California (State) senator wants to drop Cold War communist laws

AP on Bakersfield Californian ^ | 3/30/08 | Steve Lawrence - ap

[NormsRevenge]

Sen. Alan Lowenthal thinks it's about time that California removes some of the last vestiges of the Cold War from its laws.

The Long Beach Democrat has introduced a bill that would scrap statutes allowing teachers and other public employees to be fired for being members of the Communist Party.

The measure, scheduled to be considered Wednesday by the Senate Education Committee, also would drop a requirement that representatives of organizations seeking to use school facilities sign a form stating they do not have communist affiliations.

Lowenthal said the measure would drop old laws that were adopted at the height of the Red Scare following World War II and that have been found unconstitutional by the courts.

"Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the threat between us and communism just isn't there...," he said in an interview. "They are not a danger to our liberty, and the courts have uniformly said that."

But some conservative groups and bloggers have sharply criticized the measure, contending it would lead to the indoctrination of students.

"Less than 20 years after the fall of the communist Soviet Union, California lawmakers are eager to once again begin advancing a political ideology responsible for the deaths of millions of innocent people," Karen England, executive director of Capitol Resource Family Impact, said in a statement.

"Instead of promoting communism in our schools, lawmakers should be focused on actually teaching students to read, write and think for themselves."

The bill still would allow a public employee to be fired for advocating the violent overthrow of the government. That's a tactic the Communist Party USA has disavowed, said John Casey, Lowenthal's chief of staff.

Lowenthal also amended the bill to leave intact a portion of the law that allows a teacher to be fired for trying to give students "a preference for communism."

"That seems to be the part of the bill that caused people the most headaches and was not the part of the bill that Alan had the most interest in," Casey said.

Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, R-Irvine, introduced legislation last year that would have dropped the old anti-communist provisions from the statutes but allowed the firing of public employees who supported terrorist groups.

It was rejected, 7-0, by the Education Committee after the American Civil Liberties Union and California Teachers Association argued that it violated the First Amendment.

Here are some of the other bills facing action this week:

DOWNER CATTLE - On Tuesday, the Assembly Public Safety Committee will consider a bill by Assemblyman Paul Krekorian, D-Burbank, that would prohibit slaughterhouses from selling meat from nonambulatory cattle for human consumption. The hearing comes after an undercover video shot at a Chino slaughterhouse led to the largest beef recall in U.S. history. The video showed workers dragging sick cows with metal chains and forklifts, shocking them with electric prods and shooting them with streams of water.

UNLISTED PHONES - Sen. Sheila Kuehl, D-Santa Monica, has a bill that would ban telephone companies from charging customers additional fees to have unlisted numbers. It's scheduled to be considered Tuesday by the Senate Energy, Utilities and Communications Committee.

CLONED FOOD - Sen. Carole Migden, D-San Francisco, is making another attempt to require food made from the meat of cloned animals to be labeled accordingly. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed the bill last year, arguing that states are prohibited by federal law from requiring food labels. This year's version of the measure is scheduled to be considered Wednesday by the Senate Health Committee.

DRUG TESTING - A bill by Assemblyman John Benoit, R-Riverside, would require random drug testing for welfare recipients. Benoit says the bill was proposed by a Riverside high school student, R.J. Feild, who suffers from spastic triplegic cerebral palsy brought on by his mother's use of illegal drugs while she was pregnant and on public assistance. It's scheduled to be taken up Tuesday by the Assembly Human Services Committee.

[DoughtyOne]

Well it’s a thought at any rate.

[Cringing Negativism Network]

First: eliminate so-called “tenure”.

Communist teachers can jolly well prove their worth each day at work, just like all the rest of us.

[No Dems 2004]

Sounds like this senator is a bit of a communist himself!

[nw_arizona_granny]

Thanks for your post, I had not visited the site in a long time, very updated, same old hate for America.

[LantzALot]

Alan Lowenthal, get out of my life!

In the years leading up to 1998, Lowenthal was part of the Long Beach City council which decided that the best use of the land formerly occupied by the U.S. Navy was to hand it over to COSCO (China Overseas Shipping Company.)

As I was in the process of moving from Long Beach to San Pedro in November 1998, he personally appeared at my door asking for my vote for State Assembly. I informed him that I was moving from Long Beach to San Pedro, and he responded that the Assembly District included San Pedro. Sure enough, it was one of those gerrymandered districts with the two cities connected by a small strip of waterfront land. In short, it was “contiguous – at low tide.”

While in the Assembly, he proudly removed the toll from the Vincent Thomas Bridge. That saved me 50 cents on those occasions when I might use the Bridge to visit Long Beach. It also freed the container truck traffic to use my side of town to exit the port.

Term limits got him out of my Assembly seat and into the State Senate. When term limits force him out of the Senate, where will he go? If there’s no political appointment available, he has an open seat at Cal State University Long Beach – that bastion of academia which legitimized a convicted felon turned avowed Marxist, Ron Karenga – an adopted name meaning “nationalist” – and thus gave us a made-up holiday called “Kwanzaa.”

Karenga is now gone from CSULB. Does Lowenthal want to replace him as “House Marxist?” This legislation would guarantee him a lot of freedom.