Jerry Brown's Litany of Failure

Thomas Sowell reminds us of a couple of Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown's greatest hits from the last time he served as governor:

One appointment by Gov. Jerry Brown ought to tell us a lot about his ideology. His most famous — or infamous — appointment made Rose Bird chief justice of the California supreme court.

Bird overruled 64 consecutive death-penalty verdicts and upheld none. Apparently no judge or jury could ever give a murderer a trial perfect enough to suit Rose Bird.

To hear Rose Bird and her supporters tell it, she was just “upholding the law.” But, fortunately, California voters saw right through that pretense, and realized that she was doing just the opposite — imposing her own personal opposition to the death penalty in the guise of interpreting the law. No California chief-justice appointee had ever been voted off the bench by the voters before Rose Bird, but she was roundly defeated when 67 percent of the voters voted against her in a confirmation election required by California law.

Two of her like-mind colleagues on the California supreme court were likewise voted off the bench. They, too, had been appointed by Gov. Jerry Brown.

The question is not whether you are for or against the death penalty. If you don’t like the death penalty, you can vote to repeal it. But it is not the job of judges to deprive the voters of their right to choose the laws they want to live under.

This is part of a much larger arrogant political ideology, in which anointed elites impose their own notions, in utter disregard of the laws passed by the people’s elected representatives.

At one time, Gov. Jerry Brown was riding high in the Democratic party, and was considered a rising prospect for that party’s nomination for president of the United States. Then something happened that told us all what kind of man he was.

There was an infestation of Mediterranean fruit flies out in California’s agricultural heartland in the interior valleys. Despite being urged to allow spraying of insecticide out in the valleys, to nip the infestation in the bud, Governor Brown pandered to the environmental extremists and refused.

The net result was that the “Med flies,” as they were called, spread from the valleys out into cities and towns as far west as the San Francisco Bay area. Faced with a major political disaster, Jerry Brown finally authorized spraying — over a vastly larger area than would have been necessary when he was first asked. That fiasco spared us a Jerry Brown administration in Washington.

I remember one night at the height of the Med fly crisis I had done a banquet at the Disneyland Hotel and didn't get out of there until around midnight. As I was driving down Katella Ave. toward a freeway a flight of three helicopters passed overhead at low altitude. Spots appeared on my windshield and I realized I'd just been sprayed for Med flies. The spray was harmful not only to flies but to car paint jobs, so when I got home I spent some time washing the crud off my car so it wouldn't ruin the paint.

Thanks, Jerry.