Fox and Hounds Daily Says Goodbye
With this article, we end publication of Fox and Hounds Daily. It has been a satisfying 12½ year run. When we opened in May 2008, our site was designed to offer an opportunity to those who wished to engage in public debate on many issues, especially in politics and business, but found it difficult to get placed in newspaper op-ed pages.
Co-publishers Tom Ross, Bryan Merica and I have kept F&H going over this time investing our own time, funding, and staff help. Last year at this time we considered closing the site, however with an election on the horizon we decided to keep F&H going through the election year. With the election come and gone, and with no sense of additional resources, we have decided to close the site down.
Fox and Hounds will live on, at least, with my articles collected in the California State Library.
On a personal note, I have spent over 40 years in California policy and politics. There have been some incredible high moments and some difficult low points. It pains me that politics too often is a blood sport, frequently demonizing the motives of opponents and using the legal system as a weapon in public discourse. At Fox & Hounds, we tried to adhere to the practice of giving all a voice in the debate, yet keep the commentaries civil and avoided personal attacks.
F&H offered the opportunity to publish different perspectives (even ones that criticized my writings!). We had success as indicated by the Washington Post twice citing Fox and Hounds Daily one of the best California political websites and many other positive affirmations and comments received over the years.
Tom, Bryan and I want to thank our many readers and writers for being part of our journey. The publishers of Fox and Hounds Daily believe that we added value to California and its people. We hope you agree.
Two Terrible Ideas, One Ballot Initiative
Many ballot initiatives are built around a big, bad idea. Bob Huff and George Runner have distinguished themselves by filing a ballot initiative with two big, bad ideas.
Their innovation, and I use that term in a Hindenburg-esque way, is to combine those two bad ideas. Reversing the high-speed rail project that’s already under way, and using bond money for water storage.
And I write that as someone who has deep doubts about the way high-speed rail is being done in California, and who thinks the state needs to do better holding onto water from wet years.
The core problem is that water engineer and high-speed rail projects are complicated things that need to be done by humans, constantly tweaking and negotiating and improving, not by ballot initiative. In fact, the biggest problem facing high-speed rail, perhaps outside the Tehachapi Mountains, is that it got a good chunk of its money and many of its rules from a California ballot initiative. And California ballot initiatives are inflexible bludgeons that have a long record of doing far more unintended harm than intended good. High-speed rail needs not more rules or less money but more flexibility, so it can design and build a project that knits together the state so tightly that it’s worth building. (more…)
Contradictions in Tax Philosophy on Cigarettes and Marijuana
Isn’t there something odd about the tax arguments tied to the proposed initiatives on cigarettes and marijuana?
One of the arguments for raising taxes on cigarettes is to discourage their use. Raise the tax and fewer people will want to buy the product. Of course, some will seek cigarettes in the black market or online.
One of the arguments for legalizing marijuana is to tax it as a source of new revenues. No talk of using taxes as a disincentive here.
So the theory goes, taxing cigarettes might drive some people to the black market while legalizing and taxing marijuana would bring users into the sunshine away from illegal activity.
Because marijuana is not taxed now, legalizing it and taxing it will immediately bring in additional revenue. An increased cigarette tax will also boost revenue. (more…)
Golden Blues: Brown and the Oligarchs Love Green Energy
Good morning, California, and welcome to this week’s edition of Golden Blues. On tap today is a green boondoggle; later this week we’ll cover a blue one.
Governor Jerry Brown is in Paris working to encourage provincial leaders from other nations to sign a memorandum “promising to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2030.” Brown will predictably point to California’s recent passage of SB350, which requires California to “boost renewable energy use to 50%” over the next couple of decades, as an example of Californian “leadership” on the global climate issue.
Moreover, Brown has the support of what Joel Kotkin calls the “tech oligarchy-“ those Silicon Valley billionaires whose ascendancy has not only transformed the American economy and society, but also promises a generally liberal funding base for various social and environmental issues. Various tech oligarchs, including Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Jack Ma, and Richard Branson, have teamed up to establish the “Breakthrough Energy Coalition,” an organization committed to saving the planet by encouraging wind, solar, and hydroelectric energy development. Read: subsidies for green energy companies and favorable positions for their (expensively-generated) power in public utilities markets. (more…)
Tech Titans Want To Be Masters Of All Media We Survey
The rising tech oligarchy, having disrupted everything from hotels and taxis to banking, music and travel, is also taking over the content side of the media business. In the process, we might see the future decline of traditional media, including both news and entertainment, and a huge shift in media power away from both Hollywood and New York and toward the Bay Area and Seattle.
This shift is driven by several forces: the power of Internet-based communications, the massive amounts of money that have accumulated among the oligarchs and, perhaps most important, their growing interest in steering American politics in their preferred direction. In some cases, this is being accomplished by direct acquisition of existing media platforms, alliances with traditional firms and the subsidization of favored news outlets. But the real power of the emerging tech oligarchy lies in its control of the Internet itself, which is rapidly gaining preeminence in the flow of information.
This transition is being driven by the enormous concentration of wealth in a few hands, based mostly in metropolitan Seattle and Silicon Valley. In 2014, the media-tech sector accounted for five of the 10 wealthiest Americans. More important still, virtually all self-made billionaires under age 40 are techies. They are in a unique position to dominate discourse in America for decades to come. (more…)
Business, Taxpayer and Political Concerns Over “Secure Choice” Retirement Plan
Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal highlighted California’s move to establish required private sector retirement programs in an editorial that criticized the Obama Administration for taking steps to “socialize” the private retirement business that will end up as a long term entitlement program backed by taxpayers. As often is the case, an idea promoted out of sincere concern opens the door to both politics and the possibility of taxpayers being the insurance of last resort.
The Journal’s criticism focused on the Department of Labor issuing guidelines to allow state mandated private economy retirement programs avoiding any hang-ups with the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). Avoiding complications with ERISA laws is a principal concern of the California business community if the Secure Choice plan is ultimately implemented.
The editorial noted that, “nothing in California’s law guarantees ownership or portability. Private financial institutions will putatively insure the plans, but with an implicit taxpayer guarantee.” (more…)
Jerry Brown’s Insufferable Green Piety
As the UN’s climate change conference opens in Paris on Nov. 30, California Gov. Jerry Brown’s holier-than-thou pronouncements on climate change will be the gospel of choice.
At the site of real and immediate tragedy, an old man comes, wielding not a sword to protect civilization from ghastly present threats but to preach the sanctity of California’s green religion. The Paris Climate Change Conference offers a moment of triumph for the 77-year-old Jerry Brown, the apogee of his odd public odyssey.
Jerry Brown has always been essentially two people—one the calculating, Machiavellian politician, the other the dour former Jesuit who publically dismisses worldly pleasures for austere dogma. Like a modern-day Torquemada, he is warning the masses that if they fail to adhere in all ways of the new faith or face, as he suggested recently humanity’s “extinction.” (more…)