“Reporters want to fan the flames of conflict leading to war because they’re so damn stupid. That is my belief of your profession.” As Sir Bedivere (Terry Jones) might say, who is this who is so wise in the ways of the media and world peace? Why, it’s Jerry Brown, billed by the allegedly damn stupid reporter as a former governor of California. That is true, but there’s so much more to the man.
Jerry Brown is the son of California governor Edmund G. “Pat” Brown, which accounts for Jerry’s gubernatorial win in 1974. In 1976, 1980 and 1992, Jerry Brown ran for president, and came up a loser every time. In his 1982 run for the Senate, Brown lost to Republican Pete Wilson, mayor of San Diego. In his jousts with reporters, Brown seems to have forgotten those losses.
After the recent summit in San Francisco, a reporter asked Joe Biden if he would still use the term “dictator” for Xi Jinping. “Well, look, he is,” Biden replied. “He’s a dictator in the sense that he’s a guy who runs a country that is a communist country, that is based on a form of government that is totally different than ours.” That caused Antony Blinken to wince, and Jerry Brown to accuse the reporter of fanning the flames of war. The hereditary governor and three-time presidential loser then turned on Joe Biden.
“When you’ve been in politics for 50 years, the first thing you’re supposed to learn is how to avoid an embarrassing question,” Brown said. “That has to be lesson one.” Other lessons might have escaped notice.
The People’s Republic of China is indeed a Communist country, and in Marxist-Leninist doctrine the dictatorship of the proletariat rules over the people. For the Communists, free elections, free speech and such are so much bourgeois decadence. The sole political party in the PRC is the Chinese Communist Party, and the nation has been ruled by a series of Stalinist dictators, starting with the genocidal Mao Zedong, according to The Black Book of Communism, the worst mass murderer in human history.
Joe Biden’s view that Xi is a dictator is perfectly accurate, and a big improvement over his 2019 statement that the Chinese Communists are “not bad folks.” For Jerry Brown, Biden’s truthful statement was a mistake, and the reporter was somehow fanning the flames of war. That takes a special kind of person but Pat Brown’s son is up to the task.
His stint at Sacred Heart seminary was probably a draft-dodge, but Brown’s ability to quote Latin tags got him branded a sage. Like Biden and current governor Gavin Newsom, Jerry Brown shows little familiarity with works by economists such as F.A Hayek, Milton Friedman and Thomas Sowell of the Hoover Institution. Great Catholic writers such as Michael Novak and Richard John Neuhaus also seem to have escaped his attention.
Gov. Brown wanted a California space program but he’s more accurately perceived as an astronaut of arrogance. When reporters ask about his presidential losses he seems “slightly annoyed,” as he does most of the time
California’s 1978 Proposition 13 limited the amount property taxes could be raised. Gov. Brown denounced it as a rip-off, even though the measure required no new government spending or hiring. When it passed in a landslide, Brown proclaimed himself a “born again tax cutter,” which was never true.
Brown’s choice for chief justice was his former campaign chauffer Rose Bird. She was 40 years old and without judicial experience, but like Brown she had a soft spot for convicted murderers. In 1986, California voters booted Bird and Brown supreme court picks Joseph Grodin and Cruz Reynoso, who also held their personal views above the law. From this 63-37 defeat at the hands of the people, Brown learned nothing.
Toward the end of his final term, Gov. Brown signed Senate Bill 1391. Under this measure, anyone in California under the age of 16 can murder any number of people, be prosecuted only in juvenile court, and gain release at the age of 25. In his signing message, Brown said the concerns of crime victims “weighed on me.” A ballpark figure for how much would be zero.
In 1974, Jerry Brown denounced the sprawling new governor’s residence as a wasteful “Taj Mahal.” Gov. Brown refused to live there and instead moved into a sparsely-furnished, two-bedroom apartment on N St. not far from the state Capitol. The hereditary, recurring governor now boasts an estimated net worth of $10 million and lives in a 3,500-square- foot mansion on 2,500 acres in Colusa County. “Simple lifestyle” Jerry is now part of the landed gentry, but his politics haven’t changed.
In January, Brown told reporters Joe Biden was “a good guy” and should give serious consideration to another run for the White House. Vice president Kamala Harris, on the other hand, would “probably like to be doing better.” Brown still believes Biden is “the man of the hour,” but when asked about Kamala Harris Brown said, “I do not have a thought on that topic.”
As people should know, Kamala Harris got her start under one-time steady boyfriend Willie Brown, thirty years her senior. The Democrat queenmaker set up Harris in lucrative sinecures and backed her runs for district attorney in San Francisco and state attorney general. The prospect of Kamala Harris as President of the United States renders Jerry Brown speechless. As Trump says, we’ll have to see what happens.
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