Month: January 2024

Authored by Amir Taheri via The Gatestone Institute,

If there is a pendulum that regulates world affairs, it is important to know which way it may be swinging in the year that is about to start.

Seen from one angle, the pendulum looks like swinging towards uncertainty.

In 2024, many countries with major roles in international affairs are facing dicey elections.

The United States looks set for what could be the most difficult election season in its history. Will President Joe Biden, with his physical and mental fitness questioned by some, be able to run the final mile to his party’s nomination? Or will his Democrat Party be forced to rally around Kamala Harris at the last moment and out of desperation?

The Republicans face an even less predictable prospect.

Although Donald Trump continues to cast a large shadow on the whole process, a shadow is just a shadow after all. The alternative savior, Ron DeSantis, seems to be fading away, while Nikki Haley, a dark horse just a few weeks ago, is beginning to emerge as a serious pretender.

Even then, and regardless of who would win the keys to the White House next November, the United States will be on pilot mode for much of 2024 and thus, unable to take the tough decisions that only a well-settled administration could take.

The United Kingdom is also facing what is seen as the most difficult general elections it has experienced at least since the Suez Crisis of 1956.

The Conservative Party seems to be in letdown mode, while the Labour Party appears unable to seize the opportunity to make a big comeback. The prospect of a hung parliament, with Labour forced to depend on the Scottish National Party (SNP) to form a government, signals a period of uncertainty as far as strategic decisions are concerned.

In the European Union, the Netherlands is already without a stable government and is likely to remain so for months, while coalition-building goes on. In Germany, the EU’s big beast in economic terms, the shaky coalition led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz could unravel at any moment, while the right-wing Alternative for Germany waits to emerge as the arbiter of a divided political scene.

Even France now seems to be heading for a period of instability as President Emmanuel Macron’s shaky coalition begins to crumble, while his government is unable to secure a majority in the parliament.

The prospect of dissolution of parliament and snap elections is hanging above the scene like the Damocles’ sword of the myth.

In Russia, President Vladimir Putin seems set to easily sail to victory on his bid for a new presidential term. But even there, the elections are likely to lead to a major reshuffle of the ruling elite, including the top brass and the inner circle of household oligarchs. After all, the thinly disguised failure in Ukraine must be blamed on someone, someone other than good old Volodia.

The only major power to appear stable at the moment is the People’s Republic of China.

But there too, President Xi Jinping appears more focused on managing economic slowdown and the purge of the party than being dragged into international problems that promise nothing but trouble.

The pendulum is also swinging more sharply towards conflict, instability and state failures.

In 2023, the list of “ungoverned” countries was limited to Syria, Libya, Somalia, South Sudan and, according to some, Afghanistan.

In 2024 Sudan, caught in a war between rival military factions, is certain to join the category, while Myanmar, with areas controlled by Karen rebels expanding, is heading in the same direction.

If you hope that the pendulum will swing towards peace, think again.

In Ukraine, both sides, that is to say Russia and NATO, appear in a zugzwang that keeps them in conflict for the foreseeable future.

The Gaza war is set to continue in 2024. Even after Israel achieves its military objectives, that is to say dismantling Hamas’ military machine and freeing Israeli hostages, within weeks the gargantuan task of building a new status quo is certain to take much longer.

In the meantime, the Gaza war has already ricocheted to North Yemen, still under Houthi control, and parts of Lebanon, under Hezbollah’s total control. Fighting involving Iranian-controlled militias in Syria and Iraq with US-backed elements is also likely to get wider dimensions.

There are indications that both Russia and Turkey are also preparing for military action on a grander scale to secure the chunks of Syria under their control.

For its part, the Islamic Republic of Iran is likely to face a sharp swing of the pendulum towards uncertainty in both domestic and foreign policy areas.

Another case of the pendulum swinging in the opposite direction concerns the United Nations and diplomacy in general.

The UN Security Council is likely to remain inoperative for the foreseeable future, while the Secretary-General, having tripped over the Gaza war, has lost much of his authority as arbiter of international conflicts.

At the end of the COP28 in Dubai earlier this month, there was much talk about multilateralism making a big comeback. But that may be nothing but wishful thinking. The coming year looks likely to see a further decline in multilateralism and an increase in bilateral efforts to deal with economic and security problems.

In some cases, lone-ranger policymaking is finding more advocates.

Hungary under Viktor Orbán, for example, is defying the EU by hosting a Chinese manufacturer of electric cars to compete with EU producers. Despite an agreement to coordinate immigration policy, EU members are developing divergent strategies likely to lead to diplomatic clashes in 2024.

A broader and potentially more important pendulum swing in 2024 would be away from the mushy consensus formed during the golden days of globalism.

Almost everywhere, we are already witnessing a return to the narrowest concept of national interests. Fear of dependence on potentially hostile or unstable powers has forced many countries, especially in the EU, to lean towards economic nationalism and discard the “comparative advantage” argument.

France, for example, has just unveiled a plan for self-sufficiency in a number of areas, notably pharmaceuticals, microchips and batteries for electrical vehicles. In a more folkloric move away from globalization, France has just revived growing a number of plants used in textile industry.

Finally, the pendulum looks likely to swing in favor of small- and/or medium-sized nations capable of adopting non-ideological and effective policies in the interest of their people. After all, no nation is small or medium as such; it’s the leadership that makes a country small or great.

Bidenomics…

Planning to save more money is top of mind for many Americans making resolutions for 2024.

As Statista’s Anna Fleck highlights, this is a notable shift. Where in previous years the vows to exercise more, eat healthier and lose weight had come in top positions, now the financial goal has leapfrogged them to become the most commonly cited resolution this year.

This is according to data from a Statista’s Consumer Insights survey.

You will find more infographics at Statista

Slightly further down the list came the goal of reducing stress from work and spending less time on social media (both 19 percent), while less popular resolutions included cutting down on alcohol (13 percent) and becoming a vegetarian or a vegan (3 percent).

In a similar vein to saving more money, one in four U.S. adults said they wanted to reduce their spendings on living expenses such as food and energy in the coming year.

Looking further into U.S. savings habits, data from an earlier Statista survey found that in 2022, the three areas most commonly cut back on in times of high inflation and rising energy costs were contracts and subscriptions (66 percent), purchasing clothes (42 percent) and visiting bars, cafes and restaurants (39 percent).

Via The Cradle,

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken used emergency authority to approve the sale of $147.5 million of 155 mm artillery shells to Israel on Saturday, bypassing the standard congressional review for arms sales for the second time since the start of the war on Gaza.

A State Department spokesman said on Friday that “given the urgency of Israel’s defensive needs, the secretary notified Congress that he had exercised his delegated authority to determine an emergency existed necessitating the immediate approval of the transfer.”

Earlier this month, Blinken used the same emergency process to approve the sale of 14,000 tank shells, worth more than $106 million, to Israel. The emergency sale of artillery shells comes as Israel’s military intensifies its bombing campaign in Gaza.

Earlier this week, on Christmas Eve, Israeli forces bombed the Meghazi camp, killing 86 Palestinians in one strike.  Israeli government spokesperson Eylon Levy excused the death toll by telling Sky News the army had used an “incorrect munition.”

But he refused to apologize for the loss of life and did not say what type of munition was used, despite being pressed several times by Sky News presenter Niall Paterson.

Israel has regularly used 2,000 lb US-made bombs to target residential neighborhoods in Gaza.

Continued instances of this sort cast doubt on the sincerity of the White House’s rhetoric calling for Israel to refrain from killing Palestinian civilians in such huge numbers.

Josh Paul, a former State Department arms expert who resigned in protest in October, told The Washington Post that Blinken’s decision to rush these unguided munitions enables Israel to continue the type of operations in Gaza that have “led to so many Palestinian civilian deaths.”

“This is shameful, craven, and should frankly turn the stomach of any decent human being,” he said. A Washington Post analysis found that Israel’s war against Gaza has been more devastating than any other 21st-century conflict.

‘Israel dropped 29,000 weapons on Gaza in a little over two months, according to U.S. officials. By comparison, the U.S. military dropped 3,678 munitions on Iraq from 2004 to 2010, according to the U.S. Central Command.’

The Ruined Landscape of Gaza / WSJhttps://t.co/jeKciq4pzL

— Kristian Ulrichsen (@Dr_Ulrichsen) December 30, 2023

International outrage continues in response to the Israeli bombing campaign, with South Africa invoking the Genocide Convention at the International Court of Justice the same day Blinken approved the additional weapons sale.

It’s a problem in the western world that is rarely discussed in the media beyond puff-piece articles and glancing polls that avoid connecting the dots.   The precipitous decline of dating, committed relationships and marriage along with a flatline in population in the past couple decades in the US is treated as a novelty issue rather than the threat to the stability of civilization that it actually is.  History shows that without the traditional family structure, numerous ugly societal consequences follow.

One could argue, though, that the situation is far worse than that.  We may be heading into a future where families become a novelty, and many argue that the root cause is feminism and the hyperinflated delusions of progressive women.

In order to understand the problem we have to look at the stats. 

More than 50% of American women are still childless by age 30.  By age 35 fertility goes into steep decline with women having a 15% chance of becoming pregnant, and a less than 5% chance of motherhood at age 40.  Meaning, the best window of opportunity for women to find a compatible partner and build a family is in their 20s.  

Feminists argue, though, that this is the time in a woman’s life when they should be building a career and having fun.  Family life, they say, is an artificial prison “created by the patriarchy” in order to oppress the fairer sex.  Corporate media and Hollywood entertainment often reinforce this narrative and encourage unrealistic life goals.

The propaganda has generated what many refer to as the “Female Happiness Paradox.”  Surveys show that increased power, job access and responsibility for women in society since the 1970s has also led to a diametrically opposed decline in overall happiness for those same women.  The correlation suggests the exact opposite of what feminism originally promised and that the ideology has been a net negative.

Though some will argue that a general decline in economic conditions is the real cause, surveys show that women have suffered a far more pronounced drop in happiness compared to men.  Meaning, men were already acclimated to the struggles of the workaday world and their roles as providers and protectors.  Women were happy until they joined men in the trenches.  

For men, the reaction has been to back away from the dating scene and the double standards involved.  Over 63% of men under the age of 30 are now single; that’s up from 51% in 2019.  The majority of single men say this is by choice and that they are seeking to avoid relationships altogether.  Why?  The consensus appears to be that modern western women cost too much money and cause too much trouble.

Fear of failed marriage is one aspect that has the younger generation of men on edge, with family courts still largely in favor of women in divorce settlements and child custody.  This is one reason why marriage rates have declined by 60% since the 1970s.  However, the obstacles go well beyond divorce and into a new culture of female entitlement.    

The word on the street is “Hoeflation”:  The dramatic increase in cost for men today to maintain a relationship with a woman while the quality of women continues to go down.  That is to say, it is an increase in female expectations vs what they bring to the table in a relationship.  

In other words, women of the past used to have something to offer beyond sexual companionship, from greater femininity, greater potential for motherhood, less combativeness and narcissism, as well as a superior ability to raise children and maintain a home.  Such traits are highly attractive to men even after 60 years of widespread feminism, but are seen as non-existent among women under 30 in 2023.

It should be noted that “Hoeflation” seems to be directly linked to progressive influences, and not all women fall into this category.  Unfortunately, around 71% of young women identify with progressive beliefs, as opposed to young men who are only 53% progressive.  It should also be noted that progressive today means something a lot different from what it meant in the 1990s (progressive now means woke, or extreme leftist cultism).    

A majority of American women have cast off their traditional roles in exchange for modern feminist ideals while still expecting traditional roles for men.  Dating, younger men complain, is now more like a job interview with scrutiny of their finances a primary topic.  Beyond that, the online meat market isn’t helping.  Dating app research shows that 80% of western women are all chasing after the top 20% or less of men, with earning potential being the biggest factor next to physical attractiveness.    

A recent viral trend on social media in which women made a list of restaurants that they would refuse to eat at on a first date exemplifies the concept of “Hoeflation.” 

The Cheesecake Factory in particular was consistently mentioned as a “red flag” for “cheap men.”  Spending of up to $200 or more was presented as a bare minimum for a first date, and only 26% of women indicated they are willing to split the tab.  First dates used to be an opportunity for men and women to decide if there is a chance for compatibility, now progressive women expect grand gestures of wealth and ambition.  Like Valentine’s Day, but everyday.  

What feminism has done, essentially, is hyper-exaggerate women’s natural inclination to seek out more productive men, while also hyper-exaggerating their sense of self worth and making them insufferable.  

Women who have nothing to offer have been inculcated with delusions of grandeur.  So much so that the question “what do you bring to the table” is sneered at – “I am the table” is their response.  There is no cure for this level of narcissism except hitting rock bottom, which is an outcome that western women (and society as a whole) are swiftly approaching          

The problem is not as historically entrenched as one might think, with Gen Z being the biggest deviation with the worst prospects for relationships among all other generations.  Feminism has been an ever present agenda but Gen Z has been hit with the brunt of the fallout in the span of a single decade.  We can hope, however, that as quickly as the cancer of feminism has spread it might recede.  If the greatest damage was done within one or two generations, maybe a cure can be applied in the next generation.   

Authored by Caden Pearson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Republican presidential candidate Gov. Ron DeSantis told Iowa voters that if he is elected in 2024, he would fire special counsel Jack Smith on his first day in office.

The declaration came during a campaign event on Thursday and aimed at setting himself apart from his chief GOP rival, former President Donald Trump, who faces two federal prosecutions led by Mr. Smith.

The Florida governor expressed his concern that President Trump, as the Republican nominee, would overshadow the election, focusing on legal issues and investigations rather than addressing the nation’s challenges.

Should President Trump become the Republican nominee for the third consecutive time, said Mr. DeSantis, then “the whole election will be about him,” his behavior, and “all these different investigations and legal cases.”

“Which, look,” he added, “I think are unfair. I will fire Jack Smith on day one when I’m president. That is without saying.”

The Epoch Times contacted the Department of Justice (DOJ) for comment.

Mr. DeSantis has been united in the view of the former president and his supporters, who have characterized the DOJ prosecutions as a “weaponization” of the government against President Joe Biden’s likely primary opponent.

The governor emphasized his belief that the media and Democrats were keen on making the election solely about President Trump, diverting attention from holding President Biden accountable for what they say are his failures.

Mr. DeSantis argued that focusing on President Trump’s legal battles would play into the Democratic playbook and ultimately lead to Republican losses across the country.

“Even if somehow he could surmount that, you have a lame-duck president on day one,” Mr. DeSantis said, referring to President Trump. “How are you going to be able to get things done? How are you going to be able to recruit personnel that you need?”

While making his pitch to Iowa voters, Mr. DeSantis went on to outline his vision for the presidency, emphasizing the need for a diverse team to enact meaningful change.

“We will go in on day one, and we are going to upend this swamp in Washington. We’re going to do it,” he declared.

Smith ‘Should Be Scared,’ Says Trump Lawyer

Mr. Smith has brought two federal criminal cases against President Trump, one in Florida over classified documents kept at his Mar-a-Lago estate and another in Washington, D.C., related to his efforts to challenge the outcome of the 2020 presidential elections.

President Trump is also facing several other legal cases, both civil and criminal.

The former president has repeatedly claimed during public appearances and on Truth Social that all of the cases are tantamount to election interference, forming an effort to keep him from seeking the White House again.

Recent national polls put President Trump leaps and bounds ahead of his Republican rivals in the 2024 race.

Mr. Smith recently filed papers in the election case arguing that President Trump should be blocked from telling jurors that the cases against him represent selective prosecution by federal officials.

In a motion, Mr. Smith’s office specifically asked U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, an appointee of President Barrack Obama who is presiding over the case and trial, to rule that the former president cannot say in court that he is being prosecuted for political reasons, saying that it could be prejudicial.

Lawyers from Mr. Smith’s office told the court in filings that President Trump has, via public statements, court filings, and arguments in hearings, tried to “inject into this case partisan political attacks and irrelevant and prejudicial issues that have no place in a jury trial.”

“Although the court can recognize these efforts for what they are and disregard them, the jury—if subjected to them—may not,” lawyers working with Mr. Smith wrote.

Trump attorney Alina Habba, responding to the filing, said it shows that Mr. Smith is “running scared,” and he “should be scared,” she told Newsmax on Thursday.

“He doesn’t want, basically, any defense being brought by the defense,” Ms. Habba said, referring to Mr. Smith. “It’s what happened with the last trial I tried. It’s what will happen with the next one I try.”

Ms. Habba has suggested that prosecutors are trying to rush a conviction of the former president before the election. The District of Columbia trial case is scheduled for March 4, one day before the Super Tuesday nominating contest for the 2024 presidential election.

Jack Phillips contributed to this report.

From the CIA‘s fingers to your mind…

ChatGPT marked a turning point for artificial intelligence, allowing millions of users to experiment with generative AI.

So, as Statista’s Anna Fleck details below, it may come as no surprise that the topic has become the most visited English Wikipedia article this year.

According to the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organization hosting the collaborative encyclopedia, ChatGPT received 49.4 million visits in 2023 (as of November 28).

The film “Oppenheimer,” the fifth highest-grossing movie of 2023, which tells the story of the “Manhattan Project” and the development of the atomic bomb, secured the fifth spot on the list of the most-viewed Wikipedia articles in 2023.

When it comes to celebrities, Taylor Swift, today named Time magazine’s Person of the Year, holds the 12th position among the most visited Wikipedia pages, while Lionel Messi takes the 15th spot.

You will find more infographics at Statista

In the words of the organization:

“The most-viewed Wikipedia articles of 2023 tell the story of you and society at large seeking out knowledge about our ever-changing world from the world’s largest encyclopedia.”

The English site alone received over 84 billion visits this year, according to the foundation.

Authored by John Seiler via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s term years in office, 2003–11, remains one of the most consequential for California since 1991. That was the year Republican Gov. George Deukmejian left office and was replaced by moderate Republican Gov. Pete Wilson, who promptly increased taxes and went to war with the conservatives in his party over those tax increases, badly wounding the party.

As I wrote in The Epoch Times in August, “The Media Is Helping Schwarzenegger Rewrite His Governorship” as he celebrated 20 years since his election in 2003, he avoided needed reforms, increased taxes, and like Mr. Wilson went to war with his fellow Republicans.

In a new, extensive interview in Cigar Aficionado, Mr. Schwarzenegger talks with worshipful editor Marvin R. Shanken as they smoke 30-year-old Punch Churchills from communist Cuba, which are illegal in the United States. The former governor laments not being able to run for president, because he was born in Austria. And he talks a bit about national and foreign policy. But I’ll just cover his California comments.

What’s really interesting to Californians are his comments on his governorship. He begins with President George H.W. Bush appointing him to be the chairman of the President’s Council on Physical Fitness in 1990. “I then realized that we need more after-school programs, and I created an organization. And actually what I realized was this is addictive—to help other people. Which is not something that was in my vision at all. It really feels great when you come home at night and you’ve helped so many people. So I thought it was great, and one thing led to the next.”

Unfortunately, Mr. Shanken didn’t follow up with any questions about where this led. Promoting after-school programs with private money is one thing. But in 2002, Mr. Schwarzenegger sponsored Proposition 49, which permanently spent at least $400 million a year from the state general fund on after-school programs. There was no new tax source. But a clever section delayed implementation until the state’s budget deficit that year turned into a future surplus. That allowed Mr. Schwarzenegger to claim it wouldn’t increase the deficit or taxes.

But it did permanently increase general-fund spending. So when the deficits hit again when he was governor, in 2008, the program inevitably became part of the budget crisis, contributing to the ensuing budget cuts and record 2009 tax increase of $13 billion.

Prop. 49 was a practice run for governor, as Mr. Schwarzenegger crisscrossed the state promoting the initiative, which garnered 57 percent of the vote.

It was one of the worst cases of what’s called “ballot-box budgeting,” in which powerful special interests, in this case an ambitious governor wannabe, tie up budget spending for their own priorities. This prevents the Legislature from doing its job of weighing the state’s many needs and deciding priorities based on compromise.

Schwarzenegger the Moderate?

He says people since the 1970s told him he should run for governor. As he has many times, he says after immigrating here he became a Republican when he preferred Richard Nixon’s platform in 1968 to that of the Democratic nominee, and loser, Hubert Humphrey.

“So people mentioned it a lot of times, but when the recall happened I said this is perfect, because I’m not right wing, I’m not left wing, I’m in the middle. That doesn’t play well in California with the primaries, because you have to be really to the right as a Republican. I said this is perfect: There’s a recall election, there will be no primaries, there will be no problem, I can go directly to the people and I can go and win. All I have to do is tell them my plan and be convincing. And that’s exactly what I did. I said it’s between me and the voters.”

That’s a distortion. For one thing, Gov. Pete Wilson, elected in 1990 and 1994, was a moderate Republican. Indeed, one of Mr. Schwarzenegger’s mistakes was hiring a lot of Mr. Wilson’s associates, who had promoted the latter’s disastrous, “moderate” tax increases with Democrats in 1991. Moderates also won the GOP nomination with billionaire Meg Whitman in 2010 and in 2014 with economist and banker Neel Kashkari, now a member of the Federal Reserve Board.

During this period, the only conservative the Republicans nominated for governor was Bill Simon in 2002.

Moreover, Mr. Schwarzenegger headlined a Reason Foundation banquet in Los Angeles. My colleague and editor at the time at the Orange County Register, K.E. Grubbs Jr., also attended, and recalled in 2005: “I first had an inkling of Schwarzenegger’s political inclinations from a mutual friend (in Arnold’s case, a workout buddy), Dana Rohrabacher, now an Orange County congressman who was among the first to importune Arnold to enter the political arena. Then, in the early 1990s, the world-famous actor headlined a Reason Foundation dinner. His speech was pure Milton Friedman, whose PBS series, Free to Choose, he had also famously introduced.”

The late Mr. Friedman obviously was not a “moderate,” but one of American’s foremost free-market economists. About that same time in the 1990s, Mr. Friedman visited us at the Register. I remember him saying he was impressed by how much Mr. Schwarzenegger knew about free-market economics.

I also distinctly remember many conservative Republicans voting for Mr. Schwarzenegger precisely because he gave the impression he would govern as a conservative. I told them I was skeptical, and state Sen. Tom McClintock (now in the U.S. House of Representatives) was better, but they replied, “I like McClintock, but he can’t win.”

Well, once in office, Mr. Schwarzenegger applied Mr. Friedman’s free-market principles for two years, then spent five years increasing government, increasing taxes, and leaving the state worse off than in 2003, as I detailed in my aforementioned Epoch Times article.

His touted “moderate” schtick also allowed him to avoid helping real Republicans, such as Mr. McClintock, who came close to winning for lieutenant governor in 2006, garnering 45 percent of the vote to 49 percent for the winner, Democrat John Garamendi. If Mr. Schwarzenegger had teamed up with Mr. McClintock and run on a unified party ticket, Mr. McClintock could have won, setting up his own position as successor in 2010. But Mr. Schwarzenegger’s 2006 campaign precluded that. That continued how, in this interview, he never mentions the Republican Party in anything but a negative light.

Mr. Schwarzenegger’s attacks on his own party left it a wreck on the side of the political road, turning California into the one-party state it is today.

Governor of ‘The People’

Mr. Shanken asked what was Mr. Schwarzenegger’s high moment after the election.

“I walked by the television set, and I heard our new governor will be Arnold Schwarzenegger,” he said. “When I heard that on the news, I literally had tears coming down my eyes. It was the most powerful thing that I had ever felt or heard. I am going to become the governor of a state that has 40 million people, it’s the No. 1 state in the United States, it’s the fifth-largest economy in the world. I am going to be the governor.”

Ironically, his misgovernance kept the state population rising from 35 million in 2003 to 40 million. The closest it got was 39.5 million in 2019, before dropping back to 39 million today.

“And that’s why I tell people you can call me whatever you want, but don’t call me a self-made man,” he said. “There were 5.8 million people who voted for me to be governor. Each one of those people made me governor.”

That’s beside the point. Governing is taking power with a political coalition. The only coalitions available were Republicans and Democrats. Because he shoved Republicans aside, that meant inevitably siding with the Democrats. He often talked about “the people,” but it always was about Arnold.

Siding With Democrats

Mr. Shanken again flatters him with the possibility of becoming president and asks, “What are some of your ideas to fix our country?” Mr. Schwarzenegger continues with his fantasy, almost the script for a sci-fi movie: “We are all part of the team. Yes, you have your beliefs—quite contrary to mine—but you’re all part of the team. And we only can win if we all play together. So let’s figure this out.

“No different than what I did in California. I sat down and said let’s not fight over what we disagree on, let’s go and find out things we are for. The Democrats would talk about environmental issues. I said, you know something? I’m with you. But it’s important to do it the right way—to do it pro-business and not anti-business. When we said we want to reduce greenhouse gases and pollution 25 percent, we didn’t go and say to Caterpillar you cannot build that engine anymore. So we had to protect them, and we said you have 10 years to make a new engine. And we did it. And then when we had the bill signing [for Assembly Bill 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006], there were the environmentalists sitting next to the car manufacturers.”

Of course the manufacturers showed up because they have to work in the system the politicians create. And actually, even as Mr. Schwarzenegger was attacking industry in California, Caterpillar was shifting much of its manufacturing to nine cities in communist China. Where, as I have detailed in The Epoch Times, the Chinese Communist Party keeps building coal plants to power industrial growth.

Businesses continue to flee due to the policies Mr. Schwarzenegger imposed. According to the latest Hoover Institution study, from Sept. 2022, “We discuss several economic factors that have led to these departures by raising business costs, reducing productivity, and reducing profitability, including tax policies, regulatory policies, labor costs, litigation costs, energy and utility costs, and concerns about a declining quality of life within the state. Unless policy reforms reverse this course, California will continue to lose businesses, both large established businesses, as well as young, rapidly growing businesses, some of which will become the transformational giants of tomorrow.”

He Got Rolled Like a Cuban Cigar

Finally, Mr. Shanken brings up the cigar-smoking tent Mr. Schwarzenegger set up outside the state Capitol building to avoid anti-smoking laws he had signed. Democrats then passed a bill specifically banning smoking in his tent. “I vetoed it with a nice veto message on it to let them know that this is unacceptable,” he gloats. “No one is there that doesn’t want to smoke. In fact, Democrats and other legislators came down and asked me, begged me, can I come down and smoke? That’s how I got most of my deals done.

“We found something in common, which is smoking, and we smoked our stogies, took our jackets off, took our ties off, and we were sitting there and saying what are you working on? So we started working together. So this is what we did, and we got a lot of the things done because of the smoking tent.”

That was so naïve. Of course the Old Bulls in the Democratic Party, such as Senate President pro tempore John Burton, were going to humor him—as they rolled him like a Cuban cigar.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.