The Sacramento Bee reported recently how current California state attorney general and former governor Jerry Brown, (likely) seeking to ascend again to the state’s top spot in 2010, could see his hopes torpedoed by far left views he espoused as a radio show host in the 1990s. According to the Bee, Brown very publicly “blamed corporate malfeasance and political corruption for undermining American democracy…”
Talk about nuts!
Thankfully, Garry South, “a top strategist for [former] Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gavin Newsom,” is on to Brown’s seditious psychosis:
“California Democrats need to ponder very seriously the prospect of putting up a candidate for governor who comes with reams of radio-show rantings like Brown,” he states, sagely adding that “Republicans will put tens of millions of dollars behind making him look like a conspiracy-spouting fringe lunatic to the average voter.”
Good on them! And thank goodness they have tons of money at their disposal, too, which, if scary Jerry had had his way, would have been a vital tool long removed from the political process, thereby denying freedom-loving corporations their constitutional right to buy as many congressmembers, er, as much access as possible. For here’s Brown from his radical radio days waxing wacky about campaign reform: “The way politics is organized… money buys power, even though as a principle, that is condemned.”
“Money buys power”? Well, duh! It also buys patchouli oil, lava lamps and Internet porn (uh, so I’ve heard), and isn’t it interesting how he doesn’t rail against those.
As a dissident DJ, Brown also bashed another beloved American institution: institutions (as in, correctional), knocking locking up druggies and throwing away the key:
“Here’s the real scam. The drug war is one of the games to get more convictions and prisoners. There’s a lot of chemicals out there and when certain ones are made illegal, they become a huge profit opportunity and bring violence, crime and more people to imprison.”
So, let me get this straight: Instead of spending bazillions on eons-long prison sentences for adults partaking of intoxicants in the privacy of their homes, activity that causes irrevocable damage to our society, you know, um, somehow, what would Brown have wildly suggested? Legalize drugs, tax them and then blow the dough on school construction and highway maintenance? Earth to Jerry: if we’d wanted to live like namby-pamby socialists, we’d never have revolted against France. Get a clue!
Further cementing his criminal-coddling credentials, here’s Baby-‘Em Brown’s death penalty lowdown: “The great danger of humane punishment is that people will come to accept state murder as something sanitary. I don’t think bureaucracy should ever be entrusted with that kind of power.”
Now, I’m sure liberals would insist we ask the 138 people exonerated from death row in the U.S. since 1973 what they think about capital punishment, even though their bias would be obvious. Fine, whatever; but it still doesn’t change this unalterable fact: nobody kills anybody when they’re dead. (Yes, tree huggers, ‘tis true there have been at least eight people executed in recent years even though it was determined a little too late — oops! — they were almost assuredly innocent but, hey, what are you, perfect?)
But the thing that galls me most about Jerry Brown is the Marxist nature of his on-the-record anti-corporatism, for who else but a closet commie would blame Big Business for our great nation’s woes? Everyone knows that banks, insurance companies, the pharmaceuticals industry, weapons manufacturers and other corporate mega-entities have never had anything but our country’s best interests at heart, and anyone who reads ulterior motives into their God-given right to fully service us, check it, provide us full services, is truly an America-hater of the first order.
Personally, I’m couldn’t be happier to donate my tax dollars to help save critically-needed financial institutions in exchange for the privilege of using credit cards with perfectly reasonable 29.99% interest rates. I’m proud as a patriotic peacock to continue supporting the ever-burgeoning defense industry and its half-dozen or however many wars it is they’ve got going now, ‘cause one never knows when the next Iraqi or Afghani — or even the first — will attack us from hating the freedoms we used to have. I’m all for making taxpayer-subsidized health insurance mandatory for every American, and for do-gooders who complain it’s nothing but a backdoor windfall for soulless HMOs and marvel at the chutzpah of fining or even jailing fellow citizens too poor to comply, I’ve only one question: where’s your famous bleeding heart compassion when it comes to shareholders and CEOs, huh? They’re human, too, you know. (Probably.)
Fortunately, time wounds all heels or at least tempers their views, and moderation is apparently what’s happened to Jerry Brown’s extremist ideas from his far-out radio daze. The Bee makes it clear that Brown, in his undeclared desire to regain the governorship, has ratcheted his rebellious rhetoric way down.
That’s fine by me, ‘cause one thing’s for sure: if old Governor Moonbeam’s retro ravings ever came to pass, we’d no doubt have an America that looked radically different from how it looks today.
And who would want that?