Assemblymen Anthony Adams and Doug LaMalfa have been doing a great job blogging from the Assembly floor about the flood of bills passing this week. Unfortunately, there are so many bad bills passing, it’s hard to keep up with them. For example, moments ago the Assembly approved AB 1819 (Price) which will allow 16-year-olds to file an affidavit to register to vote in their next eligible election (when they turn 18). Of course Assemblyman Price and his fellow Democrats argued that this will encourage greater civic involvement from young people. But as Assemblyman Joel Anderson pointed out, this is a slippery slope towards allowing minors to vote in presidential elections—something Barack Obama could certainly benefit from were it allowed this year.
One point that I had not considered regarding AB 1819 was brought up by Assemblyman Chuck DeVore: every 16-year-old who files their voter registration affidavit will expose their private information to the public. In an era where keeping a minor’s personal information private is increasingly difficult, why is the legislature passing a law to publish minors’ information in voter files? Parents should be concerned about this possibility.
Two other important bills passed the Assembly yesterday as well. AB 2747 (Berg) will require an attending physician to provide a terminally ill patient with “information and counseling” regarding “legal end-of-life options,” including palliative sedation. Traditionally, palliative sedation was only used to help alleviate the pain of a dying patient by inducing unconsciousness. Now it’s being used to legalize assisted-suicide and euthanasia. Until it was recently amended, the bill would have included in palliative sedation the “withholding of artificial food and hydration.” In other words, a Terri Schiavo situation would be legal in California. Lawmakers should not be fooled by the euphemisms in AB 2747–it is one step closer to euthanasia.
AB 2058 (Levine) will impose a 25 cent tax on every plastic or paper bag at stores. As you can imagine, this measure elicited some interesting debate on the Assembly floor. Assemblywoman Bonnie Garcia recounted her childhood memories about carrying groceries in plastic bags with her grandmother; Assemblyman LaMalfa mentioned that plastic bags are particularly useful on long road trips with diaper-wearing toddlers. One interesting issue that concerned some Democrats was the unequal wealth redistribution of the new tax. The revenue raised from the tax will be used to combat areas with high litter rates, not necessarily in the community where the tax was collected. Thus, a responsible neighborhood in Los Angeles may have to pay for the litter abatement in an irresponsible neighborhood hundreds of miles away.
Hundreds of bills voted on already and hundreds more to go…