Kill the Golden Bear, Once and for All

Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner are slugging it out in California with fistfuls of cash and platoons of campaign consultants.

At stake is the GOP nomination for the Governorship of a state that is reeling under the weight of a $19 billion budget shortfall – and zero new ideas for how to close that stifling gap. All the Schwarzenegger administration can muster is a plan to slash health care services for children and shut-ins, and continue to fund public education at a level where it can only produce Mississippi-type mediocrity – ideas that are sure to be stymied by the Democrats.

Meaning the state budget will be held hostage as it usually is, with much posturing, lies, fabrications, wild speeches and threats of IOU’s and shuttered parks, all through the hot summer and probably into the early Fall.

While that goes on, Whitman the political neophyte and Poizner the nerdy wannabe, argue about who will be tougher on illegal immigrants, who will tame the evil “unions” that pull the Democrats’ strings, and who will create thousands of new, green, good paying jobs. Both candidates harp on their experience in the private sector – as if the for-profit arena is the Holy Grail. The logic goes something like this: “If I can run a company like E-Bay then I can surely run the State of California, and I promise you I will run it like a business.”

Business, you see, is always efficient, cost-effective, fair, just, color blind, mindful of the environment and focused on delivering the products and services people want at a price they can afford.

Government, in contrast, is slow, wasteful, inefficient, unfair, bloated and populated with slackers who can’t cut it in the free market.

That logic is fatally flawed, of course, but truth is elusive on the campaign trail, and in a 30 second TV ad almost anything goes. So Poizner claims that Whitman supports Obama’s immigration policies (which are, what, exactly?) and Whitman claims that Poizner is really a closet liberal who once voted for – hold on here – Al Gore!

Every time I think politics can’t get any dumber up pops some Tea Party spokesperson yammering about taking our country back. I still don’t know whose iron grip the Tea Party folks want to break. I think they mean Barack Obama, but that’s so nonsensical given the Obama Administration’s limp policies that it can’t possibly be true.

But back to California, the steadily expiring Golden Bear. Republicans will fall on their swords before supporting tax increases of any kind. Democrats, on the other hand, face ostracism if they dare support cuts to social services. Talk about stalemate. The state’s structural deficit will never be addressed, Proposition 13 will remain the most sacred of sacred cows, and the oil industry will continue to extract oil from California without paying a dime in severance taxes. The more the state flounders, the more desperate voters become, with the end result being that wing-nut politicians, professional or novice, begin to look attractive, even reasonable.

The Golden Bear is blind in one eye, minus a hind paw, and lame in its front leg; it can barely shuffle along let alone run as it once did from the high sierras to the coast, from the redwoods to the desert. Nobody messed with the Golden Bear back in the day, but that day ended a long time ago.

The Savior Cometh

Meg Whitman, wealthy EBay queen, is prepared to spend around $150 million to become the next Governor of California. Apparently, nobody close to Meg has told her what a thankless job she’s after. Oh well. If Meg is successful in outspending her opponents – and odds are that she will by a wide margin – she will learn the terrible truth: the state she so badly wants to revive is ungovernable.

Like the current governor, Meg Whitman is an eternal optimist who wants to do for California what she did for EBay, namely, bring optimism and opportunity to all! Noble goals to be sure, and if we hadn’t heard the same claptrap a hundred times before we might even believe it.

Let’s not forget that Arnold Schwarzenegger blew into Sacramento promising to nuke the boxes and rid state government of fraud, waste and abuse. Arnold was going to take Sacramento by its lapels and shake until government spending fell and school children achieved stupendous scores on standardized tests, stopped gorging themselves on junk food and became physically fit; until plenty of cheap water flowed to central valley farmers, and the brown haze above Los Angeles magically vanished; until thorny immigration issues disappeared. Oh yes, Arnold was going to bring California’s glory back, kicking and screaming if necessary.

Make-believe worked in Hollywood, why couldn’t it work in Sacramento?

For any number of reasons, though the most compelling of all is King Paralysis, the toughest, nastiest motherfucker in the capitol, the dude who murders campaign promises and makes a mockery of reform. Meg Whitman has yet to meet the King, but when she does she’ll never forget the experience.

The King boasts a terrifying arsenal: sacred cows like Prop 13, term limits, a dysfunctional budget process that requires a supermajority to pass any tax or spending proposals, partisan bickering that makes an inner city preschool look civil, legislative gerrymandering that insures the election of extremist crackpots who believe that compromise equals weakness, and an out of whack initiative process.

What sort of damned fool wants to stand toe-to-toe with King Paralysis? OK, Jerry Brown I understand – he wasn’t known as Governor Moonbeam for nothing. Schwarzenegger ran for vanity and ego, and because the sun was setting on his movie career. It wasn’t as if Arnold was going to be cast as Hamlet or King Lear, and no studio was clamoring to make Terminator IV, V or VI. Arnold was antsy and for her own peace of mind Maria wanted him out of the house. Why not leap into the political arena?

Whitman has more jack than she knows what to do with, though why she’s willing to piss it away campaigning for a job that’s destined to humble her is a mystery. Has Meg had a full and complete psychiatric evaluation? We may never know because Whitman’s handlers are playing it coy, keeping Meg away from the media and saturating the airwaves with ads that paint her as tough, smart, competent, brave, compassionate, visionary and kind. In short, the savior that California desperately needs.

Well, why not? We tried Gray Davis, a wimpy career politician, and he got run out of Sacramento. We gave Schwarzenegger, a Hollywood actor, a shot and he will leave the state worse off than he found it. So why not hand the reins to a hot shot corporate CEO who made investors happy as pigs in slop?