Redistricting has led to a few competitive state assembly districts and ours, the 66th Assembly District, is one of them.
The election pits Torrance School Board member and deputy state attorney general and prosecutor Al Muratsuchi against advertising executive Craig Huey. Huey is the Tea Party activist who used $900,000 of his own money to run for Congress against Janice Hahn. He is still using the same website for his new race for Assembly. One would think a multimillionaire could afford a new website.
Huey is a fine looking gentleman. He even looks presidential—sort of like Herbert Hoover. Huey sounds a lot like President Hoover as well.
Huey believes government should play little or no role in helping make peoples lives better. And he believes in (his motto, his words on his sign) "Cut Spending, Create Jobs!" President Hoover did the same thing at the outset of the Great Depression. He took the view that government had no place in trying to improve the economy and so he cut spending. But it cost jobs as opposed to creating them. The resulting unemployed lived in shantytowns called "Hoovervilles." If we elect Huey and adopt his approach, we will end up with "Hueyvilles" throughout California.
There is another reason we should discard Huey's hooey in favor of Muratsuchi. If elected, Huey will be part of a small, ineffective and obstructionist minority in the Assembly and likely won't be able to achieve anything of significance for his district.
Moreover, Huey has never held elected office before and so is very unlikely to know how to navigate Sacramento. Huey's background as an ad man may help him in campaigns, but Muratsuchi's experience on a school board and as a deputy attorney general and prosecutor for the state is more likely to be helpful in office.
It's not fair that some areas get fewer government benefits just because they elect an ineffective and inexperienced representative. But life isn't fair. If we shortchange ourselves by electing the wrong person to represent us we will have only ourselves to blame for the results.
But there is hope. Former RPV Mayor Tom Long tells us that Mr. Craig Huey is a Teapot Party Republican who wants to cut spending to create jobs. Tom shares that Craig Huey was successful enough in private sector business to heavily fund his political campaigns with his own money. It's unclear if Muratsuchi's government income was contributed or not to his own campaign or of this was combined with any earnings from possible private sector jobs that Muratsuchi may have had. Tom Long writes, "Huey believes government should play little or no role in helping make peoples lives better." Very good. The value of being a United States citizen isn't based on what government can do for us. Rather, America is great because of what the citizen is allowed to do on their own. Tom Long writes, "Huey has never held elected office." That's true. Have you noticed that not much about government is working well? There is a movement to not re-elect those who failed to make it work when they had a chance. Tom Long provided everything about Craig Huey that I wanted to discover. Craig Huey gets my enthusiastic vote! I encourage other voters to join with me. Be wary of those who erode our personal liberty. As the intrusive government nanny state gets bigger, the individual becomes diminished.
"Facts matter. Reagan’s legacy has been co-opted and mangled by both sides. Yes, he raised taxes. Yes he cut taxes. The real story is how he raised taxes and how he cut them. And the overarching theme is that Reagan dramatically lowered tax rates and broadened the base. And at the end of the day, his legacy is that of a free market tax cutter. “If you aggregate together all the tax hikes … Reagan was a net tax cutter,” says Americans for Tax Reform’s Ryan Ellis. “I believe that makes him unique in the 20th century Cold War era. Why is it important to set the record straight on this? Because liberals continue to attempt to hoodwink conservatives into supporting deficit reduction plans along the lines of tit for tat. “We’ll cut spending if you raise taxes.” Looking to history, though, conservatives should be wary of this feint." Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/06/06/ronald-reagan-raised-taxes-11-times-the-real-story/
While I'm thinking out loud, I've got to share that I am curious about something. Permit me to be so bold. Truly, I do not contrive to be disrespectful. It's just my boyish curiosity that compels me to ask. The position of city Mayor is said to be a non-partisan role. When you successfully ran TWICE for Mayor of Rancho Palos Verdes, a town I thought was Conservative, was the voting pubic aware that you are a Liberal, or did you choose to not reveal this due to the (so-called) non-partisan nature of the job? If the peninsula is truly Conservatively based, I marvel at your ability to thrive. Again, though the appearance of my query may seem disrespectful, I assure you it is not. I don't dislike you. I just happen to be voting for a guy who opposes your candidate.
Huey is running on a platform of reducing taxes and government service. That was Herbert Hoover's goal too. I am sure Huey will work hard to keep his promise and that if elected those of us repressented by him will receive fewer government benefits. Unlike Reagan (who never cut spending significantly) Huey believes that cutting spending increases jobs. Not so in my judgment. If you think cutting spending increases jobs please explain how it does so. Less government spending means fewer projects for private contractors to work on and less money in the economy for consumers to spend. While a parallel decrease in taxes somewhat offsets these impacts, it does not do so completely. As someone who would benefit from Huey's tax decreases, I can tell you that the economic environment it would create would cause me to simply save all of the tax decrease I would get. The result for the economy in its current fragile condition would be bad. Finally there is the issue of qualifications. Pure and simple an ad man is just not qualified to represent us in Sacramento. The Republican party has many qualified members. Its decision to put up a gadfly with no experience tells us volumes about its approach to government.
Thanks for the favor of your considered reply. I do appreciate that. You have given voice and reason to the answer of my question. Your candor is refreshing, too. I do believe that cutting government spending increases jobs. My confidence is not in government. I believe in the private sector. The private sector is motivated to succeed. That's the big difference. By the way, you believe of Craig Huey, "Pure and simple an ad man is just not qualified to represent us in Sacramento." I don't agree. I'm an ad man too and I am capable of doing many things.
At least ad man Huey and his ad man supporters should try a little harder to sell me on their views by trying to use something other than just faith in their good will.
That being said, Hoover's philosophy and goal was to minimize government. See http://www.hooverassociation.org/hoover/quotes.php But you may well be right in that Huey may be politically much less moderate than Hoover and much less inclined to support even the minimalist help from government that Hoover supported. Huey's and the Republican Party's uncompromising "no new taxes" approach mean big spending cuts. I note that you leave unanswered my question of how the big spending cuts Huey and others support will create job. Remember, that's Heuy's motto "Cut Spending, Create Jobs!" How does that work? I would say "tell us again" how that works but none of you Republicans have told us even once how cutting spending increases jobs.
It's more difficult to establish how cutting government spending creates jobs. Respected economists disagree on this subject. In any event, my rationale for cutting spending goes something as follows. Government does a poorer job of allocating economic resources than the private sector. If you want to grow the economy and the jobs that come with economic growth, it is generally better to have the private sector make the investment and spending decisions than the government. Increasing government spending takes resources from the private sector in the form of either increased taxes or increased borrowing costs by driving up interest rates. Government spending also has a tendency to increase over time with adverse side effects. Firs,t it politicizes the economy and government by fueling "pigs at the trough" behavior and increasing the influence of special interests and lobbyists. Second, it encourages deficit spending by both parties during good and bad economic times. This has increased our debt to the point where paying off this debt puts a drag on our future economic growth, costing more jobs down the road.
For some items (education, health care, infrastructure) government either does a better job than the private sector or there is no basis to compare because the private sector is not involved. (I am not aware of any private sewerage companies, for example.) Your assumption (and Huey's and Hoover's) is that we have overallocated resources to government. My assumption is different. I think we have underallocated resources to many functions that government does a better job at that the private sector. Public infrastructure is a key example. The biggest "waste" in government today is its failure to take care of the assets on its balance sheet--too little spending, not too much. This is particularly so at the state and local level. The average California city has about $3 per person per day to do everything. The cities in Palos Verdes have about half that. Of course there is unnecessary government spending just as there is wasteful private spending. Our bloated defense budget comes to mind. It bothers me about as much as the rapacious salaries made by the "captains of industry" of companies whose stocks I own and who are plundering me and my fellow shareholders of our dividends. My question is unanswered.
You are eloquent and continue to demonstrate an ability to rally people behind your Liberal agenda. That's a difficult and ambitious quest. So I regard you to be a noble adversary. You've got the gift. But your contribution is confined to being incredibly Liberal. You are off-the-chart on Liberalism. James Krampert accurately notices, "Government does a poorer job of allocating economic resources than the private sector." Well said, James. Indeed. That is entirely true. I'm thinking that you agree with that. You surely know this. Perhaps you know this but only accept it in the quiet of your thoughts and will not publicly acknowledge it. Regarding your comment about, "our bloated defense budget" you now suggest that you are blind to the needs of our country. Tom, I do admit that my hearty respect for you has dropped a notch or two.