As of this morning, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has acted on eight of our top twenty bills that he should veto.  As FR readers know, State Senator Dennis Hollingsworth, Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, and yours truly combed through the many hundreds of bills that the liberal Democrat-controlled legislature passed and put on the Govornor’s desk.  All twenty of these bills are really bad news, and the signing of any one of them represents very bad news for the liberty and freedom of Californians.
 
So, the fact that the Governor has signed seven of the "Terrible Twenty" is horrendous.  Republican donors and activists around the state worked hard to re-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger so that these kinds of bills, which you would expect to be passed by Don Perata, Fabian Nunez, and their ilk, would get a big VETO. 
 
Well, we’ll be doing a more comprehensive look at the Governor’s performance on the twenty worst bills after he has finished with them all.  That said, we are urging — no — PLEADING with Governor Schwarzenegger to VETO the remaining twelve bills on our list…
 
Yesterday we started with the Governor having signed four of the "terrible twenty" and vetoing only one.  During the day, the Governor managed to sign three more of them – can you believe it?  This, from our Republican Governor.
 
What did he sign yesterday? 
 
Both of these two were from our "Overreaching Environment Bills" category:

• AB 1109 by Assemblyman Huffman (D-San Rafael) – A real “dim” bill that tells you what sort of light bulbs you can buy in the name of efficiency.  Beginning in 2010, this bill would borrow the European Union’s light bulb regulations and make them our very own.  Ironically, the compact fluorescent lights (CFL) this bill favors cost far more in up front costs and contain mercury, a dangerous neurotoxin.  No word yet on whether a mandatory $10 per CFL mercury recycling fee will follow. 
• AB 162 by Assemblymember Wolk (D-Vacaville) is a state grab of land use decision authority using flood control as the rationale.  It aims to shut down development in the Central Valley by imposing a 200-year flood restriction while doing nothing to improve existing levees.  If floods can be stopped with paperwork, this bill’s for you.

And, if those weren’t enough, the Governor signed this particularly heinous bill:

• SB 777 by Senator Kuehl (D-Los Angeles) aims to reduce allegedly wide-spread harassment of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender high school students.  Assemblyman DeVore asked the bill’s floor manager in the Assembly, Assemblyman Laird, for examples of such, and Mr. Laird could cite none.  What the bill will do instead, critics fear, is to make children as young as kindergarten to believe that all types of sexual orientation are good, including sex changes, and require textbooks and other materials, to positively portray same-sex marriage, “gay history,” cross-dressing, etc.  (Read more about it here.)

What has been most disturbing about watching the Governor’s bill signings this year is that there is a notable and significant leftward shift in his ideology from previous years.  The number of bills that he is signing that came to his desk with little or no GOP votes is at an all-time high (by far).  But we’ll save our final analysis until he is done reviewing all of the remaining pieces of legislation on his desk.

The Governor gets some credit for vetoing Mark Leno’s Homosexual Marriage Bill, though because unlike any of the bills in our Terrible Twenty, Arnold had committed to veto this one all along, well before it reached his desk.  The Twenty is a prospective list, urging vetoes on bills where the Governor has not yet announced his intentions.
 
I will close with a mention of the Governor’s veto of AB 8, as he had previously committed to doing.  AB 8 was the health care plan of legislative Democrats.  The Governor gets some credit for vetoing it, but given that he has introduced his own package which is equally as terrible with its move from individual to government responsibility for health care coverage, it’s hard to expend much praise the veto.
 
We’ll keep you apprised on how it goes with the remaining twelve…

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 13th, 2007 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.