And She’s A Bad Tipper
Anyone who thinks that you need to watch UFC fighting for bare knuckled, unfettered violence has not been paying attention to U.S. politics. Like most professions these days, politics is not a vocation for amateurs. While both dominant parties have professionals advising and strategizing for maximum impact. one side in particular seems to have the most candidates who have done nothing other than being professional politicians. While of course people that get elected to office are expected to pass laws for the well being of citizens, the reality is, lawyers are elected to office who are experts in process but sadly lacking in real life ability. Generations of this has created governments and laws quite out of touch with the experiences of the average voter. In many instances, we see the sons and daughters of retiring politicians assume the seat of their parents as if it were a passed down heirloom.
Getting to elected office these days requires more than a sense of duty and altruism. You need money and lots of it. If you don’t have it, you need to make friends with those who will give it to you…usually for some quid pro quo sometime down the road. There’s the old saying in politics, you’re either running for office or running to stay in office, the campaign never ends. The making laws part is almost an incidental part of the gig. Many interested parties will have big stakes in any particular candidate and will pay big money to have their guy in office.
Little wonder then, that the battle for office is so fierce and merciless. If politics were about issues alone and the electorate were rational, that would be one thing. In real life, that is never the case. The battles are always about personality and pandering to discrete groups of influential, though not necessarily informed or rational voters.
This most recent smear campaign against Meg Whitman, a candidate for California Governor shows just how nasty the process can be. The opposing candidate is Jerry Brown; yes that Jerry Brown, perhaps better known as Moonbeam from the 70’s. As most know, California is ground zero for altered state liberals and proud of it. These are the same people that would rather save a smelt than save people. This is the state that very recently revealed that 20% of the population considered themselves to have mental problems. http://www.latimes.com/news/health/boostershots/la-heb-mentalhealth-20100728,0,2495137.story This of course is only surprising to those who think the number should be higher. This is the state which is essentially bankrupt because the cost of social programs protected by the state are not covered by revenues collected by taxes. Entitlements are handed around to anyone who shows up, like a bong at a Hollywood party.
As the linked story says, Nicky Diaz, a Mexican housekeeper who worked for Ms. Whitman for over 9 years was fired when it was discovered that she was here illegally. Under the savvy council of Gloria Allred, noted for her uncanny ability to detect passing ambulances, Ms. Diaz tearfully recounted to the media how she was mistreated at the hands of the Whitmans. Forced to work for only $23 dollars per hour and made to live in the Whitman mansion, she endured this horror for 9 years. It wasn’t made explicitly clear at the press conference, but it was likely she was forced to drive the Whitman kids to school in either the Mercedes or the BMW. She was not allowed in the Bentley.
It wasn’t made clear by the Brown camp why someone worth hundreds of millions if not billions would take the trouble to specifically hire an illegal immigrant. Ms. Whitman’s retort was that Ms. Diaz was hired from an agency. According to Brown, that’s a preposterous argument: Meg’s a cheapskate and a scofflaw. Anyone running a multi billion dollar enterprise like Ebay could have paid more. Making Ms. Diaz live in the Whitman mansion on only $44,000 a year for 9 years, depriving her of other high paying illegal immigrant labor is sure to sink Meg at the polls. Just like Christine O’Donnell in Delaware being a witch. Just like John Boehner in Ohio having too dark a tan. Just like Sharon Angle in Nevada being too extreme. How are all these weirdos expected to get into office?
In California, we see two very accomplished businesswomen running for public office. They are not lawyers, they are people who have run large enterprises and been responsible for large payrolls. On the other side, we have an aging hippy and a career Senator who insists on being addressed as such, both of whom are long term career politicians entirely culpable for much of the financial mess the state is in. Yet, faced with theses stark choices of sanity vs insanity, the polls indicate that the races are close. Welcome to the Altered state of California.