STOLEN: Thieves broke into the Paris home of designer John Galliano in the night of Friday to Saturday, French newspaper Aujourd’hui en France reported on Sunday.
It was not known if the designer was present during the burglary. The stolen goods included one of the last photographs of Marilyn Monroe, worth more than 50,000 euros, or $56,400, the paper said.
Galliano has been based in Paris since he was hired as creative director of Givenchy in 1995. He was the artistic director of women’s ready-to-wear at Dior from 1996 to 2011, when he was dismissed for making racist and anti-Semitic comments at a cafe while under the influence of alcohol and drugs.
Having successfully completed rehab, he was hired in 2014 as creative director of Maison Margiela, where he has kept a discreet public profile, in keeping with the ethos of the label’s founder, Belgian designer Martin Margiela.

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Four fresh labels that the streetwear savvy should know.

After giving a speech a few years ago, I was approached by an activist who wanted to tell me about what he believes is California’s most significant political problem. I’m usually leery of enthusiastic people touting political solutions and toting stacks of papers, but Michael Warnken made a great elevator pitch that has forever changed my thinking.

California, the Santa Barbara resident told me, has the worst political representation in the country. We have the most people represented by the fewest politicians. I’ve used his number before, but it’s worth repeating: Each California Assembly member represents 483,000 people, whereas each lower house member in New Hampshire represents around 3,290 people.

As a result, few voters here can speak to — let alone influence — their elected state officials. Those “representatives” don’t need to worry about what voters think given that there are so many of them. They do, however, need to worry about the demands of special-interest groups, given how much money it takes to win in such highly-populated districts. As Warnken emphasized, California suffers from a severe “representation” problem.

There’s a corollary problem at the local level. Most city councils in the state elect their members on an “at large” basis, meaning that each official represents the entire city rather than a specific district within the city. This also dilutes representation. In at-large races, each candidate must run a citywide race. In big cities that means they need to raise lots of money from special interests, usually developers or unions that represent the city’s public employees.

In cities with at-large elections, we also find that many, if not most, of the council members often come from one or two neighborhoods — typically, some of the fanciest neighborhoods in the city. Concerns in other neighborhoods get short shrift. Often, poorer minority neighborhoods are overlooked in the process, which is why a law firm has been calling on local cities to adopt district elections — or face a lawsuit under the California Voting Rights Act.

Many cities have agreed to adopt (or have already implemented) that neighborhood-oriented system, including Lake Forest, Buena Park, Garden Grove, Fullerton, Placentia, Costa Mesa, Anaheim and others. However, as the Register reports, the city of Huntington Beach has vowed to fight the proposed change — even though the last city to fight the firm’s efforts (Palmdale) ended up paying $4.5 million in fees.

“We are prepared to vigorously defend any lawsuit,” said Huntington Beach City Attorney Michael Gates, according to a Register report. That’s a foolish move for anyone who cares about improving our representative government.

“When you have district elections, you know who your rep is and you can go to them directly and they can take up the issue themselves,” Warnken said. “When you have districts, it becomes very clear who the representative for the district where (a) problem is occurring and there becomes a bit of a need for that representative to look heavily into the problem or lose their seat.”

Some conservatives have cheered the city’s defiant stance, given the effort is pushed by an attorney trying to expand the representation of Latinos, who tend to vote Democratic. But regardless of the political views of those supporting it, district elections are better than at-large elections because they create a more responsive government.

Conservatives had supported district elections in Huntington Beach in the early 2000s, back when environmental groups seemed to have outsized control over the council. The city squelched the effort, but a prime backer at the time, former GOP Assemblyman Scott Baugh, remains enthusiastic about district elections — even though the current plan is advanced by those with different political views.

“Elections that are closer to the people are better for democracy, period,” Baugh told me. Going to districts may or may not lead to a more liberal or conservative city council, but that’s not that point. The results may be mixed in any one election, he said, but it comes down to a simple question: “Is it better for democracy?” Baugh says the answer is yes because districts give citizen politicians the chance to run an effective campaign without having to raise a fortune.

Anaheim recently expanded its council to seven members and adopted a district model — the result of a settlement with civil-rights groups. Republican Mayor Tom Tait champions the concept. “It brings the government, City Hall, closer to the people,” he told me. “Now you have somebody from the neighborhood who stands a fighting chance against the moneyed special interests.” Two candidates recently won in Anaheim despite opposition from the major interest groups.

Whether one is talking about statewide representation or council races, the concept is the same. Instead of wasting tax dollars defending an unfair and outdated electoral system that dilutes the power of voters, Huntington Beach officials ought to take the advice of Warnken and find ways to create smaller districts, which are “more in sync with proper democratic traditions.”

Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute. He was a Register editorial writer from 1998-2009. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org.

“They’re closing down the textile mill across the railroad tracks

“The foreman says these jobs are going, boys, and they ain’t coming back …”

— Bruce Springsteen in “My Hometown”

The bard of New Jersey is hardly a Donald Trump supporter. A longtime progressive who supports the Democratic Party nominee every four years, Springsteen was tapped by Hillary Clinton in the waning days of the 2016 campaign to galvanize the faithful at a Philadelphia rally and pump up the vote in the city and its suburbs.

The Boss did his part, extolling Hillary for her “intelligence,” castigating The Donald as a man with “a profound lack of decency,” and then playing a nice set. Tellingly, the playlist did not include “My Hometown.” In the rest of Pennsylvania, and across the Rust Belt, voters ultimately put more stock in the words of Springsteen’s 1983 ballad than in his 21st century liberal self.

More precisely, they listened to Donald Trump’s interpretation of how America’s economy has been handled in the last 3½ decades. Those jobs didn’t leave of their own accord, Trump maintained. They left because duplicitous politicians and craven corporations rigged the system for their own benefit.

NAFTA was one particularly invidious instrument, in Trump’s telling, but his narrative was broader than that. Politicians of both parties mismanaged globalization, he asserted, in ways that benefited West Coast elites and rich swells in the Acela corridor while leaving middle America in the lurch. The establishment encouraged massive immigration — legal and illegal — to ensure cheap labor, while fashioning trade deals that helped crony capitalists in Mexico and China and hollowed out the American working class. I will change all that, Donald Trump promised. Those jobs? They are coming back.

This is a one-dimensional view of global economics, as the international tycoon who was spinning it knows. But just enough of it was true that Trump’s pitch resonated in the heartland. And the arrogance exhibited by those opposed to Trump tended to bolster his argument and inspire working people to tell the establishment to shove it.

In February 2016, the Carrier division of United Technologies said it was moving two perfectly profitable Indiana manufacturing operations, along with some 2,000 jobs, to Mexico. Carrier’s announcement came two months ahead of the Indiana primary, and helped swing it to Trump and Bernie Sanders — a harbinger of what awaited Hillary Clinton in November.

Meanwhile, the media dutifully reported on studies showing that working-class Americans’ income hadn’t risen in two decades. Yet, in a stark example of cognitive dissonance, these same news outlets carried a drumbeat of commentary telling their audiences that even considering a vote for the candidate who promised to get them a pay raise meant they were racists. It wasn’t an argument that figured to resonate with workers who hadn’t had a raise since Hillary Clinton was first lady — and it didn’t. For her part, Clinton amplified on the media’s dubious strategy, memorably placing half of Trump’s supporters into her “basket of deplorables,” which she described as “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it.”

By that time, Trump was calling Clinton “Crooked Hillary,” but “Clueless Hillary” would have been more apt. Which brings us to the Paris accord on climate change.

Liberals in the United States and elites all over the world flipped out when Trump announced that he was abrogating the agreement. If hot air were CO2, Democrats in this country might have ticked the world temperature up a couple of degrees in a single day.

“A willful crime,” cried Democratic Party mega-donor Tom Steyer. Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse nailed four liberal bogeymen in a single sentence. “Trump is betraying the country in the service of Breitbart fake news, the shameless fossil fuel industry, and the Koch brothers’ climate denial operation,” he said.

California Gov. Jerry Brown termed the president’s decision “insane” and “tragic” and vowed that “California will resist” — before jumping on a plane to China where he planned to discuss this issue with the global leader in greenhouses gas emissions.

As even Brown acknowledged, Trump’s action surprised no one. Like the Iran nuclear deal, this was, in effect, a treaty. But because President Obama never brought it to the Senate for ratification (it wouldn’t have passed in its current form) it amounts to an executive order that Trump felt free to undo. Why wouldn’t he? He campaigned against it, and nearly the entire Republican Party considers it a lousy deal for American taxpayers, bad for the U.S. economy and of infinitesimal benefit to the environment.

For starters, the accord is non-binding and countries are free to set their own goals. Putting his money where his mouth was, Obama committed the U.S. to achieving a 26 percent to 28 percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2025. The other big polluters didn’t match Obama’s bravado. China, the only nation to emit more carbon dioxide than the United States, merely offered that its carbon emissions would cap in 2030. India announced goals that represented an increase in what it had already predicted. Pakistan promised to try to reduce its output after reaching “peak” emissions “to the extent possible.”

To facilitate these nebulous and unenforceable goals, the Obama administration agreed to spearhead a transfer of wealth from prosperous nations to developing economies: These payments were to total $10 billion, $3 billion of it from the U.S., of which $1 billion has already been paid. So Trump saved American taxpayers $2 billion on Thursday, which is a nice day’s work for a guy who’s not even taking a salary.

The real savings to Americans, he said, will be in preventing consumers’ energy costs from rising and in avoiding the impacts of the deal on the manufacturing, heavy industry and energy sectors of the economy that would be required to meet Obama’s goals. This is not to say that there aren’t arguments for keeping the Paris accord. It was a good start on addressing an issue that has alarmed the world scientific community. It’s also the rallying point for a global conversation, which never hurts. Obama staked out the moral high ground and a position of leadership.

“Today the American people can be proud,” he said at the time, “because this historic agreement is a tribute to American leadership.”

True enough, but Donald Trump doesn’t come from this tradition. He cares less about something as nebulous as leadership than about the actual terms of the deal. He looked at the Paris accord with the mentality of a real estate magnate who came into possession of an expensive New York skyscraper — only to conclude that everything about the terms of the deal were disadvantageous. The leases are too low, the interest rates on financing too high, the maintenance contracts, finders’ fees, taxes — everything must be relitigated.

Will Europeans fall for this gambit? They were quick to say they wouldn’t. “I tell you firmly tonight: We will not renegotiate a less ambitious accord. There is no way,” said new French President Emmanuel Macron. “Don’t be mistaken on climate: There is no Plan B because there is no Planet B.”

It’s a clever line, but in Donald Trump’s mind there’s always a Plan B, not to mention Plans C, D, E and F. If global warming is truly the existential threat to mother Earth that climate change activists say it is, they’ll renegotiate with Trump. Failing to do so would call into question every single claim they’ve made about the issue’s importance.

Carl M. Cannon is executive editor and Washington Bureau chief of RealClearPolitics.

On Thursday, the California state Senate made the bold move of voting to create a single-payer health system without having any idea of how to pay for it.

Ostensibly spurred by concerns over the future of the Affordable Care Act at the federal level, Senate Bill 562 by Sens. Ricardo Lara, D-Bell Gardens, and Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, would create a single-payer system which would cover health expenses for every resident in California.

Considering the magnitude of such a proposal, the very least that is owed is a thorough accounting of how exactly such a program would be paid for. After all, according to estimates from a legislative analysis provided to the Senate Appropriations Committee on May 22, the proposal is anticipated to cost $400 billion per year, more than double the state budget. While half of that could be covered by existing federal, state and local funding, the other $200 billion would have to be covered by new tax revenues.

Even those figures could be off, because as the legislative analysis explained, “there is tremendous uncertainty in how such a system would be developed, how the transition to the new system would occur and how participants in the new system would behave.”

But rather than provide the sort of thorough vetting such a massive overhaul demands, the bill’s authors instead pushed for a vote on a half-baked proposal. “There’s no funding mechanism within this bill because we want to further study and ensure that this becomes a program that is viable,” Lara told colleagues on the Senate floor, seemingly unaware of the implications of what he had just said.

The absence of a complete proposal led many lawmakers who are otherwise sympathetic to its aims to either vote against it or abstain.

“Rather than rushing to pass it before it’s complete, we should keep it here and finish the work,” said Sen. Steve Glazer, D-Contra Costa, who voted against the bill.

Putting it more bluntly was Sen. Ben Hueso, D-San Diego, who, despite supporting the concept of single-payer health care, refused to support the bill. “This is the Senate kicking the can down the road to the Assembly and asking the Assembly to fill in all of the blanks,” he said.

Whatever the merits of single-payer health care in the abstract, what the Senate voted on was a proposal lacking critical details without which a responsible vote in favor is impossible. The prospect of an unvetted bill with hundreds of billions of dollars in proposed annual costs becomes even less sensible in light of the state’s inability to balance the budget it already has.

“Nearly $250 billion this state is upside down according to its own audited financial statements,” said Sen. John Moorlach, R-Costa Mesa, citing the state’s massive debts and unfunded liabilities. “So now we want to take on single-payer health care, which has big numbers too.”

As Sen. Jeff Stone, R-Temecula, pointed out, California is already the highest-taxed state in the country. What SB562 guarantees is the placing of greater burdens on taxpayers, employers and medical professionals. “If you want California to be competitive in the job market, which is very challenging these days, you’ll vote no on this bill,” Stone said.

Rather than voting down a clearly deficient bill, the Senate voted 23-14 in favor of it. This is not how a responsible government operates. This is a glorified political stunt which, if it proceeds with the same thoughtlessness shown to date, could do real harm to the state of California.

Scores from the CIF-SS softball championship games on Saturday.

SOFTBALL
Saturday
Division 1: Los Alamitos 3, Norco 1
Division 2: Camarillo 4, Riverside Poly 0
Division 3: Murrieta Mesa 3, Hart 1 (8 innings)
Division 6: St. Anthony 3, Sierra Canyon 2

Friday
Division 4: Buena 5, San Marcos 0
Division 5: South Torrance 6, Heritage Christian 2
•Division 7: Village Christian 7, Santa Ynez 4

Even before the election of Donald Trump, and more so afterwards, the dysfunction of the GOP has been glaringly obvious. Yet, despite the miserable favorability ratings for both Trump and the Republicans, those of the Democrats, notes Gallup, also have been dropping, and are nearly identical to that of the Republicans.

What gives? Simply put, the Democrats seem to know only what they are against — Trump — but have provided no clear sense of where they want to take the country. The party, and much of the nation, despises Trump, but there does not seem to be any huge pent-up national demand for the Democrats to take over — at least, not yet.

Part of the problem is major chasms underneath the absurd faux solidarity of the “resistance” movement on the left. These have been largely hidden in the increasingly uniformly pro-Democratic media. These differences extend beyond personal fiefdoms or stylistic differences. They reflect deep divides in terms of class and geography, and will not be easy for the party leadership to reconcile.

The gentry vs. populists

The two most remarkable campaigns of 2016 — those of Trump and Bernie Sanders — were driven by different faces of populist resentment. Yet, increasingly, the Democrats’ populist pretensions conflict with their alliance with ascendant “sovereigns of cyberspace,” whose power and wealth have waxed to almost absurd heights. Other parts of their upscale coalition include the media, academia and the upper bureaucracy.

This affluent base can embrace the progressives’ social agenda — meeting the demands of feminists, gays and minority activists. But they are less enthusiastic about the social democratic income redistribution proposed by Bernie Sanders, who is now, by some measurements, the nation’s most popular political figure. This new putative ruling class, notes author Michael Lind, sees its rise, and the decline of the rest, not as a reflection of social inequity, but rather their meritocratic virtue. Only racism, homophobia or misogyny — in other words, the sins of the “deplorables” — matter.

The Washington Post, owned by Jeff Bezos, the world’s third-richest man, reflects this socially liberal, but oligopolistic, worldview. Last spring, Bezos worked assiduously to undermine Sanders’ campaign, then promoted Clinton, and now has become a leading voice in the anti-Trump “resistance.” The gentry wing of the party, which dominates fundraising and media, as the opposition to Sanders reveals, likes its money. The tech community is famously adept at avoiding taxes.

How long can this odd pairing of socialism and oligopoly persist? There are growing sentiments on the left to begin confiscating some of the massive wealth of the tech firms. Bank of America’s Michael Harnett recently warned that continued growth of stock market wealth in a handful of tech stocks “could ultimately lead to populist calls for redistribution of the increasingly concentrated wealth of Silicon Valley.”

Geographical challenges

It’s widely noted by sentient Democrats that the party’s base is too concentrated in the big coastal cities, college towns and minority enclaves. So far, even Trumpophobia is not strong enough to shift elections in places like Montana or Nebraska. It may work in the congressional special election in Georgia, although the Democrats have done themselves no favors by nominating a nonresident and untested filmmaker.

To win in “flyover country,” the Democrats should follow the socially and environmentally moderate, economically populist course that was once the emblem of centrists and pragmatists like West Virginia’s Joe Manchin or North Dakota’s Heidi Heitkamp. Yet, such customized progressives run against the Stalinist notion of “intersectionality” that demands party members embrace every fashionable left-wing notion, from the “evils” of homeownership to police brutality, climate change and transgender bathrooms.

This creates a dilemma for many potentially anti-Trump voters. Running against energy industry growth in the Great Plains, Ohio and Texas assaults the bases of those economies. Just try telling people that they should give up their homes and cars for apartments and the bus, and then try to sell that in suburbia.

Surprisingly, Bernie Sanders, whose priorities tilt to economic concerns, may be closer to coming up with a strategy that could break the Heartland red wall than the gentry left. But his program will be expensive, and in an increasingly unequal society, free college, single-payer health care and “clean” energy all will require massive subsidies, which at some point the gentry will be forced to pay.

An American or transnational party?

Perhaps the biggest problem facing a Democratic ascendancy centers around national identity. Increasingly, the gentry and cultural wings of the party are “transnationalists” who find Trumpian grumbles about trade and immigration crudely archaic.

Yet, globalization, so particularly obvious in the coastal cities, has not served the interests of those voters that the Democrats need in the Midwest and elsewhere. Open borders and free trade work out well in the world of Davos and other meetings of the mighty, but they don’t translate well to those parts of the country where trade has devastated economies, or among those whose wages are threatened by mass, unregulated immigration.

Trump, by his incoherence and incompetence, has opened the door to the Democrats. But the passage to redemption may prove more difficult if the party fails, as Hillary Clinton and the Democratic congressional delegation showed last year, to relate to the broad ranks of the citizenry.

Joel Kotkin is the R.C. Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University in Orange and executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism (www.opportunityurbanism.org).

The custom home in Chelsea features five stories of glass, silk, oak, and stone amenities.

Ryan Lawler, owner of Newport Coastal Adventure, was all done with his eco-tours for the day when he got word: rare orcas spotted off the coast.

He decided to give it a shot and scour the sea to spot the black-and-white beauties late Friday afternoon – and he’s glad he did, finding a playful pod of killer whales that haven’t been seen off Orange County since January 2015.

“That’s the last time any Orange County whale watching boat has seen them,” he said.

The orcas – identified as the group CA-51 – were first spotted by Harbor Breeze Cruises off Palos Verdes.

Capt. Dan Salas, founder of Harbor Breeze Cruises out of Long Beach, was out watching dolphins off San Pedro with passengers when they suddenly split.

“They just took off 1,000 miles per hour, they just scattered. Then all of a sudden, here comes this family of orcas,” he said. “That is the pod that is the most friendly group of orcas we’ve ever seen. They love interaction with the passengers.”

They came up and greeted the passengers, looking at them eye-to-eye. They did back flips and spy-hopped with their heads out of the water.

“It was so beautiful to see these magnificent animals,” he said. “Some of the passengers were in tears, they had never seen anything like that. It was so beautiful.”

Salas has been a boat captain for 30 years and had trouble describing just how powerful the interaction was.

“You can see the power and how intelligent they are. It’s like they’re trying to communicate and say hello,” he said. “Words can’t describe what actually happened.”

By the time Lawler heard about the sighting, it was already 4:30 p.m. on Friday, June 2. He picked up wildlife photographer Mark Girardeau and expert Alisa Schulman-Janiger and raced up the coast.

They found the pod in Long Beach and followed them south into Orange County waters.

Girardeau had just returned from Monterey, a trip specifically aimed at seeing orcas in the wild since sightings are more common further up the coast.

So to see them in his own back yard was a treat.

“They are just more rare, we don’t get them that much,” he said. “When you do see them, it’s an adrenaline rush. They are basically a giant dolphin, when you see them they’ll play with the boat. The killer whales are the ultimate species, it’s the iconic mammal you get to see.”

Years can pass between orcas sightings in local waters. While other orcas were spotted locally last year, this particular group hasn’t been seen for years.

The CA-51 pod – known as the most playful of the orcas seen off the coast – includes orcas who’ve been named Bumper, O’rion, Star and Comet, who were spotted Friday.

Lawler said they followed the pod all the way down to the oil rigs in Huntington Beach until sundown Friday. The group headed out under overcast skies Saturday to search the sea again. His boat quickly sold out for the day after word of the orcas spread.

Girardeau said a highlight was when the orcas swam right under the 26-foot inflatable boat they were on – their bodies as big as the boat.

“When they come under the boat, you see the size of them,” he said. “It really puts it into perspective when you see them this close.”

See also: Killer whales are part of the show at SeaWorld San Diego.

FOUNTAIN VALLEY — Dozens arrived early Saturday, June 3, for an 11 a.m. Make America Great Again march organized by the Southern California Silent Majority MAGA at Mile Square Park in Fountain Valley.

More than 200 had gathered in the park as the 11 a.m. event got started.

The event’s organizers said they plan to march four miles along the park’s perimeter and host speakers such as Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Costa Mesa, and Assemblyman Travis Allen, R-Huntington Beach.

Billed as a “family friendly” day with a barbecue, the event will also be held in opposition to the “sanctuary bill” SB 54.

“We’re not opposed to immigration,” event leader and Tustin resident Darlene Savord said ahead of the event. “We’re opposed to illegal immigration. If you want to be a citizen, do it the right way.”

Westminster resident Elena Rutkowski was one of the at least 50 to arrive early.

Rutkowski, a former trustee with the Westminster School District, said she came to show her support for President Donald Trump.

“He’s doing a good job,” she said. “We need to support him instead of cutting him down at every opportunity.”

She brought homemade signs reading “No Sanctuary States” and “Oppose SB54.”

Savord said she hopes the event will provide a forum for supporters of the president to express their agreement with his policies.

She said she’s “proud” of Trump, praising his recent decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement.

“He loves his country, and I think people are beginning to realize it,” she said.

Regarding Trump’s decision to withdraw the US from the Paris climate deal, Rutkowski, an immigrant from Poland, said she was impressed.

“I think it was the best thing he ever did,” she said.

The march comes more than two months after 2,000 Trump supporters showed up at Bolsa Chica State Beach in Huntington Beach. A brawl erupted when a group of counter-protesters met the marchers, which resulted in some people being hit with  pepper spray.

Norwalk resident Cheryl Brawl drove with Elena Cervantes of Santa Fe Springs to attend Saturday’s march.

Brawl, who held an American flag on a pole over her shoulder, said the Make America Great Again event in Huntington Beach two months ago was peaceful until protesters arrived.

Asked whether she thinks the group will be met by protesters along the march route Saturday, she said, “I get a little leery, but it’s not going to keep me at home. I’m not going to stop living my life.”

Both women wore T-shirts reading “I love when I wake up and Donald Trump is still president.”

Police were seen in the park when the event started.