Lawmakers prefer grandstanding

We're deep into the legal session and it's prime-time television to take a look at what legislators are hatching.

Maybe the greatest dispute this session has actually centered on fentanyl-- the artificial pain reliever that is sometimes more powerful than heroin and has resulted in more than 5,700 overdose deaths in California in 2015. Lawmakers have proposed a bundle of procedures that mainly have to do with grandstanding-- and epitomize the "toss whatever at the wall" legislating common throughout other Drug War stresses.

The fentanyl problem is real. Yet the state already has a "master plan" that ramps up funding. Authorities companies and DAs already have plenty of powers to detain and prosecute dealerships. The propositions would develop a task force, require new cautions to drug dealerships and enhance prison sentences. The Assembly Public Safety Committee has resisted these efforts.

Meanwhile, California lawmakers continue to move on harmful costs to expand rent control and to restore eminent-domain-abusing redevelopment agencies. Those proposals provide a direct danger to Californians' property rights.

What would a legal session be without a significant tax-increase proposition? Senate Democrats have actually presented a strategy to close the budget deficit by raising taxes on large corporations "to pay for tax cuts for small businesses, tenants, low-income Californians and union members" and increasing social costs, as the Sacramento Bee reported.

Big numbers of businesses and rich Californians currently are moving somewhere else. Gov. Gavin Newsom-- as he considers a governmental run-- already tossed cold water on this tax proposition.

No legal session would be complete without some legislator using a silly costs that appears designed to become a late-night television punchline. This session's winner is the "Skittles expense" that would prohibit the use of red dye No. 3 used in some sweets. Incredibly, it lost consciousness of committee.

On a more serious note, Assembly member Phil Ting proposed a measure to limit authorities use of weird-- and incorrect-- facial-recognition systems. The ACLU argues that the costs will actually broaden their use.

Californians must question why the Legislature stops working to attend to California's most-pressing issues-- as it focuses on broadening federal government power.