The Town Crier

Federal Reserve Policy Transfers Municipal Pension Wealth to Banks Too Big to Fail

2010-10-03T11:33:00.000-07:00

The Federal Reserve Bank's near zero interest rates are impoverishing publically held pensions.

To permit Federal Reserve member banks to maintain profitable margins in a deflationary real estate, oil, equities, and big ticket consumable items (like cars) environment, the Fed. has kept interest rates historically low. This, in turn, has kept the return on bonds low. The result is that, despite a 25% recovery in the equities market, publically held pensions are neck deep in red ink.

The Troubled Asset Relief Program series of 700 billion dollar bailouts is not the only cost taxpayers are bearing to save institutions that should have failed. After all, taxpayers have earned back and been paid back almost 9 billion and almost 200 billion of the TARP authorization has not been lent out. Five hundred billion to save the world economy is chump change in 2009.

Of course, the bailouts have cost more. The 182.3 billion AIG bailout must be considered. Additionally, the FDIC insurance fund's spending to cover horrendous banking losses and looming liabilities (136 institutions added to the "problem" bank list making a total of 552) cost the U.S. treasury, in 2009, indirectly another 40 billion. Ok, just because I know how mad you all are, go ahead and include the 60 billion in the Chrysler and GM UAW bailout. In sum, that's about $780 billion. To save the world economy, it only cost the U.S. tax payer 780 billion dollars. What a deal. That's cheap, or so we're reassured by top government banking executives.
But this $780 billion dollars is less than half of the potential future cost of the unfunded, unlegislated, and unspoken Federal Reserve bailout policy that has continued now for over a year. This Fed policy of all but 0 interest rates, of printing money so fast that paper and ink commodities are out of sight, and of debasing the dollar until it's a debacle has one very clear price tag. While banks are still floating above a sea of funny money, publically held U.S. are going under to the tune of another two trillion dollars.

While the reduced value of assets held by pension funds are partially to blame, the low interest rates of bonds presents the most serious dilemma. Orin Kramer estimated (my emphasis) that public pension funds base their numbers on actuarial assumptions that use "8% returns a number that is ridiculously high in a zero-rate environment" but which still yields, especially in relationship to the market values in 2008, an aggregate $1 trillion deficit for public funds. Kramer, using current asset market values and a more conservative investment yield rate, says public pensions are currently underfunded by two trillion dollars.

It is important to note that Kramer's appraisal is that of a political fund raiser running a New Jersey pension. This is important because of the self-serving nature of Kramer's estimate. If pensions, in his estimation, are a trillion short, it follows that if the New Jersey pension Kramer runs is suddenly really short, it isn't his fault. Nonetheless, the relationship between typical yields and current yields in the Federal Reserve bailout era presents the horns of dilemma, not only to public but to private retirement funds.

In 2008, the financial meltdown's negative affect on stock prices, dropped U.S. public pension assets by more than a trillion dollars. Even though things have begun to slowly turn around for equities in 2009, conservatively, the returns for pensions are under 200 billion. Even though the turn around is slow, the dilemma for pensions is that the low Fed rates, savings rates, and bond rates make the higher risk stock market seem attractive. The Federal Reserve's policies, combined with the natural reliance of pensions on bonds is bring down the public retirement system. The last time U.S. pension funds saw a surplus was in May 2008. Since then they have had "19 consecutive months of deficits as markets reacted to the financial crisis" (Mercer).
Sometimes it is tempting to think that the trillions the U.S. Government is tossing around are as meaningless as phony campaign promises. The numbers can't be real. No one believes them. Sorry, the sad part is these insanely stupid acts, unlike the insanely stupid things candidates say, do have consequences. Bailing out the financial system is already costing private and public pension funds far more than the advertised $780 billion price tag.

What might have happened if McCain had led a revolution saying no to TARP, no GM, no to Chrysler, no to AIG and no GMAC? Would the DOW have gone to 2,000? Would the pensions have declared bankruptcy? Would the public, in outrage put the public lynching of Fannie and Freddie on UTUBE and would we have stormed the Bastille? Maybe, but maybe not. It does seem evident that the cure is killing the patient --slowly.

As gloomy as is all this news, the situation is probably far worse. Consider for instance, the House Banking Reform Bill with the Orwellian title "Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act." This bill anticipates future bailouts at as much as four trillion apiece. Sure, we've got that kind of money lying around. Sure, no problem. (See also my article on what a banking reform bill should look like).

Political Reform 101 and Ending the Senate Right of Filibuster

2009-12-26T13:26:00.000-08:00

In 1975 a rules change allowed senate filibusters to take place from back rooms, cloak rooms and from the local bar and grill. This change continues to inflate the “price” of legislation faster than the Fed can mint the money. Ending the filibuster entirely increases direct democracy. The increase of direct democracy will, ultimately, produce a more limited government.

The potential for a filibuster springs from the notion that any senator should be able speak as long as he wants on any issue. This right to speak became a filibuster (an act of piracy –from the Spanish filibustero) when a member decided to abuse his liberty to pirate the senate floor and block the peoples’ constitutional operations.

The gentleman’s filibuster has been around since the U.S. Senate revised Rule 22 in 1975. From that time forward, no senator needed to speak for a filibuster to be in force. Today, one simply files a motion. Since 1975, then, a filibuster has no longer been a filibuster, an abuse of the constitutional liberty of free speech; it has simply become an abuse of the constitution. Rule 22’s revision made it slightly easier to attain cloture and move legislation, but Rule 22 made it much, much easier to enact a filibuster. It is not surprising, then, that since the enactment of Rule 22, the number of filibusters has sky-rocketed.

The senate might at least be returned to the rules of filibuster made popular in the old black and white movie Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Because the push-button filibuster focuses legislative authority in the hands of an even smaller group of legislators, a larger number of votes must be “purchased” by the majority. Hence, legislation is more expensive than it would be in a simple majority setting. Additionally, as the parade of Democrats filibustering their own majority’s legislation clearly shows, the last votes to break a filibuster are infamously expensive.

Senator Patrick Leahy’s vote cost 250 million; Louisiana’s Senator Mary Landrieu’s, 100 million to 300 million. Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd’s unwavering “aye” cost 100 million while Senator Ben cost 45 million. Finally, the Senator Sanders charged 10 billion in heath care centers for his vote. Nelson’s deal sounds like it is worth far more than 45 million. The public option in the senate bill is the expansion of Medicaid bought about through the destruction of Medicare.

Ross Perot used to say, diplomatically enough when speaking of reform, that the problem in Washington is that good people are caught in a bad system. It is awe inspiring to really look at how little the founding fathers prescribed when concerning the operation of the U.S. government. They fearless passed forward liberty, trusting in future generations to fully participate in freedoms humans in government never before experienced. There was never a prescription for or against a filibuster, but today it is so codified that you’d swear the senate couldn’t live without such a burden. The senate today would tell you that liberty itself would be jeopardized if this obstacle to direct democracy were removed.

That people took a better system, a system that allowed for greater liberty, and, over time, chose to allow the tyranny of a minority to impede the deliberations of the majority speaks volumes. Ross Perot was not entirely correct about people or government. Good people can be weak. Weak people can have redeeming virtues; none are, sadly barred from political office.

The operation of all politics is violence explicit or implicit. From taking taxes at the threat of fines, arrest and jail time, to defending American interests abroad with the active engagement of troops, all politics is about the use of force.

Hence, all active participation politics is “bad joss,” “bad karma,” or like using Sauron’s ring of power. The active use of political power brings out the worst in people. Such use should be limited at all costs. Such use should be shared by as many as possible, so that no one individual is burdened exclusively. The weight of power must be spread out as much as technology will allow and the use of such power should be as limited as possible.

The United States government must, obviously, be reformed. We are 11 trillion dollars in debt. Any institutional change that increases genuine debate (an not illicitly cuts off debate by abusing the right of free speech) must be sought. A line item veto should be given the president of the United States so that last minute items are put into legislation without debate. Public referendums ought to be considered, but more critically, more and more decisions about every category of life ought to be returned to state and regional governments where citizen participation can be more direct.

If history has taught us that absolute power in the hands of single monarchs is a wretched evil, it now seems she is liberally instructing her students that matters are even worse when such centralized authority falls on small numbers of men. In small packs, it becomes plain there is a mathematical certainly that many will be weak, others spineless, and others corrupt; that while virtue is the aspiration of man it is not his nature. Hence, the surest way to move the pack is to appeal to its vilest instincts. Even in better days it was the exception, not the rule, that an appeal to reason, virtue and the public good might win a legislative victory

In 2010 if one wants to know a reformer from a hypocrite, ask whether or not they would vote to change the filibuster rules in the United States Senate.

Oh, the vote on the filibuster rules, according to the courts, is itself filibuster proof -- probably.

Cut Costs and Improve Life in California: Kill BTSA Now!

2009-07-15T10:56:00.000-07:00

California’s Beginning Teacher Support and Assessment program, or BTSA, is one of the least loved beginning teacher experiences in California. Like most liberal programs, BTSA’s name is doublespeak, the reality and the adjectival title are stark opposites. BTSA is the brain child of the University of California’s “educational research, but research does not show BTSA supports beginning teachers. Instead, quality assurance is based on an expensive series of annual conferences and peer reviews (see: "Program Evaluation and Accountability").

Anecdotal evidence (abundant on blogs) suggests just the opposite. BTSA is a jobs program for university faculty, administrators in training, and senior teachers. The evaluative process, the certification process, and the support processes are all redundant systems. Not many beginning teachers would pay for this “service” (see also BTSA is…). Killing BTSA saves money and improves the lives of countless new faculty members in K-12 classrooms. This though, is not happening. In the twilight zone of California government, the funding for the “support” is being used for books, but the BTSA requirements for credentialing remain. There is even talk of charging new teachers fees for the privilege of participating in this boondoggle.

BTSA, like much else in California’s educational system, is a top down program. PhD’s, and wannabe administrators who have been working most of their adult lives to escape the K-12 classroom, are in charge of future classroom teachers. The genuine support, as it does in most of life, happens for free. New teachers make friends who teach them the ropes or they don’t. Teachers share lesson plans or they don’t. The faculty generates department standards for excellence or they don’t. Hence, the Commission on Teacher Credentialing, part of the massive K-12, 40 billion dollar education budget, is a place for far more than the proposed 10% across the board cuts, for it is a perfect place to cut government to improve lifestyle. This is a place for draconian cuts. This part of the budget can be reformed so that it all but pays for itself.

Most K-12 teachers would be shocked to know that the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing actually draws 32 to 33 million dollars a year in funding from K-12 education. That's because most teachers have direct experience with this agency as a blood-sucking fee machine. In fact, the licensing, testing, and credentialing fees do generate 21 million dollars a year while the actual hard work of fingerprinting, collating extensive teacher applications, and issuing certifications accurately costs only 9 million dollars. The 12 million surplus should be able to run the California Parks Service, but no, the Professional Services and the Professional Practices divisions cost tax payers 45 million dollars a year. Hence, the California Commission's yearly drain on the general fund.

The Professional Practices Services Division is the Commission's legal division. It's packed with lawyers. The income producing part of the Commission had about seventy employees, now they are down to sixty-five. That was the "across the board cut of ten percent." These sixty-five employees run their office at about $136,000 per person. The offices the lawyers run cost about $227,000 per person. Surely, Practices Division can run with four or five fewer attorneys. Fire the ones with the greatest seniority. They have the highest salaries and they delegate most of their work to underlings anyhow. Plainly, the State ought to cut more lawyers. This is the sort of fired worker that still saves California money after he is unemployed. Most low wage workers, like the folks that do the fingerprinting in Certifications, cost the state almost as much in unemployment insurance, renters' assistance, and food stamps as they do to employ. This, however, is not true of the lawyer. Firing a lawyer is actually a net gain for the state. The only mitigating circumstance is that an unemployed lawyer runs a serious risk of getting involved politics. The added expenses of imprisoning a lawyer who has turned to such white collar crime, or worse, not catching his criminal activities, may, in the end, outweigh the temporary fiscal budgetary gains of terminating his or her services. One last caveat: although both the Certifications Division and the Practices Division took a 10% personnel cut in 2008-2009, the projected cost of each office is up again in the 2009-2010 budget.

Really, the Division that sinks the Commission on Teacher Credentialing is Professional Services. The thirty-three employees of this division spend 40 million dollars of California Taxpayer monies annually. The offices in this division cost over 1 million dollars per employee. Of course, unlike the revenue producing Credentialing Division, or the bloated legal division, the one million dollars per employee is not related directly to individual salaries. These State workers distribute funding. But to whom? It is hard, of course, to tell what bureaucrats don't do for their money by the literature they produce explaining their work. Still, to this much the Division of Professional Service will confess (without the use of water boarding): "The Professional Services Division is responsible for the development of licensure standards for all credential areas for which the Commission issues credentials." If California is serious about cutting budgets, so serious that the legislature wants to raise the sales tax, issue debt, and fire health care workers, can it not simply leave the standards from last year in place for a while? California should lay off sixty percent of the people involved in assessment. Their salaries are significant. They have PhDs, are committed to fighting global warming, and are some of the few with minds that can truly understand that the Spotted Marsh Mouse is more important than most people. To any self-respecting state bureaucracy, these folks are worth any three lawyers and any fifteen or twenty teachers, especially teachers so lowly that they are still seeking certification. Still, as valuable as these members of society are, California should release them and their fantastic intellects to do more meaningful things.

Again, where the Professional Services Division describes its work as: "the development and implementation of licensing examinations as required in the Education Code" there is room for draconian cuts. Mix and match eighty-five percent more of the past test questions for a while and reduce the internal validity assessments. If teachers start teaching that the Darwin theory, especially regarding natural selection, is antiquated or that the Democrats have plagiarized large sections of the Communist Manifesto in the party platform (page 6 last paragraph), then, then California educators might have a problem. Until then, trust the previous tests. They are absurdly irrelevant enough. No one will teach a clear thought in a public school for at least another half a century. The testing development people worry too much. California could fire sixty percent in this department and sleep better as well.

Where the Professional Services Division spends the real money is in "the administration of state-funded programs including the Paraprofessional Teacher Training Program, the Alternative Certification/Intern Program, and in conjunction with the Department of Education, the Beginning Teacher Support and Assessment Program. Related activities include data collection, reporting, and policy research."

These funds are distributed to local school districts for use in small, localized programs, the merits of which are very difficult to assess. Certainly, even if there were no budget crisis, the Beginning Teacher Support and Assessment Program should be axed. Right now the program is clinging to funding. The 2009-2010 grants have been made Tier 3. That is, Local Educational Agencies (school districts) may redirect the BTSA grant funds to areas of need. But this is not enough. The legislated BTSA requirements for credentialing must be expunged. It is an outrage that the highly paid experts that have administered this debacle still have jobs in this cost sensitive environment.

The fact is that most beginning teachers would pay good money to avoid this service. Why not let them. Let them pay $200.00 to avoid the service entirely. See how many actually would. That’s research. Better yet, do an auction. With fifty new teachers in the room, auction off twenty BTSA free credentials. See how despised this program truly is. If there ever were any beneficial aspects of BTSA, they emerged from good teacher education programs already in existence, programs that are already part of teacher's credentialing process. If recruitment and retention of high quality teachers is still California's goal, these programs should all be dissolved and the funds used to reduce class size or increase teacher salaries.

California Could Save 50 Million a Year by Reforming the DMV

2009-07-14T11:35:00.000-07:00

California has chosen not to go forward with the biometric facial recognition software required by the federal REAL ID Act of 2005. That will save the California Department of Motor Vehicles 4.5 million dollars in this fiscal year and an estimated 25 million dollars every year thereafter. Though the District of Columbia Department of Motor Vehicles is moving forward on biometrics, it offered a savings plan to offset REAL ID costs. California could apply these reforms and double the 25 million per year in savings. The D.C. reforms illustrate the opportunity citizens of California have to both save money and improve their life-styles.

The District of Columbia’s DMV is moving ahead with what many consider to be what President Reagan coined a "mark of the beast" national ID. Even though the national I.D. idea Reagan referred to was suggested in conjunction with a tattoo, the invasion of personal privacy biometric I.D.’s represent would be almost has horrible. However, the D.C. DMV's 09 Budget saved money for its change to facial recognition software and the computer indexed biometric photo’s of its citizens. The choices D.C. made in order to generate the savings are changes California’s D.M.V. could easily implement. If, like the District of Columbia, California changed the license expiration period from five years to eight years and allowed the registration fees to reflect a seven years value rather than five, California could “save” millions.

Although the logic of raising the fees while reducing the service is very typical of government, many taxpayers would happily agree to pay the same amount of money per year for an extra two years simply to avoid contact with the DMV of California. To reduce costs, the D.C. DMV extended inspections (which include smog tests in California) on new cars from a two year to a four year window. This extended window was supported by the E.P.A (p.3). California liberals, though, consider themselves special. They have managed to get special gasoline for California cars, and special emission protections especially designed for California, and of course, they have an especially strict smog testing requirement. California is also special by being a byword for impossible budget impasse. In other words, only the federal government is more impossibly in debt than California. We in California are proud to admit that we are more red than the Red Chinese. Sadly, we are more in the red than the Reds.

Nevertheless, even those that are very sensitive to carbon footprints must admit that a registration inspection on a new car is probably not necessary for at least three years. California has no such exemption for out of state vehicles.

The D.C. DMV hopes to generate enough savings from these measures to pay for its transition to facial recognition software, and although the cost of the facial recognition software per capita is difficult to compute, perhaps it is still safe to say that if California enacted the D.C. DMV reforms, a savings of 25 million per year would be a conservative estimate. Saving 25 million per year by not going with facial recognition software and then using the D.C. DMV proposals to reduce expenditure's another 25 million totals a tidy 50 million per year.

There is a larger principle behind such reforms of the California D.M.V. that that can save Californians the millions and millions more: California can no longer afford to needlessly pester its citizens. There are certain "services" provided by government that are odious to the majority of California's citizens. These should be ended now. Is a thumb print really necessary in applying for a commercial license? It wasn't before 1997. Is a ten-year history really needed for renewing a commercial driver's license? Aren't a social security number and a photograph enough to check for recent drunk driving and traffic violations? Aren't those violations already part of the applicant's records as "points" against his license? How much money can be saved by reducing these regulations? It is plain that a background check can be run without a thumb print. It is plain that the thumb print is "needed" to guard against crimes one might commit in the future.

The regulations that are a boondoggle to business in California cost money. Cut the regulations to save money and encourage economic growth.

After the most egregious bureaucratic infringements on personal liberties are expunged from California's Department of Motor Vehicles, consideration should be given to increasing fees for superior service. For instance, in any given year, budget shortfall or no, complaints of four hour Kafkaesque waits for the simplest services can be heard. Surely, as furloughs and full time positions are reduced, this will again be the case. Perhaps citizens would be willing to pay for an appointment on days that are "furloughed."

Why should a doctor who could bill at least $200.00 an hour spend nearly $1,000 of his time waiting in a line! Instead, he could be helping reduce another long line, the line of seriously needy patients waiting in an emergency room for treatment. Perhaps, the MD would be willing to part with a tenth of this wasted salary for an appointment on a furlough day? Let the tables be turned: three MD's per hour ought to make opening the DMV with it priceless services possible after all.

Departments of California's government that provide services, like the DMV, ought to be self-supporting. Greater transparency should also be required. For instance, how much does each driver's license driving test and knowledge test cost the taxpayer? Such information is vital to evaluating DMV services and practices. For instance, driving a car is so often connected to earning a living that the initial tests offered by the DMV are included in the small fees for a learning permit and license; however, how many times should citizens be allowed to fail these tests without additional fees? The D.C. DMV proposed savings by limiting the number of written tests (knowledge tests) to three per year. Perhaps it is better to have an increasing fee for each written and driving test an individual fails. Without a clear and transparent accounting for the costs of each DMV service such savings are difficult to evaluate.

Drill California! Drill! Seepage NOT Production Threatens Beaches

2009-07-10T10:13:00.000-07:00

The black glob on the beach is not a dead whale. It is a hunk of tar washed ashore, not from an oil rig, but from a naturally occurring seepage of oil from a vast underwater reservoir California has refused to tap.

The best way to ban oil is to use it all up, so, if you are an environmentalist you should say, "The sooner we burn this stuff the better!" In 2008 the state's offshore seabed produced 37,400 barrels of oil per day, while federal offshore tracts produced 66,400 barrels of oil. We'll never rid ourselves of big oil! At that rate your children will be facing the same environmental evils. Offshore oil is a ticking time bomb waiting to spoil the pristine wildlife sanctuaries environmentalists have always treasured. End it now. Use the oil!

Even without the deleterious scheming of greedy, profit hungry capitalist oil companies, the oil just beneath the Santa Barbra Canal is seeping to the surface on a continual basis.

The oil on the beaches of Oxnard, Ventura, and Santa Barbara is not because of Exxon. Some estimate that in the 40 years since the Union Oil spill of 1969 nearly two million barrels of oil has seeped into California's coastal waters. Extracting the oil in Santa Barbra's coastal region has the potential to protect the environment. The seepage is well documented. Newer underwater mapping technologies have brought increasing evidence of the sustained environmental hazard the untapped offshore oil presents. The tar on the beaches will not go away until the oil beneath the surface has been removed. Perhaps, Oh Environmentalist, the removal of oil is part of man's Divine purpose on earth!

Energy wealth is the outer wall of the human sanctuary that is the modern world. This is a perfect time for California to turn to Sarah Palin's energy model to balance her budget.

California must return to its roots to continue its liberal lifestyle. Historically, California's dreams were not built on gold, nor on platinum blondes, but on gushers of crude. Once a net exporter of oil, California now imports more than 40%. California's oil production decreased dramatically in the 1950's. It was during this period that, via the Submerged Lands Act, the federal government granted California increased jurisdiction over its coastal waters. The tendency to regulate oil production and refining out of existence accelerated after the Union Oil spill in 1969. In 1995 the California Coastal Sanctuary Act basically shut down new offshore oil drilling in California controlled waters. Despite great progress in safe drilling, under Governor Gray Davis historic leases were not renewed, reducing offshore production even more. As a result, estimates of untapped oil under the direct control of the State of California now run as high as a billion barrels. Even more conservative 1995 estimates put offshore California Oil reserves as high as 750 million barrels.

As long as California remains a net importer of crude oil, a severance tax on oil is only a VAT tax on every Californian. The California refineries will mark up their prices by a multiple of the oil price increase. The sate and federal governments will then get more cents per gallon from every Californian. The goods transported by truck will increase by yet another multiple. The same forces that want oil out of California are in favor of a severance tax on oil. The severance tax will not bridge California's budget deficits; it will deepen California's insolvency.

However, should Governor Schwarzenegger allow the severance tax of 9.9 % on newly leased oil production, the equations change. The increase in oil supply will reduce the price refineries pay despite the increase in taxes. The increased production will allow oil companies to increase net profits despite their per unit declines in profit. If the Democrats will allow the Governor's proposed offshore drilling at Tranquillon Ridge, the Republicans and the Governor should allow the severance tax on new production.

Even without repealing the California Coastal Sanctuary Act, much of the 750 million to a billion barrels of oil sitting off the coast may become accessible. If Lt. Gov. John Garamendi is correct, "new leases off the Mendocino Coast, the Orange County coast, as well as the Santa Barbara coast" could result from the precedent set at Tranquillon Ridge.

The impact on California's fiscal issues would be immediate. The leases at Tranquillon are 1.4 billion over fourteen years. The additional restoration work, land grants, and funds for Santa Barbara County promised by PXP bring the total revenues for the state to over two billion dollars. (For those who accuse Californians of being too soft on "Big Oil", compare this leasing price with the federal government's Alaskan lease to Shell). This is what PXP is willing to pay for the rights to extract about 105 million barrels of oil. If the 1 billion in new oil is extracted at these rates, it would mean twenty billion dollars in leases alone. If one considers the 10% tax on a $70 price per barrel, the new drilling is worth another 7 billion. Depending on the jurisdictional battles over state and federal waters, there may be as much as another 10 billion barrels of oil for Californians off the coast. That's potentially another 70 billion in tax revenues and another two hundred billion in leasing revenue. None of these figures include the immense supplies of natural gas that will be leased, taxed, and used in California even as oil resources are discovered and drilled.

There seems to be some buzz in Sacramento about adding a severance tax on new oil production to balance the budget. That is of course, a measure meant to encourage Democratic environmentalists to allow new production. A horse trade is what is needed. The coffers of California need new oil lease dollars yesterday. There may be more production on tap than Tranquillon. (See: California’s Untapped Oil Beckons Occidental’s Irani), but the new leases money needs to be spelled out along with the issuing of the severance tax.

If Republicans need to trade the 9.9% tax on all production, it is still worth doing to get Tranquillon done. Why? Because California is $ 24 billion in debt (and climbing). But if much of the historic production comes from privately owned land, the 9.9% tax could reduce production in the short term. Privately owned oil rights are part of the property’s value. Hence, production on privately held lands may be subjected to a double taxation, a property tax and a production tax. Since the land rights don’t sunset, the motivation to produce less to avoid higher taxes may be significant. A Democrat-Republican compromise on taxes and drilling should include specific exclusions

Conservatism & Libertarianism: Natural Rights Vs. Inalienable Rights

2009-07-02T13:14:00.000-07:00

The notion of natural rights is not the same as that of the inalienable rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence. These are akin, but the declaration inalienable rights bestowed on man by his Creator is a declaration of faith, and, hence, of a Supernatural design and purpose for man. For or founders, diverse in belief, this was the least common denominator of faith. No one rejected these tenets. However, in the spirit of synergy, let us see how far we Conservatives may walk with our natural law Libertarian brethren.

Of what does nature’s design for humanity inform us concerning the purpose of mankind? Perhaps the least common denominator would be to consider a Darwinian view of the natural world. Man is designed, in so far as he is designed by nature, to survive.

I’m not sure why some enlightenment thinkers assume abundance of any element when discussing the state of man in nature. It seems that the lack of natural resources has driven humanity to war many times. Likewise, the most peaceful societies, and, historically, the most advanced cultures are not hunter-gatherers, they are agriculturally based, husbandry based. The notion of real property and property rights comes from agrarian roots and is in conflict with the ideals of hunter-gatherers.

Is man’s mind more functional as it exists in nature, or should it be augmented by mind altering agents? In which case is the human consciousness performing according to natural design? As that answer is obvious, so also is Darwinian nature plain concerning human sexuality. The needs of children show what is proper in the responses of males and females. We aren’t bugs, cats, reptiles, or apes. The complexity of the human mind requires time and nurture. It is not that because nature teaches morality, that a government must enforce each and every natural precept. However, one cannot claim as a natural right what nature teaches is amoral. Logical consistency among Libertarians concerning their own stated beliefs should take them thus far, for even the next thought, a transcendant thought, is often much beloved as a Libertarian ideal.

Stealing is wrong according to natural law. Why? Not because of a Darwinian world view, but because, even though a dishonest thief claims justification --see the Communist Manifesto for an elaborate example--, those who are stolen from clearly understand the wrong that is committed. Hence, natural law is not based only on a supposed ideal view of humanity alone in a Darwinian natural world but also on the writ of human decency found in the heart of every man. This is a notion of natural law that transcends the Enlightenment thinkers. A Darwinist might argue that it proves evolution designed man's survival through community action, but we have left the carte blanche of the tabula rasa far behind.

Humanity is a strange creature that knows how to deceive and yet, at the same time, knows deception is morally abhorrent. What sort of creature is mankind? Some would argue that the love of freedom and the prevalence of religion among this paragon of animals indicates a purpose for man that is higher than that of even the greatest of apes. People thirst for things not of this world. Are our brethren with us still? For since this last step is on a road higher than natural law, one may deny one's own heart and write off the course of human history as an escapade in ignorance. Without malice, I'd ask my cousins to tarry just a while. For while we walk apace a moment, we will soon return. Here, though, follow elements of the corallaries that are the framework and basis of conservatism.

From this recognition of man's highest longings flows a strange notion: freedom of religion and freedom of speech are more sacred than the rights of property, for from these arise our faith choices wherein lies the truth of human destiny and the essence of human liberty.

Of the hunger for glory not of this world, history testifies, and of the common calling of the family of man his experience proclaims. A propertied man in conflict with a government over freedom of religion is a subject of a greater tyranny than he whose property rights are violated by an onerous welfare system. Although it is hard to respect those of us who too readily accept the tyranny of property, history has shown that religious persecution produces rebellion far more quickly. The long train of abuses that Jefferson cites, and the tendency of humanity to suffer the abuses he detailws, relate to the tyranny over property. Some abridgement of property is often suffered as a tolerable tyranny; however, there is no partial abridgement of religious liberty.

Laws not only govern; they instruct. That which is higher in man recognizes laws, regularities in the natural world that may be harnessed for the purpose of work. Likewise, humanity is instructed by the laws of national governance. We can approve or despise a national government according to the morality of its laws.

Returning to earthly things, those Libertarian brethren who tarried can perhaps walk with Conservatives again on these final thoughts:

If there are natural laws by way of which humanity is instructed in the precepts of right living in this world, then it is by nature humans are best taught. The fewer laws providing a safety net against humanity’s tendency to ignore natural laws, the greater freedom those who obey natural laws can practice. Laws of generosity, of service, of courage, loyalty and faith are as faithful as gravity. Those who oppose themselves, though, must be granted as much freedom to learn these lessons as is possible, for none of these can be commanded but by governments.

Finally, a genuinely free people will be the most moral, and a genuinely moral people will be the most free.

Terminating CalWorks' SSI and Food Assistance Helps Everyone

2009-06-30T23:57:00.000-07:00

Governor Schwarzenegger’s May balanced budget proposal included almost 650 million in savings from Welfare Reform. These reforms were enacted for the rest of the United States back in the 1990’s, the last time the federal government had even a look at a balanced budget. The reforms are good for everyone. They will work for the individuals involved. They’ll work for the State of California, and they’ll help the nation.

“A mouse! Whisky (the cat) has a mouse!” my daughter shouted. Then I knew it was on when I heard, “the poor thing. It’s so scared.” Scenes of chasing daughter, cat, and mouse around the house leapt to mind. Thankfully, it actually fell to my oldest to perform the mouse salvation attempts. Twice he spared the mouse and released it to freedom, and twice within that hour Whisky ended up catching it again and dutifully returning the little gray rascal to the living room. The catch and release ritual must be the cat version of “fetch.” With one last superhuman effort my son, a prayer on his lips, released the mouse far beyond our farthest fence. Needless to say, by dinner word reached us that the missus had found Whisky with a dead mouse. When it comes to animals I tend to be Roman: “May I fare as well when my day comes,” I thought…

There is a point to this parable. Life is filled with paradox and with unintended consequences. The most merciful thing might have been to simply kick the cat out of the house with its mouse and let nature take its course. The unintended consequences often cut both ways. While on the one hand, who would suspect that people who are giving often reap the most out of life? On the other hand, grey beards will note that it is the choice of the easier path that most often damages the lives of people. The Governor’s May budget proposal on CalWorks is a study of such instructive paradoxes. For instance, $647 million dollars of the Governor’s Proposal eliminates programs California enacted in the 1990’s to counter Federal Welfare Reform. This includes reductions in monthly grants ($614 million) to $1,407 per couple, for blind, disabled, and elderly couples, and reductions ($35 million) in food assistance (State Funded Food Stamps) for legal immigrants. Even with a 24 billion dollar deficit, no one is talking about eliminating programs. Five hundred million of the reductions are simply bring one program to the very generous federal minimum levels, and the other $147 million are reductions to programs the federal government eliminated in the 1990’s. Even in California’s penury, her generosity to the poor abounds. However, one of the paradoxes, the unintended consequences of being exceedingly generous is that California has more than 30% of the nation’s welfare recipients while having only 11% of its population.

This unintended consequence arises because the Federal Welfare Reform program of the 1990’s worked. Individual programs had been piloted successfully in the states (unlike the liberal plans for health care reform) and then applied with significant freedoms for individual states to continue experimentation. The welfare rolls shrunk, employment rose and, lo, for a brief shining moment the deficit appeared almost balanced. Welfare Reform is good for people. Prosperity cannot begin without first being profitable to others. Millions of people prospered because of those reforms, but not in California. California, feeling kind-hearted towards her hapless poor, enacted program after program to counteract these successful reforms. Hence, the large welfare rolls (see also: Tom Blumer, “California Draggin…”)

The other reason for these unintended consequences is, ironically, that supply and demand works every time it’s tried, even in the welfare state. Welfare recipients flocked to California because of the looser eligibility requirements and the higher returns. The greater the return on one’s investment in the government became, the greater the demand for the government’s program. This last paradox is the reasons these reductions and reforms must occur now. As unemployment grows, the numbers of dislocated workers will likewise grow. California will have challenges enough without attracting trouble from the other 49. One final irony: because these reforms were not enacted when first suggested, there is a serious possibility that California will not use the TANF Emergency Funds allocated in the Stimulus Bill because welfare rolls will go down. One can only hope this holds true. The stimulus bill was supposed to keep unemployment at 8%... We’re at 10% and still climbing. California’s welfare rolls are rising more rapidly than any state in the Union except Florida’s.

Some complain that losing the federal TANF Emergency Funds is bad economics. After all, the stimulus funds will stimulate the economy. This is cave man logic borrowed from ne’r-do-well economists like John Maynard Keynes. It is only repeated today because such discredited formulations worked so well in fooling so many in years gone by. Increases in demand not accompanied by an increase in profitable employment only results in inflation. The demand stimulated by welfare payments is inflationary because the dollars are not backed by labor, they are "funny" money. The economic troubles of the day are caused by fear. People are frozen by fear. They cannot act. The Stimulus bill, the increasing nationalization of the private sector has shown the common man the abyss. Let California show a glimmer of light in this darkened land. Make the reforms California. Lose some stimulus money, and make a big show of giving it back. Petition the federal government to take those extra funds to pay down the principle on our national debt.

Reforming the U.C. System: Saving 170 Million Dollars

2009-06-29T16:07:00.000-07:00

California funding for U.C. research projects is $675 million dollars a year. Even as the state budget has collapsed, the spending of real U.C. research dollars has increased. Much of this "research" shows little evidence of fiscal or moral profit for the citizens of California. War with this behemoth could save CAL Grant aide for California's students. This is a prize fight worthy of the governor's most Herculean efforts.

In an age in which Six Flags Magic Mountain seeks bankruptcy protection and California is already twenty billion in debt, the U.C. research budget should be pared back to its historic roots. The proposed 2009-2010 U.C. research budget was $653,045,000 (item #10). This is an increase (in a year of real cuts) of ten million dollars over the estimated 2008-2009 expenditures. A conservative goal for real streamlining would be to reduce spending by 10% from the 08-09 heights. That would be 65 million dollars in taxpayer savings. Hence, even conservative cuts in the U.C. research expenditures would result enough savings to keep the Parks and Recreation funding in place for 2009-2010 (70 million dollars, see a May proposal–p.2). In fact, some of the research grants seem to be little more than a taxpayer sponsored study of a day in the park. Consider, for instance, The Studies of Food and the Body Multi Campus Research Group, that "brings together faculty and graduate-student scholars in the humanities and social sciences …who are exploring the relationship between food, the body and culture." I hear they even serve wine.

Whatever the relative merits of an increased awareness of food, body, and culture by the smartest people in California, the elimination of less critical research may, in turn, focus some of the mostly highly trained research minds in the state to more immediate issues. Though, in real dollars, the state funding for U.C. research increased in 2008, the legislature reduced the growth in all "line item research projects" by 10% (page 67 column b). Obviously, if a 10% reduction resulted in a ten million dollar increase in funding, at the very least the legislature must reduce the 09-10 "line item research projects" by more than 20%.

However, Governor Schwarzenegger plainly feels that the time for conservative budget cuts has passed. Is it possible to generate the $170 million in savings the Governor seeks through the elimination of Cal Grants (page 12) simply by streamlining the U.C. research budget? The list of multi-campus research programs reveals that the dead weight in U.C. research funding is considerable. Instead of seeking across the board cuts, the legislature and the governor should evaluate every U.C. research project and seek to terminate each one. The list of recommendations for project terminations should be part of the rationale presented to the U.C. when the total dollar amounts of U.C. research savings is sent to the governor. This emergency invasion into the province of the Board of Regents should be done with clearly articulated and legislated principles.

The first principle should be that, since all acknowledge that the historic charter of the U.C. system in California, including its research, has been the envy of the free world: all research should be conducted according to the U.C.’s own historic models. According to this principle new research programs, programs begun since 2005, that are not directly related to breakthroughs in math, science or medicine should be completely eliminated. All research programs begun after 2,000 that are not related to math, science, or medicine, should be evaluated according to their specific contributions to the wealth of the citizens of California. For instance, did the study of ancient cultures make new archeological finds in which Californians received benefits? A cost benefit analysis of the research program should then be done. The profitable research programs (if there are any) should continue and/or the least unprofitable twenty-five percent should be kept on budget. All other non-historic U.C. research programs should be terminated.

Governor Schwarzenegger set an excellent example for what it means to terminate a non-historic research project when, in 2005-2006, he terminated ILE (Institute for Labor and Employment) first instituted in 2001 (page 68). Even the toned down version of the research findings still available on U.C. Santa Barbara’s website shows that "research" can be added to the list of earthly words that have almost lost all meaning (see "California’s Excessive Liberty…"). Suggesting that such a propaganda program is "research" suggests that members of the U.C. board are in league with the forces of ignorance.

Applying the idea that U.C. current research should be reduced to its historic charter results in this list of multi-campus research projects that should be terminated.

African Studies

Asian American/Pacific Islander Policy Initiative

Institute for Research on Climate Change and Its Societal Impacts (Website has vanished: perhaps some one is listening? If not, great minds think alike)

Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC) 1997 This project would be not be cut according to Principle 1. Funding, however, has already been suspended. Perhaps based on 9/11/2001 and Principle 2, (Historic Accountability) this is appropriate.

Japanese Arts and Globalization

International Performance and Culture (Sure doesn’t sound like research).

Labor and Employment Research Fund (what’s left of ILE –2.4 million in savings) – out!

Pacific Rim Research Program (no history given – savings $800,000)

Tranliteracies Project 2005

UC Digital Arts Network (UC DARNet) Notice how the colorful and carefree acronym seems to disparage responsibility.

UC Initiative in Human Rights (spring 2005) The image of the girl sticking her finger in her own eye says it all about this project.

Transnational and Transcolonial Studies

Transnationalizing Justice

UC All-Campus Consortium on Research for Diversity (UC ACCORD)

UC Committee on Latino Research (see the unfunded recommendation from state senate)

UC Cuba Academic Initiative (2006?)

UC Davis Agricultural Sustainability Institute (2006) – $ 950,000 dollars in immediate savings from suspending new funding is available.

Studies of Food and the Body

UC World History Workshop. This doesn’t sound new but based on available information – terminate.

Social Security and Bernie Madoff Style Pain

2009-02-05T19:14:00.000-08:00

If Americans decided tomorrow that they wanted to be rid of Social Security forever, it would cost them about twenty trillion dollars over the course of a generation. It would cost about a trillion dollars a year, every year for over twenty years... and that's in a good economy.

This time it is not Madoff's fault and it is not Charles Pozi's fault, it is our fault; it is the fault of three generations of Americans who apparently haven't had the minimum economic sense required to properly participate in a democratic republic. Social Security has always had a design flaw. It is like a pyramid scheme. For instance, the first Social Security benefit recipient paid "$22.54 into the system and received $22,000 in benefits over her lifetime" (History of Major Changes). Where did those benefits come from? Were they a return on investment? No, as in Bernie Madoff's pyramid investment scheme, the benefits were paid directly from the payroll taxes of men and women still working.

At first most voters who understood this didn't care because the tax burden was so slight. The original rate of Social Security taxation was a mere 1%. that included Medicaid insurance. Moreover, when Social Security began, self-employed persons paid no payroll tax whatsoever. Such a wonderfully easy social largesse must have been so persuasive in the hard times of the Great Depression, but that was the bait, the first level of the pyramid scheme. As in a pyramid scheme, the first Social Security beneficiaries were far fewer in number than the number of workers paying into Social Security. When Social Security began, there were sixteen workers paying into the system for each worker receiving benefits. Today, there are about 3.3 workers paying into the system for each beneficiary. When Social Security began, only the first $3,000 of a worker's paycheck was subject to taxation, today the first $100,000 is subject. Today individuals are taxed at 6.2%, their employers match the 6.2% and the self employed pay 12.4% in Social Security taxes. Including Medicaid (which was once part of Social Security), and matching employer taxes, every United States employee pays 15.3% of every dollar they earn into Social Security and Medicare. If this money had actually been invested in any serious retirement fund, the resulting wealth would have been phenomenal. What a waste.

From its inception, the program was scheduled to reach a rate of 6% for each wage earner and 12% including the employer contribution. However, FDR postponed the full tax increase until 1960. Since the 1960's there have been at least nine more adjustments to the rates involved in keeping Social Security solvent (Just the Facts). Generally speaking, before each of the FDR "contribution" increases, an increase of benefits was emphasized. Nonetheless, the increase of the rates was most directly related to the decreasing number of workers paying into the system to support the increasing number of beneficiaries. Since it is hard to imagine that the generation of patriots and immigrants who gladly sacrificed for their children and their children's children would knowing threaten the futures they held so precious, it is plain our forefathers were duped. Just as Bernie Madoff duped universities and charitable institutions, the good people of twentieth century America were duped into downloading a Trojan horse. Like a Trojan Horse, the symptoms of Social Security's design flaw, its worm, only increase over time. Social Security's history of rate increases simply confirms what logic must tell us: Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, a trap, a Bernie Madoff pyramid scheme that requires the blood of each new generation to sustain an illusion of prosperity. Dedicated to the horrid god atop the pyramid, the god of big communistic government, Social Security has become a religion of the far left fed by the blood of needless human sacrifice.

Now, at 12% of a workers salary, Americans who don't care about the effects of this tragedy are Americans who don't pay into security, don't pay into social security any longer, or don't have the prerequisite brains required to participate in a democratic republic. Just as Madoff victims who lost their family's life savings must feel great personal anguish, American workers must begin to allow themselves to feel that same pain over what has become our national retirement disaster. That's the only way we can move on. We need to find a solution without blaming one another.

Here are several estimates of the dimensions of the pain we must acknowledge:

If Americans stood up today and said "enough!" it would cost 22 trillion dollars. This includes benefits to those who have retired and benefits to those who will retire within the next ten years. From this amount one might fairly enough subtract the current Social Security trust fund surplus of a little more than 2 trillion dollars (2007). The American worker has already promised to pay these benefits, but it wasn't this generation that made the deal. It doesn't matter. That's the deal. Laws mean things. These benefits need to be paid out over a generation, twenty-two years. That's a about trillion dollars per debt a year that must be generated. The American worker is, seemingly broke. Our parents and grandparents made this deal. We need to come up with a trillion dollars a year for a generation to end it. That's pain. That's Bernie Madoff style pain.

Social Security's Design Flaw

2009-01-24T08:37:00.000-08:00

Recently President Bush revealed during his final press conference that, in hindsight, he wished that he had begun his second term with immigration reform rather than social security reform. Hindsight is also very clear that the congress and the American people were proven prudent in rejecting the notion of transforming Social Security into a national 401K plan. The initial results of such a transformation would have been a disaster. The congressional Republicans would have been thrown out on their collective ears. Imagine that! Despite the fact that the wealthiest Americans supplement their social security benefits with 401K plans, the instability of our financial institutions and the absolute bankruptcy of ethical values on Wall Street and in Washington, has made it plain that serious moves to reform Social Security into an equity portfolio is a course fraught with peril.

Had President Bush successfully reformed Social Security, we would, of course, not be experiencing the world wide financial collapse that cost the Republicans two houses of congress and the White House during a single second term of the Bush presidency. No, the massive infusion of capital into the financial markets would have spawned dozens more reckless, unregulated, financial instruments so deceitful that we would be in a bubble that would last well into our children’s future. We would be in a delirium of euphoric delight over wealth we had on paper while the wickedness of our negligence continued to rot away the fabric of our financial institutions. The ultimate collapse would have dwarfed the calamity we are now, thankfully, forced, in part, to acknowledge. Let a politician even burp an accidentally slushy blerb at an innaugural party that sounds even remotely like Social Security reform and that unfortunate soul will be resoundly excluded from public office for a generation.

Nonetheless, although FDR has avoided a direct comparison with Bernie Madoff, comparisons between Social Security and illegal Ponzi schemes persist. Charles Ponzi, like Bernie Madoff, was guilty of fraud. Ponzi, of roaring 20’s fame, claimed to be passing on the 400% profit he was earning on "postal reply coupons." Bernie Madoff claimed to be passing on the profits from hedge fund investments. In truth both were simply paying initial investors with money taken from later investors. Since Social Security discloses that the benefits it pays retired workers comes directly from the money paid by current workers, it is not, entirely, fraudulent. However, like a Ponzi scheme or a pyramid scheme, Social Security is, by its own definition, impossible to sustain. Like all pyramid schemes, sooner or later Social Security must go broke.

Though the Social Security trustees themselves cannot be called frauds, fine print, often passed over quickly in political sound bites, is filled with ominous double meanings. Even though the government websites about the Social Security trust fund plainly disclose the difference between the "special issue" federally backed securities held in the trust fund and the marketable securities that are widely sought as sound investments, the definitions of Social Security solvency based on any discussion of the trust fund can easily become misleading. Once, the difference between these securities and marketable securities becomes clear, the answer provided by the government that Social Security is solvent until 2041, when the "trust fund reserves are exhausted," is plagued with ambiguity. The special issue treasury bonds will begin to need "redemption" by about 2017. That’s when "Ponzi shceme" nature of Social Security really kicks in. In fewer than ten years social security will again be, by common bookkeeping practices, technically insolvent. After about 2017 only higher taxes or more government borrowing will allow Social Security benefits to be fully paid.

This social security crisis is not new. Such crises have happened repeatedly, throughout Social Security's history, because of the unsound pyramid scheme nature of the program itself. As one might predict by any common sense analysis of a pyramid scheme, each crisis in the Social Security program has made it more profoundly enslaving to each new generation involved in the program. Rates that began as low as 1% for participants have increased to 6.2% today. Likewise the value of benefits for participants has eroded. This must continue, no matter what "fixes" desperate politicians employ. The program itself must be completely overhauled, completely revised.

Hence, lesson one: we can no more afford Social Security than we can afford to invest with Bernine Madoff. Despite Wall Street’s complete loss of the public’s trust and respect, we have dodged no bullet by avoiding changes to the Social Security system that allows younger workers to have genuine investment accounts that they can leave to their children. The euphoric joy we might have experienced by the influx of payroll taxes into the hands of wicked investment bankers would have been no less illusory than the blessed ignorance politicians are currently bathing us in. Perhaps all future financial planning on a public level should be abandoned. Perhaps employers, state governments, and federal governments should all resist the arrogance that tempts them to think they know what is best for every American worker thirty years into the future. Perhaps we should simply call for the end of all payroll and employer taxes and contributions for retirement programs of any kind. Americans have been fooled too long into believing that the government is wiser than they are when it comes to planning for each American’s retirement. The consequences of liberty include responsibility. Americans might be well advised to demand their financial liberty again by reclaiming their individual responsibility for their own financial futures…

Oh, I forgot… We can’t…That’s lesson two: national debt means something.

Pastor Rick Warren: An American Heretic?

2008-12-21T12:11:00.000-08:00

The venom of gay activist groups towards President-elect Obama over his choice of Reverend Rick Warren to lead his inaugural prayer reveals the extreme hatred and intolerance on the far left. These gay activist groups are so self-absorbed that they neither acknowledge the magnanimity of President Elect Obama nor the universal right of every man and woman to pray publically on behalf of all despite their sins of against mere political orthodoxy.

Perhaps the first thing that came to the minds of many who heard Reverend Rick Warren’s named to lead the inaugural prayer for President-elect Barrack Obama was “graciousness.” Perhaps the most important moments of the early campaign occurred in Reverend Warren’s church when the President Elect sat before religious conservatives and shared his views on a variety of issues relevant to all Americans. Besides bravely putting aside the notion that he would govern according to the view of his longtime Chicago pastor by going to church with the Republicans also, the open honest forum was one of the only bright spots in John McCain’s campaign. President-elect Obama’s acknowledgment of Reverend Warren was an olive branch to an entire spectrum of the electorate that has fundamental disagreements with the future 44th President of the United States. In that recognition of Obama’s graciousness, one is naturally drawn to appreciate a religious figure who held honest policy differences with a powerful political figure and yet remained on friendly terms. Reverend Warrens’ ability to transcend narrowly held political ideologies in view of the larger human concerns was only echoed by President-elect Obama’s request for the man to lead an the inaugural prayer.

If President Bush, in retrospect, bemoans his attempt at raising the tone of political discourse in Washington as a failure, he was perhaps, premature. Then again, perhaps not. Within a heartbeat of Barrack Obama’s magnanimous gesture, gay right activists were doing everything but burning crosses on Warren’s church lawn in order to brand the clergyman as a bigot. Likewise, with equal intolerance, they complained bitterly that the president-elect had chosen a person to pray who did not represent “all Americans.” One must assume that these groups would never pray with Reverend Warren, no matter how graciously he extended the invitation. However, the reason for their refusal is Reverend Warren’s intolerance. This is the continuing lie propounded by the gay marriage crowd. If you don’t endorse gay marriage, you are a homophobe bigot. In general, any group that insists that men and women pretend that others are married so that they feel “included” must be selfish to the core. This was once again plainly shown by the invidious bile spewed in President-elect Obama’s face by gay activist groups that are self-absorbed, self-obsessed, and harshly intolerant of the views of others.

These activists are plainly not victims. The precursor to all persecution is to establish the sinfulness of one’s opponent’s position. If you have and extreme disagreement with your opponent’s doctrinal position, you demonize the opposition and attack his or her credibility. After one’s credibility has been diminished and your opponent isolated, the persecutions begin. No one is persecuting homosexuals in 21st century America; however, the left is endeavoring to demonize those whose views on choice and matrimony they disagree with. The result would be to brand certain religious beliefs as a national heresy.

The far left groups are, on a personal level, trying to injure Reverend Warren and his standing, not only in terms of his political views, but as a spiritual person. This should be off the table and not part of the discussion. Reverend Warren may disagree with some on the left in a political sense, but Pastor Warren’s right to pray or lead prayer in a land were religious freedom is our most precious inheritance should never be impinged. President-elect Obama is correct, Reverend Warren’s spirituality and his standing as person whose religious values are sincere should be off the table when it comes to inauguration politics.

Limited Representative Government: Prop. 8 and Racism

2008-11-26T09:26:00.000-08:00

Californians are now just racists (like they have always been) because its citizens won't allow same sex couples to pretend they are married. Direct democracy must not be allowed, they say, only the power of the state constitution is right! Well, if the state constitution allows for direct democracy, then to what constitution do they refer? Some say that constitutions are written to protect the minority from the majority. That is not correct, otherwise no majority rule could exist, hence no democracy and no democratic republics. Constitutions in constitutional republics represent a covenant among the people as to how their laws will work. When that covenant is broken, they owe the powers that broke the covenant no allegiance.

The biggest problem with more direct forms of democracy is that important issues are fought out in sound bites (like education becoming the focus of the last month's debate). During the 1960's revision period Bernard Hyink (see page 5 of article) made a series of serious arguments against the prevalence of direct democracy in California's constitution. Californians did not want any part of returning to a more representative form of government. It is this direct democracy that is more Libertarian because it liberally gives the people greater say. A reduced dependency on an independent judiciary is another libertarian notion that arose in California as the institutions of the federal constitution began to struggle under the pressures of massive industrialization during the Civil War period.

There have been many really stupid things written into California's constitution over time, including, as some rightly point out, racist notions in bold print. These things have all been eradicated, but the principles of greater direct democracy have been strengthened.

Constitutions don't come from a Divine Being. They come from people. Good people don't come from governments; good governments come from good people. There are those, (I am not among them), that argue that even our notions of right and wrong don't originate from a Higher Power. I do believe that things like passionate self-interest, greed, and jealousy often blind some people to the voice of conscience. These people, sadly, are too often the ones that are in authority in political parties.

Some folks talk about how health care must be reformed because of greedy and corrupt doctors. My response to this has always been to throw up my hands. If the people who deliver the health care are corrupt, it's over. What can anyone do? That's how I feel about the "checked" use of a greater direct democracy in not only California, but in the nation. If the people, of whom, by whom and for whom government exists, have lost their way, what's the point?

I think, because of the federal constitution, and the language of the California constitution regarding it's subjection to the federal constitution, the objections some raise about returning to a KKK society is a read herring. I say, "I think", because San Francisco seems to have seceded from the union relative to immigration law and no one cares.

In general, it is sad that people accuse the entire populace of hate because they don't want to lie to their kids and tell them that same sex couple are married... well not really... well legally... That's a bit much. What's wrong with civil unions anyhow?

I saw a good Wikipedia article on the language of Prop. 8. After great debate, "may" and "could" were the words left in the ballot initiative concerning required teacher participation in educational programs. The Supreme Court Justices had essentially ordered teachers to lie to little children, whether students could "opt out" or not.

The constitution of California never, ever provided for making people say that same sex couples are married when they are not. Four Supreme Court judges, perhaps inspired by some vision from of Saturn in red, exercised their authority to INTERPRET the constitution (if they did more than this they dare not admit it!). The simplest way to clarify the constitution was to do the people of California did.

Proposition 8 and Revisions of California's Constitution

2008-11-25T10:53:00.000-08:00

While some argue that the people of California are not worthy of the initiative process the state constitution liberally grants its citizens, the very heart of California's law disagrees. The ballot initiative process is not a twentieth century libertarian whim cooked up by 1960's radicals. Instead, it was adopted to directly address the challenges and pressures of a representative government in the modern era.

California's Constitution's Preamble is the usual: "We, the People of the State of California, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom, in order to secure and perpetuate its blessings, do establish this Constitution." This is a wonderful echo of the age of the founding fathers of the United States of America. However section 1 of the first article of California's constitution is not the unusual: "All political power is inherent in the people. Government is instituted for their protection, security, and benefit, and they have the right to alter or reform it when the public good may require." This has a bold and defiant tone, the tone of those who have had enough of pretense and hypocrisy. These are grave and solemn declarations. They are the words of men and women who have had some experience being vigilant in the great and ongoing struggle for liberty. Surprisingly, the rest of California's constitution lives up to these brave words. That's not usual either.

For these very self-evident reasons, any refusal by four judges to enact Proposition 8, by describing it as a revision, would to be to drastically alter the heart of California's constitution.

The Constitution of California is a living document, but its life is not ultimately in the hands of a Supreme Court, and its breath does not wait on a two thirds majority of the state legislature. California's constitution is specifically designed to live and breathe with the people of California. Nor was this done for light and transient causes. California's constitution is borne of the schools of error and hard experience in this land of opportunity.

Of all the states in the union, California has the most experience with constitutions. It drafted its original constitution in coordination with a military proclamation shortly following the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and California redrafted its constitution only thirty years later. It was in this second draft of its constitution that California began its loathing of political authorities and its love of the initiative and referendum process. Finally, after years of committee analysis, in 1966 California used the mechanisms within the 1897 draft to significantly revise its constitution (CPS p. 3). This it did with a constitutional convention and approval of the electorate. Ultimately, the revision committee completed the final part of its revision process with a series of tailor made ballot initiatives (CPS 6). Hence, if California's constitution is one of the most liberal states in the union, it is a political path based, not on navet, but on experience. In other words, if California gives greater authority to its electorate that any other state it is because California has learned from its history. Its institutions recognize that those in authority are often as impervious to truth as they are imperfect in character. California's limits on its Supreme Court Justices, as set out in terms of recall and elective terms, is not done without a very clear understanding of the challenges to freedom that arise in every generation, even in nations governed as constitutional and democratic republics.

The problem with the founding father's notion of an independent judiciary is that our forefathers benignly believed that the check on judges would be the laws and the constitutional documents they embodied. California discovered that such a check was not always convenient. While, on the one hand, California gives its chief justice tremendous powers over the interpretation and the culture of interpretation that surrounds California's laws, the consequences of its painful experiences with the powerful forces of large business interests during the Civil War period left the people of this state with an extremely sober view of all the elements of representative government, including the judiciary. California's judiciary is one of the least independent in the nation. While judges are appointed by the governor, the judges are subject to reelection every twelve years. Furthermore, they are subject to recall at any time by way of the initiative process.

It would not be beyond imagination then to conceive of a unanimous Supreme Court decision in favor of the proponents of Proposition 8, and that is as it should be according to California law. In the United States Constitution five judges closely divided with four others in the interpretation of the federal constitution plus the silence of the legislature can equal, in practical terms, via stare decisis, an amendment or a revision or of the constitution. Of course the more divided the judiciary, the more divided the legislature, so, in the course of time, judges have often changed the constitutional rudiments of our federal laws. In California, though, the people must also remain silent for a judicial opinion, an interpretation of the law to become, via stare decisis, an amendment to or a drastic revision of the California constitution.

In the matter of Proposition 8 and Proposition 22, Californians were not silent. They thought long and hard; twice Californians have clarified the definition of marriage. This may have been an altogether silly exercise forced on them from above, but it was, nonetheless, a gracious and constitutional one. All those who oppose that definition ought to accept the verdict in the gracious spirit in which it was legally and duly offered. The definition of marriage Californians have declared doesn't harm anyone, and it does apply equally applied to all. Homosexuals may also get married to one member of the opposite sex, just like every other Californian. Californians do not hold anyone's sexual orientation against them. The people of California have never been perfect, and they are not now. California's constitution though, isn't bad. Other states ought to follow California's example of liberally granting the final say and authority to the people. After all, where do all constitutions that are worth the ink originate?

How to Recall a California Supreme Court Justice

2008-11-09T17:26:00.000-08:00

Information is power if power has already been granted to you. Indeed, in California great political authority has already been granted to its citizens. That power is our history and our legacy, for the California Constitution in Article 2 Section 1 reads: "All political power is inherent in the people. Government is instituted for their protection, security, and benefit, and they have the right to alter or reform it when the public good may require."

The voters of California have recently reformed their state by way of a ballot initiative called Proposition 8. This was a reformation because marriage in California (and in all the world) has always been between a man and a woman. Only in recent months did our justices deem it fit to alter our state laws and our constitution. Because the justices are sworn to uphold the constitution, not alter it, they should be recalled for the failure to discharge their duties. The people of California have also been granted this right. It is within our authority as states Article 2 Section 13: "Recall is the power of the electors to remove an elective officer," and, as the constitutional framers saw fit and in California Supreme Court Justices are elected, not appointed; Article 2 Section 16a: "Judges of the Supreme Court shall be elected at large and judges of courts of appeal shall be elected in their districts at general elections at the same time and places as the Governor. Their terms are 12 years beginning the Monday after January 1 following their election." Because California Supreme Court Justices are not appointed as they are under the federal constitution, but elected, they are subject to recall by the electorate.

The constitutional framers made the manner of recall very simple. The recall process has two parts. Both of these parts are stated plainly in Article 2 Section 14a. The first is: "Recall of a state officer is initiated by delivering to the Secretary of State a petition alleging reason for recall. Sufficiency of reason is not reviewable." The petition to remove these elected officials is not "reviewable." That means that the voters could say, "We the people of California petition for the removal of these four Supreme Court Justices because they are dumb dumb heads, and we don't like them any more." Such a claim could not be rejected on legal grounds; however, such simplicity might not be considered overly persuasive either. Nonetheless, the point is that the California Constitution makes this matter simple because its intent is that the people of California, not its lawyers or its judges, define the nature and scope of our laws.

Those who choose to circulate a petition to recall each of these four judges might contemplate a petition that says:

"We the people of California, petition for the recall of Chief Justice Ronald M. George, Associate Justice Joyce L. Kennard, Associate Justice Kathryn M. Werdegar, and Associate Justice Carlos R. Moreno for the following reasons:

Unless one is of an unsound mind, seeks personal aggrandizement, or sets himself above the body of laws and the constitution he has taken an oath to uphold, the historic documents surrounding the constitution and the historic contexts of the documents surrounding the family law of California cannot be construed to include homosexuality as a suspect category in civil right laws: these are plainly limited to race, religion and gender.

The historic documents of California and the body of documentation surrounding California can not be held to imply or refer to a right for same sex couples to pretend to marriage by law, and any such conclusion is evidence of an unsound mind, self seeking, or a judicial hubris that pretends to be above the body of laws embodied in the constitution of California he swore to uphold.

In altering the Constitution of California and the body of laws it embodies, this jurist has undermined the civil right to marry for all couples; he has reduced marriage to a mere legal contract defined by states rather than upholding the court's legitimate responsibility to recognize the union of a man and a woman. This is an ancient contract between two people based on exalting that which nature and the God of nature has set within the heart of all people everywhere without regard to race, religion or gender. This fundamental joining, like the right to free speech, like the right to worship in accordance with our conscience, like the right to free movement and like the right to defend oneself against tyrants and any who would threaten life and property, exists prior to governments and any government that refuses to recognize such rights is illegitimate.

In altering the Constitution of California and the body of laws it embodies, these jurists have undermined civil society, civil conversation, and the peace of this great state, for we have had untold expenditures of time and money resulting only in increased acrimony and civil unrest. This is entirely the fault of this Court. Rather than undermining the documents and laws of this land designed for the express purpose of maintaining civil discourse, a democratic union and the peace of this people, this court could have urged the plaintiffs in "re Marriages" to utilize the ballot initiatives to democratically amend our State's Constitution. Instead, this court has purposely misrepresented the documents of our state and deceived many of its unwitting populace into feeling that it has "rights" it never received in accordance with the democratic principles of our society.

The ruling of this court expresses an explicit intent to order state representatives to deceive others by applying the historic name and honor of the institution of "marriage" on unions that have no history at all. This legislated fraud would have constituted a tyranny and would have affected young children of every race, religion and gender from the tender ages in which they enter our public school system.

Article 2 Section 14a also sets out the second condition for demanding the recall of its elected judges: "Proponents (of the recall) have 160 days to file signed petitions." Article 2 Section 14b and c contains the instructions on filing the petition:

"A petition to recall a statewide officer must be signed by electors equal in number to 12 percent of the last vote for the office, with signatures from each of 5 counties equal in number to 1 percent of the last vote for the office in the county. Signatures to recall Senators, members of the Assembly, members of the Board of Equalization, and judges of courts of appeal and trial courts must equal in number 20 percent of the last vote for the office. (b) The Secretary of State shall maintain a continuous count of the signatures certified to that office."

California is one of the most liberal states in These United States of America in the oldest and truest meaning of that word. California is not liberal because has relativism, high taxes, deficit spending and a "nanny government" written into its constitution. California is proudly one of the most liberal states in the Union because, rather than specifying that the authority and responsibility for governance resides primarily in the representatives of the people, it gives the authority and responsibility for governance to the people in some of the most direct and practical ways ever devised. Californians ought to prize the authority its citizens have been granted, but with this greater authority comes greater responsibility. Californians have a responsibility, a duty, to recall these judges. This matter has not been left to lawyers, other judges, or to elected representative. They do not, therefore, have the responsibility to recall these judges. Californians, however, do. It is therefore, the people of California who are responsible for the harm these judges have done and will do if they do not act together swiftly and decisively to recall them.

Ballot Measures: Joe the Voter Shoulders the Heaviest Lifting Again

2008-11-03T06:37:00.000-08:00

Although the practice of direct democracy began primarily with constitutional amendments, it has become more prevalent as our representatives in government have failed at their work. Once again the common man must do the heavy lifting.

Proposition 8, in some ways fits the historic reason for direct democracy through a referendum or ballot initiative process. Referendums have always been part of American democracy. Massachusetts held a referendum to approve its new constitution in 1780. By 1850 it was becoming standard practice to hold a referendum when amending a state constitution (Eclipse of Legislatures USC Research Computing Facility 2004). As sad as it is that the Supreme Court of California made an amendment to the State Constitution of California an all too provident and necessary process, Proposition 8 is a tried and true way for the citizens of a state to decide the nature of their governments.

Although a state constitution is not simply laws, it is more important because it forms the basis upon which our state laws can and should be made, or it is a set of limits on our governments saying what kinds of laws it may not make. It is very important then, that such a foundation for laws is expressed in simple words that make total sense. "A marriage is between a man and a woman makes" makes total sense. There are a few things implied rather than explicitly stated because we don't want to have to wash our children's mouth out with soap after they recite their sixth grade homework to us. Still, the words are plain and foundational. They make sense and allow little room for disagreement. On the other hand, a constitutional amendment that said that marriage was NOT between a man and a woman would be an unsound amendment because it does not plainly lay a clear foundation for the laws of California. When the people affirm what marriage is, the people set family law in California on a clearly understood idea. Other laws, including those for our schools and for civil unions will then have a firm and clear basis on which to build.

On the other hand, the other reasons we really need to pass Proposition 8 all too clearly reflect the reasons that there are more referendums on more state ballots this Tuesday than at almost any other time in our nation's history. Historically, referendums became more prevalent because of the failure of our representative form of government, in its executive, legislative, and judicial form, to do its jobs. A wave of defaults in the 1800's led to the requirements for a popular vote in 21 states (Kiewiet and Szakaly 1996). That sounds familiar doesn't it? Our national representatives as a group, including Diane Fienstein, allowed lending practices to go haywire. They did this because it was inconvenient to take a difficult position that might upset some important colleagues or more powerful constituents. This goes on, it seems, all the time in Washington. No one wants to hurt anyone's feelings. They will say "yes" whenever possible because that is how one gets reelected. People don't get reelected by saying "no." Hence, the tough job of financial responsibility has become more and more often left to the citizens. The states that require bond measures to be ratified by a referendum process have less state spending and more decentralized spending than those that do not (Eclipse).

One of the problems with representative democracy is that our representatives in the legislature "logroll", that is, they trade votes when they make a decision on behalf of their constituents. If one of our representatives needs a block of votes to approve, let's say, a new hospital in a certain municipality, they will trade their support on another issue. Hence, the majority of voters are not served by either vote. Many citizens recognize that "earmarking" in the national budget process is the current epitome of the evils of logrolling. In fact, even public policy positions taken by our representatives are often suspect. Our representatives will change positions on areas important to those who voted for them, or those whose union dues they spend. A recent national survey conducted for the Initiative & Referendum Institute at USC asked: "All other things being equal, which do you think is most likely to produce laws that are in the public interest: when the law is adopted by the legislature or when the voters adopt the law? Sixty-six percent of respondents selected "voters" compared to 20% that selected "the legislature"1. The pattern held for men and women, across all age groups, and for whites, blacks, and other ethnic groups.

Hence, direct democracy, the referendum process, has become more necessary and more popular because the representatives of the people have lost our respect. When we go to the polls on Tuesday in California, then, may we let common sense rule. It is in our best interest not to listen to authority figures like the Superintendent of Public schools who contradicted his own website on the issue of whether or not students will be taught that homosexual marriages are excellent at the age of seven. Nor should we allow authority figures that have a history of spinelessly saying "yes" to every spending measure imaginable harangue us about fairness. If you can't figure out what rights are unfairly jeopardized by affirming what a marriage actually is, consider the sources the budgets and the taxes that also make no sense. Once again, the tough job of laying the firm foundation for the future of California will come down to us. If you aren't sure what a proposal is asking, say "no." If you aren't sure what a marriage is if it is not between a man and a woman, vote "Yes" on 8.

1. The survey was conducted by Portrait of America. It can be found in Waters (2003) and on the web site of the Initiative & Referendum Institute (www.iandrinstitute.org).

Spreading the Wealth, National Banks, and the Communist Family

2008-10-22T17:59:00.000-07:00

Obama's plan to "spread the wealth" must destroy wealth and Europe's plan to nationalize banks will wreck the wealth of nations. These are things any good student of Marxism understands plainly. Karl Marx's vision of a workers' paradise also involved ridding society of mothers and fathers. Marxist Communism was never about utopia. It was always about totalitarianism. It's amazing how close to his vision we are getting.

Spreading the wealth around is an idea at least as old as Karl Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Program in which he wrote: “From each according to his ability to each according to his need.” To Marx this notion was a transitional principle leading to the workers’ paradise. It was part of the “dictatorship of the working class.” Ultimately, Marx desired that there would be no wealth to spread around. He desired the abolition of capital. That is, Marx envisioned the abolition of the means to relate to others in terms of employer and wage earner. It was an idea that never worked very well. Why? Have you noticed the flaw in Marxist logic? If there is no capital, there can be no wage earners, or in other words, no jobs. Therefore, Marxism leads to the absence of wealth! If you study Obama’s tax plan you can see that he desires the abolition of capital also. Even if jobs cannot be generated, even if the United States is in the middle of a recession where jobs are getting scarcer every day, Obama is sticking to Marxist transitional principles.

Although some five star generals might not like to hear it, illogical notions don’t work in the real world. Because of the failure of these Marxist ideas in practice, as well as on the drawing board, one almost suspects the motivation of anyone in any government who proposes them. On one level the motivation seems plain. The appeal of Marxism can be outwardly pleasant. When we humans don’t get what they want, it feels very unfair to us. It is easy to demand fairness instead of responsibility, and it is even easier to promise to make things fair by taking some one else’s property and making a gift of it to those who desire “fairness.” As a parent my response to the fairness argument has always been, “You bet life’s not fair, and a good thing it’s not! We live in America and other’s don’t. What’s fair about that?” Well life may be getting fair for those who live in Red China. We’re not far behind. In fact, capital seems to prefer Beijing.

By the way, some wonder whether the United States bank bailout plans will work. Interestingly, here is the fifth of the ten Marxist preconditions for a workers paradise first outlined in the Communist Manifesto: “Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.” Pope Paulson I, by the way, is conservative compared to the Europeans. They are completely behind Warren Buffet’s notion of buying up bank stocks to “recapitalize” them into borrowing, but Henry Paulson had to be dragged kicking and screaming to this table. Even now, he only wants to use a quarter of the cool trillion dollars printed by the congress for nationalizing banks. Will such bailout plans work? It depends on what one means by “work.” If one knows history and knows the failure of Marxist theory, one can be certain that the bail out plan will not produce wealth. However if one hates the United States because of its international prestige, its great abundance, and its liberties, and, as a student of Marxism, has been awaiting a crisis of capital to forward the communist agenda for the express purpose of ruining the wealth of nations, this bail out will work perfectly.

By the way Marx had some interesting notions about marriage as well. The Manifesto reads: “Bourgeois (an employer’s or rich person’s) marriage is (because of rampant infidelity), in reality, a system of wives in common and thus, at the most, what the Communists might possibly be reproached with is that they desire to introduce, in substitution for a hypocritically concealed (system of free love), an openly legalized system of free love. Yes, an organized force that disrupts the marriage one’s marriage was part of the plan for a worker’s paradise. So what happened to “the community of women” that would eventually bring an end to the nuclear family? Do we see such institutions in existence today? Ahhh… no. That was another failed Marxist notion.

In general though, the nuclear family appeared to be a threat to the burly bearded communist theorist. Again, the manifesto reads: “Abolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists…” Outside of the revolutionary party’s “community of women” the destruction of the nuclear family would occur without systematic intervention (except by public schools). Once capital had been destroyed, Marx believed, of nature course the workers paradise would feature no mothers and no fathers. Although Marx claimed that “the bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation into a mere money relation,” he was wrong about that as well. No, it would be a hundred and fifty years before the Supreme Court of California, not the bourgeoisie, did this. Even if you don’t like McCain or Obama, Californians should get themselves to the polls and vote “Yes” on Proposition 8.

A careful read of the Communist Manifesto will reveal its ambitious aims to amass the power of the state in the hands of the few. This, not a workers’ paradise, is what following the Manifesto’s outlines have always achieved for those who have used its perverse arguments to their advantage. If you’ve ever wondered why America, despite its tremendous powers of innovation, has been increasingly in debt, in the red, since World War II, consider some of the other preconditions for Marxist communism that were first set out in 1847. Precondition #2: A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. Precondition #3: Abolition of all rights of inheritance. Precondition #10: Free education for all children in public schools… That’s why we need the flat tax, school vouchers and to protect traditional marriage. We need to say no to the Obamanation.

Free Markets, Crashes, and Other Parables

2008-10-16T20:00:00.000-07:00

“We have now entered the final phase of the boom-bust cycle--the search for villains for past ill deeds and the search for reforms to prevent future calamities. But in the panic to sell shares in U.S. companies, investors are deaf to good news about the resilience and productivity of the American economy just as they were deaf to bad news at the height of the market euphoria.” These words, penned by Laura Tyson in her 2002 article, “After Irrational Exuberance, Irrational Pessimism” are, once again, almost completely relevant to today’s market. Perhaps what’s missing is the good news. Oil going down is apparently something approaching a positive, but that’s it. However, because of the consistency of human deafness to market fundamentals, Ms. Tyson’s article is almost always partially relevant. Here’s the sad little story rife with truths.

From 2003-2005, real estate, like the equity markets of the late 1990’s, had that peculiar reek of impending disaster that emerges from willful ignorance to market forces by those who should know better. A March 2008 REIT Wrecks article commendably explores the death of real estate’s canary: in 2005 rental occupancies fell despite declining rents. The article, “Play Subprime Safely With These Residential REITs” carefully exposes the Spiderman-like tingling those who specialized in rental properties had. They could smell the gas of the broken main. They knew that all that was driving real estate was the money supply. The loan amounts kept increasing as the credit requirements decreased. The only impediment to receiving the cash was having a residential deed to sign.

Interest rates finally began to rise, but they were answered with more easy money. After all, the changing bankruptcy laws of 2005 (making Chapter 7 debt forgiveness more difficult to come by) meant that more foreclosed assets would be available to offset these bad loans. Even more importantly, as far as the speculative eye could see more and more non-standard loans were coming down the pike. Hence, real estate had to continue to rise as the free money bid them well above their actual values. If real estate had to continue to spiral upwards, then even foreclosed properties would be worth more than the original assets. Hence, easy loans were more easily packaged into marketable “securities” that, based on an implied connection between Fannie, Feddie and the Feds, met only the most cavalier inspections. Who’d know? Who’d say anything? The only evidence of this covenant with disaster would be the mushrooming commissions on portfolio mangers’ Christmas bonuses.

However, even the “victims,” those with no credit who took exorbitant interest rates hits, laughed out loud as they signed and swore on a thousand dotted lines. Even they thought they’d hit the Vegas craps. “Why worry?” they thought; they could to sell for a 15% profit in a year. That would be more money in one place than they’d seen in their whole lives! Everyone was doing it… Then oil hit the roof, and the predatory lenders headed for the high grass. Everyone knows the rest.

Just as in the dotcom bubble, those who should have known did know. But why pull the fire alarm and alert the police? Instead, lawless bands of speculators who knew better, weren’t betting on the American dream. No, they were betting they could get out of town before the three alarm conflagration was noised abroad. The parable? Markets don’t need corrections, people do. The moral: unregulated markets will result in great prosperity only in proportion to the sense of responsibility and the recognition of the ethical source of prosperity owned by those that participate.
California, here’s the allegory: As free markets are to ethics, so is a great nation’s government to the truth. As the real estate fundamentals were eroded by senseless monetary expansion, so the credibility of our government will be eroded if we enshrine lies in our laws. Vote “Yes” on Proposition 8.

As depressing as today’s corruption of our markets may be, it has a precedent. As Frank Shostak discusses in his article, “The Prophet of the Great Depression,” two Austrian’s, Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, based on their theories of credit expansion, predicted the Roaring 20’s would end calamitously. The Austrians used a cool math based on exchange rates, but the reality is that no wizard-like forecasts are required. Indeed, even the victims of this latest real estate credit bubble knew what they were up against. They knew they were at cross purposes with the basic principles of responsibility, ethics, and, hence, genuine prosperity. We all finally got what all involved already owned.

Individuals cannot live a lie and escape the consequences. Don’t try to tell such people however, for you will be mocked to scorn. Likewise, societies cannot live a lie and long endure. But what if that lie is consecrated by the consensus of one’s fellow creatures, as was the run on equities in the 1920’s and the run on real estate in the twenty-first century? It doesn’t matter; such a nation and such a person cannot prosper. Even if so many thrill with the lie that one might say the lie is “normal,” a lie it is nonetheless, and who are so heedless cannot prosper. Whether it is abandoned at the church door or at the cork of those spirits that cry “you can’t prove it!” discard reason at your peril.

Why the ACLU Opposes Proposition 8

2008-09-20T11:21:00.000-07:00

There are many powerful people who purport to believe that religion, "the opiate of the people (Karl Marx)," is a scourge on humanity. Altruists, they purport to genuinely believe that society would be better if all religions, especially Christianity, were expunged from planet earth.

That’s not a constitutional view of course. Freedom of religion is as sacred as the freedom of speech. Like the right to marry, it is part of what is innate in people and what is part of who we are as humans prior to government. Of course governments need to, as much as is possible, keep out of the business of policing religions. Any law or ordinance that puts government into the business of arbitrating religious belief should be shunned. Indeed, governments ought to be in the business of promoting and exalting those freedoms that abound in a free people. This includes the “right to marry” and the practice of religion openly and freely.

The ACLU may believe in the right of same-sex couples to call their unions a marriage too. That’s fine; however, if Reverend James Wilson is correct, perhaps it has a more nefarious agenda in mind. Perhaps there is a secret treasure to be exhumed from the corpse of our mangled California family law. With a victory against Proposition 8 in hand, perhaps the ACLU can end religion in public life completely. We will be able to think religious thoughts, but we will not be able to either speak our beliefs or practice them in public.

Reverend James Wilson wrote in his September 15 article “Proposition 8 protects freedom of religion” at Reading.com that:

“The state Supreme Court decision OK'ing civil rights laws for suppression of doctors' consciences is …part of an alarming pattern. The decision held doctors liable after they refused — for religious reasons — to inseminate a lesbian. The doctors referred her; there was no injury to the woman as she was inseminated and gave birth. … But the court said doctors lose their right to free speech and religion when licensed to practice medicine in California. And — if the experience of northern Europe and Canada is any indicator — pastors will lose those rights should Proposition 8 fail in November. That is because courts in those nations have found pastors (and any who express politically incorrect views) guilty of ‘hate speech.’:”

One would ordinarily think this is ridiculously alarmist, but reading the series of bilious comments by readers of Wilson’s article gave me pause. Here are several:

• “Rev. James Wilson, it's a shame you don't follow Jesus' teachings to love one another instead of spreading hate like this column.
• Practice what you preach.”
• You have no idea what the Bible says, do ya...

Rev. Wilson did not quote the Bible, but anyone who has read Romans chapter 1 knows that he did not quote it out of courtesy.

• “He's just being a hypocrite.”
• it IS "hate speech", MR. Wilson (you don't deserve to be addressed as "Reverend" - that title should be reserved for people who attempt to reflect God's love and compassion in their lives).

Rev. Wilson’s most controversial line was that “love without truth is not love.” I admit that I’ve picked the most obvious examples of spiteful disregard found in the reader comments. Nonetheless, Reverend Wilson’s article is simply one of a tremendous variety of instances in which the volume of the spiteful ad hominem attacks increases exponentially when faith is mentioned at all. The raw enmity expressed in any number of reader comments associated with those expressing religious disagreements with homosexuality itself is a firestorm. Whether the religion is Roman Catholic, Mormon, or Muslim, the hate as furious as it is obvious.

Of course I had to get into the act. I commented:

“The Reverend's article, although restricted to an audience of Bible believing Christians, nevertheless proves its broader point by the overwhelming anger and hate personally directed at its author for his faith. Are we to trust any movement that so indiscriminately hates those who offer reasonable disagreements with it based on personal religious beliefs?”

Since my post was not faith based, the response I received from a fellow reader, “specialK” was reasonable and well-measured:

“It's not for his faith, rather his active campaigning to rescind and eliminate the civil rights of a small minority of citizens when he himself and the majority here enjoy the legal recognition of your primary relationship. To claim that his rights are being impinged on because I now have the same, or shall I say, equal civil (not religious mind you) rights, should not in any way interfere with the Rev's religion. The hate must only be coming from those who suffer from ignorance and fear.”

However, “specialK”’s response was not to the point. He, like many, did not see that freedom of speech and freedom of religion could be impacted by the laws of California. He (or she) thinks that it is alarmist to assume that letting same-sex couples say they're married could, in any way, impact freedom of religion. Still, the motive of those seeking to defeat Proposition 8 should be relevant to us. Is the motive of those who seek to defeat Proposition 8 less government? Plainly not. If it is more government, then what is it they most seek to govern? Likewise, all voters might want to ask, ‘what segment of society are the opponents of Proposition 8 most willing disparage?’

My articles have not been addressed to a faith audience, and so, because I understand the nature of our competitive Western society in which we take adversarial positions in order pursue the truth, I haven’t been particularly troubled by readers who ignore my arguments and then endeavor to defame me because my thesis is disagreeable to them. That’s all part of the American smear machine we call our national discourse. Even though the often decried ad hominem attack is a well-known logical fallacy, it is as beloved of 21st century America as apple pie and college football.

I also recognize that very often the more intense and unnecessarily disagreeable disagreements contain a question not answered in an article. That intensity is not what I’m writing about. There is a significant difference, an intense intolerance, shown by opponents of Proposition 8 to those who have religious beliefs. They feel entitled to this intolerance. Voters who value religious freedom should be hesitant to ally themselves with such intolerance.

Besides, who knows, perhaps there is something sacred about humanity. Who knows… maybe there is something true in these ancient religions handed down from the mists of time. I know, I can hear the barrage coming now. This article is not for them; it’s for you.

A Rewrite of the California Constitution I Missed

2008-08-05T22:53:00.000-07:00

Connor Boyak on posted a great article on his blog at:http://www.connorboyack.com/blog/the-protected-class-of-sexuality.

He does a great job pointing out that "re Marriage Cases" has profoundly changed the Constitution and the law of California by adding "sexual orientation" as a protected class with regards to equal rights. Sexual orientation is not a race, a gender or a religion. Despite all the whining from liberals, sexual orientation is not, constitutionally, a civil rights issue. There are laws on the books in California that do, however, recognize sexual orientation as a "protected class." Judge George in "re Marriages" uses this language written by the California legislature as enough of a reason to rewrite the Constitution of California:

“[e]xpanding the rights and creating responsibilities of registered domestic partners would further California’s interests in promoting family relationships and protecting family members during life crises, and would reduce discrimination on the bases of sex and sexual orientation in a manner consistent with the requirements of the California Constitution."

He is also correct about the serious impact that this has on jurisprudence in California. As as dissenting Jurist Baxter wrote on page 22 of his dissent:

"As the majority also notes, the issue is one of first impression in California. I find that circumstance highly significant. Considering the current status of gays and lesbians as citizens of 21st-century California, the majority fails to persuade me we should now hold that they qualify, under our state Constitution, for the extraordinary protection accorded to suspect classes" (my emphasis).

Connor is correct. It's time for Proposition 9: "Equal protection laws in California only apply to race, religion, and gender."

Meanwhile, a "Yes" vote on Proposition 8 will reduce a great deal of the damage this Court has done.

Another Genius!

2008-07-29T15:32:00.000-07:00

I was amazed when I read the introductory paragraph to Jennifer Robach Morse’s Marriage and the Limits of Contract only to find my own thoughts penned two years before I ever thought of them. Sadly, as one who thinks great thoughts can make a difference, I had to humbly link to Ms. Morse’s article because she articulates these ideas so well. Here’s the URL: http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/2939396.html

Supreme Deception: the Right to Deceive, Part III

2008-07-26T19:29:00.000-07:00

Even on the surface, the idea of same-sex marriage must be either a lie or a deceit; hence, any court’s opinion that is engaged in “legalizing” such a thing must also be replete with lies or immersed in deception. In “redefining” marriage without admitting that it has done so, the Supreme Court of California’s opinion is riddled with deceptions. The California Supreme Court has masked its reduction of marriage to the mere legality that it conferred on civil unions by using the misleading terms “family relationship” and “family unit” to describe homosexual relationships and civil unions. Furthermore, the Court’s opinion use of this misleading terminology generates the appearance that previous courts' opinions and precedents support the benefits of, and state interests in, gay marriage. In fact, the opinion refers to no evidence whatsoever from previous case law or precedent that the state has either an abiding interest in, or that individuals derive substantial benefit from, gay marriage.

Whether by design or by incompetence, the Court’s opinion uses circular reasoning throughout. The opinion supposes that marriage is not between a man and a woman so that it may find an offended class and conclude that marriage, indeed, must not be only between a man and a woman. Finally, not satisfied with an opinion that is so inadequate that it deceives only the public, the Court produces several passages in which it seems to have conferred the right to deceive the public on the plaintiffs. Deceiving people is what the Court has, directly or indirectly, sanctioned by its discussion of “privacy rights” on page 105 below:

“Plaintiffs point out that one consequence of the coexistence of two parallel types of familial relationship (marriage and domestic partnerships) is that — in the numerous everyday social, employment, and governmental settings in which an individual is asked whether he or she “is married or single” — an individual who is a domestic partner and who accurately responds to the question by disclosing that status will (as a realistic matter) be disclosing his or her homosexual orientation, even if he or she would rather not do so under the circumstances and even if that information is totally irrelevant in the setting in question.”

The opinion of the majority in “re Marriages” explains that disclosing one’s sexual orientation is protected under a right to privacy, but the Court’s resolution of the issue should not be to sanction intentional deception as a remedy. Under this court’s ruling same sex couples may mislead an employer, whether it is a government office or a private enterprise, by leading individuals to believe that their status is heterosexual. That is, they may rest assured that when they say they are married , their employer or insurance company will understand the ordinary sense of the word and assume they are heterosexual. Doesn’t the state have an interest in deploring all acts of deception, especially as it relates to its own offices? Instead, this court has sanctioned the deceptions and provided the means of deception. Is deception, then, simply a matter of course and necessity to the California Supreme Court? Shall we consider this evidence of the intention of the court itself to deceive the public with its ruling and its opinion? Doesn't it seem that the court recognizes that the high end of “equality” justifies deception? Should we assume that the Court itself with its high view of equality and equity felt that, for itself too, deception as practically necessary is a dogma worthy of application? If we should so decide, fellow Californians, what then should we do? You know very well what you must do. You must recall these judges.

Nor is the foregoing deception seemingly advocated by the Court without potentially serious implications for insurance, credit, and medical institutions. Although the court recognized that some of these requests for information are not relevant, the discretion on when to deceive seems to be entirely in the hands of a member of a same sex partnership.

Some may argue that the destruction of the word marriage and its meaning would result in “marriage” would no longer implying heterosexuality. Hence, there would be no deception. However, until the process of reconstructing documents in which one’s sexual orientation is necessary information and, instance by instance, allowing courts to decide upon this necessity, many instances of deception on important matters will have been perpetrated and seemingly sanctioned by this Court.

Nor is such deception a necessary instrument for achieving equality in the United States of America. No one can seriously imagine women seeking equal opportunity being able to get away with bubbling in "man" on their employment applications. No, in order to equalize the playing field women proudly declared their gender and insisted on access. Likewise, African Americans proudly declared their identities as they demanded the equal rights they were entitled to under the law.

Perhaps religions have had the "option" of “going public” with their beliefs through the years. Notice how well that has gone? The religions such as Islam that state their creeds by their apparel and their deeds have a far greater opportunity for recognition and accommodation under U.S. Laws than do the more timid believers who obey court and statute despite the outcry of their consciences. Secrecy is no ally of civil rights. Not only does the Court appear to confer the right to deceive on a special segment of the population, it undermines the very equality is seeks to establish. The gay community ought to rise up and vote “yes” on California’s proposition 8, not only so they are not embarrassed by being part of a ruling that must go down in infamy, but so that their own movement for equal rights and recognition is not undermined by legally sanctioned duplicities.

On page 117-118 the Court issues a pronouncement that, essentially, concedes the right to deceive to all same sex couples in California while, at the same time, insisting that all citizens of the state of California who have direct dealings with the state government perpetrate deception on others:

“As discussed above, (page 81) because of the long and celebrated history of the term ‘marriage’ and the widespread understanding that this word describes a family relationship (my italics) unreservedly sanctioned by the community, the statutory provisions that continue to limit access to this designation exclusively to opposite-sex couples — while providing only a novel, alternative institution for same-sex couples — likely will be viewed as an official statement that the family relationship of same-sex couples is not of comparable stature or equal dignity to the family relationship of opposite-sex couples.”

First of all, the word marriage does not refer to the commonly understood words “family relationship.” The new terminology introduced by the George court names marriage a “family relationship.” In the same way that a cursory reading of this ruling and an assumption of judiciary accuracy with language might mislead a reader, the use of the term “marriage” for same sex couples has the potential for misleading many citizens of the state and the nation. The problem is that, if nothing else, same sex civil unions are very novel, and indeed they are an alternate relationship relative to that of traditional marriage. Novel and alternative are not pejoratives, nor should anyone expect them to be.

By the courts own admission, by its stated design, the venerable history of marriage will be conferred, naturally, on same sex couples. However, that is deceptive precisely because same sex unions have no history at all. The application of the commonly understood word to marriage to same sex couples is, therefore misleading and deceptive. Even if there is a tradition of prejudice towards gay couples, prejudice in every other area of American life is not overcome by way of deception. Prejudice is overcome by being who we are, and by proving, with the equal opportunities we are granted, that hurtful prejudgments are no more than the products of ignorance.

Marriage has a long and celebrated history and has been widely sanctioned in every community in history (even if not always faithfully adhered to!) because of what it is. The use of the word “marriage” in California is now new, controversial, and alternate from every other known use of the word for 6,000 years of recorded history. Let us as Californians be clear about this: marriage in California now, under the ruling of the George court, no longer means “marriage.” If you think it does, you are deceived. If after reading this series of articles you are deceived, then you are deceiving yourself. However, when state employees, whether they be doctors, nurses, lawyers, teachers, policemen, or firemen say “marriage,” the common understanding of marriage will come to the mind of the hearers. Government employees everywhere may be directed to say “marriage” with the intended new meaning concocted by this court; however, those that hear what they say will not necessarily understand what is meant. Indeed, who really can understand this definition of marriage as a “family relationship” given meaning through a concoction of legal rights pulled from a seascape of irrelevant references?

The entire progress of this Court’s legislation, and it is certainly that, and its explanations are immersed in deception. It is by this means that it seeks to persuade us of its equanimity in making us its partners in its deceptions. Whether these deceptions are accidental or intended, we will all be employed in them. This court's ruling, whether by incompetence or by malice, evinces a design to reduce us under an absolute despotism of the state. It demands that we ourselves become the instruments of deception. The state can stand in no greater tyranny to its subjects than that it demand them to dissemble in order to comply with its dictates.

On page 8 of this opinion, Judge George wrote,

“We need not decide in this case whether the name ‘marriage’ is invariably a core element of the state constitutional right to marry so that the state would violate a couple’s constitutional right even if — perhaps in order to emphasize and clarify that this civil institution is distinct from the religious institution of marriage — the state were to assign a name other than marriage as the official designation of the formal family relationship for all couples.”

This is incorrect. If the opinion of this court is that marriage is no longer marriage and that one new institution is fitting for all, then let the Court proudly proclaim this! Instead, this court lets stand a document that rids California of marriage entirely without even the slightest acknowledgment of its radicalism. The Court seems to embrace deception for a remedy to the plaintiffs claims of privacy and its ruling encourages the deception of the entire state by insisting that government officials use a new, and impossibly complex and incoherent legal definition in communicating with children and minors about marriage.

Oh... no adults would be lying to children… Oh, no… And fear not California, your little children will not be deceived. No, even they know what marriage is. Instead, they will assume that policemen, firemen, teachers, doctors and nurses are cowardly liars or deluded morons. Good work Chief Justice George, and let us give thanks to all those members of the court that concurred.

Supreme Deception: the Evidence, Part II

2008-07-25T12:53:00.000-07:00

A marriage is not a family and to call it one is a lie. A family always involves children. For the Supreme Court to continue to call a same sex relationship a “family unit” is extraordinarily deceptive because no family can ever occur as a result of a same sex relationship. This deceptive legal jargon has entered California jurisprudence during the period of time in which Judge George has been the Supreme Court’s Chief Justice. In 2005 the majority opinion in Kobke vs. Bernardo Club Country Club, uses the terms “family unit” and “domestic partnership” synonymously. What is new in the court’s jargon in “re Marriages” (May 2008) is the Chief Justice’s wider use of “family relationship” to mean “marriage” or “domestic partnership” (pages 65-66). All of this is in keeping with the Court’s open refusal to recognize marriage in the state of California. Marriage is not a “family relationship,” whatever that is supposed to mean. Marriage is not a “family unit” and never has been. Further, in the corrupt jargon of the state of California it is even more assuredly not a “family unit” or, in other words, a domestic partnership.

Californians are deceived if they think that marriage currently exists in their law as that law has now been defined by Chief Justice George and the Supreme Court of California. The definition of marriage has not been expanded to include domestic partnerships. Instead, the definition of marriage has been contracted and dehumanized. To the Supreme Court of California marriage is a mere patchwork of rights conferred on two people by the legislature and the courts. Marriage results in husbands and wives, not “Party A’s” and “Party B’s.” To cite Perez vs. The State of California, “Marriage is thus something more than a civil contract subject to regulation by the state; it is a fundamental right of free men” (p. 714). Likewise also in Williams v. Garcetti, the Supreme Court at that time stated: “… we have already recognized that ‘[t]he concept of personal liberties and fundamental human rights entitled to protection against overbroad intrusion or regulation by government [such as defining marriage as merely the rights conferred by government] ... extends to . . . such basic civil liberties and rights not listed in the Constitution [as] the right to marry, establish a home and bring up children… (page 577, brackets and italics added).”

None of this, however, fully describes the patterns deception perpetrated on the public by the Supreme Court of California in “re Marriages.” The majority opinion authored by Judge George is deceptive when it refers to other cases of precedent on the importance of “family relationships.” The Chief Justice refers to cases of precedent written before 2003 as evidence that supports the importance of “family relationships” as defined by the court in 2005 and 2008. For instance, on page 54, Judge George notes that

“…subsequent California decisions discussing the nature of marriage and the right to marry have recognized repeatedly the linkage between marriage, establishing a home, and raising children in identifying civil marriage as the means available to an individual to establish, with a loved one of his or her choice, an officially recognized family relationship” (Italics added).

Domestic partnerships are not what the case he cites, DeBurgh v. DeBurgh (1952), was about at all. Continuing on Judge George stated,

“…for example, in explaining ‘the public interest in the institution of marriage’ (id. at p. 863), this court (in Deburgh…) stated: “The family is the basic unit of our society, the center of the personal affections that ennoble and enrich human life. It channels biological drives that might otherwise become socially destructive; it ensures the care and education of children in a stable environment; it establishes continuity from one generation to another; it nurtures and develops the individual initiative that distinguishes a free people. Since the family is the core of our society, the law seeks to foster and preserve marriage.” (Id. at pp. 863-864.)

In his citation of DeBurgh v. DeBurgh Chief Justice George makes it sound as though this court referred to marriage as a family relationship. It never did. In 1952 marriage was marriage and a family was a family. Additionally, in order to utilize this quote about domestic partnerships, the judge must assume first that marriage is not between a man and a woman. However, George blurs this very important distinction rather than obviate it. He does this by using the jargon concocted under his rule as Chief Justice.

Similarly, throughout the section in which he notes past decisions about marriage in order to catalog the importance and rights of marriage (53-66), he assumes that each right or benefit of marriage from old precedents can be assigned to any legalized relationship between two people. On page 66 the judge concluded,

“It is true, of course, that as an historical matter in this state marriage always has been limited to a union between a man and a woman. Hence, the foregoing thirteen pages of supposed evidence are entirely irrelevant. Tradition alone, however, generally has not been viewed as a sufficient justification for perpetuating, without examination, the restriction or denial of a fundamental constitutional right.”

The italicized words are my addition. These words should have been added by Judge George, all the more because he concludes that this was all the traffic of mere tradition. Moreover, his conclusion that all of the rights attributed to marriage were based on no more than tradition is itself misleading. The references were observations justices made in specific instances; they were not observations about historic tradition. Finally, although no evidence was presented that same sex couples gain any of the benefits mentioned by the authorities referred to, nor that the state has any interest at all in same sex unions, the court behaves as though it has listed thirteen pages of evidence proving both the interest of the state and the benefit to individuals of same sex unions. This is misleading and deceptive. The Court should plainly admit that it is rewriting the definition of marriage in a way it sees fit and cease attempting to persuade Californians that this has anything whatsoever to do with previous case law.

The court would lead us to believe that the references to families as the building blocks of society are directly related to the civil institutions designated by governments. The court would have us believe that a same sex couple is a building block of society, just as these famed jurists of the past declared was the case with married couples and their children. This equation is at least, open to discussion.

While we can conceive of marriages and children leading to societies and governments, we cannot see same sex unions leading to the existence of nations states. Indeed, the existence of children in a same sex union is, like a school, inconceivable without the good graces of the society at large. This is a matter for legislation, not for courts. The people of California are under no genuine constitutional compulsion to submit children who are wards of the state for adoption to same sex couples. In California the people have legislated that such adoption is acceptable. Considering the incompetence of state agencies in every aspect of public and private life, perhaps the wisdom of the people of California is to be applauded.

In Part III of “Supreme Deception: the Right to Deceive” the court’s explanation of privacy rights and same sex marriage will be probed.

Supreme Deception: “re Marriages” Twists the Meaning of Family, Part I

2008-07-24T10:02:00.000-07:00

A marriage is not a family. A family is comprised of parents and children. Here, from Dictionary.com:

“Family – 1. parents and their children, considered as a group, whether dwelling together or not. 2. the children of one person or one couple collectively: We want a large family. 3. the spouse and children of one person: We're taking the family on vacation next week…”

There are eleven definitions of family given on Dictionary.com. All of the definitions, even the idiomatic ones, explicitly include or figuratively imply children. In “re Marriages…” the California Supreme Court defines the union of same sex couples as a “family” relationship. It is by this euphemism that the Court names the congress of couples heterosexual and homosexual.

No matter how enlightened we are, none of us want our courtrooms filled with vivid descriptions of what takes place to consummate marriages or same sex relationships. However, could the court have picked a more deceptive title to describe the relationship that is the basis of a domestic partnership? From this relationship no family can ever, by nature, grow. Although this is deceptive, and although in all matters one tends to distrust this Court, if King George and the Supremes were to plead innocent to the charge of intentionally deceiving the public, they might be found “not guilty.” Too often it is the case that good and useful words become the jargon of legal decisions, so it is here.

All through its judicial history California has used the words marriage and family appropriately. For instance, here is a direct quote from a 1995 case cited in Judge George’s opinion:

“And in Warfield v. Peninsula Golf & Country Club (1995) 10 Cal.4th 594, in discussing the types of relationship that fall within the scope of the constitutionally protected right of intimate association (one component of our state constitutional right of privacy (id. at pp. 629-630)), we [Judge George himself is the we because, in his office as a Judge of the Supreme Court of California, he wrote the court’s opinion] explained that “the highly personal relationships that are sheltered by this constitutional guaranty are exemplified by ‘those that attend the creation and sustenance of a family — marriage . . . , childbirth . . . , the raising and education of children . . . and cohabitation with one’s relatives . . . [page 56].

The comment in brackets and the emboldened text added for clarification show that in 1995 the Supreme Court of California knew the difference between a marriage and a family. Marriages were part of the creation of a family. The raising and education of children were part of the sustenance of a family. In 1996 Supreme Court Judge Ronald George was elevated to Chief Justice.

However, by 2003 that the legislature of California introduced confused language into the jurisprudence of the state with this uncodified statement of legislative intent:

"This act is intended to help California move closer to fulfilling the promises of inalienable rights, liberty, and equality contained in Sections 1 and 7 of Article 1 of the California Constitution by providing all caring and committed couples, regardless of their gender or sexual orientation, the opportunity to obtain essential rights, protections, and benefits and to assume corresponding responsibilities, obligations, and duties and to further the state’s interests in promoting stable and lasting family relationships, and protecting Californians from the economic and social consequences of abandonment, separation, the death of loved ones, and other life crises” [Stats. 2003, ch. 421, § 1, subd. (a) excerpted from page 38 “re Marriages…”].

It is unclear from the immediate context what the legislature intended by “in promoting lasting family relationships…” This may refer to the resolution of problems same sex couples had gaining access to loved ones during hospital stays. The domestic partnership act made one’s partner [Party A] a legal member of party B’s extended family. In that way, despite objections by Party A’s immediate family, Party B had full access and legal authority over Party A’s medical care.

By 2005 the change of language from confused wording to deceptive jargon was completely effected:

As we (Judge George in his office of the Chief Justice of Supreme Court of California in its majority opinion) explained in Koebke, supra, 36 Cal.4th 824, 843: “[T]he decision . . . to enter into a domestic partnership is more than a change in the legal status of individuals . . . . [T]he consequence[] of the decision is the creation of a new family unit with all of its implications in terms of personal commitment as well as legal rights and obligations” (excerpted from page 46 of “re Marriages…”).

In this quote from the 2005 majority opinion in Kobke vs. Bernardo Club Country Club, the court plainly uses the terms family unit and domestic partnership synonymously. What is new in the court’s jargon in “re Marriages” is the wider use of “family relationship” to mean marriage and domestic partnership. It is in this 2008 opinion that the Court has simply decided to dispense with dictionaries, histories, statutes, or linguistic contexts of any type. Whether or not members of this court participated in making this deceptive change in the jargon for the express purpose of deception in “re Marriages” is an open question. The prior use of the unclear language of legislative intent in the 2003 to express the Court’s opinion in 2005 can be argued as an authentic representation of the liberal intent of the California Legislature.

In the evolution of the jargon of the California judiciary, it becomes plain that marriage has been banned by the Court. Marriages no longer lead to families; they are families. Like domestic partnerships, the consummating act of marriage is not required, nor is it recognized. Like marriages, families too are now no more or no less than what some court decides they are. Families in California are no longer recognized as realities preceding governments. If everything a family legally is, depends on the good graces of legislatures and courts, what privacy rights are left to protect?

Of course the change of the legal status of marriage changes the legal status of a family. Even as early as 2003 the extraordinary changes in domestic partnership law unconstitutionally impacted the rights of family. Beginning in 2003 “Party B” gained full rights with the parent of lineage to the children of “Party A”. This was not based on an expressed last will and testament of "Party A" that would then be contested in a family court. The simple act of registering as a domestic partner deprived the bloodline parent, the child’s true family, of elements of its legal family rights.

This, however, does not conclude the list deceptions perpetrated on the public by the Supreme Court of California. In “re Marriages” the patterns of deception and their repercussions are discussed in “Supreme Deception: re Marriages Twists Family, Part II.”

Marriage is Not a School

2008-07-18T19:25:00.000-07:00

So argues the majority of justices in the ruling of the Supreme Court of California on pages 103-104 in “re: Marriages…”:

“In this regard, plaintiffs (those same sex couples seeking marriage licenses) persuasively invoke by analogy the decisions of the United States Supreme Court finding inadequate a state’s creation of a separate law school for Black students rather than granting such students access to the University of Texas Law School (Sweatt v. Painter (1950) 339 U.S. 629, 634),67 and a state’s founding of a separate military program for women rather than admitting women to the Virginia Military Institute (United States v. Virginia (1996) 518 U.S. 515, 555-556).”

Marriage is an education, but it is not a school. Unlike the equal access to an education, the only equal access to marriage is that which is duly clothed in commitment and free choice. Schools on the other hand, are primarily about the access men and women have to the opportunities provided by society at large. This Court errs grievously by comparing what a marriage is primarily to what a school, a public school no less, primarily, is.

Schools are primarily social in function. Teaching may be more fundamental to human life in the context of a family, but a school by definition is social. Marriage, in contrast, is a very specific and complete access to another person based solely on the commitments and choices of those two individuals. One can easily conceive of marriage as a fundamental building block of society and, therefore, as a liberty, prior to society and its governments. This is impossible in envisioning a school, especially a public school. The caricature of marriage that emerges from the Court’s attempt to draw parallels between these two unlike institutions is grotesque and offensive. The Court again degrades all humanity by arguing that what we are as people exists, like a school, primarily because of the good graces of government.

What is absurd on its face reveals greater errors in its specifics. The Court also erred in the arcane reasoning it based upon its grotesque analogy. Here is more from pages 103-104:

“As plaintiffs maintain, these high court decisions (Texas Law School and Virginia Military School) demonstrate that even when the state grants ostensibly equal benefits to a previously excluded class (a class that had been denied access, not because of their abilities, but a history of prejudice) through the creation of a new institution, the intangible symbolic differences that remain often are constitutionally significant.”

The two high court decisions alluded to are fine, but their analogy to marriage is ridiculous. No one can blame the plaintiffs for arguing it; that’s what a decent lawyer is supposed to do. However, the idea that the Supreme Court accepted this analogy is both hilarious and tragic. It’s tragic because it is a true reflection of what we have become as a society. Nothing in our public life matters. Anything goes. Judges should know better, but who really cares? Here are the differences that make the analogy of marriages and schools, let’s just say, inadequate:

The ability to marry comes from what we are as people, male and female, more than it is about who we are as people. This is also true of other essential human liberties. Because of what we are as people, we can speak. What we say determines “who we are,” or what kind of person we are. We also have the freedom to worship. This is part of the nature of what we are as people. Who we worship determines who we are as people. The content of one’s character doesn’t enter into the ability to have access to marriage, or more specifically, the access which is marriage.

Unlike the analogies at Virginia Tech., and, we hope, to the public high school at issue in Brown vs. The Board of Education, meeting certain qualifications (passing examinations, excelling at one’s coursework) has nothing to do with the right to marry. Hence, when the Court says these two people meet the qualifications we (the Court) set as those necessary to be “married” (they are of the correct age, they can form informed consent, etc), they cannot say that, therefore, these two must have equal access to marriage. Two people cannot merit marriage. Hence, what one merits is not being withheld by society because of prejudice. How two people behave once they are married determines whether or not the marriage has merit. If this is a civil rights case, it is not a civil rights case that is related to the decisions in Brown vs. the Board of Education, Virginia Tech., or the Texas Law School. Marriage is not a school.

Indeed, if it is a civil rights case, then it is far more analogous to the equal access granted or denied women, as women. Oddly, this is the analogy the Court, in footnote 65, decided did not merit consideration.

“For example, the establishment and maintenance of separate women’s collegiate athletic teams to address the long-standing discrimination against women in the allocation of athletic resources has been found to be constitutionally valid. (See, e.g., O’Connor v. Board of Education of School Dist…”

In these cases, the discussion came down not to an unwillingness to recognize the abilities of women to excel in sports. These cases weren’t about denying women the access that they merited simply because of a prejudice against gender itself. All agreed that merit existed and access was deserved. Instead, the issues in these cases came down to problems of access posed by the problems that exist by virtue of what we are as men and women. In civil rights cases of this type, merit and prejudice are not the issue. Instead, we are nonetheless confronted by what we are as people, male and female. Any disregard of who we are as people would have resulted, in these instances, in an injustice to all.

Same sex marriage is not a civil rights issue relating to race, since homosexuality is not a race. Same sex marriage is not a civil rights issue related to religion because it is not a religion. Nor is same sex marriage a civil rights case based on gender for homosexuality is not gender specific. However, if same sex marriage is a civil rights issue, there are cases of resolving inequity in access to society’s benefits that arise for other reasons. However, bringing these analogies up might be offensive to some. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court of California erred: marriage is not a school.

Why Log Cabin Republicans Should Vote "yes" on Proposition 8

2008-07-16T14:35:00.000-07:00

A recent, articulate, and well thought through article by George Stienburg (July 12) argues that Proposition 8, the California amendment initiative saying that marriage is between a man and a woman, will not succeed on the November ballot. In his article "Why Prop. 8 is a losing proposition," Stienburg explains that voting against "Gay Marriage" rather than voting for "Marriage" will cause nice people to vote "no" on Proposition 8. He also notes a number of other disadvantages that Proposition 8 faces in November, including the pull of the general election on the numbers of people who show up.

Mr. Stienburg may have miscalculated. Many originally argued that Proposition 22 was an unnecessary measure. Although they may have been correct because California law already makes plain that marriage is between a man and a woman, the willingness to overturn a measure passed by a vast majority of California voters has exposed the California Supreme Court. This court is now widely seen as tyrannical and lawless. It knows no boundaries; it is callus to the very human institutions and rights it is sworn to uphold. The electorate may not be as religious about the pontifications of the left as many hope. Despite their feelings about, in general, being good sports, despite their willingness to "live and let live," they will surely see that this court has gone too far. It is the electorate themselves who are now the oppressed. What must the people of California do to have a voice in the laws of their own state? Perhaps they know now... I imagine they have an idea.

However, I'll bet the Supreme Court of California know how exposed it is as well. Will they willingly let the unwashed mass of the tax-paying (and non-taxpaying) citizens tell them what to do? I doubt it. If there is one more honest person on that court, all will be well. We'll be able to test Stienberg's theories, and we will see.

However, if Log Cabin Republicans have any pull with this court, it would be well advised to support Proposition 8 making it on the ballot. An appeal to the U.S. Courts on denial of due process might be interesting. Likewise, Log Cabin Republicans would do well to tell all the courts that the laws of this land are more important to them than single issues. They should vote for Proposition and campaign for and with all who support the ballot amendment. The laws of our land protect us all. The will of court, like the will of all bullies and tyrants, is unpredictable, violent and severe. Send a message Log Cabin Republicans. Tell Californians, citizens who have supported diversity with generous civil union laws, and tell every American that you are the real deal. Join us in keeping the theocracy of the golden gavel and the pontifications of the priests of "fairness" from rewriting our constitution and every other aspect of our laws.

“Bitter” Americans Stick to Their Guns in Kern California

2008-07-11T12:00:00.000-07:00

On June 10, 2008, just days before the days of illegal “marriages” in California, the Kern County board of supervisors, citing their desire to cling to their religious beliefs, ceased all ceremonies solemnizing civil marriages in that county. Four weeks later, on July 8, 2008, despite already exposing the County to a deluge of lawsuits presided over by an antagonistic monkey court, this “bitter” California county felt that they had not yet done enough. To do more to rebel against California’s Supreme tyranny, the Kern County Board of Supervisors considered a motion to begin issuing legal marriage licenses, licenses that said “husband” and “wife” and that could not be used by couples that needed to be subtitled “Party A” and “Party B.” The Kern County Board of Supervisors eventually backed down, but not from cowardice, but from courage and integrity, the qualities sometimes named bitterness by the truly enlightened.

Kern County had been presented with a detailed legal briefing explaining that for a marriage to be legal it must comport with the law. The United States Justice Foundation (USJF) briefing concluded that Proposition 22 was always an unnecessary gesture and that the abundance of California statutes that say marriage takes place between a man and a woman still have legal status. For same sex “marriages” to be legal, all these statutes must be rewritten by California’s legislature. Additionally, pointed out the brief, the Kern County Board of Supervisors is beholden by oath to uphold the law, not the rulings of any Court, or the illegal actions of the executive branch. At Wednesday night’s meeting “bitter” American after “bitter” American encouraged the Board of Supervisors to issue the new Kern County marriage licenses. There are reports form sources close to the board that several of the Commission’s “Party A’s” also pleaded that the board move forward. Additionally, several studies had demonstrated that a flood of tax and tourist revenue would have been spawned by the crowds of Californians that were willing to come to Kern. Studies estimated that thousands of Californians would be willing to travel to Kern for the sake of keeping the sentimental “husband” and “wife” title part of their marriage.

But it was not to be. In the end nothing could move this “bitter” County Board; their personal integrity could not be so easily swayed. Legally, Kern County does not have the authority to distribute marriage licenses. Marriage licenses can only be issued by the State of California. It did not matter that the Mayor of San Francisco issued illegal licenses and was rewarded by the Supreme Court of California with a sweeping rewrite of California law and an unconstitutional ruling in his support. Not even the prosperity of the unjust would shake this Board’s “bitterness.” Their integrity was not to be undermined by examples from this world. May Pennsylvania’s Americans prove half as “bitter” when their time comes, and, yes sir, it’s on its way.

Supervisor Rubio proposed a revisiting of the ban on civil ceremonies citing the 2,000 civil marriages performed last year, many for minority couples. On this, the board again demurred, still granting licenses, but not ceremonies to petitioners. If I had just a little more bitterness, or a little more forsight, I would have urged this bitter board to cease the dispensation of all illegal marriage licenses beginning in August. Let it be what it is in truth. The California Supreme Court has, somehow, with an unconstitutional process, tyrannically banned all lawful marriages in California. I urge all bitter Americans in California civil government to let it be what it truly is. If you don’t have the power to issue legal certificates, at least refuse to issue illegal ones.

California Supreme Justice: The word marriage not important to the ‘right to marry.’

2008-07-07T17:29:00.000-07:00

So says California's Supreme Justice:

“Whether or not the name “marriage,” in the abstract, is considered a core element of the state constitutional right to marry... (p. 81)”

Is there any reason such clear thinking ought not to be remembered in a recall election as soon as possible?

To this court marriage is nothing more than the rights conferred upon it by the state. Marriage, that is, the right to join in marriage, has a special recognition in law simply because marriage is prior to and independent of any right any state can confer upon it. The state must recognize marriage as it exists independently of government and its ideologies. Why? Because, like freedom of religion and freedom of speech, marriage is a constitutional liberty and an inalienable right of free people. To diminish the full recognition of marriage in our laws is to diminish the recognition of who we are as people, a free people.

Of course the court was lured into revealing its deep-seated lunacy by what sounds (according to the court’s paraphrasing) like an equally loony argument by the California attorney general:

"We have no occasion in this case to determine whether the state constitutional right to marry necessarily affords all couples the constitutional right to require the state to designate their official family relationship a “marriage,” or whether, as the Attorney General suggests, the Legislature would not violate a couple’s constitutional right to marry if — perhaps in order to emphasize and clarify that this civil institution is distinct from the religious institution of marriage — it were to assign a name other than marriage as the official designation of the family relationship for all couples. (p.80)

As this court has proven, names, indeed words themselves, are meaningless when, left to the divine wisdom of judges and lawyers, they are taken out of their legislative history, civil rights context, and timeless reality. Call it what you want, marriage is a compact, a commitment between two people (two people who can marry) in which the natural realities of who we are as human beings, male and female together, are appropriately cherished and exalted. Marriages can be good or bad. People in them will be good or bad as husbands and wives. Nonetheless, it is the ability to join in marriage that is at the core of the right to marry. This is the core of every other right that governments rightly or wrongly conferred or witheld in their recognition or ignorance of married life.

Marriage is not injured at all by history’s discoveries and failures in regard to the meaning of that union. However, societies have revealed themselves in their virtues or their failings by their regard for marriage. How are we doing? What does this travesty say about us as a people?

Dehumanizing Marriage

2008-07-02T07:03:00.000-07:00

Anytime a basic civil right, an inalienable right, whether enumerated in the U.S. Constitutional documents or not, is violated by a government, that government is dehumanized, the citizens participating in that government are dehumanized, and, of course, those having their constitutional liberties abridged are dehumanized. Consider the cases in Nazi Germany in which Jews were made to wear a yellow Star of David. The Nazi’s ignored the basic and self-evident equality among ethnicities in order to single Jews out as less human, deprived of the dignity of equality. The most devious of the Nazi aims, however, had to do with dehumanizing the populace of Germany itself. By refusing to stand up for their fellow humans, the people of German civil society became callus towards the Jews. Ultimately, the Nazi’s themselves became more and more unfeeling towards human life and the plight of their fellow man. Of course the dehumanization of the German Jew was exponentially quickened because essential religious freedom to worship was likewise stigmatized. Two sets of essential civil liberties were abridged by the Nazis at once. Yet, could the Jews have claimed to have been harmed by wearing the yellow star of David? Shouldn’t they have been proud of their religious background? The wearing of the star was the first of a continuing series of Nazi violations of civil liberties, but the dehumanization of the Jew was already complete before the clear harm began. This prima facia violation of human rights was the harm.

Likewise, no matter how one wants to interpret the odd wording of the 2nd amendment of the United States Constitution, humans in a state of nature, without government, have the right to take up arms and defend themselves. Although the choice is intimidating to some, it must be; for that is the essence of self defense. The right to defend oneself is a severe right that elevates all human life by its severity. The choice to bear arms or not to bear arms defines human character, but it is still a fundamental free choice, a liberty that is part of being human. Although, as the U. S. Supreme Court found, to protect the general welfare and to secure the blessings of all our liberties, the state, as authorized by the people, has the right to limit the liberty to bear arms, court or no court, court or no court the right to self defense must not be compromised.

The District of Columbia completely abridged the right to bear arms and the right of self defense thereby. Law abiding citizens, then, are completely reduced to dependency on government for their defense. They become no more than serfs of the Dark Ages dependent on their feudal lords for defense. They become the chattel of the state, the property of the state. Their humanity is compromised. The state too is dehumanized, for it becomes like a feudal lord, above those whom it exists solely to serve. Yet, how are those that were refused the right to bear arms for many years in DC harmed? There is only slight evidence of that harm. The NRA often points to the rise in violent crime in areas in which the right to bear arms is constrained severely. This may be simply the obvious result of the criminals being emboldened by an unarmed populace. However, it may be that the dehumanizing effects of the abridgement of the right to bear arms emboldens those who contemplate violence.

How do these tests of the abridgement of constitutional liberties relate to the recent ban on marriage in California? In both of these instances, laws abridging human rights have plainly existed without any clear harm initially being found. Both instances are also examples of the truth that any abridgement of a civil liberty dehumanizes the state and its citizens. In California there are no more marriages. Men and women cannot receive a marriage license that says “husband” and “wife”; instead, they become “Party A” and “Party B.” This language is plainly dehumanizing, and it is not the happenstance of nomenclature. The ruling of the Supreme Court of California and its accompanying opinion wreaks with violations of civil liberties and a callus, inhuman refusal to acknowledge the very essence of what it means for a man and woman to join in matrimony.

California’s Court has reduced marriage to only that over which the state has authority. It has looked at all the clothing of marriage and called these changing incidentals ‘marriage’; but the Court has ruled to ignore that unchanging reality of marriage that forms the basis of marriage as a constitutional liberty. In every case, a constitutional liberty is such because its reality is greater than man; its power is independent of governments. It is because of such fundamental liberties’ superiority and priority to government that good governments reside in harmony with these native, inborn rights natural to humanity. Good government perceives that these greater, natural, freedoms are the very blessings of liberty that governments exist, solely, to secure. Marriage is such a liberty because it is more than contracts and commitments conferred by the state. The duties of marriage proceed from the joining in marriage, not from government. This joining for which men and woman were designed (whether by natural selection of by the hand of the God of Nature Himself), this is the very essence of marriage the State refuses to acknowledge. Refusing the title of “husband” and “wife” is not the happenstance of nomenclature; it is evidence that the State of California refuses to acknowledge the essence of marriage, the joining in marriage, that is central to marriage as a constitutional liberty.

Because the state of California, through the voice of its Supreme Pontiffs, manifestly recognizes only those social rights involved in marriage, and because the essence of my marriage, my ‘right to marry,’ to join with my partner as husband and wife, is no longer recognized by California law, my constitutional right to marry is completely abridged. It is in the essence of humanity, male and female, to be able to freely join in marriage. California has a right to regulate marriage, even as the District of Columbia has a right to regulate the right to bear arms, but California does not have the right to legislate marriage out of existence, to deny its reality, and to ignore its core humanity. To designate marriage as a simple set of rights society chooses by tradition to assign dehumanizes us all.

A Genius Lives!

2008-07-01T15:29:00.000-07:00

I am rendered speechless by this brilliant analysis:

Gay marriage: not legal in California...or anywhere!
"Gay Marriage" Is Not Legal in California or Anywhere Else in the United States!

by Gregg Jackson

Johnathan Rauch begins his article, "Why Gay Marriage is Good For America," (Opinion Page June 21, 2008) declaring: "By order of its state Supreme Court, California began legally marrying same-sex couples this week."

He is 100% incorrect. The fact of the matter is that "gay marriage" is not legal in California because the initiative marriage statute ratified by we, the sovereign people of California in 2000 (Prop 22), enshrined into statutory law that "only marriage between a man and a woman is valid and recognized in California," has not been changed. It remains the "law of the land."

The California Supreme Court merely issued a declaratory opinion that limiting marriage to one man and one woman was "discriminatory" and "unconstitutional." The court however, issued no valid or enforceable court order, as Mr. Rauch incorrectly asserts. Under the California Constitution, only the people can revoke or amend an initiative statute. None of the other three branches can revoke or amend one in any way unless the initiative measure itself so provides. Prop 22 contains no such provision as Judge Baxter clearly affirmed in his dissent.

The marriage certificates which have been illegally altered and issued in California with Governor Schwarzenegger's authorization remain as null and void as those illegally altered and issued by former Governor Romney in Massachusetts when he, like Governor Schwarzenegger, speciously claimed that the "court legalized same sex marriage" and that he was merely "enforcing the law."

Whether or not "gay marriage" is "good" for America is worthy of further debate.

As to whether it is "legal" in California, Massachusetts, or anywhere else in America is not.

Gregg Jackson

Los Angeles, CA

Gregg Jackson is the author of "Conservative Comebacks to Liberal Lies: Issue by Issue Responses to the Most Common Claims of the Left from A to Z" and talk radio show host on WRKO in Boston.

http://lgstarr.blogspot.com/2008/06/gay-marriage-not-legal-in-californiaor.html

Courts Ban Marriage in California

2008-06-28T18:05:00.000-07:00

California will no longer recognize marriage. No man or woman may become "husband" and "wife" from July of 2008 until this tyranny is overthrown. I'd checked this web site more than once:

http://www.cdph.ca.gov/HealthInfo/news/Pages/Update05-08.aspx.

This link leads to copies of the new marriage certificates, now the only marriage certificates, issued in California.

Here are the specific links:
http://www.cdph.ca.gov/HealthInfo/news/Documents/Sample%20VS24C%20(6-08).pdf
http://www.cdph.ca.gov/HealthInfo/news/Documents/Sample%20VS123%20(6-08).pdf
http://www.cdph.ca.gov/HealthInfo/news/Documents/Sample%20VS%20117%20(6-08).pdf
http://www.cdph.ca.gov/HealthInfo/news/Documents/Sample%20V116%20(6-08).pdf
http://www.cdph.ca.gov/HealthInfo/news/Documents/Sample%20V115%20(6-08).pdf
http://www.cdph.ca.gov/HealthInfo/news/Documents/08-07%20Updated%20Marriage%20Forms%20ACL.pdf

I had to return several times because I continued to believe I misunderstood what I was reading. However, sadly, what I read the first time bore the test of further scrutiny. I decided that since I needed to view the site more than once, I ought to have the link available for those who suffer the same disbelief.

It is an interesting dishonesty. The government agencies were rearranged and then a new set of rules set in motion. No legislature was consulted. No new law was written. Apparently, one would have to guess, the Supremes, who spelled none of this out in their opinion, simply approved the proceedings. Otherwise, who has the authority to make this change? In truth the courts do not. This should be a constitutional quagmire.

Note #4 On the California Court's Opinion re Marriage

2008-06-27T10:46:00.000-07:00

Madness as a Contagion

If nothing else, the California Court's opinion "re Marriage..." is an important piece of literature for the study of group delusion. As Note #3 below decried, the Supreme Court's 'logic' relating to the semantics of Proposition 22 seemed to have more in common with the ravings of an alcoholic than a legal dissertation. Finally, about page 32, we get this grudging admission about Proposition 22:

"Although we agree with plaintiffs that the principal motivating factor underlying Proposition 22 appears to have been to ensure that California would not recognize marriages of same-sex couples that might be validly entered into in another jurisdiction, we conclude the statutory provision proposed by this initiative measure and adopted by the voters — which, we note again, provides in full that “[o]nly marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California” — cannot properly be interpreted to apply only to marriages performed outside of California. "

At last, we think, the Court's delirium tremors are over; no more visions of pink elephants are forth coming. Not so... not exactly... Three pages later, on page 35, this court is still apologizing to the word twisters for not going along with their delusions in this instance. Its majority writes:

"Accordingly, it is appropriate to interpret the limitations imposed by section 308.5 as applicable to marriages performed in California as well as to out-of-state marriages, in order to avoid the serious federal constitutional questions that would be posed by a contrary interpretation."

To be fair, the legislature the people of California elected has twice tried to legislate same sex marriages in California, and, twice, this has been vetoed by the governor of California. It is likely, and important for future scientific study, that constant discussion and unimaginably comic interludes between such seriously stuffed shirts, might easily have affected the California Supremes. In fairness to all madmen, all madmen should be recalled from public office. At least in the case of the governor of California, his lunacy, as expressed below, will pass from the government by term limit. If the court’s paraphrase of the governor can be trusted, here is clear evidence of the communication of lunacy, not by microbe, but by the written word:

"In contrast to the position advanced by the Proposition 22 Legal Defense Fund and the Campaign, the Attorney General and the Governor recognize that the California Constitution does not define or limit the marriage relationship to a union of a man and a woman. (108)"

If in Perez the California Supreme Court found a 'right to marry' in the State Constitution, and if, as the statutes and history of this word in California make plain, marriage is a gender-positive institution, not a gender neutral one, then it is equally plain that any redefinition of marriage making it gender-neutral defrauds the people of California of the fundamental right to marry found in its constitution. Again, it must be of interest to those who study mass hallucinations and other such phenomenon, that the madness of the executive and legislative branches have contributed to the Court’s delusions. It is the kooky carryings on of these representatives of the people that provides the excuse for the court to run on in maniacal proclamations of its sole power. The Court’s opinion, with the passion of Dr. Frankenstein himself, lifts its voice to the heavens, yelling over and over again words about irrelevant civil rights cases that completely contrast to it own findings earlier in its own opinion:

“Although, as noted at the outset of this opinion (ante, at pp. 4-5), we agree with the Attorney General and the Governor that the separation-of-powers doctrine precludes a court from ‘redefining’ marriage on the basis of the court’s view that public policy or the public interest would be better served by such a revision, we disagree with the Attorney General and the Governor to the extent they suggest that the traditional or long-standing nature of the current statutory definition of marriage exempts the statutory provisions embodying that definition from the constraints imposed by the California Constitution, or that the separation-of-powers doctrine precludes a court from determining that constitutional question… (109).”

What separation of powers doctrine? Who cares? The court quotes the governor’s opinion about the Constitution, not case law, not precedent, not the constitution itself, as the basis for doing whatever the court feels like doing. Since this recitation of its own power to do whatsoever it wants in the name of civil rights goes on page after page after page, it is plain that this court’s madness is a communicable disease. Mobs inspire one another with paranoid delusions until they do violence. So this mobbed up court has been inspired to run riot, tearing our constitution to pieces and depriving Californians of its civil rights.

Note 3 On the California Supreme Court’s Opinion

2008-06-24T06:48:00.000-07:00

The Ballot initiative embodied in Proposition 22 was almost as weak in its language as the opinion rendered on marriage in California by the appellate court (Note 2). Section 308.5, the initiative statute submitted to the voters of California as Proposition 22 at the March 7, 2000 reads: “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” The voters of California and the authors of Proposition 22, however, have some excuse. The statue was designed not only to restate the definition of marriage for California, but also to repudiate the “so-called” marriages enacted in the state of Massachusetts. Moreover, no one wants to write definitions of marriage into the law that are so precise that when our sixth grade son proclaims the Constitution in the classroom we are sadly obliged to wash his mouth out with soap. Finally, the elegant simplicity of Prop. 22's language is exactly what is needed in a ballot initiative.

Nevertheless, it is important that we don’t encourage the madmen in their delusions. There is no such thing as a marriage that does not take place between a man and a woman, and California law, sadly, needs to say just this. How ridiculous that we must be drawn into such insanity by our highest state courts. How degrading that we must explain again and again the basic meanings of words to those who are supposed to exercise jurisprudence. It is a tragic day in America that we have come to such complete barbarism in the midst of a land of plenty and of blessing. Perhaps a simpler language might be best fitted to the people’s task as warders, unpaid warders, of the State Sanitarium: “Marriage only exists between a man and a woman, and California does not recognize the 'so-called' marriages enacted elswere.”

To add insult to insanity, California’s highest court had the temerity to go on record and argue that the voters of California had no idea what they were voting for. The court argues that it is rational to construe the language of Proposition 22 to apply only to marriages outside California (page 28, paragraph 1). There is abundant evidence of Proposition 22’s intent. The intent of the law, not the ability of men to defraud the voters by twisting words, is the exact purview of courts. To actually take the side of the word twisters, charlatans, and hucksters on our tax dime, to wrest this statute out of its plain context while pretending to wear the garb of justice is either the babblings of madmen, the height of arrogance, or outright criminal malfeasance.

Note #2 On the California Supreme Court's Opinion: the Appellate Court

2008-06-21T10:05:00.000-07:00

The California Appellate Court did not seem to be forceful enough in the language of its opinion. This, in turn, left the Supreme Court a little wiggle room in which to continue its legal chicanery and "gottcha" word games. Here, from page 51 of the opinion (with my addendums and notes in parentheses):

“…the constitutional right to marry under the California Constitution properly should be interpreted to afford only a right to marry a person of the opposite sex,”

(These words ought to have been included for plainness: 'The constitutional right to marry, discovered by case law under the California Constitution, was surely in the mind of the framing court, a right for those who can marry to marry. There is no injury to the plaintiffs because they do not have the ability to be married to each other. Hence, their ability to marry a member of the opposite sex remains without offense...')

"...and that the constitutional right that plaintiffs actually are asking the court to recognize is a constitutional 'right to same-sex marriage.'”

(These words ought to have been redacted for accuracy: "same sex marriage". Instead, these words might have been more prudent: 'right to an imaginary kind of marriage that does not exist. Since there is no such thing, the plaintiffs might just as well complain that the Constitution of California has unjustly restricted their ability to freely speak with griffins.')

“In the absence of any historical or precedential support for such a right in this state, the Court of Appeal determined that plaintiffs’ claim of the denial of a fundamental right under the California Constitution must be rejected."

On this last paragraph, the appellate court cannot be undermined. However, they had already given the court some unintended leverage for its deceitful word game:

“— the (Supreme) court (in Perez -- about interracial marriage) did not characterize the constitutional right that the plaintiffs in that case sought to obtain as “a right to interracial marriage” and did not dismiss the plaintiffs’ constitutional challenge on the ground that such marriages never had been permitted in California.”

This is true, but the court in Perez did not have to look far for the definition of marriage. This was found in the entire history of the civilized world. In fact, no state, except those in these United States, may have ever been so backwards as to refuse the right to marry on the basis of race. The 1944 Perez decision was correct because the right to pursue happiness and liberty was not limited by race. The Court could find this right in Perez because a. Jefferson had slipped this right into the U.S. Constitution while those who ratified it were too stupid to notice or too greedy to care, and b. this fundamental human right was ordained by God for all people (The other rights unremunerated by the founding documents include all such God given abilities; however, it is the right of the people to convene conventions to describe these yet unremunerated rights, for they have not been relinquished by the people of These United States to the Federal Courts or to the Supreme Courts. These unremunerated rights may only be set forth in a constitutional convention.).

In this case the rights are not limited by race, by gender, or by religion. In fact, the “marriage” gay rights activists envision are limited because of the inability of same sex couples to enter into marriage. The court will seek to redefine marriage to seek an offense that can only be remedied by a redefinition of marriage.

Note #1 on California's Supreme Court's Decision

2008-06-18T18:18:00.001-07:00

Here is where the majority opinion takes up its argument:

“First, we must determine the nature and scope of the “right to marry” — a right that past cases establish as one of the fundamental constitutional rights embodied in the California Constitution…” (page 5, 2nd paragraph)..

The ‘right to marry’ is a phrase that does not exist in any way, shape or form in the California Constitution. It is a right that other judges have read into the constitution. This is what the court's opinion is saying when it says, "a right that past cases establish..."

The phrase “fundamental right to marriage” does not sound terribly suspect, even removed from its specific historic context. The historic context of course is that Jefferson put words in the United States Constitution that he knew the current Americans were not living up to. Patriotically, and with great dignity, California put these same words, with some cool addendums, into its constitution. Years later, a wise judge pointed out the trick Jefferson had played on his fellow Americans and, with as much force as the court could muster, ordered his fellow Americans to live up to their own words. Californians could not make interracial marriage illegal without a significant degree of hypocrisy.

Certainly, there are fundamental rights such as the right to bear arms and the right to free speech that come with limitations relative to age and background. The idea of a right to marry certainly seems consistent with the right to the pursuit of happiness that is the staple of the American Constitution. Likewise, California’s declaration of rights, like the United States Constitution, suggests that it may not have enumerated all of the inalienable rights, and it also includes the right to pursue happiness: “All people are by nature free and independent and have inalienable rights. Among these are enjoying and defending life and liberty, acquiring, possessing, and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining safety, happiness, and privacy.” Still, wresting anything from its context is suspect. One has the fundamental right to marry if one is not already married, if the spouse is not coerced in some manner, if one is not a minor and so on. Nonetheless, who can argue that governments should not refuse to allow consenting adults marry?

The problem is not that same sex couples cannot marry; they can marry any member of the opposite sex they choose. That’s not the issue. Ironically, as becomes evidenced by the later, finer print of this document, the court must “expand” (according to the court) the “definition” of marriage to produce a. an offense and b. a union that same sex couples can enter into. With amazing, unwitting irony, the court has chosen to site the exact decision that makes its own ruling unconstitutional, for the court does not expand the definition of marriage at all. Instead, it radically limits marriage by proclaiming all marriages civil unions. There are no more husbands. There are no more wives. There will be no more fatherhood, and motherhood is banished. By defining marriage as something marriage isn’t, this court has denied the very “right to marry” that was declared to exist in the California by a former court.

The Media is Wrong Again: California Same Sex Marriages are Not Legal

2008-06-17T06:54:00.000-07:00

According to Dictionary.com, for something to be legal it must be “permitted by law; lawful.” There is no law sanctioning same sex marriage in California there is only a court ruling. The courts may not make law; hence, the marriages in California cannot be said to be legal. On the surface it may seem that since the California Supremes struck down the law saying that marriage in California is only between a man and a woman, that, hence, the same sex marriages in California cannot be said to be illegal either. Still the media widely reports that same sex marriage is now legal in California. It is not. Court ordered extra legal “marriages” are now being officiated by California government representatives. That’s a little more accurate. How accurate can anyone be when the foundation of law in California, its constitution, has been ripped to shreds by the very body that has sworn to uphold it?

Interesting Things From California's Constitution

2008-06-08T20:33:00.000-07:00

Interesting Things from California's Constitution

From the Preamble to California's constitution:

“We, the People of the State of California, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom, in order to secure and perpetuate its blessings, do establish this Constitution.”

The mention of God in political life is not the establishment of religion. It is the free exercise thereof. The lawyers and the courts know this, but they are deliberately ignoring our constitutional rights.

From the California Constitution, Article 2, Section 1.

“All political power is inherent in the people. Government is instituted for their protection, security, and benefit, and they have the right to alter or reform it when the public good may require.”

The authors of this constitution were serious about this article. This is not just the political double-talk to which we in the twenty-first century have grown far too accustomed. While the process by way of which the legislature may amend the constitution is every bit as complex as that of the United States Constitution, the ability of the people to amend the constitution is quite simple. A referendum with a reasonable, yet serious number of signatures is presented to the secretary of state, and a simple majority decided the issue. No matter who we elect to write laws for our nation, corruption abounds, and, rather than serving as the referees, Jefferson envisioned, the courts have behaved so abominably that we need to enact an instant replay, via a California style referendum procedure to protect ourselves from judges who are betting on the games.

Of course there is a down side to this. The majorities in a great number of these United States would have, historically, had the potential to write some horrid amendments into their constitution. However, in retrospect one can only wonder whether or not the open debate leading up to some of those amendments might have gone farther to heal the wounds of racism in America than the courts intjecting themselves into the situation ever did. When the founding fathers authored the constitution, democracy was new and terrifying. The wealthy were terrified that the poor would take their properties by way of the vote. It is sad how very correct they have often proven to be.

Nonetheless, the notion of setting the legislature and courts as the arbiter’s of mob rage has not worked well in the last fifty years. If the abuse of states rights led to the Civil War and the increase of nationalism, it is appropriate that the courts' abuse of their authority should result in a return of authority to the people of these United States. While an amendment to the constitution defining marriage (again), or one declaring the right to bear arms (again), or another declaring plainly that majorities in every community have the right to proudly exercise their religion while they meet in free and lawful assemblies: graduation, school athletic events, and town counsel meetings might all be hard to gather a two thirds majority for; on the other hand, it might be difficult to persuade the people of the United States that we ought not to amend the constitution of the United States to include an initiative, referendum and recall procedure like California’s. How do the pandering politicians try to explain that we are to incapable of judgment to be trusted with this right?

Then at least we can recall judges that overstep their bounds and pass amendments to clarify their wicked imposition on American society.

Jefferson on Natural Rights as Created by Nature's God

2008-06-07T14:33:00.000-07:00

What did the founding fathers mean by the separation of church and state? Read it for yourself from Thomas Jefferson’s own lips. I have paraphrased in places and added the convenience of modern bullets. Of course I cannot help annotating and exclaiming.

The Virginia Act For Establishing Religious Freedom Thomas Jefferson, 1786

Well aware that Almighty God hath created the mind free; (and:)

that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burdens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of our religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do;
that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible (opinions), and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world, and through all time;
that to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical;
that even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion, is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor whose morals he would make his pattern, and whose powers he feels most persuasive to righteousness,
and is withdrawing from the ministry those temporal rewards, which proceeding from an approbation of their personal conduct, are an additional incitement to earnest and unremitting labors for the instruction of mankind;
that our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, more than our opinions in physics or geometry;
that, therefore, the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to the offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which in common with his fellow citizens he has a natural right; that it tends also to corrupt the principles of that very religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing, with a monopoly of worldly honors and emoluments, those who will externally profess and conform to it;
that though indeed these are criminal who do not withstand such temptation, yet neither are those innocent who lay the bait in their way;
that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles, on the supposition of their ill tendency, is a dangerous fallacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty, because he being of course judge of that tendency, will make his opinions the rule of judgment, and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square with or differ from his own;
that it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government, for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order;
and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself (and, as history has often shown, truth prevails against the entire world),
that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.

Be it therefore enacted by the General Assembly, That no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burdened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in nowise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.
And though we well know this Assembly, elected by the people for the ordinary purposes of legislation only, have no powers equal to our own and that therefore to declare this act irrevocable would be of no effect in law, yet we are free to declare, and do declare, that the rights hereby asserted are of the natural rights of mankind (this refers to the freedom of religion discussed in all of this Act for Establishing Religious Freedom. For the sake of discussion compare this view of natural rights, to Darwin’s view *) and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present or to narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement of natural right. (The simplicity of all of this is that the government not punish any person for praying or not praying or for attending church or not attending church. The modern doctrine has been to appear to expand Jeffersonian liberty by punishing, for instance, those who would choose to pray together in public schools.)

* The belief in God has often been advanced as not only the greatest, but the most complete of all the distinctions between man and the lower animals. It is however impossible, as we have seen, to maintain that this belief is innate or instinctive in man. On the other hand, a belief in all-pervading spiritual agencies seems to be universal; and apparently follows from a considerable advance in man's reason, and from a still greater advance in his faculties of imagination, curiosity and wonder. I am aware that the assumed instinctive belief in God has been used by many persons as an argument for His existence. But this is a rash argument, as we should thus be compelled to believe in the existence of many cruel and malignant spirits, only a little more powerful than man; for the belief in them is far more general than in a beneficent Deity. The idea of a universal and beneficent Creator does not seem to arise in the mind of man, until he has been elevated by long-continued culture.

Nevertheless the difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind. We have seen that the senses and intuitions, the various emotions and faculties, such as love, memory, attention, curiosity, imitation, reason, etc. of which man boasts, may be found in an incipient, or even sometimes in a well-developed condition, in the lower animals. They are also capable of some inherited improvement, as we have seen in the domestic dog compared with the wolf or jackal. If it could be proved that certain high mental powers, such as the formation of general concepts, self-consciousness, &c. were absolutely peculiar to man, which seems extremely doubtful, it is not improbable that these qualities are merely the incidental results of other highly-advanced intellectual faculties; and these again mainly the result of the continued use of a perfect language. At what age does the newborn infant possess the power of abstraction, or become self-conscious, and reflect on its own existence? We cannot answer; nor can we answer in regard to the ascending organic scale. The half-art, half-instinct of language still bears the stamp of its gradual evolution. The ennobling belief in God is not universal with man; and the belief in spiritual agencies naturally follows from other mental powers. The moral sense perhaps affords the best and highest distinction between man and the lower animals; but I need say nothing on this head, as I have so lately endeavoured to show that the social instincts,--the prime principle of man's moral constitution-- with the aid of active intellectual powers and the effects of habits, naturally lead to the golden rule, “As ye would that men should do to you, do ye to them likewise,” and this lies at the foundation of morality (from ORIGIN OF SPECIES and DESCENT OF MAN).

Darwin does not declare that there is no God. He simply argues that the Bible is no more true than the arguments of those global warming experts of yesteryear who declared the earth flat and Copernicus a heretic. However, Darwin’s discussion is not about the free choice to believe at all. Belief or a lack of belief, Darwin speculates, has everything to mental development and culture. Darwin does not recognize that the choice of nations to believe in God has resulted in freedom, liberty and what he calls civilization. This notion of a predetermined evolution of man and culture was a theme of Darwin’s contemporary Karl Marx.

One Nation Under God and Freedom of Religion

2008-06-06T09:28:00.000-07:00

These two notions seem at odds with one another. What were the founding fathers and the architects of state constitutions around the land thinking? It's possible that the nation was founded on the political balderdash that is commonplace in Washington DC, but perhaps not. Perhaps there was an idea that we are commonly misunderstanding today.

Indeed, at least in the case of the founding of the United States, the notion of Darwinism and secularism were unheard of when the original constitution was composed. As a consequence, everyone, just everyone believed in God. The problem in those days was that everyone worshipped God differently and, based on these differences, people killed each other. Yep, pretty barbaric. Fortunately, the colonists, for all of their faults, had a better idea. They put down the sword (or musket) and said "freedom of worship."

The modern argument is that any mention of 'God' involves religion and hence, by definition, impinges on the freedom of worship. This idea of people objecting to even the mention of God was impossible for the writers of the constitution. Permitting this extra constitutional logic into the laws of our land has had the following effect:

As a nation we do not expect "God to be watching." Our national life does not involve any discussion of what is pleasing to God. Our national life has lost the "Fear of God," the reverence for God that is the ancient hallmark of men and women of moral character.
Although a longer discussion of the common values of the founding Fathers as "Deists" those who settled religious differences by referring to their common God not as the God of the Hebrew, Christians or Muslims, but as the Creator of the Heavens and the Earth -- The God of Nature... would shed light on many of the relativst dramas of our day, the simplicity of the commonly held biblical values have been torn to shreds.

The main idea behind this series of blogs is to investigate modern issues in terms of this Deist logic. Why? Not because I am a Deist, but as a political voice, each person seeks an area of widest appeal. I suppose even a Transcendentalist or two could get into the act. Finally, not because I'm a Darwinist, --indeed, the fight for "true science" is central to the tenets of "Deists" in the public arena for a free nation-- but because the Darwin theory of natural evolution is the most widely accepte theory of nature, this theory will be the one primarily referenced. Perhaps we can get even a few hopeless athiests to come along for the ride.