Ah, the romance of rail travel.  From Murder on the Orient Express to From Russia with Love to White Christmas to Some Like It Hot there is something alluring about a train.  But for all those warm feelings it’s time to recognize that we are in the 21^st century and to leave trains to the movies. 

There have been calls for the great idea of high speed rail that is, in effect, a solution in search of a problem.  It may work well in Europe and Japan, but the United States is not Europe or Japan.  Two things needed to make high speed rail viable are population density and distances between such population densities that are not too close and not too far. We have a whole lot of neither.

Building a high speed rail system is capital intensive.  Between the track bed, carefully engineered to keep high speed trains on the tracks and the passengers comfortable, the rolling stock, and the signaling and safety equipment, it takes a lot of money to build it.  If that investment is to be recovered you need many passengers paying ticket prices high enough to make a profit and low enough to attract those passengers.  Those population centers have to be far enough apart so that the inconvenience of public transportation offsets driving by car and close enough so that the travel time is not too much longer than air travel.  How many of these routes are there in this country that satisfy those criteria?  Precious few.

Consider that part of the country where the population is densest, the Northeast Corridor, extending from Boston to Washington, D.C.  This happens to be one place in the country where rail service works.  Amtrak runs a fast train service along this corner that in 2008 actually made a profit of $41 per passenger on this service, called Acela. 

Let’s compare that to what is being planned for California.  The concept is a high speed rail link running from San Francisco in the north to San Diego in the south, a run of about 800 miles.  The initial segment of the project is estimated to cost $5.5 billion, take five years to build, and will connect Bakersfield to Madera mainly through agricultural regions.  From a construction perspective that should be an easy build with long stretches of open spaces.  Anyone care to wager what how much the estimate will grow?  The total cost is estimated at $40 billion.  If you could achieve the same profit as the Acela ($41 per passenger) and carry as many passengers as the Northeast Corridor in a year (10.8 million), it would take over 90 years just to recover the capital costs, not including any interest charges.  Is that remotely feasible?

Here’s where the problems mount, you could travel the 800 miles by air in about an hour and a forty minutes, whereas a high speed train would probably take around four hours.  One of the towns mentioned in a recent article in the New York Times as being along the route is Corcoran, population 26,000 including 12,000 “guests of the state” at nearby prisons.  Don’t count on them using the rails much.  The distance is too great and the population density is lacking.  But once again, the federal government is in the middle of something where it doesn’t belong providing funding.  Why should the overtaxed citizens of New York and New Jersey pay for a high speed rail system entirely within the state of California?  This about sums it up:

On Dec. 9, California’s rail authority received a windfall of additional federal stimulus money — some $600 million — when Republican governors in Ohio and Wisconsin passed on money intended for their states. California voters approved high-speed rail in 2008, and deadlines are already passing, including a Dec. 31 cutoff for the state to finalize a plan to spend federal money in the Central Valley. Initial spending will span a raft of projects, including designing stations, redirecting nearby roads and acquiring land.

So responsible governors in Ohio and Wisconsin passed on federal stimulus money; rather than return the money to the Treasury, damn it, it was going to be spent by someone!  Send it to California.  In case you hadn’t noticed lately, California is broke.  So tell me again, why hasn’t this project been cancelled?

If the people of California want to build this themselves, fine.  If a private company sees the opportunity to make a profit and wants to build this, go ahead.  But to take tax dollars from one state and give it to another to build another white elephant, is insane.  It is time to get our heads screwed on straight and live within our means.  Between cars and air travel, there are few places you cannot reach in this country.  There is no value in spending billions of dollars to hit a very small niche between the two.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours.  Please comment below.

Comments submitted in response to a previous post, “The Progressive War on Federalism,” focused on the Electoral College and a movement called the National Popular Vote (http://www.nationalpopularvote.com) bill.  Rather than argue against my point it only seemed to reinforce it.  The objective of this movement, which before this commenter’s contribution I was unaware of, is to abolish, or should I say neuter, the Electoral College and replace it with the direct election of the president.  This movement looks to further weaken the states and move us away from federalism and toward a strong monolithic central government.  Here is my analysis.

The Case in Favor of Direct Election of the President

The commenter and the website for the National Popular Vote (NPV) bill make several points in favor of the change.  In my view it boils down to the following:

1. In the current system, after the primaries, candidates only campaign in a handful of competitive states and ignore the rest where one candidate is either far ahead or far behind.
2. The Electoral College that we have today, was not designed, anticipated or favored by the Founding Fathers
3. This does not abolish the Electoral College
4. It does not require a Constitutional Amendment
5. The power of states are neither increased nor decreased
6. The National Popular Vote bill would end the influence of the “mob” in a handful of closely divided battleground states
7. The current system does not provide a check on the “mob”

This seems pretty compelling.  Most polls show that this idea is strongly favored over the Electoral College that we have today.  However, who is being asked the question?  In the federal system of government that the Founders designed, the people did not have the power to directly elect the president, so asking someone who doesn’t have power if they would like it, is like asking someone who is hungry if they would like some food.  Let me present my case against it.

The Case against the Direct Election of the President

The first argument that somehow having the direct election of the president would compel candidates to actively campaign across the country is stated but not proven.  If the outcome of the election is determined based on who has the most votes, what would compel a candidate to campaign in Montana or Alaska?  There just aren’t that many people in  those states and are we to believe that if a candidate does not show up in a state to campaign that the citizens there are going to stay home and not vote? That is absurd.

The more likely scenario is that candidates will focus on major media markets.  If you take Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., not the cities but the media markets, you will cover about 25% of the population of the U.S.  Add Chicago, LA, San Francisco, Houston, Dallas, and Miami, and you probably don’t have to campaign anywhere else to have a shot at reaching enough of the popular vote to win.  Those in favor of this proposal make no compelling argument otherwise.

The second argument that the Electoral College that we have today was not designed, anticipated or favored by the Founding Fathers is a myth.  They created the Electoral College, they left the method of choosing the electors up to the states.  “The Framers not only rejected the direct popular election of the President, but also left it to the state legislatures to determining how the states’ electors were to be appointed.” (Heritage Guide to the Constitution, p.185).  This raises several points.

If the Founders specifically rejected the direct election of the president how can the supporters argue that this will pass Constitutional muster without an Amendment?  Also the argument that it does not abolish the Electoral College may be true, but it renders it meaningless, which is the same as abolishing it.  If the NPV bill is adopted by all the states, the outcome of every presidential election going forward would be a vote of 538-0.  Anyone who thinks that is more than a rubber stamp is deluding themselves.

The argument that this does not require a Constitutional Amendment, which I believe I have refuted, is based on the argument that states can band together in compacts and agree on the all for one selection of electors.  The supporters point to Article I, Section 10 of the Constitution in support of this.  However, this clause states that the approval of Congress is required.  Furthermore in “United States Steel v. Multistate Tax Commission (1978), the Supreme Court declared that state compacts require congressional approval only if they ‘encroach upon the supremacy of the United States.’”  (Heritage, p. 179).  What could be more of an encroachment than the states banding together to effectively nullify the Electoral College without a Constitutional amendment?

Federalism recognized the national government and each of the state governments as sovereign entities.  Therefore the voters in one state determining the electors in another state would also likely draw constitutional challenge.  If all the voters in Texas chose candidate A, but the national popular vote chose candidate B, under NPV the electors from Texas would vote for candidate B against the wishes of the people of Texas.

The Cato Institute studied the NPV proposal and found that about an equal number of states would garner more candidate attention from this proposal as would lose attention.  It looked at the electoral power of the states under both systems.  Under the current system it considered each state’s power as the current electoral votes as a percentage of the total number of electoral votes.  Under the NPV system it looked at the population of eligible voters as a percentage of the total number of eligible voters.  In their analysis twenty states would have greater influence under NPV among them Pennsylvania, New York, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois; thirty states would lose influence among them Wyoming, the District of Columbia, Alaska, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Louisiana; one state, Alabama would be unchanged.  So the argument that smaller “flyover” states would suddenly garner more attention is not borne out by the analysis.

The last argument is a check on “mob rule,” which oddly was the purpose behind the design of the Electoral College in the first place.  The argument against this is best illustrated by a hypothetical example.

Let’s say over the next six years there is a massive migration to California and at the same time NPV is approved in every state.  Maybe California finally gets marijuana legalized and maybe they even declare it a fundamental right that every Californian is entitled to a free pound of the stuff every year.  The migration results in 51% of the population living in California.  Now in 2016, governor Jerry Brown decides to run for president.  On Election Day, everyone in California lights up a spliff and heads to the polls to vote for Jerry Brown.  The vote in California is unanimous.  Elsewhere in the country everyone is shocked at what is taking place in California and votes for another candidate, say, Marco Rubio.  The popular vote is 51% for Jerry Brown, 49% for Marco Rubio.  Rubio carries 49 out of 50 states plus the District of Columbia.  Jerry Brown carries one state, California.  In the system we have today, Brown would get 54 Electoral votes and Rubio would get 484 and easily win the presidency over the “mob rule” in California.  But under NPV, Brown wins 538 -0.

Okay, forward to 2024 and let’s say the population has remained the same as have the voter sentiments, but another census has come and gone so the House of Representatives and subsequently the electoral votes are reapportioned.  If you take 51% of 435, gives California 222 plus 2 electoral votes for a total of 224 electoral votes.  Now the same election is held with Bill Maher running for president from California and Alan West from Florida running against him.  When the smoke clears the results are the same, Maher with 51% of the popular vote and West with 49%.  In the Electoral College, as it exists today, West would win 314 to 224, again carrying 49 out of 50 states plus the District of Columbia, while Maher carries one state.  However under NPV, Maher would win 538-0.  Therefore NPV enforces mob rule rather than preventing it.

The Wisdom of the Founding Fathers

The Founding Fathers designed our form of government out of a mistrust of power.  They designed the system so that the people would directly elect the House of Representatives and they also gave control of the purse to that body.  They designed the Senate to represent the interests of the sovereign states, until the progressives abolished that with the seventeenth amendment.  They designed the system where the Electoral College would choose the president, but left it to the individual states how they would choose their electors.  They designed the system where judges would be chosen by the president with the advice and consent of the senate.

The Electoral College was a way to protect the voice of small states from the tyranny of the majority.  What the progressives want to do is to follow up what they did with the seventeenth amendment.  Instead of having fifty-one election districts for president, represented by the states and the District of Columbia, they want to have one election district consisting of the entire nation.  Why not then abolish the state boundaries and the states themselves?  State capitals can then become district offices of the federal government carrying out the directives that come down from Washington. 

This is not the great country our Founders gave us.  It is moving this country to a omnipotent federal government where the individual has no voice of consequence and no liberty either.

That’s my opinion. I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.

I still find myself in awe of our Founding Fathers who created our form of government.  The competing ideas that they sifted through to come up with our Constitution and the safeguards in it is wondrous.  The designs upon it by the progressives is by equal measure disturbing.

The progressives envision a national government that they can dominate and that, in turn, will dominate us.  There is no activity over which they do not feel they can or should control.  Private property is a panacea, to keep the masses from open revolt, but they really believe that all wealth that is generated belongs to the government except for the portion they permit us to keep.  If you think that statement is unimaginable consider this.  How often do you hear, concerning the current debate over the Bush tax cuts, that we cannot afford them for the rich?  Think about it.  They say our government cannot afford to allow certain citizens of this country to continue to pay the same level of taxes in 2011 that they pay today.  That the government somehow has to pay for a tax cut, that actually isn’t even a cut but rather a continuation of what has existed for the last ten years.  How is getting less than you want a cost? If you awake on Christmas morning and do not find the present you have been hoping for under the tree, do you say, “Man, that’s gonna cost me?” Of course you do not.

A Massive Federal Government

Think about the many federal departments and agencies that exist today for which you will find no authorization in the Constitution: Education; Agriculture; Housing and Urban Development; Energy; Health and Human Services; Transportation.  Did they not have education in the eighteenth century? Are we more agrarian today than we were in 1789?  If not, why do we need a Department of Agriculture today, but the Founders didn’t see a need for it then?

The progressives are fighting for the continual concentration of functions at the federal level where the voices of the people are faint, but the voices of the special interests are robust and clear.  The branch of the federal government that is closest to the people is the House of Representatives.  But ponder how small your voice is in that chamber.  You are one of some 700,000 in your congressional district; your congressman or woman is one of 435 in the House of Representatives.  How do you get your voice heard at the federal level?  And yet Congress will tell you what kind of light bulb to buy or what kind of toilet you must flush.  Is this what our founding fathers envisioned?

The Bloody Revolution

To establish our country they fought a brutal revolution; a revolution where 50% of the mortal wounds were caused by bayonets.  Now that’s up close and personal.  It is not something they entered into lightly and a reading of the Declaration of Independence will tell you that they pledged their lives when they signed that document and their death warrants as well.  If captured by the British they surely would have been tried and executed for treason.

In designing our form of government they were very suspicious of strong central power and authority, having just thrown off one.  They did not trust government.  As Jefferson said, “When governments fear the people, there is liberty.  When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.”  Here is a simple test, do you fear the IRS or does the IRS fear you?

The Founders designed the Constitution to have strictly enumerated powers given to the federal government with all other powers retained by the states or the people.  They did not design a democracy, but a republic.  In that republic they built numerous checks and balances to prevent the accumulation of power. It has been the goal of the progressives to remove those checks and balances and put in place the tyranny that fears no people.

The Structure of the Federal Government

Among the balances they put in place was that the people would directly elect the members of the House of Representatives.  That is the body of government closest to the people.  If you recall the wording of the Tenth Amendment it speaks of the federal government, the states and the people.  The Senate was to be appointed by the state legislatures to represent their interests.  The president was to be elected, not by the people, but by the Electoral College.  Lastly, judges were to be appointed for life by the president with the advice and consent of the senate.  Why did they do this?  One reason is that they believed that if a proposed law had the backing of the majority of the people (House of Representatives) and a majority of the states (Senate) then it was probably a good thing, otherwise slow it down.  The fewer the number of laws, the greater our liberty.

The Progressives Attack

The progressives began their designs on the Constitution with the introduction of the income tax through the passage of the Sixteenth Amendment in 1913.  By allowing the government to tax incomes the government could now afford to greatly expand. However, to be able to expand it had to have the consent of the states, which was not likely to be granted.  So two months after the passage of the Sixteenth Amendment, the Seventeenth Amendment was ratified.  The Seventeenth Amendment called for the direct election of Senators, rather than having them appointed by the state legislatures.  The individual citizens picked up two more votes in the federal government, in most cases an even weaker voice than their Representative, and the states were shut out.

Do you think things such as unfunded mandates could pass in Congress if the states still chose the members of the Senate?  Social Security? Medicare? The Department of Education? The Department of Housing and Urban Development? And on and on?  Think of some of the more radical members of the Senate.  Do you think Al Franken would have been appointed by the Minnesota state legislature?  For many years in New York, the State Assembly was under the control of the Democrats but the State Senate was under the control of the Republicans.  The governorship passed back and forth between representatives of the two parties.   However, New York’s two Senators are Democrats and win reelection easily because of the concentration of Democrats mainly in New York City.  Could Hillary Clinton have moved into New York and immediately become its newest Senator with a Republican governor and Republican controlled State Senate? She was elected Senator from New York before she even moved out of the White House.  So instead of representing their state legislatures, Senate candidates focused on the population centers of their states to appeal directly to the people and to get elected and reelected.  The states were reduced from sovereign entities to subsidiaries of the federal government.

The Supreme Court

When Franklin Roosevelt was president he tried to pass his massive socialist programs but found that the Supreme Court was striking down many of his programs as being unconstitutional.  Roosevelt wanted to pack the court by increasing its membership from nine justices to fifteen.  He argued that the justices were old and over worked.  So he wanted to appoint a new justice for every existing justice that was seventy years or older.  His plan failed.  But when he broke with George Washington’s precedent and that of every president who followed him of serving no more than two terms, he was eventually able to appoint every justice to the Supreme Court.  So he got his way, it just took longer.

The Supreme Court can be considered the collateral damage of the Seventeenth Amendment.  The Justices of the Supreme Court are appointed by the president with the advice and consent of the Senate.  However once the Senators became directly elected by the people things changed.  Would a distinguished jurist like Robert Bork be treated as shamefully as he was by the lie filled speech of Ted Kennedy if Kennedy and Joe Biden weren’t doing the work of the pro-abortion lobby?  Would Clarence Thomas be subjected to the electronic lynching he faced if not for some Senators pandering to their special interest groups?  What we now have are potential Supreme Court justices who have learned that if you don’t want to get “Borked” keep your mouth shut during your confirmation hearings.  So we don’t know who we are going to get until a lifetime appointee is on the bench and then it is too late.

The 2000 Presidential Election

Who can forget the 2000 presidential election?  The Democrats still say Al Gore won, not because of Florida (he lost the election there, he lost the re-count, he lost the re-re-count) but because he won the popular vote.  The debates raged, why do we have an Electoral College?  The president should be elected by popular vote only. 

The argument follows the one made previously about the direct election of senators.  The Electoral College forces presidential candidates to campaign everywhere because everywhere counts.  There are at least three electoral votes to be had in every state.  The Founders were very concerned about balance.  They did not want the president just to be elected by the people of New York, Boston and Philadelphia, the large cities of that time.  Today, if the Electoral College was abolished the election would focus on the media  and population centers of New York, LA, San Francisco, Chicago and the large cities because that’s where it is easiest to get the message out and that is where the majority of the people are.  The progressives would put up pretty much the same candidates as they do today, perhaps more to the left.  This is their home turf and power base.  Instead of traveling around the country they could concentrate their time and money in a few large cities.  The Republicans would probably field candidates of a far more moderate stripe to not get hooted off the stage in New York.  Let me illustrate.

Electoral College vote Bush-Gore 2000

The Democrats claim Gore won in 2000 because he won the popular vote.  He lost in the Electoral College by five votes.  If you look at the breakdown of the states Gore won versus Bush, Gore took the Northeast, the Great Lakes area and the West Coast.  With the exception of New Mexico, Bush took everything else.

Let’s dial it down a level and look at who won at the county level.

Bush-Gore 2000 Winners by County

If you look at it at the county level, you could drive from the east coast to the west coast without entering a single county that Gore won.  You could do the same driving from Canada to Mexico.  But if popular vote was the metric, the man who won 80%-90% of the land mass of the United States would have lost.  Why should you not have a say, if you don’t live in a major population center?  It is not like Bush won in an Electoral College landslide and it is not like Gore absolutely trounced Bush in the popular vote.  The purpose of the Electoral College is to act as another brake on the tyranny of the majority.  

Where Do We Go From Here  

We are presently at a crossroads.  We have an electorate that is more knowledgeable, more aware, and more engaged than at any time in my memory.  We can continue to go down the socialist path toward a massive central government that takes all of our liberties for a measure of sustenance, or we can turn the tide and demand our liberties back.  

Let us begin by repealing the Seventeenth Amendment.

As is the case every ten years we take a census of the population of the United States, as required by the Constitution.  After the census is taken the seats in the House of Representatives are shuffled to accommodate for shifts in population between the states.

So what does this all mean?  In a previous post focusing on the Senate we showed that currently twenty-one Democrats and two independents who caucus (meet and generally vote with) the Democrats will be facing election in 2012 compared to only ten Republicans.  In the House, everyone is up for re-election every two years.  So after picking up 60 seats, or thereabouts as some races still haven’t been decided, where do the two parties start off as a result of reapportionment?  Although final numbers won’t be in until December, it doesn’t look good for the Democrats.

The Democrat strongholds remain on the East and West coasts and in the Rust Belt around the Great Lakes.  The Republican strongholds are the rest of the country.  The dismal economic policies of high taxation and bigger government, are taking their toll and here are a couple of examples.

Rush Limbaugh, perhaps the most hated man on the left, had a residence in New York and paid New York taxes.  On one of his programs he talked about getting out of the state to avoid the high taxation.  New York desperately depends on its wealthy citizens to fund the state and New York City government, particularly the Wall Street crowd.  Instead of trying to persuade Mr. Limbaugh to stay by pointing out the attractions of living in New York, officials tried to endear themselves to their left wing base by taunting him and daring him to leave.  Leave he did, taking his tax revenues with him.

If you look at the cost of renting a truck from U-Haul to move from Texas to California or vice versa, the rates are informative:

From Dallas to San Francisco: $734
From San Francisco to Dallas: $2,116

From Houston to Los Angeles: $706
From Los Angeles to Houston: $2,051

Any student of supply and demand will quickly see the message contained here.  The cost of a truck heading to Texas is nearly three times the cost of a truck going the other way.  Apparently, there are plenty of trucks available in Texas for those who want to move to California, but no one who wants to make that move.  Conversely, there are scant few trucks to help people get the hell out of California before it implodes, but plenty of people bidding the rental price of a truck up.

The Policies in Action

Now that we have touched on the Blue state policies, what is likely to happen?

Blue States – Net loss of seven seats

• Massachusetts to lose one seat
• New York to lose two seats
• New Jersey to lose one seat
• Pennsylvania to lose one seat
• Michigan to lose one seat
• Illinois to lose one seat
• Iowa to lose one seat
• Washington gain one seat

Toss Ups – Net gain of one seat

• Ohio to lose two seats
• Nevada to gain one seat
• Florida to gain two seats

Red States – Net gain six seats

• Missouri to lose one seat
• Louisiana to lose one seat
• South Carolina to gain one seat
• Georgia to gain one seat
• Texas to gain four seats
• Arizona to gain one seat
• Utah to gain one seat

If you look at the toss ups, categorized as such because they voted twice each in the last four Presidential elections for the Democrat and the Republican candidates, Florida is a key state.  Florida will gain two seats and at the same time it just elected a Republican governor and a Tea Party senate candidate Marco Rubio.  If they can pull Florida solidly into the Republican camp, that could mean another two seats for the Republicans.

So without a ballot being cast it looks pretty positive that the Republicans will start off the 2012 House election with a six to eight seat advantage on top of the sixty to sixty-five or so they just won. 

There is no certainty that this will play out along these lines.  After all the Democrats could flip several seats in their strongholds if all the Republicans grab those U-Haul trucks and head for friendlier, liberty loving states.  Conversely those freedom seeking migrants might move into districts that are now held by Democrats in the South and flip them to the Republican column. 

The key thing for the Republicans to have continued electoral success is to stick to what you ran on without any backsliding.  I can assure you that the Tea Party will either have your back or be breathing down your neck.  You pick

If you earn less than $75,000 per year, you are in line to get a tax break of about $8 a week.  Let me get out of your way as you grab the car keys to take your $8 and go on a spending binge that will have the economy humming in no time at all.

There are No Earmarks in this Bill

Do you long for the days of Bill Clinton when he waxed philosophical about the meaning of the word “is”?  President Obama said:

“We are going to ban all earmarks, the process by which individual members insert projects without review,” he told reporters on the Hill Tuesday as he tried to build support for the measure.

So, if no Congressional member specifically inserts language about a specific spending request in a particular district, it doesn’t meet the definition of an “earmark.”  So cut out some of the specifics and voila, an earmark is no longer an earmark!  A pet project of Nancy Pelosi, preserving the habitat of the salt marsh harvest mouse, has $30 million, earmarked, er, included in the stimulus bill.

Republican lawmakers said they learned of the marsh money when asking about how various agencies plan to spend stimulus money. The vitality of the mouse has been an issue for Mrs. Pelosi and other California Democrats since the early 1990s.

While the Republicans are raising questions about how American’s tax dollars are being squandered in the name of stimulus, Democrats are responding by calling Republicans unpatriotic, obstructionists, against the will of the American people.  When Speaker Pelosi’s office was asked about the $30 million a spokesman had this response:

“The speaker nor her staff have had any involvement in this initiative. This is yet another contrived partisan attack,” Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill said. “Restoration is key to economic activity, including farming, fisheries, recreation and clean water.”

Does anyone with a room temperature IQ actually believe that statement?  The spending is in San Francisco which is where Nancy Pelosi’s district it located.  Are we supposed to believe she had nothing to do with $30 million of spending in her district?  Was it a Valentine’s Day gift from Steny Hoyer?  If she knows nothing about it, TAKE IT OUT! Those evil Republican partisans had the temerity to ask this question:

“This certainly doesn’t sound like it will create or save American jobs,” Mr. Steel said. “So can Speaker Pelosi explain exactly how we will improve the American economy by helping the adorable little” critter?

The American People Weigh In

Maybe Pelosi can explain it, but she’s not going to.  Perhaps that is why a recent Rasmussen poll had that 67% of Americans think that they could do a better job on the economy than Congress.  Do you think Nancy’s mouse is one of the reasons for that?  Even more embarrassing:

Forty-four percent (44%) voters also think a group of people selected at random from the phone book would do a better job addressing the nation’s problems than the current Congress, but 37% disagree. Twenty percent (20%)are undecided.

Selected at random from the phone book! We pay these people $167,000 a year and we think names drawn at random from the phone book could do a better job!  Is it only me, or does someone else see a problem here?  These clowns are going to bankrupt us and our children and grandchildren, so they can push through this porka-palooza as fast as possible so no one gets a chance to look at it.  Spending didn’t fix the Great Depression.  Spending didn’t end the lost decade in Japan.  Why do we think it will work now?  Isn’t that the definition of insanity?

Tax cuts were proven by JFK, and Reagan, but let’s not try anything that has actually worked before.  The Democrats say that the reason spending didn’t work in Japan is that the spending wasn’t high enough or fast enough!  So, if this “stimulus” fails to work, as many are predicting, we can expect Congress to come back and say, well it’s those Republicans.  They didn’t let us spend as much as we wanted, so now we have to go back and spend $2 trillion.

So while you ponder that, enjoy your $8.  Don’t spend it all in one place.  But when you put your head on the pillow tonight, rest easy, the salt marsh harvest mouse got $30 mill.  But remember, the Democrats are looking out for you.  And don’t forget to start saving $2,500 for each member of your family, because that’s the size of the tax bill the Democrats will be leaving you and your children.

The scene was rather startling, an elderly woman holding a cross in her hand peacefully demonstrating for Proposition 8 in Palm Springs, California and some miscreant viciously slaps it out of her hand.

At another venue in the Castro district of San Francisco a group of evangelicals were peacefully gathered on the street praying and making themselves available to anyone who wanted speak to him.  One young lady’s bible was stolen and when she asked that it be returned, her request was met with kicking and punching. Nice. So much for the city of tolerance.

So what we are hearing now, which is a formula we have seen before, is if you lose at the ballot box pick up your marbles and head off to find a activist judge who will discover within an evolved Constitution, the fundamental right that everyone missed for the last two hundred plus years and declare the will of the people null and void.

What’s This Really All About?

Here is the actual text of Proposition 8 (leaving out the legalese regarding where it fits in the California Constitution to just get to the meat of it):

SEC. 7.5. Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.

That’s it.  If you landed here from another planet you would probably wonder what’s going on?  If you are a foreign visitor and see this on the news you would probably think we had lost our minds.  Who would propose a constitutional amendment to define what any idiot knows to be true?  What should we look for next?  A constitutional amendment that defines the world as round?  The sky blue?  The grass green?

But this is not about rights. It is not about tolerance. It is not about fairness.  It is about mainstreaming.  It is about a definition. It starts by tearing down a definition that has existed for several millennia, the definition of marriage.

Once that definition is altered, then terms like husband and wife lose their meaning.  After all, if you are talking about the marriage of Jim and Joe, who is the wife?  If you are talking about the marriage of Jane and Mary, who is the husband?  If husband and wife lose their meaning, then what will soon follow is that it will become politically incorrect to use those terms at all.  Any instance of husband and wife will have to be stricken first from any public documents then eventually from all documents.  In the end we will all just be spouses or significant others or some other bland descriptor.

The reason, in my humble opinion, why the battle lines have been so starkly drawn and the fighting is getting so fierce and will continue to do so, is because this is not about adding to the rights of gays.  It is about taking away how the majority of Americans define themselves.  They just don’t see it as an equivalency.

If you took three islands and put all the heterosexuals on one island, all the gay men on another and all the gay women on the third and came back in 100 years, only one of those three islands would be populated.  So how does A=B=C?

What Was the Point of Marriage in the First Place?

Marriage and the laws that eventually gave it protection and encouraged it were for the purpose of bringing children into the world.  A man and a woman would come together, make a commitment to be bound to each other, to be responsible for each other and in that family unit bring children into the world and provide for their protection, care, and upbringing.  It was survival, not only for that family, but for the community as a whole.

Are there exceptions to the rule?  Yes.  There are couples who for biological or other reasons cannot have children and there are couples who do not want children.  For the former group adoption has been an alternative.  In the case of homosexuals, the rule is the exception.  They cannot have children without adoption or by involving a third party.  So again, how is that the equivalent of marriage?

It’s Not About Rights

Prior to 1920, women were not allowed to vote.  But with courageous leaders like Susan B. Anthony they fought for those rights and won them through the legislative process and by amendment to the Constitution.  They didn’t seek out an activist judge to redefine the term “male” to mean both men and women.

In the 1947 movie, “Gentleman’s Agreement,” the character portrayed by Gregory Peck poses as a Jew to write about the discrimination against Jews in America.  What was the solution?  Did Jews find an activist judge who would redefine them as Episcopalians?  Can you imagine them making that case?

“So, Mr. Levine,” the judge asked, “you want to become an Episcopalian?  Then why don’t you just become one?  Why are you here?”

“No, your honor, I’m perfectly happy being a Jew. I don’t want to become an Episcopalian; I just want to be called an Episcopalian.”

“Let me get this straight.  You want to continue to be a Jew, worship like a Jew and live the life of a Jew, you just want to be called an Episcopalian?”

“Right.”

” Why?”

“Life would be so much easier.”

The battle surrounding Proposition 8 is a similar one, gays don’t want to marry someone of the opposite sex in the traditional definition marriage, they just want to be defined the same way.

What Does Sex Have To Do With It?

I think that most Americans are open to the idea that the rights that gays are seeking, such as the right to share and inherit property, the right to visit a sick partner in the hospital, the right to make decisions on the part of a partner that currently go to the next of kin, should be allowed.  But taking it a step further, why should it be limited to those who have sexual relations?

Let’s take a hypothetical case of Felix and Oscar.  Felix and Oscar are heterosexual men.  They are getting on in years, both in their early eighties.  They fought together in WWII.  Their wives are both deceased.  They are not physically attracted to each other.  However, they both feel that at this stage in their lives they would like to look out for each other like they did on the beaches of Normandy and the Ardennes forest.  They want to buy and share a house together, pooling their resources, and look after each others health, and leave whatever financial assets they have to the surviving partner.  Their families, though distant, have no problem with this arrangement.  Why couldn’t these two gentlemen have the same rights that gays are seeking?  Do gays seek a special class that only includes those who are sexually intimate?  Why shouldn’t Felix and Oscar have the same rights?

Stick to the Rights Issue

If gay advocates stick to the rights issue and be inclusive such that any two people, who want to be legally bound and committed, can have the right to share, look after, and care for each other, these rights that gays are seeking would probably be granted quickly.  But if the objective is to tear down something that has existed for several thousand years in order to forcefully mainstream a way of life, then they had better be ready for a battle.  Time and again gays are asking straights to be understanding, to be fair and to be compassionate.  Perhaps it’s time to turn the tables where gays should be understanding, fair and considerate and leave marriage well enough alone.

Most fair minded Americans will support individual rights and oppose discrimination.  But if their way of life, which is not discriminatory, comes under attack you can expect them to battle back.  Marriage is not discriminatory.  It is a loving bound between a husband and a wife.