I May End Up Voting For A Pornographer [sigh]

In My Humble Opinion
21

Two other folks that have filled out the forms to get themselves on the ballot are comedian Gallagher and Libertarian Ned Roscoe.

Roscoe’s an interesting one. He’s the president of a chain of discount shops called “Cigarettes Cheaper!” and he’s been an outspoken critic of government for ages. His gas pumps had stickers on them saying “Taxes are a waste!” listing the percentages and where they go to. He’s also fought vigorously to repeal Prop 10 and the 50-cent per pack tax on cigarettes. He’s likely to win on that aspect alone if he promises to save smokers a butt-load of cash. Non-smokers have also had a chance to see that those tax revenues haven’t exactly been put to good use.

Back before the web was born, Mr. Roscoe printed commentaries on his shopping bags - IIRC, he called them bagitorials: editorials printed on bags. Feel free to also call them rants or screeds.

As for Gallagher, I’m hoping he’s joking.

I heard on the news last night, that 340 or so people have picked up the paperwork to put their name on the ballot. If even 10% of them follow through, we’re going to have one humongo ballot. It’s so simple to do - IIRC, it takes either 10,000 signatures and $3,500, or $10,000 and no signatures.

22

they said it was $3500 and like 65 sigs. so i could run if i wanted to blow $3500 and spend an hour in front of safeway getting sigs.

23

From The Daily Show:

“Larry Flynt says he has a plan to balance the budget in California without raising taxes. No details of the plan were available, but experts say it probably involves showing the inside of a woman’s vagina.”

24

Adam Corrolla’s been making jokes about running for Gov. for the past month on the radio. I hope he runs…

25

You know, Gov. Jesse “The Body” Ventura’s considering a run for the White House, don’t you?

26

:confused:

27

I absolutely agree. I am no fan of Gray Davis, but the whole point of representative government, of course, is that we don’t hold a statewide plebiscite every day, and we don’t get mob rule.

The idea behind the recall process (when it was instituted way back when) was to put more power into the hands of the people, and to avoid the machine politics of the big (and small) eastern cities. BUT in fact what this recall proves is that a small well-funded minority can hijack the process and get a “redo” when they don’t like the result. And remember that if there is a recall, the winner of the election for the new governor is whoever gets the plurality of votes. There is no requirement that the candidate get a majority. If you look at the arithmetic of this, it is shocking. Less than 2 million signatures required to get the recall on the ballot, and then, if the recall goes through, the winning candidate probably only needs 20% or so of the votes cast.

28

Also against the recall although not happy with Gray.

29

Am I the only one thinking about voting for Tom McClintock, or is there some sordid history that I don’t know about? He seems pretty solid from the interviews I’ve heard.

30

Well, BraheSilver, McClintock’s reputation is that he never saw a government service he didn’t want to privatize, all the way down to streetlights. In addition, many members of his own party still begrudge him for how he acted during the last budget crisis, when he was no help to Gov. Wilson.

31

I don’t know. Say what you will, but Larry Flynt did build a multi-million dollar bussiness, that has been around for …what, 20 years?

I think that makes him just as qualified as a lot of other people that run, and sometimes get elected.

Of course, I don’t live in California…:wink:

32

I think a good trick would be to run 10-20 candidates with the same or similar names as a candidate you don’t want to win. Thus, if you really hate (e.g.) Richard Riordan, you’d fill the ballot with Richard Reardon, Richard Neardon, Dick Riordan, Pritchard Peerdom, etc. You’d either have to find people with those names or have people legally change their current names, but hey – California’s a big state. I’m sure you could come up with whoever you needed. :stuck_out_tongue:

33

The only logical sticking point I can see is that it will cost extra millions of dollars to hold the recall measure right away. Davis has legitimately pointed out that a statewide presidential primary will be held in March and that may be the best time to do this. Anyone else have a read on this? There does seem to be an odor of a small, dissatisfied political minority stirring up trouble. Sadly, the unctuous stench of well oiled political machinery wafting from the governor’s office is much more noticeable.

34

It certainly doesn’t help dispel the illusion when Darrel Issa was spearheading the recall effort, his answering machine announced that it was for the “Issa for Governor campaign.” :rolleyes:

Yeah, but the voters voted for Davis anyway last year. Just because some Republicans got bratty at losing another election is no reason for a recall.

35

I can sort of see both side sof the issue in this matter. On the one hand, I feel like the whole recall thing is like a kid on the playground who just muffed a flyaball that scored 4 runs screaming “do over! do over!”.

On the other hand, I can see why that kid on the field feels like the school bully made him drop the ball by whacking him on the back of the head just as he was about the catch the ball.

The question is where is the wrong and who is too blame? Its painfully obviosu that Davis meddled with the Republican primaries to get a weaker candidate to run against. Knocking the real threat, Riordan, out of the picture so that the weaker and abysmally inadequete Simon was the Republican’s sole white hope.

This does lead to the dilema: Who is at fault? the manipulator or those who so easily let themselves be swayed? you can argue either way.

Davis’s other evil trait in the election was his total poo-pooing of the idea that there would be any state budget deficit to worry about. The one thing Simon got right in his campaign was how the fical situation was actually very dire. “Twaddle” said the Davis camp, and California fell for the lie. After all, Simon was a hysterical ninny who complained about Davis’s fundraising tactics in the worst way possible. Of course, mere hours after the election was over Davis all but admitted the lie and said we’ve got a budget problem.

So who is at fault? Davis for lying or California for buying his lies?

I dislike the idea of this recall, but not for the idea that it will ‘set a bad precedent’. Recall efforts have been numerous in the past and the vast, vast majority of them have failed miserably. This one had quite a head of steam to it, and it kept on going. It might have been self-serving politicos that stareted it, but it was maintained by the sheer frustration and arrogance of Davis. This kind of emotional steamhead doesn’t build up easy, and won’t be easily pulled again.

Davis made several mistakes along the way that actually helped the recall vote. He ginored at first, which was probably the correct thing to do, but he also ignored the problems as well that led to it. Then he tried to use legal tricks to get the movement dismissed, which seemed more like trickery than any real politcal effort. He claimed he would defeat it by painting it as a right-wing conspiracy, which even if correct is not the tactic people want to se out of Davis right now. Even democratic leaders are telling him to behave this time around.

For it or against it, its going to happen now. I likely won’t vote for Davis. So I think I’ll find a nice fringe candidate to waste my vote on. Heck I did that in the 2000 presidential election. It was an act of protest.

36

Daaamn, then electing Larry Flynt is going to make sense. If he puts up all the surveillance videos of pornographers, celebrities, politicians and mobsters on a pay-per-view website, California would be in the black in 6 months!

37

Actually, I thought the worst part was where he put every single Republican voter in a headlock and forced them to vote for Simon over Riordan. That was really scummy.

38

Don’t worry. Democrats have promised that they’ll finance their own recall if a Republican wins.

That way, everybody can play the same game again in a month or two.

39

Goog tip! This better happen again 25 years from now in whatever state i’m living in, i’ll own that election!

40

It’s interesting how many more threads came up on the California recall once Schwarzenegger got involved.

California politics hasn’t had this much attention since Upton Sinclair ran for governor in 1934!