Political flower power

Editor's note: Michael Ackley's columns may include satire and parody based on current events, and thus mix fact with fiction. He assumes informed readers will be able to tell which is which.

The folks now running the state of California and the nation are the children of the '60s.

Before you run screaming to your '50s-era bomb shelter, consider: This means us, and that's not bad. We were responsible for the civil rights movement and its fruits, like the extension of civil rights and voting rights to all Americans.

We also protested the Vietnam War, which was inflated by the first great presidential liar of our generation, Lyndon B. Johnson, the man who turned John F. Kennedy's ''Ask not what your country can do for you'' into ''What can your country do for you?'' Remnants of Johnson's Great Society and so-called War on Poverty are forever with us.

Oddly, the things of that era that taught us to suspect government (Vietnam and then Richard Nixon) didn't stick as well with many of us as those things that proclaimed government was the answer – to everything.

TRENDING: Caught red-handed

Thus on Tuesday, we found California Democrats had nominated their most extreme big-government man for governor. State Treasurer Phil Angelides' answer for the Golden State's challenges echo the refrain we have heard ever since the '60s: more taxes, more spending.

Angelides is not a stupid man. Rather, he is a victim of peer pressure that requires individuals to ''keep the faith'' in those things they believed in 40 years ago – even if experience has shown those things don't work.

We have had a couple of generations to observe that government-handout programs don't reduce poverty, don't reduce crime, don't increase learning and don't produce greater security.

Suppose you are a savvy guy like Angelides. How do you become a true believer in big government? First, you start your working life as an aide in the California Legislature. We hate to say this is a corrupt institution, but even Capitol Park squirrels have been caught peddling influence.

It is an environment in which you learn that those who question party wisdom actually have been assigned ''office space'' in Capitol broom closets.

As you rise through the party ranks, you notice the Democrats' constituent splinter groups always have their hands out, sometimes for funding, sometimes for power, sometimes for both. You deny them at your political peril, so you don't deny them.

You follow and go along, and when you have followed enough to establish a reputation for orthodoxy, you are anointed as a leader. You've achieved eminence by keeping the faith in failed policies and programs, and you aren't going to become an apostate now. You're stuck with the old, threadbare program.

Let us hope that in the coming campaign Angelides will abandon the attack ads featured in the primary by him and his opponent, state Controller Steve Westly. However, his only alternative to this approach seems to be to tell the electorate, honestly, what kind of government he believes in.

Either way, look for the incumbent movie star to retain the governorship.

How can we imply that the California Legislature is corrupt? Consider the effort, outlined here last week, to circumvent the Constitution of the United States by entering an interstate ''compact'' to give all of California's presidential electoral votes to whoever wins the popular vote.

Reader Doug Loss cites the pertinent section of the Constitution these clowns are sworn to uphold: ''Article 1, Section 10: ''No State shall, without the Consent of Congress ... enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign power ... ''

Loss asks, ''How do they (the legislators) think they can do this?''

It's a multiple choice question. Select the best answer: (a) they don't understand the Constitution; (b) they don't care about the Constitution; (c) there is no honor in their word of honor; (d) all of the above.

Angelides' nomination would bode more ill for California if not for the fact the electorate as a whole (well, the whole 30 percent that voted) dumped a bond issue that would have saddled the state with more debt.

More importantly, the voters scuttled Proposition 82, Rob Reiner's statist, universal preschool measure, the no votes outnumbering the yes votes nearly two to one.

All that remains to put an end to this teachers' union-backed Big Brotherism is to repeal the initiative that created the Reiner-chaired Commission on Children and Families. This is the tobacco tax-funded body that shelled out millions of dollars for pro-preschool advertising – while Chairman Reiner was working to put his initiative on the ballot. Oh. And to sanction Reiner for conflict of interest and misappropriation of public funds.

Speaking of conflict of interest, let us suggest: Enron's Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling have been convicted, so why should the company's employees and stockholders have to pursue civil lawsuits to be made whole financially?

Such litigation is under way, of course, but the sentencing in many a criminal trial requires that guilty parties make restitution. Lay and Skilling's machinations gutted the Enron pension plan. Defrauded stockholders should be repaid, but the employees should be first in line for reimbursement.

Now you can feel sorry for the poor fellow who flips you off and screams at you in traffic. He's not a jerk. He's having an ''attack'' of ''intermittent explosive disorder.''

It's a new ailment defined by the @#%*& shrinks at the @#%*& University of Chicago's @#%*& Medical School.

Excuse me. I'm having another @#%*& attack.