{"id":10794,"date":"2012-04-19T09:43:04","date_gmt":"2012-04-19T16:43:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carlsbadistan.com\/?p=10794"},"modified":"2012-04-19T09:44:28","modified_gmt":"2012-04-19T16:44:28","slug":"the-riehl-world-a-lawmakers-lament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.carlsbadistan.com\/?p=10794","title":{"rendered":"The Riehl World: A Lawmaker\u2019s Lament"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Garrick<\/a>You can tell from his most recent mailer that Assemblyman Martin Garrick, R-Carlsbad<\/a><\/strong>, hates his job. He complains about having to work year-round in Sacramento, with little time to ask local voters what they want him to do there. Forced to accept an overblown salary while working full-time on issues that \u201care not priorities for the hard-working people of this state,\u201d he can\u2019t take a second job in the real world.<\/p>\n

So what\u2019s an unhappy State Assembly member to do? Survey his constituents, of course, to see if they agree he and his colleagues are overpaid, out of touch and underemployed.<\/p>\n

Mindful of how busy we all are, Garrick boils his survey down to four simple, yes, or no questions and one \u201cpositive\u201d or \u201cnegative\u201d opinion. If you answer yes to the first question, lawmakers should have full-time careers and be part-time politicians, the next three are easy. Yes, you want a part-time legislature, yes, the legislature passes too many bills, and yes your representative is grossly overpaid. If you think \u201cno\u201d answers are acceptable, check out the answer sheet included or just Google \u201cCongress: job ratings.\u201dAfter acing the yes\/no part of the test, you can find out why you should believe the legislature is having a negative effect on your quality of life. Garrick explains we could be better off emulating large states that have lower-paid, part-time politicians.<\/p>\n

He praises Texas for enjoying \u201cone of the fastest and most robust economies in the country.\u201d The Lone Star State also leads the nation for its low cost of labor. One in every ten workers is paid at or below the federal minimum wage. Only 2 percent of California\u2019s workforce earns $7.25 an hour or less.<\/p>\n

While trickle-down economics doesn\u2019t seem to be working in Texas, we could give it a try in California if we only had part-time, more business friendly lawmakers.<\/p>\n

Calling his Sacramento workplace \u201cnothing more than a bill factory,\u201d Garrick says the 2,719 bills introduced last year were mostly unnecessary. He takes credit on his website for writing fifteen. The only one of his signed into law was a resolution declaring February 6, 2011 \u201cRonald Reagan Day,\u201d apparently one of his \u201cpriorities for the hardworking people of this state.\u201d With a record like that, who can blame him for feeling grumpy in his termed-out year?<\/p>\n

Disgruntled, yet not discouraged, Garrick has already formed an exploratory committee to consider a run for the state senate in 2014, when 38th District Senator Mark Wyland<\/a><\/strong> is termed out. Maybe he was persuaded to go back to work in the bill factory by a variation of the old Peace Corps recruitment pitch: Serving in the State Legislature\u2014The Worst Job You\u2019ll Ever Love.<\/p>\n

Richard J. Riehl<\/strong> writes from Carlsbad. Contact him at fogcutter1@yahoo.com<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You can tell from his most recent mailer that Assemblyman Martin Garrick, R-Carlsbad, hates his job. He complains about having to work year-round in Sacramento, with little time to ask local voters what they want him to do there. Forced to accept an overblown salary while working full-time on issues that \u201care not priorities for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.carlsbadistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10794"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.carlsbadistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.carlsbadistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.carlsbadistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.carlsbadistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10794"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.carlsbadistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10794\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10798,"href":"http:\/\/www.carlsbadistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10794\/revisions\/10798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.carlsbadistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.carlsbadistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.carlsbadistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}