Dan Walters: More noise than results as California legislators posture

Sacramento Bee ^ | 5/23/8 | Dan Walters

[SmithL]

A hoary game is once again being played in the Capitol, one that illustrates why and how the building's residents expend so much time and energy to accomplish so little.

Every year hundreds of bills are introduced, mostly by the Legislature's dominant Democrats. Many fall by the wayside in policy committees, and by late spring, they've been winnowed down to the real contenders. Collectively, the survivors represent the core agenda of liberal lawmakers and the major groups that stand behind them – primarily labor unions, environmental groups, personal injury attorneys and consumer activists.

Elsewhere in Sacramento, lobbyists for business and professional groups – manufacturers, retailers, insurers, medical care providers and the like – scan the lists of pending bills and choose several dozen they consider the most noxious. The business groups then publicly brand the bills as "job killers" that would impose heavy regulatory or financial burdens. The measures' champions reply in kind, portraying them as serving the public interest and the opponents as rapacious and narrow interests, and the battle is joined.

As the legislative session continues, lobbyists for both factions do what lobbyists do, and perhaps half of the disputed bills either stall or are amended to placate opponents. The remaining measures make it to the governor's desk as the session draws to a close, and more than likely, he vetoes them. Then everyone goes home, returns to the Capitol a few months later and starts the game all over again.

This gamesmanship has been under way for the last couple of decades, except for the one year (1996) in which Republicans ran the Assembly and during the final two years of Democrat Gray Davis' recall-aborted governorship when he needed political help, abandoned his pro-business positioning and signed quite a few liberal measures.

[Parley Baer]

Collectively, the survivors represent the core agenda of liberal lawmakers and the major groups that stand behind them – primarily labor unions, environmental groups, personal injury attorneys and consumer activists.

That pretty much some up the dimocRATS nationwide. You can also add socialist agenda as spoken by Maxine Waters yesterday.

[calcowgirl]

Collectively, the survivors represent the core agenda of liberal lawmakers and the major groups that stand behind them – primarily labor unions, environmental groups, personal injury attorneys and consumer activists.

Add the gay activists and I think you've pretty well nailed it.