There’s a crisis facing California legislators and they are meeting it head on. Well, not exactly head on, but they’re tackling it. Well, they’re not quite tackling it, but they’re scheming pretty hard to get around it.
Think I’m talking about rolling blackouts that terrorize many who depend on electricity for life-saving machines? And millions more struggling to pay astronomical energy bills? Heh heh. Think again. Naw, it’s term limits that have the career politicians’ full attention. The solution to every problem, according to these jokers, is to end term limits. Just give them some more time and they’ll solve each and every problem they’ve created. California term limits first took effect in 1997.
The asinine energy regulation bill, which caused the current crisis, was passed in 1996 by that last great, unlimited legislature a sort of parting gift. But while term limits has brought many new faces to the Capitol, too many of the old bulls switched chambers and are still around. Under current law they’re finally termed-out of both chambers in 2004.
These super-incumbents are using their tremendous experience not to fashion a solution to the energy nightmare, but rather to file and fund a phony new initiative. Proposition 918 pretends to “improve” term limits by allowing the politicians to continue to serve another eight years, even after already serving 14 years since term limits were passed, and years before that.
Well, the politicians aren’t going to get away with it. At long last, it’s going to be lights out for the power-grabbing politicians.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.