By Katy Grimes

Too much liberal drivel in today’s newspapers passes for news as well as journalism. Gone is most of the hard news, replaced by front page human-interest stories and social welfare issues.

This prattle is written by pushover cream puffs, who want everyone to feel the pain and agony that comes with being as enlightened as they are.

I didn’t think that Sacramento Bee writer Marcos Breton could write any more twaddle than what prompted my last story about what a tool he was over the failed Kings arena deal. But in Sunday’s Bee, Breton managed to blubber on while simultaneously beating himself up about his past denial of his Hispanic roots.

In a column titled, “Census has shifted, but we’re all one,” Breton wrote, “The U. S. Census Bureaus says I won’t be a minority in California within three years, if not sooner. It also said last week that for the first time in American history, minority births have surpassed white births.”

“I’ve been waiting for this day for years,” Breton said. “I turned my back on the ‘minority’ distinction a long time ago and buried years of negative emotion in the process.”

And then Breton put on the hairshirt of shame and recounted television shows which did not use minority actors for ethnic roles. He spoke of being called a “minority hire,” and of affirmative action policies when he was in college.

Breton attacked Propositions 187 and 209, “which attacked undocumented immigrants and affirmative action, respectively.” Proposition 187, the ban to deny benefits to illegal immigrants, and Prop 209, the ban against preferences based on race, color, sex, ethnicity and national origin, primarily focused on Hispanics and blacks, and ignored the many different Asian cultures and other ethic groups, which also migrated to California.

He failed to note that both initiatives were voted on and passed by the citizens of California for a reason, which had very little to do with racial bias. The votes for measures were driven largely by economics — affirmative action has grossly expanded the public higher education system, and the children and families of illegal immigrants rely heavily on state-funded social services, and healthcare which has also been expanded exponentially.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, the number of children in immigrant families has risen nearly 10 times faster than the number in U.S.-born families. They are more likely than those with U.S.-born parents to live in poverty, and are less likely to have health insurance and to receive medical care.

“The Urban Institute finds that the share of children enrolled in kindergarten through 12th grade that is composed of children of immigrants (including both foreign-born children and U.S.-born children with foreign-born parents) more than tripled from 6 to 20 percent between 1970 and 2000,” the NCSL found. “By 2015, if current immigration levels continue, children of immigrants will constitute 30 percent of the nation’s school population.”

Instead of acknowledging that the use of race and ethnicity in college admissions is unconstitutional, offensive, and even considered morally wrong, Breton also failed to recognize the damage done to all ethnic minorities by assuming they were educationally inferior, and needed to have the standards lowered in order to get into college and gain employment.

Despite the mess affirmative action has made for Hispanics and Blacks, Asians, excluded from Affirmative Action, have continued to excel educationally, and have very low unemployment as a culture.

As a white female who also entered college during affirmative action, I was on the other end, denied access to some schools because my name was too Anglo. Despite my high GPA, I watched as masses of unqualified students filled up state college classes, only to drop out shortly thereafter.

Despite skin color or ethnicity, the students who made it past the first few weeks proved they had what was required, and were disciplined enough to do the work. And that’s all that should matter.

Affirmative action set people of color up to fail, and was often more of a Scarlet Letter than unpreparedness, or the sometimes lack of language skills.

For those many black and Hispanic students who had the grades and qualified on their own for college, they spoke of how offensive it was to be labeled an Affirmative Action student. Success is now their best revenge.

Breton got one thing right when he shared his anger about being called a “minority hire,” but he missed the point. He blamed racism instead of the ridiculous and damaging liberal policies, which try to make everyone the same. And because that’s not possible, liberals tried to level the playing field by promoting race over achievement, skill, talent and hard work.

Regardless of color or background, those who want to play the victim and whine for a living can always find a cause. Others will study hard, work hard, and get ahead through sheer determination… the old-fashioned way.

We are not all one, and I don’t know anyone who thinks that’s a good idea. But in the liberal utopia, no one can stand out, achievements are a threat to others, and excellence must be quashed.

By John Seiler

Usually when I work, I listen to classical music. But sometimes I put on the rock I grew up with, usually the Stones, Hendrix, Cream, The Who, Dylan, the MC5, etc. A good way to do that is on YouTube, where you can click on a video stream of up to 100 videos of the artist and let it ride.

Today is a a shockingly beautiful day in Huntington Beach, the kind the government uses to entrap us into staying here and paying record high taxes. So I put on a stream of Dr. Mellow, John Denver, a Country Boy taking a Jet Plane on a Rocky Mountain High.

Then my reverie was rudely interrupted by an ad by the Proposition 29 tax-increase obsessives. A screen shot is above. The whole video is below. It’s called “Standing Up to Big Tobacco.” Prop. 29 is a buck-a-pack increase on cigarettes to fund cancer and other research and will be decided by voters in the June 6 election.

The ad features several people who got cancer from cigarettes, or who remember relatives of friends who died from puffing the coffin nails. They attack the greedy tobacco companies for tricking people into inhaling tobacco smoke, tar and nicotine.

But wait a minute! It’s been 48 years since the Surgeon General’s 1964 report on the hazards of tobacco. Since then, we’ve all been indoctrinated in how harmful smoking is.

I remember back in 1967 I wrote a little anti-tobacco play for my 7th-grade English class at Franklin Junior High School. It was my first editorial.

At this point, everybody, including the people featured in the Prop. 29 ad, knows that smoking has health consequences. The tobacco companies also have been turned into boogeymen. Their ads are severely limited. The government robs them every which way it can.

And the government, mendacious as usual, won’t tell you that there actually are some benefits to smoking. I also know people who self-medicate using cigarettes to calm themselves down. Why should they be denied their medical tobacco, or forced to pay sky-high prices for it? It’s their choice. They have free will. Let them choose it.

Kids and tobacco

What about kids smoking? That’s a parental problem. Does government have to take over absolutely every function formerly performed by Mom and Pop? And if you’ve ever seen the slop they feed kids in the government schools, you know there’s no real concern for the youngsters’ health.

Because poor people smoke more than rich folks, all cigarette taxes are highly regressive. So Prop. 29 would be an assault on the poor.

Black market

Then there’s the black market problem. I wrote about this a lot in the latet 1990s when Canada’s taxes zoomed up to $7 a pack, sparking a huge black market. The tax take from tobacco actually dropped. The Canucks got wise and cut the cig taxes.

When I was checking out at Vons yesterday, I noticed Marlboros and other top brands were on sale for $6.99 a pack. With sales tax, that’s about $7.55. Throw on a new Prop. 29 tax, and it’s $8.55. There’s been inflation since the late 1990s, so the situation might not be as bad as that in the Great White North 15 years ago. And cigs commonly are cheaper at a tobacconist’s shop.

But the Prop. 29 tax still would put California close to major black-market territory. And Californians are a lot more anarchic than the placid Canadians.

I’m not sure if I’m going to stop listening to YouTube videos. Finding out where the tax obsessives put their ads is part of what I do. It’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it.

The video also talks about reducing tobacco use. But Californians already smoke less then people in any other state but Utah. The rate was just 11.9 percent in 2010, and dropping, close to half the national rate of 21 percent. About the only way you could reduce it faster would be to shoot smokers.

Cancer research

Oh, and what about that cancer research the tax would fund? For one thing, California already is so heavily taxed that this would be another blow to the state economy. When I wrote about this before, a Prop. 29 backer assured readers that this tax is different, because it only would hit evil smokers and tobacco companies, while directing the boodle directly to the cancer-fighting boffins.

But all government money is fungible. This also is another exercise in “ballot-box budgeting,” in which wealth special interests grab ahold of a chunk of the state budget for their own purposes. It’s another blow against fiscal responsibility and accountabilty in a state that has had neither in decades.

And as much as I despise our state legislators, they’re actually are the ones who have to balance state budget interests. The initiative process should be changed to ban all mandatory spending, and to repeal all previous mandatory spending.

The state’s taxpayers, including smokers, already are tapped out. Grabbing $1 billion from smokers and the tobacco companies means that those people and companies will have less money to spend on other things, such as food and clothing for their children. More of them will slide into poverty, sign up for state programs, and get some of the taxpayers’ money, worsening the state budget deficit.

By the way, governments and research groups already have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on cancer research, yet there’s still no cure. It’s the nature of bureaucracies not to perform their ostensible functions, but to perpetuate themselves. The Proposition 71 stem-cell research money supposedly included safeguards that it would be spent properly, but it’s all been wasted at a cost of $6 billion in bond payments.

More crime

An increased black market will bring greater crime, including murders around cigarette gangs. Just think, with smokes going for $8.55 a pack, a carton is worth $85.50. Ten cartons are $855.00. That’s a lot of money for a commodity that’s light and you can scoop up in your arms.

I remember when the cig tax was increased a quarter back in 1988, when stoned voters passed Proposition 88. A liquor store near where I lived was knocked off that very night a couple hours after the store closed. The owner had to put up an iron gate. “Did they also take the expensive booze?” I asked him the next day when I stopped in for a six-pack. “No,” he replied. “Just the cigarettes.” Even then, a fifth of Jack Daniels wasn’t worth as much as a carton of smokes, and was heavier and more breakable.

The Prop. 29 ad already is hurting the state. I’m ticked off now and Dr. Mellow doesn’t do. How about the MC5? Yeah. Here’s “Motor City is Burning” by the 5. (It’s about the 1967 Detroit riot.)

By WAYNE LUSVARDI

People are upset.

The Los Angeles Times reported that the new chairman California stem cell research center, Jonathan Thomas — an investment banker — will draw a salary of more than $400,000 per year.  Current Chairman Alan Trounson also makes a salary of $490,000.

About 98 percent of more than 150 online comments to the story were outraged at the news.

The stem cell research center — euphemistically called the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) to give it a private-sounding name — was originally authorized under Proposition 71 in 2004 with $6 billion in bonds, including interest. The California stem cell institute has already requested another $6 billion in voter-approved bonds when its funds run out in 2014.

Many of the online newspaper commentators who stated they originally voted for public funding of stem cell research in 2004 vowed that they would not be burned twice and would not vote for it again.

Apparently the commentators did not realize that the father of Prop. 71 and its outgoing chairman of the board — Robert Klein II — already has created two arguably unnecessary and gratuitous state bureaucracies: the California Housing Finance Agency (CHFA) and the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), both of which depend on bond proceeds.  Those who oppose any more government bonds for state-sponsored stem cell research have already been taken to the cleaners twice.  They just don’t realize it.

Klein has been a master of influencing California’s voter initiative system, public opinion, and backstage political wheeling and dealing to create public agencies ex nihilo — Latin for “out of nothing.” California is a state where whole bureaucracies can be created without the approval of the Legislature or governor. Once created, like all bureaucracies, they have a life of their own and are almost impossible to phase out even if their organizational mission no longer exists.

As economist Milton Friedman once quipped, “Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government agency.”

Klein has not only fathered two state bureaucracies in California, he has served since 2004 as the chairman of the board of the stem cell research financing agency with a $150,000 a year salary for half-time work.  He learned how to game the political system to launch the stem-cell agency from his experience in founding the Housing Finance Agency, whose function is for the public sector to capture low-income housing finance away from the private sector.

CHFA Origins and History

The California Housing Finance Agency (CHFA) came into being in 1973 after the Nixon administration ended public housing subsidies and replaced them with block grants. Klein and associate Michael J. BeVier influenced the state Legislature to create the California Housing Finance Agency to subsidize low-income housing developments with tax-exempt bonds. In 1979, BeVier wrote about their exploits in a book titled, “Politics Backstage: Inside the California Legislature.”

In order to avoid any conflicts of interest, Klein reportedly never used CHFA bond monies in his own real estate projects.

In September 1973 — the year the CHFA was formed — market interest rates on a 30-year fully amortized mortgages reached 8.82 percent.  By October 1981, the interest rates had reached 18.45 percent after the 1979 Energy Crisis, the Iranian Hostage Crisis, President Jimmy Carter’s continuation of of price controls on gasoline and natural gas and rampant inflation. Offering a tax-exempt rate on a 19 percent mortgage for low-income housing was useless.

But by October 2003, the 30-year mortgage rate had dropped to 4.23 percent, and together with subprime loans, made low-income housing bond financing effectively superfluous.  At one point during the Real Estate Bubble of the mid-2000s, the effective interest rate on low-income mortgages had reached below zero and Fannie Mae was essentially giving away free money.

Subsidized financing for new construction of low-income housing is a contradiction. Affordable low-income housing is typically old, obsolescent, and located far from amenities such as shopping centers and light rail stations. That is what makes it affordable.  But in California, affordable housing has been redefined as a dwelling that is new, with gyms, spas and pools — and which is located in a mixed-use development with an adjacent supermarket and rail transit station.  Redevelopment and bond financing have mostly contributed to low-income housing becoming luxury housing.

Nonetheless, like all bureaucracies that have long ago lost their original missions, the CHFA continued to provide below-market interest rate financing to low income housing developers.  By 2011, the CHFA was staying out of the bond market altogether for fear that buyers would not buy the bonds.   But the agency still had an overhead of more than a quarter billion dollars per year ($255 million).

Stem Cell Institute History

The rationale used by Robert Klein in 2004 to get Prop. 71 approved by voters was ingenious.  Then-President George W. Bush had issued an executive order to ban the use of new embryonic stem cells in medical research funded by the federal government. (Although federal funding for old embryonic stem cell lines was allowed. And private and state-funded research was not affected.)

Much of the California opposition to Bush for the Iraq War was cleverly redirected into repudiating him by voting for stem cell research for miracle cures promised for paralysis, cancer, and heart disease.  But what it actually did was shoot the state budget and the medically needy in the foot.

In 2009, a Little Hoover Commission report scrutinized Klein’s organizational structure and administration of the stem cell institute. In particular, the Commission was critical that the job qualifications Klein wrote for the position of chairman of the board were essentially reflected in his own resume.  The Hoover Commission commented that Klein often overstepped the boundaries between policy setting as chairman and day-to-day administration, which should have been separated.

The Hoover Commission also became worried that the stem cell agency could become “leaderless” in the event of his departure, which is precisely what happened last year when Klein had to step down under pressure from critics.

Reportedly, Klein was accused of arranging for a crony to succeed him in a proverbial backstage deal.  Eventually, Klein was allowed to stay another six months and now an apparent successor has been found, albeit for a whopping $400,000 salary.

Another point of contention by the Hoover Commission was that the membership of the oversight committee of the stem cell financing agency included those who benefitted from agency grants and loans. The Hoover Commission was concerned that the oversight committee was full of “self dealing.”

Today, the major rationales for why government-funded stem cell research was once thought to be needed have unsurprisingly mostly disappeared:

* Medical researchers discovered that stem cells could be harvested from many different types of human cells, thus rendering the use of embryonic stem cells for research unnecessary, vindicating Bush.

* President Bush’s executive order banning federal funding of stem cell research using human embryos was overturned by President Barack Obama in 2009.

* There is no need for a redundant state financing mechanism for stem cell research to private venture funding and grants from the National Institutes of Health.  The private International Stem Cell Corporation is on track to emerge as one of the first profitable stem cell companies, mainly due to vanity skin care products sold to wealthy customers, although breakthrough skin-burn products have also been notable.

* California’s Medi-Cal program has been deeply cut, resulting in the state funding redundant stem cell research while Medi-Cal patients can’t get kidney dialysis and chemotherapy treatments.

Stem cells can’t cure bureaucratic opportunism.  Bureaucracies such as the March of Dimes continue to exist long after the Salk vaccine eliminated polio.  Such is the case with bond financing for low-income housing and stem cell research.

Infrastructure Financing Districts

State Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, has recently proposed Assembly Bill 664, which would authorize dropping the long-standing requirement for voter approval of bonds for Infrastructure Financing Districts (IFDs).

Like Robert Klein, Ammiano uses populist propaganda to sell his proposed legislation to the public.  He asks, “Why should the state general fund subsidize the America’s Cup IFD bonds?”

This is a trick question, because IFD bonds aren’t backed by property taxes outside the project area.  Nor do they rob funds from public schools.  IFDs are revenue bonds backed by the collateral of the land and improvements in the infrastructure district and by revenue stream it is anticipated to generate.  However, revenue bonds are more risky than general obligation bonds and could ruin the credit rating of a city or state.

But if history is any guide to the future, the gullible California public will evidently continue to vote for feelgood voter initiatives and legislation that creates autonomous self-dealing and superfluous bureaucracies funded by bonds. Despite protestations that they may have been fooled once but won’t be twice, California voters have already been fooled more than twice and continue to fall for the propaganda of bond hucksters.

By WAYNE LUSVARDI

On Feb. 9, the $123 million Ray and Dagmar Dolby Regenerative Medicine Building opened on the campus of the University of California, San Francisco to house the Eli and Edy Broad Center of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research.

About $25 million of this new facility was funded with bond financing from voter-approved Proposition 71, the $3 billion for stem cell research California voters approved in 2004. The total cost to California taxpayers, including interest on the bonds, will be about $6 billion.

The architecture of the new 80,000-square-foot building, comprising almost two acres of internal floor space, is symbolically appropriate. The structure is precariously cantilevered over a steep hillside. From the street below, only the underside of the building can be seen held up by a spoke-like pattern of posts that are tied to a deep concrete footing that extends into bedrock.

The building design invites us to look at what’s underneath the government of funding of stem cell research.

Purported Cure-All

One anonymous online commenter, who seems to make a career of trolling websites as an advocate, portrays stem cell research as a high-tech race for economic development and says that stem cell research will be a cure-all for our economy and human health:

Education budget being slashed? California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) will educate plenty of graduate students.

Infrastructure unrepaired? CIRM will bolster the infrastructure around Giants’ stadium (whatever it’s called).

Tuition shooting through the roof? Federal grants are what fuel universities – once CIRM gets a massive head start on ESC (Embryonic Stem Cell) research, it will dominate NIH (National Institute of Health) grants once federal funding is freed up – these grants may get funneled to the UC system.

How about the long-term investment CIRM will provide? We already have 4 human clinical trials using ESCs or fetal SCs. Imagine in 15 years when we have a dozen treatments using stem cells and the businesses will all be in Cal due to CIRM.

While the salaries at the top are certainly bloated, does that mean CIRM should be shut down? Did that 20% go to construct the hanging gardens of CIRM (California Institute for Regenerative Medicine) – or was it spent on functional space?

It just needs to be reformed in a few areas. In a generation we will reap the benefits of CIRM and the nation will be praising California. It’s ineluctable that human ESCs will be used in therapy.

Based on Redevelopment Model

State-funded stem cell research is based on the same model as state-sponsored real-estate redevelopment. One of its key elements is the creation of the psychology of a race for new biotechnology and the elimination of blight.

The psychology of the redevelopment model and state funded stem cell research goes like this: If you don’t build a new mall, or a stem cell research center, some other neighboring city, or state, will build it and other economies will thrive and yours will not. Just as in land redevelopment, the mission of stem cell research is to “eliminate blight.”

Biological blight is defined as “diseases resulting in sudden conspicuous wilting and dying of parts, especially young, growing tissues” caused by “a causative agent” that results in blight (e.g., cancer, heart disease, paralysis).

In land redevelopment, “blight” is defined as “something that impairs growth or impedes progress and prosperity.”

Is it any wonder that Robert Klein, the godfather of Prop 71, is a real estate developer and investor?

Biological and Redevelopment Concepts Merge

With stem cell research, the biological and the real estate concepts are apparently merged. Stem cell “redevelopment” is like a gigantic oncogene, a viral gene that merges with a normal host cell and turns it into a cancer cell.

The point of erecting a separate research facility apparently is to send the message that public-funded stem cell research is now another permanent fixture in California; another bureaucracy with all the incurable pathologies of self-perpetuation. In other words, it is a sociological version of a stem cell resulting in cancerous bureaucratic growth immunized against any of the risks of private venture fund medical research.

Other Uses of the Funds

In the California Stem Cell Research Institute press release for the opening of the new building, no mention was made of how these funds could just have gone for funding stem cell research within the existing scattered university biomedical programs in the state — without having to build a redundant research facility. Neither is there any report of how this building and the stem cell research center may compete with parallel efforts by biomedical venture funds that don’t risk public capital.

The $300 million authorized each year for state funded stem cell research under Prop. 71 totals $3 billion over 10 years. But in the “California Biomedical Industry 2010 Report” by Price-Waterhouse-Coopers, that doesn’t even amount to a half-percent (0.40 percent) of the total $75.9 billion estimated revenues generated by biomedical research in 2008 in California.

Venture capital investments in the U.S. in all categories totaled $28 billion in 2008 and $17.7 billion in 2009. Of that, 50 percent in each year was captured by California, and 13 percent and 16 percent, respectively, was captured by biotechnology in California.  California has consistently captured the largest share of venture capital funding and biomedical funding.

Biomedical venture capital funding in California was $4.3 billion in 2008 and $3.6 billion in 2009, after the collapse of the national financial system. California’s state-funded stem cell research reflected only 7 percent of biomedical venture funding in 2008 and 8.4 percent in 2009.

The Prop. 71 funding is less than 10 percent of the $3.1 billion in National Institutes of Health biomedical grants awarded California in 2008.

Misplaced Luxury Funding

California’s proportionately small $300 million per year in state funding for stem cell research under Prop 71 is duplicative of both private venture capital funding and N.I.H. grants and is not crucial for finding near-term treatments or cures for cancer, heart disease or paralysis.

While $300 million per year is only one third of one percent (0.35 percent) of the State’s $86 billion General Fund budget, it is nonetheless a misplaced commitment when State Medi-Cal and Workmen’s Compensation funds are being drastically cut.

For example, the State Legislative Analyst has recommended that funding for visits to physicians and treatment centers could save $196.5 million per year by limiting visits to 10 per year.

Chemotherapy treatments can possibly be limited to 10 visits per year, as many patients can be given oral chemotherapy to bring home for some treatments in lieu of intravenous injections. But limiting kidney dialysis treatments may be life threatening and only end up with more patients flooding hospital emergency rooms.

Likewise, imposing a $100 per day co-pay on needy patients per hospital in-patient day would generate a $151.2 million saving to the state budget.  But do needy patients or their families have $100 per day? This is a fictional budget saving.

If voters had to choose between 1) funding duplicative stem cell research that may, or may not, find a treatment or a cure to medical maladies 15 or 30 years from now and 2) helping suffering people today, there is no doubt what their choice would be.

But the self-perpetuating California Center for Regenerative Medicine is standing in the way. We can no longer afford luxury jobs programs for biomedical professionals for hypothetical research which is already amply funded by both the private sector and the National Institutes of Health, while medically needy people are in need of resources for care in California.

De-fund 71…

Prop 71 came into being in 2004 during the height of the real estate bubble and now should be de-funded, or the funds diverted elsewhere. Voter approval of a repeal initiative would be needed. Prop 71 only has symbolic emotional value to families of loved ones who have died or are suffering from cancer, heart disease and paralysis. Religious and other advocacy organizations need to spread the slogan: “De-fund 71.”

…Or Divert Funds to Precancer Research

If Californians nonetheless were interested in continuing to use the Prop. 71 funding for state-funded biomedical research, one of the most promising would be to consider Dr. Jules Berman’s intriguing proposal to fund precancer research, as detailed in his book “Precancer: The Beginning and the End of Cancer.”

Berman’s proposal revolves around the accepted concept that “when you eliminate a precancer you are preventing the occurrence of cancer.” Research into diagnosing and treating precancers would have a more probable near-term benefit than funding nebulous stem cell research.  But according to Berman, there is little research into precancers and how to treat them.

And there is little or no incentive for drug companies and private venture capital funds to put money into precancer research, as the return on investment likely would accrue to the patient and the public purse, not the price of their stock.