The problem with authority is that everyone wants to appeal to the
higest level. In fact they are all looking for a benevolent dictator
who just happens to agree with them. The solution of course is to
make the path rigorous and naturally subject to peer review at the
levels it is effectuated. In that manner nonsense can be stopped
short of the special pleading of the politically correct.
Democracy as exercised in the USA has unfortunately been allowed to
become a lobbiest playground in which any special cause is tagged
onto the process. Government barely controls the flow of bills even
and the obsenity of holding up principal bills while every dog vies
for his special bone is dreadful.
That all such decissions should naturally occur closest to those
affected is obvious and also powerful as well. It is also massively
cost effective because those who care make sure it is.
Gov. Jerry Brown
and the principle of subsidiarity
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER
11, 2014
BY CAMILLE GIGLIO
Although the media
likes to remind us of Governor Jerry Brown's days as a Jesuit
Seminarian, he seems not to have understood one of the Jesuits'
teachings: that of the Social Doctrine's Principle of
Subsidiarity.
That principle can be
applied to employee/business relations or local citizens groups
attempting to improve their community, or parents working to make
improvements in their child's school or health care. If that route
doesn't work, then take the next step up the ladder of authority
while always trying to keep it as local as possible.
“This is why Pope
John Paul II took the “social assistance state” to task in his
1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus. The Pontiff wrote that the Welfare
State was contradicting the principle of subsidiarity by
intervening directly and depriving society of its responsibility.
This “leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase
of public agencies which are dominated more by bureaucratic ways of
thinking than by concern for serving their clients and which are
accompanied by an enormous increase in spending.”
Year one of the
2013-2014 legislative term focused on budgetary goals to fund the
state's business. Much of this term's second year has focused on a
broad based, generalized mandated (one might say forced) change in
the relationship between the state, industry, community, schools and
families and delivery of health care. In other words, here's where a
great deal of your tax dollars will be spent.
The special interests
lobbying in those categories have jumped over the local principles
right into the waiting arms of the state and the embrace of Jerry
Brown.
As an example...Sen.
Lois Wolk, (D) has an aide in her office who has a small child
apparently still in diapers. This Aide was dissatisfied with what she
saw as an insufficient number of diaper changing tables in public
access buildings such as restaurants and department stores.
She asked her boss, so
she stated in a phone conversation, to write up a bill requiring the
placement of diaper changing stations on every floor in every public
building in the state in both the mens' and womens' restrooms. This
delighted the LGBT lobby. The bill is now sitting on the Governor's
desk awaiting his signature; almost every legislator having voted on
it, thereby, taking time away from really important state activities.
This woman didn't first go to the managers of the public buildings or
the Boards of local companies, which she might frequent, to ask them
to provide more adequate facilities for young moms in her community.
SB1358, Diaper Changing Stations.
Nor did Lorena
Gonzalez with her diapers as a special needs category within the
children with special needs programs. This bill would, if moved
forward, require facilities providing services such as First Five and
possibly private day care homes, to provide diapers, paid for with
CalWorks dollars, for lower-income working Moms because they can't
afford to buy them, therefore they will have to stay home, the child
with be diaperless and fail high school due to the emotional distress
of an undiapered infant bottom. AB1516, CalWorks,
Special Needs: Supportive Services.
The state may well
become the largest purchaser of contraceptives (SB1053, Holly
Mitchell, Contraceptives, for all and especially abortions for
Catholic facility employees) and diapers.
Further,
the LGBT community has approached the legislators to author
bills creating new birth and death certificate forms accommodating
their personal needs for proper identification as to their current
gender status. These forms, especially the birth certificates will be
more supportive of the (adoptive) parents than of authenticating the
ID of the infant to be adopted. This will require several thousands
of tax payer dollars to change the forms, but their gender needs are
more important than curing cancer or other annoying illnesses. But,
that's okay, Jerry's the Governor and he's here to help. After all,
as he said in more than one interview, he was once Mayor of Oakland.
Of course, there are
far more serious changes to the global life of our state's residents
required to be wrought through legislation that give much greater
meaning to the word CARE contained within the Affordable Care Act
than one ever could have imagined.
These next bills are
only a small part of what the state desires to see as the well
developed neighborhood, aka community, aka state, of the future.
Public/Private
partnerships are to community life what Common Core educational
standards are to education and medical homes are to health
care....centralized government, environmentally safe, globally
distributed through systematized processes for living the good
community life, according to best practices.
With all of this
governmental involvement in family life, business, education and
health care comes a whole new set of meanings to words. For instance
the word “environment” doesn't just refer to snail darters and
grasslands. In health care and education it means the rules, ethics
and morals of social interaction in the classroom and the school and
community clinic exam room. It means employing mental health
counselors and developing campus “Friendship” clubs and
territorial rights claiming in the school buildings.
Safety and health in
governmentalese refers not so much to being attacked while walking at
3:00 AM in college campuses (there is a bill to reduce penalties for
rapists on campus) or being forced to get your child vaccinated with
20 or more latest fad vaccines, (Asm R. Pan has ab357 Medi-Cal
Children's Health advisory Panel for every child in the state and AB
1559, for yet another newborn test to seek a very
rare chromasomol anomaly) Safety is also avoidance
techniques against potential bullying classmates which means using
classroom time and teacher training time for anti-bullying training;
and promoting involvement in community “space claiming” time in
after-school and weekend programs such as community blight clearance.
See listings for Defending Childhood Initiatives, or, Teaching
Without Violence. Visit the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention website to learn why its “necessary” to develop
“systemic processes” to forge public sector partnerships to
“change the community.” Were you aware that the CDC has now added
prevention to its title?
These sites will show
you exactly who and what Hillary Clinton meant when she uttered those
prophetic words: “It takes a village to raise a child.” I might
add: it also takes a village to bring about the proper dying process
for the child now grown old. Another bill will authorize the under 21
age group of patients to complete DNR or POLSTforms
claiming only palliative Hospice Care.
To forge these changes
requires creation of new tactics employing the environment-health and
safety and behavior techniques delivered by classroom teachers
trained by professional counselors and community interest groups
through social and emotional learning experiences in school and in
after-school programs. This has nothing to do with academic learning.
The school is now a processing center for entry into community life.
And, where do we start
this community life? In mandated preschool for 3 to 5 year
olds. Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan's bill AB1444,
Elementary Education: Kindergarten. Her bill will require
Kindergarten as a prerequisite to entry into First Grade.
This, of course, will
be only the first step to expanding to pre-Kindergarten which was
tried in the last term. The eternal mantra of those who lobby for
this is the guaranteed failure of the child to thrive and be
employable as an adult otherwise. This new adult will also be
overweight and a druggie because he/she didn't get proper
nutrition at home.
There is Sen. Darrell
Steinberg's SB 837, Early Childhood Education: Professional
Development. Provides in the 2014 Budget Act Grants for development
of stipends for teachers in transitional kindergarten programs and
requires any school or Charter school offering Kindergarten to
require also Pre-K. Planned Parenthood Mar Monte was one of the
principle supporters. This bill is still pending further hearings.
Oh, the child didn't
get the proper socialization in Kindergarten? Then what we need is
Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson's After School: distinguished After
School Health Program- DASH. Isn't that cute? Dash, it's meant to
imply that the students may be involved in physical activity in
properly designed after school activities.
This is being sold as
a Health and Safety program to keep the kids under someone's
well-trained watchful eye, certainly not the mother's, after school.
The YMCA us the sponsor of the bill. This is really expensive, to the
taxpayer, baby-sitting. It is also yet another opportunity for
special interest groups to gain access to your child/grandchild
instilling into their minds, hearts and souls, a new ethic of life
for the worker of the world. Maybe one of their physical activities
will be walking to the school clinic for birth control pills.
How about Sen. Fran
Pavley's SB 923, Educational Apprenticeship Innovation Act: Ed Prize.
This will turn high school students from well-knit communities into
competitors for prize money for college Career Path apprenticeships
within the community, dependent upon their ability to meet the
requirements for further investment in STEM education. (Science,
Technology, Economics and Math).
All of these bills,
except for SB 837, are sitting on the Governor's desk. A decision to
sign, veto or let stand must be reached by October 1 – 30 days
after being sent to the Governor.
Please consider
contacting the Governor's office to urge a VETO on these bills.
Spero columnist
Camille Giglio is a resident of California and also writes for
the California Right to Life Committee.
1 comment:
As long as we are willing to submit to the doctrine of subsidiarity we will have dictators. No man, or group of men, can be allowed to "reign" over us. In so far as we "allow" them to, we submit to dictatorship.
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