Imagine driving home from a Super Bowl party and being stopped at a police checkpoint. You roll down your window and an officer asks what you’ve had to drink.

“Just a couple Red Bulls,” you reply. “I’m the designated driver.”

“Will you step out of the car please, sir,” the officer requests.

“Why?” you ask.

“Because,” he explains, “we’re going to measure your blood sugar level to make sure you’re not over the legal limit while operating a motor vehicle in the state of California.”

Sound farfetched? Well, maybe not so much. Not when you read the jeremiad, co-authored by researchers at UC San Francisco, published this week in the journal Nature, suggesting that sugar be considered a controlled substance — just like alcohol.

In their commentary piece, Robert Lustig, Laura Schmidt and Claire Brindis claim that sugar’s effects on the body can be similar to those of alcohol. As such, they argue, sale and use of the sweet stuff should be regulated by the government.

“When you think about it, this actually makes sense,” said Schmidt, in an appearance on CNN.  “Alcohol, after all, is simply the distillation of sugar. Where does vodka come from? Sugar.”

Schmidt and her colleagues propose placing age restrictions on purchases of products with “added sugar” — which is defined as any sweetener containing the molecule fructose that is added to food in processing. They also suggest limiting sales of such products during school hours.

Sugar Tax

And, all-too-predictably, they advocate a sugar tax.

To bolster their case for designating sugar a controlled substance, the UCSF researchers cite the “landmark” book by social psychologist Thomas Babor, “Alcohol: No Ordinary Commod­ity: Research and Public Policy.”

In that 2003 book, Babor set forth four criteria that justify regulation of alcohol. Those criteria are now widely accepted by the public health community, according to Lustig, Schmidt and Brindis.

The criteria include:  “unavoidability” (meaning pervasiveness throughout society), toxicity, potential for abuse and negative impact on society. Based on those criteria, the UCSF researchers insist, sugar is no less a threat to public health and safety than demon alcohol and, therefore, merits similar government oversight.

That conclusion will no doubt resonate in Sacramento, where tax-and-regulate Democrats will cite the Nature article as an inarguable “scientific” basis for imposing new taxes on foods and drinks containing fructose.

Just last year, in fact, the Legislature considered a measure that would have made California the first state in the nation to impose a soda tax. Fortunately, the proposed tax died in the Assembly. Had it become law, it would have cost the state’s soda-drinking residents nearly $2 billion a year.

Yet, scientific doubt remains as to whether fructose truly is as much a threat to public health as the UCSF researchers maintain.

Indeed, the Nature article noted that saturated fats were once blamed for the putative toxicity of high-processed foods, but that “most medical professionals no longer believe that fat is the primary culprit.”

Well, if the science was wrong on saturated fats, it could be just as wrong on fructose. That is why lawmakers at both the state and local levels should be wary of embracing the kind of public policy prescriptions proferred by the UCSF researchers.

– Joseph Perkins

“Think Forward and Long” or “Think Long and Forward California.” I suggest one of those as the new name for the merging government reform groups California Forward and Think Long.  Because the ridiculousness of the name should be as ridiculous as the hailed move.

This is what former politicians do who can’t go back to the private sector once they leave public office. Couple the attention-starved politicians with bored billionaires and you get groups like the Think Long Committee and California Forward.

The Think Long Committee boasted reforms to deal with the estimated $13 billion state budget shortfall and looming $2 billion automatic trigger cuts to education.

Under The Cover Of Taxes

But many of the pseudo-reformers, who already had a shot at fixing the state’s chronic budget problems, never quite got around to sincerely addressing the actual problems in state government. Instead, the two groups came up with rhetoric-laced, lofty sounding big-budget plans, to be run by lots of paid consultants, benefitting people like the “reformers.”

It has been business-as-usual in the Capitol, with lawmakers continuing to overspend, create more regulations, scheme on ways to weasel more taxes out of the middle-class “rich” and foster incestuous relationships with labor unions. Meanwhile, the Think Long Committee released its ”Blueprint to Renew California” in November. Short on substance and devoid of any big reforms, the “Blueprint” was primarily cover for a new sales tax on every service in California not already taxed — excluding education and health care.

Haircuts would be taxed. Lawyers, accountants, landscapers, contractors, veterinarians, day care and many other everyday services would be taxed.

Who’s Who

The lineup of the two groups is a who’s-who of Capitol politicians who apparently just didn’t get enough of the place while in power: Former Assembly Speaker Willie Brown; recalled Gov. Gray Davis and his replacement, Arnold Schwarzenegger; Sunne Wright McPeak, former Contra Costa supervisor and former secretary of the California Business, Transportation, and Housing Agency; another former Assembly Speaker, Fred Keeley;  former California Secretary of State Bruce McPherson; and another former assembly speaker, Bob Hertzberg.

These politicians joined forces with billionaire financier Nicolas Berggruen; union boss Bob Balgenorth, president of the State Building & Construction Trades Council of California, AFL-CIO; and ueber-wealthy foundations such as the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the James Irvine Foundation and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

According to the Nicolas Berggruen Institute website, “the Think Long Committee for California aims to offer a comprehensive approach for repairing and renovating California’s broken system of governance while proposing policies and institutions vital for the state’s long term future.”

Beware the word “comprehensive” when used in the same sentence with “governance.”

California Forward proposed the Government Performance and Accountability Act, ”a constitutional amendment that would change the culture of governance in California,” ultimately taking it out of the hands of the governor and legislators. “The state is simply too big and too diverse to let a handful of lawmakers in Sacramento make decisions about local programs and resources that are much better understood at the community level,” the California Forward’s website said.

The long and forward thinkers talked incessantly of taking reforms to the voters through the initiative process. But, remember, it is important it is to watch what people do instead of just believing what they say.

Fourth Branch of Government

California Forward tried to “change the culture of governance in California.” The Think Long Committee really wanted to create an elitist “Citizen’s Council for Government Accountability,” which some have described as a “fourth branch of government for California.”

Acting more like a Super-Committee, the Council would be made up of 13 members appointed to six-year terms by the governor and the leaders of both parties in the legislature. They would have the power to place constitutional amendments (constitutional measures) as well as proposed laws (statutory measures) on the ballot, with no legislative vetting or signature gathering required.

Wow. Welcome to an attempt at a California oligarchy, in which political power would be held by the wealthy elite and political class, who would use this power to serve their own class interests.

Voters will need to think long and hard about what’s ahead for the state. While the Think Long Committee scrapped its own tax initiative planned for the November ballot, the group has joined the initiative sponsored by California Forward to change how the state is governed, and how the budget is written.

There are problems in paradise. Almost everyone can agree that California is showing signs of sun damage and aging. The thin, beautiful veneer is cracking.

The best thing to do is to use the system we have to defeat these types of measures.  Unions and billionaires don’t have to dominate politics. There are still many more of us than them.

Katy Grimes

“Now, a return to the American values of fair play and shared responsibility will help protect our people and our economy. But it should also guide us as we look to pay down our debt and invest in our future.”

– President Barack Obama, State of the Union address, Jan. 24, 2012

This speech was the latest reminder of the shockingly low state of political discourse in America. I’m not singling out Obama for special condemnation, given that these addresses always are a potpourri of banalities, regardless of which president is offering them. Yet, Tuesday’s speech was a vivid reminder of the shoddy thinking so common at the highest level of the federal and state governments and why we are — in the more precise, but less-lofty words of a former president — in deep doo-doo.

Criminologists have remarked on “the banality of crime,” the reality that most criminals are not dark geniuses, but ordinary dolts driven by the basest motives. The State of the Union is the ultimate example for the banality of American politics, of the reality that the people who want to reform us haven’t the slightest clue about anything. They are predictable and bland, traders in base ideas and driven mainly by ego and the desire to help those groups that assure their re-elections.

California is the starkest example. A friend of mine called the other day and told me that it finally dawned on him that Gov. Jerry Brown, despite his clever wordplay, is really not so brilliant. Here’s a man who actually believes that raising taxes and “investing” in green jobs will save California.

‘City on a Hill’

Politicians from Obama to Brown to Mitt Romney to Newt Gingrich want so desperately to build a legacy, save our state or nation, and create some “shining city on the hill,” but they want it all on the cheap.

Democratic pols want to sound like John F. Kennedy while Republicans sing hosannas to the legacy of Ronald Reagan, but such legacies don’t come from cheap banalities and the retreading of empty words. They come from tackling real issues and fixing real problems. The courage needed to do the latter is in short supply, given that most politicians crave adulation but don’t realize that putting that goal first almost assures that they won’t receive it.

Look at Arnold Schwarzenegger, who had a historic opportunity to bring the state back from the brink, yet changed course dramatically after his first defeat at the ballot box. He chose to be loved above all else and has ended up a scorned figure.

Many of us had hoped that Brown, who decades ago persistently pursued the presidency but no longer seeks higher office, would embrace the tough work of real governance and take on his own allies — i.e., the public sector unions — who are the key obstacle to reviving California. Instead, he has embraced one foolish answer, higher taxes, and has governed in a way that’s not too different from the two failed governors before him.

Spending Problem

If Brown were a serious man, he would acknowledge that the problem isn’t a lack of revenue, it’s the way the state spends money. But he has taken the easy, banal course and will, in time, be forgotten. And so, too, will Obama, who continues to believe that government is the font of all wisdom and energy in this nation and that populist attacks on evil-doing mortgage companies, for example, are more crucial than serious policy.

“Let’s never forget: Millions of Americans who work hard and play by the rules every day deserve a government and a financial system that do the same,” he intoned. “It’s time to apply the same rules from top to bottom. No bailouts, no handouts, and no cop-outs. An America built to last insists on responsibility from everybody.”

Banality is one thing, but this veers into dishonestly. No president — not even the terrible one that preceded Obama — has embraced the culture of bailouts, handouts and cop-outs more than Obama. His administration epitomizes the term “crony capitalism,” whereby friends and backers of the leaders get large infusions of taxpayer cash (e.g., Solyndra) and then cop out about why the money disappeared. In his speech, Obama sung the praises of the automobile bailout and called for more bailouts and government investments.

Instead of dealing seriously with the financial crisis, he embraced a kindergartner’s view of what happened (greedy banks foisted bad mortgages on decent people!), called for a special investment-crimes unit to crack down on financial wrongdoers and then pledged a new bailout for homeowners who are underwater in their mortgages, many of whom acted irresponsibly as they bought houses they knew they couldn’t afford and/or tapped their home’s equity and spent it.

Said Obama, “And while government can’t fix the problem on its own, responsible homeowners shouldn’t have to sit and wait for the housing market to hit bottom to get some relief. And that’s why I’m sending this Congress a plan that gives every responsible homeowner the chance to save about $3,000 a year on their mortgage, by refinancing at historically low rates.”

Just what we need — yet another irresponsible subsidy underwritten by U.S. taxpayers. In reality, the real estate market needs to hit bottom before it can rebound, and Obama’s plan will only delay the day of reckoning. This is more pabulum and more false hope for people who think the government is going to save them.

Soaring rhetoric and promised bailouts won’t fix what’s wrong in California or in the United States. It’s time for a little reality and some tough choices. It’s time for leaders with less banal rhetoric and more courage.

– Steven Greenhut

CEQA, the California Environmental Quality Act, has long been the third rail of politics here in theGoldenState. If a politician dare touch it, he or she is dead to the state’s powerful environmental lobby.

Gov. Jerry Brown this week placed environmentalists in a quandary. He released a package of CEQA reforms that would expedite the approval process for both “infill” housing projects and solar energy projects (provided they are to be built on existing rooftops or parking lots).

On one hand, enviros hate the idea of relaxing CEQA, which they use as a weapon to obstruct, if not kill altogether, construction projects they oppose.

On the other, they are big proponents of infill — rather than green field — housing development. And they are strong advocates of renewable energy, like solar, as a replacement for dirty old fossil fuels.

The governor is urging the environmental lobby to get with his program; which, he said, will not only be good for the environment, but also will create some of those half-million green jobs he promised during his campaign for the state’s highest office.

“Like California,” he said, “CEQA must be more nimble.”

As it is now, the 42-year-old law is anything but nimble. Its original goal was reasonable enough: To notify the public about the potential environmental impact of proposed development projects and to mitigate those potential environmental impacts to the extent “feasible.”

But the CEQA process has proven complex and unpredictable, as the state Legislative Analyst’s Office has attested.

It all but invites legal challenges to development projects, including, increasingly, lawsuits that have little to do with the environment. And its compliance costs make building anything in California — including infill housing and solar projects — more expensive than anywhere else in the country.

‘Unreasonable Results’

Indeed, the California Chamber of Commerce issued a report last year that offered several examples of “how CEQA’s good intentions can lead to unreasonable results.”

In one case, a company that proposed to build a solar power plant was required to pay a whopping $25 million in environmental mitigation to relocate 25 endangered tortoises from the future plant site — $1 million a tortoise.

The company was forced to acquire and clean up some 12,000 acres of land for the tortoises to move to and set up an endowment to protect the new habitat from now to eternity.

In another case, a neighborhood group in Berkeley filed a lawsuit against a proposed infill housing project that was to accommodate low income families.

The suit claimed that the project ran afoul of CEQA because shadows — that’s right, shadows — the housing would cast upon the neighborhood would produce a significant environmental impact.

It remains to be seen if Gov. Brown can persuade environmental interest groups and other putative stakeholders to acquiesce to his proposed CEQA reforms. If so, it will be welcome news for solar companies (at least those installing panels on existing rooftops and parking garages) and for inner city developers of low-income housing.

It also could be the political breakthrough that eventually leads to the full-blown CEQA reform the state’s business community has long sought, but that the state’s environmental lobby has long thwarted.

– Joseph Perkins

Years ago, after starting to report and editorialize on news events in an old factory city in Ohio, I was quickly dubbed a “negative” for pointing out the disastrous government spending, housing and tax policies embraced by city leaders — policies that were keeping a nice place wretched. Anyone who made similar criticisms was dismissed as a nattering nabob who didn’t care about the future of the city.

I’ve come to expect local officials to treat their critics this way, but was surprised to see Gov. Jerry Brown embrace this approach this week in his State of the State speech. Brown referred to the growing chorus of Californians complaining about a brain drain to Texas and other states with more favorable tax and regulatory climates as “declinists” with dark visions of the future.

“Every decade since the ’60s, dystopian journalists write stories on the impending decline of our economy, our culture and our politics,” he said. As he then explained, a lack of regulation caused the housing bubble, which slowed California’s recovery. But that’s over, and the state is roaring back.

“Contrary to those declinists, who sing of Texas and bemoan our woes, California is still the land of dreams. … It’s home to more Nobel laureates and venture capital investment than any other state. … California has problems but rumors of its demise are greatly exaggerated.”

Tech Sector

There’s no doubt that the tech sector remains strong, a testament to the word “despite.” Despite California legislators’ and regulators’ efforts to strangle the economy, investors and creative people still rather live in Silicon Valley than in Des Moines or El Paso. But one thriving tech industry does not reflect the overall economic situation, which is far less optimistic.

And it’s hard to see how his solutions — massive tax increases and big new infrastructure spending programs — will revive the state.

First, a point of correction: The housing bust had more to do with government policy that promoted the granting of mortgages to people who couldn’t afford them than it did with a lack of regulation.

Ironically, the policies the governor has most strongly embraced exacerbated that situation. Throughout his career, Brown has championed stringent land-use regulations designed to combat urban sprawl.

Real Estate

When the housing market heated up, in less-regulated markets in Texas and other places, developers were able to fairly quickly build new homes to meet the surging demand. In California’s excessively regulated markets, the lead time for building new houses was so long that prices for existing houses soared, and then they came crashing down with a vengeance. In cities where the market rather than planners called the shots, prices went up and came down in a far less extreme manner thanks to supply and demand. Brown’s misunderstanding of the housing market echoes his misunderstanding of what ails California.

The state’s persistent double-digit unemployment rate is not just the result of a housing bust, but of a toxic business climate that regulates the heck out of everyone and everything. It’s a result of a tax climate that sends people to other, less-attractive states, such as Texas. Those who point to Texas generally don’t do so out of a particular love of that place, but because it is the nation’s other megastate, and its officials take a more business-friendly approach, which has created a more dynamic and growing economy.

The state’s ruling Democrats respond to such comparisons by making fun of Texas culture and pointing to the many reasons no self-respecting Californian would move there. They are purposefully avoiding the point.

California Dream

Of course, California remains the land of dreams. Of course, most of us would never want to live anywhere else. But when people can’t earn a living here, they move to where they can, even if the new place is less appealing.

California is suffering from the same problems found in any number of advanced social-welfare states, where wealth creation is punished and getting a job in the government is rewarded. California’s officials don’t believe in the private sector. They are representatives of the government class, and Brown is that group’s highest-ranking member, which explains why government officials and government retirees don’t want any change. They are doing quite well under the current system, thank you very much.

“California is still the Gold Mountain that Chinese immigrants in 1848 came across the Pacific to find,” the governor said. “The wealth is different, derived as it is, not from the Sierras but from the creative imagination of those who invent and build and generate the ideas that drive our economy forward.”

He then championed the proposed high-speed rail system as a key to California’s future, apparently seeing government as the new source of gold. He then derided rail critics as declinists who would have opposed everything from the Interstate Highway System in the 1950s to the Suez Canal. Yet Reuters recently reported that lawmakers “are gagging at the rail system’s projected cost … and are anxious about the uncertain outlook for federal and private-sector dollars.”

Surely, these critics aren’t all Luddites.

Sorry, but the true declinists are the ones who believe that California’s health is dependent on spending tens of billions of dollars on a government rail project that looks a lot like a boondoggle. The true declinists are the ones who stick to the same path of taxing, spending, regulating and suing the life out of the productive and entrepreneurial class. Brown is not just a declinist but a denialist, who believes that the same old policies that led to the current mess will lead us to a bright new future. Yet it’s far better to point out the decline in the hopes of arresting it than to be party to it, regardless of what Brown calls us.

– Steven Greenhut

In an op-ed in the Sacramento Bee, Linda J. Wong, executive director of the Center for Urban Education at the University of Southern California, touted the Obama administration’s decision to make it easier to consider race in promoting a diversity agenda in California public colleges and universities.

Wong’s op-ed is devoid of fact. Instead it promotes the violation of Proposition 209, the California constitutional amendment approved by voters in 1996. Prop. 209 prohibits the government from granting educational or employment preferences to individuals based on race. But that hasn’t stopped the affirmative action crowd.

I am sure that there are good students in every college class who were admitted under race and ethnicity policies, and benefitted from attending college. However, there are many more that just take up valuable space, eventually dropping out. Because race and ethnicity guidelines are not promoting excellence or merit, it is just another California entitlement — and the recipients know it.

The term “diversity” is nothing more than a politically correct name for racial discrimination policy, and the exploitation of divisiveness, a well-worn tool of the left.

Affirmative Action Policies

Ask any person of ethnicity who achieved all “A” and “B” grades in high school, and legitimately earned a seat into university, what they think about the guidelines. I have asked. I’ve been told that diversity and racial preference policies are offensive to those who worked hard and know they made it to college on their own merit.

In 2011, the Obama Department of Justice ordered the Dayton, Ohio police department to lower its entrance exam scores in order to allow more blacks on its police force. Yet, Dayton NAACP President Derrick Forward replied, “If you lower the score for any group of people, you’re not getting the best qualified people for the job. … The NAACP does not support individuals failing a test and then having the opportunity to be gainfully employed.”

“While 13 percent of our population, blacks are 80 percent of professional basketball players and 65 percent of professional football players and are the highest paid players in both sports,” wrote George Mason University Economist Walter E. Williams. “By contrast, blacks are only 2 percent of NHL’s professional ice hockey players. There is no racial diversity in basketball, football and ice hockey.”

Exposing the ridiculousness and uneven application of diversity policies, Williams asked, “What should Attorney General Eric Holder do about the lack of diversity in sports?”

If merit is the sole guideline in sports, why isn’t it in education and the workplace?

‘White American Culture’ 

In the comments section of the Bee op-ed, “Multicultural Professor” wrote, “Diversity means an educational curriculum that isn’t completely dominated by European American history and perspectives. It means understanding cultures other than the White American culture that we grow up consuming through media and education. It means not being a racist that doesn’t understand or acknowledge the importance of all other races and ethnicities succeeding as well. I think you should get it right and stop spreading your racist viewpoints here.”

Whoa. How does understanding cultures other than the White American culture fit into teaching actual U.S. History, Ancient History, United States Government, Comparative World Governments, or even World History — all mandatory curricula taught in California public high schools?

Wong never addresses other ethnic groups who are not Hispanic or black. Not satisfied with promoting only Hispanic and black students into college ahead of students who met college guidelines, Wong admitted that admission policies have been the traditional target of diversity efforts, but that the new Obama administration diversity guidelines “make other — and potentially more promising — approaches feasible.”

“The state’s education leaders should take advantage of Obama’s new diversity policy and move aggressively to expand college opportunities for Latino and black students,” said Wong. But Latinos and black students have been the target all along.

Where do the ethnic people of the Middle-East, Asia, the Orient, India, Indonesia, Japan and the Philippines fit in?

Apparently they don’t need extra help to succeed.

Racial Policies Promote Mediocrity

Race and diversity policies remove the work ethic component from achievement. Race and diversity policies erase the time-honored reward that anyone, regardless of race, gender, ethnicity or disability, who works hard and wants to achieve in an academic setting, can and will get an education. It just may not be at Harvard or Stanford.

UC Merced

Diversity policies discriminate because of race, and assume that those being preferred and promoted are incapable of achievement without help from the government. And that’s offensive.

It’s a shame that these same people who promote affirmative action and racial preferences don’t follow up on their college students during college and after graduation, into graduate school or when they become employed.

“Which serves the interests of the black community better: a black student admitted to a top-tier law school, such as Harvard, Stanford or Yale, and winds up in the bottom 10 percent of his class, flunks out, or cannot pass the bar examination, or a black student admitted to a far less prestigious law school, performs just as well as his white peers, graduates and passes the bar?” asked Williams. “I, and hopefully any other American, would say that doing well and graduating from a less prestigious law school is preferable to doing poorly and flunking out of a prestigious one.”

Walter E. Williams

“Black people can’t afford to have our youngsters turned into failures so that in the name of diversity race hustlers and white liberals can feel better,” Williams added.

I’ve worked with affirmative action recipients who clearly were promoted through school because of race, as well as the grant money attached to them, and not because of achievement. And unfortunately, racial preferences often instill a detrimental attitude, allowing recipients to think that they don’t have to work hard, compete or achieve, to be advanced. When they are finally bounced out of a job for poor performance, they are shocked.

The Future of Affirmative Action in California

With farcical policies like affirmative action, I see employers in the future turning away California’s public university graduates. The only employer left to hire them will be the government, which is where many currently seek refuge.

Racial preferences are racism. Diversity is an politically correct term used by liberal elites to try to bring honor and virtue to policies that are racist.

The term “progressive” is now used to make liberals look more appealing; they don’t like being called “liberal.” But there is nothing progressive about offensive racial policies that demean the best, brightest and most talented of America’s ethnic communities, and locks out many of the best, brightest and talented non-ethnic students.

Katy Grimes

I voted against Proposition 215, the so-called Compassionate Use Act, which legalized marijuana use here in the nation’s largest pot-growing state for — wink, wink, nod, nod — “medicinal purposes.”

That’s why it is rather ironic that I find myself compelled to come to the defense of the 1996 law, which the California Supreme Court’s seven justices this week unanimously agreed to review.

It’s not that I have changed my mind about Prop. 215 over the past 16 years.

I still believe it was a Trojan Horse sponsored by all-too-clever interests whose ultimate aim is to decriminalize use of not only cannabis, but also cocaine, heroin, crystal meth and every other currently illegal drug. I also remain troubled that the Compassionate Use Act brazenly contravenes longstanding federal drug law.

So why am I defending Prop. 215? Because it was approved by 56 percent of California voters. Because I think it a mockery of the democratic process when judges overturn the results of a public plebiscite.

The temptation for the 44 percent of us who voted against Prop. 215 is to applaud the state’s highest court for addressing itself to the continuing controversy the law precipitated.

To urge the justices to allow local governments throughout the state to ban marijuana dispensaries if they see fit. To strike down the Compassionate Use Act altogether on grounds that it violates federal law.

But the time for the courts to strike down Prop. 215 was back in 1996, before the measure actually made the state ballot. Not after the measure was approved by the voters. Not 16 years after the fact.

If the forthcoming court review of Prop. 215 was an aberration, perhaps it would not so offend my democratic (small d) sensibilities. But California judges and courts have been notorious over the years in nullifying the expressed will of the state’s electorate.

Other Initiatives

In 1994, Proposition 187 was approved by 59 percent of California voters. The Save our State initiative would have prohibited illegal aliens from receiving public education, health care and other taxpayer-funded entitlements.

However, it was declared unconstitutional by federal judge Mariana Pfaelzer, a liberal judicial activist appointed by President Jimmy Carter. When Gray Davis became governor, he decided not to appeal, effectively killing the law.

Proposition 209, the California Civil Rights Initiative, was approved by 54 percent of voters in 1996, the same year Prop. 215 won passage. It prohibited the state from considering race, sex or ethnicity in public employment, public contracting and public education.

It was initially stuck down as unconstitutional by federal judge Thelton Henderson, yet another liberal judicial activist appointed by Carter. However, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals subsequently upheld the law.

Props. 22 and 8

In 2000, Proposition 22 was approved by an overwhelming 61 percent of California voters. The Knight Initiative, as it was known, specified that only marriages between a man and woman would be lawfully recognized in the Golden State. Eight years later, the California Supreme Court struck down Prop. 22 as unconstitutional.

The court’s action led, in turn, to Proposition 8, the California Marriage Protection Act. That 2008 constitutional amendment, which prohibited same-sex marriages, was approved by 52 percent of the electorate.

Prop. 8 was overturned in 2010 by federal judge Vaughn Walker, who retired not long after his ruling and announced that he was in a long term same-sex relationship. His ruling was stayed and the fate of the voter-approved law may ultimately be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

California’s initiative system, which worked just fine for much of the past 101 years, has in recent decades become a democratic bait-and-switch. The people of the state are supposed to have the power to enact law at the ballot box, but the reality is that judges and courts — all too often politically motivated — decide what voter-approved propositions may and may not become state law.

That’s why initiative system needs a fix. The suggestion here is a judicial tribunal that previews proposed propositions before they reach the ballot. Before millions of dollars are spent for and against the measure. And before — rather than after — the measure is approved by the state electorate.

Such judicial preview will not all together prevent the courthouse assault on direct democracy we’ve witnessed over the past couple decades. But it will raise the bar considerably for judges and courts that presume to thwart the will of the electorate.

– Joseph Perkins

They were slapping high fives in the offices of state Treasurer Bill Lockyer this week. Why the celebration?  Because California no longer has the nation’s worst credit rating, according to Moody’s Investors Service.

“The reason we’ve improved our standing,” said Tom Dresslar, spokesman for the treasurer’s office, “is because of the actions that the Legislature and the governor have taken last year, with regard to the budget.”

To wit, he elaborated, “They took some major steps to solving our structural deficit, and we started to pay down what the governor calls ‘the wall of debt.’ And those steps have not gone unnoticed by the rating agencies and they have given us credit for those actions.”

Well, not exactly Tom.

First of all, California really did not “improve” its standing. It simply moved from worst to next to worst because Moody’s downgraded Illinois (which, it should be noted, has a Democrat governor and Democrat-controlled state Legislature, just like California).

Also, neither Moody’s nor the other two major credit-rating agencies — Standard & Poor’s and Fitch Group –have really “given (California) credit” for the actions Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature took last year on the state budget. In fact, S&P and Fitch continue to rank California’s creditworthiness 50th among the states.

‘Missed Opportunity’

S&P said last summer that the budget the party of Brown enacted amounted to “a missed opportunity” because it failed to address the “backlog of budget obligation accumulated during the past decade.”

Fitch declared California’s fiscal and credit prospects “clouded,” not the least because of “extensive budgetary pressures confronting the state’s constrained financial flexibility stemming from voter initiatives.”

What particularly resonated was Fitch’s admonition that California’s credit rating should not be so low “considering the size and breadth of the state’s economy and tax base” as well as “the strength inherent in a state’s sovereign powers.”

Indeed, California continues to boast one of the world’s 10 largest economies. The state government collects $90 billion or so in annual revenues. If the budget-making process in Sacramento hadn’t long been so dysfunctional, the state would not now be struggling with its structural deficit. It would not have the nation’s worst credit rating.

Dresslar estimated that the state’s structural deficit is $9.2 billion. He also maintained that Gov. Brown’s proposed 2012-2013 budget will eliminate that structural deficit and, in turn, move the Golden State up a tier or more in the credit ratings.

Trickeration

But the governor’s budget relies on the same kind of fiscal trickeration that produced the backlog of budget obligations to which S&P referred. Most noteworthy, he includes $6.9 billion worth of tax hikes in his budget that require the unlikely approval of California voters.

Without those tax hikes, the governor’s budget falls apart, as a new report this week by the state Legislative Analyst’s office attests. And once that happens, we’ll see the same excruciating fight in Sacramento over taxes and spending that we’ve witnessed for far too many years.

Some say that California’s perennial budget problems are unsolvable. But that is not so. All lawmakers need do is study the best practices of the states that the credit rating agencies rank in their top ten.

Aside from their enviable creditworthiness, those states have four things in common:

They control their spending, not letting yearly outlays outpace inflation and population growth. They do not create (or expand) state programs anticipating new revenues that may not materialize.

They prepare for lean economic times by setting aside windfall tax revenues during economic boom times. And they keep their tax burdens among the lowest in the country, recognizing that lower taxes lead to greater economic growth and more overall tax revenue flowing into state coffers.

- Joseph Perkins

Many in the media say that Republicans are rapidly becoming irrelevant in California, and will become nothing more than an afterthought after the next election.

Even a Capitol press club, made up of declining “old media” newspaper, radio and television reporters, recently indicated a reluctance to invite Republicans to speak at the monthly luncheons. Will Republicans become extinct before the old media do?

In stories, reporters at the Capitol reluctantly and rarely cover Republican bills or floor speeches.

With that attitude, why would anyone care if the Democratic Party took over the Legislature with a solid two-thirds majority?

The Best Defense Is A Good Offense

With 25 Democrats and 15 Republicans in the Senate and 52 Democrats and 28 Republicans in Assembly, Republicans still have the power to block tax increases, and have successfully done so. California law requires a two-thirds majority in the Legislature to pass new taxes.

California Republicans are good goalies. They many not be able to practice good offense, but they are able to block attempts to score on bad bills.

Now, the newly drawn legislative districts provide Democrats the opportunity to capture the four Senate and Assembly seats needed in the Legislature to gain total control. With that, many in the state are leery that California is too close to slipping into one-party rule, and even totalitarianism.

California already is starting to resemble a totalitarian state. We already have a political system where the state doesn’t recognize any limits to its authority. We are regulated in nearly every aspect of our private and public lives.  And the Democrats manage to stay in power with the help of a sympathetic, supportive media. While the media are not state-controlled (yet), they doesn’t need to be.

What’s Ahead?

I asked four very different people, each involved in politics in very different ways, for a California forecast if Democrats were to take over two-thirds control of the Legislature. Surprisingly, the answers weren’t all that different.

Jon Coupal

“We will be mistreated and abused,” said Jon Coupal, taxpayer advocate and President of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association. “Democrats lied. Voters have no trust because of SB 202, the bill gutted and amended at the end of the 2011 legislative session, and rushed through for passage by Democratic Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg that monkeyed with state elections.”

Described by some Republicans as “a danger to democracy,” SB 202 was by Sen. Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley. It passed both the Assembly and Senate and was signed by the governor in warp-speed. It called for moving ballot initiative elections that would have been on the June primary ballot to November general elections, when there is a higher voter turnout. With the higher turnout, voters tend to be more liberal than during June primaries.

But many Republicans said this is just an attempt to steal elections and a ploy to stop two measures opposed by unions from being on the June 2012 ballot.

One measure, a paycheck protection measure, would prevent unions from using members’ dues for political donations. The other measure, filed by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, the California Deficit Prevention Act, is a spending-limit measure. Both potentially would greatly affect state unions.

“SB 202 is so wrong on so many levels,” Coupal wrote in a recent op-ed for the Orange County Register. ”First, it mandates that, from now on, all citizen initiative measures appear only on November ballots. Until now, initiatives that qualified in time were placed on the June primary election ballot.

“Secondly, SB202 moves the vote on a constitutional requirement for a better state-government ‘rainy day fund’ from June 2012 to November 2014. This budget reform was part of the infamous budget deal that left Californians with $16 billion in higher taxes. The only reform Republicans got out of this lousy deal was this fig leaf of a budget reform — but it was better than nothing,” Coupal added.

Steve Maviglio

Democratic strategist Steve Maviglio doesn’t think that Republicans will lose the four legislative seats or hand over two-thirds majority to the Democrats. He said, “The fear of a spending spree is tempered by the fact that not all Democrats in the Legislature are one ideology.”

Maviglio said that the Latino and Black Caucuses are not in lockstep with the far left wing of the Democratic Party. “We’ll see more moderate candidates.”

Stephen Frank

“The Democrats will eat themselves up,” said Stephen Frank, Republican campaign consultant and strategist and publisher of California Political News & Views. “A majority would force them to reconsider their budget.” However, Frank said that if Democrats achieve a majority, more moderates will be elected.

But Frank is more concerned about the bills Democrats will be able to pass without opposition. “Every bill that comes out of the Legislature that spends money will have a Project Labor Agreement on it,” Frank said. “And we will see a more stringent use of AB 32 and SB 375.” AB 32 is the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. And SB 375, the Sustainable Communities and Climate Protection Act of 2008, is a draconian law that will force Californians out of their cars and homes and into mass transit and high-rise apartments.

Coupal agreed with both Mavigio and Frank that Californians will see more moderate Democrats elected in the future. And Coupal agreed with Maviglio that Republicans will probably not lose remaining seats or the ability to block tax increases.

Republicans are not an afterthought in California, nor will they be any time soon.

Karen England

On social issues, Karen England with Capitol Resource Institute predicted that Democratic social strategies and social spending will become a little more obvious to the public. “Democrats may get credit, or get blamed for how far left the state swings,” England said.

“The recent gender bathroom bill would not have been pulled with a two-thirds majority by Democrats,” England explained. AB 266, by San Francisco Democratic Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, would have allowed for self-selection of gender by students. Beginning as early as elementary school, boys would have had access to the girls’ locker rooms and bathrooms and would have been allowed to play and compete on girls’ sports teams, and girls could have done the same with the boys’ facilities and teams.

The bill stated, “A pupil shall be permitted to participate in sex-segregated school programs, activities, and facilities, including athletic teams and competitions, consistent with his or her gender identity, irrespective of the gender listed on the pupil’s records.”

“Do we really want girls going to the bathroom next our boys, and a boy going in our girls’ bathroom, whether it’s high school or first grade?” England asked. “This is ridiculous, and it’s just one example of the far left social agenda, which will only speed up the decline of California.”

“With power, the Democrats have shown they don’t really care about California,” England added. But after significant outcry, the bill was pulled from the legislative calendar before it could be heard.

“Right now the lines of demarcation are very bright, and good for fiscal conservatives,” said Coupal. “Passing taxes in the Legislature strengthens Republicans.”

Katy Grimes

California legislators never have enough time, and always lack the vision, to deal appropriately with the state’s pressing budget and infrastructure problems. But they are great at self-aggrandizement and at catering to the special-interest groups that help assure their re-election.

One would think, for instance, the Assembly Transportation Committee would be deeply concerned with the predicted sky-high cost overruns for the proposed High-Speed Rail system, or with planning cost-effective ways to meet the transportation needs of a growing population. Yet the committee spends nearly a third of its time on a task that few readers would consider of vital importance: naming highways.

California highways already have real names. We know that the 55, also known as the Costa Mesa Freeway, goes from the Pacific Coast Highway in Newport Beach to the intersection of the 91, or Riverside Freeway, in Anaheim. It’s clear that 99 — central and Northern Californians don’t use “the” before referring to their freeways — cuts through the urbanized regions of the Central Valley.

But you can’t drive far on any freeway in California without seeing signs referring to, for example, the “Joe Colla Interchange” or the “Eric W. Rood Memorial Expressway.” Such freeway namings, which only confuse drivers because the routes aren’t really referred to by those names in atlases and GPS systems, have become so profligate that I’ve seen memorial-highway signage with multiple names on each sign.

The signs are paid for with private donations, but the Assembly estimates that it costs $15,000 to $30,000 in Caltrans staff time for every member highway resolution that is approved.

Moratorium

“It’s gone crazy,” said Assemblyman Chris Norby, R-Fullerton, who introduced Assembly Bill 595, which would have placed a two-year moratorium “on any naming of highways or posting signs by act of the Legislature.” Local governments would still be free to name roadways.

“I don’t think it’s the best way to honor any Californian,” Norby said in an interview. “No one knows who it is.”

I did some Internet searching and learned that Eric W. Rood was a Nevada County supervisor. I learned from a Facebook site that former San Jose Councilman Joe Colla in 1976 “hoisted a car to the top of [an] incomplete [interchange] ramp to symbolize the folly of it all. … He then had a helicopter drop him on top to take a picture … which was flashed around the country and brought attention to California’s budget problems and unfinished freeways.”

That actually seems like one of the more appropriate road namings, given that Colla helped get that interchange funded. In most cases, however, roads are named after living and deceased politicians and police officers killed in the line of duty, which is why a police lobbyist opposed Norby’s proposed moratorium.

But, as Norby said, this is no way to honor people. One doesn’t drive onto a freeway to observe a memorial. It shouldn’t take an Internet search to learn something about these honorees. In his home city, private citizens created an actual memorial for one officer killed years ago, which is a more meaningful honor.

NOW Objects

Almost all of the namings are for men, which prompted the National Organization for Women to testify in favor of Norby’s bill. It’s odd that the naming honors go overwhelmingly to government officials, almost as if no other Californians are worthy of honor. This is just a way for legislators to curry favor. It’s a cheap way — for the politician, although not for the taxpayer — to score points. It’s a great excuse to give a speech. Until this proposed bill, there was nary a peep of opposition from anyone. Who isn’t going to vote “yes” to create the “Greatest Generation Memorial Highway,” although it’s hard to understand how that does any justice to any member of that generation.

Practically speaking, the plethora of signs creates a distraction. The Sacramento Bee reported that there are 246 pages on the Caltrans website listing named infrastructure projects. There are more than 1,000 such signs, and the number keeps doubling every 10 years. It’s basically a meaningless gesture, and one that takes legitimate time away from more important business.

Caltrans Policy

Furthermore, the way naming honors are bestowed now violates a clear Caltrans policy established in 1963. According to Caltrans, freeway naming should be done solely by the Highway Commission and “naming should be provided on the basis of motorists’ needs.” That’s a crucial point, but how often are the needs of taxpayers or mere citizens the basis for doing anything in the Legislature? If anything, this process works against the clear driving needs of California drivers.

Caltrans also suggests the use of historical or geographic names, the use of a single name for an entire span of freeway and argues that “memorial names should be avoided.” But Caltrans notes accurately: “Of course, the Legislature being the Legislature ignored the recommendation.” And it will continue to ignore the recommendation.

The moratorium bill needed eight votes to move it out of committee but could only get five. This isn’t a big deal, I suppose. In the scheme of things, the costs imposed mean nothing in comparison to, say, the amount of money California squanders on its duplicative commissions, excessive pensions and massive welfare programs. But sometimes the little things offer deep insight into bigger problems.

The bigger problem is that the Legislature continues to conduct business as usual, nearly oblivious to the looming budget, regulatory and economic problems that grow each day. The bigger issue is that the Legislature is so beholden to interest groups that it cannot even approve the most modest reforms of its behavior. The bigger deal is that there is no hope that any of this — or any of the Legislature’s far more significant dysfunctional behavior — will ever change.

Maybe we should just rename I-5, the Road to Fiscal Ruin and be done with it.

– Steven Greenhut