The Cup Boileth Over

Sacramento piled up a record number of points Wednesday in its race for the gold-plated Pinnacle of Insufficiency mooching cup.

The Legislature scored first, burying--without honors--a bill that would have brought minimal regulation of automobile insurance rates to California. It followed with a bill that would make it illegal for employers to program computers to deliver subliminal messages to employees--a threat to society that had escaped notice. It wiped out one bill to raise the minimum wage in the state, somehow overlooking a second bill that still may have a chance of passage.

For good measure, the Legislature created a commission to study the possibility of making it easier to get to and from Las Vegas by high-speed train--surely one of the state’s more urgent needs. And its leadership sat through a meeting with Gov. George Deukmejian to discuss what to do with $1.1 billion that exceeds the Gann spending limit, apparently without mentioning public education.

The Pinnacle of Insufficiency cup is an honorary award of no particular value, particularly to the public. It would, however, be useful as a despository for campaign funds from interest groups so that elected officials could qualify for the race to yet another cup in the next legislative session.