Dreamin' California

Victor Davis Hanson gives us a quick run down on what California needs to do to bring itself back from the doldrums of progressive governance: The Remains of a California Day

After all, in no particular order, we would have to close the borders; adopt English immersion in our schools; give up on the salad bowl and return to the melting pot; assimilate, intermarry, and integrate legal immigrants; curb entitlements and use the money to fix infrastructure like roads, bridges, airports, trains, etc.; build 4-5 new damns to store water in wet years; update the canal system; return to old policies barring public employee unions; redo pension contracts; cut about 50,000 from the public employee roles; lower income taxes from 10% to 5% to attract businesses back; cut sales taxes to 7%; curb regulations to allow firms to stay; override court orders now curbing cost-saving options in our prisons by systematic legislation; start creating material wealth from our forests; tap more oil, timber, natural gas, and minerals that we have in abundance; deliver water to the farmland we have; build 3-4 nuclear power plants on the coast; adopt a traditional curriculum in our schools; insist on merit pay for teachers; abolish tenure; encourage not oppose more charter schools, vouchers, and home schooling; give tax breaks to private trade and business schools; reinstitute admission requirements and selectivity at the state university system; take unregistered cars off the road; make UC professors teach a class or two more each year; abolish all racial quotas and preferences in reality rather than in name; build a new all weather east-west state freeway over the Sierra; and on and on.

That's it?? No problem!

Did You Know...

...That the Catholic Church is funding Adult Stem Cell research? The Anchoress has the scoop: Vatican Funding Stem Cell Research

If you are surprised to learn that, it might be because you have trusted the mainstream press when it has told you -mostly based on their own distorted reporting- that “Christians -especially Catholics- hate science and would send us back to the Bronze Age.” The press -and more than a few politicians- like to pretend that faith and reason cannot co-exist, or that science is anathema to the church.

It takes only a search engine and a few minutes of one’s time to learn that nothing can be further from the truth, or to discover the names of great Christian scientists who go mostly unsung. Why would the mainstream media prefer to generate an ignorant and erroneous conventional wisdom over the simple truth? Aw, you guess.

Funny, when was the last time you heard anyone talk about the wonders of embryonic stem cell research? Remember when John Edwards said that Christopher Reeve would have been able to walk again, if only (heavy sigh) George Bush hadn't "banned" (f*** you, Edwards, there was never any ban) stem cell research? Now that Bush is out of office and safely caricatured as a religious zealot, no one seems eager to bring about our stillborn age of miracles and wonders.

Up The River

Sarah Palin is in Tennessee this week speaking to a small, powerful audience: the jury hearing the criminal case against the college student (and son of a Democratic lawmaker. Imagine that!) who hacked into Palin's emails during the '08 campaign. Sarah Palin Testifies In Hacker Trial

Sarah Palin testified Friday about the disruption and hurt caused when her e-mail account was hacked during the 2008 presidential campaign and said outside court that there should be consequences for what happened.

She declined to say if she thinks conviction of the 22-year-old defendant should lead to prison or if community service would be punishment enough. “That’s up to the judge,” she said when she stopped to talk to reporters outside the courthouse.

Former University of Tennessee student David Kernell, the 22-year-old son of a Democratic state lawmaker, is charged with hacking the Yahoo! e-mail account as Palin campaigned in 2008 as the Republican vice presidential candidate.

The hacker is facing some serious jailtime, although his attorney is seeking mitigation based on the well known "prank doctrine:"

Kernell faces up to 50 years in federal prison if convicted of identity theft, mail fraud and two other felony charges. His lawyer has said the case is a prank and Kernell had no criminal intent.

OK, so 50 years is a little ridiculous, but I don't think a little jail time would hurt. If Kernell had stolen Palin's mail that would be easy to understand as being a crime. I don't think there's much of a conceptual difference between that and breaking into Palin's email account. And, no matter how much people would like to believe otherwise, public figures deserve some private space. Anyway, I'm tired of progressive twerps like Kernell who think they can make the lives of GOP figures miserable because Republicans are evil.

Palin, for her part, received star treatment

As Palin walked to the witness stand, some jurors smiled at her. The first question from Assistant U.S. Attorney Greg Weddle was, “May I call you Governor Palin?”

The former Alaska governor smiled almost constantly through 30 minutes of testimony as she told jurors about the disruption the hacking caused for her family and close friends when their e-mails and phone numbers were publicized on the Internet.

Kid, you are going down.

Financial Reform School

Arnold Kling critiques the financial reform package presently wending its way to its inevitable fate. As you might guess, despite its 1,300 page length there's a lot that's missing: What I Think of Financial Reform

1. No exit strategy from government support for subsidized, lenient mortgage credit. No curbs on Freddie and Fannie, whose market share has skyrocketed in the past year and a half. No increase in down payment requirements for FHA, which is in deep doo-doo.

2. No change to the role of credit rating agencies, as far as I know. It seems to me that one thing that everyone, left and right, can agree on is that the regulators outsourced their function to the credit rating agencies, and this worked out badly. As far as I know, the bill does not correct this flaw. Perhaps it tries to, but other provisions have gotten more attention.

3. Nothing to address the issue of "cognitive capture." The regulators will still get their analysis of the financial sector from the CEO's of the largest banks.

For me, the big hole is the complete absence of any reform of Fannie and Freddie. They are simply left in their present ambiguous position: they remain "private" companies (with their attendant high salaries and perks), yet their liabilities are being back stopped by the government to the tune of $400 billion and counting. Maybe the private/public dichotomy helps company executives sleep at night, along with their naive belief that they are providing "affordable housing," but the fact is that these are now government agencies in all but name. The government is running an off-the-books progressive housing policy that continues the basic abuses that led to the financial crisis in the first place, yet everyone who matters seems content to stand around pretending there is nothing wrong.. I don't know, seems like something the congressional Republicans could complain about, but mostly I'm hearing crickets chirping.

Kling is also critical of the very idea of a consumer financial protection agency on the ground that the abuses in the mortgage industry were a net benefit to consumers:

I have to rant about the notion of a consumer financial protection agency. I know that it's axiomatic that poor people are helpless victims. But in the case of these mortgages, that is a really hard sell. The banks did not take from poor people. They gave to poor people. If you were lucky enough to get one of these exotic mortgages when house prices were still going up, then you got to reap a nice profit on your house. If you were not so lucky, you lost...close to nothing. I'm sorry, but if you borrowed up to 100 percent of the value of the house or more, then all you really lost were your moving expenses.

What about predatory lending? As I understand it, the idea of predatory lending is to saddle the borrower with an expensive mortgage so that you can foreclose on the property and sell it at a profit. How many times did that happen? Have you read of a single instance in the past three years where the bank made a profit on a foreclosure?

All too true, but I don't think it's out of bounds to suggest that the government police consumer lending more energetically. For one thing, if you have banks making loans to people whom they know will have a difficult time paying them back, that should be troubling. The folks who were sold exotic mortgages often had no idea what they were getting. Then, when they realized they couldn't make their payments, many went through months of financial and personal travails trying to hold it all together. The social and personal damage this has caused is obvious and not something that can just be brushed off (although I agree that "predatory lending" is one of those amorphous BS evils beloved of hack screenwriters and hustling progressives).

Look, after mortgages, the most complicated loans people enter into are probably the ones they take out to buy cars. Auto loan documents are long and filled with legalese, yet they are also put together in a way that is at least cognizable. And there isn't any great mystery about their contents. When was the last time you heard of wide-spread abuse of auto loans? Why can't you have the same basic level of comprehension for mortgage docs? And, don't even get me started on credit card "agreements" that (1) are incomprehensible (2) written by the lender to favor the lender in all possible situations and (3) which the borrower often doesn't see until after he's entered into them. No, I think there's a lot of legitimate work for a consumer financial protection agency to do without tripping over legitimate areas of the free market.

Of course, being a racist hater, I need to point out that the reform bill does nothing to resolve the "Too Big To Fail" problem. Just ask the Tea Partiers over at ... NPR: Experts say Bills Won't End Too Big To Fail

We at Planet Money did an informal survey of economists and regulatory experts on the left and the right. We couldn't find any who fully endorse the reforms backed by President Obama and Democrats in Congress.

Everyone thinks the reforms just aren't enough to solve the problem.

Take, for example, "too big to fail" -- the idea that if one of the largest banks in the country gets into trouble, the government will save it with taxpayer money.

"A vote for reform is a vote to put a stop to taxpayer-funded bailouts," Obama said in his speech in New York on Thursday.

I cannot find any experts -- of any party -- who are willing to agree with Obama on this one.

"We're not seeing a very forceful step on the too-big-to-fail problem," said Carmen Reinhart, an economist at the University of Maryland. "If there's any doubt that the crisis may be systemic, we will bail out again."

So, if a major bank says, "Hey, save us or the economy will go under," the government's going to save the bank. Full stop.

Groan.

Taking A Constitutional

Tyler Cowan's proposes some changes to the California Constitution, which he notes is the third longest constitution in the world (India and Alabama (?!) are the champs). I have to say there is no great popular groundswell for a new constitution, but it's still fun to play James Madison. Here's Cowan's partial list: Should California Have A New Constitution?

1. Eliminate the 2/3 legislative majority required to pass a new budget.

2. Eliminate popular referenda.

3. Move closer to a Swiss-like "veto only" system for referenda.

4. Eliminate the power of referenda to authorize state-level expenditures.

5. Cap state-level expenditures.

6. Regulate state treatment of pensions more strictly, to encourage fiscal responsibility.

7. Amend the constitution to make it harder to...amend the constitution.

Cowan also links to an OK essay by Joseph Palermo that has other proposals, including one that had never occurred to me as a good idea. California Needs A New Constitution

1. Double the number of State Assembly members and State Senators

2. End the term limit requirement

3. End the "supermajority" rule that gives the far-right minority veto power over the state's budget

4. End all state tax exemptions for extractive industries (especially oil) and big agribusiness

5. Triple the number of signatures needed for propositions or recalls and forbid any group or organization from paying people to acquire signatures.

6. Place strict limits on out-of-state money coming into California to influence elections and impose even stricter spending caps on all political money spent in Sacramento either on lobbying or campaign contributions.

Now most of that list (limits on campaign donations, ending tax exemptions for Big Oil, repeal the "right wing" 2/3 vote, end term limits) is straight from the same progressive mind set that brought California to its present sorry shape. But, his idea of doubling the number of state representatives is actually a good one. As Palermo points out, the current set up provides for 80 representatives and 40 senators. These guys represent more people per head than members of Congress.

And Free Will kicked around a few constitutional changes last year. Like Cowan and Palmero, I am also in favor of reforming the initiative process, which is something that has simply lost its credibility with the voters: The Spirit Of 1851

3. end the use of propositions to pass bonds and spending measures. Those are properly the subject of our representatives. Let them vote on this stuff.

4. Make it a lot harder to get propositions on the ballot. No more legislative propositions, for one thing. And increase the signature requirement for petitions to 2 million. Any proposition that passes can be voided by the legislature. Any proposition requiring any public expenditures must contain sunset clauses.

Having had some time to think about this some more, I would add these to my list of proposed changes to the constitution (check my previous constitution post for more).

1. Repeal Prop. 98, which sets a constitutional standard for K-12 education spending, and is a real budgetary straight jacket.

2. no collective bargaining for public sector unions

3. Strengthen property rights and take other steps that can open up the housing market and lower housing costs. That means: declaring rent control unconstitutional, no more open space laws, increase the burden on local governments to adopt restrictive zoning laws.

All of this is fun, but people have to understand that there is no great popular groundswell for a new constitutional convention. And, as Cowan notes, any such convention could easily become a staging ground for the sort of special interest pleading that has swelled California's budget to the breaking point. Worse, a new constitution would still leave us with the same state representatives and voting blocs that have gotten California to where it is today. Sadly, there is no constitutional amendment that can save people from their foolish choices.

Hey, Ya'll, It's Basketball

The Golden State Warriors sale is going forward full-speed with a dozen bidders competing for the Bay Area's beloved yet benighted pro basketball team. Larry Ellison would seem to have the inside track thanks to $$ and enthusiasm, but there are other credible bidders out there as well: Tip-Off Time For Warriors Bidding Frenzy

With a dozen bidders - including billionaire Larry Ellison - signaling interest in the Golden State Warriors, the team could fetch owner Chris Cohan more than $400 million, according to those close to the sale negotiations.

In addition to the Man from Oracle, Mark Mastrov, founder of 24 Hour Fitness, based in San Ramon, has also expressed interest. Mastrov tells us he might eventually even bring some of his sports pals like Lance Armstrong, Shaquille O'Neal and Magic Johnson into the deal.

A group of Silicon Valley investors that includes Riverwood Capital executive Michael Marks and Silver Lake equity co-founder Jim Davidson - which bought a 20 percent stake in the Warriors when Cohan ran into tax troubles - is expected to be in the hunt as well. Neither Marks nor Davidson returned our calls seeking comment.

Another basketball-loving Silicon Valley exec, who asked that we not publish his name, has also been privately mentioned as a possible suitor.

The linked article also notes that present owner Chris Cohan is facing increases in the capital gains tax next year and the year after, so the clock is ticking. Chris Cohan forced to sell the Warriors because of increasing taxes? Now that's some Hope and Change I can get behind!

A lot of people are hoping that a sale will not only help the team improve, but will also provide the impetus for the team to move back to San Francisco, where it was based the last time it won a championship. Much as I would love that, it would be the final insult to the team's East Bay fan base, which has stuck with the team through thin and thick. Anyway, Oracle Arena isn't that far away that SF fans have to face insurmountable obstacles to attend a home game. Of course, if Larry Ellison is willing to shell out some Jerry Jones bucks to build a state-of-the-art arena, all bets are off.

The Establishment

Tyler Cowan has a fantastic post in response to the theory - advanced in many corners on the Left and Right - that Goldman Sachs and other Too Big To Fail banks exercise outsize power in the US government. Uh, yeah, GS is so powerful they just got sued by the SEC in a maneuver widely viewed as a coordinated political attack on the finance industry by the feds: Do Big Banks Control Our Government?

There's a different way to think about the bailouts, namely that the U.S. government stands at the center of a giant nexus of money raising, most of all to finance the U.S. government budget deficit and keep the whole show up and running. The perception at least is that our country requires the dollar as a reserve currency, requires New York City as a major banking center with major banks, and requires fully credible governmental guarantees behind every Treasury auction and requires liquid financial markets more generally. Furthermore the international trade presence of the United States (supposedly) requires the federal government to strongly ally with major commercial interests, just as our government sides with Hollywood in trade and intellectual property disputes. To abandon banks is to send a broader message that we are in commercial and political decline and disarray, and that is hardly an acceptable way to proceed, at least not according to the standards of the real Washington consensus.

In other words, it's our government deciding to assemble a cooperative ruling coalition - which includes banks -- at the heart of its fiscal core. It's our government deciding who belongs to this coalition and who does not, mostly for reasons of political expediency and also a perception - correct or not -- of what is best for the welfare of American voters. If we don't in this year "get tough" with banking regulation, it's because our government itself doesn't want to, not because of some stubborn recalcitrant Republicans.

That's something that very few people understand. But, it's key to understanding why the bailouts were passed with overwhelming support from mainstream Democrats and moderate Republicans (and against overwhelming opposition from conservatives, progressives, and - d'oh! - the American public). If you are in favor of Big Government, then you need the big banks to help fund it. Even if you are a Hollywood-approved liberal who likes to talk tough about "corporations," the fact is that it was these people - the Party of the Common Man and not the Party of Big Business - that approved the bailouts.

For all their talk about "protecting Main Street," the bigger concern was protecting Pennsylvania Avenue.

The Rainbow Disconnection

You have to love this. Obama was down in LA for a fund raiser, where he was heckled by a group of gay rights protesters who find the One has been too slow to repeal "Don't Ask/Don't Tell." Gay Rights Protesters Disrupt Obama Event With Boxer

Gay-rights protesters — angered by President Obama's failure to repeal the Pentagon policy that bars out-of-the-closet gays from serving in the military — repeatedly disrupted a fund-raising event where the president was appearing. Tonight's Los Angeles event was designed to raise campaign cash for Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, a leading critic of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy.
several protesters among the crowd interrupted POTUS' speech, expressing anger over the slow progress on repealing the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gay service members. The crowd tried to hush them. "What about 'don't ask, don't tell'?" one protester shouted.

POTUS yelled back "we are going to do that."

POTUS kept talking, increasing his volume to speak over the protesters. The crowd then erupted into chants of "Yes, we can."

He later said, "we are going to repeal 'don't ask, don't tell.'"

Your pooler has learned the protesters are from GetEQUAL, a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender group that also orchestrated protests outside the fundraiser. The group was also behind a protest last month at the White House, where activists Lt. Dan Choi and Capt. James Pietrangelo handcuffed themselves to a gate.

Honestly, these clowns all deserve one another. DADT is hardly the most important issue in the world, no matter how much the Left might want to decry the injustice of it all. But, the Left is all about identity politics and DADT is one of the few areas in public life where liberal politicians can get some cheap applause about fighting discrimination. The best part: applause is all they want. No one actually wants to be the one to lead the repeal of DADT. That is was a policy put in place by a Democratic congress and president, and apparently will remain in place despite there being another Democratic congress and president makes Obama's discomforture all the more entertaining.

It's Too Late, Baby, pt 2

According to the NY Times, when government requires insurers to cover all comers, regardless of their medical condition, the cost of premiums will skyrocket. Which of the 50 laboratories of democracy has endured this phenomenon? New York State! And The Times is just now getting around to learning this? New York an Insurance Lab On Skyrocketing Rates

New York’s insurance system has been a working laboratory for the core provision of the new federal health care law — insurance even for those who are already sick and facing huge medical bills — and an expensive lesson in unplanned consequences. Premiums for individual and small group policies have risen so high that state officials and patients’ advocates say that New York’s extensive insurance safety net for people like Ms. Welles is falling apart.

The problem stems in part from the state’s high medical costs and in part from its stringent requirements for insurance companies in the individual and small group market. In 1993, motivated by stories of suffering AIDSpatients, the state became one of the first to require insurers to extend individual or small group coverage to anyone with pre-existing illnesses.

New York also became one of the few states that require insurers within each region of the state to charge the same rates for the same benefits, regardless of whether people are old or young, male or female, smokers or nonsmokers, high risk or low risk.

The Times then makes a point last heard coming from the racist hateful mouths of talk radio, Tea Party attendants and right-wing blogs: the healthy people stop paying premiums, thus driving up costs even more! Whodathunk it? It sure would have been nice if this had been part of the public debate prior to the passage of Obamacare:

Healthy people, in effect, began to subsidize people who needed more health care. The healthier customers soon discovered that the high premiums were not worth it and dropped out of the plans. The pool of insured people shrank to the point where many of them had high health care needs. Without healthier people to spread the risk, their premiums skyrocketed, a phenomenon known in the trade as the “adverse selection death spiral.”

I love the term "adverse selection death spiral."As if a phenomenon doesn't exist unless it has some bloodless term for wonks to use.

“You have a mandate that’s accessible in theory, but not in practice, because it’s too expensive,” said Mark P. Scherzer, a consumer lawyer and counsel to New Yorkers for Accessible Health Coverage, an advocacy group. “What you get left clinging to the life raft is the population that tends to have pretty high health needs.”

Since 2001, the number of people who bought comprehensive individual policies through HMOs in New York has plummeted to about 31,000 from about 128,000, according to the State Insurance Department.

At the same time, New York has the highest average annual premiums for individual policies: $6,630 for single people and $13,296 for families in mid-2009, more than double the nationwide average, according to America’s Health Insurance Plans, an industry group.

The high school graduates attending tea parties understand all of this instinctively. The Ivy League Dems who have been pushing health care reform know it too. They run the damn government in New York! (not to mention, many of them live there). Yet, they - along with their media enablers - were happy to ignore these inconvenient facts until after Obamacare passed. Thanks a lot for nothing.

It's Too Late, Baby

You might want to sit down for this. The San Francisco Chronicle has discovered that Obamacare is being paid for (although the money isn't there...) by, among other things, massive cuts in Medicare and Medicare Advantage. This has some retired people in a panic. And, naturally, the cuts are expected to hit worst in California: Medicare Cuts Have More In California On Edge

About half the funds to pay for the nation's new $940 billion health law will come from reduced federal government spending on the Medicare program - and, although it's too early to gauge the impact on the 45 million Medicare beneficiaries, the idea is creating anxiety among many of them.

Much of the worry - from both supporters and critics of the health insurance overhaul - centers on the government's plans to cut payments for Medicare managed-care policies called Medicare Advantage. These plans, offered through private companies, cover 1.5 million Californians and just over 10 million nationwide.

"I'm concerned about what changes in services might occur. I'm also concerned about the rise in premiums because I'm on a real fixed income," said Ralph Miller, 69, of Vallejo, a longtime Kaiser member who favors the new law. "I'm just worried about what kind of impact it's going to have on my bottom line."

Jed Christensen, 75, of Napa who describes himself as a conservative Republican, said he expects his health care costs to go up. "We're not getting the answers. I'd like to know so we can budget for this."

The new law proposes $136 billion in cuts to Medicare Advantage over the next decade. The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services started the process this month by announcing plans to freeze Medicare Advantage reimbursements to insurers for 2011 at this year's rates.

The cuts could have a disproportionate impact in California because a greater percentage of the Californians on Medicare - 34 percent compared with the national average of 23 percent - choose Medicare Advantage policies because of the state's long history and familiarity with health maintenance organizations, or HMOs, like Kaiser Permanente.

(sarcasm on) Way to stay current on the news, Chron. (sarcasm off). When Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, and many others pointed this out, they were castigated as uninformed haters. They also managed to learn the above before the bill was passed, incredibly enough. The Chron like virtually all MSM outlets saw no reason to discuss the substance of the bill before its passage, preferring instead to focus on procedural nonsense and burble occasionally about "history." Thanks a-freakin'-lot for keeping the public well informed with "important" stories like how black congressmen made a brave stand for civil rights by making up stories about racial slurs.

This is not to say Medicare cuts should not have been part of health care reform of some sort. The Medicare system is unsustainable, after all. Conservatives have demanded such cuts practically since the program was started. But, Obama's cuts are not being used to cut spending, but only to partially fund an even more unsustainable entitlement! (Gah!) Plus, they are coming all at once, and will affect seniors who pretty much planned their retirements around the promise that Medicare would be available. If they're going to be better off with Obamacare, no one seems to be out there reassuring them. Not too compassionate, if you ask me.

The worst, though, is that there was virtually no public discussion or debate of this outside of talk radio and the conservative blogosphere. It's just one of many things now being presented as a fait accompli now that "we" have been able to read the bill and see all of the wonderful things contained therein. Nice of the press to help time the flow of information, so as to not disturb the progress of "history."

How To Bust a Union

We've all heard of teachers going on strike, but when was the last time you heard of parents going on strike against the teachers? It's going on right now in Oakland: Parents Protest Oakland District Teacher

A group of Oakland parents, frustrated by a nearly two-year battle to remove a reportedly abusive teacher, went on strike Thursday, pulling their children out of school and onto a picket line at the district's downtown headquarters.

Close to 80 percent of Lazear Elementary School's 300 students didn't show up for school Thursday - a loss of almost $9,000 in state funding for the day - and apparently a wake-up call for district and teachers union officials who met with the parents Thursday afternoon to try to resolve the issue.

The boycott was a last resort for the parents, who were tired of the time-consuming and egregious process of getting rid of someone they say is a bad teacher.

The teacher sounds like the teacher from hell:

In nearly two years of teaching at Lazear, the veteran third-grade teacher has repeatedly left his pupils unattended in the classroom and on the schoolyard, physically manhandled students, told children to "shut up," and at one point locked a girl in the classroom because she wasn't moving fast enough, said Olga Galavíz González, a parent organizer at the school.

Students fear him, she said.

The kids at the school mostly come from low-income, Hispanic families. The school is next to a highway (the grim I-880) and is apparently a dumping ground for lousy teachers with tenure. The principal is griping because - get this - you shouldn't be pulling kids out of school a week before standardized testing starts.

The parents, of course, have absolutely the right idea. It's no secret that the school districts and teachers unions would much rather protect bad teachers with endless "procedural steps" that must precede a firing, as opposed to protecting kids from a lousy educator. No wonder these parents were upset.

The social justice crowd demands that we follow their lead and create a more "just" society, yet they are unable to live up to their end of the bargain once social justice is achieved. Having insisted on a educational monopoly, the schools are incapable of policing itself or of getting rid of bad staff members. Instead, the adults act to protect one another, rather than the kids at the school. The result is a great injustice as kids who are already economically vulnerable are deprived of a basic education, all in the name of protecting teacher tenure. If I were one of these parents, I'd be mad too.

San Francisco Tea Party - Union Square

Baby Free Will and I went to the San Francisco Tea Party this afternoon. After 20 years of getting caught up in downtown lefty protests, it was certainly a change to attend a right wing one. Obviously, these folks were cleaner, quieter and more prosperous looking than the usual SF protest crowd. While there were some young people, most of the crowd definitely fit the Tea Party demographic: white, middle aged, solidly middle class, prone to carry funny signs.

There were some fringe types there. The Larouchites had a table, complete with pictures of Obama-with-Hitler-Mustache, which was attracting some heated debaters. I guess I could be upset, but the Larouche people had a table outside my post office for years, and that didn't make me think any worse of the mail. There were also a few punks trying to "crash the party." One dork was even wearing a black mask. Luckily they were accompanied by guys carrying signs saying "Infiltrator," so no one was the wiser.

How was the event? Well, mostly there were a lot of ordinary people making short speeches, along with semi-celebrities like Melanie Morgan. A number of the speakers were immigrants. One old fellow was from Burma and gave an impassioned speech about that benighted country's socialist leaders. There was a young woman from Venezuela (I think) who also spoke about against socialism in a speaking style derived from Sarah Palin ("These liberties which we are losing, and that we are fighting for"). Everyone spoke from the heart, but I have to say that the Left could teach these folks a thing or two about rabble rousing.

Here are a few pictures I took with my camera phone:

Plenty of flags in attendance. A rarity at SF protests!

Here's a shot of the crowd around the Dewey (as in "You may fire when ready, Gridley") Memorial. Manifest Destiny!

The Littlest Rebel

And, here's a panoramic view of the crowd at Union Square.

When I moved to SF in 1991, you had to work real hard to find any sort of Republican. Starting in 2004, people became much more vocal in their alternative lifestyle views. You began to see plenty of Bush-Cheney bumper-stickers. In 2008, Ron Paul developed quite a cult following in SF and the Bay Area. Now, you can bring a couple thousand people out to Union Square in the middle of the work week to protest Obama, Pelosi, Boxer, and the rest. If you can do that in San Francisco, I can only imagine how things are in the rest of the country.

UPDATE: linked by Dan Riehl. Thanks!

UPDATE 2: linked by Smitty at The Other McCain. Thank you!