Prop 8 and Justices’ Retention Election
I will not offer an opinion on whether the California Supreme Court will or will not invalidate Proposition 8. Others are having that debate throughout California, including on the pages of Fox and Hounds Daily.
However, I will venture a guess that the legal verdict could lead to political consequences for some of the justices who make that decision.
Two of California’s Supreme Court justices come up for retention elections at the 2010 general election. One of the two is Chief Justice Ronald George who wrote the majority opinion in the narrow 4 to 3 decision recognizing the right for homosexuals to marry. The other justice on the 2010 ballot is Ming Chin who dissented from the George opinion.
The California electorate votes to retain or reject a Supreme Court justice every twelve years. The justices do not “run” against an opponent. The voters choose Yes or No on whether to keep a justice on the job.
Hitting the Healthcare Gas Pedal
A coalition of unlikely bedfellows, including my own association, is making good on its promise to step on the healthcare gas pedal shortly after America selected a new president.
In a Veterans Day full-page ad in USA Today, the National Federation of Independent Business, America’s largest small business association, AARP, Business Roundtable, and Service Employees International Union sent a joint letter to President-elect Barack Obama calling on him to make healthcare reform one of his top priorities in the first 100 days of his administration.
“If you will commit to taking action on this critical issue early in your administration, we will commit to engaging our members by hosting a health care reform summit, working with you to develop a proposal as part of your agenda for the first 100 days and educating our members about the challenges and trade-offs reform entails,” the letter said.
NFIB, AARP, SEIU and the Business Roundtable launched the Divided We Fail campaign to help build consensus and work toward bipartisan solutions to affordable, high-quality healthcare among the small business, big business, labor and consumer communities that each represents.
And Now, Back to this Trainwreck of An Economy
Whether you celebrated or commiserated last week over the presidential and other election results, it is now another week, we still have this economic mess, and it is not going away soon. This is not your Father’s recession; this one is our very own, unique meltdown. Unemployment, even with all the creative statistical revisions that gurus of these things use, hit 6.5% nationally in figures announced last week, California’s number is significantly worse, and that figure should continue to creep up.
Retail sales news are just devastating and that’s not going to get better quickly with the year-end holidays almost upon us. In fact, many retailers’ whole years are based on what they do in the last quarter; this one is not going to be pretty and the usual January bankruptcies for those who made it through the holidays are going to feature some prominent retailers, if they can get that far.
Once again, we need to take a moment to appreciate that the tail we are trying to grab onto is attached to one hell of an enormous tiger of a problem. Those ‘financial weapons of mass destruction,’ as Warren Buffett so colorfully warned us about our economy’s love affair with all things derivative, were the direct result of either bold ignorance or forgetfulness (in the name of greed) of the gambler’s first rule of survival at the gaming tables: don’t bet what you can’t afford to lose. And now we hear that AIG needs more billions – their first bailout just won’t do!
Getting the GOP Groove Back – The Messengers
Like so many others who suffered bruising losses this past Tuesday, I had that moment that CNN Commentator Donna Brazile described in her “letter to losers” of being tired, angry and sad. I lost my own primary for state assembly in the 15th district in June and promptly jumped in to help the winner Abram Wilson retain our only Republican seat in the Bay Area legislature. I did everything I could to help the presidential ticket and my friend congressional candidate Dean Andal in the 11th district.
I raised an astounding $22,500 for the Victory campaigns and even more for Andal and Wilson during the general election. Why? I just didn’t see how we could risk having a GOP “shut out” for business-friendly candidates – thus paving the way for more regulation and mandates and less flexibility.
Then Election Day and the Obama tsunami hit.
The reality of no Bay Area representation in the state legislature and the U.S. Congress was as biting a cold as I’ve felt since I left Clarkson University (where it is 45 degrees below zero in the winter).