On the afternoon of September 24th, UC Berkeley history professor Heath Pearson gave his routine lecture on the history of economic thought to an emptier than usual room. The LeConte auditorium contained roughly 80 students of the 135 enrolled in the course, indicating an absence rate usually seen only the day before the University breaks for Thanksgiving. So where were all the students?

It is estimated that 4,000 UC Berkeley workers, faculty, graduate students and community members gathered around midday on Sproul Plaza to protest a variety of recent administrative decisions made in the wake of state-wide budget cuts. The campus wide “walkout” was part of a broader walkout movement by all ten UC campuses with the purpose of sending a strong message to University administrators and state legislators. The movement began when the University Professional and Technical Employees (UTPE) urged faculty and students to stay away from campus on the 24th, except to attend the various picket lines and rallies held throughout the day. The walkout, which was scheduled to coincide with the first day of instruction at eight out of the 10 UC campuses, came several weeks into Cal’s fall semester.

Students attending the eight UC campuses with the late September start date stood only to miss the largely superfluous first day of instruction and their professors had time to plan accordingly. At Cal, on the other hand, classes were held on a case by case basis, with the decision to hold class left to the professor.

Some, including Pearson, were forced to rearrange midterm dates just days before the event. Pearson made the decision to postpone a midterm scheduled for the day of the event, but told students that they were still accountable for material covered on that day.

“I wouldn’t call it fair but I would call it acceptable,” Pearson said. “People who walked out of class today are going to pay a price because they missed out on what I consider to be important course material, but it’s not the kind of price that says ‘Guess what, you just got a zero for 25% of the course,’ which I think would be really punitive for people who are following their conscience.”

Jing Jing, an undergraduate business student enrolled in Pearson’s class had to weigh her options before making a decision. “I support the cause,” Jing said. “I considered not going to class, but we have a midterm on Tuesday.” Others, like third-year student Theresa Diederich, felt that the event was important enough to justify her absence. “The class I’m missing is economic history [not Pearson’s course] and I think that this is history dealing very clearly with economics. Here’s a chance to participate in something that I’m learning about.” She said that her participation mostly had to do with a lack of transparency in the University’s financial decision-making.

Pearson’s decision to hold class was not meant as a political statement in opposition to the walkout. Rather, he endorses civil disobedience as an effective method of human progress and acknowledges the need for real financial reform at a University and statewide level. Pearson is doubtful, though, of the walkout. That is, he is skeptical whether progress can be made by actively walking out on the resources of the University in order to make a statement about needing more resources. He sees a danger in how the walkout might be perceived by California voters. “I just don’t think this is the right way to pursue the political agenda that they have,” Pearson said.

Reasons for attendance at the protest on Sproul were as varied as the participants. Canvassers took advantage of the crowds by distributing literature on causes ranging from feminism to communism. There were, however, common threads among the hundreds in attendance. UC President Yudof was the target of chants calling for his firing and his salary ($828,000 per year) was frequently cited on handouts and signs. “I know there are news teams everywhere. I just want to show everyone that we care, to show the President that we’re really pissed off,” said Jaffer Kattan, another third year in attendance, referring to Yudof.

Widespread anger flared up among students, staff and faculty in July, following the UC Regents decision to slash $813 million from the $3 billion the University gets from the state each year. The Board of Regents, in conjunction with Yudof, voted to cut pay almost across the board and to require additional furlough days for workers and faculty, seeing that it would be preferable to massive lay-offs.

While Yudof was a primary target during the rallies, he claims that he is not the true culprit. “This is a long-term secular trend across the entire country. Higher education is being squeezed out. It’s systemic,” said Yudof in a New York Times interview that ran the day of the walkout.

State lawmakers, headed by the Democratic Senate President pro tem Darrell Steinberg and Democratic Speaker of the Assembly Karen Bass, cut $9 billion from education, including $2 billion from higher education, in an attempt to make up for the $26 billion shortfall caused by increasing costs and declining state revenues.

Diederich was one in attendance who did not rush to blame Yudof, saying, “I’m not proposing at this point that we should just cut it from the top [University administrators] automatically or that there shouldn’t be some sort of fee increases. Obviously everyone needs to feel this budget crisis, but I don’t think that there has been enough open discussion at this point about where that money needs to come from and how much actually needs to be cut to make these broad-sweeping and long-lasting decisions.”

In spite of inconveniences to class schedules, Berkeley’s campus protest was the largest of all of the UC campuses, reaffirming the city’s long-standing reputation as a bastion of political activism 45 years after the famous Free Speech Movement student protests.

Democrats in particular have bristled at the term, arguing that they are not “nationalizing” health care, but are simply providing a “government-run public option”. But socialism means more than government owning an industry outright. Socialism is a politico-economic system in which costs – and decision-making – are spread across society. The current “reforms” socialize costs and economic decisions, and the proper term for that is socialism. The least that “reformers” can do is have the intellectual integrity to call it as it is. But whatever the merits or demerits of their prolific labels, Republicans on the whole have not been anywhere near as vocal in promoting a positive agenda – that is, assessing the real problems in the health care system and offering a solution.

The first step is to recognize that many of the problems in our health care system have nothing to do with the federal government. In fact, the Congress has no constitutional authority to legislate anything related to health care. The sources of many of our health care system’s problems are at the state level: state legislators and insurance commissioners have imposed controls harassing insurers, health co-ops, charities, group practitioners, and doctors. If real reform is the objective, state government is where the lion’s share of the work is. If health care becomes a federal issue, the only practical effects will be that the federal government becomes more involved in local issues, reducing the responsiveness of the medical system, increasing administrative costs, and diminishing individual freedom.

Medicine is one of the only professions without transparency in billing; medical providers do not list the prices for their services before consumers buy them, so consumers do not have the necessary information to make proper choices. Improving visibility would ensure that people’s decisions to buy health care reflect economic realities.

One of the greatest improvements that could be made in insurance, as bad as it sounds, is to allow insurance companies to discriminate. Government requires that insurance companies use “community pricing”, which means that individuals must pay the same for insurance regardless of their risk categories. Age, gender, ethnicity, hobbies, employments, drug use, diet, exercise, and many other factors influence which health problems a person is likely to have, but insurance companies’ discrimination between these real health factors is legally forbidden. Young individuals with healthy lifestyles thus have artificially high insurance costs. This prices many of them out of the insurance market, leaving them uninsured and so further increases the price for others. As far as insurance markets are concerned, discrimination is a good thing. Insurance is a financial instrument for spreading unpredictable, catastrophic loss. If someone is known to be high risk, it makes no sense to pool them with low risk individuals because prices will not reflect costs, and the market will not function effectively. When insurance markets are free to discriminate among real risk categories, prices for each group more accurately reflect their real economic costs, and prices, on the average, fall.

Because the elderly and unhealthy are effectively subsidized by community pricing, they benefit greatly when this policy is a universal requirement. The core of the “individual mandate” to buy health insurance is not “individual responsibility” for each individual’s costs, but is an attempt to force those who are disadvantaged by community pricing to subsidize those who benefit, regardless of the real costs for either group, and with flagrant disregard to the consequences, both personal and economic, of such an action.

Licensing laws in insurance have prevented doctors from using innovative, low-cost payment plans for medical services to the poor. They have also prevented extremely effective Christian community groups from formalizing their pooling of medical expenses under a contract; thereby denying them market presence and reducing their efficiency and service. Doing away with these laws would create an environment in which insurers, doctors, co-ops, and charities can devise new, efficient services and introduce more competition in the insurance industry.

Medical licensing has also contributed greatly to the expense of medical care. By forbidding anyone other than a licensed provider from giving medical care, the government and the American Medical Association together restrict the number of doctors, reducing supply and driving up prices. It also leads to “gold plating” of medical care, where doctors must be present to diagnose and treat ailments, even when a nurse, technician, or pharmacist is perfectly competent to judge and implement the appropriate treatment. This does more than cause consumers to spend money needlessly: it also consumes more of the doctor’s time, resulting in lower quality and greater costs to those who need the doctor’s attention most. Perhaps the worst effect is when there is no doctor present at all, where paramedics or technicians might have been present to give aid, but were not due to licensing laws that impeded their training or employment. There is no way to calculate this hidden cost. Removing medical licensing laws would instantly increase medical supply and reduce costs in both wealth and human life.

Of course, safety in medicine is valuable. Instead of paternalistic licensing laws that presume consumers are incompetent to choose their medical providers, we could just as well have certification – a government or private organization (such as a university) verifying that a prospective doctor had the skills necessary to his work. Citizens would be able to base their judgments accordingly, rather than being preemptively prohibited from choosing a doctor without the right piece of paper.

Eliminating minimum benefits packages would do a great deal to improve the health care system. Every state has laws requiring insurance companies to cover certain expenses in all their plans, from chiropractors to in vitro fertilization to alcohol and drug rehabilitation. Sometimes these laws also require that the insurance have a low-deductible to reduce out of pocket expenses (but increase premiums). These laws are sold to the public under the guise of giving people some degree of security. But the same people must pay for that security, whether they consider it worth it or not. Pre-natal care and rehabilitation are of no use to a single teetotaler, and requiring him to pay for it will only drive up the cost, either reducing his standard of life or driving him out of the insurance market altogether. Eliminating these minimum benefits packages would allow individuals to purchase only the coverage they want.

Once states have removed their counterproductive insurance regulations, there will be far fewer barriers to interstate trade, which is limited due to the number and variety of state regulations. If these regulations are both minimized and standardized, over 1,000 insurance providers will be able to expand their markets to the entire nation, breaking apart local monopolies and bringing competition to urban areas, which are currently dominated by a select handful of insurers. The federal government can do its part to abolish existing federal limitations on interstate financial services such as insurance.

The federal government can also improve health care through our international trade relations. Although businesses in the United States are the primary innovators in medical technology and pharmaceuticals, we pay the highest prices, in part, because other countries impose price controls. However, price controls do not actually lower costs; they are simply efforts to avoid paying them. American consumers must pay artificially high costs to pay for development of new drugs, while foreigners pay little more than the cost of manufacture. Allowing drug reimportation from these countries will effectively import their price controls, but only to the extent that pharmaceutical companies choose to sell to such countries. This will pressure pharmaceutical companies to reject other countries’ controls, making foreigners responsible for the real cost of drugs if they wish to benefit from the advances of American medicine. Such a move would greatly increase economic freedom around the globe while lowering our medical expenses.

The next step for both state and federal governments is to end tax exemptions for fringe benefits. This system was originally the product of World War II’s price controls, which forbade paying workers more than a certain amount. To circumvent the price controls, companies gave their employees fringe benefits like health care, which tax laws do not consider income. These benefits are income, however, just not income that employees have control over. This lack of control, combined with the employer’s standardization of health insurance plans, significantly reduces efficiency – people don’t get the insurance they want and are willing to pay for, they get the insurance they’re given. Furthermore, employer provision of health insurance leads to the disastrous situation in which a worker simultaneously loses his job and health coverage, ensuring that an ailing worker’s layoff will mean financial catastrophe. It also means that people go without coverage for the duration of their unemployment, so that an ailment that develops during the unemployment becomes a “pre-existing condition” that insurance companies will refuse to cover. By simultaneously reducing the personal tax rate and removing these exemptions, employers would drop their insurance plans while raising workers’ wages, allowing them to enjoy the same standard of living while obtaining their insurance independently of their employers. Since consumers, not their employers, would be buying the insurance, they would be able to select a plan that better meets their individual needs, giving them the opportunity to buy more or less coverage as they see fit. And it would increase the portability of insurance, so consumers would be able to take their insurance with them even if they move or change jobs, so consumers would never need to go without coverage.

Drug costs could be easily reduced by reducing the scope of the FDA, whose benefits have not justified its costs. One of the proudest achievements of the FDA was the blocking of thalidomide, which was marketed as a remedy for morning sickness in Europe and caused terrible birth defects. The ban, combined with the disaster in Europe, was taken as evidence that the FDA was doing its job well, but for every thalidomide, there are many legitimate, effective drugs that have been kept off the market or abandoned, and many diseases that have long gone ignored, their cures never researched in the first place. Even the “harmful” drugs currently banned by the FDA are not necessarily bad. Thalidomide has uses that extended beyond morning sickness: since it prevents angiogenesis – blood vessel formation – it can arrest the growth of some cancers. It can also be used as a remedy for skin conditions, including leprosy, and diseases such as macular degeneration.

The FDA adds hundreds of millions of dollars and about a ten year delay to the marketing of new drugs. The expense means the drugs that are researched are ones which are intended for huge segments of the population, and even if a drug is exceptionally effective for other diseases, it is abandoned simply because the number of people it reaches is minimal. The cost of the FDA is far more than the billions lost in the approval process – it includes the very real cost in human lives from the reduced research efforts of pharmaceutical companies and the death toll of terminally ill patients that could have benefited from experimental drugs that were blocked from the general public during their development phase. An overhaul of the FDA’s regulations, including limiting its power to keep drugs off the market, would stimulate research efforts, providing consumers with more effective medicines for a greater number of diseases, make many drugs available for immediate use, and drastically reduce the cost of medicine.

Opponents of this will point out that unscrupulous companies will put harmful drugs on the market and advertise them as beneficial; this is fraud, and can be prosecuted as such, rather than creating an arbitrary regulation that pushes out beneficial drugs at the same time.

One of the more overlooked issues is the corporate income tax. One of its consequences is that charities must devote considerable time and expense to demonstrate their nonprofitable, secular, charitable nature to the IRS. Some charities undoubtedly find the expense to be greater than they value assisting others, and are thus artificially barred from their charitable activities. Those that do still exist become less efficient in providing charity because some of their wealth and effort is devoted to satisfying the IRS rather than fulfilling their mission. As far as real corporations are concerned, the corporate income tax is one of the most economically damaging taxes around, especially considering its low revenue. This tax is passed on to consumers, increasing medical costs by a substantial margin. Removing the corporate income tax would end some anti-charity policy bias and significantly reduce insurance, pharmaceutical, and practitioner costs.

Finally, Medicare and Medicaid should be phased out due to the sheer number and proportion of problems. Proponents point to the fact that Medicare and other socialized health care systems are more efficient by virtue of the fact that they do not seek profits and have lower administration costs. But since they do not seek profits and have their losses subsidized, they have no incentive to be efficient or control costs. Benefits are administered on a fee-for-service basis and has no ability to deny low value, inefficient services. Nor is their administration really less costly. Their claims are computerized and automatically approved without human oversight, lowering nominal costs but giving rise to rampant fraud: unscrupulous individuals can easily charge to Medicare with little possibility of detection. A former fraud investigator in New York estimated fraud for the state was about 40% of all charges. This cost greatly exceeds any potential benefit of reduced administrative costs. Furthermore, Medicare draws almost $200 billion annually from the general fund, indicating that premiums and Medicare-specific taxes are insufficient to cover its expenses. If a cost is paid through taxes, it has not decreased; it is simply hidden from consumers. The economic damage stemming from Medicare taxes, supplementary taxes, borrowing, and the administration of taxes, is often ignored in considering Medicare’s economic footprint. Studies show that the “deadweight loss” of Medicare – the extent to which Medicare hurts our economy – amounts to about one third of every dollar spent on the program. Medicare and Medicaid chronically undercompensate physicians, leaving them to refuse to serve the elderly or to shift their costs to the privately insured, driving the expense of private insurance up and availability down.

Still, proponents of the system claim that it is an astounding success, as measured by the number of elderly who are enrolled in it. This conveniently omits discussion of the relative costs involved, and of the fact that under current law, the elderly must enroll in Medicare or lose their Social Security benefits. This is an injustice on a titanic scale: the elderly are to be taxed over 14% of their entire life’s income for literally no benefit, unless they restrict their choice of medical care and impose a greater tax burden on younger generations. If the elderly are forced into Medicare, the number of elderly enrolled is meaningless.

If a gradual abolition of Medicare and Medicaid proves to be politically unfeasible, at the very least Congress could enable the elderly to opt out and authorize administrative reforms that would add oversight and reduce fraud.

The effect of these reforms will be to have prices reflect economic realities, extending coverage and reducing average costs. Consumers would have greater freedom of contract, giving them a more portable, flexible, and efficient insurance. They would also benefit from increased supply of medical professionals, technology, and pharmaceuticals. Most importantly, these proposals recognize every person’s inalienable right to his own life, which is more than can be said of current reform efforts.

Senator Leno, who takes pride in being the first openly gay man to serve in the state senate, may be referring to Milk’s perceived legacy as a trailblazer and martyr of the LGBT movement. Milk shattered a perceived barrier for gays, becoming the first openly gay politician elected in the United States. In November of 1978, former Supervisor Dan White assassinated both Milk and Mayor George Moscone.

Milk’s instantaneous martyr status spurred San Francisco’s gay community to “come out,” but in a manner that was less than peaceful. In May of 1979, White was sentenced for the voluntary manslaughter of both Milk and Moscone. Homosexual activists, who had deemed the sentencing as discriminatory and overly lenient, took to the streets of San Francisco and initiated the violence now known as the “White Night Riots.” This vigilante reaction caused the city hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of damage, as well as various injuries to both police officers and rioters. Similar forms of hostility reemerged in 2008, when supporters of Proposition 8 became the victims of vandalism and verbal and physical abuse at the hands of gay activists. Perhaps in Leno’s mind, this sort of aggressive lawlessness constitutes a legacy worth celebrating.

But what about Harvey Milk himself – are his deeds worth emulating? Here’s a sampling of some of his lesser known actions:

• Milk was a sexual predator of minors. At age 33, Harvey Milk had an ongoing homosexual relationship with an adolescent named Jack McKinley: “…sixteen-year-old old McKinley was looking for some kind of father figure…within a few weeks, McKinley moved into Harvey Milk’s Upper West Side apartment and settled into a middle class domestic marriage. At thirty-three, Milk was launching a new life, though he could hardly have imagined the unlikely direction toward which his new lover would pull him” (Source: Randy Shilts, The Mayor of Castro Street, pp. 30-31).

• After Milk and McKinley’s relationship had ended, Milk coldly dismissed a suicide threat from his former lover: “…the phone rang. As soon as Harvey heard the voice, he rolled his eyes impatiently at Jim. ‘It’s Jack McKinley,’ he said. He paused and listened further. ‘He says he’s going to kill himself.’…‘Tell him not to make a mess,’ Harvey deadpanned. Jack hung up” (Source: Randy Shilts, The Mayor of Castro Street, p. 126).

Milk advocated having several uncommitted sexual relationships at the same time, saying, “As homosexuals, we can’t depend on the heterosexual model. We should be developing our own life-style. There’s no reason why you can’t love more than one person at a time” (Source: Randy Shilts, The Mayor of Castro Street, p. 237-238).

• Milk publicly lied about his military career for many years: “He had not suffered this disgrace, he told a later campaign manager, but he knew the story would make good copy. If anyone said something to Harvey about his fondness for such stunts, he would gesture wildly as he launched into a lecture. ‘Symbols, symbols, symbols,’ he insisted. Sure, he had not been kicked out of the military…The point of the story was to let people know that service people routinely do get kicked out. Besides, he once confided, ‘Maybe people will read it, feel sorry for me, and then vote for me’” (Randy Shilts, The Mayor of Castro Street, p. 78-79).

• Milk called cult leader Jim Jones (of Jonestown Massacre, “Don’t Drink the Kool-Aid” infamy) “a man of the highest character.” Milk also lobbied President Jimmy Carter to let Jones have custody of a six-year-old boy, who Jones later poisoned (Source: Harvey Milk letter to President Jimmy Carter, Feb. 19, 1978).

This is the gritty truth of the man who Senator Leno would like to have glorified before California’s schoolchildren. What’s worse is that schools would be encouraged to adopt “Harvey Milk Day” into their curriculum every May 22 (Milk’s birthday) without parental consent. Parents may then have to choose between having their children miss a complete day of education or have them forced to sit through indoctrination that goes against the family’s moral values. In this way, we will continue to see the erosion of parents’ rights to be the primary educators of their children in all matters, especially those pertaining to the instillation of morality. We must ask ourselves whether Sacramento politicians want the public education system to be a partner with parents in creating the next generation of an educated and well-prepared America, or if they seek to have the system compete with parents by exposing children to a controversial social agenda that may be against a family’s core beliefs.

Though Gov. Schwarzenegger had already vetoed this same legislation in October of 2008, Senator Leno has proved to be determined enough to push on until California students are subjected to learn about this hero of the gay community. If Harvey Milk is a “hero”, one can only hope that pedophilia, lying in order to get ahead, indifference in the face of tragic death, and misrepresentations of character will not become the newest “virtues.”

1. Supreme Court Hears Case against Campaign Finance Laws

The Supreme Court recently heard Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, a case that might potentially overturn many government restrictions on politically-oriented speech, and Justice Sotomayor’s first case. Chief Justice Roberts expressed hostility to the government’s argument, declaring “we don’t put our First Amendment rights in the hands of FEC bureaucrats”. Sotomayor, meanwhile, expressed her opinion that corporations have rights under the First Amendment. She also affirmed her strong commitment to stare decisis, upholding precedent on the grounds that past judgments should be followed even when constitutional decisions might be wrong. At the same time, she expressed approval toward deferring to the “democratic process”,
suggesting that she will not be friendly toward liberty in the face of government “reforms”.

2. Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize

Obama won instant fame – and infamy, even among Democrats – after the announcement that he had won the Nobel Peace Prize. The fourth president to win the Prize, he is the first to do so in his first year in office, and also the first to do so without having accomplished anything of importance. Obama himself affirmed that the award was not “a recognition of [his] own accomplishments”. While the Nobel Committee praised Obama for his vision of a nuclear-free world and his speeches on peace, unity, and internationalism, they conveniently ignored his real actions, including – among other things – tariffs on Chinese tires, which indicate his opposition to free trade, and demonstrate that he and the Nobel Committee believe that international goodwill is somehow served by restrictions on voluntary interactions between citizens of different nations. Ironically, immediately after accepting the Peace Prize, he met with military advisers to discuss the deployment of an additional 60,000 troops in Afghanistan.

3. FOX News Host Braves Berkeley

Greg Gutfeld, host of FOX News Channel’s Red Eye w/ Greg Gutfeld, returned to Cal Saturday, October 17, after graduating in 1987. The former editor in chief of Stuff, Men’s Health, and Maxim’s UK edition, Gutfeld encouraged students to get jobs after they graduate and to think of every job as a learning experience that will pay off in the end.

After landing a respectable internship at a leading conservative news magazine upon graduation, Gutfeld claims he was really just the guy running his boss’s errands. But having “never quit a job” in his life, and rather by getting fired each time, Gutfeld now hosts the leading cable news show in the 3AM time slot. Go Bears!

4. Conservative Comedian Targets UC Berkeley

Rising conservative comedian Steven Crowder visited UC Berkeley last month to gauge the political bias (and ignorance) on campus. His results were unsurprising. While students overwhelmingly selected Abraham Lincoln as their favorite president, very few were able to identify the first Republican president’s party affiliation. None of the interviewed students were able to identify the Federal Reserve as the cause of the Great Depression, nor the wartime inflation as its ultimate end, nor even the name of Roosevelt’s New Deal. Students were also filmed asking why rigorous proof was necessary in argument (“It’s like, why prove it? I believe you.”), promoting revisionist history regarding African slave-trading, and politicizing the death of Ted Kennedy. It’s a shame Crowder was unable to find any conservatives to show that we do exist, even in the heart of the Left Coast.

5. Daily Cal Hires Conservative Columnist

Senior Roman Zhuk, 19, currently writes as The Daily Californian’s Wednesday columnist, bringing a much needed and admirably articulate conservative point of view to the campus daily. Although the newspaper has had its share of politically charged liberal columnists, the last and perhaps most laughable being the columnist of Thursday’s print edition this summer, Zhuk’s online column is a refreshing start to a more current, diverse, and interesting Daily Californian. Check out his weekly column featured every Wednesday on the Daily Cal Web site.

The bill should be opposed simply because it is illegal. The Constitution of the United States declares, in no uncertain terms, that “No State shall…coin Money; emit Bills of Credit…” The State of Missouri had once attempted to issue an interest-bearing certificate that could be used in payment of state taxes; this policy was struck down by the Supreme Court as an unconstitutional bill of credit. For California to do the exact same thing indicates our legislature’s ignorance of both the legal framework they should be intimately familiar with and the critical importance of rule of law in legal, social, and economic stability.

No doubt there are those who defend AB 1506, and other unconstitutional acts, by asserting that in a crisis environment we ought to do “what works” rather than “what’s legal”. This interpretation of a constitution as a “living document” in fact ensures that it is a dead document, a piece of paper outlining no principles, no objective standards, and no rights. This sort of “pragmatism”, far from doing what works, undermines everything that enables the system to work. Without objective standards in law, every action becomes arbitrary, and no one can rely on a stable, objective government. The government cannot protect rights when rights are a matter of convenience instead of a matter of principle.

The political consequences of the bill are, however, far more than undermining “abstract” legal principles such as rule of law: this bill actively encourages the growth of the state, and its debt. When bonds can be used as payment, they become in effect money that bears interest. Every citizen would thus have an economic incentive to convert their cash into government bonds, propping up a fundamentally insolvent government. Not only would this exacerbate the state’s fundamental problem, debt financing, it would give the state a cash infusion that would allow it to enforce ever more regulations on our economy and our personal choices. Thus, a bill intended to ensure that bondholders can recover the money they put into the state treasury will in fact put the state in worse financial condition, all the while enabling it to become more intrusive in citizens’ daily lives.

There are considerable economic consequences as well. The aforementioned increase in regulations can only serve to further disrupt a fragile economy. The US has enough experience with economic bubbles causing great pain that we ought not to rush into another one. And since this would make bonds become more liquid – they could be converted to money more easily – the state will run into problems when its bond rating decreases. In such a case, citizens will be unwilling to hold bonds; some will be attempting to sell or use the bonds they hold, while others will refuse to buy bonds due to the increased risk. This means that the state will periodically have fiscal crises where many people try to redeem bonds and the state will be unable to issue replacements.

AB 1506 will do far more harm than good. If the legislature truly wishes to reduce debt, protect bondholders, and strengthen the economy, its only reasonable course of action is to cut taxes, regulations, and spending.

Glad to be back for our Fall issue of the California Patriot! After some technical difficulties, we finally have the poll up and running and we encourage you to go back to our Web site, www.CaliforniaPatriot.org, and cast your vote. You will find another poll topic in this edition as well. We are selling advertising space on our Web site, so if you are interested, please fill out the cutout located towards the back of the magazine if you have a company logo or message you would like to have uploaded onto our site.

This issue, we decided to take a closer look at the controversial topic of health care reform in the United States. President Obama has called for change (not altogether different from his campaign rhetoric), and Congress has been at work to make some alterations to the system, so we wanted to get feedback at the ground level. We interviewed students ranging the political spectrum, and, as predicted, we received a wide range of opinions for you to observe. We would love to get your opinion on the matter as well, so please visit us at www.CaliforniaPatriot.org and cast your vote on health care!

We have a lot of other intriguing pieces in here as well. Alex Dubin writes a letter to the Republican Party on behalf of its constituents calling for their own reform and how to be competitive with the Democratic Party once again. Also included is a story about the UC Walkout. As covered on the news, over 4,000 students, faculty, and community members protested the recent budget cuts in a campus-wide walkout last month. You’ll find Charlie Deist’s coverage of the walkout.

We hope you all enjoy this issue and thank you for your continuing support. Go Bears (especially for the upcoming Big Game)!

Your Compatriot,

Something’s different with you. Barack Obama campaigned for “Change” last year, and it’s doubtless that you’ve done just that over the past few years. I don’t recognize you anymore, and I don’t really seem to understand what you’ve become and why. I’m upset that you don’t see what current ills you sometimes bring to the conservative movement, and how you could improve if you were just guided in the right direction.

Why do your representatives, senators, and governors continue to taint the party with inconsistencies and questionable ethics? You promote the sanctity of marriage, yet South Carolina governor Mark Sanford waltzes off to a woman in the southern hemisphere. You portray homosexuality as immoral, yet Idaho senator Larry Craig solicits a Minneapolis police officer for some airport bathroom fun. And you strive to attract excited young Republicans, since the party won’t survive without young blood; yet Florida representative Mark Foley sends sexually explicit texts to 14-year-old former pages.

I often open the New York Times and scan the Internet news headlines. Whenever I see an uncovered scandal involving a politician, as I look for the party affiliation, I hope, no, I pray, that it wasn’t a Republican. It too frequently is. Nevada senator John Ensign’s affair was the last one, right? But within a week, there was another scandal, with another Republican. Mark Sanford was just in the Appalachians taking some time off. Maybe his job was stressful, and the stimulus package had taken too much out of him. These are not excuses. True, Democrats have their scandals too; Spitzer and Edwards were atrocious. But our own hypocrisy won’t lead us to power.

Interrupting a major presidential address isn’t the way to gain support either. Yes, Joe Wilson was inappropriate. Wilson’s outburst interrupting the president’s speech has no place in a serious deliberation about a critical issue. His break of decorum highlights his own character, not his grievances; he not only angers the electorate, but also casts doubt onto the character of the entire party. Expressing discontent is better manifested through some other means.

It is true; Jimmy Carter and the House used poor judgment in tying in racism and formally condemning Wilson, respectively. But if we don’t look at ourselves, then we miss the point entirely. We lost power because we became unpopular. And we certainly will remain powerless if we become more so. Winning back power will require far more than becoming the best alternative: it demands that we follow a consistent, principled ideology and take on the responsibility of a positive agenda rather than merely obstructing a worse one. It doesn’t mean the whole party needs to change ideology, but we need to find someone, some vibrant, young, excited Republican, who can become the new face of our movement. He or she can’t be involved in a scandal, hold views too far away from the center, or flip-flop. Neither can this new face speak to the entire nation via a State-of-the-Union response as if we were all in elementary school (Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal), or lack the common sense to say Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death was imminently approaching (Sen. Jim Bunning of Kentucky), to list just one ridiculous Republican comment.

Give Paul Ryan of Wisconsin ten years. Give Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota five years. Heck, take Eric Cantor of Virginia now. But we need that new, fresh, young, moderate face. That means dropping the people commonly considered the face of the Republican Party. Sarah Palin is simply unelectable. She’s a young, excited politician, but she’s too far right-wing and has neither the intellectual nor philosophic credentials to gain political power. Other firebrands continue to destroy the very fabric that built up the party in the 1990s and early 2000s. How is Rush Limbaugh still preaching his hateful language as a public figure of the Republican Party? How is Dick Cheney still allowed to speak for the Party? It seems as if every time he opens his mouth, our poll ratings take a plunge. Palin, Limbaugh, and Cheney all have one attribute in common: they merely mark Republicans as undesirable.

GOP, you must admit times have changed, and by change in this sense, I mean permanent change. You must face reality. And one of the cornerstones of this permanent change involves science. You must stop campaigning against global warming. There is a consensus that global warming is both real and man-made, and a fight here will either lead to alienating mainstream voters or risking permanent environmental damage. Hopefully, a commitment to alternative energy will both enable us to stop warming and allow us to discontinue oil purchases from OPEC.

Just as you can’t campaign against science and expect to win, you can’t lead with religion. It can be one element of your campaign (Mike Huckabee), but you can’t carry yourself with it. Doing so merely concedes that your opponent has reason on his side. Any policy must be defensible on rational grounds, not because of the dictates of religion or intuition. You may want to review your push for creationism in public schools; our party is frequently ridiculed by our opponents over that debate with evolution. Religion has done a lot of good, but it cannot be the cornerstone of a political movement.

Moderation is key. Stick to the center, regain popularity, and then spend some political capital further right. You can’t run a campaign on the far-right just after you’ve emerged from the 43rd presidency with record disapproval levels. Which is why John McCain, the most centrist candidate, was a decent choice for your nominee last year. Palin was wrong, however. With a more sensible VP, like Pawlenty, Republicans could have attracted more moderate voters, without sacrificing the religious right, which is more compatible with McCain than Obama. To vote for Obama would have been out of the question, and to stay home in protest and let Obama win would have just been foolish.

The midterm elections are approaching, and now is the time to adapt yourself to the changing political scene. We have a chance. Americans are losing faith in Obamacare. Here’s your opportunity to shine. Come up with your own solution. Stop just obstructing Democrat proposals about any issue and then slouching back and remaining idle. Come up with alternatives. Tell the American people why they should put the conservative movement back in power. Give them more of a reason to support you.

I want to conclude this letter by advising you to ease your criticism of President Obama. Deep down at heart, you cannot want him to fail. If you did, you would be placing party before country, and that is unacceptable. Obama is still a brilliant man and a skilled politician. Politely disagree with his policies, argue your opposing beliefs on Capitol Hill and among the public, and hope that upcoming elections will bring about gains for conservatives. But please, do not hope Obama fails as a president; to do so is to hope America fails. My fellow Republicans, let’s emerge out of this recession stronger, fresher, and reformed, so that we may one day have a chance to lead in Washington again.

Sincerely,
Alex Dubin, a UC Berkeley conservative

California state law currently bans using scores to measure teacher’s performance, a position U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan called “absurd” and “ridiculous”, according to a July 24, 2009 piece in the Los Angeles Times. “No one in California can tell you which teacher is in which category,” the paper quotes Duncan as saying. “Something is wrong with that picture.”

The administration’s position continues a trend for Obama in supporting merit pay for teachers. Obama supported it during his campaign for the presidency and reiterated his stance in a speech on March 10th of this year to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. “From the moment students enter a school, the most important factor in their success is not the color of their skin or the income of their parents, it’s the person standing at the front of the classroom,” he said. Explaining his education plan, Obama said, “New teachers will be mentored by experienced ones. Good teachers will be rewarded with more money for improved student achievement, and asked to accept more responsibilities for lifting up their schools.”

The president’s remarks have drawn the ire of teachers unions, however, most of whom supported Obama during the presidential race. “To be perfectly honest, it’s disappointing again,” California Teacher’s Association president David Sanchez told the Sacramento Bee. “Our perception is that it’s more of the same, and that’s not good, because we thought we were going to be able to change something.”

Opponents of evaluating teachers based on test scores claim that it is an incomplete record of the full quality of a teacher, or evidence of student learning. “It takes more than the ability to fill in bubbles to be an educated person,” said California Federation of Teachers president Marty Hittleman in a letter to the Obama administration. Those opposed to the plan also fear that it could lead to students being deprived of skills not needed to pass the test. “The overemphasis on testing does not \ enhance educational quality, but instead will promote schooling that leaves too many of our children underprepared for higher education, unskilled at critical thinking and less engaged in their communities. Parents and business leaders consistently say they want us to develop in students the types of skills least valued in a test-driven educational atmosphere,” write David Cohen and Alex Kajatani, two educators, in a Sacramento Bee editorial.

However, Obama and Governor Schwarzenegger, who also supports merit pay for teachers, have found allies within the state’s minority communities. The Sacramento Bee story featured Alice Huffman, president of the California chapter of the NAACP. “I have watched this for 20 years,” Huffman said. “And I have nieces and nephews that have come out of the public schools that can’t read, can’t write, will never be employable. This is happening right here. … Something profound has to happen. We can’t wait another decade and another decade while people tweak with it.”

The state legislature will meet in special session to decide whether to adopt Obama’s request to implement merit pay, as well as other educational reforms. Obama’s proposal is entitled “Race to the Top” and in addition to using test scores to evaluate teacher performance would also provide money for school reform ideas, such as charter schools and improving low performing schools.

Quality of care is often equated with outcomes. While the United States does have higher infant mortality, we also have higher rates of teen pregnancies; infants born of teenagers are far more likely to die than the general infant population. Similarly, our lower life expectancies are confounded by both our higher murder rate and our very different lifestyle choices, such as diet, drug consumption, and exercise. These variables are related to our criminal justice system or our personal values, not our policy decisions or the effectiveness of our doctors. If actual care, rather than general outcomes, is compared to other countries, the US is superior in terms of average waiting times, availability of treatments, cancer survival rates, proper and early diagnoses, and lost productivity.

Nor are costs lower in countries that have nationalized their health care. While the US does spend an extremely large amount on health care, we are not terribly far out of line with other countries, according to the economic literature. Goodman et al. reported that economic research often comes to the opposite conclusion. Other countries hide their costs by “suppressing provider incomes” (which creates shortages), and accounting for overhead and capital costs differently; “even when harmonized, the choice of a price adjustment method can alter hospital cost estimates by as much as 400%”. Much economic literature indicates that government provision of health care is not more efficient than the private system. Some thirty years ago, Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman and his wife Rose addressed that false claim in their book Free to Choose: “[The argument that government medical care is efficient] can be dismissed out of hand…As to [the claim that medical expenses are too high for ordinary Americans], the people of the country must pay the costs one way or another; the only question is whether they pay them directly on their own behalf, or indirectly through the mediation of government bureaucrats who will subtract a substantial slice for their own salaries and expenses.”

Then there is the oft-cited number of uninsured Americans, 47 million. First, it confuses health care with health insurance. As an analogy, health care is an auto mechanic while health insurance is auto insurance – the insurance is a financial product aimed at making the care more affordable, but is not care itself. Describing problems with health care by means of number on health insurance is inappropriate – though there certainly is a problem in how we finance health care that could be addressed. The second point of contention is the number itself. Derived from the Census, this number refers to the number uninsured at any one time, not the number chronically uninsured. Since most people get their insurance through their employers, this suggests that the problem is not the unavailability of insurance, but rather the lack of portability in insurance, which has a very different political solution. Finally, this statistic leaves out an assessment of which people are uninsured. About 12 of the 47 are already eligible for public programs such as SCHIP and Medicaid already, so attempts to extend coverage would not affect them. Another 17 million have household incomes over $50,000, the median household income for all Americans, which indicates that they – and some other, less affluent Americans – are uninsured by choice. Often, young, healthy people consciously choose not to insure themselves, outlandish as that seems to some. Part of this stems from the fact that State and Federal insurance regulations pool them with the sick and elderly, which tends to make the young and healthy pay disproportionately higher premiums relative to the benefits they receive, and thus encourages them to remain uninsured. When they do need care for catastrophic losses, they are able to pass their bills on to taxpayers.

Realizing that the number of uninsured Americans is not representative of the problem, some reformers choose to cite the number of under-insured. The only response is, by what standard are people underinsured? The purpose of insurance is to finance unpredictable, catastrophic loss. Insurance grew as a financial instrument due to international shipping, where captains and companies found it more profitable to share small profits from many ships instead of large profits from one ship. This allowed them to spread the risk inherent in seafaring and prevent any individual from financial catastrophe due to poor weather or piracy. Insurance is not meant to cover routine, inexpensive, or predictable expenses. Doing so simply means channeling money through an insurance provider, which uses some of that money to pay for its administrative overhead. That is a recipe for higher costs and reduced choice and competition in markets. If the objective is more affordable care, insurance should have high deductibles, and insurance coverage should be limited to treatments which are unpredictable and prohibitively expensive for individuals. Claiming that citizens are underinsured implicitly demands that they choose low-deductible, comprehensive plans, which in practice means they should waste resources by channeling money through insurance and regulatory regimes which increase cost and reduce choice.

Ultimately, the “health care crisis” is greatly over-exaggerated. While Democrats rush to pass health care legislation, the legislation itself takes effect in 2013 – a rather convenient time that would give Democrats the ability to claim they’ve “done something”, without anyone being able to observe any negative effects of their legislation until after the next Presidential election. If reform is so urgent, why wait so long to have it take effect? If not, why must the legislation be rushed instead of subjected to scrutiny and deliberation?

We took Berkeley’s temperature on health care, and here’s what they said. Vote for the opinion that you agree with the most on our October Patriot Poll!

“Increase competition, but government as an option shouldn’t count,” Francesca.

“I think it needs to be reformed, but I don’t agree with the solution of increased government influence,” an anonymous Berkeley student.

“Whatever reform takes place has to pay close attention to the incentive structures that lead to innovation, in particular to the profit-motive, which has a track record of delivering the best product at the lowest cost,” Charlie.

“Right now, the status quo is unsustainable. We are the only industrial country which does not offer universal care, and we pay more for less. We pay twice the industrial world average, yet our life expectancy and infant mortality rates rank the worst among ‘high income’ OECD countries. Reform makes sense not only morally but also fiscally. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has called health spending ‘the single greatest challenge to balancing the federal budget,’ and it projects reform would actually lower costs over time. Reform has been endorsed by the American Medical Association, American Hospital Association, American Nurses Association, the pharmaceutical industry, and even Wal-Mart. From any reasonable perspective, it just makes sense,” Nik.

“If anyone can afford it, the United States can, and because we can, we have a moral obligation to do so,” Max.

“The first issue when discussing health care should not be about providing competition, the first should be the moral obligation of getting everyone health care,” Selome.

“I very strongly support the public option. It’s a moral issue, an economic issue, and a matter of job stability — so that Americans can feel more secure about not losing health care when moving jobs,” Mohit.

Common understanding has it that doctors, insurers, and pharmaceutical companies make “excessive profits”, and “money off other people’s misfortune, misery, and sickness”. These claims are totally unjustified. “Making money off people’s misery” implies that medical providers are making people sick, when they are in fact improving people’s health. This claim is the logical equivalent of a farmer “making a profit off someone’s hunger” or an architect “making a profit off someone’s homelessness”. The fact is that all of these people work to give us longer, happier, and more fulfilling lives. Fundamentally, profits indicate value added, the contribution made to human life. A person who makes no profits would be producing wealth and consuming it at the same rate; not only would his standard of living stagnate, he would lose permanently his time and effort. The truth is that human beings cannot exist without profiting on their capital and labor. As George Will stated on This Week regarding pharmaceutical companies making profits, “Good! They should be!”

Furthermore, criticisms of profit ignore that every person has an opportunity cost: every person’s time, effort, and money has an alternative use. If there were no profits in insurance or medicine, there would be no one to provide these valuable services, for the simple reason that they would do better to work in another field. High rates of profit are inducements for people to undertake risky, long term investments. Pharmaceutical companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars and about ten years to certify one drug. Before that can be done, they must explore tens or hundreds of other compounds for effectiveness and safety. Due to the time and risk involved, relatively high rates of profits for some drugs is necessary to compensate pharmaceutical companies for the losses on their research, development, and certification.

Besides, why should insurance companies, pharmaceutical developers, or doctors be any less entitled to profits than farmers, authors, or software developers? Assuming transactions occur in a free market (meaning no one can be forced to buy or sell anything against their wishes), a company’s profits mean that it is producing goods that people want, at prices they are willing to pay. In a free market, if a product is too expensive, consumers can go elsewhere, or refuse to buy the product. Profits can only be a problem in cases where people are not able to make their own spending choices, such as when there are government mandates that everyone must buy a particular product.

Reformers often claim that people have a “right” to health care. But rights are sanctions on freedom of action, not on material goods. The right to property does not mean someone must be provided with property, it means the property is his to keep once he earns it. The right to life does not mean that someone must be furnished with the necessities of life; it means that he is free to obtain and keep them. There is no right to the life or property of another person, except to the extent that they voluntarily agree. Health care cannot be a “right”. To do so sets up a conflict in which one person’s right to health care conflicts with another’s right to life, whether the doctor’s time and effort, a neighbor’s wealth, or an insurer’s freedom of contract. The “right to health care”, properly understood, is only a small part of the broader right to free trade – the right to trade our wealth and effort with others on mutually agreeable terms.

Some try to evade this moral issue by simply requiring that each person pay for his health care. That would be fine, except that t operates on the premise that health care is an absolutely necessary expense in all cases, one that supersedes all others. Asserting that no one should have to choose between utility bills and medical bills, they make the choice for him, by mandating that he pay for health insurance or care. The reality is that the world has limited resources, and people must economize in all purchasing decisions, even health care. That means prioritizing needs, including putting non-medical goods and services ahead of health care when the situation calls for it. Part of freedom to choose means the ability to choose (and pay for) nothing, when that is appropriate.

Still, some are still convinced that funding health care is a moral obligation that justifies force, if necessary, to get third parties to reject economic realities and pay. Theirs is a benevolent dictatorship, but a dictatorship nonetheless. The implications of this are far more than an economically inefficient health care system. It would demand treating others as rights-less beasts of burden, with no claim on their lives, time, or wealth. What could one possibly expect society to look like where every person is either a threat to one’s life or a potential victim from which to expropriate wealth? Should we force some to pay for others, or force some to work for others? In other words, should we condemn some to serfdom, others to slavery, in the name of brotherly love?

Furthermore, paying for others through taxes leaves no room for justice. It makes “need”, as such, a claim on the lives of others. Regardless of the ailment, the person, or their actions, their need becomes a mortgage on the lives of everyone around them. If one wishes to help others but leave room for freedom and justice, one ought to support voluntary charity, not coercive government. The money spent on charity is spent only to the extent that people recognize both a need and their willingness and ability to pay for it, meaning it is non-sacrificial. People voluntarily give up their property for values they perceive are higher, whether their particular neighbors or the abstract values of community and goodwill towards man; they are not forcibly deprived of property they cannot afford to lose, for the benefit of individuals and objectives they disagree with, as in government provision of services. There is no question of whether someone deserves help or not, and the bonds of community are strengthened by this local, personal attention rather than a centralized, impersonal bureaucracy. Plus, the additional oversight makes each dollar less wasteful, as people who donate to charitable causes want to see their money having maximal effect. To those who say voluntary charity cannot be sufficient: a majority of voters must support an action before it can be implemented politically, and this by itself suggests that a majority would be willing to help others voluntarily.

If reformers place any value on freedom or individual rights, they must honor these principles. If they do not, they risk
sacrificing their health care along with their liberty.