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Nov. 12, 2023 - Epoch Times
22:00
The Impact of California's One-Party Rule | Michael Maxsenti #californiainsider
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In California, Democrats have a supermajority in the State Assembly and Senate.
You may wonder how this could impact you.
To be a good leader in the government, you've got to surround yourself with people from totally different perspectives who have the courage then to speak their truth to you so that you can have the benefit of the diverse thinking.
And then you can begin to see a broader perspective to a problem and begin to seek solutions that will truly serve the problem.
My guest today is Michael McSenty, advisory board and leadership team member with the Common Sense Party.
Today he'll explain why a one-party supermajority has caused a monopoly of ideas in our state, and how his organization intends to bring different perspectives back into our state government.
What we want is to get independent-thinking people elected that can carry and be a Democrat, a Republican, A libertarian or a green party, doesn't matter, or a common sense party.
But we need to get independent thinking people in there who are not accepting of the money and the endorsement of those parties.
Because once they accept that money and their endorsement, they now fall under their control.
I'm Siamak Karami.
Welcome to California Insider.
Thank you, Siamak.
It's nice to be here.
We want to talk to you about your party.
You guys have started a party called Common Sense Party.
You've been trying to establish this party in California.
This is such a tough thing to do.
You want to start a party in California, and already there's a Republican Party that's challenged.
It's difficult for them to have a voice.
Such an established party.
Why are you guys doing this?
Yeah, we've been trying to work within the existing rules of the system, the rules that they write, they interpret, and then they can change them at their will.
So we went about, we wanted to be seeing As innocuous as possible, because we don't want to be threatening to the establishment of the status quo and the leadership of both.
In the end, we want to be a bridge, not only for the majority of people in both of those parties that aren't being represented by the leadership and the decisions they're making, but the people who, in California, the NPP, which has grown significantly, that are totally even left out of their voices or even left out.
So we want to be a bridge to bring those people into the process.
See, there's some structural things in California that give us a unique opportunity to do this, to create a party for the rest of us, to get government on the side of the people.
What we want is to get independent thinking people elected.
That can carry and be a Democrat, a Republican, a Libertarian, or a Green Party, doesn't matter, or a common sense party.
But we need to get independent thinking people in there who are not accepting of the money and the endorsement of those parties.
Because once they accept that money and their endorsement, they now fall under their control.
Because if they get elected with the need of that, Then if they don't follow what they're told to vote on, then the next primary, they'll go and give that money and endorsement to somebody else and they'll be gone.
And they're quickly told that you either do what we ask or you'll be gone at the next election cycle.
And so they quickly adhere to stay within it.
But we can help get In our unique situation, we only need to break the supermajority by electing roughly seven members of the 80 seats in the assembly.
So we'll look for candidates who did not accept or get the endorsement of their party, who are proven with their integrity to their words and their deeds.
We'll help them get elected so that they can go into Sacramento and not be beholden to the leadership of the party, but they can truly analyze a problem, listen to their constituents, and vote their heart and their conscience, not vote what they're being told to.
And if we can break the supermajority, then we can bring to light and open up the transparency on a couple of key issues and make it a much more level playing field and bring people...
into the system that are currently locked out.
Now you mentioned you went through the process, you tried to establish this party, then what happened?
Well, COVID shut us down.
Within two months of starting our signature, our registration gathering effort with people out at shopping centers around the state, we had gathered over 15,000, 16,000 plus in literally a couple of months.
And then in May of 2021, when we were allowed now, signature gathers were allowed to go back into the streets.
We then put out people throughout the state to gather registrations, and we gathered a new 54,000 registrations.
So that should have put us around 71,000 total registrations.
So we submitted that in January on time with all the rest of the paperwork to the Secretary of State's office.
They came out with their report three, four weeks later and said, sorry, you've only got 30,882.
And it's like somewhere between the signature gathering company that did all the registrations, somewhere from them To getting through the sausage maker and coming out the other end from the 58 county registrar of voters to the Secretary of State's office, magically somehow our number got reduced by 60%.
So we're in the middle of an audit trying to figure out where and who and how did that.
But what it did was they successfully kept us off the ballot again in 2022.
Now, do you think California leaders don't want another party?
Yeah.
They've blocked everybody since Ross Perot on to not let any other people onto the playing field.
They don't want to let anyone into the game.
And you can look around at California.
What's happened to us?
We used to be the example of innovation to the rest of the nation and most of the world in business, environmental policies, education, and all these areas.
And we've fallen on our sword since we became a single-party state.
And most states are single-party, one way or the other.
We're kind of the poster child for a single-party state here.
And look at the results.
So people that are in charge, they're making the decisions they want the way they want, and they make everybody in their party do whatever they want.
How come this is not working?
Don't these people want to have success, like the California leadership?
You could say it's simply follow the money.
There's really heavy moneyed interests that Almost any single thing that they do is to serve the self-interest of some group that has the money to rent or buy the votes of the leadership of the parties.
And they're willing to sell or rent their votes off on everything because that keeps them in power.
And if you were going to be a...
Get re-elected as a Democrat or Republican.
You had to adhere to what the leadership told you to vote on and you weren't allowed to be free.
So why do you think the issues are getting worse?
Do you think people are not paying attention or what's the imbalance here?
Because people are voting for these politicians.
Every couple of years, people are going and voting for the same people and they're okay.
Well, that's a great question because every election cycle, the politicians tell us everything we dream about, everything we want to hear.
We vote for those people and nothing ever happens.
And then they make excuses and just blame the other party.
It's always the other party or it's their problem, their fault.
And in California, you can't blame the other party.
For 20 years, it's been a single-party state with a supermajority for, I think, 12-plus years.
So every single decision that's been made by our government has been made without the benefit of consultation with anybody who sees things differently, who has a different path.
And when you see the amount of waste and abuse of the funds of our state, you realize how much we pay in taxes.
State taxes were the highest.
Gasoline taxes.
I mean, every fee is incredible.
And the amount of money that is spent, and yet the results aren't there.
We just got $17 billion on homeless that was given to us from the federal government, which is taxpayer dollars.
It's not money that was just, you know, came out of nowhere.
And yet, I've worked for a year and a half to get a guy, an old friend of mine, off the streets of homeless.
And it's pathetic.
It's like, what is this money doing?
These people out there, The systems are all designed from either, at best, a voyeur perspective or from a bunch of bureaucrats from the top down, and irregardless of the results, there's no accountability for the results.
So every election cycle everybody goes, I'm a D or an R, and they vote religiously for that because they're told at every time that that's what we're going to do at this time, we're going to solve it this way or that way, but the proof is in the pudding.
And they work on the primaries.
The primary is when the most ardent supporters of the parties come out.
And so many other people are not paying attention because they're trying to survive.
They're trying to raise their families.
They're trying to be good parents or good people.
And they don't pay attention at the primary stage.
And by the time the primary is done, who you elect in the general is chosen by the parties, by the extremes of the parties.
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Now we will continue the interview.
Do you think the parties had this back in the day and at some point during this process we've been losing it more and more?
Absolutely.
Do you think the parties back in the day had more independence within them?
Yeah.
They used to work together.
I mean, Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill are the last really good examples of when both parties would really cooperate together and work together to come up with solutions.
But then that started changing as they started realizing that if you played to your base and utilizing the primary system, you could gain control over the votes.
And then that they could get re-elected.
And it became all about self-interest, serving themselves to get re-elected and gaining more power for the parties.
And that's just grown.
And with social media, the advent of social media, and the corporate media being able to be manipulated And follow the narratives that they wanted to produce and the censorship started to grow as the sophistication of the understanding of propaganda grew and how they could manipulate the votes through many methods.
It's grown dramatically to the point now that it's all about not trying to compromise, not working together to come up with solutions that both sides can see as fair and sustainable.
But that does hurt us eventually, right?
It's killing us.
Look at all the problems.
Ask anybody from any side of an issue, are you satisfied with how our government has dealt with this in the last 10, 20 years or whatever?
Look around at any issue.
Whether it be homelessness, Housing affordability, our environment, you name it.
And in California, we live our own principles and we all have different perspectives, and it's through bringing people of different perspectives together that you can get a more holistic view.
I like to use the phrase, seeking the whole truth together, so that you can come up with solutions that will be seen as fair and sustainable and deal with the problem.
Now it's all about What your party says is the fair way to do it, not what will work.
You mentioned that the parties can be bought.
Do you have any examples of cases that you've seen where parties decide to do something because there's a big financial interest?
Yeah, I guess one of the easiest ones, and there's so many, but the unions.
And we need unions.
But we need unions that truly have the attitude that they had when I started in business back in the early 70s, that it was a win-win-win, a win for everybody.
But what the unions have done now, have evolved to, is it's only about getting more benefits for their members at the expense of, they don't care if the quality of what they deliver has gone down.
And we've got two great examples in California.
The power of our teachers union.
And most every teacher in this state are wonderful people.
Most of them are underpaid and they're undervalued, but the unions themselves have created, have so much money that they will support candidates only who will do everything in their power to block Charter schools and the opportunities for other schools and be able to put in rules that bad teachers could how they could be taken out of the system because we need to get rid of the bad teachers and we need
to pay more for the good teachers.
We need to be able to provide an education system that empowers and improves the public schools at the same time gives parents a choice To go to other schools, charter schools and other private schools.
The money needs to be there.
We need to improve the overall system, but the teachers union will not allow that.
You can't be a Democrat in the state of California and vote in favor of anything that would empower parents and students to get an education outside of their system.
Another one is the police unions.
You know, the ability to allow the police to have the influence that they have within the political system so that again, rogue cops are protected And they're not able to get rid of the bad cops.
And again, the police are the same way.
We've got so many good, caring policemen who put their lives on the line every day, but there are bad cops within there as well that do a lot of bad things, and they can't get rid of them.
The unions have created rules that make it impossible for them to be We've gotten out of the system.
Those are two just very simple examples of the power of the unions in the state of California.
We need unions, but we need unions that work with the people, with the system, to figure out how we can make it always better for the people.
Now, do you think there is a way for people in California to change this?
Do you think the change has, obviously you guys are doing the party, you're organizing your party.
What about, do you think the people in California have to change their way of looking at politics?
Yes.
Yeah, that's crucial in the long run.
Everybody needs to not wake up to what's going on and then begin to vote outside of the two-party paradigm.
There's been a myth perpetrated by both parties since Ross Perot that's been nothing but a bold-faced lie.
About the fact that if you vote for anything but a D or an R, you're wasting your vote.
Well, the only really wasted vote is to continue to vote for the D and the R, who've proven in our state, the Democrats, the results again are all around us, and the Republicans have become irrelevant because of their adherence to their orthodoxy.
And so the people need to just have the courage To listen, but more importantly, look at the integrity of the actions of what people have done.
What they say is irrelevant if what they've done doesn't back that up and only vote for people whose life story or whose actions...
Are ones that give integrity to their words that they can truly count on and people who are there for service.
And that's an important point about the party, the common sense party.
We want to make it possible for good.
There's so many good-caring people who are willing to go into public service, not to enrich themselves or for anything other than they want to give back for the great gifts we've been given here.
But because of the way the system is, where it costs so much money, and if you're not an insider within either one of these parties, you never get a chance to go run.
Or if you do, you have to be wealthy at best to do it because you can't possibly afford to compete.
Well, that's where the Common Sense Party will be able to level that playing field economically.
One of the key elements that we hope to do is to level the playing field economically for candidates, to allow people, good people who want to serve, to actually run for office and get elected.
But right now there's a 10 to 1 advantage if you are a representative of one of the parties because of the way they can fund.
An example, if you have a good friend and you want to run for office and you have a friend who has some means and they want to give you as much money as they can, they can only write you a check for $4,900.
But they can turn around and write a check to the party for $44,600 that then turns over to you.
So they can basically in essence give you $50,000 for your campaign if you're part of a party and you've followed it.
If you're not, you can only accept that check for $4,900 and that's the most they can give you.
So it's a built-in huge financial advantage besides the organization behind the parties, etc.
So we hope to level the economic playing field, build an infrastructure with people who can then have in each district to support candidates and help Normal, ordinary people who want to give back to the community an opportunity to get elected and go to our state legislature.
One of the things I've seen, Michael, in this country, which is very unique, is that I've seen it in the corporate world.
People, usually if you're a good CEO, if you're a good team, you will have people with different ideas.
And sometimes you have to fight with each other, but then you come up with solutions.
And then sometimes they may not work, and you have to go a different route, and people will accept.
But it looks like we're losing this in the government.
Absolutely.
To be a good CEO or a good leader in the government, you've got to surround yourself with people from totally different perspectives who have the courage then to speak their truth to you so that you can have the benefit of the diverse thinking.
Abraham Lincoln gives a great example of what's called a team of rivals and how he brought into his close cabinet The three leading opponents to him and then had a cabinet that was totally diverse, people who were on all sides of these issues.
And then he even would, one great example, he'd even tell a white lie when two of the combatants that just couldn't work together He literally would tell one group that the other person had spoken so highly and respected him so much.
And then he went and told the other side that the other person had such respect for this person.
So when they came back to the next cabinet meeting, both of them had heard these things from others.
The compliments that were given, I think it was Stanton and I forget the other guy's name.
And then they started working together.
Once they thought that they were respected by the other side, then they begin to work together.
And so a CEO needs to surround himself with people of different perspectives who Are respectful of each other so that they will speak their truth and people will listen to it and then you can begin to see a broader perspective to a problem and begin to seek solutions that will truly serve the problem.
Michael Maxenti with Common Sense Party.
It was great to have you on.
Thank you for coming on California Insider.
Thank you, CMEC. I hope that you and Epoch Times will follow the party and help bring the rest of us into the political process.
You have a great voice and powerful audience and we need to bring them into the system.
Thank you.
Thank you.
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