At least the conservative interests behind the latest move to limit or eliminate the influence of labor unions in California politics have heard what their critics said about their earlier efforts.

Dateline St. Petersburg, Russia – Imagine an art museum that actually encourages visitors to photograph its famous paintings. A museum whose collection many regard as the world’s most fabulous, covering four large city blocks inside an opulent historic palace where treasures worth billions of dollars are guarded by modern cameras and babushkas, stocky middle-aged women whose only uniforms are the scarves they wear to keep their heads warm.

It’s not enough anymore to call the trustees of the Cal State University system insensitive or tone-deaf. Recent actions indicate they border on the totally insensate.

As California begins to see the effects of new political districts and new candidate selection rules at many political levels, the state’s Republican Party has one big pipe dream: Cut down the gigantic majorities every Democrat of the last 30 years has won among Latinos except when running against Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Complaints have been coming sporadically from around California ever since state prisons began dumping inmates back to counties last fall in a move designed to save money.

Warnings come from time to time from the far right quarters of American politics that something called the “Trilateral Commission” might be a threat to America’s hard-won independence.

It was difficult for most voters to get excited about the two initiatives on the ballot, one to tweak term limits for state legislators a bit and the other aiming to considerably raise the cigarette tax. Unless you were personally involved as a politician or a smoker, neither aroused much emotion. That will change radically this fall campaign.

The more foreign and out-of-state students register at the University of California and the higher tuition and fees there are pushed, the more legitimate it becomes for taxpayers who built and still largely fund the 10-campus system to wonder who it will belong to in the future.

Neither Prop. 28 nor Prop. 29 on Tuesday’s ballot aroused any significant emotion. Maybe that is why the limited proposition action in this primary resulted in one smashing victory and one very close call where 29 continues to trail with considerable counting to come.

The results are now in, and yesterday’s primary election appears to have given voters exactly what they wanted: a whole bunch of fall runoff contests that figure to be decided not by extreme partisans of the left or right, but rather by moderate voters occupying some kind of middle ground.