A New California - The Case For Angelides

While it is easy to vote for Phil Angelides as a protest against the failed tenure of Governor Schwarzeneggar, who has long since outdone Grey Davis in corruption and devotion to special interests tenfold, the fact of the matter is that there is far more at stake here than merely rejecting a phony politician. Angelides is the first chance that California voters have had in a generation to elect someone who would change the fundamental direction that the state has been headed since prop. 13 passed in the 70s, through Democratic and Republican administrations alike.

It is time for a new direction, a new California, one that doesn't just sit pat with the unequal and broken status quo because it keeps the property taxes down, but rather a California which dares to dream. While California's dynamic culture and inventive R&D-heavy tech economy have long been innovative and unafraid of trying big ideas, dreaming great dreams, California's political sphere has been locked into a cowardly, complacent rut for my entire lifetime, unable or unwilling to govern as though this were a Democratic state, a diverse state, a state where the right wing no longer needs to be pandered to. A new California is ripe for the taking, if politicians were willing to dream, and lead. We have in Phil Angelides one such politician.

Mocked in the media as too wonkish, insufficiently entertaining, too focused on actual governance (what does that tell you about the media's priorities), Angelides is the first real chance to actually break with the corrupt, stale status quo, and move into the 21st century.

His vision:

1. An educational system available to everyone

2. A sane and sustainable tax base, reversing the borrow and spend inanity of the republican years. Unless you make over $500,000 a year as a couple, the tax hikes that everyone from Westley to Schwarzeneggar have been banging on about for moneths won't really pertain to you. And if you're making half a million a year, you can afford to pull a little more weight, quite frankly.

3. A California that proves once and for all that environmentalism, clean air and water, clean water and energy efficiency can spur a thriving economy, not block it.

4. A California where noone goes without basic health care, especially our children.

5. A California where the voters, and not big corporate donors, decide our elections, with clean, publicly funded elections.

6. A California where you don't have to be a movie star or a dot.com executive just to make ends meet, a California that works for all Californians.

7. A California with a government as willing to move forward, to work hard and to dream as its people.

8. A California that treats all of its people with respect and celebrates our common humanity, instead of pitting our many groups against one another in a divide and conquer strategy. A California that celebrates our cosmopolitan immigrant society, instead of demonizing it. A California that takes advantage of our ties to the world, instead of closing ourselves off from it.

Another California is possible, if we would but will it into being. Don't believe the media hype, and vote Angelides to carry California into the 21st century. You are not powerless, and you don't have to settle for the status quo just because it is portrayed as inevitable.