To the editor: Visitor contributor Lanhee J. Chen writes that “California needs to think outside the blue box,” (March 18). He claims that one-party Democratic rule smothers debate and significant considering. Whereas I consider he’s right about the issue with one-party rule, he’s incorrect about the reason for the present dysfunction in Sacramento.
California doesn’t must assume exterior the blue field. What California wants is a robust, wholesome Republican Get together that thinks exterior the Trump field. California Republican candidates must cease performing like President Trump lapdogs and begin performing like Californians.
I take into account myself a centrist, and whereas I are inclined to vote Democratic, I consider that the Democrats have swung thus far to the left as to be unrecognizable. Nevertheless, I’m disgusted with Trump. Till Republican candidates develop a spine and give you some concepts which may make sense to a majority of Californians, they’ll proceed to lose statewide elections.
For example, our final three Republican governors, George Deukmejian, Pete Wilson and Arnold Schwarzenegger, have been pro-choice. Are you able to even think about a California Republican working for statewide workplace as pro-choice right now? As proven by current poll measures, most Californians are pro-choice however Republicans, swooning to Trump, gained’t go there. Don’t even get me began on immigration reform.
The explanation Democrats proceed to win statewide elections isn’t as a result of Californians are dyed-in-the wool liberals. It’s as a result of the choice is so unpalatable.
Mark Shoup, Apple Valley
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To the editor: Chen is totally proper in stating the hazards of a one-party Legislature. With out opposition, we Democrats can and do drift into positions which might be out of step with mainstream Democratic beliefs. Nevertheless, Chen misses the mark. The explanation we now have saddled ourselves with a supermajority, is as a result of the Republicans proceed to cling to far-right insurance policies and rhetoric. So long as Republicans proceed to espouse their uncomfortable positions to the detriment of California, they’ll stay a super-minority.
Raul Sahagun, Hacienda Heights
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To the editor: California has lengthy struggled with the notion of “being powerful on crime,” a buzz phrase that has excused the state’s unforgiving system of harsh over-criminalization. A painful back-and-forth of various requirements of punishment has led the state to the place it’s now, as soon as once more, harshly re-criminalizing sure drug and theft crimes with Proposition 36, which permits felony fees in circumstances that have been at some occasions misdemeanors.
The true root explanation for the difficulty isn’t that looser crime rules don’t work, as is insinuated on this commentary, however slightly that they don’t work alone. The issue with these makes an attempt to decide to extra humane justice insurance policies is that they’re half-hearted at greatest.
Loosening punishments with out including the funding in communities, rehabilitative efforts, after-school packages for juveniles and each different addition that goes together with less-harsh prison codes is setting these strikes as much as fail.
The de-facto one-party system in California has failed in a number of methods, however an precise crime-reform technique was by no means given an opportunity. It’s time that we cease perpetuating this binary considering and do the actual work to make California secure, which gained’t occur if we proceed locking up our residents en masse within the title of “powerful on crime.”
Katie Aronson, Los Angeles
