George Rebane

Nevada County’s recently elected Supervisor Terry Lamphier published an extremely revealing, and therefore, welcome column last Saturday in the 2apr11 Union.  In that short piece (‘Re: It’s Time to Get Serious’, below in blue italics) he did an admirable job of telling readers his perceptions of our economy and understanding of American governance.

Many would dismiss his words as just the disjointed ramblings of a lightly learned liberal.  Here we choose not to do that; instead we take Mr Lamphier at his considered word, and inform ourselves of this elected representative’s world view and beliefs.  These tenets are important for us to understand, since he and his intellectual peers may soon dominate county government, and take us all to where their lights will show the way.  Let’s look at this new shining.

I agree with Sen. Doug LaMalfa's observation that “Americans are a can-do people.” Unfortunately, I disagree with him on just about everything else, everything else being rationalizations as to why, implied in essence, the business world is the superior role model for how we should live our lives. He is forwarding the conservative message that ‘society, and its representative, our government, should be subservient to economics and the private sector.'

Right off the bat, Mr Lamphier posits that government should not be subservient to the principles of economics and the private sector – the fundamental credo of a socialist cum whatever stronger form of collectivism you care to insert.

We are no longer talking about representative government — where we all have a say in what happens — when regular folks' voices are drowned out by a Wall Street government populated by those who perpetuate the migration of wealth into an ever smaller pool while systematically dismantling the very agency they were elected to work for and with.

So governments that are subservient to principles of economics and the private sector do not belong to the class of representative forms of governance.  Our Founders would find this conclusion most remarkable and counter to their intended legacy to us.  Difficult to tell here how Mr Lamphier connects these two propositions, but connects them he does.  Onward.

Those who are working to dismantle government are among our country's biggest threats and enemies — those folks who have helped destroy the middle class by off shoring our industries, who are bankrupting our country with endless bottomless-budget warfare without clearly stated goals, who enable corporate consolidation towards monopoly of goods and services while touting illusory “lower prices and more choices,” who again and again argue for ‘deregulation' and blame the attendant destruction of the lives of hardworking Americans on the victim's “greed and selfishness” as they scoop more money into their private coffers.

Here we must agree, for the ‘dismantlers’ and fundamental transformers are indeed “among our country’s biggest threats and enemies”.  But most of us with a keen interest in current events missed happenings like the destruction of our middle class by whatever means.  Mr Lamphier has grossly misunderstood the mechanisms bankrupting our country.  There is only one political faction in the land that perpetuates “bottomless budgets”, and the leftwing of that faction has been declaring for decades that free market capitalism provides the illusion of lower prices and more choices.  Mr Lamphier then lets us know that a free and more deregulated economy is a zero sum game in which greedy capitalists pauper their customers in order to unconscionably enrich themselves.  A beautiful turn of logic that takes us right into socialist class warfare.

What's to make of folks who fought, and those who ruled, to have U.S.-based global corporations legally ordained as ‘persons' with all the rights but none of the responsibility or accountability of citizenship?

The proper role of US corporations is ever at the whim and wisdom of our congressional electeds.  That these have been dominated by the left for most post-war years speaks to some broad political wisdom that underpins their current state.

Regarding regulations: They don't come out of thin air. They are usually put into place because we, the people, discover harms that occur without legal recourse, so government acts to attempt a fix. Or because we have determined, as we learn new information in our complex ever and rapidly changing world, that certain policies will lead to harms, so government attempts to be proactive to mitigate those harms.

This appears to be clipped straight out of an over-simplified eighth grade civics text.  Space does not permit analysis of Mr Lamphier's knowledge base, or perhaps more correctly, his low opinion of the intellectual kit of his expected readership.

Regulations come from legislators, who get a lot more information about issues than you and I do, and they are (ideally) aware that the issues are considerably complex, with competing interests that need to be balanced.

And we may here introduce the tight corollary that eggs come from the Easter Bunny.

Regulations come from you and me by way of the ballot box. Too often, voters are misdirected or there are unforeseen consequences, but, right or wrong, voting is a critical tool that gives regular folks a voice. Those who distort this process harm our democracy and discourage average citizens from being invested in our country's direction and outcomes.

America was not founded as a country where “regular folks” make regulations through the ballot box.  We were not given a democracy, but rather something quite different called a republic wherein our elected representatives make regulations.  Politicians like Mr Lamphier have successfully turned this Founders’ gift on its head through byzantine distortions that allowed the establishment of union dominated school systems which have (according to the Dept of Education) produced a voter population that can no longer understand the “direction and outcomes” for which, in the name of democracy, they are now asked to vote, …

I find it particularly reprehensible that there are those in the state Legislature who are intent on denying taxpayers the right to vote on our future — surely a corollary to the conservative value of “no taxation without representation” must be “don't take away my right to represent my position on taxation.”

… and therefore we see Mr Lamphier conclude that when the voter is denied the opportunity to vote directly on the tax code, we return to the pre-revolutionary state of ‘no taxation without representation’ – i.e. the legislators are not our representatives whenever (specifically in California) they summon up the courage to do their duty on levying taxes.  Mr Lamphier is the direct ideological descendant of the populist initiative process that has made the state’s constitution into a laughable phone book, with its countless amendments that cement in what a cash compliant electorate happens to decide in their collective ignorance with a lot less information on complex issues than you and I can imagine.

• Government ideally offers representation equally to the rich and the poor (we know this has been lost, but that was a founding principle) and provides good paying jobs and benefits enabling decent living standards and a secure retirement.

Mr Lamphier’s socialist underpinnings are again on display here in his ‘ideal’ view that it is government that “offers representation”.  The whole nation used to understand that it was the people that determined by the “consent of the governed” the government’s “just” and enumerated powers among which was never the power for it to offer any kind of representation – the people with guns and blood won and kept that power for themselves.  And the government being the acknowledged source of “good paying jobs and benefits …” puts Mr Lamphier squarely into the camp of far left collectivists who have managed to create the fiscal mess at all levels of government across the land through promoting the political power of public service employee unions.  The avowed goal here has always been for the government to fulfill such “enabling of decent living standards and a secure retirement” by also eliminating the private sector, thereby truly becoming the ubiquitous provider of good paying jobs and benefits.  Nothing less could be asked from any of Lenin’s lads.  But wait, there’s more.

• The private sector says this is wrong, implying that people should work long and hard for low pay and have little to say about it — “take it or leave it” with no collective bargaining and no regulatory protection against abuse. This is the model they want for us?

The course of Mr Lamphier’s logic and understanding of the role of the private sector here becomes clear.  The private sector, according to the man’s lights, is simply the enemy of the very same workers who are the customers and consumers of that sector’s goods and services.  They are the very embodiment of modern day Simon Legrees, and as such they must be dealt with.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

So in the final analysis and with this quote from the Declaration of Independence, Mr Lamphier declares his revolutionary intentions against our current “Form of Government” the deficiencies of which he has explicated above.  In that interpretation he joins the cadres of 1960s revolutionaries that now make up the ranks of this administration’s advisors, supporters, and intellectual fuel of the halo of socialist organizations that fiercely promote the promised “fundamental transformation” of this nation.

Nevada County Supervisor Terry Lamphier represents Grass Valley. His views do not represent county government staff, or those of his fellow board members. For which not enough of us give daily thanks, while keeping our eye firmly on 2012.