How to Cook Meatballs: In Praise of the California Model
At last year's National Conservatism conference, organized by Yoram Hazony, Peter Thiel laments that in prediction markets, along with Joe Biden, it's California (Newsom and Kamala) that's on the ticket in 2024. And he says their agenda is to make California the model for America.
For California, he points to the average state government employee compensation compared to private sector wages, and notes that the premium is up to 100%. (This fact is supposedly very bad for some reason--I think the increasingly obsolete libertarianism here reduced to mere sentiment does most of the work for him.)
Thiel also talks about property taxes and affordable housing creating a real estate racket in California, but then we're faced with a contradiction that Thiel is apparently worried about: the same real estate racket that happened in California is now happening in DeSantis' Florida and in Texas. He brags about making $17m from it, but has the sense to say this doesn't fit their narrative:
"And the fact that real estate in Florida or Texas has melted up over the last 2-3 years is not evidence that you're succeeding in building a better model than California. I worry that's evidence that you're becoming like California."
It certainly isn't Governor Newsom or AG Harris that's responsible for this run up in prices. Nor can you blame affordable housing and property taxes. What if the real reason we had this real estate problem transfer from California to Florida and Texas is that since 2020, we had a bunch of mobbed up rich guys transfer from California to Florida and Texas, along with a bunch of Chinese cash?
That would fit the evidence much better: the tech didn't follow them to Florida and Texas, but the curse did—because they are their own curse.
Saudi Arabia doesn't have an oil curse because it has oil. Many countries have lots of oil. Thiel mentions Norway, for example. Saudi Arabia has an oil curse because it's run by an oligarchy of Saudi royals. Is this too uncomfortable for Thiel to consider? Or did he wisely make this point in his sly way?
DeSantis then made a speech about Florida being a model for America. This conference was 5 months ago now, and these days Thiel is more in the business of saving his businesses, though he might be becoming a meatball cook himself, just like Donald Trump. We shall see. Mar-A-Lago might serve as a kind of beachhead in that cursed land, and mobsters can be weaponized against the mob yet again. They can be turned.
Many in the GOP are betting on DeSantis now, like Jeb Bush.
He is the future, they say. Many are also scared of him, saying he's a psychopath. He has turned Florida into a very nice place for Likud-affiliated oligarchs. One should remember, of course, that Russia and Ukraine were also very nice places for Likud-affiliated oligarchs until very recently. Now they're being stripped of their citizenships stripped, running to Israel, or getting thrown out of windows. Times change.
Who is this Meatball Ron guy? Where did he come from? According to the leaked Fox emails, it does seem like at least his current stardom is a construct by the Murdoch family, with the likely assistance from the Musk/Sacks wing of the PayPal mafia over at Twitter, who also supports DeSantis. I'm sure they won't attempt any media rigging with Twitter to help him win. Oh they are already doing that? Huh.
Elon and Murdoch seem to be rather close lately, as well.
Meatball Ron has also been compared to Ronald Reagan, though many say this is not an apt comparison, I actually think it's very accurate. After all, Reagan's acting and political career was made by the mobbed up Lew Wasserman and his Israeli-connected mobsters like Sydney Korshak.
And let’s not forget hat Murdoch got his start under Reagan thanks to Roy Cohn. Watch Zev Shalev's show for more on the history of Murdoch and Roy Cohn. This is in fact the very same network that is now wanting to make DeSantis the next president.
Another implicit reason why DeSantis is the future, according to Musk and Thiel, is because he's Gen X and he's going against the "gerontocracy," embodied by Joe Biden. He's simply younger, so he must be the future, right? But this narrative again makes no sense.
Biden is, in many ways, simply continuing what has been done by the Newsoms and Kamalas in California, but on the federal level. Kamala is now VP and poised to potentially be the first black female president, and Newsom is also a favored national candidate for 2028. Maybe the people that got mobsters out of California can finish the job on the national level? It would make sense.
This mob vs. intel fight did not start with Biden nor will it end with him. Could the strategy of doing what was done in California but on a federal level really be this effective? Yes, it could, and yes it is.
More CHIPS and Science acts and more Inflation Reduction acts. Increasing government spending, building affordable housing, increasing property taxes--perhaps even implementing a progressive cap gains tax? Yes, yes, yes, and yes. Even more funding and expansion of the IRS? Let's see how good they are at tax evasion and money laundering, after all. Also, yes, defund the Israeli-trained low IQ police.
And what to do with all their cash--techify the FBI with facial recognition, satellite surveillance, genomic sequencing, and UAVs? Sounds good, as long as nobody there works for an Oleg Deripaska, who really should consider retiring.
The deep state is done with this “malarkey,” not just Joe. State-level corruption is certainly a natsec issue and these measures are warranted. The California model and agenda on a federal level is exactly what is needed. And who will stop them? Jared Kushner? Jeb Bush? Don’t make me laugh.
Once there's Kamala, Newsom, or perhaps even the great Hunter Biden, as commander-in-chief, and these Russian-Likudnik mobsters realize there are no brakes on this train, where will they run to then?
Many will surely run to Israel, but that's no longer as attractive an option as they thought, thanks to Bibi. Perhaps it will be Mexico, they are close to the cartels there after all. They could retire as spiritual boomers in Yucatan, surely there are drug dealers there to sustain their addictions. Dan Crenshaw could be drafted into cartel wars there by Bukele and get a chance to lose his other eye to become Lady Justice incarnate.
If, that is, Mexico doesn't come to them first. Would they have a hot war with the cartels in Florida? Let's see what that does to real estate prices.
Or perhaps they will actually go to Canada? There are fates worse than death.