Among everything that caught my eye today and stirred my soul with joy or moral anger, here are three important news stories for families in California and beyond to understand.

Exit the “sexting” schools
Every 7th grader knew what ‘sexting’ meant
Every seventh-grader at a Yolo County middle school raised their hands when asked if they knew what sexting meant. Sexting involves sending, receiving or forwarding sexually suggestive or explicit messages or photos through text message, the Internet or other electronic media.

When I saw this story about children in public schools near Sacramento, I knew it was yet another reason to rescue your children from the immoral peer pressure in California’s government system. See more reasons and develop a rescue plan at our special website, RescueYourChild.com. And while you’re at it, if you’ve given your child a cell phone, make it a real basic one with no texting or internet or picture sharing.

Will tax-and-fee-hike Democrats achieve a 2/3rds supermajority?
It’s wait and see to determine whether enough voter signatures have been gathered to qualify a California ballot referendum to reject unfair state senate districts. If successful, the referendum would head off statewide tax-and-fee-hikes by denying Democrats a 2/3rds legislative majority that they’re likely to get under the gerrymandered maps produced by the liberal-dominated California Citizens Redistricting Commission.

Between Thursday and Sunday, 710,924 RAW signatures were turned in to elections officials in 57 California counties. However, the “Fair Districts” campaign needed at least 750,000 raw signatures to feel reasonably certain of qualifying. Referendums or statutory initiatives that qualify for the ballot through the “full check” process of counting signatures do so with at least a 70% validity rate, yielding at least 504,760 VALID signatures. Many fall short of 70%. And you don’t get higher than 70% unless you use a top-notch signature-gathering firm that pre-validates signatures. Doing the math, 710,924 raw signatures x 70% = 497,646 valid signatures, which would fail to qualify. May this one’s validity rate be somehow higher!

This teaches a hard lesson. To succeed at a California ballot initiative or referendum, you must first have rock-solid language that will legally accomplish all you’ve intended because it is written to withstand a judge’s “misinterpretation.” Second, you must raise major funds (at least $1 million) and plan to raise these funds early, or else you fail to qualify. Look at the SB 48 referendum drive over the summer. Organizers said they gathered less than 500,000 RAW signatures, falling short 250,000 or more raw signatures that were needed to successfully qualify. Without funds for professional signature gathering, that effort gathered far fewer signatures than the Fair Districts referendum drive, which, sadly, might not qualify at all.

However, if somehow the Fair Districts referendum campaign has an unexpected high validity rate and indeed qualifies for the ballot, we will all have a much better chance of stopping burdensome tax and fee increases upon California families. The California Constitution now requires a two-thirds vote of both houses of the Legislature to raise either taxes or fees. So, with the help of the gerrymandered maps of the “citizens commission,” Democrat politicians — hungry for more “revenues” because they refuse to cut the wasteful, fraudulent habits of the government unions or the bureaucracy — are trying to win at least two more seats in each house in next year’s election. The absence of a Fair Districts victory would give the Democrats a greater chance of achieving a 2/3rds veto-proof supermajority, empowering them to impose tax-and-fee hikes willy-nilly on both families and job-providing businesses.

Read more: 710,924 Signatures for Overturning Senate Map. And Yet…
See the fact: SaveCalifornia.com’s 2009 Waste Report

Californians, stop voting stupid
If you know the real value of something and the seller agrees to sell it at his cost, you have an idea of what honest government looks like. Honest government does not make a “profit” off its owners, the People, which would be tantamount to an employee stealing from its owner.

But if a seller hides the real value of a product or service, jacks up his “costs” to astronomical levels, and then deceives you into buying his lie so you get poorer in the process, you understand why California’s state government is corrupt and many local governments too.

Instead of cutting massive structural waste that people can’t see, corrupt city officials and government unions are deceitfully saying police and fire services, library services, water, storm drain, and trash services, you name it, won’t be provided unless taxes and fees are hiked, or expensive bonds are approved. Don’t believe it and always vote against the deception of higher taxes/more bonds, which is the unjustified taking of more money from We the People.

Unfortunately, because most California voters are either ignorant or stupid about this (can you say public school “education”?), 40 of 53 tax hikes, fee hikes, and bond-raising schemes were passed last week by voters in California cities, counties, and government school districts.

The voters’ lack of critical thinking has encouraged Democrat Governor Jerry Brown. If he doesn’t achieve a 2/3rds supermajority of Democrat legislators next year to raise taxes and fees, Brown believes he might persuade ignorant or stupid voters to approve it on the ballot.

ACTION: Take a personal pledge to oppose all proposed tax hikes, fee hikes, and bond borrowing schemes, which give more of your hard-earned money to those who habitually waste money.

Read more about Jerry Brown’s tax-hike dreams

“No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and Virtue is preserved. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders.”
Samuel Adams, “Father of the American Revolution,” in 1775