Author: RB

A fellow named Dan Weintraub who writes a column for the Sacramento Bee and who has a blog named after Greg Lucas’ much-missed Sunday column in the Frisco Chronicle, California Insider, thinks Davis may resign:

Knowing Davis as I do, I never thought I would say this, but today, for the first time, I started to think that it is possible he might resign before the election.

Weintraub was last seen breaking the story of Arnie’s decision not to run, based on inside sources, so you can take this for what it’s worth. Davis is the most stubborn man in California politics, and he won’t resign until he’s convinced that his prospects are hopeless, not just for the recall but for a career in politics beyond the recall. I don’t expect a decision on this until after Labor Day, but at that point, anything can happen. No inside sources, just simple guesswork.

The downside of the California recall is that I’ve lost all confidence in the national political pundits, all of whom are positioning themselves as experts on California politics. Granted, the dynamics of the recall are voter revolt, so the traditional alliances aren’t all that important, but it seems to me that the pundocracy should at least endeavor to learn the basics. So in the interest of universal consciousness-raising, here are a few basic facts.

Democratic Party politics are dictated in this state by two large machines and two small ones. The Willie Brown/John Burton machine, actually started by John’s now-deceased elder brother Phillip, rules the Frisco Bay area, and the Howard Berman/Henry Waxman West LA machine rules the south. Phillip Burton was the master of gerrymandering, and he engineered the scenario that ensures Democratic control of the legislature and the dominance of Frisco over LA thirty years ago. There are two smaller but increasingly important Latino machines, one run by Gloria Molina in LA, and the other by Chuck Calderon and Richard Polanco. The Calderon/Polanco machine is more pro-business and moderate, and less “Latino pride” and feminist than the Molina machine. There’s a lot of bad blood between the two Latino machines.

Davis isn’t enmeshed in any of the machines (although he’s closest to Calderon), and that’s the main reason he’s vulnerable. Nobody in the Democratic Party benefits from his surviving the recall, and he doesn’t have any personal connections that could help him survive it. The Dems are strictly looking at this contest as it relates to their own ambitions for 2006 and beyond.

There is really only one Republican machine, controlled by Pete Wilson and some buddies from San Diego and Orange County. Religious right zealots crop up from time to time, but they’re not organized and they generally don’t have a lasting impact. The majority of California Republicans are idiots who see elections as a chance to make personal statements, not as a strategic opportunity to govern. They have a death wish, in other words, and they’re their own worst enemies. The Simon and McClintock camps will snipe at Schwarzenegger so much that Bustamante will probably win the replacement elections.

The local pundits who know the most about what goes on are Dan Walters (Sacramento Bee), Jack Kavanaugh (rtumble.com) , Jill Stewart, Greg Lucas and Robert Salladay (Frisco Chronicle) and the folks at the San Diego Union Trib. The political reporters for the LA Times, the Contra Costa Times, the OC Register, and the San Jose Mercury News are all partisan hacks with little or no actual insight; the “lazy sheep” Jill Stewart talks about. The recall has been a bonanza for LA pundits Mickey Kaus and the Reason Magazine crowd, not all of whom are crypto-Nazi twits like Jesse Walker and Tim Cavanaugh – Matt Welch and Cathy Young write for Reason, too.

The main special interests that own the politicos are the Prison Guards’ union (CCPOA), the teachers’ union (CTA), the casino-owning Indians, the trial lawyers, and the insurance companies. The CCPOA is bi-partisan, supporting the winning horse as much as possible: they were pro-Pete Wilson and pro-Gray Davis, because of Three Strikes and promised high salaries. The trial lawyers and the insurance companies are behind a lot of what happens in Sacramento. Another important special interest is the Hollywood/gay rights/anti-male/radical feminist group run by Sheila Kuehl and her buddies at the Feminist Majority Fund. Their main agenda isn’t gay rights as much as it is raping men in divorce, a very popular cause in this state.

The Repubs can either use this election to reincarnate their party into relevance, or to finish it off altogether. If the Republican Party is to have a future here, it has to be recast from the Pat Robertson mold into the image of the Silicon Valley Republican (AKA “RINO”) embodied by Tom Campbell, Richard Riordan, and Arnie: that’s libertarian on social issues, pro-choice, tough on crime, strong on education, and tight on taxes. Pete Wilson understands this, and if the California Reeps can turn this corner, they could start a movement that goes nationwide. In his day, Reagan was socially liberal: he signed the first no-fault divorce law in the nation, after all. Today it means live-and-let-live with gays and legal immigrants, hands-off abortion, and some sort of wimpy gun control. So the future of the Republic rides on this wacky recall, after all.

So there are your basics, thanks for your attention, and use the information wisely.

Here’s another good Dan Walters column on the California energy crisis via Kausfiles:

* If Enron et al manipulated California’s energy market, it could happen only because former Gov. Pete Wilson and the Legislature — particularly former Sen. Steve Peace — created an unworkable, complex and irrational system in 1996. Those who really knew the energy business could see its flaws immediately and some, perhaps, exploited them. Whether they acted illegally, or materially affected the market, remains to be seen.

* When the crisis first arose in 2000 in the form of sharply rising wholesale power costs, Davis and other politicians refused to act decisively to nip it in the bud. California utility executives begged Davis and state utility regulators to allow them to raise rates and sign long-term supply contracts, but officials delayed for six critical months, until the utilities had their financial backs to the wall. Had they acted boldly in 2000, we would not have had such a severe energy crisis in 2001.

* California still doesn’t have in place a workable substitute for the discredited 1996 plan, nor do its politicians show any signs of working on the problem. Californians’ power rates are still among the nation’s highest, and with many much-touted generation projects on indefinite hold due to chaotic market conditions, the state is very vulnerable to another supply squeeze.

The history was like this: in June of 2000, San Diego became fully de-regulated and prices went up for a number of reasons, some of which were: A) a natural gas price spike, B) a drought that reduced hydro-power supplies, and C) a PUC order forbidding utilities from signing long-term energy contracts. Republicans urged the Governor to call a special session to amend the 1996 law creating the energy market, and he refused. In January, 2001, the blackouts started.

Davis was very much involved in all of this, and not just because he was on Enron’s payroll along with Paul Krugman. His inaction made a serious problem that could have been fixed into a major crisis.

See Dan Walters: Davis’ version of budget crisis doesn’t square with history:

The undisputed fact is that after a severe recession ended in the mid-1990s, the state experienced a solid, if unspectacular, gain in tax revenues for four years before the highly volatile high-tech industry produced a spike in personal income taxes — about 12 extra billion dollars — that lasted just one year before revenues resumed their normal pattern of slow growth.

When the extent of the windfall became known in 2000, Davis publicly — and prudently — declared that it would be a mistake to enact major increases in ongoing spending, or major tax cuts, and promised to resist them. But succumbing to pressures from both fellow Democrats and Republicans, Davis soon agreed to commit roughly $8 billion of the windfall to tax cuts or new spending. And when revenues did return to normal levels, the state was left with a “structural deficit” of roughly $8 billion a year — one that will continue indefinitely.

The mistake of enacting those unaffordable tax cuts and spending increases was compounded in the subsequent three years by budgets that papered over the deficits with creative, if misleading, gimmicks, raids on other state funds and loans of various kinds.

It’s about spending like drunken sailors and a busted income tax system, not about Enron and the tech bust.

It strikes me as odd that techno-populist Larry Lessig and his many disciples (Weinberger, Searls, Gillmor, Ito, Winer, et. al.) are are bitterly opposed to the recall. If you believe in grass-roots democracy, emergent democracy, and self-organizing movements, why stomp your feet and hurl angry insults about right-wing coups when the people have mobilized to make their voices heard? It just makes no sense. Lessig even tries to use some fuzzy math to invalidate the successor election:

So if this California recall succeeds, then more likely than not the Governor who replaces Gray Davis will have received fewer votes than Gray Davis. Davis could get, say, 49.9% of the vote, and would be “recalled.” But his replacement is chosen with a simple plurality. Thus, in a field of 200 candidates, it is more likely than not that the replacement governor will have gotten fewer votes than the governor he replaces.

This is what we call an “apples to oranges” comparison, since we have one election with a field of one and another election with field of a hundred or so. But even accepting Lessig’s handicap, Arnie’s polling better than the governor right now, 48 – 26.

One upside of the recall is that it’s taken both Kobe Bryant and the Nine Dwarves of the Democratic Party off page one for a while, and maybe that’s what’s got the TechPops upset: they’re mainly hardcore Deanies, after all.

This just in, from Mark Steyn via the new and improved Random Jottings:

Okay, Arnold’s not a Nazi. He was born in the Austrian town of Thal, but not until 1947, and thus was technically unable to join the Nazi Party no matter how much he may have wanted to. But he certainly has family ties to the Nazis. His wife’s grandfather, Joe Kennedy, was one of America’s most prominent Nazi sympathisers…Oh, wait. That’s not the Nazi family ties the Dems had in mind?…

Oops.

The latest CNN poll (see at Matt Welch) looks better for Arnie, worse for Bustamante, and horrible for Davis: 69% of likely voters support recall.

Developing.