A Fresh Crock of Shit Brought to You by the California Legislature.

      Today's mail brought me a bill and a bit of a shock. It was not an ordinary bill but it was a bill for services to be rendered in the future by the Department of Forestry to protect its lands and lands owned by the State of California from the ravages of wild fires. The Legislature in its wisdom has created a fund called the State Responsibility Fire Area Prevention Fund (SRFAP) this fund is fed by this new fee which is called the Fire Prevention Fee (FPF).

It is an annual fee in an amount not to exceed $150. This year the FPF is $115 with a credit of $35 showing on the invoice. There is no explanation of the whys and wherefores of either this credit or what these future services are going to be. It just tells me that it is being levied “on behalf of California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE). It is to be collected annually by the State Board of Equalization. I have thirty days to pay this fee or I will be charged interest in the amount 0.5% per month which works out to 6% per year. The authority to levy this fee is contained in the California Public Resources Code (PRC). Under the PRC sections that authorize and discuss this fee and the purposes for which it may be expended I discovered that this fee isn't levied on every owner of land within the “state responsibility areas” such as The Irvine Company or any commercial development but only on the owners of 'structures which the Code defines as 'suitable for habitation.' In other other words homes. Commercial structures such as stores, restaurants and the like are exempted from this fee as are the activities of large corporate landowners.

      The uses to which this money are put is most interesting. First of all I find out that this isn't a fee for fire suppression or fighting wild fires. It is for educational purposes such as for education about defensive perimeters around our homes, spark arresters on our chimneys, brush clearance and the like. It is to protect areas that are open space such as the lands of The Irvine Company. It excludes lands that do not have habitable dwellings on them, such as restaurants, wineries, wedding chapels, gun ranges, horse stables and the like. It ignores real causes of fires such as illegal campfires in the National Forest, wayward cigarette butts disposed of carelessly by people addicted to tobacco, sparks from recreational vehicles taken up into the national forests in California and the like. Not one dime of the funds collected is going to be used for fire suppression or for fire fighting, not one dime! Fire Prevention programs in my community are undertaken and funded by the Orange County Fire Authority and by our own citizens who belong to our beloved volunteer fire departments. These currently non-existent programs to be undertaken by Cal Fire would be a duplication of those efforts that have been ongoing for the forty years I have lived here. The idea is that our homes will benefit from this duplication and the underlying assumption is that our homes cause these fires even though in my particular community there has never been a fire in the SRAs that has had a genesis in buildings 'suitable for human habitation.' The last fire in this area that affected SRAs was sourced from a home (which was not inhabited but rather was under construction) in the summer of 1975 and was caused by an errant workman on the construction site. There have been however fires originating in SRAs and in the National Forest that impacted our canyon homes. Such as the fire of October 2007 that caused the evacuation of our homes for almost three weeks, not the other way around. We are not the cause of the problem and we should not be made to pay for duplicative programs to protect our homes from fires originating elsewhere.

      This is simply another idea whose time will never come designed to take matters out of the annual state budget so that the Legislature doesn't have to bite the bullet and raise taxes to cover its favored  line items in the budget. It is part of the mantra in the politics of our times that if you call it a fee it isn't a tax. That, dear readers, is simply horse feathers.

Discussions Missing from the Domestic Policy Segment of the Presidential Debate.

One of my major complaints about the now over and done with first presidential debate has to do with the artificial demarcation of issues presented to the candidates by the moderator Jim Lehrer. As we all know now this debate was limited to domestic policy. Which was fine had it embraced the entire universe of domestic policy. But it did not and noticeably absent was any discussion of liberty issues. There are several liberty issues that could have been discussed and debated (and which each of the candidates has discussed in their respective campaigns for office) but which Lehrer exhibited no interest in dealing with in the debate. Among those liberty issues not dealt were a woman's right to choose and to control her own body, the efficacy of medical marijuana, the War on Drugs itself, DOMA (the Defense of Marriage Act), the repeal of the noxious DADT (Don't Ask Don't Tell) law that prevented gay and lesbian people from openly serving their country in the US military and of course the current big civil rights issue, Marriage Equality.

Myth Romney is a supporter of the semi-proposed amendment to our Constitution that would forever define marriage as between one man and one woman (at least at one time) in the belief that it is the traditional definition of that institution. Even though that is neither factually nor historically correct. He shares this view with President George W Bush. President Barack Obama does not share that view and has announced his support for Marriage Equality. That difference is the beginning of a big and very important debate. Myth in order to keep the wingnut apparent-majority in today's GOP reasonably satisfied with him as he now tries to move toward the center of the political spectrum has embraced the support of those people for this amendment.

Even a cursory examination of American Constitutional History shows that there are three types of Amendments to our Constitution. Those three types are the Structural Amendments, the Liberty Amendments, and the Anti-liberty Amendment.

Structural Amendments are those which affect the structure of the government created by our Constitution. They are the the Tenth Amendment, the Eleventh Amendment, the Twelfth Amendment, the Sixteenth Amendment, part of the Seventeenth Amendment, the Twenty-second Amendment, the Twenty-fifth Amendment, and the Twenty-seventh Amendment.

The Liberty Amendments are those which honor the promise of the Jeffersonian obligation and promise trumpeted in the Declaration of Independence to maximize the liberties and equality under the law of the people and designed to further the purpose of our Constitution expressed in the Preamble to “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” Those Amendments are the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, the Third Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, the Fifth Amendment, the Sixth Amendment, the Seventh Amendment, the Eighth Amendment, the Ninth Amendment, the Thirteenth Amendment, the Fourteenth Amendment, the Fifteenth Amendment, part of the Seventeenth Amendment, the Nineteenth Amendment, the Twenty-first Amendment, the Twenty-third Amendment, the Twenty-fourth Amendment, and the Twenty-sixth Amendment.

There was only one Anti-Liberty Amendment to our Constitution. It was Sixteenth Amendment enacted in 1913 to turn America into a dry nation and which began the First War on Drugs, Prohibition. America came to its senses in 1933 when the Twenty-first Amendment repealed the Sixteenth and sort of ended the First War on Drugs.

Now people of the ilk of Myth Romney want again to limit the liberties of the American people by preventing certain disfavored groups of them from entering into legally recognized free associations that form the basic building blocks of our society and that are guaranteed by the First Amendment and I believe by the Ninth Amendment and to freeze into our Constitution discrimination of a very basic kind. This is a very fundamental issue of our politics and our liberties. Why was it not discussed in the presidential debate before the estimated fifty-eight million Americans who watched that debate and wanted a thorough discussion of American values and domestic policy?

Romney to take on Obama on foreign policy.

This morning that venerable old dish rag the Los Angeles Times reports that Myth Romney is planning an attack on the Obama foreign policy in a speech he is going to give today to a captive audience at Virginia Military Institute. you can read the LA Times article here.This is the guy who journeys to the UK and beyond mostly to cheer on his hobby horse in the 2012 Olympics and promptly steps on his own dick and insults the Brits over how they were running the Games. This is the guy who at the end of his infamous Shiftless Moocher 47% Speech to his fellow plutocrats observed that he didn't believe peace in the middle east between the Israelis and the Palestinians was possible and that we need to just sit back in our poolside lounge chairs sipping our decaffeinated diet cokes  and wait and see what happens and then added that he had been talking to an unnamed former Secretary of State who informed him of his errors in thinking on that subject and then noted that he 'didn't want to delve into that' issue. He's complaining that the reputation of the US has declined under President Obama and that despite the fact that Obama killed Osama that the power and influence of Al Qaeda is growing and the native peoples of the middle east don't like us very much. This is a man who has now decided he is sort of proud of Romneycare but wants to 'repeal and replace' the national  model Obamacare with an undisclosed something or other.
Myth apparently has no intellectual curiosity about anything except perhaps making megabucks. I wonder if he has ever even considered why it is that the people of the Middle East and beyond don't like us very much.  Could it be the two wars on them  we have waged over the last almost 12 years--the longest wars in our history? Could it be because our multi-national corporations are ravaging and pillaging the resources of that part of the world (in addition to our own) in the  name of unrestrained capitalistic greed? Does he think that he can do any better?  How does he expect to do that? Hire Dick Cheney and the other neocons like Donald Rumsfeld for more 'shock and awe" so his SecDef can bleat to the world that US is not in the business of  'counting dead [Iranians]' as Rumsfeld said about dead Iraqis or whomever else he decides to bomb into nothingness? So that he can preside over a foreign policy that maximizes greed and profit and reduce the world and its people to something more like present-day Mars?  Myth Romney is nonsensical and he is a savant who only knows how to make obscene amounts of money on the backs of people just getting by.

Another Fictional Holday

Tomorrow is another holiday. The observance of Columbus Day. I doubt there will be school tomorrow because of this holiday observing the 'discovery of America' by a guy the Anglos renamed. It is quite well understood that the first Europeans to find landfall in or around North America were northern Europeans and the first Homo saps to wander onto North America were from Asia millenia before any Europeans possibly while early Homo Saps were interbreeding with Homo Neanderthalis and living in caves in western Europe. The poor excuse for an admiral was lost and thought he had found India. So began Europe's colonization of what became known as the New World. Rah rah.

Uncle Sal is at it again!

Well Uncle Sal has opened his mouth again and uttered a terrible condemnation of gay catholics telling the press and the world at a press conference in Oakland celebrating his soon moving on to greater and greater things in the Catholic Church. 

Sal is currently bishop of Oakland but is going to take the reins of the Church in San Francisco and all its subordinate 'suffragan' bishops and dioceses including that of Oakland. He has pronounced that the gay people in his flock if they are bound together in any kind of a relationship be it marriage or something 'lesser' are “too sinful” to be admitted to the Sacraments. Those comments were a major blow personally as a catholic and very personally as a gay man. Obviously it's a judgment of the first order. There can be no doubt that Uncle Sal is making a judgment when he used “too sinful” in the sentence uttered to the press. Not only was it a judgment but it was an ugly one at that. Didn't someone big in the Catholic Church once command people to 'judge not' unless they themselves relish being judged? Apparently in Uncle Sal's view it's okay to “be into” bondage and discipline or any other kind of 'kink' but you can't be gay—that's too sinful. It's too sinful for you to be part of our eucharistic community.

Uncle Sal's view of the sinfulness of acting on your human gay nature is certainly not based on science but neither was the heliocentric nature of creation as commonly held and taught by earlier generations of bishops and popes, successors of the apostles as they like to call themselves. It's based on several things ignorance, fear and an unfathomable need of some people to look down on and condemn other people. I guess we are back to judgments again.

Personally I think Uncle Sal might happier and a more effective christian if he were to resign his high office and retire to write books on spirituality in a nice quiet monastery somewhere after he does public penance on the steps of 'his' cathedral. Sack cloth and ashes would be a nice touch offset with a penitentially shaved head.

Todd Akin has gone into hiding

This morning I decided to while away some time. So I called Todd Akin's capitol hill office. Af first I misdialed and got into the office of one of the long suffering Democrats in DC. The phone was answered by a sweet voiced female staffer who told me very politiely and with an obvious smile that came through the phone line quite clearly that she was not employed by Akin. She then gave me his office number and transferred me.  Akin's capitol office was answered immediately by voicemail. It went through its normal speech about how important my call is to them and gave me several different options...everything seemingly designed so that congress critter and his staff won't actually have to deal real people. I elected to leave a voicemail in reply and was informed by 'The System" that the good critter's mail box was full. I then started calling his district offices and found that all his phones were answered by voice mail. There was no opportunity  to leave a message for him and I was abruptly cut off by the voice mail systems in both his district offices. They did however tell me how important my call was to them. That really made my day.
Next I sought help and assistance from Speaker Boehner's office and told the  young man who answered the phone in the Speaker's office that I had been making many phone calls this morning to Akin's offices and his voicemail boxes were full and I wondered if Speaker Boehner would take a message for him.  That young man  told me politiely and with the barest hint of a giggle in his voice that he imagined Akin was getting lots of phone calls this morning but sadly the Speaker couldn't take a message for him.
Perhaps my own congress critter, John Campbell,will be of help....."hello Congressman Campbell?  Could you take a message for Todd Akin for me..?"
Now of course I am having visions of darkened and barricaded congressional offices with the congress critter hiding behind his desk surrounded by his staff.

America's Dumbest Congress Critter

Congressman Todd Akin (R-MO) is the GOPer nominee for the US Senate seat currently held by the blue dog, Claire McCaskill. Apparenlty Todd took to  the campaign trail and was touting his position on choice. He seems to believe that women should have no choice in the matter of whether or not they should carry a particular pregnancy to term. A woman's sole choice in that regard seems to be whether she will allow entre to the man's  cock. Once she agrees to that  all is over for our lady fairest and if she conceives she has to carry to term. Simple right? 

Well Congressman Akin feels that is an entirely reasonable thing to say. When queried about pregnancies resulting from rape, he repled in such a way as to cause his hearer to believe that a rape and incest exception  is not needed because there are apparently few "legitmate rapes:"  as he called them and in those cases the mysterious female body has ways of preventing pregnancy. This claim completely ignores the fact that more than 35,000 children are born each year in the US  as the product of rape.

Mr Akin is my hands down choice for Congressional Dumbass of the week! In fact I wouldn't be surprised if the Akin were also the stupidest member of the House.