Upsetting years of tradition and new trends alike, Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law sweeping new measures that put consumers and producers of nicotine-based products on the defensive.

One bill will “raise the legal age to buy products from 18 to 21,” while another “dramatically tightens restrictions on e-cigarettes,” NPR reported. “Anyone who gives tobacco or tobacco paraphernalia to someone under 21 could be found guilty of a misdemeanor crime,” the Associated Press cautioned. “Under the new law, 18 to 20-year-olds will no longer be allowed to buy tobacco in California starting on June 9.”

So-called vapes have been incorporated into a crackdown critics said would make it harder for traditional smokers to find less harmful alternatives to tobacco. Applicable legislation now “defines e-cigarettes as tobacco products, barring their use in workplaces, schools, hospitals and on public transit,” according to the Los Angeles Times. “The bill also requires vaping devices and liquids to be sold in child-resistant packaging. They also cannot be marketed to minors.”

Nevertheless, Gov. Brown did exercise some restraint around the issue of taxing smoking. He “vetoed a bill that would have permitted cities and counties to establish their own tobacco taxes,” NPR added, based on his discomfort level with the number of other tax hikes voters might usher in. “Although California has one of the lowest cigarette taxes in the nation, I am reluctant to approve this measure in view of all the taxes being proposed for the 2016 ballot,” said Brown in his veto message. 

Just the beginning

The new laws, Sacramento watchers noted, are themselves only the tip of the iceberg for public health-focused legislators. California State University and even community college students could soon be barred from smoking or vaping on campus. The legislation that would bar them, Assembly Bill 1594, “squeaked out of the 80-member Assembly on a 41-23 vote,” the Sacramento Bee reported, “with all but two of the votes against coming from Republicans and several Democrats not casting votes.”

Nationally, meanwhile, U.S. policymakers were poised to follow California’s lead, although the Golden State has become just the second state across the country, after Hawaii, to hike the smoking age to 21. (As the Associated Press noted, “more than 100 local jurisdictions around the country have made the change, including New York, Chicago and San Francisco.”) A new federal rule promulgated through the Food and Drug Administration will subject tobacco and classified-as-tobacco products to extraordinary new scrutiny. Going forward, “every e-cigarette on the market — and every different flavor and nicotine level — would require a separate application for federal approval,” according to USA Today. “Each application could cost $1 million or more, says Jeff Stier, an e-cigarette advocate with the National Center for Public Policy Research and industry officials.”

Conflicting conclusions

Scientific research on the relative benefits of vaping have been mixed. But new studies conducted in the United Kingdom have led researchers there to reach a conclusion completely at odds with the emerging expert consensus in the U.S. In a new report, the Royal College of Physicians has endorsed vaping “as part of a ‘harm reduction’ strategy that encourages smokers to move to less dangerous forms of taking nicotine, the addictive substance in tobacco,” U-T San Diego recently reported. “The advice contradicts conclusions from some researchers and American government agencies. These focus on getting smokers to quit entirely, or at least to use federally approved means of nicotine replacement therapy with the goal of totally quitting nicotine use. And results in other countries may not apply in the United States, they say.”

Tellingly, California’s anti-smoking legislators preserved one big carve-out for a certain class of smokers — military personnel age 18-20. “[B]efore you scream that you can fight for your country but you can’t light up,” the LA Weekly reported, as state Sen. Ed Hernandez, D-West Covina, admitted, “you can light up if you’re fighting for your country.”

A populist wave

In a new USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll, conducted online by SurveyMonkey, Californians disagreed on why they worried about the future, but agreed that it was worrisome. “By more than 2 to 1, voters both nationally and in California say they are more worried than hopeful about changes in the country’s morals and values,” the Los Angeles Times reported. “By nearly the same margin, more worry than express hope about the changing national economy. And by 5 to 1, they say they are worried about how the nation’s politics have changed.”

The concerns reinforced the strong impression that Donald Trump has made on Golden State Republicans. Trump ranked first among their preferences for the presidential nomination, winning 20 percent support to Ben Carson’s 19 percent. Trump’s campaign success has largely been attributed to the rise of a populist and nationalist strain on the right.

“Pessimism is particularly profound among white voters, especially those without a college education,” the Times noted. “In California, fewer than 1 in 4 non-college-educated whites say the country is on the right track, and 70 percent say they are worried about the way the economy has changed. Nationally, the worried share among the group is even higher, 74 percent.”

White woes

Some analysts have pointed to data suggesting that the demographic group faces severe challenges. A new study making waves in the national press has revealed an unprecedented, sharp decline in the health and welfare of middle-aged white Americans.

“The mortality rate for white men and women ages 45-54 with less than a college education increased markedly between 1999 and 2013, most likely because of problems with legal and illegal drugs, alcohol and suicide, the researchers concluded. Before then, death rates for that group dropped steadily, and at a faster pace,” according to the Washington Post. “Half a million people are dead who should not be dead,” one co-author, a Nobel laureate, told the Post. “About 40 times the Ebola stats. You’re getting up there with HIV-AIDS.”

Data from the Dornsife/LA Times poll suggested that inland Californians stood closer to that precipice than those gathered along the coast. “In coastal regions, 44 percent of voters were satisfied with California’s economy; inland, just 30 percent, the Times noted. “Thirty-three percent of voters with a college education said they were getting ahead financially, while just 13 percent of those with a high school degree or less said they were. Conversely, just 12 percent of college-educated voters said they were falling behind financially, but 25 percent of those with no more than a high school degree said they were sliding backward.”

The politics of government

Many respondents singled out the role of government as a problem. While almost two thirds said “unfairness in the economic system that favors the wealthy is a major problem in the United States,” about 40 percent “cited over-regulation of the free market as a bigger issue in the country” and “said that the government gets in the way of their opportunities,” USC observed.

Yet while Republicans have not been able to translate that unease into widespread change in their party’s fortunes, Democrats focused on economic anxiety have used that issue to tug their party to the left. As key activists on the left recently told The Guardian, “a key gathering of activists in California in 2013 laid the groundwork for the transformation now reverberating through the party.” Frustrated by president Obama’s willingness to trim the growth of social security, their “meeting in a San Jose hotel room of groups also including MoveOn.org, Working Families, Progressives United and Social Security Works was an informal spin-off from the annual Netroots Nation conference.”

“Having successfully fought their own president and defended the pension rights of millions of Americans, the activists decided to go on the offensive and try to convince other Democrats to begin talking about expanding social security instead.”

I was reminded of that when reading this report on how the median California community college student took 4.1 years to get through two years of college:

“We’re all talking about a college affordability crisis,” said Michele Siqueiros, executive director of the group that examined the graduation rates of the 2012-2013 graduates. “And time is part of that crisis.”

Of course, another part of that crisis is that a lot of those kids shouldn’t be in school at all. And a third part is that many classes are totally pointless. The fact is that, with free online services such as the Khan Academy, college now is worthless except as a place to have fun in the sun (at least in California) for four years or seven years, or maybe a dozen years if you throw in graduate and professional school.

Toga! Toga! Toga!

If you’re a candidate whose authenticity is open to question because of extreme, always self-serving shifts in your views, you really, really, really don’t want to be caught in an, er, obvious fib. So one would think that union-bashing Republican turned noble, above-the-fray independent turned tax-and-fee-hiking union Democrat Nathan Fletcher would be careful about factual claims about the past in his quest to be elected mayor of San Diego in the Nov. 19 special election made necessary by Bob Filner’s resignation.

One would be wrong. San Diego political circles were mildly abuzz earlier this week when it was noticed that Fletcher sometimes claimed to be the first member of his family to graduate from college while at other times claimed to be the first member of his family to go to college.

But both claims were, er, obvious fibs. One San Diego Twitterite pointed out that Fletcher’s grandfather, a former Las Vegas city manager, was a  UC Berkeley graduate; others noted his mom appeared to have attended California Baptist College; I also got in on the Twitter fun by noting that his mom’s mom was a trained nurse who almost certainly took college-level classes of some type.

First in family — if you don’t count mom, dad, grandma, grandad

Finally, Fletcher has set the record straight — at least he did if his account to a U-T San Diego reporter can be trusted.

” … Fletcher’s mother briefly attended the same college he did — California Baptist University in Riverside. Also, Fletcher’s father went to the University of Oregon for four years and his grandfather graduated from the University of California Berkeley in 1937.

“Fletcher had used the statement about being the first in the family to go to college to establish his working-class credentials, often when talking about his jobs as a janitor and forklift operator. He’s now an executive at Fortune 500 company Qualcomm. … 

“Fletcher issued a statement Tuesday night, saying, ‘Growing up, I was a good student, and my mom always talked about how proud she would be for me to be the first in our family to go to college. As I’ve now learned, she did in fact attend college for one semester. If you asked my mom, she’d tell you I was the first to go to college.’”

It depends on what the meaning of ‘family’ is

Fletcher said his biological father didn’t count because he didn’t know him. Left unexplained was why his grandfather, the one-time Las Vegas city manager, didn’t count.

All this brings to mind two men who held the job Fletcher thinks he ultimately deserves: U.S. president.

Bill Clinton famously said when asked indirectly if he had perjured himself that it depends on “what the meaning of ‘is’ is.” Fletcher seems to have his own meaning for “family.”

Then there’s Richard Nixon. 2013 is the 40th anniversary of one of the most famous attempts at spinning dishonesty in modern U.S. politics: White House press secretary Ron Ziegler’s infamous declaration about the unfolding Wategate scandal that his most recent statement outlining Nixon’s and the White House’s knowledge of the scandal “is the operative statement. The others are inoperative.”

Nathan Fletcher would normally like to be in same conversation as two U.S. presidents. But maybe not in this circumstance.

But could this study merely help to continue the efforts to legitimize and legalize drug use, and bolster the war on some foods?

It’s time to “Just Say No’ to Oreo Cookies

Some of the groups funding the college and study are ardent supporters of “sustainable communities,” and “principles of social justice.

While most cocaine or heroin drug addicts are rail-thin, an addiction to Oreos may be a little more obvious.

Joseph Schroeder, an associate professor of psychology and director of the behavioral neuroscience program, and Connecticut College students found that eating Oreos activated more neurons in the brain’s ‘pleasure center’ than exposure to drugs of abuse, the Connecticut College News reported this week.

“Connecticut College students and a professor of psychology have found “America’s favorite cookie” is just as addictive as cocaine – at least for lab rats” the Connecticut News said. “And just like most humans, rats go for the middle first.”

“While it may not be scientifically relevant, it was surprising to watch the rats eat the famous cookie,” said Jamie Honohan, the student who originated the study idea. “They would
break it open and eat the middle first.”

Rather than treatment for cocaine or alcohol abuse at the Betty Ford Clinic, the addicted will need treatment at the Betty Crocker Center for Oreo addiction.

The study, obesity, and hunger

The study was done in the College’s Holleran Center for Community Action and Public Policy. The Connecticut College News said student Jamie Honohan was interested in how the prevalence of high-fat and high-sugar foods in low-income neighborhoods contributed to the obesity epidemic.

Ah. The obesity epidemic in America. But we also are barraged with stories of the hunger epidemic in America, and food insecurity. If one in six Americans is hungry, how can more than one-third of U.S. adults be obese?

“The Holleran Center for Community Action and Public Policy  (at Connecticut College) is a multidisciplinary academic center that advances teaching, learning, research, and community collaborations,” the website says. “It works to create more just and equitable communities through programs that cultivate intellectual and ethical judgment.”

Even more interesting is the vague description of the Holleran Center which says it “prepares students for lives of civic engagement and leadership while collaborating with community partners to advance the public good.”

The History of the Holleran Center says Center faculty and staff have presented on research, course development and college/community partnerships throughout the United States and in international forums such as the Open Space, People Space Conference in Scotland. The Open Space movement studies “Urban lifestyles, which even rural children often live these days, place many restrictions on their freedom to explore and enjoy their environment.”

Who funds this venture?

Major grants from the Surdna and the Lucent Foundations funded the initial years of the Center.

“The Surdna Foundation seeks to foster sustainable communities in the United States — communities guided by principles of social justice and distinguished by healthy environments, strong local economies, and thriving cultures.”

The Lucent Foundation also supports “sustainability,” whatever that is. “Its prime mission is to respond to today’s global challenge of digital inclusion and sustainability, focusing on providing innovative programs for underserved communities across the world that enable youth, and particularly young women, to access educational and life skills programs,” the Lucent Foundation website says.

Sustainability

There's that word “sustainability” again. Organizations which push “sustainability” and claim to be supporters of it, are not entirely truthful about intentions.  What does sustainability do for  a developing country?  Recycling, the preservation of nature and endangered species, and renewable energy are hardly the concerns of emerging or developing nations.

As important as these issues may be to many, people who are hungry, and living squalor in third world countries or in ghettos don't ever think about “sustainability.”

And really, the groups who claim to support sustainability end up placing the poor at the centre of the sustainability cause. They make improving the lives of the poor a “sustainability” issue. But they are not working on behalf of the poor.

And it's not about Oreo cookies.

By Steven Greenhut

SACRAMENTO — Americans are still focused on the bubble in housing prices, which, after inflating and bursting in the 2000s, is inflating again. But the wreckage that collapse caused in real estate and financial markets could be eclipsed by the economic harm inflicted when today’s bubble in student loan debt bursts.

The Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors recently warned that soaring student loan debt has “parallels to the housing crisis,” according to a report in Bloomberg News. As with housing, free-flowing cash will lead to widespread defaults. Of course, it’s easier to repossess a tract house than to take back a potentially worthless college degree.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke dismissed these concerns, saying that most of the money in the student loan sector is federal money, which simply means taxpayers — rather than lending institutions — will take the initial hit. But the Fed governors make a salient point as student loan balances soar to $1 trillion, exceeding Americans’ collective credit card debt.

“The bankers said student lending shares features of the housing crisis including ‘significant growth of subsidized lending in pursuit of a social good,’ in this case, higher education instead of expanded homeownership,” according to that Bloomberg report. “The lending has put upward pressure on tuition, just as the mortgage lending boom led to rising home prices, they said, calling both examples of a ‘lack of underwriting discipline.'”

Funding

For my entire life, I’ve heard policy makers insist that there is insufficient funding for education and that getting a college degree is the pathway to a better life. But, as the bankers noted, the sea of student loan money artificially boosts tuition, which creates a new cycle of indebtedness by students. Higher tuition makes “pay-as-you-go” a less-likely option.

Lax lending standards make it easier for colleges to spend money poorly. If the federal government provides a loan to virtually every applicant, then university administrations can spend foolishly. There’s so much money, why not hike faculty salaries and pensions? Why not offer programs and majors of questionable intellectual or economic merit?

I know people with six-figure loan debt, multiple degrees and few job prospects. There were few lending constraints — hey, it’s only government money — so they racked up loan after loan. Others use loans to gain useful degrees with lucrative job potential, but these graduates come out of school with a crushing load of debt that will take decades to repay.

In 2012, Congress debated a controversy surrounding for-profit colleges, which receive about a quarter of total federal Title IV student aid. The impetus was the latest iteration of the GI Bill for active military and veterans, who often choose for-profit education programs.

“These colleges use high-pressure sales tactics to ensnare veterans, promising them a high-quality education and a ‘guaranteed job,’ and urging them to sign up on the spot,” Jerome Kohlberg wrote in an opinion piece for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “They lock themselves into long-term commitments, turn over their GI education benefits and sign up for student loans to cover the difference.”

The alleged abuses at some for-profit colleges have reminded some critics of abuses by the subprime mortgage industry. But these problems are almost solely the result of easy access to government dollars. Indeed, public universities do the same thing — lure students into long-term debt commitments based on freely flowing federal dollars, even if they don’t use the high-pressure tactics used by some recruiters in the private educational business. For-profit and non-profit universities rely heavily on government tuition subsidies.

Many government employees, by the way, receive automatic pay boosts for additional educational attainment, so this government-funded system ratchets up government spending throughout the entire taxpayer-funded universe.

Six years of college

When I attended college, only the rarest student stayed on campus beyond four years. Many received degrees in less than four years. Now, it’s typical for students to take six years to get through a California State University degree program. The education establishment claims the problem is the result of too little money, but the real cause is just the opposite. With so much money available, there are too many students on campus and not enough classes for them.

Look at the large portion of students taking remedial courses, which reminds us that more college doesn’t always equal a better education.

Given that students who get themselves in financial trouble can’t unload their debt through bankruptcy, easy college tuition money can mean a lifetime of financial struggles. These problems are the result of government officials pushing a social good — i.e., broader college attendance, or, in the case of real estate, broader homeownership.

The housing bubble was inflated in part by government-dictated lending policies designed to expand homeownership by requiring banks to make loans to people who couldn’t meet traditional down-payment, income and credit standards. And government policies designed to expand educational opportunities have inflated the cost of tuition, cheapened the value of education and burdened new generations with crushing debt loads.

Yet those of us who call for less government meddling and more private-sector discipline are the ones considered heartless.

Steven Greenhut is vice president of journalism at the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity. Write to him at steven.greenhut@franklincenterhq.org.

By Chris Reed

If you think the California Teachers Association is the biggest villain in state politics — and you should, you should — then you’ll enjoy the Golden State implications of this national survey. This is from the Long Beach Press-Telegram:

“Yes, they’re ready. No, they’re not. A new survey shows a wide gap between high school teachers and college professors when it comes to the question of whether incoming freshmen are prepared for higher learning.

“Just 26 percent of college instructors believe students are well-prepared for first-year courses, compared to 89 percent of high school teachers, according to the ACT National Curriculum Survey.

“‘We’ve seen for a number of years that there have been gaps between what skills colleges say are most important for students to learn and what high school teachers and school districts are teaching,’ said Ed Colby, spokesman for ACT. ‘There doesn’t seem to be enough collaboration between local schools and colleges.'”

So in California, who represents the most high school teachers? Why, that would be the CTA. Everyone knows that, Chris, you big dummy.

CTA reps all CSU faculty, many community college instructors

But in California, who represents the most college instructors? Why, that would be the CTA — which not everyone knows.

“CTA has more than 1,300 chapters chartered as affiliates. Two unique CTA chapters are ‘statewide’ affiliates: The California Faculty Association is the bargaining agent for professors in the California State University system, and the Community College Association represents members in 42 bargaining chapters who work in 72 community college districts.”

So CSU and community college professors who belong to the CTA have a low opinion of the job done by their fellow CTA members in California high schools in educating our kids. Join the club!

What’s funny is how totally this undermines the CTA’s contention that is as concerned about school quality as every other “stakeholder” in California public education. If that were true, wouldn’t the union be especially inclined to heed the complaints of CTA members in the California Faculty Association and the Community College Association about the problems they see with K-12 graduates?

Of course the union would.

But then that takes seriously the CTA’s claims that it cares deeply about students. After Mark Berndt, that’s really not possible.

So for now, I will merely content myself with the enjoyable idea that two smaller wings of the CTA find a bigger wing of the CTA to be full of incompetent chumps.

By Katy Grimes

SACRAMENTO — In 2006, a major rewrite of the federal bankruptcy law allowed for federal student loans to be dischargeable. Prior to 2006, student loans, along with taxes, were always required to be paid back in bankruptcy court.

Now, Assemblyman Bob Wieckowski, D-Fremont, also a Bankruptcy lawyer, wants private student loans to also be dischargeable in bankruptcy. Assembly Joint Resolution 11 would urge the President and Congress to allow the discharge of private student loan debt in bankruptcy.

At a hearing on Tuesday in the Assembly Banking and Finance Committee, Wieckowski admitted his bill, AJR 11, was largely a political decision, but not all Democrats were in agreement.

“Why would I go for this?” asked Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, D-Lemon Grove. “It creates an inequity between one institution or another.”

“Most students know these loans are not dischargeable… makes them think twice before spending,” Weber added. “Students are pretty smart sometimes.”

But it became clear that one target of the resolution is private technical and vocational schools. “Technical schools are ripping people off,” said Assemblyman Bob Blumenfield, D-Los Angeles. “This may be a good thing.”

Some lawmakers have tried for several years to kill off private vocational schools, which do not hire union teachers. Granted, some of these technical and vocational schools have predatory lending practices, most are very good and serve a valuable purpose.

But the primary issue is the growing student loan debt in America. According to the bill analysis, of the 20 million who attend college each year, close to 12 million, or 60 percent, take out student loans to cover the cost. And, there are 37 million student loan borrowers with outstanding student loans today.

Committee Chairman, Assemblyman Roger Dickinson, D-Sacramento, added: “People who take out a loan in good faith should not be asked to carry the debt for the rest of their lives.”

But taking out a loan in good faith means you will pay the loan back. Otherwise lenders would not be lenders — they’d be philanthropists.

By Brian Calle

The following video explains why college tuition is so high in California.

By John Seiler

Youngsters finally are figuring out that going $100,000 in debt to get a degree in poststructural-prepostmodern-quasistructuralist-semiFoucaulist-political-correctness with no chance of a job isn’t exactly the best way to start out in life.

A new study released today by the Public Policy Institute of California found, in the Contra Costa Times summary:

“From 2007 to 2010, the percentage of graduates attending University of California or California State University campuses fell by 20 percent….

“Fewer than 18 percent of California high school graduates ended up at a Cal State or UC campus in 2010, down from 22 percent in 2007. And 55 percent of the most highly prepared students enroll there, down from 67 percent.

“About one in 10 who reject admissions offers from the state universities choose not to go to college at all….”

College still can be a good deal if you’re pursuing a degree in a technical or scientific subject, such as chemistry or engineering. They still have standards. If you reject Newton’s physics as coming from the “sexist patriarchal oppressors,” the bridge you build will collapse, people will die and you might go to prison for negligence.

But the humanities departments are hopeless. With only a few exceptions, they’re suffused with cultural Marxism.

Murderous Marxism lives

It’s kind of funny, in a mortifying sort of way. Political and economic Marxism died with the Soviet Union 21 years ago after murdering more than 100 million people around world, from Lenin’s and Stalin’s Gulag to Mao’s Great Leap Forward to the killing fields of Cambodia.

Yet Marxism lives in American universities as a cultural excrescence.

So, kids, stay away from it. Start your lives right now. Don’t go to college and get into debt.

Are you intersted in Shakespeare? Then read him, attend local performances of the plays and watch videos of the plays, such as those the BBC produced three decades ago (available on Netflix and in libraries).

If you’re interested in a scientific or technical field, you’ll probably still have to go to college. The way to get through the P.C. college humanities courses mostly undamaged by the academic Stalinism is to take advanced placement tests. If you can’t do that, take courses at your local community college, where the tuition is much cheaper and you’re more likely to get a non-Maoist professor.

Read on your own. Read alternative Web sites like this one. Some of my favorites: LewRockwell.com and Antiwar.com. The Mises Institute has hundreds of free books online on libertarianism and free market economics. Use it.

Want to get into business? Then start one. There are copious books an free Web sites on how to do so. Most new businesses fail. Then start again. My suggestion: Don’t go into debt doing so. Business debt can be as bad as college debt.

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates dropped out of college. Edison and Ford never went. You don’t need it.

Here’s a good Walter Williams article on how college is a waste for so many.

Another by Marc Slavo on why college is the biggest scam in U.S. history.

And here’s a YouTube of a smart girl saying “farewell to college.” She gives me hope in the rising generation.