This is from my phone

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A Storm Is Brewing in Porterville

Posted on August 9, 2011 by Jim Reeves

Photo Credit: Porterville College

Joel Wiens, Ed.D., teaches Anatomy, Nutrition, Anatomy and Physiology, and Microbiology at Porterville College.  He is also faculty adviser for the One In Christ Club on the campus.

A posting by that club on the College’s website has caught the eye of local gay rights activists, and will be the focus of efforts to get the clearly false information removed.

The posting starts out:

Homosexuality, at its root, is not a sexual problem – it is a gender-identity problem.

Four gay myths
1.  10% of the population is homosexual
2.  A person can be born gay.
3.  Once gay, always gay.
4.  Homosexuality is normal in every way.

The very first line exposes the mindset of the post.

Click on the image to see full size.

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On Facebook today, a Conservative was discussing the typical Conservative positions regarding separation of curch and state, then took the dramatic and unexpected turn of asking if anyone knew the actual history or not from source documents, as he him self  did not.

I wrote the following in response, off the top of my head, so it may contain minor errors to the most detailed scholars. Still, the information below is something every American should know and internalize, and we will all be better off for it.

@Tim – I wonder how you came to your position without knowing the history of the First Amendment and the rest of the Constitution?

This lesson is going to be necessarily brief, but all supporting original documents are available online and in print, owing to their age and freedom from copyright.

The Constitution did not simply fall out of thin air. It was not even the first form of government for the United States. In fact, the first form was on the verge of failure and collapse and recognition of that by the public and the Founding Fathers is what spawned the Constitutional Convention of 1787 in Philadelphia.

During the Convention, the Constitution itself was created by all the signers over a period of many months. James Madison kept voracious notes of the debate during the entire era. So you can see for yourself who said what, and for what reasons, and when.

If you deign to read this important document, you will find that the Founders sought to create a government that was radically different from what they (and individually and collectively they were scholars of history of government and philosophy) knew of in the world prior.

In particular, you can see that they were quite concerned that the combination of a state government with religion could be pointed to as a weakness of both. The specifics of the religion, be it Protestant, Catholic, or anything else, was irrelevant to them. Similarly, the form of government, be it a monarchy, a democracy, or a republic, when encumbered by a religion did not matter either.

Quite simply, they felt that a State  so encumbered was doomed to fail, either by internal collapse or external attack. There is no doubt that regardless of the level of commonality of their own religions (and they did vary but that is neither here nor there), in order to succeed at their task of creating a radical new government form that would succeed where others had universally failed, the new form of state would have to be separate from religion. Meanwhile the citizens of the state would be free to practice their religions (or not) as the individuals saw fit.

This intent is all very clearly recorded in Madison’s contemporaneous notes. So there is really no excuse for anyone, conservative or not, for not knowing it. Many conservative positions are patently false as a result of not knowing these basic facts in public domain documents written by the Founding Fathers.

Now, while the Founders did in fact intend to create a radical new form of government – they had just fought a Revolution after all, the ideals expressed in the Constitution and in the Declaration of Independence (have you read that closely in its entirety lately Tim?) were not strictly the creation of the Founders themselves.

As Scholars and Diplomats, interested in the free flow of ideas, they were part of the broader philosophical movement dating back to at least the early 17 century regarding the nature of freedom of an individual and their relationship to the State. John Locke is perhaps the best known name in this area today, but far from the only one. There was a rich school of thought that the Founders understood well, and intended to implement.

Many documents from that school of thought have phrases that are echoed and almost repeated wholesale in the Declaration, the Constitution, and other earlier historical founding documents, and they are referred to during the Constitutional Convention according to Madison’s own notes.

Even prior to the 17th Century, dating back to the 13th, there are extant documents that are important milestones in the path to our Liberty, such as the Magna Carta. For the first time in our tradition at least, the limits between the power of the state (a Monarch in that case) and the liberty of the individual began to be delineated. Much of what is in that document we take for granted today, but it is still there to read, even online.

There is no excuse not to learn about these source documents, because they provide a now-almost-800 year line of thought regarding our liberty and relationship with the power of the State, and include the very documents and reasoning that the Founders referred to in creating the Constitution and amending it (actually clarifying) with the Bill of Rights immediately upon its adoption.

And there is even less excuse for Conservatives to wield random statements about what the Constitution is or isn’t, as though it fell from space, in an attempt to use it as a sledge hammer on the liberties of man.

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I thought I’d share a somewhat editied selection of my posts and others.

I wrote: The American food industry is so productive and efficient both that it produced far more calories per capita than we should be eating. But we eat them anyway.

Of course we shouldn’t, but it is a more complex issue than is generally presented. If we ate the DRA, than I think that might be as few as 40% of what we produce. What will happen to the rest of the food? Should we not grow it or produce it?

We can’t simply export all food for lots of reasons, so are we willing to sacrifice jobs for our waistlines?

A response: over eating is a large part of the problem but lack of exercise is also to blame. we did not evolve as a species to sit behind a computer screen or in front of a tv.

My followup: Yes of course, but we didn’t evolve as a nation to simply toss out or limit an industry because it became *too* efficient at what it does.

Notice that when our food industry produced something on the order of the amount of food we should eat, instead of 2-3 times as much, we were skinnier.

I am not aware of any evidence that shows that, for especially urban or suburban, in say, the era from 1945-1960, that people exercised more than they do now.

OTOH, I do know that President Kennedy instituted a national exercise effort because kids were soft compared to their scary Soviet counterparts. So already by then, there is evidence that kids (and presumably their families) were not exercising enough although they were eating just fine.

I don’t know how old you are, but I am old enough to have been in college in the late 70s early 80s, and I am amazed almost every day at the difference in portion sizes in every restaurant and the expectations about what constitutes a meal since I was in college.

That changed not because people suddenly demanded more food, but because the food industry was producing so much, they needed to do something with it to sell it. Unused capacity is anathema in our economy, and so is throwing out what you made. In fact, both can be illegal in some circumstances. And I am sure people would scream bloody moral murder if we start dumping food.

So the only alternative s to sell what you produce, and to make it attractive enough that people will buy and eat it against their individual best interests, for the vague economic collective value of keeping the machine humming.

It seems really weird to me, even as a entrepreneur who is all about disruptive business models, that the solution to overcapacity in the food industry is to create leaner consumers (real live human beings!) who are simply better able to devour the excess output of the food production industry.

Suggesting that we improve our diet industry, our exercise industry, and other related matters simply to match what the food industry has done, on the backs of the individual people in our society is simply bizarre. It is a suggestion to profit a second time – to stick a hand in the other pocket in the pants that the food industry has claimed the first pocket.

Let’s not pretend either hand is interested in the individual, or that the individual has responsibility to fix this broader problem.

And I say this sitting squarely in the middle of the most productive farmland in the entire world.

Response from the same guy: it is not an issue i have followed closely but ultimately it comes down to personal responsibility. portion control, diet and exercise are on the individual. the excess farm capacity part is an interesting angle i have not thought about. makes one wonder even more about the utility of farm subsidies.

And my followup to that:I think there is some evidence that when societies are rich enough, and when they have sufficiently unhealthy food, they will eat it to excess. Slim evidence on my part for now, but weren’t there those in Elizabethan England in the Royal cl…ass who suffered from gout due to over-consumption of rich foods? Or was that France? Or both? And more?

It is probably only in our lifetime that a wide swath of society has had the means and opportunity to do this. Maybe humans never evolved a defense to this, because there was never any selective pressure to do so.

So I ask, is there a broad philosophical underpinning to your claim? Or is the sin of gluttony special somehow, free from industrial responsibility?

I ask because if I live in a house where the drywall was made from Chinese shit and people are getting sick, no one will say it is my fault.

No one will say that because people are collectively getting sick from air pollution or water pollution or other Industrial Disease (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rWuc5kar3Y) that it is their fault. We collectively look to redirect industry’s efforts when they are affecting the health of people in predictable ways.

We don’t blame a girl for getting raped.

Why is this case different?

Not picking on you, but I would like to explore this, kind of brain storm it. I hinted at a possible answer some might give – it is a sin to be gluttonous. But I wonder, is the public health arena the place for religion, especially a religion not everyone believes in and to which industry has no allegiance at all?

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I just attended an interesting local board meeting where every local problem, and they are legion, was touched upon or hinted at in an indirect manner. How the Library Board came to be the nexus of that, I am not exactly sure, but here is my best guess:

In Central Valley towns everywhere, including Porterville, social problems abound. No need to get into the specifics of why, but John Steinbeck wrote about it in Grapes of Wrath so they are well known to the American public. The problems shown there have not been solved, not a one of them. Oh some of them are not quite as bad as they used to be, but some are worse.

So it seems that in order to fight the Ghost of Tom Joad, in a pique of blaming current crime levels for all the ills of the City, a few years back before I arrived, the town voted to tax itself with a local sales tax of .75 percent in a ballot measure known as Measure H.

Measure H doles out the money 85% to police and safety for new toys to “reduce crime”. The other 15% is supposed to go to the library for vaguely defined “literacy programs” because it is believed that doing so will also reduce crime.

All well and good I suppose, but there is a catch. The cops want that 15% and the locals are inclined to give it to them, or at least make the Library beg continually to justify every single dollar, although cops and fire departments have no such pressure to justify their large piece of the pie.

How does that happen? There is a committee, called an oversight committee, that once a year reports to City Council its opinion as to whether the Measure H funds (the Library part of it in practice) were spent “wisely” during the preceding year.

This past year there was a large controversy, because for the first time the Committee told the Council that the funds had not been spent wisely.

So the Council is leaning on the Library to justify its very existence by creating a “business plan” in order to justify the part of the budget that would come from the 15%. That request was made about 3 or 4 months ago.

Tonight the Library board met to accept and recommend the “Plan” that Library staff created to Council on Wednesday. Problem is, the Plan is not really a Business Plan. Both I and another member of the public, actually, a member of the Oversight Committee, were present to gently inform the Board they were headed for another disaster.

But the Board barely understood. It is not persuasive enough to toss out programs and assert they cause crime to go down in Porterville. Some sort of evidence is needed. There are at least some descriptive statistics available, but all the Plan has are aggregate statistics with 5 and 6 significant figures. Really? You know how many “visits” there were in a year to 1 part in a million? How much next year’s budget will be to nearly 1 part in a million in advance? That’s pretty creative!

Meantime, if there is no breakdown of even that by month or of program usage by demographic, let alone any outcomes from the programs, then there is no hope at all of correlating them with the statistics the police department has, or other demographic information that City Hall has. Let alone running a regression of some sort that might identify the relative contributions of each program to an outcome, which would be really helpful for identifying how to spend the 15%.

Or even better, to evaluate the contribution of all programs in Library Services, Police, Fire and Safety Services, in order to see what is the best way to dole out the funds, if in fact anything serves to reduce crime in those areas at all (an iffy proposition in my mind off the top of my head).

But real data would mean hard choices – maybe we could eliminate the tax, or refigger it in a new ballot measure. Maybe the library would get more, and could be run more entrepreneurially. And maybe, just maybe, this could extend to actual measurements of data, with actual hypotheses that can be studied, with actual aims of curing some of the social ills that ad hoc approaches have not solved since long before John Steinbeck and Dorty Lange brought them to the attention of the broad American public. Not by Wednesday, when the report will be made to the Council, but maybe soon.

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In (probably only a little) simpler language, this happens because the earth is tilted like a top relative to the ecliptic plane. For part of the year, the north pole points slightly towards the sun and the south slightly away. Later, it is the other way around.

The equinox is the time when both are pointing at the midpoint of those two extremes, more or less up and down. That means for a brief instant, the equator is parallel to the ecliptic plane.

A good way to see how this works is to get a table and a ball. Mark the ball with a pen or something on the top and bottom. Those will be the poles. Draw a line around the equator between the two poles.

Hold the ball near the edge of the table, which represents the ecliptic plane, so the north pole points a little bit towards the table, pointing over the top of the table. Note the equator is at an angle to the surface of the table.

Now, keep the ball in the same spot, but tilt it so the south pole points at the same angle as the North Pole did, but under the table. The equator will have tilted too.

Somewhere in between those two examples, move the ball so that the equator is parallel to the surface of the table. Note where the North and South poles are now. This is the equinox, and it happens twice a year.

It is those movements of the poles that cause the change in the angle of the equator, and hence the seasons.

The technical term for the way the earth spins on its axis like a top is “precession” in case anyone cares.

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————————–

Rachel – I approve of the effort too!

All states have the same set of 3 branches that apply to their own state government. Local government generally works the same way too. It is the American model.

But….

Here is that part where it gets messy on the ground with this issue.

In California, I guess historically government got so that it was not responsive to the citizens. So the Citizens of the time changed the Constitution that said citizens can pass laws without the usual process that involves the legislature proposing the law and the executive (governor) signing it.

In California, people can propose a law by getting enough signatures from the voting public to place it on a ballot. That law can be a general law, or it can be Constitutional Amendment.

As a result, our Constitution is easily amended, compared to others. We have over 500 amendments in the 100 years or so since this could happen.

By contrast, the US Constitution was ratified in 1791 and has only 27 amendments, 10 of which are the Bill of Rights and were passed at the time of the Ratification itself.

Which brings us to the issue and our hero Stuart: a few years ago, the people passed by ballot called Prop 22. IIRC, the language was the same or close to what Prop 8 says now about who can marry.

Stuart and his partner sued that that law was unconstitutional – the California Constitution. The case reached the California Supreme Court; in spring 2008 the Court decided in Stuart’s favor, and the law was tossed out.

That was the precise instant that 18,000 same sex marriages in California started. It was legal because the Court had thrown out any and all laws prohibiting it. Thanks Stuart!

But, while those marriages were happening, the people gathered signatures for a new law – this time a Constitutional Amendment. The wording is the same, but as an Amendment, the State Court can’t overrule it, only another Amendment can appeal it under California law.

Basically, the folks who lost Stuart’s case wanted to raise the stakes and make it harder to change then even it had been before.

Immediately after Prop 8 was passed, a few things happened.

First, there was a court case in California to decide if it was even allowed to pass an Amendment of the nature of Prop 8. The same supreme court that only months before had tossed Prop 22 (thanks Stuart!) ruled that Prop 8 was in the proper form an amendment has to be in, and hence was valid.

I am sure the Court doesn’t like the law, but they don’t get to decide about it this time.

So there was (and is!) a movement to get a a repeal amendment on the ballot. There was an active debate as to whether that should be this year (2010) or at the next opportunity (2012). Fro various reasons, 2012 has prevailed as the preferred choice, but within the movement that was a very hot discussion- repeal ASAP, or wait until there is more time to prepare carefully.

In the meantime, their is one other possible approach – all State laws must also be valid under the US Federal Constitution. Federal Courts decide these sorts of issues, not State Courts.

So while the plan was made to get a ballot issue to repeal Prop 8 in 201 was underway (collecting the requisite number of signatures will be no problem btw), independently a case developed where the matter would be presented as a Federal Constitutional issue. This is the well known Perry v. Schwarzeneggar case.

I should mention that just as local advocates were split on 2010 or 2012 for a repeal effort, people were uncomfortable about raising a Federal issue at this point. Ultimate such questions are decided by the US Supreme Court, and the nine members there are generally predictable in their opinions on this sort of thing. Right now, it is 4 on our side, 4 against, and one unknown. So any Federal case is a huge risk, you don’t get many chances, and if you lose, it could be decades before you have a realistic chance to try again, if then.

But, someone decided to take the plunge, as is their right, and while I won’t recap the trial itself here, because you probably know about it, what I will say is that is is in the Judicial Branchof the US government.

At the lowest level of that is the District Court for the area where the case arises. So in this case, California, and more specifically San Francisco. The 9th District covers that area, and the case was randomly assigned to Judge Walker. The trial was held, he made his ruling, that Prop 8 is unconstitutional under the US Constitution. This has nothing to do with the California Constitution at all.

Now, we are at the first level of appeal, which will be to the 9th Circuit Court, which covers appeals of the 9th District Court rulings. From there, any appeal would be presented to the US Supreme Court, which can decide to hear the appeal or not at its whim.

But…(there is always a but

There is some question as to whether even this first level of appeal is allowed. And that is unusual, generally the losing party has the right to appeal.

But in this case, the actual defendants were the Governor and the Attorney General, who represent the State in Court. Neither is in favor of Prop 8, so they declined to offer a defense. They said, in effect, we agree with the plaintiffs, we concede.

So who was a the trial then?

The group that was in charge of the Prop 8 campaign said to Judge Walker before trial, if the defendants won’t defend, then we would like to.

When this happens (and it is probably not often), the new group does not become defendants. Instead they are called Defendant-Intervenors, because they are “intervening” on behalf of the defense. Unlike the actual defense, they don’t really have anything at stake in the law suit, but they do have sufficient knowledge and interest to raise issues in court. So Judge Walker allowed that.

Well, we all know they didn’t do a great job, and they lost handily.

Now they want to appeal, which is natural.

But remember, they are not the actual defendants! And the actual defendants, the Governor and Attorney General, don’t want to appeal, they say they agree with the ruling. they would have 30 days to appeal, and that ends next week, on September 11.

So right now, the 9th Circuit Court is deciding if there is anyone that is allowed to appeal or not. There has been at least on case that was decided by the US Supreme Court which found that if the defendants don’t want to appeal, then the Defendant-Intervenors are not allowed to either.

This is where we are now. If the D-I can not appeal, the case will likely die right here and Judge Walker’s ruling will be final,but apply only to California. There are other possibilities too, covered on numerous blogs.

If that happens, then Prop 8 would be ruled invalid, and California law would revert to the way it was before Prop 9, which means the Stuart’s case would be the law of the land again, and people will start getting married in California instantly, as in the very next day. (Thanks Stuart!)

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SAN FRANCISCO– Today, Equality California renewed its call for President Obama to take action on the federal court challenge of Proposition 8. Yesterday the deadline passed for third parties to file amicus briefs in the case weighing the constitutionality of Proposition 8, a state referendum that stripped same-sex couples of the freedom to marry.
(...)
Hit the link for more: Equality California Urges President Obama to Take Action on Federal Prop. 8 Case

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