First, the facts: In the 2008 election cycle, the non-profit corporation Citizens United released a documentary largely antagonistic to Sen. Clinton. Citizens United planned a release for theaters as well as pay-per-view and DVD, but McCain Feingold limited advocacy for or against candidates during elections; even advertising the movie would have been illegal, yet the expenditure for the movie was entirely independent of the campaigns for or against Sen. Clinton, so there can be no charges of corruption, the official reason for campaign finance laws.

During arguments, the government claimed that any kind of broadcast communication that even mentioned a candidate’s name would be covered under the law. This includes advertisements for products. Remember the Obama Commemorative Plates going around a year ago? Illegal! The Kindle, Amazon’s electronic book, is also subject to the law. The Court also found that, by letting the laws stand, they would potentially allow Congress to ban books and other print media that mentioned candidates, and by setting a precedent that such action might be in principle permissible, lead to censorship in other ways. Even the blogosphere wasn’t immune, because express advocacy of candidates in an electronic form is technically illegal under McCain- Feingold. The government also argued that because “the First Amendment refers both to freedom of speech and of the press, there would be a potential argument that media corporations, the institutional press, would have a greater First Amendment right [than other groups].” This means, of course, that media corporations have potentially greater rights to free speech than everyone else, and true to the government’s word, mainstream media giants were exempted from the law.

The hysteria from the left, and even some nominal conservatives and libertarians, has been forthcoming in no short supply. They decry the fact that, by the Court’s decision, corporations will be allowed to influence elections. But what they are largely criticizing, corporate funding of elections, is still illegal. Corporations have been barred from direct contributions to campaigns for a century, and that facet of campaign finance law stands. The decision affirms the right to make independent expenditures and communications – a documentary, a blog, an advertisement. Corporations are still banned from directly contributing to campaigns, and so there can be no corruption – unless congressmen want to admit that as soon as someone says something nice about them they are obligated to dispense favors.

Their criticisms are based in a mindset that evades any consideration of what corporations are. A corporation is simply a voluntary association of individuals who combine their capital to undertake large expenditures and reduce individual liabilities. It does include for-profit corporations, certainly, but also non-profits, think tanks, and policy advocacy groups such as the ACLU, NRA, NARAL, Cato Institute, and Heritage Foundation. Why should individuals, speaking jointly under the aegis of an advocacy group, be prohibited from speaking via broadcast, such as when the ACLU was prohibited from advertising the names of candidates who had voted for warrant-less wiretapping and other invasive government powers? Why should free speech be taken so literally as to exclude dissemination of information by print and broadcast media? As Chief Justice Roberts stated, “The First Amendment protects more than just the individual on a soapbox and the lonely pamphleteer.” And, for the unconvinced who would still claim that a corporation, particularly a for-profit one, is a danger to democracy, consider what would happen to liberty in other areas if organization along corporate lines may be a justification for some restriction. We can have the right to practice religion – but not the right to build a church, which is often a corporate endeavor. You’re free to attend a private school, but you can’t incorporate to establish or maintain one. And you’re free to write about whatever you want on your blog, so long as you don’t use corporate-owned servers.

Logically, the kind of power the government granted itself, and many citizens have supported in the name of “clean politics”, makes any freedom or right currently protected vulnerable to harassment or outright denial by government. Large segments of the population believe nevertheless that for-profit corporations might unduly influence politics so that policies and candidates do not accurately reflect the public’s interests. They fail to take into account two very critical details.

First, corporations and unions do not speak with a uniform voice. While some corporations such as Wal-Mart supported Obama’s health insurance regulation proposals, others, such as Whole Foods, opposed them. Second, corporate shareholders are predominantly average Americans who own corporate assets by proxy, through investment firms who have been entrusted with this money to maximize shareholder wealth. Not only will it be against their self-interest to spend money lobbying for things investors may find controversial, a more plausible attempt to “seek rent” (create a policy good for the company and bad for everyone else) would be severely hamstrung by the fact that diverse portfolios would make such an act cause more self-injury than benefit.

President Obama’s response, and history, are particularly enlightening. He revealed his ignorance and poor taste by remarking in the State of the Union, “With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests…” The aforementioned ignorance of what McCain-Feingold actually says notwithstanding, it should be noted that the law is about seven years old – that’s a few short of a century, Mr. President. Shortly after the decision, he offered the following commentary: “With its ruling today, the Supreme Court has given a green light to a new stampede of special interest money in our politics. It is a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans. This ruling gives the special interests and their lobbyists even more power in Washington while undermining the influence of average Americans who make small contributions to support their preferred candidates. That’s why I am instructing my Administration to get to work immediately with Congress on this issue. We are going to talk with bipartisan Congressional leaders to develop a forceful response to this decision. The public interest requires nothing less.” This, from the man who accepted nearly $1 million from Goldman Sachs, more than any other contributor, as well as corporate and union contributions as a state legislator.

Mr. Obama’s objections, as far as can be ascertained, are not that corporate money will support a bad agenda. It is that it won’t support his agenda. He was quite fine with corporate funding from rent-seeking unions, insurance companies, and pharmaceutical companies supporting his ambition to tighten health care markets. He conveniently ignores the fact that such corporations would not be “[marshaling] power in Washington”, they would be presenting ads to the general public, and those ads would have to reveal who was funding them. Rather than spending money on lobbying Congress directly, the most they could do is denounce a congressman, and such ads would likely be ineffective since voters can easily establish a corporation’s self-interest in supporting a particular candidate or agenda. A corporation pushing an agenda antithetical to most Americans’ values cannot be successful, unless most Americans are ignorant and easily swayed – and if they are, what does that say about a man who wins a landslide electoral victory? Furthermore, as Obama himself should know from his presidential campaign, small donors and viral advertising through media like Facebook are far more effective than massive television ads.

Campaign finance regulation heavily favors incumbents, who have numerous legal provisions to protect them from competition for public visibility. For starters, they have name recognition. They can fund mailed advertisements (“newsletters”, “Washington Updates”) at taxpayer expense via the franking privilege. They can travel across their states at taxpayer expense. Incumbents often have more money than their challengers due to existing fundraising infrastructure. Yet the public is sold the nonsense that “the public interest requires no less” than these restrictions, and therefore entrenched politicians and interests.

The Constitution is clear enough: “Congress shall make no law…abridging freedom of speech” (emphasis added). The Court, and common sense, tell us that spending is a necessary and constitutionally protected component of speech, because it purchases the medium by which the speech is conveyed.

The dissent, including Obama-appointee Justice Sotomayor, has demonstrated a woefully low level of respect for both the Constitution and the moral principles it embodies. On the other hand, we can be thankful for Justice Kennedy’s opinion standing for the majority. It is commendable for its support of free speech and free thought: “When Government seeks to use its full power, including the criminal law, to command where a person may get his or her information or what distrusted source he or she may not hear, it uses censorship to control thought. This is unlawful…The First Amendment confirms the freedom to think for ourselves.”

However, before the Party loosens its tie and begins to party, it should be careful not to misinterpret the significance of this shifting support. It would be extremely naïve to think that the American public is suddenly voting Republican because of a drastic change in ideology. Instead, the Party has temporarily won over independent voters because of dissatisfaction with failed Democratic policies. In simpler terms, Americans are beginning to support Republicans not because they are Republicans but rather because they are not Democrats. This shift of support to the minority party because of the failures of the majority party has been a common theme in recent politics. In nearly every election cycle, the moderate American voter will vote for the minority party simply because that party is not in power (I’ll call it the “Not Theory”). Republican George W. Bush was elected president in 2000 largely because he was perceived as not being an immoral Democrat who would dare commit adultery in the White House. The Democrats took Congress in 2006 and the presidency in 2008 because they were seen as not being warmongering, blindly patriotic Republicans. One only has to look at the political parties of American presidents over the last quarter-century (with the exception of George H.W. Bush) to see the Not Theory manifested. Thus, like a pendulum, control of national politics continually oscillates back and forth between the two parties while America’s problems continue to become worse and worse.

If the GOP wants to end this circular cycle and maintain a more secure position of power that won’t be easily usurped come the next election, it must center itself around conservative ideology instead of the superficial fact that it is not the Democratic Party. It must return to the days when theorists like Barry Goldwater and William Buckley were on the reading list of every self respecting conservative, instead of Going Rogue by Sarah Palin. It must return to the days when policy was rooted in the political philosophy of limited governance, such as the Ronald Regan presidency, instead of the emotional appeal of hunting terrorists and weapons of mass destruction that do not even exist, as seen through the George W. Bush presidency. If the Party embraces its sensible past and rejects its nonsensical present, it is guaranteed a more permanent position in power because it will have tapped into the biggest unclaimed reserve of voters: the libertarians.

That’s right, I said it. The libertarians are the key to a successful future for the GOP. You may call me just another Ron Paul crazy, but I know for a fact that if the Party wins over the hearts of the libertarians, it will subsequently win over the hearts of the larger American public. That’s because I’ve seen firsthand the libertarian disillusionment with the Republican Party. As the president of Students for Liberty at Cal, I constantly see disenchanted conservatives wander to our club like lost sheep trying to find shelter. They are fed up with supporting a party that claims to promote peace yet supports endless wars overseas. They are fed up with supporting a party that claims to stand for restoring freedom and responsibility to the individual yet strips these freedoms away through bans on gay marriage, failed drug wars, and government censorship. They refuse to support the Republican Party, the party that strips away the individual’s natural right to liberty and has the nerve to claim it is doing it to promote freedom.

Now, I am not saying that the Republican Party should become the Libertarian Party. Moving too far in the libertarian direction will isolate more voters than it attracts. However, if it wants to end the eternal cycle of party shifting, it must abandon the blame train and start standing up for conservative values. Remember that Ron Paul raised more money in individual donations than any other Republican candidate in his 2008 primary campaign. His newest book, End The Fed, was a New York Times bestseller for several consecutive weeks. There is a huge untapped resource of libertarian voters who refuse to vote for the Party because of its failures. I know because I am one of them. Until the Republican Party wakes up and smells the sweet aroma of liberty, nothing much will change in national politics. After all, it was President Ronald Regan who once said, “the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism.”

Recently, however, the professor has engaged in some word play of his own. In recent months, he has criticized the two-thirds vote threshold required in both houses of the legislature to pass a budget or raise taxes. “As I see it, democracy is the main issue in the governance of our state,” he writes in a September 2009 piece on the liberal Web site Truthout. “The two-thirds rules have an anti-democratic effect. Our legislature is currently under minority rule.” To that end, he has authored and is currently collecting signatures for a constitutional amendment to allow the legislature to pass a budget and raise taxes by a simple majority vote.

The first problem with Lakoff’s statement is that he assumes the Republicans in the legislature are representing only a small minority of California voters. Nothing could be further from the truth. Proposition 1A, which would have extended temporary tax increases, was defeated at the ballot box in May 2009 by over 30 percentage points and in every single county in the state. More recently, a January Rasmussen poll found that only 28 percent of voters favor tax increases as the best solution to fix the state’s budget woes. Mr. Lakoff’s qualifications as a linguistics professor notwithstanding, 28 percent doesn’t quite fit the definition of majority. But let’s dispense that for a moment and assume that the majority party in the legislature really does represent the views of a majority of Californians. Does the two-thirds vote threshold constitute minority rule, as Lakoff claims? If so, then there are several other things that also must qualify as “minority rule:”

* The rules on cloture in the US Senate. Since Democrats took over the body in 2007 this has been used mostly by Republicans but just before then Democrats used the process to block several of President George W. Bush’s judicial nominees, as well as many laws, from ever reaching a floor vote.

* Rules on removing an official from office. Removing almost any elected official from an office requires at least a two-thirds vote. Had this been a majority vote, President Clinton could have been removed from office with just six more affirmative votes instead of 22 more.

* The process for amending the US Constitution. This may be the biggest triumph of “minority rule” of all. Not only does it take two-thirds of both houses of Congress, but three-fourths of the states as well.

* The US Constitution itself. The Constitution could not go into effect until it was approved by nine of the thirteen states.

So are these examples of obstructionist “minority will” where a minority can effectively run the state by refusing to provide the votes needed for progress unless their will is implemented (as Lakoff claims is currently the case in California)? Of course not. Each of these cases is a representation of one of the fundamental principles of the American republic: empowering the majority but placing limits on their power to protect minorities.

In order to make sure that important changes and policies are executed wisely and while addressing the concerns of those not in power, certain actions require more than a majority vote. This includes our budget process. Because the annual budget has such far reaching impacts, it is wise that it be held to a higher standard. This is by no means minority rule. If the California legislature were under minority rule, Republican legislators would be actively implementing their agenda. This has not happened and indeed is not possible. Both sides must negotiate to reach a deal that is acceptable to both parties (or at least enough members of both to secure a two-thirds vote).

One can also easily imagine a scenario in which the tables are switched, with Republicans in the majority and Democrats the minority. Just as Republicans in the present scenario have been fighting for their principles, Democrats in this case would likely oppose the majority Republicans to make sure their “progressive” ideas are addressed in the final product. Somehow I imagine that in this case Professor Lakoff’s “minority rule” would quickly turn into “a check on power.”

Californians should reject Professor Lakoff’s proposed amendment, and the professor should avoid baseless rhetoric.

In this e-mail, our Canadian friend expressed support for Governor Arnold Schwarzengger’s proposal to amend the state constitution to change the way money is budgeted for higher education. Knowing how we are supposed to feel, Birgeneau writes, “I am sure that you are as uplifted and encouraged as I am by this very positive outcome.”

Although there has been no “outcome” so far, there is little about which to be uplifted or encouraged in these recent developments. Governor Schwarzenegger was elected on a promise to be different than the Sacramento politicians who have systematically created the mess, fiscal and otherwise, this great state finds itself in. As he completes his stay in office, a stay that was once so promising in the hope for reform it offered, it is a sad irony that he would propose a constitutional amendment that would amount to exactly the same type of autopilot spending mandates he once opposed so vehemently.

According to comments made to The New York Times by the governor’s chief of staff, Susan Kennedy, “[t]hose protests on the U.C. campuses were the tipping point” that prompted the governor to propose the constitutional amendment in question. Apparently, Republican leaders no longer stand up to violent mobs of disaffected students who occupy buildings and throw torches at the houses of administrative figures. These leftist radicals, toting scarlet armbands as though they’re in Mao’s Red Guards, evidently achieved their objective — rather than confronting extremists as Governor Reagan once did, Mr. Schwarzenegger seems content to give them what they demand. A solid precedent he sets. Can we say girlie man?

Taking at face value the left-wing slogan “schools not prisons,” Mr. Schwarzenegger asks Californians to enshrine in the Constitution his plan that no more than 7% of the state’s General Fund be devoted to prison spending, while at least 10% be committed to the University of California and the California State University systems. Now, it does not appear that the figures are based on any pedagogical or criminological information, but let us not worry about such trivialities. There is a legacy to be made!

Currently, the state spends 5.9% of its general fund on the two university systems, while spending 9.7% on the prison system. Admittedly, it is viscerally disturbing that we spend more money on coddling criminals than on educating the youth. But rarely is the issue that clear-cut. Governor Schwarzenegger is correct in claiming that we spend tens of thousands of dollars more per prisoner than comparable states, and that this can be alleviated in part by contracting out prison operations. Studies have shown that a “private option” limits prison spending. Reforms of overreaching criminal law, as well as alternative sentencing, could also reduce the need for such large prison capacity. But the governor is delusional if he genuinely believes his proposal is a panacea to education spending reductions. Unlike other states where prisons operations have been contracted to private companies, California is a state where unions retain tremendous power, and the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, one of the most powerful unions, will surely stop any attempt to break their monopolistic stranglehold on the multi-billion prison industry.

Even if by some miracle it was made possible to introduce competition into corrections, California’s activist judiciary would still mandate incredibly high standards of care for inmates. J. Clark Kelso, a court-appointed receiver for the prison health-care system, infamously demanded the state spend $8 billion on a gold-plated hospital plan that would allow inmates to enjoy yoga and art therapy, a hospital plan that would go beyond what is offered by almost any private insurance. Until the power of the judiciary to pervert the law to mandate unreasonable spending on the comfort of inmates, massive reductions in prison spending are unlikely.

This all means that under Mr. Schwarzenegger’s plan, so trumpeted by the administration of the UC, spending by the state on university systems will need to be increased significantly. Prison spending is unlikely to be reduced much, so such a plan would not be cost-neutral—rather, it would equal an overall ballooning of spending. If we assume prison spending remains constant, to meet the 7%-10% ratio mandated by the constitutional amendment, the state would be required to increase its spending on the UC and CSU systems by approximately 242%. More spending — isn’t that what got the state into the mess in the first place? And can we expect a 242% increase in the quality or quantity of public education? History suggests not.

Fundamentally, the issue with the proposal at hand is that it is an ‘autopilot’ formula. Spending mandates like this one virtually ignore the realities of revenue, limiting the ability of the legislature to cut services as appropriate to a particular economic environment. Mr. Schwarzengger once railed against these formulas, denouncing them for what they were. He even proposed a landmark constitutional amendment, Proposition 76, to limit the deleterious effects of these mandates. But its defeat at the hand of the teachers’ union seems to have destroyed his commitment to financial responsibility.

California already has a gamut of autopilot spending mandates. Introducing more will further destroy the state’s fiscal solvency and almost necessitate tax increases, the last thing needed as California attempts to revitalize its economy. Rather, Californians must demand fiscal responsibility from their state legislators.

The University of California is a jewel, fueling the state’s economy with its teaching mission and ground-breaking research. It is among the prime assets of this beautiful state. But trying to avoid economic realities that call for sources of funding other than the taxpayer, including tuition increases, is not the way to maintain its premier status. Rather, it is a recipe for disaster for both the state and the university itself.

A simple fact of safety, no matter if you live in Beverly Hills or East Oakland, is that the police are not omnipresent. Not even an unlimited law enforcement budget, with an army’s worth of police, cruisers and security cameras on every street corner would prevent every crime. These robbers know the streets; they know how to blend in and avoid detection, even seconds after committing the crime in broad daylight (see the article).

The painful truth is that residents cannot rely on the cops alone for protection. Ideally, the goal of law enforcement should be to discourage criminals through their presence, and to pursue and bring perpetrators to justice after a crime has occurred, but police are rarely around to stop crimes in progress. Often the difference between becoming a victim and staying safe is the circumstance of the individual. Since law enforcement cannot stop every crime, citizens must take steps to protect themselves. A growing movement across the country is for students to exercise their right to bear arms on university campuses.

The tragic events that took place at Virginia Tech three years ago, and other universities across the country, were a wake-up call to many students, parents, and politicians – college campuses are not as safe as they could be. At universities, carrying a weapon for self-defense is a felony. This encourages crime by telling criminals that everyone in the area is unarmed and helpless. Criminals actively target unarmed and unsuspecting college students for petty theft and violent crimes. When effective self defense is a crime, what else could be expected?

Currently, very few colleges and universities allow students to exercise their Second Amendment rights while on campus; Utah is the only state that explicitly protects students’ rights. While recent legislation and civil suits have indicated pro-gun advocates are gaining ground, they have failed to make progress for students. The Virginia Tech massacre successfully mobilized activists on both sides of the debate; anti-gunners have won in every instance, even in states with strong gun-rights reputations like Texas and Tennessee. Often, they present arguments designed to appeal to emotion, understandably recruiting families and friends of victims to speak out against guns, and evoking visions of “fraternity militias [charging crime scenes] with all guns blazing,” to borrow from Louisiana Rep. Hollis Downs. But these arguments fail to stand up to facts; citizens who legally obtain Right-to-Carry permits are overwhelmingly responsible gun owners, who are fanatically devoted to safe handling of their firearms and regularly practice their skills. The states with the lowest firearm-related homicide rates like North Dakota, Maine, and Vermont also have the most freedom-friendly gun laws. Those rates are similar to those observed in 1900, when gun control laws were rare, and on average were one-eighth of the rates seen today. While regions with higher population density tend to have higher rates of crime, very few cities have opted to relax their draconian gun control laws, essentially holding their citizens hostage in a similar predicament as college campus residents.

While most of America has made great strides towards preserving citizens’ gun rights, California has bucked the trend. Fortunately, legislators recently rejected the false premise that gun shows contribute to local firearm-related crime and struck down a provision preventing these events at San Francisco’s Cow Palace. However, probably more important to California gun owners, they did pass a law requiring ammunition purchasers to register with the state and get fingerprinted, as well as prohibiting the purchase of ammunition online. The former strategy for reducing crime was tried in the past nationally by the FBI and was soundly rejected as ineffective. The latter will most certainly negatively affect an already strained market where ammunition is either very expensive or, as is often the case, simply unavailable. The additional labor and documentation costs increase transaction costs significantly on a market that already has razor thin profits. Indeed, the legislation will most likely only succeed in further restricting the access of law-abiding citizens to self-defense by making ammunition unaffordable and by encouraging the harassment of gun owners.

While not expressly banning firearms, these laws attempt to create a de facto ban, which violates the spirit of the right to bear arms. Still, California does have a few amenities for gun enthusiasts, such as the Chabot Gun Club, a picturesque pistol, rifle, and skeet range, tucked away cozily in the Chabot Redwood regional preserve. The range is perfect for both novice and veteran shooters; the presence of even a few Chabot Gun Club members in and around campus would surely go a long way in aiding our overstretched law enforcement saddled with the impossible task of preventing every crime from taking place. The presence of at least a few self-reliant and accomplished marksmen would surely make criminals think twice about assailing UC students.

This exhibit, known as the Genocide Awareness Project (GAP), puts images of aborted fetuses next to pictures of universally recognized forms of genocide, including victims of the Holocaust in Europe and of lynchings in the southern United States. At first, many people might call this comparison a stretch, while others would say it is downright offensive. Yet let us consider what the common justification for all these evils was and is: that the victim is somehow subhuman, or at least not on par with those deemed to be “persons.” The unborn child is not recognized as a human person, even though he or she is a biologically human entity with his or her own unique DNA. That child is not just human; he or she is a distinct person who just happens to be in the earliest stages of human development. But if we strip away that personhood, the victim is no longer human, and thus the act of destroying “it” is no longer immoral. Hitler and the Klan also considered their victims to be of unequal status relative to the “superior races”; their victims were thought of as being devoid of either personhood or humanity altogether. Furthermore, we ought to recognize that such a comparison could be deemed “offensive” only if one is under the impression that we are dehumanizing victims of genocide and trivializing that tragedy. On the contrary, we affirm not only their humanity, but the humanity of the unborn child. This recognition of this being’s humanity is precisely what makes abortion so tragic and so evil.

Abortion’s connection to genocide runs even deeper than that. Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, wrote in a 1939 letter to Clarence Gamble, “We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.” In the book, Pivot of Civilization, p. 187, Sanger is quoted as saying: “We are paying for and even submitting to the dictates of an ever- increasing, unceasingly spawning class of human beings who never should have been born at all.” Naturally, Sanger’s solution to the perceived problem of “Negro overpopulation” was to become active in the American Eugenics Society (AES) and to found her own organization (which at the time was called the American Birth Control League, later Planned Parenthood) by which she could subtly eliminate those who in her mind were undesirable. (From Maafa 21, a recently produced documentary about abortion and eugenics.) Furthermore, the writings of AES affiliates influenced Adolf Hitler himself to develop his own master plan to “purify” the human race. (From “The Horrifying American Roots of Nazi Eugenics,” by Edwin Black; an article from a historical project belonging to George Mason University.)

Today, Sanger’s goal of targeting racial minorities is still being realized. Black women are targeted the most by Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers (apx. 56% of all abortions in the US), with Hispanic women coming in second at apx. 32%, thereby accounting for 88% of all abortions in our country (Maafa 21). While these statistics differ from those currently available from the pro-abortion Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI), Walter Hoye’s Issues 4 Life Foundation had discovered that AGI had actually published misleading statistics to try to hide the fact that abortion targets minorities at an extraordinary rate. (For this reason, AGI only provides a statistic that combines the total number of abortions from 1973 – the year of Roe v. Wade – to 2005.) How can we allow ourselves to believe that preventing the births of minority groups so disproportionately can be considered anything other than genocide, especially when you take the origins of Planned Parenthood into account? Abortion truly is America’s hidden genocide, and a legal one at that.
Though the genocide aspect of the display has been the same everywhere that the event has been held, the Berkeley exhibit differed from all other past installations. This year, both BSL and CBR were proud to debut new signs that put images of aborted fetuses next to images of President Barack Obama. Each of these signs was accompanied by a quote stated by Obama. These quotes were such that most people would agree with in principle, but they were highly ironic in light of the positions Obama has taken with respect to abortion. We sought to highlight Obama’s astonishingly duplicitous rhetoric, as well as to make his unbridled support of abortion known to those who may not have been aware of it. Those who follow right to life issues know that Obama is the most extreme pro-abortion president in our nation’s history, but his carefully crafted rhetoric makes many think that he is a moderate on the issue who is truly concerned with finding “common ground.” Some will say that this approach is inherently partisan; we hold that it is merely a straightforward analysis of President Obama’s own words. Those who were offended were probably upset by the fact that the man who is revered by so many in Berkeley has been exposed as a deceiver.
Despite the hotheaded reactions and a counter-protest consisting mostly of students from a women’s studies class (at the behest of their professor) and members of Berkeley National Organization for Women (BNOW), GAP staffers were pleased to have many enlightening conversations with countless students. The fact is, Berkeley is no longer the liberal bastion it is often believed to be. Today, it is a very apathetic campus, and it takes a large scale event to get people to talk about issues that matter. These curious students held all sorts of beliefs on abortion, from staunch pro-lifers to staunch abortion supporters, and many who were uncertain. Yet what was particularly pleasing was the fact that these students were very willing to engage in rational dialogue. Even some of the counter-protestors eventually engaged with us in a very respectful discussion, for which we are very grateful. Of course, most of them continued to demonstrate their unwillingness to engage in rational dialogue, preferring to resort to the shouting of slogans. (“My body, my choice!”). One young woman, rather than join the shouting, wore a sign reading “I had an abortion/It was GREAT!” showing utter disdain for human life. This revealed a great deal about the nature of the two sides: the pro-lifers always kept their calm, and were happy to debate rationally and civilly with people.

The counter-protestors were happy to scream themselves into a state of acute laryngitis. I think many people realized that most of the abortion advocates were not really interested in having meaningful discussion. They were there simply to make a scene, which actually worked in our favor, since many more students came our way as a result of the ideological clash. Ultimately, our primary objective was to change hearts and minds, because before the battle against abortion can be won in the courts and in legislatures, it must be won in the conscience of the people. We are confident that we took great strides toward that end as a result of the Genocide Awareness Project.

The entire protest movement is rife with contradictions. Shouting “Who’s University, Our University,” they prohibit other students from using the university facilities. Claiming a “right” to education – meaning a right to force someone to pay for their education – they infringe upon other students’ true right to education – the right to undertake a course of study with the consent of both the student and educator. In the course of their protest, they disrupted over 100 classes, affecting nearly 4,000 students. While they decry the university and legislature depriving students of their imagined rights, they seek amnesty for violating the real rights of thousands of students. And when it comes time to actually assert their demands, the issue of fees is nowhere to be found; instead, the university is pelted with demands not to allow Panda Express near campus. The protesters are right — a question of priorities, indeed.

The actions of the occupiers was a trespass, pure and simple. Each one is guilty of intentionally interfering with the operation of the university, obstructing and intimidating innocent civilians, and refusing to leave when asked. The university’s response has been rather predictable: negotiate with the protesters and attempt to come to a peaceful solution. This has proven far less than satisfactory. They employed negotiators such as Professor George Lakoff, who told the protesters that they could “come out, no handcuffs, no arrests, just a misdemeanor equivalent to jaywalking.” Lakoff, a leftist linguistics professor who has developed a reputation for “framing” (euphemizing) issues, once more showed his talent for lying to achieve his ends – the penalty for trespassing is up to six months of prison and a $1,000 fine. The fact that the university would employ him in this, or any, capacity, reveals their terrible intellectual dishonesty and shortsightedness (more on this anon).

The conflict did finally end when the police pushed through the crowd, arrested the offenders, and cited each of them with trespassing. But this is what they ought to have done from the outset – the protesters had every right to protest outside the building, but none to occupy it, and none to obstruct foot traffic (One protester said “Students are no different from police – you respect the police barricade, you respect the student barricade”, showing an inability to differentiate from a barricade meant to restore order and protect rights and one intended to sow chaos and infringe on rights). The right to free speech and assembly does not entail the right to deprive others of their rights. There are those who will point to videos of “police brutality,” which include striking protesters with batons and shooting particular protesters with rubber bullets. Such reports mischaracterize police brutality, which refers to capricious, unwarranted, and excessive use of force by the police. This was not the case in this situation: protesters were ordered to stand aside to allow the police into Wheeler to make their lawful arrests; failure to comply with such an order is a felony with a penalty of up to four years in prison. Police officers’ use of force was provoked by protesters’ obstruction of legitimate arrests, and cannot be considered excessive given the offense, especially within the context of existing law.

Yet the university, rather than defended the legitimate police action, apologized for it. Chancellor Birgenau wrote in an open letter to the campus community, “Many of you have written to us expressing concerns that police action at Friday’s demonstration in front of Wheeler Hall showed brutality toward individuals who did not appear to be presenting any imminent threat… We truly regret the incidents that brought physical and emotional injury to members of our community.” The university seems to believe that the proper role of the police is to nurture protesters’ emotions rather than advance justice and protect rights. Taking it even further, the university dropped the charges against Wheeler’s occupants, letting them walk away from an incredibly damaging and disruptive affair without penalty.

The university imagines it is somehow smoothing ruffled feathers and calming a tense situation. Their actions are worse than a trade of justice for order. The Monday following the occupation, protesters rallied around Wheeler, with organizers shouting that the resolution of the conflict had nothing to do with good-faith university negotiations, but merely that the police realized that if they did not let the protesters off, “shit would go down.” “It showed that we have power, as a force!” cried the same organizer. The tone and content of these statements indicates that these protesters are more interested in being rabble than advocating their agenda with civility, and that in the long term, the university is working to encourage rather than minimize the disruptions.

If the protesters really wanted to have their concerns addressed, they would do better to approach the issue civilly and rationally. If the university wished to educate students effectively in an orderly environment, they would do better to serve justice and rights rather than the malicious caprice of intellectually arrested students.

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.”

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.