The Most Tax Burdened State In America

A recent article in Forbes confirms what us Californians intuitively knew: California is the most tax-burdened state in America. This has been confirmed thanks to a study by the Pacific Research Institute which looked at two critical factors: 1) how much of the state's economy (the gross state product) is taken up by local and state government spending; and 2) how favorably is the state's tax structure designed to benefit small businesses to encourage growth, investment, and innovation.

When burden and structure are combined, the most tax efficient state in the Union is South Dakota, followed closely by Delaware, Nevada, Texas, and Louisiana.

The lowest-ranked states? South Carolina, New York, and....California in dead last.

California politicians have been rankled by a recent advertising campaign by the State of Nevada which encourages small businesses in California to pull up stakes and move across state lines. But until those same politicians address the crushing tax burden--coupled with the brutal tax structure they have erected--California's once shining influence will continue to diminish. And businesses will continue to leave the Golden State in droves.

The Waterfalls Of Yosemite

One of the great fringe benefits of living in Northern California is its proximity to some of the most beautiful sites and places in all the world. And the most beautiful valley I have ever seen lies less than two hours' drive from my home in Yosemite National Park. The valley was carved out of granite by glaciers during the last Ice Age and--when the glaciers melted--they left an 8-mile-long valley of enduring and incomparable splendor.

The granite walls stretch some 4,000 feet above the valley floor, with half a dozen creeks tumbling from hanging valleys above to form the headwaters of the Merced River which flows from the western end of Yosemite and then down into the San Joaquin Valley on its way to the Pacific. But before the river is joined, a total of nineteen waterfalls tumble from the precipice of those granite cliffs into the valley below.

And it is now--in the mid-spring and particularly during the month of May--that the allure and the power and the magnificence of Yosemite's waterfalls are at their peak. The snows of the past winter are melting, and the runoff is turbocharging the Wonderful Waterfall Machine more than at any other time of the year. Not only that, but particularly in a year like we've had this year--with rains and snow accumulation above normal--the result is utterly breathtaking.

Even the names of Yosemite's falls are enchanting: Bridalveil Falls, Vernal Fall, Horsetail Falls, Illilouette Fall, Ribbon Falls, Waterwheel Falls, Royal Arch Cascade, Sentinel Fall, Staircase Falls, and--probably the most famous of them all--the namesake, Yosemite Falls. Altogether, there are nineteen named waterfalls in Yosemite with drops ranging from as short as Vernal's 317 feet (but still a beautiful and quite powerfall waterfall) to Yosemite's 2425 feet.

Nowhere else in the world is there such a concentration of major waterfalls in one place. Ribbon and Upper Yosemite rank among the world's highest. Bridalveil, Yosemite, and Vernal are among the most famous. And when you visit--especially during the month of May--you literally wonder why the entire valley is not floating away for the sheer volume of water which is spilling into the valley from so many places, from so many waterfalls.

For those of you who live within a long day's drive of Yosemite, I urge you to indulge your senses and see this amazing natural wonder. For those of you who live further away, please mark your calendars for any May of any year to make the journey.





And for those who may live half a world away, I have included this link to let you know what you're missing: http://www.terragalleria.com/photos/?keyword=yosemite-waterfalls .

To see the waterfalls of Yosemite in the mid-spring is something we should all include on the list of things we'll do before we die.

The Greatest President (Part Two)

Our greatest President was Abraham Lincoln. And while most Americans acknowledge that, most also have only a vague idea of why. If Washington is known as the Father of our Country, Lincoln was the savior of it--preserving the fragile Union in the crucible of the Civil War. People also have a vague notion of Lincoln's humble beginnings, but most don't know that he lived in abject poverty on the American frontier. And, thanks to his immortal Gettysburg Address, most Americans know that Lincoln's skills as an orator stand unparalleled--but there are many other examples of his astonishing eloquence that are left to us.

Abraham Lincoln was born in a one-room cabin on February 12, 1809 to Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks Lincoln--the son of two farmers in Hardin County, Kentucky. At the time, Kentucky represented "the West" to most Americans--the hard frontier where settlers were scratching out a living and on constant watch from Indian attacks. Lincoln's mother died when he was 9 and, though he was very close to his stepmother throughout the rest of his life, he became estranged from his father.

Because of the family's need for Lincoln--even at a young age--to help with tasks on the farm, he received only a cumulative eighteen months or so of formal education. He loved school and loved learning--and was known to devour books, having essentially taught himself to read and write (his stepmother was illiterate). As he got older, Lincoln became fascinated with the English language--with the intricacy of words, their meanings and the cadence of their pronunciation. As a young man he studied the law, on his own, and passed the Illinois bar on his first attempt.

He became a successful itinerant lawyer. In those days on the frontier, the population was too sparse and too far away from the county seat to have justice meted out at the courthouse. And so the courts would come to the people. It was not uncommon for the judge, the district attorney, and the defense attorney to ride a circuit together throughout their jurisdiction to hear and argue cases in various towns and villages. This Lincoln did successfully for year, building a prosperous law practice in Springfield, Illinois. It was also during this time that Lincoln saw firsthand the power of the spoken word and how arguments could be influenced through the crafting of a well-turned phrase.

Lincoln joined the nascent Republican Party when it was formed in the 1850's. Although he had been a Whig all his adult life, the Republicans sought to more clearly articulate the brewing conflagration over slavery. It was during this time that Lincoln ran for--and lost--the battle for the Illinois Senate seat with Stephen A. Douglas. The Lincoln-Douglas debates leading up to that election pitted two oratorical rock stars battling for the hearts and minds of their fellow citizens.

Six years later, Lincoln found himself battling Douglas again--this time in the Election of 1860 for President of the United States. It was a surreal political landscape. Lincoln was the sole Republican nominee. But the Democrats were badly split over the slavery issue--with Douglas representing Northern Democrats and two other candidates representing Southern interests. Lincoln's election actually served as the breaking point for many of the Southern states. Barely a month after his election, South Carolina formally seceded from the Union, followed by six other states during the winter prior to Lincoln's inauguration.

It was during that inauguration that the nation first got a taste of Lincoln's remarkable phrases. His appeal to the Southerners not to allow their fervor to devolve into civil war is striking: "I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."


Four years later during his Second Inaugural, Lincoln spoke on the eve of the end of the terrible war which would ultimately leave more than 620,000 Americans dead. His tone was not one of a brash declaration of victory, but of humility before God, a strong arm of comfort to his countrymen, and a gracious hand of friendship to his enemies: "Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."


Five weeks later, Lincoln was shot while watching a play at Ford's Theater in Washington and died the next morning. The nation was wrapped in a paroxysm of grief for months. In the excruciating hours after he was shot, Lincoln's cabinet (except for Secretary of State Seward who was shot the same night), gathered around him. When he passed, Secretary Stanton famously said "Now he belongs to the ages".

The Greatest President (Part One)

Our greatest President was George Washington. (In the next post, you'll see me say that the greatest President was Abraham Lincoln because, quite honestly, I can't choose between the two.) To those of us who live in the 21st century, he's become iconic, untouchable--as if he is and always was a marble statue in the rotunda of the Capitol.

George Washington was our greatest President not only for what he did, but also--quite importantly--for what he did not do. It's hard for us to relate to this concept today, but during the Constitutional Convention of 1787, the Founding Fathers were on the horns of a dilemma: on the one hand, they did not want the office of the new President of our fledgling country to be too strong and centralized such that it might resemble a King; on the other hand, they did not want an executive who was so weak that there would be a leadership vacuum at the top of the government. Ultimately, they looked to the man who presided over that convention during the long summer of 1787 when our nation was conceived--George Washington. In Washington, they saw a man whose courage was unassailable, whose leadership and stature throughout America was recognized, who was revered as the man who had endured the suffering with his troops through the course of the long war with Great Britain. They also saw something else: Washington did not thirst for power.

In her book "Miracle At Philadelphia", Catherine Drinker Bowen maintains that the delegates to the Convention drafted Article II (the portion dealing with the executive branch of our government) with Washington in mind. Had he not been there as a reassuring presence, the structure of the office--indeed, our entire government structure--would likely look much different even today.

Even so, Washington could have reached for power. When King George III of England heard that Washington would soon resign his commission as Commander in Chief of the Continental Army, he said "If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world." It had been the pattern of victorious commanding generals to grip and hold power, not to step away from it.

He was so revered by his countrymen that, if he had tried to consolidate power against the will of the Congress, many--perhaps even a majority--of his fellow citizens would have supported him. Not only did he not do this, but Washington tried scrupulously to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States", as he and every President have sworn to do on their inauguration day.

 He was constantly aware that nearly everything he did served to create important precedents for those who would follow. For example, his Vice President, John Adams, wanted to address Washington as "Your Excellency"--something far too imperial-sounding, even having an air of royalty in the mind of Mr. Washington. The President insisted on a simple salutation: "Mr. President". It stuck. Today, that's how our Presidents are addressed by their fellow citizens.

Another example, and perhaps the most important: Washington voluntarily gave up his office after two terms. Many think the two-term Presidency has always been part of our Constitution. But after Washington served two terms, every President after him respected his example until Franklin Roosevelt broke the standard and was elected to four terms (he died in office before he could complete his fourth term). It was only then that the 22nd Amendment was adopted, limiting the Presidency to two terms in office.

Washington was, literally, a living legend. Very few Americans have ever held such universal adoration, awe, and respect from their countrymen. His Secretary of State and the future 3rd President, Thomas Jefferson, had this to say upon Washington's death in 1799: "On the whole, his character was, in the mass, perfect. It may be truly said that never did nature and fortune combine more perfectly to make a man great, and to place him in the same constellation with whatever worthies have merited from man an everlasting remembrance".

Private Property Rights Under Attack

In my last post, I referenced the Kelo vs. City of New London ruling of 2005 by the Supreme Court. This ruling--handed down by the Rehnquist court--continues to have far-reaching effects and represents a frontal assault on one of the core principles of our nation's founding--the principle of private property rights. As Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote in her dissenting opinion,

"Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random. The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms.

She argued that the decision eliminates "any distinction between private and public use of property — and thereby effectively delete[s] the words 'for public use' from the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment."

Now private property rights are, once again, under assault because of this landmark decision five years ago. Today Fox News reported that the city of Auburn, New York will hold a hearing on May 5 to determine if eminent domain should be used to force the sale of a dog-grooming business in order to make way for the development of a new hotel. This is a classic example of just what the now-retired Justice O'Connor wrote about: the beneficiary of this fatally flawed ruling is a developer who has likely made substantial political donations to local and state officeholders, and who is promising higher tax revenues as a result of a new hotel being built in the city.  In the meantime, the owners of the dog grooming business are in shock. According to the Fox News report, the city of Auburn is offering the owners a "fair price" for their business. But "Ms. Smith-Ward blasts the offers as a "very insulting price for our property," and said she was stunned to learn that the city was considering seizing the business she and her husband Doug had sunk their life savings into only to hand their land over to someone else. She told Fox News she always thought eminent domain was "for power lines, roads, schools, hospitals and not for a private developer." "

There is another business--a pizza parlor--that has capitulated and agreed to sell to the city. Ironically, that business is owned by a former Communist from the Soviet Union who emigrated to the United States in the 1990's. She says she never knew there was such a law in the United States that could force a private property owner of a small business to sell out to a higher power and that it reminds her of what she grew up with in Communist Russia.

The truly frightening thing about this is that--if you own a home, a small business, a small farm--anything which is deemed subjectively by local officials as not serving the greater public good (whatever that means and however arbitrarily it's defined)--you can lose that property under the 2005 Kelo ruling. It is nothing short of an outrage. The Founding Fathers must be turning over in their graves.

Becoming A Constitutional Scholar

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”  Thomas Jefferson


Today--April 19--marks the 235th anniversary of The Shot Heard Round The World, when colonists from Massachusetts fired on British regulars on the Lexington green west of Boston and so fired the first shots of the Revolutionary War.


Beginning tomorrow--20 April 2010--you can participate in a great national call to join that patriotic effort and become a Constitutional scholar. Led by the actress Janine Turner (whose most prominent role was as the lead in the hit show Northern Exposure), a challenge has been placed before the American people to read and understand what our Founding Fathers wrought during those remarkable 17 weeks in the city of Philadelphia during the summer of 1787.


Never before had a nation been spoken forth from the minds and hearts of men elected for such a purpose. And today--some 225 years after its creation--the United States Constitution stands as both a symbolic as well as a practical model of individual freedom for nations around the world.


But our freedoms are being abrogated by the federal government--not just by the Obama Administration, but by the Supreme Court, the Bush Administration, the U.S. Congress, and the various agencies and bureaucracies that operate the government and enforce the laws that Congress makes with statutes which are increasingly overbearing, intrusive, and even confiscatory.


I will offer one simple example--and I will refrain from picking on the present Administration (though the examples after just fifteen months in office are legion): on June 22, 2005 the U.S. Supreme Court, in the case of Kelo vs. City of New London ruled in favor of the city's power to condemn a man's private property under eminent domain--not to build or widen a highway or to build a dam or some other public work--but in order to transfer private property from one private owner to another so that the latter--a developer--could build a downtown improvement project, including a waterfront development tract of 91 acres. (Ironically, five years after the ruling, the developer has been unable to get financing for the project and the site of the former Kelo property stands vacant and unoccupied--generating zero tax revenue for the city of New London.)

The Court ruled in a narrow 5-4 decision that the city of New London could condemn the property under the "Takings" Clause of the Fifth Amendment. So what would you have done if you were on the Court? Chances are you have no idea what the Takings Clause says. (Candid confession: As of this writing, I don't either.)


And that is exactly why the effort of Ms. Turner is so important. I urge you to go to the Constituting America website by clicking on this link: www.constitutingamerica.org .  Sign up on the right hand side. 


You can read the Constitution and the Federalist Papers (written most prominently by James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, as well as John Jay).  Reading assignments of about three pages per night will be assigned, and the readings will be discussed in an accompanying blog by invited Constitutional scholars.  And you can also participate, by simply offering your own thoughts in the public discussion section.


I invite you to join me in answering the call of Thomas Jefferson. Let us not be ignorant, or else we will no longer be free.

Willie Mays, The Man

They say the character of a man is displayed in what he does when no one else is watching. In an earlier post, I referred to a new, authorized biography of Mays entitled "Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend" by James S. Hirsch. As might be expected, the reader learns not only of Mays' on-field exploits, but also details of his private life. And one of the most endearing aspects of his life was (is) his genuine love for children.

In Chapter 25, the author tells of three heartwarming episodes that would likely not ever be repeated by any of today's athletes.

One morning in June 1961, two ten-year-old boys stood outside Willie Mays' home on Spruce Street in San Francisco, hoping he would give them his autograph. When Mays stepped outside, he gladly acceded to their wish, and then one of them--a boy named Billy Knox--got a wild idea.

"Hey, Willie", he said, "We got tickets to today's game and we were going to take the bus, but how about a ride to the game?" Mays told them to hop in.

As soon as they pulled out, the boys realized they had forgotten their tickets. "Where do you live?" Mays asked. Five blocks away, said Knox's friend, and Mays drove them there to get the tickets. Then Billy exclaimed "Willie! My mother made us bag lunches for the game. She'll kill me if we don't pick up our stuff, and she would worry where we were." Mays then drove across town to Billy's house.

"To this day", Knox recalls some forty years later, "I can still see my mom standing at our dining room picture window with her hands on her hips, mouth ajar, awestruck as the green Cadillac pulled out of our driveway and sped off."

In 1963, a writer for the Pittsburgh Press named Les Biederman asked Mays if he would speak to a group of youngsters at the Western Pennsylvania School for the Blind. Mays readily accepted. During the Giants' next trip to Pittsburgh, Biederman drove Mays to the school, and when he entered the auditorium whispers rippled through the crowd of about 200 students. "That's him", one boy said. "He really came."

Mays was introduced, and became--in Biederman's words--'the eyes of these sightless youngsters". Mays stood for over an hour and answered the kids' countless questions. After the talk, he waded into the crowd and touched the hands and arms of the students, who reached up to touch his face. "I gave them only my time and a little bit of baseball", he later said. "And they gave me their hearts".

In 1965, Richard Martin was a 24-year-old director of the St. James Center in Pittsburgh, an afterschool program for disadvantaged children. The center planned an awards ceremony for a Saturday in June and Martin, wanting a sports celebrity to present the awards, checked the schedule and saw that the Giants were going to be in town to play the hometown Pirates. He called Bill Nunn, the editor of the Pittsburgh Courier, who said he would contact Mays. The day before the Giants were coming into town, Nunn called and asked how many kids would be in attendance. "About two hundred", Martin replied. "Then he'll be there", said Nunn. "He just wanted to make sure it was really an event for the kids".

That Saturday, Martin drove to the hotel where the Giants were staying and called up to Mays' room. "Mr. Mays, this is Dick Martin...I believe Mr. Nunn spoke to you about our program tonight?"

"Yeah, man. I'll be right down", Mays replied. Ten minutes later, Mays introduced himself, wearing a sharkskin suit, and Martin drove him to an obscure youth center in an impoverished part of town. He sneaked Mays into the building through a fire escape and then instructed the astonished 14-year-old master of ceremonies--who nearly fainted--on how to introduce the guest of honor. "And now, to present the Most Valuable Junior and Senior Softball Awards, possibly the greatest player of all time...Willie Mays!"

The curtain opened, and Willie walked out. The audience at first sat in stunned silence. But when they realized it really was him, they shouted, whistled, cheered, and clapped for several minutes. Mays stepped to the microphone and said "Some people may think winning a softball award in a small neighborhood is no big thing. But I'm telling you that when you win the most valuable award in anything, you're doing something!" After presenting the awards--and knowing that Mays had another game the next day--Martin whisked him out and drove him back to the hotel.

Martin, who later became a teacher and school principal in Arlington, Virginia, recalled "I must have thanked him a dozen times for his exceptional generosity. One of the greatest athletes of all time did this for no money, no publicity, no conditions whatsoever. He did it just because he loved kids, plain and simple. What a selfless gesture, what an amazing human being."

In little more than three weeks--on May 6--Mays will turn 79. He was my boyhood hero. And he still is.