Opinion: Bookmark ‘em, Dano!

So why then is it so important to provide an official legal mechanism to do something every person is perfectly capable of doing to themselves anyway? [...] As a society, do we really want to stand on the pavement and shout, ‘Jump!’? For the Left, I fear it is something far more insidious. The Left seeks to establish in law the concept that some innocent lives are not worth living, which becomes very useful if you believe the purpose of government is not to protect our natural rights – life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness (all that stuff) – but rather to ‘improve’ society. The ‘Slippery Slope’ argument isn’t all that farfetched once you’ve taken a quick spin around the 20th Century.

Most Californians don’t know that when they set aside money for a retirement account or put family heirlooms in a safe deposit box and leave it for more than three years, the state seizes and liquidates their holdings under a process called ‘escheat.’ [...] Escheatment is actually a feudal concept that arose from the despotism of the dark ages. It stemmed from the principle that the feudal lord owned all within his realm, and when a person died or disappeared without heirs, his lands were property of the lord. In 1958, this concept was revived in California, replacing the feudal lord with the state government, and the Controller was empowered to seize property that had been inactive for more than seven years. During the budget crises of 1991 and again in 2003, this period was reduced first to five years and finally to three years for most types of accounts. This gave the state a one-time revenue surge each time, as it was able to seize three years of worth of property in a single year.

The feeding frenzy – in fact, a ‘modern day Gold Rush,’ according to Jim Sanders in the Sacramento Bee -- over the $43 billion in bond funds is now in full swing in Sacramento and by the time it’s over there’s going to be a lot of buyer’s remorse and hopefully a sadder but wiser voter. As previously noted on this blog, the CalTrans director last month admitted that only $8 billion (at most) of the $20 billion transportation bond would actually be used for highway construction. And now, legislators (who control $33 billion of the bonds) are nestled all snug in the Capitol while visions of boondoggles dance in their heads. Sadly, many of the proposals are to spend these 30-year bonds for ongoing programs like air pollution control – robbing our children to pay for projects that will be obsolete long before they pay off the bonds.

Two items in today’s news set me in mind of a famous Churchill quote about dictatorships: ‘A state of society where men may not speak their minds, where children denounce their parents to police, where a business man or small shopkeeper ruins his competitor by telling tales about his private opinions – such a state of society cannot long endure if brought into contact with the healthy outside world.’ The first item is the introduction of SB 889, which sets up an anonymous hot line for people to report diamond lane violators to the authorities. The victim of the call will then – automatically – receive a threatening letter in the mail from the Department of Motor Vehicles. No proof is required. No due process. No right to face your accuser. All that is necessary to trigger this harassment is an anonymous call giving the license plate, the time of day and the location of the alleged violation. Anyone with a grudge can play – no actual violations are necessary. Won’t that be fun?