"Corruption and hypocrisy ought not to be inevitable products of democracy, as they undoubtedly are today." -- Mahatma Ghandi
For years, California State politicians have counted on their constituents' societal indifference to get the People's business done in the Golden State. This is how, since 2008, California's State budget has fallen tens of billions of dollars short, a financial problem that has been compounded year after year, and, as a result of this protracted bout of irresponsible and unsustainable spending, has turned into a fiscal emergency that has now earned the Golden State a credit rating of near-junk status. Simultaneously, California's elected representatives have also managed to enact legislative policies that have served the citizens of this State by saddling them with a nationwide-high unemployment rate of 11.9%, resulting in one out of every five residents subsisting on public assistance in one county alone. Yet, despite this sobering performance that would have earned any private sector employee a pink slip, none of the State legislators that led California down this path to social ruin seemed to lose their bid for re-election in November of 2010. Emboldened by this apparent confirmation in the face of sheer incompetence, California lawmakers now walk around with an air of invincibility, even in the face of public scrutiny, and behave as if the work they do on behalf of the People is beyond reproach.
However, it is exactly this brazen impunity with which California legislators flaunt their actions in the face of the general public that now has many Californians sitting up and paying attention. For instance, Jim Sanders, of the Sacramento Bee, recently reported that State legislators had quietly killed "proposals to bar middle-of-the-night legislative sessions, restrict lawmakers from receiving pay for serving on state boards within four years of leaving office, and to require annual disclosure by public officials of their pay, benefits, travel and other compensation."
As if killing these proposals were not enough of an outrage, State lawmakers also elected not to deny themselves the ability to accept gifts from special interest groups. The Oakland Tribune elaborates,
When it comes to gifts for public officials, hypocrisy is alive and well in the state Capitol.
State senators last month responded to scandals at the California Public Employees' Retirement System, where employees and board members accepted junkets, jobs and gifts from those seeking lucrative investment contracts, by passing legislation placing a $50 annual limit on gifts to people in decision-making positions.
The vote was 39-0. The new rules, if approved by the Assembly and governor, would apply to CalPERS and the California State Teachers' Retirement System.
A week earlier, when considering a bill affecting their own gifts, senators had no such inclination to clean up influence peddling. At issue was a bill that would outlaw gifts of tickets, trips and spa treatments for legislators.
The Senate Appropriations Committee voted 9-0 to send it to the suspense file, where it will almost certainly die. There were plenty of excuses, such as cost of enforcement and giving the state Fair Political Practices Commission time to develop regulations. What a farce.
Citing an inability to find the $204,000 required in the State budget to fund the proposal, legislators winked at each other as they shelved this bill for its ultimate demise in the suspense file.
As if these brazenly corrupt actions were not enough, State lawmakers continue to impress their constituents by exhibiting their idea of model behavior. During the legislative session on June 15, 2011, a number of legislators demonstrated why Californians voted them into office to enact the laws that all common, law-abiding citizens in the Golden State should obey by nearly coming to blows with each other on the Assembly floor.
Meanwhile, those same lawmakers have managed to stick their hands in the People's pockets (obviously fattened by the budget crisis and record unemployment rate during a time when the double-dip recession theory is turning into the reality) to find money for SB 653, a bill that would dramatically expand the taxing authority of California's 58 local counties, county school districts and community college districts. Imposing an additional tax burden at this time makes sense because Californians already pay the highest sales tax rates in the country and homeowners are currently facing a housing market price slide that is now deeper than even the levels seen during the Great Depression. Truly, this is a government, "of the People, by the People, and for the People."
And it is with that same spirit of public service that politicians approach the controversial gun control bills that have been introduced this legislative session. Despite not being able to find the $204,000 required to enforce a bill that would deny State lawmakers to ability to accept gifts for themselves, State legislators somehow scoured the People's coffers and scrimped together the estimated initial $400,000 required to fund a doomed-to-fail and completely ineffective bill aimed at registering long guns for the purpose of solving violent crimes. Assemblyman Mike Feuer has re-introduced a long gun registration bill with AB 809 after it was defeated last year in AB 1810. Even with AB 1810's defeat and the fact that long gun registration has never proven to be useful to law enforcement in any country that has implemented it, Assemblyman Feuer continues to push forward with this flawed concept in spite of the fact that a real-life example of its utter failure stares at him directly from our neighbor and ally in the north. Ever since Canada introduced its own long gun registration laws in 1998, a program that was initially estimated to cost no more than $2 million to taxpayers has now ended up costing more than $1 billion (500 times the original estimate) and the Canadian government has admitted that not one single violent crime has ever been solved through this registration scheme.
Then, there is AB 144, the controversial Open Carry ban bill authored by Assemblyman Anthony Portantino. After winding its way through the State Assembly, Portantino continued in his attempt to infringe on every law-abiding Californian's basic, fundamental, and enumerated civil rights by pushing his unconstitutional bill in front of the State Senate Public Safety Committee on Tuesday, June 7, 2011 (1:02:00).
Despite being repeatedly, definitively, and publicly proven wrong, Assemblyman Portantino continues to sell AB 144 by mischaracterizing the bill as a "loophole" in California law and also by uttering the hackneyed tag line, "You do not need a weapon to buy a cheeseburger or a cup of coffee." Apparently, Portantino wasn't at the McDonald's near San Jose State University recently when a "mob of more than 100 people" began "screaming, yelling, and throwing punches" at each other, resulting in two people being stabbed and hospitalized. Looks like common, law-abiding Californians do face everyday situations where they need a handgun to "buy a cheeseburger or a cup of coffee".
In addition, Portantino's repeated assertion that a ban on Open Carry in the Golden State does not violate every law-abiding Californian's 2nd Amendment Rights is not reflective of the facts. According to not only one but rather two federal court rulings, Unloaded Open Carry in California does constitute every common, law-abiding Californian's individual 2nd Amendment Right. For instance, in Peruta vs. County of San Diego, Chief Federal Judge Irma Gonzales states,
Although Plaintiffs have elected not to challenge section 12031, focusing instead on concealed carry pursuant to section 12050, the validity and open carry restrictions of section 12031 are relevant and important here. The Heller Court relied on 19th-century cases upholding concealed weapons bans, but in each case, the court upheld the ban because alternative forms of carrying arms were available.
Judge Gonzales continues,
Here, to the extent that Penal Code sections 12025 and 12050 and Defendant’s policy burden conduct falling within the scope of the Second Amendment, if at all, the burden is mitigated by the provisions of section 12031 that expressly permit loaded open carry for immediate self-defense.
In addition, on the same day that Portantino postulated that AB 144 did not violate every law-abiding Californian's 2nd Amendment Rights on the California State Assembly floor, Federal Judge Morrison C. England, Jr. handed down his very timely ruling on Richards vs. County of Yolo that confirmed Judge Gonzales' position on Unloaded Open Carry in California. In Judge England's decision, he states,
Under the statutory scheme, even if Plaintiffs are denied a concealed weapon license for self-defense purposes from Yolo County, they are still more than free to keep an unloaded weapon nearby their person, load it, and use it for self-defense in circumstances that may occur in a public setting.
It is due to the fact that Unloaded Open Carry satisfies these federal judges' understanding of every law-abiding Californian's 2nd Amendment Right to bear arms in a public setting that they ruled against the Plaintiffs in both cases in their legal bid for "shall-issue" concealed carry laws in court. Furthermore, with the weight of the U.S. Supreme Court's twin decisions ruling in favor of every common, law-abiding citizen's individual 2nd Amendment Rights to keep and bear arms in the Heller and McDonald cases and the recent federal ruling in the Nordyke case in favor of heightened scrutiny in 2nd Amendment cases, Assemblyman Portantino's statement could not be farther off the mark. For Assemblyman Anthony Portantino to deny this fact, in spite of the very clear language supporting Unloaded Open Carry as every law-abiding Californian's fundamental and basic 2nd Amendment Right in both recent federal court rulings quoted above, reflects either an ignorance or an arrogance that neither his constituents nor the rest of the People of California deserve.
Furthermore, not only does AB 144 violate every common, law-abiding Californian's 2nd Amendment Rights but it also very clearly infringes upon their First Amendment Rights. During the Senate Public Safety Committee hearing, Portantino testified,
Something that has been argued, not necessarily today, but argued out there in that this is somehow an expression of politics and free speech. I look at politics and we are having this discussion today--its about ideas, its about words, its about our passions, its about our franchise, its about using all of those wonderful things that our Founding Fathers endowed in us and certainly we don't want weapons to be part of political statement and there is far too much of it.
As before, Portantino is either guilty of ignorance or arrogance. The US Supreme Court has clearly ruled on this very matter in the landmark case, United States vs. Eichman. In the Opinion of the Court, US Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan upheld and cited,
If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the Government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.
As a representative of the State of California's elected Government, and based on Portantino's own testimony in a legislative setting, the Assemblyman clearly finds Open Carry advocates' practice of exercising their First Amendment Rights to free speech (and to peaceably assemble) to be disagreeable. And yet, since Portantino's claim that Open Carry advocates are a threat to public safety holds absolutely no merit whatsoever (Open Carry advocates have never once committed a violent crime in the entire 160-year history of California and the practice has been legal, in one form or another, during this entire period), the Assemblyman is clearly violating every common, law-abiding Californian's basic, fundamental, and enumerated civil right to free speech as well as their right to keep (own) and bear (carry) arms (guns) through AB 144.
Meanwhile, as Assemblyman Portantino is willfully trampling on the basic, fundamental, and enumerated civil rights of all common, law-abiding Californians, innocent victims in the Golden State are looking forward to being preyed upon by the 46,000 convicted felons that the US Supreme Court has ordered the State of California to release early due to overcrowding in the State prison system. The State has already taken the step of releasing 450 prisoners with a "high risk for violence" and these convicted felons are currently walking the streets. And with a State recidivism rate that Assemblyman Portantino himself admits is one of the very highest in the nation (70%) via his bill, AB 219, completely unarmed and defenseless Californians can hardly wait to fall victim to at least 32,200 additional crimes over the next three years at the hands of these convicted criminals out on early release.
And it is not as if the early release of thousands of convicted felons that end up resulting in a real threat to public safety has not been very clearly demonstrated with precedent in other States. US Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito elaborates in his dissenting opinion,
The three-judge court ordered the premature release of approximately 46,000 criminals—the equivalent of three Army divisions.
In taking this view, Congress was well aware of the impact of previous prisoner release orders. The prisoner release program carried out a few years earlier in Philadelphia is illustrative. In the early 1990’s, federal courts enforced a cap on the number of inmates in the Philadelphia prison system, and thousands of inmates were set free. Although efforts were made to release only those prisoners who were least likely to commit violent crimes, that attempt was spectacularly unsuccessful. During an 18-month period, the Philadelphia police rearrested thousands of these prisoners for committing 9,732 new crimes. Those defendants were charged with 79 murders, 90 rapes, 1,113 assaults, 959 robberies, 701 burglaries, and 2,748 thefts, not to mention thousands of drug offenses.
Even anti-gun State Senator Ted Lieu, author of SB 661, the unconstitutional bill to expand Gun Free School Zones from 1,000 to 1,500 feet, warns all common, law-abiding Californians of the real, clear, and present danger that all residents of the Golden State face in the wake of this US Supreme Court-mandated release of 46,000 convicted felons in an Op-Ed in the Los Angeles Times.
Combine these facts with the ongoing and years-long trend of thousands of police layoffs throughout the State and this potential powder keg represents a real, clear, and present danger to the issue of public safety. Recently, LAPD Police Chief Charlie Beck stated publicly that his department is facing massive budget shortfalls that will result in dramatic reductions in staffing availability. To compound on this problem, The County of Sacramento just announced that they will be forced to cut 300 law enforcement positions in an attempt to shave $30 million off of their budget. In addition, budget woes have hit the City of San Jose hard as well. The San Jose Police Department was just forced to lay off 100 of its officers in the midst of a soaring violent crime rate and those remaining in the department have been forced to accept a 10% pay cut.
Given these stark realities, Assemblyman Portantino still stubbornly refuses to acknowledge that there is a possibility that a genuine need exists for a common, law-abiding Californian to be armed while "buying a cheeseburger or cup of coffee". If there is no need to have a handgun while buying cheeseburgers or coffee, then might there be a valid reason for common, law-abiding citizens to exercise their right-to-carry while filling a prescription at the local drug store pharmacy? How about when stopping by a 7-11 for a snack? What about when pulling into one's own driveway? Might one encounter a violent situation while simply driving along on the freeway? How about when shopping at a sporting goods store?
The truth is, Assemblyman Portantino and his anti-gun colleagues in the California State Legislature are well aware of all of these facts when it comes to AB 144 and all other gun control bills winding their way through the system. Portantino stands in front of the microphone time and again to testify against a class of common, law-abiding Californians who have never once committed a single violent crime in the entire 160-year history of California and calls these tax-paying citizens a threat to public safety with a straight face. He does this with brazen impunity, knowing full well that his Open Carry ban bill, AB 144, is a clear violation of every law-abiding citizen's First and Second Amendment Rights and is, therefore, blatantly unconstitutional on its face. He does so knowing that innocent Californians are facing 46,000 convicted felons that are being released early onto California streets, hundreds of which are at a "high risk for violence". He does so knowing that while convicted felons roaming the streets on early release are a clear and present danger to public safety with a demonstrated precedent, he willfully ignores the fact that no such precedent exists for Open Carry advocates in this State. He does so knowing that the recidivism rate in California is one of the very highest in the nation. He does so knowing that, for the past several years, the California budget crisis has led to thousands of police layoffs State-wide, a problem that is exacerbated further with each passing day. He does so knowing that Californians already fall victim to violent crime at a rate that is higher than the national average. Yet, despite knowing all of this, Assemblyman Anthony Portantino wants to make sure that the only legally available method left to common, law-abiding Californians to defend themselves in a public setting is legislated away. His approach with AB 144 represents the mores of California politics. His legacy is the paradigm of California's disgraceful political culture.
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