Los Altos marches to the left

Eight years ago, when Los Altos voters favored Al Gore over George Bush, the Town Crier predictably made sure to mention "the city's rich Republican history." (Just as predictably, the paper failed to mention its publisher's prominent role in local Republican politics). Four years later, a similar article by Miss Mischief characterized my hometown as "typically a Republican stronghold."

It's time to dispense with that idea. Los Altos is a place with many problems. But I am happy to report that Republicanism is not one of them.

Since the 2000 election, the margin by which Los Altos voters have favored the Democratic candidate for President has tripled, with Barack Obama pulling in more than twice as many votes as John McCain this year.

In Los Altos Hills, the margin is slightly smaller, but the trend is the same.



The local electorate's take on Prop. 8 is further evidence of the city's liberal tilt: despite the Town Crier's courageously bad endorsement of the measure, Los Altos and Los Altos Hills strongly rejected it (63-37 and 60-40, respectively).

Has Los Altos changed, or has the Republican Party?

Nationwide, voters with postgraduate degrees went Democratic by as much as 64-36 margin. (This is not surprising given their choice between a former law professor with Joe Biden as a running mate and Warren Buffett as an economic advisor and, on the other hand, the trio of a gas tax holiday advocate, Sarah Palin and Joe "the Plumber"). With 40% of its population over the age of 25 holding advanced degrees, Los Altos is likely lost to the Republicans for the foreseeable future. It may not be long before reporters are referring to its rich Democratic history.

Breaking: Town Crier endorses Prop. 8

Why can't the Town Crier just come out and say it doesn't like gay people? Then we wouldn't have to endure a constant stream of illogical excuses for its positions:

We think it is time to stop the courts from making our laws. That’s why we elect a representative government. The ripple effect of letting the current court ruling legalizing gay marriage stand will be endless lawsuits, especially regarding tax-exempt status for churches and educational institutions.

If I were more mature, I could write several law review comments on all the things that are wrong about these three sentences. Instead, I'll do this my way.

We think it is time to stop the courts from making our laws.

The Supreme Court upheld the decision under due process and equal protection law. Other examples of courts "making our laws" under these doctrines include:

• Skinner v. Oklahoma, 1942, preventing the forced sterilization of a robber
• Brown v. Board of Education, 1954, desegregating public schools
• Griswold v. Connecticut, 1965, allowing married people to use contraception
• Loving v. Virginia, 1967, striking down bans on interracial marriage
• Roe v. Wade, 1973, and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 1992, protecting women's right to reproductive autonomy

Obviously, it is time to put a stop to this nonsense.

That’s why we elect a representative government.

The California State legislature has voted twice to allow same-sex marriage. The governor vetoed the bills both times, saying he would prefer the courts to sort out the constitutional issues. The proposal that the Town Crier is endorsing circumvents representative government by asking the entire electorate to amend the Constitution in a way that would eliminate certain due process and equal protection rights for one group of people.

The ripple effect of letting the current court ruling legalizing gay marriage stand will be endless lawsuits,

It was not the gays who brought the original lawsuit; and, to repeat, they based their argument on due process and equal protection rights. Those are not the kinds of lawsuits we should fear.

especially regarding tax-exempt status for churches and educational
institutions.

This is a particularly obnoxious claim that basically threatens that churches and religious schools will illegally take political stances against the Constitutionally protected rights of gay people, and implies that the right itself is to blame, rather than the people consciously breaking the law.

Speaking of unfortunate juxtaposition

Seen next to each other on the table in the reception area at my office on Monday:

Headline from the front page of the New York Times: Obama camp closely linked with ethanol

Headline from the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle: Oil drilling question looms as election issue

Essentially, our presidential candidates are competing to see who can offer the most counter-productive solution to our oil addiction.  One day I would love to see a candidate suggest people drive less.

Sad news for the reality-based community

The once great San Jose Mercury News is surreptitiously trying to poll readers on how it should destroy itself. I suppose it's better to do these things intentionally and all at once, but that hardly makes ideas like naming the sections of the paper Live, Play and Innovate or scrapping every section but Business any less tragicomic.

If they are having trouble figuring out how to support their operation, they should call Bob Novak, who somehow manages to get paid for columns like the one he wrote this weekend. It consisted of a claim that some anonymous had told Novak that some another anonymous person or people had told him that anonymous people who work for the Clinton campaign had some unknown information about Obama but weren't telling anybody what it was. I can't imagine any other profession in which you could turn out that kind of work product and still keep your job.

Or if that fails, maybe they should take the advice of my former boss and try to "make it not suck."

Dinner with Mike Gravel

I know who I am voting for.

Mike Gravel -- the man who ended the draft (and therefore the Vietnam War) and entered the Pentagon papers into the public record -- joined a small group of UCLA law students for dinner Friday night.

Gravel is the first candidate I've heard come out in support of the Wiener platform, my proposal to eliminate our country's stupidest policies. (I did not ask him not know how he feels about the penny). He has a plan to end the war (stop fighting it), and has both the best environmental record of any on candidate (he cosponsored much of our key environmental legislation in the 70's) and the best plan for new solutions (a carbon tax).

But Gravel is thinking even bigger than that. He wants to change the way we write laws and the way we tax ourselves. His real motivation for running is to draw attention to his National Initiative for Democracy, a popularly ratified constitutional amendment that would institute a version of California's initiative process at the national level. The plan eliminates the worst feature of California's system by making it a crime to spend any corporate dollars in campaigns. Of course, it still has some drawbacks, as Gravel admitted. For one, people are kind of stupid. However, unlike legislatures, they have no need to raise massive amounts of money and have more freedom to fix their mistakes.

Gravel has been shut out of recent Democratic debates, because he hasn't met the arbitrary and disturbing standard of needing a million dollars, clearly designed to keep him out. (This is a perverse reversal of spending limits that other jurisdictions employ). As he is unlikely to solve that particular problem if he keeps spending 2.5 hours with a handful of students, look for him next at a Dec. 10 afternoon rally outside NBC studios.

Minnesota values

You know how I know you're gay, Senator Larry Craig?

You sit with "a wide stance when going to the bathroom," among quite a few other hilarious details.

It's not quite as funny an explanation as "Blow Job" Bob Allen's 'there were a lot of black guys around' routine, but it will still give my brother plenty of punchlines next time he torments my father with lines inspired by the video game scene in "The 40-Year-Old Virgin." ("You know how I know you're gay? ... You stared at a guy through a bathroom stall for two minutes while fidgeting with your fingers and later claimed that your actions were misinterpreted.")

Meanwhile, while Minnesota grapples with the possibility that its airport is a haven for sexually deviant senior-citizen conservatives from Idaho, one of the state's native daughters is facing a firestorm of criticism in Uganda for her work as a "homo propagandist."

Former Voice intern David Herbert, about whom I've promised not to say much specific because his current employer is probably reading, sends us the story of Katherine Roubos. The two graduated from Stanford together in the spring and are working as interns for the Daily Monitor in Uganda.

It seems Roubos has made the mistake of writing about gay people in a country where homosexuality is illegal. This has raised the ire of an angry mob that hilariously calls itself the "Rainbow Coalition."

Minister for Ethics and Integrity Nsaba Buturo was also on hand to represent the ruling party. Amidst the cheers of supporters, he assured the crowd that the government has no intention of repealing the ban on homosexuality before denouncing foreign journalists who advocate for gay rights.

As the local editor, it's not my place to criticize foreign governments too much, but a Minister for Ethics and Integrity? Doesn't that sound like something the Bush Administration would have? Herbert's always had a good eye for irony, so he also gives us this:

"This is not journalism, but rather criminal propaganda," said [Pastor and former National Break Dance Champion Martin] Ssempa, who held a young boy in his arms as he rallied the crowd.

Creepy. This man, by the way, receives U.S. taxpayer dollars to spread his beliefs.

Earmarks might be better

Remember how happy some of us were feeling back in November when the Democrats took control of both Congress and my liver?

That was before the new majority (in a miscalculated act of political cowardice) failed even to prevent the war's growth. It was also before loyal NOE reader Will Evans blew holes in all that Congressional bloviating about earmark-free spending bills.

The Center for Investigative Reporting is reporting today that hundreds of members of Congress have been privately pressuring federal agencies to keep feeding pork to their home districts.

Check out CIR's growing catalogue of public records to find out how your representatives have attempted to pervert the spending process. And don't worry if you don't see their names. Only five of the 13 federal agencies who received Freedom of Information Act requests actually responded. So the fact that Eshoo, Feinstein and Boxer are not currently implicated doesn't mean much -- chances are the picture this story paints of Congress is altogether too rosy.

What other bloggers did while I was drinking

Whatever your opinion of MoveOn.org (or the gerry-mandered winner-take-all system of American politics), being the group's top election-day caller in the entire nation is deserving of some kind of a prize.

The winner is Mountain View's own Wendy Fleet, former community access director director of KMVT better known around town as the lady with the Dream Peace sign (formerly Teach Peace) and in virtual reality as PogBlog. From 6:13 a.m. to 8:45 p.m. on Election Day, she made 500 phone calls, reaching 300 voters and 200 answering machines, more phone calls than any other MoveOn volunteer. (I made five, but then again I was otherwise occupied). Wendy estimates she made more than 2,280 calls in the 10 days before the election, reaching 600 people all over the country. (I'm trying to think what I did over that time period -- I think I went swimming a few times?) Her favorite exchanges are catalogued over on PogBlog.

The first decree is to legalize marijuana

Tenacious D had it right -- the tyranny and the bullshit's gone on too long.

Congressional Democrats have rolled out half a dozen initiatives remarkable mainly for their harmlessness. Raising the minimum wage, negotiating for Medicare drugs, making college tuition deductible (an idea that apparently came to them from an episode of the West Wing) are all politically palatable proposals, but they won't do much to address many of the country's most pressing problems. Meanwhile, calls are sure to grow to make truly difficult but necessary decisions -- things like signing the Kyoto Protocol, ending farm subsidies, instituting single-payer health care, and of course finding a solution to the situation we have created in Iraq.

Somewhere in between these two approaches is what I will call the Wiener platform. It focuses on ending policies that have failed so badly hardly anyone can honestly support them. This is not an argument against doing those other things, but I think these ought to be among the first priorities of the new Congress.

1) Decriminalize marijuana.
"It is recognized widely," writes Noam Chomsky, "that [the war on drugs] fails to achieve its stated ends, and the failed methods are then pursued more vigorously while effective ways to reach the stated goals are rejected. It is therefore natural to conclude that the drug war, cast in the harshly punitive form implemented since 1980, is achieving its goals, not failing."

2) End the embargo against Cuba.
Forty-five years in, and Cuba's still socialist. There's always next year. Even the Red Sox eventually won the World Series.

3) Classify SUVs as cars.
On average, the cars on American roads today get worse gas mileage than they did 20 years ago. The reason: in the twenty years since the end of mandatory increases in Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards, SUVs -- which are classified as light trucks under the law and therefore subject to lower standards -- have become far more popular.

There they are: three* proposals so clearly right you'd have to be with the terrorists to oppose them. Chip in here with your own ideas.

*Several of you are probably wondering why abolition of the penny did not make this list. I am retracting my previous support of that policy until I have more time to probe the $37,700 in campaign contributions from a copper company to Jim Kolbe, the retiring Arizona Congressman who sponsored the Currency Overhaul for an Industrious Nation Act. Arizona is the U.S. largest producer of copper, the main ingredient in nickels.

Morning in America

I woke up today at 6:45 to the following message on my phone from a teacher friend who "just had to say some things." Five points to any 1992 Bullis grad who can identify the caller based on the message alone:

Today is the greatest day on earth to be listening to conservative talk radio! [Unintelligible yelling]. I'm on my way to work! I'm listening to these [expletive deleted] complain and [expletive deleted] and moan and, and yell and (garbled) "WHAT WERE THESE PEOPLE THINKING?!" God I'm so happy! [expletive deleted] the conservatives, their kicking squirming moaning [expletive deleted] and they deserve to burn in hell!

[Deep breath] All right. Bye.

For the opposite end of the spectrum, Peter Daou over at Salon has compiled some of the most hysteric posts from the conservative blogs. This doesn't quite fit the definition, but Hugh Hewitt, who also says Santorum's loss is good for conservatives because it frees him up for the Supreme Court, might take the cake for most far-fetched rationalization:

[I]f you had told me in 1986 that 20 years later there would be a Republican president facing a 20 seat Democratic majority in the House and a two seat Democratic majority in the Senate --and that the Soviet Union had collapsed-- I'd have cheered long and loud.

A love letter to the people of Stockton

24 hours ago, I was perfectly sober. Ken Blackwell, Katherine Harris and Tan Nguyen all still held elected office. Donald Rumsfeld was still employed "overseeing" the war effort. Congress was completely devoid of former NFL quarterbacks. Perhaps worst of all, Richard Pombo was chairman of the House Resources Committee.

In all of the Pacific Time Zone, only a single Congressional seat changed hands last night. But the change in Pombo's 11th Congressional District was no ordinary takeover. It turned a seat that served as the launching pad for Pombo's efforts to gut the Endangered Species Act to a seat represented by a wind energy consultant.

People of the Central Valley, I take back everything bad I ever said about you. I wish I could give all of you (or at least 88,000 of you) a hug.

Erik Koalnd's reputation

Thank God Wolf Blitzer has failed to call several of today's House races. On the other hand, hahahahaha. As for the Senate, tradesports.com now has the odds the Dems will take over at close to 90%, Jim Webb (Virginia) and Claire McCaskill (Missouri) have already declared victory, and Erik Koland has staked his reputation on a Democratic sweep...

Drinking with Wolf

Here we are at the close of the first polls. So far, CNN has called races for Richard Lugar and Bernie Sanders, which they could have done this morning had they wanted.

This is the first election I have not had to work in years, so I am sitting here with my computer, Frank Rich's book and -- at least right now -- an 18-pack of Bud Light. Each time the Democrats take a Republican House seat, I'll be drinking one. (Hard alcohol for Senate seats). The liquor store is around the corner in the event I need more.

As an anonymous reporter friend said yesterday, cheers to alcohol poisoning.

A post for our Virginia readers

In the last installment of Congressional previews, I turn this space over to Mountain View's own Karen Meredith, appearing in an anti-George Allen ad funded by the Campaign for America's Future.

Everybody hates Katherine Harris

This might be piling on at this point, but I couldn't take all those notes on the Bill Nelson-Katherine Harris (U.S. Sen-Fla.) debate and not publish them, could I? (This, on the other hand, is definitely piling on).

Here are some choice bits from the woman who handed the 2000 election to George W. Bush. Direct quotes provided where possible.

On Vietnam: "The way we lost Vietnam is because Congress got involved."
On Cuba: "Our embargo [against Cuba] has worked."
On North Korea: The development of a nuclear program proves that Bill Clinton is to blame for the development of the nuclear program.
On global warming: "Global warming is a fact, but the scientists disagree on whether it is systemic or manmade. ... (walking towards the camera) ... We need to develop these alternative energy sources and we have made great progress in doing so."
The very first "alternative" energy source she cited? Drilling in ANWR, which she said can replace all the oil from Saudi Arabia. At this point, Bill Nelson stopped acknowledging her and began referring to himself in the third person in order to have a reasonable opponent to debate.

Harris continues to maintain that she is confident she will win despite a 30+ percentage point deficit in most polls. Too bad she's not Secretary of State anymore. Otherwise, she might still have a chance.

If you thought 2004 was bad...

Not to be outdone, Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell is considering whether to disqualify Ted Strickland, who is currently crushing Blackwell in the gubernatorial race. As the New York Times points out, this is pretty much Blackwell's only chance of winning.

Many of you may remember Blackwell as the man behind the disproportionately long voting lines in black communities in 2004. Coincidentally, he was also co-chair of the Bush campaign in the state. (Click here for the full report).

And just in case Blackwell decides to let him stay in the race, he is pinning his hopes on accusations that Strickland is gay and supported by NAMBLA. In the process, Blackwell has embarrassed himself so much that one paper even took back its endorsement.

Where all the white women at?

In the surprisingly close race to replace Dr. Bill Frist as Tennessee's Senator, Harold Ford, Jr. is bidding to become the first black Senator from a Confederate State since Reconstruction.

In response, the Republican National Committee, of course, is basically accusing him of intent to consent to miscegenation. The advertisement features a white woman saying she met Ford at a Playboy Party and winking at the camera as she says "call me." Earlier in the ad, a black woman says that Ford "looks good" and that's enough for her.

RNC chair Ken Mehlman, fresh off a campaign to woo black voters back to the Republican Party, continues to defend the ad and claim that he could not have taken it down even if he wanted to. The ad has been replaced with another that accuses Ford of "not being one of us."

Guess Tan Nguyen's alias

Let's begin with Orange County's 47th Congressional District, where incumbent Loretta Sanchez is absolutely pummeling Republican challenger and raging lunatic Tan Nguyen.

Nguyen continues to defend a letter sent to 14,000 residents with Spanish surnames born outside the U.S. telling them that they could go to jail or get deported for voting. Nguyen fired the staffer accused of sending the letter (which was printed on a non-profit advocacy group's letterhead. Now he says he would welcome her back. Why the change of heart? Because Nguyen's sources tell him that the word "emigrado" does not actually mean "immigrant." The identity of these sources and the schools from which they earned their PhD's in Spanish Vocabulary continues to remain a secret.

"I am innocent, and there is no way in hell that I am going to withdraw," Nguyen [lied]. "I am not going to quit this race, and I am going to win this race."

The L.A. Times is now reporting that Nguyen actually purchased the voter list himself, using an alias. They didn't say what alias he chose, but if you're an Orange County voter, be wary of future political mailers sent from anybody calling themselves "The real Sergio Ramirez," "Rusty Shackleford," "Edward K. Janowsky," or "T. Simon Warrington III."

Yesterday, state investigators searched the home of an LAPD officer who apparently played a role in the mailer. The best part of the story is Nguyen's comment at the end.

Reached by telephone Wednesday, Tan Nguyen declined to comment on Mark Nguyen, saying he had already discussed details of the case "far and beyond" his lawyers' recommendation.

No on everything?

As I write this, I am surrounded by thousands of undergraduates, mostly female, who are hoping to get a glimpse of the fallen former sex symbol Bill Clinton before he is institutionalized for his uncontrollable bouts of violent rage. The crazed ex-president is ostensibly here to discuss the virtues of Proposition 87, a perfectly fine law that has the unfortunate quality of being a state ballot proposition.

Prop 87 would create a severance tax on oil drilling and spent the approximately $4 billion raised to fund an alternative energy program. This is almost unquestionably a good idea, and by far the best law I have ever seen proposed on the state ballot.

If you have any doubt that the severance tax is a good idea, simply look at the tens of millions of dollars oil companies are spending to defeat it. If what they were saying was true -- that the law will simply force them to pass costs onto consumers -- they would never waste that much money fighting it. The law actually makes it illegal for them to pass those costs on. They are opposing it because it threatens to cut into their profit margins).

The problem is that every time a proposition becomes law through a vote of the unwashed masses, somewhere a rich asshole gets the idea in his head that he can spend millions of dollars getting people to support his terrible idea to reform the state constitution.

These rich assholes occasionally they have good ideas (like this one). More often than not, however, those ideas wind up screwing the state's tax, education, or penal systems. Progressives have scored small victories over the years through this process: the (sort-of) legalization of medicinal marijuana, funding for stem cell research and the recent "millionaire's tax" to support mental health facilities being popular examples. Here's a partial list, off the top of my head, of what they have given up in return:

1978, Prop 13 "People's Initiative to Limit Property Taxation"

1994: Prop 187 "The Save Our State Initiative"

1994: Prop 184 "Three Strikes You're Out"

1996: Prop 209 "The California Civil Rights Initiative"

1998: Prop 227 "English for the Children"

2000: Prop 22 "The Defense of Marriage Act,"

Ultimately, I don't know that I will be able to face myself in the mirror if I am the one vote that keeps the tax on oil drilling from passing. Weighing the possibility that voting no will discourage the next Howard Jarvis, Pete Wilson or Ron Unz from spending millions on their own particular horrible idea against the possibility that a yes vote will make this law a reality, I have to say the latter is probably greater. Sure, this amounts to compromising any belief in categorical moral imperatives to accept a loathsome kind of Clinton/Gore type of political pragmatism. Call me a sell-out, I suppose.