response 96 of 264:

Aug 12 03:01 UTC 2003

I do hope California doesn't face an endless string of recalls 
following this one.  I agree with richard that that seems possible.

If the recall succeeds, I hope a politician gets elected, rather than 
Arnold Schwarzenegger or Gary Coleman or some other person with no 
experience in government.

California has too many people, and it's economy is too important to 
the United States and the world, for me to be happy to see this recall 
and the vast amount of turmoil surrounding it.  I can't say I really 
understand the implications very well, but the situation looks ugly to 
me.

response 98 of 264:

Aug 12 03:29 UTC 2003

It may not be a crime, but gross misrepresentation of the State's fiscal
situation and/or a candidate's intensions (once elected) strike me as a
good reason to recall him/her from office.  Fear of recall might even get
a politician to tell the truth or keep a promise once in a while.  If i
got to play King Solomon, both Davis & Pataki would be working bottom-rung
jobs in an Iraqi water-treatment plant.

Nah, make that a sewage-treatment plant.

Good election laws, etc. can discourage it a bit, but democracy really
does not have any way to handle sustained disfunctional behavior by the
voters or politicians.  If you have a monarch, however, you can have a 
"democracy strikes out" rule in the constitution - if the voters & folks
they elect are failing badly enough, then politicians are canned, all
elections cancelled, and the king/queen is awarded all power previously
held by the politicians.  If the threat of this hasn't sobered the elected
folks up enough to prevent the event, then it's pretty likely that the
monarch will be no worse at governing (and there will at least be some
stability).  If the king really is worse, there's a keep-the-king-in-
charge-or-not? election after a few years, and by then a bad king will
have thinned the ranks of the politicians considerably while giving the
voters good reason to take elections more seriously. 

response 100 of 264:

Aug 13 00:51 UTC 2003

Re #22: Enron gaming the system (while Ken Lay, with a straight face,
said they weren't, and Bush backed him up) didn't help either.  Gray
Davis did a bad job handling the electricity deregulation situation, but
Republican interests helped set him up.

After that evidence of how easy it is to manipulate electrical markets,
I'm amazed that other states are going ahead with deregulation plans.

Re #98: "It may not be a crime, but gross misrepresentation of the
State's fiscal situation and/or a candidate's intensions (once elected)
strike me as a good reason to recall him/her from office."

So we should recall Bush, then?

---

I'm having a hard time taking Arnold's bid for governor seriously. 
After all these years you'd think he'd have at least grasped the English
language.  He has no campaign planks except "bringing business back to
California."  His speeches consist of bumper sticker slogans.  If he's
elected, it'll prove to me that Californians really have lost track of
the dividing line between reality and the movies.  I've suspected it for
a while now.

response 102 of 264:

Aug 13 06:00 UTC 2003

I don't think the legislature in California has the power to prevent recalls.
The voters would have to fix the problem.

It seems to me that the existence of the recall process is probably
reasonable.  The replacement election being on the same ballot leads to all
kinds of strategy games that would probably be better avoided by having a
separate, later, replacement election (or letting the Leutenant Governor take
over if he/she hadn't also been recalled).  The system whereby anybody can
get on the replacement ballot simply by paying the filing fee has to go.

Schwartzenegger's answer to every question about his positions on issues seems
to be something along the lines of "I'll let you know when I'm ready."  I
suspect his popularity will drop considerably if he's ever forced to answer
thsoe questions (or if the voters notice he's refusing to answer), since no
matter what his answers are they're bound to anger somebody.

response 104 of 264:

Aug 13 13:01 UTC 2003

Re #103: But would the spot market have climbed so high if not for
Enron's strategies to drive it upwards?  They were creating artificial
shortages.

*This* is why electrical deregulation is a bad idea, really.  There
isn't enough competition to prevent one or two companies from
manipulating the market.  It amazes me that anyone thought this wouldn't
happen.  The only way to deal with a natural monopoly industry like this
is government regulation.

response 106 of 264:

Aug 13 16:03 UTC 2003

I want to see the Schwarzenegger / Coleman debate.  Might be worth getting
TV for.

response 108 of 264:

Aug 13 17:12 UTC 2003

Ventura had been mayor of some Minneapolis suburb.  The paralel to somebody
with no political record, but a famous name and a politically connected
family becoming governor of a state significantly bigger than Minnesota but
significantly smaller than California would be George W. Bush.

I do love the bit about Schwarzenegger being a "self made man."  He shows that
even a movie star who marries a Kennedy can get rich if he really works at
it. ;)

It seemed to me a few years ago that the political demands being placed on
Davis at the time were to get the power situation under control regardless
of the cost.  Now that power is under control, people are upset about the
cost.  I suspect if there were still frequent blackouts, it wouldn't be the
cost that people were complaining about.  The real question there, of course,
is what could Davis have done to more cheaply stop the blackouts.

response 110 of 264:

Aug 13 19:06 UTC 2003

re107:  seal training.  :)

response 112 of 264:

Aug 13 19:43 UTC 2003

re105:  actually, he apparently didn't decide whether or not to run until his
wife told him he could.

response 114 of 264:

Aug 13 21:39 UTC 2003

There was an article in the New York Times earlier this week on how 
crazy the California recall process is.  Basically, with hundreds of 
candidates on the ballot, it would be logical to list everybody running 
alpabetically by last name, so you'd know where to find your candidate 
on the ballot.  But thats not what they are doing.  They actually held 
a LOTTERY style drawing where they picked letters of the alphabet out 
of a hat or something randomly, and the first letter chosen determined 
the first person on the ballot.  So that if the first letter was "G" 
and alphabetically, somebody named George Gaaronson was the first 
person with the last name G whose name comes up, he'd get listed first 
on the ballot.  But then the second person who appears on the ballot 
WOULDN'T be the second name listed alphabetically under G, it would be 
the first person listed under the second letter of the alphabet that 
comes up in the drawing.  Or something like that.  Totally absurd.

So what you'll have is several hundred people on the ballot, with the 
names all scrambled and in no logical order, so you'll have to look 
long and hard to find your candidate's name.  This probably means LONG 
lines on election day.  

Also there are stories that there are right wing groups gearing up to 
go hard negative on Arnold.  Arnold is a Republican, but he is a 
moderate, and even worse for some conservatives, is pro-choice and an 
environmentalist.  Those folks would rather have a DEMOCRAT as governor 
than a pro-choice tree hugger!  One article said they may use in ads 
outtakes from Arnold's "Pumping Iron" movie, the documentary about 
Arnold's bodybuilding days in the seventies, which show a young Arnold 
smoking a marijuana joint, exhaling and laughing.  Yep, this campaign 
could get nasty!  I mean unlike Clinton, Arnold couldn't even at least 
deny he inhaled, because its on tape!  :)

response 116 of 264:

Aug 13 22:16 UTC 2003

California's *general election* laws don't generally require greater than 50%
to win, nor do the general election laws in most parts of the US.  You just
need a plurality.

The difference here is that in most such elections, getting on the ballot is
difficult.

Still, I suspect we'll see somebody come out of this with reasonably broad
support.  Perhaps not 50%, but enough to win a three way general election at
least.