The decision to rehire uber-liberal lawyer Erwin Chemerinsky as founding dean of UC Irvine’s new law school by Chancellor Michael Drake was a mistake of historic proportion.
I am not here to criticize Drake or to even try to understand the labyrinth of three-level chess he has to play to navigate in the largest publicly funded university system in the world.
But this decision will set UCI’s law school on the road to becoming one of the most liberal law schools in the nation.
Erwin Chemerinsky is not being hired to be a professor at an existing law school where he can spout off his liberal views.
He is being hired as the founding dean of a new, yet-to-be-formed public law school.
The founding dean is the person around whom the school is built, as in any new organization, whether academic, business or social; it is formed and guided by its leadership. Chemerinsky is the leader Drake has chosen.
What kind of professors do you think he will hire, liberal or conservative? Will they be professors who believe in the actual words of the Constitution, or like him, believe that the Constitution is some living, breathing document that has to be reinterpreted as time goes on?
Do you think they will be professors who think that lower courts should use decision from the United States Supreme Court, or should they also use cases and opinions from foreign courts that do not have the Constitution as a hindrance in their decision?
This is a man who has been a board member for the ACLU for more than 10 years. He has worked to get “Under God” taken out of our Pledge of Allegiance and fought to have a cross taken out of Los Angeles County’s “City of Angels” seal, even though the city was founded by Christian missionaries.
He does not believe in the death penalty no matter how heinous the crime; he fought against the three-strikes law; and when it comes to national defense, he thinks that every enemy combatant should have the full protection of the Constitution — even in the time of war, no matter what danger it poses to our men and women fighting in harm’s way.
What amazes me is hearing extremely educated individuals, mostly with law degrees, explain to us less-educated proletariat how hiring one of the most polarizing left-wing lawyers in America as a founding dean will make no difference in what type of law school UCI creates. He is not just liberal. He is polarizing.
Now I already know what he and his supporters will say. “We do not pick law professors based on their politics; we just pick the best qualified professors.”
If you believe that, you must either be a lawyer or have some other advanced degree that removed your common sense. It has been known to happen that in higher education any bit of common sense you might have after college will be completely removed by some liberal professor in grad school.
That’s the same argument bandied about whenever a president puts forward a new justice to the Supreme Court. “All we care about is if they are qualified.”
Baloney. We care about how they think and they learn how to think in law school.
I am not saying that Chemerinsky would not be sincere in trying to create a non-ideological law school. It’s just that, because he is who he is, he can’t. The pool of talent he will attract will be left-leaning because that’s who he is.
How many conservative law professors would want to work full time for him? Would you want to be in an environment in which your superior is against everything that you believe in?
Clearly the pool he will have to pick from will be more likely liberal than conservative.
Sending our best and brightest to a law school run by an extremely liberal dean and faculty and asserting it will not affect the type of lawyers it produces is like jumping in a pool and not expecting to get wet.
It can’t happen.
Friday, September 28, 2007
Friday, September 14, 2007
Don’t Bother With Health-Care Bill
he Assembly passed its vision of health-care reform this week just prior to ending the 2007 session. The governor said he will veto it and intends to call lawmakers back Wednesday for a special session to come up with a health-care-reform bill he can support.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Democrats are looking to overhaul how health care is paid for and delivered in California. If they get their way, the state will slip down the road to more socialism and more unemployment.
This won’t be good for the citizens, taxpayers or health-care providers. The best thing that can happen is nothing.
Assembly Bill 8, which was passed and introduced by Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez and co-authored by the other half of the terrible twosome, Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, proposes to create the California Cooperative Health Insurance Purchasing Program, Cal-CHIPP, in order to function as a purchasing pool for health-care coverage by employers.
To fund this idea, they intend to charge all California employers a 7.5% tax on the total Social Security wages for its full-time or part-time employees, if they do not already provide health care.
Schwarzenegger will veto that bill for several reasons, mainly because it is funded purely from employer’s funds.
Also, the bill does not force every Californian to purchase or otherwise get health care (sometimes referred to as “individual mandate”). In his proposal, Schwarzenegger would tax several areas, not just employers.
He would charge employers with 10 or more employees a 4% tax of their payrolls, hospitals would be charged a 4% tax of their gross revenues, and physicians would be taxed 2% of their gross revenues. What a brilliant way to lower health-care costs — tax the health-care providers.
The problem with both bills is that no matter what you want to call it, this is a new tax on Californians. More taxes never lower costs. Lucky for us, either legislation needs a two-thirds vote to raise taxes and that would take Republican votes that neither the governor nor Democrats control.
Not so lucky for us is how the governor and the Democrats get around that. I expect them to cut a deal in the special session without the taxes included and to put the method to pay for it on the ballot as an initiative, which only takes a simple majority. That’s right. Expect to see television ads with heart-wrenching stories of how some poor soul was denied health care because he or she did not have insurance.
And the fault will be blamed on some greedy corporation. It’s not that difficult to get people to vote to tax someone else, especially if that someone is portrayed as some uncaring corporation.
Next stop on this health-care train is “Single-Payer Universal Health Care.” Once the government collects the money, it decides how it gets spent. Doctors and hospitals will be told, just like in Medicare, what they can charge for a service or procedure. They will not be allowed to contract with you outside the system.
The private sector will be completely driven out of health care. This affects you even if you have private insurance. Once we go to Single Payer Universal Care the government also controls the providers. Your doctor will no longer be able to work directly with you; it will be against the law.
Rationing of services will be next. The government will decide what care, if any, that you will get. How many young people will want to be a physician if their employer is the state or federal government?
So while Canada and England avoid the flaws of socialized medicine, California leads us toward them.
If you are sick, really sick, where in the world would you want to be?
The answer is the United States. We have the finest health-care system in the world. And no matter what they show you in “Sicko,” there isn’t a quality facility like Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian, let alone the Mayo Clinics, in Cuba.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Democrats are looking to overhaul how health care is paid for and delivered in California. If they get their way, the state will slip down the road to more socialism and more unemployment.
This won’t be good for the citizens, taxpayers or health-care providers. The best thing that can happen is nothing.
Assembly Bill 8, which was passed and introduced by Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez and co-authored by the other half of the terrible twosome, Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, proposes to create the California Cooperative Health Insurance Purchasing Program, Cal-CHIPP, in order to function as a purchasing pool for health-care coverage by employers.
To fund this idea, they intend to charge all California employers a 7.5% tax on the total Social Security wages for its full-time or part-time employees, if they do not already provide health care.
Schwarzenegger will veto that bill for several reasons, mainly because it is funded purely from employer’s funds.
Also, the bill does not force every Californian to purchase or otherwise get health care (sometimes referred to as “individual mandate”). In his proposal, Schwarzenegger would tax several areas, not just employers.
He would charge employers with 10 or more employees a 4% tax of their payrolls, hospitals would be charged a 4% tax of their gross revenues, and physicians would be taxed 2% of their gross revenues. What a brilliant way to lower health-care costs — tax the health-care providers.
The problem with both bills is that no matter what you want to call it, this is a new tax on Californians. More taxes never lower costs. Lucky for us, either legislation needs a two-thirds vote to raise taxes and that would take Republican votes that neither the governor nor Democrats control.
Not so lucky for us is how the governor and the Democrats get around that. I expect them to cut a deal in the special session without the taxes included and to put the method to pay for it on the ballot as an initiative, which only takes a simple majority. That’s right. Expect to see television ads with heart-wrenching stories of how some poor soul was denied health care because he or she did not have insurance.
And the fault will be blamed on some greedy corporation. It’s not that difficult to get people to vote to tax someone else, especially if that someone is portrayed as some uncaring corporation.
Next stop on this health-care train is “Single-Payer Universal Health Care.” Once the government collects the money, it decides how it gets spent. Doctors and hospitals will be told, just like in Medicare, what they can charge for a service or procedure. They will not be allowed to contract with you outside the system.
The private sector will be completely driven out of health care. This affects you even if you have private insurance. Once we go to Single Payer Universal Care the government also controls the providers. Your doctor will no longer be able to work directly with you; it will be against the law.
Rationing of services will be next. The government will decide what care, if any, that you will get. How many young people will want to be a physician if their employer is the state or federal government?
So while Canada and England avoid the flaws of socialized medicine, California leads us toward them.
If you are sick, really sick, where in the world would you want to be?
The answer is the United States. We have the finest health-care system in the world. And no matter what they show you in “Sicko,” there isn’t a quality facility like Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian, let alone the Mayo Clinics, in Cuba.
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