Tag: California

Categories
crime and punishment general freedom initiative, referendum, and recall

A Bad Sign

A Centerville, Virginia, man made news when he agreed to his wife’s demand that he stand at a busy intersection wearing a sign emblazoned “I Cheated: This is My Punishment.” His merciful wife ended the punishment after just a couple hours.

In recent years, a few judges have sporadically sought to shame criminals in similar fashion. Back in 2007, several people convicted of shoplifting opted to avoid a longer jail sentence by donning a sign outside the store they had ripped off, which read, “I Am a Thief, I Stole from Wal-​Mart.” But Wal-​Mart soon opted out of such spectacle.

Now, the California State Senate has passed new legislation to force folks to wear similar signs. But not for committing any crime.

Unless petitioning one’s government is now criminal.

State Sen. Mark DeSaulnier’s Senate Bill 448 seeks to harass and belittle the citizens who circulate petitions by making each wear a sign “on his or her chest” that reads “PAID SIGNATURE GATHERER” or “VOLUNTEER SIGNATURE GATHERER.” The sign would also inform the public which county the petitioner is registered to vote in, or must say, “NOT REGISTERED TO VOTE.” The lettering must be in at least 30-​point type.

Sen. DeSaulnier calls this “transparency.” But transparency isn’t necessary for all petitioning, apparently: SB 448 doesn’t require those collecting signatures to put a state legislator on the ballot to wear such a sign. 

It applies only to those who dare use the citizen initiative.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
property rights

Property Owners Victorious

In late April, the Institute for Justice won a smashing judicial victory on behalf of the Community Youth Athletic Center, a boxing gym and haven for local kids, as well as for other property owners in the neighborhood. They hope it’s a knockout blow.

The California Superior Court ruled that National City had no warrant for declaring the area “blighted,” that the city government had violated due process, and that it had violated California’s Public Records Act by failing to provide a private consultant’s documentation of the alleged blight.

Such studies are often blighted themselves — jargon-​ridden fictions concocted to rationalize what the government wants to do solely for other reasons. After the Supreme Court’s egregious Kelo decision, which gave targeted property owners little hope of protecting their property on constitutional grounds from eminent-​domain attacks, property owners in California and other states fought for laws to protect themselves from such baseless designations of “blight.”

Of course, politicians continued to do their darnedest, grabbing stuff that doesn’t belong to them. So the status of the legal protections often must be adjudicated.

CYAC president Clemente Casillas says, “I hope National City does the right thing now and throws in the towel so we can get back to focusing all our attention on helping to grow the kids in our community. The city can have redevelopment, but that has to be done through private negotiation, not by government force.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ballot access First Amendment rights initiative, referendum, and recall

Red-​lining Democracy

Why does a fellow who’s the executive director of the Greenlining Institute want to red-​line democracy?

Recently, in the pages of California’s Capitol Weekly, Orson Aguilar called the state’s initiative process a “monster.” Mr. Aguilar’s main beef is that “huge corporations and business groups” spent “massive” amounts of money, and that of the more than $200 million spent on ballot measures “hardly any of it came from ordinary citizens.”

Whether one agrees with a corporation or a labor union or an interest of any kind, freedom of speech still carries moral weight. It’s worth noting that while Aguilar doesn’t like corporate spending on ballot measures, he probably doesn’t mind the corporate contributions that account for over 16 percent of the Greenlining Institute’s annual income.

But what was the result of business spending? He informs us, “Happily, many of these corporate initiatives were defeated …” 

Aguilar doesn’t name a single detrimental measure passed by voters. 

Still, according to Aguilar and seemingly every special interest group, something must be done to undercut the democratic check on government that citizens enjoy via initiative and referendum.

While admitting that the “huge number of signatures required” to place an initiative on the ballot “is almost impossible to do with just volunteers,” Aguilar bemoans the use of paid petitioners.

Never does he suggest the obvious: If we want the citizens’ voice in government, petition requirements should be made less onerous, not more.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall responsibility

Pension Declension

The ugliest truth about California’s newest, gimmick-​ridden budget, is that it doesn’t address the looming public employee pension issue. Adam Summers, a Reason Foundation policy analyst, gave some figures in the Orange County Register, explaining that these pensions have been “recently pegged at up to roughly $500 billion — roughly $36,000 for every household in California”:

Throw in the $50 billion or so in unfunded retiree health care liabilities, a $10 billion unemployment insurance fund debt, and the state’s $152 billion in general obligation bond debt, and you start to get a fuller sense of the state’s true financial problems.

The current plan to deal with this — reducing pensions for new state hires back to 1999 levels — Summers says was tried before, and failed. And by “failed” I mean revised after the fact and retroactively negated by the state Assembly. 

Summers says there’s only one way out: 

Politicians can’t continue to merely nibble around the edges of the state’s pension crisis. It’s time to admit that the 401(k)-style retirement plans that are good enough for nearly every private sector worker are going to have to be good enough for state workers, too.

But do politicians have the guts or the principles required? An initiative is needed. No level of government should be allowed to offer any pension not fully invested at the time of wage or salary payment — or promising a specified pay-out.

That would be as revolutionary as the legendary Prop 13.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture initiative, referendum, and recall term limits

The Election Addiction Fiction

Poor Willie Brown. Ever since California slapped term limits on state lawmakers, Brown’s lacked a permanent perch in power.

For many, Brown’s 15-​year reign as speaker serves as Exhibit A in the case against unlimited terms. Brown himself bragged that he had been the “Ayatollah” of the assembly — though later he seemed to repent of his support for untrammeled spending in that role. 

He next lathered patronage as mayor of San Francisco. But this was another term-​limited post, so he couldn’t barnacle himself there either.

It still bothers Brown how voters limited tenures. He’s always opposed term limits. And now the papers quote him telling a Republican political club that term limits are a “disaster.… We’ve allowed ourselves to become addicted to elections.” (You guessed it: He disdains citizen initiative rights too.)

Elections, an addiction? Like heroin? Of course, we’re “addicted” to everything these days. Obama says we’re “addicted” to oil (as did Bush). We’d all admit a compulsion to consume food and oxygen.

To learn what weaning ourselves off term limits might be like, check Ballotpedia, which reports that even in this roiling political year, only 19 incumbent state senators out of 1,167 running for re-​election lost their primaries. Less than 40 percent — the exact number is 459 — even faced an opponent. In general elections, incumbent re-​election rates typically exceed 90 percent, even in tough political times.

That’s fine with politicians like Brown, who always crave another fix — of political power.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture

Serpentine, Indeed

California, increasingly known for its faults, has a major problem. Its politicians have rocks in their heads.

As the state teeters on the brink of insolvency, legislators are considering de-​listing the mineral serpentine as the state rock.

Sponsored by State Senator Gloria Romero, a Democrat hailing from la la L.A., Senate Bill 624 would raise “awareness to protect the health of our citizens. Serpentine contains asbestos, a known carcinogen. Toxic materials have no place serving as emblems for the state.”

The trouble with this is that not all — or even most — samples of the mineral (or, more correctly, mineral group) contain asbestos. Geologists, when they learned about the bill, were all abuzz. What was the Senate up to when it voted to throw out the rock?

Dan Walters, writing in the Monterey Herald, has the answer: Litigation. If the state defines serpentine itself as asbestos-​laden — not just those forms that sometimes contain the substance — then trial lawyers can sue more people for having the rocks on their property, etc. Predictably, the “language in the bill was provided by the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization, an anti-​asbestos group whose major sponsors are law firms specializing in asbestos litigation.”

If California legislators toss out the state rock to aid lawyers in plundering others, maybe the state’s citizens can use the initiative to make the rock the official symbol of the California Legislature. But only those chrysotile forms that contain the dreaded silicate.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.