Assemblyman
Ray Haynes
Assemblyman Ray Haynes represents the 66th Assembly District, which includes portions of Western Riverside County and Northern San Diego County.
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Articles by Assemblyman
Ray Haynes
November 10, 2006
I have spent a lot of time trying to think of what I would say to each of you in this, my last, Monday Morning Memorandum. God, and some gonzo lawyer, has put an end to this phase of my political career, and I personally don't have the hardware or the training to send this out each week to the 30 ...
August 12, 2006
Sometimes, I think that I am repeating myself over and over again. It seems that my liberal friends in the Legislature keep doing the same things over and over again, and never realize that it is what they are doing that is hurting the rest of us.
The latest thing is affordable housing. About a...
August 02, 2006
One of the things I enjoy most about this job is the opportunity to watch how the ruling class in our society, that is the politicians, the bureaucrats, and their allies in the private sector, try to dupe people into giving them more power.
Case in point-there is an effort nationwide, in which Ca...
July 15, 2006
A few years ago, I visited the state of Israel as a part of a delegation from California. As a part of that visit, I participated in a meeting with the Superintendent of Schools for city of Tel Aviv. In that meeting the Superintendent was describing the most serious problem facing the government-...
June 30, 2006
I have tried on many occasions to explain to people exactly what happens in the legislative process, that is, how committees are organized, how they vote, who influences those committee outcomes, and how the legislative rules actually work. Usually, by the time I am finished explaining how the Leg...
May 20, 2006
There is a cancer in the body politic of our country today.
Simply stated, it is eminent domain abuse. More broadly, it is the effort of our federal, state and local governments to erode long-standing property rights in real estate. For most of the history of our country, people have believed th...
May 13, 2006
This last week, a judge in Oakland said he thought the state's high school exit exam is flawed, because it failed to account for English language learners' inability to read the test. That is, since the test requires that those with limited English skills take and pass the test in English, it discr...
May 05, 2006
Everything we do in life is about the documents. We are born, we live, and we die with documents attached to us. So whenever you hear someone claim that something is not wrong, it is just "undocumented," keep that in mind.
For instance, in California, if you practice law without the appropriate ...
April 28, 2006
Do you want to reduce the price of gasoline by almost 60 cents a gallon immediately?
Get the real price gougers. They take nearly 60 cents of every $3.00 gallon of gas. They should pay the windfall profits tax. They should be investigated. What are they doing with this money? How is it being ...
April 21, 2006
I have refrained from commenting on California's budget because it is still uncertain exactly what is going to happen in this year's budget debate. This, however, is what we know up to this point in time.
Last year, the Legislature approved, and the Governor signed, a budget that increased state ...
April 07, 2006
I know this happens every year in the Legislature, and sometimes I think that those who read my weekly discussion on Sacramento must get bored that I keep saying the same things over and over.
Then I realize, the news media does not report these events. In fact, I think that people wouldn't belie...
March 24, 2006
In 1999, then Governor Gray Davis pushed a school accountability system through the Legislature. The system had three major components:
(1) a comprehensive testing process designed to measure a school's progress in educating children; (2) An academic performance index (API), to report the results...
March 18, 2006
I understand that it is an election year.
But this week in Sacramento was a disgrace, even by election year standards, and that is saying a lot.
In January, the Governor proposed "rebuilding" California by spending $220 billion to build freeways, water storage, schools, prisons, courts and ele...
March 10, 2006
Remember when we would run out to the schoolyard and play football or tag at recess? First, through various methods, two kids would become the respective team captains. Their task would be to assemble the best team. It was a cutthroat affair. There weren't any allegiances; just a no holds barred...
February 17, 2006
In the movie, Groundhog Day, Bill Murray's character wakes up to the same refrain from the song "I got you, babe" every morning, and that is how he knows he is stuck in the same place on the same day, day after day, throughout the movie.
I don't think I am stuck in that movie, but I keep hearing t...
February 10, 2006
Remember the Bill Murray movie Groundhog Day? One of my favorite scenes is set in the bowling alley, with Bill Murray's character, Phil Connors, talking to a drunk:
Phil: What would you do if you were stuck in one place, and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered.
...
February 03, 2006
Where else but our socialist paradise? Three bills before the Legislature this week demonstrate just how out of touch the Legislative majority really is.
First, AB 1418 by Jerome Horton. Last year, Republicans wanted to list the names and addresses of child molesters on the internet so that pare...
January 27, 2006
I joined the Republican Party a little bit later than most, as a direct result of the messages I heard from Ronald Reagan. When I began my own business, I discovered that most of the things I had been taught in college about government were wrong. As Ronald Reagan said and I quickly learned, gover...
January 13, 2006
I have been on a Governor-bashing binge lately, so I thought I would change focus. Not that there is no reason to criticize the Governor, there is. He has proposed a $222 billion bond package and a budget that spends $7 billion more than it takes in. For the fellow that got elected promising to s...
January 03, 2006
As the year begins, we find Sacramento once again considering raising the minimum wage. Only this time, Governor Schwarzenegger has indicated he might support a bill raising the minimum wage to $7.25 next year, and $7.75 the year after.
In the wake of high energy costs, high building costs, high ...
November 23, 2005
Each November, the Legislative Analyst's Office (LAO) puts out a report on our "state of the current year budget," that is the budget year we are in at the time of the report, giving us information on how much we're spending and the revenues coming in. Then they give us a prediction of the next yea...
November 23, 2005
Call me a cynic, but I think the educrats plan it this way.
They wait for challenges to pass, like Propositions 74 and 75, and then when they win, they literally spit in the voter's face. The latest outrage-the effort of these educrats to avoid any accountability for doing their job.
By way of ...
November 10, 2005
Protecting individual liberty is the most important thing a legislator can do. Exercising power is easy; restraining the exercise of power is hard. Legislators therefore have a tendency to exercise power in strange and intrusive ways. The "Noseys" were designed to call attention to the stupid exe...
October 07, 2005
A new debate has begun over the question of the origin of the species, and our Superintendent of Public Instruction, Jack O'Connell, has weighed in on the subject. Last week he announced that California schools would never teach the theory of "intelligent design." No mater what the science says, h...
August 26, 2005
They are everywhere, and they are after you and your neighbors.
They want your money, they want your property, and they want to invade your home. They are the money snatchers.
This week, those money snatchers tried to pass a bill on the Assembly floor which would have allowed them to tax you on y...
August 19, 2005
Miniaturization is cool. Laptops are cooler than desktops.
Tiny flip phones are cooler than the older, larger cell phones.
Blackberries and Sidekicks combine the coolness of laptops and tiny phones. Mini Coopers are in, though I'm not quite sure why. Even personal miniaturization in the form of...
August 12, 2005
We now know, from intelligence records seized in the Soviet Union after the fall of communism that the Russians were trying to turn Hollywood into their propaganda operation to lull us into believing that they were not trying to take over our country. Movies like "The Russians are Coming, The Russi...
July 29, 2005
My Democrat colleagues on the Assembly Judiciary Committee recently killed ACA 20, the constitutional amendment designed to create the California Border Police, a state agency whose sole purpose, if we can ever get it formed, would be the comprehensive, uniform, and statewide enforcement of federal ...