Contributor

John Campbell

John Campbell (R-Irvine) is an Assemblyman representing the 70th District in Orange County. Mr. Campbell is the Vice-Chairman of the Assembly Budget Committee. He is the only CPA in the California State legislature and recently received a national award as Freshman Republican Legislator of the Year. He represents the cities of Newport Beach, Laguna Beach, Irvine, Costa Mesa, Tustin, Aliso Viejo, Laguna Woods and Lake Forest. He can be reached through his Assembly website and through the website for his California Senate campaign.

Bake Sale, Pay-to-Play and Megan's Law
It keeps coming...
[John Campbell] 10/3/03

Bake Sale

Members of the College Republicans at the University of California at Irvine (UCI) last week had a bake sale on campus. But unlike other bake sales, this one charged different prices for the doughnuts based on the buyer's race and gender. For example, white males paid $1 per doughnut but other ethnicities were charged only 75 cents for the same doughnut. The obvious intent of this sale was to highlight the discriminatory practices of the University of California and other state agencies which collect ethnic data on everyone under the guise of "affirmative action."

However, this apparently hit a little too close to home for university administrators. Representatives from MEChA, the radical group to which Cruz Bustamante belonged which advocates returning the southwestern U.S. to Mexico and expelling all non-Chicanos, complained. Administrators said that the bake sale violated the school's anti discrimination policies, and shut it down.

So, our taxpayer supported university shut down a display which was merely practicing the same sort of official discrimination in which the UC system itself participates. Can you imagine them shutting down a MEChA display advocating expulsion of non-Chicanos from California? They would undoubtedly protect that as free speech. The double standard and hypocrisy is still alive and well at some university campuses. Three cheers for the courageous members of the UCI College Republicans for standing up against discrimination, hypocrisy and their university administrators!

Pay to Play

Governor Davis has been at it again, in case anyone had thought he has changed. The budget contained $900 million he was supposed to "save" by renegotiating union contracts. To date, such "savings" achieved total less than $200 million. And that "savings" includes such things as the terrible PEG (Professional Engineers in Government) contract where they "gave up" a 5% one year pay raise in exchange for a 30% permanent increase in benefits. Great deal for the union bosses, bad deal for the taxpayers.

I voted against this proposal (AB 977) but it passed anyway. Now we find that Davis was soliciting recall campaign contributions from the very unions with whom he was negotiating these contracts while he was negotiating them.

He has received $2.7 million from these and other unions for his recall effort. The "coin operated governor" is still in full operation.

Megan's Law

In an unusual late September session, the Assembly voted 78-0 this week to extend Megan's law for 3 more years. This law, intended to give parents information on the whereabouts of known sexual predators, is weaker in California than in 42 other states. Republicans proposed to put the information, including pictures and the actual address of the predator, on the Internet. Additionally, I authored a bill that would have completely removed the sunset provision of Megan's law, as well as allowed parents to view all of the sexual offenders within a 1/2 mile radius of their home.

While this may seem like common sense to most of us, Democrats prevented this language from being in the final solution and refused to give parents appropriate information on the whereabouts of sexual predators. So, for your protection the address of your licensed contractor is on the Internet, but somehow putting the address of a child molester is an invasion of privacy. An initiative is now being launched to again allow the people to do what their Legislature will not do.