Capers With Carroll

The time has come,' the Walrus said, To mark our ballots and mail them in: Of governors — and congresspersons — and ballot initiatives— Of cabbages — and kings — And why the sea is boiling hot — And whether pigs have wings.'

I cannot get very excited about the coming November election, with early voting already upon us. I felt fortunate, during the primary election, to at least have American Solidarity Party candidates for some of the races, but now it’s all duopoly parties all the time. In California, that generally means Democrats will sweep the statewide contests, but maybe my local county will lean GOP. The slight of hand from both parties has primarily focused on whether pigs have wings. Neither party can offer solutions to our problem with homelessness, which I consider our most pressing problem. The Republicans have no power to enact their ideas, even if they had some, and the Democrats lack the will to demand the necessary concessions from key constituencies.

I will not vote to send any Democrats to Sacramento until their supermajority has been curtailed. Each of the duopoly parties has enough whack-a-doodle ideas that neither party should be allowed to govern without some semblance of balancing power.

For a similar reason, I fear letting one party control both Houses of Congress, especially the party that controls the White House. In either case, the deciding races will probably be in someone else’s district, so my votes will simply be to go through the motions.

The propositions, however, have my full attention.

Proposition #1: No. Enshrines Uber-Roe into the State Constitution: The SCOTUS Dobbs decision did not affect even one potential abortion law in California. What it did do was give Governor Newsom a platform for over-kill grandstanding and launching a presidential campaign. His campaign to ‘enshrine Roe in the Constitution’ goes way beyond what the status quo under Roe and accompany his efforts to have California taxpayers subsidize abortions for residents of other states. Recently, Gov. Newson added $200,000 to the state budget in support of abortion, while earlier in the year he vetoed money for perinatal coverage. I support increased spending for pre- and post- natal care, but not for abortion. Unspoken in that is that these taxpayer subsidies will pass through the hands of these out-of-state mothers and into the hands of California abortionists, a group already powerful enough to demand that a likely President abandon support for the Hyde Amendment, handpick the Nation’s Vice President in 2020, and choose the Democratic Candidate in 2024. Even Pro-Choice Californians might want to think twice about this Administration’s tax-payer cash cow for Big Abortion, and say “No!” to the whole program.

Propositions #26 (in person betting) and #27 (on-line betting): No, and No. Schemes by which the State attempts to fill its coffers on gambling always function as a regressive tax. Then, the legislature can point at the gambling funds dedicated to various services and justify giving those agencies less money from the general fund. Government sanctioned gambling is always bad policy.

Proposition #28: Yes. Guarantees that 1% of any funds going to education must be dedicated to programs in art and music. This is especially important to poorer districts like the one where I taught. In rich neighborhoods, parents often pay for private lessons, or team together an raise outside funds for art and music lessons. Art and music ought to be part of the basic program at every school.

Proposition #29: No. Yet another attempt by Healthcare unions to force expensive new rules for kidney dialysis. Voters have already rejected this idea twice.

Proposition #30: Tentative yes. Initiates a new tax on high incomes, to use the funds for electric cars, charging stations, and to fight wildfires. My State Teachers Retirement pension does not put me in the high-income category, but we do face a question over how many high earners we can chase out of the state before it hurts the overall economy. It seems to me that a Capitalist system could find Capitalist solutions to create the required charging stations, but we do need to step up our game in fighting our annual wildfires.

Proposition #31: Yes. Bans the flavored tobacco products that are custom designed to hook young people. How long have we been trying to protect kids from early tobacco addiction?

After watching the sun come up over the English countryside, I landed at Luton International Airport before 7:00 AM, and committed my first rookie error within minutes. I carried no British pounds, but had $600 in US Traveler’s Checks. (Note to those who grew up in the age of ATMs: These used to be a thing, allowing traveling Neanderthals to go to a bank and obtain cash.) I supposed a better exchange rate at banks farther from the airport, and as it was still too early for banking, I decided to walk as far as I could before banks opened. It skipped my mind that banks observe no hours at all on Sundays.

After watching the sun come up over the English countryside, I landed at Luton International Airport before 7:00 AM, and committed my first rookie error within minutes. I carried no British pounds, but had $600 in US Traveler’s Checks. (Note to those who grew up in the age of ATMs: These used to be a thing, allowing traveling Neanderthals to go to a bank and obtain cash.) I supposed a better exchange rate at banks farther from the airport, and as it was still too early for banking, I decided to walk as far as I could before banks opened. It skipped my mind that banks observe no hours at all on Sundays.

After watching the sun come up over the English countryside, I landed at Luton International Airport before 7:00 AM, and committed my first rookie error within minutes. I carried no British pounds, but had $600 in US Traveler’s Checks. (Note to those who grew up in the age of ATMs: These used to be a thing, allowing traveling Neanderthals to go to a bank and obtain cash.) I supposed a better exchange rate at banks farther from the airport, and as it was still too early for banking, I decided to walk as far as I could before banks opened. It skipped my mind that banks observe no hours at all on Sundays.

After watching the sun come up over the English countryside, I landed at Luton International Airport before 7:00 AM, and committed my first rookie error within minutes. I carried no British pounds, but had $600 in US Traveler’s Checks. (Note to those who grew up in the age of ATMs: These used to be a thing, allowing traveling Neanderthals to go to a bank and obtain cash.) I supposed a better exchange rate at banks farther from the airport, and as it was still too early for banking, I decided to walk as far as I could before banks opened. It skipped my mind that banks observe no hours at all on Sundays.

I had an address for a bed and breakfast in Earl’s Court, a mere 32 miles away. I had walked that far in a day previously so even after I realized my mistake, I was not concerned. I had hiked the high Sierras. I ran run cross country in high school and my first year of college. I’d run a marathon in Mexico. I once got my high school class to challenge the class just ahead of us to a contest to see which class could rack up the most total laps on a Saturday, and personally tallied 33 miles, so I set out on a beautiful sunny morning to walk to Earl’s Court. I probably walked past dozens of bed and breakfasts that would have served me well, but a friend had given me the address of the place he’d stayed in Earl’s Court.

First time travelers may be struck by the fact that a foreign country appears in the same colors as at home, but somehow looks different. I was pondering that when a car stopped and a young man offered me a ride. I gladly accepted, and obeyed his instructions to stow my rucksack in the boot. Do you know that the British drive on the wrong side of the road? They also seat the driver on the wrong side of the car. I had read about it, but now I saw this peculiarity verified.

When my benefactor learned that this was my first day in England, he decided to divert and show me some local Roman ruins. We had a most congenial time, and then he let me out to continue on my way. The countryside gradually gave way to industrial areas, and then brownstone residential areas, and then I was in Earl’s Court. I had successfully flown across an ocean, walked most of 32 miles, gotten some exercise (though not much to eat), met a native, seen some Roman ruins, and located a target address. I decided I ought to recount my safety and my successes in letters to Vicki and my parents.

Of course, I had no return address to offer them other than the bed and breakfast in Earl’s Court, and it would be two weeks for my letters to get to California and receive answers back (Note to those who grew up in the age of email and texting: Letters were a thing that allowed Neanderthals to communicate over long distances, albeit very slowly). On the plus side, those two weeks would allow me time to visit Ireland before continuing to France, where I would hunker down with my novel and the French language. I still entertained that objective.

A few thoughts from 50 years later:

After yesterday’s episode, I messaged with a high school friend who did her travel with the army, as a nurse, and though she did not go to Vietnam, the topic came up in our discussion. For my generation, it often will. For my cohort, our post-high-school years were either spent in Vietnam or trying to stay out of Vietnam, or maybe protesting in the streets over Vietnam.

Like many of my peers, I was conflicted about Vietnam. I loved my country and wanted to defend it, but questions nagged me about whether in Vietnam we were the good guys or the bad guys. I started college three days after high school, not because I wanted to avoid the draft (Note to those who grew up in the era of an all-volunteer army: It used to be that when the letter from the draft board arrived, you reported for military duty). In 1968, the best way to stay free of the draft was to stay in school. Although I did want to avoid the draft, my primary motivation for college was excitement about college. However, those first weeks, I buddied around with a friend who really wasn’t that excited about school. Toby dropped out, got drafted, and died standing in the boot camp breakfast line. A recruit standing behind him dropped his rifle.

After watching the sun come up over the English countryside, I landed at Luton International Airport before 7:00 AM, and committed my first rookie error within minutes. I carried no British pounds, but had $600 in US Traveler’s Checks. (Note to those who grew up in the age of ATMs: These used to be a thing, allowing traveling Neanderthals to go to a bank and obtain cash.) I supposed a better exchange rate at banks farther from the airport, and as it was still too early for banking, I decided to walk as far as I could before banks opened. It skipped my mind that banks observe no hours at all on Sundays.

The spring I was finishing up at community college and getting ready to transfer to UCLA, the employment office connected me with a middle aged veteran who needed a man Friday. Pat suffered from emphysema, due to an accident in the Air Force. He knew he was dying, and wanted to do so in Europe. My job would be to carry his oxygen tank, and then accompany his body home at the end. He would pay all of my expenses and a nice salary. Most importantly for me, it would be my longed-for trip overseas. I look back on that episode as the supreme test of my transition to adulthood. Going with Pat would mean I would have to cancel my plans for UCLA. Pat told me Sen. Cranston owed him some favors and could fix me up with the draft board. Although I didn’t want to go to Vietnam, I also didn’t want some politician pulling strings for me. I drove Pat to Cranston’s office, but the Senator had been called away that day. Pat was expecting a big check from the government, but I began to wonder if it was actually coming. Pat liked to brag about the friends he looked forward to seeing, but from his description, some of them impressed me as a little shady. He also talked about the girls he would be able to get me, and how they could move in with us. That wasn’t the kind of girlfriend I wanted. After investing five or six months in Pat’s dream, and as much as I wanted to see Europe, I realized that I wanted to be my own boss when I traveled. I told Pat I was going to UCLA. To have gone with Pat then would have traded away everything of value that I have today.

I remained timid and indecisive about the war. I took part in a few demonstrations, and wavered over the question of what to do if drafted. I could not imagine killing another human being. Maybe I would go in as a medic. Maybe I would go to Canada. Dying for my country was one thing, but what if our side was actually the bad guys? That would be worse than dying in the boot camp breakfast line.

One more friendship stands out: I had written a 500 page—typed, double spaced—murder mystery (Note to those who learned word processing at a computer key board: Word-working was once done at a manual instrument that left one’s fingers raw and swollen at the end of the writing day). I had alternated 12-hour writing days with days carting Pat around. UCLA had a novel writing contest that first quarter and my 500 pages lost to a Vietnam vet’s 30-page opening chapter. Brian Jones took his $5,000 prize, went home and beat up his wife. The prize went for her hospital costs and the divorce. Over the next two years that I had to get to know him, I watched the Man Who Had Everything slowly fall apart.

We did not understand PTSD in those days, nor PITS (Perpetration-Induced Traumatic Stress), a concept first described by Psychologist and Sociologist Rachel MacNair. As I heard MacNair present at a conference in 2019, and then driving the carpool back to our shared AirB&B, she put into words exactly what I sensed had happened to Brian Jones. Brian had been the All-American everything: football quarterback, Student Body President, going steady with the head cheer-leader. Then he had done the All-American thing to do in 1966; he joined the Marines. When I asked about his experience in Vietnam, he could only shrug and say, “I killed a lot of Gooks.” There is PTSD trauma that soldiers experience when bullets are flying and friends all around them are dying, but PITS kicks in when someone raised with high moral values must face that they have become a murderer. Within a few months of my return from Europe, Brian Jones drove a van full of marijuana over a cliff, while running from police.

I believe I have seen PITS twice more. For a while I was visiting and corresponding with an inmate on Death Row in San Quentin Prison. He had been convicted as a serial killer. Independent research brought me an account of a childhood murder-dismemberment (of his mother) in which he had been forced to participate. Every one of his murders had been a reenactment of that event.

And then, in helping a friend clean up after a tenant, I found the letter-to-herself of a woman whose life had spiraled down after an abortion. Her agony came out in one haunting line, “This is not who I am!”

In 1972, as I left for Europe, the United States was struggling with a similar disconnect. “This is not who we are!”

I took this picture during a school lockdown in 1994.  In Colombia, unidentified soldiers had stepped out of the jungle within a mile of the school, so we locked down until we could be sure for whom those soldiers fought.  My junior high students sat for two hours before the all-clear, joking nervously and missing lunch.  But we were in a war zone.  There, one understands—at least intellectually—that violence is a possibility.

In California, I once locked down with 4th graders while a funnel cloud just missed us.  Before terrified ten-year-olds, the teacher must be strong, even casual about the situation, and compartmentalized.  But now, even during our school’s annual lockdown drill, I have to stop and consciously gain control over the catch in my voice.

So it is good that I first saw news of the Sandy Hook shooting while I was alone in my classroom during lunch.  As a teacher, a parent, and a grandparent, I cried.  Then I compartmentalized, taught my afternoon classes, and went home to let my four and six-year old grandsons present me with an early-birthday batch of raisin cookies.  Today, I will celebrate that 63rd birthday with a museum trip, and intellectualize.

The violence is common enough—even in elementary schools and movie theaters—that we have rituals for dealing with it. 

One group of us divides into Pro-Gun and Anti-Gun factions.  That is a debate we ought to have, though probably less driven by the most immediate atrocity.  Prudence and self-defense may require that some citizens keep guns, but from scripture I draw the principle that trust in weapons is misplaced (Isaiah 31:1 and 2:7), and the glorification of weapons is idolatry.   I waver over where to draw the legal lines on guns, but as a nation we trust and glorify them,.  For trusting and glorifying, the lines should be at zero.

Another group points to lack of mental health, to the breakdown of the family, to a culture of violent video games, and to hopeless poverty.  Yes, yes, yes, and yes.  Every year I see students who are in need of better help than the schools are equipped to handle.  I see boys—especially—trying to understand manhood when they have no fathers with whom to relate.  This very week, I had several boys excited to show me videos that glorified lone attackers who vanquished large armies.  I also just heard the verdict on a shooting a few years ago in the park around the corner from where I live.  A lone gunman sprayed bullets into a pick-up soccer game, wounding one player.  Charged with 10 counts of attempted murder, he received 500-years-to-life.  The shooter was 16.  Fatherless.  Without a DREAM Act, he was also a boy without a country, and no hope of ever belonging anywhere.  Except to a street gang.

Yet, curiously, the shooters in mass killings like that at Sandy Hook or in Aurora have been mostly white, middle class, and American born; as have been their victims.  The other kind of shootings, kids killed one or two at a time as some gang initiate tries to prove his mettle, probably claim more victims in total, but make fewer headlines.  The spontaneous monument in the photograph below sprang up after three boys were attacked in a yard across the street from where I pick up kids for Sunday school.  One seventeen-year-old died.  He had been a friend of the kids I pick up.  The young shooter, who received a life sentence, was a recent alumnus of the school where I teach.  Easy guns.  Video games that glorify the lone shooter.  Hopelessness and lack of belonging.  Spiritual deadness.  Isolated, one from this list does not create shooters, but together, they will.

So to cope with this, we compartmentalize.  We intellectualize.  We blame-shift.  We look the other way that our drones are killing children in Afghanistan and Pakistan.  We try and hide the fact that, each year, a million American children are denied even a day of birth.  We flee from the knowledge that the stores we frequent support firetrap-sweatshops in Asia or Latin America, and that the chocolate we eat was harvested by child slaves in Africa.  We have met the evil, and it is us.

Psychically we cannot carry these burdens, individually, or as a people.  It is too heavy.  We try to imagine ourselves standing in the way of all this, correcting it, or even absolving ourselves of our complicity in any of this, and we can’t.  It is too overwhelming. 

But it is not too heavy for God.

And God hears our cries.

I am driven this morning to read Daniel 9:4-19, and to use his prayer as my model.

4 I prayed to the Lord my God and confessed and said, “Alas, O Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps His covenant and lovingkindness for those who love Him and keep His commandments, 5 we have sinned, committed iniquity, acted wickedly and rebelled, even turning aside from Your commandments and ordinances. 6 Moreover, we have not listened to Your servants the prophets, who spoke in Your name to our kings, our princes, our fathers and all the people of the land.

7 “Righteousness belongs to You, O Lord, but to us open shame, as it is this day—to the men of Judah, the inhabitants of Jerusalem and all Israel, those who are nearby and those who are far away in all the countries to which You have driven them, because of their unfaithful deeds which they have committed against You. 8 Open shame belongs to us, O Lord, to our kings, our princes and our fathers, because we have sinned against You. 9 To the Lord our God belong compassion and forgiveness, for we have rebelled against Him; 10 nor have we obeyed the voice of the Lord our God, to walk in His teachings which He set before us through His servants the prophets. 11 Indeed all Israel has transgressed Your law and turned aside, not obeying Your voice; so the curse has been poured out on us, along with the oath which is written in the law of Moses the servant of God, for we have sinned against Him. 12 Thus He has confirmed His words which He had spoken against us and against our rulers who ruled us, to bring on us great calamity; for under the whole heaven there has not been done anything like what was done to Jerusalem. 13 As it is written in the law of Moses, all this calamity has come on us; yet we have not sought the favor of the Lord our God by turning from our iniquity and giving attention to Your truth. 14 Therefore the Lord has kept the calamity in store and brought it on us; for the Lord our God is righteous with respect to all His deeds which He has done, but we have not obeyed His voice.

15 “And now, O Lord our God, who have brought Your people out of the land of Egypt with a mighty hand and have made a name for Yourself, as it is this day—we have sinned, we have been wicked. 16 O Lord, in accordance with all Your righteous acts, let now Your anger and Your wrath turn away from Your city Jerusalem, Your holy mountain; for because of our sins and the iniquities of our fathers, Jerusalem and Your people have become a reproach to all those around us. 17 So now, our God, listen to the prayer of Your servant and to his supplications, and for Your sake, O Lord, let Your face shine on Your desolate sanctuary. 18 O my God, incline Your ear and hear! Open Your eyes and see our desolations and the city which is called by Your name; for we are not presenting our supplications before You on account of any merits of our own, but on account of Your great compassion. 19 O Lord, hear! O Lord, forgive! O Lord, listen and take action! For Your own sake, O my God, do not delay, because Your city and Your people are called by Your name.”

It has been some thirty years since I last voted for a Democrat. I’d just about concluded I might never do it again. After all these years, my memory is a little foggy, but I’m inclined to think I voted to elect a young Jerry Brown for governor of California in 1974 (over Houston Flournoy), and maybe again in 1978 (over Evelle Younger). I know I voted for Jimmy Carter in 1976, and liked him even as I grew more disgusted with his party. I know my last vote for a Democrat was in 1980, when I supported Rose Ann Vuich, my local state senator. She had given me almost two hours for an in-depth newspaper interview on California issues, and I came away so impressed that I could not vote against her, even if she was a Democrat.

But I have now gone 30 years without being seriously tempted to do it again. I told myself to watch for and support Pro-Life Democrats, but I saw a pattern develop. The Democratic Party took Pro-Life individuals like Ted Kennedy, Jessie Jackson, Bill Clinton, and Al Gore, and subverted them to the Pro-Abortion mold. I watched them marginalize Pro-Life voices like Pennsylvania’s Robert Casey, Sr., and Bob Casey, Jr. The party is inextricably captive to Big Abortion—America's most unregulated industry—necrotrophic and eugenicidal, extending its corruption into our national fabric in countless hidden ways. Yet it has only to clap a “Choice” riff with its forceps and scissors and the Democratic Party leaps to form a conga line.

Even so, this year I found myself inching closer to voting Democratic again. Inching until I could no longer ignore where I stood.

I will not vote for Barbara Boxer. Every once in a while during Dianne Feinstein’s 18 years in the Senate, I’ve opened the newspaper to read some statement she has made, and had to admit, “Yeah, much as I dislike like her, she is probably right on that one.” But during the same years, I have never had to make a similar comment about Boxer. She is the politician I would most like to send into retirement this year. I may still harbor some reservations about Carly Fiorina, but if I had a thousand votes, she would get them all.

I am thinking instead about Jerry Brown. I am free to do that because no matter who we vote for, the next governor of California will be Pro-Abortion. (Note: I realize the self-referential term for this is “Pro-Choice,” but I find that disingenuous.) The Pro-Life contenders all fell away during the primary. I have looked at all the third party candidates. None has a chance to win, and none deserves one. I am left to choose between Brown and Meg Whitman.

I go way back with Brown. I attended L.A. Pierce College while he cut his political teeth serving on the Los Angeles Community College District Board of Trustees. Later, while attending UCLA, I discovered him standing at a little podium on the Free Speech Lawn. I joined six or eight other students to listen until my next class. He was thoughtful and engaging.

Brown served four years as secretary of state and eight as governor. He earned the moniker “Governor Moonbeam” for a certain zen goofiness, but the nuttiness in Brown’s administration was hope in the jojoba bean, or roller-skating with Ronstadt under the rotunda (full disclosure: one of my all-time favorite albums is Linda Ronstadt’s Canciones de Mi Padre). We chuckled over his personal frugality. Brown paid more to mothball the extravagant Reagan-built governor’s mansion than he spent to rent an apartment and sleep on a tatami mat. But his penny-pinching carried over to government finance. When California passed Prop 13, Brown carefully cut the state budget to what we could live on. He earned the endorsement of Howard Jarvis. (Yeah, wrap your head around that one.)

An ex-governor at age 45, Brown became something of a Harold Stassen, running three times for president and once for senator. But in an age when ex-presidential candidates golf, peddle their memoirs, or do talk-shows for FOX (okay, bad image, for Brown it would be NPR), Brown ran for mayor of Oakland. This is akin to ex-president Jimmy Carter nailing shingles for Habitat for Humanity, or ex-president Theodore Roosevelt serving in Liberia with the Peace Corps (I may have that one wrong, but I know he was doing something in Africa). Mayors of Palm Springs do photo ops with starlets. Mayors of Oakland do middle-of-the-night triage. And by all accounts, he did it well.

Then Brown moved on to become California’s attorney general. During these three years, what I notice is Brown’s commitment to carrying out the law as it is written, even when it may disagree with his personal inclination. I happen to agree with Brown on Capital Punishment: the death penalty is wrong, but needs to be enforced until the voters prohibit it.

Meanwhile, Meg Whitman was acquiring her personal billion-some dollars and finding it too inconvenient to get over to her precinct voting booth to perform the most basic duty of citizenship. (She was, however, free with her checkbook: apparently paupers vote while billionaires buy. She is on record donating and even campaigning for, um . . . Barbara Boxer.)

When Whitman decided to enter politics herself, she quickly hired as adviser the best ex-governor money could buy, Pete Wilson. By coincidence, it is Pete Wilson I hold personally responsible for the current sad condition of the Republican Party in California. AWOL where Republican instincts are best (Life), Wilson had to demagogue where they are worst (immigration xenophobia, deregulation of historically dangerous businesses and industries, and guns). In the process he permanently alienated the ever-growing Hispanic community, ripe with its Family Values voters. For short-term political gain, Wilson was willing to sacrifice the future of both my state and my party. Yet now, every pirouette in Whitman’s dance bears Wilson’s choreography.

However, the greatest difference between Whitman and Brown may come in the fine print of their position statements. For starters, Whitman doesn’t have much. Her pronouncements skim along the surface with well-vetted platitudes. In contrast, Brown’s come loaded with the kinds of minutia gleaned over a lifetime of trying to solve the Gordian knots of public policy.

Take one area that matters to me: Education. As a teacher married to a teacher, I’d come to the conclusion that testing corporations do not so much serve the teachers, students, or parents of our state as hold them for ransom. California pays these corporations enormous sums of money and then submits itself to the corporations’ convenience. Rather than have the summer to digest test information and make reasoned decisions about how to improve a program, the corporations deliver scores for April tests in mid August, after most schools have spent June and July designing course offerings and student schedules. It is an annual ritual in my home for my math-department-chairperson wife to start the first day of school exhausted from a series of all-nighters reworking the program after the last-minute delivery of four-month-old data. With that in mind, let me quote just one short section of Brown’s education proposal, as a representative sample that demonstrates the quality of the whole:

Our current State testing program costs over $100 million, is more than 10 years old, and is not as helpful as it could be to parents and educators. It is time to make some basic changes to improve our testing system.

Typically, tests are given in the spring over a 3-day period and results come back in August. Final school accountability scores aren’t ready for almost a year.

• These tests should be reduced in scope and testing time, and results need to be provided to educators and parents far more quickly.
• These year-end tests should be supplemented by very short assessments during the school year. The assessment goal should be to help the teachers, students and their families know where they stand and what specific improvements are needed.
• Tests should not measure factoids as much as understanding.
• Finally, state tests should be linked to college preparation and career readiness, but current tests were not designed to do this.

Do I resent the way Meg Whitman has used her money to buy my party’s nomination, water down or erode its core values, and stifle intelligent political discussion?

Yes.

Is that the main reason I will be voting for Jerry Brown?

No.

Much as I disagree with Jerry Brown over the issue that has most animated my political decisions over the last 30 years, when the abortion issue is neutralized, Jerry Brown really is a fine candidate for governor.

Democracy requires a difficult-to-maintain veneer of decorum over the hottest of passions. When all else fails, the two sides must still be able to speak to each other politely and be heard over the din. There should also be respect for office. One test of this might be self-inspection on the part of those either angered or pleased about Rep. Joe Wilson’s outbreak during President Obama’s healthcare speech: Did they have the identical or an opposite reaction when the Iraqi reporter threw a shoe at President Bush?

For the record, I disagree with Rep. Wilson on several points. First, I believe a speech by the President to Congress should be interrupted only by applause, whether polite or exuberant, or it should be submitted to in stony silence, out of respect for both institutions. Second, Rep Wilson’s explosion came when President Obama declared that no illegal alien would be covered under the coming healthcare plan. As I have expressed before, I don’t believe most of our undocumented neighbors are the kinds of bogey-men they have been made out to be. Even with ten or fifteen million of them combined, I don’t believe people working at minimum wage in farm fields or sweatshops harm America as much as the executives who have given themselves huge bonuses out of money the government intended for bailing out mismanaged businesses. (If it turns out any recipient of those multimillion-dollar travesties was here illegally, I say, yes, ship them home with empty pockets.)

On the other hand, when it is journalists or bloggers who catch a president or congress spinning facts to the detriment of truth, it is our duty to point that out. The subject over which I am best prepared to support such a charge is abortion. In Wednesday’s speech, President Obama asserted, “And one more misunderstanding I want to clear up – under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience laws will remain in place.”

Fact: H.R. 3200, as it currently stands with an amendment written by Rep. Lois Capps (R-Calif) and approved by the House Energy and Commerce Committee (30 pro-abortion Democrats favoring and 28 Republicans and pro-life Democrats opposing), the bill “explicitly permits the Secretary of the Health and Human Services Department, pro-abortion advocate Kathleen Sebelius, to include abortion in the services offered by public option and requires abortion coverage in the government health plan if the Hyde amendment is ever reversed. HR 3200 authorizes taxpayer-funded affordability credits and the Capps amendment specifically requires taxpayer subsidies to flow to plans that include abortion, but creates an accounting scheme designed to give the impression that public funds will not subsidize abortion. The Capps amendment also requires that a plan that includes abortion be made available in every region of the country.” Source

Fact: Later that same day, this same committee defeated (30-29) a bipartisan amendment proposed by Reps. Joe Pitts (R-PA) and Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) designed to prevent mandated abortion coverage in the essential benefits package. Source

Conclusion: Unless President Obama is proposing to remove the Capps Amendment and replace it with wording from the Pitts/Stupak Amendment, he lied in his speech this week.

Secondly, Obama’s reference to federal conscience laws “under our plan” can only be true in a sense so narrow he would need to cross his fingers behind his back. Last March, the Obama administration published in the Federal Register a proposal to rescind all Bush-era protections for medical personnel who refused to participate in abortions on moral grounds. Obama apparently means that the current “our plan” promises to protect those conscience laws which remain after his previous plan has eliminated them altogether. To this observer, that also looks like a lie.

Two years ago, when speaking to a Planned Parenthood audience, candidate Obama promised to eliminate these conscience protections and to include abortion-coverage in his national health insurance package, “In my mind, reproductive care is essential care,” he said. “It is basic care. And so it is at the center and at the heart of the plan that I propose. Essentially … we're gonna set up a public plan … that will provide all essential services, including reproductive services. We also will subsidize those who prefer to stay in the private insurance market — except the insurers are going to have to abide by the same rules in terms of providing comprehensive care, including reproductive care. I still believe that it is important for Planned Parenthood to be part of that system.” (Note: By "reproductive care," Obama means abortion and by “part of that system,” he means federal subsidies.) Source

I was alone with my wife in the privacy of a living room when candidate Obama sat with Rick Warren and described himself as a moderate on abortion. Even then, I did not blurt out, “You Lie!”

The record, however, shows that during three different years in the Illinois Senate, Barack Obama led opposition to the Born Alive Infant Protection Act. At the same time, the US House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly and the US Senate voted 98-0 to pass nearly identical legislation. Even the pro-abortion group NARAL remained neutral. But “moderate” Obama fought hard to protect the rights of hospital personnel to abandon living babies and let them die. Then he denied he had done so. He maintained that denial until the case against him was so strong that he could maintain the lie no longer. On August 18, 2008, just two days after the Saddleback Forum, his campaign admitted the truth. (Links to Obama’s votes on Illinois BAIPA)

It damages our Democracy when a congressman interrupts a president’s speech to call him a liar. But the damage is at least as severe when a president lies to Congress and to the American People. We do need to fix our broken health insurance system, and some of what the President is proposing impresses me as reasonable. However, when he uses his condescending “I’m an adult, so stop acting like a child” look to cover his lies on abortion, and then gives the same look to put down the legitimate fears of others, how can I as a voter trust him?

It is also difficult for me to trust the President when groups with whom he has partnered get caught in blatant disregard for the laws of our country. One prime example is the number of times hidden cameras or microphones have caught staff members in Planned Parenthood facilities across the country telling purportedly under-aged girls to hide the age of the men who have impregnated them, thus allowing Planned Parenthood to evade reporting laws on statutory rape. Unfortunately, those videos have become common enough to lose their punch, and I still haven’t seen where Obama has even acknowledged their existence.

Already, however, the Obama administration is racing to sever its connections with ACORN after a video that left me gasping when I saw it yesterday. An under-cover investigative couple walks into an ACORN housing office in Baltimore: She pretends to be a prostitute in need of housing to bring in and set up undocumented girls (under age 15) from El Salvador; He wants to divert funds from this “business” to make a run for Congress. Without batting an eye, two ACORN staffers pull out code books and begin explaining how it will need to be set up to best avoid taxes. The good news is: the Obama Administration will pull ACORN’s contract to help with next year’s census. The bad news is: Obama has worked closely with a group long-accused of lying and misrepresentation, and never saw a problem until all plausible deniably disappeared.

The President not only lies, but he hangs around with people for whom lying is a way of life.

I say that as civilly as I can manage.

A sample of the Planned Parenthood videos: hiding statutory rape, accepting donations earmarked for eugenics, showing as a lie PPA denials of racist sympathies

Just one of several editings of the ACORN videos. Variations abound.