Over the last several weeks, we have seen the Democrats in Sacramento flail away at trying to fix California. Whether it is the rampant crime, particularly in our large urban centers, or homelessness, which seems to be pervasive, some rational Democrats come up with solutions, only to be overwhelmed in their own caucuses in the Legislature. The Democrats in the California Legislature are owned by the interest groups that make money from government, whether its the enviros who use the regulatory system to extort money from anyone who needs a government permit to do business or “progressive” criminal activists who have some sort of Victor Hugo-type Les Miserables belief that criminals engage in criminal behavior because they need food, and not because they are bad people. The last two or three weeks in the Legislature have shown how broken the Democrat majority in the Legislature really is.
The first thing to understand about legislative politics are that the committees in the Legislature exist to protect the interest groups that fund and support the majority from government policies that are good for the public, but bad for the pocketbook of these interest groups. So, the education committees in the Legislature protect the teachers’ union from policies that would break down the government run education monopoly, which the teachers’ union money control and maintain through union dues, even though everyone knows that system is failing our students. Incompetent teachers and administrators are protected, innovative education ideas killed in the committees controlled by the union.
The same is true for the committees that oversee our housing and crime policies. The Speaker, who needs the money and support from the interest groups the use environmental regulations to extort money from private businesses in the housing market, or other interest groups that profit from the current “soft on crime” attitudes, makes sure that the majorities on the committees that hear the bills to try and make government policies would actually help communities and those in need get killed in committee, no matter who authors the bills.
Two specific examples of how this works. If you have not heard of the “abundance agenda” now the topic of conversations among “enlightened liberals,” it basically says that the US is facing a crisis of self inflicted scarcity in housing, due to over-regulation which leads to scarcity. It says we have abundant resources and a strong economy, but regulations that are supposed to stop “bad” development end up killing all development, causing a housing shortage, and thus leads to greater homelessness due to rising prices in rents caused by this shortage. I don’t know about you, but to me, this sounds like what the Republicans have been saying for years (I know I have since the days when I sat on my local planning commission).
So, a group of “enlightened liberals” have proposed proposed reducing these regulations. The problem is these regulations actually help enviros extort money from local developers in the towns and cities across the state, so these enviros oppose the “abundance agenda.” And the chair of the Housing Committee, when asked about the proposal to reduce these regulations to increase housing and decrease homelessness, says words like “I’m not going to help make developers make more money, they’re evil.” What? That is total insanity. Finally, some leftist comes up with policy ideas that make sense, and the Legislature uses the committee system to protect the interest groups that are directly responsible for out of control housing prices and homelessness.
Now let’s look at the Public Safety Committee. Every rational person knows that the sexual trafficking of 16 and 17 year olds is evil, and should be punished severely. This is not even really subject to debate, unless you are a living in some alternative reality, so when a Democrat actually proposes increasing the penalties on those who engage in that evil behavior, we all think finally the Ds in the Legislature are doing something right.
Enter the committee system. The bill to increase those penalties goes before the Public Safety Committee, and gets killed because teenagers have sex, and some kid might go to prison because he paid for a dinner date and had sex afterwards. That can be interpreted as the trafficking of young girls. Once again, What?!!!! In no rational world does that make any sense. Only in the mind of the extreme leftists in California does that argument carry any water, but those extreme leftists dominate the committee, because the Speaker needs the help of those who support the “soft on crime” agenda to keep the majority. Sex Traffickers, who make money off the sexual exploitation of children were protected, children were not.
For those of you who think this is a recent phenomenon, I can tell one story from my time in the Legislature. In 1996, a Democrat had a bill to increase the penalties on purveyors of child pornography. Of course, child pornography involves filming the illegal sexual exploitation of children, and selling the film. The majority on the Senate Judiciary Committee essentially gutted the bill, turning a bill that called for stiff criminal penalties to a weak-kneed shadow of its former self, still increasing penalties a little bit, but eliminating the harsher penalties for this evil behavior claiming that child pornography is “adult material.” Child pornographers, who make money off the sexual exploitation of children, were protected. Children were not.
In each of these events, some Democrats were getting it right, and other Democrats did the wrong thing to support their interest groups, harming California’s children, homeless, and businesses. There really is only one solution, California voters need to replace the majority Democrats, even the Democrats who claim they support the policies that will actually help Californians. If they really supported those policies, they wouldn’t vote for a Speaker that populates the committees with people who kill their rational ideas. Even if a Democrat says I don’t support the Ds position on crime or housing policies that create homelessness, they still vote for a Speaker that kills the bills that will correct the problems, so even when they try to get it right, they get it wrong.
In the end, it is California voters that are the problem. The majority of Californians keep voting to keep the crazy leftists in charge of the state. We get the government we deserve. Until a majority of the voters in this state wake up, we will keep getting these warped policy outcomes, and the quality of our state will continue to diminish.