COLAB SAN LUIS OBISPO WEEK OF SEPTEMBER 23 - 29, 2018
THIS WEEK
NO BOS MEETING
PLANNING COMMISSION BACK IN ACTION SOME INTERESTING DEVELOPMENTS
LAST WEEK
BACKLOG OF MARIJUANA PERMIT APPS. AND ILLEGAL GROW VIOLATIONS SLOWING OTHER PLANNING DEPARTMENT WORK THE BOARD APPROVED A NEW $730,000 PER YEAR UNIT USE OF CONTRACTOR TO DO IT FASTER AND CHEAPER NOT CONSIDERED
BOS ADOPTS PRIVATIZATION OF PUBLIC SAFETY MEDICAL SERVICES
PUBLIC FACILITIES FEES REVIEW PERFUNCTORY REVIEW ANESTHETIZES BOS
REGIONAL WATER BOARD MEETING ON AG WATER RUNOFF ON SEPT. 20 & 21
LAFCO CANCELLED
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SLO COLAB IN DEPTH SEE PAGE 11
ARE WE ON THE VERGE OF CIVIL WAR? By VICTOR DAVIS HANSON THE ALINSKY-IZATION OF BRETT KAVANAUGH By Rich Logis
THIS WEEK’S HIGHLIGHTS
No Board of Supervisors Meeting on Tuesday, September 25, 2018 (Not Scheduled)
September 25th is a 4th Tuesday, when the Board does not typically meet.
San Luis Obispo County Air Pollution Control District APCD Meeting of Wednesday, September 26, 2018 (Scheduled)
Item A-8: Request For Proposal For Legal Counsel. Contract District Counsel Ray Biering has announced his retirement. The SLOCOG Board will be considering the content of Request for Proposals (RFP) for a new attorney. He will also be retiring from the SLO County Solid Waste Authority, where there is an unraveling scandal over allegations of fraud, misuse of public funds, and cronyism. He is also apparently retiring as LAFCO’s contract attorney. LAFCO has issued a request for proposals for a new contract attorney. It is not known if his sudden retirement is related to the mess at the Waste Authority or not. Last year he reported that he needed to spend time with a family member who had been diagnosed with and was receiving treatment for a serious illness.
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Item B-2: Closed Session. The meeting includes the issue of recruiting a new legal counsel as noted above. It also contains labor negotiations and performance evaluation of the Air Pollution Control Officer (executive director).
Planning Commission Meeting of Thursday, September 27, 2018 (Scheduled)
In General: For this meeting, while business has picked up, and except for Item 10 below, there are no major policy change items on the agenda. Items of interest include:
Item 6 - Request by Craig Stoller for a third time extension of previously approved Minor Use Permit DRC2013-00014 to allow for the phased construction of a production winery consisting of two buildings and totaling 13,525 square feet at build out. The project does not include public tasting or special events. The project will result in the disturbance of approximately 2.5 acres of a 114-acre parcel. The proposed project is within the Agriculture land use category and is located in the northwest quadrant of the South El Pomar Road and Almond Drive intersection, approximately 7 miles east of the community of Templeton. The site is in the El Pomar/Estrella sub area of the North County planning area. Also to be considered is the environmental determination.
Staff recommends approval.
Item 7 - A continued hearing to consider a request by Ralph Goehring/Templeton Tennis Ranch to allow for a modification of their previously approved Vesting Tentative Tract Map and Conditional Use Permit (SUB2004-00227) for the construction of a 4,320 sq. ft. multi-purpose building and for 58 temporary events with 24 events up to 100 guests, 22 events up to 150 guests and 12 events up to 250 guests. Amplified music is proposed. The existing uses include a 10,086 sq. ft. tennis club facility with 6 tennis/paddle courts. The project is within the Residential Rural land use category and is located on the west side of Theater Drive, approximately 1,000 feet south of the intersection of Main Street, in the community of Templeton, in the Salinas River Sub Area of the North County Planning Area.
Staff recommends approval. Some neighbors are unhappy.
Item 8 - A request by Bill Lee for a Minor Use Permit/Coastal Development Permit to allow encroachments (as-built) into the road right-of-way of First Street including: 20 feet of landscaping along the length of the eastern portion of the road, and the extension of an approximately 86 foot long (5 feet wide) coastal access boardwalk (connecting to the boardwalk which fronts the bay front at the Back Bay Inn). The project will result in a disturbance of approximately 6000 square feet of First Street (an 80 foot wide right-of-way). The project is located on First Street, south of Santa Maria Avenue extending to Morro Bay, in the Estero planning area in the community of Los Osos. Also to be considered is the environmental
3 determination that the project is categorically exempt under CEQA, pursuant to CEQA Guidelines Section 15061(b)(2).
Staff recommends approval. There is some opposition. Others are in support.
Item 9 - Hearing to consider processing of a land use ordinance amendment to Section 22.94.070 of the County Land Use Ordinance (Nacimiento Sub-Area Standards) and Chapter III of the Inland Area Plan Section 6.2.8 (North County Area Plan – Combining Designations – Flood Hazard). The amendments would allow reconstruction of homes destroyed in the 2016 Chimney Fire below the 825-foot elevation line of Lake Nacimiento (subject to approval by the Monterey County Water Resources Agency). The subject site is within the Recreational land use category in the North County planning area. Also to be considered is the environmental determination that the project is exempt under CEQA, pursuant to CEQA Guidelines Section 15061(b)(3), General Rule Exemption. The Environmental Coordinator has determined that it can be seen with certainty that there is no possibility that the proposed project may have a significant adverse effect on the environment.
The staff recommends approval. The green line on the aerial view below delineates the elevation below which development is prohibited today. The exemption is being granted for properties destroyed in the fire.
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Item 10 - Hearing to consider a request by Ormonde Properties for a Land Use Ordinance Amendment to County Land Use Ordinance Section 22.94.082.D.1, modifying the Wellsona Road Commercial Service Area Plan Standards in the Salinas River Area Plan to allow ‘Vehicle Service and Repair’ and ‘Vehicle Retail Sales’ as allowable uses. The purpose of the amendment is to allow for the future consideration of a Minor Use Permit to relocate and develop a truck sales and service business (Paso Robles Truck Center) within the Wellsona Road Commercial Services area. The Wellsona Road Commercial Services Area surrounds the intersection of Wellsona Road and US 101 and consists of multiple parcels totaling 48 acres within the Commercial Service land use category. Also to be considered is the approval of the environmental document. A Mitigated Negative Declaration has been issued on August 20, 2018 for this project. Mitigation measures are proposed to address Air Quality, Biological Resources, Public Services/Utilities and Transportation/Circulation; and are included as conditions of approval.
The item is complicated because the Wellsona Road/Highway 101 intersection has continuously experienced deadly traffic collisions. Cal Trans expects to construct a fully controlled access interchange in 2022 to alleviate the problem. It is not known if that project is dependent on the continuation of SB-1 funds.
In the meantime staff recommends approval of the development with numerous conditions. It is not clear if the applicant agrees.
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LAST WEEK’S HIGHLIGHTS
Board of Supervisors Meeting of Tuesday, September 18, 2018 (Completed)
Item 13 - Addition of More Staff Planning Department For Marijuana Permitting and Enforcement. A new unit with more staff was unanimously approved for the Planning and Building Department to manage marijuana permitting and enforcement activities. As we have noted in past Updates, the County has a huge backlog of permit applications and illegal grow violations.
Background: The estimated work hours for catch-up are noted below:
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Some questions which were not discussed or considered in public or perhaps not considered at all: a. How long will it take to staff up the unit? b. On the code enforcement side, how many inspections per day does each inspector do on average, and how long do they take per inspection? c. Could one of the private sector facilitator firms in the area do this cheaper, better, and faster while avoiding the addition of long-term pension liability? How much is the accumulated projected actuarial cost of Planner III who works for the County for the next 30 years? d. How much money has the County collected so far in permitting fees and fines? e. Will there be a lag in revenue vis-a-vis the expenditures due to the backlog? Will the General Fund have to assist to backfill this? We will probably see at the time of the 3rd Quarter Financial Report in May 2019. f. Will the County be in compliance with the permit streamlining act? g. How long will it take to eliminate the backlog? h. Do the permitting fees and fines in sequence constitute a violation of the 8th Amendment to the Constitution?
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
For example, a person has a grow and is registered under the interim ordinance. The permitting fees under the permanent ordinance for a minor use permit end up costing $10,000 (all in with the base fee, inspections, other departments, etc.). The person can’t afford to pay them, is found in violation for the current crop and is fined $1000 per day, and loses the property for default on a loan.
WHY ARE THE PERMITS SO COSTLY?
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At The Meeting: One public speaker asserted that the County’s enforcement process was racially discriminatory and that it favored minorities over whites. The Board lobbed the accusation to the CEO, who forcefully and succinctly denied it.
Item 23 - Razor Wire for the Sheriff’s Honor Farm – Oxymoron of the Week. The write- up stated in part:
Request to 1) amend the fixed asset list for Fund Center (FC) 136 – Sheriff-Coroner to include razor ribbon at the Honor Farm campus to deter inmates from leaving without permission.
Reportedly the Honor Farm inmates are becoming less honorable, as increasing numbers of long- term sentenced prisoners are housed in the County Jail due to the State downshift to County jails of those who would formerly be State prisoners. The report indicates that these inmates are more “criminally sophisticated” and apparently less honorable, since some climb the existing chain link fence and “leave.” Therefore, the need for razor wire.
Item 27 - Public Facilities Fees (PFF) Annual Report. The Board received the report and renewed the fees for another year. This item contained the annual required update on how many dollars have been raised by PFF, how much has been expended by function, and where it has been expended geographically. Readers will remember that several years ago Supervisor Compton figured out that although most of the parks fees were raised in Nipomo, most of the money was spent in other parts of the County.
The dilemma is how could the County and other jurisdictions raise money for capital improvements attributable to development without suppressing the development or adding substantially to the price of the related homes and commercial development.
In the meantime we are bludgeoned with stupid ballot measures which would outlaw the oil and gas industry within the County (Measure G), imposition of rent control (State Proposition 10), and unrelenting tax increases.
Item 32 - Public Safety Medical Services Choice: County Operation. The Board adopted the Sheriff’s and Administrative Office’s very complete analysis and recommendation for privatization. The report compared in-house operation and contracting out of jail medical services. These have come under scrutiny in recent years. The recommendation to contract the services out based both on qualitative and financial analysis was adopted. The table below depicts the financial benefit.
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Background: National firms have perfected providing public safety medical services with great success. Twenty-eight of the 58 counties in California now contract out. More are in the process of issuing requests for proposals. The firms that are likely to bid on a contract have very in depth capabilities for both physical medicine and behavioral medicine, including substance abuse and addiction.
The plan includes assisting employees who could face layoffs with transition to other jobs, whether with the County or with the contractor that is ultimately selected.
At the meeting: The staff presentation was complete and measured. There seemed to be no opposition. The staff and Board promised to do everything they can to transition those employees facing layoff to other jobs.
Significantly, and not so subtly, Supervisors Gibson and Hill questioned the Sheriff on whether things in the County Jail would get better. Gibson kept repeating that the Board must accept responsibility for its decisions to privatize the medical care and to implement the Stepping Up Program (a standardized performance based jail management system, which the Board had previously adopted). However, there was an undertone that all this was at the behest of the Sheriff and that he had better deliver.
Organizational Culture: Simultaneously, Supervisor Gibson talked about “organizational culture” as a matter which must be improved. Organizational culture is generally how an organization behaves (both management and employees) in ways that have dropped out of consciousness. In an effective organizational culture, people do the right thing no matter what and when no one is looking. Most of us have experienced both bad and good organizational cultures as employees, students, customers, soldiers, team members, or wherever. Nordstrom; Disneyland; Hyatt Hotels; the US Marines; the NY Metropolitan Opera; the City of Santa Monica; UC Berkeley; the City of West Hartford, CT; San Francisco Grace Cathedral; and Joe T. Garcia’s Mexican Restaurant, Fort Worth have all exhibited the right stuff inter- generationally.
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Values of Accountability, Customer Service, and Excellence are important building blocks, but employees (especially management and supervisors) must be selected, promoted, rewarded, and sanctioned on how well they live them.
Lesson Learned and Opportunity: How about conducting one or two similar analyses every year for other services? Health clinics, fleet services, building maintenance, information technology, personnel services, planning, community development, parks, social services, and others are good examples for review.
No Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO) Meeting on Thursday, September 20, 2018 (Cancelled)
Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board (CCRWQCB) Meeting of September 20 & 21, 2018, Watsonville City Council Chambers, 4th Floor, 275 Main Street, Watsonville, CA (Completed)
Item 6 - Agricultural Order 4.0 Stakeholder Panel Discussions [Chris Rose, 805\542-4770, [email protected]] The call for the meeting stated in part: There will be several panels and speakers for this item followed by an opportunity for public comment. The item will begin on Thursday and continue through Friday. Thursday’s panelists represent agricultural interests. Friday’s panelists represent environmental and environmental justice interests. Opportunity for public comment is provided on both Thursday and Friday following panel discussions. STAFF REPORT Attachment 1: Day One Agricultural Panels Attachment 2: Day Two Environmental Panel
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This 2-day extravaganza was designed to kick off what is likely to be an effort to make the rules for ag water runoff even more severe and oppressive. Whether the ag panel made any lasting impression of the staff and Board members is unknown at this writing.
COLAB IN DEPTH
IN FIGHTING THE TROUBLESOME, LOCAL DAY-TO-DAY ASSAULTS ON OUR FREEDOM AND PROPERTY, IT IS ALSO IMPORTANT TO KEEP IN MIND THE LARGER UNDERLYING IDEOLOGICAL, POLITICAL, AND ECONOMIC CAUSES AND FORCES
ARE WE ON THE VERGE OF CIVIL WAR?
By VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
Americans keep dividing into two hostile camps. It seems the country is back to 1860 on the eve of the Civil War, rather than in 2018, during the greatest age of affluence, leisure, and freedom in the history of civilization. The ancient historian Thucydides called the civil discord that tore apart the fifth-century B.C. Greek city- states “stasis.” He saw stasis as a bitter civil war between the revolutionary masses and the traditionalist middle and upper classes. Something like that ancient divide is now infecting every aspect of American life. Americans increasingly are either proud of past U.S. traditions, ongoing reform, and current American exceptionalism, or they insist that the country was hopelessly flawed at its birth and must be radically reinvented to rectify its original sins. No sphere of life is immune to the subsequent politicization: not movies, television, professional sports, late-night comedy, or colleges. Even hurricanes are typically leveraged to advance political agendas. What is causing America to turn differences into these bitter hatreds — and why now? The internet and social media often descend into an electronic lynch mob. In a nanosecond, an insignificant local news story goes viral. Immediately, hundreds of millions of people use it to drum up the evils or virtues of either progressivism or conservatism.
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Anonymity is a force multiplier of these tensions. Fake online identities provide cover for ever greater extremism — on the logic that no one is ever called to account for his or her words. Speed is also the enemy of common sense and restraint. Millions of bloggers rush to be the first to post their take on a news event, without much worry about whether it soon becomes a “fake news” moment of unsubstantiated gossip and fiction. Globalization has both enriched and impoverished — and also further divided — America. Those whose muscular labor could be outsourced abroad to less expensive, less regulated countries were liable to lose their jobs or find their wages slashed. They were written off as “losers.” Americans whose professional expertise profited from vast new world markets became even richer and preened as “winners.” Geography — history’s intensifier of civil strife — further fueled the growing economic and cultural divide. Americans are increasingly self-selecting as red and blue states. Liberals gravitate to urban coastal-corridor communities of hip culture, progressive lifestyles, and lots of government services. Conservatives increasingly move to the lower-tax, smaller-government, and more traditional heartland. Lifestyles in San Francisco and Toledo are so different that it’s almost as if they’re on two different planets. Legal, diverse, meritocratic, and measured immigration has always been America’s great strength. Assimilation, integration, and intermarriage within the melting pot used to turn new arrivals into grateful Americans in a generation or two. But when immigration is often illegal, not diverse, and massive, then balkanization follows. Currently, the country hosts 60 million non-natives — the largest number of immigrants in America’s history. Yet unlike the past, America often does not ask new immigrants to learn English and assimilate as quickly as possible. Immigration is instead politicized. Newcomers are seen as potentially useful voting blocs. Tribalism is the new American norm. Gender, sexual orientation, religion, race, and ethnicity are now essential, not incidental, to who we are. Americans scramble to divide into victimized blocs. Hyphenated and newly accented names serve as advertisements that particular groups have unique affiliations beyond their shared Americanism. America is often the target of unrealistic criticism — as if it is suddenly toxic because it is not perfect. Few appreciate that the far worse alternatives abroad are rife with racism, sexism, civil strife, corruption, and poverty unimaginable in the U.S. The last few elections added to the growing abyss. The old Democratic party of John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton is now trending into a radical democratic-socialist party. Meanwhile, the old Republican party is mostly gone, replaced by tea- party movements and the new Donald Trump base.
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Former president Barack Obama came into office from Congress with the most left-wing voting record in the Senate. Trump was elected as the first president without either prior military or political experience. Obama issued dozens of controversial “pen and phone” executive orders, bypassing Congress. And Trump is systematically overturning them — doing so with similar executive orders. Will America keep dividing and soon resort to open violence, as happened in 1861? Or will Americans reunite and bind up our wounds, as we did following the upheavals of the 1930s Great Depression or after the protests of the 1960s? The answer lies within each of us. Every day we will either treat each other as fellow Americans, with far more uniting than dividing us, or we will continue on the present path that eventually ends in something like a hate- filled Iraq, Rwanda, or the Balkans.
This Article first appeared in the Stanford University Hoover Institution Daily Report of September 21, 2018. Victor Davis Hanson is a Hoover Senior Fellow, Professor of Classic, author of numerus top selling scholarly books, prolific article writer, and one of the nation’s most important public commentators. He has appeared at COLAB events in SLO County
Dr. Hanson’s prior article (Our Second Civil War) on this subject, which appeared in the COLAB Weekly Update of August 5 – 11, 2018 can be seen at the link (Scroll down to page 11).
http://www.colabslo.org/prior_actions/2018/Weekly_Update_August_5-11_2018.pdf
THE ALINSKY-IZATION OF BRETT KAVANAUGH
By Rich Logis
Republicans and conservatives are fond of referencing Chicago community organizer Saul Alinsky, but how many have read his body of work? I've always referred to Alinsky's secular agitator bible, Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals, as the sequel to The Communist Manifesto. Published in 1972, shortly before Alinsky's death, Rules was a significant part of President Obama's and Hillary Clinton's political upbringings – although he more influenced Obama, who followed in Alinsky's community organizing footsteps in Chicago in the '80s.
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Alinsky's thirteen rules are effective. The first step to challenging them is actually recognizing them. Here's how Democrats and the DMIC (Democrat Media Industrial Complex) Alinsky-ized Brett Kavanaugh, in the lead up to, during, and after his U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearings. 1: "Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have." Outnumbered 51-49, Senate Democrats know that the arithmetic isn't on their side. If the Democrats and Republicans each hold court along party lines, Kavanaugh is our next justice, thanks to the nuclear option employed by Kentucky senator Mitch McConnell last year to get Justice Neil Gorsuch confirmed. But a two-senator lead means the tie-breaking voter, Vice President Mike Pence, had better be on call when the roll call vote to confirm Kavanaugh is held. Democrats undoubtedly consider Republican senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, of Maine and Alaska, respectively, to be free agents, particularly over Roe v. Wade. Kavanaugh was relentlessly questioned by Democrats over abortion; the goal was to create doubt that Collins and Murkowski would vote to confirm him. If uncertainty exists, it's unlikely that Democrats from states President Trump won in 2016 will cross the aisle. If Democrats somehow secure 51 nays, we'll have the modern-day version of Borked: Kavanaughed. 2. "Never go outside the expertise of your people." Alinsky wrote in Rules that "the issue is never the issue." The reason the Democrats were obsessed with the documents withheld by the president has nothing to do with the documents; it has to do with the fact that the Democrats on the Committee on the Judiciary were unwilling to have substantive legal discussions. Why? Simple: because Kavanaugh would have made the Democrats – several of whom are trained attorneys – look like first-day law school students. Having authored 307 opinions, from 2,700 cases, during his 12 years as a federal judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals, along with dozens of speeches to law schools and legal groups, Kavanaugh's jurisprudence bona fides are not only rock solid, but also very public. There is zero we don't know about Kavanaugh's interpretive approach and acumen. 3. "Whenever possible go outside the expertise of the enemy." I suspect that this rule guided The New York Times' and Associated Press's show-me-the- woman-and-I'll-show-you-the-crime expedition two months ago for the work emails of Kavanaugh's wife, Ashley, who was hired earlier this year as town manager of Chevy Chase, Md. The Times requested any emails that contained the words "gun," "abortion," "federalist" or "gay." Perhaps the Times believed that Mrs. Kavanaugh was fond of attending The Federalist Society lectures about concealed carrying lesbians who believe that abortion is creepy. The Times' request was a big dud; 85 pages of emails later, and, I'm sure, much to the newspaper's chagrin, nothing incriminating, and nothing about guns, abortion, gays, or federalists was discovered. The AP requested all of her work emails but hasn't yet reported on its findings. 4. "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules." Though there weren't explicit questions about Kavanaugh's Catholic faith, he noted his work with Catholic Charities. This rule was the basis for California senator Cuckoo Kamala Harris's lie that Kavanaugh called birth control abortion-inducing drugs (have you noticed how often I've
14 already written about abortion?). And here's the ACLU's predictable fear-mongering that Kavanaugh would usher in a theocratic oligarchy. In fairness, I'm not angry at the ACLU, because voting is a lot like any decision or purchase: it's done based on fear or greed. 5. "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon." Kavanaugh has been in Washington for decades; he's what many of us would call an "establishment" figure. This has provided an opportunity for the DMIC to attack his establishment "elitism," which President Trump swore to reject by draining the swamp. The median household income of Kavanugh's ZIP code is $12,000 a month, his house cost $1.2 million to purchase, and Kavanaugh racked up tens of thousands of dollars in credit debt to buy Washington Nationals season tickets. As coach of one of his daughters' basketball teams, his moniker is "Coach K." If the nickname Coach K doesn't smack of elitism, I don't know what does. The DMIC showed no qualms in portraying Kavanaugh as an out-of-touch Beltway insider. Oh, yeah, and people will die if he's confirmed. 6. "A good tactic is one your people enjoy." Democrats know that most of their voters are out for blood, and a "good tactic" was to inextricably link Kavanaugh to President Trump, an "unindicted co-conspirator," according to Harris and Connecticut senator Richard Blumenthal, due to the plea deal of Trump's former personal attorney, Michael Cohen. In the old days, Democrats weren't quite as politically loony as they currently are and were definitely more likable. Unlikability is a good tactic for the Democrats; the temperament of a justice is important, and the more unlikeable Democrats were in their questioning, the better the chances Kavanaugh would lose his cool. But alas, he kept his cool, especially during Harris's entrapping questions about possible conversations he had with Trump's lawyer's firm regarding the Mueller investigation. The Democrats tried to force Kavanaugh into the role of de facto spokesman for the president, but he was ready for them. 7. "A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag." I didn't watch every second of the hearings, but I watched more than 75 percent, and Democrats said Trump's name dozens of times. New Jersey senator Cory Booker handled Trump fatigue by putting on a theatrical production worthy of Broadway: Booker, whose claim to fame was interrogating Mike Pompeo about sodomy during his secretary of state confirmation hearings, dared his Republican colleagues to expel him from the Senate. As was expected, President George W. Bush's name popped up. Kavanaugh worked for Bush, and the implication is that Kavanaugh has always been associated with illegitimate presidents. 8. "Keep the pressure on." This is one of the easier rules to follow, because specifics aren't necessary. Attorneys who litigate before the Supreme Court know to expect random barrages of questions, and the Democrats kept up the pressure by interrupting Kavanaugh dozens of times, not including the interruptions from protesters. The interruptions failed in knocking Kavanaugh off his game – same for the objections to the hearings, coordinated by Democrats. 9. "The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself."
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If I had to pick one rule sold the hardest by Democrats, it's this one. The "threats" posed by Kavanaugh sound a lot like the threats posed by Robert Bork, nominated by President Reagan in 1982. Said Massachusetts senator Edward Kennedy: Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution[.] Of course, had Bork been confirmed, none of those things would have occurred. But that wasn't important; it was the "what if?" threat of those things. In Kavanaugh's case, workers will have zero rights, felons will own machine guns, and women will be forced into back-alley abortions and die. 10. "The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition." If Kavanaugh is confirmed, the Democrats will have lost the battle, but they will consider the larger war still winnable – especially considering that he's expected to be confirmed a month before the midterm elections. It was quite apparent which Democrats were thinking about running for president in 2020 (Harris and Booker) and which weren't (Patrick Leahy of Vermont). Those positioning themselves for a White House run will incorporate their self- aggrandizing "resistance" to Kavanaugh into their campaigns. 11. "If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside." In the case of Kavanaugh, this is a slight overlap of Rule 1. Trump has gotten 60 federal judges confirmed, is reforming the Supreme Court to how the Founders envisioned it, and has 100 pending federal judicial appointments. These realities are red-meat selling points to Democrat voters: "Look at the havoc Trump has wrought! We must prevent him from further destruction!" Just how deep it will break into the counterside remains to be seen, but desperation is all Democrats have left (although projected demographics, if not engaged, don't bode well for America First). 12. "The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative." To have a chance of winning long-term political battles, there must be self-immolation and sacrificial lambs within the Democratic Party ranks. Adaptation is key. This is already underway, as evidenced by the rise of "democratic socialist" primary winners nationwide. In America, Leninism has always been implemented in creeping doses, until one day, it's mainstream. The constructive alternative will continue to be the message that overt, out-in-the- open socialism is necessary to prevent future Brett Kavanaughs. 13. "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." In Clintonian fashion, the Democrats will persist. Remember: Kavanaugh can't prove he's not racist, or that he won't vote to send abortion battles back to the states, where they belonged in the first place. The Democrats will continue to color Kavanaugh identically to how we describe Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor: as an untrustworthy judge who legislates from the bench.
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My prediction: Kavanaugh will receive 54 votes to confirm, with Collins and Murkowski unlikely to defect. Rich Logis is host of The Rich Logis Show at TheRichLogisShow.com and author of the upcoming book 10 Warning Signs Your Child Is Becoming a Democrat. He can be found on Twitter at @RichLogis.\
ANNOUNCEMENTS PLEASE SEE FOLLOWING PAGES
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MIKE BROWN ADVOCATES BEFORE THE BOS
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON ADDRESSES A COLAB MIXER
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DAN WALTERS EXPLAINS SACTO MACHINATIONS AT A COLAB FORUM
See the presentation at the link: https://youtu.be/eEdP4cvf-zA
AUTHOR & NATIONALLY SYNDICATED COMMENTATOR BEN SHAPIRO APPEARED AT A COLAB ANNUAL DINNER
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