[conspire] Heads up: Urgent need to vote in Sept. 14 recall election

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Nick Moffitt (nick at zork.net):

> I got a notice earlier this week that my ballot would be arriving, and
> we're watching the post to pounce on it.
> 
> I've had to explain to folks around here who are upset with local
> council leadership that recall mechanisms aren't as useful as you may
> think: they tend to be used to stop progressive leaders from
> accomplishing anything, and that's it.  We had a petition go around to
> institute them for Local Authority positions, and I very quickly told
> everyone about the Gray Davis experience.

Since you mention it, my take on the Gray Davis debacle:

A couple of years before Gray Davis took office, the Legislature at the
urging of, and with the support of, Gov. Pete Wilson (R) of San Diego
enacted deregulation of the electricity market (I don't have details 
in front of me) that included forbidding the state of California from
locking in a reliable supply.  

Roll forward a few years, Wilson leaves office and is replaced by Davis,
and Enron Corporation, sensing a weekness, manipulated the electricity
market in California in ways that induced the infamous "rolling
blackouts" of the summer of 2003, and drove California into the "spot"
market for at-will supplies at artificially inflated prices.  

Many California voters, angry at the rolling blackouts, and not
"getting" that they had been rolled by a criminal enterprise (Enron), 
blamed Gov. Davis, who was in truth not the _cause_ of the debacle, 
but rather one of the victims.

It could have worked out differently, _if_ Gov. Davis had been
resourceful and ruthless, rather than a hapless bureaucrat.  If,
hypothetically, he had used California's vast buying strength properly,
he could have turned the tables on Enron and cornered the "spot" energy
market, taking their lunch and enriching the General Fund.
Unfortunately, _this_ universe's Gray Davis was not adequate to that
challenge, and got rolled along with the entire state.

It was California's good fortune that his replacement, Mr.
Schwartzenegger, was a sensible and public-spirited man, a non-ideoloue
and quick learner, who eventually learned the job and entered with much
stronger support than unpopular Gov. Davis had.  None of that, sadly,
applies this time.


Anyway, I've continued to update my
https://linuxmafia.com/~rick/election-2021-09-14.html page today, but 
it's pretty much more of the same, plus some handy anchor links,
including one,
http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/election-2021-09-14.html#misogyny , about
Mr. Elder, that's not linked to from the table of contents but may prove
handy in online references.