California is a beautiful place.  The perfect weather, the wonderful scenery, it all adds up to a great place to live.  You may find yourself longing for a life of luxury in CA, but remember, they don’t call it the Left Coast for nothing.  For all our family and friends outside of California, here is just a taste of idiocy and lunacy emanating from our esteemed state government.  There are a few level headed folks in Sacramento.  Ray Haynes is one.  Here is a copy of his "Monday Morning Memorandum" from this week.  Enjoy the lunacy!

MONDAY
MORNING MEMORANDUM

By
Assemblyman Ray Haynes

November 14, 2005

The
Fourth Annual Nosey Awards

             Protecting individual liberty is the most
important thing a legislator can do.  Exercising power is easy; restraining the
exercise of power is hard.  Legislators therefore have a tendency to exercise
power in strange and intrusive ways.  The “Noseys” were designed to call
attention to the stupid exercise of power in the California Legislature.

 

The 2005
Nosey Award Winner is:

 

1.  AB 1677(Koretz) Correctional
Condoms Act:  This
bill provides for the legalization of, and distribution of contraband in our
states correctional facilities, by allowing any
non-profit or health agency to freely distribute condoms and dental dams to
inmates (Just what is a dental dam?).  With the understanding that sex between
inmates is a crime, this bill’s stated purpose is to prevent disease.  What
this strange bill DOES NOT DO, is provide for the disposal of the potentially
hundreds of thousands of used condoms.  Who gets stuck with that job?  Would
our Correctional Peace Officers be relegated to the duties of a peep show
custodian? 

 To be fair, the bill does state that it isn’t intended to encourage
illegal sex acts between inmates.  This begs the question; for what purpose are
these prison prophylactics to be used? 

This bill is the hands down winner for the bill that tries to do the
work of the lesser good, while simultaneously avoiding the root cause of the
problem.

 Runners
Up

   2.  SB 607 (Bowen):
Taxing Yard Sales.  When the Socialists in Sacramento aren’t doing dangerous
things like coddling pedophiles or trying to give drivers licenses to illegal
aliens, they try to do really dumb things like taxing yard sales.  Would you
expect anything less from your legislators who have tried to pass a “Soda Tax”
and force our building codes to include the principles of “Feng Shui?”

   3.  AB 17 (Koretz):  Tobacco: the
low hanging fruit of the politician; This bill seeks to
create a crime for smoking in what is arguably the most outdoors one can get;
the beach.  Now we have no smoking indoors and no smoking outdoors. When
smoking is outlawed, only outlaws will smoke. Now, if we could only outlaw all
of those darned seagulls…

   4.  AB 163 (Bermudez) Splitting
Hairs:  This bill sought to clarify issues regarding the
practice of hair threading; one form of trimming eye brows. The Legislature,
after an abnormally long committee debate, tried to tell people just exactly
what constitutes incidental eye brow hair cutting. Not willing to let well
enough alone, the bill also sought to add another redundant step in the
cosmetology licensing process. Strike another blow for the hair police.  Vetoed
by the Governor.

   5.  AB 418 (Koretz) “A little hair
of the dog”:  They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Why
not let dogs engage in cosmetic surgery? Why pass AB 418, which would have
outlawed dog ear cropping?  Not only a job killer, “nosing” into the long
established practices of the American Kennel Club, this bill reminds us that while
politicians aren’t willing to tackle the real problems that affect the working
people of California, they are perfectly willing to invent them.

   6.  AB 178 (Koretz) Up in Smoke,
“fire safe cigarettes”:  By adding more harmful chemicals to
the ingredients in cigarettes, which are already rumored to be unhealthy, Mr. Koretz
hopes to prevent smokers from setting themselves on fire. This bill will create
yet another price hike and additional regulations impacting both the manufacturer
and consumer. This bill will now be law.  No word on how it affects “fire-safe
medicinal marijuana”.

   7.  AB 616 (Vargas) “Cigar Envy”:  This
bill sought to prohibit smoking in an outdoor area that is enclosed on four
sides by a public building.  Mr. Vargas’s willingness to have the taxpayers
print a bill whose only function is to interrupt the relaxed atmosphere in the
Governor’s signature cigar smoking tent, is a perfect model of the playground
antics of an insulated Capitol establishment.

   8.  AB 756 (Goldberg) Lilliputian
Learning:  Miniaturization is cool. Laptops are cooler than
desktops. Tiny flip phones are cooler than the older, larger cell phones. Even
personal miniaturization in the form of anorexia appears to be cool—at least
if the covers of People and US magazine are a good barometer.  But much like
anorexia, the quest for miniaturization can sometimes be harmful and
shortsighted.  This bill would prohibit textbooks longer than 200 pages.  But
then again, maybe they are on to something – I might support an amendment to
limit all legislation to 2 pages!

   9.  AB 1103(Karnette) TOUR DE
TAX:  The legislature has long tried to figure out how to tax
kids—and this year they did it.  Tax cars, now tax bikes.  Kids—welcome to a
free society.

 10.  AB 651 (Berg, Levine) State
Sponsored Suicide:  This bill sought to provide a state
sanctioned means of ending a life with the help of a health care provider.
Rather than using the will of government to find solutions to things such as
healthcare, eldercare and such, we have now fully surrendered to our
legislative demons and have agreed to just give up.  As a well known actor once
proclaimed, “Soylent Green is people!” And you thought eugenics was passé!

             The
Legislature is no longer in session, so you are safe again for now.  But I’m
sure you can’t wait until next year to see just how nosey the Legislature can
get.

 ******************************

See, I told you so.  Lunacy!

Jonathan