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Astrology’s New Signs

15 Saturday Jan 2011

Posted by Adrian Covert in Readings

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astrology, bill nye, carl sagan, new, new sign, zodiac

I'm sorry, what's the sign for 'asshole' again?

The Media is having a newsgasm over the supposed discovery that the Astrological calendar is off. Here’s what you need to know.

FOR the Western Hemisphere, this past winter solstice brought with it a total lunar eclipse, the first time both phenomena paid simultaneous visits to that region in over three centuries. To mark the occasion, I shared a link to Pale Blue Dot, Carl Sagan’s touching appeal to dignity, reason, and humility through science. Like a great many people, I enjoy feeling connected to the cosmos; and through astronomy I get perspective, awe, and beauty. It’s a good bargain, with Sagan as it’s most forceful and most poetic advocate.

Then there’s Astrology. Astrology has been in the news recently, because an astronomy association in Minnesota released data showing just how far the Zodiac signs have drifted since they were first fabricated by semi-literate, bronze age, Babylonian mystics. Because we do not live in a static universe, as the Babylonians believed, but on a tilted, wobbling planet in an ever-expanding one, the ancient Zodiac calendar is about as accurate as Helen Keller with a hand grenade. The data shows that the signs have essentially moved back one full motion, so September’s Virgos are “now” Leos, a sign which, until now, belonged to August babies.

Two things are interesting about this “development”. One is that, at least among fans of science, this is old news. In fact, just after I posted the link to Pale Blue Dot, I posted another link to Bill Nye (that’s right, the science guy) making the exact same point regarding astrology on an April 10, 2005 episode of his TV program The Eyes of Nye. Why no credit for Nye? The second interesting thing will be watching astrologists attempt to square yet another circle. Let’s face it: if they survived Galileo’s proof that the Earth orbited the Sun and not, as Astrologers had contended, the other way around (forging a strange and terrifying coalition of Astrologers and the Pope), rest assured they’ll brush this aside like someone wearing black without the blue.

Astrology is a perfect alignment of two human behaviors: Our pattern-seeking need for explanation (a good thing about us), and our willingness to accept a bogus explanation over no explanation (a bad thing about us). It’s not going anywhere.

SF vs NY: A Tale of Two Cities.

06 Thursday Jan 2011

Posted by Adrian Covert in Readings

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Tags

Best city in america, New York City, San Francsico

Impressive, but I'm betting you'd survive a plunge to the bottom.

BLACK SNOW & STIFF DRINKS: A SAN FRANCISCAN’S TAKE ON THE BIG APPLE.

Cleanliness may be next to godliness, but as it’s a relative term, it’s also pretty darn close meaninglessness. For example, when I’ve served New Yorkers at the San Francisco restaurant where I work, I often hear them marvel “…and San Francisco is so clean!” (to which one can watch locals turn their heads and awe at the astonishing and never-before-heard opinion). Safe at home after my very first trip to New York City, now it all makes sense to this lifelong Californian.

My very first “New York Experience” consisted of me nearly getting my ass kicked. One hears all the time about the roughness of New York’s subways, but that still left me unprepared for the three very large, very drunk, and–shall we say–very impolite Dominicans who greeted my maiden voyage with assurances that they were drawing nigh of beating my California ass and taking my shit.

I survived the incident (thankfully, without there being much of one) and immediately noted the differences between NY’s subways and SF’s MUNI. Whereas one might find a hamburger wrapper or two fluttering about Civic Center Station, this is utterly eclipsed by the unmitigated filth of New York’s subway system. Rats, sewage, mold, you name it: if it’s foul, it’s down there. However, whereas MUNI streetcar routes are sparse, and their reliability is notoriously unreliable, NY’s subways hurl seemingly beneath every inch of the Big Apple, and do so all the time, as in 24 hours a day (!). After going straight into New Year’s Eve drinking following a transcontinental flight and eventually finding your drunk self trying to get from Manhattan to Williamsburg at 4:30am, one tends to find this arrangement quite agreeable.

Then there’s the pizza. It’s great, without a doubt, especially Joe’s at Union Square. But honestly, after hearing about New York pizza my whole life (the entire side of my mom’s family was born in New York), I came away with the conclusion that a pizza can only get so good, and that perfection has in-fact been exported beyond NY’s city limits for some time (dude, Littlestar?).

I'll have a "dark".

Then there are the bars. We ventured to at least a dozen watering holes, from the urbane cocktail lounge at Cibar, where enormous Manhattans were poured (and spilled) to bring in the New Year, to the light-beer-dark-beer-only selection at McSorley’s Old Ale House (believed to be the oldest bar in NYC, and probably the only bar on Earth which can count both Abraham Lincoln and John Lennon as past patrons). The Dram Bar in Williamsburg, with it’s polished pine decor, cozily mixes the polarities of working-class pub with specialty cocktail lounge, and the barkeep at Marlow & Sons, a tiny, must-see bar near the Williamsburg bridge (which doubles as a very Californienne fresh-ingredient-oriented restaurant during the day) poured Rachel and I no fewer than 8 shots of tequila on the house.

A losing battle.

Pressed for time (we only had four days) we had to be precise in our sight-seeing. At the MOMA we took-in originals of some of the 20th century’s most celebrated artists, including Jasper Johns, Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, and even an exhibit on vintage kitchen design (very cool). Downtown, we saw the NY Stock Exchange and Federal Hall, where George Washington was inaugurated as the first President of the United States. We paid homage to fallen heroes at Ground Zero, where the memorials brought you to tears, but also where the still-missing Freedom Tower brings you to rage. Uptown, we saw Times Square and Broadway, where we watched (and listened) to the musical Memphis, and where I snapped a video of Al Pacino leaving the Broadhurst theater after finishing a showing of The Merchant of Venice.

Interesting absinthe spoon, yes. But is it most interesting? Sculpture at the MOMA.

We ventured to the “Top of the Rock”, the viewing deck atop Rockefeller Center, and took in breathtaking views of the city, including Central Park. Nearby, we visited the Dakota building where John Lennon was assassinated, and the neighboring Strawberry Hills. We also visited the American Museum of Natural History, where I saw a rather dated placard read something to the effect of “At current growth rates, humans population may reach 6 billion by the year 2000”.

The trip bore several surprises. Nobody seems to recycle, and what few trash cans I saw were plainly being pushed to their cosmic limits. The street grid doesn’t run North/South, East/West like in San Francisco, but at a diagonal which, when combined with the skyscraper-blockade of the Sun, makes navigation difficult. There isn’t much Mexican food (I found one taco truck, where I enjoyed an entirely respectable taco), but New Yorkers partially make up for this terrific dearth with an ample supply of extraordinary bagels. Contrary to popular belief, there seemed to be plenty of Fernet Branca, though nobody seemed to drink it. No place stocks toilet seat covers. The West Coast is a generally irreligious place, but this is especially true in it’s cities, so it was surprising to see churches filled with people who weren’t tourists. For the life of me, I’ll never get over the sight of Hasidic Jews tripping over their bronze-age costumes while chatting on the cell phone as the step into their Chrysler minivans. Nobody seems to pick up after their dog, and there are no hills.

Finally, something must be said of the people. I never before gave much credit to the national slogan E Pluribus Unum (Out of Many, One) mostly because it seemed to sacrifice accuracy at the alter of wish-thinking. But New York seethes with a nearly indescribable brand of unity that, at least for a major metropolis, might be unique to the entirety of human civilization, and which earns every syllable of the national motto. San Francisco, the most transient of cities, differs greatly in this respect. Remember, San Francisco was founded by tens of thousands of men who left their families to strike gold. Most of them didn’t find any, many of them left, and from college students, to dot-com start ups, to culinary aficionados,  this constant inward-outward push continues today. So whereas New York City piles generation atop of generation to fortify it’s civic identity, San Francisco replenishes it’s cultural stock by briefly enchanting individuals to spend several years calling her home, before they too continue the tradition and move on.

An amazing time to be sure, and given that I missed so many things (Ellis Island, the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State building…the list goes on) I’ll surely go back. But in the contest of cities, my heart lies with San Francisco and her (relatively) clean streets. It’s good to be home.

Enlightenment Revisited

20 Saturday Nov 2010

Posted by Adrian Covert in Readings

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a wicked company, atheism, books, enlightenment, european enlightenment, History, philipp blom

Philipp Blom takes on historical revisionism, Rousseau, and the splendor of 18th century Paris. “A Wicked Company: The Forgotten Radicalism of the European Enlightenment”.

At the fashionable salon of Madame Geoffrin, God's existence was definitely not a topic of debate. Skeptics instead skipped over to Holbach's house.

Monotheism, the trifold belief that a supernatural world exists and that it is governed exclusively by one all-powerful being and that one can have an intense personal relationship with said being, is perhaps the most consequential development of Western philosophy. Borrowing mightily from Judaism, Christianity had, by the 18th century, become the official religion of virtually all of Europe and Byzantium, while Islam dominated Arabia, Persia, and North Africa.

But while Christianity was beginning to assert itself abroad, it had begun to come under attack at home. Capitalism, industrialism, and scientific progress had so radically transformed Europe, and had done so with such breathtaking speed, that many European thinkers began to consider human progress capable of reaching perfection. To these thinkers, man was being tyrannized– his true potential blocked–by two ancient institutions: hereditary monarchy and Christianity.

European monarchs, yoked to a broad and expensive aristocracy, were increasingly seen as a social cancer; unnatural and unproductive, the ruling class consumed wealth created by others. Christianity proclaimed this order to be God’s will, damning those who challenged authority to eternal fire in the afterlife, and actual fire hear-and-now. This intolerably corrupted theocratic arrangement made increasingly little sense in the exciting new world of scientific and economic progress. Europe’s great thinkers set about crafting a path towards mankind’s ultimate political progress.

Paul-Henri Thiry Baron d'Holbach

It is here where we come across a monumental division in Enlightenment thought regarding man and God. One camp, led by the deists Rousseau and Voltaire, argued that man cannot live without belief in absolute truth, even if that belief is actually false. Since Christianity was false, they believed, it was not to be simply destroyed, but actively replaced by a more perfect virtue, a perfect religion designed to worship a perfect being as deduced by human reason. Another camp, led by atheists Denis Diderot, Baron d’Holbach, and the atheistic David Hume, argued that Christianity was certainly false, but that it’s most consequential evils came not from the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, but from Christianity’s unique standing in Europe as a law-religion, wedded to the state. Human progress was subject to acute limits, they reasoned, and thus they were skeptical of utopia, Christian or otherwise.

The Age of Revolution was a volatile epoch, and many Enlightenment ideas were  tested by the period’s political actors (Holbach’s essay Christianity Unveiled, and his suspiciously familiar-sounding Good Sense were published in 1761 and 1772 respectively). The atheist philosophies which argued for a state disinterested in the religious lives of it’s citizens was seized by the American Revolutionaries, especially Ben Franklin, Thomas Paine, and Thomas Jefferson, the latter of whom would first codify this stance in Virginia’s Statute for Religious Freedom, then finally the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. (Jefferson’s library contained copies of both Sense and Unveiled).

Denis Diderot.

Meanwhile, the radical deist philosophies of Rousseau and Voltaire, which believed that the state can and should dismantle and replace Christianity along more virtuous guidelines, were seized by the French Revolutionaries. Robespierre in particular was steeped in Voltaire and Rousseau, and his Jacobins aggressively “de-Christianized” France: First by replacing the christian calendar (with the year of the Revolution as year “0”), then by putting much of the clergy to the guillotine, and then finally by unveiling a new deity, the Goddess of Reason, who was “played” by the wife of the printer Antoine-François Momoro and for whom an absurd ceremony was held in Notre Dame.

The rest is history: The United States would follow the Diderot/Holbach/Hume model and develop into a wealthy and industrialized state characterized by pluralistic religious liberty under what is perhaps the most durable Western political regime ever, while France, and later Russia and Cambodia (Lenin and Pol-Pot were steeped in Voltaire), labored terror and barbarism in the fruitless pursuit of the utopia vaingloriously promised by deist philosophers infatuated with the notion of a perfect being.

This interpretation of events is not new. It is, in fact, at least as old as Isaiah Berlin’s 1958 essay “Two Concepts of Liberty”. But it has been refreshingly revived by historian Philipp Blom in his examination of the “Forgotten Radicalism of the Enlightenment” in A Wicked Company (Basic Books).

Company focuses almost exclusively on the salon of Paul-Henri Thiry Baron d’Holbach, a wealthy, German-born scientist who establishes a regular salon in his adopted Paris. Holbach’s coterie includes a who’s-who of Enlightenment thinkers, including Denis Diderot, David Hume, and Jean-Jaques Rousseau (whose paranoia and late-life turn to radical deism would isolate him from the salon). Blom uses the verve and color of 18th century Paris as a clever delivery system for impressively terse explanations of his subjects’ materialist philosophies. (A sample menu from a typical Holbach gathering lists 26 dishes, including Ox palates and grilled veal,  served over 5 courses).

Madame Helvetius. The widow Helvetius was a charismatic, well-educated woman of means. She worked with Diderot on several of his writings, and American diplomat Ben Franklin even asked her hand in Marriage. She declined.

The book strides with subversive energy: these thinkers were publishing the first fully atheist philosophical works since ancient Rome, and were doing so under strict secrecy as heresy was punishable by death. Company also endows the reader with an appreciation for the philosophical origins of broad-based contemporary values we now take for granted (including freedom of religion, sexual liberation, secular government, and women’s equality) and on whose behalf Holbach’s salon defiantly advocated.

Blom’s revisiting of the Enlightenment comes at an important time for the atheism with which he obviously identifies. After three best-selling books, one feature length film, and numerous viral internet campaigns, “New Atheism” is about to enter it’s 7th year as an American cultural phenomenon (that is, if one marks the movements’ beginnings with Sam Harris’ 2004 The End of Faith). New Atheists have all but made their case, and with the coming eclipse of Christopher Hitchens, the movement’s most powerful voice, New Atheism risks fading into memory, an interesting blip in the history of American skepticism. Company keeps the movement interesting by crafting a narrative which connects the non-religious to their risk-taking philosophical forbears and, not unimportantly, by making what is, to-date, the most powerful refutation of the popular idea that the cruelest despots of the 20th century were somehow inspired by atheist ideologies.

This is where Blom’s account of history soars. He demonstrates once-and-for-all that the  most murderous regimes of the 20th century were rooted, not in atheism, but in the 18th century European obsession with a “supreme being”. What Hitler, Pol-Pot, Stalin, Mao, and the Kim regime have in common is the “belief-in-belief”: a philosophical invention of the deists Rousseau and Voltaire that rejected Christianity as obviously contrived and morally dangerous, yet also rejected atheism on the grounds that people need to believe in absolute truth, even if one must invent it.

The last part of that sentence is deeply troubling, as it contains something for nearly everyone to hate. First, it implies that religion is created based on a babyish need for consolation; Second, it asserts that this need has only ever been met with man-made fictions; Third, it logically follows that there’s no harm, and certainly no reason, man shouldn’t replace one fiction with another if he feels it to be superior to the old. This logic was followed to brutal effect during the French Revolution’s Cult of Reason, and later in the Nazi, Stalinist, Maoist, Cambodian, and North Korean state-cults.

Founded on deist philosophy and bearing the uniting feature of compulsory state-worship, how is it that these nightmare regimes are so often mistaken for being atheistic? Does Christianity feature a philosophical necessity to categorize all non-Christian religions “atheist”? As much as it is a history of ideas, A Wicked Company makes a powerful distinction between the deism and atheism which sharply divided Enlightenment thinkers, and demonstrates how mankind’s greatest atrocities would be caused by the former, and blamed on the latter.

California Ballot Measures.

19 Tuesday Oct 2010

Posted by Adrian Covert in Readings

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Tags

California, california state, sacramento

Proposition 19: Tax, Regulate, and Control Cannabis: YES. By far the most important item on the ballot. Proposition 19 represents a huge and painfully overdue blow to the insanely expensive and completely ineffective “war on drugs”. Sane drug policy cannot, and will not, ever come from the Federal Government, unless it first comes from the states. This is our chance. I cannot overstate the importance of this piece of legislation.

Proposition 20: Redistricting of Congressional Districts: YES. Remember way back in Politics 101 the term “Gerrymandering”?–the drawing of ludicrously shaped political districts designed to keep incumbents safe? This would end that. Californians approved a similar measure last election, but that law covered only the state legislature. This one covers Congressional districts and thereby completes the job.

Proposition 21: Vehicle Registration Fee for State Park Admittance. YES. Proposition 21 would tack on an $18 fee every time you register your car. The money would go entirely to the cash-starved state-parks, and would remain out of the reach of state legislators. In exchange, every California registered vehicle would receive free-entry to every state park. Now, I’m not one for compulsory membership, but I’m also not one to pass on a good deal. Saving the State-Parks while gaining unlimited access for $18? That is a GREAT deal.

Proposition 22: Prohibits State Raids on Local Government: YES. Sacramento is actually worse of than you think. For years, Sacramento has been disguising the full scope of it’s financial woes by stealing money from local governments. Proposition 22 would make such raids illegal, and force state-politicians to come to grips with a structurally dysfunctional business model.

Proposition 23: Suspend Environmental Protections: NO. This insulting attack on California’s burgeoning clean-energy industry is spearheaded by Texas Oil companies. Fuck them.

Proposition 24: Close Corporate Tax Breaks: YES. An extremely complicated array of closures and repeals of tax-loophole and tax-breaks for people who aren’t you.

Proposition 25: Democracy in Budgeting: YES. California is one of only three states in the union where the budget is controlled by minority-rule. This arrangement is actually principled in feudal-era notions of class and privilege,  and it is in every way bad. Proposition 25 restores majority rule to California’s horrific budget process.

Proposition 26: No more democracy in fee raises: NO. Takes away majority rule in regards to state-fees. The reverse of Proposition 25 above.

Proposition 27: Abolishes sanity in redistricting reforms from last year: NO. This cynical and insulting measure comes from the state Democrat and Republican party leadership, and would give party bosses the ability to pick their voters rather than voters pick their representatives. Big NO.

Beatles vs. Stones vs. Hitchens

31 Monday May 2010

Posted by Adrian Covert in Readings

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beatles vs rolling stones, hitch 22, hitchens, revolution, revolution vs. street fighting man, rolling stones, street fighting man, the beatles

But which one is wearing REAL leather?

I was reading Hitch 22, Christopher Hitchens’ freshly published memoir, the other day when I came across this:

“I later vastly preferred Mick Jagger’s ‘Street Fighting Man’, which had been written for my then-friend Tariq Ali, to the Beatles’ more conciliatory ‘You Say You Want a Revolution’…”.

Two things about this Beatles vs. Stones comparison. First, the Beatles song (which is actually titled simply “Revolution”…come on Hitch),  is much smarter than “Street Fighting Man”, which is basically a long lament against “Sleepy London town”.

How Lennon’s grungy rejection of Chairman Mao and “Minds that hate” could be considered “conciliatory” I don’t know. Those same lyrics, presumably, would have been more contextually useful to the actual folks in the streets of 1968 than Mick Jaggers’ context-free killing of the “King and all his servants”. (Note how the English Rolling Stones, in what one might characterize as a conciliatory gesture, spare the Queen).

Second, as with all matters of Beatles vs. Stones, this probably has more to do with perceived cultural differences rather than actual musical ones. Above all else is the perception that the Rolling Stones were, are, in some way, the “edgier” choice. They are certainly the edgier brand. But beyond that I’m not so sure…

It was the Beatles, after all, who were working-class kids from the rough port city, cutting their teeth on the gritty streets of Hamburg and getting their original bassist, Stuart Sutcliffe, killed in a bar fight in the process. Meanwhile, it was the ‘Stones who were the upper-class London prep-school kids with proper accents. The Beatles wrote the Stones’ first hit (the rocker I wanna be your man) because the ‘Stones didn’t yet know how to write music. Add the fact that the heaviest track recorded between the two bands belongs to the Beatles (Helter Skelter by far) and the Rolling Stones’ “edge” begins to look more like a marketing gimmick. The marketing has been convincing though, and one for which Hitchens, ever conscious of his own “radical” brand, has taken a liking.

A Tale of Two Dystopias

17 Wednesday Mar 2010

Posted by Adrian Covert in Readings

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1984, Aldous Huxley, books, Brave New World, christopher hitchens, George Orwell

Ah! Where's my head?! Wait, how am I saying that?

Damn, Shepherd Fairey has been around forever!

HAVING never had to read them in High School, I recently finished George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World for the very first time. While I deeply enjoyed both, and although, in a post Cold-War world, I believe BNW to be more relevant today, I come out being more impressed with Orwell. Both for the intensity of the writing and for the sheer philosophical achievement it represents, 1984 might be the best book I’ve ever read.

1984 is popularly understood as a novel “about” totalitarianism. In truth, Orwell’s masterpiece goes much further than simply describing totalitarianism; it examines it, defines it, predicts what it is, what it wants, and how it must behave, all to an extraordinary degree. In 1984, George Orwell invents totalitarianism.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in Orwell’s ability to “speak” totalitarianism, and nowhere is it spoken more effectively than when the subject turns to sex. There is one particular scene where the protagonist, Winston Smith, discusses sex with his girlfriend, Julia. They are lying side-by-side (and after-the-fact) when this memorable exchange occurs:

Winston: Look, I hate purity. Hate goodness. I don’t want virtue to exist anywhere. I want everyone corrupt.
Julia: Well, I ought to suit you, then. I’m corrupt to the core.
Winston: Do you like doing this? I don’t mean just me…
Julia: I adore it.

The exchange is memorable because English society has become dominated by a culture of extreme sexual repression, whereby teenagers are forcibly enrolled into the militant “Junior Anti-Sex League” and where Winston’s wife refers to having sex as fulfilling her “duty to the party”, and not in the swingers-kind-of-way either. The totalitarian society is one in which the primitive preoccupation with “purity” becomes a national obsession, and where sex (of course) is seen as purity’s natural enemy. The State is your only acceptable lover, and she is a jealous one. By hating purity, and by loving promiscuity–going so far as to fantasize about Julia sleeping with great numbers of men–Winston is hating totalitarianism and loving whatever its opposite might be.

In Brave New World, Huxley’s view towards sex is completely opposite to that of Orwell’s. BNW imagines a future England which is no less totalitarian, but instead of being forced into submission by the boot and the truncheon, society is “bred” into order using genetics, and harmony is maintained using narcotics and sex. Instead of extreme repression, England becomes dominated by extreme promiscuity: children are taught sex games, monogamy is considered unnatural, and everyone gets through the day by masturbating (“Vibro-Vacuum massage”, going to the “feelies”) and by getting wasted (off of a euphoric, hallucinogenic, hangover-free trip called “Soma”). Books no longer exist really, as all entertainment has devolved into cheap variations on visual and physical stimulus. Human society has dedicated itself to eliminating anything which might cause “pain”, and in doing so also eliminates all that which causes love, beauty, and maturity.

The hero, if he can be called that, is John the Savage. While pregnant, John’s mother was abandoned by her lover during a vacation to “Malpais”, a reservation of primitive humans located, hilariously enough, in New Mexico. Growing up, John’s only reading material happens to be one of the few surviving copies of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. John is thus obsessed with morality, virtue, and honor. And abstinence. John escapes the reservation and is disgusted by the soullessness of the Brave New World around him. When a woman, Lelina, advances on him, the pressure eventually drives John mad.

What’s impressive is how both works could be so different, yet so prophetic.  For example, 1984 was published the very same year the North Korean state was founded. Christopher Hitchens, who has written a biography of George Orwell, once said the similarities between the nightmarish world of 1984‘s “Oceania” and the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea are so great “its as though somebody handed Kim Il-Sung a copy back in 1948 and asked ‘do you think we can do this here?’ And he responded ‘we can sure try'”.

In the same setting, Hitchens commented that 1984, the quintessential Cold War novel, will remain relevant because it speaks to a timeless human flaw: the will to obey. The continued relevance Brave New World needs no explanation.

Students: Don’t Blow it.

28 Sunday Feb 2010

Posted by Adrian Covert in Readings

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budget cuts, cal riot, California, student protests

As a member of the late Repair California campaign, I was recently invited to participate in a panel discussion on the state of government reform efforts, put on by the University of California Students Association. The panel was part of their annual summit, held in Sacramento, and was designed partly as a strategy session for the upcoming “March Forth” protests. The event plans to be huge: Universities from around the world are reportedly taking part, as students everywhere highlight the social, economic, and cultural value of higher education.

I gladly accepted the invitation, and delivered this message: This is your moment. Don’t blow it. For the record, “blowing it” looks like what happened in Berkeley last Thursday: a riot.

In what the local media referred to as a “warm-up” protest, several dozen young people were filmed destroying downtown Berkeley. The Daily Cal featured amateur video of young people tipping trash cans, lighting them aflame, insulting police officers, smashing windows, and chanting something about the littered streets being “their streets”. With their faces sheathed behind bandannas, it wasn’t entirely clear if the crowd was protesting Sacramento or holding-up the railroad.

It took a little bit of diving into the reports to find that most of the people involved weren’t students, just typical street kids taking a break from their usual activities of asking me for money and not bathing.

That the rioters weren’t students should matter. It doesn’t. Student leaders were mute in their disapproval of the pointlessness, assuming they disapproved at all. The result was the disconcertingly powerful way in which conservatives wed their narrative to the news reports pouring in from a conflict-seeking media: somebody else’s ungrateful spoiled-brat kids are running amok in a beautiful city and wasting your hard-earned money.

Make no mistake, this is a bad development for the students and the universities. Students have been shouldering a disproportionate share of California’s great budgetary burden, and thus have legitimate, no, very legitimate, grievances. In response, many students have worked hard to build an opposition movement. With the national attention span measurable only in iotas, students cannot afford to surrender a single headline to packs of street kids who care little, and understand even less, about California’s perilous financial system and the network of world-class colleges and universities that depend on it.

One gets the troubling sensation that students were loath to forcefully condemn the riots out of deference to the Bay Area’s tradition of civil activism. This is the sort of thing Berkeley does. If so, this is an unspeakably pitiful development. A mob that masks the sound of breaking glass and smoldering refuse with here-and-there chants plagiarized from the civil rights movement is still a mob. And while such incantations may be enough to placate professors, students, and liberal pundits, I’d be surprised if the shopkeeper or the taxpayer are as impressed. Shame on those who turn their cheeks while the reputation of a worthy and important movement is dragged through the mud by hooligans, left-wing or not.

Instead of anger, chaos, and anarchy, instead of hanging effigies of the Governor, the students should make it their singular mission to rekindle the hope and confidence that was once called the California dream, and to make themselves that dream’s indispensable component. Students, almost by definition, stand for youth, energy, and idealism: ingredients for inspiration that are perennially ripe. So here’s an idea. Drape yourselves in California flags and, by the tens of thousands, and walk peacefully up streets singing the Beach Boys. Doing so will impress not just your cosmopolitan university neighbors, but your redneck uncle too.

California Convention Movement: 8/24/2008-2/12/2010

12 Friday Feb 2010

Posted by Adrian Covert in Readings

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california constitutional convention, constitutional convention, convention, repair california

As you may have heard, the movement for a California constitutional convention officially died at 11:30am February 12, 2010, a Friday. It’s been one heckuva roller coaster, and we gave it all we had. More on this soon…

Signature Gathering Firms Colluding to Stop California Constitutional Convention

03 Wednesday Feb 2010

Posted by Adrian Covert in Readings

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California, california state, california state constitutional convention, constitution, constitutional convention, convention, lawsuit, repair california, repaircalifornia.org, signature gathering firm, state constitutional convention, www.repaircalifornia.org

Repair California Prepares Lawsuit To Protect Citizens’ Movement To Break Special Interest Stranglehold On California’s Broken Government (Press Release).

SAN FRANCISCO and LOS ANGELES, February 3, 2009 — Today Repair California, a group of everyday Californians, reformers, and advocacy groups demanded that signature gathering firms, their regional coordinators, and some crew chiefs, immediately cease the improper, unethical, and illegal boycott of the Constitutional Convention movement, and stop the threats, intimidation, and other dirty tricks that are interfering with California citizens’ right to collect signatures for the Convention campaign.

“We are building an organization that can survive the dirty tricks, but rather than cover up these moves to snuff out this citizens’ movement, we felt it best to expose them to sunlight,” said John Grubb, Campaign Director of Repair California.  “Here lies the dark underbelly of California’s political control.  It’s a very bad sign for our democracy that reminds one more of ‘Caligula’ than ‘Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.’  We need help from political leaders and everyday Californians willing to stand up and loudly say this is not right.”

Repair California has turned in ballot language to call the first Constitutional Convention in
California in more than 130 years.  Citing a broken system of governance, the measures would call a limited Constitutional Convention to reform four areas of the constitution: the budget process; the election and initiative process; restoring the balance of power between the state and local governments; and, creating new systems to improve government effectiveness.  The Convention is specifically prohibited from proposing tax increases or from considering changes to social issues such as marriage, abortion, gambling, affirmative action, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, immigration, or the death penalty.  Voters will decide on calling the Convention on the November 2010 ballot, the Convention would be held in 2011 and its proposed reforms would require voter approval in one of the three scheduled statewide elections in 2012.

“Californians deserve better,” said Jim Wunderman, the President and CEO of the Bay Area Council, the organization that started the Convention movement.  “Our entire democracy is demeaned when the question of calling a Convention is denied a fair fight on the field of ideas before the voters.”

The letters sent today by Repair California’s attorneys at Hanson Bridgett alleges that certain signature gathering firms are engaged in conduct that violates State and Federal Antitrust law, and the Constitutional rights of Repair California and the people supporting it.  The “blacklisting” of Repair California has harmed the Convention campaign by limiting and interfering with its right to engage a signature collection firm, and has resulted in a drastic increase in prices offered Repair California.  A group boycott violates Section 1 of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1, and it is also contrary to the California Unfair Competition Law (UCL). Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code § 17200, et. seq, which protects California businesses and consumers from unfair and anti-competitive activities.  In addition, the Convention campaign alleges that people actually or apparently acting on the signature gathering firms’ behalf are engaged in behavior intended to threaten and intimidate persons who are circulating petitions calling the Convention.  Also, there is evidence of “dirty tricks” designed to thwart the Constitutional Convention petition effort.  For example, persons acting on the signature gathering firms’ behalf may have thrown valid signatures away.  Hanson Bridgett, lawyers for the Convention campaign, have notified those who may be responsible for such illegal activities that Repair California, and the citizens it represents, have the Constitutional right to circulate petitions to qualify an initiative for the ballot, and that any interference with this right is a basis for a lawsuit.

Limiting a Constitutional Convention to 2/3 of Proposition 13.

08 Friday Jan 2010

Posted by Adrian Covert in Readings

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

California, california state, california state constitutional convention, constitutional convention, convention, repair california, repaircalifornia.org, www.repaircalifornia.org

Few topics related to California’s state government are as sensitive as Proposition 13. Which is why it is so important for Californians to clearly understand what impact a state constitutional convention could have on the landmark initiative. So let’s be clear: The constitutional convention proposal currently under circulation would be legally prohibited from proposing any tax increase whatsoever, including those taxes related to Proposition 13.

The reason is simple. Californians have made up their minds: they are unwilling to increase their property taxes to make up for Sacramento’s shortfall. Limiting the Convention from this issue would allow it to sidestep a poison pill and focus on the critical changes our state needs to end farcical budgeting, a bloated bureaucracy, the over-concentration of power in Sacramento, and a host of other problems.

But how can we be sure that these limits aren’t simply ignored? Can a state constitutional convention be limited? The answer is a resounding yes.

Unlike federal constitutional conventions, state constitutional conventions can be successfully limited in scope, and indeed have been on many occasions throughout US history. Furthermore, the legality of such limits are backed by a clear legal tradition established by State Supreme Courts going back to the 19th century.

These opinions establish that the people, as sovereigns, are free to limit state conventions both “to” certain topics and “from” other topics. An 1874 decision by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that “the people have the same right to limit the powers of their [constitutional convention] delegates that they have to bound the power of their representatives.” This opinion is the prevailing one, and has been echoed in ruling after ruling from Virginia to Rhode Island, and from Kentucky to Tennessee.

Californians both want and need this convention to succeed, that’s why it’s important that the voters give the convention a laser-like focus on what issues are on-the-table and which are off-the-table. Limiting the California constitutional convention “to” governance reform, and limiting it “from” changing laws associated with marriage, abortion, capital punishment, basic freedoms, and tax increases–including those associated with Proposition 13–is to follow a rock-solid legal tradition.

The fact that it will be the voters themselves–and not an unpopular legislature–who establish these limits, further cements both their legality and their legitimacy.

That said, there are other, lesser known parts of Proposition 13 which the people deserve the opportunity to review.

One of those parts established a 2/3 supermajority threshold for tax increases. One may argue for or against raising or lowering this threshold, but what is clear to all is that our current system is broken, and this threshold is part of that system. Many liberals and conservatives agree it deserves a citizen review.

Another part of Proposition 13 centralized tax revenues in Sacramento at the expense of local government autonomy. This is bad policy for two reasons.

First, it strangles what should be one of California’s greatest strengths, its diversity, by forcing irreconcilably different regional interests into zero-sum political battles in Sacramento. Why not instead allow the state’s political, social, and economic diversity to flourish by decentralizing Sacramento, and by providing for greater regional autonomy?

Second, it has allowed the state to hide the scope of its dysfunction by skimming the coffers of responsible local governments. The recent budget meltdown has turned the skimming into an all-out raid, leading to draconian service cuts, expensive litigation, and the near-bankruptcies of several municipalities across the state.

Since this movement is about restoring the balance of power between state and local government, this centralization question absolutely must be reviewed, and that requires opening up parts of Proposition 13. Luckily, these cows are sacred to no one.

California is perhaps the most diverse, innovative, hard-working, and creative assemblage of individuals in human history. Our state is brimming with potential, yet our government is a fundamental, catastrophic, and undeniable failure.

Californians know we can do better, and this belief in California is fueling an historic movement for the state’s first constitutional convention in 130 years. The people are speaking up: they want to review this government. Let them deliberate.

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