Ask Nunez to put human life above appropriations

You've got one week to convince him to save a lot of potentially innocent lives.

The word from Tom Umberg's chief of staff is that Fabian Nunez has misused his power to derail AB1121 in the Appropriations Committee. The committee has placed the death penalty moratorium on hold. If it doesn't make it through appropriations by the end of the month, it is dead.

The moratorium bill is very limited. It only creates a two-year moratorium while a study is being conducted to determine whether those on death row are innocent. By failing to pass the bill, the legislators are effectively saying that they are gung ho on killing right away without caring if those they execute are innocent. The members of the California Democratic Party asked these legislators to legislate a moratorium almost two years ago. The response of Nunez and the appropriations committee is to place the wishes of those who put them in office on hold. Since it is more expensive to execute a person than keep him in prison, there is no reason for the bill to be held up in appropriations - unless Nunez and the appropriations committee consider some value less than zero to be worth more than a person's life.

Nunez is also the reason we have McPherson instead of Shelley. After talking Shelley into resigning over what turned out to be nothing, Nunez blackmailed the Democrats in the assembly into voting for Republican Diebold-friend McPherson. Lori Saldana reportedly stayed in her office as she knew that if she went to the floor she would be forced to vote for McPherson. It is sad when the head Democrat in the Assembly is a front man for the Republican Party.

How many more blind, deaf, crippled inmates will have to be carried onto the death table so they can be killed? We clearly need to rush to execute elderly invalids before they die of natural causes. How many more Nobel Peace Prize nominees will we kill before we realize that they are doing more for society than we are?

We don't need a Republican for Speaker of a Democratic Assembly.

It is really very upsetting to think of a politician sacrificing lives as a political maneuver. Nunez and the members of the Assembly Appropriations Committee should hold their heads in shame. We need to elect people who will get through the bills we want.