This week the Wall Street Journal had a delightful story about how collectivists can lose their way on the road to equality. For in Finland it is a Nordic tradition to have both progressive taxation for income and progressive punishment for violations of the law; that is, a sliding scale of financial penalties for such wrong doings as shoplifting, traffic tickets, and white collar crimes.
It was the traffic tickets that provided the humor. The more you make, the more you will pay for the faster you drive. They have had such things as $71,400 for speeding or $44,100 for zigzagging (whatever that is - I think we call it lane-changing) or even $39,000 for colliding with another car.
The sliding scale is so confiscatory in concept that the richest really should not drive a car. Traffic fines could be over $100,000. Reform efforts to cap the dollar amount at $7,825 failed in the legislature (171-29) but a change did pass making a person's income tax records immediately available to the patrolman by cell phone so the fine can be determined on the spot. It used to be the officer took the violator's word for how much they made, but now they have the wonder of Nokia cell phones (made in Finland) to put truth in fines.
While the poor don't seem to have any problem fining or taxing the rich, they, too, have to pay. A minimum fine is in the $63-$110 range. The following example shows how such variations result:
"The equations start with a motorist's net monthly income. The figure comes into play whenever the driver is caught going at least 12 miles an hour over the posted limit (below that, the fine is a fixed amount, ranging from $63 to $110).
"To begin, the driver's monthly net income is reduced by 1,500 Finnish marks ($235) and that total is divided by 60. This figure is supposed to represent a person's daily disposable income. Then, for every dependent, such as a child or nonworking spouse, 15 marks is subtracted. But as many as 20 marks may be added depending on the value of the driver's other assets, including real estate.
"The final figure, called a day fine, is then multiplied by a number ranging between one and 120, representing the severity of the violation as determined by the traffic officer. For example, a person driving 20 miles an hour over the limit on a highway in good weather might be assessed 12 day fines."
It is becoming increasingly apparent that many people like to be "taken care of" and this costs money. They want someone else paying the bills, whether it be parents, children, the state or the federal government. Some would say; "What's wrong with that?" What's wrong is that the money has to come from somewhere and somewhere ends up as taxation; even traffic fines are a form a taxation.
As has been known since recorded history, the power to tax is the power to enslave-which is what socialism is all about; lowering everyone to the lowest common financial denominator. All of which brings us back to the sole purpose of government-controlling people.
When I was going to college on the G.I. Bill, as it was called, the monthly check was just over $80. Even in those days students frequently did not have a checking account, just operated on cash. So when the check came in each month a trip to the corner bank was in order. That was my first contact with Bank of America. They wanted 25¢ to cash a check if you did not have an account there. I said no way in hell was I going to pay to cash a U.S. government check when they had a franchise to operate under FDIC insurance. I never crossed their threshold again for decades. Security Pacific National Bank offered a helping hand and over the years was amply compensated for their earlier act of accommodation. However, the Go-Go years of the 1970s took their toll of many financial institutions with Security Pacific losing their way with land speculation in Arizona. The bubble burst and the shotgun wedding was arranged. Security Pacific was taken over by Bank of America and life moved on. Unfortunately, I had loans, lines of credit and other banking activities in place so I stayed on for the ride.
The first sign of trouble showed up when our son was transferred to the east coast and wanted to take his banking with him. The last step in that process was to have his IRA account moved from Bank of America to the new bank. It turned out there was a seven-day window for the transfer to happen or a penalty (forfeiture of three months interest) was assessed. As you might guess, Bank of America did not transfer during the window so the penalty was deducted from the transfer. Knowing all of this, my daughter decided she was also going to leave Bank of America, and set up a new IRA account elsewhere. Then she carefully ordered the transfer to coincide with the maturity date. Guess what: missed the window again. Two attempts to hit the window, two penalties. It would be easy to conclude that with Bank of America in control of the transfer date, it always takes longer than the seven-day window and IRA transfers have become another profit center for the bank.
Being a slow learner, I was not concerned by these warning flags because at 59½ you can start drawing on your IRAs and I was certain at 70½ there was no restriction or penalty on early payouts over the federally required minimum. With the confidence of already having closed out another IRA at a different bank with no penalty, I was absolutely sure there would be no penalty after the magic age. Guess what? Not so at Bank of America. If you want more than the actuarial minimum and the money is in a timed instrument (12, 18, 24 months), withdrawal before maturity will cost you a three-month interest penalty. Now as one gets older, the IRAs grow and the dollars become substantial. To close out my IRA at Bank of America I found I was facing a penalty of over $3,000. The only way out of this was to wait for the CD to mature and then move it into money market status from which it could be removed anytime.
I did a little checking around and found Bank of America was the only bank charging a penalty for withdrawal before maturity date after age 59½. At other banks I checked, it was repeatedly suggested that any penalty would be against the law. It is my opinion that this sort of loophole maneuvering to generate a penalty would be ripe for a class action lawsuit by some enterprising attorney.
At the very least, it would seem prudent to lay out your retirement needs and coordinate the maturity dates of your IRAs, having actually asked your bank beforehand to be sure there will be no surprise penalties.
The Clinton years have been rich in moral dilemmas. It seems that getting elected or re-elected justifies any means. Does being president make you feel above the law? Why is the president allowed to bypass Congress by making law through use of "executive orders"? And, of course, what is the responsibility of the press, now including the electronic media, to report all the news, not just the parts they agree with?
Such was a recent dilemma for the Los Angeles Times. While once a paragon of virtue, shepherded for almost a century by the Chandler family, it is having its own morality problems. The not-so-long-ago flap over joint advertising participation for the Staples arena showed why corn flake salesmen should not run newspapers. And then a buyout from merger mania cast the shadow of Chicago across the Times, causing liberal bias to become more of a tilt.
The latest example to make national news concerned a syndicated column by George F. Will who writes for the Washington Post. Will was writing about the transgressions of the president in an editorial originally called "Clinton's Mark" in the Post and renamed "Bill Clinton Leaves His Smudge on the Presidency" by The Los Angeles Times.
The Times edited the column by leaving out the following part of a sentence: "It is reasonable to believe that he was a rapist 15 years before becoming president, ...." Most sexual predators have a defining moment and to try and hide under the bed Clinton's rape of Juanita Hickey does not serve historical needs.
The essential facts are that in 1978 Clinton, then Attorney General of Arkansas, was attending a healthcare conference there. Another attendee was Juanita Hickey who did healthcare business with the state. Clinton invited himself up to her room and then proceeded to forcibly violate her sexually, keeping her in submission by biting her upper lip. After having his way, he left the room reportedly with the comment, "You may want to put some ice on that lip." Hickey later divorced and then remarried, which is why we know her as Juanita Broaddrick. In its editing of the column, it would appear that the new Los Angeles Times has bought into sanitizing the Clinton legacy.
George F. Will concludes the article in question with: "Clinton is not the worst president the republic has had, but he is the worst person ever to have been president." I concur.
Then these distributors had to go out to the grid, as it is called, and buy power for us on the open market at the daily price or "spot" price. No long-term contracts. Also in the law was the requirement that every seller of power to the grid got paid the price of the highest bidder. So the highest price controlled the market.
Now to add to that, the utilities could not raise the price to the consumer. Edison was paying up to 30¢ per kilowatt-hour and could only charge us about 14¢ kwh. The difference was carried on credit, which is how the distribution company could come to owe the power generator companies billions of dollars, thus setting the stage for bankruptcy.
Reportedly, on the total national grid there is all kinds of power. It's that there is a reluctance to sell to a California utility that is on the verge of bankruptcy for fear of not being paid. Basically unaffected are those municipalities that own their own generating and distribution systems such as Los Angeles City, Glendale, Burbank and Pasadena. However, they are getting hit with higher natural gas costs-but they can pass this on to their users.
There are some rather poignant ironies in all this. Long Beach came within a heartbeat of buying the distribution system in their city from Edison. Then Long Beach could have gone broke buying power from the grid as they would have had no generating capacity. All the while the environmentalists, who would not let any new coal-burning plants in the state, can't stop the huge coal transshipping operation in Long Beach harbor which sends our coal to Japan. However, the prevailing winds blow coal dust from this process across Long Beach. Now, that is a health hazard. It's called Black Lung Disease.
And of course, our new potential invader in South Gate, an out of state electric generating company, wants to build a gas-fired plant on South Gate's eastern side so that the smoke plume can blow into Downey. Let us see how that works. The South Gate Redevelopment Agency gets $3 million a year in new property taxes, the power generated goes on the grid at the highest price, and Downey gets the soot. Plus all property title reports in the Downey real estate market get a proximity-to-hazardous-condition notation, effectively lowering the value of the house.
I happen to know there is a 145-mile long, 3-foot diameter natural gas pipeline between Los Angeles and Trona, CA that is definitely outside of a populated area where a new plant could be built. That is also where the transcontinental power lines come into the state for a grid connection. Why not build out of town? Somehow, the South Gate project raises all kinds of questions about hidden agendas, i.e., who is getting paid off.
This mess with electricity supply is not going away any time soon. Gov. Davis does not have the will to fix the problem which is to beat back the environmentalists and push power plant construction in outlying areas by private interests with reasonable safeguards. Additionally, our energy bills need to show two parts; the cost of distribution and the cost of power. Edison has to have enough money to maintain the distribution infrastructure (poles and wires) and we should pay whatever the power costs, no artificial caps. That will encourage conservation. In many areas of the northeast power costs 24¢ kwh. That's enough to cause you to turn off lights when you leave the room.
Davis' idea about the state buying all the power generators in California is lunacy. We all saw what Gov. Jerry Brown did to the freeway system in California; wait until "Electric Czar" Davis confiscates our power system under the guise of deregulation. That would turn out the lights for both him and for us.
It is one thing to have an interruption in the wintertime when the residual heat in a building will keep you feeling warm for some time. This summer will be another matter. When it is 100 degrees outside and with many office windows not openable, there will be a significant impact on businesses from rolling blackouts. And such will be the case unless we face up to paying for what we get. Utilities cannot continue to pay twice as much for power as they sell it for without a subsidy or going broke. Gov. Davis wants to subsidize power by having the state (taxpayers) pay the difference in price. Davis will dodge the bullet for now, while in these types of interventions or bailouts, the politicians save face and maybe their jobs, but the people still pay the bill. It would be cheaper in the long run if true deregulation were allowed to work. Yes, at first we would pay more, but the cost-saving of long term contracts would come into play. Additionally, the real cost would force conservation. I suspect Davis is looking for a less painful transition. Davis' past performance shows he is highly responsive to lobbying by low income groups; however, "lifeline" amounts of power could be subsidized for the elderly as is done by the phone companies for their service.
When looking at how we got into this mess, we would have to go back to when the legislation was passed and see who or which energy companies were making big campaign contributions to the legislators carrying the bills through the Assembly and Senate. This type of convoluted legislation is passed only with the help of money.
If there was any awareness of the impending storm following last summer's power shortages, Davis gave no indication he understood the root cause of the problems. New power generation capacity could not be built because of environmental regulations and there was no motivation for consumers to cut back because of price caps.
Los Angeles City's Dept. of Water and Power (DWP) has been in an excellent position through all this because they still have their own generators and long term contracts. They, in fact, have a surplus and have been selling to Edison on credit-part of what has saved us, so far, from blackouts. DWP's long term commitments for Boulder Dam power and the 900,000 volt direct current lines from Bonneville are sure winners.
Interestingly, Boulder Dam is playing a pivotal role in supplying power to Las Vegas. Not so much for the casinos, but for the quadruple growth of the residential market in the last 10 years. Another growth area in Las Vegas is its huge warehousing and distribution operation. California has a reputation for being a hard place to do business, and now no power.
Until some compromise can be reached on new power plant construction, we will continue to have a shortage. And these new plants should be built in the desert, not in heavily urban areas. New construction means new fuel needs and purportedly there is more oil in Alaska than there is in Saudi Arabia. We just need to get it out of the ground.
Compromises will have to be made by everyone, including the environmentalists, or California will go dark and many jobs will be lost. Maybe even yours and mine.
Two things marred the show for me. One was the high volume level on vocal numbers. This is something most live theaters have become guilty of-somehow louder is better. What happens is that on high notes the sound systems can't handle the volume level, thus the words and musical notes just turn into unintelligible mush. In fact, this can cause actual pain in the ears.
A second cause of pain during the performance was the trend to whistle during applause-that sharp high-pitched whistle that is normally considered an "outside noise." For some reason some patrons, perhaps new to theater-going, think this is the way to show appreciation. Not so. What it does show is a certain lack of civility, not appropriate for the Shubert Theater in Century City.
This coarseness of behavior has become part of our daily lives. In the extreme, it shows up as rage; on the road, at the grocery store, at the workplace, or just waiting in line for almost anything. It has been developing for several decades. Is it another byproduct of the Vietnam War and the "flower children"? A generation of kids unwilling to die in a political war, testing the limits of authority, rejecting anything that smacked of the establishment and later becoming parents of much less-structured children. Unwittingly this set the stage for what we have today; young people, many lacking good manners-one might even say etiquette-and having even less a sense of protocol.
We see this in how people talk, how they walk, dress, eat, and even drive. The cure, or at least a way to make things substantially better, may be as simple as schooling in manners. Where there is no role model available, i.e., parents or grandparents, classes for children and adults are available in most communities, usually privately or at adult schools. Some aspects of the old button-down world are still with us. For those who want to "climb the ladder" the Old Guard is still there and thinks candidates should look the part and act the part, which has spawned a resurgence in what used to be called charm schools. Some parents just want to be better role models for their children and have taken the private class route.
We have been through these cycles before and it is not suggested the barbarians are at the gates; only that as population grows we become more crowded and thus more protective of our personal space. Manners play a large part in how comfortable we feel being close to other people. How people move about, how much noise they make, how approachable they are demonstrate the first steps in civility.
It will take another decade, but maybe going to the theater again, both live stage and the movie theater, will be more fun.
Barring some form of crime, a person's income is usually the result of that person's labor. Labor comes in many forms. Some are active, such as ditch digging, sales, clerical, commissions, management; some are passive, for example interest income and investments. Normally taxes are paid on new money, money you did not have before, a product of physical and intellectual pursuits. It is here where inequality steps in-taking money from one group of people and giving to another. This is also called income redistribution. This theft of property has come into focus again because of the new Bush administration's drive to cut income tax rates.
Somehow the notion got fixed in people's minds that the "rich" should support the poor-not just by investing in the means of production, thus providing jobs so the poor will be less poor (if not become rich themselves).
And how rich is rich? Syndicated writer Walter Williams reports the top one percent of earners, earning $250,000 or more, in fact pay 33 percent of all federal income taxes. If we expand the bracket to the top 5 percent of earners, which includes incomes over $108,000 a year, this larger group pays 52 percent of all income taxes. Enlarging the group to the top 25 percent of earners, which have incomes of over $48,000 a year, generates 82 percent of all income taxes. We see the remaining 75 percent of earners, who make less than $48,000 a year, pay only 18 percent of the tax load.
The question is why shouldn't each person's income be equally taxed? Computer models indicate a flat tax of 16-18 percent would generate the same amount of dollars to the government as they get now. This is based on no deductions of any kind. It is your money; how you want to spend it is your business. If you want to have a large family, that is your business. If you want to buy a house or live on a boat, that is your business. If you want to spend or invest, that is your business.
The claim is made that the rich get all the tax breaks. I think they want to repeal the law of mathematics that says zero from zero is still zero. When 75 percent of earners are paying only 18 percent of the taxes, you know who is paying the freight and who deserves the reduction in rates. At $26,000 income, a family of four pays no income taxes, nor should they. However, if in our zeal to make everyone equal, at least in income, government legislates what is called a negative income tax, we will have welfare beyond control and will have killed the goose that laid the golden eggs.
The incentive to prosper drives the economy. Everyone is not equal in their ability to create wealth and it is only wealth that creates jobs. Governments can only create welfare. To overtax the producers is to take jobs away from the poor.
Unfortunately this kind of thinking, or rather lack of understanding of the physical sciences, by the population in general can be exploited by those who have their own agenda. On the most recent scare the media ran wild with supposedly bad taco shells and that's where the story begins. Both Fortune and Discover magazines this month have the saga of Starlink corn. Yes, the kind of corn that grows on corncobs.
Many plants through evolution and through cross-breeding have developed an internal process to make poisons against insects. There are a number of known poisonous plants and if the plant is in the food chain for humans it is monitored very closely. However, there are also many plants that bugs leave alone which are not harmful to humans.
There are two other ways to achieve the same effect of eliminating bugs in plants. One is by spraying with insecticide and the other is by genetically modifying the DNA of the plant. In the first case, Rachel Carson exposed the hazards of using synthetic pesticides such as DDT in the environment. She encouraged the use of natural insecticides such as bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) found in common soil. Bt's properties have been known for 100 years, but it was not until 1961 that a way was found to use it as a spray. It took twenty years more for scientists to isolate the crystalline protein that is toxic to bugs, and then start the research to identify the genes to combine with the plant DNA.
By 1990 cotton was the first large scale biogenetics success story and now some 60 percent of the U.S. soybean crop, some tomatoes, potatoes and corn are protected. As a side note, strawberries grown in a cold climate can be protected from frost by a gene transplanted from an arctic fish.
The reason Bt toxins work is that the Bt proteins bind to the cells in the bug's alkaline stomach causing internal bleeding. The mammalian stomach and intestinal tract is acidic and the toxic proteins break down in seconds which is why the Bt is not harmful to humans.
The Bt that has been used is known as Cry1A. There is not a single incident of adverse reactions in humans. Trouble developed when further refinement produced Cry9C, a more resistant protein which passes further into the bug's intestine for a sure-fire kill. However, now other creatures may be at risk, not just worms and caterpillars. Monarch butterflies eating corn pollens did not migrate back to Mexico.
It is believed the risks, if any, for humans would be as a food allergy. However, it is known that the heat and pH of food processing destroys the Bt protein molecule and leaves only the genetic material. "Food allergies are prompted by proteins, not by the nucleic acids DNA and RNA that are the codes for proteins." In the recent scare, the only food products found were one brand of taco shells which have been fully recalled. There were no known incidents of illness. All growing of Cry9C seed was stopped and recalled and all Starlink corn that can be found is sent to animal feed. Cry9C will not be back.
Technology has raced ahead of us and while the lay public will not be able to keep up, we should not be exploited by special agenda groups who would take us back to living in caves.
Europe has banned all genetically engineered foods including our soy beans. Somewhere in this tangle of laws we need to find a compromise between our many competing goals. If we are going to feed our burgeoning populations in all lands it will take a lot of food. Growing with natural genetic toxins seems better than contaminating the land by spraying insecticides everywhere.
This election has clearly shown that we need safeguards from the majority overrunning the minority. Such was the protection the small states wanted from being overrun by the larger states-a balance we have with the Senate and House in our Congress.
It is now recognized that similarly large concentrations of people can overrun, as in outvote, a vastly larger land area that has a smaller population. This is what happened in the last election.
In a brilliant display of reporting, U.S. Today, followed by Newsweek, compiled a map of which candidate won county by county all across the country without regard to state boundaries. The map is arresting in visualizing the extent of Bush's mandate. Virtually the whole country voted for Bush except for the pockets of concentrated population in the major cities, mostly on the coasts, which almost cost him the victory-Seattle, Portland, San Francisco Bay area, Los Angeles, along the Mississippi River, Miami and the New York to Boston corridor. "Democrats in the metropolitan areas and Republicans in the vast open spaces."
Yes, popular vote should and does count, but in this case the popular vote was concentrated in a few cities made up of largely ethnic minorities forming a majority who are in a position to vote themselves even more public services at everyone else's expense. It was the electoral college system that gave a balanced representation to the election.
The pure concept of one person, one vote representation is just as much in question today as it was two hundred years ago, and should bring back a review of why California changed our state representation to popular vote for both chambers of the state legislature. This came about by the cities claiming they did not want to be ruled by the "cow counties." So the changes were made and now the cow counties subsidize the cities' giveaway programs and we are having the usual mass rule problems. The prevailing political party of the principal cities can keep the rest of the state hostage for decades, exactly where the whole country was headed before the last election when Florida barely saved the nation.
The very first part of this change was to get the through traffic off Downey Ave. The four lanes of traffic with adjacent parallel parking was the death knell for the old downtown. That section of the avenue had become a "bypass street" for people who frequently did not live here, did not shop here and were only on their way to somewhere else.
Today, completing the first step of restricting through traffic has already started the return of shoppers. Stores along the avenue are reporting their best sales in months-a testament to the wisdom of this change. And those who have had to abandon Downey Ave. as a quick way to get from one end of town to the other are another measure of success.
The next step, and visually just as important, will be the landscaping treatment. The trees will make a profound impact toward making the business center more inviting and livable. The Granata family made a serious commitment to downtown Downey and the results are outstanding. Other new businesses to the area are on the way and some of those already there are planning to remodel.
While the beautification process adds to the pizzazz, the crux of change was the slowing down of traffic and getting through or bypass traffic out of that area, thus allowing shoppers to return. Diagonal parking is an integral part of the success because people don't like to parallel park.
The beautification phase has taken a to-be-expected turn in what should have been a straight path. The trend in the last decade of store architecture has been away from the sameness look to one of many irregular forms, shapes and color. The dated look of Santa Barbara, while appealing to some, has given way to a rainbow of color and free flowing forms. A trip to the Long Beach Town Center at the 605 Freeway and Carson shows where we are today with design and color. All reports of business volume indicate a runaway success. People are being liberated from the forced conformity of old ideas.
How does this relate to downtown Downey? To facilitate remodeling, the City is encouraging a facade improvement program with matching funds up to $20,000 per project. The current proposed contract for design and architectural services has a potential of up to $16,750 of the $20,000 being paid to the architect for design and architectural services. This would not leave very much toward actual construction costs, especially since if the actual architectural fees exceed $16,750 "the program participant will be required to provide the balance."
All this may be by design because the stated goal of providing design and architectural services by the City is "ensuring some measure of City control over the final design." All under the guise of promoting "some continuity in design ..." through "... the development of some specific design guidelines for downtown Downey."
Our City is actually doing an excellent job in integrating all the various needs of the community. They are to be congratulated for being willing to try and even more for succeeding-although it would move us a little closer to the sameness of Santa Barbara.
Another part of the success of a town is how it looks. Are the streets clean and uncluttered? Are the buildings in good repair? Is the general architecture pleasing to see?
It is this last part that can cause great unrest in a community because it is so subjective. When it comes to architecture there is no right and wrong, only the past and the future. Some of the great new buildings in the world were not acceptable in the past. And this is why theme communities are immediately dated. While initially pleasing to look at, they become boring and lack the vitality of change.
So how does the architecture of a community get established ? Usually it is hit or miss. It is possible to build almost any design structurally safe, so that is not a problem. The problem is what does it look like to the people who are going to see it? Many towns get to a point of political development where the "movers and shakers" wanting to contain change invent and codify such things as "design review boards." In the beginning this is very admirable and works well, but as with all bureaucracies, they eventually take on a life of their own and run with their own narrow view of how things ought to be.
These boards are usually made up of one member each of architect, engineer, landscape designer, signage specialist and citizens-at-large. By abdication of staff, these people come to control how a town looks. Typically these people do not live in the town where they are on the board; this is so they won't have "conflicts-of-interest" in the cases presented. What this comes down to is regardless of how big or small a project you are doing, no matter how much money you have spent on licensed professionals for architecture, engineering and landscaping, your whole design can, and probably will, be changed at least some-if not thrown out-and told to start over. It happens all the time based on the arbitrary and capricious whims of the current design review board members. The idea that a single person who may not live in the community and is responsible to no one can order the redesign of anything, essentially without appeal, is ludicrous and yet we have it today.
In the old days the Design Review Board used to be an appeal board. If the builder could not reach accord with the city planning staff, the applicant could apply to appear before the Design Review Board and plead their case. In fact, the Board usually met infrequently.
What happened was the staff gets tired of the daily fights at the counter and started sending everything to the DRB who now by default became omnipotent. Eventually the process becomes so distorted and expensive development slows down and may even stop. For a town to grow and prosper in this changing world, change is the magic word.
These questions become increasingly important when our town, as many others across the nation, starts dealing with ideas like revitalizing old downtown business areas. There will be an immediate inclination by staff and the DRB to control the direction, especially the design. The usual architectural mind set is toward a theme concept. But growth does not come out of sameness.
As long as the Design Review Board has veto power over every project, we will continue to be hobbled in our efforts to revitalize.
I in no way want to suggest that this extra help is not needed or not appreciated-only that there is help for almost every cause, all at general taxpayer expense. What happens, though, is that beneficiaries of this generosity tend to develop into voter constituencies and they tend to concentrate in the inner cities.
The tracking of our changing demographics was easily seen from the last census. It was known that the African American population was about 15 percent. What was surprising was that the emerging Hispanic population has now also reached 15 percent. This 30 percent of the general population is ethnic-based and most live in metropolitan areas. These statistics have profound consequences when 90 percent of black voters went Democratic and the Catholic Church strongly supports Democratic candidates and is well-represented among Hispanic voters. This and the overlay of single moms plus wage earners under $30,000 is exactly how you win "the popular vote."
The pervasiveness of government almost exceeds imagination. Also the futility of correcting any problems. It is now widely known that at the Santana High School in Santee where the tragedy of a 15-year-old boy taking a gun to school played out, some government money was involved. Money in the form of a grant to study bullying. There may have been a warning in the study for this boy taking a gun to act out his revenge by killing two other students and wounding many more. All because some students had "bullied" him. Truly a tragic commentary on the state of civility prevalent today.
There is nothing new about teasing, harassment, intimidation and bullies now or a century ago. Children can be unbelievably cruel to each other, but guns are a recent response choice. However, it is justly understandable with the hours and hours of nightly TV shows featuring gun violence as the solution to all problems. Not to be overlooked are motion pictures. The more violence, the larger the gate and the shot at awards. We live in a society where violence is glorified and rewarded, so why are we surprised when a fragile boy turns to our silver screen for role models?
The government response to all this mayhem is issuing more grants. Actually millions of dollars each year go out to anything that looks like a cause. While all very noble, results seem lacking.
Some of the causes reported in a recent Wall Street Journal article were child abuse, violence against women, missing and exploited children. The problem is that the cause becomes an industry which creates jobs and thus has an interest in perpetuating itself, in fostering prosecution thus generally keeping the money coming in without any real results except awareness.
It is a sad touch of irony that the same Santana High School where the killings took place had received grants totaling $137,482 in years 1998-99 to study bullying, apparently to no avail.
Government grants and subsidies are addictive. They look good on paper but generally provide only an expensive salve for the conscience of the public. They seldom cure anything, but they do build a voting constituency.
All this came about because of a telephone call from Nielson TV Rating Services. They wondered if we would be interested in being a Nielson household for a week. I am not sure what the motivation was, but I said yes. They must have really been digging deep in their files to find we had been a regular recorder some forty years ago. Then it made sense because we were a young family in the right demographic range. At that time each recording family was supposed to represent 50,000 viewers. Whether or not that was just a sales pitch, it did encourage accuracy.
So what's the reason now? Are the advertisers wanting to keep track of an aging marketplace? They will be very disappointed at all the TV shows we don't watch. It was an informative experience again to write down every minute the TV was on and what was being watched by whom. If our family of two still represents 50,000 viewers, the advertisers are in big trouble. We essentially do not watch mainstream TV anymore, even though I am a TV junkie (My wife prefers reading). There is such a variety of programming available virtually any taste can be satisfied.
From the media providers, over-the-air, cable and satellite, there really are 150 channels available. News from around the world is almost live 24 hours a day. The sports channels carry such a selection of events many people have not even heard of all of the games. The movies available, while several months after release, make it possible to watch a different film every day. Satellite is a virtual cornucopia of entertainment.
But what is this entertainment? The news broadcasts are front-end loaded with every murder, assault (rape is now euphemistically called assault), gun use, general mayhem and accident the mobile units can find. The sitcoms are so shallow in substance, they suffer benign neglect. Humor today seemingly can't get out of the bathroom. The use of laugh tracks is insulting. Most of the "jokes" rate little more than an embarrassed snicker.
So where have all the writers gone...but maybe a better question is where have all the audiences gone? Reportedly Fox is trying to run with the big three, but when Fox delivers the numbers (viewers) they are ethnic and lower income, not who the advertisers are looking for. Fortunately Fox has a couple of standout shows which save them from being an also-ran. It is an audience they are all looking for and that's hard to find. The over-the-air broadcast watchers are continuing to decline. The old (as in "years past") audience is totally fractured.
Most of the local stations are available in their respective areas on cable and satellite because of F.C.C. "must carry" rules. But the real migration has been to the sports channels and to the documentary channels. The sports channels are only a few dollars a month more and give worldwide coverage. Shown on a "big screen TV" it is awesome. The ball is actually big enough to see and follow. There is a feeling of being there. The rest of the missing audience has taken up residence at A & E, Discovery, History Channel, The Learning Channel and now National Geographic has its own channel. A tidal wave is washing over the media providers and no one seems to know how to capture it.
So what did I watch last week? Surprising to me, not very much: the documentary shows, Jim Lehrer and Charlie Rose were the clear winners. Will the advertisers be happy? Not likely. I doubt Nielson will be back for a reprise-maybe in another 40 years.
Communism failed on two key points; property rights and human rights. Not until the private ownership of land and crops did civilization enter into explosive growth. Only when individuals can directly benefit from their own efforts will they work at more than a subsistence level. This has been amply demonstrated whether the label is pharaoh, czar, king, or communism.
The reason this matter of property rights is important is that here in America we are losing our property rights, the engine that drives our prosperity and the foundation of our freedom. How this plays out was well presented this last Saturday at a Redevelopment Conference held in Anaheim. The reality of Redevelopment is that a city government on the vote of a simple majority (usually three) can take a person's land and business through eminent domain at the lowest possible price and give the land to another private person or organization for their own use and gain. All financed out of bonds that everyone pays for. All perfectly legal and basically without recourse. It is this perversion of private property rights that is the communistic side of Redevelopment.
Compounding the failure of Redevelopment is the economic side where the bonds to finance this confiscation of property are paid for by everyone through some form of taxation-property taxes, sales taxes, etc. Somehow when bonds are used to pay off debt, people feel that it's like free money. And in the case of Redevelopment, the laws get changed to just keep pushing out the maturity date. The interest will have exceeded the principal many times, still leaving an unpayable debt for our grandchildren-all on bonds that were incurred without even going to the people for a vote; just three people saddling you with millions of dollars of debt.
All this and more horror stories from town after town were well showcased by many excellent speakers. The keynote address was made by state Senator Tom McClintock from Thousand Oaks. He and state Senator Ray Haynes of Riverside are providing the leadership in Sacramento to try and curb Redevelopment abuse. Also speaking were law professors, attorneys and journalists telling how corrupt the process is. Victims told what it means to have "the government"-that's three people on a city council-take away from them all their life's work for the lowest appraisal. Karl Marx may be dead, but his ideas have found a new home in Redevelopment.
This process of taking new property tax money and bond proceeds started in the late 1940s to build slum-replacement housing after the war. A side benefit was to cure blight. One project in Washington, D.C. was actually done. After that it was commercial retail all the way: auto malls, sports stadiums, big box discounters-all on prime real estate. Any blight in sight was created after the fact, created by displaced people and the empty stores in the old downtowns which were sucked dry by Redevelopment.
Interestingly enough, only in California is this legal financial rape of a community called Redevelopment. All the other states call it "tax increment financing." Either name will get you to a web site devoted to the subject. Judging from the e-mail coming in, the easy money temptation is spreading far and wide as town after town after town in all states sign up for debt that will eventually bankrupt them.
Next time, the high price we pay in human terms.
More important though is what happens on an individual level. This is where the costs can turn deadly. One example, and not uncommon, was in Fresno. The city started a retail project that would replace senior housing. The project fell through, but the city still took the land, moved the people out. The land is still empty today. Older people, especially those who are just getting by, do not like to be uprooted into an uncertain future. Historically, this accelerates the dying process. Similarly, some people who have spent a lifetime building a business go into a deep depression when they are forced out or forced to relocate. They cannot get started again at the same level.
Condemnation from eminent domain is never at replacement cost, it is only at depreciated value. Eminent domain never makes the person whole again. The crushing sense of loss, the sense of being robbed can affect health. This phenomenon is well known and most often seen in the survivor of a spousal death or after divorce in a long-time marriage. It is believed that deep depression from whatever reason can cause the body's immune system to shut down, allowing cancer to develop. Indirectly at least Redevelopment can and has killed people.
Another way Redevelopment affects people is in their trust in government. It is one thing to see nice, shiny new buildings, but it is another to realize they were all subsidized at your expense, loaded with bond debt that will never be paid back and you, the taxpayer, do not have a piece of the action (equity interest). The government's club of eminent domain is used to take private property from one person and give it to another for their gain, and a third person (you) pays the bill. What does that process say about government and about the elected officials who cause, or at least allow, this to happen? What does this do to our trust in government and the democratic system in general? It creates distrust of government and voter apathy.
Government by definition is about control How much control we allow will have a direct effect on both our economic health and our physical health. Redevelopment is not about public use, slum cleanup or blight; it is about confiscation. It is taking from the poor and giving to the rich, be they out-of-state big box discounters, car dealerships, stadium owners or ball players. Redevelopment is the theft of well-being from ourselves.
It seems that Federalist John Adams who was running for reelection did not like what the friends of his Whig challenger, Thomas Jefferson, were saying about him. So Adams got a group of laws commonly called the Alien and Sedition Acts passed in 1798. The Alien Act with its twin Naturalization Act were short-lived, dying unused in 1800 and 1802 respectively.
It was the Sedition Act that crashed the party. Adams wanted to stay in the White House and Jefferson's friends were saying some bad things about the incumbent and the government. So Congress passed the Sedition Acts which imposed fines up to $5,000 and imprisonment up to five years for writing, speaking or in other ways arousing discontent with the government. In all, ten persons were charged under the statute. All hell broke loose. Virginia and Kentucky weren't going along with this line of reasoning and their legislature declared the law violated the Constitution and thus was unenforceable. The northern states were more Federalist and held that only the Supreme Court could declare a federal law unconstitutional.
This was the first big test for free speech. Even though the Sedition Act expired in 1801, the Constitution won and a principle was established. This is why we can criticize our government today. But such is not true in other parts of the world.
We have been watching for the last decade what happens in a country without a constitution and without an independent court system. When people cannot talk about something in public, they do so in private. China has not been able to silence the Tiananmen Square massacre. To speak out in China against the government is to risk arrests, confessions by torture, long term imprisonment, and frequently death-all over lack of free speech.
Religion does not fare much better in China. One of the most non-threatening religions today is Falun Gong. It is totally passive. Yet, over 100 have already died in custody and hundreds more are in reeducation camps and mental institutions. While China may consider free speech and human rights bourgeois capitalism, it shows what can happen when rights are not recorded and enforceable.
Tiananmen Square seems to have become a defining moment in recent Chinese history. It was a moment when thoughts became action. The actions were repressed with gunfire, but the thoughts took hold, underground and out of sight, but not forgotten.
The leaders of China had not forgotten either. There were many internal letters among the top leaders. How they took power into their own hands, decided on martial law, bypassed the party's supreme body, the Politburo Standing Committee, and dismissed the Party Secretary-all duly recorded.
Someone "inside" made copies and smuggled them out to the West where they have been translated and printed as the Tiananmen Papers and appear on a number of web sites much to the consternation of current Chinese officials. Now the narrative has been reprinted in Chinese and is being smuggled back into China for distribution. The Chinese government has their people's bodies, but they may not have their minds.
Next, how governments are trying to take over our thoughts as well.
But what about the right to criticize a person? Trials have created a body of case law generally falling into the slander/libel category which defines how poorly we can speak of someone. However, before words, there has to be thought, and this is where the next grand adventure in law is being defined-thought crimes. So, we ask, how can thoughts be a crime? Well they can; such laws are coming on the books now. When the thought is a thought of hate, they are now classified as "hate crimes."
Not to be outdone as the liberal capital of America, San Francisco, the Wall Street Journal reports, has a long list of restricted thoughts which if turned into words or action constitute a hate crime "committed on the basis of color, religion, race, ancestry, sex, sexual orientation, place of birth, disability, gender identity and now obesity." So far in our criminal prosecution we have been able to keep separate the subtle difference between the "motive" of the perpetrator and the "intent" of the action. The motive may be used to help solve the crime, it is the intent that brings prosecution. Here is where solid ground becomes quicksand-can a thought be a crime? And the answer is becoming "yes."
England, lacking a written constitution, has no Bill of Rights to fall back on and in 1986 they passed a Public Order Act criminalizing "incitement to racial hatred" from literature, songs, TV and Internet. They liked this breach of freedom so well two years later they passed a Crime and Disorder Act which increases the sentence for racially motivated assaults from six months to two years. Criminals really need to choose their victim carefully to prevent any extra time in the pokey. But now we are on a very slippery slope. Are clerics to be jailed for preaching homophobic views?
So far in America, we have only tried to regulate actions, not thoughts, through criminal codes. It appears a new area for governmental control is taking shape-thought police. Are we to have separate laws that prosecute bigots? Once we do, it is easy to pass more laws to prosecute other unpopular thoughts. Do you have any unpopular thoughts you would spend time in jail for? How about criticizing the government for passing the laws in the first place?
Hate crime legislation has the potential of enslaving all of us in a web of thought control more insidious that any crime it is meant to prevent.
There was some belief that City staff viewed this Street Faire as some sort of grand opening for the street when, in fact, most of their handiwork was hidden behind the tents. It might have been better if the final flower planting had waited until after the fair and then have a grand opening for the street with some sort of a block party or sidewalk sale for the merchants.
There seemed to be conflicting goals for the event. The Chamber of Commerce was trying to hold one of the city's two great promotional events (the other being the Holiday Land Parade) in some kind of peace and quiet and the City seemed to want to showcase their handiwork. This resulted in the City requiring the tents be kept eight feet (later reduced to five feet) away from the "new" curb/sidewalk with nothing stored between the tent and the curb. As you saw, with the new wider sidewalk, the enforced buffer zone and the tent depth, the walking track down the middle of the street was narrow and the afternoon passage was a little close for the heat of the day. Fortunately, some breeze was blowing.
So why was the City so concerned over their new sidewalk? Something about fresh concrete. In reality, after new concrete has cured for seven days, you can drive a tank over it and those new curbs have been in for several months. I suspect the real concern was over the flowers because the amount of yellow tape made it look like a crime scene. In retrospect, planting the flowers could have been left until after the event, although I did not see anyone trampling through the gardens. In fact it was a very respectful crowd, but maybe that was because what appeared to be the entire Downey Police Department was on display. I heard some talk about a "sidewalk patrol" to protect curb space. Hopefully that was just a sick joke along with comments about taping off where the bodies were buried.
Some of the stores merchants expressed a desire for an opening or walk-through passage between the tents. And certainly large "OPEN" banners over doorways would have helped (hopefully allowed for the day without a permit). Unfortunately, with the solid wall of tents, unless a potential customer was very determined, the sales were less than the usual Saturday.
Considering all the restrictions placed on the event, it turned out amazingly well, which is a testimony to the need. Maybe next year the sidewalk police can come in civilian clothes, on their own time rather than overtime, and we can have back the full width of our street for an even better Street Faire.
The Chamber of Commerce is to be congratulated for putting on a major attraction to bring people to see Downey. Many will return to shop here; others may come to live here. Our own residents will have seen our new downtown and hopefully will come back to shop and eat there. A wonderful job done by all.
The following is an actual exam question given on a University of Washington chemistry midterm. The answer by one student was so "profound" that the professor shared it with colleagues, via the Internet, which is, of course, why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well.
Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?
Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law, (gas cools off when it expands and heats up when it is compressed) or some variant. One student, however, wrote the following:
"First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate that souls are moving into Hell and the rate they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore; no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today.
Some of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there are more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that most souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially.
Now we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added.
This gives two possibilities:
1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.
2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.
If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year, "...that it will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you," and take into account the fact that I still have not succeeded in having that event take place, then, #2 cannot be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and will not freeze."
The student received the only "A" given.
Power comes in a lot of forms. One of the most visible is electricity; turning on a light switch. We feel it in the summertime by being in a cool room. It is also the natural gas that heats our rooms in the wintertime. It is the gasoline that powers our cars when we want to travel. It is the water that is in short supply in the northwest which drives the generators that power the 900,000 volt DC line to L.A. from the Columbia River to power our lifestyle.
Not to be overlooked is the political power being exercised by politicians of every stripe. Many local activists are just trying to get their name in any paper or TV broadcast, usually in the "save our view" stance and usually without any understanding of the larger view, by lobbying against any new powerlines anywhere. In this case a new line to get power both into and out of San Diego County has been put on hold by activists. While the terminuses are near populated areas, the majority of the miles overlook sage brush, ground squirrels, and rattlesnakes.
At the opposite end of the spectrum we have a not-ready-for-prime-time governor who has presidential ambition. Having been in power over two years, finger pointing in any direction but towards himself, he is saying on national television that only the President can solve California's problems.
How did this mess get started? Deregulation has taken place successfully in some states. Texas is the most striking. For two years before the unbundling, new, fast-track construction was encouraged, new power plants were built, both large ones and small ones called peakers. The state wanted an excess of capacity before deregulation, maybe even some power to sell outside. Pennsylvania also succeeded because they were allowed to keep their generating plants and could still make long term contracts to supply their multi-state grid.
Then we have California. The planning actually started when Gray Davis was chief-of-staff for Gov. Jerry Brown. It came together under Wilson, leaving an unworkable system for Davis. No one could have made it work and it can only be dismantled. Additionally the environmentalists have to be told to go hug a tree, which Davis can't do because that's where his support is.
The plan was to change a vertically-integrated system to a horizontal one by forcing the power companies to sell off their generating capacity to third parties and only be in the business of distributing power. They cannot make long-term contracts for power, but must buy on an artificially created "spot market" where everyone pays the highest price bid. Then there is a price cap on the sale to the customer. That is not deregulation, it is confiscation. It was a state "nationalization" of our power companies - P.G.& E., Edison and S.D.G.& E. There will be serious damage to our state's economic well being. All the while, Davis, Feinstein and Boxer stand around pointing fingers, not willing to take the political heat to turn back the clock.
Most of the new plants built today are natural gas-fired which is why natural gas is in short supply. We need a larger natural gas pipeline distribution network, but environmentalists block that too. A drought in the northwest means the reservoirs for their water power are half empty. Canada has a surplus of power that could be brought into the northeast via underwater cables like they do in Europe, but no. Here our environmentalists are protecting fish-nobody seems to know what from.
It could be a long hot summer.
The Wall Street Journal reports that only 65 percent of our voting-age population pays any income tax. That means 35 percent don't make enough money to pay taxes and probably qualify for refundable tax credits such as the earned income tax credit and child tax credit. The IRS reports that "the bottom 43 percent of income tax returns receive net cash payments." That says our income tax system has become a giant octopus taking from the rich and giving to the poor. Only now the rich are the broad middle-class who are paying most of the bill. It was John F. Kennedy who argued for lower tax rates with the truism, "A rising tide lifts all boats."
The states have the primary welfare system with this secondary direct federal system funding through what is a selective negative taxation. This use of the income tax as a form of welfare will eventually divide the people. The "have nots" can vote to force the "haves" to keep paying high marginal rates. This is why tax reform is so hard to do. The Democratic legislatures have vested interest in keeping the incoming taxes high so there is more money available for low income benefits. Unfortunately this sort of forced wealth transfer has the potential to foster class warfare-certainly not what our founders had in mind.
This is why meaningful tax reform is not going to happen anytime soon. Politicians get re-elected on their ability to deliver the check. This is also why it is nearly impossible to push the flat income tax, because it would separate the payers from the receivers. Among the poor, there is a strong sense of entitlement to taxpayer support. The goal is to decouple the income tax from the direct low income subsidies.
While President Bush got his campaign promise of tax reform, it was at a heavy price; a shell game of illusionary benefits. The marginal rate reductions (39.6 percent to 35 percent) over 10 years is better than nothing, but not much.
The gift taxes remain unchanged. There is a serious question of why there should be any taxes on gifts at all, considering gifts are after-tax dollars-dollars the taxes have already been paid on, yet they are taxed again. That raises the question of estate taxes. These are also after-tax dollars. Why shouldn't you be able to give them away free? The why is because the government wants to do that for you, to someone they think is more deserving than your own family. In the case of estate taxes, the new code keeps the same confiscatory maximum rate of 55 percent, reduced to 45 percent in 2009; however, the exempt amount is raised from $675,000 to $3.5 million over the same period.
There are going to be no serious changes in the tax code until there is a national dialogue on what should be taxed and how. Many economists would like to move toward a consumption tax, a tax only on the things you buy, believing that would remove most of the distortions that oppress economic growth. This idea has a certain feeling about it, like jumping from the frying pan into the fire.
Only one income tax is fair and equal and that is flat. Unfortunately, this is not going to happen any time soon because then the politicians would have to stand up and be counted as to how much of your money they gave away-something they are loathe to do.
While in the past the power generation has been river or dam-fed, it is unpredictable because the water supply is dependent on the vagaries of nature determining the amount of snow pack. At the opposite end is nuclear, which, at least initially, is the lowest on-line cost, but has some environmental secondary problems. In between we have the steam-powered plants that use coal, oil or natural gas for heat source, each with its own problems. California is about one-half gas fired.
There is another way of looking at power generation; relatively new, but with some real pluses. They fly under the label of "peaker plants." In the lexicon of the trade, a peaker plant can be described as a smaller generating facility to use for extra capacity during peak loads, such as a fill-in for summer air conditioning.
Alliance Power, Inc. has brought to market one of these new plants. It is a small, gas-fired turbine jet engine which, through reduction gears just like a turbo-prop airplane engine, turns a 10 megawatt generator. They can run for a few hours or continuously for months. The five essential pieces are generator, turbine, oil cooler, air intake filter, and exhaust scrubbers with mufflers. All this is about the size of a large bus for each unit you want to assemble.
That "to assemble" is part of the magic for these pre-fabricated modules. All that is needed from a construction site standpoint is to pour the concrete bases and bolt everything down. You can have turn-key electricity in six months. Granted, there has to be a plentiful natural gas connection nearby, for this is not the size of a household gas hookup. But the big thing is there is no water requirement as with steam generating plants for their cooling towers. All that's gone with these new generators. They are small, out of sight, and unfortunately noisy. They would need to be a quarter to a half mile away from any residential. This is not necessarily bad for there are thousands of towns that have open space where a power plant could be built with several of these multi-units. The benefit is when one goes off-line for maintenance, the whole town does not go dark.
Last Saturday I had the unexpected pleasure of attending a ribbon-cutting for one of these new units. It will help relieve any energy shortage for the City of Colton. In fact, they will have eight units total which could, if necessary, supply all the electricity Colton uses. It was an example of what can happen when a forward thinking city management, both council and staff, along with the help of their local assemblyman, John Longville, can accomplish in Sacramento working together to push through the permitting process.
The City of Colton is one of the older cities in California and one of the first to have electric power. They were a turn-of-the-century railroad town and needed to be lit at nighttime. Consequently, they own their own city distribution system, buying most of their power from outside suppliers on long term contracts. This makes it easy for them because the new power units are located next to the main substations so the 12,600 voltage output matches the city distribution system and involves no high voltage transmission lines, with their associated loss or leakage of power.
Local generation is a much more efficient distribution of power and gives substance to the century-old fight between small local and large remote generation of electricity. Clearly Colton has found an answer that works for them. Mayor Deirdre Bennett can take great pride in what she has been able to do for the people in Colton.
The town was Ashland, Virginia, a homey, well-cared-for, little Southern town thirty miles outside of Richmond that 7,200 people called home. Now, it's not that these townspeople were without shopping opportunities; they already had a full cross-section of the usual stores: automotive, clothing, hardware, shoes, bakery, grocery, stationary, and many more that make a town self-sufficient. And just in case some category or item was not represented, there was, in fact, a Wal-Mart some ten miles away in another town-a town that had already succumbed to the charms of our circling suitor, a town that within the last two years had lost 28 of its local businesses after Wal-Mart opened, leaving empty storefronts and shopping centers waiting for new tenants.
Supposedly, the advantage to having a big box discounter in town is lower prices and new jobs. In this case, Wal-Mart claimed 250 new "full-time" jobs. So let's take a look at these new jobs. First of all, they consider a full-time job as anything over 28 hours a week. They also offer a contributory benefit package (medical insurance); however, 28 hours at minimum wage is not enough to live on, much less contribute toward a benefit package. So the answer is yes, initially they would have 250 new jobs, though mostly what everyone else calls part-time. But as the other stores in town are forced out of business, there are now a new group of newly unemployed people, usually older, who will start drawing government benefits which are paid for by taxes. We also have business owners who have lost their livelihood and empty buildings which have the makings of something called blight. You see, we are going to pay full price for those products one way or another.
It has been repeatedly shown that when a Wal-Mart comes to town, there is a net loss of jobs. Additionally, it is known that in local ownership of businesses, the profit tends to stay in town; new cars, new homes, increased funds in local banks. It will turn over three or four times locally instead of sending all the cream off the top to Arkansas.
Then there is the matter of bribery. It is not bribery in the legal sense. It's there in the form of paying for road improvements to the store, maybe a traffic light or two in a town that had none; it's splashing some money around to civic causes and generally ingratiating oneself to the town's people. When it is a particularly divisive issue, elected officials get voted out of office and animosities last for years. Interestingly, as a side matter, volunteerism tends to go down in the town.
From a competition standpoint, some people felt Wal-Mart wants to build enough stores so they only compete against each other. This year their expansion program is opening one new store every other business day. By 2004 they plan on opening a new store every business day of the year.
As J. Robert Oppenheimer said on viewing the first atomic bomb explosion, "I am become Vishnu - the destroyer of worlds." Many people believe Wal-Mart has become the destroyer of towns.
I tell this story to illustrate how provincial a town's thinking can become, thus delaying the much needed milestones of progress. This lack of vision may be found not only in town councils, but in the various commissions and staff as well. I well remember when the only expressed vision of Downey was to be a well-manicured bedroom community and every roadblock imaginable was put in the way of business development. Most of that is now gone with the realization, or maybe acceptance, that business development is the strong heartbeat to a vital town. Like many things in life, it is either grow or die.
Downey has taken a major step forward in its renewal process with the Downey Avenue development. The popularity of the diagonal parking spaces certainly validates that parking concept. Unfortunately both sides of the street were not made that way, even though there was plenty of room. However, the traffic is restricted enough that most of the through or bypass traffic has moved somewhere else allowing local shopping to return. Hopefully the new trees will be kept well trimmed or even bonsaied. If they don't, signage will not be an issue; it won't even be seen.
One unexpected fallout of traffic enforcement in downtown was the issuance of a parking ticket to a vehicle displaying a handicapped placard. It seems our new parking patrol was not aware of Vehicle Code "Section 22511.5. (a) (1) Any disabled person ... displaying ... a distinguishing placard ... shall be allowed to park for unlimited periods in any of the following zones: ... (B) In any parking zone that is restricted as to the length of time parking is permitted as indicated by a sign erected pursuant to a local ordinance." Because of this section, city streets do not need to have handicapped spaces as a parking time exemption was built into the law. This is of particular importance because many of the stores on Downey Ave. do not have any off-street parking.
It has developed that the E & E Orthocraft shoe store on Downey Ave. is a major draw to many outside the city. Just like Brewer's Rendezvous has become famous for imported products from England and the Continent as well as for its brewing supplies, so has E & E Orthocraft spread the town name far and wide for custom crafted specialty shoes as well as regular shoes. Many of their patrons display handicapped parking identification.
This matter of advertising a town is important for continued prosperity and is clearly demonstrated by North American Aviation, Rockwell and Boeing not being here anymore. Hopefully we can hang onto Coca Cola. The home of the largest bottling plant in the west is no small drum beat.
Advertising a town both by name and in business friendliness will help bring people to Downey and keep our town prosperous.
"Responding to the newspaper editorial, a Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney, who is obviously community minded, submitted a five point plan. The plan is designated to assist citizens, who might otherwise be randomly shot by police, in staying out of the path of police bullets.
"The newspaper never printed it, but I thought you might appreciate it.
"1. DON'T COMMIT VIOLENT CRIMES. I know this seems elementary, but this rule is lost on many. They do the crime, get shot, and then wonder how it could possibly happen. They whine that it is so unfair. Well, Slick, violent crime, like jumping in front of moving cars, is just a high risk occupation, and, in case you missed it, committing violent crimes make police officers think you may not be a good person.
"2. If you ignore Rule No. 1, and the police do confront you, DON'T RUN AWAY FROM THEM. I know it's hard to believe, but that may make them think you're guilty of something. Hiding in bushes or closets makes some cops (mostly older ones) very nervous. They might even foolishly conclude that you're up to no good!
"3. If you disregard Rules 1 and 2, and the cops catch up with you anyway and inform you that you are under arrest, DON'T MAKE FAST MOVEMENTS WITH YOUR HANDS. I know it sounds silly, but grabbing a shiny beer can, a dark colored wallet, or one of those snazzy and real looking replica guns may make police officers mistakenly believe that you are about to hurt them
"4. If you disregard Rules 1, 2, and 3, and manage to get what looks like a deadly weapon into your hands, DON'T POINT IT AT THE COPS. We all know that you're basically a nice person, but that may be lost on the police officers confronting you. In their paranoia, they may even believe they need to protect themselves.
"5. If you disregard Rules 1, 2, 3, and 4, DON'T BE ASTONISHED IF THE COPS DO NOT INSTANTLY TURN INTO YOUR PERSONAL CONFIDANTE. They may be too preoccupied to realize that you're normally a splendid person and that you're just having a bad day. They may be too preoccupied to see that when you point a weapon at them in a threatening manner, it is just your way of crying out for help. We both know that the whole problem can be traced to the fact that your mother didn't breast feed you, but some police officers are so cynical they just don't see it that way.
"So there you have it. If you really apply yourself and obey even some of the rules listed above, I bet you'll avoid the vast majority of police gunfire."
While the courts are often maligned when they don't go the liberal way, every once in a while a decision comes down that harkens back to the best of 1776 and a real reminder of what Independence Day is all about. This happened last week in the United States District Court, Central District of California. A case was decided that, at the very least, will serve as a landmark ruling, one that will be reverberating through City Halls for years.
What happened was that the City of Lancaster Redevelopment Agency was totally repudiated in their attempted use of eminent domain. The facts are that in Lancaster's premiere shopping center, the Agency wanted to condemn a 99 Cents Only Stores location next to a Costco so that Costco could expand into their space. David Gold, CEO of 99 Cents Only Stores was not accepting that scenario and the battle was joined.
The court rejected Lancaster on all points and set some limits on the Agency's use of Redevelopment law. The eminent domain attack brought into play the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. To read from the judgment: [There] "is an explicit limit on the power of government to take private property for public use, even if justly compensated, for it must serve a legitimate public purpose." And "a taking for purely private use is unconstitutional no matter the amount of 'just compensation' that may be given." In this case, "the evidence is clear beyond dispute that Lancaster's condemnation efforts rest on nothing more than the desire to achieve the naked transfer of property from one private party to another. Such conduct amounts to an unconstitutional taking for purely private purposes."
Also rejected was Lancaster's theory that the possible loss of Costco might cause "future blight" which justified taking under the "public use" statutes. The court said only existing blight is to be redressed. Also as a protection for the future, 99 Cents Only Stores asked for a permanent injunction against the City coming at them again at this location for the benefit of Costco and that, too, was granted.
Gradually court cases are turning against abuses of Redevelopment law. Some are small but significant wins, some are major victories for freedom and private property rights. We all owe a debt of thanks to the David Golds of the world who fight to protect our independence from the ever present enslaver - government.
As you know, the air above us is actually in layers, some traveling one direction, other layers other directions. These winds keep everything in balance. Some layers will be laden with moisture, some will be dry, some will be cold or hot. For example, we feel the hot Santa Ana winds coming off the deserts. In the mid-states, the warm moisture-laden air coming north from the Caribbean is met by dry cold air moving south out of Canada causing our mid-continent stormy weather.
The lack of understanding that a layer of air can contain extra moisture at a different temperature keeps some people from understanding what is happening when an airplane flies through a wet layer. It may force a dew point, thus creating a cloud or vapor trail. Lacking this perception can lead many to false conclusions. This can be seen as part of the conspiratorial rhetoric that litters the Internet. Some people who may view themselves as modern day Paul Reveres would have us believe the CIA or some other agency is spraying germs on us with these airplanes in mass medical tests. This, of course, is sheer nonsense, totally defying logic and showing what can happen when superstition replaces science.
The phenomena of a wing flying through a moist layer of air causing dew point and thus a vapor trail (cloud) is well understood. It is the only way man can create a cloud. No amount of spraying anything will do it. Ski lodge operators can make snow, but they cannot make clouds.
Bomber crews from WWII were well acquainted with the beauty of trails coming off their wings as they flew over the North Sea to Germany. And the only things they were spraying into the air were bullets at incoming fighter planes. Today military pilots know exactly where the boundary layers are, so by controlling their altitude they can either be seen or not seen - which makes sense of their option to fly a "signature" flight. It is unfortunate some of these Internet followers are diverted by a totally false premise when more useful investigations could be made.
Another source of their conspiracy concerns is the finding of brown/black spots on cars and elsewhere. I must admit that if I don't wash my car every week, I find them also. A piece of the puzzle finally clicked into place for me when I remembered that when I worked for North American Aviation by LAX, one of my fellow employees bought a baby blue Ford convertible with a white top which was her pride and joy. When she got married, they moved into a house right under the landing path. When her car was left out at night, she found brown/black spots on the previously pristine white top in the mornings. She found everything outside had to be covered. I had forgotten about this until last week when I was driving down Van Buren Blvd. toward March Air Base on my way to Hemet. What do I see but this huge barn-size airplane making touch and go landings right in front of me. And its four engines were spewing out a trail of smoke and particulates for many lengths of the airplane. Suddenly a light went on in my head and I knew what the connections were. Jet engines in full-power takeoffs, afterburns, and throttle-down landings all produce large quantities of partially burnt fuel which will land on everything as little brown/black spots. No germs involved, no chem-trails, no harm. Just lack of understanding. When someone wants to believe something beyond reason, it is hard to keep science in the equation.
There is another victim in this disaster that I don't hear much about and that is the utility stocks. Companies like Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas and Electric and San Diego Gas and Electric were considered the bedrock of the stock market. They held their value through thick and thin. They were among those called "widow and orphan stocks" paying six percent annual return through dividends and following the market trends with minor changes. Davis' calamitous effort to nationalize California's private electric utility companies should be understood for what it did to the stockholders of those companies, not only to personal funds but to the retirement dollars in pension funds. He literally flushed away billions of dollars through his inactivity on pricing and deference to the "greens" on power plant construction.
There is also an aspect of this called fairness. That is, why there are various rates for different users. It costs so much to make power, so much to distribute, so much for necessary overhead, all of which translates into so many cents per kilowatt hour. One price should fit all. Why should we pay a different rate depending on how large our house is, how many children we have, whether we live by the beach or the mountains. If we use it, we should pay for it; all at the same rate. The idea that we can soak business to subsidize the poor is just to not acknowledge that all business costs are just passed on to the consumer.
Back when the world was right side up, the more power you used, the less it cost per unit. This was possible because of infrastructure efficiencies. Now, the more you use, the higher the rate per unit. These new rate structures are mandated by the government. It's called confiscation of wealth and is another part of the liberal agenda to pay for the ever-growing size and cost of government. What better place to start transfering your wealth than through your electric bill.
Clearly laws are necessary to have a safe environment for people to live in. However, it is revealing to watch how many laws have the opposite effect of what was intended. The latest to show their true colors are the CAFE regulations. Now, this has nothing to do with eating establishments, but does have to do with the Corporate Average Fuel Economy program. This is a program to get you to drive more fuel-efficient cars, which translates into higher and higher fleet fuel averages.
On a manufacturing level, this is now 27.5 mpg for cars and 20.7 mpg for light trucks and SUVs. Production levels are controlled to make lots of small, low-profit, high-mileage cars so that large, high-profit, low-mileage cars can still be built. The mileage is solely determined by weight and engine size. If you want small, it comes that way. If you want to haul people in any kind of comfort, or carry loads, the vehicle is going to weigh more, have a larger engine and burn more fuel. There are no mysteries to fuel economy.
The current craze for SUVs, now accounting for slightly more than half of all sales, shows where the interest is - in carrying capacity and safety. Yes, safety. It is not a secret that more people die in crashes of small cars than large cars. It is reported that sub-compacts make up 18 percent of the vehicles on the road, but are responsible for 37 percent of fatalities.
So why should anyone really care about what kind of cars we drive? The government does, of course. After all, in 1975 when 35 percent of our oil was imported, we needed independence from foreign oil so we were all squeezed into little cars; now our oil imports are only 52 percent. (Once again, the opposite effect.) This is not hard to understand when the environmentalists have lobbied, protested and blocked any new oil exploration and succeeded in having the Alaska pipeline flow reduced to 25 percent of capacity (just enough to keep it flowing).
Now under the junk science banner of global warming, the greens are after SUVs. Not to buy, but to ban, proclaiming our stately new wagons will cause a hothouse effect which historically precedes ice ages, or at least they have for the last few million years. The last ice age was some 30,000 years ago. The polar ice cap was a mile thick over Chicago. Now that would shut down Detroit for a while.
What is most interesting about this CAFE is a matter of safety. Small cars have a certain similarity to coffins and the government reluctantly seems to agree. The Wall Street Journal reveals a government report "mentions that rapid increases in fuel economy standards for cars in the 1980s may have contributed to thousands of additional deaths, as automakers sharply reduced the size and weight of vehicles." The extent of this carnage was reported in USA Today which "analyzed government crash data and found that in the 25 years since fuel-efficiency standards were first imposed, 46,000 people had died in crashes they would have survived if they had been driving bigger cars." And now we have the greens still lobbying Congress to build more small cars that will cause more people to die.
There is a reason people drive SUVs; they want to live.
The reports in both Aviation Week & Space Technology and Air & Space magazines have extensively detailed the saga of getting the Concorde recertified and back into the air. The accident was not without prior warnings, specifically tire blowouts on takeoff. Previously, 57 tire failures had resulted in various damage to airframe or aircraft sub-structures, including fuel tank penetrations, resulting in aborted flights and even emergency landings.
The sequence of events on the fateful flight can be reconstructed as follows. On the takeoff roll, one of the four tires on the left landing gear peeled off a five foot section of tread, which traveled upward hitting the bottom of the wing, propagating a shock wave through a full fuel tank that blew a foot square hole back out the bottom of the wing creating a cascade of fuel to be ignited by the engine exhaust flame. The control tower informed the pilot his wing was literally on fire before liftoff. All this happened as the speed was approaching 174 knots, still 15 knots short of normal takeoff speed. The pilot went ahead and lifted off, apparently thinking he could "go around" and land. Not so. More tire debris had gone into the left wing engines causing them to fail and shut down. Under speed and under-powered, the plane stalled and fell to the ground.
The recriminations started. There was plenty of blame to go around. Who to lay it on? Much has been made of a 17 inch piece of metal that fell off an American plane just previously on the runway. However, that metal would have punctured a tire, not scalped a five-foot length of belt off a left tire. A more likely scenario, presented by an independent research team, believes the plane was drifting to the left as speed increased because on the left landing gear assembly a wheel alignment spacer "was not reinstated after routine maintenance work performed four days before the crash ... and because of that missing spacer, the left main gear was slightly skewed on the takeoff roll. Skidding heated and wore down the tire, caused the plane to drift to the left side of the runway, and kept it from accelerating normally ... and only after the blowout did it strike the metal strip. If acceleration had been nominal, the plane would have been airborne about 50 yards before reaching the metal strip."
These kinds of happenings are the staff of legends. The Concorde turned out to be one of those things you do for prestige, for both British Airways and Air France consider Concorde service a right of birth. Such supremacy carries a risk.
Now that the plane has had extensive modifications to the fuel tanks, armoring hoses, electrical cables and hydraulic lines-anything in harm's way of flying rubber-the Concorde should soon fly again. Yes, these are risks when you race the sun across the sky. But that's how aviation was born. Fortunately, the Wright brothers and those who followed were less concerned about safety or we would still be crossing oceans in boats.
It is extremely unfortunate that this case is about a particularly loathsome man who will probably end up being a cause célèbre for the First Amendment right of free speech. The Ohio obscenity statute not only prohibits "pandering obscenity involving a minor" but also forbids the "creating of any obscene material that has a minor as one of its participants." It also states that "material" not only includes images and pictures, but also "descriptions." This is important because federal law is only about photography. The test for child pornography says it must be a "visual representation of a live performance." The other half of the Ohio law deals with obscenity. The U.S. Supreme Court has many rulings on pornography and on obscenity. In the 1961 Supreme Court case Stanley v. Georgia, it was decided that while the distribution of obscene material may be illegal, the private possession at home may not be. The Ohio law is at odds on both counts. Yet now we have a case that no one wants to touch being talked about as a rallying point for free speech protections.
Why does all this matter about a 22-year-old man who is clearly sick and needs help that he is not going to find in prison? Because when the First Amendment is in any way shackled, a part of our freedom is lost. The backbone of free speech is the right to express oneself, to criticize, especially to criticize the government. This was first tested in the 1798 Sedition Laws.
In Europe today, it is against the law to write against the Euro nation formation. When there is no critical comment, there will be no improvement and totality becomes the law. It is a very small step from outlawing personal writings to outlawing writings against the government. All done for the public good. That is why we must be eternally vigilant or the government will want to read your diary.
All this is only a prelude to the coming consternation the digital age has and will bring. This next session the Supreme Court is going to look at the question whether computer generated images of children can be considered child pornography, because virtual images of children are not "real children" as now required by law. The question also asks how much difference is there between computer generated images of pornography and language generated images of pornography.
The reasoning may come down to private possession versus any kind of public dissemination. It is a thorny issue and I am sure there will be some missteps on the way to a workable law. Hopefully we can balance protecting our children and preserving free speech.
"Accidental" alcohol usage is directly involved in about 25,000 vehicle deaths per year. More children die in backyard swimming pools than are accidentally shot playing with guns, yet the news media seems to have a strong anti-gun bias, certainly above any concern about drinking. American Journalism Review reports on a study by Media Research Center from July '97 to June '99, which found ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN ran 357 stories in favor of gun control, compared with 36 against. ABC's "Good Morning America" ran 92 anti-gun stories and one pro-gun story. Clearly there is a strong anti-gun bias here.
How about elsewhere in the world? In China, private citizens do not own guns, only the military does. Now that ought to be food for thought. Australia, whose gun history is very close to ours, tried a remarkable experiment last year in forcing destruction of all personal firearms. It all sounds very noble. However, someone forgot to tell the crooks to turn in their guns, so nationwide homicides went up 3.2 percent and armed robberies went up 44 percent-this after declining for the previous 25 years. This speaks volumes for guaranteeing the next victim will be unarmed. Great Britain, however, does not have a history of gun ownership like Australia, so their private citizens have been unarmed for years. (Kings don't like their peasants armed.) They also have had a similar increase (40 percent) in handgun crime as more and more restrictive laws are passed in response to illegal weapons coming in from Eastern Europe. There is no allowance for the concept of self-protection. In a country where only the criminals have guns, you stand with the emperor in his new clothes.
What's to be done about all this erosion of personal rights? Many states have passed "CC" laws. "Concealed Carry" means with training a crime-free private citizen can get a permit to carry a concealed weapon. In every state where this has been enacted, gun-related crime has gone down. By contrast, New York, with our country's most restrictive gun laws, has seen violent crime continue to rise.
In California the vast bastion of liberal thinkers, not wanting to be left behind, has orchestrated a coup in Sacramento to rid our state of guns through a handgun licensing law. In the Assembly it is AB 35 (Shelley) and the approved Senate bill is SB 52 (Scott). Interestingly, our Senator Betty Karnette is listed as a co-author. That may be an albatross around her neck at election time.
Starting January 2003, owning, transferring or transporting a handgun in the state will require a "handgun safety certificate," which entails 2 sets of thumbprints (one to Dept. of Justice and one to the FBI), a "shooting proficiency demonstration" and a written test. Guns include all concealable weapons, including distress signaling devices (boat owners beware). There will be no private sales; all transfers must be through a qualified dealer.
With this their goal, no wonder the liberals were upset when the new U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft said he believed the Second Amendment does mean individual Americans do have the right to keep and bear arms.
Thank you, Mr. Ashcroft for wanting to uphold the Constitution.
Germany is the most famous for this design. The British tried to build some based on captured German craft from World War I but they all failed and the U.S. had a limited program, but they all crashed. It was only the Germans who had a success story. By the middle 1930s they had built several Graf Zeppelins offering luxury trips around the world. Their crown jewel, the Hindenburg, came in 1936. It was 804 feet long and could carry 72 passengers with a crew of 22 from Berlin to Lakehurst, N.J., in 2 1/2 days-half the time of ocean liners of that day.
So why did this whale in the sky die? The U.S. had a political policy not to sell Germany any helium gas to use in their airships. Helium gas is totally inert; you could use it in a fire extinguisher. The only other abundant lighter-than-air gas is hydrogen, which is highly flammable. However, if properly contained it works, and did until that fateful May, 1937 day in Lakehurst, when 72 passengers with 22 crew went down in flames (36 died). The final investigation laid the cause to static electricity discharge igniting venting hydrogen gas from landing.
Sixty years later the truth will out. In a PBS documentary, "What Happened to the Hindenburg?" scientist Dr. Addison Bain, who is a hydrogen specialist for NASA, did not feel the events were consistent with what he knew about hydrogen. First of all, eye witnesses saw this huge red-yellow ball of flame consuming the ship starting from the rear-all 804 feet in 34 seconds-much too fast a burn. Also the ship seemed to stay afloat while burning. The most important clue was the color of the fire. Hydrogen burns cold blue and is hard to see in daylight. So where was all the red-yellow flame coming from?
Through a chance encounter Dr. Bain met a man who knew where to locate some of the outer skin (fabric) which had survived the crash. Dr. Bain wanted to know what the reflective waterproof coating was that had been on the outer fabric. A sample was analyzed and the "doping compound," as it is called, was found to be iron oxide and powdered aluminum. Dr. Bain knew immediately what that was-the solid propellant used in the booster rockets of our spacecraft.
The start of the fire had nothing to do with the use of hydrogen as a lifting gas. It had to do with a natural build-up of a static charge on the outer cloth panels. This charge is supposed to drain to ground when the landing ropes are lowered. At least one of the panels was not properly grounded to the frame and sparked, causing the doping compound to catch fire. It was just like having the outer covering of that airship saturated with rocket fuel, which is how and why it burned in seconds.
Dr. Bain confirmed all this with tests and then he went to Germany where he was able to look at the archived tests that the German scientists has done after the crash where they found the same thing, only to bury the secret. The ship would have burned whether it was filled with hydrogen or helium. It was pure luck that it did not get hit by lightning in its 10 Atlantic crossings the first year.
Fortunately, the technology is not lost. Germany is again building airships for sightseeing excursions. The first three will be 246 feet long and carry 12 passengers with a crew of two. They can stay aloft for up to 24 hours, going as far as 560 miles. Altitude is limited to 7,800 feet with a top speed of 75 mph. They will be filled with helium and covered with a non-flammable material. They are called Zeppelin NT.
Maybe some day we can get over our prejudices and have a Zeppelin in our skies again.
This was the first time I have been on a City-sponsored outing and my first time on a modern tour bus. I did not know buses came that nice. It was such a pleasure for me to avoid driving into L.A. during the rush hour traffic, not to park three levels down and not have to search for my car after the play. They only had a five dollar surcharge over the price of the ticket for transportation - less than what I would have paid for parking. Carole Kirk, our escort for the evening, was flawless in getting everyone on the bus, delivered virtually to the front door and gathered together again for the ride home. She is superb.
So what was the attraction? The dancing. "Contact", here as a road company from Broadway, has raised the bar on choreography. The dancing is at a new level. Susan Stroman as director and choreographer is the new star of Broadway and it was easy to see why.
The play is actually made up of three separate stories. The first, "A Girl on a Swing," was a little on the bawdy side, but then most things were in France of the 1700s. The acrobatics and dance carried the story.
The second story, "Did You Move?" was sort of a wake for the macho man - a dying gasp for the non-communicative boorish husband. Once again the dancing was inventive, explosive and just plain dazzling.
The third story, known as "The Girl in the Yellow Dress," is overtly sensual. It is about people who live too crowded, in search of meaningful relationships, coming up empty. It is about bodies in motion looking for contact.
The previous great star of Broadway choreographers was Bob Fosse. Stroman's string of hits may lead her to filling his shoes. Unfortunately, Stroman lost her husband before doing "Contact" and there are some overtones about death in the stories. Purportedly they were unusually close and she was devastated by the loss. The death sequences may be an expression of closure for her lost love.
The Ahmanson Theatre director should be given credit for a quality show brought to Los Angeles, and we can thank Downey's Community Services for arranging such a well executed trip. May they do more of them.
Debt is normally straight-forward, how much do you owe? Add up the outstanding treasury securities (bills, notes, bonds), include contracts due (ships, airplanes, etc.), entitlements (welfare, all safety nets), military, the general government operating overhead, and the sleeper-future Social Security benefits.
Social Security is like a porcupine in the woodpile; touch at your own peril. And if you stay in there long enough, you can also get bitten by a black widow spider. For you see, the future Social Security needs are not listed in the national debt. As the expression goes, they are "off budget," and do not appear in the totals. This is only part of the lies and deceptions that come out of Congress.
The total profile of Social Security is easy to calculate with modern computer modeling using the Census and the Bureau of Labor statistics. A projected shortfall is expected to occur when the current baby boomer bulge hits their late sixties, followed by a much smaller workforce paying for these seniors. However this could be moderated by our large increase of foreign-born workers. It is the difference between the Social Security money coming in and the payments going out.
While Social Security has been on the plus side for a few years ($157 billion this year), the Office of Management and Budget reports Medicare will lose $45 billion this year. That means your Social Security payments this year added about $112 billion to the General Fund to be spent on anything Congress wants. The Democrats have their pet social projects and the Republicans have their own pet business projects besides wanting to lower taxes.
Where the lie comes is what happens to your excess Social Security money. Your present or future income is spent, it is not put aside in some special "lockbox" to grow with compounding interest. There is no trust fund; there is no lockbox, it is just spent. The lockbox is the biggest lie, the biggest con, ever perpetrated on our nation.
It started when President Johnson wanted to pay for the Viet Nam War without raising taxes, so he increased the money supply by selling more bonds and Congress started borrowing from the Social Security fund. That proved so easy they just emptied the piggy bank to fund all the Great Society programs.
It is shame on Congress for how they have lied to us; it is shame on us for not making them tell the truth about our supposedly free lunch. The Democrats in Congress buy re-election votes by providing more and more programs for the inner city poor without saying where this money is coming from. Once entitlement programs are installed they are virtually impossible to kill. Entitlement programs do something else. They increase government control over all our lives, thus the tentacles of creeping socialism spread wider as the new bureaucracies grow.
Is there any hope? Yes, when we realize how as a nation we have been ill-served by our elected representatives who apparently for the most part only serve themselves. We need to tell them we know there is no Social Security trust fund, no lockbox, and tell them to start putting away any annual Social Security payments over outgo into a real trust fund-with hands off. Tell Congress that the give-away programs have to be paid for from current taxes and large appropriations, say over $100 million, must be voted on by a roll call vote, something they are loathe to do. The voters back home need to know who these handmaidens of the lobbyists are.
If Congress doesn't listen, talk of term limits is sure to come back.
"There always seem to be a lot of different fellows up here. I'm never sure which one of them gets to talk. Right now, I guess I'm the guy. As I pondered our visit tonight it struck me: If my Creator gave me the gift to connect you with the hearts and minds of those great men, then I want to use that same gift now to reconnect you with your own sense of liberty of your own freedom of thought ... your own compass for what is right.
"Dedicating the memorial at Gettysburg, Abraham Lincoln said of America, 'We are now engaged in a great Civil War, testing whether this nation or any nation so dedicated can long endure.' Those words are true again. I believe that we are again engaged in a great civil war, a cultural war that's about to hijack your birthright to think and say what resides in your heart. I fear you no longer trust the pulsing lifeblood of liberty inside you ... the stuff that made this country rise from wilderness into the miracle that it is.
"Let me back up. About a year ago I became president of the National Rifle Association, which protects the right to keep and bear arms. I ran for office, I was elected, and now I serve ... I serve as a moving target for the media who've called me everything from 'ridiculous' and 'duped' to a 'brain-injured, senile, crazy old man.' I know ... I'm pretty old ... but I'm sure, Lord, I ain't senile. As I have stood in the crosshairs of those who target Second Amendment freedoms, I've realized that firearms are not the only issue. No, it's much, much bigger than that. I've come to understand that a cultural war is raging across our land, in which, with Orwellian fervor, certain acceptable thoughts and speech are mandated.
"For example, I marched for civil rights with Dr. King in 1963 long before Hollywood found it fashionable. But when I told an audience last year that white pride is just as valid as black pride or red pride or anyone else's pride, they called me a racist. I've worked with brilliantly talented homosexuals all my life. But when I told an audience that gay rights should extend no further than your rights or my rights, I was called a homophobe. I served in World War II against the Axis powers. But during a speech, when I drew an analogy between singling out innocent Jews and singling out innocent gun owners, I was called an anti-Semite. Everyone I know knows I would never raise a closed fist against my country. But when I asked an audience to oppose this cultural persecution, I was compared to Timothy McVeigh. From Time magazine to friends and colleagues, they're essentially saying, 'Chuck, how dare you speak your mind. You are using language not authorized for public consumption!' But I am not afraid.
"If Americans believed in political correctness, we'd still be King George's boys - subjects bound to the British crown. In his book, The End of Sanity, Martin Gross writes that 'blatantly irrational behavior is rapidly being established as the norm in almost every area of human endeavor.' There seem to be new customs, new rules, new anti-intellectual theories regularly foisted on us from every direction. Underneath, the nation is roiling. Americans know something without a name is undermining the nation, turning the mind mushy when it comes to separating truth from falsehood and right from wrong. And they don't like it.
"Let me read a few examples. At Antioch college in Ohio, young men seeking intimacy with a coed must get verbal permission at each step of the process from kissing to petting to final copulation ... all clearly spelled out in a printed college directive. In New Jersey, despite the death of several patients nationwide who had been infected by dentists who had concealed their AIDs - the state commissioner announced that health providers who are HIV-positive need not ... need not ... tell their patients that they are infected. At William and Mary, students tried to change the name of the school team 'The Tribe' because it was supposedly insulting to local Indians, only to learn that authentic Virginia chiefs truly like the name. In San Francisco, city fathers passed an ordinance protecting the rights of transvestites to cross-dress on the job, and for transsexuals to have separate toilet facilities while undergoing sex change surgery. In New York City, kids who don't speak a word of Spanish have been placed in bilingual classes to learn their three R's in Spanish solely because their last names sound Hispanic. At the University of Pennsylvania, in a state where thousands died at Gettysburg opposing slavery, the president of that college officially set up segregated dormitory space for black students. Yeah, I know ... that's out of bounds now. Dr. King said 'Negroes.' Jimmy Baldwin and most of us on the March said 'black.' But it's a no-no now. For me, hyphenated identities are awkward ... particularly 'Native-American.' I'm a Native American, for God's sake. I also happen to be a blood-initiated brother of the Miniconjou Sioux. On my wife's side, my grandson is a thirteenth generation native American...with a capital letter on 'American.' Finally, just last month ... David Howard, head of a Washington, D.C. Office, used the word 'niggardly' while talking to colleagues about budgetary matters. Of course, 'niggardly' means stingy or scanty. But within days Howard was forced to publicly apologize and resign. As columnist Tony Snow wrote: 'David Howard got fired because some people in public employ were morons who (a) didn't know the meaning of niggardly, (b) didn't know how to use a dictionary to discover the meaning, and (c) actually demanded that he apologize for their ignorance.' What does all of this mean? It means that telling us what to think has evolved into telling us what so say, so telling us what to do can't be far behind.
"Before you claim to be a champion of free thought, tell me: why did political correctness originate on America's campuses? And why do you continue to tolerate it? Why do you, who're supposed to debate ideas, surrender to their suppression? Let's be honest. Who here thinks your professors can say what they really believe? It scares me to death, and should scare you too, that the superstition of political correctness rules the halls of reason. You are the best and the brightest. You, here in the fertile cradle of American academia, here in the castle of learning on the Charles River, you are the cream. But I submit that you, and your counterparts across the land, are the most socially conformed and politically silenced generation since Concord Bridge. And as long as you validate that ... and abide it ... you are - by your grandfathers' standards - cowards.
"Here's another example. Right now at more than one major university, Second Amendment scholars and researchers are being told to shut up about their findings or they'll lose their jobs. Why? Because their research findings would undermine big-city mayor's pending lawsuits that seek to extort hundreds of millions of dollars from firearm manufacturers. I don't care what you think about guns. But if you are not shocked at that, I am shocked at you. Who will guard the raw material of unfettered ideas, if not you? Who will defend the core value of academia, if you supposed soldiers of free thought and expression lay down your arms and plead, 'Don't shoot me.' If you talk about race, it doesn't make you a racist. If you see distinctions between the genders, it does not make you a sexist. If you think critically about a denomination, it does not make you anti-religion. If you accept but don't celebrate homosexuality, it does not make you a homophobe. Don't let America's universities continue to serve as incubators for this rampant epidemic of new McCarthyism.
"But what can you do? How can anyone prevail against such pervasive social subjugation? The answer's been here all along. I learned it 36 years ago, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., standing with Dr. Martin Luther King and two hundred thousand people. You simply ... disobey. Peaceably, yes. Respectfully, of course. Nonviolently, absolutely. But when told how to think or what to say or how to behave, we don't. We disobey social protocol that stifles and stigmatizes personal freedom. I learned the awesome power of disobedience from Dr. King ... who learned it from Gandhi, and Thoreau, and Jesus, and every other great man who led those in the right against those with the might. Disobedience is in our DNA. We feel innate kinship with that disobedient spirit that tossed tea into Boston Harbor, that sent Thoreau to jail, that refused to sit in the back of the bus, that protested a war in Viet Nam. In that same spirit, I am asking you to disavow cultural correctness with massive disobedience of rogue authority, social directives and onerous laws that weaken personal freedom. But be careful ... it hurts. Disobedience demands that you put yourself at risk. Dr. King stood on lots of balconies. You must be willing to be humiliated ... to endure the modern-day equivalent of the police dogs at Montgomery and the water cannons at Selma. You must be willing to experience discomfort. I'm not complaining, but my own decades of social activism have taken their toll on me.
"Let me tell you a story. A few years back I heard about a rapper named Ice-T who was selling a CD called 'Cop Killer' celebrating ambushing and murdering police officers. It was being marketed by none other than Time/Warner, the biggest entertainment conglomerate in the World. Police across the country were outraged. Rightfully so - at least one had been murdered. But Time/Warner was stonewalling because the CD was a cash cow for them, and the media were tiptoeing around it because the rapper was black. I heard Time/Warner had a stockholders meeting scheduled in Beverly Hills. I owned some shares at the time, so I decided to attend. What I did there was against the advice of my family and colleagues. I asked for the floor. To a hushed room of a thousand average American stockholders, I simply read the full lyrics of 'Cop Killer' - every vicious, vulgar, instructional word. 'I GOT MY 12 GAUGE SAWED OFF. I GOT MY HEADLIGHTS TURNED OFF. I'M ABOUT TO BUST SOME SHOTS OFF. I'M ABOUT TO DUST SOME COPS OFF ...' It got worse, a lot worse. I won't read the rest of it to you. But trust me, the room was a sea of shocked, frozen, blanched faces. The Time/Warner executives squirmed in their chairs and stared at their shoes. They hated me for that. Then I delivered another volley of sick lyric brimming with racist filth, where Ice-T fantasizes about sodomizing two 12-year-old nieces of Al and Tipper Gore. 'SHE PUSHED HER BUTT AGAINST MY ...' Well, I won't do to you there what I did to them. Let's just say I left the room in echoing silence. When I read the lyrics to the waiting press corps, one of them said 'We can't print that.' 'I know,' I replied, 'but Time/Warner's selling it.' Two months later, Time/Warner terminated Ice-T's contract. I'll never be offered another film by Warner's, or get a good review from Time magazine. But disobedience means you must be willing to act, not just talk.
When a mugger sues his elderly victim for defending herself ... jam the switchboard of the district attorney's office. When your university is pressured to lower standards until 80 percent of the students graduate with honors ... choke the halls of the board of regents. When an 8-year-old boy pecks a girl's cheek on the playground and gets hauled into court for sexual harassment ... march on that school and block its doorways. When someone you elected is seduced by political power and betrays you ... petition them, oust them, banish them. When Time magazine's cover portrays millennium nuts as deranged, crazy Christians holding a cross as it did last month ... boycott their magazine and the products it advertises. So that this nation may long endure, I urge you to follow in the hallowed footsteps of the great disobediences of history that freed exiles, founded religions, defeated tyrants, and yes, in the hands of an aroused rabble in arms and a few great men, by God's brace, built this country. If Dr. King were here, I think he would agree. Thank you."
Osama bin Laden is an outcast member of the Sa'ud family who owns Saudi Arabia. As they say in the Middle East: Their name is on the land. Bin Laden wants to go home and take over the family business-that is, owning the whole country which would include the oil fields, something he cannot do as long as the Americans are there. This started out not about religion, but about money and who owns the oil.
Saddam Hussein tried the same thing in Kuwait resulting in the Gulf War. Unfortunately, we stopped short of what the conclusion should have been, so now we may have to do it again on a target that is even less defined and a whole lot smarter. For whatever reason - some would call it compassion - we as a nation, seem to have a problem with finishing the job. General MacArthur understood the concept of finality when he demanded unconditional surrender from the Japanese ending World War II. After that it has been downhill. The negotiated settlement of the Korean War put us in a weakened position for what turned out to be the Viet Nam debacle. It is now a matter of record that when a bunch of students took over the U.S. Embassy in Iran, they were expecting the U.S. Marines to arrive in a couple of days and they were prepared to give up and get out of there. President Carter's lack of response set the stage for what was to come. The tyrants of the Middle East "knew" we as a nation did not have the will to win. Saddam Hussein knew that and when Osama bin Laden tested the limits, he found there were none.
Our eight years of Clinton appeasement has led to the 1993 World Trade Towers truck bombing which resulted in some arrests, but no military response. In 1994 a truck bombed the U.S. military barracks in Saudi Arabia - no response. In 1998 two U.S. embassies were bombed in east Africa - no response. In 2000 American navel vessel U.S.S. Cole was suicide bombed in a Yemen refueling station - no response. These bin Laden-led Muslim operatives are loyal to him as he has now become not just a terrorist hero, but a religious leader to drive the infidels out of the world of Islam.
The Christian world has had some experience with failed Crusades, some eight major expeditions between 1095 and 1291. Not a pretty picture. Especially the Christian sack of Constantinople in 1204. On the other hand, Afghanistan has been undefeated since Alexander the Great in 327 BC. Of late, Afghan cities have been devastated by internal fighting. Purportedly there is nothing left standing of military value. The ruling military junta (the Taliban) is presiding over ruins. All aerial bombing would do is level mud huts, break up rocks and rearrange the previous rubble.
This campaign should be viewed as stopping criminal activities, not Muslims vs. Christians. Terrorism has no creed or religion. Terrorists can be any race, any religion (Northern Ireland) or no religion (Oklahoma City). They are just criminals to be hunted down and killed so we do not get involved in hostage trading.
This time we need to go until we win. There is a downside to any military action, but the downside to inaction is unacceptable, as we have seen.
The original concept was of a national forensic laboratory to help local police departments with more complicated investigations. The real growth, though, came with air travel. Crime moved from local to national and then international, bringing contact with Interpol. The growth in scope also brought a need for more personnel. The Bureau has become, by sheer size alone, a national police agency. I don't remember seeing any provision for that in the Constitution, but we now have one. Their first steps into the national policing scene were a little shaky with Ruby Ridge and Waco, but they have their sea legs now and are off investigating around the world.
This expanded experience for the FBI will prove useful in hopefully stopping the ultimate crime any society can be exposed to-terrorism. The FBI is uniquely positioned with the CIA to keep our streets safe and our citizens safe in other countries. However, this is going to mean intrusion into our private lives. The computer program Carnivore is already installed and watching over the Internet. A test program with a new type X-ray machine (BodyScan) is already operating at several airports. It literally sees through clothing as you are walking by and shows any concealed objects. If one had been installed in Amsterdam it would have shown the two hand grenades hidden in a brassiere worn by a man dressed as a woman. That attempted hijacking was foiled by the El Al pilot who was not letting anyone into the cockpit and by two Israeli marshals who regularly fly the route. We may come to the point where routine full body X-ray is necessary to make sure the skies are friendly again.
Another change in our approach is to make the cockpit secure no matter how many passengers the hijackers kill, which is totally contrary to our existing policy. We have learned the pilot should not open the door under any circumstances. In fact, the door into the cockpit could be made of Lexan, a clear bullet-proof material, so the cabin can be watched over, or even closed circuit TV could monitor cabin activities for the pilots.
We have finally seen and felt what other countries have put up with for years. For us, it will mean a lot of changes both in our privacy and emotionally. Truly we have lost our innocence and are now part of the real world. Whether we will ever be able to go back to the level of freedom we had and did not really appreciate is uncertain. Increasingly big government is now central to our lives. The question is: Will we ever be able to throw off the yoke?
The stories abound of fateful survival. A lady was packing to fly from Boston when a careless driver hit a dog in front of her house. She went out to help a neighbor take the dog to a vet, only to miss her flight and live. A man and his young daughter ready to fly out of Boston checked on the movie being shown and when his daughter thought it would be scary, he rescheduled the flight to the West Coast a half-hour later. The new flight was in the air when it was redirected to Nova Scotia where they spent four days just happy to be alive. Some of the most poignant moments were the farewell cell phone calls from the doomed planes. Expressions of the deepest, most profound love expressed in the simplest of words-I love you. Words that will be remembered for the rest of their lives.
The possibility of further terrorist attacks seem likely. The concept of committing suicide to achieve martyrdom is totally foreign to western minds. It could be likened to Japanese kamikaze pilots of World War II. We did not understand that either. There is a vast difference between the bravery of going into battle and the futility of suicide for glory. And having studied the Koran, I don't remember anything about any ennobling spiritual rewards from suicide. I suspect this whole despotic journey by Osama bin Laden is just that of another aspiring dictator out on a world tour for power and money, flying falsely under a religious banner and unfortunately bringing shame and derision to one of the major religions of the world. The exploitation of these simple religious followers by charismatic leaders with other-than-spiritual goals is going to create an unfamiliar challenge for Americans. Self-directed mayhem is just not a part of western religions. Interestingly, in Buddhism, which is certainly a major world religion, there is no such concept as being a martyr and being a Buddhist. Those concepts are mutually exclusive.
We may end up dealing with these terrorist problems in unexpected ways. Sporting goods stores are reporting increased gun sales; if we are not already an armed nation, we are becoming even more of one. More states are allowing qualified civilians to carry concealed weapons. There are just not enough police to cover every corner, nor do we want there to be. We may end up learning to protect ourselves. Not the best option, but one that would work. The anti-gun liberals may have to rethink their position.
For example, some environmentalists are very vocal about the possibility of a warming planet, blaming burning hydrocarbons, i.e., the internal combustion engine. As to whether that is junk science is another question. The fact is, we are off on a new tack for the automobile engine. It is called a fuel cell. It takes in hydrogen and puts out electricity and a small amount of pure water. The propulsion is actually by an electric motor. The fuel cell technology is well understood; they have been used for years on spacecraft using liquid hydrogen as fuel. However, everyone who remembers the explosion on Apollo 13 will realize why pure hydrogen is not a good idea for cars.
Gasoline contains hydrogen but must be "cracked" first to use in a fuel cell; while possible, not a viable option. The most practical fuel source is liquefied natural gas. The distribution infrastructure is slowly coming into place as a supplier for trucks and buses. (This is not to be confused with propane.)
Natural gas fields are found around the world. The same processes were in play that changed prehistoric flora into coal, oil and natural gas. There are some really huge natural gas deposits; interestingly, some of the largest are in Indonesia. For some years, large Thermos bottle-like ocean-going tankers have been hauling this very cold liquid (compressed gas) to various ports. It does not need any refining; it is ready to run your car using either an internal combustion engine or in a fuel cell.
So what is the geo-political impact of all this? The connection is that the largest Muslim-based population in the world is in Indonesia. What we do in the Middle East is going to affect our natural gas supplies from the Far East.
Our need for fuel and the desire to protect Saudi Arabia and Israel comes toe to toe with the world of Islam. We must recognize and respect that Islam is one of the five major religions of the world. Likewise we also need to remember that the terrorists are not a part of the mainstream Islamic faith, but a fundamentalist sect wanting to overthrow the Saudi Arabian government so they can take over the country, the oil fields, the money and get us out of the area so we cannot protect Israel.
Osama bin Laden and followers are not religious zealots, they are dictators in waiting. We must be careful not to export religion, but only the example of freedom and democracy. The Middle East countries are not ready for full democracy. They have no experience with freedom and still need what would hopefully be an enlightened monarchy. Some hastily-put-together experiment in democracy would surely end in a military dictatorship claiming to be the true faith they are not.
Our path is difficult enough finding the hunted and recapturing the streets for the people of Islam. This must not be a religious war. If we want respect for our way of life and the other religions of the world, we must respect theirs. In order for this world to operate on a global basis, we will need to be connected by a thread of respect. We can proselyte for democracy, but not for religion. If we don't learn that lesson, we will be getting all our fuel from within our own shores.
We have polluted everything in sight for a long time. Some may remember that not so many years ago on passenger trains when you flushed it went straight onto the tracks. That went away with on-board holding tanks. This application was also extended to boats of all sizes. If you take it out, you bring it back.
To accomplish these goals, Congress passed a set of laws known as the Clean Water Act to protect the oceans and all waterways running into them. This is where flood control channels come into the picture, especially in the West, which is how we get to Downey-or namely, how Downey gets to the sea. It has to do with rain and parking lot runoff to storm drains, to riverbeds, to bays, to the ocean.
The parking lot problem comes in two parts. One is trash and leaves, the other is the rain washing the oil drippings from cars and other hydrocarbons off the pavement into the storm drains. The trash around fast food places is particularly troublesome; people don't seem to know how to use trash cans any more. New construction now mandates maintenance programs for fallen leaves and other vegetation. But it is the rain water runoff that is causing the new crisis.
The regulations have been on the books for several years, but are just now starting to be enforced. Specifically, the first 3/4 inch of each rainfall must be captured on-site and either processed through a clarifier or run into the ground as a filter. Just in case you never thought about it, 3/4 inch of water is a lot of water. For example, any national retail store today is at least 15,000 to 20,000 sq. ft. in size. The required parking will add another 45,000 to 60,000 sq. ft. which means we now have about 1½ acres covered with 3/4 inch of water. An amount roughly equal to a small swimming pool-and we have to put it somewhere. (In the past, roof water did not have to be considered, now it does too). So the State tells the County who tells the City who tells us to put this hydrocarbon-contaminated water into the ground on-site.
Now it can be collected, filtered and sent on its way through a clarifier at a substantial cost plus annual maintenance costs. More commonly, it will be stored in large recessed percolation beds acting as planters (no more berms) or run into very large diameter perforated pipes (20" - 30"), as long in length as necessary for percolation under planters. I can hardly wait for someone to tell our Design Review Board that no trees are allowed over these pipes because the roots will clog them.
While all this is technically possible, it is not practical, even though it is being done right now. It certainly gives credence to the idea of having Lake Boeing for those 160 acres of runoff. Where else could you store 10 acre-feet of water?
However, that is not where I think the real problem develops. We will be washing hydrocarbons into the ground and on down, contaminating the groundwater. Now who is going to clean up that mess? Is the owner going to be legally responsible for cleanup? What does this do to hazardous waste clauses in leases? When the bureaucrats figure out what they have caused, are we going to dig out all that contaminated dirt and haul it away? To where? Which City employee is going to sign off on the lies that will have to be in the Environmental Impact Reports? Banks don't make loans on contaminated land. How is a property ever going to be refinanced?
It's a world gone mad as the government continues to take over our lives.
For many years stories have been circulating about how the government, our government, has been spraying germs on our cities to test bacterial warfare. The official response has always been denial. Well, it turns out they have been. This week The Wall Street Journal carried a story detailing how the U.S. Army, in the depths of the Cold War from 1950 to 1969, conducted open air tests of biological agents 239 times in such places as the Pennsylvania Turnpike, New York subways, Minnesota, Panama City and Key West, Florida, and even Washington, D.C.
President Nixon shut the secret program down in 1969 and it would have stayed buried if not for a Senate subcommittee hearing in 1977, but it was still under wraps until a lawsuit went to the U.S. Supreme Court. The program started in Sept. 1950 when, for one week, the Navy used one of their mine laying-size boats to spray thousands of gallons of water containing Serratina and Bacillus microbes plus particles of zinc-cadmium-sulfide into the air along the San Francisco coastline. The resulting fog of supposedly harmless germs and chemicals would have gone unnoticed except 11 people got sick with one dying. The doctors at the hospital thought this outbreak of pneumonia was strange enough to report it in a medical journal.
Still, all lay quiet until word leaked out from the 1977 Senate hearing and the grandson of the man who died, Edward Nevin, thought the U.S. government should be held accountable. However, the courts consistently upheld the government's immunity to lawsuits.
While it is unfortunate unknowing citizens were used as guinea pigs, a lot of valuable information was obtained. The Minnesota air drop tests found bugs 1,000 miles away. The San Francisco tests showed nearly all of the 800,000 residents had been exposed. The New York subway test showed travel to all the boroughs. The Greyhound bus terminal test showed how 130 passengers took the bacteria to 39 cities. In 80 of the experiments live bacteria were used, in others inert chemicals were used to simulate bacteria.
It is now evident why the FBI was so interested in crop dusting planes following the Sept. 11 attack, for the government knew how vulnerable we are to bacterial attack. So far, however, the amount of material a few people can deliver, while very disruptive, is small in volume. Fortunately, few people have fallen ill from anthrax and hopefully further incidents will be caught early.
I believe a larger question is the apparent right of a government to have conducted those earlier tests in the first place with no responsibility for any harm done. A similar situation exists with the environmental contamination from making atomic bomb materials. This also applies to the many people who worked and died from radiation in the process and the government is only now starting to make restitution after many bitter lawsuits.
But the fact remains, whether in peace or war time, trust is something earned, not mandated.
As it has been pointed out to me on several occasions, we live in cities by permission and what we do here is by permission. The background for this lies with the U.S. Constitution. The federal government reserves certain things for their jurisdiction, leaving the rest to the states. The states carve out their piece of control, then come the counties to establish law and order and maintain general law cities. Some county folks want even more control and set up charter cities. Downey is a charter city; it is a "permission" city. If it's not on the books, you can't do it. Private property rights are subject to code and "in the best public interest" as decreed by those who know what is "best" for us.
In general, one of the great strengths of this nation is that we are a nation of laws, for the most part equally applied. The key is that laws should be to make people free, not to enslave them. That is the balance we strive for.
One of the places where things go awry on the most elementary level is something called "code enforcement." Designed to take care of persistent violations of health and safety laws and usually administered by the Department of Building and Safety, it is easy for public officials who want to avoid the unpopular enforcement hassle to simply turn it over to the Police Dept. This moves an opportunity for compromise to one of compliance. A police department stated purpose in life is to "enforce the law" not play statesman. People are hired to write violations and the only measure of performance is the prosecution backlog. It is a public relations nightmare that eventually gets sorted out at the ballot box, but the damage gets done along the way.
Normally, the process gets started by a confidential phone call from a neighbor. The corruption comes into play when it is not a neighbor, but an enemy across town whose only motive is revenge. If the person reporting has curried a special relationship with the Police Dept., it only compounds the problem, as there is no opportunity to confront your accuser.
Code enforcement is a legal matter, not a police matter. It should go back to Building and Safety where there is an incentive to make things work, and away from the enforcement club of police.
But the real cure is to name the accuser. This is a civil matter, not criminal, and in all other civil cases, you get to know who your accuser is; it should not be different here. Until then, we will continue to have petty little people taking out their revenge under the color of authority, and we all are less for it.
The line here between good and evil is sometimes hard to find. For instance when reporters need to talk to both sides of an issue a free exchange of ideas may be muted for fear of later prosecution. What about conversations of political protest? Are they going to be subject to review? Is it going to be OK to talk against Islam, but not against Judaism? Is that not a form of censorship? When does criticism become sedition? Having to make these distinctions under these new powers of eavesdropping becomes troublesome.
With this increased level of federal government looking over our shoulder, it seems only logical that local government should also push the envelope, and so they have. Now in the City of Downey you have to have a permit for a going out of business sale. All, of course, under the auspices of Code Enforcement. If that is not bad enough, the store must submit an inventory of items for sale as well as all advertising about the sale to the City for approval. Examples abound of stores having "going out of business" sales several times a year if not indefinitely. South Gate has a store that, in a little play on words, should just change its name to "Going Out For Business." Obviously, this is what the City is trying to control.
Such silliness as the inventory requirement shows a lack of knowledge about how businesses are run. Is Code Enforcement going to monitor the inventory list against sales each day? I have only heard of one instance where extra merchandise was not brought in for the sale. With chain stores, it is always brought in to consolidate volume. The idea that some company like Fedco or Gemco is going to turn in any inventory list is too ludicrous for words. Once again, all it does is penalize the small, local business.
Saving the best for last is the submission of going-out-of-business advertising for City approval. That's a freedom of speech matter and bumps right into the First Amendment. As for "false" advertising, there is a lot of case law to take care of that without any help from any government bureaucracy. Is Code Enforcement to spend time looking for unauthorized advertising? All this shows the direction we have been going-more governmental oversight and control at all levels.
In our new zeal to ferret out terrorists, such things as national ID cards are being mentioned again, sort of trial balloons for tolerance. If that does not fly, the next suggestion is converting the Social Security card into a national ID card for residents. Visitors and aliens would have to carry passports anytime they are out. Just think, for fear of our lives, we could become a regular police state. Somehow that does not seem acceptable.
Yes, the crime in New York was especially heinous. Almost five thousand innocent people died. However, on U.S. highways approximately 42,000 die every year. About one-half or 20,000 die as a direct result of alcohol. Is the drunk driver going down the road killing one or two at a time any less a terrorist?
But what would happen if we did not need so much oil? It has been demonstrated that even a small reduction in demand would drive down the price and we now have the possibility of doing just that. A recent article in U.S. News and World Report tells how new advances in wind turbine design make it possible to generate electricity for about 4 cents per kwh. This is down from over 30 cents in the 1980s for wind power. The average cost today from oil is about 8 cents.
These new giant windmills are 200 feet tall and each of the three blades is 115 feet long. Everything about it is computer controlled and cost $1.3 million per unit. The blades start to turn in an 11 mph breeze. So where do you find a steady source of wind that would make that level of investment practical? Mostly in the mid-continent states from North Dakota to Texas. There is a 2,000 turbine wind farm slated for South Dakota to feed the Chicago grid, 16 units in Pennsylvania, 214 units in Odessa, TX. The Washington-Oregon border is home to 390 turbines. No one is suggesting that wind can supply all our power, but it will enhance our energy freedom in a big way.
There is another part to the equation. While wind does not blow all the time in one place, it is always blowing somewhere in the country, including at night when power needs are low. Electricity does not store well, but there is one very good way it can be stored. It just so happens that any excess electricity can be run through water (H2O), a process called electrolysis, and you get two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. That hydrogen gas can be compressed, sent through pipelines to storage tanks where it can later be put into your car to run the fuel cell which will make electricity again to drive your electric car.
That's the plan, and all the pieces are coming into place. Tax credits for windmills, turbines that are efficient, a way to store and distribute hydrogen, fuel cells that were developed for the space program, global warming forcing the smog requirements, and most car manufacturers have had a test run with electric cars. All this will reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
There is one other side benefit not widely talked about. It has to do with the clear-cutting and burning of the world's rain forests. And how does that fit in? Plants and trees take in carbon dioxide and give off oxygen which is how oxygen gets replaced in our atmosphere, thus keeping the carbon dioxide and oxygen levels balanced. As the rain forests are cut down, we will have less and less oxygen in the air, which in the long run would affect us even more than global warming. The hidden sleeper in all this is that the oxygen from the electrolysis of water can just be vented into the air to help replace the oxygen lost from our diminished rain forests.
Truly this whole program is a win for everybody-a free, unlimited, non-polluting energy source mostly available everywhere in the world. Now if the "oil" companies can just reinvent themselves to become "energy" companies, and put turbines in the air instead of holes in the ground, we can all have a better life.
Many small towns at Thanksgiving time used to have events called "turkey shoots." So one year I just had to take a shot at the prize and everyone, except me, was surprised when this skinny little kid brought home the bird. That's not a frozen turkey from the local A & P, but a real live large bird that walked, flew and squawked. Now my father, who was not in the animal husbandry business and definitely not into feathers, said, "That bird's got to go." So it did, to a family a little more in need and a lot less squeamish. And some years later that firearms training served me well in the military.
The whole concept and rational for civilian possession of firearms seems to be an evolutionary journey. Seemingly the progrssion goes from a country in full revolution such as Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the almost total ban on civilian possession as in England and China and then to the most sophisticated Switzerland. The Swiss have a program where every able-bodied adult male is drafted, trained and sent home with a military rifle and live ammunition. Periodic training keeps everyone ready to defend the homeland. So it is possible to have guns at home without everybody killing someone.
It is not really clear why firearms are such a divisive issue. Is it the lack of experience or education? Unfortunately movies and TV can solve all problems in an hour and a half with guns, not a good image to leave with children-or adults, for that matter.
Maybe saturation is finally getting through. Gun related deaths have been falling since 1971, at a time when there are more privately-owned firearms today than ever before. And with CC laws being enacted in more states, there are more concealed handguns being carried than ever before-which may account for the decline in accidental firearms deaths and crime in those states.
The National Center for Health Statistics reports on these kinds of things-police shootings, suicides, murder, accidents with guns and the like. The anti-gun activists continue to spotlight "children killed by guns," yet in 1999 the total firearm-related deaths among children was 489 with just 84 from accidents; while sad, just a fraction of those who drown every year. Parenthetically, I have never heard of anyone going to jail for not watching their children around a pool.
The pendulum has swung from the days of the wild west to almost confiscation. Now it looks like we are starting to become more mature about the whole topic. In the meantime, most of us will not have to shoot our turkey out of a tree like the Pilgrims did. The supermarket will be just fine, especially sans feathers. Thanksgiving will give an opportunity to think back to our forefathers and mothers for all the sacrifices they made so we can live a better life.
I also thank them for the Second Amendment so I can still take target practice; there is a nice range in Artesia just off the 91 Freeway.
Berkeley, California bans U.S. flags from being displayed on city fire trucks because they didn't want to offend anyone in the community. In an "act of tolerance" the head of the public library at Florida Gulf Coast University ordered all "Proud to be an American" signs removed so as to not offend international students.
It's time for Americans to take back our country and stand united and firm on our American rights and quit worrying about the minority rights of those that have their own personal agendas and don't stand for America.
I, for one, am quite disturbed by these actions of so-called American citizens; and I am tired of this nation worrying about whether or not we are offending some individual or their culture. Since the terrorist attacks on September 11, we have experienced a surge in patriotism by the majority of Americans. However, the dust from the attacks had barely settled in New York and Washington, D.C. when the "politically correct" crowd began complaining about the possibility that our patriotism was offending others.
I am not against immigration, nor do I hold a grudge against anyone who is seeking a better life by coming to America. In fact, our country's population is almost entirely comprised of descendants of immigrants; however, there are a few things that those who have recently come to our country, and apparently some Americans, need to understand.
First of all, it is not our responsibility to continually try not to offend you in any way. This idea of America being a multicultural community has served only to dilute our sovereignty and our national identity. As Americans, we have our own culture, our own society, our own language and our own lifestyle. This culture, called the "American Way" has been developed over centuries of struggles, trials, and victories by millions of men and women who have sought freedom. Our forefathers fought, bled, and died at places such as Bunker Hill, Antietam, San Juan, Iwo Jima, Normandy, Korea, Vietnam.
We speak English, not Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, or any other language. Therefore if you wish to become part of our society-learn our language!
"In God We Trust" is our national motto. This is not some off-the-wall, Christian, Right Wing political slogan; it is our national motto. It is engraved in stone in the House of Representatives in our Capitol and it is printed on our currency. We adopted this motto because Christian men and women, on Christian principles, founded this nation; and this is clearly documented throughout our history. If it is appropriate for our motto to be inscribed in the halls of our highest level of Government then it is certainly appropriate to display it on the walls of our schools.
God is in our pledge, our National Anthem, nearly every patriotic song, and in our founding documents. We honor His birth, death, and resurrection as holidays, and we turn to Him in prayer in times of crisis. If God offends you, then I suggest you consider another part of the world as your new home, because God is part of our culture and we are proud to have Him.
We are proud of our heritage and those who have so honorably defended our freedoms. We celebrate Independence Day, Memorial Day, Veterans Day, and Flag Day. We have parades, picnics, and barbecues where we proudly wave our flag. As an American, I have the right to wave my flag, sing my national anthem, quote my national motto, and cite my pledge whenever and wherever I choose. If the Stars and Stripes offend you, or you don't like Uncle Sam, then you should seriously consider a move to another part of this planet.
The American culture is our way of life, our heritage, and we are proud of it. We are happy with our culture and have no desire to change, and we really don't care how you did things where you come from; if it was so superior, go home. We are Americans; like it or not, this is our country, our land, and our lifestyle.
Our First Amendment gives every citizen the right to express his opinion about our government, culture, or society, and we will allow you every opportunity to do so. But once you are done complaining, whining, and griping about our flag, our pledge, our national motto, or our way of life, I highly encourage you take advantage of one other great American freedom, the right to leave.
It is time to take a stand! May God bless America.
The very fine public service group, the League of Women Voters, put on an opportunity to meet the candidates for our recent School Board election, all well advertised and publicly available. For whatever reason, what was supposed to be a forum turned out to be construed as a "debate," when in fact, it was not for "one office" but for several offices or "seats" on a school board, and there were not two contestants, there were many.
Somehow the rules of the game got misinterpreted to mean that for those seats where only two candidates were running it became a debate and if one of the two did not show, then the other could not be heard. In fact that was the situation for one of the races. What if there were three candidates and one did not show, would the other two not be allowed to speak? What if there were five candidates for one seat and while driving to the event one of the five had a car accident, would the other four not be allowed to present themselves? How is it the rules are different for two? You can't change the rules in the middle of the game.
Since when in a "forum" of candidates for several offices or seats, does only having two candidates for one of the offices make it a "debate" for that office? Of course it does NOT and the "empty chair debate" rule jeopardizing the organizing group's tax-deductible status does not apply. If anything, to apply the rule has just the opposite effect - inhibiting the free flow of information. The simple fact remains after all the rhetoric, that if two candidates are running for a single office and one of them, possibly the lesser-known or weaker candidate, does not want the other to be heard, all he needs to do is just not show up. So the absent one then has veto rights to silence the other. That's not democracy, that's censorship. All candidates deserve a hearing. To not do so, the meeting becomes irrelevant.
I believe the underlying problem here was the perception that a general forum of candidates was somehow construed to be a debate when it was not. There were not just two candidates on stage for one office, there were many candidates on stage for several offices. It was a meet the candidates night - a forum, not a debate - and all who were excluded deserve an apology. Hopefully it will never happen again.
It seems when the Moors (Muslims) were well entrenched in Spain, there was a great deal of tolerance and intermingling with the Jews, Gypsies, Christians and Muslims all being friends. Rome and the Vatican thought this was not adhering to the one true God concept, so when King Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella were on the throne in 1494, support came from Rome for a thorough housecleaning. Those who would not convert to Catholicism or get out of town and just generally vanish, were tortured to death. Among several ways, burning at the stake was a favored conversion persuader for heretics.
So you see, these people have been doing bad things to each other for a very long time, always standing on their truth of their God being the only true God. Why this is important is that it is still going on and likely will be for the foreseeable future.
Most religions mature over time so they can live within a framework of nations and respect and give space to each other so civilization can advance and people feel safe living together. For some, though, this is not true and has not been for a thousand years. We are still trying to throw people out of countries. In this case the Palestinians and Israelis want to throw each other out of the homeland they each believe is theirs, thus denying the other a country. Now this has not worked too well as demonstrated by people blowing themselves up and killing many others in the process. I suppose it is a little easier death than on the rack or by fire like they used to do, but suicide bombing is still not an acceptable approach to the problem. Until Palestinians and Israelis each have their own homeland, this carnage is not going to end.
I haven't read anything about the countries surrounding Israel and the Palestine protectorate offering to donate any more land to the cause; what land is there is all that there is going to be. What there is will have to be divided between the two of them. That is, in half. Anything less or more than half for each is not going to end the violence. We can't go back in time. The 1948 accord is dead. The boundaries of the past are dead. What we have now is what there is. The carnage must stop. Israel is going to have to understand they will have a new neighbor (both having secure borders) with one caveat-Jerusalem has to be an open city and both new countries must touch it. It should have its own bi-country police force and if that means an AK-47 on every corner, so be it.
A somewhat amusing irony is that there are so many Palestinians living in Israel that Israel cannot have an open election, otherwise they could not stay in office. There are Palestinians who have lived in camps for generations with no expectation of ever having a home land. Such is the incubator for suicide bombers. Palestine needs to have their half of the available land and then they need to go home and get away from Israel's half. Likewise Israel needs to stay away from and out of Palestine's land. Otherwise, this cycle of revenge will continue to be a cycle of death for all who take part.
Only we, the U.S., have the leverage to force the combatants to a truce. Israel would be gone in a minute if we abandoned them and they know it. The question is, does the Jewish bloc in Congress have the will to allow a peace by carving up their mother land? And the second question is, do we as a Christian nation have the wisdom to ask for it?
'Twas the night before Christmas, he stayed all alone,
In a one bedroom house made of plaster and stone.
I had come down the chimney with presents to give,
And to see just who in this home did live.
I looked all about, a strange sight I did see,
No tinsel, no presents, not even a tree.
No stocking by mantle, just boots filled with sand,
On the wall hung pictures of far distant lands.
With medals and badges, awards of all kinds,
A sober thought came through my mind.
For this house was different, it was dark and dreary,
I found the home of a soldier, once I could see clearly.
The soldier lay sleeping, silent, alone,
Curled up on the floor in this one bedroom home.
The face was so gentle, the room in such disorder.
Not how I pictured a United States soldier.
Was this the hero of whom I'd just read?
Curled up on a poncho, the floor for a bed?
I realized the families that I saw this night,
Owed their lives to these soldiers who were willing to fight.
Soon round the world, the children would play,
And grownups would celebrate a bright Christmas Day.
They all enjoyed freedom each month of the year,
Because of the soldiers, like the one lying here.
I couldn't help wonder how many lay alone,
On a cold Christmas Eve in a land far from home.
The very thought brought a tear to my eye,
I dropped to my knees and started to cry.
The soldier awakened and I heard a rough voice,
"Santa don't cry, this life is my choice;
I fight for freedom, I don't ask for more,
My life is my God, my country, my Corps."
The soldier rolled over and drifted to sleep,
I couldn't control it, I continued to weep.
I kept watch for hours, so silent and still
And we both shivered from the cold night's chill.
I didn't want to leave on that cold, dark night,
This guardian of honor so willing to fight.
Then the soldier rolled over, with a voice soft and pure,
Whispered, "Carry on Santa, it's Christmas Day, all is secure."
One look at my watch, and I knew he was right.
"Merry Christmas my friend, and to all a good night."
It took the Internet to jump-start MSNBC who then moved over to cable. But there was still an empty niche and it was an Australian who saw that the airways just might be paved with gold. Rupert Murdock came here to develop the Fox network into a media giant challenging the big three. He did it not by a frontal assault, but by the old-fashioned approach of providing a better product, especially in the news department. This has all come into focus with the writings of ex-CBS journalist Bernard Goldberg.
Goldberg was a long-time TV reporter for Dan Rather and became aware that a growing bias toward the liberal position was permeating news stories. He approached management about the apparent loss of objectivity and was rebuffed. So he wrote a guest editorial for The Wall Street Journal in 1996. He noted that when the reports are about conservative candidates, they are labeled "conservative" and that they have "schemes" and their programs are an "elixir" for living. Any mention of the Heritage Foundation adds the label "a conservative think tank" while the Brookings Institution is never called "a liberal think tank." When using known liberal experts they are always presented as having no ax to grind, whereas any conservative expert is always so identified. Candidate Steve Forbes' flat tax plan was labeled "wacky," whereas Hillary Clinton's health care plan was never called wacky on a CBS show. Such is not "all is fair at election time," a period when it is most important for the news reporting to be balanced. But in fact the unidentified bias is something that goes on every night of the year.
Goldberg does not believe the bias is deliberate, it is just the way the majority of media people think, and they believe they are the middle of the road. The only people they travel with are other New York media elites who all think the same. However, that song is not playing well out in the hinterland of the rest of the states which is why network viewing continues to fall. The anchors, producers, directors and journalists for ABC, CBS, NBC, and to a lesser extent CNN, slant the news to match their belief systems about such things as affirmative action, women's rights, AIDS, the Christian groups, gun control, child care, the homeless-you name it, there is a liberal viewpoint being expressed.
Such abandonment of objectivity has been noticed by the viewing public and given rise to talk radio and the Fox news in particular. Bill O'Reilly's rise to #1 has not gone without notice. He is a little rough around the edges and is somewhat abrasive, but you know you are going to get a fair shake and hear both sides of the issues on Fox, something you do not get on ABC, CBS and NBC.
As you can imagine Goldberg is no longer with CBS, but he has written a revealing behind-the-scenes look at how the news is put together. The book is called "Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News."
If you like to watch the news, the book will add an unexpected dimension to their reporting of the truth, their truth.