Semi-Daily Journal

NPR interviewed the car salesman governor candidate. The interviewer asked 10 separate times about specific spending cuts and after hemming and hawing 9 times, the only response was to cut education. Have reporters finally gotten wise that claims of easy spending cuts without specifics are probably bogus?

In his book, The Triumph of Politics, David Stockman relates a Reagan story about a boy who was overjoyed to get a room full of horse manure for Xmas. The boy grabbed a shovel and yelled, "There's got to be a pony in there somewhere.

We are told over and over by anti-tax politicians that there is a lot of wasteful spending that is easy to cut. Iit turns out to be just a load of horse manure.

Bakho

Which car salesman (GOP candidate) did NPR interview? I know ARNOLD ducks questions about spending cuts and he has promised increases in education spending. So how will he reduce the deficit? Not by new taxes.

I'm voting against the recall, but in the next election I'm voting Republican for governor, unless they put up a turkey like Simon.

A Republican would save the taxpayers a lot of money because he or she would not be beholden to the public employee unions.

California Republicans have cozied up to public employee unions, too. Pete Wilson warred with the teachers, but played nice with prison guards and public safety unions. Deukmejian didn't cross the public employees. The public employee unions make contributions and run independent expenditure campaigns in GOP primaries, making Republicans shy about crossing them. Only one Republican legislator voted against the contract giving big raises to prison guards. If Joe Willingham thinks having a Republican in the Capitol will save lots of money on public employee contracts, he's likely to be disappointed.

I don't for the life of me remember the guy's name. He was on Morning Edition. He is some minor guy, one of the hundreds. Maybe they have transcripts.

Seen on a bumper sticker: "My child is a candidate for governor of California."

Reagan's OMB, David Stockman was intent on cutting spending. However, he found that his ideas about cutting spending were trumped by politics. The inability to make draconian spending cuts led to the Reagan deficits. That is why Stockman calls his book, The Triumph of Politics. Ideologues that charge ahead ignoring the politics usually have a rude awakening. The American ideal is based on an educated electorate (Jefferson) that chooses representatives. The head of Administration, however, needs to have special skills. Do you trust a state to a novice? Planet Hollywood. Need I say more?

Mark, I can't find a counterargument. It is utterly depressing. Look at Great Britain, France, and Germany. The unions have put those once great countries in the toilet.

But even the unions are a minor problem compared to the "multiculturalist" morons who are dominant in academia and the mass media.

Yes Joe Willingham, nothing is more fearsome than a few Ethnic Studies professors who don't like American foreign policy! They CLEARLY have caused the country's current problems like a rising deficit, slow growth, and multiple qWagmires.

If we brave patriots don't root out the "multiculturalists" (also known as communists), our country may not survive.

Joe, you fail to appreciate that much of the multiculturalism adopted by American Universities is in response to business demands for employees that are sufficiently global in their outlook that these employess can address their business needs to negotiate cultural differences in markets that are increasingly global.

Even such seemingly parochial businesses such as agriculture are global in scope, developing products for foreign markets and using foreign countries for product development. Because summer and winter are reversed in the northern and southern hemispheres, these companies can speed their research by working in South America, Australia, etc. during our winter instead of waiting a whole year for the next cycle. Operating in SA means having to negotiate language and cultural differences. Who is going to get the high paying development job in Argentina? The English speaking farm boy who has never left Mississippi, or the Peace Corp volunteer that has already spent several years in SA and speaks Spanish fluently? Clothes, computer chips, consumer electronics, etc. are all produced in countries where English is not the first language and there are significant cultural differences. If Americans want to compete in global markets, they have to understand many different cultures. duh

Multiculturalism is supported by businesses with global interests or it would only be a minor part of college education.

"So perhaps Simon's plan is worth looking at: the right-wing class warfare element, the mirrors, the smoke--this is a good introduction to today's Republican Party in California."

Wonder which class is winning? Hey, how did these folks ever get so darn rich with all the rotten California taxes? As Schwartzy tell us, they tax us in the bathroom. Poor Schwartzy, need a few dollars hon?

I should also add that I live in a town with a Japanese auto plant. Workers have to adjust to Japanese management practices. Those still fighting WWII need not apply.

What would you have me do? I am Latino. Mexican-American. First generation. What I understand is that except for native Americans, the rest of us descend from immigrants. Does it matter how far back we can trace our American descent? We either are a multicultural interdependent society or bunches of isolates hounding each other. OK? We are muticultural.

August 26, 2003

AP NEWS

Labor union representatives gathered Tuesday to decide whether to endorse Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante's ``No on recall, yes on Bustamante'' option in the state's referendum on Gov. Gray Davis, or to stick to their ``No recall'' guns.

Several unions have already endorsed Bustamante's campaign, but the whole California Labor Federation AFL-CIO has thus far flatly opposed the recall and played a leading role in trying, unsuccessfully, to keep Democrats off the ballot.

AP 8/26/03

California State Labor Federation AFL-CIO delegates voted Tuesday to endorse Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante for governor in case Gov. Gray Davis is ousted in the Oct. 7 recall election.

The labor organization had already come out against the recall itself, but the vote added the Bustamante endorsement as a fall-back position. The results of the vote were revealed by delegates leaving a meeting at a Manhattan Beach hotel.

Bakho,

What you call "multiculturalism", learning foreign languages and about foreign countries is altogether a good thing. It is important in business because of globalization, but it is valuable for its own sake.

If I had my way no one would be awarded a college degree without being fluent in at least one foreign language, or maybe even two. Multiculturalism in your sense has been part of the western educational tradition since the Renaissance. Before that, in the Middle Ages, the west was influenced by Islamic scholars.

When I condemn multiculturalism I am not talking about multiculturalism in your sense, but about a political ideology. That ideology teaches that people's ethnic differences are more important than what they have in common, and that the law should treat people of different ethnicities differently. I believe with Martin Luther King, Jr. and other great political thinkers that the law should treat people according to their conduct, not according to their ethnicity.

In my sense of the word the old South was multiculturalist. White people and black people were treated differently by the law. That system was un-American, and it was overthrown by a revolution in which I was an enthusiastic participant.

Don't get me wrong. People should speak what languages they want, they should follow the customs and dance the folks dances that please them. But they should do it so to speak on their own nickel. The government should stay out of it.

Insofar as government has anything to say, as in the public schools, it should emphasize the common civic culture of all Americans, and the Judeo-Christian-Classical-Enlightenment heritage on which this country is based. (Footnote: the reference to our Judeo-Christian heritage does *not* mean that people of other religions or no religion can't be good Americans. It simply recognizes an historial fact.)

Bakho,

Conservatives and libertarians see Multiculturalism in exactly the same why that liberals and many others see Ashcroft and the Patriot Act. US universities have institutionalized it and made it more noticeable. The removal of free speech. The demand to toe the institutes party line. Trumped up charges if your the wrong race or gender. Un-equal rights.

Your proposed comparison is un-equal. The ability to speak fluent Spanish as a second language does not automatically denote multiculturalism. If both spoke fluent Spanish, the Mississippi farm boy would most likely get the job. People who work in the non-profit sector tend to have a hard time crossing over to the pure business sector.

Wow, you guys are amazing.

Your party controls 2/3rds of both houses of the legislature, every statewide office, both US Senate seats, vast majority of House seats, most local offices, and yet you still somehow turn everything back to those evil Republicans.

Gee, is there one hiding under your bed? When will you be happy? When you control 80% of the seats in the legislature? When all the Republicans are killed off like your hero Stalin did to dissenters?