CA: McClintock's gold - Editorial: State senator sees success for reform package

BTTT

BTTT.

BTTT

McClintock ping.

Please freepmail me if you want on or off this list.

California certainly has a crisis in all the areas of these four initiatives.

BTTT!

Thanks for the ping. I'm glad McClintock thinks these measures will pass. I've never quite understood the concept of tenure. The idea that anyone would be next to impossible to terminate, seems like a foreign concept.

It certainly doesn't lead to productivity.

My issue is the redistricting.

It had been my thought, that most districts were fairly even with regard to population. I recently heard a person explaining that some Democrat districts have something like a few hundred thousand people in them, while some Republicans have as many as 6 million in theirs.

Carfully selected districts with a few hundred thousand make it very unlikely that Democrats would ever lose the district. They don't have to spend much money to keep it that way either.

Of course that's not true with a large district.

BTTT

>>I recently heard a person explaining that some Democrat districts have something like a few hundred thousand people in them, while some Republicans have as many as 6 million in theirs.

That makes no sense to me. Is there ANY district with 6 million people in it? Maybe this person was smoking too many cigars? Given the "cow's can't vote" laws, I would doubt there is any scenario that even resembles the numbers quoted here.

You are correct. I just used the following resource to check out 2001 Redistricting data.

Each district has been drawn with 423 thousand and change inhabitants. While registered voters and by party registrations do fluctuate considerably, they obviously don't resemble anything near what I heard on the radio.

As for the six million figure, I probably just didn't remember accurately, but I do believe the person was saying that some districts had millions while others have only a few hundred thousand inhabitants. That's clearly wrong.

Somehow it seems I confused the issue, or this person was just wildly off.

Thanks for the response.

http://www.igs.berkeley.edu/library/courseHandouts/CAredistricting.html

>>...or this person was just wildly off.

Definitely!

I usually don't quote people who call in, or I'll identify them as such. This person was a guest. Wish I could remember the exact situation now. Thanks again.

If you think about it, our original Constitution mandated government with a degree of unequal representation. Consider the difference in representative power in a Senator from Rhode Island versus California.

There is good reason for it which is well covered in the constitutional convention debate (it was the key issue). As things were, states governments were represented in the Senate, just as people were in the house. Similarly, within the states, counties selected state senators. That meant that your local supervisor had a direct line to state and even the Federal government with but one intermediary.

The 17th Amendment greatly weakened state representation (and empowered the media) while the Warren Court changed internal state representation with Reynolds v. Sims.

Thanks!!! Great article.

Did you happen to already see THIS too...?
http://boxerwatch.blogspot.com/2005/09/common-sense-legislation.html
Gracious! What a concept!!! ...To actually REQUIRE government entities act in accordance with the Fifth Amendment, to The United States Constitution, for a change...???!!! ...How absolutely RADICAL of these guys to even suggest such a thing...!!!

Friday, September 23, 2005

"Finally, we have a chance of giving property owners rights instead of giving every

environmental group the veto over what happens to (property owners' own) land."

Common Sense Legislation?

The Washington Post's Juliet Eilperin reports that the House Resources Committee has just passed a bill that sounds like a piece of common sense legislation. The legislation would rewrite the Endangered Species Act, which has been a goal of Committee Chairman Richard Pombo, (R-CA), for over a decade. Here's some key provisions from the bill:

Setting the stage for the most sweeping restructuring of endangered species protections in three decades, the House Resources Committee yesterday approved legislation that’d strengthen the hand of private property owners & make it harder for federal officials to set aside large swaths of habitat for imperiled plants & animals...The measure, which the panel approved 26 to 12 with eight Democrats voting aye, would require the government to compensate landowners if it declared some of their property off-limits to development to protect federally listed species & to decide such cases within 180 days.

Finally, we have a chance of giving property owners rights instead of giving every environmental group the veto over what happens to their land. Also, it establishes a method to compensate the landowner if the government sets aside land. The next step is to get it passed by the full House of Representatives. Ms. Eilperin reports that that's expected by a comfortable margin.

Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee (R-RI), who chairs the Senate subcommittee charged with overseeing endangered species law, said yesterday he won’t decide how to proceed until he hears back from an advisory group of environmentalists, landowners & government officials meeting in Keystone, CO. The House, Chafee said, "is moving quickly," adding that once the Keystone group reports to the Senate in 2006, he’d be comfortable drafting a bill. Offering financial incentives to landowners will be key, he added. "If you care about protecting private property rights & protecting species, it's going to revolve around funding issues," Chafee said.

Let's hope that this group reports back soon. It's time to get this thing moving ahead.

Thanks for the comments. I agree that the 17th Amendment was a mistake. I like the way you link the local supervisors to the process. Then I think of the County of Los Angeles and wretch.

I can't help but think they have offered Tom a deal of somesort. Let me know if I should be getting out the tinfoil.

The pressure for pragmatism mounts!!! Principled politicians are pictured as too ridgid and brittle and harsh!!!

In a local political battle I was once commanded to "bend, or break... change, or die!" He ended up biting the political dust for nearly killing our timber industry!!!

I like the way you link the local supervisors to the process. Then I think of the County of Los Angeles and wretch.

When representation is meaningful, people pay more attention to electing better representatives. When representation is subject to Federal, State, and judicial mandates, not to mention tort law, what you see is what you get.