After positing that state Sen. Curren Price (D-Culver City) and U.S. Rep. Karen Bass (D-Culver City) are lovely people with charming personalities, let’s turn to what they do when they leave home.
Busywork.
In the last two days, we have listed the almost two dozen bills our state and federal representatives were involved in this year.
If you can find as many as one in that unholy bouquet of busywork, that represents a proper government function I will disagree with you.
I understand legislators must justify their salaries, their perks, their relatively lavish accoutrements. They travel with entourages befitting George Clooney today or Muhammad Ali 40 years ago.
Government’s single focus is to defend our country from without and within. Stop. Do not move an inch. Keep his admonition in mind in a few minutes when you scan some of the bills promoted by our delegates to Sacramento and Washington.
It Is Called Confiscation
Democrats’ ugly historic reputation for taxing and spending into bankruptcy the middle-class dupes in our country is richly merited — such as Swishy the Liar’s bait-and-switch this week on the payroll tax cut.
The Left’s compliant handmaidens in the media wail like newborns in their daily essays.
On behalf of their masters in Congress and the state legislatures, they plead for new taxes while simultaneously reaching into the pockets of those “hardworking middle-class families” to relieve them of ever more of their wretched salaries.
Sponge Barack Square Obama looks his supporters in the eye and swears:
“I am telling you the truth. I support a payroll tax cut for one year. I support a payroll tax cut for only the next two months, and Republicans are deliberately hurting the middle class if they don’t agree with me. I am proud of my consistency.”
Weak Swishy is the most undisciplined spender in Presidential history.
Listening to Ms. Bass (D-Culver City) the other afternoon count off her accomplishments for the just-completed year and goals for next year, I was reminded again:
We do not need a fulltime state legislature.
The entire necessary business of mis-running our state could be comfortably transacted in 60 days, one month in spring, one month in autumn.
The massive, almost comical, overblown state legislative machinery is comparable to blowing up a 450-pound man and entering him in a sprint race against a lithe young man.
Paring their schedule to a compact two months is do-able within the foreseeable future once people with the will of the admirable creators of Prop.13 is re-assembled.
The Congressional schedule easily could be sawed in half. Have you ever looked in on C-Span. Congress often resembles Romper Room in longer pants. To what end?
But such ambition has no chance of being achieved in this portion of the century because too many powerful people are involved. There would have to be an amassing of a national will that is unachievable when at least 50 percent of the country is willing to elect Sponge Barack Square Obama. These electors are not serious or informed. They derive their opinions from the Comedy Channel. Isn’t that where the opinion-shapers Stewart and Colbert are found?
Consider the bills Sen. Price crafted and won passage for, and I challenge you to find one that is an appropriate function of government. My favorite is keeping your 26-year-old on your insurance rolls. When is the big lug going to get a job?
Why is a legislator’s success measured by how many incidental bills he can ram through his colleagues?
The present Congress is panned as do-nothing, but only by the Left. Already wheezing from oppressive liberal interventions, who needs more regulations?
SB 509 is another dandy.
SB 100 — Provides for greater oversight and regulation of surgical clinics and other types of clinics such as fertility and outpatient settings. This bill will ensure that quality of care standards are in place at these clinics and checked by the appropriate credentialing agency.
SB 294 — Requires the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) and the California State Teachers' Retirement System (CalSTRS) to develop a five-year strategic plan to expand participation of emerging investment management firms in investing and managing state pension funds.
SB 220 — Authorizes dependent children to be eligible for coverage under group life insurance policies up to age 26 and maintains protections for older dependents with intellectual or developmental disabilities.
SB 451 — Requires the California Student Aid Commission to develop and regularly update the areas of occupational or technical training for which students may utilize Cal Grant C awards, and would require the Commission to give priority in granting the awards to students pursuing occupations or technical training in high growth, high wage or high demand jobs sectors.
SB 509—- Allows school districts to purchase the most recently adopted materials for the neediest schools without the financial burden of purchasing for the entire district.
SB 594 — Improves overall efficiency by consolidating certain disclosure and policyholder notices into a single mailing, thereby reducing numerous customer communications that often confuse customers.
SB 706 — Reforms the Dept. of Real Estate's Enforcement Program and the Office of Real Estate Appraisers. This bill states that protection of the public shall be the highest priority for the department and the office in exercising their licensing, regulatory, and disciplinary functions.
SB 756 — Provides local jurisdictions the ability to prosecute sex offenders who fail to register as currently required by California law. This legislation requires sex offenders to provide proof of residence when requested by law enforcement officers.
SB 107 — Extends the authority of the California Interscholastic Federation.
SB 539 — Extends the sunset date of the Board of Vocational Nursing and Psychiatric Technicians to Jan. 1, 2016, requires employers of vocational nurses and psychiatric technicians to report resignations for cause, and allows the board the option to review vocational nursing schools and psychiatric technician schools for compliance.
SB 540 — Extends the sunset date of the Dental Board of California to Jan. 1, 2016, adds one additional public member to the board, and makes other programmatic changes
SB 541 — Authorizes the boards and bureaus within the Dept. of Consumer Affairs, as well as the state Board of Chiropractic Examiners, and the Osteopathic Medical Board to continue to utilize expert consultants, as done in the past, without having to go through the formal contracting process.
Why? What Justification?
As with Sen. Price, Ms. Bass’s socially-based legislation looks noble. What does noble have to do with government? The bills uniformly are unrelated to the purpose of government.
I believe that every one would improve our society. But a lumber company can improve society — quite without unwelcome, un-needed, unappreciated interference from Washington or Sacramento.
Ponder them and tell me otherwise.
Of the seven bills Ms. Bass authored, one, the Child Family Services Improvement and Innovation Act, was signed into law.
Among the others were: Foster Care Mentoring Act, Speaking Out to Stop Child Abuse Act, strengthening the Child Welfare to Human Trafficking Act, the Home Ownership Preservation Act, the Health IT Modernization for Underserved Communities (to aid physicians’ assistants, a position she once held), Accelerating the End of Breast Cancer Act (by 2020).”
