"Talking about Dylan is too complicated for just a few words..." The post Richard Hell’s favourite Bob Dylan song: “There’s no explaining it” first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California Gov. Gavin Newsom was last seen in New Hampshire, where he was touting President Joe Biden’s reelection in a Democratic-leaning swing state. Whatever the political merits of the governor’s visit, it left Californians wondering about Newsom’s plan for dealing with the many crises that have been piling up in Sacramento. Many observers — and not just conservative ones — have concluded that Newsom has psychologically moved on from his current job. The Democratic primary for governor — and that’s the only primary that matters for statewide office in California — isn’t until June 2026, yet Newsom recently decamped from the capital city. He moved his family out of his 12,000-square-foot suburban Sacramento estate back to Marin County, the wealthy liberal enclave north of San Francisco. He cites schooling issues for his children. Family first, but this hardly instills confidence in his commitment to governing. “I think the governor has made it very clear that he’s bored with his job here. And frankly, he’s underwater with his popularity in the state,” said long-time Democratic consultant Steve Maviglio. “More people think negatively of him than positively and I think part of that reason is he’s too busy running for president and not too busy being governor.” He couldn’t even bother to give his annual State of the State speech on time or in person. He offered a pre-recorded video. The talk led CalMatters columnist Dan Walters to ask the obvious question: “[W]as it truly a State of the State address, or the opening event of his 2028 campaign for president of the United States?” Instead of reporting on conditions here, Walters said Newsom told the nation to follow “the policies and programs that he and the Legislature have wrought.”  That would be an odd course. Before he left for his Biden campaign tour, Newsom flubbed perhaps the most significant issue that’s come before the Legislature this year: crime. Despite Newsom’s Pollyanna view of California, the media has been awash in news stories about skyrocketing property crime. Criticism has centered on Proposition 47, the 2014 statewide ballot measure that reduced penalties for lower-level crime, including retail theft. There’s been widespread frustration at the governor’s and Legislature’s failure to address the matter. It’s mostly the result of progressive lawmakers who dominate the Assembly Public Safety Committee and refuse to toughen up sentencing. Their basic view is they won’t do anything that increases over-incarceration. But they even battled efforts to toughen up penalties for serious crimes involving fentanyl, child rape, and domestic violence. Public pressure has mounted. Amid a wave of shoplifting and high-profile smash-and-grab robberies, a group of district attorneys, conservatives and retail companies have qualified for the November ballot a measure called the “Homelessness, Drug Addiction and Theft Reduction Act,” which directly reworks some elements of Proposition 47. It’s somewhat of an overreaction, but Newsom and legislative Democrats have been tone-deaf to widespread concern about the crime wave. Pushed into action by the looming and seemingly popular initiative, lawmakers crafted a wide-ranging package of crime bills that address the matter without gutting Prop. 47, but they overplayed their hand. They included “poison pills“ in the legislation that would invalidate their bills if voters approved the above-mentioned DA-backed initiative. Even some Democrats were aghast at the cynicism of this move and berated their caucus. “It is clear that the only purpose of this novel legislative maneuver is to equip opponents of the ballot initiative with a talking point — to be used on the campaign trail, and likely even on the ballot itself — to confuse voters and undermine the will of the people of California,” wrote a group of Republican members of Congress, per a Center Square report. Again amid public outrage, Democratic lawmakers backed away from the amendments. But they weren’t done playing games. Newsom and his allies introduced an alternative ballot measure that seemed designed to muddy the waters on the ballot. One typical ploy to stop a measure is to qualify a similar-sounding measure to confuse voters, thus reducing the likelihood that the other measure will pass. In our initiative-happy state, voters often vote “no” on everything when they are unclear about the distinctions. “Despite these efforts and having the votes necessary to pass the measure, we are unable to meet the ballot deadline to secure necessary amendments to ensure this measure’s success and we will be withdrawing it from consideration,” Newsom said before he left California. Per Courthouse News Service, Senate GOP Leader Brian Jones of San Diego chided the governor: “For once, Californians benefitted from having a governor that cares more about national politics than his job in Sacramento.” Had Democrats been willing to negotiate in good faith, they could have spared themselves the embarrassment. Their crime package wasn’t bad and both sides agreed on the need for, say, a measure that allows prosecutors to charge serial thieves who steal under the $950 felony limit at one store and then do so at other stores — thus avoiding prosecution. It’s hard to understand how such gamesmanship can be any model for the nation. There’s no reason they couldn’t have negotiated a solution. As I noted in my Orange County Register column, Newsom has prattled about democracy, but has used his powers to limit public say on crucial governing issues. Recently, he succeeded in a state Supreme Court challenge to a business-backed initiative that would have limited tax increases. Newsom and other state leaders convinced the court to pull the measure based on the argument that it amounted to an improper constitutional revision. So much for defending democracy. Meanwhile, the state continues to endure a variety of policy crises, including a collapsing property insurance market, growing homelessness concerns, spreading wildfires, and soaring utility and home prices. It might be nice to have a governor who was more engaged in the problems at home rather than dancing on the national political stage, but perhaps his mind just isn’t on the job. Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org. The post Has Newsom Moved on From California? appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation―and Could Again By Yuval Levin  (Basic Books, 352 pages, $25) An important conservative intellectual was here teaching an attentive post-graduate audience about the contributions of a dozen intellectual leaders of the early conservative movement. But it soon became obvious from the questions posed to him that the students were confused. After a bit of further discussion, one of the youngish audience’s brightest intellectuals blurted out to the speaker: “The problem is that your generation read serious books and ours has not.” While a decades-old Pew study suggested that the young still read books, the more detailed studies show that most of this is light reading. Indeed, the more academic studies suggest that reading serious books has declined markedly. Today’s “reading” seems to be “all about the screens.” There is reading, but it is short texts required at school and Instagram captions, rather than long-form articles that explore deeper themes that “require critical thinking and reflection.” And SAT reading scores have been plummeting as a result. So here comes an incredibly serious and comprehensive book on the Constitution by American Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow and National Affairs editor Yuval Levin titled American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation—and Could Again. It is essential reading for serious older readers on the right who can benefit from its comprehensiveness and mostly forgotten solutions. And it is receiving good reviews. But the first question that occurred to me was: Who among the younger generation will actually read it? But more on that later. A short review will not do the book justice, but here is a bit to entice the serious reader. Levin begins by first explaining the U.S. Constitution itself. If you think you understand it already, most Americans would be wrong. Indeed, Levin concedes there are actually five ways to look at the Constitution: as law, as policy, as an institution, as political, and as a common national framework. He considers the first two views conventional and well known, so he concentrates on the latter three, with the fifth as his unifying theme. The author argues that those who think seriously about the Constitution as an institution start with its power being divided and balanced between three national Article institutions, the legislative, executive, and judicial. But most deemphasize that each branch is to exercise power differently, for a different purpose. And most leave out the states as Article IV institutions and ignore the general political nature of the Constitution throughout, especially voting and politics. Levin’s guide to the Constitution is the way it was understood at its Philadelphia Convention, especially by James Madison but also Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and the rest. Their view was that Congress was placed first by design, a legislature to make the laws, divided into a House of Representatives and a Senate, to force accommodations between their differently composed and geographically diverse divisions. The president was next created singular to give that law the power to act within its confines and to apply it to ever-changing daily events. The Supreme and other courts then are forced to apply the law in concrete cases to resolve specific circumstances. The federated states and political institutions have their own semi-independent institutional lives and interact with the national entities. As a political scientist, my favorites are the separate chapters, first on federalism, then Congress, the presidency, the courts, and political institutions. He gets to the essence of each institution, stressing what is most important about them. States today are overwhelmed by national rules, so it is essential to rebalance federalism because the more centralized the nation, the “more divided it becomes.” Congress is in Article 1 for a reason, because it is the most important nationally and is now the most weakened by 20th-century progressive reforms. His solutions to better represent ordinary citizens include increasing the size of the House to create smaller representative constituencies, restoring the importance of local political parties, and decentralizing power generally. But it is the Constitution’s role as a framework for national unity that most motivates Levin throughout his presentation — especially in the concluding chapter that he titles “What Is Unity?” Following Madison’s Federalist 10, he agrees that differing opinions are inherent in a free society and that “unity is less about thinking alike than about acting together.” The U.S.’s cohesion resulted more from having to act together under a common Constitution in common institutions than by agreement on issues. Some agreement on basics like the Declaration truths derived from Western civilizational experience is required, but the Constitution with its opening word “We” provides the real solution, which is to work out differences within its political institutions. Some actions took time to work out properly, but civilizational principles basically prevailed over time. The result has been a “patchwork of mutual obligations” requiring “an enormous amount of acting together but it does not presume an enormous amount of thinking alike.” While progressivism assumes it is impossible to act together without thinking alike, the Founders believed that majority will and minority rights can be balanced by “procedural protections, structural constraints and institutional mechanisms” balanced by a “we” that develops an historic pluralism and toleration that culminates in the Constitution’s institutional “conception of unity.” Today, “[o]ur politics has grown more bitterly divided” as a result of the progressive reforms that have tried to force agreement on one single “right” solution rather than building a plural consensus, Levin argues. Congress has become too centralized, the presidency too politicized, the courts too active making laws rather than interpreting them, the parties weakened, and federalism bureaucratized by “one national size fits all” policies. The only way back is to recover the Constitution as the founders understood it. Levin’s is a sophisticated argument that in years past could have been seriously discussed in a university teaching environment. This simply does not exist very often today. Everyone gets an A and consequently, why read? And why bother with a right-of center author who is not on a faculty? The American Political Science Association professorship is 90-plus percent left of center and the other faculties are not far behind. A serious book like Levin’s demands one or two lessons a week in a college-like Socratic format, taking one chapter (or less) at a time, for nine weeks or so, one for each chapter. The normal graduate school today is both intellectually and ideologically unable to seriously consider such a book. The only hope today is that conservative institutions will accept the challenge to become de facto graduate schools, places to teach what is not read in today’s mainstream universities. While Levin’s American Enterprise Institute and my The Fund for American Studies and others make efforts in this regard, we all need to do more — and more comprehensively. The only solution for a true conservative intellectual future today is holding graduate-like classrooms inside or outside the existing colleges to teach the relatively small number of heroes who have survived the modern university experience without turning simplistic or radically Left. And one of the first books to be discussed should be American Covenant. Donald Devine is a senior scholar at the Fund for American Studies in Washington, D.C. He served as President Ronald Reagan’s civil service director during his first term in office. A former professor, he is the author of 11 books, including his most recent, The Enduring Tension: Capitalism and the Moral Order, and Ronald Reagan’s Enduring Principles and is a frequent contributor to The American Spectator. The post Teaching the Constitution in a World Without Books appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

The Republican National Committee just released its 2024 platform. While calling it a platform is a stretch, the list of bullet points gives an idea of what the potential next Trump administration’s goals are. Here’s one issue that should be front and center: End inflation and make America affordable again. To be sure, “make America more affordable” would be a great slogan and a great objective. It’s similar to what many have called an “abundance agenda.” While there is plenty to dislike in a platform that at times feels unserious and destructive, this part, I like. Abundance isn’t achieved by the same old subsidies or tax breaks for special interests, price controls, or spending loads of taxpayer money on transfer payments. It’s achieved by freeing up the supply side of our economy. That means freeing producers and innovators from excessive regulatory obstacles and heavy tax burdens (including tariffs) so they can provide more of what Americans need. The Trump administration platform assures us it will move in this direction. For instance, it wants to increase America’s dominance as an energy producer, which will only be achieved through a deregulation agenda. Apart from counterproductive tax incentives for first-time homeowners, it expresses a commitment to lowering housing costs through deregulation. The platform states it will “cancel the electric vehicle mandate and cut costly and burdensome regulations” as well as “end the Socialist Green New Deal.” I assume that means ending the expensive subsidies and tax breaks in the Inflation Reduction Act. Great idea, but get ready to hear all the recipients of these handouts cry that they won’t be able to do what they were already doing before being given the subsidies. A deregulation agenda would serve the Republicans’ goal of boosting manufacturing much better than tariffs, which former President Donald Trump continues to love despite overwhelming evidence that they don’t do what he claims. Most tariffs raise the prices of inputs used by American firms, including manufacturing, to produce outputs that serve their customers. Something similar could be said about Republicans’ swipes at immigrants. Fewer immigrants will create labor-supply shortages, hurt manufacturing and slow the economy. Still, even with their disastrous trade and immigration agenda and the many contradictory goals espoused by this platform, implementing the deregulatory part of the agenda will make some strides at freeing the supply side and hence lowering prices. Indeed, President Joe Biden has not only maintained many of Trump’s tariffs, but he’s added some of its own. He’s also systematically favored subsidizing the demand for certain things — nudging customers to buy what he wants them to buy — while taking actions that restrict supply. That’s a recipe for affordability failure. But as far as affordability goes, I’m less optimistic about the prospect of the next administration ending inflation. That’s because Trump and other Republicans are firmly embracing fiscal irresponsibility and excessive debt. The platform contains no mention of a plan to get government debt under control. Instead, it pledges to “fight for and protect Social Security and Medicare with no cuts, including no changes to the retirement age.” Many voters love hearing this promise. But maintaining these two objectively underfinanced programs will inevitably explode the debt burden over the next 30 years. In the entire history of the United States so far, Uncle Sam has accumulated roughly $34 trillion in debt. Under the Trump plan, the government would need to borrow another $124 trillion for these programs alone. Leaving aside the question of who will lend us all this money when foreign buyers are already scaling back purchases of U.S. Treasuries, remember that most of the inflation we’ve recently suffered is the product of massive Biden administration spending on top of the COVID-19 spending without any plan to pay for it. As such, announcing that the U.S. will simply go on another borrowing spree sends a poor signal, and it might even increase inflation. This is made more important because Trump wants to make permanent the tax cuts that are set to expire after 2025, end taxes on tips, and more. If Congress and the president do this without any offsetting spending reductions, it will add at least another $4 trillion in debt over 10 years. With more inflationary fuel, we could easily see the Federal Reserve raise interest rates again, making borrowing money even more expensive than it already is. The bottom line is that Trump’s deregulatory agenda could have a shot at lowering some prices. But it will only be a game-changer if he becomes serious about fiscal responsibility. Right now, he isn’t, so I wouldn’t count on it. Veronique de Rugy is the George Gibbs Chair in Political Economy and a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. To find out more about Veronique de Rugy and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM The post Make America Affordable Again appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

ANNOUNCING: PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP TO SPEAK AT #BITCOIN2024 pic.twitter.com/F2mwECVMTW — The Bitcoin Conference (@TheBitcoinConf) July 10, 2024

from Bannons War Room: TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/

from Revolver News: There are pivotal moments that define a person’s transformation, both personally and politically, and Elon Musk is right in the middle of one. Thanks to the Democrats’ radical Marxist agenda and their botched, tyrannical policies, Musk has been pulling off political U-turns left and right. So much so, that jaws were literally […]

Boeing has agreed to pay $243.6 million to resolve a US Justice Department investigation into two 737 MAX fatal crashes, the government announced in a court filing on Sunday. However, Infowars host Alex Jones, who [...] The post Boeing Fined $1.26 Billion Less Over Death of 346 People Than Alex Jones Was For Saying Things appeared first on The People's Voice.