Ode to a Hoover Fellow

What follows is a response to a Sacramento Bee Article written by a "Hoover Institute Fellow" in response to usual poorly researched, propaganda B.S., that flows out of that Fallis shaped edifice like lava....geese what a metaphor!

Just once, just once could you climb down from Hoover Tower...or jump maybe, and provide a well researched and vetted piece of academic work, not the partisan crap you passed off for an article in the Bee today?

You attack legislators for visiting a successful (oops it can't be successful it has government around it) educational approach in Long Beach because of the cost.

Then, unbelievably you actually seem to tout that lobbyists' spending is vital to embellish lawmaker's knowledge (and pocketbooks)!

The mess we have with outright bribery by lobbyists is good? What? Where is your evidence? You know...proof?

Next, you list other "examples", that any 12th grade Civics student could do, of the breakdown of big government (I think). You actually have the gall to include Modesto, with its housing bubble meltdown, Prop 13 starved local government, and high unemployment rate.

You are implying that big government did that? Really...really?

Ok, that's right...you are a Hoover Fellow!

I dare you...I dare you to publish or refer me to a body of work, you know RESEARCH backed by empirical evidence, that PROVES (I went to Stanford, so walk north west from the Tower and visit the Engineering Department for advice), that the limited government ideology of the Hoover Institute works.

President Hoover never forgave Franklin Roosevelt for being right about the Great Depression. He, and others "never give in to reality and science" types, set up the Hoover Institute, that should be studying issues of War and Peace; not right wing economic nonsense, to prove that he really was right after totally failing as President.

Now, the Hoover Institute churns out revisionist history, backed by nonsense, that the New Deal actually caused the Great Depression! Or, that the New Deal lengthened the Great Depression. Or, that the New Deal really didn't happen at all ....look I can see Alaska from my house!

When I was an undergraduate, I used to look at the phallic symbol looming in the sky, and think, "Poor loser". We laughed at Hoover then, I pity him now.

So, bring out the studies that prove, oh let's try: that Prop 13 revitalized California's economy....Or, that the Housing Bubble of 2003-2008, thanks to George W. Bush's "ownership society" de-regulations, actually helped the economy.

Or, that the law and order "reforms" of 1970-1999 actually reduced violence and provide a safer urban society today (you evidently don't think Oakland is there yet). Please include the government spending explosion that led to California being one of the most incarcerated places on earth.

I would suggest you apply Poverty rate statistics, unemployment, foreclosures, health care rates, distribution of wealth data; etc. You know, Hoover Fellow, use facts!

Of course you won't, because, surprise, the limited government crap you dish out every day, from the Hoover edifice, is just that...crap!

What do you do all day anyway? While you lambast "full time legislatures", as if a part time government could govern a state of millions, what do you produce?

I am betting you confer with others who agree with you, who don't bother to look at the overwhelming empirical, quantifiable, statistical evidence that proves the limited government, free market ideology simply DOES NOT WORK!

The idea behind Political Science, that you obviously hate, is that social, economic and political human behavior can be studied like Anthropology, or Biology. And, there are empirical standards, if you will, upon which a better government can be built. This requires study, of present realities, and past history. From this study, (why am I telling a Hoover Fellow this?), political decisions can more accurately be made...you know, "Public Policy"!

In effect, ideology does not drive public policy formation, rather, science does. And gee whiz, it actually works.

But that is not the reality at the good ole Hoover Institute is it? Nope, ideology drives public policy formation. Research is designed to not quantify but to manipulate public opinion. Public policy is not a product of process, it is a product of propaganda.

That is what you do!

Finally, I was one of those Political Science graduates you seem to complain about. I find it interesting that employers are not hiring them, while raping us with a lobbyist system, that in the guise of pluralism (look it up) simply bribes its way to more profits, more income inequality, and builds an aristocratic state.

You work near one of the greatest research Universities on the planet, in a den of ideological vipers (Biblical reference), and your fellow...fellows provide ideology and propaganda (Fox News) rather than science to back up what is actually a decade long apology for the mistakes of one of the most vilified Presidents in our history!

Oh, you also worked for Wilson, whose anti-immigration public "policy" has landed the Republican Party a permanent minority status in California politics.

Good job. If you worked for me, with that success record, you would be making room for some of those Political Science graduates who nobody will hire right now. How can somebody do nothing, contribute nothing to the body politic and make money at it?

And THAT, my kind Hoover "Fellow", is the real tragedy!



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