Of Cabbages and Kings and Kooks
California's liberals legislating…
[by Ray Haynes] 9/12/05

Do you wonder what the California Legislature is doing? I feel like I’ve fallen through the Looking Glass. They are doing everything but what needs to be done.

It is the last day of session, and you are hours away from being safe from the intrusive hand of government. But before they dismiss session your Legislature has to inflict as much damage as possible. The last week of session is always insane, with the Legislators violating all of their own rules, breaking numerous laws, ignoring the Constitution, and doing whatever it takes to get what they want, no matter what the people of this state want.

This week, the Legislature argued about what kinds of foods were natural or nutritious, whether illegal aliens should get driver’s licenses, whether men could marry men, and whether or not rich movie producers should get welfare.

Of course, none of these issues had anything to do with the real problems of California. Our houses cost too much, our freeways are overcrowded, our budget is out of balance, and we are running out of water, gasoline and electricity. Yet the Legislature has expended hundreds of hours, spent hundreds of millions of dollars, used up hundreds of thousands of pages of paper, (killing tons of trees) to accomplish absolutely nothing of consequence for the people of this State.

We argued about whether cling peaches were nutritious for our children. The Democrats said there is too much sugar. We should only use fresh fruit so our kids won’t get fat. They wanted to spend 10 cents per student per day to make sure each student ate at least one piece of fruit. I’ve got an idea, why don’t we spend that 10 cents on a telephone call to their parents and ask them to buy an apple for their child, and make sure they eat it. Why spend government money on it, or debate about what specific fruit they ought to eat? Perhaps the time could have been better spent discussing what how to actually improve our failing educational system.

Hours were spent arguing about driver’s licenses for illegal aliens. Now that was rich. Foreign nationals break our laws, and the response of the liberals in our Legislature is to give them a driver’s license and $4 to $5 billion welfare per year. And then we wonder why our borders are out of control. History has no meaning for these folks. Have they forgotten that this was why Governor Davis was recalled? Did they not hear you when you signed petitions to qualify a referendum to repeal it the first time it was signed?

Next, we argued about whether men could marry men (or women marry women). Over and over, they stressed it was about ‘love.’ The fact that nearly 62% of the people in this state voted for Proposition 22 to define marriage as between a man and a woman is irrelevant in their eyes. We don’t know what this will do to marriage, or to our children, or to our society in general, but that didn’t stop the Legislature from passing it. Fix our freeways, not today. It’s more important to pass same-sex marriage. Fortunately, the Governor has at least indicated he’ll veto this one.

And let’s not forget that we gave welfare to rich movie producers. Now, I like tax breaks as much as the next guy, but giving movie producers tax dollars seems a little over the top. It takes care of a bunch of liberals in Los Angeles, but doesn't do a whole lot for the rest of us. So much for our pro-business Legislature. I guess you just have to be the right kind of business. Everyone else can go to Nevada if they want to be profitable.

Cling peaches, illegal aliens, gay marriage, and movie producer welfare. These are the things that your Legislature thinks are important to you, these and thousands of other intrusive, socialistic bills, which find new ways to take your money and redistribute it to their political supporters, keeping them in power.

That is your Legislature at work. While the Governor is busy trying to fix the state budget, control the government unions, break the liberal’s power in Sacramento, and improve education, the liberals are trying to figure out how to mess up California even more. Soon you will be able to sleep well, they won’t be in Sacramento, at least not until next January, when I assure you the process will repeat itself. CRO

Mr. Haynes is a California Assembleyman representing Riverside and Temecula and frequent contributor to CaliforniaRepublic.org.

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