Golden State policies a nod to death and lawlessness – woohoo!

Editor's note: The powers that be at WND.com have told Michael Ackley he may submit the occasional column. As Golden State madness has accelerated, Mr. Ackley has succumbed to the urge to get back in the game. Hence, the items below. Remember that his 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 the difference.

Little noticed in Gov. Gavin Newsom's $220 billion budget proposal for 2020 was an allocation to help communities "achieve the state's policy goal that no adoptable or treatable dog or cat should be euthanized."

"Puppies and kitties are cute," explained Howard Bashford, the governor's Special Deputy Associate Assistant for Matters of Life and Death. "The governor believes dogs and cats have souls and that their souls are cute, too.

"And who could object to a $50 million expenditure – a mere drop in the bucket compared to $220 billion – for the purpose of saving souls? And there are thousands and thousands of really cute puppies and kitties in shelters all over California that deserve to be saved."

Bashford seemed near tears as he noted, "This is in line with the governor's executive order suspending the death penalty for humans on the state's Death Row.

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"There are 737 prisoners awaiting execution," he said. "We're sure some of them are cute. You know capital punishment discriminates against the mentally ill, with whom the governor identifies, as well as against people of color.

"It isn't fair that murderers of color are executed more frequently than murderers who are white. And never mind that the voters passed a measure calling for more expeditious executions."

Returning to the matter of dogs and cats, Bashford noted that Gov. Newsom has declared that California should become "a no-kill state."

On a related issue, Bashford reported that under the law Newsom signed last fall, abortion drugs are being provided to pregnant students at state college and university health centers.

"We're so proud of this," said the Special Deputy Associate Assistant for Matters of Life and Death. "Why, before this law, one university student had to ride a bus for 45 minutes to get rid of an inconvenient fetus.

"As a result, sadly, she missed a class!"

Meanwhile, most former felons now are allowed to serve on California juries.

Backers of the new law, authored by State Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, say it will solve "racial disparities" in jury selection.

"So many felons are from minority groups," said Amy Handleman, president of Equality for Criminals. "Banning them from juries makes it more difficult for criminals to be tried by juries of their peers. Former criminals on juries provide balance – you know, against jurors who haven't experienced felonyhood."

Now comes State Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, with a bill that would allow non-citizens to serve on juries. Instead of drawing juries from Department of Motor Vehicles lists and county lists of registered voters, Wiener's Senate Bill 1001 would expand the pool of potential jurors to everybody filing state tax returns.

Handleman, who also is president of Equality for Illegal Aliens, said, "Law-abiding illegal aliens would make our juror pools more diverse, which is to say, less white.

"And never mind that a majority of California's population is minority. It just isn't fair that white people register to vote more often than minorities. Sen. Wiener's bill could be an important step toward eliminating citizenship – as a requirement for anything."

Many years ago, when I first became a columnist at the late, lamented Sacramento Union, I predicted that Nancy Pelosi's ascension to speaker of the House of Representatives would prove women are as capable as men of screwing things up.

Enough said?

Speaking of Sacramento journalism, the once-proud Sacramento Bee is dropping its Saturday print edition, the once-proud McClatchy publishing empire is in bankruptcy, and a hedge fund rather than the McClatchy family controls that empire.

It is a pity that as the paper versions of newspapers disappear into the Internet, young reporters will not experience the thrill of a great printing press rumbling into action, the warning bell that tells the pressmen to get their fingers out of the works, the hiss of the newsprint web providing the treble line to the bass of the accelerating drums, the folios emerging blank from the folder, then gradually turning black-and-white as the ink takes hold, making ideas visible and tangible.

Some editor pushing the "send" button never will embody such romance.