Better late than never, that’s what I always say.
*** Let’s start with Red County. The headline? ‘Arnold is a Big-City Liberal (Rips on Rural CA and Endorses Prop 99).’ Are you serious? I guess the righties like to label each other too. Prop 98 is nothing more than a partisan attempt by Republicans (read: the wealthy) to repeal rent control in order to take the gentrification that’s going on in Santa Ana to a statewide level.
In the process they seem to be attempting to redraw the battle lines by which they want to be judged this election season, and despite their rhetoric to the contrary, they seem to always revert back to the tactics of the S.O.S. (same old…), much like they did with the ‘In God We Trust’ nonsense. To be fair, the story came out of mostly agricultural Placer County where the scare tactic of eminent domain abuse among farmers is running rampant, but it’s not fair to go after Arnold by calling him a liberal just because he’s against an unfair attack on the less affluent, most of whom live in already overpriced cities.
Oh don’t be fooled, this is another Republican ploy to divide the populace and weed out those they feel aren’t ‘true conservatives,’ but true conservatism includes the libertarian principle of smaller government and in turn dictates that referendums be simple in nature and
intended to empower the voters, not just give us a choice between bad and worse, which incidentally seems to be the way many races are shaping up this year.
Prop 98 covers more property owners from eminent domain abuse, but phases out rent control, which will lead to landlord/tenant abuses instead. Prop 99 is simple and covers strictly eminent domain, but isn’t worded strongly enough and only covers owner-occupied structures. Since neither initiative covers everyone, I argue that the smarter, and easier way for Californians to finally have protection for their homes from the fallout of the Kelo decision is to vote no on 98, yes on 99, then we must work to add more eminent domain protections in the very near future. As many of us are aware, it’s much easier to add something to the law than to subtract from it. Seriously though, check out the comments on the story and decide for yourself who’s been using fear and division as political tactics.
*** ‘The LBC’ (I’m still not linking to them as they don’t link to my site TheCentristOC.com) has offered us some more marshmallowy goodness from Ed Chau in the 42nd Congressional District. Riveting stuff. This week Ed has captured the endorsement (as if it were really a contest) of the Asian-American Action Fund.
It looks to me like more good news for the Ed Chau for Congress campaign. Ed’s snatched yet another good endorsement, and he’s showing us how far he can really go. Congrats, Team Chau!
I’ll give you two guesses as to who offered up this drivel, but if you follow my work, you’ll only need one. That’s right: none other than LBC hackmeister Andrew Davey. Poor Ed needed a quarterback but he’s settled for a cheerleader! Naturally, there was only a single comment to this story, and it mentioned the lack of signage in the district which is something that I’ve been complaining about since I started writing again.
So last night I took a drive through the district on a sign-hunt and came up with nothing! When the campaign announced that they had moved into an office, they neglected to include an address, so I didn’t end up finding that either. I drove through Rowland Heights, his fundraising base, and Brea, where the supposed office is located, and if I didn’t already know about this race, I would have no clue there was a primary in less than a month except for a few signs for Republican judicial candidates in the affluent foothills areas. It’s simply depressing. Name recognition? What’s that? Who are you again? Election day is how long from now? [Update: ‘The LBC’ is just now reporting that Ron Shepston has been endorsed by the communication workers union – are they going to pick a horse here or even bother to analyze this race or are they just going to reissue press releases ad nauseam? California Progress Report has a story by Ron about Ron here]
In other 42nd news, if you can really call it that, Ed’s people are also announcing a rigorous public speaking schedule of three whole appearances in the month of May. Wow! I
hope he doesn’t over-exert himself! Actually I take that back. If he passes out from exhaustion, it may actually be worthy of some major media news coverage.
He’s also hired a young man by the name of Drew Cornick. Who’s he? Why he’s a former HRC staffer of course. When I asked Aaruni Thakur if I was being used as a token LGBT team member, I was told repeatedly that I wasn’t. Apparently, in his hiring of a gay-rights crusader, he continues to show that he may have had an ulterior motive in asking me to join Ed’s campaign after all. As soon as they realized I wanted nothing to do with it, I was quickly thrown under the bus.
In the end, it doesn’t matter anyway. Aaruni lies to Ed all the time too and Ed will find out soon enough. I told him he could win his election because I actually believed in him. Aaruni Thakur and Ken Christensen told him the same because they don’t want Ed to realize that he is in fact a sacrificial lamb. I wonder where the $20,000 he lent to his campaign came from, and it’s going to be very difficult to pay back without the state Democratic Party’s help, which does not look good for him in Dirty Gary’s district. Oh, and there are no comments on this story. Seriously, why does Andrew Davey even bother?
