— High among the reasons Californians are the laughing-stock of America is the talent of our state legislators for pushing ridiculous agendas to absurd heights, as John Vasconcellos did with his silly self-esteem program. The latest example of this remarkable exercise in unintentional reflexivity is a bill by one of the most rotund members of the legislature to tax soft drinks as a cure for teen obesity (Senator’s bill calls for levy on soda)
SACRAMENTO – With obesity increasingly becoming a problem for California’s schoolchildren, one state lawmaker is proposing a tax on soda to discourage consumption and pay for programs intended to guide kids to healthier living.
Sen. Deborah Ortiz, D-Sacramento, said her legislation will help highlight the growing trouble children have controlling their weight while at the same time offering schools an incentive to drop lucrative contracts to sell certain brands of soda on their campuses.
“All I’m saying is let’s have them (soda drinks) made available in other places than schools,” Ortiz said. “Our children are there six and eight hours a day. They are a captive audience there.”
Ortiz is regarded by her peers in Sacramento as the dimmest of the many dim bulbs beneath the dome, and she’s also one of the heaviest and most acne-ridden. There’s a personal reason behind each of Ortiz’ bills, many stemming from her childhood with a single mother on welfare. In her forties and still unmarried, she wants to raise all the children of California as if they were her own. No thanks, Debby.
Google “Ortiz soft drink tax” and you’ll see a nationwide sneering campaign already in progress from New Mexico to New York.
My daughter who lives on Long Island asked me how people like Ortiz get elected, and I had to tell her the story of term-limits and its many consequences. Ortiz was first elected to the Assembly seat formerly held by Phil Isenberg, one of the brightest lights in the Democratic Party, and she subsequently ascended to the Senate seat formerly held by Leroy Greene, the most common-sense member of the legislature and its only engineer. While nobody would ever argue that former Isenberg aide and city council-member Ortiz can’t fill a seat, she’s all calories and no nutrients, as are so many of the ersatz citizen-politicians who’ve gone to Sacramento since term-limits passed.