Another good column by Jill Stewart. She was on "Reliable Sources" Sunday and said, " California political reporters have been "very, very lazy" in recent years, but now they're ready to pounce on Arnold Schwarzenegger . "They did not cover the budget disaster last year," she says. "If you look at the coverage, you cannot find any real in-depth coverage. They have a guilt complex about what's going on, and they are going to do a big pile-on on Schwarzenegger, because he is the front-runner. ...I predict a lot of bias and a serious attack on everything -- every little bobble that he does they are going to go after it big time."
Environment is Big Hurdle for Tin-Ear Republicans
Arnold Could be Sunk by Sacramento Politicos Firing on their Own Ship
(Aug 7, 2003)
By Jill Stewart
No matter who is running against Gov. Gray Davis, the California gubernatorial race promises to shine a spotlight on Sacramento's elected Republicans and the views that have turned them into an isolated minority just when the Republican Party has an unexpected chance to win a governorship.
Davis intends to make political hay out of the farthest-right ideas proposed this season by Sacramento's Republicans. Then he plans to tar Arnold Schwarzenegger and the various Republican gubernatorial candidates as plotting to uphold these ideals if he is recalled -- even if that's a bunch of bunk.
Meanwhile, pro-environment pundit Arianna Huffington made clear on Aug. 6 that in her "progressive, populist" run for governor she intends, beyond loudly attacking President Bush, to name as Enemy No. 1 the state's still-struggling business sector and its supposedly rich vein of income tax shelters and property tax loopholes. Going negative right out of the box, Huffington twice ignored interviewers' questions on CNN to attack Schwarzenegger, blasting him for being a spokesman for Humvee -- her symbol of the worst, most-polluting product corporate America has to offer.
Many pundits are breathlessly saying Schwarzenegger's superstar qualities, and the stirring vow he made that "I will talk directly to the people" during his campaign will not only sink Davis but sideline lesser candidates, like Huffington, Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante and Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi.
These pundits are perhaps unaware that pigheaded elected Republicans in Sacramento are almost gleefully providing Davis and Huffington with the ammo they need to make Californians feel queasy about a Republican governor. These Republicans clearly suffer from a collective tin ear when it comes to what Californians---a moderate crowd who still back the death penalty but support saving the redwoods---really want from their government.
A glaring example of this is the Republican take on the environment. Just look at their behavior toward a bill now sitting on Davis' desk, the first law in the nation to ban flame-retardant chemicals known as PBDEs.
PBDEs are showing up in people, whales and large fish, and especially in the breast milk of nursing women and their infants.
It is not known exactly how PBDEs move from upholstery, dashboards, TV and computer housings and carpets into living things. But early studies show the chemicals are doubling in Americans and Canadians every five years. Some scientists say PBDEs are the most "bio-accumulating" compound to appear since the horrors of DDT. Nobody yet knows what effect PBDEs have on humans. Scientists say they interfere with the hormones and thyroid gland that regulate brain growth, but scientists have not yet determined whether that interference has any measurable effect on human health.
Limited studies on Bay Area women by the state's Environmental Protection Agency showed they had, on average, 10 to 70 times the PBDE levels found in people in Europe. In Europe, manufacturers voluntarily stopped using the chemicals, which are now banned by the European Union.
At first, industry lobbyists hotly opposed AB302, authored by Democrat Wilma Chan of Alameda, because it banned forms of PBDE that do not show up in mammals in high concentrations, taking these widely used lifesaving flame-retardants off the market.
But Chan's compromise bill left manufacturers several PBDEs to use as flame retardants, as in Europe, and allowed five years to remove the "bio- accumulating" forms, penta and octa PBDEs. So industry agreed to live with Chan's reworked bill.
Yet after industry itself came onboard, only four Republicans voted for the PBDE ban, while 40 Republicans voted "no." Why? Do elected Republicans grasp the counterintuitive fact that in Sacramento, the vast majority of business and industry campaign bucks flow to the majority Democrats and only a fraction is given to the minority Republicans? For instance, last year, according to research by William E. Saracino published in March by California Political Review magazine, 94 percent of the money given by big businesses that hold board seats on the California Chamber of Commerce and the California Business Roundtable went to Gray Davis. Just a pittance went to pro-business Republican Bill Simon.
Just who in the hell do the Republicans think they are protecting?
One of the most outspoken opponents of the ban, Republican Assemblyman Greg Aghazarian of Stockton, tells me Chan's original bill was so bad "it completely eliminated the three most common flame retardants used in commerce whether they were accumulating in animals or not. These are the most effective flame-retardants we know of ? and they save many lives. "
Fine. Chan's bill sucked. But why did Aghazarian hotly oppose the final bill, which left manufacturers with plenty of options? He says he wants more study, in part because the compounds that are banned have not been proved to actually harm humans.
"It sets a bad precedent," says Aghazarian. "Are we going to start removing and eliminating and banning things just because somebody writes a report that is speculative at best?"
An industry lobbyist told me the other day that even industry is wincing over the tunnel-vision manner in which the Assembly and Senate Republicans are behaving. Says my industry source of the Republicans: "They're acting without regard for the recall or how voters will see it; that much is clear."
This mulishness parallels Republican leaders' behavior in the 1970s, when Southern California choked on smog. An Air Quality Management District was formed amid fierce opposition from those who said that cutting smog would cripple the economy. Instead, while smog control did drive out some incredibly dirty businesses, it spawned a vibrant smog-control employment sector and industry, and gave us fantastic inventions that use less energy and thus create less pollution---for example, thin-wall refrigerators, eco-wash machines, compact fluorescent lightbulbs and the tiny, new hot-water-on-demand water heaters.
Among the most profound outcomes is that Los Angeles today thrives in direct response to smog control, as neighborhoods long blanketed in a brown pancake of ozone have become desirable again.
But elected Republicans have utterly failed to learn the lesson of the air quality management miracle. (A miracle now threatened by growth and a nasty spike in smog from wildly gas-inefficient SUVs, a major issue of Huffington's). Yet while their politicians act like fools, Republican voters get it. Several polls, including a 2000 Zogby Poll, show that Republican voters, like most Americans, see themselves as environmentalists, and will pay extra taxes to protect the environment.
Everything the Republicans do in Sacramento, and everything the Democrats do in Sacramento, is now fodder for the recall. The Sacramento Democrats---always far more sly than the Republicans---understand this to the bottom of their toes.
In a blatant play to buy the votes of Latinos who currently support recall, for example, Davis has vowed to sign a controversial Democratic bill allowing drivers' licenses for illegal aliens. Unlike a similar bill Davis vetoed just last fall, this very hard-left bill does not even require the illegal aliens to apply for U.S. citizenship or submit to a criminal background check. That's pure insanity. Big unions like the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor are pushing hard for this no-strings and no-homeland-security drivers' license because unions, faced with ever-dwindling nationwide membership, see the illegal aliens as a juicy new member pool. The Los Angeles County Federation of Labor is already crowing to Latinos about how it is forcing Davis to sign this unwise law.
In another horrifically ill-advised move, this one designed to attract massive campaign funds, Davis is expected to sign a Democratic bill giving rich Indian tribes say over the environmental impact of developments within five miles of burial sites---a law almost certain to put a nasty clamp on badly needed housing in California.
When Davis begins his flurry of bill-signings in mid-September, expect the biggest giveaway since "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?"
The governor's panicky actions will create incredibly bad laws, and may even border on recklessness, but Davis is past all that now. For this man born with cockroach DNA, survival reigns supreme.
So when 40 Republicans vote against a ban on a creepy flame-retardant compound showing up in California babies, that easily becomes a TV ad to save Gray Davis.
It will be fascinating to see if Sacramento Republicans figure it out, or just keep refusing to accept that they are pawns in a uniquely bare-knuckled election year. Republican pigheadedness helped sink the party in California in recent years. GOP blindness on the environment, and most Californians' strong disagreement with them on this issue, is one big reason why Republican strategists should not assume a Republican win is in the bag.
jillstewart.net |
