“The greatest threat to our Republic is the unelected and unaccountable bureaucracy”

To describe why understanding this rule is so critical to making sure we protect freedom and opportunity for our children, I have a story that demonstrates how the bureaucracy spends its time trying to manipulate elected officials. Keep in mind, when I was in the Senate, I was the only Republican on a three member budget committee that spent over $50 billion in state and federal money and oversaw about 60,000 total employees. Pete Wilson was Governor, and I was brand new to the Senate Committee and actual oversight of the very large, and very expensive health and welfare budgets in state government.

The chief bureaucrat of one of departments (which, in California government is called the “career executive assignment (CEA),” that is, a permanent bureaucrat that had worked himself up the bureaucracy to become the chief advisor to the politically appointed head of the department) came to my office to defend a relatively large increase in personnel for his department. The Democrat chairman of the committee proposed eliminating some (though not all) of… Read More

“The purpose of the political process is to persuade people to entrust you with power.”

You would think this rule is an easy one, but it’s not. What is it that most people want out of government? Truth is not much. Keep the liars and the thieves out of my business, let me keep most of the money I earn to take care of my needs and the needs of my family, and let me live the life I want to live without too much government intrusion. Don’t try to raise my kids for me, I can do that myself. Don’t try to run my business for me, I can do that too. If you can keep me, my family and my property safe, I can pretty much do the rest on my own.

Thomas Jefferson said it best in the Declaration of Independence when he wrote government exists to secure the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (which he originally wrote as property), and that government derives the just powers to perform these tasks from the consent of those who they govern. The way elected officials derive that consent is through the process of election. In a republic such as ours, elected officials serve for a specific period of time, and have to go… Read More

In my first four rules of politics, I outlined the political challenges we face in the partisan battles for the soul of our country. In the next three rules, I talked about the institutional challenges of pursuing a freedom and small government agenda. The next rules will talk about the social challenges we face.

That leads me to the eighth rule of politics:

“The real battle in society is not, as Marx states it, between the working class and the rich. It is between the ruling class and the entrepreneurial class.”

There are two sources of power in any social structure. One is power obtained by wealth, the other is power gained at the end of a gun. There are also two forms of human interaction. The first is voluntary interaction, contracts, ownership and disposal of private property, and voluntary associations, like marriage, community groups and the like. The other is involuntary interactions, most easily described as transactions forced upon them by someone, either through criminal or reckless behavior, or use of government power.

Those who gather wealth by satisfying the needs and wants of others in society, the… Read More

How does government spending get so out of control? You and I both know we can’t spend more than we earn for any length of time, but that doesn’t seem to register with those elected to political office, particularly at the federal level. One would think that, at some point, they would stop spending, but they don’t. That phenomenon leads to my seventh rule of politics:

“Democrats want to increase spending for education and social services, and cut transportation and public safety. Republicans want to increase spending on transportation and public safety, and cut spending on education and social services. They reach a compromise to get a budget by increasing spending on everything.”

At the federal level, public safety is mostly national defense spending, and social service spending is welfare and social security. Education and transportation are pretty much the same at both state and federal levels. At the state level, public safety is cops and firefighters.

In every budget battle, the disputes about spending, what gets cut, what gets increased, and how spending categories get treated in the budgets tend to fall… Read More

The new administration is getting serious with countries like Mexico regarding the production and shipping of fentanyl into the United States. It is a deadly drug when not administered legally. An estimated 75,000 Americans died from the drug in 2022 and 2023. Most of them had no clue they were being exposed to the drug. I had a discussion with a drug expert regarding this subject that is quite interesting. The author expressed that he is against tariffs being imposed on Mexico. He thinks it will do nothing to solve the fentanyl crisis. Since he is against tariffs to strongarm Mexico for clamping down on production and shipments to America, I asked him how he would stop it. His answer was, “You can’t. PROHIBITION NEVER WORKS. Did alcohol prohibition stop the trafficking of booze across the Canadian border? Besides, the traffickers are already expanding into Costa Rica. They’ve partnered with Balkan cartels to expand into Ecuador and South America. Is the U.S. going to invade every country south of the border?” “Waging a war on drugs is like playing Whacka-mole. The solution is to end prohibition. Legalize these drugs and regulate them… Read More

If you ever saw the film “The Candidate” you will know that it ends with the classic line: “What do I do now?” Robert Redford’s character in that film had just won his election, and though he had spent months promising to help people and move the government towards his agenda, he had no idea how to accomplish that.

That encapsulates the feelings of most people who actually get elected to office for the first time. After months of campaigning and promising, they win, and then they are at a loss as to what to do. To all candidates I ever spoke to when they were asking for my endorsement for office (back when my endorsement meant something), I would always tell them my sixth rule of politics as advice as to how to direct their efforts during their time in office:

“There are two ways to approach your time in elected office. You will either become an advocate for the people to the bureaucracy, or you will become the mouthpiece of the bureaucracy to the people.”

Simply stated, this means you will either press the agenda of the people that elected you to the bureaucrats, or you will explain the agenda of the… Read More

The previous four rules of politics had to do with things I had observed about Republicans, Democrats, and their approach to politics. I know everyone has seen those rules in action, they just have never understood them, or how to put words to the things they have seen. I derived these rules from watching and attempting to understand what I am seeing. I write them down like this mainly just so they are somewhere other than my brain. The next few rules are not about politics, but rather about governance. How do elected officials approach their job? Why does it seem that once elected, everybody seems to do the same thing? That leads to the my fifth rule:

“There is always a good excuse for bigger government.”

This is how the process works. Someone identifies a problem, and their solution is always some government program to fix it. Or, they see a government agency out of control, and try to fix it, and are hit with the “you are allied with the bad guys we are trying to stop” excuse. Ronald Reagan once said the closest thing to eternal life on this earth is a government program. Once it is… Read More

“At some time in political history, Democrats married Unions as their partner in the path to political power, and Republicans married the business community as theirs. The Democrats’ partner is faithful, the Republicans’ partner cheats all the time.”

I learned this rule early on in politics, and it was really emphasized during the two years that Republicans had a majority in the Assembly and the Governor’s office. Unions always gave 99% of their money to Democrats for Democrat elections prior to the 1994 election, and gave even more in the 1994-6 election cycle to unseat the Republicans. The Business Community, prior to 1994, gave about 60% of its money to Democrats with the excuse that they had to because “the Democrats are in charge of the Legislature.” In the 1994-6 election cycle, they gave about 55% of their money to Democrats because, according to one lobbyist I spoke to, “they might be in charge again, and we have to maintain those relationship.”

What? The unions don’t use such a lame excuse to justify their campaign contribution behavior, and besides, when the Democrats take over… Read More