Greenhut leaving the O.C. Register

I know what every government worker in Orange County is doing right now, this evening of Sunday, Sept. 20, 2009: Getting plastered on expensive booze, paid by their massive tax-funded salaries. They’ll be so hung over tomorrow don’t even try to do work with them.

They’re celebrating because the scourge of government in Orange County for 11 years, Steven Greenhut, announced today in his column in The Orange County Register that he’ll be leaving for Sacramento

to start a news bureau and investigative journalism project for a free-market think tank – Pacific Research Institute – as part of the “new wave” of journalistic endeavors sprouting up across the media horizon.

He’ll still be writing a weekly column for The Register, sometimes on Orange County issues. Indeed, I’ve always said he should be a national columnist. So perhaps his new job will lead to that.

But what will be missed are his daily, Rottweiler-tenacious attacks on the follies, waste, and criminality of Orange County government.

The good news is that he’ll be doing that against the state government, right from the belly of the beast. Gov. Arnold is going to wish he had stayed in Hollywood and made Terminator 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8, Predator 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8, and Kindergarten Kop 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7.

New Greenhut book

You’ll also get a chance to read more Steve when, as he wrote, his new book on rapacious employee unions comes out before Thanksgiving. I’m helping edit it, and it’s a brilliant assault on the greed, power lust, and arrogance of today’s public “servants.” Unlike so many conservative and libertarian books that focus on the national government, Steve’s examines the government workers most of us suffer under every day: the local school, DMV, licensing, regulatory and other officials, and the brutal polizei.

In the meantime, read his book of a few years back, Abuse of Power: How the Government Misuses Eminent Domain. You can pick up for just a couple of bucks at the link on the right.

Chris Norby for California Assembly

Chris Norby

Most people think of Orange County as a place where conservative politicians thrive. Some do — but most actually are “moderates,” that is, liberals who try to appear conservative on some things.

One person who is the real McCoy is County Supervisor Chris Norby. He’s a principled opponent of the excesses of government, especially abuses of eminent domain that seize private property to help another, politically connected, private business. He’s always a reliable vote against government waste and for low taxes and bureaucracy.

Norby now might run for an open seat in the state Assembly. I hope he does. (He’s also considering running for county clerk/recorder, which would be a lesser position.)

The Ackerman Deficits

His principal opponent would be Linda Ackerman, wife of Republican former state Senator Dick “Deficits” Ackerman. As Republican minority leader in the state Senate from May 10, 2004-April 15, 2008, he was part of the “Gang of Four” (the governor, plus  the Democratic and Republican leaders in each house) that wrote the state budget, then got their colleagues to pass it. So he was responsible for the budgets from fiscal 2004-05 to fiscal 2007-08.

During those four fiscal years, general fund expenditures rose from $78.3 billion in fiscal 2003-04 (the year before he took charge) to $103 billion in fiscal 2007-08 (his last year in charge.) That’s a rise of $24.7 billion — or a whopping 32% — in just 4 years! (The data are on Schedule 6, page Appendix 13, of this .pdf.)

If you look at the data, the budgets of those years appear “balanced.” But that’s only because of what in the state Capitol are called “gimmicks” — that is, accounting tricks that would land a private-sector accountant in prison for fraud. The actual deficit — with the gimmicks stripped away — is called the “structural deficit.”

As we saw this year, the “gimmicks” eventually are revealed as Enron-style legerdemain. In reality, if honest accounting were used, every budget of the Ackerman years was running structural red ink. And those were boom years, when there’s no excuse (such as higher welfare payments during a recession) for red ink.

As CalTax President Larry McCarthy wrote in 2006, during the middle of the Ackerman Deficits:

More than any other state, California offers promising opportunities to redirect and reprioritize spending. If elected officials in Sacramento had the political will to challenge public spending that is being ripped off, the structural budget deficit could be zeroed out.

The structural deficit is a $5 billion problem or 5% when calculated in relation to the total general fund.

If Ackerman had held firm on spending, the state’s budget would not have gone out of whack, and this year’s financial meltdown could have been avoided.

So, I hope another Ackerman doesn’t make it to the Legislature.

Go, Chris, go!

“Red County” Republicans vs. Greenhut

Nowadays we shouldn’t expect much from Republicans but amusement. At least they’re not running the central government, still ruining everything, having left that task to Democrats.

A post on the Red County blog doesn’t disappoint. It’s by Chip Hanlon, a local GOP activist. “Red County” gets its name because in the 2004 election Orange County had the biggest margin of victory for the Republican candidate for president, although it didn’t in 2008.

Chip critiques a column over the Independence Day weekend by Steven Greenhut, my former O.C. Register colleague, “Declarations on Independence,” about how America isn’t exactly the land of the free the Founders fought and died for way back in 1776. Greenhut’s subhead: “Try to relax and enjoy the holiday devoted to America’s revolt against oppression, at least as much as the government lets you enjoy it.”

Greenhut’s responses are here and here.

Hanlon writes:

Here, Greenhut shows how, like many Libertarians, he has become a prisoner of his own supposed philosophy.

Why “supposed philosophy”? Anyone who has read Greenhut’s articles over the years knows that, agree or disagree with it, he has an actual philosophy that’s well thought out.

Military supremacy

Hanlon writes:

However, one passage in particular gives a valuable glimpse into the mind of the extreme Libertarian:

Fourth, try attending one of the many military displays, where you can honor those agencies that have protected your freedoms by invading countries that you previously had never heard of. While you’re at it, try appreciating every one of the $500 billion-plus spent by the Pentagon this year, along with the additional billions spent by the nation’s intelligence officials to protect your freedoms in ways so important that they must be kept secret from you.

One of the few functions of government someone like Greenhut would acknowledge as appropriate is its duty to protect its citizens– via both the military for national defense and via a law enforcement/court system. Apparently, though, according to Steve those intelligence agencies and their “secrecy” have no place in a national defense scheme. And you can just hear the disdain he holds for those in our military in the very first line in that paragraph.

It’s funny, but I attended military parades in the 1960s and 1970s  that weren’t nearly as martial as those today, even though veterans marched from World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War, which combined had 100 times as many war dead as have the Iraq and Afghan Wars. They were just parades honoring our friends and relatives who had served, and in some cases died, not displays of war whooping like modern parades.

A free Republic, which America is supposed to be, is modest about its military. Only empires act as if the military were the paramount element in society.

Hanlon:

One of the few functions of government someone like Greenhut would acknowledge as appropriate is its duty to protect its citizens — via both the military for national defense and via a law enforcement/court system.

“Protect,” yes — but we’re way beyond that into total government domination of our lives.

“PATRIOT Act” Tyranny

Hanlon writes:

Is it legitimate to question laws like the Patriot Act or the size and scope of our military spending and engagements? Undoubtedly, but Libertarians don’t stop on any reasonable ground in these areas.

Actually, any real American patriot is outraged by the misnamed “USA PATRIOT” Act, which should be called the USSR Traitors’ Act. As 9/11 was America’s Reichstag Fire, so the “PATRIOT” Act is America’s Enabling Act, in each case — 1933 or 2001 — giving a central tyranny the authority to destroy our liberties on the excuse of “protecting” us.

Hanlon is a smart fellow. But he needs to wake up to what’s really happening. He, like so many Republicans, didn’t heed the warning of the late Paul Weyrich, who said, “Never give your friend a weapon your enemy, once he’s back in power, could use against you.”

How does it feel now, Chip, that Homeland Security Gauleiter Janet Napolitano has a conservative enemies list?

As the song asks, “What ya gonna do when they come for you?”

Intrusions and “conspiracies”

Hanlon writes:

And it’s why a guy like Steve will take inane examples of government “intrusions” and turn them into full-blown conspiracies.

It’s not a conspiracy, but a law! It’s the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. According to the Wikipedia article the law, among other things:

• Permits the government not to keep records of searches, and destroy existing records (it requires them to keep the records for a period of 10 years).
• Protects telecommunications companies from lawsuits for “‘past or future cooperation’ with federal law enforcement authorities and will assist the intelligence community in determining the plans of terrorists.”
• Removes requirements for detailed descriptions of the nature of information or property targeted by the surveillance.
• Increased the time allowed for warrantless surveillance to continue from 48 hours to 7 days.

Then there’s the REAL ID Act, a national ID card, that Republicans have tried to foist on us, and Obama now is reviving.

Your paperz pleasze?

If it looks like the KGB and quacks like the KGB, it is the KGB.

Police riots

Hanlon brings up Greenhut’s reference to “a rare instance of excessive police force.” Actually, these instances are getting not only common, but routine, as detalied on William Norman Grigg’s blog.

And let’s not forget an example right here Red County, involving one of the top Republicans.  Corrupt Orange County Republican Sheriff Mike Carona, now a felon in prison, allowed conditions in his jail so bad that an inmate was killed. Greenhut wrote in May:

the Carona jail system gained the reputation as something of a torture chamber. The beating death of inmate John Chamberlain (deputies regularly watched TV, slept and played videogames) was the epitome of the Carona management system. A grand jury report revealed various departmental cover-ups of that brutal event, as deputies perjured themselves, tampered with witnesses (see a pattern here?) and abused the inmates under their care.

No “conspiracy” there. Just the facts, ma’am, as Sgt. Joe Friday used to say.

And Carona’s replacement as sheriff, appointed by the GOP-dominated board of supervisors, is an anti-gun fanatic.

An Empire, Not a Republic

Hanlon:

In their bizarre [libertarian] ideology, it is better to passively watch all the events of the world and take literally no hand in shaping it to meet our American interests nor the those of individual liberty around the globe. Some belief system.

Actually, America’s Founders favored an America First foreign policy, and opposed foreign adventurism. President Washington laid it out for us in his Farewell Address of 1786:

The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible….The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible.

Moreover, the Constitution, whose drafting Washington presided over, included nothing about taking a hand in shaping the world “to meet our American interests” and those “of individual liberty around the globe.”

We were to shape the world only by our example as a free country, something we no longer do because we’re no longer free.

For one thing, we’re learning what the Founders knew from their study of the Athenian Empire and the Roman Empire: that global engagement means the end of a free republic and the imposition of a tyrannical empire.

For another, the Constitution grants the power to declare war only to the U.S. Congress, yet our last declared war was World War II. All the rest of the wars since then, including the Iraq and Afghan and Pakistan wars, have been unconstitutional. The presidents who began them should have been impeached and removed from office.

Fiscal Follies

Hanlon:

Sadly, because the GOP failed so miserably on fiscal responsibility while in the majority, many on the right are being enticed by the little they know about Libertarians — their commitment to fiscal restraint.

And why did they “fail so miserably on fiscal responsibility”? It was mainly because of the unconstitutional  wars. The Iraq War alone is going to cost us up to $5 trillion. That’s $5,000,000,000,000.00.

Not only that, but to run a war, you need to bribe domestic constituencies with porkbarrel spending — guns and butter, just like LBJ, another spendthrift warmonger Texan, did in the 1960s. As former Reagan Treasury official Paul Craig Roberts wrote:

President Lyndon B. Johnson’s policy of Great Society spending and Vietnam War is credited with the rising American inflation that persisted until checked by President Reagan’s supply-side policy.

In Johnson’s time the American economy and the US dollar were strong, and there was no current account deficit. Yet, LBJ’s policy of guns and butter did long-term harm.

The Bush/Obama 21st century policy of guns and butter makes LBJ look like a piker. The 2009 and 2010 federal budget deficits will be monstrous even without guns.  But Obama is exiting (apparently) the Iraq War in order to start two, possibly three, more wars.

Inflation, debt, depression

And it was Republican President Bush and Republican Fed Chairman Greenspan who, after 9/11, panicked and inflated the dollar, thus tripling the gold price, even as they lowered interest rates — the combined effect being the real estate bubble that crashed later in the decade.

Another way Bush panicked after 9/11 was that, instead of going just after bin Laden and the other terrorists who perpetrated the 9/11 attack, he tried to turn both Afghanistan and Iraq into model “democracies” — an impossible task given the tribal nature of both societies. The result was the endless quagmires in which we’re now stuck, and all the woes of empire for America.

Wild spending on war, wild domestic spending, inflation, artificially low interest rates, record deficits, record debt — no wonder in September 2008 the economy careened into the Bush Depression. Republicans — including the GOP Congress in power until 2006 — bear most of the blame, although Democrats bear much of the blame, too. For one thing, both the Democratic Congress of 2006 and Obama in 2008 were elected to end the Iraq War, yet they have not done so. Obama is making everything worse, not better.

But let’s never cease blaming Republicans as the primary culprits in our economic misery. They should have known better.

Reagan, after all, whatever his faults, presided over the correct formula: no foreign quagmires (he pulled out of Lebanon after the Marines were blown up in 1983), a stable currency, sensible interest rates, and tax cuts that lasted (instead of Bush’s, which expire next year).

Jumped the shark?

Finally, and maybe most hilariously, Hanlon jumbles the “jump the shark” analogy. He writes:

Just like when Fonzie jumped the shark, marking the moment when Happy Days lost its relevance as a show, Steven Greenhut just had one of those moments, giving all of us a glimpse into the extremist he seems to have become due to his frustration with the Republican party.

Actually, “jump the shark” doesn’t mean when something “lost its relevance,” but as Wikipedia explains, has “passed [its] peak.” And in fact, “Happy Days” lasted another seven of its 11 seasons, or about 2/3 of the show’s run, after it “jumped the shark.”

So, given that Steven has been at the Register since 1998, he’ll be there another 22 years, by this analogy. Although I should add that he hasn’t “passed his peak” but has just begun it.

It’s also ironic that Hanlon brands Greenhut an “extremist,” given that’s usually the label leftists use against sensible conservatives and libertarians — which, of course, is what Steven really is.

Update, July 14, 2009, 8:35 p.m. PST. Steven Greenhut has another reply to the Red County Republicans:

The good Republican folks at Red County have published a post accusing libertarians of being extremists and suggesting that we hate America, believe Lincoln to have been one of the world’s biggest war criminals and other such nonsense based on the unidentified statements. Yet one prominent writer at the blog, and someone who has zealously joined in the “libertarians are extremists” commenting has long ties to Christian Reconstructionism, a form of fundamentalist Christianity that seeks to impose Old Testament law on society. Would it be fair, then, to suggest that Red County is in league with those views, which I believe are somewhat outside the mainstream?

Click here for more…

Harry Sidhu is running for O.C. Supervisor — in the wrong district

My sources tell me that Anaheim City Councilman Harry Sidhu is running for Orange County Supervisor in the Fourth District — even though he lives in the Third District. He is scouting a new residence in the Third.

Beginning a week ago, on Feb. 6, I made several calls to Sidhu to confirm his position, but he has not returned the calls. So I’m going with this story anyway.

His candidacy means Sidhu is moving out of the Third District, the location of his current residence, into the Fourth District.

It’s called carpetbagging, and Americans frown on it. A politician is supposed to come from among the people he represents.

We have residency requirements that are supposed to prevent rich people from other areas effectively buying a seat, something common in England, where there is no residency requirement for parliament. The most famous modern American carpetbagger is Hillary Clinton, who switched from Arkansas to New York to run for the Senate in 2000, but now is President Obama’s secretary of state.

The Fourth District currently is held by the excellent Chris Norby, who is term-limited out of office. The best candidate to replace him is Shawn Nelson, currently a Fullerton councilman and previously the city’s mayor.  Nelson has made a name for himself fighting a pension-spiking scheme for the city’s government workers.

At times like these — of economic Depression and insane tax increases pending at the state level — Orange County needs a real fighter like Nelson. As times get tougher, you just know Orange County’s government-shirker unions are going to imitate their state brethren and push tax increases instead of cuts in government waste.

How about 2010?

Sidhu should stay put in Anaheim, complete his current term as councilman and, if he still thinks Orange County needs him as a supervisor, run in his home Third District when it is vacated in 2010 by term-limited incumbent Bill Campbell.

After all, the Third District is the Indigestion District. Campbell once owned a number of Taco Bells, and Sidhu owns a number of Burger Kings.

Burger King’s most famous slogan is, “Have it your way.” In Orange county, “our way” is electing locals.

Two more reasons to recall O.C. Sheriff Hutchens

On Monday I detailed the abuses of power mandating that Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens should be recalled. Two more reasons have come up.

First, yesterday evening, the O.C. Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to take security for their meetings away from the sheriffs and contract it out. This is a vote of no confidence in Hutchens’ performance of her job. The vote stems from the Stasi-Sheriff’s intimidation of peaceful citizens at a board meeting, spy cameras peeping at the notes of supervisors, and her refusal to turn over to the supervisors the tapes of the spying. I detailed these charges in my previous blog.

This actually was a vote of no confidence in her by the supervisors. Unfortunately, she cannot be fired by them. So a recall is necessary.

Second new reason for a recall: Assistant Sheriff Hillman

Second,  Hutchens has hired a thug for her second in command — like her, a migrant from Los Angeles, Assistant Sheriff Mike Hillman, formerly of the Los Angeles Police Department.

Can’t we get people from our own police and sheriff departments, right here in Orange County? We have 3 million people to choose from, including many police chiefs and sheriffs. Why do we have to go to L.A. for Hutchens and Hillman? L.A. is completely different from O.C. Over there, they have much bigger government, higher taxes, and more brutal cops. Remember the Ramparts Scandal?

OK, we’ve had our own problems with felon Mike Carona, just convicted on federal corruption charges. But why import trouble?

Hillman’s thuggish behavior was detailed on Orange Punch by my former Register editorial-page colleague Steven Greenhut. I’ll just quote all of it:

Is Hillman behind the police-state stuff?

Assistant Sheriff Mike Hillman offers this analysis of the widely criticized sheriff’s department security tactics at the January 13 board meeting. The best part of the analysis was this line: “No ancillary groups appeared who wished to engage in First Amendment activity outside the Board meeting.” I like how Matt Cunningham put it at OCBlog: “First Amendment activity”? It’s interesting how the clipped style of police reports can make exercising one’s free speech sound sinister.” The whole Hutchens/Hillman approach to board security seems to be epitomized by that line. They made it feel and seem sinister to attend a board meeting and actually speak out against the sheriff’s anti-CCW policies.

A number of readers have suggested that these new tactics are standard operating procedure for Hillman, the former LAPD deputy chief.

Here is a column by the Times’ Steve Lopez called, “Iron Mike Needs to Forge a New Image As Part of LAPD’s Brass.” It includes this paragraph: “A snapshot of LAPD Deputy Chief Mike Hillman has been making the rounds among brass at Parker Center. In the photograph, taken at the demonstrations on the evening of the Academy Awards, Hillman has a bullhorn in one hand and a citizen’s neck in the other.”

Maybe that can be the new photo mascot for the OC Sheriff’s Department. And maybe a quotation from Hillman, found on a public radio Web site, captures the OC Sheriff’s Department’s new approach to civil liberties. Hillman is explaining how he deals with people at protests who he thinks might be potential troublemakers because they are wearing hoodies and have a backpack with them:

“Walking over to them and saying, ‘Hi, Mike Hillman, I’m going to be here with you. Want to make sure we protect your First Amendment rights. I’ll be with you the rest of the day.’ Now, it may sound hokey. But what it does is, it tells somebody that we’re watching.”

That seems to be the exact approach the OCSD took toward those troublemakers who showed up at the board meeting to speak out about CCW permits. Ominous. At least the past ethically challenged sheriff was too busy in petty pursuits of sex, booze and toys to try this sort of police-state nonsense!

Recall Hutchens

These are yet more reasons why Sheriff Hutchens should be recalled.

Somebody, maybe gun-rights advocates, needs to start a campaign and collect signatures.

Recall Orange County Sheriff Hutchens

Under new Sheriff Sandra Hutchens, Orange County increasingly resembles East Germany under the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit  (Ministry for State Security), or Stasi.

Like the Stasi, Hutchens has violated essential rights, such as spying on supervisors, intimidating citizens, and violating the Second Amendment “right of the people to keep and bear arms.”

Her abuses demand an immediate recall.

Charges

The charges against her:

1. Intimidating citizens. As my former Register editorial page colleague Steven Greenhut wrote yesterday:

Based on a rumor that gun-rights activists would show up to protest her policies by carrying unloaded guns in holsters, the sheriff sent more than 20 deputies to the public board meeting, where they searched, watched, followed and questioned those residents who showed up to speak out against the sheriff’s new-and-not-so-improved plan to move up the expiration date of gun permits. The deputies targeted only those people who showed up wearing pro-gun-rights buttons or who appeared to be part of that group. The department told me that “only” three “subjects” (what an ironic term!) were searched or contacted, but I talked to CCW activists who said the number was higher. Many felt intimidated and monitored….

Regardless of the number of actual searches, the effect on the meeting was chilling….

I talked to a number of CCW supporters who attended the meeting, and they all felt picked on and intimidated.

As John Lott and other scholars have shown, in fact conceal-carry citizens are the most law-abiding for two reasons: 1) If you violate the law, you can’t get a conceal-carry license. 2. If you get such a license, you don’t want it taken away if you, so you don’t break the law. Hutchens’ intimidation is a police-state abuse of the first order.

Moreover, as Lott has proven, the more conceal-carry guns that are on the streets, the fewer crimes are committed because criminals don’t know which victim might be armed.

2. Violating the First Amendment “right of the people to peaceably assemble.” Harassing citizens at a public meeting is an especially egregious violation of civil rights.

3. Violating the Second Amendment “right of the people to keep and bear Arms.” As was noted by Founding Father Tench Coxe, this right was not just for hunters, or even for self protection, but for protection against a tyrannical government:

As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before
them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be
occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to
the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the next
article in their right to keep and bear their private arms.

James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, agreed with that exposition, as noted in the book I linked to.

And last year’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller found that this was not a collective right, but an individual right.

4. Spying on elected leaders.  Greenhut describes what happened:

Sheriff Hutchens said she was upset after learning that deputies used the board room’s security surveillance cameras – usually operated by security staff – to not only scan audience members but to focus in on and, in fact, spy on two supervisors’ notes and one’s BlackBerry-like device. She has started an internal affairs investigation into the matter. In a case of damage control, she contacted the two supervisors after someone submitted a public records act request for the surveillance tapes that showed this abuse of the security cameras.

But she still defends what Supervisor Chris Norby calls the “1984-like” approach to security by pointing to instances in other communities where violence took place at government meetings and arguing that it’s her job, in her words, to “balance” the security of the board room with First Amendment rights.

Let’s pick apart this Orwellian language. First, the First Amendment gives the public the right to speak out. Any effort by government to stifle debate and criticism by using searches and intimidation is an affront to the Constitution. It’s not the government’s job to “balance” our rights; that’s totalitarian language. Its job is to protect our natural rights to life, liberty and property. Government has been granted, by the people, certain specific authorities but that does not give it carte blanche to behave in any manner it chooses.

As of today, Jan. 26, 2008, Hutchens refused to turn over the spy tapes to the board of supervisors, the people’s elected representatives. Writes Art Pedroza:

I spoke to [Supervisor Chris] Norby about this the on Saturday night, at the Judge Jim Gray retirement party.  Norby said that Hutchens’ people (ie. Jack Anderson) would not turn over the tapes.  Apparently the excuse is that Hutchens feels the footage includes security issues.  For example, according to Anderson, you could find out what spots at the County’s Board Room could be “blind spots,” by viewing the tapes.

Norby of course was flabbergasted by this stupid excuse.  Why would he, or Supervisor Nguyen, reveal that information to anyone?  Isn’t the security system supposed to protect the Supervisors?  Why would they move to undermine it?

Norby said it was not likely he would sit through six hours of tape.  Instead a staffer would get to do that.  But Anderson, and his boss Hutchens, simply would not allow Norby to take the tape.

This is more police-state indimidation.

Hutchens really a Fed

A big part of the problem with Hutchens is that she has no previous links to Orange County, especially no inkling that this is a country that treasures liberty far more than most places. Her previous job was as chief of the L.A. Sheriffs’ Office of Homeland Security. This 2003 L.A. Sheriff’s press release explained:

As Chief of the Office of Homeland Security, Chief Hutchens is involved with all aspects of local homeland security for the County of Los Angeles and commissioner on the Los Angeles County Emergency Preparedness Commission.

Additionally, she serves as the Department’s Emergency Coordinator and is the Department’s liaison to the federal government for all matters relating to homeland security and the ongoing anti-terrorism effort.

The Department of Homeland Security was the vaguely German-Stasi sounding new bureaucracy Bush imposed when he panicked after 9/11. (Germans refer to their “Heimat,” or homeland; American patriots refer to our “country.” Notes Wikipedia: “The specific aspects of Heimat — love and attachment to homeland and the rejection of anything foreign — left the idea vulnerable to easy assimilation into the fascist ‘blood and soil’ literature of the National Socialists.”)

Imposing the Department of Heimat Security was totally unnecessary and a major step toward a police state. We already were defended by the Department of Defense, FBI, CIA, NSA, etc. The DHS also imposed federal hegemony over formerly independent local police and sheriffs, who now effectively are sub-departments of the DHS/Stasi.

Hutchens certainly has brought that mentality to her new job as O.C. Sheriff, as Greenhut explains:

This is the handiwork of a sheriff who, according to the Jan. 27 board agenda, wants to start a Homeland Security-funded Intelligence Assessment Center “to provide an integrated, multi-disciplined, information and intelligence sharing network to collect, analyze and disseminate information on all criminal risks and safety threats to law enforcement, fire, health, private sector and public stakeholders.”

Can we trust her with even more power to monitor and eavesdrop on O.C. residents? It’s a valid question that must be asked at that board meeting. But those who oppose the new center should not wear any buttons indicating their views, unless they want to be searched and harassed.

Recall Hutchens now

No, we can’t trust her.  At this point, we only can trust the people of Orange County and the recall procedure.

Last year, convicted felon Sheriff Mike Carona quit under a cloud of scandal. This year, Sheriff Sandra Hutchens must be recalled to get rid of her storm of tyranny.

In 1989, the East Germans ripped down the Berlin Wall, got rid of the Stasi, and restored freedom. In 2009, Orange County must rip down the Orange Curtain, recall Hutchens, and restore freedom.

20% chance Freedom Communications could default on its bonds

My favorite journalism blog is Reflections of a Newsosaur, by veteran journalist Alan D. Mutter. He devised a Default-O-Matic meter to graph which newspaper companies are closest to defaulting on their bonds.

The Default-O-Matic graph currently doesn’t include Freedom Communications, the parent company of The Orange County Register, where I wrote editorials for 19 years until taking a buyout nearly 2 years ago. But we can calculate it ourselves.

In June, Moody’s downgraded Freedom’s junk-bond rating to B2. So it’s the same as Gatehouse, meaning, according to the Default-O-Matic, a 20% chance of default.

It should be noted that this doesn’t mean Freedom will default. It’s only a historical percentage based on Moody’s experience with past companies holding B2 bonds. And as of June, at least, there was an 80% chance that it would not default.

Looming lawsuit

Another negative factor is that on Sept. 22 a $100 million labor lawsuit goes to trial against The Register: Paper carriers claim they were “wrongly classified as independent contractors, not employees.” The alleged offense occurred under Publisher Chris Anderson, who has moved on to become a journalism ethics professor at Arizona State University.

Here’s how I expect that one to go. A friend of mine was at the Arizona Republic newspaper in the mid-1990s when it was being prepared for sale by the Pulliam Family, which included ex-Vice President Dan Quayle. My friend said the company settled all lawsuits — sexual harassment,  carpal tunnel syndrome, stubbed toes, whatever — in preparation for the sale. That way the new owners, if a lawsuit carried over and resulted in a major settlement, couldn’t come back to the old owners and demand: “Give us more money because you didn’t tell us how bad this lawsuit would be.” The Republic ended up being sold to Gannett (current Moody’s bond rating: A3; a 0.6% chance of default on the Default-O-Matic.)

So, what I expect will happen in the lawsuit is that real close to the Sept. 22 trial date, Freedom Comm’s lawyers will say something like, “Look, if you win $100 million in this lawsuit, that only will bankrupt the company. Then you’ll get in line with all the other creditors. Or we can offer you $5 million right here.”

Carrier lawyers: “How about $10 million?”

Freedom lawyers: “How about $7.5 million?”

Carrier lawyers: “You got a deal.”

After the lawsuit

That will clear the decks for selling the company, probably by breaking it up and auctioning the pieces. It’ll be accomplished before Rudolph and Santa alight on your rooftop.

The Hoiles Family, one of the last of the old newspaper families, seems to have given up.

The TV and radio stations are worth something. The Register might be merged with the L.A. Daily News of Dean Singleton‘s MediaNews Group (current Moody’s junk-bond rating: B3; Default-O-Matic estimate of default: 26.4%). But I’m just speculating on that part.

What we’re seeing is the Cheyne-Stokes of the newspaper business. The Internet isn’t the future of news, it’s the present. Everything else soon will be gone.

The O.C. Register still refuses to explain its switch to supporting same-sex “marriage”

On Sunday the O.C. Register editorial page had an opportunity to explain why it switched its position on the laughable absurdity of so-called same-sex “marriage” (so-called). As I noted when the illegitimate California so-called “Supreme” so-called “Court” risibly “legalized” the foolishness, it was just 8 years ago when the Register editorial page backed Proposition 22, which affirmed the obvious: that marriage exists only between a man and a woman.

Anything else really is a joke, like in the classic comedy “Some Like it Hot.” Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon dress up like girls to avoid the mob — but they both want Marilyn (who wouldn’t?).

The Register sensibly wrote in 2000:

The ultimate question in Prop. 22 is whether the definition of what constitutes a marriage should remain as it always has been, or whether the door can be opened to same-sex marriages – and by extension to any other sort of arrangements that people might devise.

After some libertarian boilerplate (which I agree with) about government getting out of the marriage business, here’s what the Register editorial maintained just this past Sunday, next to a picture of two women getting “married”:

As a practical matter, however, the government has so entwined itself into our daily lives that state recognition is important.

This brought cheers from homosexual writer Andrew Sullivan:

California’s largest conservative-libertarian newspaper, the Orange County Register, now backs marriage equality. We can win this.

You can read my full argumenst against this latest anti-libertarian usurpation of our freedoms — this totalitarian government redefinition of our very language and families — here and here and here.

But my main point in this new blog is that the Register still needs to explain why it switched positions. There’s nothing wrong with switching positions. I’ve done it on, for example, school choice and immigration, and provided explanations for why I did so. Time and circumstances influence one to change one’s mind.

As the paper keeps losing subscribers by the truckload — and the physical size of the paper keeps shrinking; today it’s one inch narrower — shouldn’t the remaining subscribers be given the courtesy of an explanation of a major shift in opinion?

As it’s not forthcoming, I’ve come up with four possibilities:

1. Nietzsche’s “Twilight of the Idols”

As Nietzsche wrote, in “Die Goetzendaemmerung” — “Twilight of the Idols”:

Marriage as an institution involves the affirmation of the largest and most enduring form of organization: when society cannot affirm itself as a whole, down to the most distant generations, then marriage has altogether no meaning.— Modern marriage has lost its meaning—consequently one abolishes it. —

2. Sartre’s philosophy of absurdity

The Register has adopted Sartre’s existentialist philosophy of the absurd.  About.com explains:

An important component of existentialist philosophy is the portrayal of existence as being fundamentally irrational in nature. Whereas most philosophers have attempted to create philosophical systems that produce a rational account of reality, existentialist philosophers have focused upon the subjective, irrational character of human existence.

3. Artaud’s theatre of cruelty

Wikipedia explains:

Imagination, to Artaud, is reality; dreams, thoughts and delusions are no less real than the “outside” world. Reality appears to be a consensus, the same consensus the audience accepts when they enter a theatre to see a play and, for a time, pretend that what they are seeing is real.

Same-sex marriage? C’est absurd!

4. Groucho Marxism

As Groucho said,

Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who wants to live in an institution?

Why not me for O.C. Sheriff?

Out here in beautiful Orange County, we’ve had an ugly mess over our O.C. Sheriff, Mike Carona, who recently was indicted and resigned. The Board of Supervisors is looking for a replacement candidate. A couple articles on the matter are by my former Register colleagues Steven Greenhut and Frank Mickadeit.

While mulling their commentaries over some Booker’s and a Macanudo, I realized that, to serve great people of Orange County, I’m throwing my hat into the ring. As Jimmy Carter insisted in 1976, “Why not the best?”

Here are my qualifications:

1. Extensive law enforcement experience. I was in the U.S. Army from 1978-82. From 1979-82 I was a member of an elite Military Intelligence Unit, the 533rd CEWI Battallion, stationed athwart the Fulda Gap in West Germany. (CEWI = Combat Electronic Warfare Intelligence.) During that entire time, the evil Red Army didn’t dare attack. We — I — stared them down. And the commies had more than 40,000 nukes (that’s the Joe 4 explosion in the picture, named after mass-murdering commie dictator Josef Stalin; Russky name: RDS-6s, or Reaktivnyi Dvigatel Stalina). Quit a bit more dangerous than dealing with drunks and pickpockets, wouldn’t you say? We — I — won the Cold War and saved America. Without us — me — right now you’d be speaking Russian and picking oranges on the local collective farm.

2. I grew up in a Law Enforcement Family. It’s in my blood. My late father was a District Judge for 25 years, from when I was 5 until I was 30. In high school, kids called me “judge.” I grew up around judges, sheriffs, cops, lawyers, and other law enforcement types. I know this stuff cold.

3. I’ve actually read the U.S. Constitution, including the Bill of Rights. How many other candidates can say that? I hope the Board of Supervisors actually asks us candidates about the Bill of Rights. Here’s my answers to a couple of questions:

Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms? It’s absolute. That means all state and local laws on guns are void. You don’t even need a permit to carry a concealed weapon.

Use by sheriffs of tasers that kill people? Banned.

Secret inquiries into alleged sheriffs’ and police’ abuse of powers? All now will be made public.

Federal aid to the Sheriff’s Department? All unconstitutional, and therefore denied. We don’t need the Feds’ blood money to defend our local people.

4. My model for sheriff sure won’t be Mike Carona or his brutal predecessor, Brad Gates. Instead, my model will be America’s Sheriff: Andy Griffith. Deputiy sheriffs will be expected to be like Sheriff Griffith’s deputy: Barney Fife, carring only an unloaded .38 with a single bullet kept safe in the shirt pocket. By the way, did you notice that the city next to Mayberry is Siler City (a variant spelling of my name)? Another qualification.

I expect I’ll hear from the supervisors soon. I’m going to lose some avoirdupois so I’ll look great in my new uniform.

Tridentine Latin Mass returns to St. Mary’s by the Sea

Even if you’re not Catholic, this is significant. Imagine what would happen if, tomorrow, all the rock radio stations in America started playing Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, Mozart’s Requiem, Palestrina’s Missa Papae Marcelli, and Bach’s B Minor Mass for six hours a day (the previous links are to YouTube videos, if you want to listen to some samples). Or, for that matter, if they started playing old-style Protestant hymns.

Culture always trumps politics, and in fact politics comes from culture. That’s why the most important event this year was not anything in politics, but Pope Benedict XVI’s Motu Proprio (decree) restoring the Tridentine Latin Rite throughout the Catholic Church; the Pope even noted that, contrary to widespread belief, the Tridentine Mass never had been banned.

At St. Mary’s by the Sea’s High Mass today at noon, the Mass truly was “the most beautiful thing this side of heaven,” as someone observed years ago about the Tridentine Mass. Said by Fr. Xavier, a Norbertine priest, and accompanied by a competent choir, the Mass was sublime and inspiring. About 120 people were in the pews, significantly more than have attended the noon Mass, said in Latin but in the Novus Ordo rite, in recent weeks.

I snapped the picture above on my cell’s camera. Note the six candles on each side of the altar, indicating High Mass, and the the priest facing toward the altar, not the people.

The Tridentine Mass long was at St. Mary’s until its pastor, Fr. Daniel Johnson, retired 3-1/2 years ago; he died earlier this year. A lot of parishoners then fled the church, some to chapels that still featured the Tridentine Mass but were not affiliated with the the local bishop, Tod Brown. As I’ve mentioned before, I never would attend an unapproved Mass (except as a journalistic observer). But there’s no doubt that these chapels around the world were one reason, among many, the Pope issued his order, as he indicates in the text of the Motu Proprio.

The Motu Proprio was supposed to be implemented in September, but Bishop Brown delayed that until today, Dec. 2. Well, even though I haven’t exactly been a fan of Bishop Brown’s administration of the diocese, I’m not going to grouse about the delay, as some have done. 2-1/2 months isn’t too long to wait. The Bishop was busy with the controversy over Msgr. Urell‘s testimony and departure for Canada. And Fr. Martin Tran, the pastor, just spent a month in his native Vietnam.

I talked briefly with Fr. Tran after the Mass and he was happy. I don’t know if he recognized me as the author, along with my former colleague Steven Greenhut, of the Register blogs in spring 2006 that sparked the infamous kneeling controversy, which became an international cause celebre.

But for Fr. Tran, the controversy is over. He followed the Bishop’s wishes during the kneeling controversy, even though it sparked the controversy. But now he has also followed the Bishop’s wishes in smoothly bringing the Tridentine Mass — which is filled with kneeling — back to St. Mary’s. It make take some time, but I suspect that most of those who left St. Mary’s because of the controversies will come back.

And Bishop Brown did what he’s supposed to do: advance what the Pope called, in the Motu Proprio, “an interior reconciliation in the heart of the church” by accommodating the needs of tradition-minded Catholics. Until now, the Tridentine Mass has been offered officially in Orange County only early in the morning in out-of-the-way parishes.

Although the vernacular Mass, the Novus Ordo, can be said beautifully, usually it’s said to the accompaniment of insipid guitars and drums imitating the sound of  Peter, Paul, and Mary (the 1960s folk-rock group, not the saints). I always wonder why they don’t go all the way and play adaptations of the kind of shock rock I listened to as a teenager, with the volume turned up to 11 to annoy my parents: The Who, Hendrix, Zeppelin, the MC5, the Stooges. If I’m gonna have to listen to rock music at Mass, instead of “Kumbaya,” make it “Purple Haze” turned up loud enough to make me need a hearing aid.

But I don’t need to worry about that now because I can just attend the Tridentine Mass at St. Mary’s.

It’s a blessed day and all Orange County will receive many graces.

(Keep up with my blog. Sign up for my RSS feed. And click here to hire me for your writing projects.)