Santa Cruz

Libertarian Foreign Policy: A Dialogue on Imperialism

Brandon Christensen History , , , , ,

Pretty much the same story as that of the first years of the American Revolution including the foreign intervention and under enormously favorable circumstances than the poor Libyans encountered. After all, King Georges was no Kadafi.

Tsk tsk. You’re getting sloppy Dr Delacroix. I suspect you have re-ignited your passion for smoking ganja. Santa Cruz has a wonderful variety from around the world to choose from.

As I have previously noted, the angle we should be looking at (from a national security perspective) is the one of France during the Anglo-American War. They are the ones who intervened on behalf of a rebellious segment of the British Empire, just as we are intervening on behalf of a rebellious segment within the Libyan state.

Nevertheless, you keep repeating this tired mantra so I figure I’ll try to kill it. Right here and right now.

Let’s start with your keen observation that King George was no Ghaddafi. Aside from being totally correct, I think it would also be pertinent to point out that King George was also at the helm of a worldwide empire that was in constant rivalry with not only France for global hegemony, but also with aspirant regional hegemons throughout the world. Now contrast this position with that of Libya at the time of Ghaddafi’s offing.

King George also wielded a lot less power than did Ghaddafi. Indeed, he wielded a lot less power than most monarchs of his time period. As we both know, the British parliament held immense power, and King George was in constant conflict with them. The Rule of Law was alive and well in Britain during King George’s reign. Contrast KG’s position with that of Ghaddafi, a brutal tyrant who exercised a near-supreme will over his subjects.

Let’s review the circumstances of the positions of the two tyrants of Dr. J’s choosing before we continue any further: one of them was at the helm of a global empire and constantly held in check by his own parliament and the Rule of Law. The other was a tyrant of a mid-sized post-colonial state in North Africa who ruled with an iron fist and was spurned by most of the global community.

Can we continue?

France (whose position, remember, during the Anglo-American War is the one that most resembles our own today in regards to the Libyan excursion) was in constant conflict with Great Britain. They were fighting for global supremacy. French support, then, came not from benevolence or fear of mass migration from the U.S. to France, but from a calculated decision to strike deeply at a hated enemy, one that had recently acquired all of France’s colonies in India and North America.

The U.S., in contrast, has become involved in the Libyan civil war because of cries from weak and decadent allies to come to their aid for fear of a mass influx of Muslims into their welfare states.

Not exactly a struggle for global supremacy. I suspect you will warn your readers that China (GDP PPP per capita Intl$7,000) is watching us, of course.

The 13 colonies that fought for independence were independent polities, too. They all had their own ideas and thoughts and interests to look after when coming to an agreement with each other. Libya – one state – has merely one resource that is apple of everybody’s eye. While the American experience was one based on compromise and sectional interests, the Libyan experience is one that will be based off of the redistribution of wealth. Not a good start, if you ask me.

An observation and a question: the transitory government of Libya has recently asked NATO to continue its no-fly zone to at least the end of the year. It has recently welcomed foreign troops from Qatar to help shore up its defense forces. My question to you, Dr. J, is this: did the transitory government of the U.S. ask foreign powers to patrol their streets for them? To continue to keep their navies nearby to help dispense of any lingering British presence?

I find it suspicious that the Libyan rebels have relied so heavily upon foreign support. What is their motive for this? Most rebellions hearken calls for independence and liberty. Why do they beg the West for help? In my mind, a government – even a transitory one – that is incapable of standing on its own two feet without the support of foreign influence and power, is not a government that will long be trusted by the people it purports to govern.

Is the Libyan experience similar to that of the American one? Sure, but only a very superficial level. It would be best to leave Libya to the Libyans – warts and all.

Duckshit and Bullshit in Santa Cruz, California.

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Politics , , , , ,

Today, interestingly right before Memorial Day, thousands of residents of Santa Cruz are hiding their faces like a bunch of old nuns who would have caught sight of a naked man by mistake. (I should stop saying this; it’s may not be fair to nuns.) The cause of their emotion: a front page article in the local newspaper about one of the most obvious beaches in town being grossly polluted. The newspaper is itself a grossly  biased greenie-liberal sheet that can’t spell. (It has its good days once in a while but I can’t figure out why.)

Something like this happens regularly with the most attractive beaches in the area pointed to by the severe index of pseudo-science, or of quasi-science. The last time I looked into it, it turned out that natural lagoons had been allowed to form on the offending beaches,  stopping the flow of small creeks. Ducks and seagulls had gathered in there, of course and done  for weeks on end what waterbirds will do in the water. The solution: Breach the sand dam that allows for the lagoon;  sea water downstream then tests clean within a day or so.

At the time, local surfers organizations and many greenie mouthpieces had darkly commented as if it were a known fact that the high bacteria count near those beaches was due to human fecal matter. It was not. It matters. I would not let my grandchild swim in duck shit but the fact is that it’s less likely to infect humans with human disease bacteria than do human feces. Got it? Continue reading →

Welcome to the New Bohemia

Brandon Christensen History, Politics , , , , , , ,

[Editor’s note: I first came across this article while living in Santa Cruz. It was in one of those trashy “arts and events” weeklys that you find littering every city in America. I have tried to locate the author of the piece but he appears to have written it under a pseudonym, and the weekly is now defunct. So, I figured I’d reprint the whole damn thing here. You can find an archived copy here]

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We are the modern equivalent of the ancient city-states of Athens and Sparta. California has the ideas of Athens and the power of Sparta. —Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger

California is like an artificial limb the rest of the country doesn’t really need. You can quote me on that. —Saul Bellow

Perhaps Schwarzenegger and Bellow divined what’s now painfully clear to everyone: Arnie’s California is Humpty-Dumpty, the Hindenburg and some kind of sociopolitical Holocaust all rolled up into one overstuffed exploding burrito. It’s an ungovernable, near criminally impotent and outdated mess. Remedying California’s woes requires draconian cutbacks to essential services and infrastructure. Anyway, that’s what we are told, grand allusions to Athens and Sparta notwithstanding. Others insist the fix lies with the Feds, that the U.S. Treasury need to bail California out at the begrudging consent of Congress. But another still largely muted scenario is slowly gaining traction. Continue reading →

Liblogic

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Politics , , , , , ,

Again (AGAIN) the Midwest is trying to operate in spite of a major snowfall. Its’ a snowfall of extraordinary magnitude for the season according to many of those who know.  And, I have not heard or read any meteorologist arguing that, on the contrary, it’s a normal snowfall for the first week of Spring.

Snow is cold. This cold wave is yet another proof of the reality of a global warming trend that threatens civilization and, beyond it, Earth itself. Of course, this trend is the result of noxious human activities. It’s a done deal that there cannot be any other cause.

If you don’t see that the more industry and cars, the more cold, and the more cold, the more  warming, you are just uneducated or stubborn, or both.

By the same reasoning, the unseasonal cold makes fuels, including natural gas, less essential to human happiness. The president, served by the supine press, must see the current snow storm in the Midwest  as a signal to  redouble its efforts to prevent the rational utilization of America’s abundant fuel resources.

Got it?

There is a pleasant-looking guy in his forties  who often suns himself close to my coffee shop at the beach. He admires my grand-daughter. Of course, I took this to imply that he is a man of taste and discernment. We fell into casual conversation recently about a book I was holding. The conversation quickly turned casually political.

He is an Obama supporter. This being the People Socialist Green Republic of Santa Cruz, it would be surprising if he were not. So, I pried a little.

It took my beach acquaintance a few minutes to fold to the default option that President Obama at least looked presidential. He couldn’t name a single Obama achievement of which he was proud or satisfied. (I had unfairly deprived him of the opportunity to mention Obamacare by designating it  a Pelosi victory.) This is not the fist time I hear Obamites refer to the president’s looks. It’s not clear how you turn such people around. Update: I don’t mean that I hope to turn all, or many around, just a small percentage would do, pehraps 3%..

Suntan Joe was seething with hatred of President Bush. This is remarkable five years later. Curiously, it did not seem to be about the Iraq War. I sense that the antipathy runs deeper, that it’s akin to what some chimps feel about a designated other chimp with an unusual facial expression perhaps. That is also hard to beat.

Since the Republican defeat last November, I have been perplexed by the post-mortem analyses of people I usually trust. I feel that they are off the mark because they are too obvious perhaps, too logical. I am not doing better myself.

A Wide Net; Cyprus Lesson; Conversations with my Ghost; Unfeminism; the Blooming Sequoia

Jacques Delacroix Current Events , , ,

I am too busy, because I am completing my memoirs and because I am refinancing ( a real bitch!), to do proper postings. So, here are pellmell thoughts  to stay in your minds and in your hearts during this dry spell. (That goes for my enemies too. I love being in their hearts, festering.)

Yesterday and today, I had hits from India, Mauritania, Ecuador, Yemen, and Estonia among others on this blog. I don’t  know many actually read my stuff. I hope all the hits correspond to actual readers although I cannot be sure, obviously. That is the miracle of the Internet. In spite of all the garbage it carries, like a large river, it’s good for development, the development of knowledge, in this case, and of rationality. There is a special spot in my heart for forthright, brave, tiny Estonia. Read up on it.

Once in a while, I even  have a spirited discussion on the Internet with people I would not meet in the other life, the life many persist in calling “real.” I am glad I cast a wide net on the Internet.

This week  the Cypriots gave the world a lesson. Hardly anyone  noticed because our commentators keep spreading boring cliches instead of looking for that which is both unusual and meaningful. Their government tried to make palatable the prospect of taxing bank deposit by promising to do it only to the rich. Ordinary Cypriots did not take the corrupting bait. They still said “No!”

I am like them: I don’t want to tax more the rich, the very rich, the billionaires,  the crooks, the mafias, the zebras, the giraffes, anyone! I just want the  federal government to shrink radically. I don’t know a single liberal who is aware of this principled position, not one.  Listen to them on this blog’s “comments” section. Their heads are full of silly stereotypes about conservatism as a political philosophy. I think they are not evil but lazy.

A couple of days ago, a high-school buddy recognized me through the excerpts of my memoirs on this blog (“I Used to be French: An Immature Autobiography“). Frankly, I had not thought of him for fifty years. His name  acted like a key that unlocked a door I had not entered in decades. It’s not that the door was double-locked or anything like this. The door was closed and I had no reason to bother to look for a key. I just ignored it. It contained no treasure in fact, just a few objects of interesting memory. But inside, there was also a ghost, the ghost of me when I was a teenager.

I don’t know if the French have high-school reunions. They might because they imitate eventually everything that America does.  If they had reunions and I knew it, I would probably not go. First, I failed there. I would sound stupid saying one hundred times in one evening, “No, I did not get it.”  Or I would have stopped going after ten years, when the  prospect of scoring with the girls you secretly lusted for as a teenager begins to  turn into a nightmare. I have no wish to see my own aging in others’ waistlines. I would think unkindly both of those who looked worse and of those who looked better than I. Does this make sense?

My high-school buddy reminded me of an episode of which I have nearly no memory. He recalled a time when he and two girls and I were waiting for admission to an expensive swimming pool . (That was the same  central Paris swimming pool. “Piscine Molitor,” that figures into the great movie “Life of Pi ” and that gave  its hero his name.) My classmate must have expressed admiration for the light gray flannel pants I was wearing. (That part must be true; I was already a flea market super-champion then, a superman picker.) He says I gave him the pants. I think he means then and there; I am not sure. I love the  story, of course. It depicts me, the young unformed me, as a generous person. Or was it only the love of the grand gesture?

URGENT UPDATE THE NEXT DAY: I did not give him the pants, I sold them to him. It means that I made up in my own mind by myself a story of generosity. That’s awful! Too bad, it was a good story.

I don’t know about you but I really enjoy this kind of adventure that comprises tiny, bearable elements of disorder. The Internet does not replace reading books though. It’s different but equally attractive.

Random pearls of wisdom: I overhear parts of a conversation while treating myself to  a rare greasy breakfast at my local diner:

“You have to kill them with silence.”

I stop the waitress who said this to ask,

“Is that what women do to men when they are angry?’ She never skips a beat, “No – she says – that’s unscientific.; women can’t do this, I mean stay silent.”

Smart women like this are dismantling stone by stone the phony monument put up by feminists over thirty years. It’s good that there are women equal to the task because feminists have been partly successful in  emasculating American men. (Many of the poor saps actually think showing sensitivity will get them laid!) How can I be sure? I am old enough that young women actually confide in me on the topic.

There is a completely incongruous redwood tree in my front yard about which I bitch periodically. It’s breaking up my portion of the sidewalk. It’s already cost me over $10,000 in sewer  repairs. One of these days, in a big wind, it will fall on my house, I fear. It gives us unwanted shade.

I like redwood trees but there are tens of thousands in the forest a mile away. This is not New Jersey or New Mexico; it’s not a rare tree around here. The city of Santa Cruz forbids me from cutting it. (Yes, it’s on my property.) The city has the criminal stupidity to demand a fee before it will even hear my appeal!

Well, several years ago, my wife planted a  bush bearing small yellow roses not far from the redwood. There was not foresight, no planning, no knowledge involved, maybe not even a green thumb. For some reason, the rosebush loves it there. It spread to everything. It’s a good climber. Right now, it has climbed about fifty feet up the redwood tree trunk and branches. The redwood looks like it’s in bloom with many yellow flowers. A deep part of me loves this display of joyous anarchy. I wonder if it violates some city ordinance I have not heard of though.

Pot Shops and the Evils of Government

Jacques Delacroix Law, Liberty , , , , ,

It seems to me that few people dare entertain the thought that government is inherently bad, that it’s bad even when it’s honest and well-intentioned. That was pretty much what the founders of this republic thought but the idea is almost lost. Even when ordinary people think of bad, oppressive government, they usually have the distant federal government in mind. But it’s too far, precisely, too large, it has too many tentacles. Perhaps it’s easier to understand the moral issue if you consider something smaller and closer. The city of Santa Cruz in California (population about 50,000) just gave us a clear example of well-intentioned government action with predictably bad consequences. It’s small and it’s innocent. Repeat: innocent.

The city council just decreed that there could be only two medicinal marijuana shops in the city. Two consequences.

1 The council has created by decision a quasi-monopoly. Absent such restrictions, there might have been one hundred pot shops at first. After a short time, the number would have dwindled to a small number, possibly only two. But the winners would have been those offering the best combination of price and quality. The latter, understood widely to include possibly diversity of products and quality of service, an essential ingredient in serving presumably sick buyers.

Instead, we are going to end up with the first two applicants. That’s if the decision-making process is honest. Those two may be the worst possible or they may just be mediocre. The city’s decision is another factor, a small factor to be sure, of local high cost of living and a low level of satisfaction. Multiply this decision by 10 million and you have the Soviet Union’s economy. (Reminder: The Soviet Union did not just deny freedom, it denied a decent standard of living and the dignity that comes with not having to scramble for oranges.) Continue reading →

Justice for Bangladesh?

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Religion , ,

From the New York Times:

The year 1971 was seminal for Bangladesh. We had been denied our right to self-rule since the Indian subcontinent was partitioned in 1947. In March of ’71, the Pakistani military, supported by China and the United States, initiated a bloody suppression of 75 million Bangladeshis. Millions fled the murderous onslaught and sought refuge in India.

Militias affiliated with the Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami collaborated with the Pakistani military. They informed on, hunted out, and participated in the rape, killing and torture of ordinary citizens. They targeted hundreds of intellectuals, who were killed in cold blood.

Bangladesh is one of the poorest states on the planet. Here’s why:

Bangladesh’s original Constitution had four basic principles: nationalism, democracy, socialism and secularism.

Can you guess what happened after independence? Go ahead: guess. Or just read the whole thing (it’s short).

As of now there are massive protests going on in Bangladesh calling for revenge. While I support justice, and the Bangladeshis have suffered innumerable injustices over the past five decades, I don’t think calls for blood bodes well for the rule of law.

In other, more local, news here is a good account of the shootout that recently happened in Santa Cruz. I’m going to turn in my guns tomorrow.

Possession Two (or too)

Jacques Delacroix Liberty

Part Two: No Place to Stay

Update: In a previous blog (“The A.A President,” posted 10/7/09 ), I argued that President Obama’s current string of failures was not surprising because he had never accomplished much of anything in his life under his own power. I mentioned that his passing the bar exam might prove me wrong. There is nothing on Wikipedia about his having passed the bar anywhere. There is nothing I could find on the Internet. Not trusting the thoroughness of my search, I went straight to the source. Nine days ago, I emailed the White House website asking when and where the President had passed the bar. No answer to-date.

In the first installment of this essay, I began to attempt to use a small-scale entity to explain the damage done by innocent government intervention. The small-scale entity is my town of Santa Cruz (population about 40,000). In Part One, I showed how the municipality’s practice of taking possession of buildings downtown to shelter social services impoverished the tax roll. There is worse.

Santa Cruz has two main parallel arteries. On one side of the river, lies Ocean Street, leading to the Boardwalk, a permanent carnival near the beach. Ocean avenue is appropriately lined with fast food joints and motels. It’s as devoid of interest as any similar commercial artery anywhere in the US.  Continue reading →

Possession

Jacques Delacroix Economics, Liberty , , , , ,

Part One: Drying up the tax fountain

I suspect many people have troubling getting a good grasp of the on-going conservative struggle to prevent large-scale takeover of the economy by the federal government. I think there are two main obstacles to their understanding.

First, the idea of the virtuousness of the market as a regulator and organizer of economic life is difficult to communicate. It’s an abstract idea and it does not correspond well to people’s own experience. In their personal life, people think that when good things happen it’s a because someone (some one) made good decisions. First, it’s Mom, and then, it’s the “leadership” of the many organizations within which they live, schools, churches and especially employing organizations. To an extent, the one is themselves.

In daily life, there are few occasions to reflect upon the fact that the myriad decisions made by anonymous decision-makers, including bad decisions, aggregate into good outcomes. The market processes involved are both too magical-seeming and too abstract.

At any rate, for some reason, schools and universities do a bad job of explaining these processes. Liberal Arts teachers don’t understand them themselves and they are hostile to them. Most of them are born socialists. If you eat the King’s bread long enough, you become a monarchist.  Continue reading →

Tea Party in the People’s Green Republic of Santa Cruz

Jacques Delacroix Liberty , , , ,

On April 15th, my wife and I went to a tea party to protest the Obama-Pelosi spending and its probably consequences. (For those of you who read me from overseas: April 15th is the last day Americans may pay their federal income tax without a late penalty. They also pay taxes to their state, to their municipalities, and others.) Nothing extraordinary about our attendance; millions of Americans did the same. However, for us it was in Santa Cruz, California.

Santa Cruz is a perfect 1970s political throwback, except that today’s Greens warn against global warming instead of global glaciation. We even have flower children here. I believe at least 90% of residents of the country of Santa Cruz voted for Obama. If someone showed me it was 98%, I would not be surprised. Santa Cruz is the kind of town were strangers would address you at the coffee-shop with anti-Bush remarks without hesitation. It did not cross anybody’s mind that you might actually have voted for Bush (twice, in my case).

Well yesterday, at the height of the gathering, there were about 140 people demonstrating in front of the post office. That’s a fairly small number as compared to the tens of thousands some media showed at the Alamo in Texas, for example. Also, the time of the protest was ill-chosen. It began at 2, when most people are at work. The most impressive observation about this anti-spending demonstration was the density of approving  car horn honking it generated. I have never heard so much honking in the past ten years in the area. It seems to me each of the pro-fascist, anti-anti terrorist demonstrations produced much less honking in spite of the town’s leftists near-consensus.  At the Santa Cruz tea party, 9 out of 10 signs were crudely hand-made, not evidence of top-bottom organizing surely. I think some people in the middle are switching sides because they are appalled by the first 80 days of Obama-Pelosi.  Continue reading →

The Minimum Wage and Stupid National Public Radio

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Politics , , , ,

Two things on my mind this Bastille Day 2012. The first is who is more stupid, French leftists or American liberals? I have life-long knowledge of both tribes. At this point, I think French leftists are smarter but more dishonest that their American cousins. In general, there is a certain artlessness about deception in ordinary Americans. The French are often artful; can’t take that away from them.

The second matter on my mind is that constant struggle to avoid using nasty epithets in connection with liberals’ statements. One that keeps coming up is the simple “stupid.” I scrupulously avoid the word on this blog and in my other writings. Yet, there are informational events that sort of self-label with no escape possible. Here is one, below.

It’s shortly after 5 pm on Sunday July 10th 2012. I am in my pick-up truck listening to National Public Radio. (I know the combination is jarring.) There an in-depth discussion of the minimum wage. That’s always interesting. Conservatives make an apparently impeccable theoretical argument against: Minimum wage laws create unemployment among the most vulnerable categories of the work force. Liberals sometimes make sophisticated arguments for the minimum wage. Behind those, however, I always find the usual combination of mindless jeremiads of “sad” and “unfair.” But, it seems to me that the empirical evidence supporting the conservative position against minimum wages is on the thin side. Listening to a relaxed radio show from the Left could be a good way to find out more. Continue reading →

Liberal Authoritarianism: Independence Day, the Sequel

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Politics , , , ,

This is Part Two of a report on my American Independence Day (Part one is “An Eventful American Independence Night.” It was posted on July 5th 2012.)

The best beach in Santa Cruz was cordoned off for the evening with plastic netting, and illuminated by powerful projectors. There were only a small number of narrow entry points where beach-goers were inspected individually for contraband. I don’t know if anyone was frisked but younger people were intimidated into answering questions they should not have to answer routinely according to my understanding of the Constitution. (I think law enforcement officers may not stop you at all without cause or probable cause.)

There were two kinds of contraband, possibly three. The first was obviously alcohol. Alcohol is outlawed on that beach at all times. I regret to admit that I think it’s a good policy. In the days before the prohibition, I had the feeling that the same beach was more dangerous to children. The “maybe” contraband would be weapons although I don’t understand by what authority a quasi-municipality, the harbor, and a county could jointly or separately restrict the citizens’ right to bear arms. Incredibly, it being the Fourth of July, Independence Day, the second kind of contraband was… fireworks.

Local government entities routinely ban fireworks for the Fourth of July. They ban fireworks in the towns were many houses are made of wood. They ban fireworks in brush and forest areas, reasonably enough. They also ban fireworks in the sand and on the water. Public safety specialists in the Santa Cruz area apparently believe that sand can burn and that the sea can go up in flames. Note that even the most fanatical local greenie will no affirm that the local seawater is so polluted that it will catch fire. (In fact, it ‘s not polluted at all, except very segmentally and only by concentrations of seabird shit. Bird dropping being natural, greenies should love them and not fear breathing them while swimming or swallowing them accidentally. But I digress in the most disgustingly self-indulgent manner!)

The local prohibition of fireworks makes me wonder how thousands of French villages, many quite a bit smaller than Santa Cruz, manage to offer a beautiful, complex fireworks to their citizens on Bastille Day, year after year. It makes me wonder why France has not yet been burned down to the tree roots and French beaches sand melted into glass. Of course, the French often have their fire department take charge of fireworks, even volunteer fire department. The system seems to work for everyone.

Someone will object that involving fire departments would cost money and that this is not a good time given that so many local entities are in dire financial straights. I don’t know about that. They did not rely on that obvious situation when they thought, and we thought, they were rich. And I don’t believe paying locally employed law enforcement officers time and half or more is economical. That’s not counting the private security employees hired for the occasion of this every labor-intensive endeavor. Why does the uncharitable thought cross my mind that providing overtime for public employees is one of the motivation behind the fireworks ban, possibly not a conscious one?

Later in the evening, leaving the scene in my truck was like moving across a city under martial law. There were law enforcement officers in the fog under the street lights at every crossroad directing traffic into unnatural patterns. One sent me into an eternal loop I could only escape by cheating. The police occupation continued much after the crowds had left the area.

A harbor guy I won’t name because it would be bad for this career confided to me that the real issue occasioning this vast deployment of armed force was concerns with possible mass rioting. I know a little the guy who said this. He strikes me as a reasonable person. He was not putting me on. This raises the question: Who would riot?

Santa Cruz is Silicon Valley’s beach town. Directly as my informer stopped talking I conceive visions of hordes of rowdy India-born hoodlums descending on my city, their pocket protectors bristling with non-pens pens of unknown usage. I could just see them in my mind’s eye sowing wi-fi havoc on our rudimentary 2010 !phones.

Or, maybe, just maybe, political correctness being what it is in this left-liberal region, this bastion of 1970s political culture, another fear underlaid the ban and the security measures. I don’t know that what came to my mind is true. It may just be speculation. Is it possible that the local authorities are afraid that the gangs from nearby towns such as Watsonville and Salinas would seize the opportunity of lose revelry to transform the beaches into battlefield where to continue their deadly wars ? Is it possible the same local authorities don’t have the internal fortitude to name the object of their fears? The problem is that upward of 99% of violent gang members seem to have Spanish surnames. Could it be that stating that they, the authorities close the beaches to contain gangs would be considered the sin of sins, racial profiling?

PS I like Santa Cruz Harbor a great deal. It’s this extreme rarity: a public entity with quasi-municipal powers that does not rely on taxes. It’s long overdue for my complimentary essay.

An Eventful American Independence Night

Jacques Delacroix Current Events , , , , ,

Yesterday night, July fourth, American Independence Day, around 8:30 pm, I was out of the Santa Cruz harbor in my humble and felicitously stable 26-foot boat. With me, an immigrant, were three immigrants and one of their offspring plus one college-educated Oakie. (Oakies who can’t find a job raising beagles and who are too lazy to trim trees will go to college, contrary to widespread opinion.) The immigrant offspring is only three and we were offshore trying to catch as many outlawed fireworks as we could for her. All the immigrants were legal but, for two of them, it had not always been so. I don’t know the third immigrant well enough to ask him.

We were meandering slowly when one of us spotted an overturned kayak in the distance. There were two people in the water trying in vain to get back on. I hurried there slowly, as in the books. My mostly inexperienced crew did a great, calm job of retrieving the kayakers and even their kayak. The Oakie did a stellar job although his proximate ancestors got no closer to the water than when noodling catfish. All the retrieved kayak gear seemed to me fairly new and expensive. One of the kayakers, a woman, obstinately tried to recover all her equipment from the cold water. To my experienced free diver’s eyes and ears, she was showing the first signs of delirious disorientation from cold exposure. Nevertheless, we got both of them aboard as well as most of their stuff. Continue reading →

A Real Town Meeting in the People’s Green Republic of Santa Cruz

Jacques Delacroix Economics, Politics , , , , ,

Tuesday night, I took in, in person, two and a half hours of town hall meeting with the same congressman, Sam Farr, in my own town of Santa Cruz, this time. Now, it’s important to understand that Santa Cruz is, overall, a seventies throwback, left-liberal to communist anti-American. To give you an idea, on my long street, downtown, there are only three American flags, two of which belong to me. When I make conservative noises in public, in spite of my considerable expressive talents, people think I am kidding.

I went to the meeting with my wife, under my own power. The only prompt I got is that one local radio station gave the time and place of the meeting on the air. It did so several times. It’s seen as a conservative station. (Full disclosure: I [used to] have a talk-show program on that station, KSCO 1080 AM, every Sunday 11AM-1PM.) Rush Limbaugh did not send me. The local Republican Party was pathetically absent in every respect. If there was any conservative or right-wing organization present, it escaped my attention and I was looking for one. There were no right-wing thugs in sight, with the possible exception of myself, and especially, my wife, Krishna. My wife is in very good shape indeed but, she is slight of built. She has never really divulged her age too me but her hair is all white. The only humans she has ever physically threatened were our children, when they were teenagers, and me, of course. I can’t tell you why she threatened me because I don’t like to brag.

I insist on the unorganized nature of the event in a spirit of helpfulness. The main problem most Democrats, including Congressman Farr and including the President face, is that they cannot conceive of a genuine grass-root movement of revulsion. George Beck, the Fox News-appointed liberal, of all things, said on television that he does not believe that the opposition to Obamacare is “spontaneous.” He is not a dumb man. He is associated in some fashion with George Washington University. I have heard him before and never caught him even in a white lie. Those people can’t conceive of spontaneous political action because it seldom happens on their side. Instead, they rely on tax-subsidized ACORN, and on a variety of radical front organizations.  Continue reading →

Left-Liberal Hypocrisy and Bad Taste

Jacques Delacroix Liberty , , ,

Leftists always let their real soul slip through, somehow.

I know a young woman who lives in a country other than the US. She is not American. What she has in common with Santa Cruz, California liberals is, well, everything she says. (I can’t really know what she actually believes.) She says the world is fast coming to an end because of fossil fuels. She says, in so many words, that governments should take their money from the rich to give it to the poor (as defined by herself, of course). She says socialism is more fair than capitalism. (She has no idea what capitalism means.) Of, course, she talks as if the US government were a far worse terrorist than say, Osama Bin Laden. By the way, she does not want to talk about who was responsible for 9/11. I think she likes to feed ambiguity without paying the price deniers of terrorism pay in intelligent society.

This young woman also holds a responsible position in the service of a NATO government. She received an education from one of the very best schools in her country. Personally, I think that one-on-one, she is quite likable. At least, I like her in most respects.

Recently, I had a chance to look at her wedding pictures. They showed the bride in her bridal splendor, laughing guests, parts of a dinner party. Nothing more natural there. However, included in the set of published pictures was one of an expensive Mercedes convertible.

Why was the car treated as prominent member of a wedding party?

Weddings are about two individuals joining their lives together, in part, to rear children. It’s about their friends celebrating. It’s about people, isn’t it? Should be, especially among liberals who always act holier-than-thou in matters of material consumption, liberals who see themselves as are more spiritual than selfish, narrow-minded, gross conservatives like me.

What’s the flashy, environmentally unsound, insulting-to-the-poor, imported car doing in the middle of the wedding party? Do I detect such mind-boggling hypocrisy that the hypocrites don’t even recognize what they are?

By the way, no sour grapes here. I don’t care much about cars, never did. I only ask of a car that it protect me against highway drunks and that I don’t have to think about it. Conservatives are simplistic, for sure! I think expensive cars are the poor man’s art (and, I don’t mean financially poor! Wow, what a bitch I am!) The Mercedes in the picture did look good, not $100,000-good though. Think about how much you could do with that kind of money, for others, and even to cultivate your own self.

How utterly vulgar; how infantile; how astonishingly self-centered, how amazingly incoherent; how so very left-liberal!