The Alta Californian

Land use battles rage across California from the redwoods of our temperate rain forest to the desiccated Algodones/Imperial Sand Dunes. This fight is nothing new. Nor will it ever be settled permanently so long as the lands in question remain public. Land use decisions for Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and National Forest land hinge on local politics and the conservation/exploitation ideology of whoever is currently in the Whitehouse. Instead of fighting for control over public lands, conservation groups should be focusing on private ownership of land, including bringing public land private.

Buying lands for the purpose of conservation is the most effective way of removing them from the public tug-of-war. Once a tract of land is owned by a private organization dedicated to conservation, those who would develop that land have no recourse. That protection, however, relies on protecting private property rights as well - even the property rights of off road vehicle enthusiasts and developers. Areas such as deserts are particularly fragile environments because the resources to support life are more limited. They are stressed and damaged easily by human activity. But, desert land is also pretty cheap, meaning a whole lot of it can be protected at a relatively small cost.

Successful examples of private conservation already exist in this state. Santa Catalina Island is owned almost entirely by the Catalina Island Conservancy. The Nature Conservancy owns approximately 76% of Santa Cruz Island and other land world-wide. Just last summer (2006), this same organization purchased land in the Mt. Hamilton Range near San Jose and more near San Luis Obispo.

Population and resource demands will keep growing. By supporting private property rights and protecting land privately, conservationists can create a robust arrangement for protecting the natural world, even when public opinion sways in favor of development.

The following are the results of the California statewide election. The data was taken from the
California Secretary of State’s website.

Ballot Measures

1A - Yes
1B - Yes
1C - Yes
1D - Yes
1E - Yes
83 - Yes
84 - Yes
85 - No
86 - No
87 - No
88 - No
89 - No
90 - No

Wal-Mart, Intel and AT&T recently announced that they are joining the Service Employees International Union, America’s largest labor union, to promote universal health coverage. While the Wall Street Journal may think this an “unlikely coalition,” anyone who understands government subsidy
will see what these large companies stand to gain.

Government-provided (or at least subsidized) universal health coverage will result in a huge cost-savings to these large companies, especially Wal-Mart, which employs 1.39 million people, 57% of whom are not covered by the company health plan. Why pay for approximately 800,000 employees to have health care when you can lobby the federal government to cover it for you?

Other large companies like AT&T (190,000 employees) and Intel (100,000 employees), which do provide health benefits, also have an interest in reducing their costs through government subsidy. Acting now allows these companies to take advantage of the popular universal health care movement that already exists, thus saving even the cost of lobbying.

Even though they pay lip service to private responsibility, it is clear from their statement that this is simply a call for socialized medicine:

“We believe that businesses, governments, and individuals all should contribute to managing and financing a new American health care system.” [my emphasis][1]

Calling for business, government, and individuals to contribute is nice way of de-emphasizing the fact that the only change they are advocating is the addition of government. Their only motive for getting government involved is to pass the costs to other people.

Saving money is not the only thing these companies expect to gain — they also expect to free themselves from the smear campaigns of labor activists. If the federal government provides health care, then employers are absolved of any supposed responsibility to provide it themselves. No longer will labor activists be able to smear them publicly, at least on the point of health care. But, this is wishful thinking — labor activists will have plenty to complain about, such as the quality and inequality of health care.

We will see growing support for universal health care amongst large companies simply because they expect to profit from it. The costs for such a program will be passed on to all of us through taxes, inflation from increased deficit spending, or simply though long waiting lists for health services.

[1] Press Release

Wouldn’t it be awesome to see massive herds of bison stampeding across miles of open prairie? We could enjoy this wonder of the world once again…if we had were a bison run! It’s just like a dog run in your backyard, except it crosses a couple states and maybe even into Canada. The size is different, but the idea is the same.

Right now the last remaining herd of wild bison (fully wild, not mixed with domestic cattle) survives in Yellowstone National Park and some adjacent National Forest land, depending on the time of year. I’m sure they would be happy to grow their numbers from about 3000 to the tens of thousands we would need to really create some thunder.

Prop. 89 will ensure that tax dollars are used to fund Democratic and Republican political campaigns, while offering little for independent and third-party candidates. And, like any attempt at funding campaigns with tax dollars, it forces all corporations in the state to fund candidates whose ideas they may despise. Even if you do not reject funding party politics with public money, you still might not like campaign financing reform that clearly benefits the two major parties over everyone else.

Under Prop. 89, qualifying “Clean Money” candidates receive public money for their campaigns up to specified limits. But, the rules governing qualification for public funds ensure that in most cases only Democrats and Republicans will receive significant public funds, while third-party or independent candidates receive little or nothing. Partial support is offered to third-party and independent candidates under certain circumstances. Full funding would be offered only when a party received more than 10% of the votes in the last election, something many parties only get in their strongest districts, and something an independent candidate could never have (because he has not been on the ballot before).

The matching funds provisions included in the legislation are designed to prevent qualifying candidates from being outspent by an opponent with private money, but neither Democrats or Republicans are at a loss for private money. At the same time, private funds and personal wealth are the backbone of most (if not all) independent campaigns. Prop. 89 essentially guarantees public money for any Democrat or Republican campaign, while penalizing independent candidates who must use their wealth usually to just get on the ballot.

Prop. 89 will not reduce or eliminate corruption, but it will grant public money to help Democrats and Republicans get elected. Vote No on Prop. 89.

California Proposition 87 would add an addition tax (about 2 to 6% depending on the price of oil per barrel) produced in the state of California amounting to an additional 4 billion dollars drain on the oil industry. This loot is to be diverted to research in alternative energy sources. This proposition is made possible by and enjoys the support of the Environmentalist movement. If passed, it would be the latest salvo fired by the Environmentalism against industrialized civilization.

Many people believe that the core of the Environmentalist movement seeks merely the protection of the environment for the sake of human health and benefit. In fact, this movement poses a grave threat to human life. Radical Environmentalists are not motivated by a desire to protect the environment for the benefit to mankind. Rather, it holds that nature has intrinsic value - that is to say that the environment has value in and of itself, apart from human beings. As evidence of this fact, note that Environmentalist have successfully lobbied to prevent exploitation of the Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve by oil companies, despite the fact that it a barren wasteland with very few human inhabitants. Also note that large portions of state parks such as Yellowstone are set off limits to benefits of human beings in order to preserve its "pristine" state - that is, a state apart from the influence, and enjoyment, of mankind.

As novelist/philosopher Ayn Rand points out, man's very existence requires that he alter nature in order to survive. Even in most primitive agriculture alters the existing plant and animal life in a given area, in favor of those he sees fit to
deposit. The more an activity promotes human life, the greater the alteration of nature is involved. As man reaches ever
greater levels of technological - building ever larger skyscrapers and shopping centers, and more extensive freeways - the
more evil he is in the eyes of Environmentalists. It is not surprising that U.S. National Park Service biologist David Graber
proclaimed in 1989 that man is a "cancer" and longed for the "right virus to come along" to wipe him out.

Environmentalism has a long track record of attacking man's use of nature precisely because it is useful to him. When it was discovered that the cancer fighting drug - taxol could treat ovarian and uterine cancer in women, the Environmentalist opposed the harvest of its source - the Pacific Yew Tree - and succeeded in placing it off limits to drug companies. Former Vice President and Presidential Candidate Al Gore in his book - "Earth in the Balance" - explains Environmentalist ethics thus: "It seems an easy choice - sacrifice the tree for a human life - until one learns that three trees must be destroyed for each patient treated…Suddenly we must confront some tough questions." Environmentalists care about trees, not women with breast cancer.

The pesticide DDT has saved an estimated half billion according to the National Academy of Sciences by destroying malaria
carrying mosquitoes. This rivals the number of lives saved by the drug penicillin. Nevertheless, Environmentalists
successfully lobbied for its world-wide ban, claiming that it is a carcinogen in humans. This is in spite of the fact
that tests in animals and humans, show that it safe even at thousands of times the concentration of normal exposure.
The actual reason for Environmentalist opposition to DDT is not concern for human health, but for alleged harm done to
certain species of birds, as well as the mosquitoes killed by the insecticide. When a reporter asked Dr. Charles Wurster,
chief scientist for the Environmental Defense Fund, why the attack on this beneficent chemical, he responded that there were
too many people and "this was as good a way to get rid of them as any."

Environmentalism is one of many movements that have demanded sacrifice of people for some "higher" goal. Nazism demanded the murder of millions of Jews, Slavs, and homosexuals for the sake of the German Race. The Communists murdered the bourgeoisie for the alleged benefit of the proletariat. Islamic Fundamentalism demands the sacrifice of its practitioners (as well as the "infidels") for the sake of 70 virgins in a mystical afterworld. The Environmentalists, however, demand human sacrifice not even for the sake of another group of human beings, but for the sake of trees, birds, bugs, and arctic tundra. It is for this reason that Environmentalism is the most evil ideology in the history of human thought.

And now the Environmentalists have turned their venomous hatred toward the producers of one of the most beneficial commodity in the history of human kind - oil. Oil has made possible the highly developed industrial society we see today. One would be hard-pressed to name one product used in daily life that has made possible using factories powered by oil and petroleum. Each product has been transported to market by means of oil. It is thanks to oil, that our houses are lit with electric lights instead of candles, are warmed with central heat, not wood-burning stoves. Oil is the reason why we travel in
airplanes and automobiles instead of on horseback. Even the vast arrays of plastics are chemically derived from petroleum.

Oil has allowed the stupendous wealth manifested in the vast array of goods and services it has made possible. This wealth
has made possible the research into new technologies and medicines that have allowed the standard of living, leisure time,
longevity to progressively increase as the decades by. And this is the reason why Environmentalists have launched their
attack on the producers of oil.

One would run kicking and screaming if one knew what this movement actually represents, if one discovered what their real
motive was with respect to the oil industry. So Environmentalists who support Proposition 87 hide their true motives by
listing all of the benefits this measure supposedly provides.

According to the Environmental California website, this new tax will improve air quality by reducing oil production and
therefore consumption. But if Environmentalists were truly concerned about air pollution, they would support expansion of
the use of nuclear power - an energy source that has resulted in not one human death in the western world. Thanks to
Environmentalist lobbying, not one nuclear power plant has been contructed in the U.S. for three decades. They would also
support the use and expansion of hydroelectric dams, not oppose them for the sake of the habitat of fish.

Even wind-power, once endorsed by Environmentalists, has earned the ire of the greens now that it is becoming economically competitive with fossil fuels. Environmentalists now complain that wind farms are a "visual blight" and that rare birds are killed by wind mill propeller blades.

Not even geothermal power is acceptable to Environmentalists. Local Environmentalists groups oppose the building of
geothermal plants at Medicine Lake in California, citing concern that the plants threaten the Shasta crayfish, an endangered
species.

Felice Pace of the Klamath Forest Alliance best sums up the Environmentalist position on energy use in particular, and
industrial civilization in general, by stating that "Essentially, in our minds, what it boils down to is any human act,
any energy development, is going to have some impacts." Anything man does in order to live, in other words, is evil.

Perhaps the most ridiculous of the Environmentalist rationalization for this new tax is that it will reduce our dependence
on foreign oil according the Environment California website. We must remember that it was the Environmentalists who
lobbied successfully against the drilling of oil in regions of Southern California, the Gulf of Mexico, and in the Alaskan
National Wildlife reserve. The ANWR reserve alone has an estimated 10.4 billion barrels, the amount of oil imported from Saudi Arabia in thirty years. Environmentalists are not interested in reducing dependence on foreign oil or maintaining
national security.

And finally, Environment California claims that Prop 87 would be good for the economy. It would "generate" $4 billion in new revenue which would be used among other things, for investment in alternative energy sources. It is a Marxist view, shared by the Environmentalist’s fellow travelers that money looted by taxes belongs to no one in particular, and simply exists out in nature to be harvested by government. In fact, the government produces nothing. It only transfers wealth from one source to another. The billion dollars robbed from oil companies would result in reduced investment, production, and employment on the part of oil companies. But it is far too generous to say that the Environmentalists hold that economic prosperity is good, but are mistaken about how to achieve it. Environmentalists oppose all the things that an industrialized nation benefits from - the expansion of freeways, utilization of energy sources, and genetically engineered foods. These polices reduce the standard of living in the Western World and condemn to grinding poverty those in the Third World. Their view of economic development is best captured in the slogan: "Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of a cancer cell."

Regarding the claim that this new looting of oil companies would be spent on alternative energy research, any resulting
new technology would probably be opposed by Environmentalists anyway.

Contact Jason at: hoskin@usc.edu

Jason Hoskin is a graduate student in Pathobiology at the University of Southern California. He is President and Founder of the USC Objectivist Club. He is a a staff writer for USC’s Daily Trojan, as well as for Capitalism Magazine. He writes on a wide range of topics from U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East to Environmentalism.

The past decade has shown consistent declines in state support for the University of California. U.C. tuition rose from approximately $3800 in 1996 to $6300 in 2005 [1]. Students, their families, and the general public recognize that this trend is unlikely to change in our cash-strapped state. As state funding for higher education diminishes, institutions must learn from their private competitors and adopt strategies to maintain funding levels. Rather than continue to blame waning public support, the U.C. must turn to private sources for financial support.

A semi-private funding strategy for the U.C. is not so different from what already exists. U.C Berkeley currently has an endowment of $2.2 billion and receives millions annually from private sources [2]. However, a comparison to Harvard’s $22.3 billion or Stanford’s $12 billion puts in perspective the inadequacy of that $2.2 billion to replace public support. The entire U.C. System has only $7.7 billion in endowment assets.

Each of the UC schools must start a funding drive to build endowments along the lines of what private schools rely on. Whereas schools like Stanford were started with a large endowment from a single private source, public institutions must turn to the public at large, especially alumni, to fund an endowment. Given the decades of compounded returns on investment that private endowments have enjoyed, it might seem impossible for any institution (public or private) to catch up. Not so. Just last year, UCLA concluded a 10-year drive to raise $3.2 billion, an amount almost 2 times the value of UCLA’s current endowment. Furthermore, much of the increase in value of endowments at U.S. universities has occurred only in the last 25 years [4]. Harvard passed the $1 billion mark only in the early 80s. Annual fundraising levels ranging from $300 to $600 million for 2005 at top universities supports the possibility of building a significant endowment [5] within a decade. A concerted fundraising campaign over the course of 5 to 10 years could double or triple the endowments at major public universities such as UCB, UCLA, and UT Austin.

The future of the U.C. and other public universities rests heavily on private endowment. Stubborn refusal to recognize this will lead only to a vast decline in quality of education in the years to come.

References

[1] University of California Budget Office website

[2] “University of California Annual Endowment Report FY05,”

[3] “College and University Endowments 2004”

[4] “University Endowments – A UK/US Comparison,” The Sutton Trust, May 2003

[5] “Contributions to Colleges and Universities…”, Council for Aid to Education, February 16, 2006