Shock Doctrine California

If anyone has any doubt that the entire purpose of the whole Schwarzeneggar dog-n-pony show - from the Enron con job to the absurd recall circus to the daisy chain of special elections to the cutting of the car license fee and then sudden proclamations that we MUST DO SOMETHING ABOUT THESE SUDDEN AND UNEXPLAINED REVENUE SHORTFALLS which usually meant cutting some government service or another to the insane borrow-and-spend accounting flimflam after every hostage crisis budget session - being one gigantic attempt to destroy the state of California and subject its citizens to such a degree of pain that we collectively cried "uncle!" and let the permanent superminority CAGOP have their way with us, I offer this quote by Schwarzeneggar's State Finance Director:

"I looked as hard as I could at how states could declare bankruptcy," said Michael Genest, director of the California Department of Finance who is stepping down at the end of the year. "I literally looked at the federal constitution to see if there was a way for states to return to territory status."

That's right, they literally considered dissolving the state of California rather than raise taxes. If there is a better one-sentence summary of the conservative approach to governance, I haven't heard it.

Anyone voting for a Republican these days is a fool. They are trying to destroy the state, and they openly admit to it.

Analysis of Measure P

This isn't much, but I bothered going through the precinct data and figured I'd type it up in case anyone finds it interesting.

Basically, there wasn't a whole lot of variation across the city. Measure P went down in flames, with no precinct voting higher than 35% for it, and the lowest a miserable 16%, a 19% swing. Turnout was just under 30%, which makes any deeper interpretation of the broader electorate rather unreliable. Still, there was some slight variation, and it clumped, as I expected, by neighborhood.

The strongest votes against P were to be found in two places: first, those who lived closest to the proposed development (ironically, also those with the greatest say in its design process), in Wildhorse and across Covell near Slide Hill park; second, in the traditional Progressive base neighborhoods of central Davis north of campus and downtown.

The strongest votes for P (such as they were) were similarly inflected by neighborhood: South Davis, Far West Davis (ie. everything west of 113), and the apartment-heavy southern part of North Davis near Marketplace and along Catalina Ave. Some of this overlaps with the parts of town that voted for Measure K (ie. Target) a couple of years ago, but this should not be overstated: P got blown clear out of the water in all of those neighborhoods as well, just by a somewhat smaller margin.

The biggest story of the election, in my opinion, was how few people voted at all. I suspect a lot of the nonvoters did so for reasons related to the no votes (irritation with the process, unimpressed with the proposal, didn't find it necessary to build at this moment), but I am wary of ascribing that absence of action to much of a deeper political sympathy with the slow growth/no growth Progressive take on housing issues. Example A: The strong showing of Moderates on the City Council following a 60-40 rejection of Measure X.

As with Target and Covell Village, I believe that majorities in Davis on such matters are built from weird, unstable, often incoherent coalitions of voters, and that perception of fair play/good government concerns are a much larger factor than most political debate (either online or in the letters to the editor section of the Enterprise) would suggest. If you're going to try and buy an election, you should probably be careful to cloak it with a local volunteer effort, as Target did successfully with Measure K. If Davis voters feel like they're being pushed around, (see also: PG&E, Covell Village, and Chris Cabaldon), they tend to backlash pretty hard.

Mostly, I would hope that this election will caution people against calling more special elections on mundane stuff like this. I dont know about anyone else, but Iam getting rather tired of the permanent revolution of special elections, 15 by my count just since 2002.This is exactly the sort of issue that should have been delayed and put on a consolidated election.

P Stands for "Pounded"

That's gonna leave a mark, 3-1 against. Unfortunately with no exit polling it'll be very hard to figure out what set that many voters so against it. Should be interesting to see if there was any neighborhood variation this time, once all the votes are in.

UPDATE - wow, a 75-25 defeat, with a miserable 29% turnout. brutal.

Meh on Measure P

I still have no idea how I'd vote on this one. Not good enough to support, nor bad enough to reject. Why the heck are we having a special election for this anyway? No recommendation.

Text of Delta/Water Bill

I have only just started to dig into this, but I wanted to get the Sac Bee's reprint of the bill out to anyone who hadn't seen it yet:

Water Bill

This bill could have an enormous effect on the Delta (either beneficial or deleterious), neighboring counties, really the perennial water wars of the central valley as well as nor cal/socal. One hopes that it won't just get rammed through with nominal debate, like they've tried to do repeatedly up to now.

I will be watching Lois Wolk's response. More than anybody, she has been the Delta's Lorax on this issue, and all power to her for doing so. Someone's got to. Lord knows the Westlands water district and LA will do anything they can to screw us out of our water.

h/t Calitics

The Public Should Have the Option to Buy Into the Public Option

Oregon senator Ron Wyden on Rachel Maddow's show:



This really is the core of it. Right now, there are millions of people who either can't even get healthcare or who hate their lousy, overpriced health insurance and the phone battles with corporate bureaucrats that follow every major trip to the doctor. The vast majority of Americans want a choice between the craptastic options currently available and a public plan whose bottom line doesn't depend on denying care, trying to get out of paying for anything, and jacking up rates. Those of us who aren't over 65 years of age, that is; they already have public single-payer health insurance in the form of Medicare.

I'm stoked that Reid put some form of public health insurance in the bill headed to the Senate, but it has got to be something with substance if it is to make a difference for the rest of us. For health care reform to work, it must offer real competition with the current health insurance racket, open to everyone, not just some 10%. The public deserves its option.

Random Thoughts on Wildhorse Ranch and Measure P

In no particular order:

* This is a excellent suburban housing proposal; the main question to me is generally whether suburbia is a failed model or not, and specifically if it is a failed model in the long run, whether a good suburban project is still worth building for the short-to-medium run. Personally, I think new urbanist transit-oriented walkable mixed-use multistory housing focused in the downtown core (and to a lesser degree, centered on all the neighborhood shopping mall commercial centers) would be much, much smarter than this. This project, at best, is really an attempt to set a higher standard for low-density suburban peripheral growth. And it does, but it impresses me less than the planning for the southern, mixed zoning, higher density portion of Covell Village, ironically enough.

*One criticism I have seen is that the developer's claims for 90% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions claims only make sense seen in relation to other future housing developments, not measured from a no growth zero point. Of course, what everyone means when they say "no growth" is that any overall county or regional population growth would be displaced elsewhere in the region (Woodland, West Sac, Dixon or Sacramento), which would most likely not be as energy-efficient as this project. Given that a huge chunk of our carbon emissions come from our housing (in the form of the fossil energy expended for lighting, appliances, heating and cooling), it isn’t entirely unreasonable for the Yes on P folks to be promoting this point like crazy. Of course what is needed even more than one small housing project is a broader crash course effort to retrofit existing housing stock with better insulation, windows, energy-efficient appliances, energy-intelligent landscaping, solar electric/hot water panels, etc. so that we aren’t just cutting 5-600 houses' worth of carbon emissions, but this is a start of sorts. On the other hand, the peripheral location of Wildhorse Ranch makes it hard to deal with a major source of carbon emissions, which is oil-burning car transportation in weekly commutes plus running errands around town. The proximity to neighborhood schools helps a bit, but the location really isn't ideal.

*Almost as important as the greenhouse gas stuff for drought-prone California are the water/drainage features built into this project. I find it ironic that a lot of the stuff they're hyping here was cutting edge a generation ago in Village Homes but at least they’re going back to a good idea, 30 some-odd years later. Bioswales, porous cement, and open space doubling as drainage and habitat are all great ideas, and keep the runoff from flooding our storm drain system by soaking it back into the water table. I love walking along the drainage ponds north of Arlington and watching the birds, there should be more of that sort of thing. The use of an agricultural well for landscaping water is interesting, although I wish there was more greywater recycling in the plan. Keeping the streets narrow will help a lot with water absorption as well (although it should be noted, less so than just keeping it as open space.

* As before, I am struck by how much Davis city politics – especially on matters of housing and growth – presume an affluent middle-aged homeowner audience.

* One of the more persuasive arguments IMO is that this project builds for a different type of homebuyer than was previously the case. There is huge pent-up housing demand – both for owner-occupied and rental housing – in this town for young people, recently graduated students, faculty and the workforce who do much of the work in all those shops and restaurants in our lauded downtown shopping area. But most of the housing this town actually builds is luxury stuff targeted at rich out of town yuppie commuters with equity. While the university West Village project should help with student and professor housing, that still leaves a lot of pent-up demand for people who aren’t rolling in equity to buy or rent homes in town, but who don’t need or want McMansions. This project claims that it would satisfy that demand. As I look at the housing plan on the city of Davis site, this seems about right.

*The location of this place is pretty good for parks and schools. Birch Lane, Slide Hill, Harper and Korematsu are really not all that far away by bike. It would have been better if the Wildhorse NIMBYs hadn't forced the developer to strip the commercial zoning out of the original plan, though.

*I’m amazed at the coalition of people who normally badmouth sprawl, suburban development, the "developer-friendly council majority," and developers generally who are coming out for this one, using the exact same language that the Yes on Covell Village folks used. Total through the looking glass stuff. All I can figure is that so-called progressives in town must really dislike Mike Corbett, for reasons I cannot fathom. Is there some developer vs. developer pissing war behind the scenes that I’m not privy to? Why the sudden turnaround on this, guys?

* I still have not seen any explanation for why we need to vote on this particular project in a special election, with all the attending costs. Especially in a very weak housing market, this seems like the textbook definition of something that should be scheduled to be on the next general election, for convenience and thrift's case. And on the matter of thrift, whatever happened to Freddie Oakley's threat to move the city to a 100% vote-by-mail system, to save money?

*The one really clear thing that comes out of reading through the Yes on P web site’s explanation of how they accommodated neighborhood concerns is that the paradigm of late 20th century suburban sprawl is still as ruthlessly determined to block anything different from itself as ever. Note the neighborhood concerns about the original proposal: low income housing mixed with mid-income housing, owner-occupied units being rented out to renters, tall buildings encroaching on their views and able to see over their fences, general opposition to low-income housing, too dense, don’t want four story buildings, want to move the low-income housing as far away from their property as possible on Covell. In essence, what Wildhorse neighborhood commenters wanted is low-density suburban housing for the affluent, and to not let “those people” anywhere near their property.

*From a sheer political standpoint, it is better IMO for growth to occur in Davis, rather than elsewhere in the county/region. We have a good community, good schools, and for all its irritations, an honestly pretty decent local culture that newcomers tend to accommodate and internalize over time. The fact that it is established practice here to go and talk to (heckle, even) politicians and political activists pushing one measure or another at the farmer’s market every Saturday is a good thing, and has already thrived with decades of pretty steady growth. As the biggest city in the county, we have a certain political power that goes with our population. No growth displaces that growth elsewhere, and thus displaces our political influence as a community. We have tougher environmental standards, so that growth has less of an impact on our shared resources. We have a lot of stuff going on culturally in town, and we already serve as a sort of center for the surrounding county with concerts, festivals, etc. A lot more of our land is outside the flood plain than either Woodland or West Sac. We have better transit infrastructure well-positioned to manage future growth, both interurban from the capitol corridor/yolobus, as well as internally with the bike lanes and unitrans. We can handle more people while maintaining who we are, at least if we define who we are on how we interact with one another as a community and not the merely external form of our housing units.

* If it irritates the people in Wildhorse, that alone might recommend the project. Then again, voting for P would put me on the same side as Stan Forbes, whom I still have not forgiven for blocking the Richards underpass widening. So spite's out the window as a factor.

Ultimately, I’m still chewing over this ballot measure, but the end message that I am left with from both the proposal and the debate over the past couple months is that Davis continues to think small, suburban and as if the late 20th century could go on forever (it can't), and that it is going to take some serious effort to change the paradigm of city planning in any meaningful sense. That or another round of oil shocks, which should be back around in another year or so.

For a New Urbanist, these remain maddeningly blinkered times.

Why California is Broken

A chart by Poly Sci professor Boris Shor (by way of 538) reveals something I already knew, but seeing it graphically makes it that much clearer: Elected California Republicans are off-the-charts rightwards of the political center in the state.

First, the chart:



The graph represents the political ideology, by state, of the Democratic and Republican legislators (blue and red horizontal bars), relative to the median positions of federal elected officials (vertical grey lines). As you can see, the political spectrum varies a heck of a lot by state. California in particular has some of the most liberal Democrats and the most conservative Republicans this side of Oklahoma or Texas, with a huge gaping void in between the two.

Aha! say the centrists, proof of the radicalizing force of partisan gerrymandering. Not so fast.

You see, one of the things that this chart does not show is the relative numbers of elected Democrats and Republicans. As we painfully discover every budget negotiation, California has just under 2/3 elected Democrats in both houses, and just over 1/3 elected Republicans. If Democrats were actually out of touch, too far left of the majority of voters, there is no way in the world they would be able to consistently win those kinds of majorities. To find the center, then, one shouldn't split the distance between the parties (as the Broders and Skeltons would have us do), but rather 2/3 over to the left of the imaginary center point between the blue and red bars, with the CA GOP located in roughly the same ground that the GOP in Oregon or New York occupy. And yet there is not a Republican statewide anywhere near that spot. Why?

The answer lies in Prop. 13's 2/3 majority for budget and taxes. In any other state, merely winning 34% of the legislature would condemn a party to the political wilderness on pretty much any issue. If they wanted to have any say in the state government, they would have to go to where the electorate was, moderate offensive political positions and speak to those voters. But in California, there is absolutely no need for the far right to do so, because they can hold the state hostage and shut it down with a mere third of the votes, demanding all sorts of non-budgetary concessions in exchange for not shutting down the state government every summer.

Once upon a time, there existed moderate Republicans in California. After 1978, however, Prop. 13's 2/3 rule enabled a superminority of right wing politicians totally out of touch with the state's actual political center to drive out their party's moderates and act without political consequence, because they still had a reliable third of the electorate to maintain the budget/tax veto. A simple majority system would both enable the electorate to reward and punish either party as it sees fit by giving them or denying them majority status, and thus would force the California GOP to moderate itself or risk becoming politically irrelevant.

The only reason why California has no political center is because the minority GOP is not forced to speak to voters outside their base. Without addressing the supermajority aspects of the budget and taxes, Prop. 11's redistricting reform will not, I suspect, make a bit of difference. The solution is to restore majority rule to our state government.

If the electorate does not like how a party governs, they should be able to strip them of the right to govern, and give it to the other party. All electing powerless majorities does is create a frustrated and cynical electorate, corrosive to the idea of representative democracy.

Which was, I suppose, the point of Prop. 13's supermajority clauses. If you can't win, monkeywrench the state.

"America Doesn't Care About Your Feelings"

Elections have consequences. America had the choice between a party that wanted to reform health care and provide a broadly accessible public health insurance option on the one hand, and a party that rejected same as rank socialism and an unacceptable expansion of government into the market on the other. The contrast was as clear as day, and everyone involved understood the stakes.

The American electorate then gave the Democrats 59 senators, 60% of the house, and a resounding presidential victory. Obama was called a communist for his health care proposals during the campaign, and the American people largely shrugged and voted for him anyway. Fine, he's a communist, so what, now get me my goddamn coverage.

You don't like it, win an election next time.

Talks on California Politics @UC Davis

These will be worth catching if you're free around lunchtime in Davis this fall:

Mark your calendars for the IGA Policy Watch Fall Quarter Seminar Series

MELTDOWN:
Institutional Challenges Facing California

Wednesday, September 30th
Daniel Weintraub, Columnist, Sacramento Bee
"Governing California: Is It Possible?"

Wednesday, October 14th
Lois Wolk, California State Senator
"Meltdown: A Legislator's Perspective"

Wednesday, October 28th
Steven Sheffrin, Professor of Economics, UC Davis
"California Tax Reform? The Commission and Its Aftermath"

Wednesday, November 4th
Mark DiCamillo, Director, California Field Poll
"California Views of Constitutional Reform:
The Results of the Latest Field Poll"

All seminars will be held from 12:10 - 1:00 PM
360 Shields Library

The Fix is In - Steinberg Shuts Wolk Out of Water Bill Conference

UPDATE 2 - The water bill didn't make it. On to a special session.

UPDATE - The Delta Counties Coalition now opposes the bill and wants it killed:

“To be perfectly clear, the Delta Counties Coalition opposes the Delta package, as currently drafted, and believes that the Legislature should not bring the package up for a vote today. The number of changes required to make the package acceptable to Delta Counties is not possible in the time remaining.”

--------

Just caught this press release by State Senator Lois Wolk, and my jaw dropped:

SACRAMENTO—Senator Lois Wolk (D-Davis) has withdrawn her authorship of Senate Bill 458 that would establish a Delta Conservancy. The action came in response to being notified by Senate Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) that her legislation would be amended in a Conference Committee with provisions Senator Wolk and the five Delta counties opposed. Wolk has been replaced with Senators Steinberg and Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto) as the authors of SB 458.

“When I learned that the Conference Committee intended to alter key provisions of the bill, as well as other pieces of the water package, it was clear I could no longer carry this legislation,” said Senator Wolk. “What began as a sincere effort to create a state and local partnership to restore the Delta and sustain the Delta communities and economy is becoming, day by day, amendment by amendment, a tool to assist water exporters who are primarily responsible for the Delta’s decline. It is regrettable. Without the Delta communities as working partners in this effort it is unlikely to succeed.”

Neither Lois Wolk, nor Mariko Yamada, nor any other politician representing the Delta have been allowed into the committee, and it looks for all the world like they're gearing up for a peripheral canal deal that screws the Delta so that the hydraulic status quo can be stretched along a little bit further into the future. A region and an ecosystem long marginalized in favor of powerful interests has just had the last line of political defense stripped away.

Forget it, Lois, it's Sacramento.

h/t Davis Vanguard.

An Elegant Solution

1. Lots of people - especially young people - either don't have insurance, can't afford insurance, are unhappy with their crap insurance, or have been denied coverage because of some preexisting condition.

2. Medicare, while generally popular among those who use it, has some issues with its risk pool being exclusively people over 65 who, on average, tend to cost more to cover than the population at large.

3. So why not just offer all of us who are currently too young for Medicare the option of buying in? The risk pool would immediately be larger, younger, healthier and cheaper, the administrative infrastructure is already there, and those of us who hate the corporate insurance plans available to us would have a better option. People who like their insurance wouldn't have to do anything.

The whole bill could be written on one sheet of paper: "The age of eligibility for Medicare is at birth."

Sac Bee Columnist to speak at UCD

From the series: Meltdown: Institutional Changes Facing California

“Governing California: Is It Possible?”


Daniel Weintraub

Columnist, Sacramento Bee


Wednesday, September 30th

12:10 – 1:00 PM

IGA Reading Room

360 Shields Library


Sponsored by the Institute of Governmental Affairs

Tempest in a Teapot

So after all that frothing manufactured outrage over Obama's speech to school kids, here's the sinister message of the actual speech:

"Work hard, stay in school, and you can accomplish great things." (my paraphrase)

How freaking unhinged does one have to be to scream and yell and throw a fit and pull your kid out of school and force schools not to show such an utterly inoffensive message from the elected president of the United States? I mean, seriously folks, I watched Bush the father drone on about the importance of education in a Davis high classroom, and none of us were very scarred from the experience, and certainly noone protested us being forced to watch the speech on one of those big AV cart TV-VCR things.

There is so much effort to demonize this politician it boggles my mind. It's just another speech, people. Pull yourself together and rejoin the land of the sane.

The full text, for whoever's interested:

Hello, everyone — how's everybody doing today? I'm here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we've got students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through 12th grade. I'm glad you all could join us today.

I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it's your first day in a new school, so it's understandable if you're a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you're in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you could've stayed in bed just a little longer this morning.

I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn't have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday — at 4:30 in the morning.

Now I wasn't too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I'd fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I'd complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, "This is no picnic for me either, buster."

So I know some of you are still adjusting to being back at school. But I'm here today because I have something important to discuss with you. I'm here because I want to talk with you about your education and what's expected of all of you in this new school year.

Now I've given a lot of speeches about education. And I've talked a lot about responsibility.

I've talked about your teachers' responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to learn.

I've talked about your parents' responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don't spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox.

I've talked a lot about your government's responsibility for setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren't working where students aren't getting the opportunities they deserve.

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.

And that's what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself.

Every single one of you has something you're good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That's the opportunity an education can provide.

Maybe you could be a good writer — maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper — but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor — maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine — but you might not know it until you do a project for your science class. Maybe you could be a mayor or a senator or a Supreme Court justice, but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team.

And no matter what you want to do with your life — I guarantee that you'll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You're going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can't drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You've got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.

And this isn't just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you're learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.

You'll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You'll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You'll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.

We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don't do that — if you quit on school — you're not just quitting on yourself, you're quitting on your country.

Now I know it's not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork.

I get it. I know what that's like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn't always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn't fit in.

So I wasn't always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I'm not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse.

But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our first lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn't have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country.

Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don't have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there's not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don't feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren't right.

But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life — what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you've got going on at home — that's no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That's no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That's no excuse for not trying.

Where you are right now doesn't have to determine where you'll end up. No one's written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.

That's what young people like you are doing every day, all across America.

Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn't speak English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez.
I'm thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who's fought brain cancer since he was three. He's endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer — hundreds of extra hours — to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and he's headed to college this fall.

And then there's Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs; and she's on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college.

Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren't any different from any of you. They faced challenges in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same. That's why today, I'm calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education — and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book. Maybe you'll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you'll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you'll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you'll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don't feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.
Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it.

I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work — that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you're not going to be any of those things.

But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won't love every subject you study. You won't click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won't necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.

That's OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who've had the most failures. J.K. Rowling's first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, "I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

These people succeeded because they understand that you can't let your failures define you — you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn't mean you're a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn't mean you're stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.

No one's born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You're not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don't hit every note the first time you sing a song. You've got to practice. It's the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it's good enough to hand in.

Don't be afraid to ask questions. Don't be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn't a sign of weakness, it's a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don't know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust — a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor — and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.

And even when you're struggling, even when you're discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you — don't ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.

The story of America isn't about people who quit when things got tough. It's about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best. It's the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.

So today, I want to ask you, what's your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?

Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I'm working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you've got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don't let us down — don't let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.

That's what all the yelling's been about.

Davis Notes

1. Anyone feigning concern for the ground squirrels as a pretext to oppose the West Village development is out of their freaking gourd. Land under cultivation is tilled, people. Claiming that the land south of Russell and West of 113 is prime agricultural land and then lamenting the demise of the ground squirrels strains credulity, unless one is a Jain who grows all of their food in a backyard garden. Cultivated land disrupts wildlife, and so does housing. Period. Unless one is calling for university land to be set aside as a wildlife refuge, this is a deeply silly argument.

2. The wood burning ban is still a theatre of the absurd. While there is plenty of middle ground to be had on the matter of changing city code to require cleaner-burning, efficient wood-burning stoves, the "progressive" fixation on banning wood-burning entirely in favor of fossil fuel natural gas, while ignoring the main cause of particulate in the air (namely, I-80, the internal combustion engine, and global warming-enhanced forest fires), is environmentally self-defeating due to the fact that burning methane is a whole heck of a lot worse for global warming than burning renewable wood. I'm fine with regulating open fireplaces out of existence, but the fact of the matter is that - save for the occasional inversion layer burn ban situation - burning wood is a) not a pressing particulate air quality problem (if it was, my asthmatic mother would have problems with the emissions of her very own wood-burning stove), and b) looking forward, actually going to be an asset as a flexible, renewable source of heating as natural gas market fluctuations mess with our energy supply. Pellet stoves are even better; smart environmentalists should be encouraging their replacement of open hearths, one would think.

3. I have come around on the 5th street narrowing. Flip-flopped, if you will. So be it. While I'm more in favor of a restriping experiment rather than a full-on landscaping project, the fact of the matter is that bicyclists can't be legally dissuaded from driving on 5th street anyways, and the left-turners are a constant block to through traffic. Cutting east-west traffic to two lanes, creating a 2-way turn lane in the center, and bike lanes on the margins would seem to free things up well enough. And if it is an epic failure, restriping would be a lot cheaper than removing landscaping. Let it not be said that I am resistant to a good argument.

4. Walking around downtown Davis, I am seriously worried about what Target will do to what hasn't managed to go under as of yet. Seriously bad idea to let the wolf in the door, IMO, much less change zoning requirements to enable its siphoning off of a lot of my favorite local businesses' revenue. Hopefully this will catalyze the survivors into doing something similar to Bellingham WA's buy local campaign, but I'm not holding my breath. FWIW, there is no way I'll shop at that store for anything I can get from a local merchant.

The Unintended Consequences of ToughOnCrime(tm) and the Externalizing of Social Problems

Surprise, surprise, Jessica's law ended up driving sex offenders into rural areas (h/t polizeroes). Whocoodanode?

Just as with the controversy over the Yolo reentry center in Madison, the unintended but completely foreseen (yes, we told you so) effect of Jessica's law is to externalize the social problem of crime to rural areas who for various reasons do not have the political power to refuse. That conservative rural voters repeatedly vote for the ToughOnCrime(tm) approach to social problems is ironic, but does not obviate the fact that they are, in essence, being forced to take care of urban areas' problems (or, to be more accurate, disproportionately so).

As the Guardian article points out, the relocation of sexual offenders to rural areas (the only places where housing can be found more than 2,000 feet from either parks or schools) compounds the initial problem by putting sexual offenders in communities that are already unable to adequately police themselves, doubly so in the current depression with collapsing exurban housing value and the corresponding property tax revenues, trebly so given the state government's GOP ransom-driven decision to steal from government so as to avoid raising taxes on the rich, oil companies, and corporations. Making the definition of "sex offender" unduly broad - lumping flashers in with the real baddies - only makes it harder for police to monitor those who are actual dangers to the community, in a manner starkly reminiscent of the drug war's idiot strategy of throwing essentially harmless pot smokers in with violent felons.

There is a better way to do this. Californians need to understand that they cannot simply make Bad People go away, and urbanites should not foist off their problems on politically weak rural areas. The conservative, law and order ToughOnCrime approach to our deeper social problems has been an abject failure at all levels. It is time to totally rethink our criminal justice system. We need to be throwing a lot less nonviolent people in jail, we need to devote a lot more resources - in both relative and absolute terms - towards training, rehabilitation, treatment and counseling so that criminals don't just get mired permanently in the cycle of crime and prison, and we need to make sure that all communities actually deal with the external costs of the criminals they prosecute, instead of passing them off on communities elsewhere.

News Flash: California Still Broken

...and it will stay broken until we start doing things differently than how we got our state into this predicament. Anyone expecting anything different from these tired old solutions is insane.

The only bright moment in this exhausting Groundhog's Day charade has been that time and again, the voters have repeatedly refused to vote for the execrable initiatives that Arnold and his enablers tried to shove down our throats. That is why we're being Shock Doctrined right now, to break our will and get us to acquiesce in our own immiseration.

You may have broken the elected Democrats (they cry out to be broken, beg for it), but we will not accept these absurd, auto-cannibalistic starve the state permanent crisis emergency measures. We will continue to see them for what they are: highway robbery.

A constitutional convention cannot come too soon. Next time there is a "surprise" "emergency" budget shortfall ("Who could have foreseen that California's economy was related to its public sector, or public services?) that requires yet another special session, people should really drive over to the capitol mall and camp out a while. Clearly these people are insufficiently scared of their constituents, for them to be so terrified of the ghost of Howard Jarvis.

34% of the state must not hold 66% of the state ransom.

Dear Arnold,

Voting down a spending cap is not a popular cry for massive spending cuts, and proposing the same failed forced austerity plans and shell game funding gimmicks is not "thinking outside the box."

When the people of California reject your special election scams this many times in a row at the ballot box, perhaps it's time to ask yourself whether we need more "leadership," or whether the state would be better served by your resignation.

-surf putah

-----

Any Democrat treating this sad joke like a "leader" needs to have their head examined. We already know what the voters want, all we're waiting for is a party willing to stand up and fight for us when the chips are down.

The solution to the 1996 federal budget showdown wasn't giving Gingrich what he wanted. It was calling his bluff.

Kids! What The Heck's The Matter With Kids Today!

And people wonder why the newspapers are all going broke. Exempli gratis, the New York Times on the disturbing phenomenon of teenagers hugging one another. Clearly the collapse of Western Civilization as we know it.

Back in my day, the suburban PTA mom busybodies got hysterical about drunk driving, teen pregnancy, drug use, and gangs (seriously, bandanas and headbands were banned in DHS sports pictures because of Davis High's huge upper-middle class suburban gang problem).

Either the kids these days are all incorrigible goodie two shoes, or the New York Times is writing their articles by mad libs.