August 28, 2006

 Selling Commercials On The California ChannelMONDAY

If you haven’t done so, you should take a few minutes and watch the California Channel. It is the Legislature’s response to C-SPAN.

Every weekday between 9:00 a.m. and 3:30 p.m., you can watch the proceedings of the Senate, the Assembly, and their respective committees, and find out what is really happening in your California state government.

Of course, it competes with game shows, soap operas, Oprah and Dr. Phil, so it doesn’t have the highest ratings in the world. Not many people can sit through the droning, pontificating, blathering and pandering that go on in most legislative venues.

What’s a bunch of politicians to do? Game shows are famous for their giveaways to people who answer silly, obscure questions. People watch them to fantasize about how they could win those prizes themselves, and try to answer the questions as they are being asked. Oprah and Dr. Phil bring on people of some kind of interest, either lurid or sympathetic, and talk to them about their problem and how to solve it. Soap operas get their ratings by talking about their characters’ lives over and over again.

All of these shows make lots of money selling commercials because of their "intrigue," and the ratings that intrigue generates. The poor California Channel just has droning politicians debating obscure points ad nauseum until even the reporters that are paid to watch these tedious proceedings are put to sleep by boredom.

Until this week. Life got pretty exciting this week at the Legislature. Two bills generated some real drama on the floor of the Assembly.

The first was AJR 51, a resolution to Congress by the Speaker of the Assembly, Fabian Nunez, calling on Congress to enact "intelligent, comprehensive and balanced" immigration reform. In other words, to provide amnesty to those in this country illegally today. The resolution goes on to say that the House of Representatives, controlled by Republicans, "unfortunately" passed HR 4437, which "can only be characterized as mean-spirited, short-sighted, and anti-immigrant." It called upon Congress to "stand up to the extremists’ voices" (that is, those voices that want to enforce our immigration laws, and call those who violate those laws criminals). The resolution called upon Congress to reject any legislation that seeks to criminalize illegal entry into our country, and any other policy that seeks to "divide us."

Republicans didn’t take to kindly to being called extremists, mean-spirited, and the like, and pointed out that Congress wouldn’t take to kindly to that sort of name-calling either. The Speaker, in a fit of anger, called the Republicans who didn’t like those words "f----ing" nitpickers, and slammed the door of his office loud enough for it to be heard throughout the building. So much for tolerance and unity.

Then the next day, on SB 1827, by Senator Carole Migden, a bill to allow domestic partners the opportunity to file their tax returns as if they were married, another brouhaha broke out. The Assembly started discussing in detail their individual sex lives, and how much those sex lives affected their life, and claimed that any criticism of their bedroom behavior offended them.

They got so mad that the entire Democrat caucus stormed off the floor to have a private meeting about how mad they were that Republicans didn’t want to know or hear about their sexual practices.

This is real dramatic stuff. I can only assume that we are engaging in this behavior because the state wants to make some money off of the California Channel by selling commercials, and the Legislators have to do something to attract an audience. Now all we need is a game show—"Name That Budget Line Item" or something like that. Our ratings will really soar. The franchise rights alone could be worth millions. I’m sure our public schools and public labor unions would really appreciate the extra money.

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http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/opinion/homepage/article_1250984.php

08-23-06

In 1966, California voters created a full-time Legislature after Speaker Jesse Unruh promised dazzlingly "professional" lawmakers instead of part-timers earning $6,000 yearly. By this year's end, legislators will earn $145,097 in wages and per diem, costing roughly $200 million annually, yet taxpayers get a dubious "product" in return: mountains of pointless laws. We are drowning in 47,000 new laws enacted since 1966, covering everything from the size of typeface on official notices on employee bulletin boards to the arcane timing dictating when you must use your windshield wipers.

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http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/opinion/editorials/article_1250975.php

08-23-06

If Californians don't watch out, the state economy could slide into another malaise, like in the early 1990s or early 2000s. The latest damage comes from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's agreement with Democratic leaders in the Legislature to boost the state minimum wage to $8 an hour from $6.75, a 19 percent increase. The wage would rise by 75 cents in 2007 and by 50 cents in 2008.

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Confused about why Californians so desperately need to pass statewide property-rights protections? Then turn your attention to the city of Brea, which is involved in a long-running and disturbing process to use regulations to greatly diminish the value of private property. The city doesn't plan to pay the owners of the property anything even as it moves forward on a plan to deprive owners of much of the developable value of the land.

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http://www.sacbee.com/content/politics/columns/walters/story/14303473p-15178665c.html

08-21-06

Redrawing their own districts to fix elections and insulate themselves from voters' whims is generally and accurately regarded to be the most cynically self-serving act that state legislators can perform. However, strangling redistricting reform after months of pledging to place it before voters and thus elevate the level of lawmakers' civic standing may be even worse -- and that's exactly what California's legislative leaders did late last week.

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http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060824/news_lz1ed24top.html

08-24-06

The argument that wealthy individuals and well-heeled special interests have too much influence over government has won near-universal acceptance. The problem is what to do about it. At both the state and federal level, much-hyped measures such as Proposition 34 and the McCain-Feingold bill have achieved close to nothing. Given this backdrop, voters should be wary of any new proposal billed as a short-cut to a healthier political culture.

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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-border25aug25,1,3385166.story?coll=la-headlines-nation

08-25-06

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his counterparts from Texas, Arizona and New Mexico made stopping illegal immigration a central theme at their annual meeting Thursday with governors from Mexico's border states. The focus on illegal immigration at a gathering typically dominated by nonconfrontational topics such as boosting trade and cleaning up the environment underscored the increasing desire of American politicians to show that they are doing something to address the issue in an election year.

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http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060821/news_1n21tracking.html

08-21-06

The state has spent $70 million on a high-tech student information system during the last decade, but the goal of analyzing test scores and other data to improve the education system is still years away. California has fallen far behind other large states with sophisticated student tracking systems, such as Texas and Florida, and cannot accurately calculate a basic fact about school performance: the dropout rate.

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http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-housing22aug22,1,3075649.story?coll=la-headlines-california

08-22-06

California had the second-highest increase in the number of housing units of any state last year, adding 181,997 new dwellings, the Census Bureau reported. The data released Monday underscore population shifts as people increasingly move west and to Sunbelt states. Florida had the most new homes built, and Texas was third in the most recent reporting year, from July 2004 to July 2005.

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http://www.pe.com/localnews/opinion/editorials/stories/PE_OpEd_Opinion_D_op_21_ed_offenders2.2df5395.html

08-21-06

Keeping a closer watch on California's high-risk and violent sexual-predator population should be a top state law-enforcement priority. To that end, Gov. Schwarzenegger and legislators would do well to adopt the advice of the state's High Risk Sex Offender Task Force. A special task force of the Department of Corrections on Tuesday issued a report proposing 10 reforms for managing more than 3,200 paroled high-risk sex offenders (see www.cdcr.ca.gov).

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http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/news/abox/article_1249055.php

08-21-06

How much Christianity is too much for the University of California? That's a question being asked these days, in a federal lawsuit that has pitted Christian schools against admissions officials at UC who decide which high school courses are eligible to be college prerequisites. The issue revolves around decisions by the University of California to reject three Christian-themed courses at a high school in Murrieta and several textbooks by two well-known Christian textbook publishers.

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http://www.leginfo.ca.gov

Assemblyman Haynes’ office can be reached at (951) 699-1113 in Temecula, California

or in the Capitol in Sacramento at (916) 319-2066

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Comments (1)

Thank You Ray! written by Administrator on September 1, 2006 The Administrators of the Stanislaus Free Press are honored to have your Monday Morning Memorandums on our Web Site. Please tell other legislators to post their comments here as well. Working together, we can educate the voters on the important issues of the day.

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