Like many of the propositions, this one seems to be a very emotional one for its supporters.  I have not seen viceral personal appeals in opposition, but in Yorba Linda in 2012, I don’t know a lot of farmers personally.

Other than my recent field trip to Coachella Valley to visit some large farming operations and talk about their water service, I don’t have a lot of reason to get excited about this one.  I’m no health fanatic, and much prefer that ‘head in the sand’ approach to knowing a lot of details about what I eat. I am pretty dispassionate about this issue, and have been content for the debate to rage on, while I ignore the pleas of my facebook friends to worry about whether eels are real, or in my cereal, or something.

Until yesterday, when I was near Mother’s Market on Newport Blvd.  They had proudly and prominently displayed a banner on the front of the building imploring drivers by to vote in support of Prop. 37.  There were also, on the other side of the street, many supporters, hollering at cars, waiving their hands and signs that matched the banner on Mother’s market.  I was heading to lunch at Mimi’s, and I was certain that Ihad no intention of asking them to see the nutritional information of whatever I ordered.

All the energy emanating from Mother’s Market though, struck me as strangely ironic.  If you are shopping at Mother’s Market, you are probably there out of a great concern for having high quality food, from the best sources and great availability of options like, organic, cage-free and grass fed.  That is what the free market system provides you.  Choices, in the open market where there is demand, supply will naturally follow.

I don’t know about the rest of my Republican brethren, but it seems to me, if we are to stand against big brother and his socialist agenda, we must do so at all turns.  Do we really need to expand the food police? Can we not, all of us, accept some responsibility for effective consumerism?  If you don’t want genetically engineered foods, then get together with all the other *dirty hippies and boycott those companies, and all their products.  I have seen the list of Monsanto products that has been circulated, and with only a cursory look over it, I can not imagine how I could avoid all of those products, but kudos to those of you who are trying.  People who are disciplined enough to getup before the sun and run several miles, can certainly squeeze in some extra time to research the products and manufacturers of what you are ingesting.

It’s really a hierarchy of need kind of thing.  We are still hovering barely below double digit unemployment nationally.  Businesses in California are taxed and regulated nearly out of existence, and we continue to place additional burdens upon them.  If you have searched for a grove of anything in Orange County, of tried a drive up the Interstate 5 to show your children what cotton, potato or tomato fields look like, you have been sadly disappointed. For a variety of reasons, they are not there to see. These are all complex issues, with a variety of explanations and causes, BUT do we really have to make everything HARDER and more complex and more taxed and more regulated, and create additional government agencies and jobs.  With this trend we will all eventually work for the state of California.  Forget about the paranoia of socialism on a national level, we are dangerously close to being the real time experiment here in the tarnished Golden State.

It is a complex issue, and like every other pet issue in this state, if you don’t get what you want in Sacramento, just put it on the ballot.  A popular end run for those of us in the chronic minority in the legislature, but GEEZ, enough already.  We are approaching the place where the voters have to be professional legislators, and voters have enough of a problem keeping up with the simple issues and facts without the addition of the plethora of wordy and confusing propositions. 

My mother asked me at dinner last night who she should vote for in the local election, and then proceeded to tell me that she already mailed in her ballot.  I asked her if she checked this blog for recommendations from myself and my colleagues, of course, she did not. (Insert heavy sigh here) If those of us who keep up on the issues, and people close to us, don’t fully understand the complexities of the issues on our ballots, then our ballots are too complex.  That is why we HIRE people to legislate for us, we make it their job and send them to Sacramento.

Of course none of us want to feed our children meat from mutant inbred fish that have no tailfins or eyes. The creation of new government regulations and food nazis is not the answer though, nor is legislating from the ballot box.   Everyone concerned about these things is free to get involved in lobbying their representatives for reasonable and specific legislation tailored to the narrow and specific issues of concern, free to consume or not consume any offending product, boycott manfacturers, and contribute generously to competent consumer watchdog groups.  If these are your concerns, do all of those things, but don’t increase my tax burden and grocery bills with ill drafted, haphazard propostions.  There is a method, we need to stop this madness.

***(“dirty hippies” is a term of endearment I use for my Democrat friends.  I’m sorry if I offended any actual hippies, it’s just a sematical joke. Lighten up.)