Ironically, in the midst of Sunshine Week, designed to create more open government and freedom of information, the “Committee of Two” considering the financial situation of the UC system – Gov. Jerry Brown and University of California President Janet Napolitano – are not forthcoming in revealing details about their negotiations. Despite protests to the contrary, this may be a necessary thing.

Yesterday at the UC Regents’ meeting in San Francisco, both Brown and Napolitano did a two-step around whatever progress is being made in their talks about the proposed tuition increase. Napolitano and the Regents supported tuition increases if the university system did not get more money from the state. Brown refused to be bullied.

Now the two are working on a plan that will try to re-set some university finances without raising tuition or dramatically increasing the state’s contribution. Not an easy task, but they claim they are making progress.

That doesn’t stop critics from demanding the negotiations be more open. As one student was quoted in the Sacramento Bee, “We need a committee that not just represents a committee of two, but a committee of 240,000,” referring to the number of students in the system.

University business

Are private talks setting government plans ever the way to go? Historians have suggested that, if the United States Constitution was cobbled together in open meetings the document would be much different and, they suggest, not better.

Tackling tuition hikes is not the same as constitution writing. However, to continue the broad analogy, what comes out of these private meetings may set a course of change for the way the university does business, just as the long ago constitution-writers went beyond their original assignment of fixing the Articles of Confederation.

I know – a little bit of a grandiose comparison.  But it is quite possible the UC system might look and feel quite different if the negotiators come to an agreement and any proposed changes are approved after debate. Online courses, larger teaching loads for professors and a shorter time to graduation all may alter the university experience as we have come to know it over the last few decades.

Whatever the Committee of Two comes up with would have to withstand vigorous public debate. There is no guarantee any Committee of Two proposal will pass the test. I served on a half-dozen state commissions over the years and few commission recommendations were turned into state policy.

Pensions

One big issue that is affecting all government-related organizations is employee pensions and health costs. When the issue of raising tuition first surfaced, the university’s financial division pointed to pension costs as one of the culprits. That issue must also be part of the negotiations, along with rising retiree health care costs.

We will see if the Committee of Two can come up with any solutions on the pension/health care front that succeed and maybe set the course for reform in this area for other government entities.

One suspects big changes are coming to the UC system. Getting the ball rolling is happening in private.

Why do we have to live under the rule of people who don’t know the difference between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution?

Here’s the story from Breitbart:

“A federal judge struck down Virginia’s ban on same-sex marriage today…. Except … Judge Arenda Wright Allen claimed the Constitution declares that “all men are created equal,” which is, instead, the first line of the Declaration of Independence.”

Actually, “all men are created equal” is in the second sentence! So some journalists can’t get it right, either.

We’re in trouble.

Check out the venerable document, below. Not that anybody seems to read it anymore.

“The Constitution guarantees the right to free speech, but don’t try to pass out copies of it at Modesto Junior College in California.

“A student at the school who tried to pass out pocket-size pamphlets of the very document that memorializes our rights got shut down on Sept. 17 – a date also known as Constitution Day.

 “Campus authorities told 25-year-old Robert Van Tuinen, who caught the whole thing on videotape, he could only pass out the free documents at a tiny designated spot on campus, and only then if he scheduled it several days in advance.”

What a change from my college days. When I first attended the University of Michigan 40 years ago, in 1973, a common sight was the Spartacist League, a group of Trotskyite communists, passing out literature. Their free speech rights were as respected as those of Republicans and Democrats.

And it’s also almost 50 years since the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley (picture above).

Here’s a YouTube of the Modesto Junior College repression:

By John Seiler

It’s terrible that four people were killed in Boston last week. But for that should we ditch the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights?

That’s what New York Mayor-for-Life Michael Bloomberg insists:

“The people who are worried about privacy have a legitimate worry. But we live in a complex world where you’re going to have to have a level of security greater than you did back in the olden days, if you will. And our laws and our interpretation of the Constitution, I think, have to change.”

Actually, given the events of the last century — the Nazi and communist mass murders of tens of millions of people — we need our constitutional protections more than ever. Compared to those atrocities, the crimes of King George the III — taxing tea and stamps, etc. — were the misdemeanors of a pickpocket.

If recent history has taught us anything, it’s that governments are infinitely more dangerous than even the worst criminals. After all, it was just 20 years ago that the government itself murdered 70 people, including about 20 children and 20 blacks, in the Waco Inferno (shown in the pictures nearby).

More Bloomberg:

“Look, we live in a very dangerous world. We know there are people who want to take away our freedoms. New Yorkers probably know that as much if not more than anybody else after the terrible tragedy of 9/11.”

Yes, and the main agent taking away our freedoms after 9/11 was the government itself, with the imposition of the unconstitutional USA “PATRIOT” Act, which was treason to our freedoms.  

“We have to understand that in the world going forward, we’re going to have more cameras and that kind of stuff. That’s good in some sense, but it’s different from what we are used to.

But it was private cameras in Boston that helped finger the alleged perpetrators, not government cameras. And a private citizen located the second suspect.

“Clearly the  Supreme Court has recognized that you have to have different interpretations of the Second Amendment and what it applies to and reasonable gun laws … Here we’re going to to have to live with reasonable levels of security.”

The last was a reference, according to the article, to the use of “magnetometers to catch weapons in city schools.” Which shows how modern schools now are prisons.

And he was referring to his obsession with gun control. He wants to re-interpret our Second Amendment “right to keep and bear arms” to mean we can’t.

He also can say such things because he’s immensely wealthy, according to Forbes the 13th richest person in the universe at $27 billion. He now is guarded by New York City police. But if he ever stops being mayor-for-life, he’ll have private guards. And can take unusual precautions to protect his own privacy, such as traveling to those private islands featured on the Wealth Channel.

You, however, cannot. He wants to take your guns, leaving you defenseless against terrorists. And he wants the government ceaselessly to spy on your every move.

He should call himself Mayor Orwell.

By John Seiler

Although we often criticize California government here at CalWatchDog.com, we also like to highlight the occasional good news. I just found something that’s worth mentioning, although a few months old.

The Fiscal Times lists the 11 American public universities with the worst graduation rates. Not one is in California. However, because all state universities, and all but a handful of private universities, get our federal tax money, Californians still are paying for this academic malfeasance.

The worst is the citadel of learning known as Southern University at New Orleans. Graduation rate: 4 percent. Flunk rate: 96 percent.

Why is this place still open? Suppose a car company made cars that crashed 96 percent of the time. How long would it stay in business?

Second worst is the University of the District of Columbia. Graduation rate: 7 percent. Flunk rate: 93 percent.

Appropriately, UDC is located in our nation’s capital, the center of the federal government that tells the rest of us to what do. Its Department of Education (De-Ed) wastes $70 billion annually of our tax dollars — or adds to the $1 trillion-plus annual deficits.

De-Ed meddles in state and local school policies and programs, dumbing down everything in sight. Since federal involvement of education accelerated after the phony Sputnik scare in 1957, test scores across the country have crashed almost every year. All of this violates the independence of the states under the 10th Amendment.

But there’s no question the feds control D.C. schools, because D.C. is a federal district specifically set up under the Constitution.

Let me emphasize: The feds can’t get more than a 7 percent graduation rate out of the university the Constitution lets them control. Yet the dictate policy to the thousands of state or private universities they control even though the Constitution prohibits them from doing so.

By John Seiler

In civics and law classes, we’re taught that the court system is “objective” and “follows the Constitution.” In fact, courts are just more political bodies. And as someone said, the U.S. Supreme Court “reads the newspapers.”

That’s also true of the California Supreme Court. It just ruled that private property can be invaded by union protesters, but not by other protesters or by people gathering signatures for petitions.

What a coincidence. Just last month, unions demonstrated their total control over California by passing the Proposition 30 tax increase, defeating the Proposition 32 limit on taking union dues for politics directly from employee paychecks and pushing a Democratic supermajority into power in the state Legislature. Two years ago, unions put Jerry Brown on the governor’s throne; he calls them “my troops.”

As to protests, the U.S. Constitution is clear: they are allowed on public property, such as sidewalks, but not on private property. The Fifth Amendment stipulates that no person may “be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

When the government allows unions — and only unions — to trample on your property, then your property is being “taken for public use, without just compensation” — or any compensation.

The Fourteenth Amendment, enacted after slavery was abolished, also guaranteed, “nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

State courts allowing unions to march on your private property obviously is a State — in the case before us, California — depriving property owners of their “property, without due process of law.”

What about the rights to free speech and to protest, as guaranteed by the First Amendment? Those certainly are allowed — on public property, or on private property with the owner’s permission. But no one, obviously, has a right to barge into your living room and start protesting your beliefs; that’s your private property. And the building, parking lot and private sidewalks of a business are its private property.

Except for union protests in the state of Unionifornia.

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 John Seiler

I watch debates differently. I look for how each candidate upholds the U.S. Constitution, which each has taken an oath to “preserve, protect and defend.”

In the vice-presidential debate between Joe Biden and Paul Ryan, here’s how many times the Constitution was mentioned: zero.

I listened closely, then checked the transcript.

Same thing for the Bill of Rights: no mentions. The closest either candidate got was Ryan saying, “We should always stand up for peace, for democracy, for individual rights” — and, no doubt if Biden hadn’t kept butting in, Ryan would have added truth, justice, the American Way, baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet.

This is more proof that the Constitution and Bill of Rights are moribund documents. They act only as a structure in which the politicians operate: the presidency, the Congress, the Supreme Court, the government bureaus (most of them unconstitutional; all of them doing unconstitutional acts). Inside the structure, the Constitution is completely ignored. Anything goes.

It’s good to know that the government, at all levels, is lawless.

By Steven Greenhut

SACRAMENTO — The main problem with the California Legislature is not that it spends your money far faster than it comes in, or that much of it is squandered on absurd programs and on the enrichment of those Californians who work for the state. Those are symptoms of the real problem, which is that the Legislature recognizes no natural limits on its power.

If a legislator doesn’t like something, expect a proposal to ban it. If a legislator likes a particular idea, expect plans to build a bureaucracy to implement it.

The only issues off the table involve fixing those budgetary and governmental problems that the state government is legitimately tasked with handling.

When you see supposedly serious efforts to address a problem, such as the Legislature’s last-minute embrace of public-employee pension reform, a closer look reveals such reform is just a fig leaf covering something else.

This particular reform package does little but was passed after polls showed the governor’s tax-increase initiative (Proposition 30) for November was on thin ice. The pension bill is designed to help a political campaign — “Look, voters, we are serious about reforming government, so go ahead and vote yourself (or your wealthier neighbors) a hefty tax hike!”

So another legislative session comes to a close, and a load of new rules and regulations is headed to Gov. Jerry Brown for his signature or veto. California bans and regulations, including those emanating from local governments, have gotten so out of hand that regulation-happy New Yorkers at the New York Times now are making fun of our state.

“Once known for its sunny, freewheeling disposition — a live-and-let-live sensibility rooted in Western ideals and relied upon by generations of surfer dudes and misbehaving Hollywood stars — this region has long been as regulated as anywhere,” the Times reported recently. “Lately, however, cities, school districts and even libraries have been outlawing chunks of what used to pass here for birthright at a startling clip.”

The article focused on new local bans on everything ranging from fire pits on the sand at Newport Beach to the wearing of obnoxious perfumes in libraries in Southern California. But the Times also mentioned the Legislature’s recent “ban on psychotherapy aimed at making gay teenagers straight” as a glaring example of the Capitol’s ban-it mentality.

Invading bedrooms

One of the very few benefits of having liberal Democrats running everything in California, as the cliché goes, is that they won’t be meddling in our bedrooms. But the ban on gay-conversion therapy shows that liberal activists can be even more meddlesome in people’s personal lives than conservatives.

If I were a gay teenager and wanted to become straight, why shouldn’t I be able to go to a licensed psychologist to try out the therapy? Are families incapable of making personal decisions without the oversight of regulators and legislators?

As one psychologist told the Wall Street Journal with regard to the anti-gay therapy, “People report that the therapies exacerbate their own struggles and distress.” He said it can hurt teen’s self-esteem and sense of well-being.

Lots of things can harm our self-esteem, but that doesn’t mean the Legislature should ban them. Huge budget deficits and pension liabilities hurt my psychological sense of well-being — but I don’t expect the Legislature to assuage my feelings by dealing with those matters, even though they are issues that legislators urgently should be handling.

Another psychologist quoted by the New York Times got it right when he called the ban an attempt to intimidate therapists and undermine parental rights.

Sen. Ted Lieu

Sen. Ted Lieu, the Torrance Democrat who authored the gay-conversion therapy ban, called the therapy “quackery,” but now teens and parents are more likely to head to real quacks — shamans without licenses or training.

Or they will turn to religious practitioners. Even California’s legislators don’t have the power to ban therapy in those settings, thanks to religious freedoms.

Lieu’s office recently sent out a statement boasting of the 17 bills he authored that have been approved by the Legislature. But Lieu, who apparently is competing for the title of “California’s Ultimate Nanny,” is sadly typical in Sacramento.

In addition to the gay psychotherapy ban, Lieu is proud of his bills that crack down on used-car dealers who offer high-interest-rate loans to their customers, and forbid landlords from requiring tenants to pay their rent online. Is there no area of life, not matter how petty, that willing buyers and willing sellers can’t negotiate without governmental interference?

Lieu also authored a bill to speed up state payments to people who are victims of corporate fraudsters — “smooth-talking hustlers,” as Lieu refers to them. I see nothing in his list of bills that protects California residents from the smooth-talking hustlers who run the Capitol, and promise us every good and noble thing known to mankind, but can’t even deliver us an honestly balanced budget.

Last December, Lieu threatened legislative action against the Lowe’s home-improvement chain after it pulled its ads from a TV show called “All American Muslim.” Even if you accept the always politically correct Lieu’s contention that pulling the ads was bigoted, shouldn’t private companies have the right to pick and choose where they advertise?

Lieu did author one good bill, which celebrates the anniversary of the signing of the U.S. Constitution. That makes it even more ironic that he and his allies spent most of the legislative year shredding the values in the document they want to celebrate.

The Constitution was designed to put boundaries around government so that it protects our life, liberty and property without intruding on our freedoms. California’s government, in its hubris, recognizes no such limits. Until Californians rediscover the importance of limiting their government, we will be at the mercy of the petty totalitarians who run the Capitol.

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 John Seiler

Hey, I thought we had “separation of state” in America? Even though it’s not exactly in the Constitution, but imposed by court rulings.

Anyway, Gov. Jerry Brown has been campaigning in churches for his tax increases. “We’ve got to take this message to the schools, to the colleges and, yes, to the churches, to the faith community that knows that man doesn’t live by bread alone,” said a man who himself is exceedingly wealthy because of oil deals his late father, former Gov. Pat Brown, made with the murderous dictator Sukarno of Indonesia.

That’s also a novel and highly convenient interpretation of Matthew 4:4. Here’s the context, from the first four verses:

¹Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.

²And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred.

³And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.

⁴But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

The devil was tempting Jesus with being able to feed the whole world with bread — an infernal premonition of the welfare state that Brown presides over, and wants to fund more with even higher taxes. Instead, Jesus replied, we’re supposed to live by “every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”

Moreover, many things the government now does — especially education, health care and marriage — used to be performed by churches, and in many cases still are, although on a smaller scale to what government does. Government, including Brown, has usurped the rightful sovereignty of churches and families over these functions.

Brown’s tax increase would slam the middle class and the poor with a sales tax increase. It also would hit wealthy people with higher income tax rates. Brown, slipping into faux religious concern again, said the rich “have been blessed, and they must join with us in blessing those that have not been as fortunate.”

But the rich already “bless” us by creating businesses and jobs. Taking away their money means fewer businesses and jobs, with more workers laid off and going on unemployment and welrare. The main thing this tax increase would do is push more of rich folks to leave a state where they’re being robbed.

Thou shalt not…

Tellingly, Brown did not bring up these Biblical admonitions from Exodus 20:

¹⁵Thou shalt not steal….

¹⁷Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.

The tax increase money is not going to the poor or schools, either. It’s going to the bloated pensions of current retirees. David Crane, a budget expert and fellow Democrat of Brown’s, just wrote:

Most Californians would be surprised to learn that 100 percent of education’s share of the tax increase proposed by Governor Jerry Brown will go to pensions instead of classrooms. But that would be no surprise to longtime observers of the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, which administers teacher pensions.

So, all Brown is doing is using religion to push robbing people more to shovel stolen money to his political allies. It’s another con game.

If he wants to help the poor, he should heed the words of Matthew 19:

²¹Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.

²²But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions.

Finally, in the Bible, God asks us to give to church or charity only 10 percent of what we have. Speaking of the priest Melchisedec, Hebrews 7:4 says, “Now consider how great this man was, unto whom even the patriarch Abraham gave the tenth of the spoils.” In Old English, the word “tithe” even means “tenth.”

Yet, government today takes far more than that, at least 40 percent of most working people’s incomes. That means government considers itself four times as important as God. What blasphemous arrogance.