California Recall

[Roadtoad]

Does anyone blame the california assembly for the state problems? It seems to me that Gray Davis is just a small part of any problem since he is just the governor.

Hell, yes, I blame the rest of the legislature!

We're "represented" by Senator Deborah Ortiz, who gave us her plan to tax junk food, and State Assemblyman Dave Cox, who's got his eye on higher office, (but likely won't get there if he continues to play his budgetary games). These are two of the most incompetent, cowardly people ever elected to public office in this state. I keep voting against them, and THEY KEEP COMING BACK! God, they're like a case of herpes!

These people and their pet projects have royally screwed this state. Sounds like the Congress.

 

[RandFan]

How much if anything does the mess have to do with Prop. 187?

Zero, but thanks for asking.

187 was gutted by Davis who played a game and pretended that he was fighting for 187 when in all actuality he wouldn't even let the authors of the proposal into the mediation. By the time he and his friends were finished there was nothing left of 187.

In fact there is a very good argument that had 187 gone into full force we would not be in the mess that we are in.

 

[RandFan]

Re: Re: California Recall

What I'm not clear about is why. What were the issues involved that led them to consider pausing the process, what were the reasons Kelley used to justify doing this, and why is this such an outrage? Sometimes there are good reasons for doing things, and sometimes there aren't.

There is a window of time. If the ballots are not counted (as they are required by law to be) by the deadline then the election will get pushed back 6 months. It is seen to be simply a way to put off the will of those who want the recal with out justification and in opposition to the law.

This has angred many.

 

[RandFan]

Shelley slows the recall count

Big news from the Secretary of State’s office on the recall. According to a spokesman, Secretary of State Kevin Shelley has interpreted the law to say that county registrars need only be verifying the signatures they received by June 16. The rest they may set aside until the end of the next reporting period on July 23. Then they will report that number to Shelley and he will give them the go-ahead to verify the second batch. But they won’t be required to report that new number until Aug. 22. If this ruling stands, it will delay considerably the verification process and the date by which the recall qualifies for the ballot. It would almost certainly delay the election until March.

A state-by-state look at taxing and spending

California came in dead last.

California
Fiscal management: Poor
Annual spending change: +9.1%
Annual tax rate change: -1.0%
2002 budget: $133.1 billion

The state borrowed $11 billion last week to cover its 2003 deficit. It will borrow another $2 billion to make a required contribution to the state employees' retirement system. Democrats, who control the Legislature and the governor's mansion, have been spending $1 billion a month more than the state takes in for two years.

Special Survey on the California State Budget

75% of likely voters disapprove of the way Governor Davis is handling his job, and 57% of the state's residents disapprove of the way the legislature is handling budget issues.

The reason why Davis is to blame

California voters are suffering the consequences of reelecting a fiscally irresponsible governor. "California voters re-elected pro-tax and pro-spending Governor Gray Davis despite the fact that during his first term he ran the state economy and state budget into the ground," she said. "In four years, he has grown the state budget by nearly 40 percent and turned a $10 billion budget surplus into an estimated $35 billion deficit.

 

[peptoabysmal]

Does anyone blame the california assembly for the state problems? It seems to me that Gray Davis is just a small part of any problem since he is just the governor.

Gray Davis is a big pimple on the state of California, but not the only one. Like I've been saying all along, this is a prime example of a full-on liberal Democratic government allowed to run to it's pitiful conclusion. Yes, I know there are Republican officials in California, but a California Republican is like, well, a taco from Minnesota, it just lacks a certain something. The predominant political atmosphere in California is an overwhelming liberal stench.

 

[RandFan]

Gray Davis is a big pimple on the state of California, but not the only one. Like I've been saying all along, this is a prime example of a full-on liberal Democratic government allowed to run to it's pitiful conclusion. Yes, I know there are Republican officials in California, but a California Republican is like, well, a taco from Minnesota, it just lacks a certain something. The predominant political atmosphere in California is an overwhelming liberal stench.

Whenever a predominant ideology becomes endemic regardles of what that ideology is there will be problems.

Governemt in America works best when there is more than a modicum of opposition to the party in power. California is a prime example of that.

 

[davefoc]

Peptoabysmal talks about California's problems as a "prime example of a full-on liberal Democratic government allowed to run to it's pitiful conclusion.

RandFan says "Governemt in America works best when there is more than a modicum of opposition to the party in power. California is a prime example of that."

While I think both of these views are right, neither one touches on what I think is the most important problem. That is the almost unparalleled incompetence of our chief executive.

Corplinx said:

Does anyone blame the California assembly for the state problems? It seems to me that Gray Davis is just a small part of any problem since he is just the governor.

The problem with what Corplinx said is that he sees something in government that will almost always be broken as a source of the problem. Legistatures, by their very nature are corrupt bodies. They make deals to generate local benefits at the expense of the population as a whole, they are controled by special interests and their size distributes accountability to the point that there is no accountability. The only thing that separates us from disaster from an unconstrained legislature is the chief executive.

In California we are seeing the kind of problems that occur when the chief executive is a weak, conniving individual driven more by politics than any desire or ability to run the government.

I'm a person that generally votes Republican, that was initally opposed to the recall effort. It was my philosophical point of view that recalls are only to be used in the case of extreme corruption or extreme incompetence. I didn't initially think that Davis was guilty of either.

I changed my mind, when I began the to realize the near totality of his failures, that include the inept handling of the power crisis, a disastrous runup in state spending and a complete failure to deal with the worker's comp crisis that threatens to put California in to a major economic crisis. If this stuff isn't an example of extreme incompetence, I don't know what is.