The LA Times reports on the new Costa initiative -- this one dealing with legislative and congressional redistricting. For background on the process see Costa's People's Advocate web site. This is Costa's second attempt -- Prop 24 qualified for the ballot in 2000, but the California Supreme Court (Kennard and Brown dissenting), in a wholy unprincipled and rushed decision, yanked it off the ballot and the people never got to vote. Senate v Jones (S083194) 12/13/99
Now Costa and People's Advocate, fresh from their recall victory, are back. The new initiative removes the power to draw election districts from the legislature and creates a panel of 3 retired judges to redraw the districts each decade. The resulting remap would be subject to approval by a statewide election. It also provides that the current, provably gerrymandered, districts would be redrawn in time for the 2006 election.
Is this important? CATO thinks so. The idea of legislators choosing their voters, instead of the other way around, perverts the entire political process. For a legislator to craft his or her own district so that 70% or more of the voters are from his party -- or meet perferred demographic criteria -- in order to guarantee re-election is such an abuse of the process that it really doesn't need further comment. Further, parties themselves, when in control of the legislature, are always tempted to craft districts where their party will likely get a disproporionate number of seats with a given vote. Simply by piling as many of your opponents into as few districts as possible, and back-filling your safe districts with as many opponents as you dare (wasting their vote), a party can return 60 or 70% of the seats with a bare majority of the vote. If done right, you can even retain a large majority of seats after losing the overall partisan vote. Computers make this trivial. The Democrats did this here in the 1980 remap, and the New Jersey Republicans have done this currently. In Texas, the congressional seats have just been remapped, replacing a Democrat gerrymander (where Democrats won a majority of the Congresssional seats with a minority of the vote) with a milder Republican one.
This really needs to stop. The results of the 2004 election are predictable today -- only 3 or 4 seats are in any question. California has had several ballot initiatives regarding this, but it is really pretty hard for most folks to get their minds around such a statisical inside-baseball political process. None has yet passed, and this one will take a LOT of support if it is to suceed. So we lurch from one gerrymander to another, and the people's vote for legislators and Congress is nearly meaningless.
Ted Costa and People's Advocate have their recall sucess behind them to give credibility, and both Governor-elect Schwarzenegger and the Los Angeles Times have stated that they want the gerrymander ended and the power of legislative remap taken out of the hands of the Legislature. But the devil is in the details. The Times has a history of supporting things in principle and opposing them in fact, and the result has been than many reforms the Times claims to favor have died at the ballot box when the Times objected to some detail.
This reform needs to be won this time. Nothing less than free elections in California are at stake. When the Costa initiative comes out for signing, please get a copy and distribute it. Keep the pressure on the Times (and Arnold) to support it. Educate youself on the issue. We need to win.
Here's a fine new site by FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education)on campus speech codes. According to FIRE:
Speech codes are, unfortunately, the rule rather than the exception in higher education, and they include bans on "offensive speech" and "intolerant expression." Often, they are inserted into "verbal conduct" sections of "harassment policies," with the goal of suppressing "hostile" viewpoints and words. Because these codes are so overbroad that even mildly controversial speech can be punished under them, they have frequently been used to silence students and faculty on all parts of the political spectrum.via Joanne Jacobs' fine edublog
For example, Bard College in New York forbids "conduct that deliberately causes embarrassment, discomfort, or injury to other individuals or to the community as a whole," ignoring the fact that in any debate, parties on one side will feel "discomfort" when their views are challenged. Similarly, Penn State asserts that "acts that show contempt" on the basis of "political belief" may be forbidden.
The NY Times editorializes that Justice Janice Rogers Brown is "out of the mainstream." This is getting repetative. So many Republican appointees are "out of the mainstream" that one wonders where this "mainstream" can be found. Certainly not in the NY Times newsroom, which probably has more parapalegic gay Hispanics than Republicans. In particlular:
As an archconservative justice on the California Supreme Court, she has declared war on the mainstream legal values that most Americans hold dear.Such as affirmative action, municipal takings, gerrymanders and general governmental repressions of liberty. Ann Coulter suggests that
...if your "mainstream" includes Roman Polanski, Michael Moore, Howard Dean and Jacques Chirac, then Brown really is "out of the mainstream." This proverbial "stream" they're constantly referring to is evidently located somewhere in France.This may be unfair to the Times, coming from Coulter who is arguably not in the Times' official mainstream guidebook. Let's see what a more moderate center-right publication -- the Wall Street Journal -- says:
As Condi Rice, Colin Powell, Justice Thomas and others can attest, liberals reserve their harshest and most personal attacks for minorities with the audacity to wander off the ideological plantation.Well, there's one possible answer -- the NY Times is simply using racist code-words for "all mainstream minorities are liberals." Her opposition to racial quotas (in a decision supported by a unanimous CA Supreme Court) in the case of Prop 209 (passed by the citizens of California) was of particular affront to the Times. I guess this means that the citizens of California are also out of the mainstream (and/or racist). It seems that Justice Brown, born to an Alabama sharecropper's family in 1949, does not have the Time's refined sensitivity to discrimination and poverty that would be necessary to be considered "part of the mainstream."
As is becoming increasingly apparent, California's recent "budget solution", signed by soon-to-be-former Governor Davis amid great fanfare, is coming completely unglued.
Not only is the new Governor committed to cancelling the car-tax increase, but two bond issues totalling $10.7 billion are on the verge of being thrown out by the courts. It seems that the Legislature does not have the power to unilaterally indebt the state without a vote of the people.
A suggestion to the Governor-elect: Take those bond issues, along with whatever else is needed in cuts and borrowing, and place the package before the people in the March primary. It would be such a refreshing and novel experience for the powers-that-be in California to trust the people for once. If it makes sense (as opposed the the usual flim-flammery), it will pass overwhelmingly. Another back-room deal will only lead to chaos and disaster.
Trust the People
An LA Times article on the fires captures the fundamental difference between Schwarzenegger and Davis.
California's incoming and outgoing governors toured charred areas; both appeared sobered. "They say these are the most devastating fires that have happened in the last decade," Gov.-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger said during a visit to Simi Valley. "What the firefighters are doing here is extraordinary. This is why I'm out here visiting, to let them know what great heroes they are."Guess which one chose the blue pill?
Davis, at Scripps Ranch in San Diego County, said he was reminded of scenes of devastation that he saw as a soldier in Vietnam.
County Supervisor Greg Cox said that he encountered a "nightmarish tale of red tape" while seeking the governor's help in asking the Pentagon to authorize the use of military-owned helicopters and tankers."Not my table", says the Ex-Gov. No tip.
Davis, at a news conference at Scripps Ranch, said it was the duty of the U.S. Forest Service, not the governor's office, to ask for the assistance.
Sometime Saturday afternoon, PacBell cut my phone cable -- no dialtone, no DSL. Dead line on their side of the MPOE. They say they'll be by to fix it Monday. Site's remotely hosted, of course, but my access is catch-as-catch can.
XRLQ has a interesting point about the ACLU complaining that Legislatures are thinking of crossing into Judicial territory and actually legislating.
Further on in the same article we have this from one of the comatose woman's parents:
"I've been contacting the ACLU since the beginning of my involvement in this case to have them speak out against what's going on with Terri," Hennessy said. "It's going on against her will. She's had her religious freedoms stripped from her. She's had her civil liberties stripped from her. And they're defending the husband?"Of course they are -- it's about which side the Bushitler is on, not which side their cause is on. The AARP is also considering supporting the husband, against the (middle-aged) parents. I'm expecting NOW to weigh in any moment now.
Apparently someone is leaking Drudge information on the upcoming CBS hatchet job "The Reagans." According to Drudge, the show features such things as "Mommie Dearest" Nancy popping pills and slapping her 5-year-old daughter. The writers have Nancy's mother referring to Hollywood as "Jews and queers", while Nancy's father seems more accurate in referring to Tinseltown as "Communists and drug addicts." The show further suggests that Reagan was sufferring from Alzheimer's throughout his Presidency, and had to defend himself from aides who thought he was an idiot. Not to mention hating gays and saying it was God's Will that they died from AIDS, as reported last week.
CBS has always been Left-Net, even back in the days of William Paley and "ol' Trustworthy" Walter Cronkheit, but this is as over-the-top as their classic Goldwater-meets-with-German-Nazis peice during the 1964 election. I guess it's time to ask:
Have you no sense of decency CBS, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?
And if they won't answer that, maybe the show's advertisers would like to.
Janice Rogers Brown, Calfiornia Supreme Court Justice and DC Appeals Court nominee, is being pilloried for the following words:
"Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates, and our ability to control our destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege, war in the streets, unapologetic expropriation of property, the precipitous decline of the rule of law, the rapid rise of corruption, the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit..."My take is that they deserve to be carved in marble somewhere. The speech that she gave at the Federalist Society in April 2000, available here is a tour-de-force of the limited government, Hayek-inspired worldview in which Liberty is still valued. For this, she is considered by some to be a great danger to the liberal order.
I'm going to beat Instapundit by hours: Go read Lileks today.
It’s not an “admission of failure, ” as Daschle put it - hell, the administration could put Osama’s head on a stick in the Rose Garden, and Daschle would call it an admission of failure that they hadn’t located the torso.And he's just warming up.
Apologies, if necessary, to Patterico and xrlq. I still think they're arguing at cross-purposes (see below), but I've been wrong before.
I happen to agree with Patterico's general analysis of the Partial-Birth Ban -- that it is a clear challenge to the Supreme Court to respect acts of Congress. Patterico despairs that the same decision as Casey will occur (unconstitutional 5-4). I disagree and think the Court will rule narrowly the other way. The difference this time is Congress, and a new set of facts. Congress is pointing out quite clearly that they are, indeed, the US Congress, and they have certain rights, and among these are the sole Federal power to legislate. Further, they are doing so after long debate and investigation, and their legislation, barring significant constitutional issues, requires deferrence.
I happen to think that Scalia’s dissent (quoted by Patterico) in Casey is not particularly useful, as he was arguing abortion as a whole, not a particular and presumably replaceable late-term procedure. His dissent in Stenberg is more relevant, but here Scalia is still mostly arguing Casey. Further, he doesn’t have the critical fact that he now has: Congress has acted, in a limited way, against a particular procedure that in no way impacts the general right to abortion, as other procedures are available in every instance.
The issue of abortion has, until now, been absent any Federal legislation of any import -- likely due to xrlq's Federalist argument. Into this vacuum the Supreme Court (foolishly) found it necessary to tred. [Insert long rehash of old issues.] In doing so, the Court, however, has presumptively nationalized the issue, and created such common interstate expectations that it is impossible for one or several states to effectively regulate abortions without running afoul of an impossible gamut of objections, ranging from stare decisis to "privileges and immunities." For the Court now to assert State's Rights would be profoundly ironic.
This thing has festered to the point that every sitting Justice has been confirmed in the light of Roe v Wade. Roe, a poorly argued hand-wave now largely superceded by the liberty argument of Casey, placed profound limits on legislative authority over abortion. Most relevantly Roe stated:
We, therefore, conclude that the right of personal privacy includes the abortion decision, but that this right is not unqualified and must be considered against important state interests in regulation....Casey, which refounded the abortion right on the basis of personal Liberty, and defended the results of Roe on the basis of stare decisis, added this argument:
With respect to the State's important and legitimate interest in potential life, the "compelling" point is at viability. This is so because the fetus then presumably has the capability of meaningful life outside the mother's womb. State regulation protective of fetal life after viability thus has both logical and biological justifications. If the State is interested in protecting fetal life after viability, it may go so far as to proscribe abortion [410 U.S. 113, 164] during that period, except when it is necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother.
A comparison between Roe and two decisional lines of comparable significance - the line identified with Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45 , and the line that began with Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 - confirms the result reached here. Those lines were overruled ... on the basis of facts, or an understanding of facts, changed from those which furnished the claimed justifications for the earlier constitutional resolutions.Now, the Congress has acted, and asserts that there is no medical justification for any reason for a procedure that, itself, blurs the demarcation of birth identified in Roe. It does not bar other procedures that might be employed at that point to ensure the health of the mother, and even allows the barred procedure in cases of clear danger to the mother's life, erring on the side of caution. In doing so, the Congress asserts that it has met the test of Casey and stare decisis -- things have changed, and the procedure is now know to be medically unnecessary, and is therefore a permissible regulation.
XRLQ & Patterico both think that the Supremes will overturn yesterday's partial-birth abortion ban -- for very different reasons. Both think the other's reasons wrong, near as I can tell. I think they are both right/wrong and that the Supremes will defer to Congress and uphold.
XRLQ (I can't spell his blog's real name) has this here about Governor Davis' ongoing partisan activities as governor, along with a dandy suggestion for changing the recall law.
As I pointed out here, the Ex is only supposed to be a placeholder until Schwarzenegger is sworn in (which is taking too long, BTW, Mr Shelley). As any parliamentarian can tell you, a leader that loses a vote of confidence continues in office as a caretaker, if at all. This is not the same thing as a lame-duck period after losing a scheuled election. We didn't choose not to rehire Davis, we fired him!
More rope.
G. B. Trudeau is a well-known fringe Leftist, so it should be little surprise to see him among the Arnold-haters -- a new but growing subset of Bush-hater, it seems.
Today's "comic" introduces us to the Doonesbury icon for Schwarzenegger: a huge hand, named Herr Gröpenfuhrer. I guess the stolen California governor's chair is gaining mythological ground in the Leftist Pantheon.
More rope.
This thing will break soon -- the grocers are seeing far more public opposition than they expected and the workers are starting to suffer. Hard to go weeks with no pay when you only make a couple of K, at best, of take-home. Right now both sides are trying to avoid being the first to crack.
My personal take is that the union will accept some medical plan concessions, and that these will depend larely on the plans off-contract negotiated payments to PPO providers. I also think that they will accept some non-union big-box subsidiary concession if it is tied to a Wal-Mart (et al) marketplace penetration formula -- much as the airline unions accepted with respect to value airline subsidiaries. What would suprse the heck out of me is any concession related to two-tier or of reduced retirement plan benefits.
As much as folks talk about these grocery jobs being unskilled short-term labor positions, the grocers have continually marketed their jobs as "careers", and therefore they are hard-pressed to suddenly treat them as high-turnover spot jobs. This new attitude by the grocers is probably the main tearing-point in the whole contract offer.
See the LA Times Business section article today about the "career" grocery workers
The New York Times has an article up on the CBS hack job on the Reagans.
"I fully expect this mini-series will be largely unfavorable to my dad," Michael Reagan, a radio talk-show host who reaches two million people each week, wrote recently in a column posted on various Web sites.....This is no doubt what Al Franken refers to as "Fair and Balanced." The major media once again shows just how completely pegged they are on the Left-O-Meter, when they consider this crap to be a centrist view of the Reagan Presidency. They clearly think that they are helping Reagan's image by ignoring his economic policies, which they no doubt view as failures. I guess we should be thankful -- their take on Reaganomics would have been homeless people and the inflation of 1981, rather than the 1984-2000 bull market.
"With the climate that has been in America since Sept. 11, it appears, from the outside anyway, to not be quite as open a society as it used to be," [Judy] Davis [playing Nancy Reagan] said during an interview at her hotel in Montreal. "By open, I mean as free in terms of a critical atmosphere, and that sort of ugly specter of patriotism."
She added, "If this film can help create a bit more questioning in the public about the direction America has been going in since the 1970's, I guess then I think it will be doing a service."
Mr. Brolin said he, too, hoped that the film would prompt Americans to be more suspect of their leaders. "We're in such a pickle right now in our nation," he said, "that maybe if learn something from this."[sic]
According to Drudge, CBS is preparing a hatchet job on the Reagans, showing Reagan in the worst light possible, and Nancy as a pill-popping airhead astrology freak who controlled Ronnie.
In the upcoming CBS telefilm on President Ronald Reagan producer fail to mention the economic recovery or the creation of wealth during his administration, nor does it show him delivering the nation from the malaise of the Jimmy Carter years.
The film depicts Nancy Reagan as a pill-popping control addict, who set the president's schedule based on her astrologer's advice and who had significant influence over White House personnel and policy decisions......
more ....
"This was very important for me, to document everything and give a very fair point of view," says Leslie Moonves, the CBS chairman and a top Democrat supporter....
The film is set to air during next month's Sweeps. It stresses Reagan's moments of forgetfulness, his supposed opinions on AIDS and gays, his laissez-faire handling of his staff members. The scenes often carry a disapproving tone.....
The film's producers, Zadan and Meron, acknowledge their liberal politics, as do the stars of the television movie, James Brolin and Judy Davis. But Meron tells the TIMES: "This is not a vendetta, this is not revenge. It is about telling a good story in our honest sort of way. We all believe it's a story that should be told."
According to the Mercury News, Ted Costa and others are preparing a redistricting reform for the November 2004 ballot. Note that this is not a Texas-style power-shift, but a Constitutional amendment to remove the power from the Legislature and to put it in the hands of randomly-selected retired judges.
Hopefully it would include a prohibition on using party registration or precinct voting data, and would ignore current district lines and the wishes of incumbants. It should also constitutionally prohibit gerrymanders.
It is no reform to substitute one gerrymander for another, as Texas appears to have done -- even if the result is less unfair. Even a fair distribution of seats, locked into safe districts (as CA arguably now has), is contrary to the principles of free and fair elections. People should choose their representatives, not the other way around
No doubt the Usual Suspects will cast this as the end of the Republic.
Hat tip: The Irish Lass
Thanks to a link by Dale Franks in the comment section, here is a PDF of last contract offer from The Store™ to the UFCW. Frank, BTW, thinks I'm nuts for supporting the union.
As I read through this (and it's a bit hard to tell the full import -- this is just the changes to the existing agreement) I see any number of things that a union would hate. Yes, the medical insurance changes are large, but I think the real killer is the "New Hire" provisions, both wages and benefits. The medical plan for New Hires is a joke. Between deductables, exclusions, co-insurance, co-pays, and unusually large OOP limits, there not much actual "insurance" left on the table. But go read it and see what you would say if the New Hire plan was offered at your workplace (page 21 of 22). There is also some concern expressed by the union regarding the future viability of pension funds under the proposals.
Union flyers can be seen here and here.
The LA Daily News seems to agree with me on the two strikes: an editorial today supports the grocery clerks, and has this to say about the MTA mechanics:
For too long, our elected officials have taken money and campaign support from public employees unions, then paid them back out of the public treasury with inflated salaries, benefits and pensions without even expecting high productivity.But, as they say, read the whole thing.
The result is that in these difficult economic times, our government agencies are cutting back in public services, and our elected officials are looking for new ways to raise taxes.
The unions, in turn, are acting like spoiled brats. The MTA mechanics -- who average $50,000 a year with 21 making $100,000 -- are among the worst examples. They have gone on strike because they want the public to make good on their union leaders' mismanagement of their health benefit funds without accounting for where the money went.
Shame on them, holding the public hostage for their own mistakes......
Enough is enough. The time has come for our leaders to decide which side they are on -- the side of the public they took an oath to serve, or the public employees who have wrapped them around their fingers with political campaign support.
Gregg Easterbrook is a New Republic editor who dislikes violent movies. In a recent review of Kill Bill, he wrote:
All of Tarantino's work is pure junk. How can you be a renowned director without ever having made a film that's even good, to say nothing of great? No film student in 50 years will spend a single second with a Tarantino movie, except to shake his or her head.Not too favorable. But he went a bit further:
Set aside what it says about Hollywood that today even Disney thinks what the public needs is ever-more-graphic depictions of killing the innocent as cool amusement. Disney's CEO, Michael Eisner, is Jewish; the chief of Miramax, Harvey Weinstein, is Jewish. Yes, there are plenty of Christian and other Hollywood executives who worship money above all else, promoting for profit the adulation of violence. Does that make it right for Jewish executives to worship money above all else, by promoting for profit the adulation of violence? Recent European history alone ought to cause Jewish executives to experience second thoughts about glorifying the killing of the helpless as a fun lifestyle choice.And so, after decades of writing for publications such as the New Republic, Easterbrook was accused of being a rabid anti-Semite -- on the basis of one paragraph of one article written in anger.
The Institute for Justice, that is. IJ is what the ACLU pretends to be -- a defender of personal liberty against the power of the State. As IJ states it:
The Institute for Justice is the nation’s premier libertarian public interest law firm. We are in courts across the country preserving freedom of opportunity and challenging government’s control over individuals’ lives. We sue governments when they stand in the way of entrepreneurs who seek to earn an honest living free from arbitrary and oppressive government interference. We litigate on behalf of individuals whose private property rights are threatened by government excesses. We represent parents who seek to choose the education that best meets their children’s needs. We defend individuals’ rights to publish and access information regardless of the communications medium involved.Why not drop by their site, or, better yet, send them a donation.
Our cases demonstrate that individual initiative, freedom of enterprise, freedom of speech, private property rights, and the legal protection of these liberties are vital to the future of all Americans, but especially those at the bottom of the economic ladder. The Institute for Justice’s clients and cases illustrate the tangible benefits of liberty and the need for greater protection of basic American freedoms.
Sydney Morning Herald report:
The Indonesian President, Megawati Soekarnoputri, joined a standing ovation for her Malaysian counterpart, Mahathir Mohamad, after he called on Muslims to consider Jews as their enemy, it has been revealed.Good thing they're on our side.
All 57 leaders at a Conference of Islamic Nations summit applauded the comments, which have renewed regional tensions ahead of next week's APEC leaders' conference. Among them were several key figures in the post-September 11 world, including Ms Megawati; the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai; President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan and Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. [emphasis mine]
Which reason would be socially acceptable for denying someone membership in the LA Country Club?
a. He is black African-American.
b. He is Jewish.
c. She is a woman.
d. He is an evangelical Christian.
I feel it necesssary to begin this post by pointing out that I am not an evangelical Christian. I am probably not even a Christian, technically. I wish this disclaimer was not necessary, but I think we all know why it is.
The LA Times yesterday published a front page story and an apparently unrelated guest commentary attacking the US general in charge of finding Osama. Why? Because he was too lax in his job? No. Because he hadn't got Osama yet? No. It was because he was an evangelical Christian. The horror!
Both artlcles referred to an NBC News piece for corroboration. Turns out all the atrticles, including the NBC piece are largely the work of one man, William Arkin, the author of the op-ed. Turns out that his quotes from the general are. to some extent, fabricated. Hewitt provides details here; Lileks provides ridicule here.
One would expect the LA TImes, always careful of avoiding even the appearance of dishnesty or bigotry, to have published a correction in today's paper. Alas, what we got was an editorial decrying the information that it had trumped up the day before.
See cartoon, below
According to the Mercury News, Governor-unelect Davis is now asking for the state Senate to come back into special session in order to approve his last-minue appointments to various boards and commissions.
Gov. Gray Davis is urging the Senate to return to the Capitol before he leaves office to confirm a list of last-minute appointments that would name some of his top aides to jobs with six-figure salaries, according to a Senate Democrat.It may well have escaped his notice, but Governor-unelect Davis was not defeated for re-election. He is not a "lame duck." He was fired in a vote of no-confidence, and only maintains office so long as the votes are not official. In the rest of the world they call his status a "caretaker" -- the government he represents has fallen and he is only there to take absolutely unavoidable actions until a replacement can take over. Such a caretaker would never assume he could make appointments or enact controversial laws.
There is an initiative circulating regarding a "Voter's Choice Open Primary." In this system, there would be one big primary ballot for every office except President. Voters would pick their choice without regard to Party. The two 2 vote getters would go to the general election run-off -- regardless of whether someone already has a big majority.
According to the backers, this will solve the gerrymander issues, because in gerrymandered one-party districts, more than one candidate from the dominant party will run. Ask McClintock if he thinks this will happen without a lot of pressure from the party -- especially if the party has a sitting incumbant.
According to the backers this will cause moderation among candidates, because the other-party voters can affect the majority party's candidate(s). To the degree this is true, it is unconstitutional (Democratic Party v Jones). But again, there will be no serious same-party challenger to the sitting officeholder. Without Instant-Runoff Voting, there is no way for the other-party voters to coordinate, either. Maxine Waters will not fear this.
(There is also a voting procedure issue with Presidnetial primaries being done on a different ballot -- some voting machines will choke on this)
So, this initiative is another one of the seemingly endless series of "fixes" that fix nothing in our intentionally broken state elections. How many times have we passed "clean campaign funding" initiatives? The next one that works will be the first (I hear Ariana has yet another). We just got through with the "blanket primary" that was supposed to let moderates compete, but didn't -- and was unconstitutional to boot (see above). This deck-chair re-arrangement won't keep the ship afloat either.
What do we need for real reform? Three things in order of importance: Removing redistricting from the Legislature's control; Criminalizing gerrymanders; and Instant Runoff Voting. More on these later.
As just about everyone in Southern California knows, the supermarket employees union has struck The Store™ (otherwise knows as Ralphs-Vons-Albertsons). What are the unions demands? They demand not to get screwed. What are The Store's demands? Split shifts, two-tier payscales for new (i.e. replacement) workers, two-year wage freeze on current workers, and benefit givebacks. Those damn greedy unions, calling strikes for no good reason!
Never mind that Albertson's loses money because it won't computerize inventory, Vons loses money befause parent Safeway buys grocery chains and then ruins them and sells them off at a loss, and Ralphs makes money hand over fist by having the most understaffed stores in the business.
Oh, right, their complaint: that everyone will go to the Wal-Mart and Costco to save a few dollars -- never mind the inconvenience, distance and lack of amenities. There is nothing wrong with these companies that firing a bunch of MBAs won't cure. But they want to blame it on the workers who are among the hardest working of any American employees.
Want to end the strike soon? Don't shop at The Store, and maybe send $20 to the Union's strike fund. And yes, this is coming from a conservative, which ought to tell you just how untenable The Store's position is here.
THE OTHER STRIKE:
On the other hand, the perennial MTA mechanics strike is on. Their issues? It seems that the union-controlled medial insurance fund, which gets $533/month/employee is insolvent. MTA officials say this is because the union's fund managers are a pack of fools, and shouldn't be spending $800/month/employee llike they are. This is, by the way, the whole issue.
Management has a point. The whole mass transit system for LA is down -- stranding hundreds of thousands of people who (clearly) have no other choice -- because one public employee union wants Uncle Sugar to guarantee the union's internal fund graft management with unlimited public money -- $6 million for starters.
I hope they fire the lot of them and decertify the union. Send the union a Terminator poster.
Update: The LA Times article on the mechanic's strike, and the Daily News and the Times articles on the grocery strike.
Soon-To-Be-Ex-Governor Davis has been busy since his defeat. In the last 3 days he has done all this (hat tip: Weintraub)
Note that, up until 10/7, Gov Davis was signing laws and making proclamations. As of 10/7. it's been apoint, appoint, appoint.
I would particularly like to point out the following entities to Arnold's Department of (Removing) Redundancy Department:
New blogger Erick Erickson is blogging up a storm at Confessions Of A Political Junkie. Stop by and say Hello.
An interesting thing came up in the CA recall. There were certain also-ran candidates who did well primarily because they were next to the leaders on most, if not all, ballots. Schwartzman, Burton and McClain. All 3 finished well ahead of the pack. See Mickey Kaus and Election Law and Volokh
Now, assume that almost all votes for Schwartzman were intended for Arnold, but mismarked in a Florida-butterfly-ballot manner. Since the vote is reported by county, and voting machines are also chosen by county, one could possibly infer a machine-induced voter error rate from this data.
Garry Young did this and found the following Schwartzman vote totals:
Punchcard counties: 5336 (0.166%)
Other counties: 5621 (0.125%)
The difference here between puchcard and other voting methods (if statistically meaningful, and I'm not convinced) amounts to 410 additional voter errors per million votes cast, caused by an increased tendency to mispunch the adjacent line.
Is this a problem? You be the judge.
President Bush recently nominated California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.
One group that has been active in opposing this nomination is Community Rights Counsel, which "provides strategic assistance to state and local government attorneys in defending land use laws, environmental protections, public health measures, and other community protections. CRC has published a litigation handbook, which assists state and local attorneys defending against takings claims."
No small wonder they oppose Brown, who is one of the leading proponents of restoring property rights to significant status under the law, especially in "takings" cases, where governmental restrictions on property often amount to massive reduction in the value or utility of property without any compensation whatsoever. CRC, of course, thinks this just grand.
Janice Brown's decisions are not what folks who accuse her of Lochnerism point to. Rather there are a couple of speeches, one to the Federalist Society (PDF), in which she referred to Lochner.
Note that Brown does not call for a return to the Lochner Era (named after a 1900s decision that voided state wage & hour laws and generally held that the state's police power did not extend to regulating private transactions) -- she just says that the property and contract rights that Lochner held to be vital are now held to be trivial. She asserts that the gutting of the Lochner doctrine during the New Deal was no less extreme than Lochner. Brown feels that the individual rights of property and liberty are indeed non-trivial and need to be returned from the ashes where FDRs judges consigned them -- that if Lochner is one end of the pendulum, we're pretty much at the other end, and long past due for a correction. I happen to agree with this.
The attack on Brown is just Socialist overreaching by organizations that actually believe that property rights ought to be minimal, and that the "takings" clause of the 5th Amendment should be put in the same scrap heap they've put the 2nd, 9th and 10th Amendments.
Update: Here is a news story accurately reflecting the attitudes that have annoyed CRC, People for the American Way, NARAL, TalkLeft, and all the other usual suspects.
Update: Here is a set of links to Steven Wu's rather evenhanded SCOTUSblog posts on Justice Brown
Kevin Drum over at CalPundit posted a detailed analysis of the current Texas Republican Party platform. According to Kevin's reading, the platform includes support for creationism and the gold standard, opposition to abortion, gays, the UN, social security and the income tax.
I should point out that Kevin's blog is a pretty mainstream Democrat/center-left site, having only rare moments in common with the lunatic left. As such his view from the outside merits attention. His conclusion is:
If this were just a lunatic fringe we could all have a good laugh over their manifesto and then go out for a beer. But you can't dismiss it so easily. Texas-style conservatism has already put George Bush, Tom DeLay, and Karl Rove in charge of the country, and it is very much the future of the Republican party. And for all the conservatives reading this: I know this doesn't necessarily represent what you believe. But whether you like it or not, this kind of thinking does represent a very strong, very fast growing segment of the leadership of your party, and this is why liberals think the Republican party is just plain scary these days. We know that this is their agenda, we know that they really truly want to do this stuff, and we know that they are steadily gaining influence.Now, do all Republicans or even most Republicans agree with this platform? Income taxes, possibly; reform [not abolition, KD] of social security, probably; dislike for the UN, almost certainly. The social issues? Google "McClintock, Tom, vote totals".
I see that various people on the Left are calling for Recalling Arnold. Where do I sign? No -- I don't want to see Arnold voted out of office. Hardly. I just think it's such a complete mistake that I'm willing to help them make it.
Can they get enough signers? They need 12% of the number of voters in the last gubernatorial election. This may or may not be the one just past -- the Secretary of State thinks so though, so we'll go with that. 7.7 million votes * 0.12 = 924K valid signatures, give or take. This is, by the way, more that twice the number needed (5%) for an initiative, which itself isn't easy.
They'll need some money but there's lots of Hollywood money, so that's not a problem. Must be someone in Hollywood that hates. They will use paid signature gatherers, or they will fail.
When can they start? Not until Arnold is in office, I'm pretty sure, but there is no other limitation -- although a careful misreading of the law could justify some delaying lawsuits, but I digress. Probably have a couple of weeks of set-up time (petition approval, SecState blessings, stamps, seals, etc). OK, now it's at least Nov 1, 2003. They'll have 160 days to get their signatures. April 10, 2004.
Now, when should they aim for the election? March 2 would be good -- lots of Democrats voting for Dean or maybe Hillary by then. So, need to be done no later than 60 days before March 2nd -- done, counted and certified. January 2nd. Lousy timing, what? Realistically that means the signatures all need to be turned in by early December. So, 30 days, or so, to get 1.3 million signatures. Not Bloody Likely. It took Costa and Issa 90 days or so. So, can't have March 2nd. Pity.
What to avoid? November 2nd, I think, because if it does piss people off, that's the single worst time to have people pissed off -- they have many ways to make you pay -- voting for Bush, other Republicans, and all of Arnold's initiatives, say.
So, any date after March 2nd, but before the Presidential election. Of course, to avoid the recall being moved to the next regular election within 180 days (i.e. Nov 2) that means that everything has to be done and certified 181 days before November 2nd. Which is to say: no later than May 5. So everything needs to be in the bag by, to be safe, April 10. Sounds about right. Better get cracking. This just might work. Election in July-August.
But of course, being Democrats, you'll get started sometime in January or February, get done in May or June, the recall will be in November, and it will completely annoy 80% of the voters, and they will retaliate.
And this is why I'll so happily sign the thing.
Update: aphrael thinks another recall will backfire as well
Hugh Hewitt in fine form:
The New York Times may be the Old Gray Lady. The Internet has [the LA Times'] number as Gray's old lady.
Governor-elect Schwarzenegger ought to spend some effort on mending fences. Here are a few ideas:
Assuming that Arnold is Governor in the near future (my bet, within 2 weeks) he has at least 2 major tasks:
1) A Constitutional Amendment to permanently remove the reapportionment power from the Legislature. Nearly everyone (including the LA Times), except members of the Legislature, agree this is needed. Only a Constitutional Amendment will work, as there is currently a prohibition against multiple reapportionments in the same decade.
NOTE: The idea here is *not* to carve out different safe seats for, say, Republicans -- it is to overturn the whole system of allocated safe seats with their lopsided 70-30 predictable votes. Nor is it to create a partisan gerrymander where the minority ends up with more seats than the majority (e.g. the current maps in Texas (D) & Pennsylvania (R)).
What to do? The simple plan would be to randomly select a panel of retired state judges. Schwarzenegger has suggested this. However, this does not always work. A (federal) judicial panel in Texas came up with the current, unfair, plan, by making minor adjustments to a previous gerrymander. In Texas 60+% vote Republican for Congress, but Dems get 60+% of the seats. Judges alone are not the answer.
What is needed is a constitutional prohibition on using 1) election data, 2) party data, and 3) previous district lines. Let the judges use city and community boundaries, zip codes, rivers, highways and etc, keeping the results compact as possible, without an eye towards how people vote or what politician stands to gain or lose.
2) The Bureacucracy. The Blob, if you prefer. Dick Riordan was on TV a few days ago talking about Arnold's plans for budget cuts. His number one target: bureaucracy reduction. Applying standard corporate downsizing tactics, Riordan suggests early retirements and fair severance packages in cutting from mainline bureaucracy, while completely eliminating some of the myriad commissions and bureaus that have accumulated over the last however-many years. Savings in the billions directly, and savings in reduced regulation indirectly, both for business and for local government, such as schools.
Go to it, Arnold.
Before the election there were any number of blog posts regarding whether people voting NO on the recall might affect results by abstaining on the replacement ballot. There were even fears that people, having voted NO, might believe they could not choose a replacment candidate, and that such misinformation could be grounds for court action.
Turns out it doesn't matter. Accrding to Kevin Shelley:
7,857,000 votes were cast Yes/No
7,581,000 votes were cast for candidates
Schwarzenegger leads by 1.2 million votes. Even if all the "missing" Yes/No votes all were given to Bustemante, he'd still be nearly a million votes short.
No pun intended.
A post from yesterday was deleted from this site. The post linked to a "rap sheet" pertaining to someone with the same name as an Arnold accuser. The individual has asserted that the rap sheet did not refer to her. If so, the post had the potential to defame, and a simple update or disclaimer seemed insufficient to mitigate the potential harm.
"An abyss opened for a moment, and black bats flew out. They filled the air with old nightmares, throwbacks to a style of history that the world had been forgetting....Three days: then the bats of history abruptly turned, flew back and vanished...."
So wrote Lance Morrow of TIME after the aborted Communist coup of 1991 failed to restore the Party to power in the soon-to-be-former Soviet Union.
The last week here in California, with the full court press against Arnold from the mainstream (read: Left) media, the spectre of Davis pulling out the upset was the stuff of nightmares. Where was Buffy (or Nikita) when we needed her?
It was enough to drive someone to voting for the actor, just out of protest. So I did. Take THAT, LA Times.
The wife of New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg was abducted at knifepoint Tuesday from the couple's suburban home and forced to withdraw money from a local bank, police said. She was released unharmed.What you wanna bet they catch these guys?
Kathleen Gregg, 52, said she found two men inside her McLean, Va., home when she arrived about 9:30 a.m. EDT. One pulled a knife and demanded money, said Jacqi Smith, a spokeswoman for the Fairfax County Police Department.
Mrs. Gregg then was told to drive to a local Wachovia Bank branch and withdraw money, police said. After receiving the cash, the men fled in a silver Chevrolet Monte Carlo with Virginia license plates.
Pepperdine professor Doug Swartzendruber has offered to run for lieutenant governor if Schwarzenegger wins, just so Californians can vote for a Schwarzenegger-Swartzendruber ticket.
I voted today in Los Angeles, where they use the dreaded punchcard ballot. Same old, same old.
Except this time there were signs around the room about CHAD horrors. Each voter was asked if they had checked the ballot for hanging chad as they handed in their ballot. All were saying things like "Yes, of course I did."
I guess people in California aren't complete idiots.
Also posted on calblog
One of the reasons that the LA Daily News doesn't make a run at the LA Times -- as everyone outside the Valley might wish -- is that the LA Times invested in the Daily News in 1998, and has an option to buy it should it ever be put up for sale. The current owner seems to have agreed to stay in the Valley and "be good" in exchange for some $50 million. Basically, the Daily News has been bought off.
See Matt Welch or AP/Salon or LA Examiner
Update: The Daily News owner (Dean Singleton) is also one of the bidders for the OC Register, and is getting press from guess who
I've been doing some research on CA's other problem (OK, one of the other problems) -- the Gerrymander. A few quick notes:
Note: Since only half of Senate seats are up each year, the Senate distribution is even odder -- the Democrats won 16 out of 20 seats -- 5 unopposed. Apparently, choosing which seats go first after a remap is an advantage, especially if parties have swapped seats and the new Democrat seat goes into the first block and the old Democrat seat is a holdover. But it makes analysis of the Seante remap impossible after one election, other than to expect the Republicans will gain state Senate seats in 2004.
What does this all mean? More after the recall election.
The more things change, the more they remain the same.
The Los Angeles Times has had several publishers, and is now owned by a Chicago corporation. Its politics has gone from far-far-right to its current left-of-center. But one thing stays the same: the Times remains utterly and completely opposed to the notions of Recall, Initiative and Referendum.
According to the I&R Institute, the first use of the initiative in California seems to have been under the 1903 Los Angeles City Charter Reform (opposed by the Times). It seems that people were so upset with the LA Times' control of the city that they passed a city initiative:
Reformers in Los Angeles won voter approval, in December 1911, of a unique local initiative to create a municipally owned, yet editorially independent, newspaper to compete with the anti-labor, anti-reform Los Angeles Times and provide unbiased news and an equal forum for all political views. Each political party was given a column in every weekly edition.
This bold experiment in free speech attracted the state's top newspaper talent and got off to a highly successful start. After less than a year, however, it failed because of the harassment of vendors and an advertiser boycott organized by the Los Angeles reformers' arch-enemy, Harrison Gray Otis, owner of the Times.
The Times was loved even then. According to the History News Network,
The recall was used several times in ensuing years, resulting in the ouster of several councilmen and, in 1909, of Mayor A.C. Harper. Following Los Angeles' lead, several California localities adopted the device.
Wonder if these officials had anything to do with making the owners of the LA Times -- Harrison Gray Otis and Harry Chandler -- extremely rich in the Owens River water grab of 1905.
One other thing to note: then, as now, the fight to restore the state to the People was led by the Republicans, who were quite hated by the Times. I wonder what these Progressives of 1911 would say about their modern namesakes.
The first significant statewide initiative in California abolished the poll tax in 1914, and a construction bond initiative for the University of California also won voter approval that year. Immediately thereafter, anti-initiative forces launched their first counterattack, in the form of a constitutional amendment passed by the legislature to make it more difficult to pass initiative bond proposals.
Hiram Johnson, the Governor who put the Initaive and Recall into the state Constitution, had this to say about the LA Times' publisher of the era, Harrison Gray Otis:
San Francisco has its own "dregs of infamy," Johnson said. "But we have nothing so vile, nothing so low, nothing so debased, nothing so infamous in San Francisco as Harrison Gray Otis. He sits there in senile dementia with gangrene heart and rotting brain, grimacing at every reform, chattering impotently at all things that are decent, frothing, fuming, violently gibbering, going down to his grave in snarling infamy."
And the Times hasn't yet stopped. The current publishers wouldn't be caught dead praising Otis, the Chandlers no longer control the Times, and the paper's politics are firmly liberal, but on the subject of Direct Democracy they've never been reconciled. Every time the People carve the powers-that-be a new ass*ole, the LA Times writes about how horrible the process is, and how this should all be left to their puppets in the Legislature.
Expect a movement later this month, supported by the Times, to gut the Recall. As always, for our own good.
Apparently, there are further, even more damning things in recent Arnold interviews that are circulating around the Internet. One clip I saw has someone who looks a lot like Arnold extolling the following:
I took a ride in Mr Peabody's Way-Back Machine -- back to the ancient days of August 1 -- and found this article in the California Insider archives:
In the most explosive comments yet aimed at Davis by a fellow Democrat, Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer tells the Sacramento Bee that “prominent Democrats” will leave Davis for Riordan if the governor runs another of his famous negative campaigns.
"If they do the trashy campaign on Dick Riordan ... I think there are going to be prominent Democrats that will defect and just say, 'We're tired of that puke politics. Don't you dare do it again or we're just going to help pull the plug.' There is a growing list of prominent Democrats that, if that's how it evolves, are going to jump ship."
But I guess "puke politics" against Arnold is OK, Mr Attorney General? Just as long as Davis' fingerprints aren't all over the scene?
(And by the way, where's Riordan been in all this campaign ... time for him to take a swing at Davis, I think.)
UPDATE: Lockyer has gotten back the ol' time religion and has signed on to the puke brigade. See PrestoPundit
Look what surfaced! (Hat tip: Mickey Kaus) Go read the long lost 1997 New Times LA column by Jill Stewart Closet Wacko Vs. Mega-Fibber for everything the LA Times would never print about Gray Davis
Here's the lede:
I have this file, labeled Gray Davis, that for the last few years I've been stuffing with all the bizarre little tales that are quietly shared among journalists and political insiders about the man who, though probably viewed as a blandly pleasant talking head by most Californians, is in fact one of the strangest ducks ever elected to statewide office.
Long protected by editors at the Los Angeles Times--who have nixed every story Times reporters have ever tried to develop about Davis's storied history of physical violence, unhinged hysteria and gross profanity--the baby-faced, dual personality Davis has been allowed to hold high public office with impunity.
Weintraub reports about an interview that Arnold supposedly gave while filming Pumping Iron, in which he expresses an admiration for Hitler's rise to power -- but not Hitler himself. Wientraub links to ABC News, which filed the report.
ABCNEWS obtained a copy of an unpublished book proposal with quotes from a verbatim transcript of an interview Schwarzenegger gave in 1975 while making the film Pumping Iron.In the interview, Schwartzenegger is alledged to profess an admiration for Hitler's political ability.
The author of the book proposal, Pumping Iron's director, George Butler, told ABCNEWS today that the quotes needed to be seen in context, and that Arnold never said anything anti-Semitic
Remains to be seen how this plays. I've heard lots of people over the years talk about "Hitler's genius for politics" without being the slightest bit sympathetic to the man or his policies. For a politician to do so would be stupid, of course, but Arnold's comments, if reported accurately, were 30 years ago in the course of some very wide-ranging interviews.
Then again, these last-minute reports could add up.
UPDATE: As everyone now knows, this "Hitler" thing was a bogus quote. Both out of context and misquoted to boot, with little words like "NOT" inadvertedly left out.
This cover story is very surprising, coming from the left-of-center OC Weekly: An endorsement by R Scott Moxley arguing for liberals to vote for McClintock. And not for the reasons you'd expect. Hat tip: California Republic/Liebau(10/2)
Some excerpts (but read the whole thing, as they say):
This hemorrhaging of public funds coupled with a continuous demand for new tax revenue while government services are routinely slashed leads me to an observation sure to offend some of my fellow progressives. Sometimes the best endorsement is inadvertent. Ask Sacramento Democrats what they think of McClintock. They’ll likely tell you the last man they want holding the veto pen to their spending habits is the relentlessly frugal 47-year-old conservative from Thousand Oaks. At the moment, that’s good enough for me....
Davis and Bustamante, the state’s top Democrats, are slapping their own party’s middle-class and poor constituents with plans for new regressive taxes. Davis tripled the vehicle license fee and helped inflate everyone’s monthly energy bill on behalf of the wealthy, private shareholders of Southern California Edison stock. Bustamante promises to raise taxes on corporations and the rich—and to increase taxes on cigarettes from 87 cents to $2.27 per pack as well as boost alcohol taxes an additional 25 cents per gallon. He literally smiles—why?—when he says "everybody has to pay" for the state’s mess. And pay we will. There is talk again of raising the state’s gasoline and sales taxes, already among the highest in the nation....
An upset McClintock victory on Oct. 7 could give us the following scenario: Democrats in the state Legislature won’t get most of their Volvo spending programs and special-interest payouts. The Republican governor won’t be able to enact any of his 1950s-era social initiatives. And because of McClintock’s hard-wired stinginess, the rest of us—Democrats, Republicans, Independents, Greens and Libertarians—can finally see some financial sanity returned to Sacramento.
Well, the LA Times has published their dreaded hit piece (hat tip: fresh potatoes). Schwartzenegger, it seems, is a male chauvinist pig and pats the occasional fanny. Coarse behavior? Certainly. Unheard of in politics, not hardly. I thought this whole issue went out with Slick Willy.
Living in Los Angeles, all I can say is "I'm shocked...SHOCKED...that there's philandering going on here!" I thought the line got drawn a little further left here in LA -- somewhere around having sex with your poodle.
Will someone PLEASE invest in the Daily News?!?
SFGate reports that Davis is demanding that Bustamante drop out, saying that Davis has a decent chance if there's no Democrat alternative.
In a nutshell: Gov. Gray Davis' folks say their polls show Democratic "fallback" candidate Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante is toast -- and will never overcome Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Worse, the Davis folks say Bustamante's continued presence in the race is drawing votes from the governor's bid to hold onto his job, by giving disaffected Democrats the "false hope" they will be able to replace Davis with another Democrat.
According to Davis' polls, support for firing Davis is running at 53 percent to 55 percent with Bustamante in the race. With "backup" Bustamante out -- the recall is a dead heat.
Bustamante doesn't agree, of course.
Given the poll numbers, what happens if Bustamante gives up, or the Democrats force him out, returning to the original "make 'em vote NO" strategy? Note that the Democrats have a dandy stick to hit Bustamante with -- if Davis and Bustamante both lose, Davis can resign between the vote and certification, leaving Bustamante with a short Governorship and then no job (the Lt Governorship is vacant and Bustamante doesn't get it back).
Does this help Davis defeat the recall? Do enough Bustamante supporters switch from YES to NO? Do they vote for Camejo? Do they stay home?
Does this throw a wrench into the "Vote for Arnold or you're voting for Bustamante" argument? Given a free vote, do Republican conservatives (or others) choose McClintock?
Idle speculation, perhaps [grasping at straws, perhaps --Editor], but Arianna dropped out, endorsing NO. This ain't over 'til it's over.