No limits to lust for 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.

Don't stop me if you've heard these before:

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• Currently, term limits produce a rapid turnover of lawmakers, some of whom never get enough time to build leadership skills or gain expertise in making public policy, and our most knowledgeable and experienced legislators are forced to leave the Assembly or the Senate prematurely, thus depriving Californians of their policy expertise. (Nota bene: If you can't get up to speed on policy in a couple of months, you're too stupid to serve.)

• California faces many complex and critical issues ranging from underperforming schools to global warming to inadequate health care. The legislation required to solve these problems can take years to develop and pass, and members of the Legislature must spend substantial amounts of time obtaining the kind of support among their colleagues necessary to address these urgent issues. (Nota bene: What really takes years is selling the electorate the idea that bad laws actually are good.)

• When legislators lack the skills, the only ones who have the skills are the lobbyists. (Nota bene: Hey, that's just the way it was before term limits.)

• We need to increase the flexibility of legislative terms to enable members to build necessary policy and process expertise, and slow the current whirlwind rotation by elected representatives from one elected office to another, which compromises public policy. (Nota bene: See the first bullet point, above.)

Californians have heard this stuff, nearly word for word, annually since the Golden State began legislative term limits in 1990. In fact, the same arguments were made 17 years ago against the initiative that imposed those limits. (And the performance of the current Legislature is no worse than the performance of pre-1990 legislatures.)

In any case, the bullet points above are taken verbatim from a new California ballot initiative, the "Term Limits and Legislative Reform Act." This initiative would reduce the total time an elected official could serve in the state Legislature from 14 years (aggregating six years in the Assembly and eight years in the state Senate) to 12 years.

But it would increase to 12 the number of years legislators could serve in either house – six full terms in the Assembly or three full terms in the Senate.

Most importantly, backers have soft-pedaled the fact the measure would provide "a transition period to allow current members to serve a total of 12 consecutive years in the house in which they are currently serving, regardless of any prior service in another house." (Cynics might say this would provide a transition period for feathering the lawmakers' nests, largely by shaking down those horrible lobbyists.)

Do this math: If the initiative passes, incumbent legislators who have served six years in the Assembly could spend 12 years in the state Senate for a total of 18 years. This would be a boon to the roll of legislators soon due to be termed out of office, a roll that includes Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez and state Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata.

No doubt, as proponents say, "Our law is in need of reform to make government work for the people," but retaining legislators who routinely overspend and whose prime goal is to extend the nanny state isn't the reform required.

Other Matters: California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has followed through on plans to grant huge pay raises to his administration's top staff. These included a 23 percent raise to his chief of staff, Susan Kennedy, who now will make more than $175,000 annually.

Reason for the raises – granted at the same time the governor was blue-penciling $703 million from the state budget – is to keep talented personnel from leaving for higher-paying jobs. Irreplaceable, every one of them.

Oh, and according to the San Francisco Chronicle, Kennedy still trails Dan Eaton, Fabian Nunez' chief of staff. He knocks down $200,000 a year.

Other matters: Our president shows up in a war zone, and the Old Media continue to give top billing to the plight of "Lavatory Larry" Craig. Perhaps the only way George W. could ever gain better media attention would be to copy the extracurricular antics of William Jefferson Clinton.

Our unbiased media: A rather short-sighted, Republican-backed California ballot initiative would distribute most of the Golden State's presidential electoral votes to the winners in its congressional districts.

But that's not what excited the Associated Press. The AP seemed to think the real story was that the law firm ramrodding the initiative also had worked with GOP moneybags Bob J. Perry. Perry financed ads by (gasp) the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth – ads that helped torpedo John Kerry's presidential campaign.

OK, this is worth pointing out somewhere in the story, but the AP reporter just had to write that the Swift Boat vets "made unsubstantiated but damaging attacks on Kerry three years ago."

Unsubstantiated? The Swift Boaters took issue with Kerry – among other things – for his having told the Washington Star that his unit was "butchering a lot of innocent people" and for telling U.S. senators American troops "… had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in (a) fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam. …"

SBVFT boasted many members, all of whom had been with Kerry during his four-plus months in Vietnam, all of whom contradicted what they saw as his slander of the American soldier. They were there, and the testimony of eye-witnesses usually is regarded as substantial.

Of course, the Swift Boaters also regarded Kerry as a self-aggrandizing boob. It's a matter of opinion whether or not this assessment has been substantiated.

Related special offer:

Sen. Tom Coburn's "Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders into Insiders"