Tag: politics

Protests at the Capitol: Vang Pao Supporters March!

My hopes in the future are to be able to mingle with protesters and talk with them a bit to get their sense of why they’re protesting and what they hope to accomplish by doing so.

Last week (May 11th) a large group of Hmong, Vietnamese, Vietnam Vets and others (estimated at over 10,000) gathered at the State Capitol to march through Sacramento to the Federal district court.  The marchers were protesting the trial of General Vang Pao and 10 others who are on trial for allegedly trying to overthrow the Communist regime in Laos.

Using my Flip Mino (first time) I was able to record a small bit of this as the protesters assembled at the Capitol.  I had no idea who Vang Pao was, or that he and others were on trial.  For more details on what exactly is going on you can check out the Wikipedia article on the him here.  This has been the largest group of people assembled at the Capitol I’ve seen so far this year.  I only caught a small bit of the march as I was heading into work and had quite a bit today that morning and so was prevented from talking more footage or talking to the people.

My hopes in the future are to be able to mingle with protesters and talk with them a bit to get their sense of why they’re protesting and what they hope to accomplish by doing so.

So here’s the videos via Youtube (warning 5 seconds in there is a loud whistling!) :

and another short clip  to roughly show the size of the crowd:

A quick word to California voters…

I’m sure you don’t like the propositions on the ballot for the election coming up in 9 days… But, if they go down prepare for a much uglier economic forecast from the State…

I know it’s easy to blame legislators for the mess, but the truth is, this mess is largely the result of voters. If they could pass a budget without asking the voters believe me, legislators would! But the last 20+ years voters have been budgeting from the ballot box and all the props. that have passed in recent years require voter approval to change them. The legislators don’t have any other choice in the matter, their hands have been tied by the ballot box.

Sadly, legislators seem unable to convey this to voters and so we’ve ended up with year after year of gimmicky budgets as legislators attempt to deliver ever more services to constituents with funds from an ever shrinking pot. Worse, legislators have to cope with this monstrous mess with one hand tied behind their backs: the 2/3 majority vote requirement for budget bills.

I’m not optimistic about these initiatives and so when they all fail and legislators and the governor have to figure out how to patch the multi-billion dollar hole in the state budget they’re going to do so with cuts.

You can’t have your cake and eat it too. Funding schools, mental health, extensive roads and transportation networks, etc… takes an incredible sum. You can’t have low taxes and high services. Sadly, the one thing that would help, a constitutional re-write isn’t on the table. I don’t care how it’d be accomplished, through a convention or an extraordinary session of the legislature, it needs to happen.

Or next year and the year after that Californians are going to be back where they are right now. That’s one ballot initiative I’d like to see, and then I’d like to see the initiative process go away. Direct democracy of that sort has only made the job of California legislators, leaders, and citizens more complicated and difficult

Revisiting Same Sex Marriage

the essential civil right is not the right to be different — because difference, in this context, is the prerequisite assumption of bigotry — but the right to be the same.

With the recent legal activities in Iowa and Vermont, the Same Sex Marriage issue isn’t going away, as some proponents of Prop. 8 hoped it would after the proposition passed.  I stated then that people don’t stop fighting for basic rights regardless of how many times those rights are denied them. 

Now, this issue will be taken up and debated at the Federal level by the Congress.  Not because there is any politician brave enough to address the issue, but they’ll be forced to by the District of Columbia City Council who have proposed to recognize the same sex marriages performed elsewhere.  I’ve been thinking about the arguments against Same Sex Marriage as well and I agree with Peter Sagal, who lumped them into 3 groups:  It is against God’s law, it is against tradition, and it’ll destroy heterosexual monogamous marriages. 

I’ve covered these arguments in the past but thought that I’d do so again, if perhaps you missed it or didn’t understand.  The first one isn’t an argument at all, and is irrelevant.  What if my God told me it was okay?  What if he told me to kill kittens, and build giant obelisks to his glory?  It doesn’t matter. My and your personal religious beliefs aren’t an argument for denying people their rights in a secular nation that doesn’t recognize any religious belief as valid.  That whole ‘wall’ Jefferson talked about. 

Arguing marriages traditional place is also a poor argument, the whole liberal enlightenment movement of which the United States is probably the best product of is based on overcoming narrow-minded traditional beliefs, laws, processes, etc.  Slavery has a long tradition in the world, Misogyny does too, as well as genocide, torture, pedophilia, polygamy, etc.  The list could go on and on, these are all traditions that we’ve overcome and are better off for it!  I won’t mention the fact that what is presented to Americans as traditional marriage is younger than our country, but that can be for another time. 

The final argument that same sex marriage will destroy heterosexual ones is ridiculous on its face.  What is the divorce race in our Nation?  50%  How many more heterosexual marriages are loveless or festering wells of spousal and children abuse?  According to the Center for Health and Gender Equality 22% of women interviewed admit to domestic violence abuse.  This actual incidence of domestic violence is almost always under reported.  In some surveys the number has been as high as 50-70%!    It appears that heterosexual marriage doesn’t need any help being destroyed, heterosexuals are doing a bang up job all on their own.  All of this and I haven’t even begun to question how what two people do in the privacy of their own home effects what you do in the privacy of yours?  You might not like it, but besides not being comfortable with the idea of two men or two women raising children and having sexual intercourse it can’t do anything to your marriage.  What is much more likely to destroy it is money issues or infidelity.  Besides there’s no evidence to support this, the divorce rate in Massachusetts hasn’t spiked since the same sex marriage became legal, for the few weeks that it was legal in California the only statistics to see a spike was the rate of marriage…   They used this argument too when it came to giving Woman the vote, passing Civil Rights legislation, and abolition…  Nothing was destroyed then either…

Finally, those opposing same sex marriage will fail for one reason, the young don’t care.  It might take more years than it should, but it is inevitable.  Look at some exit polling from last year’s election concerning Proposition 8 in California:

           Yes   No

18-29 (20%)  39   61
30-44 (28%)  55   45
45-64 (36%)  54   46
65+   (15%)  61   39

As older voters die off and younger voters replace them and the LGBT movement continues to press for equal rights, laws protecting “marriage” will fall and the LGBT community will be able to enjoy the same rights heterosexuals take for granted.  As Andrew Sullivan stated, the essential civil right is not the right to be different — because difference, in this context, is the prerequisite assumption of bigotry — but the right to be the same.

Long Time No Post, Election Thoughts

I’m  still alive, it just so happened that I was very busy running the campaign of Mark Johannessen, who was running for mayor of West Sacramento, we lost.  When I took the job I really had no idea what all was involved with running a ground campaign.  Working on one as a volunteer does little to prepare you for all the stuff that goes on in one of these things.  I’d have been even more overwhelmed if the campaign hadn’t of had the services of a very good consulting firm (from what I hear, what do I know about political consulting?).

So, that explains my long absence, While I was busy trying to get my candidate elected the rest of the nation got Barack Hussien Obama elected!  I’m optimistic that perhaps some positive changes will occur in the United States, though expectations for our President-Elect are through the roof, and the crises he’ll be facing on day one are enough to bury the greatest of Presidents.  If I had a wish list of the things I’d like to see happen in the next four years it’d look like this:

  1. End the War on Terror, roll back all the laws passed because of it that have infringed on civil liberties
  2. End the War of Drugs and the militarization of our peace keeping forces (the police/firefighters/EMTs)
  3. Insure the Internet remains free and unregulated
  4. Re-examine the Fairness Doctrine and the consolidation of media, or free the airwaves!
  5. Stop growing the military-industrial complex
  6. Start providing policy that helps the majority of Americans as opposed to the privileged few
  7. Look into re-regulating of banks and credit markets,  a balance between the complete unregulation of the early ’20s and contemporary times and the over regulation of the late ’70’s

The only one of these I see happening soon is a scale back of the War on Terror, as to an end of it… Doubtful.  So, as a Democratic Progressive where do I go from here and what do I put my time and money into?  I’m thinking about applying for the grand jury here in Yolo County and trying to use it as it was originally intended:  protecting citizens from the government and trying to take it away from prosecuters and judges who see it merely as a rubber stamp for their actions… Speaking of activism, the greatest disappoint for me was the passing of Proposition 8 (and similiar bills in other states) and the loss of civil libertiess to homosexuals.  This bill is bigotry, dress it up however you like, and homosexuals and progressives are going to sit down as rights are denied to them.  I’m sick of hearing about tradition as well.  “Tradition” generally means backwards, patriarchal, and based on nothing more than silly old stories.  As a nation we’ve overcome traditional ownership (slavery), traditional suffrage (male property owners), traditional government (monarchy, oligarchy), and I look forward to overcoming traditional marraige.

It’ll be interesting to see where we go from here, as to moving away if things don’t work out just how I’d like, where would I (or you) go?  I’m an American, this is where I live, this is where my forefathers lived, It’s my duty to them and my progeny to make here a better place.

Next post won’t be so heavy, promise!

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