You might ask, who is Tim Donnelly and why are we writing about him in an off-topic column? The answer is that he is a right-wing Republican Assemblymember from Southern California, who somehow managed to be involved in several completely unrelated news stories in which he utterly and completed failed.
It all started on Wednesday, when the freshman legislator was boarding a flight to Sacramento at the Ontario Airport when he was stopped and cited by airport police. Why? He was carrying in his bag, a .45-caliber Colt Mark IV that had four rounds in its magazine and a spare magazine with five additional rounds.
Assemblymember Donnelly is a big supporter of gun ownership.
Possession of a loaded firearm is a misdemeanor, punishable by a maximum sentence of one year in jail and a $1,000 fine. According to published reports, transportation of firearms is permissible on flights but they must be unloaded, contained in a proper case, and checked into the baggage department.
On Friday, the Sacramento Bee reported that Assemblymember Donnelly does not have a permit to carry a concealed weapon.
Reported the Bee: “Californians with a concealed weapons permit cannot carry a loaded gun onto an airplane. But whether Donnelly had the right to carry a loaded weapon anywhere is a separate question that was not definitely answered Wednesday.”
The Assemblymember would later dodge questions.
“It’s already been spoken to,” Assemblymember Donnelly said. “It’s certainly not something that I feel that I need to address. I really don’t feel that there’s anything more that I want to add to that story. I tried to be very forthcoming and put all the information out there … so, I’m just going to leave it at that.”
Meanwhile, this was not the only story on the assemblymember. The Crestline Courier News reported on Thursday, “Frustrated by what he sees as a partisan rejection of his plan to cut prison costs and overcrowding, Assemblyman Tim Donnelly is pledging to take up the fight again when the legislature reconvenes this month.”
“I’m going to push a bill to deal with some of the unintended impacts of AB 109,” Assemblymember Donnelly said.
Under AB 900, the CDCR had the authority to send prisoners to other states, believing that they could house them at far lower costs than in California.
However, AB 900 had a sunset date on July 1, 2011 and Mr. Donnelly’s bill “would have continued it indefinitely and revoked inmates’ right to insist they be returned to a California prison after five years’ confinement out of state.”
He argues it “costs about $26,000 a year to pay for the care of one of the exported prisoners, but $53,000 to provide the same service for inmates in California prisons.”
Assemblymember Donnelly is also an outspoken critic of illegal immigration. He told the paper that he “remains interested in legislation to transfer illegal alien state prisoners to lockups in their own countries. Doing so, he has long contended, would cost California taxpayers far less than housing them at in-state prisons.”
He argues, “State corrections officials claim 9 to 11 percent of the system’s approximately 170,000 inmates are illegal aliens.” The assemblyman said the number “could easily be double that,” because the state’s estimate is based on how the prisoners themselves define their immigration status. Whatever the number, he said, it “costs California taxpayers about $980 million a year to keep illegal alien inmates behind bars, and the federal government only reimburses the state 5 percent of that cost.”
That leads us to the final story on Assemblymember Donnelly.
Back in October, the Dream Act was finally passed, which allows all undocumented students who came to this country prior to age 16 and who attended high school in California to apply for Cal Grants and other financial aid. Under previous circumstances, such students were eligible for in-state tuition.
“Going to college is a dream that promises intellectual excitement and creating thinking,” Governor Brown said in October. “The Dream Act benefits us all by giving top students a chance to improve their lives and the lives of all of us.”
Critics like Tim Donnelly have been fighting the implementation, threatening to put the matter up for a vote. However, in further evidence that California’s fear of illegal immigration is not what it once was, this week, Assemblymember Donnelly had to inform supporters that the campaign had failed to qualify for the ballot.
According to the Sacramento Bee, “The effort garnered 447,514 signatures, not the required 504,760 valid voter signatures required to place the matter before voters.”
In a statement, Assemblymember Donnelly said, “This is disappointing news, but it is no less of a warning to Governor Brown and every Democrat legislator who voted to create a new entitlement program for illegals while the state still has a budget deficit of over $9 billion, and cannot even meet its obligation to legal California students.”
“Today only marks the end of one battle in a war to reclaim our voice in our Legislature,” he added. “This one loss will not dampen our resolve.”
But in fact, it marks the end of a week of utter failure by the right-wing legislator.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
Mr. Donnelly is certainly entitled to advocate for any position he supports. He is not entitled to break the law. David, will you be following this story with regard to the possibility of illegally possessing a concealed weapon ?
I’m not sure. Since I started doing the off-topic columns, I started pulling aside articles during the week for material and was surprised to find out at the end of the week I had like four on some guy I had never heard off, all different stories.
Yet, pales in comparison to the “fact” that the end of left-wing DEMOCRAT Assemblywoman Mary Hayashiit’s week of utter failure, culminated in a criminal conviction…Hmmm how the ‘excuses’ can change…
DG: [quote]Possession of a loaded firearm [/quote]
Yet, purportedly cited for something else?
Whether Tim Donnelly had the right to carry a loaded weapon anywhere is a separate question, no?
AdRemmer
Criminal behavior is criminal behavior. I fail to see how being left wing or right wing has anything to do with guilt or innocence, or what these two cases have to do with each other.
BTW, IF, after detention Donnelly was ‘cited’ for Penal Code 12031 PC, IF prosecutors charge him, the defense of ‘not knowing’ goes to intent & could easily lead to not guilty of said offense.
Cuz…carrying a loaded firearm in public necessarily requires that you know the firearm is present.
Let’s see if DA will ‘waste’ taxpayer monies, or utilize his/her discretion to decline to file.
The biggest state government news this week, not mentioned in this story, is that the governor’s budget is going to cut serious dollars from programs which help poor residents of our state*.
At the very same time, the Democrats, who run the state and who get a great amount of their funding from the CCPOA, have decided to pay twice as much to house long-term prison inmates in-state, in order to satisfy the union which funds their re-election campaigns.
As such, there is no other reasonable conclusion to make than the Democratic Party, which talks a big game about helping the poor and so on, is the party of the public employees, for the public employees and by the public employees.
David Greenwald types Mr. Donnelly, who may be a dope for all I know, as “a right-wing Republican Assemblymember.” But one thing not mentioned by the left-wing blogger: Donnelly’s legislation “to (continue to) send prisoners to other states” has the potential to save billions of dollars (now going to members of the CCPOA) and those billions could be used to restore funding for programs which benefit the poor, including cuts made over the past 3-4 years.
* [i]”Brown asked lawmakers for $4.2 billion in cuts, including $946 million to welfare-to-work and $447 million to subsidized child care. The welfare cut would save money in part by eliminating grants for parents who don’t meet federal work requirements after 24 months, compared with 48 months now. The governor also called for a $71 family reduction – from $463 to $392 – in average monthly grants to children whose parents are no longer eligible for welfare-to-work.”[/i] [b]–Source ([url]http://www.sacbee.com/2012/01/06/4166838/jerry-brown-budget-plan-cuts-welfare.html[/url])[/b]
Rich
I agree that there is a financial case to be made for housing prisoners out of state. I also am no fan of the CCPOA.
However, there is another case to be made for keeping prisoners in state and that is proximity to their family.
For prisoners who will be rejoining society at some point in time, there is a benefit to the prisoner, their family and presumably to society as a whole in promoting their ability to reintegrate successfully into the society upon their release.
This would not be the case for those sentenced to LWOP or to those who were due to be extradited or those who are on death row who would in my opinion be good candidates for out of state incarceration.
AdRemmer
I think the issue here is about equal treatment under the law. Would you feel the same way about the “not knowing” defense if the individual were not an assembly member but perhaps a Muslim who happened to have been reading
jihadist materials but had never been implicated in any activities ?
Rich: If sending prisoners out of state saves money, then we should perhaps figure out why and fix it on that end.
Ad: I think both Donnelly and Hayashi should have to resign.
“The biggest state government news this week, not mentioned in this story, is that the governor’s budget is going to cut serious dollars from programs which help poor residents of our state*.”
Did a whole story on that yesterday and am doing several future pieces on the budget, including one today on education.
[i]”… there is another case to be made for keeping prisoners in state and that is proximity to their family. For prisoners who will be rejoining society at some point in time, there is a benefit to the prisoner, their family and presumably to society as a whole in promoting their ability to reintegrate successfully into the society upon their release.”[/i]
There is one obvious problem and perhaps one less obvious problem with your statement, MEDS:
1. We could exclusively ship long-term inmates out of state. That is, send away those whose sentences are five or more years long and have at least five or more years left on their sentences. A guy who was sentenced to 25 years to life and has been in prison just 3 years would be a good candidate. One who got a 3 year sentence and will be eligible to leave in 18 months would probably be a worse candidate. Since Gov. Brown, last year, instituted his “realignment policy,” most inmates who have short sentences are not being housed in any prisons, but rather are serving their sentences in county jails, normally in the county where they committed their offense;
2. The less obvious problem with your conclusion is with the evidence that prisoners who are housed in prisons near their families have a better record of “societal integration” or have a lower rate of recidivism. Where is that evidence?
I am not saying I know you are wrong. However, I searched the academic articles on recidivism and could not find any studies which say that the proximity of one’s prison to one’s family makes a difference in recidivism.
That said, I think this article ([url]http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/15564886.2010.509660[/url]) is quite interesting. It states that the ability of the ex-prisoner to find a job shortly after leaving prison makes a substantial difference in whether or not he ends up back in prison in the 10 years following his release. That conclusion supports my belief that for most prisoners* we should try to make prison a trade school. We should be training them to become electricians, cooks, HVAC technicians, metal workers, plumbers, skilled carpenters, tile setters, long-haul truckers, machinists, welders, landscapers, tree trimmers, computer repair technicians, etc, etc**. If we then paired them with a paid journeyman-mentor in their field, who could help guide their new career and give them life advice, we would save a lot of money on future court costs, prison-guard salaries and so on.
*I would exempt the very old, those who will not be eligible for release before they are very old and those who have handicaps (mental and or physical) which make it unrealistic for them to work in for-profit private industry.
**For those with higher IQs and some academic interest, I would try to convert their years in prison into an educational opportunity geared to training them for various white collar jobs, including a lot of areas of medicine, accounting, specialty sales jobs, computer programming, and so on. Obviously, if you have someone in prison with a CPA who is there because he was an embezzler, you might want to re-train him for a job where he cannot so easily steal his employer’s funds. Likewise, if someone is in prison for child rape or molestation, you don’t want him to be trained to work as a kindergarten teacher.
“I am not saying I know you are wrong. However, I searched the academic articles on recidivism and could not find any studies which say that the proximity of one’s prison to one’s family makes a difference in recidivism.”
As I recall in the reentry arguments, one of the cited advantages to the reentry facility was to have family and support network close at hand to ease the transition precisely because it was believed that would help reduce the likelihood for recidivism. It would be interesting to see if that was based on actual education.
[i]”If sending prisoners out of state saves money, then we should perhaps figure out why and fix it on that end.”[/i]
The LAO ([url]http://www.lao.ca.gov/laoapp/laomenus/sections/crim_justice/6_cj_inmatecost.aspx?catid=3[/url]) has studied why prison costs are so high in California compared with other states. The reasons, as I recall, are:
1. The high wages and overtime and benefits paid to the CCPOA prison guards who finance the Democratic Party. The fix? Don’t vote for Democrats;
2. The extremely high cost of those who provide medical care (esp. psychiatrists and psychologists and dentists and various other medical doctors and nurses) for inmates in California. Some of these doctors are making $500,000 per year. There are other doctors and nurses who take home huge paychecks and don’t provide and services at all ([url]http://articles.latimes.com/2011/nov/28/local/la-me-prison-mailroom-20111126[/url]). Of course, these public employee medical professionals also fund the Democrats and get paid back big for doing so. The California Nurses Association is a huge funder of Democrats for office. The fix? Turn out the Democratic Party.
[img]http://www.allassistedlivinghomes.com/assisted-living-news/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/elderly-inmate.gif[/img]
3. Due to our large number of lengthy sentences and our unwillingness to pardon, we have a high number of elderly inmates, whose medical care is intensive and expensive. The fix? Get rid of 3 strikes and other long-term sentences; and when an inmate passes age 75, take him out of prison, send him to Florida and confine him to home detention with an ankle bracelet.
Rich: this is exactly why I don’t like solutions like Donnelly, it doesn’t deal with the real problems, it just transfers them elsewhere.
DG wrote:
“Possession of a loaded firearm is a misdemeanor, punishable by a maximum sentence of one year in jail and a $1,000 fine”.
I beleive he meant to write:
Possession of a loaded firearm, [u][i][b]in an airport[/b][/i][/u], is a misdemeanor, punishable by a maximum sentence of one year in jail and a $1,000 fine. Californians are still not prohibited form possession of a loaded firearm in their home.
Because of the extreme difficulty in obtaining a Concealed Cary Weapons Permit in many counties (Yolo County being near the top of the list), Many citizens choose to carry a loaded weapon on their person or in a vehicle for personal protection, without permission from the local Sheriff. Unfortunately, this makes an otherwise law abiding citizen into a criminal should they be caught. Most believe the adage that goes, ” I would rather find myself explaining to the judge why I shot the bad guy than the other way round”.
It should be noted that citizens who apply for a CCW permit in a difficult county like Yolo, and are turned down for lack of “good reason”, are then penalized for being turned down in Yolo should they then chose to apply in a county where permits are mere readily available. This is because being turned down in one county is deemed grounds for being turned down again without any grounds beside the first refulal to issue. So many citizens who fear being turned down in difficult counties, like Yolo, and who may wish to apply in the future, in a more reasonable county, simply carry concealed without ever applying for a CCW Permit.
If a Yolo County lawman pulls over a vehicle with a lockable box (briefcase) sitting on the passenger seat he can be reasonably sure that the driver pulled his loaded weapon from under the drivers seat, dropped the clip and locked the gun in the box in order to be in conformity with California law requiring all hand guns to be in a locked container, separated from the ammunition.
To avoid this unfortunate reality we need state wide uniform laws governing concealed carry of weapons. It should not be necessary to be a state legislator or one percenter for a responsible citizen to be able to protect themselves with a fire arm. Most states follow a “must issue” system whereby the state must prove that a citizen is unqualified to possess a concealed weapon in order to refuse issuance of a CCW Permit. In California, when it comes to concealed carry, the citizen is considered “guilty until proven innocent”
Just for information, inmates in the CDCR are screened on a variety of variables before being sent to out of state prisons. If they have ever been on suicide watch, been in one of CDCR’s inpatient psychiatric units, or have been treated for a mental illness in the last year they are screened out. They also screen out inmates who have had family visits in the last 12 months. Finally, high security (Level IV) prisoners are not sent out of state.
The Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), which operates the prisons in Arizona, Mississippi, and Oklahoma where California inmates are sent (there were plans to send some to Michigan and Colorado too, but I’m not sure we are sending them there right now), charges higher fees for more services. So, if you want everything that goes along with higher security, the state has to pay more. Want a doctor on the premises 24-hours per day? It costs more. The state, when it got into the out-of-state incarceration business five years ago made decisions about what level of services (and thus what inmates) it wanted. It also had to make sure that medical and mental health policies of the CCA complied with the policies developed in conjunction with the Plata and Coleman litigations.
Out of state prisons operate a lot like our prisons but are cheaper for a variety of reasons. The prisons themselves are pre-fabricated in modules and they can build a prison in about half the time the state can, and far cheaper. Private prisoners labor costs are much lower. In California, the correctional officers are all sworn peace officers which means it is a lot costlier to train and pay them. Labor costs for correctional officers in California are much higher.
Rich’s point about doctors being paid to do menial work is correct although that’s probably not CDCR’s fault as much as the arcane and deathly slow civil service system rules. Overall, the pay for medical staff in CDCR is not so outrageous given where people work (in prisons with some pretty tough patients) and the geographic locales of some of the prisons, which makes it difficult to get qualified people. Until three or four years ago CDCR physicians did not need to be board-certified. Now they do and this makes for better medical care for inmates – who by law are required to have community-standard medical care.
[i]”Californians are still not prohibited form possession of a loaded firearm in their home.”[/i]
Nor should they be prohibited. But gun owners should know this: having a firearm in your house in most cases does not make you safer. The best study* done on the topic found: [quote] “… people who keep a gun in the home are almost 2 times more likely to be murdered with a gun and almost 17 times more likely to take their own lives using a firearm.
Findings are consistent with many previous studies: guns in the home are associated with domestic violence and in particular injury or homicide of women at the hands of an intimate partner; for suicide the net effect of having a gun was highest among 18-24 year olds; most victims knew their killer.
One finding that was different from previous studies was that “adults with guns at home were significantly less likely than others to commit suicide with a method other than a gunshot.”
The study concludes that: “adults who have a gun or guns in their home appear at risk to be shot fatally (gun homicide) or to take their own life with a firearm.”
In addition it recommends that: “Physicians should continue to discuss these implications with patients who own guns or have guns at home and to consider how patients might make their environment safer.” [/quote] * Wiebe, Douglas J. PhD., “Homicide and Suicide Risks Associated With Firearms in the Home: A National Case-Control Study,” [i][b]Annals of Emergency Medicine.[/i][/b]
[i]Many citizens choose to carry a loaded weapon on their person or in a vehicle for personal protection, without permission from the local Sheriff. Unfortunately, this makes an otherwise law abiding citizen into a criminal should they be caught. [/i]
Yes, I believe that when someone chooses not to obey the law, that does make that person a criminal (caught or otherwise). I think that is self-evident. Maybe you have just used a [i]tautology[/i]! Rich?
Rifkin quotes a study that found,
[i]”… people who keep a gun in the home are almost 2 times more likely to be murdered with a gun and almost 17 times more likely to take their own lives using a firearm”.[/i]
I wonder if the folks who performed this study considered weather the person who keeps a firearm in their house Keeps it there because they have a legitimate fear for their life. In other words, had they not kept the gun in their house they may have been three or four times as likely to be murdered by gun.
I wonder if the studiers did any statistics on how likely a person who has no guns but lots of Tylenol is to commit suicide by Tylenol poisoning. I do know that all police officers keep firearms in their houses and that cops have one of the highest suicide rates of any demographic.
Don, Thanks for introducing me to a new word in my vocabulary. [i]Tautology[/i], in my dictionary, is defined as “needless repetition of an idea using another word”
The point I was struggling (apparently unsuccessfully), to make is that many people do not consider carrying a concealed weapon for self defense to be criminal act. Therefore, the only way for this person to become a “criminal” is to get caught doing something that they consider to be a constitutionally protected activity.
I hope Rich does not bust me for committing the criminal behavior of a tautology!
[i]”Maybe you (Roger B.) have just used a tautology! Rich?”[/i]
The two sentences together do make up a rhetorical tautology in that Roger is essentially saying, “If you break the law, you are a lawbreaker.” The most common type of tautology that I know anything about is that sort of argument by repetition. I am certainly guilty of it at times. I don’t think Roger hurts his case by using this tautology. His point, I am sure, is that the law itself is wrong and should be changed.
I should add that there are a very large number of different types of tautologies and I am by no means an expert on any of them, particularly those in the field of logic. I vaguely recall studying these various propositions in a college course I took, but I don’t remember them well.
[i]”I wonder if the folks who performed this study considered weather the person who keeps a firearm in their house keeps it there because they have a legitimate fear for their life.”[/i]
That is a good question. I don’t know. I didn’t actually read the study, just the conclusions. I would think you could test for that by taking some 1,000 or so households with guns and some other 1,000 households without guns and control for the rates of crimes and other salient demographics within each grouping. Then if you found that the people with the guns in their homes were “2 times more likely to be murdered with a gun and almost 17 times more likely to take their own lives using a firearm” the case would be proven. I will try to see if that is what they did and report back.
[i]” I will try to see if that is what they did and report back.”[/i]
I cannot access the report from the Annals of Emergency Medicine. ([url]http://www.annemergmed.com/article/S0196-0644(03)00256-7/fulltext[/url]) You have to be a subscriber.
Roger Bockrath wrote: “I do know that all police officers keep firearms in their houses and that cops have one of the highest suicide rates of any demographic.”
It’s a generalization that all police officers keep firearms in their houses. I have a good friend employed by the Sac PD who does NOT keep a firearm in her home.
This verbiage comes from the study’s abstract:
[i]”The homicide sample consisted of 1,720 case subjects and 8,084 control subjects. Compared with adults in homes with no guns, the adjusted odds ratio (OR) for homicide was 1.41 (95% confidence interval [CI] 1.20 to 1.65) for adults with a gun at home and was particularly high among women (adjusted OR 2.72; 95% CI 1.89 to 3.90) compared with men (adjusted OR 1.23; 95% CI 1.01 to 1.49) and among nonwhite subjects (adjusted OR 1.74; 95% CI 1.37 to 2.21) compared with white subjects (adjusted OR 1.27; 95% CI 1.03 to 1.56). Further analyses revealed that a gun in the home was a risk factor for homicide by firearm means (adjusted OR 1.72; 95% CI 1.40 to 2.12) but not by nonfirearm means (OR 0.83; 95% CI 0.62 to 1.11). The suicide sample consisted of 1,959 case subjects and 13,535 control subjects. The adjusted OR for suicide was 3.44 (95% CI 3.06 to 3.86) for persons with a gun at home. However, further analysis revealed that having a firearm in the home was a risk factor for suicide by firearm (adjusted OR 16.89; 95% CI 13.26 to 21.52) but was inversely associated with suicide by other means (adjusted OR 0.68; 95% CI 0.55 to 0.84). Conclusion: Having a gun at home is a risk factor for adults to be shot fatally (gun homicide) or commit suicide with a firearm. Physicians should continue to discuss with patients the implications of keeping guns at home.”[/i]
It’s not clear to me that there is not a selection bias (implied by Roger’s question). That is, how do we know that those who choose to have guns in their homes are not making that choice because they live in more crime-ridden neighborhoods? And if that is the case as to why they have guns, then perhaps it is not the existence of the guns but the existence of the proximate criminals driving the higher rates of homicide?
A good source of information about the means of suicide (including firearms) is “Means Matters” – http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/index.html
I’m not sure why Rich thinks the large case-control study he abstracts has a selection bias? The highest rates of suicide are in rural areas – areas with considerably lower rates of crime than urban areas. They also have higher gun ownership rates (notably more long guns than hand guns).
And it’s not just having a gun. Use of trigger locks, keeping guns in locked cabinets, separating ammunition from the gun – these can all reduce the risk of suicide by firearm. Australia experimented with gun buyback programs in the 1990’s and reduced suicide rates. Here is the abstract from a large panel study of the Australian program:
Do Gun Buybacks Save Lives? Evidence from Panel Data
*
In 1997, Australia implemented a gun buyback program that reduced the stock of firearms by around one-fifth. Using differences across states in the number of firearms withdrawn, we test whether the reduction in firearms availability affected firearm homicide and suicide rates. We find that the buyback led to a drop in the firearm suicide rates of almost 80 per cent, with no statistically significant effect on non-firearm death rates. The estimated effect on firearm homicides is of similar magnitude, but is less precise. The results are robust to a variety of specification checks, and to instrumenting the state-level buyback rate.
Leigh & Neil, 2010 (just google Australia gun buyback suicide”
Here’s a link to a summary of the Australian study and comments why it might not work in the U.S.
mw what part of my post causes you to ask such an inimical & offensive question?
Staying w/in the legal framework; my response is all persons alleged to have committed the offense have the same defenses available to them. THE issue here revolves around wheter or not ALL of the requisite elements of the crime have been established.
Hey Rich,
If the Yolo County Sheriff turns down a citizen’s request for a concealed carry permit and that citizen then follows through by applying in a neighboring county, and is subsequently turned down, due entirely to having been rejected by Yolo,is the neighboring county guilty of a tautology?
AdRemmer
I am truly at a loss. What did you find offensive in my question ?
I agree with your comments in the remainder of your post regarding staying within the legal framework …..
Do you not agree with me about about equal application of the law ?
[i]”If the Yolo County Sheriff turns down a citizen’s request for a concealed carry permit and that citizen then follows through by applying in a neighboring county, and is subsequently turned down, due entirely to having been rejected by Yolo,is the neighboring county guilty of a tautology?”[/i]
I don’t think so, Roger. I suggest you pose the question to Sheriff Prieto and see if he thinks it is a tautology.
Rifkin: “The high wages and overtime and benefits paid to the CCPOA prison guards who finance the Democratic Party. The fix? Don’t vote for Democrats;”
But what is the alternative Rich? Vote for people like Tim Donelly who bash immigrants, take Grover Norquist’s pledge to never raise taxes and can’t keep track of their firearms. Just can’t do it Rich.
[i]”But what is the alternative Rich?”[/i]
Most of the Republicans who have run recently in our state Assembly and Senate districts have been moderates uncorrupted by the teachers unions and the prison guards and the firemen. Hopefully, the new Prop 14 primary voting system ([url]http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/09/will-californias-top-two-primary-work/[/url]) will produce more GOPers and Dems in the middle of the road who owe no allegiance to the unions, the lawyers, the nurses and other greedy corrupters. Hopefully it will strip the power from avaricious men like Darrelll Steinberg, whose principal principle appears to be keep the donors happy at all costs.
You act like the Republicans don’t have their patrons. How about the car dealers who funded the election of Arnold and were rewarded with a reduction in the Vehicle License Fee blowing a $6 billion hole in the budget that created the structural deficit. Or the anti-union Broad Foundation, who funded Cabaldon against the CTA funded Yamada. Or Donald Bren of the Irvine Company. Or the people funding Michele Rhee to go around bashing teachers. How about the California Business Roundtable funded by some of the largest corporations in the state or the Chamber of Commerce. How about self funded candidates like Meg Whitman, who, although they may be great business managers, have no experience in politics and with the help of job wreckers at her old outfit, Bain Capital, try to buy the election. How about the Farm Bureau or the Taxpayer Associations. You act like the unions are the only one’s pouring money into elections in this state. Without union money what would counterbalance the massive funding from the rich, Rich?
[quote]Hopefully, the new Prop 14 primary voting system will produce more GOPers and Dems in the middle of the road who owe no allegiance to the unions, the lawyers, the nurses and other greedy corrupters. Hopefully it will strip the power from avaricious men like Darrelll Steinberg, whose principal principle appears to be keep the donors happy at all costs.[/quote]
Nicely said!
mw, as to your earlier question re: left/right. I intentionally posted as such in response to the story writer’s use, to make this very point. And, I notice you didn’t question the author’s use?
[see 2nd sentence of the instant story]
As to your later response, re: application of the law. I thought that was asked and answered. My point about intent [ergo defenses] then & now is that it must be applied to all as the crime’s elements require it. I don’t believe it is a general intent crime. It seems some have taken the bait by trying to assert deference due to status.