In Mel Brooks’ classic western comedy, Blazing Saddles , Brooks plays the corrupt western Governor William J. LePetomaine.  When a report reaches him that a town faces a crisis, LePetomaine turns to his attorney general, Hedley Lamarr (Harvey Korman) and exclaims, "We’ve got to do something to save our phony-baloney jobs!"

It appears the talks on legislators extending term limits are over for now.  Good.  Trying to slop something onto this year’s ballot would be very ugly and almost certainly defeated, as the voters would see through any sham cobbled together last minute, especially trying to fig leaf it behind redistricting reform.  Reforming the corrupt redistricting methods we have will now have to wait, but since any reform likely won’t take effect or be used until after the 2010 census, it’s OK on timeline.

This legislature can still try to get it right in an open process and put a quality reform package on the 2008 or even 2010 ballots and still be in plenty of time after the 2010 census for 2012’s election.  It’s up to all of us to make sure the promise made by Democrat leadership to reform redistricting after the effort to defeat Prop 77 is kept, and that this legislature lets go of ownership that is the conflict of interest in drawing its own districts.  

This without putting other silly political requirements into the process that distort what should be a ‘blindfold of justice’ method of drawing maps, that would favor a party, an incumbent, or someone’s definition of a community of interest…which means some other interest is then demoted.  

Outside of all of this talk of legislator term limit enhancement, if you really want to reform Sacramento, let’s talk about term limits for the bureaucrats that utilize the Survivor method of "Outwit, Outplay, Outlast" in stonewalling their bosses in the public and the legislature.