A High-speed Green-Labor Pipedream

Progressives are doubtless celebrating with Gov. Jerry Brown yet another victory for green ideology and union muscle over economic reality.

Three weeks ago Sacramento gave a 2.6 billion dollar send-off blessing to a high-speed rail system whose final cost estimate miraculously shrank from 98 to 68.4 billion dollars in the authority’s most recent business plan.

That .4 fraction (four-hundred million dollars) is a nice bureaucratic touch. It suggests to clueless Californians that the estimate is quite precise—a figure that taxpayers can take to the bank. Never mind that a politically-required recalculation had just lopped off almost 30 billion from the prior “guesstimate.”

A more reliable directional analogy for government-sponsored super-projects would be Boston’s “Big Dig”—a tunnel initially estimated to cost 2.6 billion dollars that wound up taking taxpayers to the cleaners for over 20 billion (including bond interest). But not to worry—much of that featherbedded tab was picked up by the flush-with-cash feds.

Brown and his green-union coalition hope for a reprise of that scenario with the ultra-fast choo-choo. Indeed, it’s doubtful that this ego-inflating legacy project would have been approved even by the economic illiterates in Sacramento were it not for free fed money—in this case 3.2 billion dollars.

Anyone who is confident that this monumental white elephant will be built within shouting distance of 68 billion dollars or will ever pay for itself, once constructed, should ponder this sentence that appears on the Rail Authority’s official web site:

“On November 1, 2012, the California High-Speed Rail Authority (Authority) released a Draft 2012 Business Plan (Draft Plan) for public review and comment.” The message goes on to say how public feedback was solicited and received for this November 1, 2012, draft—including more than 250 website comments.

Many Californians are aware that the aforementioned All Saints Day is three months in the future. One might think an error of this sort would have been corrected by now, but such corrections are only common in private businesses that, according to President Obama, aren’t really built by the folks who started them.

Few Californians are aware that the currently projected completion date for the much-heralded Los Angeles to San Francisco leg of the bullet train project is around the year 2027. (Don’t hold your breath.)

As one wag put it, by the time Phase 1 of the project is completed in 2029, unemployed residents of the Golden State will be able to zip from L.A. to San Francisco “for the price of a Southwest Airlines ticket…in twice the time it takes to fly.”

Fast and Furious: A Bloody Scandal & Cover-up

Anyone who wants to know what’s at stake in Congressman Darrell Issa’s investigation of Attorney General Eric Holder should read Katie Pavlich’s book “Fast and Furious: Barack Obama’s Bloodiest Scandal and Its Shameless Coverup.”

Pavlich’s “Booknotes” interview (available on YouTube) offers a good introduction. Unfortunately, the damning details about this guns-to-killers scheme are being withheld from Issa’s Oversight Committee because of the President’s recent “executive privilege” claim.

The central question posed by Pavlich is why the Obama Justice Department (specifically its Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms branch) secretly pressured American gun dealers to illegally sell thousands of untraceable weapons to purchasers working for Mexican drug cartels—thus creating a more audacious and dangerous operation than the limited program the Bush Administration (in coordination with Mexico) had abandoned.

The most plausible reason for this decision, Pavlich argues, was Obama’s desire to promote gun control in the U.S. Evidence starts with a coordinated publicity campaign that began shortly after Obama became President.

On April 16, 2009, President Obama said this about Mexico’s drug violence, “This war is being waged with guns purchased not here (in Mexico) but in the United States.” He added that “more than 90 percent of the guns recovered” from Mexican crime scenes were from the U.S.

This mantra was echoed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other prominent Democrats, including Senator Diane Feinstein. The truth, as subsequently revealed, was that less than 20 percent of Mexican crime scene guns were traceable to the U.S.

Not long after the 90% claim was debunked, the deadly Fast and Furious scheme was launched—a program that would greatly bolster the argument that American gun dealers were causing mayhem in Mexico.

A major goal of “Fast and Furious,” in other words, was to provide a compelling rationale for gun-control in the U.S. Two-hundred dead Mexicans and at least one dead American Border Patrol Agent, Brian Terry, were collateral damage.

It’s a damming indictment that explains the President’s belated “executive privilege” claim and Eric Holder’s prior stonewalling of Issa’s committee--including the Attorney General’s incredible statement (undermined by various memos) that he was unaware of the “Fast and Furious” program until shortly before his testimony in May, 2011.

Pavlich’s charge also makes sense of lies told by various officials, including Assistant Attorney General Lanny Brewer, who in February 2011, sent a letter denying high-level involvement in the program—a letter that was subsequently “withdrawn” because of inaccuracies.

Whistleblowing ATF Agent John Dodson said he never heard an explanation from anyone involved in “Fast and Furious” that would justify the operation. That’s probably because its primary purpose was unspeakably callous and coldly political.

"Baseball, Dennis & The French": Chronicling a Change of Heart

How do you convince your brother-in-law that conservatives aren’t hate-filled Neanderthals and that you haven’t gone off the deep end by becoming one yourself? A good place to start would be a film called “Baseball, Dennis & The French” that was directed by former Southern California liberal activist Paul Croshaw.

The operative term in the prior sentence is “former.” This lighthearted documentary takes viewers on a ninety-minute journey that begins with a homerun-hungry Little Leaguer whose parents were the lone McGovern boosters on their San Gabriel Valley block.

From there Croshaw focuses breezily on his high-school infatuation with French films and his growing involvement in liberal politics—culminating at one point with a side-by-side photo of the filmmaker-to-be with now Minnesota Senator Al Franken. \

Then comes the troublesome slow-motion “epi-phony” over the car radio—a Los Angeles-based talk radio host named Dennis Prager. When “Dodger Talk” gave way to Dennis, the invitation to philosophical introspection was too much to resist.

At this point moviegoers, like Croshaw himself, get heavier doses of Prager, but not Prager-uncut. Short monologues on various political and moral topics are interspersed with humorous vignettes about baseball, religion, and the French.

(France is the film’s example par excellence of a secular society that values cultural sophistication above all else and whose intellectual sensibilities are offended by traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and objective moral standards.)

At movie’s end Croshaw provides a summary of his intellectual and spiritual journey (in French) while removing mime makeup. Dennis’ happy conclusion is that he’s “thrilled that this Jew (Prager) has helped Paul find his Christian faith. Only in America!”

One viewing of the movie won’t convince hardcore ideologues of anything, but for folks interested in honest dialogue, “Baseball, Dennis, and the French” is a great starting point. Like the homer hit by young Croshaw, the film plants a seed that can grow in several directions—from confronting the practical goodness of most conservatives (cf. the book by Arthur Brooks, “Who Really Cares”) to posing serious questions about God, morality, and The Lawrence Welk Show.

The documentary has recently had several one-night showings at select theaters throughout the Southland. Close to 100 patrons were present at last week’s screening in Riverside. Readers can visit the film’s website for news about future showings.

And if your brother-in-law is averse to visiting a theater space largely populated by conservatives or to reading Dennis Prager’s recent book, “Still the Best Hope,” the fellow who doubts your sanity might be willing to devote an hour-and-a-half to watching a modestly priced gift DVD in his home—if only to understand his sibling’s benighted spouse!

SIT-COMS, JUDGES & MARRIAGE

George Orwell famously observed that some ideas are so foolish, only a member of the intelligentsia could believe them. Had he lived another sixty-two years, the noted author might have revised his comment to include not-so-intellectual jurists and the current Vice-President--folks whose views have been inordinately shaped by sit-coms like “Will and Grace.”

A bit more than two weeks ago the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals declined to reconsider the 2-1 ruling by a judicial panel that overturned the almost 600,000 votes by which Proposition 8 passed in 2008.

That proposition defined marriage as it has always been understood throughout history—as the union of a man and a woman. But Judge Stephen Reinhardt, utilizing his legal training to do just what he wanted to do in any case, penned a decision that invalidated Proposition 8 without ruling on the merits of the question that over 13 million Californians voted on.

In his opinion Reinhardt overturned a huge statewide election because, “California had already extended to committed same-sex couples both the incidents of marriage and the official designation of ‘marriage.’” In fact, it wasn’t “California” but a handful of judges that extended the marital designation in contravention of the expressed wishes of California voters (61 to 39 percent) in the year 2000.

Topping that mischaracterization was the assertion that Proposition 8 had no rational basis—that its only purpose was “to lessen the status and dignity of gays and lesbians in California.”

In his dissent to the court’s most recent Prop. 8 ruling, Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain observed that Reinhardt’s opinion was based on a “gross misapplication of Romer v. Evans…that would be unrecognizable to the justices who joined it, to those who dissented from it, and to the judges from sister circuits who have since interpreted it.”

Lesser mortals without Reinhardt’s talent for legal sleight of hand might have had second thoughts about equating the druthers of a few black-robed jurists with “California” and impugning (through his misuse of Romer) the motives of seven million Californians.

Reinhardt and company, however, were eager to dismiss as hateful views that coincide with the mores of every major civilization and the traditional teachings of every major religion—views that embrace the formerly taken-for-granted idea that procreation and the care of both a mother and father are integral to an institution whose very existence derives from society’s view of a child’s best interests.

It is possible that the Supreme Court will take up this case. But if not, one could accurately say that an absurd policy will govern California largely thanks to a few ideologues and a Hollywood sit-com.

FINDING REFUGE IN TEXAS

Chuck DeVore was elected three times to the California Assembly, serving the 70th District that includes Irvine and coastal constituents stretching southward from Newport Beach. In 2010 he sought, unsuccessfully, the GOP’s U.S. Senate nomination.

Nowadays DeVore makes his home in Dripping Springs, Texas—a growing recreational area 25 miles west of Austin. He’s also become a Senior Fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

The exodus of a former legislator, aerospace executive, and army intelligence officer wouldn’t be newsworthy if the move weren’t repeated many times over by businesses throughout the state.

Recently DeVore explained his “Divorce from the Golden State” in an article for Fox News. The piece noted that while Texas and California both have an abundance of natural resources, long coastlines, diverse populations, and borders with Mexico, the states differ dramatically when it comes to their philosophies of government.

For example, while California subsidizes expensive solar projects and obstructs traditional energy production, Texas welcomes oil and gas exploration. As a consequence, that state added over 36,000 jobs in those industries last year—more than all the jobs in California’s solar sector.

The negative comparisons go on from there and include tax rates, government spending, pension obligations, business climate, teachers per-capita (Texas, DeVore says, has 17% more than California), and educational outcomes (Texas fares better on national rankings).

A couple of months earlier Professor Victor Davis Hanson observed that one percent of California’s taxpayers provide 45 percent of the state’s income tax revenue--and that income taxes fund half of the state’s budget.

He also noted that the number of upper-income earners in California decreased by a third between 2007 and 2009—either because they are fleeing the state or because they’ve become much less wealthy. I’m confident that “both” represents the correct answer to this statistical query.

On the other side of the ledger, California, with 12% of the country’s population, is home to almost a third of the nation’s welfare recipients (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, formerly AFDC). Furthermore, during the last two decades the state’s Medicaid population grew at 70 percent of its overall increase in population.

In the face of these daunting statistics, California’s political class has doubled down on spending (the high-speed rail system), cap-and-trade environmentalism (AB 1532), and higher taxes (Governor Brown’s November sales tax proposal).

Rather than junking disastrous government-centered, union-approved policies, left coasters focus public attention on second-hand smoke and plastic bag bans—just as their kindred mayoral spirit in New York City has taken aim at large soda drinks.

No wonder Mr. DeVore has taken refuge in the Lone Star State.

TRAINS, TOBACCO, and TAXES

Governor Jerry Brown recently announced, to the surprise of no rational observer, that California still faces a 16 billion dollar deficit. It’s what inevitably happens when a state is largely run for the benefit of public employee unions, business-averse interest groups, and large voting blocs that support lax border enforcement and demand ever more goodies from Sacramento.

In view of this annual fiscal crisis, one might think the state’s deep-blue politicians would consider pulling the plug on a multi-billion dollar high-speed rail project whose cost estimates have increased as dramatically as questions about its utility. That decision, however, would represent a rational approach, and rationality doesn’t count for much when it comes to legislators enamored with Tinseltown fantasies.

Accordingly, the California Assembly turned down Diane Harkey’s proposed “Lemon Law,” AB 1455, that would have terminated the flow of funds to a super fast choo-choo that’s currently estimated to cost around 100 billion dollars. Instead, the governor’s approach to our fiscal train wreck is higher taxes and a gun-to-head threat of cuts in “essential” services if voters fail to pass the proposed tax increases that will appear on November’s ballot.

Note that it’s always public safety, parks, and education that are tentatively placed on the budgetary chopping block—not an unpopular rail boondoggle or any of the redundant bureaucratic agencies that infect Sacramento and the state’s bloated university system. (Does UCSD really need, as Heather MacDonald noted in a City Journal article last year, a handsomely-compensated vice chancellor for equity, diversity, and inclusion—in addition to a massive diversity apparatus that includes more than a dozen different positions and various councils or centers all devoted to this PC obsession?)

In line with Sacramento’s bureaucratic mentality, Proposition 29 not only adds to the existing taxes on tobacco, it also sets up yet another committee with its (doubtless well paid) officials to distribute money for cancer research and anti-smoking education programs. Never mind that the state already funds a plethora of anti-smoking ads.

I suspect the most tangible beneficiaries from passage of this proposition will be those folks who oversee distribution of the estimated $735 million that will be raised from its dollar-a-pack tax. (According to the proposed law, approximately two percent of the funds raised, or about 14.5 million dollars, can go to administrative costs.)

This initiative would have greater appeal to non-smokers like me if all the funds from the new tax were applied to the state’s yawning budget deficit and not to the creation of yet another government commission whose designated pot of gold is exempt from rational budgetary review.

MAY DAY PROTESTS FIZZLE

"Overall, officials said most of the thousands of protesters were nonviolent."

Can you imagine such a forgiving comment being employed by the mainstream media when they covered Tea Party rallies--events where even a few less-than-tasteful signs were evidence enough for reporters to resurrect the "angry (and potentially dangerous) white male" motif that they used to explain the GOP sweep of Congress in 1994?

As the aforementioned LA Times quote suggests, major media outlets (alongside Democrats like Nancy Pelosi) have bent over backward to give the Occupy Wall Street movement better coverage and more significance than it deserves--the exact opposite of the stance they took toward Tea Partiers whom then House Speaker Pelosi dismissed as an "astroturf" concoction. Concerning the OWS movement, ABC's Diane Sawyer breathlessly and cluelessly announced last fall that it had "spread to thousands" of the world's (196) countries.

The mish-mash of government employees, greenies, labor unions, open border advocates, and jobless liberal arts majors that comprise the OWS movement was supposed to spring back to life with a gaggle of worldwide events on May first--piggybacking on the traditional "workers" demonstrations that were also employed with great fanfare in the Soviet Union. Unfortunately for these leftists without a coherent cause, even the largest events in cities like New York and Los Angeles were comparable in size with or smaller than the April 15, 2009 Tea Party rally in Oceanside.

Some protests reduced sympathetic reporters to using terms like "hundreds" or even "dozens" to describe the paltry gatherings that presumed to speak for 99% of the American citizenry.

Given the overhyped nature of these May Day events, it isn't surprising that little has been said about their size and ineffectiveness--or about the violence that accompanied demonstrations like the one in Seattle where a few protesters confused mindless vandalism with meaningful reform.

Imagine the heyday the Democrat media would have had if Tea Partiers had engaged in the disruptions and law-breaking that was hastily reported by network bigs on May second. Indeed, more sustained attention was given to a single alleged spitting incident among Tea Partiers in 2010 than to the numerous acts of violence perpetrated by OWS protesters on May 1.

I'm pleased that there were no reports of violence by OWS Temecula-Menifee--a group that rejects lawbreaking and whose numbers occasionally reach double-digits. I'm also gratified to note that most Oakland Raider fans (like their bay city OWS counterparts) are only irritating and obnoxious, not criminal.

It would be swell if I could also report that OWS now understands the greatest component of corrupt government is precisely its gargantuan size and scope.

LEARNING VERSUS ACTIVISM

“A Crisis of Competence” is the 81-page document produced by the California Association of Scholars that was recently presented to the California Board of Regents.

While the study illustrates, as I noted in my prior column, the utter dominance of leftist beliefs in higher education, its focus is not on political opinions per se, but rather on “the associated question of competence and quality of education.” Moreover, the report doesn’t claim that “most” educators are derelict in their duties but rather that politicization is widespread, unprofessional, and mostly ignored by administrators.

Put succinctly, the document asserts that the one-sided leftist tilt of colleges and universities undermines quality education, especially in the humanities and social sciences. Below are some UC-centered observations:

On most UC campuses courses in Western Civilization aren’t offered at all. Similarly, at UC San Diego a literature major need not take a course on Shakespeare but must complete a survey course in Chicano, African-American, or Asian-American literature.

“At UC Davis a history major can avoid American history entirely, and the same is true of the Santa Cruz, Irvine, and San Diego campuses,” the report notes.

By contrast, at UC Santa Cruz (where Communist Party Vice-Presidential candidate Angela Davis was a professor from 1991 to 2008) courses on Marx are offered in five separate departments. (According to a national study by Neil Gross and Solon Simmons, almost 20 percent of professors in the social sciences self-identify as Marxist.)

Several anecdotes in the CAS report illustrate the corrupting influence of political activism on specific courses:

A student in a writing program at UC San Diego’s Warren College, for example, reported that she composed an essay that called for legal abortion, but with restrictions. She was informed that in order to pass the course she needed to revise her essay “to support abortion in all circumstances.”

Even a computer science class at Berkeley included regular course-irrelevant harangues directed at George W. Bush and California’s “Nazi” Gov. Schwarzenegger.

The study also provides data indicating that the politicizing of higher education is getting worse—as younger faculty are more explicitly committed to leftist activism than older faculty. In addition, the report cites a study that links poor primary and secondary education with “the political preoccupations that now drive teacher training in the nation’s colleges.”

In calling for enforcement of the academic standards in the Regent’s own charter (and in California’s constitution) the CAS report sides with the view of John Stuart Mill that students must be able to hear arguments “from people who actually believe them” and that “he who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that.”

LEFTISTS CORRUPT ACADEMIA--and the UC SYSTEM

Most college-bound seniors have now received their letters of acceptance from admissions offices around the country. A lengthy document submitted last week by the California Association of Scholars (CAS) to the California Board of Regents offers compelling evidence that these incoming freshmen will be paying more money for a lower quality education that’s heavily corrupted by leftist activism.

The report notes that “the amount families pay for college has skyrocketed 439 percent since 1982” while “an astounding proportion of students” are completing their studies “without measurable gains in general skills.”

Case in point: According to the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, 80% of seniors from fifty-five of the country’s most prestigious colleges and universities (including Berkeley and UCLA) received a D or F when asked basic questions about American history like identifying the Gettysburg Address or recognizing fundamental constitutional principles.

The CAS report views the politicization of higher education as a major factor that’s fostered this state of affairs. After all, instructors besotted with ideology focus on indoctrination—not on dispensing a balanced portrait of complex issues and developing a student’s ability to critically evaluate competing perspectives.

In the words of the CAS study: “political activists tend to have a very different attitude to alternatives to their own convictions.” In their view competing beliefs “do not deserve sympathetic consideration, for they are at best wrong, at worst evil.”

Those who believe that the academy has always been structured as it is today should consider the difference between the political makeup of schools in 1969 (when, according to a Carnegie Commission report, there was a 45-27-28 percent liberal-moderate-conservative split) with the 5:1 liberal dominance observed by Stanley Rothman in 1999. Since that time the imbalance has gotten much worse—especially in the Humanities.

At UC San Diego the CAS report shows a clean 27-0 leftist sweep in Politics and a 26:1 split in History—ratios typical within the UC system. The report also provides examples of the way ideology permeates instruction and affects the hiring of new faculty—where there’s significant bias against hiring Republicans but no measurable prejudice against self-identified Marxists.

Even non-political courses are often used as platforms for leftist indoctrination—as Luann Wright (founder of the website noindoctrination.org) discovered when she investigated a UCSD writing course that ignored composition and instead became a “sociopolitical soapbox.” Wright was amazed that administrators were aware of but tolerated such malpractice.

The aforementioned CAS report is designed to get Regents to take seriously Article IX, Section 9 of the state constitution at their May 15 meeting: “The university shall be entirely independent of all political and sectarian influence…”

FAST AND FURIOUS COVER UP

Imagine you are an Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms agent working on a clandestine operation designed to snag members of Mexico’s gun-smuggling drug cartels—especially Mr. A. The program involves tracking weapons that have been knowingly and illegally sold to persons associated with those cartels.

Now imagine you’ve caught Mr. A red-handed at an Arizona border town while he’s attempting to drive a BMW brimming with hidden ammunition into Mexico. What do you do? Here are your options:

A. Arrest Mr. A. and declare your operation a success.
B. Take Mr. A into custody and begin plea-bargain negotiations in hopes of securing more valuable information.
C. Talk with Mr. A about his connections, confiscate his ammo, give him your phone number jotted on a ten-dollar bill, then release the trafficker based on a promise of further cooperation.

If you answered C, you may have a future with ATF. That seems to be the route chosen by Hope MacAllister when, according to recently revealed documents, she interrogated a major gun-runner named Manuel Celis-Acosta on May 29, 2010.

Unfortunately, and not surprisingly, Acosta chose to continue his smuggling enterprise instead of keeping in touch with Special Agent MacAllister.

Perhaps Acosta mistakenly used MacAllister’s bill to buy some cigarettes and couldn’t remember the initials of the agency that stopped him on the border with an "AK type, high capacity drum magazine loaded with 74 rounds of 7.62 ammunition” hidden beneath his spare tire.

Or maybe Acosta just had a good laugh at the expense of government gringos who apparently released a prime target based on little more than hopes of landing bigger fish.

In the following months Acosta continued his gun-smuggling activities and ATF continued its gun-selling operation. The agency, however, lost track of about 1700 guns, many of which were discovered at crime scenes in Mexico and two of which were linked to the death of U.S. Border Agent Brian Terry near Tucson in December of 2010.

It’s hardly a shock that ATF documents related to the botched release of Acosta weren’t provided by Attorney General Eric Holder to Congressman Darrell Issa’s House Oversight Committee—despite a subpoena covering documents related to this “Fast and Furious” operation.

Apparently what was touted as “the most transparent administration” in the nation’s history is only transparently interested in covering its tracks—as it was when it kept information about Solyndra’s moribund financial situation under wraps until after the 2010 elections.

Acosta was eventually captured in El Paso in February of 2011—but only after distributing hundreds of government-tagged guns to folks like the ones who murdered Agent Terry.

BREAKING US TO THE SADDLE OF THE STATE

It would have been nice if George Will had worn flashing-light glasses with Elton John flair when, a month ago, he made this statement on ABC’s “This Week”:

“This is what liberalism looks like. This is what the progressive state does. It tries to break all the institutions of civil society, all the institutions that mediate between the individual and the state. They have to break them to the saddle of the state.”

Put simply, Will’s comment means that the “progressive state” increasingly tells both individuals and institutions what they may or may not do and say—imposing mandates that extend even to the type of light-bulbs folks buy.

One legal rationalization for this huge expansion of government power was Hugo Black’s 1947 Supreme Court opinion that claims the Constitution erects a “wall of separation” between church and state—a phrase subsequently used to eradicate vestiges of common religious belief and practice (like the Mt. Soledad cross) from the public square.

Consequently, a Constitutional amendment designed to protect the “free-exercise” of religion from federal coercion is now employed to prevent invocations at high school graduations. Similarly, because the Boy Scouts’ beliefs conflict with progressive ideology, they are denied municipal concessions for Balboa Park facilities that would be available to “non-religious” groups.

Novel renderings of “equal protection” laws are also utilized by progressives to break individuals and institutions to the saddle of the state.

Thus, a medical group in North County that refused to provide artificial insemination for a lesbian—based on the respectable belief that children shouldn’t be intentionally deprived of both a father and a mother—was told by the California Supreme Court in 2008 that its religious convictions violated state law when applied to professional services.

Similarly, Catholic Charities in Massachusetts gave up their longstanding work in the adoption field when that state required the organization to place adopted children in same-sex households.

With the expansion of federal power into insurance mandates, the potential for eroding liberty is almost limitless. A government that can require individuals to purchase health insurance is a government that can also require religious institutions (and insurance companies) to provide policies that cover abortions or other procedures that might violate their consciences. Such was the case with directives recently inserted into the massive Obamacare legislation.

Put succinctly, the vastly expanded government of a largely religious people is now expected to be rigorously secular and to reflect the condom-dispensing, abortion-ready convictions of secular elites.

Moreover, for progressives, religious liberty is largely restricted to the walls of a church. Soon, it may be confined to the space between the ears of their serfs.

JOHN BORUFF: MOVING MOUNT FEINSTEIN

Laurie Boruff enthusiastically describes her husband of thirty-three years as a “tenacious” worker who can “move mountains.” John Boruff now has an opportunity to display those qualities in his bid to become the Republican candidate for Senate against Dianne Feinstein.

I chatted with John and Laurie last week in Escondido and asked the North County businessman what motivated him to undertake what many pundits believe is an impossible task—unseating California’s twenty-year incumbent Democratic senator. John responded as follows:

First, he has personally experienced the onerous burdens that governments at all levels place on business. He also knows first-hand that laws aimed at huge corporations are preventing businesses from expanding due to the additional regulations that typically kick in when an enterprise reaches the dreaded fifty-employee level.

Put succinctly, Boruff said he has more real-world business experience than all his Republican competitors—and certainly more than Dianne Feinstein.

Secondly, Boruff is convinced there are enough dissatisfied independent voters in California to make possible a GOP Senate victory in November. Moreover, he didn’t want to sit idly by while Feinstein was given a free pass for another six-year term—as was the case in 2006. The GOP, Boruff contends, needs a candidate who will do more than mail in a campaign—someone who can passionately articulate a set of policies that will, first and foremost, stimulate the state’s economy.

Neither Laurie nor John expressed reservations about the possibility of dirt being dredged up as a result of entering a senatorial campaign. The father of three said that his personal life has been quite regular. (An impartial observer, noting John’s civic involvement, his work as a Scoutmaster, and his stint as a Reserve Police Officer in Carlsbad, might employ the term “exemplary.”)

The fact that an individual whom Boruff once fired recently volunteered to work in his campaign suggests the kind of loyalty he inspires, even when John (as that former employee now confesses) is the bearer of deserved bad news.

Beyond reducing burdens on business, Boruff voiced support for expanded but sensible energy exploration, for second amendment rights, and especially for restricting the federal government’s intrusion into matters that are constitutionally reserved to the states and people.

Concerning immigration, Boruff stressed the need for both border enforcement and work visas. He also rejects forms of amnesty that put illegals in front of legal immigrants.

If Boruff succeeds in getting out his carefully-considered limited-government message, Californians may actually have an opportunity to vote for a genuine citizen legislator and to send packing one of the professional politicians so many folks claim to despise.

That would certainly be a mountain-moving political event.

Moral Confusion Abounds: Ninth Circuit Panel Rules Traditional Marriage Unconstitutional

You know a culture is morally confused when the head of a Christian-affiliated high school can’t see the problem posed by a religion course that features the film “Pulp Fiction” within its curriculum.

Add to that graphic visual violence and vulgarity a novel (“Song of Kali”) whose principal images consist of dead or decomposing bodies and in which ritual human sacrifices are vividly depicted—along with a few sexual encounters.

Cap off these curricular elements with an explicitly anti-Christian work of science fiction (“Stranger in a Strange Land”) that revolves around a cult whose largely Nietzschean beliefs are expressed through the mouth of an alien hero who has intercourse with various group members—male and female.

The response I observed almost a decade ago within a supposedly Christian institution was a product of either indifference, ignorance, or lack of spine. Two years later the Massachusetts Supreme Court displayed a similar media-induced myopia when it declared illegal the limitation of marriage to persons of the opposite sex.

Last week that Bay State ruling was temporarily expanded by two of the three members of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals who ruled that California’s Proposition 8 violates the United States Constitution.

According to Justice Stephen Reinhardt (whose wife, Ramona Ripston, recently retired as executive director for the ACLU of Southern California—an organization adamantly opposed to Prop 8):

“Although the Constitution permits communities to enact most laws they believe to be desirable, it requires that there be at least a legitimate reason for the passage of a law that treats different classes of people differently. There was no such reason that Proposition 8 could have been enacted… Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite sex couples.”

It requires an exquisite combination of smoke-and-mirrors legal rationalizing alongside a profound sense of ideological arrogance to arrive at the supposedly “narrow” legal basis on which Justices Reinhardt and Hawkins overturned a purely definitional law passed by California voters in 2008.

The nominal right this duo claims was taken away from a “class of people” was itself granted by judicial fiat—a brazen act that dismissed as irrational the moral views and practices of every major civilization and religion from time immemorial. Among these supposedly irrational beliefs is the conviction that children benefit from having both a male and a female parent.

Unfortunately, when moral compasses get wildly out of whack, they tend to point in any direction elites deem desirable.

SHOOT THE HIGH-SPEED WHITE ELEPHANT

A high-speed railroad takes a long time to stop—not because the imaginary vehicle travels so fast and carries so many passengers from San Francisco to Los Angeles and points south, but rather because career politicians like Jerry Brown are determined to build legacies for themselves, come hell or high-water.

The governor’s recent State of the State Address was vintage Moonbeam. Brown claimed credit for making serious spending cuts while simultaneously calling for tax increases—including a previously announced half-cent boost in the sales tax rate.

Most egregiously, the governor clung passionately to the whitest elephant in the budget—a high-speed rail system whose Phase I estimated costs have already mushroomed to around 110 billion dollars, give or take ten billion.

The California High Speed Rail Authority’s own Peer Review group recently offered this grim assessment of the project’s feasibility: “…we cannot overemphasize the fact that moving ahead on the HSR project without credible sources of adequate funding, without a definitive business model, without a strategy to maximize the independent utility and value to the State, and without the appropriate management resources, represents an immense financial risk on the part of the State of California.”

Put in plain language, the group says it doesn’t know where the money to build this system will come from, and it doesn’t see a business plan that demonstrates a clear benefit to the state. What they see as likely (“an immense financial risk”) is that the railroad will become the costliest white elephant in the state’s history.

As General Custer might have said at Little-Big Horn, “Outside of those problems, everything is fine.”

This Peer Review assessment echoes many prior analyses including those of the Bureau of State Audits, the UC Berkeley Institute of Transportation Studies, and the Reason Foundation. Even Democrats, including Treasurer Bill Lockyer and a trio of state Senators headed by Alan Lowenthal have issued withering criticisms.

Were Governor Brown more concerned about the state’s fiscal welfare than his own legacy, he’d support Assemblywoman Diane Harkey’s bill, AB 1455, which halts state debt funding for the high-speed rail project. Instead, Brown holds a gun to the head of Californians and pretends the only alternatives are tax hikes or drastic cuts in education.

This bit of political theater reminds me of a scene in “Blazing Saddles” where the new black sheriff in a bigoted frontier town holds a gun to his own head and then threatens to shoot his hostage if town-folks don’t holster their weapons. The ruse works.

There is a more logical and poll-popular option for Governor Brown: Shoot the white elephant.

THE POLITICS OF HATE AND PROJECTION

It happens all the time. Someone reads an opinion piece with which he or she disagrees and then responds with a stream of venomous rhetoric directed toward the author—occasionally myself. It comes with the territory—the kitchen and heat.

What’s noteworthy, however, is how often critics accuse yours truly or other political opponents of hatred in messages brimming with that very quality—an incongruity that stands out more prominently when a respondent’s invective is compared with the mild verbal jabs in the article to which he is responding.

My own generic criticisms of pornographic “smut-peddlers” and the “abysmal vulgarity” of “much rap music,” for example, was enough to set one reader off on an e-mail tirade that labeled me, personally, as a hypocritical right-winger who’s insensitive to homelessness, murder, and poverty.

In psychological parlance what we have in this instance is a case of projection. The writer’s own anger is being attributed to his adversary.

It’s annoying when an individual labels you a hater based purely on opinions that don’t coincide with his own. It’s positively destructive for society, however, when it becomes a common political tactic to smear opponents as “haters” simply because their views don’t agree with passionate beliefs on the other side.

The most obvious recent example of this tactic concerns the phrase “Proposition H8”—a coinage used to vilify anyone who dares assert that the male-female definition of marriage is part of a longstanding familial ideal that’s worth preserving.

One can make arguments for or against the proposition, but when an opponent is labeled a “hater,” all rational exchange is undermined. One need not listen to the words of a “hater” because his views are presumed to be outside the realm of civility—regardless of how civilly and thoughtfully his positions are expressed.

Progressives are particularly apt to use the h-word (or other ad hominem labels) to marginalize arguments they don’t wish to consider. Liberal columnist Ellen Goodman, for example, likened global warming dissidents to Holocaust deniers.

Other terms regularly employed to squelch rational debate include sexist, homophobic, racist and bigoted.

Even the term “tolerant” is inadequate for the crowd that demands ideological conformity. What we need, I was once told in a teachers meeting, is “acceptance,” not “tolerance.”

This passionate ideologue may or may not have known that “acceptance” in his scenario obliged opponents to “accept” views they didn’t share. Meanwhile his political allies weren’t even expected to “tolerate” ideas that differed from their own.

In short, “acceptance” means everyone must get with the progressive program or risk being labeled a “hater.” That’s not a good prescription for a democracy.

DEFINING DEVIANCY DOWN AND UP

Here’s an electoral item indicative of the morally confused thought process now employed by many Americans, especially Californians.

The Adult Film Workplace Condom Initiative recently gathered enough signatures to be placed on a ballot for Los Angeles voters. This proposal, backed by more than 70,000 hyper-conscientious Angelenos, would require adult film companies to use condoms in their productions as a precondition for receiving film permits. 

The proposal also calls for industry fees to fund inspectors (condom-cops?) who will make sure smut-peddlers comply with the prophylactic terms of their permits.

To modify a mantra from the “Occupy” crowd: Is this now what democracy looks like?

Naturally, the measure is embroiled in a legal challenge. L.A. City Attorney Carmen Trutanich contends that the initiative is a “needless and wasteful expenditure of public resources made in connection with a measure which the voters have no power to adopt.”

Of course “needless and wasteful expenditures” are the mother’s milk of government. Witness the half-billion dollars blown on Obama’s pals at Solyndra.

Trutanich might more persuasively argue that if voters in the state of California don’t have the authority to adopt a law defining marriage the way it’s been viewed for millennia, then residents of Los Angeles don’t have the power to stipulate the “technical” conditions under which pornography is produced.

But that would be a losing argument given the moral myopia of Americans who, to borrow a biblical phrase, “strain at a gnat and swallow a camel.”

The mainstreaming of porn is a prime example of camel-swallowing. Another exhibit is the shameless sexualizing of childhood by commercial maggots like those at MTV. Consider also the abysmal vulgarity of much rap music, a commodity often deemed an authentic ethnic art form.

Many progressives turn a blind eye to these hugely corrosive elements within the culture. They compensate for this fashionable cowardice, however, by focusing obsessively on gnatish matters like requiring condoms for porn actors, banning plastic grocery bags, protecting endangered minnows, and denouncing second-hand smoke.

The same folks who frequently wink at grotesque vulgarity and rampant illegitimacy exhibit absurd hypersensitivity when it comes to language they consider politically incorrect—especially comments about favored ethnic groups and non-conservative females.

Porn isn’t a problem, but sex without a condom is a no-no. A million-plus abortions annually aren’t noteworthy, but smoking around a child is big news. Crude musical misogyny is excused, but the use of traditional, gender-insensitive grammar (“his” versus “their”) becomes an ego-crushing insult to womanhood.

In short, the common left-coast response to increasing depravity is to downplay or ignore real decadence while exaggerating and tirelessly condemning faux-deviancy.

A related link:

http://opinion.latimes.com/opinionla/2011/12/condoms-in-porn-what-should-we-do.html

MERRY SANTA MONICA SOLSTICE

Jon Stewart mocks the idea of a “War on Christmas” by featuring images of huge Christmas (or “holiday”) trees located in public spaces throughout the nation. The bit provides a stark verbal-visual juxtaposition for the amusement of progressive nabobs.

Logically, such anecdotal evidence is as invalid as concluding that malnutrition doesn’t exist based on photographs of overweight Americans.

If Mr. Stewart directed his attention to the various “Winter” programs performed in public schools throughout the country—or to the city of Santa Monica—he might come to a different conclusion.

That city’s Palisades Park has long displayed a series of Nativity scenes assembled by various church groups. This year, however, only two of the 21 display areas focus on Christmas. Another, appropriately enough, has a Hanukkah theme.

Three, however, tout anti-religious messages, and the rest are empty—all thanks to non-resident atheist activist Damon Vix and his cohorts from American Atheists Inc. and the Freedom from Religion Foundation.

The Trinity of in-your-face displays wish holiday viewers a “Happy Solstice,” place the Christian faith on the same level as the Olympian god Neptune, and provide spectators with this intellectually dubious observation by Thomas Jefferson: “Religions are all alike—founded on fables and mythologies.”

Apparently the rigorously applied PC rule that regularly silences public religious expressions that “might give offense” doesn’t apply when the offending shoe is on an atheist’s foot.

The fact that most of the atheist-reserved spaces in Santa Monica are empty speaks volumes about the ongoing war on Christmas. Displays that once gave joy and hope now offer nothing to lift the spirit. Angels, shepherds, wise men, and lovable critters are replaced by a void that aptly symbolizes an uncaring, godless universe.

Scenes depicting the holy family are banished. In their place stands a barren, undecorated sign whose “Happy Solstice” greeting mocks the spiritual legacy of a civilization that for almost two millennia has expressed gratitude to a god who revealed himself in the humble form of an infant.

San Diego’s “December Nights” in Balboa Park provides a more understated version of secularization. The Holy Day that must not be prominently displayed is mentioned indirectly in the third paragraph of the event’s Internet description—and then only as the name of an international festival where one can sample “food from around the globe.”

This “secular sanitization” of our cultural heritage brings to mind Alfred North Whitehead’s delightful rebuke of Voltaire’s excessively critical philosophical musings: “If men cannot live on bread alone, still less can they do so on disinfectants.”

Kudos to cities like Poway that still embrace these “offensive” but uplifting words: Merry Christmas.

GRINCHLY STATE JOBS TRENDS

Break out the bubbly. California’s unemployment rate plummeted to 11.7 percent in October (down from 11.9 the prior month). If national stats for November are any indication, the Golden State may approach 11 percent by Christmas. But before the party gets too euphoric, some Grinchly accounting is in order.

First, it’s worth noting that only Nevada’s October unemployment rate (13.4) exceeds that of California. Then there are the numbers for Riverside County (13.7), which surpass even the unlucky figure posted by Nevada.

The really bad news comes when one scrutinizes long-term trends. A study commissioned by “City Journal” found that California’s employment picture had become “far less vibrant and diverse” even before the recent recession. Below are some grim statistics:

From 1992 to 2000 California experienced dynamic growth in business start-ups, especially in Silicon Valley. A total of 776,500 net jobs were created when start-ups are offset with closures. By contrast, the state suffered a net loss of over 250,000 jobs in the same category over the next eight years—a difference of over a million jobs. In short, even before the 2008 recession, California had stopped attracting new business investment.

Job production in large metropolitan regions also plummeted when compared with the prior eight-year period. Specifically, from 1992 to 2000 the Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay areas added over 1.1 million new jobs. Yet from 2000 to 2008 these areas (including Orange County and Silicon Valley) created fewer than 70,000 new jobs.

In addition, the jobs created in California from 2000 to 2008 generally paid much less than those created earlier. From 1992 to 2000 almost 909,000 net jobs were created in high-paying industries. That lofty figure fell to a negative 270,000 during the next eight years.

The bright spot for good jobs from 2000 to 2008 was in housing and construction—sectors now moribund after the real estate bubble burst.

The lion’s share of jobs created in California from 2000 to 2008 was in the generally low-paying “administration and support” category. This fact corresponds with the study’s finding that employment growth was confined largely to jobs paying between 50 and 75 percent of the state average.

A final fly in the bubbly concerns the dramatic reduction in jobs with firms having over 100 employees. That number dropped from a positive 564,000 in 1992-2000 to a negative 685,000 over the next eight years.

The primary culprits behind these Scrooge-like figures, according to various analysts, are “suffocating regulations…and a political class uninterested in business concerns, if not downright hostile to them.”

Put briefly, Sacramento is too much in tune with the Occupy movement.

OCCUPY PROTESTS MISSING GRATITUDE (and Basic Economics)

A video on the Occupy San Diego website asks mostly young participants in this event to describe how they feel—in one word. Terms like “angry” and “frustrated” are common. Other popular responses concern feelings of exhilaration. The word “thankful,” however, is conspicuously absent from this verbal potpourri.

Gratitude isn’t a sentiment that’s typical among folks who delight in expressing indignation over perceived injustices perpetrated by faceless villains. Individuals obsessed with utopian dreams (“free education for everyone”) also tend to ignore the absurdity of demanding higher pay for teachers who provide a theoretically free service.

A world of rights and free lunches provided by an all-caring government is the vision that permeates the rhetoric of most occupiers.

Well, here’s something for which occupiers in New York, San Diego, and Los Angeles can give thanks: The much-vilified “one percent” isn’t a static group of individuals.

Indeed, economist Thomas Sowell notes that while the percentage of national wealth parked within that category has increased over the years, the “flesh-and-blood people” occupying that one percent in 1996 actually “had their incomes go down…by a whopping 26 percent by 2005.”

These seemingly contradictory statistics become understandable when one realizes that “most people who are in the top 1 percent in a given year do not stay in that bracket.”

Viewed more broadly, folks tend to go up the economic scale as they get older. That’s why households headed by someone 65 or older have, on average, more than 15 times as much wealth (not income) as households headed by persons under 35.

This circumstance indicates that experience and a lifetime of work is typically rewarded in the U.S.—a nation where, according to World Bank economist Branko Milanovic, the poorest five percent of Americans are richer than 68 percent of the world’s inhabitants. That’s a startling statistic, especially in light of the fact that most “poor” Americans will eventually become better off.

At Thanksgiving it’s also instructive to recall that the settlement at Plymouth only flourished after the Pilgrims abandoned the collectivist economic system they initially practiced—with disastrous results.

As Governor William Bradford observed in his diary, the “communism” of goods produced “confusion and discontent” and “retarded much employment.” By contrast, when private property was introduced, the new system “had very good success” and “made all hands industrious.”

That industry was consummated with abundance and gratitude—an attitude that’s perhaps the best indicator of an individual’s (or a society’s) character. Unfortunately, many occupiers seem woefully deficient when it comes to expressing gratitude for blessings (economic and otherwise) that are often taken for granted.

PITIFUL SEXUAL PEDAGOGY

San Diego’s Patrick Henry High School made national headlines recently—not for academic achievement but for pushing the social envelope a bit further in a direction that tickles the fancy of progressives. Specifically, the school selected a girl (presumably a lesbian) as homecoming king. Her girlfriend was picked as homecoming queen.

For folks whose understanding of sexuality is shaped by the ideology-driven lessons dispensed by most academics and by story lines within the secular media (e.g. “Glee” and MTV), the proper response to this event would be, “Isn’t that special.”

Individuals whose views aren’t a mirror image of pop-culture are more likely to sigh and feel pity for a cohort of youngsters who’ve been so badly served by their teachers.

The presumptions reflected in this student vote include the idea that sexual orientation is solely determined by one’s genes, that same-sex relationships stand on the same level as male-female commitments, and that differences between males and females are insignificant, even when it comes to parenting.

These are among the notions drummed into the heads of kids eager to embrace the message that most folks over thirty are bigots and that following one’s impulses is a virtue known as “being yourself.”

However, that same-sex attractions can be fostered by societal expectations is clearly shown by the homosexual bonds promoted, with ultimately disastrous demographic consequences, in the Greek city-state of Sparta. (See David Goldman, “How Civilizations Die.”) Has anyone ever asked students at Patrick Henry to ponder such facts?

If ancient history is too far removed from young iTuners, how about considering the bio of actress Anne Heche, a three-year “gay” partner of Ellen Degeneres who later had a son by her now-divorced husband, Coley Laffoon. Doesn’t such ambiguity about one’s own sexuality deserve more than thoughtless dismissal via the handy term “bisexual”?

As for the oft-asserted claim that all sexual relationships are created equal and that children only require two loving adults in their lives, I’m confident that this politically-correct assertion will eventually be seen as bogus.

Several decades ago the intense desire to sympathize with single parents led a host of sociologists to claim that it was only the stigma of single-parenthood that harmed children in such households. This non-judgmental judgment was eventually reversed (as the late Senator Patrick Moynihan noted in his monograph, “Defining Deviancy Down” *) after the stigma vanished, single-parenthood proliferated, but the related child pathologies persisted.

Something similar will happen, I predict, after the harm done by progressive sexual pedagogy and a sex-crazed, rootless culture becomes so widespread that it will be impossible to deny and all but impossible to reverse.

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* A relevant quotation from Moynihan’s monograph: Writing in the Journal of Marriage and the Family in 1989, Sara McLanahan and Karen Booth noted: "Whereas a decade ago the prevailing view was that single motherhood had no harmful effects on children, recent research is less optimistic."

Occupiers Versus the Tea Party

Like a bad case of the flu, Occupy Wall Street (OWS) and its nationwide spawn won’t go away. Predictably, mainstream media and their political cronies (including the leftist-in-chief) have tried to spin these demonstrations as progressive versions of the influential Tea Party rallies—judgments akin to dramatic comparisons that put Paris Hilton in the same league as Katharine Hepburn.

I was present at Oceanside Municipal Pier on April 15, 2009, when more than 3000 working folks gathered to peacefully protest the huge deficits that were being racked up in the first months of the Obama Administration. “Thousands” also reportedly showed up at Temecula’s Duck Pond. At least one protestor carried a prophetic sign that perfectly fit the half-billion dollar Solyndra scandal then being hatched: “It’s not stimulus. It’s payback.”

The primary protest message was as focused as one could expect from a largely spontaneous event: 1. The government is spending too much and should not increase taxes. 2. The unprecedented growth in government is a danger to liberty.

At the Oceanside Tea Party (as at all such gatherings) there was no attempt to provoke confrontations with police or shut down public facilities. Many parents with kids were present, and American flags were abundant and waved with pride.

By contrast, OWS protestors have shut down the Brooklyn Bridge, ignored trespassing and health ordinances, drained municipal resources, and had a negative impact on nearby small businesses.

Moreover, a New York Times numbers guy used credible crowd estimates in 150 cities to come up with a nationwide figure of only 70,000 for the movement’s October 15 protest. The largest gathering, in the Big Apple, was put around 7,000. Figures for Chicago, Denver, and Oakland were each south of the conservative estimate for Oceanside’s April 15 event in 2009.

When it comes to the make-up and message of this group, Democratic pollster Doug Schoen finds what a perusal of video evidence suggests—that the OWS crowd is mostly young (about half under 30) and overwhelmingly leftist in orientation (74% voted for Obama). Significantly, almost a third believe violence may be employed to achieve their collectivist goals.

This finding dovetails with the much larger violent demonstrations in Europe onto which OWS, October 15, piggybacked. After all, the socialist left is a worldwide, reason-resistant virus that didn’t disappear with the collapse of the Soviet Union—a movement composed of power-hungry ideologues and useful idiots who employ utopian demands and violence (when expedient) to achieve totalitarian ends.

In sum, the dubious character of OWS is best epitomized by the picture of a protestor apparently defecating on a New York City police car.

OCCUPY THE NANNY STATE

“Occupy Wall Street” has come to L.A. and San Diego. Fortunately, the small contingent of youngsters holding anti-capitalist signs at Ynez and Rancho California in Temecula last Saturday would have had a hard time occupying the nearby Pat & Oscar’s—a corporate enterprise that has filed for bankruptcy and shuttered two Carlsbad outlets thanks to an economy that’s been run for years by the protestors’ ideological soulmates in Sacramento.

After perusing the major “Occupy” web sites, especially “Occupy L.A.,” I feel safe in saying that most protestors would qualify for confinement within a hypothetical home for the criminally naïve. These folks generally display all the intellectual depth of those infatuated voters who elected our inexperienced, teleprompter-dependent president based on a vacuous “Hope and Change” platform.

Callow sign-holders calling for an end to capitalism are apparently unaware of the profound financial crises in Europe’s Grecian-formula economies or the utter lunacy of simply erasing all debts. These adolescent activists also seem oblivious to the implications of the four-trillion dollar deficit their transformational president has piled up in only three years—thanks in no small measure to socialist policies most non-taxpaying protestors apparently favor.

The thunderous, prolonged applause that last year greeted President Obama’s collegiate announcement that kids can stay on their parents’ insurance policies till age twenty-six typifies this entitlement mindset.

The following web-page comment by an “occupier” puts that applause into halting words: "We have been kind of screwed over by our government, which should be taking care of us and instead is taking advantage of us."

Patrick Henry and company must be spinning in their graves. Instead of protecting individual liberties and property, government for this and other protestors has become a lifelong nanny.

Unsurprisingly, many Democrats, labor unions, and public service workers that have sapped tax-paying Americans for fat pensions for decades have thrown in with these would-be waifs who prefer the multi-syllabic drivel of pseudo-professor Cornel West to any real knowledge about economics achieved by intellectual effort.

Reading a book or two by legitimate scholars like Thomas Sowell or Milton Friedman would be sufficient to enlighten all those who aren’t irredeemably committed to massaging their belly buttons. The reason Washington D.C. and corporations (like Solyndra) massage each other is because America’s government has become a giant 3.7 trillion-dollar slush fund. That’s why Wall Street’s Goldman-Sachs gave much more money to Obama than to McCain in 2008.

The best way to “get money out of politics” is to shrink government and let consumers, not Obama’s czars, determine winners and losers. But mobs, as opposed to most Tea Partiers, love mindless chants, power, simplistic schemes and especially imposing themselves on others.

SPENDING OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

Merryle Rukeyser once said on his son’s long-running “Wall Street Week” TV show that a liberal is someone who’s liberal with other people’s money.

The half-billion dollar loan dished out by President Obama’s Energy Department to the politically connected and now bankrupt Solyndra Corporation is a potentially criminal case-in-point.

Rukeyser’s aphorism was given additional weight by Professor Arthur Brooks’ 2006 book, “Who Really Cares,” a scholarly investigation that showed conservatives, on average, give much more time and money to charitable activities than their liberal counterparts—a disparity that holds true even when one excludes contributions made to churches.

A corollary to Rukeyser’s definition is that liberals are also more likely to lobby for taxpayer funding with the taxpayer’s own money.

A few months ago I noted that a local PBS station was using its government-subsidized broadcast time to encourage viewers to support continued Congressional funding for public broadcasting. Now I see that Riverside County has a court web page encouraging county residents to petition the Governor “to restore vital funding to the court and provide more judges to hear cases.”

This taxpayer-funded lobbying effort even includes sample letters addressed to Governor Brown and state legislators that contend Riverside County needs twice as many judges than it currently has.

I have no problem with arguments in favor of increased funding for the court system, but that a government web page is doing the lobbying poses a serious issue—namely, whether government officials and government-sponsored groups should be using government funds to solicit the general public for more funding.

The fact that even conservative Riverside County has taken up this dubious practice isn’t a good sign.

Both politicians and ordinary citizens are free to make arguments about how public money should be spent. But putatively non-political government officials and institutions shouldn’t themselves solicit the general public for funds.

A similar problem arises when public employee unions use their political clout to sweeten employment benefits—a common scenario where government employees sit on both sides of the bargaining table without a clear bottom line to stiffen the spines of pliant politicians.

This negotiating imbalance is one of the reasons even FDR said, “All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service.” He added that “militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization of Government employees.”

Unfortunately, the militancy recently exhibited by public workers in Wisconsin now matches the audacity of both public and private groups for whom government has become a gigantic trough of other people’s money.

A GREEN BUBBLE BURSTS: "SHOVEL READY" FOR SOLYNDRA

Conspicuously absent from President Obama’s “jobs speech” last week was the “green jobs” refrain that punctuated prior rhetorical efforts.

Looking on the bright side, perhaps the President’s economic team has finally gotten it through their skulls that quixotic wind and solar investments have been a bust.

The more likely reason “green jobs” didn’t accompany “pass this bill now” in the President’s solo rendition of “Son of Stimulus” was the recent bankruptcy filing of California-based Solyndra—a solar energy company that stiffed around a thousand former workers just two years after receiving a cool half-billion dollars of government assistance.

To make this environmental disaster even more embarrassing for the administration, FBI agents carted away documents from the company’s Fremont headquarters in order to investigate possible hanky-panky.

The political smoke that suggests fire arises from the cozy relationship between the White House and Solyndra—especially the tie with George Kaiser, one of Solyndra’s key backers who donated $53,000 to Obama’s 2008 campaign and helped “bundle” thousands more. White House visitor logs also show twenty visits by Solyndra officials and investors, most by Kaiser, between March, 2009, and April, 2011.

Even worse on the appearance-of-impropriety scale, the Obama administration “fast-tracked” the company’s loan application to the Department of Energy in 2009—a decision later criticized by the Government Accountability Office.

Back in the giddy days of Stimulus 1.0, President Obama specifically pointed to Solyndra as a model of green-energy success. At least Mr. Obama was correct on one score. Solyndra is a “model”—of government cronyism and market manipulation.

According to Solyndra CEO Brian Harrison, “Regulatory and policy uncertainties in recent months created significant near-term excess supply and price erosion.” In plain English this verbal smokescreen means that today’s solar market is largely a function of government subsidies.

“Excess supply” (as was the case with mortgages and housing in the prior decade) refers to government policies, in the U.S. and abroad, that have created another bubble that’s in the process of bursting. Case in point: Two other solar companies, SpectraWatt and Evergreen Solar, filed for bankruptcy just weeks before Solyndra.

Meanwhile, according to government sources cited by the New York Times, other Obama “green jobs” programs in the Golden State have netted less than 1,300 jobs at the price of over 150 million dollars.

Still, Malibu-minded Congressman Henry Waxman, along with Gov. Brown and Sacramento’s ruling Democrats, continue to pursue the illusion of “green jobs”—a fantasy that even a New York Times piece suggests is a very expensive “pipe dream.”

Get the shovel ready—not for jobs, but to clean up the mess.

ANN COULTER: EXPOSING THE LEFT'S MOB MENTALITY

Many moons ago ABC’s Sam Donaldson compared the French and American Revolutions—implying that the two events were historical twins. Even then I knew enough history to conclude that this simplistic equation was bogus.

Unfortunately, I didn’t know just how wrongheaded the comparison was until I read Ann Coulter’s recent book “Demonic”—in particular the chapters about the slaughter of over half a million souls that occurred in France from 1789 to 1794. (By comparison, the religion-steeped American Revolution had about 20,000 casualties—half disease-related—and none of the mob-inspired butchery that was common in France.)

Coulter contends that the details and philosophical motivation for this bestial continental bloodbath aren’t more widely known because France’s statist revolution was compatible with the beliefs and propaganda methods of modern leftists. American universities, of course, are seminaries for such ideas, and attachment to these dogmas is so fervent that prominent conservatives on campus are often, in mob-like fashion, shouted down or even, on occasion, assaulted.

Coulter notes that neither Cornell (in 2010-2011) nor UCLA had courses specifically on the French Revolution. I can add that none of my numerous graduate courses in intellectual history came close to presenting the depths of atheistic depravity exhibited in Coulter’s chapters on the revolution and Terror.

I perused UCSD’s offerings on the topic and found a single course taught by a professor whose primary interests are gender and labor relations. The absence of student reviews on the web suggests that the course (buried deep in the university’s multicultural offerings) didn’t light anyone’s fire.

Coulter also observes (as David Horowitz did earlier in his book, “The Professors”) that many violent radicals from the 60s ensconced themselves in positions in higher education —among them Obama associates and former “Weathermen” Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn.

In California Coulter mentions former Black Panther Angela Davis (long time Professor at UC Santa Cruz) and Ron (Maulana) Karenga. Karenga, a former 60s radical and inventor of Kwanzaa, was able to go from prison for physically assaulting two women to Chairman of Black Studies at Cal State Long Beach in a mere fourteen years. That’s quite a tenure track.

Throw in the fact that UC-system employees were candidate Obama’s number one source of funds in 2008 (contributing $1.64 million or 50 times the amount given to McCain) and you have several exhibits favoring Coulter’s thesis that modern leftists often try to achieve their goals not by rational argument but by the exclusion of opposing views.

Congresswoman Maxine Waters’ recent “go to hell” condemnation of Tea Party Americans further reinforces Coulter’s point about the left’s mob-baiting mentality.

PUT BRAKES ON THE BULLET TRAIN

While driving to the central coast a few weeks back, I often wished that some of the state fundsemployed over the last decade on mass transit schemes would have been used to repair or widen the roads connecting Menifee and San Luis Obispo.

Perhaps in answer to my starless wish, it now seems increasingly likely that more rational cost estimates may derail the high-speed San Francisco to San Diego boondoggle whose initial funding was authorized by 52.7 percent of California voters in 2008.

The most recent construction “guesstimate” just for the Merced to Bakersfield rail-to-nowhere section came in at 10 to 13.9 billion dollars—40 to 95 percent above the prior 7.1 billion figure. Considering the trajectory of this preliminary revision, the final project could cost anywhere from 80 to 200 billion dollars.

Earlier this year State Treasurer Bill Lockyear, the fellow charged with selling California’s high-speed rail bonds, observed that private investors have exhibited no real interest in purchasing these bonds absent a sound business plan. Indeed, Lockyear even acknowledged that he himself agreed with investors who felt the folks in charge of the project don’t know what they’re doing. Said Lockyear, “We don’t have a plan that makes sense.”

As more realistic cost estimates come in, the rapid-rail “business plan” seems to bear a mega-expensive price tag that will never be largely picked up, as hoped, by private investors, the federal government, and those who ride the choo-choo.

A prescient report last month by three Bay Area financial experts observed that megaprojects of this sort have a consistent record of cost overruns. Sixty percent is just the rail average. However, if the bullet train performs as badly as the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge project, the final price tag would be more than five times present cost estimates or around $247 billion.

On the bright side, Boston’s Big-Dig came in with a comparatively modest 300% cost overrun—a ratio that would put California’s high-speed bottom line at over 130 billion.

Another low-balled item has been the price of bullet train tickets, which have already been revised sharply upward. Among items likely overestimated in early scenarios are ridership and ridership revenue.

Amazingly, even Democrats in the California legislature have begun to question the wisdom of proceeding with this high-speed rip-off. Senator Alan Lowenthal, a past supporter of the project, recently acknowledged that “we really need to re-examine what we’re spending and what we’re going to get for it.”

Put more accurately, legislators need to scrutinize the project carefully for the first time—and then, as
Rep. Diane Harkey has been urging, scrap it.

UC FEEDS THE DIVERSITY BEAST

Responding to a recent 150-million dollar reduction in funding for the University of California system, UC’s vice president for budget and capital resources, Patrick Lenz, insisted that the state’s campuses and offices have already “cut to the bone.”

Not exactly. Despite “draconian” cuts that professional education bureaucrats are paid to lament, campuses throughout the UC system obviously have enough dough to fund and even expand a gargantuan diversity establishment.

As Heather MacDonald of the Manhattan Institute notes, diversity-related positions not only have “been protected from budget cuts, their numbers are actually growing.” A prime example is a new vice chancellor position for equity, diversity, and inclusion at UCSD.

Such a position might conceivably be rationalized if no comparable function existed, but according to MacDonald, UCSD’s “massive diversity apparatus” already includes a Chancellor’s Diversity Office, an associate chancellor for faculty equity, an assistant vice chancellor for diversity, faculty equity advisors, graduate diversity coordinators, a staff diversity liaison, an undergraduate diversity liaison, a graduate student diversity liaison, a chief diversity officer, a director of development for diversity initiatives, an Office of Academic Diversity and Equal Opportunity, a Committee on Gender Identify and Sexual Orientation Issues, a Committee on the Status of Women, a Campus Council on Climate Culture and Inclusion, a Diversity Council, directors of the Cross-Cultural Center, a Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Resource Center, and a Women’s Center.

Somewhere in that plethora of politically correct conformity (generically known as “diversity”) one would think that several warm bodies could be found to cover the new vice chancellor’s task of “building on existing diversity plans to develop and implement a campus-wide strategy on equity, diversity, and inclusion.”

Unfortunately UCSD is not alone in its multiplication of “diversity” administrators. UC Berkeley, for example, has its own vice chancellor for equity and inclusion with a staff of seventeen in his immediate office. In 2009 this fellow’s base pay was almost $200,000—over three times the official starting salary for assistant professors in the UC system.

But since the diversity beast must be perpetually appeased, the burden of budget cuts continues to fall on regular students in the form of tuition increases and not on the legion of tax-supported “multi-culti” functionaries.

A further consequence of this mad devotion to political correctness is that prestigious professors are being lured away by institutions that employ their funds more wisely. Such was the case with a trio of cancer researchers who recently left UCSD and headed for Houston, Texas—where a 40% benefit package increase awaits them at Rice University in the nation’s premier red state.

Meanwhile, the UC system adds more administrative diversity fluff.

A SUMMER DREAM OF SECESSION

A new state of South California? It’s about as likely to happen as the current state of California is to balance this year’s budget without using smoke-and-mirrors.

Still, at the end of June Riverside County Supervisor Jeff Stone proposed a conference to consider forming a new state that would be carved out of 13 counties in Southern California--including Riverside, Orange and San Diego Counties but excluding Los Angeles.

Stone’s secessionist rhetoric was partly motivated by budgetary decisions in Sacramento that diverted around 14-million dollars in 2011-2012 vehicle license fee revenues from four cities in Riverside County: Eastvale, Jurupa Valley, Menifee and Wildomar.

Later at a Board of Supervisors meeting Stone modified his proposal and suggested a summit of city and county officials this fall to discuss problems local governments are facing due to state regulation and appropriation of taxes formerly directed to counties and municipalities.

The Board approved this modified proposal, which is to be funded privately and lacks any reference to Fort Sumter. Stone insisted, however, that secession would still be an option should the conferees fail to discover viable solutions to enduring problems like border security, chronic budget deficits, and economic stagnation.

Since any secessionist reorganization would need to be okayed by both Sacramento and Congress, the chances of it happening are infinitesimally small. But it’s midsummer, and folks can be forgiven for dreaming.

Currently California’s state motto is “eureka”—Greek for “I have found it.” The motto of our new imaginary state could be the Latin equivalent of one of the following: “The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen,” or “SoCal—where humans trump delta smelts,” or “Here ‘illegal’ really means ‘illegal.’”

Other contenders might be “Educating for life, not for interest groups,” or “Love LA? Take I-10 West.”

Stone’s own thoughts about his 13-county political dream are that it would have a part-time legislature, no term limits and strict limits on property taxes.

One wag suggested that the new state’s capital could be in Disneyland. But even the Magic Kingdom would have a hard time topping the fantasies that have emanated from Sacramento during the last two decades.

The same critic added that secession involves “major surgery where we need a Band-Aid”—an analogy whose tepid medical prescription demonstrates the kind of remoteness from economic and political reality that prompted Stone to float the secessionist idea in the first place.

Stone’s midsummer political dream might at least prompt realistic conversations about factors that have made the once Golden State largely ungovernable—factors like entrenched public-sector interest groups, hopelessly gerrymandered legislative districts, and excessive concentration of power in Sacramento.

SOCKING IT TO THE GRINGOS

It was a week and two days before the fourth of July when the U.S.A. and Mexico squared off in a Gold Cup soccer match. The stadium was packed with fans, the vast majority of whom were supporting the green-clad Mexican squad.

During the American national anthem the boisterous crowd bounced beach balls back and forth and tooted their noisy air-horns. Then throughout the contest a torrent of verbal abuse was reportedly hurled toward the American goalie.

At game’s end Mexico had secured a 4-2 comeback win over their North American rivals. Adding insult to injury, the post-game awards ceremony was conducted almost entirely in Spanish.

The real kicker in this sorry tale of poor sportsmanship is that this prominent event was held in Pasadena’s Rose Bowl.

U.S. goalie Tim Howard, who was doubtless in a sour mood after letting in four goals and being constantly harassed from the stands, directed his anger toward the sponsor of the tournament for conducting the award ceremony almost totally in Spanish: “You can bet your ass that if we were in Mexico City, it wouldn’t all be in English.”

A writer for the LA Times called the night “imperfectly odd…strangely unsettling” and “uniquely American”—displaying in his high-falutin’ prose precisely the political sentiments that have allowed Los Angeles to be transformed in the last five decades from an overwhelmingly Anglo town in 1960 into (in the words of former LA Mayor Jim Hahn) “a Mexican city.”

That demographic transformation wouldn’t be so unsettling if American elites and most teachers in our public school system still believed in the principle enunciated in Latin on our nation’s coins: e pluribus unum--“out of many, one.”

Unfortunately, since the 60s the mantra of multiculturalism has been drummed into the heads of Americans vegetating in classrooms or in front of the boob tube. That ideology goes beyond embracing feelings of ethnic pride to include a fashionable hatred that exaggerates and dwells obsessively on everything that’s wrong with America.

Given this elitist catechism, it’s inevitable that the time-honored practice of assimilation and pride at becoming an American is being replaced by a litany of historical grievances directed against the country in which immigrants (especially illegals) live and work.

Instead of honoring the values articulated in the country’s Declaration of Independence, America is increasingly seen by those who cross its southern border as the land that victimized their ancestors and owes them big-time reparations.

Americans who’ve absorbed this guilt-inducing caricature are loath to require anything of these newcomers and are inclined to interpret evidence of cultural disintegration as “uniquely American.”

In short, multiculturalism, anti-Americanism and lax border enforcement are triplets.