The RAnts of RA

Media falsely reporting spanking ban abandoned

Sacramento-Assemblywoman Sally Lieber (D- Mountain View) has, as promised, introduced a bill to ban parents from using physical force in disciplining their children.

AB 755 bans parents from using spanking as discipline for misbehavior.

According to the bill, a parent who spanks their child will be placed on probation for 4 years, would be forced to attend a “nonviolent parental education class” and the child would receive a criminal court protective order “protecting the victim from further acts of violence.”

“Media outlets are falsely reporting that the spanking ban has been dropped. In fact, the bill is still a ban on spanking,” stated Karen England, Executive Director of Capitol Resource Institute.

“Assemblywoman Lieber has claimed that she is no longer going to ban ‘spanking’. This is mere semantics as AB 755 on its face bans the use of force in disciplining a child.

This is a tactic often used by politicians to make their legislation seem benign when in fact it is still just as bad.”

“Parents often use a wooden spoon or ruler to spank their children. This legislation actually bans the use of ‘a stick, a rod, a switch, a belt’-tools often used by responsible parents in spanking disobedient children,” explained England. “As a parent, I am angered that the government is declaring my disobedient child “a victim” and intervening in the raising of my children.”

“AB 755 creates a ‘rebuttable presumption’ that when parents discipline their children, they are abusers,” explained Meredith Turney, Legislative Liaison for Capitol Resource Institute. “The government is basically telling parents that when they use responsible discipline in training their children, they are the criminals. Discipline is used to protect children from disobedient behavior that could harm them. It is appalling that the government is treating parents like criminals when there are dangerous sexual predators on our streets.”

“Assemblywoman Lieber is purposely misleading the citizens of California when she claims to have ‘abandoned’ the spanking ban. And the media have become her accomplices in this deception,” stated England. “Make no mistake, AB 755 is a serious attack on parental authority. We call on every responsible parent in California to contact their legislator and urge them to vote against AB 755.”

Read AB 755

Karen England
Capitol Resource Institute

1414 K Street
Suite 200
Sacramento, CA 95814
Phone: (916) 498-1940

Smoking is not a crime – yet, but if the American Lung Association has their way, it soon will be.

The American Lung Association has been on the rampage against what they deem, “Big Tobacco,” for several years now and show no signs of letting up any time soon. Unfortunately, it’s not “Big Tobacco” that they are going after this time, it’s the little guy – that’s you and me.

In their current campaign, they are trying to convince California Legislators to pass Assembly Bill 379, in order to “protect children.”

According to their website:

Help Reduce Smoking in Cars with Children

Assembly Bill 379 (Koretz, D-West Hollywood) will prohibit smoking in vehicles when young children are present, defined by those that are required to ride in child safety seats (six years of age or sixty pounds, whichever is first). Secondhand smoke has been determined to cause cancer, respiratory illness and trigger asthma attacks, to name just a few of the significant health impacts. AB 379 is important because the lungs of young children are at higher risk by secondhand smoke because their lungs are still developing physically, they have higher breathing rates than adults, and they have little control over their indoor environments, in this case, cars.

In January 2006, the California Air Resources Control Board declared secondhand smoke a toxic air contaminant, the first such designation by a state in the nation. Not only did CARB affirm the mountainous scientific evidence supporting the ill effects of secondhand smoke, the scientific findings quantified smoke concentrations in automobiles. One such finding indicated that average particulate concentrations in vehicles are up to 10 times higher than the average particulate concentrations found in the homes of smokers.

A Field Research Corporation Poll (“Field Poll”) commissioned the American Lung Association of California found that 65 percent of California voters support enacting a law that would prohibit smoking in cars with young children present. Thirty percent opposed and five percent had no opinion.

There are several things wrong with this campaign.

First and most importantly, passing this bill is not their goal, it’s a means to an end. The ultimate goal is to make smoking any where, for any reason – illegal. If you remember your history books, you’ll recall that prohibition didn’t work against alcohol and making smoking illegal isn’t going to work either. It only serves to increase the governments coffers and steal more money from the middle class.

Second, most people no longer smoke in their cars because it decreases the resale value of the vehicle. Those who do choose to smoke in their vehicles hold the cigarette near the window or smoke with the windows all the way down, making the smoke reaching the backseat negligible. Instead of banning cigarette smoking in vehicles, shouldn’t we simply ban children from riding in them? After all vehicle emmissions are far worse for children than secondhand smoke.

This bill is a blatant attempt to increase funding for the state of California and has nothing to do with protecting children.

There are plenty of unbiased studies, which prove that quoted industry studies are fabricated and weighted on the side of the anti-smoking crowd, but of course, if you say something long enough, people tend to believe it.

Don’t be fooled by this, this is just another freedom anti-smokers are trying to take away. Next, they will be taking children away from mothers and father because they smoke. Oh, wait, they are already doing that in California.

If this is supposed to be the land of the FREE, I’d just like to have one question answered. Exactly, What are we FREE to do?

Encourage your legislators to Vote NO on AB 379.

Second-hand Smoke Facts

• The Facts About Second Hand Smoke
• Passive Smoke
• Does second-hand smoke really cause cancer?
• Secondhand Smoke Study Raises Ire

By: Assemblyman Ray Haynes

Liberals in Sacramento are missing the target again. At a time when people are upset and fearful of serious sex offenders that are being placed in group homes in their neighborhood with little or no oversight, the Democrats in the legislature have once again rallied around their favorite ‘tough on crime’ issue and declared war on… bullets!

Despite the lack of evidence that any of their goofy gun control laws have ever stopped a single murder, and despite the fact that they have already succeeded in banning scary “assault weapons”, allegedly unsafe “Saturday night specials”, and the imaginary menace of “50 caliber sniper rifles,”
they have dug deeper this year to invent new ways to harass gun owners in California.

There are four major gun control bills moving through the legislature. Two are major threats to the future of gun ownership in California. One that is mostly just annoying (AB 944) adds a bogus new warning
to the six warnings already required by law. Relying on discredited studies, it claims that the “State… has determined that” among other things “it is safest not to keep a gun in the home.” I guess that means you’re okay if you keep it in your purse or car?

The second more limited bill (AB 996) requires all handgun ammunition to be kept inaccessible to the public, but doesn’t explain how this is to be done. It could require all of it to be under lock and key. It could require it to be merely behind the counter. It could require specific lock requirements like the state now does for handguns.

No statistics indicate that theft of ammo is a major problem in this state, and at $10-$50 per box, don’t retailers already have sufficient incentive to prevent theft? Some of the larger gun stores have rows of ammunition for sale in a wide variety of weights, bullet types, and grains of powder, under different manufacturer labels at differing prices. Keeping it all behind the counter under lock and key will be nearly unworkable for some stores.

The two bills that seem designed to stop the sale of firearms and ammunition in California are AB 352 and SB 357. Apparently written by someone who has watched too many episodes of CSI, both of these bills attempt to add high tech identifying marks to bullets to make it easier for the police to solve crimes.

AB 352 sets up a cockamamie, laser-etched, micro-stamping system inside the firing pins and chambers of handguns that would mark the ejected shell casings with the make, manufacture, and serial number of the firearm. From a law-enforcement perspective, it will only provide even greater incentives for the bad guys to steal guns that won’t be registered (which is what they usually do anyways).

It would also allow killers to collect marked casings at shooting ranges and then scatter them at crime scenes to confuse the police and cause law-abiding citizens to be harassed and questioned by the police. Oh yeah, and it is completely useless on revolvers. This will also require manufacturers to completely retrofit equipment and factories to make handguns that will only be sold in California. My guess that many won’t bother and will just leave the market here.

SB 357 will require every bullet in California to have an identifying number that will be traceable to the purchaser with a complicated and expensive bullet registration system.

Anyone who keeps his old ammo, or casts his own bullets would be subject to expensive fines. People (including one of my own staff members!) would have to dispose of hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of unmarked ammo to comply with the new law. With 8 billion rounds of ammunition manufactured world-wide per year, and some factories turning out a million rounds a day, how can they verify that 50 rounds in a single box have the exact same serial numbers? And how do they keep them from being switched later?

The industry suggests they’d have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars building special factories, just to sell handgun ammunition in California. Furthermore, while stealing ammunition (as discussed in AB 996) hasn’t been a problem before, if this bill passes it will create an immediate hot new black market for out-of-state and stolen ammunition. Is that really what they want?

I’m afraid what they want is to make gun ownership for recreational and personal protection purposes impossible in California, as manufacturers and retailers continue to flee the state.

But while these gun bills have passed the floor in their house of origin, bills to extend parole periods and require GPS tracking of sex offenders (SB 1044), prevent felons from owning sex offender group homes (SB 1046), keep sex offender group homes away from schools (SB 1051), and create a one-strike punishment for certain sex crimes against children (SB 448) have been defeated or stalled in Sacramento by the Democrat majority.

Do you feel safer yet?

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