Posted on 01/31/2010 9:06:57 AM PST by SmithL
The speaker of the California Assembly last week spiked legislation that would have severely curtailed lawmakers' ability to accept concert and sporting-event tickets, meals, greens fees and other gifts from lobbyists. This was the same week that state senators - most of whom drive state-leased cars of their choice, which they fill up with gas and park at taxpayer expense - approved a bill that would compel local governments to curtail the amount of free public parking in their communities.
Is it any wonder our Legislature's approval rating keeps sinking toward single digits?
A spokeswoman for Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, D-Baldwin Vista (Los Angeles County) said she had no objection to the gift-giving restriction but that it should be part of a comprehensive reform package.
Don't hold your breath waiting for anything out of the state Capitol that takes away legislators' power or perquisites. After all, defenders of the status quo are taking aim at the one meaningful reform that would change the way business is conducted: The 2008 initiative that will empower an independent commission, rather than the legislators themselves, to determine legislative district boundaries.
Under Proposition 11, an independent citizens commission of five Democrats, five Republicans and four "others" will draw the political boundaries. Commission members could not have held state or federal office in the past decade, worked as a legislative staffer or lobbyist, or contributed more than $2,000 to a candidate.
Yet even as the commissioner selection process is just getting under way, petitions are being circulated to wipe out Prop. 11. The proposed ballot language for the Financial Accountability in Redistricting Act makes the laughably absurd argument that this is about money:
...more honest title of this initiative, which is being conceived by a small group of Democratic insiders, would be the Incumbent Protection Act.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Boggles the mind sometimes.
Putting in parking meters on onmetered streets will just help to kill off business on main street. I guess that is what they want to do. It favors big business and internet business.
By for and of the people, keep it classy California!
These people have gone insane. They wonder why we want to rid ourselves of them.
Is it any wonder our Legislature’s approval rating keeps sinking toward single digits?
And yet they keep getting re-elected in double digits.’
You cannot discount the power of illegal intruders voting.
Their entire state is headed over the cliff into scary, uncharted wilderness.
And the most important thing to these bastards is losing a few perks.
I suspect the majority of Californians have no clue how dangerous this is. Or maybe they just don’t give a shit?
It’s more like the following...
“My Congressman is great, it’s all the rest of them that are idiots.”
scumbags..
In yur face governance.. usually met with pitchforks in your butt and torches on yur roof.
a sham of a joke of a ponzi scheme .. California gubamint in action.
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