California gets low “freedom” score

Good morning! Happy hump day.

As the Legislature rolls through its last month of session, a Libertarian think tank issued a report saying that when it comes to liberty, California is one of the most restrictive states on its citizens.

The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, in its “Freedom in the 50 States” report divided liberty into three categories: personal, fiscal and regulatory. And while the Golden State ranked high (16th) in personal liberty, it was near the bottom in fiscal (46th) and regulatory (48th).

Overall, New Hampshire ranked the highest. New York was the only state with a lower overall liberty score than California.

For context, Cato defines libertarianism, in part, as “the belief that each person has the right to live his life as he chooses so long as he respects the equal rights of others.” And while the data used to compile the score gives a good snapshot of life in the state, many of the metrics used are sure to be viewed differently from person to person.

For example, gun “rights” account for more than 3 percent of the total score — and while the study sees gun-control measures as a threat to liberty, many Californians view restrictions on firearm usage and access as a necessity. But the study’s guiding principal is based on how governmental policies and regulations affect an individual’s ability to make his or her own decisions.

CalWatchdog has more. 

In other news:

• “State officials will not force most California water districts to reduce water use this year, even as they caution that the five-year drought persists and note that drought-fueled wildfires continue to wreak havoc,” reports The Sacramento Bee.
• “Felons serving time in county jails would be able to vote in California elections under a bill approved Tuesday by the state lawmakers and sent to the governor,” reports the Los Angeles Times. 
• A Democratic assemblyman has an oil industry lobbyist ghostwriting audit requests, a practice his chief of staff says is common, reports the Los Angeles Times.
• Some legislators are hoping a one-day hunger strike stunt will highlight the need to pass additional protections for farmworker overtime pay. The San Diego Union-Tribune has more. 

Assembly:

• Next floor session Thursday. Agriculture Committee hearing today. 

Senate:

• In at 10 a.m. Multiple hearings. 

Gov. Brown:

• No public events announced. 

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And no, it’s not a car.

Liberty is something we often hear about, but isn’t exactly a topic of discussion at dinner parties. If we don’t really know what liberty is, how will we know when it is taken away, or if it is being taken away? Unfortunately, it often takes tyranny to make liberty more precious.

The purpose of liberty is to allow human life to flourish. Are we flourishing in California and the rest of America in 2013? What will liberty look like in 2014?

Are Americans prepared to fight for liberty?

Government serves the people

John Locke, a 17th century English philosopher and physician, regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers, said government is morally obliged to serve people, namely by protecting life, liberty, and property. He explained the principle of checks and balances to limit government power. He favored representative government and a rule of law. He denounced tyranny. Locke insisted that when government violates individual rights, people may legitimately rebel.

Locke said the only legitimate governments are those that have the consent of the people. Therefore, any government that rules without the consent of the people can, in theory, be overthrown.

These views were most fully developed in Locke’s famous “Second Treatise Concerning Civil Government.”

Locke said that if, either through an abuse of power or an impermissible change, these governing bodies cease to represent the people and instead represent either themselves or some foreign power, the people may–and indeed should–rebel against their government and replace it with one that will remember its trust.

“All men are naturally in a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of Nature, without asking leave or depending upon the will of any other man,” said Locke.

What Locke identified are the three but interconnected keystones of a society of free men: Liberty, Rule of Law, and Legislative Power by consent of the governed.

The people work for the government

Americans are burdened by a labyrinth of government policies, procedures, rules and regulations. Our federal government, once limited to basic core functions, now dominates virtually every area of American life. States, local governments and municipalities, and private businesses are increasingly overwhelmed by federal programs and influence. And as government expands its influence, our liberties recede.

The Left has been engaged in a century-long attack on the first principles of America, the Constitution, and the culture that supports liberty and freedom. However, the Left, steeped in ideology and control, always eventually oversteps, and has done so once again.  The recklessness of government, and the arrogance of officials, appear to have finally awakened a sleeping giant, in a nation that has been too long asleep. Many Americans have been jolted awake and are beginning to recognize the imperative to save our Republic.

Compared to the Founding era, more and more power is now being centralized in the national government. Today, for example, many policies that affect local public schools are made in Washington. As creeping centralization slowly overcomes the Constitution’s federal design, the national government has begun to restrict the freedom of religion that is an indispensable element of the American founding.

The Constitution, the supreme law of the United States, is under assault. First Amendment speech rights are being challenged by Congress. Some members of Congress want to limit the definition of the press to only those who work for large, established news outlets. They want alternative media and bloggers quieted.  Yet the First Amendment is very clear: Congress cannot interfere with an individual’s religion or speech. It cannot restrict a citizen’s communication with others to form community by worship, publishing, gathering together or petitioning the government.

President Obama and the Constitution

In 2013, President Barack Obama targeted Second Amendment gun ownership rights, and tried to impose sweeping federal gun control legislation. It failed, but he and the Left have made it very clear, they will attempt this again. Yet the Second Amendment guarantees the right of citizens to keep their own weapons.

One of the most egregious centralizations of power in U.S. history was ushered with President Obama’s health care overhaul in 2010. The law dictates what patients must buy, what insurance companies must offer, orders employers to provide health care coverage for employees, and and what the insurance must cover. Obamacare offers no way out, and no choice. This is a staggering loss of liberty.

Religious freedom under assault

“Religious freedom requires that the government does not interfere with religious faith and the charitable works it inspires,” the Heritage Foundation explained. “If a government is truly limited, friction with religious institutions and individuals will be rare. Of course, occasionally, tensions between faith and state may arise even under a limited government. The Founders counted on these tensions to keep the state in check.”

While we still have religious freedoms in America, the Left continually wages attacks on religion, and specifically Christianity. And they do it legislatively.

Attacks on the Boy Scouts of America are based on the Scouts’ inclusion of religion in their scouting practices and oath.

Public schools across the country are no longer allowing school facilities to be used by groups with religious affiliation.

Catholics have come under assault for standing their ground on the Obamacare contraception mandate. Religious employers are going to be forced into providing contraception, abortions, and sterilization procedures to their employees.

A judge recently ruled that a bakery owner violated the law when he refused to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding.

As government grows, liberty decreases

It was Thomas Jefferson who warned, “The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases. The natural progress of things is for liberty to yeild, and government to gain ground.”

Jefferson also had plenty to say on liberty: “Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.”

What will you do to save and restore liberty in 2014?

SACRAMENTO — Having faith in freedom, Igor Birman is hoping voters “hire” him for Congress. “I’m here on a job interview asking you to hire me,” Birman tells voters he meets.

Birman, a Russian Jewish Immigrant and Republican, announced in September he is running for Congress against Rep. Ami Bera, a Democrat from Congressional District 7. At 32, Birman has a unique ability to reach young and ethnic voters who historically have been wooed by Democrats. At a Sacramento coffee shop, he sat down to talk to me.

“I was defined by freedom,” Birman said when we met this week. “But that freedom now is in great jeopardy based on the policies of many leaders in our government.”

“This is all in your hands”

Birman is the former Chief of Staff to Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Elk Grove, a post he held since 2009. McClintock has endorsed Birman.

Birman was born in the Soviet Union in 1981. His father father is a physicist and a Refusenik, a term for Soviet Jews who were denied permission to emigrate abroad. Soviet officials said Birman’s mother could leave the country and take Igor and his younger brother, but officials would not let his father go because of his scientific expertise. Finally, after the Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991, eventually the family was allowed to leave in 1994, when Igor was 13.

Birman said a few days before the family left Russia, his parents discovered the secret police had been conducting surveillance of them. The police tore apart their small Moscow apartment trying to intimidate the family. Birman said his parents risked everything and gave up everything they owned to come to America.

“This will never happen there,” Birman said his mother repeatedly assured him.

As the Birman family was preparing to leave, his father received a suspicious letter claiming to be from the American Embassy. “But it was in Russian,” Birman said. The letter read:

“Dear Mr. Birman,

“Due to the new fiscal year, the U.S. is no longer accepting new immigrants. Please cancel your plans to come.”

Igor said since his English was good, he called the U.S. Embassy for his parents and asked officials about the suspicious letter. He was told it was a fake. “Come, and come right away,” the U.S. Embassy representative told him.

“My parents risked their lives to get me here, to live in freedom, to flourish,” Igor said. “And now that that same freedom is being threatened by our own leaders, how can I not dedicate my life to make sure that my children and grandchildren are born into a society that I came here to find?”

Consequences of an overgrown government

Birman said Americans are faced with the consequences of an overgrown government everywhere. Obamacare is just one example.

“You don’t have to look much further than families who can no longer find full-time jobs, or who now find themselves with less than full-time work, with 29-1/2 hour work weeks,” Birman said. “Families whose husbands and wives came home and reported their companies no longer carry health care coverage. That’s not because the ingenuity of the American people is sapped. It’s because of government policies that ultimately are up to us to reverse. Many of these folks realize it’s public policy to blame, and that’s why I’m running.”

People are the sovereigns

“People are the sovereigns,” Birman said, meaning that “the people” have all of the rights of kings.

Indeed, the U.S. Supreme Court found in Yick Wo vs. Hopkins, “Sovereignty itself is, of course, not subject to law, for it is the author and source of law.”

“But instead, the people have become supplicants to government,” Birman said. “They tell us what to do, but we hire them.” He said this is reversible. “This is all in your hands,” he tells constituents.

Congressional District 7 contenders

Rep. Ami Bera narrowly won a 2012 election rematch against Rep. Dan Lungren, a veteran Republican, with a long history of holding political office, including as California attorney general. Bera is vulnerable in the district, with 39 percent registered Democratic voters, and 38 percent Republican voters.

In the new “top two” voting system, the two candidates with the most votes in the June primary face off in a November 2014 runoff. Bera almost certainly will be one of those two. Which means that, for the second slot, Birman is challenging Republicans Doug Ose, a former California congressman from 1999 to 2005; and  Elizabeth Emken, who in 2012 ran as the Republican Party nominee for U.S. Senator, losing to incumbent Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

“Do your best to stand for freedom,” Birman said. “If you lose, history will remember you. If you win, my God! Then everyone wins. Americans want someone who will uphold freedom. You don’t win every battle when you stand on principle. But you may win many.”

By Katy Grimes

As a young child, I was fortunate to be able to live in Newport, Rhode Island, the first British colony in America to formally declare its independence, and the first state to  guarantee freedom of religion.

We lived a short time in an old home in downtown Newport, which survived the Revolutionary War. Soldiers fought the Brits from the upstairs windows of our home, according to local lore.

Newport was rife with constant reminders of The American Revolution. I used to imagine what life was like in 1776 Newport, when the state repealed its allegiance to King George III of England.

Reflecting upon Independence Day, it’s so important to remember the Revolution wasn’t just a rebellion against the King of England, it was a rebellion against being ruled by a monarchy. Our forefathers and many of our ancestors gave up everything and shed their own blood rather than submit unto King George lll.

Liberty and the Declaration of Independence

My early years were still during an era unembarrassed by, and unapologetic of America’s individualist morality. But by the time I entered college, America was undergoing significant moral, ethical, political and social change.

Globalism was being ushered in promoting the hegemony of Western culture, capitalism  and free markets. The foundations of democracy and social stability were clearly being undermined.

Can this individualistic ethic be renewed in an America enveloped in entitlements and self-absorption?

Re-reading the Declaration of Independence, the nation’s most cherished symbol of liberty,  helps refresh our ties to American history. Thomas Jefferson drafted it, and his words still capture the heartfelt convictions of liberty-loving Americans.

Jefferson rightly focused on the importance of  individual liberty, ideals first shared by John Locke and the Continental philosophers.

Jefferson argued in his opening two paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence that a people had the right to overthrow their government when it abused their fundamental natural rights over a long period of time:

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for a people to advance from that subordination in which they have hitherto remained, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the equal and independent station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s god entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the change

We hold these truths to be [sacred and undeniable] self evident, that all men are created equal and independent; that from that equal creation they derive in rights inherent and inalienables, among which are the preservation of life, and liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these ends, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government shall become destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing it’s powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes: and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. but when a long train of abuses and usurpations, begun at a distinguished period, and pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to [subject] reduce them to arbitrary power, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

As the United States’ government continues to grow, has it also abused our fundamental natural rights over a long period of time?

Would Americans today sign such a document, under similar threats as the founders?

“A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue then will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.” — Samuel Adams, 1779, a delegate to the Continental Congress, and signer of the Declaration of Independence

By Katy Grimes

I had a chance to talk with Assemblyman Tim Donnelly on Thursday, which is always interesting. He’s one of a handful of lawmakers who tells it like it is. And, then he puts his plans into action.

We discussed President Barack Obama’s 23-point gun control plans and agreed that the president is politicizing the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary in order to impose an anti-Second Amendment agenda. Ironically, nothing currently proposed by the President would have prevented the tragedy, or any of the other recent attacks. Donnelly said that all the President’s plan will do is make it more expensive, and more difficult for law-abiding citizens to exercise their Second Amendment right.

Donnelly told me that he is introducing a bill to create a school marshal program, modeled after the highly successful air marshals program. This would allow teachers to volunteer to receive gun training and qualify to carry concealed weapons. The idea is to have teachers fully trained, but not let anyone know which teachers have gone through the training.

Criminals typically avoid houses where there is a German Shepherd, an alarm system, or a gun owner. The chances of an insane school shooter getting gunned down by a teacher may do the same.

“We should be celebrating the incredibly heroic teacher, Vicki Soto, instead of focusing on taking guns away from citizens,” Donnelly said. “In light of the incredible bravery and selfless heroism of teachers like Vicki Soto, it would be morally wrong to leave the next teacher confronted by a deranged killer defenseless.  Donnelly said.

“We should be holding criminals accountable, not guns,” Donnelly said. Donnelly said the President going after citizens was certainly not about protecting anyone. Donnelly said that the president’s plan will only target people who have followed the law and register their weapons.

“We must not criminalize responsible, freedom-loving citizens exercising their natural right as Americans,” he said in a story yesterday in the Victorville Daily Press.

Donnelly has been consistent in saying “the purpose of the Second Amendment is to defend freedom against tyranny.”

Our wonderful friend Jocelyne Leger produced a beautiful video on Alan Bock, who died two weeks ago. Alan was a great fighter for liberty and the colleague of Steven Greenhut, Jocelyn and me at The Orange County Register.

Rest in Peace, Alan.

Click here for the short video.

May 27, 2011