Awash in Corruption
A bill to expose the name and address of everyone who signs a Recall petition has passed the Senate Elections Committee. SB 663 lets the target of a Recall get their hands on the list of petition signers.
The bill’s author is a Senator who was once recalled himself. At the same time, the State Senate’s past president has started an anti-Recall PAC to help Newsom called “Stop the Steal.” He’s demanding the list of petition signers and threatening a lawsuit if he doesn’t get it. You can’t make this stuff up.
The goal is obvious: to bully people into withdrawing their signature and to use state power to retaliate against them for signing in the first place. Even the Democrat-controlled Elections Committee said SB 663 would make voters would feel “intimidated or harassed” and that “government employees, particularly, may also fear professional retaliation.”
To make matters worse, public comment on the bill was cut off before dozens of people got a chance to participate. At least this was better than last week’s education hearing, where the Chair shut down public comment after 10 minutes. When I objected, he tried to mute my microphone (see the video here) – something he also does to members of his own party on the rare occasions they cross teachers unions.
Gavin Newsom, his allies, and the Special Interests they serve can sense the jig is up. That’s why they’re denying citizens a stake in our government like never before. In fact, the State Capitol itself has been closed to the taxpaying public for a year even as an obscene $1 billion “renovation” of the building proceeds.
If our Founding Fathers were to visit modern day California, they’d conclude the experiment of self-government had failed. A glimpse of our Capitol and then of any major freeway overpass would produce an undeniable conclusion: corruption breeding decay.
That had been the norm for much of history, until the Enlightenment exalted reason and truth as the engines of progress. Those ideals found their finest form in the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration Independence, and America’s enduring civic institutions. The question we now face is whether those institutions are strong enough to withstand the counter-Enlightenment that California’s politicians have unleashed.
I believe the answer is yes. That’s what the Recall is all about. The people of California can at once restore our founding principles and deliver a decisive blow to our corrupt political class.
Help me fight the corruption at our State Capitol
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