The Editor's Desk

“ASSEMBLYMAN COOK’S CAPITOL PUNISHMENT BILL PASSES FULL ASSEMBLY”

It’s about time we got some capitol punishment up there in Sacramento.

I received a press release from the No on 98 folks crowing about the latest polls that show the proposition losing and losing pretty badly next Tuesday.

Given that the entire campaign against the proposition is based on the rent control provision, I do have to wonder if it was a mistake to include it. We ran a guest commentary from Timothy Sandefur explaining in detail why the rent control issue isn’t a big deal, but sadly in some situations it is tough to fight emotional arguments with rationality.

Somebody needs to just suck it up and write a ballot initiative that restricts eminent domain and does nothing else, period. There’s too much mission creep going on. I understand the arguments for getting rid of rent control and keeping local government from abusing the zoning process to get what they want, and I agree, but this is a battle fought in increments. Let’s re-establish the proper use of eminent domain first and then wage the other battles.

I’m also disappointed in the number of newspapers who have fallen for the horrible arguments that have been presented to kill 98 and approve 99. You’d think an industry that requires government respect for the Bill of Rights in order to function would have a little more appreciation for property rights. But, sadly, for many newspaper editorial writers, the strength of your rights seems to weaken based on the amount of money you have. If you own a mobile home, you have all sorts of rights. If you own a mobile home park, well then, forget it.

This week marks one year since we started blogging at the Desert Dispatch. This blog in particular has 83 posts (not counting this one), and I’m looking to increase that frequency of posting over the next year.

Unfortunately, Barstow doesn’t seem to be much of a blogging town as yet. There are a few out there, but not many. I’ll attribute the loss to the fact that we tend to lose population of folks between the ages of 20 to 40, which apparently are prime blogging years. As much as a new medium can have a formal demographic as yet.

But anyway, as a reminder, if you want to join the blogging party, we host reader blogs through the “Publish Your Stuff” feature on the home page.

Yesterday, editors of Freedom Communications newspapers had several seminars regarding the future of our Web sites and newspapers (more are happening today).

One of the major focuses yesterday was on information databases for our sites, something we’ve wanted to do here at the Desert Dispatch, but lacked the tools and staff. For example, we held off posting our police logs in the way we posted typical stories, because we wanted to figure out a way to present them in a map format, the way a lot of larger newspaper sites do. Lacking the tools to do so, we decided to just go ahead and post them online anyway to fulfill readers’ needs.

Fortunately, our friends at our larger Freedom publications are working on tools to help us more easily build and develop our own databases to help Barstow residents find local information. In the future, expect to see more resources on our site to help you track down important local information.

I’m in San Antonio this week for our annual “Freedom School,” where publishers and editors of Freedom Communications newspapers gather and hear from libertarian luminaries about the issues of the day and have questions answered about local issues.

I bring this up because there have been comments relevant to our gay marriage issue in California. I received an e-mail from a reader, who wrote in part in response to my Monday editorial: “I know lots of people, to include me, who have a big problem with four judges over turning 61% of the voting population to make 3% of the state’s population happy. Scott those four judges just ‘beat it’s citizens into submission’ and how can you NOT think that?”

It concerns me that somebody believes he has been beaten into submission because the government refused to allow him to beat others into submission. As I, and all libertarians, argue, the will of the people cannot be used as an excuse to violate the rights of individuals. As Tibor Machan said yesterday in our conference, “The people cannot confer upon the government powers that they don’t have.” He was elaborating on something Freedom Communications founder R.C. Hoiles believed, which was that groups don’t have the moral authority to do things that individuals aren’t allowed to do. You can’t go around deciding who can get married. Therefore, neither do 61 percent of Californians.

These days, most speeches from gay activist organization leaders tend to inspire eye rolls from me. I’m not that interested in identity-based politics, and it frequently feels impossible to connect with gay political movements unless you’ve purchased the entire liberal identity package and think the government can make everybody get along. You also have to be willing to act like a victim, and I can’t stand doing that.

However, as a libertarian, my belief in the bedrock foundation of civil liberties is no different from theirs (the difference is where the foundation ends). I believe, and I have said before, that marriage is a right. We treat marriage as a right. As such I believe the U.S. Constitution already endorses gay marriage in the Ninth Amendment: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” Essentially, just because a right isn’t laid out specifically in the Constitution does not mean said right doesn’t exist. But that’s considered a radical argument in today’s era of nanny government. The government gives you rights now, when it once existed to make sure your rights weren’t taken away.

I’m getting a little too far ahead, actually, as yesterday’s gay marriage decision was based on California’s Constitution, not the United States’. The judges determined denying marriage to same-sex couples violated the state’s constitution.

The responses from gay marriage opponents have been predictable, but no less frustrating. Apparently the definition of an activist judge is one that makes decisions you don’t like. Consider the response from our own county supervisor, Brad Mitzelfelt: “In 2000, the people of this state overwhelmingly supported Proposition 22, defining marriage in state law as a union between a man and a woman. With this decision, the Court has chosen to overrule the will of millions of California voters.”

Well, yes, Mr. Mitzelfelt, when millions of California voters approve a proposition that violates the state’s constitution, the court is supposed to strike it down. Determining the constitutionality of legislation is what the state Supreme Court is for.

Our congressional representative, Howard “Buck” McKeon, is also either dense or cynically manipulating the matter to get votes: “[U]nder no circumstance should the courts be allowed to show such utter disregard for the democratic process. In this case, it appears partisan politics and personal opinions are taking precedence over the rule of law; and that’s an alarming turn of events.”

Yes, actually, the court is supposed to overrule the democratic process if the democratic process produces an outcome that violates the state constitution. That’s how the “rule of law” works. Now, if you want to debate whether the judges have misinterpreted the wording of the constitution, that’s one thing, but a legislator who doesn’t understand the role of the court is a legislator who isn’t fit for office.

Let’s try changing the parties involved here to see if I can’t get my point across. According to a 2007 report from the California Secretary of State, registered Democrats make up 42.5 percent of all voters and Republicans account for 34.2 percent in this state.

So let’s say a group of Democrats got together a petition that said the State of California would not recognize marriages between registered Republicans. In theory, such a petition could pass, given the Democrats have the Republicans outnumbered. Would Mitzelfelt and McKeon accept the will of the people under such circumstances?

No, of course not, because, and I’m sure they’d agree, the state doesn’t have the right to deny the marriages of Republicans. So what makes this case different?

The state has no business deciding the legitimacy of a family, nor does it have any business validating relationships between consenting adults. I will not vote for candidates who believe that the government is the hammer to help them beat people into submission so that they may build their fantasy utopia. If private individuals choose to believe my marriage wouldn’t be valid with another man, or if churches decline to perform them, then that’s certainly their right. But I won’t have the government making that decision for me — or them.

Don’t expect my vote in June, Mitzelfelt. I don’t vote for those with no respect for basic civil liberties.

I’m very happy about today’s California Supreme Court decision regarding gay marriage, though I know there are many people in our area who are probably not.

I’m leaving myself out of the decision-making process in the newsroom (a very rare occurrence) as I have absolutely no objectivity on the matter, letting the staff decide how to run the coverage of the decision.

I will be out of town next week for a business conference, but I’ll try to put something together as an editorial comment for Monday’s Desert Dispatch. My editorial will be one of my less formal ventures in order to account for my personal stake in the debate.

A couple of days ago I pulled in at a local gas station that shall remain nameless (I don’t want to get any employees there in trouble over a mistake) that was offering regular unleaded at $3.89 a gallon, pretty cheap for our area.

I scanned my card and had to wait an unusual amount of time for it to let me start pumping. I pushed the button again, just to make sure I hadn’t forgotten, but it was still about 30 seconds before I actually was able to pump fuel.

As I was waiting, I noticed something odd — the price digitally listed on the pump for gas was $2.89 per gallon, not $3.89. I figured perhaps this was a visual glitch. But once it let me begin pumping, I watched the numbers fly by and discovered, indeed, it was charging me only $2.89 per gallon.

I wondered briefly what to do. Part of me wanted to let the staff there know, because I’m well aware that the profits from high gas costs aren’t going to individual stations. I didn’t want them to get in trouble or fired for “undercharging” for gas. But then once I was finished and replaced the nozzle, the display went through an odd reset process, and the price switched back to the correct $3.89 per gallon.

By the way, Barstow is of course known for higher gas prices due to our location in the desert. Traffic between Los Angeles and Las Vegas increases demand for gas to get through the Mojave, and that drives up prices. Typically gas is cheaper almost everywhere in the state (except Baker).

However, when I drove down to Los Angeles a couple of weeks ago, I discovered gas prices were pretty much the same as they were out here. My previous experiences had gas prices at about 10 to 15 cents cheaper per gallon in LA. So even though our gas prices are extremely high, they’re not necessarily that much higher than gas elsewhere in the state the way it used to be.

“The Editor’s Desk” won second place in Best Overall Blog in the 2007 Society for Professional Journalists Inland Southern California chapter award ceremony.

I’d complain that I deserve first place, but that award was taken by my newsroom compatriots in the “Off the I-15” blog.

While it would be nice to crow about what a distinction this is, I think the reality is that newspapers, particularly editorial writers, have been slow to get on board the blog train. Or maybe they’re just reluctant to make a big deal out of them, given it’s still an evolving form? The Press-Enterprise won a ton of awards at the ceremony, and has quite a few blogs, but didn’t win any awards in that area. I wonder if they even entered.

Also, an experiment of mine failed. Way back when I was in college, I posited a theory that if you wrote about being gay in your English composition classes, you would automatically get an A. This turned out to be pretty true for me and some gay college friends of mine (to be fair, I got A’s on most of my essays though, so perhaps correlation doesn’t imply causation).

I thought I would try the experiment again for the individual blog essay competition. I sent in my essay on National Coming Out Day back from back in October. I got beaten by two essays about housing market issues and one about crime by Kate Rosenberg, formerly of the Daily Press in Victorville, now of the Lucerne Valley Leader.

The loss could mean several things — the most obvious is that it’s no longer much of a surprise to find out somebody is gay, particularly in the media. It’s not as big a deal as it was 10 or 20 years ago. It also probably wasn’t my strongest essay. I considered sending in my piece on how I became a libertarian instead, a stronger blog essay that talks about my thought processes as an editorial writer.

I also submitted one of my editorials about rental inspections in a print category. It didn’t win, nor did I really expect it to. I’ve noticed that libertarian editorials that hinge on the idea of setting boundaries for government behavior tend to not be rewarded. I suspect media judges don’t find it particularly inspiring to read pieces telling the government to stop doing things, unless these things are causing obvious physical harm to citizens. I think the editorials I do write are about issues that are important to residents to Barstow, but they lack a certain level of flash due to my reluctance to grandstand.

The first of what I’m sure will be another dozen incomprehensible spammed e-mails:

Dear Desert Dispatch,

Maureen Wessler

Sincerely

Maureen Wessler
[Address redacted]
Woodland Hills, CA

Let’s see how many I get this time. I did finally manage to get taken off one mailing list we ended up on that was supposed to send spam responses for action to legislators. I was getting pretty tired of demands that I vote in favor or against particular bills.