Author: John Wildermuth

Pundits and politicians on the left and right continue to express amazement about how unpredictable Gov. Jerry Brown has been. On the one hand he’s

Once again, the California Legislature has shown it slavishly follows the Golden Rule: He’s who’s got the gold, makes the rules. And there aren’t many

In a Nixon-to-China moment, Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown
reminded voters – and his party leaders – that they voted in a different type
of Democrat last November.

In a message vetoing SB105, a bill by Democratic state Sen.
Leland Yee that would have required helmets for all skiers and snowboarders
under 18, Brown took dead aim at his party’s long-standing belief that the
Legislature always knows best.

"I’m concerned about the continuing and seemingly inexorable
transfer of authority from parents to the state," the governor wrote. "Not
every human problem deserves a law."

Let’s look at that last line again: "Not every human
problem deserves a law."

The Democrats’ plan to jam through a late-session bill blocking future initiatives from appearing on primary election ballots is a sneaky, baldly partisan, pro-union measure.

Having said that, it’s not a bad idea.

Darrell Steinberg, the Democratic leader in the state Senate, admitted Monday that the party is “considering” a bill that would limit all initiative measures to future November general election ballots, beginning, not coincidentally, next year.

It isn’t meant as a good-government plan.

You see, pro-GOP types already are collecting signatures for an initiative that would ban unions from using members’ dues for political purposes and barring direct contributions from unions. Let’s call it “Son of Paycheck Protection,” a similar measure that as Prop. 75 failed in then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s disastrous November 2005 special election.

"Not Invented Here" is recognized as a pretty dumb way to
run a tech company. It doesn’t work so well in politics, either.

In the biz world, it refers to a company’s unwillingness to
make use of technology or innovations that someone else thought of first,
figuring it can’t be that good if we didn’t develop it our self (see also:
Let’s Reinvent the Wheel).

In politics, a similar attitude is standard operating
procedure when it comes to budgets, legislation, proposals and just about
anything else that comes down the pipe. Not only can’t it be that great an idea
if someone from the other party thought it up, but no way, no how are we going
to let the other guy snatch any political credit for it.

A case in point can be seen in D.C. right now, where
Republicans seem to be willing to fight tooth and nail for a tax increase
President Obama wants to block.

Did the Founding Fathers really believe that we have the
unalienable right to life, liberty and uninterrupted underground cell phone
service?

You’d think so if you’ve been reading the various screeds
that have come out since officials of the Bay Area Rapid Transit District
turned off cell phone service in some of their subway stations for three hours
last week in an effort to keep protesters from shutting down the system.

The shutoff "was a shameful attack on free speech," raged
the Electronic Frontier Foundation, comparing it to the actions of dictators in
Egypt and Syria cutting phone service to peaceful anti-government
demonstrators.

The ACLU called it a clear violation of the First Amendment.
The international hacker group Anonymous warned that the group "will attempt to
show those engaging in the censorship what it feels like to be silenced." That
was followed by electronic attacks on a pair of BART websites, with personal
information of the system’s riders and police officers grabbed and posted
on-line.

If the state budget is supposed to be a blueprint, this is
one funny structure California is building.

One month into the new fiscal year and the state is already
10 percent short of what it needs to keep the budget balanced. And as Joel Fox noted
in this space Friday, it’s not like the national economy is inspiring a lot
of optimism that things are going to get better in a hurry.

Sure, July is just one month. And the state Department of
Finance says their numbers are better than state Controller John Chiang’s
report Tuesday of a $538 million shortfall.

Local businesses could fling open the hiring window,
Californians could dig into their wallets and start buying homes, cars and
video games and then cue the confetti, happy days are here again.

California has finally ended its 16-year pursuit of the
white whale of presidential primary relevance.

When Gov. Jerry Brown last week signed the bill to move the
state’s 2012 primary election back to its traditional home in June, it was
recognition that California was never going to be Iowa or New Hampshire.

More than that, though, the choice was a reminder that while
the presidential race gets the flashy headlines, those too-often-ignored state
legislative and congressional races can be even more important to California.

It seemed like such an easy call back in 1996. Since
California’s June election was at the end of the presidential primary season,
moving the primary to March 26 would make the nation’s biggest state a real
player in the race to pick the presidential candidates, bringing in the big
names to actually campaign up and down the state and not just raise money to spend
elsewhere in the country.

Here’s a reminder, courtesy of the Rolling Stones, to the
various Californians already camped out on the courthouse steps in advance of
Friday’s presentation of the final redistricting maps:

Cue the music: "You can’t always get what you want."

Republicans, Democrats, blacks, Latinos, mayors, county
supervisors and local activists across the state already have complained that
the lines drawn by the new California Citizens Redistricting Commission, all
boiling down to a single beef: They just aren’t fair.

And the way to fix that problem, naturally, is to redraw the
lines so that my political party/ethnic group/city/county/neighborhood gets
what it wants, even if the other political party/ethnic group, etc., gets
screwed.