On more than just local government

Ariel Sharon

2006-01-06T19:25:00.000-08:00

I have never been a great fan of his, but he seems to be the only man in Israel that could be trusted to give things to the Palestinians without the potential recriminations of being too liberal. Sort of like Nixon in China.

Who will follow him? If it is Netanyahu, many will die. If it is a liberal, the country may come asunder. Hobson's choice.

Pat Robertson

2006-01-06T19:24:00.000-08:00

I have a feeling all the blood doesn't quite go to the brain of this wacko.

Turned out pretty much as expected

2006-01-06T19:21:00.000-08:00

At this writing, the Governor is putting the finishing touches on his State of the State message. According to reports, he will include a call for a massive bond issue to “deal with California’s infrastructure problem.” The price tag could be as big as $50 billion. More likely, it will be in the mid-$20 billion range. In either case, it is way too much…and way too little at the same time.

How can that be? The infrastructure needs of California are defined very differently depending on the group questioned about it. To developers, truckers and the motor vehicle lobby, roads and freeways need to be fixed and expanded. To transit advocates and environmentalists, public transportation needs to be beefed up. To water agencies, levees and pipelines need updating. To housing advocates, fixing the shortage of moderately priced units should be the first priority.

It goes on and on. And, at some level, all of them are true. California’s needs are massive. But, a situation that has been ignored for decades, by Governors of both political parties, will not be fixed by putting the State so far into debt that its options for future financing would be jeopardized. That’s because Wall Street, which ultimately sets the price on all this borrowing through the determination of credit worthiness, will not allow California to go that deeply in debt, especially considering the fragility of its revenue sources, without paying prices that would be less of more prudent decisions are made.

Why fragile? During the past three to four years, revenues have been increasing because of three factors. The first is the growth in incomes. An improving economy creates more jobs which add to income tax revenues. The second is sales taxes. Consumer spending numbers have increased and the State is reaping some of the benefit, although more and more is going to online retail, for which state and local tax revenues are minimal or nonexistent.

The final piece of the puzzle is property taxes. With the spurt in home buying, the state has gotten an unanticipated bump in this area. Local governments have also benefited as their small portion of the property tax revenues, and the developer fees associated with new home building, have grown.

As we saw in the early years of this decade, this bubble can burst. In fact, the housing market is already showing signs of dramatic slowdowns, due to high prices and increasing interest rates. The floating of a huge bond puts the State at greater risk of having debt service become a far too large portion of the annual budget, making it more and more difficult to provide the services the people of California demand.

A catchall bond is the easy way out. Making the hard decisions about what should and should not be financed may be hard, but it is the right way to go. The Governor has lost a year of work in this area by believing that the voters would make it easy for him to control the process. The voters told him to stop asking them and for him and the Legislature to do their jobs.

It is time he actually listened to the people.

OK, I'm going to try once again

2006-01-03T12:00:00.000-08:00

Writing a blog is not difficult. Writing it regularly is.

I'm going to try again to see if I can actually keep up with a schdule of blogging. What with a weekly column and a regular job, this is not easy. But, some weeks there are more stories than can fit in one column, so I'll give it another try.

What's the over/under on how many Congresspeople will find it necessary to "spend more time with their families" over the next few weeks? Should be an interesting survey of who has/had "juice" in Congress.

Killing the jobs of toner salespeople

2005-07-14T16:21:00.000-07:00

Have you noticed a decline in the number of junk faxes you’ve received over the past few years? Despite the occasional one that comes through, compared to a few years ago, the reduction has been significant.

Now, the California Chamber of Commerce, along with most of the local chambers, is demanding a return to the bad old days. According to them, a bill in the state legislature, SB833 (Bowen), is too restrictive on their abilities to communicate with their members and, therefore, should be defeated. What they don’t tell you is that this bill is merely designed to keep in place the restrictions on unsolicited fax advertising that have been working for two years. So, what’s wrong with the protections we already have?

The history of this legislation is important to understand. Prior to 2003, California had a weaker junk fax law than did the Feds. To remedy this situation, a law was passed in Sacramento mirroring the stronger Federal statute. In a matter of days, the number of those invasions of our privacy diminished.

Now, Washington is planning on weakening the Federal law. Part of this weakening is to require that rather than your having to agree to receive faxes, known as “opting in,” you would be responsible for asking that you aren’t sent unsolicited material, known as “opting out.” SB833 would keep the existing limitation in place in California, with its “opting in” requirement, no matter what happens on the Federal level.

The main problem with the proposed Federal law (S 714 by Sen. Smith, R- Oregon) is that they want to make it so that any organization can fax anyone with whom they have even the most tenuous of a “business relationship.” This means that anyone to whom you have passed a business card, for example, can place you on their fax list and you, then, have to request removal from it. In reality, since there is no enforceable requirement in this law that the “business relationship” be proven, bulk fax companies like Fax.com can send you an unsolicited missive and, if you don’t respond to cancel, your fax number is now fair game for their use.

This is what the Chambers want to have happen. Why? Sadly, one main reason for the hue and cry from them is, to put it simply, laziness. They do not wish to be bothered to have to ask their members to agree to receive faxes, such as newsletters, from them. When you consider that your privacy will be lost because they don’t want to just ask their members for permission to fax them, you start to wonder whether these organizations have forgotten that they are consumers, too.

The California Chamber calls any bill that regulates business practices as “job killers.” Our local chambers, with the notable exception of Carson, walk mindlessly in lockstep, not seeming to understand that their members would perhaps like to have their own fax machines freed up from unsolicited use.

So, Chambers, whose job is going to be killed by this? All we can think of is the person who sells toner to the many individuals who will inconvenienced by your policies.

I’m not worried about them. I just want to keep my fax machine to myself.

Wastes of government funds

2005-06-16T11:23:00.000-07:00

Within three hours of each other Monday afternoon, two glaring examples were evident everyone to see of how managing the cost of government activities is never the highest priority among public officials. There was the end of the Michael Jackson trial followed by the announcement by Governor Schwarzenegger of a November special election so that some decisions that will do nothing to reduce the state’s budget deficit, and that could easily have waited until next June’s scheduled primary, can be decided at a cost of $80 million.

I have no idea whether Michael Jackson was guilty or not. It is clear that he is wacko, but perhaps he can’t be proven to be THAT kind of wacko. However, the fact that not a single guilty verdict was gained, even on the least of the counts regarding offering liquor to a minor, indicates how much of a waste of the public money was involved in mounting this case. The District Attorney, it seems, has fallen into the Gil Garcetti trap of trying to nail a celebrity with enough money to buy “justice.” Hopefully, Mr. Sneddon will suffer the same response from the voters of his county as Mr. Garcetti and be tossed from office.

As for the special election, the Governor feels that he must deal with these “serious” issues that will be offered to the voters. This despite the fact that one of the key items to be voted on, redistricting, cannot be accomplished in the time frame set by the initiative and that others, such as nurse staffing, teacher sanctions and firefighter benefit reductions are consistently opposed by a majority of California voters. Nevertheless, the Governor has decided that $80 million needs to be spent on an election that could have been held for nothing just 8 months later.

For both these public officials, the public’s money seems to be viewed as their own personal expense account when it enhances their self-aggrandizement. For Mr. Sneddon, a victory would have meant statewide publicity that could have lead to thoughts of higher office. For the Governor, this special election is a large scale public opinion poll that could provide the impetus he needs to recover the support he has lost since the Recall election. We don’t need to spend our scarce resources this way.

June is the month to remind you of the dire fiscal condition of our local governments, cities, counties, school districts and special districts. We need all the resources we can get to be working for us, not for the politicians who have control of the purse strings. By the end of this month, you will hear much about the cutting of services these local governments have been forced to undertake. Every million dollars spent in these crackpot endeavors is a million less for something that we need.

The only way to stop them is to, loudly and convincingly, repudiate them. A sound beating will, hopefully, be an object lesson to any spending-crazed politicians who follow. Then, maybe, we can get down to the real work of government…providing services to the people who entrust them with their money.

Whose budget is it anyway?

2005-06-08T13:58:00.000-07:00

We have been inundated in recent weeks with a commercial paid for from the over $70 million in campaign contributions raised by Gov. Schwarzenegger castigating the California Legislature for spending $1.10 for every $1.00 raised. He conveniently doesn’t mention that the signature on that document is his.

As we enter the budget season in Sacramento, the bs factor rises to epic proportions. Everyone tries to blame everyone else for a situation that has been a problem not just for the last few years, but for the last few decades. Specifically, since 1978, the initiative process has little by little eroded the power of both the Governor and the Legislature to control spending. That’s because every special interest has carved out its own gravy train of funding and some, such as then Citizen Schwarzenegger’s after school program initiative, which passed more than four years ago, will kick in as the budget situation improves.

It is estimated that the legislature has management control of only about 20% of the budget. The remainder is allocated based on formulas that, very often, do not relate at all with the changing financial condition the State find itself in. So, for the Governor to blame the Legislature in this way indicates that he is either lying or doesn’t really understand the history of State government. Either scenario is highly disturbing.

The Governor has also in recent months decided to take on what he calls “special interests.” Included in these groups are nurses and firefighters, two groups that, generally, get high marks for the people they serve. The concerns he has with these groups are different, but they are both aimed at the fact that they have effectively organized as labor groups. The nurses want to make sure that their workloads don’t get in the way of service to the people who need them and the firefighters are concerned that proposals to cut their health and welfare arrangements will leave any widowed spouses without pension benefits.

I don’t understand what the Governor thinks he is going to get out of these fights. The public, as seen in poll after poll, clearly side with the nurses and firefighters. Yet, he plods on toward a special election that will cost California taxpayers at least $70-80 million.

Schwarzenegger has spent and continues to spend, the political capital he gained from the Recall election like a drunken sailor. Driving back from Northern California last week, I saw a billboard with two pictures on it. On the left was a nurse, with the caption “She heals.” On the right was Schwarzenegger, with the caption “He wheels and deals.” Very succinct and very correct.

The chances he had to make reform happen are gone. They have been lost in the creation of an “uberpolitician,” who raises money beyond anything Gray Davis ever did, bounces from issue to issue with no coherence, lands on policy solutions that make no sense, for which he fights until they die due to lack of interest.

Oh, well. The 2006 election is at hand. Maybe that will solve it.

But, I stole it fair and square

2005-05-09T16:58:00.000-07:00

San Diego Mayor Dick Murphy resigned last week amid growing concerns about his stewardship of the financial crisis that threatens California’s second largest city. The speed of his departure was certainly assisted by an article in Time Magazine citing Murphy as one of the three worst Mayors in the United States.

The problem is Murphy should never have been in the Mayor’s chair in the first place. Had all the votes been counted in the City’s last municipal election, Donna Frye, a Councilwoman who began a write-in campaign late in the process as the depth of the financial crisis became clearer, would have been properly sworn in. Only an arbitrary decision by the Registrar of Voters (ROV), Sally McPherson, ruled that 5,551 Frye write-in votes that did not have a filled in bubble next to the written name were void. The margin of difference between Frye and Murphy was slightly more than 2,100.

People seem to have this belief that paper ballots are the panacea to accurately count votes. History has shown that it is not, and the Frye case is a perfect example. Paper ballots are far more prone to fraud and error than electronic voting has proven to be. In addition, a situation like Frye’s could not have occurred on an electronic machine because a write-in vote is automatically tallied as such. There is no requirement to do anything other than enter the name.

The bubble fill-in requirement is, in fact, only important to the ROV. That’s because the computer system used to read the pieces of paper (yes, Virginia, it is all tallied by computer) needs a mark to let it know that there is a name in the write-in box. The law, as presently written, does require these bubbles on paper ballots. However, other parts of the law enable the ROV to determine the “intent of the voter” in recount situations. The San Diego ROV and a municipal judge hearing the case ignored that. It is on appeal.

Hopefully, this situation will be clarified upon the passage of SB 1050 (Bowen). This bill, which cleared the State Senate last week, specifies that the bubble is "for the convenience of the elections official counting the ballot and that, if the name of a qualified write-in candidate is written in the blank space provided, failure by a voter to mark the voting space shall not preclude the voter's ballot from being counted if the intent of the voter can be determined.”

Part of the problem with the counting was that boxes of votes kept on popping up at various ROV offices. In King County, a heavy Gregoire area, at least 785 votes are known to have been “mishandled,” with three ballots stuck in counting machines. At least 200 ballots were set aside to research the voter’s status. These were never processed.

Paper is not a perfect solution. In Redondo Beach, which uses the Ink-A-Vote paper system, every pass through the tallying machines gave a different number in the Mayoral race. A hand recount provided yet another number and, with a difference of one vote between two candidates, we still aren’t sure that every vote was actually counted.

There is no more important bulwark of democracy than a fair vote count. It’s time we used all the tools available to make that happen.

What a lovely couple

2005-04-27T16:41:00.000-07:00

George and Abdullah will be out looking for tent furniture soon.

Dodging bullets

2005-04-22T09:11:00.000-07:00

During a visit to New Orleans last week, a city official told me in one succinct sentence what is the primary civic concern. “We have,” he told me, “one homicide a day.”

In 2002, a new Mayor, C. Ray Nagin, was elected in a surprise victory over the old establishment. In fact, he was the first person in nearly 60 years elected to the office that had not held a previous elected position. He immediately began a criminal and administrative probe of the City’s workforce which resulted in the arrest of 84 city workers and the restructuring of the Utilities Department. A new world had come to the Big Easy.

Now, Mayor Nagin is bringing his understanding of technology (he was the VP and general manager of Cox Communications in Louisiana prior to his election) to law enforcement. Beginning in the highest crime district in the City, high definition closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras are being deployed which will enable the police to monitor its most troublesome streets.

The camera feeds are available to a specified group of users and can be monitored from any computer connected to the Internet. Therefore, any authorized user is no more than the closest computer away from being able to see, in real time, what is going on throughout that district.

The Mayor is a regular user, taking some time each day to switch from camera to camera to see what is going on. He has, in fact, called the Chief of Police to tell him of some “unusual” activity he has observed. In one case, a police unit was dispatched and a drug deal was caught in the works.

The use of technology is even more important to New Orleans than it might be in other places since about 90% of the felony arrests they make fail for the lack of a witness willing to testify about an event. The introduction of CCTV provides the police with “witnesses that are not able to be intimidated.” As a result, a growing number of guilty pleas are being entered as the bad guys see what evidence the police have against them.

Technology does not replace good police work. It also does not replace the impact of a person on patrol. However, it does provide public safety with a tool that can help determine how limited resources are most effectively deployed, how criminals get taken off the street quickly and, as important, how a city dependent on tourism can say to the people visiting them that they will have a safe trip.

New Orleans is a city of extraordinary appeal. For me, the ideal trip there involves two dinners in their fine restaurants and a breakfast of beignets at the Café du Monde. The French Quarter is unique to the United States for its charm and its sense of historical place.

Now, this “Old World” city has become a leader in the new world of technology. Its residents and its visitors will be all the better off for it.

Check the rocker panels

2005-04-05T15:34:00.000-07:00

So, it seems that when the FBI was working the case of Terry Nichols, (you remember, one of the two guys we found guilty of the Oklahoma City bombing), they didn't bother to check the nooks and crannies of his house. A dozen years later, they went back and, lo and behold, they found enough explosives to do another large job.

Luckily, it seems, no one else knew about this cache. Had they known, they could easily have gone in and supplied themselves for another act of domestic terrorism. And does anybody get fired. Oh, no. The FBI asks for MORE power under the a new Patriot Act.

Are we that gullible? Is Congress so cowed by the right winger that they don't see that the agency needs fixing before it should be given more power?

Dialing 9-1-1 and getting nothing

2005-03-31T15:44:00.000-08:00

In the continuing search for alternatives to the telephone monopolies that have given us higher prices and reduced service, a growing number of people are considering using the Internet for their home and business communications needs. The service, known as Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, is provided by companies like Vonage, the country’s largest Internet-based telephone service provider.

The problem is that Vonage, according to a lawsuit filed ten days ago by the Texas Attorney General, fails to make clear to its customers that its service does not include traditional 9-1-1 emergency contact. The lawsuit was brought following a Houston family’s attempts to contact emergency dispatch. They were thwarted in those attempts when their house was invaded by burglars. Two victims were shot multiple times while a daughter tried in vain to contact 9-1-1. Unknown to them, their Vonage system didn’t interconnect with the city’s emergency services.

Internet-based telephone system providers are not regulated at the federal or state levels. While some VoIP providers do interconnect with local 9-1-1, it is usually not automatic. In Vonage’s case, for example, a customer has to take some additional steps to enable the system to do that.

But even when they do, the calls from most of the VoIP providers, including Vonage, don’t necessarily go directly to the emergency call center. They often are routed through the police department’s administrative lines, requiring rerouting. This capability is often only available when the front office is staffed, which is usually during regular business hours.

The system also will not provide a caller ID number, which most emergency dispatch centers use to track a call when the person on the line is unable to speak or provide cogent addresses.

VoIP is a fast growing service, having made a ten-fold leap in subscribers in just the last year. According to Vonage, they have 500,000 subscribers in the US. As is often the case, legislation and regulation have not kept up with the speed of technological change. In this case, the Federal Communications Commission and state legislators all over the country must act quickly to help save lives.

Enormous amounts of money have been provided by the public, through fees on your telephone bills, and spent by local and state public safety agencies to create an emergency calling system that is powerful and effective. Calling 9-1-1 is high on the list of the things our children are taught about what to do in an emergency situation.

By not informing their customers, Vonage may be responsible for a growing number of injuries and deaths associated with the inability to contact 9-1-1. It is time to give that responsibility some teeth and force all VoIP providers to make automatic 9-1-1 interconnection a requirement.

Being Bill Clinton

2005-03-25T13:35:00.000-08:00

At the opening of his Presidential Library in Little Rock, Arkansas late last year, former President Bill Clinton met up with an old friend of 30 years. The friend is a Pentecostal minister who, despite having very different views on issues such as abortion, supported Clinton in the 1992 and 1996 elections. In fact, this minister was helpful in getting a law passed in his state to provide equal rights in employment for gays, a point that surprised, and pleased the former President. Perhaps his many discussion of issues with the minister had done some good after all, he thought.

However, the minister told Clinton he had to confess something to him. This amused the former President. “If you have to confess to me, it must be real bad,” he told his friend. The minister told Clinton he had voted for Bush in 2004. When asked why, the minister said, “Because you guys stopped talking to me.”

The problem with being Bill Clinton is that you possess a brilliant political mind, have the ability to communicate in a way that people listen to and understand complex issues, have energy and drive galore, yet have, hopefully, decades of life left after having reached the highest possible level of political attainment.

Bill Clinton spoke last Tuesday and Wednesday at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion as part of the Music Center’s Distinguished Speakers series. (It was originally scheduled for Disney Hall, but the response was so great that they moved it into the larger Chandler.) Both nights sold out quickly.

He looks great. He is slim and is keeping himself in great shape following his heart bypass surgery last fall. Clinton’s list of activities seems endless, ranging from tsunami relief to assisting small female-owned businesses in India gain economic traction. One wonders whether he lives in the same 24 hour a day environment the rest of us do.

Yet all this world wide activity has not diminished his understanding of the nuances of the American political scene. He knows why the Democrats came up short in 2004. He knows how to fix it. And, he’ll spend time with anyone who wants to make it happen.

Clinton doesn’t buy the generally accepted notion that the Republicans stirred up the Christian fundamentalist base and that it caught the Democrats by surprise. In fact, he believes that the Democrats gave the Republicans the opening, just like with his minister friend, by assuming these people were lost to the party.

He said groups, such as the Catholic Church, became involved at unprecedented levels in the election because the vacuum created by marginalizing people with different views caused them to feel abandoned and fearful of what the Democrats might do if given power. “I didn’t realize Jesus was involved with any political party,” Clinton said. “One of the reasons they hated me so much was that whenever they tried this stuff, it didn’t work. As soon as the Democrats let it work, they won. We’ve got to stop letting it work.”

Each evening was divided in two parts. For about 45 minutes, the former President spoke without notes and using the classic Clinton body language of outstretched arms seeming to reach out to the audience. He is an engrossing speaker whether you agree with him or not. (I remember one National League of Cities conference in Washington late I his second term when a crowd of thousands, Republicans and Democrats, were held spellbound by an off-the-cuff talk about race and its meaning American society. After the speech, one of my Republican colleagues shook his head and said, “Now, I understand.”)

The key element of his speech was focused on explaining his view of the world in the 21^st Century. “The last century,” he said, “was about interdependence. This is good, bad and both.” The good included the interweaving of technology, especially the Internet, into the fabric of the world. What is happening in Lebanon, or in the Ukraine or even China is enhanced, perhaps even completely made possible, by the ability of people to communicate with each other and learn more about the outside world.

On the bad side was 9/11. The interdependence we need for our economic survival, as well as the technology to facilitate communication, enabled people from disparate countries to coordinate an event whose worldwide economic impact is still being felt.

The mixed results can be seen in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, who are intensely interdependent. In 1998, when things were going well, no Israelis were killed by terrorist action. Since Arafat rejected the peace offering at Camp David in 2000 and the Intifada began, 1500 Israelis (average age: 24) and 4000 Palestinians (average age: 18) have been killed. Their interdependence kept them from separating enough to allow room to cool down.

Continuing on the Middle East, Clinton says that Arafat’s death and the election of Mahmoud Abbas. Clinton believes that Abbas has a short period of time in which to turn this interdependence from bad to good. While it may not be an exact role model for other nascent democratic movements, the success of Abbas would have enormous impact on the region.

As for the growing sense of democracy in the Middle East, Clinton expressed great praise for the brave Lebanese who have risen up to call for the removal of Syrian troops from their country. However, he said that a great deal of the credit goes to the Bush administration for involving the French President Jacques Chirac in the process. This example, as well as the involvement of Britain, Germany and France in the negotiations regarding Iran and China, South Korea and Japan in the North Korean issue indicates an understanding of the limitations of unilateralism.

“Whatever you feel about how we got into Iraq, this must work,” he said. “There should be no timetable for our withdrawal. We need to be there until it works.” However, the experience of our involvement in Iraq has made very clear that we do not have the infrastructure to do it again.

However, the primary focus of Clinton’s address was about the need to move from interdependence to an integrated global community expressing shared responsibilities, benefits and values. This community does not, according to Clinton, mean giving up sovereignty. However, it does mean understanding that there is a common structure of need that must be satisfied.

The first part of this structure is security. Without that nothing can succeed. Next is understanding that we can’t kill or occupy everybody who disagrees with us. “We need to fix the terrorism problem, but it must be done through health, economics and stability. New democracies most definitely have need of that.”

Third, “we need more organizational cooperation on both governmental and non-governmental levels.” The reason we have any kind of stability in Afghanistan is not just because of our 20,000 troops, but the addition of 20,000 troops from NATO. “The only way,” he said, “we can keep North Korea from becoming a nuclear Wal-Mart is by working with the other powers in the region.” The $200 billion we will have spent in Iraq makes it, in constant dollars, as expensive for us as World War I. we don’t have the resources, particularly in an era of huge deficits, to do it again.

An additional growing force in the world is that of NGOs, or non-governmental organizations. In situations, such as tsunami relief, these groups have been the most effect means of getting help to the people who need it immediately. “We need to cooperate and coordinate to make the best use of this powerful new resource,” Clinton said.

Finally, it is important to make America a better and better model of the value of an integrated global structure. “Our present economic policy,” he said, “undermines this. Tax cuts are not a good example of shared responsibility.

“We’ve never had four tax cuts in time of war. But worse, our policies have driven 80% of our national savings to service the deficit. Over 40% of our new debt is owned by other countries. We are making China richer every day while making ourselves poorer.” Other world leaders have told Clinton that if they did what the Bush administration has done economically, they’d “be in jail.”

He cited hope for the future, however, using a quote from Winston Churchill. Before the US entry into World War II, Franklin Roosevelt did everything he could, surreptitiously, to help the British. The Lend-Lease program is the best example. When hounded by the press and other political leaders about why the US wasn’t joining them in the war effort, Churchill told them to be patient. “The US.” he said, ‘always does the right thing…after they have exhausted every other alternative.”

The next 45 minutes was an interview by NPR (KCRW) radio newsman Warren Olney. He hoped Clinton would be expansive in his answers, probably a request he really didn’t need to make. The answers were chock full of information, but, as is the former President’s style, never boring.

The natural first question about Hillary’s plans was deftly avoided by saying that “she hadn’t told him and, he hoped, he would be disappointed if he weren’t the first to know.” He had enormous praise for his wife’s efforts as Senator from New York, indicating that she is the Senator with the most bi-partisan bills over the last 4 years. She is up for reelection in 2006. After that, she will consider what comes later.

The next question dealt with social security. Clinton’s answer was a perfect example of his ability to speak to a complicated subject and deliver it in an understandable manner for everyone. In short, he does not agree completely with the Bush privatization plan, but feels that it may be a good start. His problem is that it doesn’t resolve any of the intrinsic problems with the system.

Clinton has no problem with adding a layer of privatization on top of a base level program, but does not see the value in diminishing the system, thus likely adding more future seniors to the level of poverty. For 18% of all seniors today, social security is their only source of income. This does not include those people on disability income or survivor’s benefits, which the Bush plan doesn’t seem to deal with.

Congress has been using the Social Security surplus as cover for its own spending. This year’s deficit of $400 billion is actually $550 billion. The $150 billion “borrowed” from Social Security makes it look smaller. In addition, the trustees of the plan, who are responsible for future projections on the system’s viability, have consistently moved the target.

During Clinton’s last year, it was supposed to go bankrupt in 2027. Now, it is 2048. Projections out 50 to 75 years are notoriously inaccurate. But something needs to be done, he said. There is a short term problem when the baby boomers hit the system. After that, it returns to normal again, as there are relatively more and more younger workers to fill the system’s coffers.

In closing, Clinton returned to his theme of shared responsibility, benefits and values. “We make a big mistake,” he said, “in thinking that we have to dislike the people we disagree with. That is a miserable way to live. We need to debate our differences, not denounce our opponents.”

Once China, for example, becomes rich, they will make choices about how to spend their money. Will it be for defense or for infrastructure? “Having shared responsibilities, benefits and values will make that decision one that will be better for us and the rest of the world."

I guess the era of big government ISN’T over

2005-03-23T11:31:00.000-08:00

No matter what position you may take on the sad situation regarding Terry Schaivo, the woman in Florida whose life, and possible death, are the subject of strongly felt emotions on both sides, the one sure thing that has emerged is the desire of the Federal government to work its way into some of the most intimate decisions a family can make.

The problem is not this particular case itself. For some, it is the place of government to protect those who seem not to be in a position to protect themselves. That is the basis for a great deal of disability law. But for others who understand that no matter how much a piece of legislation is aimed at a specific case, they are worried that history has proven that it never really is.

Why should someone in local government be concerned about this? Because local government is the place where the impact of these decisions is felt the most. Rarely, however, does any compensation come with the demand. In the local government business, these are known as unfunded mandates.

Most of the time, the issues associated with these unfunded mandates are the result of regulation, such as storm water runoff, etc. However, if the Federal government were to get itself more involved in decision-making at a personal level, like in the Schaivo case, the costs of locally financed programs, such as the health care system, may be severely impacted. And this would be on top of an already overburdened and underfunded system that is today not delivering the care it was created to perform. Will they provide the money to make it work? Unlikely.

The court system, overstetched with its present case load, also could melt down from lawsuit after lawsuit from family members unhappy with the decisions made by those supposedly provided with authority over other family members. Challenges to living wills could increase the difficulty in resolving family issues once thought simple to manage. Will they provide the money to make it work? Unlikely.

Once again, this is not about the Schaivo case, but about what happens if the precedent created by what Congress has done is taken to a logical result. As has been mentioned many times in this space, the only immutable law of government is the Law of Unintended Consequences. This situation seems ripe for proving that that law is always actively in play.

The Schaivo case will not produce a result that satisfies everyone. It is not a dispute that can be mediated. Either she lives or she dies. Yet, when it is decided, it can be finished.

Congress, however, should understand that what it does rarely is finished. By getting involved in this case, it may have opened Pandora’s box. I hope they understand and send resources to ease the burden.

But, I doubt it.

A cautionary tale from "The Independent" in Britain

2005-03-23T11:29:00.000-08:00

Paul Cooper never found himself short of friends in the area of north Manchester where he grew up. He was known for his devotion to his dog, Blue, an interest in cookery and an optimistic outlook, despite a motorcycle crash that meant he needed a walking stick to get about.

But a positive contribution to community life counts for little when a neighbourhood starts feeding on fears of crime and takes the law into its own hands.

A murder investigation was under way yesterday after a gang of men near Mr Cooper's home at Heywood wrongly convinced themselves he was a paedophile and beat him to death at his flat.

Detectives were forced to stress Mr Cooper's innocence after being hampered in their investigation by locals who are unwilling to give evidence because they believe he was a sex offender.

Mr Cooper's disability hampered his attempts to defend himself against the attack, by several young men, which took place at about 11.45pm on Friday, at his flat in Walton Close, a concrete-clad block of flats near Heywood town centre.

He was subjected to a "brutal and prolonged" attack, detectives say, and was found with serious head injuries in his bathroom. He was pronounced dead on arrival at Fairfield General Hospital.

Despite the police's insistence that Mr Cooper, 40, was an entirely innocent victim of "mistaken identity", the climate of bigotry and vitriol that contributed to his death was still palpable in Heywood yesterday. "Some people deserve to be killed," said a drinker at the Starkey Arms pub before issuing an obscenity about Mr Cooper and his dog.

Greater Manchester Police have come across the same sentiment as they have set about solving the crime. "We are trying to dispel the myth that has developed in the area that Paul was involved in paedophile activities," said Detective Chief Inspector Jeff Mahon of Greater Manchester Police. "We have checked our records and there is no trace of anything of that nature. However, the myth appears to have led to tragic consequences. Paul was a nice lad who did not deserve to die."

Mr Cooper's death appears to reflect the nationwide climate of suspicion and fear being fuelled by growing public concern over crime and punishment.

Rising hostility toward minority groups, clamour for tough sentences against offenders and a sinister desire for retribution are being driven by an increasingly prevalent right-wing agenda.

Are the values screwed up?

2005-03-22T11:09:00.000-08:00

Hours and hours of bloviated Congressional speechifying was spent on whether or not a woman who said she wanted to die can. Not a second has been spent on the ability of a 16 year old, who now seems to have been having a love affair with Adolf Hitler, to get a gun and run through a school killing indiscriminately (after, of course, popping off his grandparents).

Right to life, huh?

The Family Man?

2005-03-04T17:15:00.000-08:00

Political campaigns are often filled with rhetoric that, in retrospect, seems impossible to have been uttered. Promises are made, positions are taken and comparisons are cast which have no basis in fact or possibility. This bombast, sadly, is an element of the usual context in which people approach their decision about their vote. Rarely does the rhetoric approach the responsibility of the offices they are all seeking.

Then, there is the more subtle campaign. That’s the one where innuendo and discomfort with the details of the other candidates’ lives are brought into the mix. Usually, these are not found in the words that are written in campaign material or spoken in debates. They are presented in one-on-one discussions or small gatherings, where no reporters are present and the only ones who hear these personal attacks are the ones meant to hear it.

The issues raised there are the ones people don’t talk about in public. Yet, they actually define the attacking candidate. They are about prejudice. They are about alleged failings in people because they don’t follow the same path the “proper” candidate follows. They are about lies that can’t be spoken in public for fear of being shown for what they are.

The idea that a person is a “family man” purely because they have a wife and a couple of kids defies the truth that we have seen far too often in the newspapers and on television. How many of these “symbols of perfection” have ended up the perpetrator of some criminal activity causing their unsuspecting neighbors to declare, “What a surprise. He was a good family man…?”

The public status of one’s personal relationship tells nothing about the individual, as we all should very well know. After all, don’t more than 50% of marriages end up failing? Yet, some continue to fall into the trap. (It also makes me wonder why the gay community should want to get married, considering how completely the straight community has screwed it up.)

To many who believe in this “family man” ethic, relationships have to fit very strict guidelines. To them, even my own relationship, 35 years of marriage with no children, is a lesser one. After all, isn’t marriage for procreation?

No, it is not. The millions of people who have no children whether by choice, or by happenstance, should not have their lives denigrated in that way. There is no demonstrable example of anyone being a better public official because they had 2.3 children.

The problems facing our city, county, state or country can best be met by smart, involved, principled people who speak directly on what are the problems and the possible solutions. These are people who put their service to the communities they wish to represent at the forefront. Lots of people with very differing backgrounds fit that bill. It is time we focused on what is being said rather than the personal details of speaker.

Fiddling while cities burn

2005-03-01T12:23:00.000-08:00

While much of the attention of the public has been focused on the arcane details of the President’s Social Security plan, the fiscal rape of city budgets is going on unnoticed.

The FY 2006 budget proposal issued by the White House last week includes devastating cuts to programs that have worked extremely well in educating our children, protecting our communities and assisting our least fortunate. As an example, the proposed budget includes elimination of the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Program, COPS hiring grants and likely cuts to Section 8 housing.

CDBG programs help cities to fund job creation, community/economic development and home ownership/affordable housing programs. According to the National League of Cities, last year CDBG created or retained 90,637 jobs. For every one dollar of CDBG funding, approximately $2.79 in private funding was leveraged for economic development projects, like shopping centers and grocery stores.

The COPS hit is particularly egregious since it includes police hiring (police on the street), juvenile programs (particularly after school) and justice assistance (anti-gang activity) grant cuts for programs that have been proven over the years to make communities safer. This COPS program has been credited with putting over 100,000 police officers on the street.

It has funded technology initiatives that have freed up officers from mundane tasks to get them out from behind their desks and on patrol where they can do the most good. It has worked exceptionally well. There is no excuse for cutting it.

The Section 8 cuts hurt the people who live in our communities who need a little bit of help to maintain a residence. The Beach Cities have always had a limited supply of this housing, but for those who need the help, it could be the difference from having to uproot one’s children from schools they are familiar with. It is not a way of life, but a helping hand for a neighbor.

All of these cuts are being piled on additional reductions in city revenues from the lastet swipe by the Governor at local government budgets. Millions of dollars originally intended for local government are being rerouted to Sacramento to help alleviate the State’s fiscal woes. Add this to the ongoing ERAF raid of funds since the early 1990’s and local governments are in a world of hurt. Billions of local dollars are ending up in Sacramento.

Proposition 1A, the fiscal protection initiative for local governments approved by the voters in November, does not take effect until the 2006-7 fiscal year. In the meantime, belts will be worn tighter at City Halls all over California and the country. The cuts in service will be painful. Just remember where they all came from.

The Law of Unintended Consequences

2005-02-04T17:31:00.000-08:00

I guess Vinnie from Chicago didn't show to fix the election.

The mullahs seem to have won the election in Iraq and made the lives of 1300 Americans the price for the creation of an Islamic state. I wonder if, after searching for WMDs, that was the goal most of these men and women were seeking.

It proves the most immutable law of government: The Law of Unintended Consequences. Let's stretch our imaginations and say we went into Iraq to bring them democracy. True democracy brings surprises. Just ask Allawi.

So now what do we do? Do we stay and protect a government that may very well oppose our attempts to get the REAL bad guys in the region, the Iranian mullahs, to get rid of their nascent nukes? Do we protect a government that will, at its core, foment a hatred for one of our most precious pieces of foreign policy: our support for Israel?

What a mess we have gotten ourselves into. I guess the Powell Doctrine is right. You break it...you own it. Unless you pay and leave the pieces in the store.

I think we have paid enough with our blood. Sadly, it looks as though all the effort, pain and horror was wasted.

On to Social Security.

It ain't as easy as it looks

2005-01-27T13:05:00.000-08:00

From the New York Times:

"If individual investment accounts become an integral part of Social Security, as President Bush is proposing, what will happen to workers who become disabled before they retire?

"Will they be allowed to draw on the savings in their retirement accounts? Will their standard Social Security benefits be increased to make up for the fact that because they have worked fewer years, their personal accounts are likely to be smaller than those of retirees? If they do receive higher benefits, will they have to forfeit their investment savings?

"These are among the dozens of questions posed in a report issued on Wednesday by the National Academy of Social Insurance, a private, nonpartisan organization of academics and government officials who specialize in issues like Social Security, Medicare and unemployment compensation....

"...Currently, 16 percent of those receiving monthly Social Security checks are people under retirement age who cannot work because they are disabled. They receive the same benefits, based on their earnings in their working years, that they would receive if they were retired. This is a central element in the safety net provided by Social Security.

"Social Security provides more than half the total income for about half of these disabled people and more than 90 percent of the income for about one-fifth of them.

"The premise behind almost all proposals to divert tax money into private accounts is that ordinary Social Security benefits would be reduced to save the government money, but theoretically retirees would be at least as well off because income from their private accounts would make up for the lower benefits.

"But this would not work well for people who become disabled. Their accounts would not provide as much income as those of retirees, since they would have had fewer working years to put money into accounts."

AND YOU THOUGHT THIS WAS GOING TO BE EASY, HUH!!!!!

Knickers atwist

2005-01-27T11:06:00.000-08:00

Didn't the Clinton adminstration catch hell for something just like this? Guess this is the "freedomization" of repressive regimes.

NEWS ITEM:

"The acquisition of IBM's PC business by China's largest PC maker, Lenovo Group Ltd., may pose a threat to U.S. national security and deserves a closer review by the U.S. Congress and government agencies before a decision is made on whether or not to approve the deal, three U.S. lawmakers said this week.

"Those concerns were set out in a letter yesterday to U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow that was signed by three Republican congressmen: House International Relations Committee Chairman Henry Hyde, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter and House Small Business Committee Chairman Don Manzullo.

'Specifically, the congressmen worried that the $1.75 billion deal could transfer advanced technology and corporate assets to the Chinese government, along with licensable or export-controlled technology, and may result in certain U.S. government contracts involving PCs being fulfilled by the Chinese government, according to a statement released by the House Armed Services Committee."

Must have been the Cliff's Notes

2005-01-26T15:59:00.000-08:00

Allegedly, W's favorite book is Natan Sharansky's The Case for Democracy.

According to Chris Suellentrop in Slate, "most of the discussion surrounding Sharansky's book has focused on what he calls 'the town square test' for free societies. Here's how Sharansky defines the test, which Condoleezza Rice endorsed during her Senate confirmation hearings: 'Can a person walk into the middle of the town square and express his or her views without fear of arrest, imprisonment, or physical harm?'

"Sharansky uses this test to devise the central policy recommendation in The Case for Democracy: He wants to 'turn a government's preservation of the right to dissent—the town square test—into the standard of international legitimacy,' and he recommends sanctions and pariah status for the nations that fail it."

So, let's see. How many of our ALLIES and major trading partners pass this test? Saudi Arabia? Egypt? Uzbekistan? Russia? China?

Must be ripe for an invasion.

Is there a greater bullshit artist than Ahhnold?

2005-01-25T15:54:00.000-08:00

From his meeting with the editorial board of the Orange County Register, Ahhnold tries to explain what a special interest is. I think the steroids have addled what's left of his brain.

Q: You talked about special interests, but you're going to raise $13 million to qualify initiatives from special interests. Could you define what exactly is a special interest?

A: I think any group that is interested in a specific thing. An industry, a business, a union, all are special interests.

Q: Does that include businesses seeking state contractsor whose businesses are affected by regulations and who come to Sacramento to lobby your administration?

A: I think it's very important to differentiate between lashing out at special interests having control over our legislators versus lashing out at special interests. There's no reason to lash out at special interests. There's only a reason to lash out and say, "I'm against the special interests paying the politicians for their campaigns, then they owe favors back, then they go in and they write the laws."

I mean, you know, those guys are the ghost writers of our laws up there in Sacramento. That has to stop. And so therefore what I want the people to know, is that the decisions and the things that you hear about, right now with education to take an example, taking money from education, those are the special interests. Because they have an interest in keeping things the way they are. Just because there's more money for them, there's more money for everybody. That's what they want to do.

What I'm saying is that the legislators can listen to them, then make the decisions that are right for the people, not for the special interests. And the special interests will be very, very powerful up there and throwing their money around and they will be throwing their power around and the legislators get intimidated by that.

So therefore they make decisions based on what decisions the politicians should be making, not what is best for the people.

And so what I am saying is, we have to make decisions, the politicians, the legislators up there, should listen to the people, not the special interests. The special interests are there, they've always been there. That's fine. But don't get influenced and don't make decisions based on what's best for them. Make decisions on what's best for the people.

And the special interests will then be out there campaigning and they will be spending money and for these various initiativesor against initiatives. I mean you see it, you write about it. And they are out there. I want to let people know that those people are not working for your interests, they are working for them. So always be conscious of that.

Q: Is the Chamber of Commerce a special interest?

A: Of course. The Chamber of Commerce is interested in helping the businesses of California. And then there are special interests out there that are businesses. All of them, the key thing is not to go and say that they are bad. It's just that their influence - if they have influence on the legislators, that is evil and bad. Because then they do not represent the people any more. They represent the special interests. That's what we see over and over, and that's what I'd like to break, that habit. Let them know that this time it is over, we have to fight that, we have to do everything we can to fight that.

Heh?????????????????

Lies, damned lies and Social Security

2005-01-19T16:52:00.000-08:00

The biggest problem with Social Security is not the generally accepted, but highly disputed, proposition that it will not deliver any benefits to our children's children when they get older. The biggest problem is that many of the proposed solutions are worse than anything the present system offers.

Two statements drive me crazy:

1) "The system doesn't deliver a return on investment that one could get in the secuities market." Of course, it all depends on what you call ROI. The law now requires that the Social Security Administration invest its enormous surplus only in government bonds. This clearly is not as much as one can get in the stock market. But it is much, much safer, as we all sadly learned in the "dot-bomb" years.

The REAL ROI is how much you ultimately get back from the system compared to what you put in. In this case, the primary variable is how long you live. Live to 66, and your investment doesn't pay out. Live to 90 and you make out like a bandit.

This is actually the key question. When should somebody start getting benefits? If one is pushed into retirement at 65, the system is being stressed more than if you let a person retire when they wish...very likely later than that arbitrary time frame.

2) "People should take control of their own investing." Many of these same people can't balance their own checkbook or keep from maxing out the multiple credit cards they've built up over their lives.

What happens if someone blows it all? Isn't the government going to be dealing with their needs anyway, but at a higher cost to the system? No one is going to be left out in the cold.

It is time for the Bush administration to stop thinking "pie in the sky" and try to deal with some real issues regarding social security. Why should the payroll tax be capped, thus making the system highly regressive? Why shouldn't there be means testing for benefits? Why shouldn't the later retirement options be sped up so that people dip into the system when they want it rather than some arbitary age?

And, one other thing, W, a symposium on ANYTHING offers disparate voices, not just the ones you want to hear. Grow up! It's OK to hear arguments you don't agree with.

You have the big chair. Use it more wisely.

The pink elephant in the room

2005-01-18T17:12:00.000-08:00

All these blovine Senators and not one of them, save Barbara Boxer, would say to Condoleeza Rice during her confirmation hearing, "Hey. You lied to us the last time. Why should we think you are telling us the truth now?"

No matter how smart, how dedicated, how controlled, how seemingly unflappable Dr. Rice was during today's hearing, she has a stain on her that no one, save Boxer, wants to talk about.

So she will become Secretary of State and, once again, a senior politico gets away with murder. In her case over 1300 Americans and an untold number of Iraqis.

Ah, ain't government great!!!!!

The co-respondent

2005-01-10T17:53:00.000-08:00

Yet another house has been tumbled by falling mud. One would think we would have learned about where to build and, more importantly, not build houses.

California is a paradise with natural disaster looming over the horizon. This is the pact with the devil that all Californians make. However, there should be some adult supervision to keep us from expanding our opportunities for folly.

When we build in fire zones, underneath muddy hillsides, cantilevered off of cliffs or in an historic floodplain, the people who should be telling us to rethink our decision are the insurance companies. They understand the risk. But by writing policies at reasonable prices to cover some, if not all of the cost of rebuilding, they have become enablers.

These companies provide a false sese of security that what goes away can be replaced. But lives can't. Nor can the less terminal, but still important, memories and memorabilia.

It is up to the insurance carriers to make the cost of placing one's home and kin in danger an expensive proposition. Hopefully, this will create a sense of responsibility among the buyers of these properties.

Human nature is such that we can never keep people from putting themselves in harm's way. However, we can make it so that they have to think long and hard about doing it. Since the pocketbook usually attracts the most attention, that should be where it hurts.

The fraud known as Ahhnold – Part 2 of many

2005-01-10T17:49:00.000-08:00

If there was any doubt that Arnold Schwarzenegger was governing in a parallel universe, last week’s State of the State message should have proven the case. The self-described anti-politician announced a policy of complete political control of state institutions in the Governor’s office. One man rule. It sounds like he may have listened to his father more than he admits.

Ahhnold’s Four Points were, on the surface, statements of populism. In fact, they are the seeds of oligarchy. Ahhnold doesn’t like the fact that he couldn’t convince people to support his candidates, so the rules must be changed. He doesn’t like the fact that he made a deal with the teacher’s union last year, so he unilaterally abrogates it and blames the victim for the crime.

He claims that California has a spending, not a revenue problem, while piling on initiative after initiative that does nothing but increase spending without any revenue to offset them. Finally, he claims that commissioners make too much money while meeting not often enough, when 96% of the commissions he wishes to end offer stipends of only about $100 per meeting.

The last of the points is a complete joke and is indicative of why this Governor has become the one most assistive to the special interests. After all, most of the commissions and review boards he wishes to put an end to exist for the protection of the consumers against the people who have given Ahhnold most of his enormous political war chest. Now, I wonder, why are they on the first target list? Could it be payback?

Schwarzenegger rode into office on a tide of disdain for Gray Davis due to his mishandling of the deficit, the energy crisis and for being addicted to raising campaign money. In over a year, the deficit has gotten worse, there is no energy policy and even more campaign money than ever before has been raised.

The difference between Ahhnold and Gray is that the present Governor shovels the BS better than the previous one. But that is not governing. That is being a sow to the thirsty mouths of the rich and powerful.

The Legislature needs to come up with its own plans for the future structure of California, if only to protect its position as an equal branch of government. If they don’t, we will be a Gubernatorial dictatorship as far as the eye can see.

And Republicans should beware. The Law of Unintended Consequences, the only immutable law of government, will eventually rear its ugly head and give that power to a Democrat. Think about whether that’s the government you would want to live under.

The problem with merit pay is just the beginning

2005-01-07T14:45:00.000-08:00

Ahhhnold's State of the State speech was filled with the usual yada-yada that occupy those useless speeches. However, as he reached his Four Points, through which he plans to change California government as we know it, we came to see that the turning of the New Year has brought with it a complete erasure of all agreements and events that occurred in 2004. Like a governmental Magic Slate.

In particular is the complete screwing the education establishment has gotten. Last year, at the height of the negotiations on keeping the lights on for 2004-05, Ahhnold made a deal that would keep his hands off their future revenue in exchange for a couple of billion dollars of anticipated revenue. Now he wants to renege on the deal.

In addition, he wants to add the requirement that teacher pay be linked to a merit system. Good teachers will be rewarded. Poor teachers won't.

From a purely logical prespective, this makes sense. Practically, it can't. After all, who is responsible if a parent doesn't provide an environment supporting the things the teacher has fought so hard to instill in a student?

This student hasn't succeeded because of his/her parents, not the teacher. Maybe we should sterilize those parents who prove to be non-supportive of the education of their children. It makes about as much sense.

Ahhnold loves sound bite policy making. The problem is that we are left holding the bag. We still have a huge deficit. Ahhnold has put Gray Davis to shame regarding fund raising. (But, they aren't special interests. Only the nurses, teachers, police and fire associations, etc. are.)

He also got his pride hurt when none of the people he backed for election the the State Legislature won. Toughen up, Ahhnold. This isn't the pattycake of Hollywood. This is REAL hardball.

Who knew Ahhnold would take the wusses way out and blame everything on somebody else. Nice superhero.

Tsunami Shame

2005-01-04T17:04:00.000-08:00

The lateral two-step being danced by the upper echelons of the Bush Administration may just be the embarassment over having been caught asleep at the switch when the tsunami hit South Asia. I hope it is, because the other alternative is even more embarassing...that this administration, seeing that the devastation was taking place in a part of the world that has little geopolitical importance in today's Iraq-centric world, chose to ignore it.

The cause and effect from a United Nations bureaucrat calling the US "stingy" to the sudden outpouring of aid cannot be missed. Maybe it's just that everybody in and around the White House is preparing for their next job.

Colin Powell must either feel that he is already out the door and being ignored or that he has lost any sense of the "magic" that made him a political superstar in the run up to the 2000 election. I hope it is the former, but after four years of kowtowing to the Bushies and trumping up evidence of WMD, it is hard to know whether he has any of himself left.

The shame of it all is that is was totally unnecessary. If W had only come out immediately and said that "we will be there to help as soon as we know what is needed," none of this would have happened. But, considering how disciplined this White House has been, it leads one to believe that they really didn't care all that much. After all, you don't bother W in Crawford unless you absolutely have to. Just ask Richard Clarke.

The United States now has added so much additional fodder to the "why I hate America" song because if this. I don't know if even four years will expunge it. We seem sure to have to wait until 2009 for someone else to try to make amends. In the meantime, thousands, including the homeless, orphaned and disaffected will join the terror cells and many more will die because of that.

Our shame will be washed in blood.

New Year's Promise

2004-12-28T11:47:00.000-08:00

Over the past few months, life, I'm afraid, has gotten in the way of blogging.

I promise during 2005 to return to my blogging ways and provide for you some insight into issues of government at all levels.

Regarding 2005 and the strengthening of Republican power in Washington, there are three things they should remember:

1) Their win was based on an issue, a wedge one at that, and does not mean that people will accept everything they recommend in the same context. The issue of gay marriage, which was the driving force to get people to the polls, mostly via ballot initiatives, doesn't have "legs." For the most part, people don't really care what people do in their bedrooms. Nor are they much in opposition to people obtaining rights through "civil unions."

What ticked people off was the incursion of this issue into the institution of marriage. (Considering how much the heterosexual community has screwed this "sacred vow" up, it is a wonder any group would want in, but so be it.) A line was crossed. But this doesn't mean that everything that follows will be bought by those who oppose gay marriage.

The same situation happens in the area of abortion. Most people believe that a woman has a right to choose what to do with her body. However, certain procedures, especially late term abortions, are opposed by many of these same people.

It is up to the people who are seeking the "privileges" of marriage to weigh their wishes versus the consequences. Somewhat like the Nader voters in 2000 did...and see where it got them.

2) Democrats made significant gains at the state and local levels. In November, at least 5 state legislatures became either completely controlled by the Democrats, or partially so. Four of these were in "red" states. As the Republicans found when they were in the doldrums in the '70's and '80's, a party has to keep building its "bench strength." The Democrats are doing that and will be back in contention very soon.

3) Remember Denver Mayor Pena. After becoming the first Latino Mayor in Denver, he spoke to his supporters and said that, rather than gloating over the Anglos from whom they had just taken power, they needed to "serve everyone, as we had demanded when we were out of power." The partisanship in Washington is worse than it has ever been. It is driven by ideology and not the by the desire to fairly administer a nation which remains strongly divided.

There will be a price to pay. It will come when the inevitable shift of power occurs. It will likely not be pretty as the IOU's for revenge keep building.

Enough for now. Have a Happy New Year and I look forward to communicating to you far more often in 2005.

Finally, some real electoral reform

2004-10-01T16:05:00.000-07:00

The redistricting of Legislative seats following the 2000 census was a demonstration of how far political parties will go to protect themselves and to demonstrate their disdain for the general public.

In California, redistricting is done by the Legislature and, with the approval of the Governor, creates the legislative map for the next ten years. With both the Legislature and the governorship in the hands of the Democrats in 2000, the Republicans had two choices to have any kind of say in the process. They could sue once the maps were released, or they could negotiate a plan in which all their present seats (and incumbents) were protected.

They chose the latter. The result of this has been the creation of primarily one party districts throughout the state. With this single party focus, the real election every two years occurs in the primary and not in November. Under present law, in primaries only party members can vote and turnout is usually low. Thus, the party faithful, usually more radical than the population as a whole, selects your representatives, not you.

On your November ballot are two propositions dealing with this, but only one represents real reform. Proposition 62 enables every voter, no matter what party they belong to, to vote for any candidate they wish. The top two vote getters in the primary will then face each other in the general election, no matter what party they come from. For example, two Republicans, one more moderate, one more conservative, or two Democrats, one more moderate and one more liberal, can face off in November, giving the voters a real choice rather than a rubber stamp.

This system has been in use for years in many cities and counties throughout California as well as in other states across the country. It has worked extremely well in bringing more moderate voices to legislative bodies. These voices are often silenced by the party-controlled primary system where extremism more likely prevails.

Proposition 60, placed on the ballot by the Legislature at the behest of the two major political parties, is a cynical means by which this status quo is maintained. It requires that, no matter how few votes they get in a primary, a member of every party is placed on the November ballot. In fact, the only reason this item is on the ballot is to confuse voters, since the process listed in the initiative is the same as already exists. No initiative was necessary to implement this system.

However, if both initiatives win and Proposition 60 gets more votes than 62, then the status quo is maintained.

With so many people becoming more and more fed up with the necessity of having to choose among the “lesser of two evils” every November, wouldn’t it be refreshing to actually have a choice you could vote for rather than against? Proposition 62 will lead us in that direction. Give it your consideration.

Is it worth the lives?

2004-09-15T21:34:00.000-07:00

Watching the terrorist attack on the school in North Ossetia, Russia made me wonder what are the criteria for a political leader like President Putin (or, in our case, President Bush) to determine that a specific situation is worth the loss of life to achieve the goal.

Why keep Chechnya? They don't want to be a part of Russia. It doesn't seem to have any natural resources of any value. It must be all about national pride.

When the Soviet Union broke up, many of the sections of the USSR that had been formed into "republics" had the social and political infrastructure to become nations. Regions like Chechnya, Ossetia, etc didn't, so it remained in Russia.

This happenstance has cost a lot of people, partcularly children, their lives.

But, then, not unlike President Bush, Putin has used this situation to restore a great deal of centralized political command and control. In Bush's case, 9/11 and Afghanistan was a rationale (right or wrong) for a policy of war on Iraq. With Putin, this Ossetia attack has been used as a shield for the restoration of dictatorial control in Moscow.

This is not political leadership. It is dictatorship...at the price of the lives of innocents.

Ahhnold Grimm, of fairy tale fame

2004-09-10T15:19:00.000-07:00

Governor Schwarzenegger made a boffo speech to the Republican National Convention a little more than a week ago. Too bad much of it was about as truthful as his promise to Californians that he would be free of the influence of special interests.

It seems that Ahhnold made up the stories about his youth in Austria. His father and uncle probably did fear running into the Russians after the end of the war, but that would be natural since the Russians were merciless with Nazi collaborators. After all, over 10 million Russians died during World War II at the hands the Nazis.

It was fortunate, therefore, that the Schwarzenegger family found itself in the American zone rather than the Russian one. Being in the American zone, by the time Ahhnold was old enough to notice, there were no Russian tanks, just American soldiers, primarily in Jeeps.

The Governor also talked about his distaste for “socialist” Austria. However, during the time he was there, the governments were run by conservatives, either with a majority or in coalition with small middle-of-the-road parties.

Ahhnold’s predeliction for making things up has extended to his time as our Governor. During the recall campaign, he promised that he would make Sacramento free of special interests. He was going to break down the structure of government and recreate it as a leaner, more efficient machine.

Yet, his California Performance Review, the keystone of his government restructuring was privy primarily to the thoughts of those people and companies who had forked over thousands of dollars in campaign contributions. Take energy policy as an example. In true Cheney-like style, he took his advice from ChevronTexaco, who, basically, wrote that policy statement.

Perhaps this proves that he is a real Republican.

When cities and counties heard during the recall campaign that Ahhnold would protect their revenues, they thought they had finally found a champion. However, Ahhnold reneged on that promise, requiring the League of California Cities and the California State Association of Counties to force his hand by gathering sufficient signatures to put a constitutional protection measure on the November ballot.

The Governor finally relented, after a couple of flip-flops, and helped get Proposition 1A on the ballot. This measure, while a compromise, will make it possible for cities, counties and special districts to be more secure in their revenue projections for future years.

This kind of legislation by initiative is not the best way to make public policy, but it was all that was left to these local governments as every other special interest was locking up portions of the state budget for their exclusive use. The only way to really solve this revenue problem is for a true honest broker with solid political capital to be a leader in deconstructing and reconstructing how all levels of government are financed.

However, with Ahhnold’s love of fantasy, he is not one of those we can trust.

Sorry, Ahhnold. No White House for you.

2004-09-01T16:29:00.000-07:00

Any ideas Arnold Schwarzenegger had for running for President died last night after his boffo speech to the Republican Convention.

After all, in order for him to become President, a Constitutional amendment would be required. That means that two-thirds of each house of Congress and three-fourths of the States would need to approve.

However, since nearly every one of the 51 Republican Senators think they can be the next President, why should they make it easier for someone they know would wipe the floor with them into the game. No amendment, no Ahhnold.

But, then again, how many Republicans would want to see a Kennedy as First Lady?

Maybe Kevin Shelley just needed some juice

2004-09-01T09:28:00.000-07:00

Electronic voting is a topic that creates passion even among those who have no clue what anybody is talking about. From a theoretical level, the idea of voting and not providing a paper trail of that vote makes absolutely no sense. However, on a practical level, most voters in the US have been electing people just that way for nearly a half a century.

That’s because the lever style voting booths that are prevalent in Eastern states, especially the most populous like New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio and Illinois, haven’t produced a single piece of paper for any election since around the time of Harry Truman, when they came into general use.

In fact, even in states like California, where punch card voting was used, the votes were tabulated by computer and, when recounted, were merely retabulated by the same computer. No one I have spoken with in the elections community can remember when Californians actually went back to the original pieces of paper to recount. People accepted the computer result and that was it.

So, from a practical perspective, we haven’t used a paper trial in the memory of nearly everyone now voting. Yet, that doesn’t stop the naysayers from perpetuating the urban myth about the preparations for an elections coup in 2004. Suffice it to say that non-electronic shenanigans, like voter roll manipulation, is where the elections fraud focus should be aimed. But that’s not sexy.

One of the leading proponents of the addition of a voter verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) to California’s growing list of electronic systems is Kevin Shelley, our Secretary of State. This position is new to him, since he didn’t have any trouble with electronic voting when, as an Assembly member, he voted to accept money from the Feds under the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) and in recommending to voters that we borrow $250 million to meet the cost sharing requirements of HAVA.

With Shelley’s urging, under legislation just passed but not yet signed, VVPATs will be required by 2006. However, the Legislature, in its “wisdom,” has put a freeze on the spending of HAVA money, which would be used to buy the systems. The cause of the freeze is a legislative audit reviewing, in part, a mailer Shelley was proposing to get more people to become permanent absentee voters. Naturally, Shelley’s name would be plastered all over this mailer. Sounds Quackenbush-like to me.

In addition, the Legislative Joint Audit Committee is concerned about the whether Shelley has diverted HAVA voter information funding only to those areas where Democrats reside, and particularly where old political cronies can benefit. This, it would seem, would be counter to the requirement that, as the Chief Elections Officer of the State, he be neutral in these areas.

In fact, this lack of neutrality is a perfect reason why the Secretary of State should not be an elected official. After all, he relies on contributors to run statewide and, by definition, brings a partisan focus to what should be our most non-partisan job.

With revelations of directing money from state-funded projects to Shelley’s friends also swirling around Sacramento, the joke is that maybe, rather than sitting out the election process in terms of campaign contributions, the electronic voting manufacturers should have paid to play. Then, maybe, they would have gotten a fair hearing.

Just get over it. Legalize gambling, already.

2004-08-26T14:35:00.000-07:00

Last week, Governor Schwarzenegger agreed to a series of “compacts” with five Indian tribes to enable them to build gambling establishments. While there are some additional requirements covering health and safety as well as an agreement requiring coverage by the State’s workers compensation system, much of the deal is favorable to the tribes, including removing the cap on the number of slot machines a casino can operate.

The biggest winner is the Lytton Band of Pomo Indians, who will be able to build a mega-casino in an area the Governor promised would never have one, a highly urbanized area. In fact, this operation in San Pablo, along Interstate 80 east of San Francisco, will have over 5,000 slot machines, more than the MGM Grand in Las Vegas,

The casino would be operated for the tribe by a partnership that includes the Maloof family, owners of the NBA’s Sacramento Kings and the Palms Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. Native Americans all, I’m sure.

The deal might even include a new interchange on I-80, but who would pay for it is not exactly clear. According to reports, the State’s expected take should be at least $150 million a year. 25 percent of the casino’s earnings from not just slots but card games is supposed to go to the state, with payments to the city, county and CalTrans (do I smell freeway interchange?) to be deducted from that amount. The remainder would go to the State’s general fund. No one is quite sure how much will make it through that sieve.

So, why is this any different from allowing a city or county to open up a facility in which one can drop coins into slot machines, play cards at a green covered table or even throw some dice? And why should the sovereign nation status of these tribes make this acceptable while it would not be if it were owned and operated by non-Natives?

The hypocrisy is so thick you could slice it.

It is estimated that on one day a year, the day of the Super Bowl, over $1 billion is bet by Californians either at legal sports books in Nevada (a small portion) or through bookies (the large majority). This does not include the office pools, etc., which, while illegal, is so rampant enforcement is impossible.

According to sources, the bookie’s share of the “action” is about 10%. This “fee,” known as the “vigorish,” or “vig,” is their charge for creating the betting marketplace. Were the State to be in this business, their take for ONE DAY would be $100 million. That’s two-thirds of what the State will make in a year from this big new casino.

Yes, I know people have trouble with gambling. They also have trouble with smoking (which we try to manage by taxation and limiting places for use) and drinking (which we try to manage by licensing purchasing and imbibing outlets). The problem is that we are not limiting gambling by not having places to gamble. All we are doing, as we did with booze in the era of Prohibition, is provide a revenue stream for organized crime.

It is time to face the reality of the expansion of Indian casinos. If you build it, or even if you don’t, they will bet. However, if everyone gets the chance to build it, the State will, at least, get its fair share of the action.

And maybe, just maybe, we can reduce all our taxes.

Stop those damned anthems

2004-08-24T13:52:00.000-07:00

Call me crazy, but I thought the Olympic Games were about individuals achieving great athletic heights. So when Paul Hamm, the guy who got the gold medal in the men's gymnastics all-around, tells NBC that he did this to "make his country proud," it makes me wince.

I've been watching the Olympics since 1960, when they first started televising them. I have been an enormous fan of Bud Greenspan's series of Olympic movies. Most of that coverage, and all of the movies, focused on individaul achievment. Yet, sadly, jingoism has grown exponentially during that time.

The focus of NBC's coverage of medal ceremonies is indicative of the problem. On occasion, such as the Greek gymnast winning on the high bar, we hear another national anthem. Usually, it is the Star Spangled Banner ceremonies only. After all, NBC is looking to keep people watching events that ended hours earlier and whihc most people know the results of.

The Olympics should stop playing anthems and focus their attention on the individual winner, not where they came from.

Paul Hamm didn't win the gold for the US. He won it for himself. (At least he thinks he won it, since some idiot judge screwed up and tarnished the win forever.) Just as May and Walsh won beach volleyball for themselves. Let the Olympics live up to its credo, where individuals from around the world gather to compete and show which person, or team, is, on that particular day, Olympic champion.

Higher crude prices, higher pump prices...maybe

2004-08-20T17:39:00.000-07:00

Over the past few weeks, the news has been filled with reports of ever increasing crude oil prices. Yet, despite the fact that a similar increase about a four months ago led to rising pump prices, this one hasn't. I wonder why.

Perhaps, since the Saudi princes couldn't keep the promise they made to the Bush Administration to reduce prices by the time the election rolled around, the oil companies, who owe a great deal to the incumbents for weakening environmental laws, are coming to the rescue.

The profit reports for these companies will not become available until after the election in November, so we won't know completely how much of a conspiracy exists. But don't be surprised if these prices start to rise on November 3 to make up for the "lost revenue" these months have caused.

So, you think Ahhnold’s thinking of you?

2004-08-19T15:57:00.000-07:00

In all the hullabaloo surrounding the negotiations, name calling, posturing and, ultimately, passage of the State budget, some of the details included in that document may have been missed. If so, here’s a little tidbit that may want to make you rethink the question of who is out for whom?

One of the primary sticking points that kept the budget from being approved on time was a demand by Republicans, and supported by Gov. Schwarzenegger, that the sales tax on luxury yachts costing over $400,000 be waived. Why? Because, the supporters of this tax loophole said, the yachting industry would be devastated if people who can afford to spend that much on a boat would have to pay the 8.5% tax everybody else does. Yacht sales, they moaned, would plummet and people would be thrown out of work.

I don’t know about you, but I guess if you have enough money to buy a boat that expensive, you probably wouldn’t even notice the tax, much less be unable to afford it.

But, far worse than that issue alone, at the same time, demands by the Democrats for the continuation of a sales tax rebate program for school teachers who are forced by budget cuts to purchase essential teaching materials for the classroom was rejected during the negotiations with the Governor. Too expensive, they were told.

So now teachers, who already don’t make the kind of money the importance of their job should demand, have to continue to dip into their own pockets for needed materials and pay the sales tax for them, to boot.

So who has their priorities screwed up? Is it the Governor and his minions sucking up to millionaires and billionaires, or the people who thought we should give our harassed teachers a break?

Governor Schwarzenegger has spent a lot of time posturing about being a representative of “the people.” He blathers about how he is out to protect us. Yet, it has been clear from the moment he decided to run for office, and especially since he took the oath, that he is more beholden to his allegedly hated “special interests” than even Gov. Davis was. It is just a different group of interests.

This Governor does not care about you. He cares about the people who have given him thousands of dollars in campaign funds for his various, sometimes harebrained, schemes. He goes around denigrating his opponents with infantile remarks like “girlie men” and expects to be taken seriously as a national political figure.

We have not gotten the Ahhnold we were told to expect when he was elected in the recall last October. I only hope that the voters come to understand the mistake they have made and either correct it when they next have a chance in 2006, or correct him.

But, I wouldn’t hold my breath…unless, of course, I had a few tens of thousands of dollars to throw his way.

Just arguing about the price

2004-08-11T07:31:00.000-07:00

Over the past few months, a group of nearly 300 state employees and private sector advisors obtained input from individuals and groups in order to come up with a massive government reorganization plan known as the California Performance Review. This study, released this week, is one of a series that have been conducted over the past few decades in various attempts to make streamline government. Combining measures such as job cuts, reorganizing “the boxes” and reducing the number of boards and commissions, this latest attempt claims that implementing all their proposed changes can save $32 billion over the next five years. We shall see. The accounting is a bit fuzzy.

Meeting in secret, this group claims to have gathered input from a wide range of sources, up to 1800, including academics, state agencies, unions and businesses. But, according to press reports, it seems that only those who “paid to play” by giving money to the various campaigns set up by Governor Schwarzenegger got physical access to the group.

According to one watchdog group, the Governor has called for the “biggest reorganization and dissolution of government in California history, developed behind closed doors and with gag orders on participants whose salaries are paid by taxpayers.”

In addition, there is no indication whether any private sector organization that influenced the conclusions of the committee will be precluded from benefiting from the decision-making process. This preclusion from benefit is a basic element of government procurement law.

As an example, if a company is involved in building the scope of work for a government project, they are precluded from bidding on the project itself. While controversial among vendors, it is a basic protection from a vendor building a scope of work favorable to one particular client, themselves. Some of those companies that provided the “more personal” input that seems to have swayed the committee to its conclusions may very well be in a position to provide the work that, according to the report, should ultimately be “outsourced” to the private sector.

Another interesting aspect of this process, however, is the clear repudiation of the Governor’s claim in the recall election that his wealth will keep him independent of those nasty “special interests” he claimed had taken ownership of Sacramento. Actually, he has turned the soaking of those interests into a science even beyond former Governor Davis, someone often vilified for his focus on fund raising. By these standards, Schwarzenegger makes him look like a piker.

There is no organization of the size of the State of California, be it in the public or private sector, that wouldn’t benefit from regular review and updating of structure and responsibility. However, when dealing with a public sector change of the magnitude being recommended by the California Performance Review, maintaining absolute process openness is essential. In this, likely with the blessing of the Governor’s office, this openness was tossed in the trash.

In fact, it seems, it was sold to the highest bidder.

Doesn't anyone ever get fired around here?

2004-08-10T14:25:00.000-07:00

How much does someone in the Bush administration have to screw up before they get fired?

The latest revelation is that the name of the computer geek the Pakistanis picked up was bloviated to the networks so that the President could say to the American voter that something is moving on the terrorism front. The only problem is that the Pakistanis wanted to use the information they had gleaned from the sting to get higher-ups.

With the American chest pounding, these people knew the jig was up and they fled back into whatever woodwork there is in Islamabad and environs. Yikes! As Casey Stengel used to say about the 1962 New York Mets, "Can't anybody here play this game?"

Now, who should be fired? The person who had the idiot idea to tell the press? The person who approved this person telling the press? The cretins who hired the people who did such a stupid thing?

And why didn't anybody let the Pakistanis know we were doing this? They must have gotten quite a whiplash when they snapped on CNN that night.

Nobody was fired for 9/11 (unless you consider George Tenet getting out before the police arrived). Nobody was fired for MWD (unless you consider Ahmad Chalabi taking a convenient trip to Iran). Nobody was fired for too few troops to do the job (unless you consider Tommy Franks' timely departure to have a book ghostwritten for him).

At hockey games, my brother and I used to follow the singing of the national anthems with the shout "Hit somebody." George W., "Fire somebody."

I am curious - Orange

2004-08-02T16:50:00.000-07:00

Whatever respect I had for Tom Ridge as being focused on creating a truly apolitical Department of Homeland Security was blown away today during his news conference announcing the raising of the threat level in the financial communities of New York, New Jersey and Washington, DC.

Ridge must know that many people believe that the raising of the threat levels in the past have been driven exclusively by the political necessity of the time, whether to deflect the attention public from some Bush administration screw-up or to get a jump on press focus on the Democrats. So why would he, in the middle of his news conference announcement include this passage? "But we must understand that the kind of information available to us today is the result of the President’s leadership in the war against terror."

So, is this the beginning of the August push to take center stage from John Kerry? I hope not. But, we have been told that the wolf is at our door many times. Many local governments don't even respond anymore when the alert is sounded.

Tom Ridge used to have some integrity. Too bad, he has proven to be just another flak.

Obamarama

2004-07-28T12:38:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while, you get a feeling that you are seeing something important happening in real time. Something you are going to remember. Barack Obama's keynote speech to the Democratic National Convention last night was one of those occasions.

I was a delegate to the 1996 Democratic convention. These conventions are, basically, three things. First, they are an infomercial for the party and its candidates. Second, they are a scmoozefest, where campaign financing deals are worked out and parties try to outdo each other to gain the "title" of "hottest ticket."

Finally, it is the testing ground of new talent. Over the years, many people have been given the opportunity to strut their stuff. Few have made it to The Show. Some who messed up their chance, like Bill Clinton in 1988, still made it to the Big Leagues. Others, like Mario Cuomo, aced the exam, but then decided they didn't want to jump into the deep end of the pool.

It remains to be seen what happens to Obama. He still doesn't have a rival for the U. S. Senate seat in Illinois, due to his former opponent's penchant for kinky sex locales. Many have made it to that plateau and never moved beyond, like Joe Biden. But, for some reason, I think we may be looking at the first African-American Presidential or Vice Presidential candidate.

His resume is the stuff of political dreams. He has almost as many ethnicities as Tiger Woods. He has a family most political consultants have to invent. And, he is smart as they come.

All he has to do is to avoid the downfall of many, the hubris that comes with high political office. If he keeps grounded, there is no limit to his potential.

We shall see.

Safer, but not safe

2004-07-23T16:31:00.000-07:00

In Joseph Heller's glorious "Catch-22," the pilots are in the officer's club and one muses about how old they all are. "Old?" one asks. "But, we are in the flower of our youth." "We are one day away from our death," the first pilot says. "You don't get much older than that."

If you are not safe, how can you be safer? But, that is what the 9/11 Commission told us yesterday. It seems to me that if you are on a plane, you are either safe or dead. There isn't anything in between.

The 9/11 Commission probably did the right thing by not making their report a political diatribe. However, despite losing over 3,000 people, no one has been blamed for anything? No one, it seems, has lost their job over this monumental screw-up.

We hear a lot about "leadership" in political campaigns. In management, leadership means having the guts to fire people when it is appropriate. The failures of 9/11 meet that test of appropriateness.

"Leadership" also means being able to tell people bad news honestly. We are not safer, because we are not safe. It is time the political doublespeak ended and the discussion of what "the new normal" is going to be begins.

Blocking the view

2004-07-20T13:35:00.000-07:00

It is an interesting "revelation" that Sandy Berger, the National Security Adviser under President Clinton, may have taken classified documents with him while researching his 9/11 Commission testimony. What is interesting is that an event investigated nearly nine months ago should suddenly pop up two days before the Commission's report is to be released.

Now, Berger knows the rules about documents like this. And, no matter what miniscule impact it might have had on the 9/11 Commission's work, it was stupid. However, it should not be used as a smokescreen to obscure this bipartisan and, according to press reports, scathing analysis of what went wrong prior to those attacks.

If, as reported, the Commission calls for a centralized structure for intelligence, we should give it the proper consideration, not the knee-jerk "protect my turf (and my budget)" battles that usually accompany large-scale change. If only to enable technology standards for information exchange, such a reform would be worth it. After all, "connecting the dots" requires sharing and sharing requires standards and standards require a single point of decision-making.

But, power in government is represented by the size of one's budget and staff. And, after all, what are 3,000 people's lives when loss of face might be involved.

Banished to the children's table

2004-07-19T15:57:00.000-07:00

Back when Ahhhnold decided that his first major budget cut was to dramatically limit funding for the developmentally disabled, I figured the Gubernator was going to spend Christmas in the Shriver family corner wearing a dunce cap.

Now, I guess he's going to sitting at the children's table. After all, that's where mental 12 year olds ought to sit.

Over the weekend, Ahhnold decided that he was either going to be funny or, as is more likely, his steroid besotted brain couldn't come up with any better response to the standoff between his and the State Legislature's budget plans. Despite the fact that nearly every major committee in the Legislature is chaired by a woman, the Austrian Annihilator decided that all the people who opposed him were "girlie men."

This phrase, made popular in a Saturday Night Live skit that was parodying him, was meant to challenge the manhood of these...females? Or was he saying that the male legislative contingent were wusses for putting women in these positions in the first place?

Or, did he know what he was saying? Did he use Richard ("stupid dirty girl") Riordan as his public relations model?

Just when you think Ahhnold is sounding like a real statesman, something like this comes along to snap us back to reality.

I'm back

2004-07-16T17:18:00.000-07:00

It's funny how business can get in the way of the fun stuff you want to do.

It's not really a good excuse, but my recent travel schedule has made it difficult for me to keep blogging. But, I have vowed to get back on track. In fact, it was a trip to Kalispell, Montana last week that gave me the itch to start up again.

I had never been to Montana. (There are only two states left that I have not yet visited, NM and AK.) It is big and it is empty. It's not the easiest place to get to by air, but as you fly in, you are made very aware of its scope.

The reason for my visit was a conference of the Montana Association of Chiefs of Police. At conferences like this, you get a chance to find out a great deal about the state you don't see in the chamber of commerce photographs. Talking to someone from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, I found that the two nattiest crime problems in the state are illegal guns, often held and distributed by militias, and methamphetamine labs.

The first one I understand. Montana has a Libertarian streak in it that makes it probably the most armed state in the nation. Everyone has a gun. Some keep them for safety against potential (or invented) criminals, although there is relatively little property crime. Many keep them for protection from large animals. (The Border Patrol people joke that the most effective Canadian border guards are the grizzly bears that roam in the areas where, logically, easy cross-border access would be possible.)

Montana is the fifth largest state physically, but one of the smallest in terms of population. There is a lot of open area for law enforcement to cover. It is easy for militia groups, if they aren't too brazen with their venomous outpourings, to hide for years among the pines and mountains of the western part of the state.

However, the growth of the methamphetamine problem was a surprise, not because of raw product availability (after all, farms are the best sources of the product's raw materials), but the costs of distribution. Montana seems a long way from the marketplace for the stuff, which used to be just urban areas, but has been spreading to the suburbs very quickly.

After the conference, I drove for a few hours around Kalispell and the Glacier Park area and discovered a large number of private planes sitting the commercial and private airports that dot the scenery. This relatively poor state, primarily reliant on tourism, mining and lumber, has an awful lot of people with Cessnas.

This got me to thinking about police resource management. How can a state with so few law enforcement personnel possibly counter a problem so difficult to find? The answer, it seems, is technology. Montana is hungry from technological solutions to crime solving. But, technology costs money and everything being funded now has to be associated with Homeland Security in one way or another.

It is not a pejorative to say that Montana doesn't really have anything Al Quida might want. Therefore, Montana won't get the resources it needs for something that is probably a much more present danger to its residents.

Go figure.

Oy, vey!

2004-06-02T16:56:00.000-07:00

As home to Seinfeld, delis and the best bagels in the world, New York is indelibly linked to Jewish culture. But the Jews have made a shocking discovery: The city's water is not kosher.

Two weeks ago, millimeter-long crustaceans known as copepods were discovered in the water. Although the tiny creatures pose no threat to public health, under Jewish law the eating of crustaceans, aquatic animals with skeletons outside their bodies, including shrimp, crabs and lobsters, is forbidden.

Sales of filters have rocketed in heavily Orthodox Brooklyn, and restaurants and bakeries were advised to further filter to ensure purity. "We hope the city will do something to purify and filter the water to accommodate a few hundred thousand Orthodox, observant Jews," Rabbi Abraham Zimmerman of the Orthodox Satmar sect said.

But the Department of Environmental Protection, which controls the reservoirs, said to eliminate the copepods would be impossible and the micro-organisms provide health benefits to the reservoirs. Two weeks ago, an Israeli company was accused of selling vegetables contaminated with insects, a violation of kosher laws. The company said the bugs were introduced when the produce was washed in New York water.

From The Independent

I'd have thought it would be "Kiss your ass goodbye"

2004-06-01T17:33:00.000-07:00

Would you like Windows to remember your "secret unlock code"? What was the "secret unlock code" for America's ICBMs during the height of the Cold War?

Not "Admin" or even "password." It was "00000000."

Why? How could this possibly be? Former U.S. Air Force nuclear launch officer Bruce G. Blair explains: "The Strategic Air Command (SAC) in Omaha quietly decided to set the 'locks' to all zeros in order to circumvent this safeguard.

During the early to mid-1970s, during my stint as a Minuteman launch officer, they still had not been changed. Our launch checklist in fact instructed us, the firing crew, to double-check the locking panel in our underground launch bunker to ensure that no digits other than zero had been inadvertently dialed into the panel. SAC remained far less concerned about unauthorized launches than about the potential of these safeguards to interfere with the implementation of wartime launch orders.

And so the 'secret unlock code' during the height of the nuclear crises of the Cold War remained constant at 00000000."

......From the San Jose Mercury News

The New York Times won't print this

2004-06-01T17:27:00.000-07:00

For more than half a century, the people of New York have voted without requiring a paper trail, despite the fact that lever voting machines are notoriously the most inaccurate and corruptible form of election device. So, maybe that’s why there is such a hue and cry about electronic voting machines…they are too accurate.

During the March, 2004 primary election in California, the Secretary of State (SOS) sent teams of his staff to 10 counties conducting elections with direct record electronic (DRE) voting devices. In each, machines representing a full polling place set up were randomly selected and sequestered. They were protected by video surveillance and deputy sheriffs until Election Day, when a voting sequence known only to the SOS was entered by his staff throughout the day and tallied at the same time the polls closed.

The result was 100% accuracy. No Trojan Horses, hacking or other nefarious programming gremlin scenarios such as those imagined by a small group of election Luddites were discovered. Nevertheless, you cannot get the SOS to admit that level of accuracy because it would undermine his call for the inclusion of a voter verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) for the 2006 election.

Adding a VVPAT is not simple process, especially when you don’t have any standards to work toward. In California, seven manufacturers have been certified to run DRE-based elections. Each has its own idea of how to make it work. At the same time, each solution adds elements of risk that could derail the operational quality of the election.

Generally, the problems that develop during electronic elections are human-based. Adding mechanical devices, paper rolls, feeders, etc. only multiply the things that can go wrong. In Los Angeles County, for example, producing a version of a single voter’s selections would produce a piece of paper more than three feet long. How many people will have to wait (likely, impatiently) while paper rolls are changed after every ten to fifteen voters?

And these VVPATs assist not a whit in making the election more accurate. How much better than 100% can you get? In fact, they make it so that a portion of the population the Help America Vote Act was supposed to empower, the disabled, are placed back in the voting Dark Ages.

Everyone in New York should ask themselves before they rail away about DREs whether Senators Clinton, Schumer, D’Amato, Moynihan, Buckley, Javits, etc. were really elected since no voter, for or against them, ever was sure that their vote counted. Paper trails are a red herring perpetrated by people who fear technology. No hacking is possible because these machines are never connected to the Internet. Randomly selecting machines and running a “parallel count” would easily determine whether any date-based or party-based scheme was inserted in the software.

And, everyone’s vote would be counted as it was cast. Wouldn’t that be a unique New York experience?

With Solomon on vacation, they sent Kevin Shelley - 2

2004-05-12T09:09:00.000-07:00

A Secretary of State (SOS) with ambitions for higher political office has few opportunities for publicity. After all, the office is primarily a records management and election oversight post. Counties actually run elections and are responsible for certifying the results. The SOS has oversight for the equipment used, determining whether they are able to run a fair election.

For the March 2 primary election, the SOS had certified 7 companies as suppliers of Direct Electronic Recording (DRE) voting equipment. The certification process included years of testing and retesting to determine the machines’ accuracy. They all passed the SOS’s scrutiny. In fact, that scrutiny was borne out during the election.

The SOS sent squads of staffers to counties using DREs to, first, select and sequester machines and, then, “vote” them on Election Day, under the protection of deputy sheriffs, along a predetermined secret formula. When the polls closed for everyone else, the SOS’s people tallied their votes exactly the same way. The result: 100% accuracy.

However, a series of unanticipated issues faced him. In some counties using machines from Diebold Election Systems, uncertified software upgrades had been added without the SOS’s approval. In other counties, training issues created problems such as providing some voters with the incorrect ballot type for their precinct. While the Diebold issue was serious, the others caused little more problem than a misallocation of votes by precinct. According to the SOS all results, even in Diebold counties, were 100% accurate. Therefore, the election results themselves were not put in question.

Nevertheless, in the heat of a focused attempt by a set of anti-electronic voting activists, our SOS, Kevin Shelley, took the bait and proceeded to commence a months long rant that electronic voting is inaccurate and prone to security problems. Despite these issues being debunked by his own staff, he has gone so far as demanding changes for the November election that are clearly posturing, because most of what he has asked for has already been done.

Shelley laid out 23 demands for DRE system counties to meet if they are to be able to use their systems in November. However, 21 of these 23 were already in place in March and were to be continued in November anyway. Of the other two, one is aimed at forcing the cost of creating a parallel paper system at polling places, estimated at $1.5 million in Orange County alone, on the vendors, only one of whom did anything wrong.

The other would require the vendors to release their computer source code, which has already been reviewed by the certification companies, from the escrow in which they sit at the SOS’s office. While the vendors are amenable to this, it is only under the assurance that the code remains confidential. In Ohio, when a similar study was undertaken, key portions of source code were released to competitors. The vendors do not want this experience to be recreated here.

Kevin Shelley has no grounds for doing what he did, with the exception that he should censure, fine and, perhaps, decertify Diebold for the illegal acts which they performed. Other vendors played by the rules, delivered equipment the SOS had certified and conducted a 100% accurate election. The errors of training were not their fault.

But the biggest fault in this process is the use of this unique opportunity by Kevin Shelley for his own political gain. It is disgusting behavior on the part of an official whose glorified clerk’s job really should be non-partisan.

Politics sure can be fun, and extremely wasteful.

With Solomon on vacation, they sent Kevin Shelley - 1

2004-05-11T12:10:00.000-07:00

Secretary of State Kevin Shelley was faced with a dilemma.

He had two Luddite shoot-from-the-hip State Senators breathing down his neck to decertify all electronic voting machines, based solely on information they had gained reading unsubstantiated (and, ultimately, incorrect) newspaper accounts. One company violated state election law and implemented uncertified systems in some of their client counties.

But, Shelley also had information, from his own staff, that all of the machines in every county worked perfectly. He had been pummeled for months by those who believe that electronic voting should be banned, primarily because they believe that manufacturers, especially Diebold, are intending to rig the election.

As a safeguard, before the primary the SOS sent a team of his staff to each county office and randomly selected machines on which to vote and tally results. The machines were then sequestered and protected by Deputy Sheriffs. On Election Day, the SOS staff ran a day long sequence of voting that was known to no one at the county. When the polls closed, they ran the results. In every county, there was 100% accuracy. So whatever happened during the primary, and much did, the results were correctly counted.

Of the companies that had electronic voting machines in operation in California during this primary, only one, the aforementioned Diebold, decided that they couldn’t wait to get one of their upgrades certified, so they went ahead and made a software change anyway. Electronic voting is a highly scrutinized and regulated business, with multiple layers of government oversight and testing.

Normally, when a software change or upgrade is made available, it goes through a Federal and state system of testing and certification, a process that can take at least half a year. Even though the Diebold change affected only four of the counties their equipment was used in (not LA, by the way), it was a violation, requiring some sort of action.

The bulk of the problems that did occur stemmed primarily from poll worker training issues. In Orange County, for example, the consolidation of over 2,000 precincts into 1,125 polling places led to handing out of the wrong ballot style to around 2,000 voters (not 7,000 as reported by the LA Times).

A ballot style is the list of contests on a particular ballot. For example, if Hermosa Beach had an issue on a ballot, their ballot style, including the question, would be different from Manhattan’s, which wouldn’t include it. Everything else would be the same. Therefore, getting the wrong ballot style doesn’t mean you haven’t voted on any proper contests, just the ones exclusive to your precinct.

In March, using a system provided by Hart Intercivic, 99.7% of all votes cast in the Orange County primary were within the proper ballot style. In only one race, the sixth and seventh position in the Democratic Central Committee for one Assembly district, did this mishandling of ballots potentially have any impact on a race. In every other contest, the proper winner was determined.

Other counties had different problems. In San Diego, using, once again, Diebold equipment, many polling places couldn’t open up on time because of a software issue that hadn’t been dealt with in training. The county’s help desk was overwhelmed with calls and couldn’t respond in a timely fashion to get the polls open for the morning rush. The County Registrar has no idea how many of those didn’t return later.

What’s an SOS to do? More later.

Knocking heads against a wall

2004-04-20T10:31:00.000-07:00

About five years ago, I was speaking with the Chief Information Officer for the City of Chicago. We were speaking about recalcitrant department personnel within cities that were balking at moving to e-government. He told the story about one particular problem in his city.

After multiple attempts to get the department head to comply, the CIO went to his office and pointed to a picture of the Mayor on his wall. (In Chicago, the Mayor’s portrait is standard office decoration.) After one final fruitless attempt for him to comply of his own volition, the CIO pointed to the picture and said, “He wants you to do this. Do you have any other questions?”

It got done.

The 9/11 Commission testimony of National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice was stunning in many ways, but most scary was that even the President of the United States can’t get a bureaucracy to do what it is supposed to do. As opposed to the situation in Chicago, the work he wanted done didn’t get done and nearly 3,000 people are dead.

Bureaucracies have lives of their own. This is one of the reasons I am opposed to term limits. All the limitation of the people who are charged with overseeing the government has done is to make these nameless and faceless bureaucrats even more powerful than they were before. After all, they can wait you out. The new ones coming in won’t know who they even are until it is nearly time for them to go as well.

In local government, with a system that devolves most of the day-to-day operational control to a City Manager, the need for vigilance among elected officials is even greater. As part timers, it is very difficult for an elected to get to know the inner workings of a city by the time their proscribed time in office is up.

And while most City Managers do their best to keep the elected officials aware of what is going on, some are more secretive than others. In addition, the City Manager is presenting information through his or her own personal prism, with many City Charters structured so that elected officials are warned not to delve too deeply into departmental affairs, so they might get another perspective on the same story.

We have had bureaucracies as long as we have had government (and big business as well). They will never be replaced. But it is wrongheaded to make it even stronger by taking some of the oversight tools away from those who are held accountable by the public. The most effective tool is experience. Term limits destroys that capability.

Thoughts on a desert journey

2004-04-06T09:30:00.000-07:00

Twenty five years ago, a group of advertising guys decided they needed a break from a spate of bad late March weather and went to Palm Springs to watch some Angels preseason baseball. A quarter century later, the same guys made their silver anniversary visit. Since the Angels haven’t played there in years, the ritual has changed to multiple rounds of golf as well as to better wines and food than were affordable then.

As with the guys, the cities of the desert have changed dramatically over the years. In the late 1970’s and early ‘80’s, the former “core” desert city of Palm Springs was being overshadowed by the growing “new” cities of Palm Desert, Indian Wells and Rancho Mirage. The money was moving eastward, and Palm Springs was left as a decaying relic.
At the same time, the indigenous population of Native Americans, the Agua Calientes, Morongos and other tribes, were basically either on the dole or working in menial jobs serving visiting Angelenos and snowbird Canadians.

How times have changed. Now, as you drive toward the Coachella Valley from the west, you see a new high rise hotel being built to serve as the centerpiece of a new Morongo Casino, the third of an ever growing sequence, on that site. Past that, you enter Palm Springs with a newly spiffed up downtown, brought about by a combination of new residents, a progressive city administration and the establishment of the Agua Caliente’s casino on the site of the old Palm Springs Spa.

We can learn a lot from the revitalization of the desert. The first is that a city’s resurgence relies upon creativity and resources. For Palm Springs, it was a film festival, the brainchild of then Mayor Sonny Bono, that got people to look at the city in a different way, attracting new visitors and, ultimately, new businesses and residents.

But ideas need money. In Palm Springs, it was not only a combination of entertainment sources, such as clubs and restaurants, but also a growing high end retail sector, catering to the better heeled residents that were gentrifying the old city shell that made it work. In addition, the city has benefited, indirectly, from the success of Indian gaming.

Yet they haven’t benefited as much as they could if the casinos were paying into the State’s coffers instead of the tribes’. And while the governor is trying to get Indian casinos to ante up to the state in order to get increased gaming opportunities, such as full casino gambling, the amount will be a pittance compared to what it would get if they would just legalize gambling.

Yes, I’ve heard all the whining about how legalization will penalize the poor and play into the gambling addict’s hands. If this is the criterion for public policy, why do we allow anybody to buy cigarettes? For that killer addiction, we offer help for those who desire it, ultimately assuming that adults can make decisions for themselves. Why shouldn’t it be the same for gambling?

Meanwhile, our Puritanical nature hasn’t stopped gambling from happening. All it has stopped is the government getting something out of it. This ostrich-like policy is ludicrous. It is time we acted like adults. Gambling is largely illegal, yet omnipresent. What part of this failure don’t we understand?

Besides, we could use the money more than the tribes or the bookies, no?

F**k this hypocrisy

2004-03-19T11:50:00.000-08:00

Little did we know what a breast would reveal.

The Janet Jackson escapade on the Super Bowl has brought the Solons of Good Taste out in droves. From the usual wacko guardians of our mores to the complete hypocrites who have been making boatloads of money off of the public's seemingly unquenchable desire for grossness, society is now being forced to go through a "moral cleansing" process.

Leave me out of it. I don't really care if Howard Stern salivates over pulchritudinous babes in his studio, nor if Bill Maher uses the "f" word. It doesn't affect me, nor anybody who should be watching or listening.

It may affect those who should be monitored, such as children, but the lack of monitoring is the MONITOR's fault, not mine. "Stop my children from watching something I don't want them to watch," they are saying.

So, stop them yourselves, if it's so damned important to you.

These impotent parents are generally the same people who want government out of our lives., that is,except when they want government in their lives to do something they seem unable to be able to do. They are hypocrites. Their children see they are hypocrites. Their children lose respect for them. Parental controls are undermined.

It is a vicious cycle of which I am not part. Leave me alone. I decided not to listen to Howard Stern, but to watch Bill Maher on my own. Why can't you?

The bloodless battle for Iraq

2004-03-11T11:08:00.000-08:00

Ayatollah Sistani must have watched a lot of Clint Eastwood movies. It isn't necessary to say very much for one to be control.

Last week, the Iraqi interim government was ready to sign an interim constitution, so they could get on with creating an interim infrastructure to run the country until elections were conducted to create a permanent authority. The wheeling and dealing was furious, particularly where it dealt with the balance of power among the major ethnic groups, the majority Shiites and the minority Sunnis and Kurds.

Everyone thought they had a deal. An elaborate ceremony was arranged, with gold pens lined up for each of the participants to take home as a souvenir. It didn't happen. The Shiites wanted some changes.(The most telling image of the day was the laid out table guarded by a soldier with a mean looking gun on his shoulder. Nice democracy.)

They hemmed and hawed over the weekend, and finally Sistani said it was ok to go. But he had made hispoint. Nothing was going to happen without his approval. He was now the de facto leader of Iraq. Paul Bremer works for him.

A lot of blood has been spilled in Iraq on all sides. We can argue all day about whether we were tricked, lied to, or had smoke blown up our butts about WMDs and the like. But, if we are to believe the Bush and Blair administrations, we went there to bring democracy to the people of Iraq.

What we seem to be creating is Iran II, with Sistani replacing the Ayatollah Khomeni. Soon enough, we'll likely see a repressive Islamic state, trampling on individual rights, especially those of women.

Was that what we asked our soldiers to lay down their lives for? I hope not.

It’s about health insurance, stupid

2004-03-02T09:47:00.000-08:00

Everywhere one looks, these days, the economic issue of the moment is health insurance. The recently settled five month strike of grocery workers in Southern California was over health insurance, not wages. The greatest family fear is not lack of savings or, even not getting a raise, but losing health insurance.

In the 1940’s, ‘50’s and early ‘60’s, the fight over the institution of Medicare was driven by the “progressives,” who saw a coming need to care for the medical needs of a population whose life expectancy was growing rapidly, versus the anti-socialists, medical groups and pharmaceutical industry, who saw this new entitlement as an anti-capitalist plot. Now, a compromise structure is the core of their businesses.

The same fight is taking place over health insurance. On one side are the “progressives,” who see universal health coverage as a right of citizenship. On the other are the anti-socialists, medical groups and the pharmaceutical industry, which see this “socialized medicine” as the end of their businesses as they know it.

As with most things political, the answer is somewhere in between. And it is an essential problem to solve, for the ramifications of a workable program will affect everything from how counties operate their health departments to how much businesses pay for worker’s compensation.

County health officials universally report that the primary problem causing funding and service difficulties in public hospitals is the use of emergency rooms as primary care facilities. This most expensive medical care is never covered by insurance, so the funding becomes an issue for the county and the state, for which there is no offsetting compensation.

Worker’s compensation is over 75% health care driven. (The remainder is coverage for “pain and suffering,” the penalty portion of the process, if you will.) The growth in worker’s comp costs have been due primarily to increases in the medical side of the equation, especially in prescription drugs, which often accompanies workplace injuries. Yes, some jury awards have gone through the roof, but they are actually few and far between. If there were universal health care, the supporters say, businesses would be helped dramatically.

With the baby boom population reaching retirement age, the issue of long term healthcare is no longer a question of if, but when. The system as it is today will break under the burden. It has to be solved.

Obstreperousness cannot be abided.

Conflicting constitutions

2004-02-24T16:22:00.000-08:00

I’m not a lawyer, so this entry is from a lay person’s view of the law. However, it seems that the passage of a constitutional amendment establishing a male/female relationship as the only recognized marriage would set up an unsolvable conflict between two equally relevant parts of the Constitution.

The allegation by the people issuing marriage licenses in San Francisco is that the California Constitution (as does the US one) offers “equal protection” to all citizens. Marriage, they claim, comes under that protection. Therefore, it should be available to everyone.

But, if an amendment is passed, could that negate the concept of equal protection in general, so that other issues, such as housing, public accommodations, ADA, etc. can be challenged purely by passing the marriage amendment and weakening this bulwark of our modern society? It could be that, as long as an amendment specifies certain behavior, it would supercede the more general concept of equality.

Where will it stop? That’s why this whole issue of amending the constitution to deal with a specific social issue is misguided. It was tried with Prohibition, and all it did was create speakeasies and fund organized crime. Social engineering by Constitutional amendment doesn’t work.

Perhaps the best solution is for counties to stop issuing “marriage” licenses all together. In this scenario, the governmental part of the process would be a “civil union” no matter who is involved. Then, if someone wants to get “married,” such as in a religious ceremony or in Las Vegas by an Elvis impersonator, it would be the choice of those getting “married” and not sanctioned by the government.

Everyone would be entitled to the same benefits accorded to other “unioned” couples. Marriage would be merely a state of mind, which is, in fact, what it is anyway.

Harold Stassen lives

2004-02-23T17:25:00.000-08:00

Few things in life are sadder than watching someone you have cared about not be able to see that something has passed them by. To many of us growing up in public affairs in the 1960’s, Ralph Nader was on the cutting edge of consumerism. His fight against General Motors to make them focus on the safety of their products stands alongside Rachel Carson’s wake up call to the world about the environment. Thousands of people are alive today, or have been born to people who otherwise would not have been here, because of Nader.

But Nader’s quixotic independent run for the Presidency this year smacks of that of Harold Stassen, the boy wonder governor of Minnesota, who missed out on the Presidential nomination in 1948 and then was known, primarily, as the perennial candidate. He ran nine times for the office, including a final attempt when he was in his mid ‘80’s and barely able to speak.

While the 70 year old Nader is not quite Stassen yet, he is on the edge of being considered more of a joke than a person with serious issues. And his issues are serious, including the “corporatization” of the major political parties and the problems with international trade agreements.

Many Democrats blame Nader for costing them the election in 2000. While his votes probably would have thrown Florida Gore’s way, Nader has a reasonable retort when he states that if Gore had won his home state or normally Democratic West Virginia, the point would have been moot.

Those who fear a Nader candidacy this time should have less of a concern. He is running as an independent and not as the standard bearer of the Green Party. This means that he will have to get himself on all 51 ballots by signature, not the easiest thing to do. In addition, with the Green support going to their own candidate, the number of votes he will get will be dramatically reduced.

But, the greatest damage will be to the legacy of the man. For Harold Stassen, the 31 year old governor and Ivy League university president, was replaced by the nine time presidential loser. Nader is weaving the same fate for himself. It is a shame.

Suing grandma

2004-02-19T14:20:00.000-08:00

You’ve got to hand it to Gavin Newsom, the newly elected mayor of San Francisco. If you are going to pick a couple to be first to challenge the law making gay marriage illegal, choosing an 81-year old and a 78-year old who have been together for 51 years makes a lot of sense.

Most people don’t make it past either of those two numbers, no less reach 51. My marriage is only two thirds of the way there. Usually, when I tell people how long I’ve been married they look like there are viewing an icon at Lourdes. Imagine 51 years!

So, why didn’t this happen before? And why just in San Francisco and not, let’s say, West Hollywood?

The second question is easier than the first. Marriage licenses in California are only issued by counties. San Francisco happens to be both a city AND a county. West Hollywood is a city within Los Angeles County, which is not issuing marriage licenses to same sex couples. QED.

The issue of why this didn’t happen before deals with an amalgam of issues including the demographic makeup of the man who was recently elected to be San Francisco’s mayor. First, he is 38 years old. He has grown up in a generation in which most people, even those who live far from communities with high percentages of gay populations, know someone who is gay. The stigma of “gayness” is rapidly diminishing. (See, also, “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” or “Will and Grace.”)

Second, his generation is one with a new view about relationships. The attraction of “Sex and the City,” with its non-traditional view of life and love, is highly indicative of a current in people under 40. But, then again, for much of that age group, the non-traditional is traditional. The pejorative seems not to be who is committing to each other, but whether you can commit to anything.

Mayor Newsom also grew up in a generation where “separate, but equal” exists only in textbooks. So when that issue is presented to them in the context of marriage, they will not accept it. That’s the way the issue of civil unions is seen. There may very well be a lot similar between that and marriage, but they are not the same. Some benefits are only available through official marriage. To gays and their supporters, saying civil unions are the same doesn’t make it so.

A generation ago, the parents of the Baby Boomers shook their heads in dismay over the revolutionary changes brought about by the birth control pill, increased attendance in higher education, changes in technology, and larger numbers of women in the work force. Today, the next generation is making similar kinds of changes, to the chagrin of those older revolutionaries. Movements like this are difficult to stop. And they shouldn’t be.

Twenty five years from now, these same revolutionaries will be looking at their children, shaking their heads in wonder over the things they are doing. The more things change…

All in

2004-02-16T13:11:00.000-08:00

Poker seems to be everywhere. New television series ranging from The World Series of Poker to Celebrity Poker has brought the term "all in" back into the lexicon. That's when you take all your remaining chips and bet it on your hand. You lose and the game is over.

In a way, the Wesley Clark presidential campaign took on the aura of a poker game where all the chips were placed on one candidate, Howard Dean. The cards didn't turn up and General Clark had nothing left to fight with. It was over before it began.

The Clark campaign, it seems, was so convinced of a Dean victory in Iowa that it did not even bother to contest there. While all the other Democrats, except Joe Lieberman, were in the Midwest, Clark and Lieberman had New Hampshire to themselves. The expectation was that the Kerry people, soon to be without a place to go, would find Clark as the best anti-Dean alternative.

As we now know, the Dean campaign was basically mirrors and blue smoke. Actually, it was expensive blue smoke, since it spent more than 70% of the over $40 million it had raised for non-media activities. Generally, the percentages are reversed, with three quarters going for media. But, I guess, if you believed the polls, Dean was sure he could replenish his coffers in days.

Two things occurred, however, to change the process irrevocably. First, Kerry, who also bet "all in," won. And second, John Edwards used the Iowa caucus system to his advantage by being everyone's second choice. Under Iowa rules, the supporters of any candidate not having 15% representation in a caucus site were free to vote for someone else. Had Clark been there, he might have been the beneficiary. With his absence, the way was open for Edwards to finish a strong second.

The dice were cast. Clark's plans went up in smoke and he had no response. It was just a matter of time, despite his victory in Oklahoma, until it was all over.

The people who surrounded Clark were smart and politically savvy. But, like many, they misread the polls and made the wrong choices. They will have four years, at least, to think about how it all went wrong and whether betting "all in" on circumstantial evidence is the way to go.

Number 332

2004-02-13T15:54:00.000-08:00

A few years ago, at a National League of Cities Conference in Little Rock, AR, I sat at a table for eight at lunch. The conversation, as at many city confabs, turned to the precarious funding we all operate under. One person mentioned lottery revenues as a possibility. Jokingly, I said that only one lottery had been of any great import to me and the result, number 332, changed my life.

Of the seven others at my table, five men and one woman were of about my age. The other was in his thirties. The only one with a quizzical look was the youngest. Everyone else knew exactly what I meant, for anyone of our age lived through the night when the draft numbers were chosen. During that first year, anything over 150 was considered safe. In fact, two of my college acquaintances at the time, who drew numbers in the low teens, have their names on the Wall in Washington.

For those who were not as fortunate as I was, there were five possibilities: fail the physical, find a deferrable job or graduate school, go to Canada, go to Vietnam or join the National Guard or Reserves. Men went to great lengths to abuse their bodies to try to fail the physical. Only a few succeeded. Others went to graduate schools or found jobs as teachers in low income areas. For some of them, this became a rewarding experience. For others, it was marking time.

Those who went to Canada often lived unhinged lives, away from family, some of whom “disowned” them because of their political differences. An amnesty ultimately allowed most to return, but great, often irreparable, damage had already been done. 57,000 of those who went to Vietnam didn’t come back alive. Millions others did, some damaged by the experience, especially the rejection by many of their countrymen leading to the ignoring of their post-war needs.

But some, often the privileged and connected, got coveted places in the National Guard and Reserves. Today’s Guard and Reserves are nothing like they were then. Everyone knew that if you got that posting you could avoid “going to ‘Nam.” All you needed to do was “play soldier” for a few hours a month, follow all the rules and not make waves. These lucky few knew they had hit paydirt. They bonded to each other because they were often well educated, “worldly wise” guys who saw the irony in the things they were doing. While the bond may have been built out of cynicism, it was still a bond.

This all makes the situation presented by President Bush so interesting. The fact that he leapfrogged over many others to get in the Guard wasn’t all that unusual. That he wanted to skim the edge of his responsibility during his time on the Guard also wasn’t particularly odd. My friends who took that route say that both were the standard then.

However, the fact that many of his mates don’t remember him has my friends shaking their heads. These units were not so large that a high profile member, like Bush, wouldn’t have been known. In fact, one friend told me that had he been in his unit, Bush would have been hit on for job references regularly.

Something smells. But like most politicians, Bush doesn’t seem to believe in the advice nearly every crisis manager will tell you, “Get the bad news out early.” The longer this hangs on, the more confidence in him as a truthful leader will erode.

But, there is another thing, the “What did you do in the Vietnam War, daddy?” question, which has clearly come to the fore in national politics. Many people like me did not have to face it. I was number 332, and got a free pass. With nothing pejorative associated with that, everybody accepts that result. Others, however, were forced to face it in a different way. And, some of those wounds will not heal until the generation dies away.

George Bush has to face what he did. Strangely, at least for seven of us around that table, it wouldn’t be much of a surprise.

Why this blog?

2004-02-13T15:36:00.000-08:00

As a weekly columnist ("On Local Government") for the Easy Reader in Hermosa Beach, CA (http://easyreader.hermosawave.net), I focus my attention on issues of local government. With this blog, I am expanding that view to issues beyond that level. Notice I didn't say above, as many people do when they discuss state or federal government in reference to the locals.

That's because it is my belief that local government is the most important level in people's day to day lives. I also believe that it is the least understood. Nevertheless, the other levels of government have tremendous impact on the workings of the locals, so they need to be watched, and commented on, as well. Thus, this blog.

Also, it allows me to comment on a more irregular basis than a weekly column does. So here goes...