Democrats in Sacramento are at it again.

After introducing a bill to ban police from using canines to apprehend dangerous criminals, another Democrat – this time state Senator Dave Cortese of Santa Clara County – has a new bill that passed the Senate Public Safety Committee, that could allow for the early release of death row inmates, or “life without parole” inmates.

If passed into law, Senate Bill 94, would allow death row inmates to have their cases reviewed and potentially resentenced if they committed their crime before June 5, 1990, and spent at least 20 years of their sentence in prison.

Pushing the bill is a man named Daniel Trautfield who heads up the Felony Murder Elimination Project, which seeks to get rid of the death penalty and life sentences.

Madera County District Attorney Sally Moreno is one of the DAs against the bill, saying, “This ‘life without the possibility of parole’ is the last honest sentence (so) it’s not surprising at all that they’re coming for that.”

Not surprisingly, the bill was co-authored by San Francisco’s state Senator Scott Wiener, who wrote a prior bill that decreased the punishment for knowingly infecting someone with HIV. Wiener has come up with some of the worst bills in California history, such as legalizing adults to have sex with minors.

There are still Californians who believe that if you take a life, then you should forfeit your own. In fact, most Californians feel that way. California voters voted in 2016 against Prop 62 which would have repealed the death penalty. Proposition 62 was backed by Newsom, the Democrats and all the leftists.

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I’ve been thinking about why teenagers and young people are going wild these days. Sideshows – which are where lawless members of the public take over and block public rights-of-way that we all pay for and should be able to use at all times – are commonplace in Stanislaus County and California. Sideshows are illegal but a frustrated Turlock City Council just made it illegal to even watch one.

Sideshows are dangerous for obvious reasons.  Cars spinning in a circular fashion inside of a circle of bystanders can easily hit people; and that they tend to congregate lawbreakers who don’t bat an eye about bringing a gun to the party and squeezing off a few rounds.

Sideshows are not something that wise people participate in.

Young people think they’re invincible but most of us who have lived long enough have known people put in coffins by cars. Young people don’t have the life perspective those of us in our 40s or older have experienced.

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Compton, a predominantly Hispanic and black community in Southern California, has suffered from “flash mob” style takeovers conducted by young people who take over a store to loot it. AM/PM customer Pam Sebastian told KTLA TV station that the lawlessness two weekends ago angers her and she asks, “Why would you do that?”

Why? Because kids are being raised by parents who have a “the world owes me” mentality.

They also have no fear of getting caught, and if they do, all they need to do is run. If caught, they yell police brutality or racism.

Lawmakers have increasingly vilified police and successfully pushed for defunding police in the interests of restorative justice.

The newest generation has also been used to being given everything – from their school lunches to their cell phones to their cars to their clothes so they are separated from the concept that you have to work for what you want in life. So the mob enters a gas station, overpowers the clerk and takes whatever they want. And you can forget about them having any empathy or concern for the terrorized store owner who is busting his hump raising his family on the store’s profits.

You can bet because no arrests were made that the pathetic thieves will be more embolden to continue their thieving ways. Welcome to California 2023 where the state Legislature opposes building more prisons and opposes adding a single day to sentences, according to newly seated state Assemblyman Juan Alanis, R-Modesto.

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Recently I drive through a shopping center parking lot and came to an unregulated intersection and found myself in a quandary when the other driver and I were making split-second decisions on who would go first. I started to proceed because the other driver hesitated, then had to stomp on the brake when “he” proceeded to go. I say “he” because I couldn’t see the driver for the dark tint on his window and am only assuming it was a man.

The windows on the pickup’s driver’s side were so dark I was unable to see him and that means where he was looking – which is important information when you’re trying to understand their presence of mind or their intentions.

I get that it’s trendy to darken the windows to an illegal shade where others cannot see who’s sitting behind the wheel. And I get that dark tinting keeps the car cooler during the sweltering summer heat in the Central Valley. But there are laws on how dark you can make the windshield and driver’s side windows yet how many of these tinting shops are violating state law? How many officers are not bothering to cite?

On Dec. 28 Sheriff’s deputies in Palmdale, Calif., conducted an enforcement operation focused on vehicles with front windshield tint. Many of the vehicles stopped had window tint so dark that you could not see inside. In less than two hours, 50 citations were issued for violations of the tinted window laws. Even if a tint company tells you it is legal, it is illegal to have completely tinted front windows or completely tinted side windows.

It is legal to have up to 70 percent of tint darkness in combination with factory tinted windows.

I’m not the only one noticing. A fine and upstanding Courier reader contacted me last Thursday and had this to say: “Have you noticed the sudden influx of tinted front windows over the past several years? I counted 20 passing cars during a walk with my kids last week. Out of 20, 11 had front window tint such that I could barely see the driver. Stupid. Impossible to make eye contact. Can’t tell their intentions at the intersection. Dangerous and annoying for law enforcement.

“From cell phones to earbuds to window tint, our society does more and more to distance itself from our fellows.”

And I must say that if you’re a criminal, it’s likely that you have dark tint on your windows for a reason – the same reason the Compton takeover thugs wore masks.

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There is so much talk these days about the dangers of fentanyl. An estimated 130 Californians die from fentanyl overdoses every week. Maybe I think about things too simplistically but it’s one of those things where if you don’t take fentanyl or any types of illegal drugs in the first place then you don’t have to worry about dying from them.

The only way to be sure your fentanyl is real is to get it prescribed by a doctor. You can take it safely by following your doctor’s directions and taking the recommended dose. However, using drugs sold on the street is akin to playing Russian roulette with your life.

I’ve often wondered why so many young people feel the need to take drugs. And that goes for marijuana. What have we done in our country that kids are so miserable that they feel like drugs are an answer?

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It’s about time somebody in Sacramento took a crack at dishonest advertising when it comes to the way we label propositions on the ballot.

The Senate Elections and Constitutional Amendments Committee unanimously passed Senate Bill 858, which reforms the process by which ballot measure titles and summaries are written.

SB 858, introduced by Senator Roger Niello (R-Fair Oaks) received bipartisan support at the committee hearing last week. It transfers the duty of preparing the ballot title and summary for a proposed initiative or referendum measure from the state Attorney General, a partisan elected official, to the Legislative Analyst, a non-partisan advisor to the Legislature. 

There are numerous examples that show biased ballot titles and summary misinformed the voters on what the ballot measure would actually achieve if passed. For example, in 2022, Proposition 22’s ballot title changed from “Changes employment classification rules for app-based transportation and delivery workers,” an accurate description, to “Exempts app-based transportation and delivery companies from providing employee benefits to certain drivers and delivery workers.”

Another example was in 2020 when then Attorney General Xavier Becerra gave this title to Prop. 15, which was an assault on the landmark Jarvis-Gann Initiative of 1978. Becerra labeled Prop. 15 the “Tax on Commercial and Industrial Properties for Education and Local Government Funding Initiative.” A majority of voters didn’t fall for Prop. 15, which should have been labeled, “Further Shakedown of California Business and Job Killers Measure.”

If only proposed laws submitted in the state Legislature could receive titles that were less deceptive.

This column is the opinion of Jeff Benziger, and does not necessarily represent the opinion of The Ceres Courier or 209 Multimedia Corporation.  How do you feel about this? Let Jeff know at jeffb@cerescourier.com