Conservatives say they like judges who follow the law and the original intent behind it. Liberals say they like judges who understand the world and have empathy.

I like judges who agree with me.

In that vein, there were two very agreeable court decisions on the initiative process in the past week.

Cross posted on www.ronkayela.com

LA contracted with a private company to install red-light cameras at 32
of its 4,300 intersections to catch scofflaws. The company went
bankrupt and now is owned by a firm from Arizona, the state the city is
boycotting, and its contract is up.

In five years, the program has chalked up a $1.5 million loss for the
city because two-thirds of the $466 fine goes to the state and county
and nearly one in five of the tickets for red-light crashing — fully
50,000 of them worth nearly $6 million — have gone unpaid.

You can’t renew your license or car registration if you have unpaid tickets.

What do you need when you don’t have a job?  You need a job.  That seems pretty obvious.  And with 2 million Californians still out of work, what California needs is a lot of jobs.

Instead, what we now have on the ballot in November is the Jobs Tax Initiative.  A proposal that would cost us jobs, a lot of jobs.  A proposal that would punish with higher taxes, businesses that want to hire Californians and create new jobs.  That would push existing jobs out of the state.   That heaps new burdens on already struggling small businesses.  That goes right after high tech and bio tech, the very industries that we are expecting to create the next wave of good jobs.

What seems pretty obvious about the Jobs Tax initiative – is what a bad idea it is.

If you’re a
business person who has to deal with the city of Los Angeles, you may
get the feeling you’re watching that old movie, "Three Faces of Eve."

I mean, Los Angeles must have a multiple personality disorder. How else can you explain this:

On Tuesday, Councilman Tom LaBonge
stood up at an event in which the governor and the mayor, among others,
congratulated themselves for helping a bioscience business stay in Los
Angeles. He implied that he was all in favor of helping businesses.
LaBonge told the crowd that when he first met Austin Beutner, L.A.’s
so-called jobs czar, a few months back, he instructed Beutner to "do
what we can" to help businesses.

Meg Whitman was wrong not to vote for many years, as she admits, but I find it surprising that the union funded independent expenditure chose to kick off its television ad campaign against her on this issue. You would think the unions would want to get to its solution for fixing the California budget crisis – raising taxes by $40 billion dollars.

Okay, maybe they want to keep that a secret.

It’s unlikely the issue of voting will have a great impact. The same charge was made against our current governor in the recall election of 2003 and did not stop his winning campaign.

To paraphrase White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, "Never let a crisis go to waste."  

Clearly, Barack Obama agrees with his chief of staff’s philosophy.
Last week during his first Oval Office address, President Barack Obama
spent a significant part of it trying to convince the American people
that in the wake of what’s happening in the Gulf, now is the time to
implement radical energy and climate reform legislation – which for
Barack Obama and some of his Democrat supporters, means a so-called
cap-and-trade system…or a national energy tax.

To "move" this economy-changing legislation through Congress – a feat
doubted by many in his own party – Barack Obama needs the United States
Senate to act legislatively…and that "action" will require 60 votes to
stop a filibuster.  Sensing the timing may be right, or, in truth, that
the legislative calendar for the year is nearing its end and Democrats
need to rush home to campaign for November’s elections, the President
will soon call a group of Republican and Democrat Senators to the White
House to discuss this so-called energy and climate "reform" effort.

California State Senator Gil Cedillo (along with the California
Latino Legislative Caucus) proposed a Resolution on Wednesday that would force
California to boycott the state of Arizona in light of that state’s tough
crackdown on illegal immigrants.

I could be wrong, but wasn’t that last month’s story? Seems to me our
buddy Gil Cedillo is a day late and a few pesos short of a sound idea.

To be sure, this is right up Cedillo’s alley. He is, after all, the State
Senator who has continued pushing for Driver’s Licenses for illegal
immigrants. But calling for a boycott against one of our fellow
southwestern states and trying to strip them of the 2011 All-Star MLB
game seems silly at this point when there are so many other pressing
matters facing OUR State.

Is Assemblyman Sam Blakeslee’s first place finish in the Senate District 15 special election an omen for what might come in the November battle over suspending AB 32, the greenhouse gases law? Ironically, on the same day that Blakeslee pulled off a comfortable victory over former colleague John Laird – although not decisive since Blakeslee just missed 50% necessitating a runoff — the initiative to suspend AB 32 qualified for the November ballot.

Blakeslee missed capturing outright the senate seat vacated by new Lt. Governor, Abel Maldonado, by winning 49.71% of the vote. Millions of dollars was poured into this race because a Democratic victory would leave Democrats one vote short of the two-thirds vote necessary to pass the budget and taxes.

But, the election was heavily influenced by the Gulf oil spill. The Laird campaign tried to splash the oil spill crisis all over Blakeslee, reminding voters he used to work for an oil company, and that he supported a form of off-shore drilling. The images of the destruction caused by the Gulf oil spill certainly have an emotional pull.

The Senate Democrats
realignment plan is off-target.

The state can raise revenues, generate
jobs and growth by eliminating bureaucracy and unnecessary programs —
not increasing taxes or shifting the unfunded burden to the counties.

What’s needed is the ELIMINATION of unfunded mandates, consolidation
or elimination of state departments and agencies along with reducing
the large number of legislative committees, subcommittees and select
committees.