Longtime consumer advocate Harvey Rosenfield writes a long and detailed indictment of Governor Davis based on Davis’ long history of selling his influence for political contributions and his lack of leadership on the energy crisis. It’s a pretty strong statement IMO.
When a long time progressive consumer advocate comes out against Davis, you know the governor is in very serious trouble. For those of you who are out of state and opposed to the recall as a right wing power grab, you have to understand that the problems with Davis are much broader and deeper than standard partisan attacks. Davis has done such a poor job that he has high negatives with liberals, moderates and conservatives.
Back to Dan’s point, I think everyone agrees that Davis is a lousy governor and shouldn’t be in office. He barely won the election despite running against a complete and utter moron (a moron whom Davis helped put on the Republican ticket, incidentally). He sucks. No argument. But much of the anti-recall crowd–including me–is anti-recall just because recall elections are a bad idea. I’d rather have an impeachment-style system that could only be invoked for abuse of the public trust (dishonesty, graft, etc.). If you just think the governor is a bad governor, vote him out at the regular election.
It’s particularly bad for THIS recall, because the procedures used in California recall elections are such a farce–the way Davis can’t be on the list of candidates (raising the specter that Davis could win 49% of the popular vote but lose to someone who only got 10%), the absurdly easy criteria to get on the ballot in the first place, etc.
Well, no, I mean you remember the initial stories about the crisis - that California wasn’t producing enough energy - and that was bullshit.
The truth was that the power companies were selling it out-of-state and demanding more money from California itself. So, in reality, there was no crisis per se… just a scam.
Or perhaps it could be because the preceeding governor, a republican, deregulated the entire energy industry. Of course, mulligan will never admit that any form of deregulation could possibly be a bad thing, so I look forward to hearing his convoluted explanations as to the REAL ™ cause.
Could it be because governments across the Western world are rapidly turning back more than a century of societal progress and giving control of essential services back to private interests? Look at how much of their income that middle-class people are surrendering these days just to light and heat their homes. The cost of everything is skyrocketing these days. We have another cold winter like this last one, with oil and natural gas prices so insanely high, and old people will be freezing to death in their homes.
Call me a socialist if you want (hey, I live in Canada, so I’m the next-best thing to Trotsky according to a lot of Yanks), but I think we’d all be better off with these sorts of things under the control of democratically-elected governments.
As much as I would like to Republican-bash alongside you, sadly, CA energy deregulation cannot be primarily blamed on the Republicans. The disastrous energy deregulation bill was sponsored by CA legislator Steve Peace, a Democrat, and was approved unanimously by both houses of the CA Legislature which were then (and now) controlled by large Democratic majorities. All of the Republicans also voted for the bill, so they share the blame, but the sponsor and the majority of voters were Dems :(.
As a further note, Steve Peace now works for Gray Davis, as director of the budget or somesuch.
I’m not sure what specific politicians are to blame for the power crisis; they did set up the environment where power companies could break the law and manipulate prices like no one’s business. That said, I’m pretty sure the people commiting the crimes - the fucking power companies - were the bad guys. You know, unless conservatives have suddenly embraced “root causes” explanations, and think suing gun companies because they happen to make guns which people use to shoot each other is a-ok.
Oh yeah, and there’s a certain party in Washington - I’m not saying who! - who lied through their teeth, pretending the crisis was the fault of the power plant-hating CA hippies. Never mind that they were best buddies with the people holding up the state for ransom, and the yahoos they appointed to the FERC just kind of stood there and watch while CA was held up at gunpoint.
I’m kind of curious what else Gray could have done in the power crisis, too; it’s a bit silly to blame him. What, he could run on an exercise bike to make it himself?
I don’t dispute any of this - I was simply pointing out that you cannot blame the CA Republicans for passing the deregulation in the first place. It was a bipartisan screwup.
Obviously the Bush White House shares a lot of the blame but this WAS a state issue and the pointman to show leadership and take action should have been Davis.
I’m kind of curious what else Gray could have done in the power crisis, too; it’s a bit silly to blame him. What, he could run on an exercise bike to make it himself?
He had multiple options: the first signs of the problem were in San Diego in Summer 2000 - then 6 months later it hit the rest of the state. There was much discussion in the state of what to do during the six months and Davis did essentially nothing. He could have negotiated power contracts with a medium-term duration before the crisis went bad; he could have used eminent domain to get some of the offline plants under state control and operating again; he could have expedited the investigation and gotten some court orders. Given that he eventually had to raise rates, he could have raised rates sooner and alleviated some of the disruptive impact. The bottom line is that he did Jack and Squat. I was here, I was a Davis supporter and his passivity and lack of leadership shocked the hell out of me.
And who the hell is Harvey Rosenfeld?
By his own description, he is:
"Mr. Rosenfield, the Foundation’s President and founder, is one of the nation’s foremost consumer advocates. A public interest lawyer and protégé of consumer advocate Ralph Nader, Rosenfield authored Proposition 103 and organized the campaign which led to its passage by California voters in 1988 despite over $80 million spent in opposition (still a record). He has co-authored groundbreaking initiatives on HMO reform (Proposition 216, November 1996) and most recently on utility rate deregulation (Proposition 9, 1998) as well as lead the campaigns for their enactment. "
Sounds like the kind of guy you would often agree with Jason :).
Sounds like the kind of guy you would often agree with Jason.
Probably, and he does make a good point in his PDF there (though I must wonder what magical GOP candidate he’s imagining who wouldn’t be worst).
But on this:
He had multiple options: the first signs of the problem were in San Diego in Summer 2000 - then 6 months later it hit the rest of the state. There was much discussion in the state of what to do during the six months and Davis did essentially nothing. He could have negotiated power contracts with a medium-term duration before the crisis went bad; he could have used eminent domain to get some of the offline plants under state control and operating again; he could have expedited the investigation and gotten some court orders. Given that he eventually had to raise rates, he could have raised rates sooner and alleviated some of the disruptive impact. The bottom line is that he did Jack and Squat. I was here, I was a Davis supporter and his passivity and lack of leadership shocked the hell out of me.
Medium-term contracts would require him to have been prescient.
Seizing the plants (something I’m not sure even I favor) would be extremely dangerous both politically and legally.
Raising rates would just directly let the power companies directly screw the population, rather than indirectly screwing them - one of the oddities of the crisis was that prices had virtually no connection to anything; it’s extremely doubtful passing along the rates would have cut demand enough to end the (generator-manufactured) crisis.
On the investigation/court thing, I don’t know enough about it.
Jason - just out of curiosity - what would you be saying about Davis if he was a Republican?
I don’t live in California, but some of my most liberal friends in the world do live in California, most of them Democrats, and to a person they feel that they have seen Davis completely screw things up there and want him out. At least one feels (her words) that his blatant lying about the size of their deficit during his re-election campaign is reason to throw him out.
I don’t live in CA, so I’m not real passionate about the issue, although I have seen how the state has lost a significant amount of high tech industry when everyone 10 years ago was planning to move out there. But I see these threads on Davis being a reflection of how the two party system works in Washington - if someone in your party is being attacked, valid or not, you have to defend him or her to high heaven and find a way to blame whatever the problem is on the other party.
It will take a lot of Democrats voting to get rid of him for the recall to be successful.
One thing I do believe - while Davis has done CA enough harm to have long lasting consequences, this recall is a bad idea. Not because the people shouldn’t have a mechanism to throw someone out if they feel the circumstances warrant it, but because the mechanism of this recall is such that someone who only gets, say, 20% of the vote, could win the job. Heck, with 200 candidates, I suppose theoretically someone could win with only 1% of the vote. I understand that we have presidents elected with less than 50% of the vote (and before we have the cliched Bush comments, remember that he got a higher percentage than previous high profile presidents), but there’s something that I don’t like about an election that ends up with someone getting a very small percentage of the vote winning. I’d much prefer a recall process in which there are two steps - one, the recall, then a normall process for the election.
OTOH - I assume that would just ensure that the only people that voters would get to vote for would be “appointed” by the party official in Washington. ;)
I’m not aware of any federal law allowing the President to be recalled. Davis should just resign. The democrats don’t have a prayer unless he steps down and lets his Lt. take the reigns. He could kill it now, save sixty odd million, eliminate the spectacle and preserve democratic control of the office. Otherwise he just gets crucified this fall and Arny wins.
