Category: Politics

The Mercury News reports:

The election to recall Gov. Gray Davis will be held on Oct. 7, Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante announced at a Sacramento press conference Thursday morning.

Bustamante also said voters will get the opportunity to select a new governor from a slate of candidates at the same time, should Davis lose the recall election.

So there you are, California voter, able to recall the governor you just elected nine short months ago. Will you? I don’t know. Should you? Of course, and here’s why:

Davis is an absentee governor who’s failed to live up to the duties of the office because he’s been too busy fundraising. He’s failed to make the appointments necessary to fill open slots on boards and commissions, he’s failed to engage the legislature — where he’s widely hated, even by members of his own party — around a common agenda, and he’s failed to use this line-item veto to keep the budget under control.

Davis is a quirk of the political process, a candidate who’s great at campaigning, where his primary technique is sliming his opponent, but bad at actually doing the job he was hired to do.

Davis doesn’t stand for anything, relying on polls and fundraising numbers to arrive at policy positions.

A caretaker governor simply filling the chair until the next regular election would be an improvement.

With all that going against him, Davis could very well survive the recall and emerge stronger, because the California Republican Party has such a strong death wish. Their best shot at removing Davis is to have Dick Riordan in the race rather than Arnie Schwarzenegger, but the Hollywood charm factor may prevent that.

Davis’ biggest challenge is that his well-honed campaign technique — sliming the opponent — really only works in a head-to-head contest. With a number of Republicans and Greens in the race, Davis would have to tout his own accomplishments, which are meager to say the least. So sign up Dick Riordan, Darrell Issa, Bill Jones, Tom McClintock, and Peter Camejo and lets see the fur fly.

If nothing else, it should be entertaining.

California Insider Daniel Weintraub points to a remark by Gray Davis’ creator, DemOp Garry South, on Total Recall, the Election:

Let’s say you run and you win: what have you won? You get no transition period. You take over a staff appointed by Gray Davis. There are seven constitutional officers who are Democratic — all of whom can investigate you, audit you and have press conferences on the steps of the Capitol against you. The budget deficit doesn’t go away. Not one more job is created. It doesn’t bring the economy back. It doesn’t pay back the millions you’ve lost in homeland security. Except now the gum isn’t on Gray Davis’ shoes — it’s on yours. The highlight of your career will be the day you are elected. It will be all downhill from there.

Let’s look at it another way: the economy is improving, tech companies are starting to hire again (I’m getting a face-to-face interview every week now), everybody knows the Dems are responsible for the budget mess, and a smoking gun shows they’re doing their best to make it worse instead of better. You have line-item veto power over the budget, and you can therefore shape the direction of state government in some very significant ways, while credibly being able to blame all the problems you face on your predecessor. So what do you have to lose?

Michael J. Totten surveys a number of classical liberal blogs, and finds a mass exodus from the Democratic Party. The issues: national defense, free speech, and the failure of Democratic Party leaders to grow up. It’s a good survey, check it out.

Re: the following story on Sacramento shenanigans by far-left Dems, see Dan Walters on the locational element to super-majority vote requirements:

It is, proponents of the change argue, inherently undemocratic to allow a legislative minority to dictate fiscal policy for the state, noting that California is one of just a handful of states requiring supermajority votes on budgetary matters.

The argument may be valid, but it is more than a bit ironic that the same political interests that want to eliminate supermajority votes on budgets in California are very supportive of the Democratic filibusters on President Bush’s judicial appointments in the U.S. Senate. It takes a supermajority vote of 60 senators to break a filibuster (ending otherwise unlimited debate), so on highly controversial matters of any kind, 60 votes become the threshold in the Senate.

What’s undemocratic in Sacramento, those on the political left seem to be saying, is quite appropriate in Washington. And with a vote in the state Assembly on Monday, they seem to be saying that undemocratic supermajority vote requirements should become a legal mandate in local government, at least when it pertains to police and fire labor contracts.

Dan Walters is always worth reading, of course.

Ever wonder what the legislators say when they have those little closed-door meetings to discuss tactics in the middle of a bill fight? OK, you probably haven’t, but this is the stuff that fascinates me, and we have a good example on Rough and Tumble today, thanks to a little Progressive Study Group faux pas in Sacrameno yesterday.

California law requires a two-thirds majority to pass a budget, and Dems would like to lower the threshold to 55% in order to free themselves of a reliance on Republican votes. In order to amend the constitution, they’re willing to extend the budget crisis indefinitely. This whole discussion, which they thought was secret, was broadcast throughout the Capital yesterday, thanks to a hot microphone in the hearing room they used for their plotting.

The best accounts are in the L. A. Times and in the Frisco Chronicle:

Members of the Assembly Democrats’ progressive caucus were heard making candid, if not intemperate, statements such as one by Los Angeles Assemblyman Fabian Nunez that they may want to “precipitate a crisis” over the budget this year. That might persuade voters to lower the two-thirds vote threshold needed to pass a spending plan, he reasoned.

“It seems to me if there’s going to be a crisis, the crisis should be this year,” Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg, D-Los Angeles, said during the meeting. “What you do is you show people that you can’t get to this without a 55 percent vote.”

The unintentional broadcast was interrupted when someone informed the group that a microphone was on. “Oh s–,” Goldberg said as the sound was cut.

The Mercury News’ coverage of the hot mike fiasco was bizarre, blaming it on unscrupulous Republicans:

Goldberg criticized Republicans for recording the session and alerting reporters. “That’s the kind of stuff that makes you think there are no ethics in this place,” she said.

See also: Evan Halper and Nancy Vogel in the Los Angeles Times Alexa H. Bluth in the Sacramento Bee David M. Drucker in the Los Angeles Daily News.

Howard Finemand on Howard Dean:

Howard Dean is a simmering teakettle of emotion, aspiration and edge. In these wrought-up times, it’s a persona that has considerable appeal to the grass roots of the Democratic Party, if not, as yet, to the nation at large. It’s made him a celebrity on the Internet, where his Web-based efforts are changing the face of campaigning. As governor of Vermont, he was known for his chesty confrontations. As an early foe of war in Iraq, he made acerbic comments that now look prescient. But Dean’s aura of disdain can cause him problems, too. His attacks on Democratic presidential rivals are delivered with all the grace and humor of a fedora-wearing hit man

Except for the “prescient” part, it’s right on.

The most recent comment from the Howard Dean campaign staff at the Lawrence Lessig blog reaches a whole new level of pandering:

We’re all big Lessig fans on the Internet Team, and it has been, as many have said, an historic week. Lessig quotes EFF founder Mitch Kapor as saying “Architecture is politics.” For me, what is so powerful about this campaign is how the Internet is completely changing the architecture of politics. We talk alot about how the energy and momentum is bottom-up, but I think what sometimes gets lost is how the innovation is bottom-up and person-to-person as well (or e2e as Lessig might say).

So we see that technology now enables politicians to do the same sleazy things in entirely new and innovative ways, and that’s progress.

In the last election, voters were asked by exit pollsters whether they were regular users of the Internet. Here’s how they answered:

Regular User of Internet	All…	Gore…	Bush…	Buchanan	Nader
Yes	64%	47%	49%	1%	3%
No	36%	51%	46%	1%	2%

It appears that George W. Bush is our first Internet president.

Presidential candidate Howard (“Shorty”) Dean took a break from a day of heavy pandering to minorities, in which he bravely condemned racial profiling at meetings of La Raza and the NAACP, to reach out to Lawrence Lessig’s blog audience with a strong denunciation of Big Media:

The Internet might soon be the last place where open dialogue occurs. One of the most dangerous things that has happened in the past few years is the deregulation of media ownership rules that began in 1996. Michael Powell and the Bush FCC are continuing that assault today (see the June 2nd ruling).

The danger of relaxing media ownership rules became clear to me when I saw what happened with the Dixie Chicks. But there?s an even bigger danger in the future, on the Internet. The FCC recently ruled that cable and phone based broadband providers be classified as information rather than telecommunications services. This is the first step in a process that could allow Internet providers to arbitrarily limit the content that users can access. The phone and cable industries could have the power to discriminate against content that they don?t control or– even worse– simply don?t like.

The media conglomerates now dominate almost half of the markets around the country, meaning Americans get less independent and frequently less dependable news, views and information. James Madison and Thomas Jefferson spoke of the fear that economic power would one day try to seize political power. No consolidated economic power has more opportunity to do this than the consolidated power of media.

Of course, it’s good that candidates for office are willing to stick their heads above ground to meet and greet potential voters on the Internet. But the usual routine of telling each audience what you think they want to hear isn’t going to cut it in this medium (you can ask Trent Lott and Howell Raines about that.) Dean copied his post to his own blog, and censored critical remarks from the comments section. Here’s one that was censored:

Good pandering, Dr. Dean, you?ve clearly done your homework, and I respect that.

Concentrations of economic power certainly are a threat to democracy, as we?ve learned in California where we face a huge budget crisis because our elected officials are beholden to the unions, trial lawyers, and casinos who elected them, so I?m glad you?re on the case, and you?ll have my support when you take on these special interests.

Other threats to democracy that have been identified by scholars include the awareness of the majority that they can vote themselves the contents of the treasury (Earned Income Tax Credit, for example) and a potential descent into tyranny predicted by Plato as politicians appeal to the baser passions of the majority. I?m glad you?re on to that one, too.

Under the strict regulation of media ownership we had 20 years ago, the regime to which you?d like to return, we could only get television news from three networks, all of which had exactly the same, elitist, left-of-center, Ivy League orientation. Deregulation brought us Murdoch, the only news organization with a different spin. As you would clearly like to shut down the Murdoch empire, you?re actually an advocate of less diversity of opinion in the media.

Bravo for you – choice is confusing, and it?s much better to have a Big Brother in Washington telling us how to think.

Speaking of censorship, the Dixie Chicks are actually doing fine, selling lots of (copyrighted) records and selling out their concerts, but that right-wing fascist Michael Savage is getting what he deserves, don?t you think? Richard Bennett

Oddly enough, the censors didn’t delete the responses to this comment, which should prove to the skeptical that it was in fact deleted.

So do you trust a guy who practices this kind of censorship on a puny little blog to regulate media with the kind of sweeping powers he says he wants, where he can decide which company is small enough to own each and every single media outlet in each and every market? That’s one of the things you have to decide as a voter as the campaign progresses.

California Insider Daniel Weintraub has been blogging some great stuff lately, so check him out if you’re the least bit interested in Cal politics, the recall, the budget, or liberty.

The Supreme Court’s varying opinions in the Texas sodomy case struck me as a politically motivated jockeying between the conservative faction and one more attuned to Senatorial sentiment. Libertarian law professor Randy Barnett finds some actual jurisprudence in the Kennedy opinion:

Contrary to what has been reported repeatedly in the press, the Court in Lawrence did not protect a “right of privacy.” Rather, it protected “liberty” — and without showing that the particular liberty in question is somehow “fundamental.”

I have to admit that my first take was hasty, and Barnett’s puts the issues into a much more coherent perspective. If he’s right, Lawrence sets the stage for a radical new turn by the court, and a very good one at that.

Via Hit and Run and Instapundit.