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Given my age, by now I suppose I should be accustomed to change. I’ve seen a lot of it. Some good, some bad, some absolutely terrible, some fair and some unfair, both stupid and intelligent. You name it, and I thought I’d seen it all.
But, I never thought I would live to see the day when the crazies in our legislature would actually think it’s a good idea to allow schoolchildren to decide which sex they want to be. Not their sexual preference, mind you, but whether they are male or female, notwithstanding their anatomical makeup.
California’s Senate Bill 777 mandates that “Kids are going to be taught that they have the right to completely ignore their physical anatomy and choose the status of being ‘male’ or ‘female.’” (NC Times Commentary, Just The Facts, by Robert Tyler, general counsel for Advocates for Faith and Freedom, nonprofit religious liberty and pro-family law firm, December 29, 2007).
As Robert Tyler notes, “Ignore your common sense, ignore your chromosomes and ignore your anatomy. This is what your politicians want to teach your kids in school. After all, California’s kids have mastered reading, writing and arithmetic, haven’t they?” To illustrate the potential consequences of the law, Mr. Tyler posed the question, “What will prevent the 250-pound linebacker from deciding he wants to share the locker room with the cheerleaders?”
For those who may scoff at this example of the law’s potential impact, “The Los Angeles Unified School District has already adopted policies allowing boys to use girl’s restrooms and locker rooms – and vice versa.” The District’s Reference Guide “even tells teachers they need to refer to students using the student’s preferred pronoun. And of course, it prohibits the teachers from disclosing a student’s chosen gender to the student’s parents.” (The Jawa Report, California Schoolchildren to Decide Their Own Sex, December 31, 2007).
And, the “Los Angeles Unified School District has already implemented a policy that states a boy perceiving himself to be a girl may use the girls’ restroom and locker room. He may also participate in girls’ sports and other female-only activities.” (Testimony by legislative liaison Meredith Turney of Capitol Resource Institute, Newsmax.com, January 11, 2008).
How crazy is this? Children can now declare which sex they are without telling their parents. How, I wonder, does that work at home, or how does a teacher consult with a parent whose child has declared they are a different sex without the parents’ knowledge?
SB 777 was passed by the California legislature and signed into law by the governor late last year. It eliminated Education Code 212, which defined “sex” as “the biological condition or quality of being a male or female human being.” This law redefines the term “gender” for all schoolchildren by adding Education Code 210.7, which reads: “‘Gender’ means sex, and includes a person’s gender identity and gender related appearance and behavior whether or not stereotypically associated with the person’s assigned sex at birth…In short, this redefinition of gender states that you are what you choose to be regardless of your anatomical make-up. (Emphasis added)…. SB 777 also uses this redefinition of gender to forbid educators from discriminating against any individual employee, student or other person based upon that individual’s unspoken claim of being male or female, regardless of his or her actual sex.”
Advocates of this legislation argue that “it’s needed to protect gays and others with non-heterosexual orientations from being harassed in schools. Opponents say it will force teachers and school officials to silence anyone who is morally opposed to homosexuality and allow anyone to claim privileges based on self-defined sexual orientation.” (Dan Walters, Sacramento Bee, December 3, 2007).
My sense is that this will stifle all free expression about sexuality in the schools, that it’s another step along the path of Political Correctness to mass confusion and resentment. And, no doubt it will add to the income of the trial lawyers, who will game the system with litigation to create and/or protect clients’ rights, real or imagined.
In October 2007, state Senator McClintock wrote, “After all, if courts begin ruling that exclusion is indeed a form of discriminatory bias – which is clearly the intent of this bill – there are no groups more excluded or less tolerated in the public schools today than evangelical Christians, orthodox Jews and traditional Catholics.”
The oft quoted declaration, “the asylum is being run by the inmates,” seems to describe California’s political system perfectly. If this didn’t have such serious potential consequences, it would be downright laughable.
The Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently ruled “that meat and milk from cloned animals and their offspring are as safe as the natural versions, clearing the way for the products to enter the food supply without special labeling…In releasing their final risk assessment on the safety of cloning technology…the FDA asked producers to continue keeping cloned cattle, pigs and goats out of the food supply during a transition period of unspecified length to give the market time to adjust.” (Charleston Daily Mail, January 16, 2008).
So, how is the public to know when these products will be on the shelves of our grocery stores and whether we will be able to avoid them if we don’t want to risk including them in our diet? Apparently we won’t.
Reviewing the information about this development, I couldn’t help but think back to another time, when the German government failed to adequately protect the public and, as a result, the world learned a new word, one that still evokes terrible images of physical deformities in babies. Does anyone else remember “Thalidomide babies”? Inadequate tests were performed to assess the drug’s safety, with catastrophic results for the children of women who had taken thalidomide during their pregnancies. “From 1956 to 1962, approximately 10,000 children were born with severe deformities.” (Wikipedia)
The FDA’s approval of meat from cloned animals also put me in mind of another example of what might happen when government controls the nation’s food supply and does not permit the public to know what they are eating, as portrayed in a 1973 science fiction movie, Soylent Green. The story depicted the consequences of running out of food and how the government controlled the media to prevent people from learning what the food they were eating was actually made from. Pure fantasy, to be sure, but thought provoking nonetheless.
Opponents of releasing cloned animal products into our food supply raise the following objections:
Unknown food safety risks.
Animal cruelty.
There is no requirement to require labeling of cloned food so consumers can avoid using them if they wish.
Problems in clones could lead to increased incidence of illnesses caused by these food products, such as E. coli infections.
Excessively high doses of hormones, antibiotics and other medications in the animals that are a necessary part of the process.
Even healthy appearing cloned animals could have hidden defects that could affect food safety.
Cloning animals for food is completely new technology, dating back just 10 years.
A 2006 Pew poll found that nearly two-thirds (64%) of “American consumers” are not comfortable with animal cloning, and the Humane Society of The United States has declared that cloning has no “legitimate social value and decreases animal welfare.”
“Widespread adoption of cloning could lead to the dramatic loss of genetic diversity in livestock,” which “may leave farmers and our nation’s food supply vulnerable to devastating epidemics due to an extremely narrow gene pool.” (The Cornucopia Institute)
Proponents argue that it is perfectly safe, that it has been adequately studied, and that it is a necessary and economic addition to the food supply.
If that’s true, why is it that they don’t want the public to exercise their own discretion in deciding what they want to eat?
We don’t yet know for sure whether cloned meat and milk are safe, notwithstanding the FDA’s claims. Until we do, these products should not be released for public consumption or, if they are, they should be clearly labeled so the public can decide for themselves if they want to include them in their diet.
As the old saw about drinking goes, “Name your poison.” For me, my poison will not include meat and milk products from cloned animals if I can avoid them. Not yet.
Finding ways to tax Americans without their being aware of it seems to be the name of the game for politicians and bureaucrats, and generally what should be readily transparent to taxpayers is deliberately obscured.
For example, we usually don’t think of the fines that are generated by our local police or sheriff’s department for traffic and other infractions as taxes - or, city and county fines for violations of building codes, or OSHA fines for workplace safety violations, or FCC fines for inappropriate radio and TV programming. Many of these fines can be exceedingly harsh, especially for small businesses or non-profits, many of which have a hard time staying afloat.
Just about every government agency levies some sort of fines for infractions of various rules. And, although estimates of potential revenue from these sources are included in the annual budgets of most government agencies, they are really just another form of stealth taxation. As far as I know, other than city councils, county boards of supervisors and the like, not one citizen of any community ever has the opportunity to vote on them.
Property has often been confiscated and sold, even though the owner was not involved in anything criminal, and they did not have to be accused or charged with a crime. The police have been able to go to court and, without a trial, obtain a court order to confiscate and sell the property of someone who was suspected of a drug crime. The mere fact that the property was involved in some way has been sufficient. The theory that makes this possible is based on “a technicality in the law that allows the government to claim that it is suing only the item of property, not the property’s owner.”
Even if that’s justice, what happens to the money?
Between 1991 and 1995, Federal confiscation of property under the forfeiture laws increased by 1500 percent, to a total of $644 million. And, seizure of property by state and local governments also amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars.
But the amount of money that’s generated by forfeiture laws is only a small part of the total funds received by government from fines and penalties, ranging from the lowly citation for illegal parking to major penalties imposed by agencies such as the SEC, FCC, etc. For example, in 2004, Time Warner agreed to a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that included a $750 million fine. And, in 1995 the international accounting firm KPMG agreed to pay a $456 million fine to the SEC in a case that involved tax shelter investments.
When an agency takes in a fine amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars, the money disappears into the black hole of government accounting, and no one ever seems to ask what happened to it.
The explanation usually given is that these fines are levied to recover the costs of investigation and enforcement incurred by the agency involved. However, funding of government agencies does not appear to be reduced by the fines and penalties it collects in excess of those amounts that may be built into their budgets. If that’s the case and the investigating agency recovers more than the amount of revenue budgeted from this source, why isn’t their funding reduced accordingly?
If you think about it, fines and penalties are actually another form of stealth taxation: first the public is taxed to fund the operation of an agency, law enforcement, regulatory, etc. And, when revenue from fines exceeds budgeted amounts, instead of using the excess to offset operating expenses, the money is used for some other purpose. At the very least, the public pays the cost again by virtue of the fines that are not applied to help cover the costs of funding the agencies involved by a like amount.
Another interesting fact is that fines and penalties are not tax deductible. When violators, corporate or individual, pay their income taxes, in effect they pay additional taxes on the amount of the penalty that has been imposed because it cannot be included as part of the cost of doing business. Thus, a $450 million corporate fine could actually amount to something on the order of $600 million ($450 million plus $150 million tax).
When it comes to finding ways to fleece taxpayers without their even being aware of it, politicians and bureaucrats are usually found at the head of the class.
A recent headline, “War Crimes Investigation Requested,” in the “Santa Barbara News Press,” caught my attention. What’s this about, I wondered, thinking it was probably another attempt by the World Court to assert its authority as the official arbiter of law throughout the world. To my surprise, the story was not about the World Court but about the German courts, where a complaint has been filed by lawyers who noted that “the point was simply to increase the pressure on top (American) brass they say are culpable. German federal prosecutors said they would examine the case.”
But culpable of what? Abusing prisoners at U.S. detention facilities in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that’s what.
How did this complaint come to be filed in a German court? The Germans don’t have jurisdiction over the U.S. military and American officials do they? Apparently, according to them, they do. As a matter a fact, German law provides for prosecution of war crimes that may actually occur in other nations. A 220-page lawsuit has been filed under the provisions of a German law, naming 13 U.S. officials, including Donald Rumsfeld, the former Secretary of Defense.
How’s that for chutzpah? Germany, the nation that gave us the Holocaust, has now set itself up as a world court, with authority to try anyone for war crimes that are committed anywhere in the world.
The claim is that Secretary Rumsfeld “personally ordered and condoned torture.” One of the leading witnesses is U.S. Army Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, the former commander of all U.S. military prisons in Iraq, who was relieved of her command and demoted over the abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Bagdad.
In a classic example of the pot calling the kettle black, Gen. Karpinski claimed she wanted to “be a voice for my soldiers.” Really. Of course, there’s no payback involved, is there?
If there is a legal case in this situation at all, shouldn’t it be heard in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) or the International Criminal Court (ICC), not in a German court?
The ICJ website states that the Court’s role is “to settle in accordance with international law the legal disputes submitted to it by States, and to give advisory opinions on legal questions referred to it by duly authorized international organs and agencies.” So, it appears they don’t qualify as the venue to hear cases involving “crimes against humanity.”
However, the International Criminal Court was established as “a permanent tribunal to prosecute, ‘crimes against humanity’.” (WorldNetDaily, April 11, 2002), so why isn’t this particular case being tried there?
The United States “lodged strenuous objections to the ICC,” and the U.S. Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee refused to release the treaty for a vote for a number of reasons, including:
Concerns that crimes of aggression were not defined, which would make various U.S. military operations open to prosecution, which would include such acts as injury to a population’s ‘mental health’ in the definition of “crimes against humanity”
U.S. citizens would be denied the guarantees of our Constitution.
A U.S. president could conceivably be prosecuted by the court for engaging in military activity without first seeking approval from the U.N.
World events in the near future could find the U.S. and its citizens at the mercy of a panel of judges from non-Western nations, or of nations that seek to extort favorable trade agreements from the U.S.
The treaty is not entered into “among parties in agreement, but is instead a new, and many believe dangerous, species of an international instrument that subordinates all nation states in the world to the rule of the United Nations’ court.”
The ICC can prosecute whenever it deems a nation’s courts have failed to prosecute its own violators of ‘human rights’.
So, now German law makes it possible to prosecute someone in Germany for “crimes against humanity” that may have been committed elsewhere. For example, Human Rights Watch (hrw.org) recently reported, “Survivors of torture and the May 13 massacre of unarmed protesters in Andijan, Uzbekistan, filed a case on Monday in Germany calling for the prosecution of Zokirjon Almatov, Uzbekistan’s Minister of Internal Affairs, for crimes against humanity, Human Rights Watch said today. Almatov is in Germany receiving medical treatment.”
This, at least, makes some, albeit limited, sense. That is, trying someone who is in Germany for crimes that may have been committed elsewhere. Although the fact that the individual involved is not a German citizen still makes the application of their law questionable in my mind.
Furthermore, the case in question (against U.S. leaders) makes it appear that it is an effort by the Germans to unilaterally apply their laws so as to extend their authority over citizens of other nations who may have committed crimes elsewhere around the world. It almost looks as though they are trying to use their legal system to gain the ascendancy over other nations that they failed to achieve in WWII.
Nice try. Having failed to conquer Europe at gunpoint, are they now, some 60 years later, attempting to become “king” of the world by the simple act of passing a law? Not just a law that applies to German citizens, but to anyone who commits “crimes against humanity” anywhere in the world. Where did they get the authority to do this? If they try our citizens in absentia, will they then attempt to have them extradited to Germany?
Isn’t it about time for Americans to stand up and start telling those nations that attempt to unilaterally exercise authority over us to take a hike? If they can pass laws to extend the jurisdiction of their courts over U.S. citizens for acts that were not committed on German soil, how about our doing the same thing?
I can think of a lot of people who should be tried for “crimes against humanity” who are not U.S. citizens and have committed the most heinous crimes imaginable in other countries. How about going after them?.
Listening to the presidential candidates as they stump on the campaign trail, it’s easy to get the impression that they think they have the answers to every major problem confronting America. And, sometimes the less they appear to know, the more readily they seem to make judgments about issues that have enormous consequences, not only for Americans but for the entire world.
I know, I know, it’s a political campaign, and candidates are supposed to have a position on every issue and solutions to all the concerns that bedevil us.
That’s absurd. Not just that they can’t admit they don’t know everything but that the public, led by the candidates themselves along with the political pundits, immediately pounce on every misstep or misstatement as if they themselves had all the answers.
Here are just some of the things that seem to be expected of Presidential candidates in order to qualify for the job of leading our nation:
>Keep us safe: There is no such thing as total security, nor can there ever be, no matter what we do.
>End the war in Iraq: How to accomplish this without any negative consequences is the question. There is no simple solution to this situation, and it’s disingenuous at best to expect or pretend that there is.
>Resolve the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: No one can do this but the Arabs and the Israelis themselves, and that’s not going to happen as long as the Palestinians adhere to the position that Israel must be wiped off the map and the Jews driven into the sea.
>Provide affordable health care for every person in America: Many people believe this can be accomplished by nationalizing health care. That may be possible, but the evidence is that it would also seriously diminish the quality of health care in this country.
>Manage the economy so effectively that jobs are continuously produced for everyone, especially high paying ones, forever: The idea that this is possible ignores basic economic realities. There have always been and always will be economic highs and lows. It’s a fact of life in every society, no matter what type of system they may have - capitalism, socialism or communism.
>Solve the energy crisis: Can’t be done until Americans wake up to the fact that they must stop opposing every potential source of energy other than those that are “renewable,” such as wind and solar power. These can be very helpful but simply cannot meet our current and projected needs, ever.
>Make everyone in the world like us: How is that possible – with all the diverse and conflicting cultural, economic and political interests in the multitude of societies on the planet?
>Prevent Global Warming: So far, in spite of Al Gore’s grandstanding, no one has the answer to this problem. Not yet, perhaps never.
>Eliminate poverty: Depends on the definition of poverty. In many societies, people survive on around a dollar a day, and we may be able to do something significant about their plight. However, if the goal is to raise the standard of living throughout the entire world to equal ours, that’s not very realistic.
>Candidates should never change a previously held position: People’s ideas, beliefs and values often change over time, so why shouldn’t they be expected to modify certain positions based on experience and new information? Sometimes for the better, sometimes not.
>Candidates must agree with everything we may personally believe. Not only is that impossible, but a great many people are not exactly clear about what they themselves believe or they may hold positions on different issues that are contradictory.
>Finally, Walk on Water: No need to elaborate on this.
What I have not been hearing in the presidential campaign is any sense of humility from most of the candidates themselves. To me, that’s dangerous. In my experience, the most worrisome people are often those who have no appreciation of what they don’t know – and presume to have the solution to any and all problems.
Finally, probably like most people, I know one thing for sure: I have never been and am not now qualified to be President of the United States, and I wouldn’t accept the job if it were suddenly bestowed or thrust upon me. Not just because of my age, but because I couldn’t do it. I don’t know enough, don’t have the experience or the drive and ambition to handle the responsibilities involved, and certainly wouldn’t have the answers to most of the major issues that confront America today. Not really. How about you?
Why is it that when people spend public funds they often seem to lose touch with reality? How many times have we seen individuals we consider to be upright, responsible citizens, who normally personally live within their means, suddenly become spendthrifts with a public purse? What is there about holding elective office that somehow makes it acceptable for politicians to spend more money than we can afford or to run up bills for things they would never think of doing in their personal lives?
Political Credo
The reflexive answer to a budget shortfall always seems to be to raise taxes. Look for something to tax, anything, but whatever you do, don’t cut back appears to be the politicians’ motto. In the words of Ronald Reagan, “The government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”The credo of most politicians appears to be: Raise taxes and expand the budget when the economy is healthy and generating more money than government needs, then raise them again to cover the shortfall when revenues decline. But, never curtail spending and never give anything back to the taxpayers if it can possibly be avoided.Witness the charade that’s currently taking place in California. At the very time when the state is facing a massive budget shortfall, the salaries of California’s legislators have just been raised. The Sacramento Bee observed (December 3, 2007), “California pays legislators at least $30,000 more than any other state, but numerous city or county managers, auditors or school superintendents receive far higher paychecks.”
A “Fiscal Emergency”
Writing in Forbes.com (9/1/03), Rich Karlgaard noted, “California took in 44% of its revenue from fewer than 10,000 capital gains tax payers in 2000. The state’s legislators insisted on basing the budget on what was clearly understood to be a temporary spike in tax revenues. When the easy money flew off, so did the tax receipts.”Furthermore, “…state spending has soared under Schwarzenegger even faster than it did under his predecessor…” His budget “spends 34% more than when he took office just four years ago. His spending plan was based on the fallacy that revenues would continue to pour into the state’s coffers.” (ibdeditorials.com, December 17, 2007).
California’s budget is now projected to be some $14 billion short, and in January the Governor may find it necessary to declare a Fiscal Emergency, “…in order to give him and the legislature more power to deal with the state’s growing deficit.” This would “trigger a special session and force lawmakers and the governor to begin addressing the shortfall within 45 days.” (nbc11.com, December 14, 2007).
But, why on earth do they need to declare a “Fiscal Emergency” to force themselves do the obvious, that is, deal with a crisis? And, what have our politicians been doing up to now about the financial disaster caused by their overspending? Certainly not spend less.
California’s Budget Mess
Columnist Dan Walters noted, “The good news is that California politicians, who have sidestepped the state’s shameful and ever-worsening budget mess for six years, may finally face the music. The bad news is that they really don’t have a clue how to close the chronic deficit, given its three-dimensional nature.” (Sacramento Bee, December 16, 2007)“The widely followed UCLA California forecast took the state to task in its 2008 outlook for a budget ‘based on a combination of overly optimistic projections of revenue, wildly optimistic assumptions that spending would decrease on its own and a handful of accounting gimmicks to make up the difference’…Anyone with half a brain knew that soaring tax revenues were about to reverse, based on the housing crash, which has hit California harder than the rest of the U.S.” (ibdeditorials.com, December 17, 2007)
Always Spend More
Too many politicians seem to think it’s always necessary spend more money - and never save anything. No project seems to be too insignificant for them to fund. Whatever the cause, they invariably believe it’s worth the cost, especially their own compensation, which at the state and Federal levels is now automatically raised without an open vote of the legislators themselves being required.If Californians do not regain control of their government’s budgets, we can look for our politicians to borrow more money and/or raise taxes again to cover the shortfall. If that happens, more taxpayers will leave the state, especially businesses, while those who pay little or no taxes will continue to move in - a disastrous combination. It’s a serious mess!
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