Editor’s note: Michael Ackley’s columns may include satire and parody based on current events, and thus mix fact with fiction. He assumes informed readers will be able to tell which is which.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, confirming his reputation as a social liberal, has endorsed California ballot Proposition 71, which would put the state into the business of embryonic stem-cell and human-cloning research.
The measure would “establish a right to conduct stem-cell research,” including cells harvested from “surplus products of in vitro fertilization,” and it would authorize a bond issue to provide $295 million a year for 10 years to finance such research.
Of course, the state will need a bureaucracy to oversee the funds, so the proposition would establish an “institute” to evaluate projects and dole out the money, and an Independent Citizen’s Oversight Committee to oversee the overseers.
Financial safeguards would be put in place, such as one assuring “reasonable payment” “for the purchase of stem cells or stem cell lines.”
Ethical standards include the stipulations that human-cloning research be for medical purposes only, not reproduction, and that research “be subject to accepted patient disclosure and patient consent standards.” As usual, voiceless human life will not qualify as patients.
Fiscal conservatives may be uncomfortable with all this, but the authors of Prop. 71 emphasize that the new law would help “improve the California health-care system and reduce the long-term health-care cost burden on California through the development of therapies that treat diseases and injuries with the ultimate goal to cure them.”
The fact this thing has been leading in recent polls may be attributed to celebrity endorsements and to a lesser degree to the authors’ ability to make eight pages of small-print legalese sound like a common-sense investment in health. And never mind that it will make us all sick at the core.
Meanwhile, the governor’s wife, Maria Schriver, is proving true to her Democratic Party roots by mucking around with the California State History Museum. According to published reports, she has prevailed on a majority of the museum’s board of trustees to rename the facility the California Women’s History Museum. Three trustees, two men and a woman, have resigned.
One, Tom Stallard, said, “I find it unfortunate that we’re giving up the focus on California history. History is now the subtext and women the major theme, and it should be the other way around.”
Kerry’s logic: Sen. John Kerry opposes abortion on religious grounds, but would not “impose” those religious views on the nation.
We must suppose, therefore, that if one opposed abortion on non-religious grounds, it would be OK to impose such views on the country, as they would not conflict with the First Amendment. For example: It has been shown abortion can have serious, adverse effects on the mental and physical health of both women and men, which could have a serious impact on public health, with attendant costs to the state. If we can reduce those costs through strictures on abortion, we should do so. (See stem cell, cloning research, above.)
One wonders where Kerry would stand on other religiously based social concepts, such as “thou shalt not kill” and “thou shalt not steal.” Of course, we already know where he and his running mate stand on “thou shalt not bear false witness.”
A twinge of nostalgia: Forty years ago, the press reminds me, I was a bewildered junior at the University of California, Berkeley, wondering why students had surrounded a police car on the bricks of Sproul Plaza.
It was the beginning of the Free Speech Movement, and the car had been surrounded because a civil-rights activist named Jack Weinberg had just been arrested for handing out leaflets, in defiance of a campus ban on political activity.
As occurred in 1964, students scrambled onto a police car to give speeches, this time taking care to remove their shoes, so as not to crush the roof, as happened four decades ago.
Last week, at the 40th anniversary FSM re-enactment, the police department provided a squad car to serve as a platform.
It all would have been more touching if today’s dominant campus culture were truly committed to diversity of opinion.
Class action scams
John Stossel