This should shock no one

A few thoughts about Stockton I wrote for Sunday's Recordhttp://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20140803/A_OPINION0604/408030315/0/SEARCH:

But what if they'd been Muslims?

A little Sunday morning snipping about the Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby ruling. http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20140706/A_OPINION0604/407060311/-1/A_OPINION

If only Gov. Perry had self-control he thinks gays lack

Texas Gov. Rick Perry had another "oops" moment last week when he compared being gay to being an alcoholic. It's all a matter of self-control, he said. Oh, and he said it in front of a San Francisco audience during a business recruiting trip.
Yeah, Gov, and blue eyes are a matter of self-control too.

 Gov. Rick Perry at the Iowa State Fair

But Perry is not one to miss a chance to double down on stupid remarks. Or perhaps just throw some red meat toward the Texas Republican Party that recently adopted a platform recognizing "reparative therapy" for gays. By the way, that "therapy" has been discouraged by the American Medical Association and outright banned by California and New Jersey (If Texas Republicans think "reparative therapy" can turn gays into straights, it follows that they must believe that the therapy can be crafted so that straights go gay. Somebody should ask).
Monday, Perry was on CNBC's "Squawk Box" where he was dismissive about the ire generated by his remarks before the Commonwealth Club of California.
"I understand," he said. "People have different opinions about that."
To Perry, being gay is a "lifestyle" -- perhaps, like being left-handed? -- that he said he does not "condone" nor "condemn."
And he insisted the issue of gay marriage is a states' rights issue (feel free to conjure your own code language here).
"Texas has made the decision on that already by a vote of over 75 percent," Perry said. "They said that marriage is between one man and one woman. And I respect that. And I respect whatever they want to do in California and New York."
Sure you do, governor. Intolerance and inequality are OK in Perry's world as long as supported by a majority vote.

Student loans get no credit from GOP

Senate Republicans this week blocked a measure that would have let students refinance their debt just like homeowners and businesses do every day.
The GOP leadership, in the person of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, complained that Sen. Elizabeth Warren's legislation did nothing to address student debt and in fact was nothing but an election-year ploy to make a campaign issue.
Of course, the Republicans didn't offer any legislative alternatives to address the crushing $1.2 trillion student loan debt that economists, real estate agents and bankers fear is hampering economic growth. The average student borrower now carries $25,000 in debt, a figure that increased 70 percent between 2004 and 2012.
Recent graduates struggling to pay their college loans likely aren't out buying cars or houses.


Sen. Elizabeth Warren               

Warren's bill would have let people with federal and private loans issued before 2010 refinance at 3.85 percent. That's the rate Congress set for federal student loans a year ago.
The proposal actually won a majority of Senate votes, 56. And three Republicans, Susan Collins of Maine, Bob Corker of Tennessee and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, voted with Democrats. But under the Senate's arcane rules, a majority isn't a majority. Warren needed 60 votes to advance the legislation.
Republicans simply weren't going to back a bill that called for a new tax on millionaires to offset the cost of lowering interest rates on students. Fine. Warren said she's willing to find other ways to pay for it. But from across the aisle her offer was met with silence.
Student debt is among the few things that can't be dismissed by bankruptcy, the theory being a lender can't repossess an education. That's fine too.
What's not fine is subsidizing businesses with tax dollars or loaning money to banks at virtually zero or allowing companies to avoid U.S. taxes by off-shoring their operations solely for the dodge. And it's not fine to do that while refusing to make low-cost loans available to the next generation of doctors, lawyers, teachers, engineers, academics and, ironically, business leaders.

Flood of children is another signal reform is needed

A humanitarian crisis is playing out along this nation's southern border. As many as 90,000 children are expected to cross into the United States this year, according to The Associated Press, most of them without their parents or other adults. For the most part, they are refugees from the horrors of their Central American homelands, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. These are countries plagued by poverty, drug and gang violence.
News reports about these children have again raised the issue of America's immigration policy. But no matter how desperate their plight, these youngsters have become the most recent pawn in the debate over one of our most politically divisive issues.
Look no further than Tuesday's defeat of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, ousted in the Virginia Republican primary by a tea party candidate who's never held elective office. Cantor's demise demonstrates how toxic immigration can be to a politician. Never mind that the nation's growing Hispanic population makes dealing with this issue politically inevitable.
Xenophobia, often fed by thinly-veiled racism, has a storied history in this nation. Virtually every immigrant group has faced it to some degree. We pride ourselves on being a nation of immigrants, a refuge for the tempest tossed, but when it comes down to it many Americans would be just as happy if the doors were slammed shut on newcomers and even happier if many the newly-arrived simply left.
Politicians long ago learned to cater to Americans' darker side and exploit our fears. They've long been helped by a cooperative media. But little in our national history -- not even when William Randolph Hearst controlled 25 percent of the nation's newspaper circulation -- compares to the torrent of fear-mongering flowing from FOX News. There is nothing fair or balanced or, often, even factual about the rabid-baiting analysis offered by Rupert Murdock's network commentators. That's what was so startling (and welcome) about what FOX's Brit Hume said Monday concerning those thousands of children now trapped in an immigration purgatory.

Brit Hume

Hume: "The immigrant children illegally crossing American borders by the thousands have triggered a logistical, humanitarian and law enforcement crisis to which current US immigration policy has no satisfactory answer. It may be tempting to call for their deportation but that ignores an important consideration: what the minor children most of them unaccompanied by adults had to go through just to get here. Nearly all are from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, three countries plagued by extraordinary levels of drug and gang violence. Honduras now has the highest per capita murder rate in the world.
"These kids are not so much immigrants as refugees who somehow had to make it here by crossing the treacherous terrain of Mexico, a harrowing journey of a thousand miles or more. If this country had an immigration policy that gave priority to those who had shown the personal wherewithal to succeed and contribute in this country we would find a way to keep these hearty and obviously capable kids. Remember how well the Vietnamese boat people have done in America, their mettle having been severely tested by their arduous journey here after the fall of Saigon in 1975.
"We should try to keep these immigrant children here not because it’s compassionate, though it is, but because it’s the smart and self-interested thing to do."
Bret Bair: "We hear Brit these towns and cities along the border, Arizona, talking about it, how they’re overwhelmed by this stuff."
Hume: "They are and that’s a very serious problem that must be dealt with on an emergency basis. But I have seen some of these kids. A youth home where I serve on the board here in Virginia has taken in dozens of them. They are remarkable kids from what I have seen of them. They are well behaved. When meals are served some of them weep at the fact that they’re eating better than their families can back home. They wait til all are served before they’ll eat. They turn up at prayer services. This is an extraordinary breed of young children. They potentially could make an enormous contribution to this country if we can find a way to house them and care for them and let them stay."
Americans can differ on immigration policy. You can quibble about Hume's analysis. But you can't argue with the fact that a healthy immigration debate is needed. America needs to find a practical, workable solution. Demonizing people who are different or hold different views advances nothing. Hume himself became a target by offering a more measured, humane view of some tempest tossed children.
Unfortunately, Cantor's defeat Tuesday likely signals to those leaning toward common-sense immigration reform that there is nothing to be gained by pushing the issue. And, sadly, it gave those opposed to any type of reform an even greater license to cater to our fears.

Love first, then patience, planning

Raising a disabled child can be so tough that financial challenges that are part of the deal are often ignored. They must not be.
http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20140608/A_OPINION0604/406080303/0/SEARCH …

State of Jefferson, state of frustration

Many residents of Del Norte and Tehama counties are upset, as in, "We're being ignored."
Nobody cares, they say, what they think or what they need, especially all the nobodies in Sacramento. Next week they will go to the polls and express their anger on an advisory measure that asks each county's board of supervisors to join a wider effort to form the nation's 51st state.


Signs such as this dot the extreme north state.

Elected officials in Glenn, Modoc, Siskiyou and Yuba counties already have voted to join the movement. Butte County supervisors will vote June 10. Boards in several other north state counties are awaiting the results of the Del Norte and Tehama votes before deciding what to do.
Backers want to form the state of Jefferson. In fact, in Siskiyou County, voters on Tuesday will decide whether they want to rename their county the Republic of Jefferson.
What's going on?
Consider just one fact: Del Norte and Tehama counties have a combined population of just 91,000 residents. In California, there are 62 cities with populations of more than 100,000 people. Not one of those cities is north of Sacramento (OK, Roseville, population 105,940, is slightly northeast of the capital city, but don't try that argument out in, say, Red Bluff or Yreka).
In what the north-staters longingly consider the good old days, each county used to have a state senator. That all ended in the mid-1960s with the Supreme Court's one-man-one-vote decision that apportioned the state's upper chamber by population rather than by geography.
Eleven north state counties now share one state senator. The greater Los Angeles area has 20 and the San Francisco Bay Area has 10.
In terms of getting their voices heard by elected officials, the plight of north state residents might be compared to that of, oh, most Americans. Increasingly, only the rich, urban and powerful get their voices heard in Washington. A good number of north state residents are poor, rural and, certainly in their view, powerless. Oh, and north state residents are overwhelmingly white so some might draw other conclusions about what's going on.
Rules are made and laws passed without any consideration for how they will affect them, Jefferson state backers say. The north state has much of California's forest and farm land, its minerals and its water, but north state residents have little say over those assets (by that logic, perhaps the state should be split at San Joaquin County's southern border and then Gov. Jerry Brown can try to find another freshwater estuary to tunnel under). It's an argument hard to dispute.
On the other hand, it also is hard to dispute the logic of the one-man-one-vote court ruling. If you were a resident of Los Angeles in 1960, population 6 million, having one state senator seemed unfair given that Tehama County, population 25,000, also had one state senator. Back then, a Los Angeles resident could reasonably argue a resident of Red Bluff had a louder voice in Sacramento.
The argument can be made that all states have two U.S. senators so why not one state senator for each county? But that's based on the premise that the relationship between the counties and the state is the same as between the state and the nation. It is not, and that reality makes it highly unlikely the one-man-one-vote ruling will be reversed.
So, what to do?
North state counties say the only solution is succession from California. Forgetting for the moment the highly complex financial and logistical problems of slicing off the north, there are the political realities.
Under the U.S. Constitution, separation requires a vote of the state Legislature -- where north-staters say they don't have a voice -- and the U.S. Congress, where increasingly Americans don't have a voice unless they also happen to be American billionaires.
The reality is this Jefferson state movement is going nowhere. Some of the arguments backers make are reasonable and their frustrations legitimate, but reason and legitimacy have little to do with political reality. Short of armed rebellion -- and those haven't worked out too well in the past -- statehood is a pipe dream.