Another year, another April 15 when the government gouges us to the bone. The excuse often given is Oliver Wendell Jr.’s “Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society.” Except history shows taxes and inversely proportional to civilization. Back before 1913, when the dreaded income tax first was imposed (except for during the...
Author: John C. Seiler (John C. Seiler)
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California Surfs Toward Bankruptcy
Beach Blanket Bankruptcy would be a great name for a 1960’s-style surf movie about California’s state and local finances. Alas, although Frankie Avalon still is with us, the beauteous Annette has gone the way of fiscal solvency. Already in recent years, four Golden State cities have declared bankruptcy: Vallejo in 2008, and Stockton, San Bernardino,...
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Bathroom Break
Imagine this. You send your 13-year-old daughter to her first day of high school. She goes into the school bathroom, and standing there is a 6′ 2″, 19-year-old male student. She screams. But instead of school officials expelling the boy from school and turning him over to the police, your daughter is arrested for committing...
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President Meets Pope
When President Obama met with Pope Francis, I was expecting a Walk to Canossa. It turned out the latest in a long line of reactionary disappointments. Afterward, the media people of pope and president conflicted on how much America’s latest church-vs.-state contretemps du jour was discussed. We fight a lot over religion for a country...
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Ex-Democracy in America
Let’s skip worrying about democracy in Ukraine, Crimea and Russia for a few minutes. And concentrate on democracy right here in America. Yet another federal judge overturned state laws banning the absurdity of same-sex “marriage,” in this case in Michigan. AP reported: “Federal Judge Bernard Friedman on Friday overturned Michigan’s constitutional ban, the latest in...
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CPAC moves to Rockford?
Here’s how you’ll know the conservative movement means something again: When the Conservative Political Action Conference, which just held its annual meeting, moves from Washington, D.C. to Rockford. Or Dubuque. Or Peoria. Or Helena. Or San Antonio. Or Bakersfield. Anywhere but the District of Corruption. I attended a couple CPACs back in the mid-1980s, at...
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I scream, you scream, we all scream for Ukraine
“Would you mind not shooting at the thermonuclear weapons?” is a line from the bad guy, played by John Travolta, in the 1996 action flick “Broken Arrow.” Not a great addition to our national culture, but slightly enjoyable at the time. The line keeps popping into my head during this Ukraine crisis. According to the...
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Suicide State
“We don’t divorce our men; we bury them,” instructs Stella Bernard, played by a loony Ruth Gordon, in Lord Love a Duck (1966). That’s certainly better social policy than America has pursued since 1970, with no-fault divorce shattering families. No custody battles. No brawls over alimony and child support. No kids shuttled back and forth...
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Six Californias?
California is a preposterously large state, with 38 million dwellers stretching toward 138 million. So it’s not surprising a new idea to split it into six states has gurgled up from Silicon Valley venture capitalist Tim Draper, who’s holding a press conference today, Feb. 24, at 6 pm EST. His divorce initiative just received the...
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Stop Clowning Around
Now the numbers are declining for clowns – beside those holding political office. Seriously, if possible, the NY Daily News reports: “Membership at the country’s largest trade organizations for the jokesters has plunged over the past decade as declining interest, old age and higher standards among employers align against Krusty, Bozo and their crimson-nosed colleagues.”...
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Russkies Jibe at American Loss of Freedoms
A great way to attack somebody is to mock hypocrisy over a perceived strength. During the Cold War, anti-communist writers like yours truly would scribble something like this about the Soviet Union: “In the workers’ paradise, only the bosses have cars and a washing machine is your babushka (grandmother).” Payback time. In recent decades, Americans’...
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Joking Through the Apocalypse
Mark Steyn is the only neoconservative who can still make you laugh. David Brooks could, when he and I worked at the Washington Times in the mid-1980’s; he was great with the jokes in person and in writing. But after Brooks was hired at the New York Times in 2003, he took on the High...
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Cigarette Holders, Nicotine Gum
Is President Obama a “change agent” on the level of Franklin D. Roosevelt, with a New New Deal comparable to FDR’s New Deal? Michael Grunwald’s book details the enactment and operation of Obama’s almost $800 billion stimulus bill, officially called the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Though he covers only the first months...
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The Rise and Death of the Disinformation Media
Americans can now pick from a welter of news outlets on the internet and from such independent sources as this magazine. Yet most Americans still get their news from the usual disinformation sources: the major newspapers and broadcast and cable TV. This became clear to me in 2012. After resisting for decades, in July 2012...
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The United States of Surveillance
There’s a monster on the loose It’s got our heads in a noose And it just sits there—watching. —Steppenwolf (the rock group) Big Brother is watching you; he’s also listening, sniffing, recording, and analyzing. His private little brothers—everyone from major corporations to your doctor and your local grocer—are also snooping on...
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Institutionalizing Compassion
Writing in the mid-1980’s, Forrest McDonald observed that America’s founders would have recognized their handiwork as late as the early 1960’s, but not after. Despite technological changes, the Civil War, the Progressive Era, the New Deal, and two world wars, the governments most Americans dealt with were state and local. Except for the draft board...
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The Folly of Propositional Democracy
California continues its essential role as the proving ground for bad ideas. The latest is the demolition of “popular” initiatives to decide important issues. Of the 11 initiatives on the ballot last November in the Golden State, 8 were funded primarily by multimillionaires, according to MapLight, which tracks election funding. And Proposition 30, Gov. Jerry...
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Something’s Gotta Give
The Golden State is now the Bankruptcy State. In late July and early August, California suffered a cluster of bankruptcies in three cities: Stockton, San Bernardino, and Mammoth Lakes. In 2008, Vallejo declared bankruptcy. Since 2010, 26 municipalities in the United States have filed for bankruptcy. The most notable, Central Falls, Rhode Island (August 2011),...
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See the USA in Your Chevrolet in 1964
Pop pulled the sky-blue 1963 Chevy Impala out of the driveway in Wayne, Michigan. With Mom and three kids along for what our family would call our 9,000-mile trip, he jogged a block to Michigan Avenue, which, as US 12, always beckoned West to Chicago and, beyond that, to California. The kids: Johnny, nine; Caroline,...
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The Soros Left Guns for ALEC
Vote for Chicagoland politics, get Chicagoland politics. Inspired by President Obama’s slash-and-burn tactics on his opponents, Democrats, radical labor, and left-liberal activists have begun full Saul Alinsky-Bill Ayres-style assaults on conservative and libertarian groups. Media Matters for America is the barking brigade leading the charge. A battalion in the war is another website called Color...
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Newtwisting the Trayvon Martin Killing
Newspapers are down and will soon be out, destroyed by the internet. Next to follow them into the sewer pipes of history will be TV network news—first broadcast, then cable. In the meantime, there’s still a lot of money to be made gluing eyes to the page or screen the old-fashioned way: by stirring up...
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What Have They Wrought?
In spring 2005, President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were beginning their second term in office. They were expending some “political capital,” as Bush put it, advancing their Social Security reform plan. Cheney came to the Orange County Register to meet with the editorial board, of which I was a member. For...
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The Unbearable Bulldozers of Walmart
A theory about the mafia that was advanced in these pages by the late Samuel Francis about 15 years ago explains how Walmart, Costco, and Home Depot drive out your corner grocery, the local pharmacist, and Joe’s Hardware. The national expansion of these blights isn’t free enterprise. It’s more akin to the nationwide expansion of...
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Romney: Making the World Safe for Plutocracy
Mitt Romney’s life traces the economic path of America, from global colossus to deadbeat in hock $15 trillion. His father, George, built things, running American Motors Corporation from 1954 to 1962. Although AMC was a weak sister to the Big Three auto companies, under George it was a profitable firm, especially with the popular Rambler...
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Moonbeam Returns
California is like a beautiful woman who always falls for losers. In just the past 13 years, voters put on the governor’s throne Gray Davis, who was so bad he was dumped from power in the state’s historic 2003 recall. He was replaced by Arnold Schwarzenegger, who promised to “terminate” California’s problems, especially its endemic...
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Gardasil Rick
Texas Gov. Rick Perry enjoyed one month as the heartthrob of the Republican Party. He announced his presidential bid on August 13, overshadowing Rep. Michele Bachmann’s narrow victory over Rep. Ron Paul in the Ames Straw Poll. By September 15, a Bloomberg National Poll showed him leading former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the Eastern establishment...
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Aborted Economy
“Demography is destiny,” sociologists and demographers tell us. No. Morality is destiny. Demography stems from that, as does economics. Americans now are learning that lesson the hard way. Tax rates, debt, deficits, trade policy, monetary policy, government spending, and other factors all affect economic growth and prosperity. But they’re all trumped by demographics—and above that,...
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Ayn the Antichrist
“If you would know what the Lord God thinks of money, you have only to look at those to whom He gives it.” —Maurice Baring “Who is John Galt?” again rings throughout the land. Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand’s doorstop novel chronicling a general strike of the productive against the “looters,” gains resonance during times of...
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September 11: Ten Years After
Ten years ago, on the morning of September 11, I was in my apartment in California getting ready for work when a friend called. “Turn on the TV,” she said. “What’s going on?” “Just turn on the TV.” I turned on the tube in time to see the second airliner crash into the south tower...
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The Hidden Stability of Oil Prices
Every guy remembers the day he got his driver’s license. Pop, a little warily but proudly, handed him the keys to the family car, and the road was open to drive anywhere in the 48 continental United States. Of course, most guys were just happy to take a girl on a date without Pop chauffeuring....
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Facts Are Stubborn Things
It took only 22 years after he left the White House for conservatives to turn Ronald Reagan into a totem. The celebrations surrounding his 100th birthday on February 6 made George Washington look like a back-bench legislator. Conservatives hailed Reagan as the apotheosis of political wisdom and prudent action. Liberals conceded that he had done...
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Re-Newtering America
Newt Gingrich is back! In fact, it’s his fourth or fifth comeback. He has his third wife in tow, two new DVDs, that old gift for the flabby-gabby, and presidential ambitions. With the former wunderkind turning 69 in 2012, and a Republican considered a likely winner for the presidency that year, it will be his...
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Babes in Arms
U.S. military veterans know firsthand that putting women close to the front lines is not only idiotic but perverse. Yet that’s been U.S. policy for more than 30 years. Previously, women served in support roles far behind the front lines. The only exceptions were some registered nurses, following the tradition of their noble forerunner, Florence...
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Gelded Europeans
From 1979 to 1982, I was a Russian linguist stationed in Frankfurt, West Germany, with the 533rd Combat Electronic Warfare Intelligence (CEWI) Battalion, part of the 3rd Armored Division. If a war had come, assuming we hadn’t been nuked right away, we would have deployed within hours northeast to the Fulda Gap to listen to...
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Rainbow Camo
The controversy over ending Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) is a typical modern morality tale, in which the moral always lose. Although a few generals and admirals objected to allowing homosexuals to serve openly, a military led by real men would have seen every general and admiral resign in protest unless the new policy was...
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Mortgages From Hell
A mortgage crisis still haunts the country like a credit collector calling you daily about your unpaid Visa bill. It’s harder to get a mortgage than it has been in the memory of anyone living. The banks “only accept the best credit now for a loan,” a mortgage broker told me. She enjoyed the business...
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California Exodus
California’s November 2010 election results were seen by national pundits as a “firewall” that stemmed the tide of Republican victories sweeping across the country. Actually, this was a Republican disaster long in the making. The main cause of the GOP’s defeat was the large increase in the immigrant population in the last 30 years. Voting...
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America’s Defense Bleeds—Out
In the run-up to the November elections, Republicans comforted themselves by passing around an analysis by the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office showing that spending on the Iraq war so far has been “only” $709 billion. They pointed out that President Obama’s wasteful stimulus actually cost $100 billion more. And they touted the $709 billion number...
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Blago Nullification
Call it the luck of the Serbs. If deposed Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich had been charged with trying to sell a U.S. Senate seat in the months after September 11, he would have been shipped off to Guantanamo and never heard from again. But since the economy collapsed in December 2007, Americans have been in...
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The Panic of 2011
If you’re old or sick and have a lot of money, I suggest taking a trip out of the country, away from your heirs, until January 1, 2011. And don’t tell them where you’re going. On that date, the death tax for rich folks goes from the current 0 percent to 55 percent. So your...
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The Panic of 2011
If you’re old or sick and have a lot of money, I suggest taking a trip out of the country, away from your heirs, until January 1, 2011. And don’t tell them where you’re going. On that date, the death tax for rich folks goes from the current ...
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California Ecclesiazusae
During the June primary campaign for governor of California, a GOP operative told me that the plan of the party elites is to nominate Mitt Romney for president in 2012, with Meg Whitman as his running mate. That way, she would spend hundreds of millions of dollars of her fortune on the campaign, enriching every...
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Newsweeklies In Hell
Every Easter and Christmas at least one of America’s three newsweeklies—Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report—includes articles trashing Christian dogmas. For Easter 2010, Newsweek featured a piece by religion editor Lisa Miller blurbing her new book, Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination With the Afterlife. Concerning the resurrection of men, she wrote, “It’s a supernatural...
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Last Action Hero
Arnold Schwarzenegger marched into the Orange County Register’s lobby wearing cowboy boots and confidence. He was mobbed in the lobby by women who wanted him and men who wanted to be him. He cheerfully signed autographs. He then came up to our offices to meet the editorial board. The celluloid dream became a physical reality...
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California Crash
“Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-a, wipeout.” —The Surfaris Maybe we just had it too great out here in California. Perfect weather. World-class universities. High-paying middle-class jobs. Reasonably priced housing. Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. The Beach Boys. California girls. Hollywood. Disneyland. Now the state is crumbling fast into the ocean. Still can’t beat the weather—until unemployment forces you to move to...
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Arnold’s Pyrite State
The most obscene political speech I ever heard was delivered by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2007 for the Orange County Republican Party’s annual Flag Day dinner. He began with his stock boy-immigrant-from-Austria spiel, a version of which you might have heard him give at the 2004 GOP National Convention. Then he brought up the red-white-and-blue...
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“Gay Marriage” in California: Back in the Docket
In modern America, the absurd is forced on everyone with the full coercive powers of an omnipotent state—all in the name of “rights.” Same-sex “marriage” first was “legalized” in 2003 when the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court drove matrimony off Chappaquiddick’s Dike Bridge and let it drown. In October 2008, Connecticut’s Supreme Court did the same....