California's Balance Between Free Speech and Property

Over at my personal blog, I've posted more on California's approach to balancing free-speech and property rights. That topic stems from the comments thread from a post I made on the YAL blog last week concering a suit against a California mall for restricting speech.

Here is an excerpt from the new post:

One notable point made in the comments thread involved the case of Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins (1980).

In that case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states could extend rights beyond that of the U.S. Constitution so long as doing so does not violate rights protected by the Constitution. The case dealt with the California Supreme Court ruling that their constitution’s protection of free speech allowed for individuals to exercise their free-speech rights in a private shopping mall, despite the wishes of the mall owners. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed with the California Supreme Court that this did not violate the mall owner’s property rights under the fifth and fourteenth amendments.

Read the entire post here.

Nanny State Comes Back to Suffocate California...AGAIN

When I interned this past semester in Arlington, VA, I didn't notice a ridiculous policy implemented just across the river in the nation's capital:  There's a 5¢ fee for every plastic bag you use in DC.

Now the government of California has found a similar way to take money from an economy starving for innovation and freedom.  Instead of letting the market reward good behavior like some stores do by giving discounts for people using "green bags" which are far more sturdy and reusable, California has banned plastic bags -- a plan that won't help anybody.   Will someone please let these naive lawmakers know that prohibition doesn't work?

Oh wait...if my memory served me correctly, after government banned alcohol, everything was just fine:  nobody missed it and crime rates didn't change...

Sacramento's Getting Pretty Desperate

According to a staff editorial in the Sacramento Bee, the Governator has actually proposed selling advertising space on the traffic bill boards meant to alert highway drivers of bad traffic conditions in order to shrink California's approximately $20 billion deficit.

This time the governor wants to sell advertising space on state highway message boards.

The proposal is serious. If approved, existing message boards – the ones used to alert drivers to road hazards ahead or abducted children – would be upgraded with LED technology and converted to colorful commercial grade electronic billboards. The state would lease the billboards to outdoor advertising firms and collect the money upfront to help balance the state budget – as much as $2 billion over 20 years for 500 billboards.

The good doctor is popular, even in California.

This is a recently published Letter to the Editor in the Vacaville Reporter, which serves the California Bay Area and Sacramento metro vicinity. The good doctor has supporters even in Garamendi/Boxer/Feinstein-land.

Dear Editor,

Just writing to let Americans know that there is very little time left to vote off the rotten apples that we have up on Capitol Hill.

The only decent one is Ron Paul -- he really cares about what happens in America. Capitol Hill has been laughing at us for a long time now. When the treasury secretary of the Federal Reserve (Timothy Geithner) said he wasn't sure where $2.5 trillion went, the Americans did nothing.