JohnWayneCounty.com

I have combined this blog with my other blogs in one grand, new site. Click here if you dare: JohnSeilerBlogs.com

Dear Constant Blog Reader:

I currently maintain three blogs, but am considering combining them. They are this blog, CaliforniaComment.com, and USAComment.com.

Combining the blogs would make it easier for me to do the computer maintenance needed, such as screening comments. (I approve all comments except spam.) That would leave me more time to write more blogs.

My original thinking was that three blogs — national, state, and local — would let readers decide what they wanted to read. Someone in New York City, for example, might not want to read local news about Orange County. And someone in Orange County might read my local comments, but not care what I think about the Iraq war.

But I’ve been thinking that, when I read blogs, I just skip over those items I’m not interested in. And I recall that some of my favorite columns from late Mike Royko  were his local observations of Chicago, where I never have lived.

So, please let me know. Type something in the comment section below. Or email me: john@ocregister.com

I’ll be deciding in a few days.

Yours,

John

OCBlog is right: Cut tax money going to the Human Relations Commission. Let it be merged into the private Human Relations Council. Both are run by Rusty Kennedy. OCBlog notes:

County government shouldn’t be in the business of forcing county taxpayers to shell out for “Living Room Dialogs” and “Latino-Muslim Community Exchanges.” Let the Human Relations Council run such programs on freely given dimes.

I remember going to a presentation Kennedy gave to those attending a local Democratic Party convention a couple of years ago. He put up a bunch of pictures and asked people to identify which was white, Latino, black, man, woman, homosexual, etc. The point was that the pictures sort of could be one or another, so we were supposed to see that appearances often aren’t the same as reality. It was 1960s-style sensitivity training.

Tax dollars shouldn’t fund such nonsense.

Register columnist Gordon Dillow, whom I usually like, today brings up the old right-wing bromide that the media lost the Vietnam War for the United States. I grew up during the war, turning 17 when the last troops left in 1973 (except for embassy troops), and always supported the war. After the war was lost in 1975, I believed the myth that the media lost the war.

Then I read a lot on the war and grew older and realized the media couldn’t possibly have lost the war. The U.S. had 10 years to win the war, if we go by LBJ’s escalation of 1964 after the Gulf of Tonkin incident. At the height of U.S. involvement, 550,000 troops were in Vietnam. The whole war cost U.S. taxpayers $100 billion — about $1 trillion in today’s inflated money. The long war essentially bankrupted the U.S. government because it caused — along with LBJ’s Great Society welfare waste, which is still with us — the inflation of the late 1960s and 1970s.

And the media mostly supported the war until the 1968 Tet offfensive.

How, then, was the war lost? First, because America shouldn’t have been there in the first place. The American Founders were right: America should stay out of foreign entanglements.

Second, the war was run by idiots: LBJ, Defense Secretary McNamara, Gen. Westmoreland were re-fighting World War II, using Second Generation War tactics from WW I. But Gen. Giap, the North Vietnamese commander, was using Fourth Generation War tactics.

LBJ opened a wide “credibility gap” with the American people because his whole life he was a massive liar.

Dillow concludes his column by saying the same thing — media betrayal of the war — is happening in Iraq. Except that the real parallels are, first, we shouldn’t be there, either. And second, the government — this time Bush, Cheney, Powell, and the others — again lied us into war.

Just as LBJ lied about the Gulf of Tonkin Incident to get America deeply involved in Vietnam, so Bush lied about Saddam’s non-existent “weapons of mass destruction” and ties to al-Qaeda to get us into the Iraq war.

That’s why Ron Paul’s candidacy is so important. He’s the only Republican candidate who would keep us out of the unnecessary and unconstitutional (because neither had a declaration of war) killing fields and return us to the Founders’ wise policy of non-intervention.

Orange Unified is going through further agonies, which began several years ago when its greedy teachers’ union packed the school board. Now some people are angered at eccentric board member Steve Rocco, and are gathering signatures to put a recall on the February ballot.

A better idea: Just recall the whole school district by dissolving it. Return the tax money to taxpayers. Let them figure out where to send their kids.

Would you buy a car made by the government? Likely not. When government produces cars, you get the Yugo.

So why, when government runs education, do we expect anything better than Yugo-”quality” results from our kids?

One of the worst trends in modern journalism is the kind that buries the lede – the lead paragraph — in the middle of the story, instead of beginning with it. A Register story today on housing in Anaheim does that. I don’t blame the writer, because that’s what they’re taught in journalism schools and what editors want. The idea supposedly is that if you begin with a “human interest” angle, readers will be more likely to keep reading.

Actually, the real result is to encourage the reader to skip the story. Readers only have so many hours, and want the lede to give them the gist of the story, allowing the reader to decide whether to continue reading that story, or to move on to other stories.

The effect of burying the lede usually is to skew the story toward view of the human interest angle. That’s the case for this Register story, which is about the supposed need for special “low-income” housing. The story never provides an opposing argument. Here it is.

The best way to provide housing for everybody, including the poor, is to guarantee property rights and let the free market build what is needed. If you skew the market by legislating “low-cost” housing, the market is distorted and becomes less efficient, which in turn raises prices for everybody.

Mandated “low-income” housing also means the people who own it can’t sell it at a good profit when the market goes up. The mandates include keeping the price low if the property is sold, so it will remain “low-income.” They’re stuck there even if they want to move because they’re never going to get such a good deal. This freezes the market, raising prices even higher for surrounding properties. By contrast, fluid markets, in which buyers and sellers are free to come to an agreement on price without government interference, are the best way to keep prices low.

Another problem is that those lucky enough to get the “low-cost” housing often rent out space to others, even though that’s against the rules, to make a profit.

The story also doesn’t mention how Orange County’s housing shortage has been made much worse by the immigration problem, which has brought millions of illegal aliens into this area, and state government restrictions on housing. Building a wall at the border, defeating Bush’s amnesty bill, and ending zoning would go far in making housing more affordable.

I wish reporters, and officials of my Catholic Church — who are advancing this foolishness — would study some basic economics.

And let’s put those ledes back where they belong — at the top of the story.

Because it affects Orange County, don’t miss my analysis of the state budget, which Flashreport is running. Click here.

Does Orange County really need to force taxpayers to promote it? Doesn’t the world already know about Disneyland, John Wayne, the Ducks, the Anaheim (not that other city) Angels, and our famous beaches?

The supervisors were right this week to halt funding of the county film commission. But they voted, 4-1, to fund the county tourism council to the tune of $150,000. Only Chairman Chris Norby voted against the waste.

I’m disappointed that John Moorlach voted for it. I can assure him that people in Michigan, where I grew up, all the time are “California Dreamin’ ” about coming here — and staying. No advertising needed.

I remember how, when Sheriff Mike Carona first took office in 1998, everyone hoped he would be a breath of fresh air after the secretive, brutal, tediously long reign of his predecessor, Brad Gates. Early on in Carona’s administration, there was talk that the GOP would nominate him for lieutenant governor. Then things turned sour for “America’s sheriff.”

He forgot that the top cop in any jurisdiction — federal, state, or local — should be above reproach. That’s because he wields the power to shoot and arrest people.

An exchange this week between Carona and Register columnist Steven Greenhut shows why the Board of Supervisors was right to unanimously back the Citizens Law Enforcement Review Board, which would oversee Carona’s actions.

When the Review Board was voted on last month, Carona objected that the board’s action showed “a certain amount of distrust” and was creating a “redundant process that is inconsistent with the Orange County model of lean government and direct accountability.” Supervisor John Moorlach retorted that, when he was overseeing Orange County’s recovery from the bankruptcy (itself caused by too little oversight, I would add), he was not offended by oversight boards and, “Transparency and daylight is a preventative approach that I find works.”

Well, on June 12, Greenhut blogged about Paris Hilton possibly being sent to the OC Jail:

Any inmate in the OC Jail would be likely to suffer from the same mistreatment and poor medical care that are the subject of numerous lawsuits, federal oversight and investigations. I’m not sure, however, that this is something the county should be proud about.

Carona responded:

Steven Greenhut is on the slippery slope of liars and fools. Facts simply do not measure up to his conspiracy theories and fantasies, but he continues to forge ahead….

No doubt he’ll continue down the slippery slope. Just sift through everything he has written over the last year and you’ll quickly notice that his tone and tenor are consistent. Greenhut’s conspiracy theories and wild fantasies have eroded any journalistic integrity he may have had.

He ignores facts as well as any other information that would get in the way of his agenda. His motivation is clear. He is not writing to enlighten or inform his readers. Allegedly, his goal is to undermine the community’s confidence in Law Enforcement while ripping our reputation to pieces.

I’m not sure, however, that this is something the Orange County Register should be proud of.

Actually, the paper should be proud of the work of Greenhut and the other journalists there who have worked to clean up the many scandals that have occurred under Carona’s administration. If Carona had run the squeaky-clean administration he promised in 1998, he wouldn’t be having these problems today.

Greenhut then listed some of the scandals under Carona:

[Greenhut’s] columns on jail abuse. Here. Here. Here. Here.

OCWeekly’s archives on the sheriff’s list of scandals

Here is a recent Register story on cronyism allegations against Carona.

Here is information on the sheriff blaming the civilian oversight panel vote, 5-0, on political payback of some sort.

Here is a Times article on Carona’s aide, George Jaramillo, and his jail sentence. Notice that Jaramillo will be spending his year at the Montebello jail.

The Lincoln Club letter on the need for civilian oversight.

Here is Carona’s retribution against Bill Hunt.

Here is the Register article on Sandy Trujillo sexual harassment case.

Here is Total Buzz’s archive of stories on The Ethically Challenged Sheriff.

Quite a list.

Orange County deserves better than this. Carona was re-elected last year and should use the remainder of his term in office taking care of these scandals and not creating any new scandals. He should apologize to Greenhut and Orange County. And he should cheerfully welcome the Citizens Law Enforcement Review Board as a way to verify he is properly running his department.

John Kobylt, of the John and Ken Show, is a major reason Bush’s amnesty bill was defeated. The show’s “political human sacrifice” of local politicians supporting amnesty went a long way toward showing the politicians’ vulnerability on the issue.

But John is supporting Rudy Giuliani for president. John even introduced Giuliani Sunday night at the OC GOP’s Flag Day celebrations in Irvine. Yet in Giuliani’s speech, as I reported from the event Sunday night:

Giuliani said he wanted to build an effective fence on the border. He wanted a “tamper proof” ID card and “make it so every person from a foreign country has that card — put it in a database.” So he would erect another federal database, in addition to the Real ID Card Database foisted on us by Bush and the Republican Congress two years ago and the Deadbeat Dads Database imposed by the Gingrich Congress in the previous decade.

Giuliani insisted that, once his program was in place, “Then wouldn’t we be able to solve the rest of the problem? When that happens, we can reach very rational solitions to the rest of the problems.” In other words, he would cave in on everything else.

Under Giuliani, we likely would have amnesty.  He once supported it, and apparently still does, if you read through his waffling.

So why is John Kobylt supporting Giuliani instead of one of the really anti-amnesty candidates, such as Tom Tancredo or Ron Paul?

He should tell us.