* AB 727: 50 percent of the food and beverages sold in vending machines in state- owned buildings must meet a certain nutritional standard. Can’t we let adults buy what they want to eat and not stand in the way of vending machine businesses that simply supply what the public wants to eat?
* SB 432: Requires hotels to use fitted bottom sheets and not flat sheets so housekeepers won’t need to fold in corners. Can’t hotels serve their patrons without state legislators telling them what they can and can’t put on their beds?
* SB 48: Requires that public schools teach the contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in K-12 curriculum. This push by the Legislature to showcase a person’s sexual behavior has no place in our classrooms or books. Disappointingly, Gov. Jerry Brown recently signed this into law.
* AB 350: Requires certain contractors to retain, for at least 90 days, employees from the former contractor who lost the contract. This is another example of government sticking its nose where it doesn’t belong, telling a private employer whom he/she must hire.
* SB 568: Bans all food vendors from using Styrofoam containers, likely to result in many lost manufacturing jobs.
* AB 1326: Imposes a 12.5 percent oil and gas severance tax. This would have a disastrous effect on our fragile economy, raise the cost of gas and threaten thousands of local jobs. Attempts to add additional taxes to oil production and use have become an annual occurrence.
Energized by these full-time state legislators and their special interest allies, Sacramento has become the personal playground for these and hundreds more senseless, costly pet projects.
From the authoritative, big-government union interests to the LGBT sex labeling agenda to the anti-growth “environmental” agenda, our state Capitol is overrun with radicals.
Founding Father Roger Sherman summed the issue up well:
“Representatives ought to return home and mix with the people. By remaining at the seat of government, they would acquire the habits of the place, which might differ from those of their constituents.”
We need to break the habit of bad government and return to a system run by and for the people.
Contributed by: Paul Strickland, Field Representative for California Assemblyman Cameron Smyth
