Term Limits
July 14, 2009
Now this discussion can go two ways: term limit changes to ensure elected officials are dedicated to policy that will be beneficial and healthy for California or if the term limit law happened after you, does it still apply…
I will address the latter. I know that I am generations behind political peers, but to know that Jerry Brown was already Governor of California for two terms and is planning to run for a third is just plain wrong to me. I completely understand the precendent in terms of when the law was incorporated, etc. etc. But come on, you already served two and have access to another two IF you can raise enough money, carry the Latino vote, and address your impotence on Prop 8.
As a young Californian, lets give the Capitol some new life. Whoever is there right now needs to go, obviously, and moreover, in mass exodus. (I was super excited about Steinberg and Bass in leadership, but now I am just totally disillussioned with every single legislator up there). Talk about unveiling the early retirement programs to address the budget, we have our pilot group right in front of us.
I diverge. So Jerry Brown wants to be governor. He might as well be; PPIC has clearly suggested that the state’s voters are old, white, and relatively well-off. Soungs like Brown’s perfect constituency. Now I don’t have the stomach for the former Mayor of Oakland and his opportunity to reinvent himself for my peers failed drastically with his lack of movement and political prowess on the Prop 8 legal hearings. Is he ready to take a stance and save our public education system, vouch for protecting students and lower-ranked faculty in the CSU’s, UC’s, and CC’s, courageous to pioneer and sign a single payer health care bill into law (Khuel where are you), and incorporate undocumented workers into the framework of our state with dignity, respect. After all he was at the helm when the state pioneered the property tax movement for the nation and passed Prop 13; I cannot in good faith trust him to lead us out of this budget fiasco. It was his leadership grandfathered us into an inequitable system of property taxes favoring corporations and early white homeowners.
I will say that the one thing I like about Brown is his gubernatorial portrait, impressive; but I think Newsom will far outdo this contemporary canvas.
