Last week’s Republican Presidential debate confirmed one thing: Texas Governor Rick Perry’s main challenge in winning the Republican nomination will be his ability to explain his record on illegal immigration as governor vs. what he proposes to do about it as President.

Perry’s opponents have hit him for signing in 2001 the nation’s first law allowing illegal immigrants to get the in-state tuition break that other Texans who attended high school in-state receive.  Four lawmakers out of 181 voted against the bill, as Perry has pointed out, making the bill uncontroversial at the time.  (Note: as a California lawmaker from 2004 to 2010, I consistently voted against expanding benefits to illegal immigrants.)

Today, 12,138 illegal immigrant students pay in-state tuition in Texas, about one percent of all Texas college students.  By comparison, the Department of Homeland Security estimates that 7.0% of Texas residents are in the nation illegally.

Gov. Perry has pointed out more than once, and with a degree of exasperation, that Texas has spent $400 million of its own taxpayers’ money on border security, hiring additional Texas Rangers to better secure the border.  Perry has also defended his insistence that a fence not be built along the entirety of Texas’ 1,969 mile border with Mexico, citing the fact that a river runs along the border through some very remote and rugged terrain that is best secured with “boots on the ground” and “aviation assets.” I have to agree with Perry on this one, building a fence along a river is costly while the river itself will constantly undermine the fence’s footings.  In addition, Gov. Perry’s Texas has passed a law that requires a photo ID to vote (only 13 other states have photo ID laws on the books) and illegal immigrants cannot obtain a driver’s license in Texas (11 states issue driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, including Sarah Palin’s Alaska).

Dismissing Texas’ own border security efforts, Perry’s opponents have focused on the in-state tuition, calling the law a magnet for illegal immigration.  Theoretically, that’s true.  But does it actually impact an illegal immigrant’s decision about what state they may decide to live in?  I find it hard to believe a 22-year-old man from central Mexico is going to say to himself, “Hey, I’m going to move to California or Texas because, when my two children become college age in 17 years, I can save some tuition money.”  Rather, the decision to break U.S. law more likely comes down to the availability of jobs and the seriousness with which the Federal government secures the border.

To test this proposition, it is instructive to see where illegal immigrants live in the U.S.  According to the Department of Homeland Security, the largest illegal immigrant population by state in 2010 was:

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With Texas Governor Rick Perry now leading the race for the Republican nomination for President, only days after jumping into contest (according to Rasmussen Reports – full disclosure, I have endorsed Perry) – we can expect a withering response from President Obama and his allies on the left.  As John Podhoretz noted in Commentary, comparing Perry to Ronald Reagan, “The conservative boogeyman is back.”

Since the Republican Party’s natural constituency is conservative, more so in this tumultuous Tea Party era, most attacks on Perry will be from the right – the attacks from the left will come after Perry wins the nomination.  That the machinery of the left will aid in the early attacks from the right is a given; it’s all part of winning for them.
The Trans-Texas Corridor is one such emerging line of criticism against Gov. Perry.  First proposed by Perry in 2002, the north-south running road would have also included a railway, petroleum pipeline, power lines, and communications cables.

Some conservatives have linked the planned Texas road with the feared, but as yet theoretical, North American Union or NAU and NAFTA, dubbing it the NAFTA Super Highway.  That Perry would have proposed such a thing is yet more proof to them that Perry is somehow the “Establishment” candidate (never mind his comments about the Fed, the Tenth Amendment, and the fact that the same “Establishment” ran Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison against him for governor last year).

So, what’s the deal with Perry’s proposed superhighway and should conservatives be worried?

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Sunday evening I was mulling over data from the 2010 Census when my wife suggested we take our extended family out to California Pizza Kitchen.

Walking into CPK, I was still mentally processing the implications of the census data that showed what appeared to be a strong link between college educated Americans moving out of high tax states to low tax states (go ahead and laugh, yes, I’m really like that).  When the menus came, my deepening melancholy for California’s self-inflicted tax wounds shifted to sadness due to the Golden State’s penchant for regulating all aspects of life.  Why?  I immediately saw that CPK’s shiny new menus were in violation of the California Health and Safety Code Section 114094, the law that requires restaurant chains to list “…the calorie content information for a standard menu item next to the item on the menu in a size and typeface that is clear and conspicuous.”   Nary a speck of calorie data was next to any item on the menu (not that I cared about it, I don’t go to restaurants to count my calories – the information was available on request, nice, but not legal in California).

A full-blown case of Over Regulation Realization Depression hit me.  California Pizza Kitchen, the quintessential California business, would be forced to reprint thousands of menus for their 67 California restaurants, or risk fines of up to $500 for each location: a $33,500 exposure for each local health inspector visit while out of compliance.

While waiting for my California Club Pizza (it was delicious enough to temporarily lift me out of my bad case of ORRD) my thoughts drifted back to the floor vote on SB 1420, the 2008 bill by Senator Alex Padilla (D-Van Nuys) that sought to impose the calorie counting mandate on business.  I recall arguing against the bill which passed on a largely party line vote, Democrats for it, and Republicans mostly against it (then Senator Abel Maldonado was the sole Republican “aye” vote while some of the more moderate Assembly Republicans, Bonnie Garcia and Todd Spitzer, abstained).

Democrats justified calorie listing mandate by saying that big restaurant chains could afford it (the bill exempted chains with less than 20 locations), that some restaurant meals contained enough calories to feed an entire family for a week (or something along those lines) and that the bill was made less odious than it was initially so as to remove the opposition of the California Restaurant Association.

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Sacramento’s ABC News 10 reported on the union rally and Tea Party counter rally in Sacramento today.  ABC’s online report makes cursory mention of an incident of union violence directed at Tea Party activist Rodney Stanhope: “Police cited one man for battery after he allegedly shoved a tea party supporter.”

I spoke to Stanhope, as he drove to the hospital for x-rays and treatment for the injuries sustained at the rally, and asked him what happened.  Mr. Stanhope said that he was with a group of about 150 Tea Party activists across the street from the MoveOn.org-organized union rally.  A union man with a bullhorn, Richard Andazola, 28, was yelling across the street at the Tea Party activists, calling them “fascists.”

Then one of the Tea Party activists, also bullhorn equipped, replied, “We pay your salary!”

This enraged Andazola, who, according to Stanhope, rushed the Tea Partiers, chanting “Fascists go home! Fascists go home!”  He violently shoved Stanhope twice, the second time apparently striking Stanhope in the throat:

Somehow in the melee, Stanhope’s hand was also injured

The union thug was later cited by law enforcement:

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John “Don’t touch my junk” Tyner is an American hero. Airport security ejected him from the San Diego airport after he refused the choice between a naked body scan and a crotch grab – and he recorded the whole affair on his cell phone. John Tyner’s confrontation calls into question the entire Transportation Security Agency (TSA) apparatus.

The TSA believes that it must view your naked body with a scanner or place a hand on your private parts to safeguard the flying public from terrorists. I have advice for the TSA: you can spend a trillion dollars to make air travel safe and it won’t work. Islamists will simply board an aircraft originating in a nation with weaker security or go after a school or a bus or a subway. By incurring unending costs and eroding our freedoms, the terrorists win and we lose just a bit each day.

We can’t defend everything – and certainly not using processes drawn from the bureaucratic-industrial complex. Consider this: no TSA employee has ever caught or stopped a terrorist but alert passengers and intelligence has. This says volumes about the nature of the threat and our ham-handed response to it.

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A Schwarzenegger hangover saved California Democrats from a wipeout as the Tea Party wave washed harmlessly up the High Sierra’s eastern slope.  Democrats won eight of nine statewide offices, with the race for attorney general looking more Republican as the late ballots get tallied.  Democrats also racked up their largest State Assembly majority since the Watergate blowout year of 1974 (52 seats of 80).  And, the passage of union-sponsored Prop. 25 allows Democrats to enact a budget with a simple majority vote.  But for visual confirmation of this election’s connection to the failed “Republican” governor, one need only look at governor-elect Jerry Brown’s ad showing Arnold Schwarzenegger side-by-side with Meg Whitman uttering the same platitudinous inanities we’ve come to expect from self-funded dilettantes who neither have the time to vote nor the inclination to first seek a lesser office so as to gain political experience.

It isn’t hard to see where things went awry in California: just look back to the heady years of the historic 2003 recall of Gray Davis.  Davis was swept out of office due a massive deficit brought on by his rapid expansion of state government during the dot com economy combined with his mishandling of the state’s electricity crisis.  Candidate Schwarzenegger won on a platform of “blowing up the boxes” of bureaucracy while “cutting up” the state’s “credit cards” – Schwarzenegger did neither.  Instead, he gave California seven years of uneven leadership, veering from the right to the left while calling his erratic leadership “post-partisanship.” Schwarzenegger pushed through the largest state tax increase in U.S. history, expanded government spending, debt and regulatory hurdles while shrinking the sphere of liberty – curious actions for a self-avowed fan of the late Milton Friedman.  Schwarzenegger’s voter approval rating hit 22 percent this summer, matching Gray Davis’ recall-eve rating – something Davis, if he wishes to indulge in schadenfreude, might see as poetic symmetry.

While the Democrats had a great election night in the Golden State, there are some signs of hope for the majority of Californians who don’t take their ideological cues from San Francisco.

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California’s progressive-era experiment in direct democracy was supposed to elevate the voters above the special interests, allowing voters make law themselves through the statewide initiative process. That this process is now virtually owned by the special interests is yet another example of the immutable Law of Unintended Consequences in government.

A brief perusal of the California Secretary of State’s initiative campaign finance disclosure website shows that some $120 million dollars has been raised by 53 groups supporting or opposing California’s nine November ballot initiatives. By comparison, California’s two major candidates for governor have raised or given to their campaigns $176 million to date, exclusive of independent expenditures and political party spending on both sides.

Initiative spending

What’s common about most of this spending is that it is fairly transparent in that we know the identities of the people, the labor unions and the companies writing the checks. Sure, there are cut-out committees that ship money to each other in an attempt to obfuscate their spending, but, with a spreadsheet and enough patience, a person can figure out who is funding whom.

For instance, you can crack open the disclosure page for the biggest No on Prop. 23 committee and see that they’ve raised more than $23 million. This includes $1 million from Hollywood director James Cameron, $700,000 from America’s richest man, Bill Gates, millions more from rent-seeking Silicon Valley venture capitalists who hope to grow wealthier off the economic pain of average Californians. You can also see that the National Wildlife Federation gave $3 million. Sadly, here is where campaign disclosure gets weak, because the National Wildlife Federation doesn’t have to disclose its donors since contributions on an initiative are considered nonpartisan and thus, not subject to the stringent disclosure rules as money destined to directly influence a partisan campaign.

This oversight is especially egregious when it comes to Prop. 22, a densely written amendment to the California constitution (already the third-largest in the world) that consumes eight pages of fine print to accomplish its purpose: constitutionally lock in redevelopment agency protections to protect them from pressure to reform.

California’s redevelopment agencies are supposed to target so-called “blight.” What they often do instead is use eminent domain to take property from one set of owners and give it to another so as to increase the tax base for a city.

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We’re preparing to move out of my Sacramento apartment so I went online to check rates to rent a small truck.

I first checked U-Haul; they have a great brand name and I’ve used them before.  The cost to rent a 10 foot truck from Sacramento to Irvine: $219.  It all seemed pretty straightforward – until I started to complete the online contract.  In addition to the $219, U-Haul suggested I buy some insurance for $60, saying that most car insurance policies don’t cover rental trucks, unlike rental cars.  OK, reasonable enough.  Then I came to a $5 “Environmental Fee” payable at the store.

“Environmental Fee?!?” I thought.  I clicked on the link to explain this unexpected fee and U-Haul treated me to a rambling eight paragraph paean to their environmental consciousness, saying, in part, “For more than 60 years, the U-Haul Companies have provided an economical, sustainable and environmentally friendly means for families to move to a better future.” And that “sharing” trucks rather than buying one for the average family’s twice a decade move reduces “hundreds of thousands of tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually.” And “With 15,000 locations across the United States and Canada, U-Haul truck sharing helps to reduce the carbon footprint of many local communities.” So far, the $5 fee hadn’t been explained – I was on the edge of my seat for the punch line – until finally, in the last paragraph: “The Customer money collected as an environmental fee is expended to reduce the negative impact of our business on future generations. Aerodynamic fuel saving truck skirts, the fuel economy gauge, storage re-use centers, environmentally friendly truck wash soap, are examples of where these funds go.”

Ahh, I see.

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Last week, the premier of British Columbia, Gordon Campbell, paid a visit to the California State Legislature.  He spoke at length about his province’s green energy partnership with California in supplying California with electricity while helping the state meet its greenhouse gas reduction goals.

I listened to the leader of the Western Canadian province of 4.4 million people and I found myself asking, “What is he selling?”  So, I decided to follow the money.  What follows is a summary of an international green energy scam that costs California taxpayers millions while robbing California of jobs due to higher electricity costs and electricity imports.

The Scam

Decades ago, the West Coast began exchanging electricity.  During the summer, when air conditioning use spiked in California, Washington State and British Columbia would ship hydropower down to the Golden State.  Later in the year, during California’s mild winters, when rivers levels were low in the Northwest, California would return the favor.  The power exchange worked well for everyone.

During California’s 2000-2001 energy crisis, our northern neighbors took Enron-like advantage of us.  BC Hydro, a state-owned utility, through its marketing and trading subsidiary, Powerex, aided in the rampant market manipulation that ended up costing California consumers millions.  Bill Lockyer, then California Attorney General, sued.  In March 2005, Powerex settled and refunded a fraction of the profits they made at the expense of California ratepayers.

The current version of this energy scam is breathtaking in its scope.

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CNN, together with Moody’s Investor Services, published a map of the U.S. showing per capita state debt.

This debt map brought to mind another map, this one the Electoral College map from the 2008 election.  President Obama won 28 states and the District of Columbia totaling 365 Electoral College votes, to McCain’s 22 states totaling 173 Electoral College votes.

Now, compare the high-debt states to the states shown in blue that voted for Obama—the linkage between debt and voting behavior is visually clear.

According to Moody’s, the average state per capita debt of the 28 Obama states is $1,728 while the average debt in the 22 McCain states is less than half, at $749.  This information alone says a lot about voters and their attitude towards government and debt.  Voters with a propensity to elect politicians who burden future generations who can’t yet vote with huge debts voted for Obama while fiscally responsible voters generally voted for McCain.

This trend gets starker when you look at the debt in the states that voted overwhelmingly for one candidate.  The six states where Obama received the highest percentage of the vote were: Hawaii, Vermont, New York, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Maryland.  McCain received his highest percentage of votes in Oklahoma, Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, Alabama and Alaska.  The strongest Obama states had a per capita debt high of $4,606 for Massachusetts and a low of $709 for Vermont—remember, the average per capita debt in the McCain states was only $749, barely above the debt level in Vermont, with its “less is more” ethic.  Per capita debt in the strong McCain states ranged from a high of $1,345 in oil-rich Alaska to a low of $77 in coal-rich Wyoming.  The average per capita debt state debt in the strong Obama states: $2,697, almost $1,000 greater than the average debt in the 28 states he won.  McCain’s six strongest states tell the opposite tale with a per capita state debt of $713, a little more than a quarter of the debt load racked up in the states that most enthusiastically went for Obama.

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California has the worst bond rating in the nation, hovering just above junk bond status.  A lower bond rating means higher interest rates when selling bonds – and California already spends $10 billion per year in bond principal and interest repayments.

In this, as in many other things, California leads the nation, for better or for worse (repaying the money borrowed for President Obama’s Stimulus will cost every American $280 a month for life).

Some people place a portion of California’s debt problem at the feet of voters who approve nearly every bond initiative, from $3 billion for an embryonic stem cell research bond to $10 billion in debt to build a high-speed rail system.

It’s hard to blame citizens of the Golden State for voting for debt when the most famous Californian, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, proclaims bonds “a gift from the future.”  It’s also hard to blame voters for approving bonds when the bond ballot descriptions and arguments are chock full of shaky claims.

Take November 2008’s much promoted High-Speed Rail Initiative, Proposition 1A.  Voters approved it by 52-48 after proponents, such as train manufacturers and unions poured $2.5 million into the effort.  As with almost every bond measure, there was no funded opposition.  The measure’s proponents, big business and labor unions, claimed that the trains would offer time-saving travel “AT A CHEAPER COST!” than air travel or car.  And that, the train would, “give Californians a real alternative to skyrocketing gasoline prices and dependence on foreign oil while reducing greenhouse gases. Building high-speed rail is cheaper than expanding highways and airports to meet California’s population growth.”

Really?  Who checks these claims?
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Is there a political answer to every problem? Most of my colleagues feel this is the case. I disagree.

In the past day, there was a spate of news articles about California’s trans-fat ban due to go into effect on New Year’s Day. I voted against this new law.

California has the 4th-highest unemployment rate, a $21 billion budget deficit, and a severe water shortage, so, what do lawmakers do?  Pass a law that will fine restaurants $1,000 for using margarine in their foods.

One of the articles said:

Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, R-Irvine, criticized the new law as an example of nanny government with little beneficial impact.
“Not every human problem deserves a political solution,” he said. “That’s the fallacy my colleagues engage in.”

I’ve been criticized for voting against all sorts of nanny state bills that expand the police power of government in the name of making us safe from ourselves. I’ve often argued that we might as well pass a blanket bill outlawing stupidity and rudeness in California.

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If you are under 30, you really need to read this column and pass it on to your friends.  Your elected officials are dooming you to a new sort of bondage, a form of 21^st Century slavery, if you will.

First, some background.

On October 16, 1854, Abraham Lincoln, then a former one-term Congressman, gave a three hour speech in Peoria, Illinois in which he decried the extension of slavery into the territories.  The Republican Party was barely three months old.  Lincoln warned that slavery was a “monstrous injustice” based on the raw principle of “self-interest” at odds with the “fundamental principles of civil liberty.”

Lincoln was moved to action by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, widely seen as a check on the growth of slavery in the territories.

At Peoria, Lincoln presented the economic, legal and moral case against slavery.

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Last night was one of those nights when I was mad as hell at the California State government and their foolish, micro-managing, Big-Nanny ways.  (Caution, dear reader, such rage at the machine has been known to cause the temporary insanity of running for public office.)

The cause of my extended rant?  AB 1953, a law passed in 2006 that goes into effect on January 1, 2010, the purpose of which was to define lead-free plumbing from 4% in fixtures down to the European Union standard of 0.25%.  Not that the science supported this change.  Once lead was removed as a gasoline additive, taken out of paints, and removed from plumbing (the Latin word for plumbing is where we get the chemical symbol for lead: Pb), human lead exposure dropped significantly.  Having a small percentage of lead bound up in a brass alloy plumbing fixture isn’t going to add a statistically meaningful amount of lead exposure to anyone.

Today’s story began when my family bought a 4-bedroom house in Irvine in 1998.  The house, built in 1979, had the original chrome-plated sink fixtures when we moved in.  As soon as I could afford it, I installed solid brass bathroom fixtures.

Well, our master bathroom faucet sprung a very slow leak on the cold water handle a few months back.  Having a few spare hours, I found the leak on the valve, took it apart, and trekked down to Lowe’s.

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What is Cap-and-Trade? Cap-and-Trade is a political scheme ostensibly aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions with the goal of reducing the global temperatures.

With a Cap-and-Trade law in place, the government would set a yearly greenhouse gas emission target (carbon dioxide is the most common man-made greenhouse gas, you are exhaling right it now) and would reduce that yearly ceiling over time.  This is the “Cap” of Cap-and-Trade.

The “Trade” part of this scheme comes in when the government (read: politicians) gives out greenhouse gas emission credits, valued at billions of dollars, to favored industries.  So, industries with greater credits than emissions would be able to sell their valuable credits (basically, a right to emit greenhouse gases) to those industries (such as the coal industry or the oil and gas industries) which would need the credits to stay in business.

Over time, the government makes money, commodities traders make money, such as those on the Chicago Climate Exchange (yes, it exists, they make money trading carbon dioxide credits), politically favored industries make money (such as those former Vice President Al Gore has invested over $100 million in), and the rest of us get hit with the bill – up to $2,000 per family per year of higher energy costs. Thus, Cap-and-Trade is actually a huge energy tax on working Americans.

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On February 22, 1983, I raised my right hand in the Los Angeles MEPS (Military Entrance Processing Station) and said, “I, Charles Stuart DeVore, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; That I will bear true faith And allegiance to the same…” With those words, I became United States Army Private First Class DeVore, joining the millions of others since 1789 who swore with their lives to “support and defend the Constitution.”

Unlike many veterans, I have been fortunate not to see combat. I was “officially” shot at only once; during the Los Angeles riots in 1992 (well, there was that time in Lebanon, but that wasn’t official; and I was carjacked in 1988 by Panamanian paramilitaries).

When the members of the armed forces of the United States of America fight, they do so not just for their colleagues in uniform next to them – virtually every soldier in history has done that – they do so not for king or country – they fight to preserve a document, the Constitution. In that, the United States Armed forces have become the greatest force for good, for freedom, that the world has ever seen because the Constitution exists to make a reality out of the promise of the Declaration of Independence to secure our “unalienable rights” of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

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THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.

– Thomas Paine, The Crisis, December 23, 1776

For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?”

– Esther 4:14

These are interesting times. Under President Obama and the most liberal Congress since 1965, the United States government is expected to borrow a trillion dollars per year for the next decade while the size and power of our federal government will grow at the expense of our liberties. 

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