By B. Wayne Hughes Jr.

The Social Justice movement that seems to be everywhere, if only in theory, has broken through the veil of being but a notion, and spread its way into the real world.

Recently in California, my home state, Gov. Jerry Brown’s bid to overhaul the state’s educational budget is the latest taste of what is to come with the social justice worldview. “This is a cause,” the governor of the largest state is quoted as saying.

By directing a disproportionate share of budgeted monies to serve lower-income and non-English speaking students, his “cause,” so to speak, will be shorting the districts and their children that do not reflect his idea of the favored demographic. “If they’re going to fight it, they’re going to get the battle of their lives,” he promised.

The social justice movement is based upon an alleged collective compassion for the poor, or less rich, depending on how much of social justice you’ve imbibed.  Certainly compassion is a good thing, but politicians stripping one group to redistribute to another is not.  This is what is being imposed upon California schools and students, leveraging one child’s educational needs against another’s.

Social justice, as it is now defined, furthers the belief that we are an unjust society in need of targeted redistribution and taxation.  That we must “conform” to these fashionable expectations. That we are now a collective team, and no longer individual sovereign selves.  That our generosity and compassion should be linked, fused and welded into redistribution, standardized definitions and communal expectations.

While I clearly understand the challenge of educating those that have less means, language barriers or lack of family infrastructure, I reject the notion that justice, in this case involving “resource redistribution,” must be administered unequally in our educational system.  Only in the new paradigm do we see “injustice” as the cure to restoring “justice.”

Although I am not a lawyer, I do know that justice consists of fairness and equality. That justice is, or should be, blind to the defendant and plaintiff, the litigant and the suspect.  “Inequality” is not necessarily unjust, socially or otherwise, and does not mandate redistribution by force of new taxes, or unequal applications, to change it. What inequality can do, however, is ring the bell to get your favored group protected under the umbrella of the “socially just,” and therefore on the right side of justice.

The social justice crowd, Brown included, would have us believe that we are a winner-take-all society; that wealth, fortune and success are zero sum games.  Something is unjust because it does not have a built-in category for “what I want,” and that we should have no distinctions among groups or individuals.

Civil rights

Brown went on to say, “Equal treatment for children in unequal situations is not justice … it’s  a matter of civil rights.” In other words, the only way to act justly is to treat California’s school children unequally. If a child is from a middle class family, or her first language is English, she must be discriminated against, so the governor’s logic goes.

Social justice and redistribution is what is in store for our students once the monies are divided up.  Performance metrics, school choice and community service will continue to be ignored as out-of-date, objectionable and quite simply, “unjust.”

The better questions for our families and relations are, “Why isn’t the Governor fighting like this for my child? Where is his commitment to my community?  Am I too middle class, too fluent in English, or too favored by ‘chance’ to garner his support?”

As Nobel economics laureate Friedrich Hayek pointed out, “Outcomes need to be arranged, and in such a way as to be pleasing to our prejudices.” I remember my 6th grade “new math” class, back in the early 1970s, where we were taught about “groups, sets, subgroups and subsets.” I barely understood those concepts at the time. Forty years later, I understand their application all too well.

B. Wayne Hughes Jr. is a California businessman and philanthropist.

Commentary

Dec. 20, 2012

By B. Wayne Hughes Jr.

The Republican Party lost the presidential election of 2012. Here in California, my own state doubled down on big government by adding a novel surcharge to its already high 11.3 percent income tax rate and ignored spending cuts and entitlement reforms needed to modify a deficit-driven state budget.

The California state Legislature now is firmly in the hands of a Democratic supermajority.  Thus, Republicans are practically irrelevant.

As I sit here and listen to the talking heads and the remaining leaders of the failed GOP bid across the country, I find myself skeptical of their analysis and leadership. What may have once worked is now outdated.  Yet, obsolete tactics were only part of the problem.

Fundamentally, the Republican Party lacked a coherent strategy.  More importantly, there was no captivating message to inspire the American electorate to take notice and change its government, despite a target-rich environment from which one could starkly contrast a message of urgency and course correction against our moribund present.

Where are the statesmen in our present age?  Who casts a vision for all the people?  We must not delude ourselves that we are returning to the days of “peace and prosperity,” when in the New Normal we are unlikely to have either.  Ultimately, we are in danger of being entirely unrelated to the world in which we live.

How can we offer to young men and women “membership” and “leadership” in our Republican Party when we offer them no knowledge of where we have been, and no vision of where we are going?

Rule of law

So few young people today understand that the rule of law is the precondition of an ordered society in which free men and women act in liberty.  It is no overstatement to say that, without the rule of law, we cannot have liberty, and that this is a truth, not merely a theory.  In the absence of this truth, all we are left with is power. We see that in the perversion of our judiciary, which increasingly legislates, rather than interprets law; in our legislative branch which, unchecked, pursues remedies far beyond what the framers and the U.S. Constitution would allow; and in our executive branch, where the presidency seems imperial.

Anyone who can look the American public in the eye and say we are passing along a better country to our children than the one that we received is lying.  We should be ashamed of ourselves. The other side speaks of equality of outcome as if it were the endgame.

But government is a referee, not an enforcer of “fairness” as subjectively redefined by each session of Congress.  No one is asking the people to stop and think about who the arbiters of equality are going to be; what standard they’re going to be using; and is that standard to be etched in stone or, as is the case and so far, written on cigarette paper. I find that, when leaders talk about progress, it is only to avoid talking about their policy, in the context of what is good and right.

I hate forensic analysis. I know the Republican Party lost. And in many ways the outcome was deserved. Some of our candidates revealed that they were out of touch with reality. And I wonder if some of them in fact are detached from the real world.

What keeps me committed to the conservative movement are the virtues it has always stood for.  In the classic fusion of libertarian and traditional conservatism, we recognize that men and women cannot be virtuous unless they are free to pursue virtue.

We must fight the temptation to quit or capitulate, to conclude that it’s no use fighting. The magnitude of our peril directly correlates to the years of complacent leadership.  Furthermore, the power of the opposition to course correction is directly related to the size that correction signifies.

California matters, our country matters, life matters. You matter.  Just as each individual is endowed with a purpose, so too can each individual be a part of the movement to recapture the American dream.

There is hope.

B. Wayne Hughes Jr. is a California businessman and philanthropist.

By B. Wayne Hughes Jr.

This past July, the California Legislature approved starting construction on the first 130 miles of the much hyped high-speed rail from San Francisco to Anaheim.  That’s an ante of $8 billion just for a seat at the table.

As many of you may know, the state budget is woefully underfunded at around $90 billion.  And even though initial monies for the train are federally funded, as a businessman, I would never accept the scheme: Once it starts, they’ll argue it has to be completed.  Yet, with no prospect of long-term funding, this is “the train to nowhere.”

But the legislators who voted for this stupid project will be long gone while taxpayers struggle to pay off the bonds.

The pharaohs had the pyramids. And California politicians want to build monuments to their tenure in office.  They would argue they are forward-looking visionaries dedicated toward a future that holds greater promise for generations to come. It’s a dubious legacy paid for by those future generations.

But others  would argue, as do I, that while today’s politicians enjoy the glory of what few voters take to be a bold vision, the reality is that these politicians will be living off their taxpayer-funded pensions while our children struggle to pick up the growing tab for their reckless wastefulness.

Ego trip

The bullet train is a case in point. At best, it is an ego trip for the politicians who boost it.  At worst, it is the ultimate expression of crony labor-capitalism, in which special interests — unions and vendors — enrich themselves at the expense of the public purse.  This is the elephant in the room.  It’s truly a political pachyderm (my apologies to the GOP figure).

The best case, then, is that the politicians who support this 500-mile “fast train” are on an ego trip, using our tax money, to get a high.  And, over the short-term, they take credit for the alleged growth in jobs, as they conveniently ignore the jobs lost through a greater tax burden to fund yet another dubious program.  Why not instead cut the regulatory and tax burden to attract new industries and businesses and encourage job growth in California?  What happened to Google’s self-driving car?

Consider, the Federal government is borrowing money from China to make grants to state and local governments for all sorts of questionable projects. This used to be called “pork-barrel”  legislation.  More recently, U.S. senators and members of the House of Representatives have used “earmarks” to attach spending programs for their state or district to other legislation.  It’s a self-serving game, where each politician trades favors for his pet projects, until the legislation has enough “Christmas tree ornaments” to get a majority of votes to pass.

Bribes

Yet, some governors have refused the federal bribes to pursue various federal grant programs, such as the Bullet Train. That’s because these programs come with conditions that typically require the state, county or city government to spend more money over a period of years, sometimes many years. It’s like buying too much of something at Costco. Seems like a great price, but you end up buying more than you need, and the food spoils or the merchandize expires.

Suppose you did this, not impulsively or occasionally, but all the time.  That’s what it’s like with these federal programs, in which the feds provide continuous grants, conditioned on you (the state or local government) spending a certain amount of money.

Now, let’s talk about the worst case. When you look at a massive project like the Bullet Train, you’re talking about lots of companies and unions that stand to gain.  And who funded the campaigns for the politicians?  The companies are contractors and sub-contractors, as well as the many lobbyists, public relations people and other incidental staff.

Then there are the unions whose members will get more work, often at wages higher than in pure private sector jobs. The union leaders want their members to stay in the union, because union members provide a steady stream of dues money to fund the union’s organization and office, and the salaries, expense accounts and pensions of union leaders. Crony capitalists lobby for favored routes or zoning allowances.

Environment

Ironically, many of the liberals from central casting who would normally support High-Speed Rail felt the proposed route was an environmental disaster. The Sierra Club objected to Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposal to protect the train from environmental lawsuits. Bureaucrats rejected a more sensible route along I-5, the major north/south thoroughfare of California, in favor of blazing a trail through God knows where.

Even if this High-Speed Rail seems desirable, any “yes” has to be conditioned on cost. In the 1990s, California Congressman Jim Costa promoted a $10 billion state bond initiative for a project that supposedly would not require a state tax subsidy.  Thus, the bulk of the then-estimated $33 billion project would come from the private sector and the federal government.

The latter is, of course, always depicted as free money.  Once voters approved a 2008 ballot measure, the cost suddenly went from $33 billion to $43 billion.  Then-Attorney General Jerry Brown refused to investigate what critics have called a “bait and switch.”

It’s very significant that investors want revenue guarantees that the government can’t provide because the guarantees don’t pencil out. The expected high-ticket prices would rule out most riders.  It’s also worth mentioning the project starts equidistant from its two end points (kind of like insurance that something has to get built because we started out 300 miles away from anywhere).

The price tag is now $68 billion, and it could run to $100 billion. Once again, California is leading the way to an unsustainable future.

B. Wayne Hughes Jr. is a California businessman whose interests include philanthropy and public policy.

.