NO ON THE RECALL, YES ON CRUZ BUSTAMANTE; NO ON PROPS 53 and 54

It's only October of 2003 and we are already battling filthy Karl Rove and a Republican Party that is governed at all levels by the devil. I thought we'd be able to wait at least another eight months before we had to endure this sort of garbage, but no, not with Rove closer to George Bush than Dick Cheney's pacemaker is to his heart.

In California we are only supposed to be able to remove a Governor for malfeasance. No one has made that charge against Gray Davis. People blame him for the energy crisis - yet we know that that crisis that was made in a conspiracy by many of George Bush and Dick Cheney's friends and donors. Enron, Ken Lay, Arthur Anderson - remember? No malfeasance, just a supreme screwing by right-wing monsters that saw a chance to make lots of money and maybe score an enormous political victory.

In California, the Governor and Lt. Governor are elected separately. While Davis had a close election, Cruz Bustamante won overwhelmingly. Yet when the White House/Schwarzenegger crew decided to try to recall Gray Davis, they moved with all possible cynicism and made this a recall and replacement election, not a recall and replacement by elected successor election. Cruz Bustamante, of course, has never been accused of malfeasance either.

I am disgusted beyond words that so many Californians believe that tough times are the right time to throw out a governor for no cause. It's shameful.

Far more shameful is the Arnold Schwarzenegger candidacy and the tame press that enabled him to go to the top of the polls. As of last week, the mainstream press had all but anointed him, without asking any hard questions about the brutal decisions every California politician is going to have to make for the next decade. The deification was postponed after the LA Times story appeared and confirmed earlier stories in the (London) Daily Standard and in the National Enquirer about Arnold's incessant groping. The Times story omitted mention of his long-time mistress, Gigi Goyette. But hey, the LA Times decided it had to defend itself for publishing the story. Are they totally castrated?

So, NO on the recall, and YES on Cruz Bustamante in case the recall succeeds. You'll find his name almost in the exact middle of the names, about eight after Audie Bock. On the touch-screen, his name might be on page six of the replacement candidates.

Prop 53 pretends to be all about investing in infrastructure. It isn't. It's an attempt to reserve a percent of the State's General Fund for the highway construction and concrete industries, no matter what else is desperately under-funded in the state. Hospitals come to mind - all hospitals have to be earthquake retrofitted by some menacingly close date certain. Oakland residents should realize by now that demanding that a set percent of the Citys General Fund be reserved for certain vacuous programs is insanity. Consider the damn Kids First initiative that was passed several years ago. A tiny number of programs for very few children (out of 50,000+) get a smallish amount of money. Meanwhile, Oakland has spawned a new slew of poverty pimps, all depending on getting grants so that they can take a cut of the grant to fund themselves, not childrens' programs.

Prop 54 is another Ward Connerly piece of crap. It would prevent doctors from collecting and using race, ethnicity, et cetera as a tool to help identify people who are likely to need medical help because they are prone to diseases like breast cancer, diabetes and so on. It would also prevent the police from keeping data to either prove or disprove concerns that racial profiling exists in California.