According to the Declaration if Independence, America consists of “Free and Independent States”; 13 originally, 50 today.

Except that the centralized tyranny in Washington, D.C. owns 45.3 percent of the land in California. That’s better than the 84.5 percent in Utah or the 69.1 percent of Alaska.

But it’s much worse than the mere 1.6 percent of Alabama or the 0.4 percent of Connecticut.

The Feds should sell off all that property and use the proceeds to pay down the $15,338,276,445,417.43 national debt. But they won’t. They love enslaving us.

Here’s the chart of the whole country:

Feb. 3, 2012

Hat tip to LewRockwell.com.

I’d rather walk that drive a hybrid car. After bourbon, the internal combustion engine is mankind’s greatest invention. All talk of oil “shortages” and too much “pollution” is just socialist blather used to destroy our freedoms.

But some folks like hybrids. Soon they could be paying a lot more for them thanks to a nutty decision in a California court. Reported the Huffington Post, Heather Peters, on Feb. 2 won “a court decision awarding her $9,867 and finding Honda misled her into thinking her Hybrid could get 50 miles per gallon. She said the 2006 model, which she still owns, gets about 30 mpg.

“Peters’ win in small claims court was a unique end run around the class action process and set the stage for others to follow suit. She sees her victory as benefiting not just Honda owners but all consumers.”

But as was noted by auto journalist Eric Peters (no relation to Heather), Honda and other automakers don’t establish the fuel ratings, the federal government does! Didn’t Heather and the California court know that?

Oh, wait, I forgot. This is California, where dreams are reality, common sense is uncommon and our governor is named Moonbeam.

Lawsuits Galore

Eric Peters writes, “Because while [Heather] Peters’ $9k judgment is small potatoes, the fact that she succeeded could encourage a tsunami of similar court cases that might end up costing Honda (and potentially other hybrid car sellers and so, ultimately, consumers ) a lot more than $9k.

“As Peters (a lawyer) notes, there are at least 200,000 Honda Civic hybrid owners alone. That’s just one make/model of hybrid. There are at least a dozen different hybrid vehicles on the market — and theoretically, the same case could be made against them, too….

“The government (EPA) takes a new car, then runs it through its test loop. Mileage figures are posted on the window sticker based on these tests, which are by nature subjective. Hence the caveat, in plain standard English: Your mileage will vary. Note, not may.

“Will.

“The exact wording is as follows:

“ ‘Your actual mileage will vary depending on how you drive and maintain your vehicle  (italics added).’

“And just under the big ‘best case’ mileage numbers, in smaller type, one finds a range of ‘expected mileage.’ As an example, this week I am test driving a new Fiat 500C. The ‘best case’ number is 32 MPG highway. But underneath this is a range of ‘expected mileage’ between a low of 26 MPG and an even higher high of 38 MPG.

“In other words, your mileage will vary.”

Attacking Honda

According to the Huffington Post, “But Professor Laurie Levenson of Loyola University Law School said Honda may have suffered something much worse than a possible flood of small claims actions.

“‘The worst part for Honda is they’ve been branded as committing fraud’,” she said. “That’s not good for sales. It’s a P.R. disaster and sometimes that costs more than the judgment.”

But it was the federal government that committed the fraud by establishing the Honda’s fuel usage ratings.

And how do we know how Heather Peters drove the car? To do that, you’d have to put a camera behind her head and record how heavy her high heels were stomping down on the accelerator.

Eric Peters again: “Unfortunately for Honda — and potentially every other seller of hybrid cars and perhaps cars, period —  there are a lot of people out there who cannot read and comprehend the meaning of plain English and worse, assume everything the government tells them must be true, since it’s the government that’s telling it to them. Thus, they become angry when reality disabuses them — but unfortunately, they channel their anger toward the wrong party.

“Here is the truth about the Civic hybrid — and all hybrids:

“If you drive it very gingerly, if you keep it under 50 MPH and accelerate very gradually, it is entirely possible to realize the federal government’s publicized ‘high’ MPG figures — and even to exceed them. The problem, of course, is that it is difficult to drive this way if you ever want to get anywhere — and/or have any concern about not driving your fellow drivers to fury by impeding their progress.

“There is also the problem of conditions. They, too, vary.

“A Civic hybrid that does not have to ascend 8 percent grades every day, which is not driven at high altitudes (where the air is thinner) or for months on end in 20 degree weather is going to be easier on gas than a hybrid Civic that is subjected to any one of these conditions, or to all of them. And if, say, you run around on under-inflated tires, or need of a tune-up, then once again, your actual mileage will vary. 

“So, arguably, Peters’ lawsuit was fundamentally wrongheaded — and the judgment, unjust. The court did not even try to determine how she actually drove her car, even though it is a critical piece of evidence. The only question considered was whether her car delivered the advertised mileage – notwithstanding the bold-faced caveat that the advertised mileage is for ‘comparison purposes only’ and that (wait for it) your actual mileage will vary.”

So the whole hybrid thing is another fraud the government has perpetrated upon us. And it’s just going to get worse, thanks to federal regulators and the unjust California “justice” system.

Feb. 3, 2012

Putting its investment projections slightly more in line with reality, yesterday CalSTRS downgraded its fund forecast. According to its own announcement, “The governing board of the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS) today adopted a new set of actuarial assumptions, including lowering the investment return assumption from 7.75 percent to 7.5 percent. The change is part of a four-year experience analysis that sets the parameters for determining the financial health of the system.

“The assumptions update the actuarial experience analysis covering 2006 through 2010 and are used to evaluate the impact of both demographic and economic factors on the long-range financial health of CalSTRS. These assumptions, in turn, have a significant impact on the valuation of the plan, a snapshot of its financial health, scheduled to come before the Teachers’ Retirement Board in April.

“The most recent past valuation, presented in April 2011, showed a $56 billion funding shortfall, meaning that available assets fell $56 billion short of the system’s long-term obligations.”

That means California taxpayers are on the hook for making up that $56 billion.

But at least some reality has crept into the CalSTRS projections.

By contrast, sister fund CalPERS, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, has refused to change its assumptions. Reported Bloomberg, “Last March, the CalPERS board voted to maintain its 7.75 percent assumed rate, rejecting its actuaries’ recommendation to lower it to 7.5 percent.

“Of the 11 U.S. pension funds with assets of more than $50 billion, CalSTRS and systems in Wisconsin and New York reduced their assumptions since 2007-08, according to the staff report to the CalSTRS board.

“New York City owes its pensions more than previously anticipated because officials have been too optimistic in assuming an 8 percent return on the $115.2 billion that the five funds hold in assets, Chief Actuary Robert North has said.

“A more realistic expectation would be 7 percent, which would increase the city’s liability by about $2 billion if paid in one year, North said in a telephone interview.”

Actually, a Stanford study found that even CalSTRS’ 7.5 percent assumption is too optimistic — that 6 percent or lower is more realistic.

These state pension funds still don’t acknowledge that the 2007-09 Great Recession, and the tepid recovery since, scrambled all their calculations of fund gains. Taxpayers increasingly will be dinged to pay for the shortfalls.

Reform is more needed than ever.

Feb. 3, 2012

Imagine driving home from a Super Bowl party and being stopped at a police checkpoint. You roll down your window and an officer asks what you’ve had to drink.

“Just a couple Red Bulls,” you reply. “I’m the designated driver.”

“Will you step out of the car please, sir,” the officer requests.

“Why?” you ask.

“Because,” he explains, “we’re going to measure your blood sugar level to make sure you’re not over the legal limit while operating a motor vehicle in the state of California.”

Sound farfetched? Well, maybe not so much. Not when you read the jeremiad, co-authored by researchers at UC San Francisco, published this week in the journal Nature, suggesting that sugar be considered a controlled substance — just like alcohol.

In their commentary piece, Robert Lustig, Laura Schmidt and Claire Brindis claim that sugar’s effects on the body can be similar to those of alcohol. As such, they argue, sale and use of the sweet stuff should be regulated by the government.

“When you think about it, this actually makes sense,” said Schmidt, in an appearance on CNN.  “Alcohol, after all, is simply the distillation of sugar. Where does vodka come from? Sugar.”

Schmidt and her colleagues propose placing age restrictions on purchases of products with “added sugar” — which is defined as any sweetener containing the molecule fructose that is added to food in processing. They also suggest limiting sales of such products during school hours.

Sugar Tax

And, all-too-predictably, they advocate a sugar tax.

To bolster their case for designating sugar a controlled substance, the UCSF researchers cite the “landmark” book by social psychologist Thomas Babor, “Alcohol: No Ordinary Commod­ity: Research and Public Policy.”

In that 2003 book, Babor set forth four criteria that justify regulation of alcohol. Those criteria are now widely accepted by the public health community, according to Lustig, Schmidt and Brindis.

The criteria include:  “unavoidability” (meaning pervasiveness throughout society), toxicity, potential for abuse and negative impact on society. Based on those criteria, the UCSF researchers insist, sugar is no less a threat to public health and safety than demon alcohol and, therefore, merits similar government oversight.

That conclusion will no doubt resonate in Sacramento, where tax-and-regulate Democrats will cite the Nature article as an inarguable “scientific” basis for imposing new taxes on foods and drinks containing fructose.

Just last year, in fact, the Legislature considered a measure that would have made California the first state in the nation to impose a soda tax. Fortunately, the proposed tax died in the Assembly. Had it become law, it would have cost the state’s soda-drinking residents nearly $2 billion a year.

Yet, scientific doubt remains as to whether fructose truly is as much a threat to public health as the UCSF researchers maintain.

Indeed, the Nature article noted that saturated fats were once blamed for the putative toxicity of high-processed foods, but that “most medical professionals no longer believe that fat is the primary culprit.”

Well, if the science was wrong on saturated fats, it could be just as wrong on fructose. That is why lawmakers at both the state and local levels should be wary of embracing the kind of public policy prescriptions proferred by the UCSF researchers.

– Joseph Perkins

By JOHN SEILER

I love cars. The best auto site in the Internet is EricPetersAutos.com. He writes not just about old and new cars, but about the politics of cars.

Another great site, LewRockwell.com, just published an article by Peters on how the government is spying on us through the dozens of little computers that now run modern cars. One of Big Brother’s biggest helpers is the California Air Resources Board. CARB not only imposes excruciating regulations because of AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (even though global “warming” has been disproved). It also micro-manages vehicles.

This isn’t paranoia. It’s government policy that’s out in the open. Things could get worse once the government imposes OBD III — On Board Diagnostics III. A better name for it would be Orwellian Bad Diagnostics III.

Before getting to Eric’s article, let’s see what the U.S. government says about it. The federal Environmental Protection Agency’s Web site explains: “On-Board Diagnostics, or ‘OBD,’ is a computer-based system built into all 1996 and later light-duty vehicles and trucks, as required by the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990. OBD systems are designed to monitor the performance of some of an engine’s major components including those responsible for controlling emissions.”

That means the edicts were signed into law by President George H.W. Bush, in case you thought Republicans were any better than Democrats.

The EPA site adds: “For State Agencies:

* “OBD plays an important role where vehicle inspection and maintenance programs are required.

* “This site will help you find information on program implementation guidance and outreach materials to help raise awareness about OBD in your state or locality.”

Currently, we’re still in OBD II. But the even more Orwellian OBD III is just around the corner. Eric writes, “Here it is, straight from the horse’s mouth — the California Air Resources Board (CARB) which sets the trend for what inevitably becomes national when it comes to emissions rigmarole.”

CARB Edicts

He then quotes CARB, which writes: “If the inspection process could be automated through the use of transponder-assisted on-board diagnostic systems (in what could become an OBD-III requirement or program), the process could be made less costly and time-consuming. ” (Italics added by Peters.)

Peters explains: “If it comes to pass, OBD III will be the keystone that assures the end of any expectation of privacy behind the wheel (in addition to everywhere else) and it will also obviate the quaint notion that it’s your car — and hence, private property. Hence, hands off. SEMA’s fact sheet about OBD III notes this directly, stating that OBD III would impose what amounts to “sanctions based on ‘suspicionless mass surveillance’ of private property” and would also be ‘random,’ with the actual monitoring taking place before the computer throws any codes — and so, bereft of probable cause and thus a pretty clear violation of the Fourth Amendment.”

The Fourth Amendment guarantees, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

But the Fourth Amendment effectively has been repealed, despite some modest remaining protections. For example, the U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that police cannot snap a GPS tracking device to your vehicle with out a court order. However, if OBD III becomes operative, such a device effectively already would be hard-wired into your flivver, so no warrant will be required.

Old Cars

One way around the new super-Orwellian vehicle spying is to get a car from before about 1979, when the earliest computers first were installed. A car like the beautiful 54 Packard in the picture. Peters recommends doing that. And he wrote a great article showing how you can update on an old car to make it more fuel-efficient.

Yet, in his more recent article, Peters warns that the government effectively may outlaw older cars. No doubt the auto industry would cheer, as people then would be forced to buy more new cars, just as happened during the Cash for Clunkers program. That program ended up driving up the price of used cars so much that friends of mine haven’t been able to afford a car. President Obama and the others who imposed this program know only their rich donors, and are ignorant of the millions of people their policies had thrown out of work but are now trying to get back on their feet again financially.

Peters warns that the regime also could go after old cars: “Here is the backdoor that will be used to effectively outlaw older cars, including antique cars — but also just older late-model cars. They won’t be prohibited outright, probably. Rather, they will be prohibited from being used for everyday transportation. You’ll be allowed to keep your pre-OBD III car. You just won’t be allowed to drive it — except, perhaps, to the occasional old car show. Or they may just require that all pre-OBD III cars be ‘retired’ after a certain period — and then rendered inoperable by having their engines filled with silica or some such, a la Cash for Clunkers.

“In this way, everyone will be forced into the system of mass control/mass surveillance. It has been a source of frustration in certain quarters that it’s still possible for the average citizen to drive a car built before catalytic converters and computers (and air bags and all the rest of it) became mandatory or de facto mandatory. There are dangerous asocial types out there who prefer such cars, which are paid-for, simpler and can often be kept running for years for next to nothing. That annoys both the TPTB — and probably also the car industry, which wants you in a new car, not a paid-for older car. The big combines will be among the most ardent proponents not merely of OBD III — but that cars without OBD III be ‘retired’.”

Big Brother not only is watching you. He’s the nastiest backseat driver ever.

I’ve been arguing for a couple of years that the pension problem in California is so bad that the state will have to cut existing pensions. Is that supposedly banned by the California Constitution? It doesn’t matter. Constitutions can be changed. Actuarial realities cannot.

Such a cut could happen soon in Providence, R.I., a canary in the coal mine of pensions in America. Note that it’s Democrats making the cuts. Republicans there are even more scarce than in California.

Writes WPRI.com, a radio station there, “Rhode Island’s capital city will be in bankruptcy by June if it doesn’t get help resolving its financial crisis.

“That was the dire warning from Providence Mayor Angel Taveras during a Thursday morning news conference at City Hall. With five months left before the end of the fiscal year and the capital set to run out of cash by the start of summer, the city still faces a $22.5 million deficit in its budget for the current fiscal year, which ends June 30.

“The budget shortfall was projected at $110 million last March, when Taveras declared a ‘category five’ financial emergency in Providence. It was reduced after he negotiated new contracts with unions, laid off workers, cut spending and won increased state aid….

“Taveras said the city’s retirees must accept reduced pension and health care benefits to save the city from financial ruin. A decree signed in 1991 by Mayor Buddy Cianci pushed the city’s pension liability ‘into the stratosphere’ by giving annual cost-of-living increases of 5% and 6% to more than 600 retirees, he said.

“‘These retirees have refused to sacrifice and are costing Providence taxpayers tens of millions of dollars a year,’ Taveras said, calling the increases ‘raises,’ not adjustments to keep up with the cost of living. The mayor will hold a meeting with retirees on March 3 where they will be asked for concessions.

“Taveras’s office released a list showing that the city’s highest-paid pensioner, former Fire Chief Gilbert McLaughlin, now receives an annual pension of $196,813 a year. He retired with an annual salary of $63,510. At the current rate of growth, McLaughlin’s pension will total roughly $796,871 if he lives to the age of 100.”

All across America, government-worker unions remain unreasonable in resolving the pension and budget crises they caused through their greed. But there’s only so much money out there. The economy isn’t growing fast enough for the funds’ stock portfolios to recover from the crash of 2007-09.

This is just the beginning. Soon, California also will cut existing government retirees’ pensions.

(Hat tip to Jack Dean.)

Feb. 2, 2012

Does anyone still believe that these are just frustrated, misunderstood ’99 percenter’ college students who fear they won’t be able to find employment upon graduation? Or that the protests and demonstrations are being orchestrated by “a cadre of infiltrators hired by Wall Street or some shadowy right wing cabal to discredit the Occupy movement?”

Columnist Peter Schrag, retired edititorial page editor of The Sacramento Bee does. In an op ed Wednesday, he stated that his theory may be a stretch, but then said, “but the real events amount to nearly the same thing.

Many in the media have provided cover to the occupiers since the movement began, and even have attempted to explain-away Occupiers’ bad behavior by saying that they are just a bunch of dumb kids who don’t know what they are doing.  The movement only seemed to sustain because of the media coverage, and media support. And then it grew legs.

If you think they are not a serious movement, I have some swamp land to sell you. The media not only gave cover to the movement, they gave credence to Occupiers’ demands.

“The demonstrators’ anger is understandable, but the more intense it is, the more carefully it has to be directed,” Schrag wrote in Wednesday’s Bee.

Scrag neglects to mention in his column that Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, initially encouraged the occupiers, despite their muck, looting and arson. And Quan wasn’t alone. Prominent Democrats all over America stepped forward with support. Only in the new media were there reports of the Occupy movement being funded by labor unions, left wing financier George Soros, and even the Democratic National Committee.

However, after Saturday’s destruction derby inside Oakland City Hall, Quan appeared fed up with the pernicious protesting brats, and their leftist, nihilist friends. ”People in the community and people in the Occupy movement have to stop making excuses for this behavior,” Quan said.

Quan might have included the media in her statement.

The Left’s Stale Playbook

Standard operating procedure for the far left is to use violence when they are losing the intellectual battle – it’s in the playbook, and taught at most public universities. Where the media provided cover for the Occupiers was in how the story was told from the outset; Occupy Wall Street and the subsequent groups made no secret of the fact that they wanted to force businesses to close. They tried to interrupt commerce with the Port of Oakland closure, an event Mayor Jean Quan said she was powerless to stop.

Spreading filth in New York City’s Zuccotti Park, disrupting and disturbing commuters was all part of the plan. Read the Occupy Wall Street website - none of this is a secret.

Media Responsibility

Where this gets weird is when news organizations overstep their responsibility and stop reporting the news, and stories are peppered with opinion. Or only part of the story is told.

Schrag however, is a columnist, and expected to opine, however off base he is.

“Why close the port, one of the city’s few major sources of income and a source of jobs to hundreds of truckers, dockers and countless other blue-collar workers?” Schrag asks. “Why trash little downtown shops and eateries as some did last fall? These surely are not the 1 percent symbolized by Wall Street. Why shut down the airport, as some are now threatening to do? What message is being conveyed there? How is Oakland preferable to Piedmont or Newport Beach where the rich actually live?”

After reading Schrag’s encouragement to the occupy protestors to “go where the rich actually live,” I fully expect to see ‘Occupy Laguna Niguel,’ or ‘Occupy Pacific Heights’ groups created.

It’s All About ME

Many of the middle class whiners doing the protesting are college students upset that they will have to work for less than $100,000 a year when they graduate. They say they shouldn’t have to repay student loans or mortgages. Where does thinking like this come from?

They’ve been told all of their lives how great they are, and how everything they do is wonderful. But who would hire them with such narcissistic, self-absorbed senses of self-worth.

And now the kids are angry.

The students who are protesting should be turning on the teachers and ‘educators’ who passed them every year to the next grade when they couldn’t read and speak English, or do basic math… and the coaches and parent volunteers who handed out first place trophies and blue ribbons to overweight kids with two left feet… and the parents wouldn’t dish out some tough love and discipline, fearing their children wouldn’t like them… In the world of the Occupier, everyone is a winner, except those who work for a living.

The rest of the occupiers, save for a few ideologues in every crowd, are the sloths of American society who believe that instead of working hard to make themselves successful, they are entitled to the things they want, and that it is the responsibility of the government to take care of them and provide for them.

The Occupy movement is playing right into the political left’s class warfare campaign. It’s a tired, hackneyed play, right out of the pages of famous leftists’ writings.

“Occupy, lacking a defined agenda, has become more about itself than about the nation’s paralyzing economic inefficiency and injustice,” Schrag wrote, and the only thing he does get right.

Ultimately, leftists are about selfishness, not selflessness. They are about control, not inclusion. They are about secrecy, not transparency. Leftists are agitators, and have been identified in history as socialists, communists and radicals, not moderates or conservatives.

Conservative by definition, is stable, sober, traditional, orthodox and steady.

Leftists are theorists and perpetual students, not teachers. And as Dennis Miller so aptly said, “They’re squatters who don’t know squat.”

FEB. 2, 2012

feb. 2, 2012

The following first appeared in City Journal California.

FEB. 2, 2012

By STEVEN GREENHUT

California’s ongoing budgetary and political dysfunction has spawned a host of reformers backed by wealthy donors. The latest scheme, released with much fanfare in late November, is a report produced by the Think Long Committee for California and funded by billionaire Nicolas Berggruen. It’s called “A Blueprint to Renew California,” and it leaves much to be desired.

Most of Think Long’s proposals—the creation of a “citizens’ accountability committee,” additional spending on infrastructure and education, streamlining the environmental-permitting process—are window dressing for the main one: a $10 billion tax increase, imposed through a ballot initiative that would go before voters in 2012. And then, after it gets voters to sign off on the tax hike, the committee (like many in California’s majority party) wants to rein in the voter-initiative process. Berggruen and Think Long believe that the key to renewing California is to raise taxes on almost all Californians. Their plan would make the state’s tax code less progressive by trimming the corporate tax rate and imposing a new sales tax on services. The goal: to provide still more revenue to a state government that’s already bloated and wasteful.

Conventional Thinking

Think Long released its utterly conventional recommendations with a burst of self-congratulation: “At a time when political leaders in both Sacramento and Washington seem hopelessly mired in gridlock, the committee has shown that difficult bipartisan compromise can be reached if politics is set aside and the public interest is put first.” These words might be more persuasive if Think Long weren’t composed of so many politicians who wielded power during the period when California’s budgetary problems became unmanageable. The committee’s members include former governor Gray Davis, bounced from office in the 2003 recall election; former assembly speakers Bob Hertzberg of Los Angeles and Willie Brown of San Francisco; and former state supreme court chief justice Ron George. Other advisors include former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, current lieutenant governor Gavin Newsom, and Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Most of these are poster children for what’s wrong with California; they are an unlikely group of saviors.

The report ignores the Golden State’s real problems: excessive government spending and dominance by public-sector unions and other special interests. The closest that Think Long comes to acknowledging them is three perfunctory paragraphs at the report’s end, which cite the pension crisis crushing municipal governments and offer this solution: “We recommend that the governor, legislature and local government officials make it the highest priority to work with public employee unions to find ways to address the long-term costs of pensions and the unfunded liabilities that have already been built up.” That’s as far as it goes.

Prison Costs

Nothing in the report comes close to articulating major reforms that would help the state stretch its dollars. For instance, the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office recently reported that the cost of incarcerating inmates in California has more than doubled over the past decade, the result not only of court decisions regarding inmates’ health care but also of escalating compensation costs for correctional officers. A braver committee would have considered prison privatization or constraining the influence of the noxious California Correctional Peace Officers’ Association, which resists even modest reforms and holds outsize influence over both parties.

Even soft-pedaling, Think Long provoked the ire of the California Teachers Association. The CTA resents the committee’s proposal to junk Proposition 98—which directs 40 percent of the state’s budget to education from kindergarten through community college—even though the report goes on to propose an extra $5 billion for the schools from other sources.

Every would-be reformer knows that something is wrong with California’s budget and political process. But most have tended to be left of center and have offered ceremonial, symbolic reforms that don’t get to the heart of the state’s problems. Think Long is the latest example, and its “blueprint,” like the work of its many predecessors, is likely to be soon forgotten.