In 1977, Brown showed up unannounced to a tenement building called "The Pink Palace" in San Francisco, where he met residents and stayed the night. "I get firsthand knowledge uncensored by the normal channels," Brown said at the time. He also visited state prisons and mental hospitals.
Kashkari said that he wished Brown would do visits like that again. "I think it's great," he said. "I think it'd be great for the governor to get out of his cocoon."
A spokesman for Brown's campaign said, "Gov. Brown has spent a lifetime involved in these issues; Kashkari is a multimillionaire banker who put on a costume and posed as something he isn't."
Gun control advocates argued the exemption allowed gun dealers to sell temporarily altered single-shot pistols to people who could convert them back into semiautomatic weapons that do not comply with state safety requirements. The California Association of Federal Firearms Licensees, which opposed the bill, said it will "further narrow California's already onerous and overly burdensome 'not unsafe' handgun roster and eliminate more firearms from the non-peace officer marketplace," according to a legislative analysis.
The bill passed the Legislature largely on partisan lines, with Democrats in support & Republicans opposed.
He also expressed worry about the "tendency to go to extremes." After legalization, he said, "if there's advertising and legitimacy, how many people can get stoned and still have a great state or a great nation? The world's pretty dangerous, very competitive. I think we need to stay alert, if not 24 hours a day, more than some of the potheads might be able to put together."
California became the first state to legalize medical marijuana use in 1996, when 56 percent of voters approved Proposition 215.
California's current budget windfall has come almost entirely from a rebounding stock market, and from billions in revenue generated by a capital gains tax--the most volatile revenue stream. Brown, scarred by budget battles both a few years ago and a few decades ago, said the state should save money in the good years to pay for the bad years.
"I think that kind of ping-pong budgeting, where first you ping and then you pong, makes no sense," Brown said. "It's cruel budgeting to propose a spending program and then have to finance it two or three years from now by cutting somebody else's program."
"I'm not interested in a Jerry Brown legacy, whatever the hell that might be," Brown said. His initiatives, he said, will help cope with an influx of millions of new residents over the forthcoming decades. "We're not a homogenous state where it's easy to have 60% or 70% of the people agree on things. There are divisions," he went on. "These are longer term, serious, societal commitments that help knit us together as a people."
But there is one project Brown has decided not to save for the future: building the nation's first high-speed rail line, one of the largest infrastructure projects in U.S. history, with an estimated price tag of $68 billion--if not higher. Shovels are poised to hit the ground this year on the first section of track, the latest advance in Brown's 32-year quest (he signed the first bill authorizing a study of high-speed rail in 1982) to erect something he believes befits the image of California as a "land of dreams."
"We aren't all Twitter-holics that have to have instant gratification after 140 characters," Brown said. "We can take a few years and build for the future, and that's my sense here, that I'm coming back to be governor after all these years. It's been on my list for a long time."
Though the state has acquired $3.4 billion in federal funding to start construction of the rail project in the Central Valley, legal challenges have left state bond funding in question. Brown has made high-speed rail a priority, and he suggested two years ago that cap-and-trade revenue, which is designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, would be a future source of funding for the project.
But the use of cap-and-trade money for high-speed rail could be problematic. While the rail project could eventually help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, benefits would not be seen until after 2020, the year by which California is seeking to meet its greenhouse gas reduction goals.
"California is still a very yeasty place," he said, noting the state's record for companies that develop new technologies that grow into major industries. He said the state now has multibillion-dollar surpluses that can continue for the next several years if state lawmakers spend responsibly.
When asked if he supported national education standards, Brown said, "No. That's just a form of national control." Brown reprised a story he tells frequently about an exam he had in high school when a teacher asked students to write their impressions of a green leaf. "Still, as I walk by trees, I keep saying, 'Can I feel anything? Am I dead inside?' So, this was a very powerful question that has haunted me for 50 years." The point, Brown said, is that "you can't put that on a standardized test. There are important educational encounters that can't be captured by tests."
The governor sent a letter to congressional leaders late last week urging them to extend benefits for those who have been unable to find work. "These workers will suffer irreparable harm if these federal benefits are allowed to expire," Brown wrote, noting that more than 214,000 Californians could see their benefits expire.
Brown also noted the "severe federal underfunding" of the state's unemployment insurance program, which the governor blamed for delays in workers receiving their unemployment checks.
Presently, prosecutors must charge individuals arrested for possession of certain drugs, such as heroin or cocaine, with felonies. Under current California law, possession of less than an ounce of marijuana is an infraction and possession of methamphetamine is currently eligible for a misdemeanor charge. Senate Bill 649, then, would have merely extended the option to possession of other substances, such as heroin and cocaine, and would not have gone so far as California has with marijuana.
The veto comes as California scrambles to figure out how to meet a Jan. 2014 deadline to reduce overcrowding in the state prison system. In 2010, California was ordered to reduce the prison population from 150,000 to 110,000.
SB 185 would have made it legal for UC and CSU schools to consider factors such as race, gender, ethnicity and national origin in student admissions. The bill had faced scrutiny by those who questioned its legality. Opponents of the bill said that it contradicted Proposition 209. Approved by voters in 1996, the proposition made it illegal for students to receive preferential treatment on the basis of race, gender or ethnicity.
Though Brown said that he agrees with the purpose of the bill, he believes the courts should determine the limits of the proposition, according to a veto message he sent to the State Senate. "Signing this bill is unlikely to impact how Prop. 209 is ultimately interpreted by the courts; it will just encourage the 209 advocates to file more costly and confusing lawsuits," he wrote.
|
The above quotations are from 2014 California Gubernatorial debates and race coverage.
Click here for other excerpts from 2014 California Gubernatorial debates and race coverage. Click here for other excerpts by Jerry Brown. Click here for other excerpts by other Governors.
Please consider a donation to OnTheIssues.org!
| Click for details -- or send donations to: 1770 Mass Ave. #630, Cambridge MA 02140 E-mail: submit@OnTheIssues.org (We rely on your support!) |