  

The double standard on freedom of speech lies with the left. They want freedom of speech, but only if you are talking about what they want to hear. Anything controversial or in conflict with their brittle worldview, and they lash out.

Yet it is very clear that Gustavo Arellano intended to bully me into silence, and for this he deserves to be outed for the bully he is, and he owes me, and his profession, and even R. Scott Moxley, an apology.

They are bullies, but the good news is that conservatives are finding more--and easier--ways to punch back twice as hard. These hollow leftist are falling back, unable to counter the conservative alternatives which Saul Alinksy warned about.

I do believe, however, that justice will be swift indeed. They had written a hit piece against me in December 2016. Friends and followers of mine actually celebrated, because if I was getting the attention of these left-wing hacks, it means that I was really becoming a mover and shaker in the SoCal scene. Incidentally enough, however, their usual coven of readers (all five of them) mocked Moxley and the editors for printing a hit piece against "little ol'" me. Am I really that important? Better question: is OC Weekly important?

Funny but true, the corrupt, hateful, bigoted, anti-liberty left-wing media are getting taken to the cleaners. Conservatives are fighting back and winning the policy and political debate. President Trump took off the gloves and beat down the media as no other President would--or could. Now we are watching their once invincible army falling apart all around them!

Crisis in Leadership in the CA GOP?

I noticed a nice little shout-out for me in the California Political Review Blog.

Thanks, Stephen Frank.

He reposted my comments about The War Within ...

Before I take on his comments, I want to share more good news ...

1. Darrell Issa has officially won re-election.

YES!

2. I have a great job and I am very well-paid to do what I want to do.

3. I spent a wonderful Thanksgiving with my father, his wife, and the rest of the extended family in Oregon!

4. I am in good health.

5. I am back to reading my Bible, and I sense the changes for the better already.

6. A good friend of mine gave me updates on what she is doing in Long Beach, CA.

Yes, indeed, Thanksgiving cannot be just one day--everyone of us should be encouraged to make it a lifestyle!

So, something more that makes me happy ...

Stephen Franks reprints something that I wrote on his California Political Review!

His preliminary comments are worth meditating on:

Since February, 2013, the California Republican Party has not spent a dime on voter registration—and it shows.  Since October 22, 2012 till October 24, 2016, the Party has lost over 300,000 net registered voters, though a couple of hundred thousand did, register Republican.  

I have heard nothing but complaints about the lack of registration for Republicans in California. Why is this? What is going on?

I can say that in the Beach Cities Republicans, people are re-registering.

I think that this method is doomed to fail, however.

What is going on?

We are told that under McCain-Feingold there are periods of time we can not, as a Party register voters without using “federal funds (Levin accounts).  OK, so why not register in the other times?  Why not raise Levin funds?  Instead the State Party has outsourced voter registration to an organization run by Charles Munger—unelected by Republicans at any level—HE decides where voter registrations happens.

Which organization is this? Membership is about leadership and doer-ship. Why does this habit persist, in which GOP leaders are doffing responsibilities onto other people?

How has it worked out?  A net loss of 300,000 registered Republicans.  I should add Munger also sponsored and financed Prop. 14, which ended political parties nominating candidates for office in California.  Hence no reason to be a Republican registrant.

What?!

That is unconscionable.

How can we be losing registered votes in such a dramatic fashion?

AD-66 was a terrible example of this. In 2012, the district was 36% Democrat and 33% Republican. Now it's 42% Democrat and 32% Republican. This is not success.

This pattern of failure is all wrong.

Prop 14 is bad. That proposition is a terrible idea, and needs to be scrapped or significantly altered.

There followed statements from my blog post:

“Instead of freaking out over principles, it’s time to reach out to more people.

"We need leadership, enforcement, and a no-nonsense attitude on the necessary basis for a sound government which protects the rights of all and offers special privileges to no one!

If the proper forces don’t take hold in the state of California, this will be the lingering fate of the California GOP:”

Leadership is about making clear differences and standing by them.

The goal is not to try and make nice with every segment of a population, especially those elements which vehemently oppose the political party and its principles.

Principle means nothing if it is not treated with primal importance.

Political parties have to coalesce around values. They always will. From the outset of the Republic, there were Federalists and then the anti-Federalists.

Two parties exist because of two different views on the role of the state, and the role of the citizen, of the individual within the state.

Here comes Frank's question: 

That takes leadership.  What do you think?

Yes, that takes leadership.

It will take leadership that stands for something.

That takes a personal connection with the day-to-day concerns of other people.

That means getting in bad people's faces to change things.

Fundraising is a necessity, but not dependence on one large donor, or on donors who are more interested in abandoning values and accommodating a dying culture.

Leadership. 

I hope that I have begun fitting that mold. Everyone who wants to lead must be willing to follow, as well. I believe that there are other people who demonstrate leadership skills for building up California, and building up the California Republican Party.

How can we Californian Republicans generate support for our efforts?

And who will lead this rejuvenation?