Letter from California

by paradox

07/17/05 0442.54 pst
San Jose, California

After the budget was passed two weeks ago and everybody in Sacramento realized in an adult world the summer political season would be over, people would be looking forward to vacations and no one would be taking enormous expensive risks with a special election that makes everyone else in the state look to Sacramento with bleary, horrified disgust, frantic hope burned the rumor mill that the Governor would cancel the election. The rumor got so hot some office issued a statement that Arnie did, in fact, have the authority to cancel this year’s monstrosity.

Cutting a deal would have ultimately made Arnie look weak no matter what he eventually came away with, so after days of silence the Governor signed the budget after line-item vetoing labor and union research projects at the University of California, and ugly, petty jab the sank everyone’s spirits in the soaring July heat. This year’s incredibly expensive ugly brawl will take place and the State’s opinion of its ruling political masters will plummet even more, such is the only certainty we have in the land of sunshine.

A fresh steaming turd of news was flung on everyone’s driveway last week when headlines blared Arnold’s $8 million contract with a fitness magazine—this from a Governor’s office that places hidden commercial advertising in its political marketing and vetoed a bill that would have regulated the supplement industry in high school athletics. Two days ago Arnie said he’d give back all the money, the horror show continuing with no depth too low to explore, it seems, in the political wreckage of California.

Some, perhaps, would happily see this an opportunity to disgrace Arnold even more in a “gleeful” manner, and one can draw any conclusions one likes to the delivery of this news, of course, but in this mere human mind there is no joy at the bumbling backstabbing disgrace of Arnold in this disgracefully immature clown show we call California politics.

Once again a year has passed where we’ve screwed our kids and education community with a huge wide-ranging list of urgent proactive tactics to other very real social problems unused—we got a special election to gut public servant unions in a brutal tactic twisted through our children instead. If they can cripple the CTA with this election they’ll make a serious play for vouchers—only the CTA stands as guardian for the future of our children in the birthplace of Disneyland. Yes, it has come to this.

A bedrock for this distress is the news from Afghanistan and Iraq. How dishonorable, it seems at times, to be concerned and tactical with Sacramento distastefulness when the worst news imaginable continues to be delivered on a daily basis to the communities of Coronado and San Diego. Camp Pendleton is living a horror show that shames the whining and complaining in our daily lives while the President stays silent as his closest aid is accused of treason.

There is no joy and glee at this news—the polar opposite, in fact. One rarely ventures into the MT forms because there is so much bad news to report; no one likes a downer read and writing it all up is certainly depressing enough. Liberals strive for a world where government solves solutions in the pursuit of happy, independent lives, not this grim yoke of death, lying, and maiming we live in under Republican rule.

The news is very bad, will continue to be so and we will grimly carry on. I will write, donate, table for voter registration, wear my wife’s CTA shirts, and hope the Democrats can fight a quarter as well as the unions can as we neglect another generation of children.

There is no alternative. There is no joy and happiness to living under rank political failure, just more grim work to do. Liberals in a Democratic party would not have delivered this current mayhem of incompetence—the certainty of this knowledge will forever keep us working toward progressive, liberal values and politicians.