The divisive issue was whether California’s regulation was one of general applicability treating religious conduct as well as the state treats comparable secular conduct. The majority found that the regulation did not treat religious conduct as well as comparable secular conduct. As a result, strict scrutiny (showing that the regulation is narrowly tailored to further a compelling state interest) was triggered.

The majority noted that “California treats some comparable secular activities more favorably than at-home religious exercise, permitting hair salons, retail stores, personal care services, movie theaters, private suites at sporting events and concerts, and indoor restaurants to bring together more than three households at a time.” The dissent authored by Justice Kagan contended that the majority was not comparing apples to apples inasmuch as a hardware store open to the public is not comparable to at-home gatherings. Moreover, Kagan pointed out that California “adopted a blanket restriction on at-home gatherings of all kinds, religious and secular alike.” Thus, because a secular dinner party would be limited to three families, Kagan believed that the First Amendment was satisfied.

According to the petition for injunctive relief, the key to unlocking the comparability argument is California’s definition of gatherings which means “social situations that bring together people from different households at the same time in a single space or place.” Under California’s own definition of gatherings, at-home worship and commercial activity at a hardware store are “social situations that bring together people from different households at the same time in a single space or place.” The petitioners also pointed out that under exceptions to the gathering guidance they “could contract out their home to Netflix for the filming of Warrior Nun with dozens of stagehands and actors inside, they could not host a nun and two other people from different households for an ecumenical prayer meeting.”

This last point raised by the petitioners demonstrates why the Court properly granted the injunction. Petitioners have to show a likelihood of success on the merits. California’s exceptions to the gatherings guidance does not treat religious and secular activity equally. As we have seen in other cases, it is the myriad exceptions that government makes to laws that are otherwise generally applicable that gives them legal trouble. Hopefully, governments will eventually learn this lesson as they craft laws dealing with the pandemic.

The post Supreme Court Grants Injunction on California COVID Restrictions appeared first on The Beacon.

“Delaine is the former State Superintendent for Public Instruction,” the website explains. On Eastin’s watch, from 1995 to 2003, the California Department of Education gave more than $20 million in federal funds to a consortium of community-based organizations (CBOs), primarily for English-language instruction for immigrant children. 

Assistant Superintendent Robert Cervantes, a longtime advocate of English as the key to economic advancement, who oversaw the program, found that the CBOs lacked the required nonprofit status and had falsified records. CBO bosses spent much of the money on jewelry, luxury automobiles, houses in Washington, D.C., and political activism.

Superintendent Eastin responded by demoting and reprimanding Cervantes and fellow whistleblower James Lindberg. Both took legal action and received cash settlements. Lindberg’s was reduced but the damage had been done. Yet the CBO scandal does not appear on Eastin’s web page about her time as superintendent. 

It was hardly her only lapse. On Eastin’s watch, California’s education spending rose from about $5,500 per pupil to more than $9,000. Even so, test scores languished at alarmingly low levels and Eastin opposed reforms aimed at raising standards and expanding parental choice.

In the Assembly Eastin sought to make charter schools indistinguishable from regular government schools. As a candidate for governor Eastin advocated a moratorium on new charter schools, a meaningful reform currently under fire, as Thomas Sowell notes in Charter Schools and Their Enemies. 

Eastin claims that our educational system “was designed in a way meant to uphold white supremacy and to protect the privileges of wealthy elites.” Democrats, she adds, “must commit to eliminating the structures that perpetuate racism in our society.” Yet she does not identify the structures that perpetuate racism or explain how they are to be eliminated. She opposed Proposition 209, which banned racial and ethnic discrimination in state education, employment, and contracting. Eastin does not perceive the voter-approved measure as a way to end anti-black racism. 

Naturally, she’s a staunch supporter of the California Teachers Association and laments declining union membership, but she does not tackle the state’s high taxes or the onerous regulatory regime. She also wants college to be “tuition free again” and she calls for “single payer” health care for all.

All told, Eastin’s campaign differs little if at all from those of progressive Democrats nationwide. For California Democrats, however, one item deserves close attention. 

Eastin says she will have “zero tolerance for sexual harassment” and will uphold “accountability as it relates to sexual harassment by anyone.” This may be a reference to former state party chair Eric Bauman, who resigned in 2018, facing allegations that he “sexually harassed and assaulted” staffers at party events and touched both male and female staffers “in ways that made them feel uncomfortable.” 

Bauman gave way to union activist Rusty Hicks, who recently has become controversial in a different way. Hicks calls the effort to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom a “coup” led by “right-wing conspiracy theorists, white nationalists, anti-vaxxers and groups who encourage violence on our democratic institutions.” 

Eastin wants Hicks’ job, but where she stands on the recall is not clear from her campaign website. Democrats will decide whether the self-proclaimed “Champion for Education” is the right call for state party chair. 

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He and others have also remarked at the stark difference between the police response to the mostly white pro-Trump mob and the predominantly black Black Lives Matter protests across the United States over the summer. Photos emerged of Capitol police taking selfies with protestors as they broke into Congress. A video surfaced of police holding the door as the same protestors left the building.

Compare this to the treatment of BLM protestors who were consistently tear-gassed, shot with rubber bullets, and taken by federal agents in unmarked vehicles.

My co-author Chris Coyne and I have written in a number of places about the origins and perpetuation of militarized U.S. domestic police. We have also written about why minorities are likely to bear a greater cost of this militarization. In his 1970 book, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty, economist Albert O. Hirschman describes the choices that confront individuals when faced with problems within the organizations to which they belong. This includes governments.

Individuals may “exit” or withdraw from the relationship completely. An alternative option is to “voice” their grievances in an effort to correct the problems. When it comes to the question of militarized police, neither of these options are consistently available to minority communities.

For instance, “exiting” areas disproportionately impacted by militarized police is not easy. When one considers that black Americans are three times more likely than whites to live in poverty, and that Hispanics are twice as likely, moving or “voting with your feet” simply isn’t feasible.

Similarly, “voice” is not a reliable change mechanism for many communities of color. Consider one study that found many black communities are often represented by political leaders who fail to champion or adopt policies favored by their black constituencies. In Ferguson, Missouri, the city that found itself mired in controversy after the 2014 killing of a black teenager named Michael Brown by a white police officer, there are nearly no black political leaders. This is in spite of the fact that nearly 70 percent of Ferguson’s residents are black.

Taken together, the lack of opportunities to effectively use the political process to correct problems within their communities, and the difficulty in leaving areas with heavy-handed police presence, it should come as no surprise that minority communities bear the brunt of militarized police. It may also help to explain the waves of protests throughout the country in 2020. Without other alternatives, people took to the streets.

Militarized policing is just one example of how the government has progressively exerted more social control through the United States. It is clear the costs of these expanded powers are largely born by those unable to effectively leave or give voice to their disappointment and dissatisfaction with their political leaders.

So what can be done to change the status quo? True change requires a major shift in thinking regarding the actions of our government. Rather than viewing government as the solution to the problems it helped create, it’s imperative we adopt a more antagonist stance—or at least some healthy skepticism. This is particularly true if we want to help those marginalized groups who are least able to escape the heavy hand of state power.

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The ruling class wants to lock down everybody, but when it comes to their own needs they claim special privilege. In similar style, Gov. Newsom forbids people from singing or chanting in church yet is much less troubled by roving mobs of looters and arsonists. These mobs have operated largely unchecked, while police arrest a solitary surfer at Malibu beach. Pelosi’s bad hair day is an example of that double standard, but there’s more to the San Francisco Democrat.

For one thing, she is Gavin Newsom’s one-time aunt, and when Newsom declared the state of emergency he hailed the leadership of Nancy Pelosi. So Californians have grounds to think she is the one really in charge.

Nancy Pelosi has been in Congress since 1987. In 2001 she wrote in the Congressional Record that “Harry Bridges was arguably the most significant labor leader of the twentieth century,” and “beloved by the workers of this nation, and recognized as one of the most important labor leaders in the world.” As Joshua Muravchik noted in “Pelosi’s Favorite Stalinist,” Harry Bridges was a member of the central committee of the Communist Party USA, and a longtime Soviet agent. The most important American labor leader was the anti-Communist George Meany. As Muravchik noted, in 1975 Meany organized a welcome for Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, “when President Ford and Secretary of State Kissinger refused to receive the Soviet dissident.”

Nancy Pelosi should have known that. And good luck with the apology for the “set up.”

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One of California’s biggest public corruption cases involved the new span of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge, ten years late, $5 billion over budget, and riddled with safety issues. In early 2014, the massive project became the subject of hearings under then-state Senator Mark DeSaulnier, a Concord Democrat.

Witnesses testified that Caltrans compromised public safety by ignoring problems with welds, bolts and rods. Caltrans also outsourced work to China, where workers produced cracked welds. Caltrans bridge engineer Douglas Coe noted that every one of the 750 panels had to be repaired. The most serious charge, according to chairman DeSaulnier, was “a deliberate and willful attempt to obfuscate what is happening to the public,” and as the senator lamented, “there’s never been anyone in the management of the bridge who has been held accountable,”

Caltrans geologist Michael Moore testified that safety problems were kept secret, ignored and covered up. Moore called for a “criminal investigation,” but none took place. DeSaulnier sent a report on the bridge to Attorney General Kamala Harris, who launched no criminal investigation. So the Bee had a point when it said that Harris “could be more aggressive on public corruption.”

As this column regularly notes, public corruption in Washington, D.C., is truly fathomless, and seldom is anyone held accountable. Should the Biden-Harris ticket win, the vice president will face her biggest challenge.

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Forbes Media bagged “at least $5 million,” according to CNBC and the Washington Times got at least $1 million. The Washingtonian and the Daily Caller both got at least $350,000, and The American Prospect received at least $150,000. While propping up media, the PPP payouts did not neglect the political side.

The Ohio Democratic Party got at least $150,000 and the Florida Democratic Party Building Fund got at least $350,000. The Women’s National Republican Club of New York got at least $350,000, with some $150,000 going to the Black Republican Caucus in Florida. PPP also shelled out $5-10 million to the Boies Schiller Flexner law firm, headed by David Boies, whose clients include former vice president Al Gore. As embattled taxpayers assess the merits of these payouts, they might consider an item CNBC managed to miss.

As Evan Symon reports in the California Globe, PPP loans of $150-350,000 went to PlumpJack Winery, owned by California governor Gavin Newsom. Last year Newsom reported more than $200,000 in income through PlumpJack, so the governor remains a beneficiary even though he relinquished control while in office.

Before the July 4 weekend, Gov. Newsom shut down bars, restaurants, zoos, movie theaters, museums and winery tasting rooms in 19 California counties. Missing from the shutdown list is upscale Napa County, where PlumpJack is located.

All told, the PPP payouts show some distancing from the kind of accountability taxpayers have a right to expect.

The post Paycheck Protection Payouts Give Taxpayers Plenty To Ponder appeared first on The Beacon.

Tip O’Neill, Democratic Speaker of the House, criticized Reagan’s policies often, but he did not hate Reagan. It is said that sometimes after criticizing Reagan’s policies, O’Neill would meet with the president for a cocktail. That was the prevailing atmosphere in those days.

No more.

I no longer get mad about politics. That was not always the case in my younger years. Why couldn’t reasonable, bright, educated people agree with my arguments, I wondered then. What changed my temperament over the years? Two things: one, age and experience. I learned, along with Ralph Waldo Emerson, that “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” Two, I came to realize in a political or philosophical argument that both sides convey seeds of truth. Sometimes, of course, one side had more seeds than the other side. For example, I did not agree with President Obama on Obamacare. Yet at the same time, how could I oppose a person who wanted to provide health care to poor people? His intention was noble; it was simply the means of reaching that intention that I disagreed with.

When I moved recently to Oakland, California I had a mutual friend, a liberal, who wanted to argue with me about politics. I did so for awhile, only to see that he could not defend his views without getting angry. His face would get red, his voice louder, and he would pound his finger on my chest, saying, “How can you hold such a view?” I should have responded, “How can you hold such a view?” I no longer argue with him because he cannot do so without getting mad.

Today, President Trump is widely, yes, hated by adversaries. He was hated even before he was elected, and more so after his surprise defeat of Hillary Clinton. Democrats, the print media, television news, Hollywood, the music industry, university administrators—all then and now intensely dislike the man. The silent majority, meanwhile, has said little in defense of the president. To be sure, Trump is narcissistic beyond belief. He reminds of me of Oscar Wilde, who standing before the mirror, said, “It was the beginning of a life-long love relationship.”

With regard to today’s zeitgeist, I am here also reminded of the Irish poet, William Butler Yeats’ observation: “The best lack all conviction [to act], while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” Also, Edmund Burke’s insight comes to mind, “The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” And Burke also observed about the French Revolution that the crickets in the field are noisy while the cows are content. These observations fit today’s spirit of the times.

John Stuart Mill put brilliantly what is needed in today’s political, philosophical world: “Though a silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of truth, and since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied.”

I’ll not hold my breath, but I will also not get angry about it.

The post Reagan and O’Neill Were Friendly Opponents, so Why Must Today’s Partisans Spew Hatred? appeared first on The Beacon.

And I see it all around me all the time, especially in the news and the social media. Which is a bit of a mystery, because we live in a world flush with marvelous achievements by people working in the sciences, technology, and the practical arts and crafts, so that a day rarely passes without the announcement of some new discovery, invention, or achievement to expand the understanding and practical attainments of the human race.

The key consideration here is that stupidity manifests itself especially, to a painful, almost unbearable degree, in politics and anything closely tied to politics—which is to say, anything having to do with government as we now know it. Political discourse itself is enough to make even a person of moderate intelligence run away screaming. So much ignorance is on display, so much viciousness, so much ill-disguised envy and malevolence, such unscrupulous attempts to take what belongs to other people and redirect it to those who have no just right to it. The stupidity, therefore, is not only an inability to connect real causes and effects, but also moral stupidity, an inability to do what is obviously right and decent, as opposed to predatory and criminal, albeit legal.

Do these two worlds—politics and nonpolitics—attract different kinds of people? Or are people the same everywhere, but politics makes those who enter that world stupid and morally dense, whereas people engaged in science, technology, and the practical arts and crafts must demonstrate that they can get worthwhile results—and bullshit won’t bail them out if they fail, at least not for long?

Well, I’m an economist, so I understand that prevailing incentives and constraints structure people’s actions. If one enters a world in which violence, extortion, and fraud are the chief means of attaining one’s objectives, one learns how to sharpen those swords and use them to maximum effect. That’s the world of politics—dishonest at its very core, a blatant attempt to paint lipstick on the plundering pig, to declare indispensable an enormous mass of what could well be dispensed with because it amounts to nothing more than bullying one’s fellows.

Yet, having recognized how different incentives and constraints foster different styles of discourse and conduct, it is hard to reject the hypothesis that people are not the same in the two worlds. If you are tough and aggressive, you have a better chance as a prizefighter than you would have if you were delicate and meek. It’s not by chance that so many slimy ne’er-do-wells rise to the top in politics. They are the kind of people who have a comparative advantage in operating a violent extortion racket. If they were inclined to live a life of kindness and personal assistance to those who deserve their help, they would avoid politics as if it were the plague and devote themselves instead to any of the countless callings in which honesty, diligence, and kindness have a payoff, at least on a local level, if not in “saving the world.” (Such colossal saving, of course, can never be realistically expected on a national or global level in any event, and those who promise to attain it—always with vast amounts of state power and shiploads of other people’s money—would be recognized in an intelligent world as charlatans.)

But in the world of politics and the professions it stains, we are deluged with wars to end all wars, with trade wars to achieve complete free trade, with socialist, fascist, and communist fantasies of a New World lying just beyond the political horizon. The connivers who promise these shining futures break plenty of eggs, as everyone knows, but the omelet never comes forth. And because politics is stupid, multitudes of people persist in the conviction that if only the right imposters or a better formulated Central Plan were in place, all would be wonderful under systems and projects that have only piled corpses high in past implementations. In science, technology, and the practical arts, people learn from experience and move on to something more promising. In the world of politics, however, people never learn, and they repeat the same species of mistakes in a perpetual cycle.

In reaction to the foregoing considerations, someone can always be expected to reply, “You can leave politics alone, but politics won’t leave you alone.” And there is some truth in this hackneyed observation. Its true implication, however, is not, as its advancers imagine, that we must soldier on in political struggles, like it or not, to protect whatever we can, lest we lose everything.

Because that promise, too, is vain. If we must devote ourselves to politics, if doing so is unavoidable, then we have simply conceded that we live in a world of irremediable stupidity and brutality, a world in which scientists, technologists, and practical entrepreneurs, creators, and builders may be permitted to go about their work, but only in fetters and in the knowledge that whatever good thing they bring forth will be put, sooner or later, to an evil end as a result of politics.

On the eve of World War II, the poet W. H. Auden told us that we must love one another or die. We might also recognize—indeed, it is almost the same admonition—that we must find a way to escape from politics, from government as we now know it, or we will die. The systematic organization of hatreds—the very core of politics—cannot yield any other fruit.

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