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However, he warns, if California follows the socialist model preferred by its wealthy, liberal political class, it will have to expropriate that same elite to pay the cost, which fleeing middle class families cannot afford.

Kotkin writes:

The new consensus is being pushed by, among others, hedge-fund-billionaire-turned-green-patriarch Tom Steyer. The financier now insists that, to reverse our worsening inequality, we must double down on environmental and land-use regulation, and make up for it by boosting subsidies for the struggling poor and middle class. This new progressive synthesis promises not upward mobility and independence, but rather the prospect of turning most Californians into either tax slaves or dependent serfs.

[C]ombating climate change has become an opportunity for Brown, Steyer and the Sacramento bureaucracy to perform a passion play, where they preen as saviors of the planet, with the unlikable President Donald Trump playing his role as the devil incarnate. In following with this line of reasoning, Bay Area officials and environmental activists are even proposing a campaign to promote meatless meals. Its Gaia meets Lent.

To these burdens, there are now growing calls for a single-payer health care system which, in principle, is not a terrible idea, but it will include the undocumented, essentially inviting the poor to bring their sick relatives here. The state Senate passed the bill without identifying a funding source to pay the estimated $400 billion annual cost, leading even former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to describe it as snake oil. It may be more like hemlock for Californias middle-income earners, who, even with the cost of private health care removed, would have to fork over an estimated $50 billion to $100 billion a year in new taxes to pay for it.

In the end, we are witnessing the continuation of an evolving class war, pitting the oligarchs and their political allies against the states diminished middle and working classes. It might work politically, as the California electorate itself becomes more dependent on government largesse, but its hard to see how the state makes ends meet in the longer run without confiscating the billions now held by the ruling tech oligarchs.

Read Kotkins full essay here.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He was named one of the most influential people in news media in 2016. He is the co-author ofHow Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

P.S. DO YOU WANT MORE ARTICLES LIKE THIS ONE DELIVERED RIGHT TO YOUR INBOX?SIGN UP FOR THE DAILY BREITBART NEWSLETTER.

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Liberal Geographer: California is Descending into Socialism - Breitbart News

The United Kingdom election returns had hardly begun coming in when conventional wisdom started to form. A day later, it solidified. The elections demonstrated the renewed vitality of hard Left, progressive politics in the English-speaking world.

Even if Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn had not exactly won, he had shown how the Left could win. He had road-tested the kind of politics Americans had seen at work last year in the Bernie Sanders campaign. And he had proven that style of politics would prevailif not this year, then surely in the near future.

There is a certain truth to this narrative. British Prime Minister Teresa May made a grave miscalculation, lost her majority in Parliament, denied herself another three secure years in power, and will probably be gone as prime minister by late summer. But a closer analysis of the election exposes significant flaws in the conventional narrative. American conservatives should indeed study the British election closely. They should not, however, be disheartened by it. It offers them valuable lessons on how to remain in power, and how to use the power they hold.

To begin with, its important to understand that while the British Conservative Party (the Tories) lost their majority in Parliament, they still remain in office and will likely continue to govern the nation. Before the election, they held an absolute majority in Parliament, of 331 seats out of 650. They lost 13 seats, dropping to 318, some eight votes shy of a majority.

But within a few hours, they began forming a coalition with a traditional ally, the Democratic Unionists (DUP) of Northern Ireland. That party won ten seats. The Tory-DUP alliance would thus control a majority of 328 of the 650 seats. To be sure, that majority is slender, and could suffer attrition as members of Parliament (MPs) died or left office. But a majority it nonetheless is. And it would permit May to retain her prime ministership and the Tory Party to rule.

Furthermore, Labours success should not be overblown. It remained well behind the Tories both in numbers of parliamentary seats (262 versus 318), and in the popular vote (roughly 40 percent to 42 percent). The Tories share of the popular vote actually climbed by more than 5 percent, although the Labour share increased by nearly 10 percent. Although Labour picked up a substantial net gain of 32 seats, its gains came at the expense, not so much of the Tories, as of smaller third parties, especially the Scottish Nationalists, who lost a net of 19 seats (of a previous 35) in all.

Even without further analysis, these results hardly suggest a massive rejection of the Conservatives. Rather, they indicate that Britain may be returning to something more like a two-party system, with smaller regional or special interest parties giving way to bigger parties that have broader, national appeal.

Labour also seemed to have made gains because Nigel Farages party, the UKIP, had disappeared. UKIP existed to promote Brexit. With that achieved, the party basically folded its tent. Forecasters had mistakenly predicted that UKIP voters would migrate to the Tories. But many did not, voting for Labour instead. That is crucial: it suggests that many pro-Brexit, nationalistic voters voted for Labour for economic reasons, given that Britains exit from the European Union seemed assured.

Here, then, is one important lesson for American conservatives: Do not count on retaining the loyalty of working-class voters in places like western Pennsylvaniaplaces that gave Donald Trump the necessary margin for victorywithout rewarding them on the bread and butter issues. In particular, American conservatives should be very wary of cutting health-care programs severely.

Labour made extremely effective use of the charge that May and her Tories were starving Britains national health-care system of funds. That charge resonated with aging working-class Britons who may well have supported UKIP or Brexit. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, the Labour Party, under leaders like Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, had snubbed and stiffed those voters. In that respect, they resembled our own aloof and arrogant Obamas and Clintons. But under Corbyn, Labour began to court these neglected, deplorable voters again with, it appears, a fair measure of success. Conservatives: Be sure that the Democrats have grasped that piece of Labours strategy, and beware of it.

British conservatives had absorbed that lesson even before the election, and they should pay even more attention to it in the aftermath. May was depicted as a Red Tory in large part because of her views on social welfare. She or her Tory successors will probably blush an even deeper red now. Voters who favor nationalist causes, like Brexit or Making America Great Again, value a robust nation-state, not only because it guards its borders jealously and protects its native working class from low-wage foreign-born competition, but also because its health care and social security programs shelter them from the worst ravages of (what Edward Luttwak calls) turbo-capitalism.

A turn to the center on social welfare issues would be very good for conservativism both in Britain and in this country. In Britain, it would mean the Tory Party would break even further with the economic policies of Thatcherism and continue its return to an older and deeper conservative tradition. That is the tradition associated with post-War Tory prime ministers like Harold Macmillan and, in the nineteenth century, Benjamin Disraeli.

In those periods, the Tories aspired to beand in fact weregenuinely the party of the nation as a whole, rather than (like Labour) of one particular class. Their leadership consciously sought to combine the dynamism, innovation, and risk-taking of capitalism with substantial protections for those most vulnerable to the dislocations and deprivations that unfettered capitalism inevitably causes.

In my opinion, that is the true and natural habitat of conservatism in any advanced modern society. And it is the kind that comes naturally to President Trump. To an extent almost wholly unrecognized by commentators, with the notable exception of Conrad Black, both Trump and his followers are moderates. Trump appears to recognize not only the political necessity of protecting core social programs, but also the social imperative for doing so. The deplorables are an essential part of the national community, and the nation needs to give them their due.

Finally, a word about the Ulster MPs on whom the Tories depend. These are not the anti-Catholic bigots of the past, even a past as recent as the 1980s. Their leader, Arlene Foster, is a young Protestant woman who has earned the praise of the UKs Catholic Herald, for her openness to Roman Catholics and her partys staunchly pro-life values. It is not altogether unimaginable that Foster could play a leading role in the next UK cabinet, or perhaps even become prime minister.

The Tories dependence on her party for remaining in power gives Foster extraordinary leverage. It may even be that the Britain that emerges from this election, while taking a more progressive tack in economics, will steer in a more conservative direction on social and cultural issues. Its not a bad combination for American conservatives to espouse.

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The UK Election Means Voters Want Moderation, Not Socialism - The Federalist

To my delight there was a honey festival locally. The Italians like this sort of thing, celebrating local produce whether it be lake fish, lentils or wild asparagus.

Tasting honey is a civilised way to live. The leaflet for the event, though, contained what for me was a bit of a surprise: it was sponsored, in part, by Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS).

There is nothing wrong in principle with a bank funding local events. Mussolini passed a law that a percentage of a banks turnover should go to public good works, and it seems to be something the old boy got right. Its just that MPS doesnt have any money. Not even for a honey festival.

MPS, founded in 1472, is to banking what Alitalia is to airline management, and it is a tragedy that two such dreadfully managed companies should come from the same country. Whilst Alitalia decreed that all its staff should live in Rome, bussing them up daily to Milan and Venice, MPS went one step further.

You could only get on in MPS if you were a socialist. It was owned by a socialist foundation, and if your family were something in local lefty politics you could get a job in the bank. It is rather as if Alitalia had decreed all its pilots should be short-sighted.

I have an account at MPS, I should declare. Probably as a result of their entitlement, the staff were, by and large, rude and ignorant. Some of the ones higher up were corrupt as well. The organisation was not being run for the benefit of the customers, at least, and if it was for the shareholders they had a funny way of going about it.

Things had been going wrong for many years but it was not until the 2008/9 crash that they came to a head. It was the time, you will recall, that Natwest was getting itself into trouble buying ABN/AMRO. Banco Santander, one of its consortium, received as part of the deal an almost worthless Italian bank called Antonveneta.

Santander officials admit privately they were staggered when MPS offered 8 billion for Antonveneta. Staggered and delighted. And so the long decline began.

It is not as if MPS had been investing in sophisticated debt instruments: it hadnt yet got around to looking at this new stuff. MPSs problem was the traditional one of lending money to people who didnt have a hope of paying it back.

Amongst the bad debtors were friends of directors, socialist worthies and of course the Government of Italy whose debt collapsed in value after the crash. The socialist foundation which owned MPS refused to raise capital because its stake in the bank would be diluted.

So, without Collateralised Debt Obligations or anything like that, just through bad banking, the oldest bank in the world proceeded towards insolvency. Following a 2 billion bailout in 2009, by my calculations MPS got through around 8 billion in the period up to the present day. It is now of course bust again.

The late Christopher Fildes used to say that giving capital to a bank is like giving beer to a drunk. You know what he will do with it, you just dont know which wall he will choose.

Even five years ago MPS shares were at 900; today they are 15. Ten thousand euros invested in July 2012 would now be worth 170. But people did invest, many of them poor savers, persuaded into subordinated bonds which paid a bit more than the deposit rate. Even I was invited to buy this stuff; fortunately I knew what it was, a local farmer would not have.

Now the EU has allowed the Italian Government to make a final bailout, but only as part of a general resolution of the bank. Shareholders and junior debt holders will be wiped out. If the poor farmer has the wit he will claim he was mis-sold the investment and hope the government reimburses him.

MPS should have been wound up years ago. Italy has too many banks and those banks have too many branches. The foundation that owned it has learned that 95 percent of zero is worth the same as 0 percent of zero.

Italy will be better without Monte dei Paschi. The honey was good, though.

Tim Hedges,The Commentator's Italy Correspondent, had a career in corporate finance before moving to Rome where he works as afreelancewriter, novelist, and farmer. You can read more of his articles aboutItaly here

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Death by socialism: Demise of the world's oldest bank - The Commentator

Entry visas into Venezuela remain fairly accessible, although journalists are not allowed without a special visa. Although I claimed I was there as a tourist, this seemed far-fetched even to the likely pro-government immigration authorities. What is the real motive of your visit? the officer asked me. Seeing my girlfriend, I replied.

She smiled. Welcome to Venezuela.

As you travel down from Simon Bolvar International Airport into the city center, the difference between Caracas and Bogot formerly one of the worlds major drug war battlegrounds is stark.

Armed police stand on almost every street corner. Every physical space is dedicated to promoting the success of the late Hugo Chvezs socialist revolution and Nicols Maduros authoritarian regime. The opposition undermines official government propaganda with its own graffiti, effectively accusing the regime ofdestroying the country with the highest oil reserves in the world.

The rise in anti-government messaging stands out compared to my visit last November. Pro-government propaganda shares the streets with graffiti denouncing the regime on nearly every block.

This is the new Bolivarian toilet paper a reference to Maduros proposed changes to the Venezuelan constitution, rejected by the people in a vote last year. Maduro is depicted holding a pocket constitution.

If hunger kills the people, the people will take out the government.

A billboard calls for the release of opposition Leopoldo Lpez, who was imprisoned by the regime in 2014 for organizing a peaceful assembly against Maduro.

Nearly every day, anti-government marches take place across Venezuela,nearly all of which attract violence. So far, as many as 84 protesters have been killed since daily protests began in late March, as police use water cannons, rubber bullets, and smoke bombs to control the situation.

Protests have the feel of an out-of-control soccer crowd. There is a feeling of solidarity among people, most of whom are wearing Venezuelan flags. On the side of the street, salesmen sell what can only be described as protest merchandise, including Venezuelan flags, horns, and t-shirts.

Below, the shirts read from left to right: S.O.S. Venezuela; Whosoever Tires Will Lose; Resistance: Dont Surrender!

Closer to police and military barriers, the protests become more tense, with the menace of violence constantly present. Many of those protesting are boys and young men in their mid-teens.

This is a fight for our families, for our future, a group of masked protesters tell me. We will risk our lives every day for as long as it takes to bring down this dictatorship.

A group of young protesters pump themselves up as they prepare to face off with police.

On a visit to the Universidad Central de Venezuela,the countrys biggest university, something seemed not quite right. The university itself seemslike any other, with department buildings scattered around a campus, as well as grandiose facilities such as sports stadiums anda stunningconcert hall.

Yet, despite it being a Wednesday, there are barely any students around.The situation is too serious right now for students to dedicate sufficienttime to studying, English professor Lilliana Cspedes tells me. Many prioritize attending anti-government marches or trying to earn money to support their families. During some of my classes, just a handful of students turn up.

One of the most frustrating things about trying to understand Venezuela is the high level of security atplaces the regime would like to hide. As I enter a government-run supermarket, security guards check my pockets to see what I am carrying. They find my camera. No photos here, they say. A similar routine takes place on the way out.

I also tried my luck at a Venezuelan state hospital, althoughthis time armed guards asked me to put the camera away. Nearly every public place in Caracas is guarded by police keeping a watchful eye over the situation. Most are very meagerly paid, but still officially remain supportive of the government.

Sitting in a hospital waiting room, armed guards soon ask me to put away my camera. Failing to comply would likely mean facing arrest.

Amid the crisis, some Venezuelans have accused others of not doing enough to fight the Maduro regime. The only way I see out of the current regime is a military coup, my taxi driver, Nelson lvarez, tells me. Some people have accused me ofindifference towards the current political situation, but I have a family to look after. No matter how many or how violent the opposition protests, the key to bringing down this government are the military.

Everything about Venezuela suggests this is a nation on the brink of collapse. Whether it is the ongoing violence, the extreme poverty, or the enormous piles of garbage in the street, nothing is working as it should be. In January, inflation reached over 800 percent, while some analysts predicting it could reach 1500 percent by the end of the year. Even at one of the citys most exclusive hotels, breakfast offerings remain scarce and electricity and internet connection regularly cut out.

Thousands of notes are now required to buy anything of value. However, the government recently introduced higher denominations.

Many streets are covered in landfill. People can be regularly seen searching through garbage for scraps.

Im Hungry

While some still solely blame the current crisis on the collapse in oil prices in 2012,a vast majority of Venezuelans believe the country needs serious economic reform. After 17 years of hardcore socialism, egged on by left-wing elites around the world, many in leadership appear hesitant to accuse the socialist system itself and not the people running it of being the problem.

Many within the oppositions leadership structure are members of the Socialist International (SI). Popular Will, the party led by Leopoldo Lpez before his arrest, belongs to the SI. Lpezs colleagues often find it easier to lay the blame at Maduros feet and call for elections, rather than demand a free, capitalist society, rebuilt from the ground up.

Yet the students and street protesters, who have put their lives on pause to fight Maduro, seem to understand that the institutional rot goes way beyond Maduro.

As one student put it to me: Chvez succeeded in creating an equal society by making everyone poor.

You can follow Ben Kew on Facebook, on Twitter at @ben_kew,oremail him at bkew@breitbart.com

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Inside Venezuela: The Socialist Haven on the Brink of Total Collapse - Breitbart News

California is widely celebrated as the fount of technical, cultural and political innovation. Now we seem primed to outdo even ourselves, creating a new kind of socialism that, in the end, more resembles feudalism than social democracy.

The new consensus is being pushed by, among others, hedge-fund-billionaire-turned-green-patriarch Tom Steyer. The financier now insists that, to reverse our worsening inequality, we must double down on environmental and land-use regulation, and make up for it by boosting subsidies for the struggling poor and middle class. This new progressive synthesis promises not upward mobility and independence, but rather the prospect of turning most Californians into either tax slaves or dependent serfs.

Californias progressive regime of severe land-use controls has helped to make the state among the most unaffordable in the nation, driving homeownership rates to the lowest levels since the 1940s. It has also spurred a steady hegira of middle-aged, middle-class families the kind of tax-burdened people Gov. Jerry Brown now denounces as freeloaders from the state. They may have access to smartphones and virtual reality, but the increasingly propertyless masses seem destined to live in the kind of cramped conditions that their parents and grandparents had escaped decades earlier.

There is some irony in a new kind of socialism blessed by some of the worlds richest people. The new policy framework is driven, in large part, by a desire to assume world leadership on climate-related issues. The biggest losers will be manufacturing, energy and homebuilding workers, who will see their jobs headed to other states and countries.

Under the new socialism, expect more controls over the agribusiness sector, notably the cattle industry, Californias original boom industry, which will be punished for its cows flatulence. Limits on building in the periphery of cities also threaten future growth in construction employment, once the new regulations are fully in place.

Sadly, these steps dont actually do anything for the climate, given the states already low carbon footprint and the fact that the people and firms driven out of the state tend to simply expand their carbon footprints elsewhere in their new homes. But effectiveness is not the motivation here. Instead, combating climate change has become an opportunity for Brown, Steyer and the Sacramento bureaucracy to perform a passion play, where they preen as saviors of the planet, with the unlikable President Donald Trump playing his role as the devil incarnate. In following with this line of reasoning, Bay Area officials and environmental activists are even proposing a campaign to promote meatless meals. Its Gaia meets Lent.

The oligarchs of the Bay Area have a problem: They must square their progressive worldview with their enormous wealth. They certainly are not socialists in the traditional sense. They see their riches not as a result of class advantages, but rather as reflective of their meritocratic superiority. As former TechCrunch reporter Gregory Ferenstein has observed, they embrace massive inequality as both a given and a logical outcome of the new economy.

The nerd estate is definitely not stupid, and like rulers everywhere, they worry about a revolt of the masses, and even the unionization of their companies. Their gambit is to expand the welfare state to keep the hoi polloi in line. Many, including Mark Zuckerberg, now favor an income stipend that could prevent mass homelessness and malnutrition.

Unlike its failed predecessor, this new, greener socialism seeks not to weaken, but rather to preserve, the emerging class structure. Brown and his acolytes have slowed upward mobility by environment restrictions that have cramped home production of all kinds, particularly the building of moderate-cost single-family homes on the periphery. All of this, at a time when millennials nationwide, contrary to the assertion of Browns smart growth allies, are beginning to buy cars, homes and move to the suburbs.

In contrast, many in Sacramento appear to have disdain for expanding the California dream of property ownership. The states planners are creating policies that will ultimately lead to the effective socialization of the regulated housing market, as more people are unable to afford housing without subsidies. Increasingly, these efforts are being imposed with little or no public input by increasingly opaque regional agencies.

To these burdens, there are now growing calls for a single-payer health care system which, in principle, is not a terrible idea, but it will include the undocumented, essentially inviting the poor to bring their sick relatives here. The state Senate passed the bill without identifying a funding source to pay the estimated $400 billion annual cost, leading even former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to describe it as snake oil. It may be more like hemlock for Californias middle-income earners, who, even with the cost of private health care removed, would have to fork over an estimated $50 billion to $100 billion a year in new taxes to pay for it.

In the end, we are witnessing the continuation of an evolving class war, pitting the oligarchs and their political allies against the states diminished middle and working classes. It might work politically, as the California electorate itself becomes more dependent on government largesse, but its hard to see how the state makes ends meet in the longer run without confiscating the billions now held by the ruling tech oligarchs.

Joel Kotkin is the R.C. Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University in Orange and executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism (www.opportunityurbanism.org).

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California's descent to socialism Press Enterprise - Press-Enterprise