CA Assembly: Monday Becomes ‘Willie Brown Day’ Instead of Voting on Crime Bills Day

It’s Monday June 24 2024, and the California State Assembly and State Senate were supposed to be voting on 14 crime bills.

Instead, today was Willie Brown Day in the California Assembly, celebrating the Former Speaker of the Assembly’s 90th birthday. Assembly leaders put on the hog for California’s longest serving Speaker.

The speeches by caucus leaders were syrupy, sometimes funny, thick with crediting him firsts – Willie broke the glass ceiling for women, he paved the way for LGBTQ and “marginalized peoples.”

Democrats lauded Willie Brown’s 60 day budget standoff with Gov. Pete Wilson in 1992.

They reported, “He knew there would be no national recession recovery unless California recovered.”

That’s telling given that today, conversely, Governor Newsom appears to be destroying the state so the rest of the country can more easily be broken apart. Is that how this goes?

I was age 3 when Willie Brown was first elected to the Assembly, and 20 years later at 23 I was an intern for a large lobbying association with a lot of business inside of the Capitol. Willie Brown was larger than life and already a legend.

Bottom line: according to the Democrats, Willie Brown is responsible for all of their Progressive politics. A learned friend replied, “He is the Godfather of California Communism.”

But back to the crime bills – we are talking about the ballot initiative to reform the 2014 Proposition 47, which qualified with 900,000 signatures for the November ballot. Democrats in the Legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom are apparently compelled to oppose it, despite the important legal fixes to California’s outrageous crime problems.

As we have reported, Democrats have had 10-years since the passage of Proposition 47 to legally address the crimes Prop. 47 turned into misdemeanors from felonies, and ushered in a decade of serial retail theft, homelessness, drug trafficking, sex crimes, sex trafficking and other violent and terrible crimes. And every legislative attempt was summarily killed or never even given a hearing.

Rather than supporting the qualified ballot initiative, Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democrat lawmakers California Democrats put “poison pill” amendment provisions in their package of retail theft bills to provide that the bills would be repealed if the Fix Prop. 47 initiative is approved by voters in November, and then rushed the package of bills through to mislead voters.

According to the “poison pill” amendments, the legislative bills would be repealed if the ballot initiative to restore safety to cities and communities is approved by voters in November, rather than complimenting the ballot initiative.

But this hasn’t gone over well at all, and now appears to have been a total dud.

Sidelining the crime bills is a win. And that’s because Democrats in the Legislature would rather keep the high levels of violent crime, record fentanyl overdoses, homeless drug addicts living on the streets, organized retail theft, than allow the bipartisan organizers of the ballot initiative to “win.”

Democrats want the “win.” Optics are more important to Democrats than policy that benefits all of California.

A win of the Fix Prop. 47 ballot initiative is a win for everyone – not just Republicans, not just law enforcement, not just prosecutors, not just the judiciary. It would be a win for small, medium and large business owners, and the consumers who need the products these stores sell.

The Fix Prop. 47 ballot initiative win would benefit anyone walking on city streets to work, going to a public park, or a public parking garage, or navigating a city street dodging passed out drug addicts, poop, urine, vomit, tents, and the stolen contraband decorating “encampments.”

But back to Willie Brown – since that is what Democrat lawmakers wanted you to see today.

Willie joked that the Capitol construction noise stopped when he started talking.

Democrats lovingly brought up his “Ayatollah of the Assembly” title.

Republicans and Democrats swarmed around him for photos and recognition. This went on for hours… instead of the crime bills debate and vote.

And who could forget that California only has Gavin Newsom as governor because of Willie Brown. “After he and Getty played a big role in helping Willie Brown to get elected mayor of San Francisco, Brown named Newsom to the city’s Parking and Traffic Commission,” Ellie Gardey Holmes says in his powerful and unflinching new book Newsom Unleashed: The Progressive Lust for Unbridled Power, Bruce Bawer wrote today at Frontpage Mag. The rest is history.

For perspective, Lance Christensen offered:

The Ayatollah of the Assembly is the reason California legislators have term limits & no real power outside the Speaker’s office. We’re finding out that Willie Brown did a great amount of irreparable damage to our governing institutions, not to mention that he gave us Kamala Harris. I find nothing to celebrate here.

Perspective.

It appears that Willie Brown Day was an effective distraction for Democrats’ inability to honestly and openly debate and vote on their crime bills.

Democrats aren’t done yet – With only three days before the ballot initiative deadline, Democrats are hastily trying to get their own crime-related ballot initiative on the ballot to confuse and mislead voters – and apparently trying to keep dangerous criminals on the street.