California Be Damned

"...as long as it might win votes, there is virtually no argument too deranged or dishonest for the desperate defenders of California's failing status-quo. Up is Down. Black is White. Right is Wrong." -- San Diego Union-Ledger

"Want to send a message to California's politicians? Vote NO on all the propositions!" -- campaign literature mass mailing

A year ago I laughed at a bitter, almost vicious, tirade written in the gloomy hours of post-election dawn by the NY Times's hyperbolic elitist Maureen Dowd, bemoaning the basic stupidity of the Red-State mentality that had put the man she loved to hate back in the White House. Her frustration was visceral, grinding, wrenching. If a pedestrian so much as sauntered by wearing a red shirt she might have poked out his eyes with her stilettos and chewed out his liver. I too voted for Kerry but, to say the least, didn't share her level of disappointment.

Now I do.

The Special Election is over and California has revealed itself as a political wasteland littered with the propaganda of an out-of-touch oligarchy and crowded with the sun-ripened bodies of a misinformed, sheep-like electorate. The state is beyond broke; billions in deficit; we have raised our education budget to $10,000 per child and keep increasing total spending yet our test scores still sag and our buildings crumble; we can’t fix enough roads and bridges; we take decades when we do; we pay the highest taxes in all the states and don’t want to pay more…. We can’t unseat a single legislator because of fixed districts, yet we send a message saying, “don’t involve us in the process, fix it yourselves!” and so send the whole mess back to the same folks who got us here. Shame! Shame on all of you for allowing Dick Armey, Barbara Boxer, and Judge Wapner (fer godssake!) to sway you from effective, moderate reform of this once great state. Who made that great cynical quote that I used to pooh-pooh and tell folks not to subscribe to in any way: “If voting actually had any effect it would be made illegal.” (already Googled it and mostly get outrageous far-left websites saying “Ward Churchill got it right”; boy, that helped pull me back from the brink!) ? Pure old money, lies, and more lies have triumphed over moderation and rational change. What hundreds of years of monarchy, tyranny, communism, fascism, imperialism, and dictatorship could not do to democracy, one single election has done. The insulated forces of the status-quo have turned the people into willing participants in the undoing of their own economic well being. Democracy, great as it is, allowed this to happen. The people were willingly coerced into voting for Tammany. (Do you not know what that refers to? You probably went to a Calif. Public school; you probably shouldn’t vote until you do know about Tammany, and when you do, you will vote different, I guarantee it.) The foxes are in the henhouse and rather than drive them out you stuff more hens inside.
“Lies, ALL LIES!” says Frau Unabrow in the Austin Powers movie, yet that farce is like Shakespeare compared to the parody of truth emanating from Sacramento’s hallowed halls and neighboring propaganda sweatshops. I’ve never been less proud to be a Californian, a Democrat, a Union member. I’ve never been less happy to be non-ignorant. Shame on all of you. A pox on all your houses.

<deep breath>. Ok… why didn’t the reform props pass? The Gov, now safely ensconced in China, laughs and says, basically, “whoops, I made a bad; sorry ‘bout that. We’ll all work together now!” Well, sheesh. He has to say something like that now. Look who he is forced to work with. The same legislative robots whose owners pulled a mega-million dollar curtain over the eyes of several million voters.

How could good reform measures like these fail? Arnold wanted reform quickly because we are in the red and structured to not get out, so every day matters. You don’t wait to put out a fire. But the enemy was so good at calling the Special Election “unnecessary and costly” that turned some people off to the idea of any props in the first place, so a number of folks just voted no on everything. My local fishwrap was one of the few papers to come out against Prop. 77 (redistricting) because they maintained a “send ‘em a message to work together by voting no on everything” philosophy. If it was just the regular June election, some of the enemy’s argument would have been undermined.

There was also just too much stuff to ask the voters to understand all at once. Look, I believe in civic responsibility. You should read, you should study, you should look around and ask questions of knowing, fair-minded folks (like me!). Ideally, these props shouldn’t be that hard for most folks to understand, well… ideally, they should be dealt with by our elected representatives, but we know where they stand on that, so it’s up to us, unfortunately. Realistically, however, it was too much for most folks to get, and not because they are stupid. Just busy, a bit fearful, and not into doing other people’s jobs for them, especially well paid folks. Of course, you shouldn’t vote “NO” on something you don’t get!! Arnold should have gone for Prop. 77 only and then work on the others in June and November ’06. The teacher’s tenure was a bad idea I see now. It played intot he hands of the propagandists big time.
Some of the reasons the props failed is because so many people didn’t really like Arnold in the first place. Women think he is a groper and an over-testosteroned nincompoop. Men seem to like him more, naturally, but many (esp. union men) think he is the Republican Trojan horse, ready to take California over for the big corporations and change the overtime laws. I didn’t vote for him (but that was more against Recall than against Arnold, though I did, stupidly, vote for Cruz Bustamante; you we find that this blog will be a steady repudiation of much – though not all—of the political folks I have followed for 20 years). The fact is he is something untenable in this day and age of polarization and character assassination: a unity minded moderate. Yeah, I know, run for the hills! I’ve watched this guy carefully, read, listened to thoughtful analysis and have concluded that he really doesn’t have much of an agenda except to make California healthy for jobs and for the great life it was known for back in the day of Ronnie Reagan. Sound finances. A healthy business climate that still has the best worker protection in America. The best infrastructure: education, roads, water, electricity, and a clean, protected environment. It can be done, but it can’t be done by spending our bond rating into the toilet. There are realities to contend with, Mr. & Ms. Dreamer, and sometimes they may require your supposed enemy to sit at the table and discuss. Arnold, cigars, Hummers, and all, is a Practical Idealist. Someone who really believes not just the American Dream, but the truly wonderful upgrade of that: the California Dream. He lived it. He gets it. We should be helping him but too many of us believed the hype of a large, well-funded cabal of jackals who have only their own narrow agendas to protect.

Another reason for failure: Arnold’s team. Big dreams aside, Arnold, I believe, flunked the staffing test. These guys wouldn’t let Arnold respond directly to the early criticism last summer, and through most of the fall. Those stupid “scowling Nazi” billboards were towed on trailers up and down the state spewing the moronic “Arnold hates nurses, firefighters, teachers” back in March. Worst of all, they were rolling them through Humboldt County – way the hell up here with 0.4% of the state’s population!! If they have the money for that kind of penetration, I thought, Arnold better get his act in gear. We kept hearing from the mostly liberal, mostly status quo loving press that Arnold is “lining up special interest money in the tens of millions for his big campaign against public employees”. Sometimes they might throw in the more truthful addendum “unions” after that line, but the word was out: Arnold has big money from his big corporation friends to attack nurses, firefighters, teachers. Ridiculous? Well… he is a Republican, right? Therefore he must be getting Chevron, big landowners, Halliburton on his side. Well, if he did, he must not have given the execs enough rides in his Hummer because the poor beleaguered unions outspent him 5 to 1. Yes, FIVE to ONE.

The $$ are still being tabulated but it was a great year to be in advertising. The public-employee unions spent at least $200 million to defeat the reform propositions after their hand-picked, completely bought Legislature spent two years refusing to cooperate with Arnold on any meaningful, lasting reform (all they basically agreed upon was how to cover the last two years deficits, a shortfall that doubled our state’s total debt and sent our payments on said debts past the cost of funding the entire UC system). Arnold’s team was slow, apparently witless, and led by a well-meaning but (perhaps understandably naïve) leader. A far cry from the ruthless billboard Aryan paraded up and down every freeway in the state. Did Reagan have this much trouble in ’68? Well… things weren’t as f**ked up, then, son, and the vested interests weren’t as well invested…. Sorry, I ramble. All of us who supported the governor, followed the analysis, read and understood the facts, looked past the hype and slanted, ignorant reporting (it’s almost hopeless for California when you just consider that the two major newspapers are the LA Times and the hideous SF Chronicle), and really considered the situation (all 10 of us), could see he was in trouble early and kept getting worse. Paging John Kerry. Kerry didn’t respond early, quickly, and once to those stupid swift boat ads, so they dragged along for months, drowning out his message. Defeat came swiftly too. Arnold stayed on message but didn’t speak to the lies enough. Paging Dr. Geobbels: repeat a lie enough and people will believe it. And huge dues-paid funds to get a message out will do the trick. Arnold hates teachers. Arnold hates firefighters. Arnold hates unions. Arnold is scary. Arnold is white, angry, and well-funded. Arnold is the Devil. My mailbox began filling up weeks before the election with propaganda partly paid for by my union dues (the “California Labor Federation” which the Teamsters belong to, sent me a ton of glossy stuff with sad, angry, ethnically diverse firefighters and (oddly) very white nurses, bedraggled with overwork, warning me of the end of union protection) “Don’t let Arnold take away your rights!!” WTF? What about the right to pay less in taxes or have a solvent government at least? Anyway, slow to respond in the face of an extremely well-oiled machine, one that had obviously been getting ready since the Fall of ’03.

Arnold could’ve walked on to the Tonight Show any night and gotten a chance to get his message out to thousands of California voters for free. Jay is a liberal but loves Arnold and gets good ratings. Arnold announced his candidacy on that show! But does he go on? No. Arnold’s stupid staff wouldn’t even put him on the Armstrong & Getty show until the end of October. WTF?? This is the top rated radio show in the Central Valley and one of the biggest in the Bay Area. (Arnold’s staff was mad about some mix up during the ’03 campaign that had Arnold interviewed while conservative Sen. Tom McClintock was on the show; Arnold was refuted a bit but held his own very well, yet the staff never forgave A&G; that’s the kind of long memory that works against you in politics). RULE #1: ALWAYS GO FOR THE FREE MEDIA!

Alright, I know, I’m going on. This is a blog, not a barrage. Pithy ain’t my style, unfortunately. Arnold: I love ya, man. Fire some people and let’s git’er done. We knew it would be hard to bring even moderate reform to the state but surely among all these bright, talented people roaming around our Golden State, somebody must have enough expertise to avoid costly mistakes. Sure, it’s easy to criticize but I realize that I saw it all coming and I’m just some yahoo in nowheresville. Don’t let this fiasco gain momentum. Practically everyone I explained Prop. 77 to liked it more and most seemed willing to vote for it. I didn’t hide the facts, I cut through the lies by explaining. Arnold, you got some ‘splaining to do, and I will be there with ya, buddy. I hope a lot more of us are as well.

Goblins In The Mist

Yesterday was the least favorite day of the year for UPS drivers. First, it's Monday. 'Nuff said, except that it is also usually our heaviest day of the week (over the weekend the company actually advances some of our work for Tuesday so it gets here a day earlier, benefiting YOU the customer! You can thank me later...) Next, it's the first workday after the dreaded Time Change; the sun now goes down around 5:30 so we are all working an extra hour in the dark. Some of the luckier guys may have wound up light today and so get done at dusk but my route gets me back at 7:45. That's two hours of headlights as I snake back through the Coast Range. Management must love it and lobbied hard against the extension of Daylight Savings Time that Congress passed recently (first good thing they've done this session!) because productivity jumps as drivers race all day to avoid as much darkness as possible. Of course, this being the first year with our new mandatory lunch hours (in California our DIAD boards are shut down for an hour so we can't do any deliveries, due to a lawsuit and court order) more drivers than ever will be embracing the darkness.
The final dread-of-the-day is that it is Halloween so all the little children of our neighborhood will be swarming around in said darkness. I remember my first year as a driver. I'm going 5 mph along a curving suburban street in heavy fog, kids wearing masks, jonzin with sugar lust, runnin' around all over the place, oblivious to me and me dark, dark truck. Can't we put some temporary day-glo yellow on the trucks? Actually, we should just take the whole day off; UPS can keep the logistics part of the business going for that day, which is their big darling (read Tom Friedman's new book .) Why I am not running the company, I dunno. But it can be hell. The likelihood of your worst nightmare skyrockets, yet the delivery clock still ticks without mercy. If I still worked in town, I'd take the day off. But there's hardly anybody out at the dark far end of my route, in SOmes BaR, just hippies... so it's Ok to keep speeding. No! Just KIDDING. Actually, I'm grabbing my life-saving big cuppa joe at the Salmon River Outpost, getting ready to head back home, when several cars pull up and disgorge a variety of bunnies, princesses, and jedi knights. Out here in the Big Empty, ya gotta trick-or-treat by car if you want to fill your bag before All Saint's Day. The store was staffed by a very obliging witch and everyone left happy.
Do people still worry about the ridiculous urban legends of poisoned candy and razor-blades in apples? I was recently presented with the facts that, according to published crime statistics, no one has been injured by the infamous razor blades and only 2 cases of poisonings were ever prosecuted. Both those cases involved people who knew each other. I was warned about "sick" people who might try this so we would trick-or-treat with this mental picture of which neighbors we might need to triage. We had a lot of lonely pensioners and newly released mental patients living in my Downtown L.A. neighborhood. Who seemed nutty enough to try it? The old ladies that always yelled at us for throwing a ball around too close to their windows or shortcutting through their gardens were obviously haters and would commit murder upon us in a heartbeat. But their houses were dark and shuttered on Oct.31. Apparently they were senile, too, missing such a great chance for malice. The real loony toons were usually sacked out in front of the toob by evening, exhausted from a day of raving and arguing with their voices in the park. A knock usually brought silence or the TV growing suddenly louder. Yeah, I can't hear you either buddy (I was too chicken to try flaming dog-poop as a trick, but as we got older the real get-off-my-doorstep types would get a return visit; remember, there is just one day for treats, but 364 for tricks , heh-heh.) No, the dark-hearted kid poisoners and palate-slicers would blend in, insurgent-style. We'd have to judge on the spot. As the bags grew fuller, however, our judgment lagged. It became a race to see who could max out first so we'd bang on every seedy apt.door, regardless of any subtle clues. Then there would inevitably be some ancient person, perhaps a mustard gassed veteran of The Great War, who would still be getting used to this trick-or-treating thing (did they not have it in the Nineteenth Century?), who would open the door, have a puzzled look, then slow understanding, and shuffle off into the kitchen for about 20 minutes. They would return with a distant smile and hand us.... apples. This was the one! It was all true! We'd take them, from trembling hand to trembling hand, parkinsoned to palpably fearful, thank them, back away, and run home screaming and giggling. We'd sneak a knife out and do a dissection of the weapon under the streetlight in the alley. No razors, no implements of doom, just… an apple. Crap. Well, it had to be poisoned then. So we’d chuck the remains into the crazy old lady’s garden next door. Once, really sweet and friendly old feller gave us dates wrapped in tinfoil. You didn’t have to poison those—you’d get sick just from looking at them. Some people were just unclear on the concept.
I survived my crazy childhood to reach the full flower of crazy middle age and all its anxiety. I heard some hospitals are offering free x-rays of any Halloween treats parents want to bring in (in my day we ate half the stuff while we were still obtaining it, who knew if you would live to see tomorrow, right?). Please. Get a mammogram instead, hmm? Or get yer head examined at least! I hope everybody had fun… we’ll see you down that dark road, somewhere, among the giggles.