Welcome To 2011

Every new year is usually filled with expectation and hope. If you are watching or involved with government, you will no doubt notice some new laws and regulations which they tell us will make life better for the people.

This year, the state of California begins the annum novo with 725 new laws going into effect. It is already one of the most regulated and legislated states in the union. But that's okay, they obviously needed some more.

Here are but just a few from the short list provided in the link:

SB 782 prevents landlords from evicting tenants who are victims of domestic or sexual abuse or stalking.

So...the landlords must eat the costs of no rent from these people for how long? I am not sure it says, but I am not sure it matters to the authors. It's just another infringement on property rights, if you ask me.

AB 537 will make food stamps an acceptable form of payment at farmers markets through an EBT process.

Another business unfriendly measure designed to discourage people from starting a small produce market. Like many of these free enterprise hating measures, most of their ideas end up hurting small businesses more than the large corporations.

Forcing these businesses to use food stamps will cause a greater cost to the owners when it comes time to redeem them....and who says they will be able to? At the rate the government is going now, how long will they have any value at all?

SB 1317 allows the state to slap parents with a $2,000 fine if their K-8 child misses more than 10 percent of the school year without a valid excuse. It also allows the state to punish parents with up to a year in prison for the misdemeanor.

Not a bad law on the surface, we all know that parents need to be more accountable for their children's actions or inactions. For all of the food stamp/government check receiving parents, who sit at home on their asses, this may be applicable. But how will they penalize them? Will they take it out of their government checks?

And what if the parent is a hard working parent who shuns public assistance and must work hard every day to make ends meet? Every day they must go to work or face disciplinary issues and even termination at work. How will they be penalized? Will the state fine them incessantly for a kid who will just not go? Will they do it to the point where the parent ends back on public assistance?

AB 715 makes a change to the California Green Building Standards code. The change will require new California buildings to be energy efficient.

More business killing legislation to prevent global warming...er, I mean, climate change. And they wonder why the corporate tax base in the Golden State is shrinking. If I owned a business in California that wasn't dependent on Californians, I'd be getting out as fast as I could.

AB 12 allows foster youth to acquire state services until the age of 21.

Adding more debt to the state that is already broke...at the taxpayer's expense. At 18, they can join the military. Why does the state need to provide services to California's foster children, when they could get a job?

Oh...I forgot. There are no jobs because there is a shrinking corporate taxe base, because businesses are fleeing....and we need people to learn how to stay dependent on government. How silly of me.

SB 1399 allows California to medically parole state prison inmates with physical incapacitating conditions and ultimately shifts some of the cost of care to the federal government.

Putting killers back on the street so that the federal government can pick up the tab? People in other states are soon going to be bailing California out, one way or another. If not by a huge money payout, they'll do it by incremental shifts in burdens like this. A little here, a little there, pretty soon you'll wish you just wrote them a check and could be done with it.

AB 97 bans the use of trans-fats in food facilities.

More freedom lost.

Maybe if they try hard enough, they can follow the lead of the warped nanny-city of San Fransicko and ban Happy Meals statewide.

Look.... there are needs for laws, we all know that.

If humans weren't so self-serving and dishonest, there would be no need for a lot of them. But I cannot help wondering if we need to enforce the good laws we already have and implement punishments to fit the crimes, before we start tacking on things that infringe on the rights of the law abiding citizens and those who are working to keep this economy moving. 

We certainly do not need to make laws to appease the false prophets like the social justice lamebrains, the Global Warming ministry, and the race-baiting racists just to shut them up. They do not produce anything...except idiocy.

So once again, welcome to MMXI. Leave your sense of humor at the door. Because if the newly elected Congress doesn't start a corrective process and path,  you may find yourself crying a lot this year.