California Dreamin’ – About Sane Government
2013-08-31 · Guest: Steve Greenhut (Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity) · 82:37
Political and economic decline of California
Bob Zadek and guest Steve Greenhut discuss the political and economic decline of California, focusing on the overwhelming influence of public sector unions, unfunded pension liabilities, and restrictive land-use regulations that have driven out the middle class. The conversation also shifts to legal and cultural topics, including Bob’s critique of federal civil rights charges following the George Zimmerman trial, the political returns of Elliot Spitzer and Anthony Weiner, and a libertarian defense of performance-enhancing drugs in professional sports.
Topics: California politics, public sector unions, pension reform, land use regulation, Coastal Commission, Plan Bay Area, George Zimmerman trial, civil rights law, Elliot Spitzer, performance-enhancing drugs, libertarianism
Speakers: Bob Zadek - Host Steve Greenhut - Vice President of Journalism at Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity Caller (Mimi) - Listener from Castro Valley Caller (Robert) - Listener from San Jose
The State of the Golden State [00:16]
Bob Zadek: Welcome to the Bob Zadek Show, everyone. I’m your host, Bob Zadek, every Sunday at noon at News Talk 910. Thanks so much for listening. We are the leading libertarian talk radio show in the Bay Area and around the country, the only spot for a live libertarian chat all weekend. Thanks so much for listening.
There is so much to talk about today. I may have to commandeer the network, under force, and I’m taking over here, and maybe I’ll go on until 6:00 tonight. There is so much to do. We start with a discussion of California. As California goes, so goes the country. So those of you out there who are feeling smug and under-taxed and under-regulated and under-environmentally-eyed and treated fairly by your government—if you’re feeling smug because you are not oppressed as we are here in California, spare that smugness. This can happen to you. So learn from California. Forewarned is forearmed.
Why are we talking about California? California is, I am told, the seventh biggest economy in the world. It is the largest state by population in the country, the largest by economy size, the largest by the number of dumb regulations and dumb propositions that we enact. And it is no, as you will learn on this show, it is no mystery why California is in the jam that it is in. The reasons are clear. And if you out there learn from the mess that we are in here in California, learn what went wrong because the lessons are so clear, then you can defend against those lessons and not have happen to your state what is happening to my state.
To help me sort out the problems in California, I’m happy to welcome for the second time on my show, Steve Greenhut. Steve is the Vice President of Journalism at Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity and has written extensively on California. He lives in Sacramento where it all happens. Nobody has a better vantage point on the state and therefore what is likely to happen in the country than Steve Greenhut. Steve, thanks so much for joining me on this Sunday afternoon.
Steve Greenhut: Yeah, thanks for having me.
The Rise of Public Sector Unions [03:15]
Bob Zadek: Now, Steve, you have written extensively on California. You have compared California to New York—we’ll get into that. You have discussed all of the somewhat comical, but a lot of money is involved and a lot of people are involved, so it’s not quite so comical, all of the goings-on in California. Now, to start with the, as they say, the 30,000-foot view, how would you summarize as a starting point what went wrong? California, the land of opportunity, the Golden State, the place where everybody came for a fresh start, a place that would nourish entrepreneurial energies, welcome all immigrants, both foreign and domestic, into the state and provide a chance to be all you can be, to borrow from the Marine Corps slogan. That was California then. If you had to pick one or a few seminal events that changed all that, what would it be?
Steve Greenhut: Yeah, I don’t think anything’s irreversible. The biggest problem I see right now is the fact that our leadership doesn’t even think there are any problems. I mean, you had mentioned in your intro that California is the seventh largest economy. It’s actually the eighth, and Governor Brown thinks this is—we’ve just surpassed Russia and Italy again because of the supposed rebound. So the Democrats who run this state top to bottom are celebrating the fact that California is on the mend, and they believe that California is the model for the rest of the country. The model of raising taxes, increasing regulation, and I think getting to answering your question, the incredible power of the public sector unions in California has been the state’s main undoing. And it’s hard, I don’t know, it’s hard historically to pick out what led to that.
But I do see that as California’s—each time we do more things, or the government does more things to make it harder to earn a living here, more of the voters who tend to oppose that sort of thing go to other states, and it becomes, you know, the cycle. Now, when I moved to California in ‘98, Republicans still were in play. And I’m not—don’t ever get me wrong, I’m a libertarian. I think the Republicans are, you know, the stupid party, so don’t get me wrong there. But still, they’re the alternative to this kind of nutty, I don’t know, quasi-socialism or whatever you want to call it. And now, in not that many years, they’re a non-entity. They’re not even a player in the discussions.
And so we’ve got—there are a number of things. The growth of the environmental movement certainly one, and the reason—this is such a beautiful state and it’s such a special state. And I think we were able to—I think that has something to do with the kind of environmentalism that’s sunk in. You know, the fact that we don’t have the kind of industries in, let’s say, I lived in Ohio—you know, Ohio, Michigan, those sorts of states where even the union movement there is a private sector union movement and the business leaders are more moored in the economy. And here it’s a different kind of economy, so a different kind of union movement. So these are things probably a historian would do a better job wrestling with, but we did—there is a sense, you know, that in California that you can have it all and not have to pay any price for the decisions.
Bob Zadek: Steve, let me make a suggestion as to what I might find, because I can sort of see, not that I am a historian, but I can see some seminal events that made it all different. I would start with 1968 when unions, public sector local unions, were given the right by statute to collectively bargain. Before—now, then in the 1970s, that right to collectively bargain was given to state employees. Then it all got different. Once the state employees and government employees were given the right to collectively bargain, then what happened is, then the elected officials had an ally in the public sector unions because the public sector unions could marshal a lot of bodies to help win elections.
And the unholy alliance between public sector unions and their employers, who were the elected officials, was created. And what happened was—and we’re going to spend some time on the prison guards because they explain it all. And I know you’ve written about the prison guards, and we’re going to come to that because that is, not that it’s the worst abuse, but it explains it so vividly. Once the public sector unions had the power to collectively bargain, watch what happens. The unions raise dues on the workers to build a war chest to help public officials win elections. Now, why do the union members voluntarily pay relatively high union dues? Because the employers, the elected officials who get elected with union help, will give them generous contracts so that, in effect, the union dues become ultimately paid by the employer, by the states and municipalities.
So we have the states pay high wages, which are then paid by union members to union dues, which are then used to get those same officials elected again. Once that starts and once that system is developed, it becomes unstoppable and the unions or the governments are run for the benefit of the union members to a large degree, to the detriment of the taxpayers who don’t get a seat at the table. So I would identify the recognition of public service unions, something which old-time union leaders like Samuel Gompers rejected. Old-time union leaders, the industrial union leaders in the ’30s and the ’40s, thought public service workers should not be in unions. It was not what unions were formed for. But that’s then, this is now. So I think the power of the public service unions is what started to cause the distortion of the public treasury away from what’s good for the state to what’s good for the workers.
Steve Greenhut: Well, there’s no question about that. But one of the interesting issues is why California? Why did it take—because granted, I think the collective bargaining rights here predated what was done in the federal government and in other states, but not by that much. So the interesting thing is how deeply the public sector power grew in California compared to other states. And you know, there are all sorts of ways of looking at it. I mean, part of it, I know when I grew up in Pennsylvania, and in Pennsylvania you had the Philadelphia area, which was the big major city that tilted things, but the rest of the state kind of was a counterweight, and elections remained pretty competitive.
In California, you’ve got two mega metropolitan areas, and there’s really, if you look at the voting, we all see this, a lot of the rest of the state is like a conservative intermountain western state in many of its voting patterns. But you know, if you’ve got Los Angeles County with 10 million people and the Bay Area with 8 million people, and they go 70% or more for Democrats, there’s really hard to stop that.
And another interesting thing to think about is I just did a piece for Bloomberg about comparing, as others have done, comparing Jerry Brown to George Wallace in effect in the way he’s defying the federal courts over the prison releases. And what we see with Brown in that issue and with virtually every other issue is he is defending the establishment, right? So he’s defending—he won’t take on the prison guards union, which goes back to your point, to make the kind of reforms that could stretch our dollars. Instead, he’s taking this, I think, kind of cheap posturing.
But the fact is California has been a law and order state, and a lot of folks back east don’t recognize the degree to which this is not a state where, you know, we’ve got this reputation as being this kind of kooky left-wing state. But there’s this odd coalition of liberals and conservatives who have always championed some of the law and order policies, which have helped enhance the power of the public sector unions. We end up with, you know, the prison guards having an inordinate amount of power. I mean, I remember during the Gray Davis era—I call it the Gray Davis error, but it’s the Gray Davis era—you know, the prison guards got a 38% increase, if I recall correctly, at a time when we had these massive deficits. I remember when Gray Davis was debating the equally loathsome Dan Lungren for the gubernatorial race in ‘98, Davis advocated the execution of 13-year-olds and the—what was it? He said Singapore is a good starting point in terms of law enforcement policy. So there’s this strange law and order bent in California politics, and I see it right now too. I mean, it hasn’t subsided whatsoever, and the Democrats are every bit as bad as the Republicans on this. And that’s helped enhance the power of the police unions, the prison guards unions. But there really is very little appetite for taking on the status quo. So what we see is this false choice: higher taxes or fewer services. And there’s never a discussion about how to stretch the services we have.
The Prison Industrial Complex [15:03]
Bob Zadek: You know, law and order is an interesting place to start, and the prison guards, because the prison guards tell it all. California enacted famously in 1994 the well-known, the infamous Three Strikes Law, which said once you commit three felonies, even if the third felony was non-violent, you get a mandatory sentence of 25 years to life for the third felony. And there were stories about a guy who stole a piece of pizza, and it was his third felony, went to jail for life for a piece of pizza. And what happened was—so what about Three Strikes Law? How does that fit in with California mentality? Well, the prison guards spent $100,000 to support the Three Strikes Law because it was more customers for the prisons.
The prisons in California then got to be overcrowded. And the Supreme Court in 2011 said the prisons were so bad in California that it violated—it was cruel and inhuman punishment, Eighth Amendment violation to have the prisons the way they were. Then California enacted something called Prop 5, which was going to reduce sentencing and provide more funds for drug treatment rather than incarceration for drug violations. The prison guards spent a million dollars to defeat that. Then they spent another million dollars to defeat Prop 66, which was going to reduce the number of crimes with mandatory life sentences. They do all this because they don’t want to reduce the business.
And lastly, and most offensively, California has the highest incidence of solitary confinement, which is torture, in the country. Now, why is that? Because solitary confinement requires three times as much prison guard hours as does somebody in the general population. So all of this, California’s offensive treatment of prisoners, is all a result of the incredible power of the prison guards, who by the way make average salary $72,000 versus $45,000 for the rest of the country. And prison guards may go for $100,000 a year if you add in the benefits. So the prison guards tell it all. Talk about regulatory capture or cronyism, this is it. Our entire criminal justice system is owned by the prison guards, and that’s a microcosm. The teachers do the same things with smaller class size to get more business.
Steve Greenhut: Right, and that’s really an important point that’s certainly been—all the policies we see, you know, California’s increasingly militarized police forces, and we see all discussion about police behavior is all dominated by those people who benefit from the system. I remember when I was covering—I went up to the State Senate when this is, I don’t know, a few years ago, after the State Supreme Court’s Copley decision, which essentially cloaks all police disciplinary records in secrecy. And Gloria Romero, Democratic State Senator, really good person, she introduced a bill that would have reduced—you know, it would have opened some of these things back up so that we could at least have an inkling of, you know, police officers who abuse their power.
Anyway, she—I was at the hearing, and the Democrats—the Democrats kicked Mark Leno, who you know, I may not agree with on many things, but he was the head of the Public Safety Committee at the time.
Bob Zadek: From San Francisco.
Steve Greenhut: Yes, from San Francisco. And he was good on that issue, and they booted him as the chairman. They put Jose Solorio from Santa Ana, who was a—he’s a—well, let’s see, we’ll just say he’s a complete and utter tool of the police unions and a—you know, he’s a Democrat, and yet he’s a complete tool of the police unions. It was just incredible. The ill-treatment of the people who were there who had relatives who were killed or beaten by police officers—forget it. The whole thing was a big sham, and it was Republicans, the law and order Republicans, and the pro-union Democrats just shut down any dissent on that issue. So my point is that the police issues are determined by police unions, and the place was just filled with police unions. Police unions and their politicians who they help get elected, they’re the ones who make all the policy on that issue. And same thing with the prisons. Prison policy is driven by the prison guards unions and the politicians who, you know, who they help elect to office, and people like Jerry Brown, who’s pretty much a just a complete status quo politician who’s just trying to defend, you know, the entrenched bureaucracies and the unions. So yeah, so we don’t get much of a say, and this is the frustrating thing here in California, that it’s really hard to see any movement toward reform on any of these issues.
The Pension Crisis [20:30]
Bob Zadek: And that’s where, you know, our initiative process is really the only hope. And you know, as we get into talking about the problems plaguing the state, I think the pension issue is certainly one that is crushing municipalities. I mean, Vallejo, not far from where you folks are at, you know, it came out of bankruptcy, and from what I hear, it’s headed right back into the fiscal hot water again just because they never reformed their pensions. So Stockton, which is, you know, the couple pages I wrote in this The Beholden State book, the Manhattan Institute’s book that I think you had referenced here, Stockton is struggling with bankruptcy.
Bob Zadek: Stockton is a city in the Central Valley. It’s about an hour and a half southeast of San Francisco. It, if it goes bankrupt—if it does become subject to bankruptcy—it will be the largest municipal bankruptcy, and that is until some other cities bump it. But for—it’ll hold the record for the largest municipal bankruptcy until it gets bumped by some other city, which is likely as cities start to go bankrupt.
Steve Greenhut: Right. And what my point in the article I wrote was that, you know, the city—they’re dealing with a crime wave. The city— I think it’s an interesting old Gold Rush era city. I like the city, but it’s got a lot of deep problems, and they can’t fix them because the amount of the pay levels for public employees are so high. And you know, it’s the kind of city that is just crumbling. It’s a good example of how—of the progressive case for pension reform, which is there are a number of progressives—Jeff Adachi, public defender, great guy in San Francisco, who led a pension reform initiative. Chuck Reed and other, you know, very fine politician—how often do I ever say that about any politician?—but he’s a really good guy. He’s a progressive Democrat in San Jose who led pension reform there. I mean, they talk about how other services are suffering as they’re paying these really outlandish amounts of money to public employees.
Bob Zadek: Well, of course, the pension issue, just to put it in magnitude, Jerry Brown recently announced a budget surplus, which of course wasn’t true, but he’s able to do it because of the accounting gimmicks. California, by most measures, owes a trillion—one trillion with a T—in unfunded pension costs. And this is the classic sticking future generations with today’s costs. We talk about it at the national level; it’s happening in California. And the pensions, there is so much abuse, there’s almost no place to start, and it’s a little wonky. But just understand that California’s quote “surplus” doesn’t exist. It’s a lie. It’s cooking the books in the most offensive way. And just to take one little segment, CalPERS, which pays for the state pension, which administers the state pension, needs $4.5 billion with a B, billion dollars a year for the next 30 years just to pay for the teachers. Now, that $4.5 billion has to come out of the state budget, and it’s not budgeted for. That would more than consume the entire state budget surplus. Sayonara to the surplus.
Economic Freedom and Regulatory Overreach [24:43]
Bob Zadek: This is Bob Zadek. I’m talking with Steve Greenhut. We’re talking about California. As California goes, so goes the country. 800-345-5639 for your horror story questions or horror story answers. Now, Steve, you had mentioned, and I made a note, I want to come back to it. You had mentioned about California and economic freedom. And I know you’ve written quite a bit on this. Now, economic freedom, while it sounds like an abstraction, is simply the right and the ability of one to earn a living free of government interference. Now, tell us the headlines about California and economic freedom, this quote “land of opportunity.”
Steve Greenhut: Well, this is—oh, and Steve, before you start, I’m sorry, I’m reminded by Raymond, we’re going to have to go to break. Sorry, Steve. So you have 90 seconds to formulate the most perfect answer to my question. So this is going to be a thing of beauty. Please stay tuned. 800-345-5639. Bob Zadek talking to Steve Greenhut about the state of California. Be back in 90 seconds.
[Break]
Bob Zadek: Welcome back to the Bob Zadek Show. I’m your host, Bob Zadek, every Sunday at noon at News Talk 910. Thanks so much for listening. 800-345-5639 to join my conversation with Steve Greenhut. We are talking about the state of California. Now, Steve, before we went to break, I asked about economic freedom. But before you answer the question, there’s a clip—we had talked earlier about the public service unions, and there’s a clip I cannot—I must play. And Steve, during the last election cycle, the California Public Employees Union testified at some hearing when some state committee wanted to cut back on the funding for home healthcare workers, which are public service workers. And just to give you an idea of the power of the public service workers, this is the testimony of the public service workers on a state budget cutback on public service employment in the home health industry. Raymond, the clip please? The one about the—we’ve got you, we’re going to vote you out of office.
Union Representative (Clip): You know, the power, the backing, helped many Democrats get into office who would not have done so without the assistance of the Homecare Workers Union. We helped to get you into office, and we got a good memory. And come November, if you don’t back our program, we’ll help to get you out of office.
Bob Zadek: Now, Steve, that’s what elected officials have to deal with in the state of California. We got you into office, and we’ll get you out.
Steve Greenhut: Yeah, but it’s even worse than that. I mean, because the Democratic leadership now, take a look, most of these folks come directly out of the union movement themselves. So it used to be, you know, they were scared of the unions. Now the unions are the legislators. So why scare people when you can just get your own people in there? So a guy like John Pérez, the Assembly Speaker, who was United Food and Commercial Workers organizer, Darrell Steinberg, former SEIU attorney—I mean, we’ve got the ranks of Democratic legislators come right from the public sector unions. So they don’t even have to be scared of these folks.
But where it’s really ominous is at the local level. I recall I was at a—I went to a school board meeting in Fullerton, and it was over—I forgot what issue I was covering, but there was another issue regarding the school employees. And it wasn’t the teachers, the school employees who do the other sorts of work on the public schools. And there were maybe three members of the public and a couple reporters, and then there were probably about 50 or 60 union members wearing their union T-shirts standing at the back of the room and shouting and pounding their fists. And you know, you could guess probably which way the school board voted on the issue of concern to them. It was some sort of outsourcing issue that they were trying to stop.
Bob Zadek: Of course.
Steve Greenhut: And then at the local level, and you know, you had mentioned before the break about the unfunded pension liabilities, which is just the debt, the amount of promise—these are legally binding promises that the taxpayers are on the hook to pay for these enormous pensions, and they are enormous. We’ve made your average public employee is a millionaire. He would have to have millions in the bank to have the kind of equivalent pension that we’ve given them. These folks, you know, the unfunded liabilities are killing the municipalities. It’s not the $4.5 billion extra that really needs to be more than that that goes into the general fund to make the payments to CalPERS and CalSTRS, the teachers’ retirement system. It’s the fact that these cities like Stockton have to pay so much for their retiree benefits that they don’t have any money left to provide the services for current residents.
Bob Zadek: Steve, you’re exactly right. You talk about some abuses. Just a few anecdotes. Anecdotes are always fun. There’s a Solano retiree—Solano’s a small town—a Solano retiree gets $371,000 a year in retirement pay. In the state of California, 12,200 state employees get over $100,000 a year in pension benefits. In San Diego, a retired librarian, $234,000 a year in pension. And lastly, in Newport Beach, a lifeguard retired at age 51, $108,000 a year plus lifetime medical with no co-pay. Welcome to California. A 51-year-old millionaire lifeguard. Knock yourself out.
Steve Greenhut: Right, figure out how much money—I mean, I’ve done some retirement planning myself, now that I’m getting a little older, and you would need millions of dollars in the bank to be able to live on that kind of amount. And you know, we had the Alameda County executive, who’s—what was it? It was multiple hundreds of thousand dollars. You can’t even make it up anymore.
Bob Zadek: $631,000.
Steve Greenhut: Right. So you can’t even make it up anymore, right? So whenever I write about these kind of things, the union people say, “Well, that’s just a—sure, that’s an abuse, that’s not really the way it is.” Well, it is. The formulas are the formulas. So what we’ve done throughout the state is given law enforcement 3% at 50, and almost always these pension increases are done retroactively. So if I’m about to retire tomorrow, I get an increase going back to the day that I started, which is a gift of public funds. But anyway, the formula’s the formula. So if I’m 3% at 50, 3% times your final year’s pay available at age 50, and police and average firefighter pay and benefit package in California is around $175,000 a year. And so if you’re making $100,000 a year, 3% at 50, you get 90% of that, that’s $90,000 a year. And then there’s every manner of pension spiking gimmicks that you could engage in in the last year. In fact, there was one police department where everybody got a promotion in the last year. And it’s not the only one that—
Bob Zadek: Pension spiking describes the process. Since pensions are based upon your last year’s salary, if you can goose up your last year’s salary a whole lot, then for the rest of your life your pension is that much higher. That’s what pension spiking is.
Land Use and Regional Planning [34:42]
Bob Zadek: Now, Steve, another topic you’ve written about, and we have a caller who wants to talk about this, I suspect, is California has basically repealed the laws of private property with all of our land-use statutes. The California Coastal Commission, which you have written about. And before we talk about land use and the confiscation of private property, I’d like to take a caller, Steve. Mimi from Castro Valley. She wants to talk about regional planning, which is a form of personal property abuse. It’s eminent domain under another name. Mimi, welcome to the show.
Caller (Mimi): Hi Bob, thanks for having me. Yeah, I wanted to comment on Plan Bay Area, which is a 25-year plan that’s going to include housing, transportation, and land use. This is all being done at the regional level. The cities are pretty much left out of the process and are being dictated to. And private property rights just go out the window on these types of plans. There are regional plans all over the state. And so this is another factor that’s making California really unlivable. It’s a massive transfer of wealth from the private sector into these government agencies and non-governmental agencies who stand to benefit from these new plans.
Bob Zadek: Now, Mimi, let me just explain to the audience who may not be so familiar with Plan Bay Area, and it all starts with AB 32. In California, California has decided that the state and the region know better how one person should use their property and how local areas, small towns, should allocate resources. And there is a profound hatred of automobiles and a desire to build up rather than out. They hate sprawl—it’s one of the words they hate. And these regional planning associations have incredible power, and the power to dictate to a town, to basically take away a town’s ability to zone and to dictate how much low-income housing you have to have. Now, the result of that is that housing, that land, becomes much more valuable because it’s so much more expensive to do anything, which means land becomes so expensive people can’t afford to buy houses and middle-class people are chased out of the state, leaving California with both the very rich or the very rich wannabes on the one hand and people who live off the public dole on the other. But California is kicking out, as Mimi pointed out, the middle class by forced regional zoning based upon predicted, not known, but predicted needs of housing 40 years down the road. I think, Mimi, that’s a fair summary of what you have in mind.
Caller (Mimi): Yeah, that’s an excellent summary. And I just want to tell people there’s a major meeting on July 18th, which is this Thursday. They’re going to approve the final plan. If anybody wants some information or would like to go to that meeting, because we need people to speak up, they can go to BayAreaLiberty.org and I’ll send them information. I think the real key here is, you know, on the one hand they complain about affordable housing, and yet they’re making housing unaffordable with their land-use policies.
Bob Zadek: Exactly right, Mimi. Well put. And thank you so much for your comments.
Caller (Mimi): Thank you.
Bob Zadek: Thanks a lot. Now, Steve, California is the poster child for removing people’s power over their personal property. And you’ve written about the California Coastal Commission, a government unto itself. Tell us about, by way of example, the California Coastal Commission and what California does because of the eco-nuts in the state.
Steve Greenhut: Well, you know, I think Mimi was onto something really important. I mean, it’s a combination. The Coastal Commission, which has vast regulatory authority for a mile from inland or more, and often—
Bob Zadek: The Coastal Commission, let me just give some background. The California Coastal Commission was created actually by citizen initiative in 1972 and then became statutory four years later in ‘76. And the California Coastal Commission regulates the coastline. And how they define coastline also goes inland as well as out into the water. They basically regulate a landmass the size of Rhode Island, to give you some example of their power. And they regulate, among other things—and this is a quote—“disturbances on coastal areas without a permit.” Now, if that sounds pretty benign, that rule, “disturbances on coastal areas,” has been used to prevent somebody from sunbathing using a portable umbrella on private property, and somebody wanted to replace rotten planks on a landing midway on the way to the beach. So that’s the Coastal Commission. Now, with that ugly background, Steve, tell us about land-use regulation and the Coastal Commission.
Steve Greenhut: Sure. Well, and it’s got to be a lot more than the area of Rhode Island. I think Rhode Island’s got about a thousand square miles, and you know, California’s coastline is how many hundreds of miles? So, but whatever, it’s an enormous amount of land, and it’s often regulated with very little oversight through edict. And the folks on the Coastal Commission are hostile to any sort of coastal growth. And yeah, they’ve regulated any sightlines from the ocean and it’s just craziness. You basically have very little that you can do on your own property along the coastline unless it’s approved by the Coastal Commission, certainly anything that’s going to be serious building. But they have gone as far down as regulating fences and umbrellas and ridiculous stuff like that. And it’s not as if—now, that’s all a layer on top of all the massive county and city regulations that apply along the coastline. So bottom line, if you have a coastal property, don’t expect to do anything with it. You own it in name only, but you’re really just a tenant of the Coastal Commission.
Steve Greenhut: Absolutely. And then remember, was it Peter Douglas who passed away recently? He had said that he had—he was what? He crafted the Coastal Act. And here’s a good example of the voters don’t always know best on the initiative process. But he ran the commission for decades—25 years. Yep. And then he had once, in one speech, he had talked about—he was a really hard leftist. He mocked property rights. At one point he said we should have a property system more like India’s property rights system where—I mean, it’s just craziness. So anyway, it was a good example of the kind of mentality that dominated the Coastal Commission, and any sort of project would take many years to get through, if it would get through at all.
But the bigger issue is throughout the state of California, the land-use restrictions are so severe. Like Mimi was talking about, how it drives up the prices of housing in the Bay Area. And what’s ironic is all these land-use restrictions and all these artificial restrictions and the long timeframe to get your development approvals and the environmental impact reports and the environmental impact statements and on and on and on so adds costs to any sort of construction. And there’s so much no-growth sentiment that builders are in a bind. So the Bay Area, I mean, you drive into the Bay Area, it’s very beautiful, there’s a lot of open land. Well, gee, that inflates the prices. There’s no reason—there’s a pretty clear reason why Marin County has—it only has 252,000 people just right there right next to San Francisco, because 84% of the land is owned by the government and the other 16% forget trying to build on it. So it’s essentially a government-zoned paradise for very wealthy liberal people. And it’s, you know, it’s no surprise that the median home price there is over a million bucks. And all these folks who talk about the poor and helping the poor, well, what they’re doing is regulating the poor out of their region. Out of Marin County. Yes, absolutely. So let them cross over the Richmond Bridge, I guess.
But the thing too, and then what happens in these—these elitists who are with their new urbanism, which the whole idea is to—and almost all the regional planning in the Bay Area and throughout California is based on new urbanism and smart growth. The idea that we cram people into small footprints with small yards and then you keep everything else open as open space, and then people are supposed to rely on transit rather than on cars. And no cars. California hates cars. Right. So the irony though is those policies so dramatically inflate the price of property that that’s why people go over into the Central Valley, over to Mountain House and Tracy and Stockton and Manteca, where there was a lot of tract house building. And then these elites make fun of the people who drive over there to get housing. I was just talking to someone who worked in the South Bay area, and the price of homes just to buy a home is close to a million dollars. So he’s going to take his family like 50 miles out into the valley because he wants to own a house. So the very policies designed to combat sprawl actually increase sprawl. And then of course, these folks who promote those policies then just talk about how selfish and awful we are for relying on our automobiles. But they’re making it, unless you’re a very wealthy person like they are, it’s impossible to live in these areas.
And then here’s another interesting point to think about with the housing bubble, which burst and now is reinflating just as rapidly as it burst, it seems. The reason things were so bad here, such a severe drop in California, is because it takes so long to build a property. So in Texas, for instance, and parts of the Midwest where you don’t have as many geographic constraints and you also have reasonable land-use policies, when there was the increase in housing demand driven by the cheap money, builders were able to react pretty quickly. So the prices never got overheated. They went up, but they didn’t get overheated. Whereas in the Bay Area or in Los Angeles basin, when the demand shot up quickly—and we can see how quickly demand will shoot up in real estate markets—it shot up quickly, but it’s so many years to get approvals to build a subdivision that all that did was drive up the prices and then it drove folks into the Central Valley up here or down in the LA basin, drove them into the high desert and the Inland Empire. And so these kind of land-use policies have another impact. They help to distort housing markets.
Economic Freedom Rankings [45:46]
Bob Zadek: Now, Steve, you had mentioned—regrettably, until I take over the studio, we’re running out of time. You had mentioned an important topic that I want to just spend a little bit of time on and then close with the Homeless Bill of Rights if we have time. But you had mentioned California’s standing in economic freedom. And California is—there’s a ranking every year, objective ranking of the states that are a good place to do business. California ranks 47th overall, and California ranks 50th in terms of the quote “cost of doing business.” And the Mercatus Center, part of George Mason University, has ranked California 49th in overall economic freedom. And Mercatus has observed—this is a quote—“California not only taxes and regulates its economy more than most other states, but also aggressively interferes in the personal lives of its citizens.” Economic freedom, licensing requirements—California makes it so hard just to make a buck.
Steve Greenhut: For sure. And it’s the—when I talk to business owners, it’s not just the high taxes. We all kind of understand that this is a high-tax state. Highest taxes in the country, highest gas taxes in the country, and the fourth highest unemployment rate in the country. Welcome to California. Right. I’m not defending high taxes. I’m just saying most business owners I know here have made peace with high taxes. We’re just stuck with it, right? But that’s not primarily when you talk to people who are leaving the state. I mean, the high taxes, I think, does drive people out of state because you say, “Hey, I can move over here and save this much money.” But a big part of it, in addition to the high taxes, is the attitude of our bureaucrats here and our state officials. Remember when Richard Alarcón, when he was Senate Majority Leader, said he was asked about businesses fleeing the state and he said, well, he doesn’t care if they could go rip off some other state. So that’s the attitude, I think, of the leadership, the Democratic leadership here, that businesses are a rip-off and that government is what’s going to help you. And so the punitive—you talk just talk to business owners, you can’t do anything without between the AQMD and there are all sorts of—
Bob Zadek: That’s the Air Quality Management District.
Steve Greenhut: Right. There are all sorts of stories about them, you know, their unannounced visits to businesses and they see some minor infraction and they nail you with fines. I did a story about how they do press releases every time they impose a massive fine on—this is the, I’m sorry, the California Air Resources Board does press releases every time they fine a business, and it’s got this celebratory tone of the bureaucrats who run it. And then of course with the AB 32, I was down in Fresno meeting with some farm producers and they’re, you know, canning and those sorts of businesses are—it’s an international business anymore. They’re competing with Mexico and China, and then they’ve got this essentially added tax, the cap-and-trade system, which forces them to buy air pollution credits. And Joel Kotkin, who’s also in The Beholden State book, the Manhattan Institute’s book that started our discussion, he’s written about how the—he’s an old-school Pat Brown progressive, and he talks about how these new progressives really are at war with kind of the working-class economy. And I see that. What you have are these kind of elites, environmental elites in the Bay Area and the LA basin, who have no clue about—
The “Homeless Bill of Rights” [49:50]
Bob Zadek: Steve, we have—I just, in my tipping my hat to the founders and James Madison et al., we have to close with the Bill of Rights. The Homeless Bill of Rights in two minutes.
Steve Greenhut: Oh gosh, the Homeless Bill of Rights. Well, that never passed. It just was a sense of the silliness. But essentially the proposal, you would have a constitutional right to urinate in public. And some other sorts of behavior and—
Bob Zadek: And to panhandle, and to occupy public spaces as long as you wanted, and to dumpster dive.
Steve Greenhut: It just shows some of the silliness. That was from Tom Ammiano of San Francisco. But the point was the initial bill just showed no distinction between private property and public spaces. And the more we undermine the traditional rights, the more our government comes up with new rights. And that’s, I think, the best example of that where, as we really don’t have much in the way of property rights or constitutional rights in this state anymore, but you do get new rights. You have a right to be homeless, and maybe more of us will be exerting that right as the state makes it harder and harder to earn a living.
Bob Zadek: Of course, Steve, it’s not homeless, it’s quote “differently sheltered.”
Steve Greenhut: That’s right. And soon enough, the differently sheltered will be able to shelter themselves on my property and have a right.
Bob Zadek: Steve, we have 30 seconds. Is there hope?
Steve Greenhut: Of course there is. I mean, this is—socialism and those kind of policies never work anywhere. That’s not going to work here. It’s a great state, it’s a beautiful state, it’s worth fighting for, and we just need to keep talking about it, writing about it, and hoping reality sinks in at some point.
Bob Zadek: This is Bob Zadek thanking Steve Greenhut for joining me to talk about the problems in California. I’ll be back in 90 seconds. We’re going to talk about a lot of very well-known men: Lance Armstrong, George Zimmerman, Elliot Spitzer, and Uber taxi when we come back. 800-345-5639. This is Bob Zadek, the leading libertarian talk radio show in the Bay Area and around the country. Please do not go away. George Zimmerman, Elliot Spitzer, Lance Armstrong, Uber taxi when we come back.
[Break]
The George Zimmerman Verdict [53:23]
Bob Zadek: Welcome back to the Bob Zadek Show. I’m your host, Bob Zadek, every Sunday at noon at News Talk 910. Thanks so much for listening. We are the leading libertarian talk radio show in the Bay Area, the only live libertarian show on all weekend. Thanks so much for listening. 800-345-5639 is the way to join the conversation. All views are welcome. We are the show of ideas, not attitude. The show of stuff, intense stuff, not fluff.
Every once in a while, I prepare for the show, I’m on my way in, thoughts occur to me as I drive to the station, and I have to have what I guess can be called, to borrow a concept from Kmart, unadvertised specials. And since the George Zimmerman murder trial, manslaughter trial, was so much in the news and the verdict in Sanford, Florida was handed down yesterday and George Zimmerman was found to be not guilty of manslaughter, the jury accepted his defense of self-defense and acquitted him on all charges. And there’s been a lot in the media about that, and I just felt compelled to spend a few minutes talking about the lessons and the bigger picture of the George Zimmerman trial. 800-345-5639 if you wish to join the conversation.
The facts are all well known to us all. George Zimmerman killed—that’s not disputed—Trayvon Martin, a black young man. George Zimmerman was a volunteer neighborhood watch, was carrying a gun. He claimed that he approached Trayvon Martin, an altercation occurred, according to his side of the story Trayvon Martin attacked him, and he shot Trayvon Martin in self-defense. The prosecutor in the case, after the killing—I won’t say murder because murder is a legal conclusion and killing is a fact—after the killing, the local prosecutor did what local prosecutors are supposed to do. He interviewed George Zimmerman, he spoke to witnesses, I presume, he did his prosecutorial thing and concluded there was no reason in his opinion to bring charges against George Zimmerman, and he was going to let it go as that.
The media and the prosecutor-in-chief, President Obama, then started to become involved, and because of intense national pressure, 46 days after the killing occurred, the prosecutor then felt compelled to go forward and to bring charges against George Zimmerman, and he did. And a jury was convened. George Zimmerman’s defense was self-defense. The jury, six white women, heard all the evidence, deliberated for a day and a half, and concluded he was innocent.
And now, as an aftermath, the NAACP has publicly urged the Department of Justice, the federal agency of course, Department of Justice of the federal government, to bring civil rights violation charges against George Zimmerman. There are so many issues that appear from that recitation of facts. First of all, the fact that this became quote “about race.” It’s not quote “about race.” The “about race” in large part was based upon a statement that it was claimed, and I don’t—I presume it was true, that George Zimmerman used the N-word in a communication with the dispatchers or with somebody, which indicated a racial bias. Well, the fact that a private person harbors privately offensive points of view is hardly newsworthy and sort of “who cares” in the public policy sense.
But there’s no—this was not about a community being racist. There was no allegation so far that race entered into the very private deliberations of the jury. So what is there in this case that makes it anything more than yet another highly regretful killing of one person by another where a trial, where apparently there’s no claim the trial was anything other than fair and in compliance with applicable law? Under a fair trial, the prosecutor failed to persuade the jury that the defendant was guilty of murder and was not exercising self-defense. This was just a trial, a criminal trial in a small town in Florida where the jury rendered its verdict. And how this can capture so much attention and how organizations like the NAACP can immediately, immediately, just because of a killing where there was a fair trial, to in effect want Zimmerman to be retried at the federal level in another city is—it offends so much of what I believe in.
First of all, I find the use of civil rights violations to second-guess local—the state and local enforcement of their laws, to second-guess it and in effect create a manner of double jeopardy. Now, it’s not legal double jeopardy, and I’ll explain double jeopardy, but to create something which smacks of double jeopardy is highly offensive to me. Double jeopardy is a concept that has been around long before we had our country. And double jeopardy is a concept that basically says a criminal defendant cannot be tried twice for the same crime. Just cannot be. It’s absolute. Even though there may be new evidence, you cannot be tried twice for the same crime.
Now, in the use of civil rights laws, the claim is that when the Department of Justice brings, if they do, and I doubt that they will, but if they bring civil rights charges against George Zimmerman, they are not claiming murder. He’s not being tried for murder; he’s being tried for violation or depriving Trayvon Martin of his civil rights, that is his right to be alive. Well, of course, that’s a different statute. It’s not a murder statute; it’s a civil rights statute. But it is in effect the federal government saying it’s a do-over, that we simply reject that local law enforcement gave the population a fair shake in the Trayvon Martin or the George Zimmerman trial, and we’re going to do it again. It offends my sense of federalism. I just abhor the whole concept that the federal government gets to retry a fair trial at the state level.
The civil rights use of civil rights statutes may have been, although I doubt it, may have been essential during an uglier period in American history with the Jim Crow laws and all of those abuses. It may have been needed then, but that was then and this is now. And we no longer need the federal government once again imposing a federal system of criminal law as an overlay over a state system. In our country, states have been charged with the responsibility of protecting the public. Historically in our Constitution, there were three and only three federal crimes. Only three. For five silver dollars, can anybody out there name the three federal crimes specifically provided for in the Constitution? There were only three. What were they? But certainly there was no federal murder statute. Now in effect, the civil rights laws are such a statute. And I find the whole intrusion of the federal government, and especially Obama’s intrusion into the local criminal justice system, to be contrary to how our country is supposed to and was designed to operate. And I hope against hope that the Department of Justice does not retry George Zimmerman.
And what’s also interesting, and then we’ll go on, there are other figures in the news we have to talk about, but another aspect of the Zimmerman trial is how the public through the media is brought into the trial and the public every day is deciding he should be convicted, he should not be convicted, he’s guilty, he’s innocent. No one in the public, no matter how much you are glued to the TV set, can make an informed decision on the guilt or innocence in the legal sense of any defendant in a criminal trial. The jurors are the only ones who are competent to do that. They sit there every day for six or seven hours, and they look at witnesses, they make decisions as to credibility of the witnesses, they decide—that is our system. And while we with all of our own biases sit there and say he should be convicted, or he didn’t do it, or leave him alone, those are not informed decisions and are frankly not relevant to and cannot be used to second-guess a jury who sits there and hears all the evidence and gets to evaluate the witnesses. 800-345-5639. Even disagreements are welcome.
Spitzer and Weiner’s Political Returns [65:16]
Bob Zadek: Another personality entered the news this week and also raised lots of interesting policy issues. We are reliving 1791, or we relived it this past week. I’ll introduce this topic with the Elliot Spitzer clip. Raymond, can we have the Elliot Spitzer clip?
Elliot Spitzer (Clip): I am resigning from the office of Governor. At Lieutenant Governor Paterson’s request, the resignation will be effective Monday, March 17, a date that he believes will permit an orderly transition.
Bob Zadek: Elliot Spitzer, Governor of New York, mentioned as a credible candidate for president, resigned from office because he was caught patronizing prostitutes. The leading—he was at the time the leading law enforcement official in the state of New York, the Attorney General. He patronized prostitutes, got nailed, he resigned. He then set about being a political pundit, trying to make peace with his family, and now he has this past week announced he’s the candidate for New York City Comptroller. He wants to go back into public life. And what’s interesting is he is running in New York City in the same city where Weiner—remember him?—he sent lewd pictures of himself on the internet to very young girls. He was disgraced, resigned from Congress, hid for a few years, made a bunch of money, and now he wants to be mayor. So we have this fairly bizarre campaign where Weiner is running for mayor and he was guilty of offensive sexual behavior, and Elliot Spitzer is running in the same city for Comptroller and he is guilty of offensive sexual behavior.
And the question is how much does this matter? If you were voting for—in the New York City Comptroller’s race and there was another—and there will be—another candidate for Comptroller, or the candidates for mayor, assuming, assuming—and I’m not saying this is true, I’m posing the hypothetical—assuming these candidates with very bizarre sexual proclivities, assuming these candidates are otherwise credible candidates for the office they’re running for, how relevant is their extracurricular sexual behavior? How relevant is that to your vote for office?
And I’m reminded when Spitzer announced that he was going to run for Comptroller, I thought back to sexual scandals in American history. And I remember reading about our first, probably our first sexual scandal as a country. 1791. Alexander Hamilton, perhaps the second most powerful politician in our very young country—our country was three years old. Alexander Hamilton, who was George Washington’s Secretary of the Treasury, had an affair with Maria Reynolds. She seduced him. She was married, he knew she was married. She claimed her husband was abusing her and she needed help, and Alexander Hamilton had an affair with her. It’s probably the case that her husband knew all along. Her husband started blackmailing Alexander Hamilton. He paid the blackmail. It then—the affair came out, the payment of the blackmail came out, and in 1796 Hamilton ended up publishing a very long, very long public apology, including publishing all of the love letters he wrote with Maria Reynolds. And he explained that while it was terrible behavior and he apologized and he was ashamed, that he did not violate—otherwise violate the public trust. There was an accusation that he used public money to pay the bribes, to pay the blackmail, but he didn’t. That was never really seriously. And as a postscript, remember Aaron Burr? Aaron Burr killed Hamilton in a duel on the cliffs of Weehawken, New Jersey in 1803, I believe. Aaron Burr, as a little side note on history, was Maria Reynolds’ divorce lawyer. Little aside there.
So I thought back to the history of sexual misbehavior in American politics, and I wondered how important is it? Is the private life of our elected officials—in making a decision, is it a joke? Is it silly for Elliot Spitzer and Anthony Weiner to run for office? Should they not be doing that? And if they should be doing it, if it’s okay, how much should voters consider that behavior, sexual behavior in and of itself, as relevant? And how relevant would you consider it to be if you were voting in the New York City election?
I don’t know that it’s all that important directly, but it does raise an interesting issue. We will see how much the public—because Spitzer is a credible candidate for Comptroller on the merits in terms of—he’s intelligent, he understands how government works, he’s aggressive, if that’s an important quality. So he brings a lot to the table. On the other hand, what a jerk. What an incredible jerk. Does he—and the last question is, there’s a statement in the media that when people are voting, he doesn’t deserve the office. But when voting for somebody, you’re not giving them an award; you’re hiring them to do a job. And it may be that all things considered, this is the best person to hire. After all, didn’t America in the aftermath of World War II hire a lot of known Nazi scientists to work on the American atom bomb and related programs in order to defeat the Russians in the Cold War that followed World War II? And that was acceptable policy at the time. So that America in the aftermath of World War II hired people with very serious problems in their background, pretty gosh darn offensive people, but America hired them because there was a role for them to play towards the greater good of America. And does that analogy even apply to Elliot Spitzer and to Anthony Weiner? Food for thought.
Performance-Enhancing Drugs in Sports [73:35]
Bob Zadek: Doping in sports was in the news again this week. Major League Baseball has hired, of all things, Hillary Clinton’s former head of Secret Service, that is a guy named Sullivan, a pretty high-up guy. Major League Baseball has hired this former Secret Service guy to poke around and make sure that Major League Baseball players are not using steroids. When I read that this past week, I couldn’t help but moan. America and professional sports are nuts about doping in sports, so-called performance-enhancing drugs.
Performance-enhancing drugs was, I think, the second or third show that I did about four years ago, and I haven’t discussed it since. And I felt strongly about it then, and I feel strongly about it now. What is the fuss about performance-enhancing drugs? It should be, in my opinion, totally legal for professional athletes and anybody else to put anything in their body and to do anything to their body that they want. After all, it is their body. I can find, try as I might, to see other sides of an issue. I cannot find anything that makes performance-enhancing drugs bad and why they should be criminalized as they are, why Congress should hold hearings. And the public feels so strongly, at least some of the public, about performance-enhancing drugs. Raymond, we have a clip about some commentary when Lance Armstrong was finally—it came out that he was using performance-enhancing drugs, just to show you the vehemence of people about performance-enhancing drugs. Raymond, can we play the Lance Armstrong clip?
Commentator (Clip): Armstrong was a disgraceful fraud of epic proportions. A man who juiced himself with illegal drugs, then bullied his teammates to do the same to ensure they could help him win big events.
Bob Zadek: He was a criminal according to—or he was a criminal because he broke the law, but what he did was in the eyes of many people so wrong. What in the world did he do? What did Barry Bonds do that was so wrong? What has A-Rod—if A-Rod has taken drugs, what is wrong about steroids? This country has lost its mind when it comes to performance-enhancing drugs. And the history: forever athletes have used performance-enhancing drugs in one form or another. And then in 1976, the International Olympic Committee decided to ban steroids. Then in 1987, the NFL started testing for steroids. And then it all started, it all turned to garbage in 1988 when Congress passes something called the Anti-Drug Abuse Act. And while it was basically dealt with narcotic drugs and hard drugs like heroin and the like, there was a bit of a throwaway where they tossed into this Anti-Drug Abuse Act bill, they threw in that the use of steroids was a crime. And then in 1990, steroids became again a controlled substance.
What’s wrong with it? Why is it wrong for athletes to use performance-enhancing drugs? Why not criminalize training and saying athletes are not allowed to train? It’s not cheating; it’s only cheating when you criminalize it. But if you don’t criminalize it, then there’s nothing wrong with it. So the question is why did it ever become wrong? What if you tell athletes they are allowed to use performance-enhancing drugs? Every athlete will make a decision what to do with his or her own body. And I, for the life of me, I can’t understand why we have a thing about an athlete trying to outperform the competition by taking drugs. Why not criminalize training? Why not saying you have to eat bad food and you can’t eat vitamins and you can’t take painkillers and you can’t put your arm in a cast to get better because that’s performance-enhancing? The whole thing is nuts to me. And what has become of professional sports when now there are urine tests and saliva tests and this kind of test and that kind of test? And why are athletes’ careers ruined because they want so much to win that they take drugs? Ah, I thought we’d have a caller. Robert in San Jose. What’s your problem with performance-enhancing drugs, or do you, God forbid, agree with me? Robert, are you there?
Caller (Robert): Yes.
Bob Zadek: How can I help you this afternoon?
Caller (Robert): Performance-enhancing drugs for athletes is fine, it’s—I’m a libertarian, it’s your choice. But in an organized sport, we have rules. We have sidelines on the football field, we have a limit of three strikes and you’re out in baseball. So if they agree to that, then they have to follow the rules.
Bob Zadek: I agree with you. Baseball can make its own rules. My question, Robert, is one notch down: why should there be that rule? You as an observer of sports, as a customer of the sport, are you harmed or helped by performance-enhancing drugs? Is the sport better or worse because of the drugs?
Caller (Robert): I just don’t like that to be a variable in the case as an observer, as a sports fan, okay?
Bob Zadek: But what about taking vitamins? That’s a variable.
Caller (Robert): And they evidently set a rule that says that’s okay.
Bob Zadek: Okay. Robert, thank you so much for the call. My point is that people are free to do with their body exactly what they wish. And this country has gone crazy with the criminalization of performance-enhancing drugs, which hurt nobody except for the athlete who takes it. And people are allowed to do dangerous things with their body. The very playing of some professional sports is per se dangerous. Indeed, being a ballerina is per se dangerous. It is very bad for your body. But people do it because the benefits are offset by the psychic or physical or economic benefits. I say decriminalize all of the performance-enhancing drugs, let the records fall by the wayside, there is nothing unfair or wrong about it. That is a libertarian’s view of sports. There is nothing wrong with people doing things to their body.
Bob Zadek, thanking you for listening for the past 90 minutes. I’ve had a real good time, hope you have as well. I’ll be back next Sunday. 800-345-5639. Thanks so much for listening and enjoy the rest of your Sunday.