HOW THE CONSERVATIVES HAVE
LOOTED THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

You know, I can't believe all of the flack Governor Swartzenegger is getting for being a spending liberal, even from people from whom you normally would not expect such criticism. Some people say that those Ballot Measures deserved to be voted down because California is way over-spending. I can't disagree more. Governor Swartzenegger was put into office you'll remember as a counter-ballance to Gray Davis, who allowed the state to be looted by Ken Lay and Enron by unwise financial dealings and jacking up the price of electricity here in California. But you'd never know that our present governor used to be called "The Termanator" by the way people are reacting to him today. Among the hard right he is being referred to as a "liberal cave in" bowing to the Kennedy connection of his wife, Maria Shriver. All this because the governor believes we should start being energy efficient and bring California into the 21st Century when it comes to cleaning up our polluted air and water. But the seeds of our current Financial problems we are having now, and they are serious, date back over thirty years to that fateful day when Proposition 13 was enacted by the voters of California. This is the measure that restricted all statewide property tax assesments to one percent of assesed valuation of property. Prior to this measure, California simply didn't have financial problems. Now it is learned that some deal was made by commercial intrests that goes like this: "Right now commercial intrests pay three forths of the property taxes in the state and private citizens, one fourrth. We want you to reverse this so they pay three forths and we pay a quarter". So they worked a deal, and they had to take preemptive steps before the thing was even voted on to insure their success. You know that in Windows you set a "System Restore" point prior to the time you actually need it. This is a case like that. These conservative power brokers knew that real estate prices would explode in this state, and said explosion would actually be Caused by this measure, Proposition 13 passing. So what they did was set up dummy subsidiary corporations that owned the property. Now, any time a piece of property is sold it's supposed to be re-assesed and re-valued. But they got around that by not selling the property directly but having the dummy subsidiaries own their property. And then they would simply sell their subsidiaries, and leave title to the property untouched. You getter read that again. Any time they want to sell or buy property they leave the property title itself untouched but merely sell the subsidiaries that own the property, which accomplishes the same thing, only now they pay a fraction of the tax they once paid. With prices ageraging eighty thousand in 1978 and five or six hundred thousand dollars now for a private home, you can easily see the advantage of this set up. And they have worked it well, so that it's John Q Citizen that pays the bulk of local property taxes.

Turning our attention nationally to President Obama, we liberals find ourselves less than overjoyed by many of our President's policies. Now I hear he's intending on erecting a status to Ronald Reagan and also planning many other centenial celebrations to mark anniversary of the former President's birth. What if Barry Goldwater had after being elected said he was erecting a giant statue of John Birch to be venerated by the people in the spirit of Daniel chapter 2? Liberals rightfully wouldn't like that. Now we hear so often it must be true that "renditions" are still going on. Renditions or kidnapping people and shipping them off to third world nations to be tortured- - an practice begun under President Clinton- - said rendition is still going on. Now we hear that Obama is in trouble with West Virginia voters. Why the people of West Virginia would have voted so heavily for Hillary I don't know. Maybe it's because their all inbred. Perhaps if I were President I'd start my own racial "eugenics" policy. I'd re-institute bussing. I would bus in twenty million Blacks from the ghettos of our large cities to West Virginia to interbreed with the native population and improve the racial stock of the people of West Virginia. Anyhow, now we hear that to please all the mine workers, Obama has a plan to blow the tops off of all the mountains in West Virginia to strip mine for coal as part of the President's vaunted "Clean Coal Policy". I know strip mining is going on in Montana, but West Virginia is a whole other ball of wax. Imagine the ecological devistation! And we still hear that in the good old days of President Eisenhaur, Corporations paid 41% or something of all income tax in this country. Today they pay only seven. What's the President going to do about this? Well, he wants to get tough on off shore corporations. In a speech about off shore tax dodges he says there is a building in the Caimen Islands which headquarters a thousand corporations. He says "It's either the biggest building in the world, or the biggest tax scam of all time. You decide which". He says that off shore corporations only pay a two percent rate on income tax. One wonders, and I was scratching my head whether there would be a violation of some sacred Constitutional principle laid down by the Supreme Court or something, if they were forced to pay their share. Apparently this is not the case. Congress can change the tax law whenever they choose, only they are "choosing" not to. We can speculate why. Some say that altering our current tax laws would "cripple our economy further" and exaserbate the recession. I don't believe this for a minute. These corporations don't pay taxes in this country and they skirt the laws in the Caimen Islands or whatever, so they don't pay taxes over there, either. President Obama says if these tax loopholes were closed and they paid their fair share, we could raise 210 Billion dollars in ten years. No offence but this seems a really paultry ammount considering the size of our debt. I am confident we can do much better than that. Rewriting our tax laws so that corporations stay in this country along with their jobs, should be a high priority item for this president.

Some have wondered about me, "You've said many times what you Don't believe on the subject of religion, but just what is it that you DO believe?" Well, as I have said I'm an anti-dyspensationalist, Calvinist, Deist, Objectivist individual. The objectivist part I'll hit first. That means that IF Jesus Christ rose 2000 years ago, it must be a fact that is waiting to be discovered and Will be discovered. An Objectivist believes "The truth is out there- - and one day will be discovered and scientifically proved". Many don't like the idea of our being a nation conceived "By Divine Providence". I have no problem with this statement. I believe also in a form of Creationism. Let me explain. Some believe, and Hartman has said this, that a Deist believes God is somehow in all animate objects. I don't believe this. I am the ultimate believer in the separateness of God and nature. I don't believe God is in nature kind of "guiding the evolutionary force along". I believe that every decision that God WILL make he has ALREADY made. Hence I believe that whatever form that life has taken on planet earth, the seeds of dezign, if you will, were contained in The Big Bang long ago, and things now are just "playing out" as scripted by God before the creation of the Universe. I don't believe, as some dyspensationalists believe- - in a God who appears to be either constantly changing his mind- - or else playing some kind of mind game like Steve Jobs- - like "Can you guess what I'm really planning". I do not believe God ordained either progressive revelation or progressive evolution. I do believe it's proper to thank God for his grace in our own lives, and thank God that we were born in America. If that's corn-ball, so be it. That's what I believe.

You know the Beatles have that new video game out now containing old Beatle studio recordings with chatter never heard publicly before. Paul and Ringo have been promoting this game, due out in September, the past couple of days. It's nice to see a little Beatle unity, however belated. But I'd like to address the original planned cover of the "Get Back" album. This is the photo used on the cover of "The Blue Album" Beatles 1967 - 1970. This whole idea of "getting back" oddly is a gnostic one. It's born of the belief that "Evolution is only Devolution". Any progression foreward only increases the degradation and devolution of the original product. The trouble is of course that getting back really isn't getting back. The songs on the "Get Back" album were so awful that none of the Beatles originally wanted them released. It was John Lennon having a conversation with a certain "somebody" in the Revolution song where he says "You say you want a revolution - - you tell me that it's evolution". I was a big fan of the slogan "Revolution is Evolution" back in 1968. But John Lennon had other ideas, On a show last sunday, we would be led to believe that that certain "somebody" whom Lennon was addressing the song "Revolution" too was Abbey Hoffman. Now John Lennon is attacking people on the left for "ruining it for people like him" who want to live in this country peacefully and not rippling any waves or troubling the Establishment". I think God placed in each one of us the natural desire to grow and evolve personally and intellectually and yes, musically, as the Beatles did. We should always be "pushing the envelope". But Gnosticism was engendered by the desire of a child to crawl back into its mother's womb and find confort there. The hook of attraction to Gnosticism, is "a fundamental lack of belief or confidence in one's self". It's my belief that the Beatles met their demize before they had to, and that there are musical idea forever now laying dorment.