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| A Procrastinator's Guide To The Recall Election | ||||||
| Well folks, this historic day has finally arrived, for today is the day that we vote on whether or not to recall our current governor, Gray Davis. In addition to this, two amendments, Propositions 53 and 54 will be on the ballot for voters to decide on. I am very confident that many of you here already know who you are going to vote for and what you are going to vote on the propositions, but for those of you who do not know as of yet, read on! | ||||||
| As many of you may or may not know, immediately prior to an election many newspapers often have a special section dedicated to explaining what each candidate's platform entails, what each candidate's party affiliation is, and any other tidbits of information about the candidate that seem appropriate to mention. Newspapers do this not only to tie up all loose ends, if you will, but also to give procrastinating voters a chance to decide on who or what they will vote for. This column will be similar in nature to the aforementioned type of article, but with one exception: I do not have the space necessary to focus individually on each and every candidate (there are a whopping 135 on this particular ballot), so I will simply focus on the major candidates from each party, as well as Proposition 54, and why you should vote "Yes" on it. | ||||||
| Allow me to start with the obvious: who to vote for governor after voting "Yes" on the recall! This should be a no-brainer - Arnold Schwarzenegger. Why, you may ask?� First of all, Gray Davis has proven to the state that he is fiscally inept. To demonstrate this, I ask you to picture a once successful and booming business. One day the business is sold and a new manager takes over, implementing ideas that he believes will work. Unfortunately, his brilliant plans fail miserably, and subsequently send the business spiraling into debt to the tune of a massive $38 billion! Jeez, talk about Chapter 11! You get the point. | ||||||
| Let us now consider Arnold Schwarzenegger's prime opponent besides Gray Davis, Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante. Despite ridiculous and immature smear campaigns directed at Schwarzenegger just days before the election, the most recent poll at the time of this writing still shows him in the lead ahead of Bustamante by a solid 7-percentage-points, according to a report on http://www.sacbee.com. Bustamante, on the other hand, has been introducing asinine plan after asinine plan, in an effort to appeal to voters. Take, for instance, his support of cutting tuition for two-year colleges (or, more colloquially, continuation high schools): so instead of students paying $12-per-unit, they are going to pay $10? This is the solution to California's debt? Where is my tuition cut? Oh yeah, our tuition was just raised! Thanks a bunch Gray and Cruz! | ||||||
| What about Bustamante's "tough-love" program, where he would triple the car tax for anyone with "a car worth more than $20,000," according to a column by Richard Acello, found at http://www.sandiegometro.com. "The average new car sold today has a sticker price of about $25,000," Acello also notes, accentuating the fact that it could very well affect many more Californians than some people seem to think. As a side note, I'm just wondering where, exactly, Bustamante's "tough-love" was when he accepted that $500,000 donation from the Pechanga Band of Mission Indians? Wait, now I remember, it was swept under the rug with the rest of Bustamante's common sense! | ||||||
| One final issue I would like to comment on before I bid you adieu is Proposition 54, which will "end government's preferential treatment based on race, and junk a 17th-century racial classification system that has no place in 21st-century America," according to http://www.racialprivacy.org, the organization behind the proposition itself. The website continues: "But most importantly, [Racial Privacy Initiative's] passage will signal America's first step towards a color-blind society." I realize that many supporters of affirmative action and such are still stuck in the past, but isn't it getting a little overboard already? I can recall a very telling statement I once heard from Larry Elder, a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and conservative columnist. Elder, a black man, believes that race should be a non-issue in this day and age and sees affirmative action as hindering progress. Voting "Yes" on Proposition 54 would be the first true step toward a truly equal state, wouldn't you agree? | ||||||
| It is my hope that this column has informed and educated those of you who have not done a vast amount of research on today's recall election. If you agree with anything I have said, then I urge you to go out and exercise your civil duty and vote. Again, by voting "Yes" on the recall, "Yes" on Arnold Schwarzenegger, and "Yes" on Proposition 54, we could potentially turn this state around. | ||||||
| Copyright Gerry Wachovsky, 2003, and Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved. | ||||||
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