As California Goes, So Goes The Nation

As I have admitted before, I am a political junkie.  I limit the amount of time I watch politics by recording the programs I want to watch and blasting by the commercials.  Thus, for a one hour program I save 20 minutes.

This past week has been a real roller coaster.  The Zimmerman trial in Florida has taken up a lot of time, and although I found it fascinating to watch, thought about my health and exercise and really limited the amount of time I watched that.  I did watch the prosecution summation and tried to watch the defense summation but O’Mara droned on and on, so I raced through to the end.  At this point as I write this, no verdict.

The other issues that have been of interest are the sudden appearance of so many so-called anti-abortion laws, the gerrymandering of states by Republican legislatures to insure the election of a majority of Republicans along with and the proliferation of voter suppression bills in state legislatures after the Supreme Court struck down Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. 

The majority of the clinics that are the target of the Republicans do provide abortions, but they also provide for over-all women’s health care.  These include but are probably not limited to mammograms, ovarian and cervical cancer screenings.  The one that had me both laughing at and feeling sort of sick at the same time was the North Carolina bill for motorcycle safety that had an amendment added at the last moment to restrict access to women’s health care clinics.  The reason for the laughter was the little headline at the bottom of the screen on Rachel Maddow’s program:  “Zen and the art of menstrual cycle maintenance”.  Ohio and Wisconsin have also passed anti-choice laws these past few weeks, usually by sneaking them through when they thought no one was looking. 

What I have found to be really interesting is that although most of the pundits I watch decry all of these maneuvers of gerrymandering Congressional Districts to ensure that Republicans are elected, sneaking anti-women’s health clinic laws through at the last moment, and the voter suppression laws, no one mentions the laws in California where these above sins now cannot occur.  I say “now cannot” because California appointed a bi-partisan commission of 12 private citizens to redraw California’s Congressional Districts to eliminate the Republican gerrymandering that had taken place.  Believe it or not, the Republican Party in California challenged the new Districting because “it did not favor Republicans”.  That was the point!  It didn’t favor either party, and now Democrats control the State government. 

As far as sneaking laws as amendments onto bills that have nothing to do with the amendment, as North Carolina did with the motorcycle safety act and abortion, California has had the Begley-Keene Act for years.  This Act has pretty strict requirements for special meetings, emergency meetings, etc., but for regular meetings of the Legislature, the meeting must be noticed 10 days prior to the date, with a draft agenda.  If an emergency item comes up that requires immediate action, there must be a 48 hour notification period, and depending on the item, requires either a 2/3rd or unanimous vote to place it on the agenda.  The reason for these strict rules is to enable the public to also be present when decisions regarding its life, liberty and pursuit of happiness are involved. 

The 52 counties and Special Districts in the State of California are covered by the Ralph M. Brown Act, which also requires public notification, the posting of an agenda, rules for open meetings, and the prohibition of secret meetings among the members of Boards and Commissions.  Thus, for a five member Board, two can have a discussion on an item, but not three.  Nor can there be a “serial” meeting.  That is, board member one cannot call up member two and tell him/her what the decision is, member two calls up member three, and on up the line.  This is highly illegal as well.  Consequently most of California’s counties are pretty well run.  We always have exceptions like San Bernardino County, and some others, but by and large the system works pretty well.

When it comes to election laws there are also some pretty strict guidelines.  But some of the voter suppression scams that other states use would be useless here.  That is, cutting back on days that the polls are open, or the number of polling places simply cannot work here because we have this really neat thing called “absentee voting”.  We sign up for absentee voting, and when our ballot comes in the mail we have the choice of filling it out at home and mailing it in, or filling it out at home and dropping it by a polling place on election day.  And heaven help the person who commits voter fraud!!  Consequently there is little to none in California, regardless of Darrell Issa’s ranting.

How I wish the old saying, “As California Goes, So Goes The Nation” could really happen now.