Category: Politics

Jill Stewart says Al Checchi has a plan for relieving the California fiscal crisis:

With Democrats refusing to bite the bullet, Checchi suggests, “I am not so sure California wouldn’t be better off if a trustee took it over and ran it instead of this governor and this Legislature.”

I hope he enters the recall election.

Instead of passing a budget, the California Legislature spent their last day in session before the weekend break debating a Father’s Day resolution written so as to offend fathers.

Christine Kehoe, the San Diego lesbian who ran for the Assembly after losing two bids for the Congress, wrote a resolution singling out several groups of people for praise – gay fathers, adoptive fathers, grandfathers who father grandchildren, and unwed fathers – but failed to recognize the good, old-fashioned man who marries the mother of his children before they’re born and stays married to her as long as she’s willing. The resolution was so contentious that only one Republican could bring himself to vote for it:

The final vote on HR 32 was 41-22, with 17 abstentions. All but one Republican — Keith Richman of Northridge — voted against the resolution, which was introduced by Assemblywoman Christine Kehoe, D-San Diego, one of four openly gay Assembly members.

Critics complained that HR 32 did not specifically single out “traditional fathers” — using the term “biological” fathers instead — and that the resolution went too far by citing categories of non-traditional fathers.

Now what do you suppose would happen if the next time the Legislature wanted to honor mothers or gays, the Republicans wrote a resolution honoring those who smoke crack, turn tricks, serve time in prison, rape or abuse children, just in the name of being “inclusive?”

This kind of legislative trolling is among the main reasons I hate California Democrats, even though I was a Democrat for 30 years. Some things are not meant to be political, and the Father’s Day Resolution is one of them.

The latest poll from the Public Policy Institute of California has most California voters voting Gray Davis out of office, but narrowly. His strongest supporters are LA and Frisco liberal Democrats:

Voter support for a recall is strongly related to partisanship and ideology. Three in four Republicans support the recall effort, compared to one in three Democrats, while independent voters are nearly evenly divided. Similarly, liberals are strongly opposed to a Davis recall, and conservatives are strongly in favor, while moderates are evenly divided. Latinos are more likely than whites to want to keep Davis in office (46% to 37%). It is interesting to note that higher-propensity voters are closely divided on whether to recall the governor or keep him in office?college graduates (44% to 48%), upper-income residents (50% to 44%), and those ages 55 and older (45% to 45%). Majorities of residents in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles want to keep Davis in office, while majorities in the Central Valley and Other Southern California want to remove him from office.

There’s some humor in this, because Davis is not a liberal by any stretch, and in fact his most staunch opponent in Sacramento is liberal John Burton, whose name may very well be on the ballot in November.

Somewhat surprisingly (for a state where Al Gore trounced the President in 2000), President Bush outscores both Gov. Davis and the Legislature:

Job Approval

Gov. Davis 28%
Legislature 39%
Pres. Bush 57%

Gray Davis will probably not be elected President of the United States any time soon, but he might do well in Saudi Arabia.

Links via Rough and Tumble and Roger L. Simon.

Dan Weintraub concurs on the recall:

Get ready for a wild autumn, folks. The recall is going to qualify, barring some unexpected technical glitch or court ruling from out of the blue. The only question is whether it qualifies in time for a special election this fall or if instead the governor’s fate will be decided at a March election combined with the presidential primary.

Via Rough and Tumble. More here and here and here.

It’s reasonably certain that we’re going to have a recall election on Gov. Gray Davis, and one of the two serious questions about it is whether it comes in November as a special election or in March as part of the presidential primary. Issa wants it this year, so he can run without stepping down from his Congressional seat, and Ted Costa wants it in March so as not to burden the taxpayers with additional costs, but mainly to screw Issa, who’s not conservative enough for him. Costa’s rumored to be sitting on 100,000 sigantures already, and we’ll have to wait and see how that plays out.

The other question concerns who’s going to take Davis’ place, especially interesting because the plurality format of the election of a governor to follow the recall means anything can happen. You don’t need a majority to win the election to fill the recalled governor’s seat, and there are no run-offs, it’s simply who gets the greatest number of votes.

This is prompting a lot of jockeying for position among various hopefuls:

While Issa clearly wants to run if the recall makes the ballot (voters would decide on a successor at the same election in which they decide Davis’ fate), he probably would not be alone. Actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, state Sen. Tom McClintock and Bill Simon, whom Davis defeated last year, are among Republicans weighing a run. Private polls give an early edge to Simon, due to his high name identity.

Several Democrats who had hoped to run for governor in 2006, meanwhile, must decide whether to figuratively thumb their noses at Davis and run if the recall qualifies. Attorney General Bill Lockyer, Treasurer Phil Angelides, Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi and Controller Steve Westly are being forced to think about it as the recall drive picks up steam. Some Democrats believe that U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein would be the perfect alternative. There also are suspicions among Davis aides that Senate President Pro Tem John Burton harbors ambitions himself and may be aiding the recall by bucking Davis on several key budget issues.

The party that can exert the greater discipline by running the least candidates has a natural advantage, and that’s usually the Republicans. But this is California, where self-immolation is the Republican Party’s stock-in-trade, so anything can happen, even the election of crazy John Burton as governor.

Press conferences would certainly be livelier if Burton’s elected; he generally cusses a blue streak when he’s the least agitated, which is most of the time. He’d also pardon and parole dozens of prisoners who Davis wouldn’t even think about, and do whatever the Gov. can do to commute death sentences. His judicial nominees would be truly scary, and so would his budget priorities. He’d try and jigger the tax code so only Republicans paid taxes, and he’d wreck Silicon Valley.

While I like John personally, if he becomes governor, I’d have to leave the state.

On Inside Washington, Charles Krauthammer said: “In just two months we’ve seen the fall of Saddam Hussein and Howell Raines. It’s been a good spring.”

Things aren’t going so well in the Department of Child Support Services, according to this article in the LA Times:

Before 2000, the district attorney in each of the state’s 58 counties was responsible for helping parents collect delinquent child support. But the individual counties lacked uniform regulations and had such poor records of collecting child support that the state stripped prosecutors of the responsibility.

In its place, the state created a department that supervises child-support services in each county under a new set of guidelines.Since the system was overhauled, state officials have reported steady improvements in collection rates. The new state program is expected to collect a record $2.3 billion statewide this year, a nearly 7% increase over last year. With improved state funding, several county child-support departments began adding staff.

County officials now fear that the progress made over the last three years may suffer a serious setback. For counties such as Los Angeles, San Bernardino and San Diego, cuts will mean fewer resources to collect child support.

Most of what this agency actually does is collect money funds from dads that’s retained in the state and federal treasury to defray costs of welfare payments to moms, but the advocates never spin it that way, preferring the “for the children” dance for its obvious resonance.

Ironically, the spin is now biting them in the ass. The state isn’t cutting revenue collection programs, just service programs. For example, when it was learned that the 93 sales tax auditors on the layoff list brought in $24M more than their salaries, the state decided to keep them on board. The state actually makes a profit of several million dollars a year from collecting child support for welfare reimbursement, and cutting these collectors will cost the taxpayers money. But to admit that child support is a revenue program for the state is to admit that it’s not all that it’s been cracked-up to be in the media.

In a round-about way, lax efforts to collect court-ordered support also hurt the dads, because their unpaid support accrues 10% interest and isn’t dischargable in bankruptcy. It’s best to pay as you go, if you possibly can, dads.

It appears that the Department is putting the word out to friendly columnists about the revenue nature in order to avoid cuts, which is why we had Joan Ryan quoting Department staffer Leora Gershenzon a few days ago.

In defense of his junk-yard dog obsession with off the record remarks that may or may not have been said by Paul Wolfowitz, Carville’s boy Joshua Micah Marshall says he only wants the truth:

But that’s my best effort to get to the bottom of this little mystery.

In related news, Trent Lott said today that some of his best friends are colored people.

ScrappleFace casts Sharon Stone in the part of Hillary Clinton in the TV movie, but our choice is William H. Macy. We considered RuPaul, but rejected him as too feminine.

That’s Hillary in the middle.

This is totally bad news for Gray Davis:

Garry South, the pugnacious political strategist who masterminded Gray Davis’ last three election victories, is signing on as a senior campaign advisor to Democratic presidential hopeful Joseph I. Lieberman.

South’s appointment, to be announced today in Washington, comes as Davis faces the threat of a recall, and means the governor will have to fight back with only part-time help from his closest political aide.

South created Gray Davis, and now he’s done with him, which probably indicates that Californians generally will be soon.