A Commentary By Debra J. Saunders, Rasmussen Reports, 6/20/10

When activists (who are not necessarily students) were able to delay construction of a UC Berkeley sports center by living in trees for 21 months, there was no review of what went wrong.

When protesters with torches vandalized UC Chancellor Robert Birgeneau’s home, there was no review. But when UC police arrested 46 people demonstrating against higher-education cuts by occupying Wheeler Hall on Nov. 20, there were complaints that police overreacted. And so — with authorities, not anarchists in the sights — a review was born.

Last week, UC Berkeley released the 128-page report. In academic fashion, it notes two forces that converted “an animated but essentially non-violent protest into a raw power struggle between demonstrators and police” — without overtly taking sides.

There were officers, who in a “series of over-reactions by insufficiently supervised police” at moments overreacted, intensifying fears among students. Then there were demonstrators, mostly “young, sincere, and emotionally mobile” students, but also “a smaller group” that “set out to instigate confrontations with police” and provoke them “into high-visibility over-reactions that could be used to inflame the crowd and escalate its aggressiveness.”

The review served a useful purpose in that it details the need for campus police to prepare for the worst and, when it occurs, to communicate with demonstrators and other law enforcement personnel who come to their aid.

There are also some heroes in the review, like Dean of Students Jonathan Poullard, who took the initiative to advise Wheeler Hall occupiers via megaphone that if they wanted to leave peacefully, they should sit down before the police came in. “As it turned out,” the report notes, “all the occupiers followed this wise advice.”

Two aspects of the report stand out for me.

First, there’s this dubious theory on the use of riot gear by officers from UC and other departments called to aid the scene: “If the police had not worn riot gear, there never would have been a need for it.”

While the review purports not to take a side on this theory, the review board continues, “We wonder whether it was wise to have some of the mutual aid squads try to move through the crowd in rigid, formal, militaristic formation.”

I object.

For nearly two years, UC delivered energy bars and water to trespassing tree sitters lest activists get hungry or thirsty and fall from a tree. Do not tell me that the university is supposed to take every precaution coddling activists breaking the law, then risk the safety of men and women dispatched to ensure the peace in dangerous hot spots.

Which leads to the other issue — that student protest is practically a major at Berkeley. UC police arrested a professor for cutting the crime scene tape outside Wheeler Hall. Some students told the review board that they ended up at the Nov. 20 protest simply because they wanted to be part of “the Berkeley experience.”

Unfortunately, this means, the review notes, “many students reportedly do not understand that disobedience of campus rules (even quite ‘civil’ disobedience) can affect their academic standing, that it can jeopardize their ability to continue their education here, permanently mar their record, perhaps even prevent them from receiving a degree whose other requirements have been satisfied.

“Moreover, the rules as written are not enforced consistently.”

Not enforced consistently? Hey, it’s news to learn that the rules are enforced at all. University spokesman Dan Mogulof told me that the Center for Student Conduct adjudicates these cases, but the majority of Nov. 20 “cases are still unresolved.”

Please observe: The academic year is over.

What is the penalty for occupying a building? Associated Students President Noah Stern told me, “It is not clear what the penalties are for a violation.” He added that due-process options slow down the system.

Student advocate Kelly Fabian explained in an e-mail that punishment for student violations could range from a “warning with community service to suspensions of varying lengths.” Alas, that doesn’t tell students much. If there is punishment, it is veiled.

I want to make this clear: I support all students’ rights to protest and exercise their First Amendment rights. But students and activists do not have the right to take over an institution that is supposed to be dedicated not to protest, but to higher learning.

If students want to engage in civil disobedience that trespasses on the university’s vital education function, they should be ready to pay a penalty — like cleaning bathrooms for an afternoon. They’re adults. They should know this. Yet the occupiers of Wheeler Hall included a general amnesty for civil disobedience as one of their “demands.” They must think they have a right to dodge consequences.

Mogulof noted that the school wants to “communicate early and often with students about the time, place and manner rules that govern protest demonstrations and expression, to explain the consequences of violating those rules.”

He’s right, but there is a rub: If there are no consequences or no consequences within a meaningful timeframe, there’s not much to explain, is there?

http://capoliticalnews.com/blog_post/show/5453

Obama’s Health Care Ambush
By Michael Fowler

Methinks thou doest protest too….little. Every parent knows that when the kids are suddenly quiet for more than a few minutes this means trouble. Children wrongly believe that silence will reduce unwanted attention from their parents when doing something wrong. Silence is information. When I was in the U.S. Marines, Force Recon unit, we learned that the first attack was generally a diversion for a far more serious and silent attack. Sun Tzu’s wrote about this in The Art of War, “Big noise in east; attack in west.” It may seem like crazy advice America, but look out behind you.

Right in front of us is the main attack: Socialized medicine. We must fight it, it is a real attack and President Barack Obama will fight for it if he can. This is a big noisy assault on liberty from the east called socialism. I believe that there is good reason to think Obamacare is not the main attack but a diversion. Allow me to lay out a few points.

Point One: Insurance companies are silent. If the insurance companies thought for one second that they were going to lose one dime on this deal they would be screaming bloody murder, and spending millions on advertising telling us how this plan would ruin health care in America. There would be no end to “Chicken-Little” television. However, Aristotle’s dictum tells us “silence implies consent.”

Point Two: Health care workers are silent.

Point Three: Money buys political power.

Point Four: Capitalism operates on two basic principles of liberty, which equates power being in the hand of the people, the buyer. One is the power to choose between products or services offered at market. Two is the power not to purchase the product or services. These two basic principles give the buyer the ultimate power to spend the fruit of his labor (income) how and if he pleases.

Point Five: A true government takeover of health insurance would destroy the entire industry. Again we hear nothing.

Point Six: Fifty-two fiscally conservative House Democrats known as the Blue Dogs receive considerably more in contributions than those Democrats who support a public option.

Point Seven: The Athenian Democracy collapsed when politicians discovered the ability to rob the public treasury. Now, industry has learned how to rob the public treasury by buying politicians.

Holding those points in mind, let’s also include a little history from California. In the 1960’s the auto-insurance industry was successful in lobbying Sacramento to pass a mandatory insurance law. The reasoning was that when everyone paid it would lower the costs. Yet, after passage rates did not change, nor did purchasing increase. Then, in the mid-1980’s, lobbyists urged the state again to pass a new law: enforcement. Now a trooper could require you to prove you had auto insurance. All of sudden, rates which had hardly changed since 1910, when indexed, shot up like a rocket. This was exactly the opposite of what the insurance companies had promised. This caused the insurance revolt of 1988 and the passage of Proposition 103—which the insurance companies fought in court for 20 years. This happened because the second principle of capitalism was removed, the power to refuse the product. When this occurred, there was a lack of motivation on the part of the seller to keep the price low. Thus, the people had to use the legislative process to regulate the price.

The logical conclusion of this evidence is that insurance lobbyists are paying off the Democrats for their votes. Is there evidence to support this? Max Sieben Baucus, Democrat senator from Montana, is the current chairman of the United States Senate Committee on Finance. He is influential in the debate over healthcare reform and has received more “contributions” than any other senator—a staggering $3,973,485 from 2003 to 2008 from the health sector. It is no surprise he is opposed to the single-payer option. While running for presidential office, then Illinois Senator Barack Obama received over 19 million dollars from the health industry. Why would they donate so much money to someone who would shut down their industry—unless, the deal was in the bag all ready?

Attack from the West

Silence is information just as noise is information. I submit that insurance companies are silently working every angle in order to achieve mandatory health insurance—the Baucus plan. They have given millions to Mr. Obama, the Democrats, Blue Dog Democrats and Republicans. They are covering all of their bases.

As the baby boomers age and continue to vastly outnumber the next generation, the so- called Generation X, they are no longer funding the insurance agencies coffers, and the Gen Xers are not a significant source of new customers to cover the growing bill. So the insurances companies are looking to Mr. Baucus to create a government mandate that will force all Americans to purchase their product. When the baby boomers were young and healthy, the money from premiums abounded, and everyone got rich. Now it’s pay day for the baby boomers and the money is gone. The insurance companies ran a scam, and they need Sen. Baucus to bail them out with our money.

Obamacare will fail; it has never really been the plan. The real plan is to pass mandatory insurance consumption by all citizens. But first they have to scare the public with the specter of socialism in order to get them to accept a lesser option of mandatory insurance. Everyone on both sides has agreed that reform is needed. This may or may not be true, but it is common ground that will provide a foundation for a return to a government-sponsored “company-store” of yesteryear or debt bondage, which is tantamount to slavery.

How so? The American people will be forced give the fruits of their labor to the insurance companies without their consent or agreement. Arguments will be made to justify such actions. Slave owners likewise made such arguments to justify their actions. They claimed that they provided a service to slaves: food, housing, education, security and healthcare in exchange for labor—yet it was slavery. The difference between slavery and freedom is choice. We must explain to others that the most basic form of power is the right to be free, the right to say no and the right to refuse a company’s product.

We have a socialist-communist system of distributing medical care. Instead of letting people hire their own physicians and pay them, no one pays his or her own medical bills. Instead, there’s a third party payment system. It is a communist system and it has a communist result. – Milton Friedman

If Obamacare passes, the Democrats win socialism and if Mr. Baucus wins, the insurance companies win our money—either way the American people will lose. In the end, this will be the largest theft of liberty to ever occur. Both can be stopped cold once the people can see that what is happening is a direct infringement of their rights.
Healthcare reform is the domestic enemy that waits snarling in the dark to strike at liberty today. If allowed to pass, it will invalidate the deaths of every fallen solider from Valley Forge to Gettysburg and beyond who fought for a right to be free.

Originally written for the Edmund Burke Institute’s Reflections Magazine:  Here

http://www.ebireflections.org/index.php?vol=001_vol&iss=009_issue&section=05_public_policy&item=01_public_policy.html#id05_public_policy

-Michael Fowler is Director of Veterans for Academic Freedom.org, an instructor of Christian apologetics, author and talk-radio host.