SACRAMENTO, CA -- California’s capitol building is a magnificent structure and a tourist draw, but that may
come to a screeching halt because the white, domed building is now a suspect in multiple deaths.

Over the past 12 years, six state lawmakers have died of cancer, and former Assembly Speaker Willie Brown,
now mayor of San Francisco, thinks the culprit is the capitol building itself. Mayor Brown has asked Senate
President Pro Tem John Burton for a full epidemiological survey.

The capitol cancer scare is a perfect example of post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning. The legislators
contracted cancer after working in the building, therefore the building caused cancer. By this standard,
their private residences would also seem to be suspect. Like cell phones and electrical wires, buildings have
not been revealed as a leading cause of cancer. Dr. Lois Gold, director of the Carcinogenic Potency Project
at UC Berkeley, thinks the likelihood of a building causing these deaths is remote, to say the least. But
while they search for any buried toxics, citizens of the Golden State should consider a different thesis.

The ideas and practices that emerge from the capitol, in both Sacramento and Washington, cause noticeable
harm to large numbers of people. Take, for example, the unchallenged dogma that elected officials are so wise
they know the needs of citizens better than the citizens themselves.

That emerged last year during the debate on the state’s $4 billion budget surplus. Proposals to return this
money to the taxpayers who provided it in the first place sparked cries of outrage from, among others,
Senator John Burton, who called the $4 billion a "score." Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa said
that the people get the money back through government spending programs, a pose of noblesse oblige_ that
would befit a medieval bandit king. The Speaker, like politicians on both sides of the aisle, believes the
government has a prior claim to what people earn. And this is not mere theory.

The government gets citizens’ money before they do in the form of withholding, a practice that dates to
wartime but was conveniently retained. This practice fuels the notion that elected officials are not only
wiser, but know how to spend citizens’ money better than the citizens themselves. Instead of eliminating
the car tax, a regressive levy on personal property that hurts the state’s poor, legislators cut it a
paltry 25 percent. And there is no move to reduce a punitive sales tax which also punishes the poor,
particularly on the purchase of big-ticket items like cars and appliances, and which gives the state more
than seven percent of every transaction.

Legislators are also comfortable with the idea that they, not parents, should choose the schools their
children attend. As recent tests confirm, California’s public schools are failing to teach children to read.
By refusing to give parents choice, legislators trap children, particularly those in the inner cities, in
failing schools that leave them harmed for life.

Unlike the Capitol cancer scare, these are examples of ideas that are already causing harm to many citizens.
Legislators should fix these problems before they pass any new laws. A shutdown of the legislature while they
check for toxics is only a temporary solution.

--K. Lloyd Billingsley