Posted on by Californiacontrarian

The Same Rules for Everyone

Let’s say for the sake of discussion that a family has four kids. It would seem obvious that in order to maintain a sense of fairness and order that the rules would have to be the same or at least very similar for all of the children. For instance when a child reaches middle school, he/she gets a cell phone so that he/she can inform the parents of where he/she is. Starting at age sixteen a child may get a driver’s license, providing that he/she can pay a predetermined portion of the auto-insurance. Each child’s curfew is set by the age of that child . . . for instance at age fifteen, the curfew is 9:00 and at age sixteen the curfew is 10:00, etc. Now let’s expand that to a family of ten children . . . all the more important to have the same rules for everybody. Now imagine if the family had fifty children . . . mind boggling, but all the more important that everyone play by the same rules. If one “independent” child decided to make his/her own rules, then the result would be chaos! Welcome to the U.S.A. family and the recalcitrant child, California.
The latest temper tantrum by the recalcitrant child involves the new E.P.A. standards for automobile gas mileage. Despite the fact that these new standards have not been officially announced by the E.P.A., the independent teenager is already protesting.
“I find this to be an outrageous intrusion,” said Diane Feinstein. “We will take this fight to the courts . . .” Obviously Ms. Feinstein is now in full campaign mode, even though the E.P.A. spokesperson has refused to comment on the details of the draft plan!
As a sidelight, Neil Gorsuch gained a lot of respect from me when he agreed with the four liberal justices in a ruling just last week. With this decision, Judge Gorsuch established himself as an independent thinker. In the recent past have any of the four liberal Supreme Court justices ever split from the other three, and voted with the conservative justices? “No, not that I am aware of.” This obviously says a lot about their ability to think independently. At some point is it possible that California could actually gain some respect from the rest of the family by considering a Trump administration proposal before reflexively objecting to it?
It seems pretty obvious that California feels strongly that it should be able to decide its own fate and follow its own rules in just about everything – no matter what the parents (Federal government) say. Would the state follow its own train of logic and allow me to follow my own set of rules? “No! That would lead to chaos.” What if my city, or my county wanted to follow its own set of rules, would the state of California say, “Okay, my obstreperous son, do what you want. It’s okay with me.”? or would it say, “Not a chance, as that would lead to chaos!”
If a state can choose which federal laws it chooses to obey, can a citizen, city, or county also choose to do the same?

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