Earlier this year, I noted in City Journal that one sign of California's hyper-interventionist public sector was the sheer volume of legislation coming from Sacramento. I wrote:
By the time the California State Legislature's filing deadline arrived on February 18, Sacramento's 120 legislators had introduced more than 2,300 bills for consideration in 2011. And 750 new laws from last year's session have already gone into effect since January...
This flurry of activity is no aberration. Proposals in past years have included the banning of trans fats (passed); a prohibition on Mylar balloons (passed the state senate but failed in the assembly); a bill to move California to a single-payer health-care system (passed the senate but did not receive a vote in the assembly); and a statewide ratification of the Kyoto Protocol's greenhouse-gas limitations, which has been estimated to cost the state's small businesses alone over $182 billion a year and to destroy 1.1 million jobs over time (passed). Legislative priorities in California run to extremes: it's either nanny-state marginalia or liberal moon shots.The California Legislature has now adjourned for the year ... and the results are more of the same. According to the Sacramento Bee, approximately 600 bills are currently awaiting a decision on Governor Jerry Brown's desk. Among the important civic priorities demanding gubernatorial attention: prohibiting minors from using tanning beds, preventing alcohol from being sold at self-checkout lines in grocery stores, and enabling the unionization of babysitters. And Nero fiddles ...
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