Suggestions for California

California,

You are my home state, the place of my birth, and the place I plan to live for the rest of my life. You disappointed me today (as you did on November 4, 2008), but I have some suggestions for improving the quality of life in this state, which can be implemented by changes voted on in the next general election.

1. Amend the State Constitution to disallow constitutional amendments to be proposed by initiative. All constitutional amendments should be proposed by the legislature, period.

2. Restore California's integrity by repealing that idiotic ban on recognition of same-sex marriages. It creates a wholesale contradiction within the constitution itself (contrast it to the equal protection clauses), and it's not really being implemented as intended anyway (see the CA Supreme Court decision, upholding recognition of the 18,000 same-sex marriages already performed, completely contrary to the plain language of the constitution).

3. (this is pie-in-the-sky dreaming) Completely eliminate the initiative process. It's a failure. Nothing good has ever come of it that I've ever heard of. Everything either ends up having horrendous unintended consequences or getting overturned -- all of which just makes things more expensive for the state (in terms of court proceedings and tax consequences, etc).

While I anticipate that I will always be proud to be Californian, I cannot say that I am proud of how my home state is governed.

Sincerely,
a humble voter

I told them so!

For the longest time, as a temp or contract employee, I wanted to put in my 8 hours and go home. I wanted to eat lunch at my desk, not take a break, and leave 8 hours after I got there -- not 8.5 hours after I got there having taken a mandatory break at some point near or around lunchtime.

I just heard about the Brinker case. I know, I'm late hearing about it. The opinion I'm currently reading was filed on 7/22/08. I've only gotten a couple paragraphs in, and I haven't researched to make sure it hasn't already been overturned (I don't have access to the database systems that let a person do that easily, and it's doubtful that this has reached the Shepard guides in the law library at JFK University down the street from where I live)...

But basically, the gist is what I always told all my employers and coworkers -- the wage and hour laws requiring that employers provide meal breaks and rest breaks are there for the worker's benefit. This means that employers are required to provide them, but workers are not required to take them.

For some reason, all my employers disagreed with this and required that our timesheets reflect a half hour taken for lunch (and required that our timesheets also accurately reflect hour actual hours). As a result, I found that my timesheets accurately reflected my overall time in the office, but not the specific hours... and claimed a lunch break when I didn't take one. Either that, or if I had an employer who micromanaged, I'd spend a half hour snacking and surfing the web, then leave later and be miserable in the inevitably worse rush hour traffic. I figured that the employers just wanted to be able to prove that they gave us lunch breaks and didn't want anyone who chose to skip their breaks being able to come back and claim that the employer didn't allow them the break.

But now, the courts in California have agreed with MY interpretation.

I feel so vindicated. :)