WHY SO BLUE?

California is a great place to live. We have nice weather, nice beaches, Hollywood, theater, Disneyland; you name it. I moved here from Las Vegas in 1987 to attend UC Santa Barbara and never looked back. In those days, politics was the last thing on my mind, but I've since matured (well, I still enjoy Star Trek and comic books, so I suppose I haven't grown all that much). In the last decade or so, I've come to realize that another thing I like about calling California my home is that fact that we are a Blue State. Would I live here if we weren't? Sure. But the fact that the majority of Californians share my world view is admittedly comforting.

Conservatives living in California are quite aware of its Blue State status, and they're not happy about it. To hear some of them talk, you'd think they are preparing to be hauled off to secret prison camps in the Eastern Bloc or something. If you don't believe me, just check out our local "woe is me" Conservative Turtle or Minority Report. Jeez, relax guys: liberals make love, not war. Personally, I don't get the fear and paranoia. I mean, you can't honestly feel underrepresented in the US of A, can you?

Now, I'm not naive enough to think that California will always be Blue -- Reagan wasn't that long ago -- but if some day the political winds do change, I want it to be because the majority of Californians voted for it in a fair and honest election. If you've been paying attention lately, there was a recent attempt by Republicans to instantly turn California Red; it's called the "Presidential Election Reform Act" ... In a nutshell, it was an attempt to change the winner take all process for presidential elections so that California's Electoral College votes would be divided by regions. According to past voting records, the end result of this is that the GOP would get 20 additional electoral votes from California in the next election.

It appears that this initiative has crashed and burned, but I think it's important to discuss its underlying implications. In a rather ironic statement, Gov. Schwarzenegger recently said the following regarding the proposal ...

I feel like if you, all the sudden in the middle of the game, start changing the rules it's kind of odd, it almost feels like a loser's mentality, saying I cannot win with those rules, so let me change the rules… I have not made up my mind yet in one way or the other, because I haven't seen the details on it.

This, of course, is comical considering that he is only governor due to that horrible recall election. If anyone has forgotten, let me remind you ... Republican Darrell Issa spent a million dollars of his own money financing that recall election so that he could be governor. That didn't work out so well for him, but the end result is that Schwarzenegger skated into the position on name recognition alone. Ultimately, I'm actually pretty happy about that fact, because listening to Issa defend Blackwater on CSPAN this weekend made me ill. So, what, now supporting the troops means you have to support corporate sponsored contractors?

The point here is that this establishes a pattern for Republicans: before recall elections and reform acts, there was the Texas gerrymandering fiasco and voter suppression in Florida & Ohio. And it doesn't end there: soon the ever more conservative Supreme Court will be taking on Indiana's voter ID law. Gee, I wonder how that 5-4 decision will go?

What I take away from these events is that the Right knows they are losing the battle of ideas, so they have to cheat the system in order to maintain power. With that in mind, I would have to say that Schwarzenegger is correct: if you can't win on your own merits, then you're a loser.

I LOVE NY ... AND CALIFORNIA

The Average Man shouldn't like Arnold Schwarzenegger. He's arrogant, he can be kind of a doofus (see the movie Pumping Iron), and he pimped for Bush at the Republican National Convention (calling Democrats girly-men). More than that, however, I was angry -- and still am -- at the whole recall election fiasco. To me, it was just another example of conservatives gaining power by cheating the system (e.g. Texas gerrymandering). Does anyone really think Mr. Schwarzenegger would have won so easily had he been forced to run an actual campaign for more than a couple of months? The only consolation I received was that Darrell Issa lost after funding the thing.

Anyway, despite my strong feelings in this matter, I must give credit where credit is due. Aanold may not be perfect, but he's certainly done more for the environment and the global warming cause than any politician I can think of ... save Al Gore. I was inspired to write about this after reading a New York Times Editorial on Saturday that faults the federal government for moving too slowly on this important issue. In the article, it is stated that "Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California has warned that he will sue the Environmental Protection Agency unless it gives him the power to regulate automobile emissions." Certainly no girly-man behavior in that.

This then got me thinking about Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York. If you haven't heard, he just put forth a bold new plan to make NYC the greenest big U.S. city by reducing the city's global warming emissions 30 percent by 2030. As stated in the commentary, he plans to do this by implementing these items ...

All of New York's power plants and all the city's contaminated brownfields would be cleaned up, helping create vast new areas for an added 250,000 housing units. To put recreation space within reach of all New Yorkers, the city will open 290 schoolyards as public playgrounds and create public plazas in every community.

Roadways would be landscaped and 1 million trees planted. "Green" building standards would be required for all new structures and an array of financial incentives would be created to spark broad-scale energy rehabbing of buildings.

... Bloomberg's first (and toughest) sell may be congestion pricing for Manhattan, which he reluctantly embraced out of fear the economy of the city could be paralyzed by a projected 20 percent increase, by 2030, of traffic on the already clogged island ... The $8-a-day fee for cars and $21 for trucks ... would pay for vast subway improvements and expansion, plus increased commuter connections into the city.

So, there you go: two of the most (arguably) influential politicians on global warming are making things happen, and they are both ... oy ... Republicans. In a rare case for me, I was opposed to both of them, and I'm glad I lost.

Bringing it a little closer to home, I was saddened to read in the Los Angeles Times this weekend that the MTA is thinking about raising bus fairs to $2 from $1.25. As Queen Whackamole has suggested, a great way to reduce greenhouse gasses would be to make public transportation free. I agree, and L.A. certainly has some stinkin' thinkin' here. It is suggested that every 10% rise in fares drops ridership by 3%. And that is why San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has ordered a study of eliminating bus and streetcar fares all together. Santa Barbara should do the same.

I'm in line with Bill Maher's assessment that some problems only government can fix, and global warming is one of them. That thought depressed me considering Bush's denial of science and Congress's "glacial" pace. But the recent actions of California and New York give me hope.