Murderers Who Are Released to Murder Again

Last November Californians narrowly defeated (52-48 percent) a proposition that would have abolished the state’s death penalty. Riverside County, like most inland regions, voted more decisively (62-38) against the measure.

Dennis Fink Stanworth is one reason folks who aren’t entertainers with personal bodyguards or wealthy liberals living in gated coastal communities tend to favor the death sentence for first degree and especially “special circumstances” murders.

The seventy-year-old Stanworth recently confessed to killing his own mother in Vallejo. In 1966 a much younger Stanworth raped and killed two girls, ages 14 and 15. For these crimes he was sentenced to death. Three years later the State Supreme Court set aside that sentence despite the defendant’s insistence that he deserved to be executed.

A second jury invoked the death penalty for Stanworth in 1974, only to have their judgment again overridden by the state’s highest court. This time those black-robed demigods ruled that California’s death penalty constituted “cruel and unusual punishment” and reduced Stanworth’s sentence to life in prison with the possibility of parole.

In 1990 this double murderer with four other rapes on his rap sheet was released on parole. Three years later parole oversight ended, and he was only required to register as a sex offender.

At the recent arraignment for his mother’s murder Stanworth exclaimed, “It’s the third time. I plead guilty to everything.” Stanworth isn’t the only murderer sentenced to death that’s been released from prison and murdered again, but he is the most recent—as far as we know.

Opponents of the death penalty often raise the possibility that an innocent person might be executed—totally ignoring the killed-by-released-murderers side of the equation.

Proposition 34 supporters (who outspent opponents by a 20 to 1 ratio) also argued that death penalty cases are much more expensive than non-capital cases. They failed to note, of course, that capital trials and appeals are costly precisely because of legal redundancies that are multiplied by the same folks who cite money as a reason to abolish executions.

Currently the existence of a “life in prison without the possibility of parole” punishment makes it unlikely that today’s double-murderers will be released from prison. But the constant agitation for penal leniency by reformers for whom victims quickly become bloodless abstractions should give pause to anyone who thinks California’s no-parole prison sentences (like Stanworth’s two death sentences) are written in stone.

The myopic mindset of the most ardent bleeding hearts is reflected in the astounding sentence given to Norway’s recent murderer of 77 human beings—twenty-one years. That’s 100 days for each life snuffed out by Anders Breivik.

Is California Being Run by Eco-fascists?

One might think a book called “Eco-fascists” would emanate from a conservative think tank. Elizabeth Nickson, however, is a committed environmentalist and mainstream journalist who was mugged by what she now calls “the tyranny of the environmental movement.”

This “mugging” occurred when she attempted to subdivide her twenty-eight acres on British Columbia’s Salt Spring Island and was met with a green fury that was only matched by an authoritarian bureaucratic structure that squelched any resistance to environmental dogma.

Californians would be well advised to peruse this work that provides several Golden State examples of the devastation wrought by government agencies and green groups working largely under cover of the Endangered Species Act.

Nickson cites the Klamath River Basin in California as “a case study in how the movement destroys a region in order to turn it first to wilderness, then, seemingly inadvertently, to desert.”

Thanks to unnecessary spotted owl forest shutdowns, only two of that area’s twenty-two sawmills now function, and unemployment stands at 25 percent. Moreover, vast amounts of wood that could be harvested is left on the forest floor to fuel an environmentally catastrophic fire.

Due to such ideology-driven policies, California, which has the second-largest forest in the country, now imports 80 percent of its wood.

Environmentalists are also pressing for removal of the four low-cost energy-producing dams on the Klamath River, the largest dam removal in history—all for the sake of a species, the coho salmon, that never thrived in the chemical-rich riverbeds of the upper Klamath.

The Klamath’s green disaster has a counterpart in Del Norte County. There the creation and expansion of Redwood National Park resulted in dramatic losses of forestry and service-related jobs. By 1998 that county’s poverty rate was almost 23 percent.

The tourism that was supposed to compensate for all those lost family-wage jobs never materialized and is even discouraged by “wilderness” policies proffered by the California Coastal Commission. In the words of one county supervisor, “The park expansion turned us into a welfare county.”

The anti-rural devastation Nickson describes in Northern California is also evident in the dramatic reduction of San Joachin-Sacramento River water sent to Central Valley farmers. The dubious ecological rationale? A three-inch sub-species called the Delta Smelt.

Even San Diegans living in areas with puddles designated “vernal pools” can wake up and discover environmental activists and government bureaucrats confiscating their property rights in the name of a tiny fairy shrimp.

The final irony, as Nickson argues persuasively, is that “ecosystem” science is deeply flawed and often destructive of the nature it supposedly preserves--all at the worldwide cost of millions of human lives and trillions of life-enhancing dollars.

Tax Breaks for Hollywood Hypocrites

Hollywood has long been a goldmine for big-government Democrats who inveigh against wealthy folks who aren’t paying “their fair share” in taxes.

Thus, it seems fitting that the first annual “Al Gore Height of Hypocrisy Award” should go to those Tinseltowners who last year received a two-year extension of California’s Film and Television Tax Credit program. (Gore, by the way, recently sold his Current TV cable channel for a bundle to a news outfit funded by the oil-rich Emir of Qatar.)

The aforementioned Sacramento stocking stuffer provides 100 million dollars in tax credits to lucky California productions randomly selected from the hundreds of applications submitted to the California Film Commission. The lottery continues until all the year’s goodies have been allocated.

This giveaway provides a 20 percent tax credit for feature films with production budgets between one and seventy-five million dollars. Made-for-television and mini-series productions with budgets of at least $500,000 also qualify—as do new television series licensed for original distribution on basic cable.

According to a study by the self-interested Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation, this modest program (by government’s lax standards) generated more than $3.8 billion dollars in economic activity in California and “supported” more than 20,000 jobs during its first two years of operation.

A more somber portrait was offered by the non-partisan Legislative Analyst’s Office. It concluded that the policy “appears to result in a net decline in state revenues”—an odd outcome for a program that, if the law’s L.A.-based authors are to be believed, would end the state’s economic woes if only it were dramatically increased.

This special deal for TV and film productions is needed, it should be noted, because folks in that industry have been fleeing California to sites where tax burdens are less onerous and various tax breaks are available.

According to one estimate, “the number of studio-backed feature films shot in California dropped from 66 percent in 2003 to less than 40 percent last year.” Other reports spotlight a dramatic decline in TV productions. Tax incentives offered by various states and Canada were cited as a major reason for the drop.

Riverside County Supervisors Jeff Stone and John Benoit are hoping to cash in on this exodus by offering Hollywood hypocrites financial incentives that are closer to home.

Here’s a thought: If tax incentives work for Hollywood liberals, why not employ the general principle throughout the economy and abolish special perks for political cronies—like the estimated $430 million slice of filmmaker pork that was stuffed into the recent fiscal cliff deal in Washington D.C?

Will Politicians Prescribe Therapy?

The Ninth Circuit Court recently provided an example of the aphorism that even a broken clock is right twice a day. In this case those black-robed demigods issued a post-Christmas injunction against implementing a bill (SB 1172) that prohibits state-licensed therapists from counseling minors to eliminate unwanted same-sex attractions.

That first-in-the-nation bill, signed last September by Governor Brown, was scheduled to go into effect on January 1. Now our pathologically narcissistic Sacramento politicians must secure an OK from the nation’s most eccentric federal court.

Apparently even those hyper-liberal jurists were swayed by arguments about freedom of choice and privacy that were made by groups opposing the bill. Among those groups is the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality. NARTH’s website summarizes various objections against this legislation that places interest-group-obsessed politicians between minor patients and their licensed therapists.

The law, spawned by Torrance State Senator Ted Lieu, dictates to parents, minor children and their licensed therapists that they must not seek “to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward individuals of the same sex”—an amazingly broad prohibition that calls in question even counseling designed to curb sexual impulses.

The list of horribles that supposedly accompany such therapies are typically paired in the legislation’s self-justification by weasel-words like “can” or “may” and concern possibilities that apply to any serious therapy. Moreover, the law’s vague recitation of negative outcomes applies in spades to the popular antidepressant prozac.

Even the American Psychological Association (a group long dominated by ideologues) only “advises” parents and youngsters “to avoid” therapies that “portray homosexuality as a mental illness or developmental disorder.” The APA also notes, with uncharacteristic modesty, that the “scientific value” of such therapy “is questionable.”

By contrast, Sacramento’s know-it-alls, whose ignorance of climate science and psychology only matches their exaggerated self-esteem, cast aside all doubt by outlawing a practice that the premier professional association only discourages.

Also ignored by these legislative super-egos is the dangerous precedent set by government’s intrusion into matters related to parental authority and mental health—or the likelihood that parents will seek out less qualified, less sympathetic counselors to achieve goals that the capital’s pretend-shrinks have made it impossible to pursue within a professional context.

That the bogus but once-revered notion of self-esteem is scattered generously throughout SB 1172 gives anyone familiar with trends in pop-psychology a sense of how intellectually shallow this legislation actually is.

SB 1172 is championed, I should add, by the same folks who insist with contorted red faces that government mustn’t interfere with maternal decisions that relate to the life or death of a healthy nine-month fetus.

WILL RICH CALIFORNIANS FOLLOW THE FRENCH?

What do Gerard Depardieu and wealthy Californians have in common? Governor Brown is hoping the answer is “very little.” Several anecdotes and a spate of statistics, however, suggest they share more than Sacramento types would like to think.

Monsieur Depardieu, one of France’s most famous actors, has taken refuge in Belgium from President Hollande’s 75% tax on income over a million euros. The Cyrano de Bergerac star, however, is hardly alone in his search for a less taxing environment.

According to a Swiss magazine, 44 of that nation’s 300 richest residents are French and include famous names like Peugeot and Rothschild. Earlier this year London Mayor Boris Johnson, speaking fluent French, encouraged financial workers on the other side of the Channel to move to his city.

With the passage of Governor Brown’s Proposition 30, overall state-federal marginal tax rates for the Golden State’s top earners could exceed 50 percent—depending of the resolution of President Obama’s proposal to tax millionaires, billionaires, and those with adjusted incomes over $200,000.

As a consequence, the somewhat diminished flight of folks out of California could again become frantic—especially on the part of enterprises struggling in a business climate that ranks near the bottom of the Tax Foundation’s list of states. Among recent departures are 800 Chevron and 1000 Comcast jobs that are moving to other states, especially business-friendly Texas.

Ironically, folks in Hollywood are themselves increasingly prone to take productions elsewhere to secure tax breaks that aren’t available under the political regime they enthusiastically support. A double irony is that conservative Riverside County is pondering incentives that might encourage these “runaway” studios to film in the Inland Empire.

Beyond anecdotes, historical statistics suggest that Brown’s new taxes on the somewhat and actually wealthy are unlikely to produce significant revenues. As economist Thomas Sowell has noted, “high tax rates that people don’t actually pay do not bring in as much hard cash as lower tax rates that they do pay.”

The 1920s provide a poignant example. In 1921 a 73 percent tax rate on the wealthy brought in less revenue than a 24 percent top rate in 1925. Similar but less drastic cuts by JFK, Reagan, and George W. Bush produced similar results.

Rich folks, especially in a technologically enhanced economy, have many ways to avoid paying taxes. Tax-exempt bonds, even with low yields, beat paying half one’s dollars to the government. Or consider Google, an Obama-friendly California-based corporation that utilizes a Bermuda company to shelter two billion tax dollars.

Vilifying the rich may be emotionally gratifying, but it’s bad economics and socially destructive—as California, like France, may someday learn.

VIOLENCE PERVADES A CULTURE WITHOUT MORAL BACKBONE

“Oh my gosh, here we go.” Those were the thoughts of Newport Beach Deputy Chief David McGill when he got the call last week about a man firing a weapon at the city’s Fashion Island shopping center.

The previous day the lives of twenty young children and six adults at a Connecticut elementary school were brutally ended after the killer murdered his own mother at home. Fortunately, the Newport Beach shooter “released his tension” in a less horrific manner—directing more than 50 shots to the skies.

The next day Los Angeles police arrested a 24-year-old Pomona man for threats made against “kindergarten and elementary school kids” via the college student’s Facebook posting.  L.A. County prosecutors, however, declined to file charges despite a large cache of firearms that police found at the parental residence where he was arrested.

According to neighbors the now-free young man is a “head-of-the-class student” and a “totally good kid.” Perhaps the threatening post was, for him, a form of humor—not unlike Jamie Foxx’s Saturday Night Live comment (prior to the Connecticut horror) that in his new movie (“Django Unchained”) “I kill all the white people. How great is that!” Audience laughter followed.

The absence of a recent body count in California perpetuates the illusion that such things happen “somewhere else.” Disappearing down the memory hole is April’s murder of seven at Oikos University in Oakland. Last year’s shooting at Seal Beach, where eight persons were killed, has become ancient history—an artifact as remote as the slaughter of twenty-one humans at a San Ysidro McDonald’s in 1984.

Many folks are eager to assure us that these horrific events are no worse than shootings in the past. According to one scholar, “mass killings actually reached their peak in 1929.”

Those individuals are quite literally “whistling past the graveyard.” The late Senator Patrick Moynihan, himself a distinguished scholar, noted that the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in 1929, where four gangsters killed seven other gangsters, was a huge event meriting two entries in the World Book Encyclopedia. How many folks even remember  Seal Beach?

Only in the last few decades has violence been mass-marketed extensively via films, music, and video games to both adults and kids. Ten years ago when I was teaching at a La Jolla prep-school, one teacher felt comfortable showing another ultra-violent Quentin Tarantino movie, Pulp Fiction, to students in a religion class. There was no administrative reaction.

When folks in authority are more worried about being called prudes than about setting high standards--for language, parenthood, and entertainment--that culture is in trouble. Not all shots will be fired into the air.

PROPOSITION 13 MAY BE DEMOCRATS’ NEW SCAPEGOAT

A joke in the old Soviet Union concerned a departed leader who left his successor two envelopes with these instructions: “When you are in big trouble, open envelope number one. When you are in really big trouble, open envelope number two.”

A few years later the official was in a huge mess, so he opened the first envelope. It said, “Blame everything on me.” After a while the official was facing an even greater crisis, so he opened the second envelope. It read, “Prepare two envelopes.”

The moral of the story is that scapegoating becomes routine in a system that doesn’t work. California’s politicians have transformed this practice into a fine art.

For several decades the dwindling numbers of Republicans in Sacramento were regularly blamed by Democrats and their media allies for the state’s wildly imbalanced budget. As is the case now in Washington D.C., GOP opposition to tax increases took the political rap for deficits—not the other party’s penchant for spending that, adjusted for inflation, increased over 40 percent per capita in the Golden State from 2000 to 2010.

Now that Democrats possess sufficient numbers to make Republicans irrelevant, one would think this supermajority would have to own the consequences of their belief that, as one skeptical commentator put it, “California is only one massive tax increase away from being fixed.” This consequence seems especially reasonable given that voters recently approved Governor Brown’s Proposition 30 tax increases.

There is considerable evidence, however, that the big government crew is building up a new scapegoat beyond the GOP, oil companies, and those dastardly Koch brothers—just in case higher taxes don’t produce revenues that keep pace with continuing demands for more “stimulus and investment.”

The new scapegoat for failed economic policies in Sacramento appears to be Proposition 13. Recently State Senator Mark Leno introduced legislation that would reduce from two-thirds to 55 percent the majorities needed to increase local property taxes. Other ideas designed to “reform” Prop. 13 focus on assessments for commercial property.

The speed with which these proposals appeared after the passage of Prop. 30 suggests that Democrats don’t expect Brown’s new taxes to be the magic bullet that will cure California’s ills. This assumption is reinforced by recent figures from the State Comptroller’s office showing November’s revenues came in 10.8 percent ($806.8 million) below budgetary expectations.

In short, if new taxes don’t produce a flood of additional revenue and a balanced budget, Sacramento’s prescription will be more of the same. The two revolving envelopes for these legislators will always read “Blame the rich” and “Raise taxes.”

“MEATLESS MONDAYS” DISTRACT FROM TOUGH POLITICAL TASKS

What are politicians to do when problems are massive and solutions bound to offend the powerful interest groups that pull their strings? Answer: Focus attention elsewhere.

That’s what the Los Angeles City Council did a couple of weeks before the national election when it adopted a “Meatless Monday” resolution “in support of comprehensive sustainability efforts” that would also “encourage residents to eat a more varied plant-based diet to protect their health and protect animals.”

Councilwoman Jan Perry, whose district extends southward from downtown L.A., introduced this zany motion. As an encore, she hopes to ban new fast-food restaurants in the area—a move that would lessen the number of jobs available for her constituents where unemployment far exceeds the county’s dismal rate of 10.5 percent.

The councilwoman is only following in the footsteps of other politicians like New York City Mayor Bloomberg who, having little success doing what politicians are elected to do (i.e. manage finances and provide basic government services at reasonable rates) have assumed the mantel of Nanny-in-Chief.

In Bloomberg’s case the latest object of his wrath was sugary soft drinks in excess of sixteen ounces. Other Bloomberg crusades have been waged against trans fat, salt, and outdoor smoking.

In Southern California the specter of thin plastic shopping bags has captured the fertile imagination of officials whose schools are often performing as poorly as the public employee pension funds that were mindlessly expected to grow as quickly as the number of retirees tapping these exorbitant benefits.

Other faux-crises that fascinate Golden State politicians include endangered critters like the three-inch delta smelt—a species-of-sorts whose protection trumped the water needs of Central Valley farmers and put thousands of unprotected homo sapiens out of business.

Put simply, “meatless” diversions shift attention away from yawning budget deficits, a high-tax, high-regulation environment that’s driving entrepreneurs out of state, illegal immigration issues that have only been ameliorated by a lousy economy, a graduation rate of 61.6 percent in the LA Unified school system, and a plethora of problems related to crime, drug smuggling and drug abuse.

The situation reminds me of a scene at the beginning of the film “Sex, Lies, and Videotape” where Andie MacDowell is explaining to a psychiatrist her obsession with a garbage-laden barge searching for a friendly port-of-call—an extraneous event that allows her to ignore a dissolving marriage.

Politicians fixated on “plant-based diets” are engaged in a similar delusion that detracts attention from budgets, jobs, education, public safety, and infrastructure. Believe it or not, constituents can plan their own diets without bureaucrat tutorials.

CHRISTMAS VERSUS THE NAKED PUBLIC SQUARE

One of the consolations of living in Sun City (aka Menifee) is the nostalgic atmosphere that pervades the residential communities dating from the sixties and seventies. When cruising these holiday-enhanced streets, one could almost forget that in America today, and especially in Santa Monica, there are folks who devote significant effort to removing from public property scenes that have warmed young and old hearts since 1953.

Last year in that saint-christened city a group of atheists conspired to secure for themselves the lion’s share of spaces available for decoration based on a lottery that had been set up to ensure equal access by folks of different persuasions.

Many of these slots were, appropriately enough, left empty by folks who are skilled at destroying tradition but ill-equipped at putting anything uplifting in its place. A few other displays were used to mock religion—a good example of the new “spirit-of-the-solstice-season.”

Two slots housed a condensed version of the traditional Nativity scene, and one space commemorated the Jewish festival of Hanukkah.

This year “The City of the Christmas Story” all-but-ditched the traditional displays at Palisades Park, insisting that any scene erected must have an attendant, presumably to protect it from vandals. A federal judge recently upheld the position of the municipality that seeks to wash its hands of what has become a legal and cultural battlefield.

Who knew that images promoting “Peace on earth; good will to men,” could be so divisive?

What most folks don’t know is that the modern judicial interpretation of the Constitution’s establishment clause would have seemed bizarre to the Founding Fathers, including Thomas Jefferson. The Jefferson Memorial, which is replete with religious references, pays tribute to an unorthodox President who nevertheless regularly attended church services that were held in the Capitol building itself for seventy years.

By contrast, the crew that gets its drawers bent out of shape over traditional Christmas displays on public property now insists that government-related acknowledgements of “the season” should shed all their essentially religious components and employ only images that don’t offend secular sensibilities—perhaps Black Friday fistfights or tasteful representations of a meaningless universe.

The logical kicker is that these dismal metaphysical preferences aren’t rational imperatives. Moreover, they offend individuals who lack a grinchly disposition and cringe at the idea that the only thing we have in common is government and black holes.

Here’s a novel thought. How about exhibiting some charity when in a government “of the people” some of those folks express their holiday traditions in the public square? That response certainly beats a cheerless, naked and rigorously intolerant public square.

Immigration Driving Shift in State Politics

Way back in 1964 Marshall McLuhan began his influential book, “Understanding Media,” with this anecdote from the New York Times: “A health director…reported this week that a small mouse, which presumably had been watching television, attacked a little girl and her full-grown cat. Both mouse and cat survived, and the incident is recorded here as a reminder that things seem to be changing.”

That odd case of turnabout might be used as a metaphor for the political transformation that’s occurred in California—from a state that four times gave electoral majorities to Ronald Reagan, twice as governor and twice as President, to a state that just voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama in spite of an unemployment rate that’s been above ten percent for over three years.

In addition, Democrats recently gained supermajorities in Sacramento and now sport a 38-15 bulge in the state’s Congressional delegation—Mary Bono Mack and Brian Bilbray being two recent GOP casualties.

San Diego is another case in point. That city recently chose pro-union, liberal Democrat Bob Filner as its mayor. This is the same municipality that from 1971 to 1983 was headed by Pete Wilson and from 1983 to 1986 by Roger Hedgecock.

A major factor driving this Left Coast transformation has been demographic. As journalist Diana West has noted: “In 1960 non-Hispanic whites made up 82 percent of the population of Los Angeles County. Forty years later…the white population had dwindled to 31 percent while Hispanics…accounted for 44.6 percent.”

In the last decade those figures have continued to fall and rise—to 27.6 percent and 48.1 percent respectively. This demographic change brought with it significant economic shifts. Thus, during the 1990s, a period of rapid economic growth in the country at large, the poverty rate rose 28 percent in Los Angeles County and over 60 percent in Riverside County.

Other sociological trends have combined with these demographic factors to produce the political shift that’s turned the Golden State dark blue. These trends include a dramatic rise of out-of-wedlock births among Latinos. Indeed, according to Center for Disease Controls statistics for 2003, Hispanics had by far the highest unmarried birthrate in the country (92 children per 1000 unmarried women).

Link those numbers with a dropout rate of 20 percent, and you have a circumstance where, as New York Times columnist Ross Douthat writes, many immigrants “aren’t assimilating successfully—or worse, are assimilating downward.”

Put otherwise, the family cohesiveness that was once touted as a strength of Hispanic culture is rapidly dissolving amid America’s media-driven culture. As it does, the government aid that both alleviates and promotes social dysfunction seems all the more necessary.

Proposition 30 Brings Smiles to Union Faces

It used to be said that patriotism was “the last refuge of scoundrels.” Nowadays the façade behind which political rogues reside are the happy faces of children.

A case in point was the ubiquitous political ad featuring Governor Jerry Brown and a group of cheering kids. The obvious message was that whoever voted for Proposition 30 was doing so “for the children.” By implication, those voting against Prop. 30 were Ebenezer Scrooge clones whose hearts were unmoved by the tears they brought to the faces of little tykes.

If there were a truth in advertising requirement for political ads, the cohort standing behind Gov. Brown would have been officers from the California Teachers Association. When these mugs lit up at the mention of Prop. 30, folks would rightly conclude that this “temporary” sales and income tax increase was primarily “for the union”—specifically for a pension program that’s unfunded by tens-of-billions of dollars.

As those officials know, the word “fungible” concerns a thing’s interchangeability—including the idea that money taken from pot A can easily be shifted to pot B, and vice versa. Thus, if more money comes into a vessel that’s designated for classroom education, it becomes easier to divert funds for other purposes.

Fungibility is why lottery revenue didn’t prove, as advertised, a tremendous boon to education in the state and why Prop. 30 won’t cure its “funding problem.”

Indeed, the only reason education and public safety were specifically on Prop. 30’s budgetary chopping block is because the governor placed them there to extort a tax increase from voters. In effect, he pointed guns at schools and public safety and said the only alternatives were a tax rise or shooting kids and police officers.

It’s not a strategy that would have worked if the budgetary “trigger” mechanism were aimed at the multi-billion dollar bullet train or insolvent public employee pension programs.

The biggest deception of all, however, is that a lack of money is education’s most serious problem. This fallacy has been illustrated and ignored countless times. Even the late Democrat Senator Patrick Moynihan concluded that the correlation between money spent per pupil and positive academic outcomes was “derisory.”

Instead of the much-ballyhooed teacher-student ratio, Moynihan pointed to the rigorously ignored parent-student ratio as the most critical factor related to student success—a measure largely beyond the reach of legislators.

Two things politicians could change for the better with respect to education include requiring greater teacher accountability and increasing parents’ power to choose where their kids go to school. Neither policy will change as long as happy-faced CTA lobbyists own Sacramento.

The audacity of incumbency: Feinstein’s no-debate strategy

How does an incumbent Democratic senator win reelection when unemployment in her not-so-Golden State has exceeded ten percent for over three years and its business climate continues to place near the bottom of various national rankings. Diane Feinstein’s approach was simple: Ignore your opponent and outspend her 15 to 1.

For voters who encountered the name only on last Tuesday’s ballot, Feinstein’s Republican adversary was Elizabeth Emken—a talented lady who graduated from UCLA in 1984, worked for years at IBM as an efficiency and cost-cutting expert, and served as Vice President for Government Relations at Autism Speaks, a major advocacy organization for developmentally disabled children like Emken’s son, Alex.

One reason this resume was never encountered by millions of Californians is because Senator Feinstein refused to debate Emken even once. Feinstein’s imperious attitude was on full display a couple of months ago when San Francisco reporter Mark Matthews asked the senator why she hadn’t agreed to debate Emken. Feinstein responded shortly that she was running her own campaign.

When Matthews pressed the issue by saying, “Wouldn’t it be better for voters to hear both sides?” Feinstein replied, “Thank you very much,” stood up, patted Matthews on the shoulder, and walked away.

The condescension exhibited toward Matthews was also an expression of contempt for California voters. Why give the poor darlings a chance to hear another perspective when you have a massive campaign war-chest and an overwhelming name recognition advantage?

“We need to get rid of career politicians,” is a refrain I’ve heard repeatedly over the years. In accord with that sentiment Californians established term limits for their state legislators. If voters wish to put limits on Congressional office holders, however, they have to reject the incumbent in an election—something that’s not likely to happen as long California’s union-dominated political landscape looks like it does.

A powerful 20-year incumbent like Feinstein didn’t need to employ any tricks from the Democrats’ political playbook. There were no kids voicing their enthusiastic toilet-trained support for her candidacy (a la Jerry Brown’s Prop. 30 ad). There were no menacing portraits of Karl Rove and the Koch brothers threatening to turn California into a vast corporate-controlled wasteland (a la “No” on Prop. 32 ).

There was simply a supremely confident (one might say arrogant) senator facing the camera and mouthing a few platitudes about Medicare, Social Security, and “a woman’s right to choose.”

The result: A landslide for entrenched incumbency—even a narrow win in Riverside County. Please, no more empty words about hating career politicians unless you’re prepared to vote them out of office.

Media ignore feeble response on Libya (11/3)

In the era of electronic bombardment most Americans don’t pay attention to events that aren’t emphatically repeated at least a dozen times in the mainstream media. For them the terrorist attack in Libya on 9/11, the Obama administration’s unbelievable response to that attack, and the stunning comments of a grieving father at his son’s repatriation service never happened.

The September 11 attack in Benghazi resulted in the death of four Americans, including a U.S. Ambassador and former Navy SEAL and Imperial Beach resident, Tyrone Woods.

In the wake of this tragedy the mainstream media for days focused negative attention on Mitt Romney for criticizing an apologetic embassy response to a non-deadly demonstration in Cairo—the pretext for which was a YouTube video of a crude anti-Muslim film produced in Southern California.

Five days after the attack U. N. Ambassador Susan Rice appeared on five Sunday talk shows confidently asserting that the Libya attack wasn’t an organized terrorist operation but was precipitated by outrage over this same YouTube video.

Accordingly, mainstream news organizations scoured the Southland to expose the beliefs and background of the film’s “Coptic-Christian” maker and Hemet-based spokesman.

As information about the Benghazi raid dripped out, mostly via Fox News, the YouTube scenario about a “spontaneous demonstration” that morphed into a murderous, heavy-weapon assault became untenable. Yet even two weeks later the President denounced the video six times in a speech to the United Nations.

A few days ago Charles Woods, Tyrone’s father, raised a question one would think any honest journalist would pursue: Why was military assistance to his son not forthcoming during the 7-hour consulate siege? Related questions include the following: Why was the administration so reticent to attribute the Benghazi attack to an organized terrorist group? Why was the consulate’s security not better in light of prior local attacks and the fact that it was, after all, 9/11?

Almost totally ignored by mainstream media outlets were Mr. Woods’ negative comments about the demeanor of President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton at an Andrews Air Force Base memorial service.

Recently President Obama declared to an impertinent Denver TV reporter that what happened in Libya “has nothing to do” with the election. An honest press corps would be demanding (with Watergate intensity) that the White House prove, before the election, that its Libya response and comments weren’t, as they appear, largely driven by politics.

Prop. 32: It's time to shake off union's yoke (10/27)

A popular aphorism defines insanity as repeating the same action over and over but expecting different results. By this standard, most voters in the Golden State should long ago have been institutionalized.

Again and again majorities vote for the same big government, easy entitlement, union-dominated, hyper-green legislators in Sacramento. And time after time they get a state characterized by high unemployment, bulging budget deficits, fleeing entrepreneurs, and mediocre schools.

Assuming the voting public in California doesn’t actually desire these outcomes, it might be wise to vote for some changes on November 6--changes that transcend political cosmetics.

One major adjustment would be Proposition 32. This initiative allows individuals to decide for themselves if they want to contribute to political causes rather than having such funds automatically deducted from their paychecks.

In addition, the law would prohibit unions and corporations from contributing directly to political candidates. Nothing in the law, however, would (or constitutionally could) prohibit these organizations from promoting whatever general causes they wish to support.

Leading the fight for Proposition 32 is former Democratic Majority Leader in the California Senate, Gloria Romero—an unlikely source of support for a law designed to reign in union domination of Sacramento.

Romero, who earned a doctorate in psychology at UC Riverside and subsequently taught at Cal State, Los Angeles, supports Prop. 32 because, as she discovered during many closed-door legislative meetings, California’s government is currently (and has long been) “owned” by unions.

Chief among these proprietary lords is the California Teachers Association, which according to the Wall Street Journal has already put up more than $24 million to defeat Prop. 32. According to Romero, CTA lobbyists in Sacramento “walk around like they’re god” and regularly squash even modest attempts at educational reform.

There are, after all, more than 300,000 CTA members from whom the union annually collects via automatic payroll deductions about $50 million that can be used to buy political influence. No wonder, as Romero observes, California legislators always want to know where “their sugar daddy” stands on any issue.

It’s revealing that folks who are adamantly “pro-choice” when it comes to abortion are generally determined to put as many obstacles as possible in way of teachers and public employees whose political choices might not coincide with those of their unions. Apparently choice isn’t such an important value when it comes to amassing and exercising political power—even when the results of that power are chronically dysfunctional political and educational systems.

Power and money explain union support for California’s status quo. Other voters who oppose Prop. 32 can only plead ignorance or insanity.

WAG THE LIBYAN DOG

“Wag the Dog” was a popular film of the late 90s in which corrupt politicians invented a phony war and manipulated the media to boost a President’s reelection bid.

Thus far the Obama administration has successfully pulled off a similar feat with the cooperation of a supine mainstream media that’s virtually indistinguishable from the campaign’s own PR flacks.

The “Wag the Dog” diversion in this case concerns the September 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya. That attack resulted in the death of our U.S. ambassador and three others—Glen Doherty, Tyrone Woods, and Sean Smith—all of whom had ties to the San Diego area.

For days after the attack the Obama administration pushed the idea that the Benghazi raid was a spontaneous uprising caused by a short YouTube trailer of a cheap anti-Muslim movie filmed in Southern California. The notion that the assault was an act of terrorism was repeatedly avoided—despite the fact that Libya’s president quickly concluded that the coordinated attack with heavy weapons was carried out by terrorists.

Indeed, five days after the September 11 attack, U. N. Ambassador Susan Rice (not Secretary of State Clinton) went on five Sunday TV news shows to reiterate the fiction that the Benghazi attack was a spontaneous response to this Internet clip.

Adding to the dramatic distraction was fervid media focus on the producers and promoters of the film—including a faux perp-walk of the so-called “Coptic Christian” who probably violated his felony-based probation terms by putting the movie on the Internet.

Wagging along with the Obama media were local religious leaders who uncritically swallowed the administration’s spontaneous-demonstration script in a statement deploring the movie and, secondarily, the violence it supposedly spawned. I had to endure a reading of this “useful idiot” missive during a Sunday service in Menifee.

It’s now obvious (though inadequately publicized) that the September 11 attack on the Libyan consulate was a coordinated terrorist plot on a facility that was inadequately protected despite numerous attacks in the region—including an assassination attempt against the British ambassador in June.

The Brits closed their diplomatic office as a result of the June attack. By contrast, the Obama Administration devised a massive “Wag-the-Dog” diversion after four Americans were killed thanks to its negligence. Now it pretends that relevant information can’t be released because of a bogus FBI “crime scene” investigation.

I’d love to hear a pastoral letter condemning a government that repeatedly spiked the “bin-Laden is dead” football at its political convention and then repeatedly lied to the American people to cover its own “bumps in the road” negligence. Fat chance.

LIBYA: DEATH AND DELUSION

The September 11 attack on the American consulate in Libya resulted in the death of our American ambassador and “three others.” Two of those “others” were former Navy SEALs, Glen Doherty of Encinitas and Tyrone Woods of Imperial Beach. The third, Sean Smith, was a San Diego native.

According to the Obama White House—which for days refused to call the violent murder of an American ambassador an act of terrorism—other individuals residing in Southern California were, at least indirectly, culpable for these deaths.

These “co-conspirators” had produced a low-budget movie that intentionally insulted Muhammad and Islam. The film was reportedly screened in a Hollywood theater to an audience that didn’t include a single paid admission.

The prime mover of this project, an Egyptian émigré named Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, was quickly tagged by the mainstream media as a “Coptic Christian.” This moniker was ill-suited to a felon who recently spent time in prison for bank fraud, previously pled guilty to drug charges and had tenuous ties to Coptic congregations in the Los Angeles area.

(No wonder some speculated that Nakoula might be a naïve publicity hound or a radical double-agent—not someone motivated by concern for Coptic Christians who would surely be targeted for even more persecution if the film were disseminated in Egypt.)

Subsequently a 14-minute trailer of the film was placed on the Internet, and Arabic dialog was dubbed in. This virtually unknown clip was eagerly employed by Islamic radicals to incite crowds in Egypt and has since become the pretext for dozens of violent demonstrations.

The American “spokesman” for the film, Steve Klein, is an ex-Marine who served honorably in Vietnam and whose insurance agency is based in Hemet. Klein says he had limited contact with or knowledge about Nakoula, aka Sam Bacile.

Klein’s anti-Islamic sentiments have been publicly aired on previous occasions but doubtless intensified after his son, an army medic in Iraq, was seriously injured by a suicide-bomber in 2007.

As more information becomes available, it seems the amateurish video had little to do with the apparently preplanned attack in Benghazi. Instead, the trailer was used as a convenient scapegoat for a politically-craven administration that on September 11 didn’t provide adequate consulate security in a highly unstable country loaded with terrorists.

Obama’s blame-the-video narrative did, however, divert attention from the failure of his apology-rich foreign policy and from the fact that al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri had previously called for revenge for the drone-killing of a senior Libyan terrorist.

I’d wager that deadly drone attacks provided more incentive for committed Islamic terrorists to kill Americans than an insulting Internet video.

Proposition 32: Ending Union Domination of California's Politics

If impartial analysts had to pick one reason for the perennial dysfunction of California politics, most would probably point to the inordinate power of public employee unions.

This circumstance was made possible long ago by legislation, signed in 1978 by then-Governor Jerry Brown, that allowed state employees to unionize. Since that time the Golden State has been transformed into the bought-and-paid-for Union State. The most powerful of these despots is the 325,000-member-strong California Teachers Association.

According to a 2010 study by the California Fair Political Practices Commission, from 2000 to 2009 the CTA spent more than any other group, $211 million, in political contributions and lobbying efforts. That’s almost twice as much as the next largest spender, the Service Employees International Union. Since then CTA has spent nearly $40 million more—including $4.7 million to elect Gov. Brown.

Among the major “accomplishments” of CTA has been the ability to fund and elect its own majorities in school boards throughout the state. In 1988 the union used its vast resources to narrowly pass Proposition 98—an initiative that now requires the state to allocate about 40 per cent of its budget for public education.

Those “achievements” haven’t produced discernable academic progress, but they have put California teachers, averaging $67,900, at or near the top of the national pay scale. Moreover, CTA has consistently opposed measures to make public schools more accountable.

The organization even went so far as to kill a bill recently proposed by Democrat state senator Alex Padilla that sought to facilitate removal of teachers who engage in “serious or egregious unprofessional conduct”—especially offenses involving sex, drugs, or violence.

Public safety workers and SEIU (which represents about 350,000 government employees) are other union groups that have established political fiefdoms in Sacramento.

In many cities, including San Jose and San Diego, police, fire, and other government employees secured unsustainable pension benefits from politicians that unions largely placed on the other side of the bargaining table.

Proposition 32 offers a way to pull the power plug from these unions. This initiative will ban union and corporate contributions to state and local candidates. It also bans automatic deductions of employee wages to be used for political causes.

It may seem like common sense to allow workers to opt-in to having political contributions deducted from their wages. But that’s a pro-choice position (along with school choice) that unions are determined to squelch.

The problem facing Prop. 32, of course, is the same massive, union-funded opposition that crushed Schwarzenegger’s reform propositions in 2005 and transformed him into little more than an empty gubernatorial suit.

Passing the Buck--Big Time!

Only folks who play with other people’s money and will be long gone when it’s time to pay the piper would feel free to enter into an agreement that obligates the borrower to repay almost a billion bucks to finance a loan of $105 million.

Poway Unified School District recently became the national poster boy for capital appreciation bonds whose delayed repayment schedule (beginning in 2033) accounts for the embarrassing interest-to-principal ratios for PUSD’s 2011 loan.

Unfortunately Poway isn’t alone when it comes to employing this borrow-now-pay-a-lot-much-later financial instrument. Most prominent on the list is San Diego Unified’s 2010 agreement to repay 1.25 billion dollars, starting in 2030, for a loan of $164 million.

Other bonds with similar interest-to-principal ratios, but smaller amounts borrowed, have been issued by school districts in Oceanside, San Marcos, and Escondido. A number of community college districts also issue capital appreciation bonds—most prominently the San Bernardino Community College District whose 56 million dollar loan would eventually cost almost half-a-billion dollars by 2048, the final repayment date.

Fortunately, some capital appreciation bonds, unlike those employed by the Poway school district, can be refinanced.

It should go without saying that this etched-in-stone bond with eye-popping repayment figures wasn’t clearly presented in the 2008 election when Poway voters approved the sale of $179 million in “general obligation bonds.”

A boldface declaration in the text of Proposition C assured voters that the maximum tax rates levied to pay for the bonds would be the existing rate of “fifty-five dollars ($55) per year per one hundred thousand dollars ($100,000) of taxable property.”

Another incentive for reluctant voters was the prospect of $20 million in “free money” from Sacramento.

The impartial analysis of county counsel blandly noted in its third dense paragraph that bond interest rates could not exceed 12 per cent per annum or mature later than 40 years after issue—“pursuant to the Government Code.”

Prop C passed with 64% of the vote, but when funds ran out and planned construction projects were still incomplete, the easiest way to keep the “no tax increase” pledge and complete construction was to employ the capital appreciation bond alternative—a choice that passed the buck (a billion bucks, in fact) to a future generation.

Lacking the federal government’s power to run trillion dollar deficits, local politicians naturally latch on to convenient alternatives like borrowing with long-deferred repayment schedules and praying for another housing boom.

In both cases, however, our children and grandchildren are the ones left holding the bills.

2016: Obama's America -- D'Souza unveils Obama's background

Dinesh D’Souza and Barack Obama were both born in the same year (1961), lived in foreign countries as youngsters, and eventually attended Ivy League universities in the United States. That’s where similarities end.

D’Souza’s emigration from India left him profoundly grateful for a country that provided a talented foreigner entrée to Dartmouth, the Reagan White House, and a successful career that eventually financed living quarters in Rancho Santa Fe.

According to D’Souza, Obama’s upbringing in Hawaii and Indonesia imprinted on the current President a set of ideas derived from anti-colonial, anti-capitalist mentors whose convictions were congruent with those of his absentee, polygamous father, Barack Hussein Obama Sr. These convictions, which included seeing America as an exploitative colonial power, were further embedded by Obama’s preferred professors at Columbia (Edward Said) and Harvard (Robert Unger).

This thesis is developed in detail in D’Souza’s book, “The Roots of Obama’s Rage,” and presented more succinctly in a documentary film now showing in Southland theaters: “2016: Obama’s America.”

Beyond Rev. Jeremiah (“God damn America”) Wright and former domestic terrorist Bill Ayers (whose influence upon the Democratic candidate were largely dismissed by the non-Fox media during the 2008 presidential campaign) D’Souza explores the profound impact of Frank Marshall Davis on young Barack Obama.

Davis, whose name “Frank” is mentioned 22 times in Obama’s autobiographical “Dreams from my Father,” was a card-carrying communist (#47544) whose views corresponded closely with those of the missing father Obama idolized.

“2016” doesn’t claim that the President embraces in toto either the up-to-100% tax-the-rich ideas of Obama Senior or the radically anti-American views of Frank Marshall Davis. It does, however, note that the fervid anti-colonialism and leftism of Obama Senior and Frank Davis make sense of various presidential actions from immediately returning to the Brits a bust of Winston Churchill to the downsizing of America’s nuclear arsenal and global influence.

D’Souza also sees policies that restrict American oil production, while touting Brazilian exploration, as congruent with a mindset that seeks to set right the “sins of colonialism.” The film further notes that Obama’s five-trillion dollars of deficit spending is consistent with a desire to undermine the nation’s (presumably exploitative) capitalist system.

One could apply a similar motivation, though the film does not, to recent immigration policies that abet millions of illegal aliens living in America.

Just how much the President’s views have been shaped by the radical mentors D’Souza highlights is hard to say. What’s clear, however, is that Senator Obama would never have become the Democrats’ presidential nominee in 2008 if the national press corps had scrutinized his background with half the intensity they devoted to Sarah Palin’s family.

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.”