Small government is good, so big government must be better.

That’s seemingly the thought process of California’s lawmakers during 2018 as the bluest of the blue states created so many laws during the year that even the silliest ones were passed and signed without so much as a second glance.

According to Timothy Snowball at The Hill, the state passed a grand total of 1,016 laws, ranging from “the unnecessary to the silly to the sad.” Snowball begins with the unnecessary:

In the “unnecessary” category, we have the requirement that only milk and water be published as beverage options on kids’ menus in sit-down restaurants. While childhood obesity is a huge problem, what do they actually expect to accomplish with this? When was the last time you saw a kid actually read the menu or order their own food and drinks? Parents aren’t actually prohibited from ordering their child a soda, milkshake or whatever else they want. The options are simply removed from menus.

Snowball also gives us a look into the silly, and the very, very sad laws California embraced:

As for “silly” new laws, the most notorious, of course, is the requirement that restaurants no longer automatically offer patrons plastic straws when they order a drink. Never mind the expectation that you are supposed to put your mouth on the side of a questionably clean glass every time you take a drink, but the law will be as ineffective as not listing soda on kids’ menus. Ask and you shall receive anyway.

Finally, when it comes to “sad” laws, the familiar is often the most depressing. It’s an established economic fact, demonstrated time and again, that raising minimum wage depresses the availability of jobs to entrants, who are simply priced out of the market as firms tighten their belts to offset the increased labor cost. And yet states such as California continue to pursue policies that will guarantee harm to those they claim they are trying to help.

Snowball warned that it could have been worse as Californistan lawmakers attempted to regulate online speech with S.B. 1424, the “Internet: social media: advisory group” act. This would have basically made it the government’s job to tell you what is and isn’t permissible to say, as well as define what is fact and what is fiction, what is fake news and what is news.

If I had a week, I wouldn’t be able to tell you how completely Orwellian this is.

S.B. 1424 only died because Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed it, but he’s about to leave office with Gavin Newsom stepping into his place. Newsom is no stranger to radical leftist ways of thinking, so if people think the battle for the internet is over, I’d think again.