Environmental follies in France

"To arms, oh citizens! Form up in serried ranks! March on, march on! May their impure blood / Flow in our fields!" When it was first heard in 1792, the chorus of La Marseillaise, France’s national anthem, left no doubt whatsoever about the determination of French revolutionary troops to win the war their national assembly had just declared on the King of Austria purportedly in the name of freedom. The same kind of Jacobin take-no-prisoners approach has been favored by latter-day French authorities in their latest revolutionary expedition against environmental damage. Too bad if Baby Freedom is being thrown out with the bloody bath water.

The war on environmental recklessness started back in February 2005 when then President Jacques Chirac, otherwise known as a peace-loving world leader, convened all 907 French deputes et senateurs in a special parliamentary session which was held, of all places, in regal Versailles and in which a so-called Charter for the Environment was ratified almost unanimously as an amendment to the French Constitution. Representative government can undoubtedly work wonders when a majority might produce a different outcome at the ballot box in a referendum.

Anyway the charter duly strikes a balance between the singular right of French citizens “to live in a healthy environment” (Article 1) and their plural duties to protect the earth (Articles 2, 3, and 4). Just as importantly, the document democratically goes on to point out in Article 8 that “education and training will have to contribute to the fulfillment of the rights and duties described in the Charter”. Mercifully no mention is made of reeducation camps for recalcitrant green fellow travelers -- but those in France who still believed that representative government and propaganda did not mix have now been warned to think again.

Whether these skeptics like it or not, even French meteorologists will patriotically make sure they put on their green thinking cap by “educating” and “training” viewers, at the end of their televised forecasts, about the various potential environmental dangers of turning on the heat when it’s cold or the air-conditioning when it’s too hot, of performing prolonged ablutions and cooking gargantuan meals. (Now you know why the French are so slim!) For good measure, the democratically naïve will afterwards be treated to three or four segments in the nightly news on environmentally-friendly anchors for fishing vessels, writing materials for school children, and preposterous whatnot.

Of course, French environmental education would not be complete without fiscal illustration. Since November 2006, the French have had to pay a new euphemistically called “eco-participation” (read, “eco-tax”) to help with the costs of recycling electrical and electronic waste.

Finally, early this week, even President Sarkozy, Jacques Chirac’s successor, “trained” his fellow countrymen by lambasting his new American friends with words to the effect that while the U.S. once (can anyone remember when?) couldn’t resist the temptation to use force unilaterally, it now “unfortunately” does not show the same kind of unilateral commitment in the war on global warming.

There is one little inconvenient truth in all this, though. French authorities have actually been too doctrinally successful in their green revolutionary drive. Indeed, this has been one of the coolest and wettest summers in France in almost half a century, and French citizens have apparently been voting with their feet lately: record numbers of them traveled abroad in July and August. The most popular destinations? Sun-drenched resorts.

Time to close the borders?

Note: "Paoli" is the pen name, or should we say nom de plume, of our French correspondent, a close student of European politics and a well-wisher to us Americans. He informs us the original Pasquale Paoli, 1725-1807, was the George Washington of Corsica.

For better schools, don't overspend, overcome

Since I don't see many first-run movies today, because of the high prices and low quality, here's an older cinematic analogy to illustrate how Democrats and Republicans differ on the approach to government. Today's script comes from House Speaker Andrew Romanoff's state-wide education grandstanding tour. There's a 1992 movie with Daman Wayans titled Mo' Money. That seems to be the Democrats' answer for everything. Recent examples include Amendment 23 and Referendum C. Remember how Bill Owens, Bruce Benson, the Denver Post, Rocky Mountain News and almost all state Democrats promised us this would be the answer to Coloradoans' dreams? We'd see fully-funded schools, freshly-paved roads and highways, and they wouldn't be asking for another tax increase again.

But - surprise, surprise - in today's Rocky Mountain News, we're told to look for the premiere of "Amendment 23: The Sequel." That's because Romanoff sees these (gasp!) schools with bad sewer systems, unacceptable gym equipment, and golly-gee whillikers, that's not good enough for Colorado kids. And what would that mean for state government if this big-government pipe dream comes true? Mo' Money, Mo' Money, and Mo' Money in state coffers - and out of taxpayers' pockets.

It's painful to be right at times, and I was in my 2005 post about Democrats' almost insatiable appetite for taxing and spending. Romanoff also opines in this article: "Coloradans haven't been dared to dream about what their schools could be... There's a real appetite for this conversation."

Note to the Speaker: There already has been some dreaming (and doing) with educational alternatives in Colorado. Some parents have chosen to home-school their kids, and others have opted to send their kids to charter schools - where some have waiting lists in the hundreds, and sometimes thousands for kids to get accepted. Not to mention the push for educational vouchers, so parents (and not some state bureaucracy) could decide where their children would be educated.

But that doesn't set well with the Democrats biggest supporters, the CEA and teachers' unions. Remember what Rep. Mike Merrifield said about people who supported choice in education? "There must be a special place in hell for these Privatizers, Charterizers and Voucherizers. They deserve it!" Since Dems can't offend their biggest source of campaign contributions, they obey the CEA's marching orders.

Let me think about this: Liberal Democrats defend to the hilt a 'woman's right to choose' an abortion (also known as killing an unborn human being), but parents of living children don't have the right to choose where, how and by whom their kids are educated? Another example of liberal logic - the ultimate oxymoron.

Contrast the Democratic "Mo' Money" approach to the Clint Eastwood movie, Heartbreak Ridge. Eastwood plays Marine Sergeant Gunny Highway, whose three words about overcoming adversity best reflect my (and most conservative Republicans') approach to improving education: Adapt, Improvise, Overcome. Alternative schools such as Hope Online Learning Academy are using the Gunny's approach, giving disadvantaged kids an alternative to the failure of public schools.

But that doesn't tow the Dems' company line on education, so they have the Rocky Mountain News criticize Hope Academy . Publish a story about a non-public school succeeding? That's not in the big-government, big-education playbook, so they can't allow that to happen.

However, support is rapidly gaining for charter and online school alternatives. A recent Gallup poll showed 60 percent of adults polled favored charter school alternatives, and 40 percent approved of online choices. That's up from 42 and 30 percent respectively in a similar poll back in 2000.

Americans are increasingly fed up with the Mo' Money approach to government and education. Private-sector, free-market alternatives that adapt and improvise are (and always have been) the best ways to overcome challenges and promote positive change in America.

Welcome to Taxorado...

... empty your pockets here. Last week it was Rep. Michael Garcia (D-Aurora) wanting to boost the sales tax a third of a billion dollars annually for the benefit of 8,000 developmentally disabled people. The week before, it was a tax and spend trifecta: tripping over each other in the Denver Post metro section on a single day were (1) half a billion in proposed higher RTD spending for one rail corridor alone...

then (2) a billion or more in new taxes for highways from one of Gov. Ritter's study groups (or if you prefer, and liberals probably do, another 1/3 billion in sneaky road "fees" not requiring voter approval)...

and then (3) up to $26 billion from another panel of Ritter dreamers for Canada-style socialized medicine, covering every resident at a cool 150% of the state's total current budget.

Senate Minority Leader Andy McElhany (R-Colorado Springs), in a letter published Aug. 30, calls the latter "a fool's bargain" that would require a more-than-doubling of our income tax rate, from under 5% now to nearly 11% if the Dem dreamers get their way.

Also looming out there are the Ritter property tax increase for schools -- on the lawbooks but facing a TABOR suit -- and the Hank Brown plea for some kind of dedicated tax to support CU and other higher-ed institutions.

Mark Hillman, the former state senator and acting treasurer, offers context for all this revenue lust in his new study for the Independence Institute, documenting how K-12, higher ed, and health care missed out on much of the spending boost that voters were promised under Referendum C. The obvious lesson is that 2005's bait-and-switch could easily be the model for similar fiscal shuffles in the future. Caveat taxpayer.

You tend to think -- or at least I do, as a conservative Republican -- that the Taxorado frenzy can only be a liability to Dollar Bill Ritter and the Democrats. But then you remember Mayor John Hickenlooper and his 80-plus percent reelection this spring after a dozen tax increases in four years.

You remember former Gov. Bill Owens and his Dem-GOP coalition that passed Ref C, sending Owens off to private life last January with approval ratings above 60%. You think of a Republican legislator friend of mine who comments that in the Denver suburbs it's now "cool" among some Republicans and quite a few unaffiliated folks to vote for Democrats and higher taxes.

Maybe it's just another form of conspicuous consumption that makes affluent people feel good about themselves, not so different from the Volvo wagon, plasma TV and the daily latte. Not so different from buying carbon credits and paying more for green power.

I for one don't want to live in a State of Taxorado. Ever-larger government taking an ever-larger bite of what people earn is unhealthy for a free and virtuous people. It erodes liberty, responsibility, civic virtue, and the institutions of civil society. In a word, it's bad for backbone. But my preferences aren't everyone's. We'll see soon enough, from coming elections, what everyone's are.

[Cross-posted on PoliticsWest.com]

Vanguard Forum coming up 9/7

Take conservative issues, a Biblical worldview, and a maddening moderator who gives both sides with equal plausibility. Add coffee, donuts, and 50 opinionated voices. Serve up in a DTC eatery at 7am on the first Friday of each month. This coming week, Sept. 7, is the next one, tackling Mormonism and politics. Email me for details if you want to come.

Sarko should read Goldwater

(Lyon, France) Was I too uncompromising in last week's piece about the challenges facing Nicolas Sarkozy as he embarks on his first term as President of France? Some readers, drawing on their own experience of France and French people, may have thought so. However, today, as I perused material on the US presidential election of 1964 as part of my doctoral research, I came across something that makes me think not. It's an article written by Alan L. Otten and published in the Wall Street Journal on September 16, 1964, which quotes extensively from a statement Senator Barry Goldwater “prepared for a 1962 Encyclopaedia Britannica volume on ‘Great Ideas Today’.” There Goldwater gave his definition of the people whom he called “the Forgotten Americans” and whose concerns he endeavored to articulate in the 1964 campaign. He wrote:

“The forgotten American is that dragooned and ignored individual who is either outside the organized pressure groups or who finds himself represented by organizations with whose policies he disagrees either in whole or in part. Big power-blocs and lobbies, labor unions, farm organizations, racial groups, civil liberties groups, consumer groups, nationality groups, cooperatives, educational associations, and even cultural and artistic groups have used their pressures to obtain through Government large benefits for their members, or, at any rate, what the leaders of these groups say are benefits. But the average citizen of the United States, a member of the real majority, pays the price of such pressures, and often is adversely affected.”

Goldwater went on to point out that:

“Though most of [the forgotten Americans] are patient men and women, they are beginning to get their backs up, and no wonder. Every special interest or “minority” has powerful backing in Washington but the forgotten American, who pays the taxes and fights the battles and does the work of the nation, feels that he has been left out. Minorities have real rights which must be protected. But majorities also have rights, and the people outside the pressure groups actually constitute the American majority.”

And the senator said in conclusion:

“[The forgotten American] is annoyed at certain welfare measures that seem to put a premium upon indolence and fraud. He does not like being pushed around. He thinks he has some things worth conserving -church and family and home and constitutional government and property and freedom of opportunity.”

It is quite clear that parallels may legitimately be drawn between the situation described by Sen. Goldwater in America in the early 1960s and the state of affairs in France today, after decades of government expansion. The only exception may be that, at least prior to the 2007 Presidential election, “the Forgotten Frenchman” was assuredly in the minority. Be that as it may, what “the Forgotten Frenchman” now hopes for in the very near future is a conservative revolution of Goldwaterite proportions.

Somebody order a copy of The Conscience of a Conservative for Mr. Sarkozy, Elysee Palace, please.

Note: "Paoli" is the pen name, or should we say nom de plume, of our French correspondent, a close student of European politics and a good friend of America. He informs us the original Pasquale Paoli, 1725-1807, was the George Washington of Corsica.