Posted on 08/05/2003 1:36:35 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
PONTEFICATIONS
FACING CERTAIN RECALL, THE STATE’S CHIEF EXECUTIVE
has turned to his Leftist allies on the high court and in the legislature to block the recall election itself.Despite the close resemblance, this state executive is not Democratic Governor Gray Davis. The state is not California, named by Spanish explorers for the land of fabled Queen Califia, ruler of a magical island filled with talking animals.
The state depicted instead was by Spanish explorers named “Little Venice,” Venezuela, after the homes its native people had built on stilts above the waters around the oil-rich Lake Maracaibo basin.
The executive depicted is Hugo Chavez, the brutal Marxist thug President who keeps his friend dictator Fidel Castro afloat with Venezuelan oil exchanged for Cuban I.O.U.’s that everybody knows will never be paid.
Polling finds that in a recall election 69 percent of Venezuelans would vote against Chavez, an overwhelming repudiation similar to what polls say California voters would deliver to Gray Davis.
The response of both these Leftist rulers has been an attempt to postpone or prevent any such election, to stifle the democratic voice of the people.
Chavez and his Marxist government allies have prevented the counting of petition signatures, an estimated four million of which remain locked away in 64 boxes in four-foot-high stacks.
(The population of Venezuela is approximately 22 million, roughly half of them too young to vote, so four million petition signatures means that more than a third of the entire electorate is demanding a recall election….and doing so bravely in a nation where Chavez goons have gunned down those protesting against his dictatorship.)
As Davis did, Chavez claimed that the collection of signatures for a recall referendum was flawed and that the signatures demanding a recall election should be thrown out on technicalities.
Davis, like Chavez, ordered government officials to delay their counting of petition signatures. But with talk radio and an alternative press (including FrontPage Magazine) no longer entirely controlled by Democrats, a groundswell of political anger and pressure thwarted Governor Davis’ attempt to circumvent the continuous signature counting that California law requires.
Chavez, by contrast, spent seven months negotiating a recall referendum with his opponents and the Organization of American States – but now he has violated that agreement and is using every gimmick available to prevent a vote until at least August 2004. Even if voted out of office, after that date he would be replaced by his Marxist Vice President, not by a new candidate elected by the people.
Chavez now also insists that only those who voted in the 2000 election that brought him to power be allowed to cast a ballot in the recall. But millions of Venezuelans had protested what appeared to be a rigged, pointless election by “voting with their feet,” by boycotting the polls in 2000. Chavez now claims he has the power to disenfranchise everyone who engaged in such protest in 2000, thereby tilting the pool of those allowed to vote in his favor.
Gray Davis is attempting to force a similar Leftward tilt into the California recall electorate. His lawyers this week are demanding that the state supreme court move any recall election, now constitutionally set for October 7, to the scheduled ballot in March 2004. This would do more than buy Davis six additional months as Governor. It would also move the recall to the same ballot as California’s Democratic Party primary, meaning that millions more Democrats would be voting.
Davis now argues, according to Carla Marinucci and Harriet Chiang of the San Francisco Chronicle, that rushing to an October 7 election as the state constitution requires “would result in chaos.” (Recall supporters would say that every hour Davis remains in office causes more chaos and financial problems for California.)
Davis also claims that many counties would conduct an October 7 election using only a fraction of their usual polling places, thereby disadvantaging Democratic voters, many of whom are too dumb to find or get to the polls that will be open. This, he argues in a manner that sounds racist, would effectively disenfranchise many members of minority groups that tend to vote Democratic.
Davis also demands, contrary to law and the state constitution, that the California Supreme Court force his name into the list of those running to replace him.
More than 300 people may pay the $3500 and gather 65 signatures by the August 9 deadline to qualify to be on the ballot to replace Davis – from smut-merchant Larry Flynt to celebrity name-alike Michael Jackson to publicity-seeking strippers to both former Congressman Michael Huffington, now out of the closet, and his ex-wife Arianna.
Davis knows that, if the Leftist justices of California’s Supreme Court add his name to the second half of the recall ballot, he could in theory be recalled by 70 percent of the electorate but simultaneously elected Governor by two or three percent of citizens scattering their votes. If this happens, think how much respect people will have for their government.
With typical Leftist hubris and illogic, Davis argues that more people are likely to vote against his recall than will vote for the person elected to replace him as Governor. This, he argues, is undemocratic.
No, Governor Davis – what the voters, including a third of Democrats and a majority of Hispanics according to polls, agree upon overwhelmingly is that you should be removed as Governor. This is precisely why the law and constitution prohibit you from running to replace yourself on a recall ballot. The peoples’ vote for or against you is the first item on that ballot, and therefore the democracy your entire political career has tried to subvert will survive you.
Why, those outside California might wonder, is a mild-mannered Governor re-elected only last November the target of such bi-partisan disgust? The reasons are many, beginning with how Davis won that election. He concealed government information, thereby claiming he had run the Golden State into $15 billion less deficit than he had.
Davis blamed energy companies for California’s financial crisis, when in fact he was himself the biggest recipient in the nation – Republican or Democrat -- of political money from Enron. Davis is notorious for selling government to the highest bidder, whether with higher wages to the prison guard union or a decades-denied permit to dump carcinogens into San Francisco Bay to a company only days after it gave him many tens of thousands of dollars.
Gray Davis is one of the filthiest, most corrupt politicians in American history – and that filth is reflected in the gutter ways he has always slimed opponents with personal attack ads and propaganda.
Even Davis’ fellow Democrat, California Attorney General Bill Lockyer, last Thursday publicly warned him not to run the kind of “trashy…puke” campaign he did in 2002.
In 2002 Davis in effect rigged the Republican primary by waging a multi-million dollar smear campaign to defeat in the primary the Republican most likely to beat him, former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan. Arnold Schwarzenegger, star of the movie “Total Recall,” is expected on Wednesday to announce whether he or his friend Riordan will seek to replace Davis on the recall ballot.
A gutter politician and incompetent Governor, Gray Davis has become an embarrassment to other politicians in his own Democratic Party, many of whom fear that his unpopularity may drag the party down with him. Davis has demanded that no prominent Democrat go on the ballot, thereby giving Democratic voters someplace to go other than himself.
But late last week Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D.-Compton) urged popular U.S. Senator and former San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein to break ranks and run to retain Democratic control of the Governor’s office. (The always-ambitious Waters did not mention whether she would then seek Feinstein’s vacated Senate seat.)
Unless some other big name Democrat runs by August 9, liberal votes on October 7 will probably go to Clinton ally Larry Flynt, publisher of Hustler Magazine, who has vowed to solve California’s debt problem by turning the Golden State into a gambling and sin Mecca like Nevada next door. Even this would be a moral step up from Gray Davis.
Could Davis survive? If he can persuade the liberal state supreme court to move the election to next March, coinciding with the Democratic primary, perhaps.
Then or on October 7, his recall will apparently be on the same ballot as Ward Connerly’s noble Racial Privacy initiative, which qualified months ago for a place on whatever becomes the next ballot. This good measure, which in most cases would prohibit any California government entity from noting racial or ethnic information about people, could ironically become a catalyst to bring Democratic minority voters to the polls who otherwise might have stayed home.
Davis is also pandering for special interest group money and votes by signing into law measures that even he might otherwise have vetoed. In recent days the embattled governor has signed measures to threaten with lawsuits any employer who does not hire transsexual and other “transgender” job applicants, to give trial lawyers a virtually unimpeded right to sue companies for damages even without representing any injured victim, and to give California driver licenses to illegal aliens. (Like Venezuela, California is now largely a Spanish-speaking state.)
Such Democrat-imposed laws, of course, will cause companies to continue fleeing California, taking their jobs with them. Will the last business leaving California please turn out the lights? Wait. Gray Davis already did that with his corrupt mishandling of the energy crisis, his shakedown of the world’s fifth largest economy, and his degrading of what used to be America’s best system of public education. Venezuela used to have the richest economy in Latin America and could have become one of the world’s most successful nations. The Marxist thugocracy of Hugo Chavez has turned the land of Simon Bolivar into a basket case, much as the Left has done to California. Gray Chavez. Hugo Davis. Which is which? Can you recall?
And isn't it amazing how the lamestream press has been so QUIET about this??
And they have the audacity to insist they're not biased in favor of the Left. *derisive laughter*
-Jay
I Almost hate to say it, but he almost makes even Billy Jeff Clinton look good.
Kidnapping worries Venezuela - Fears it could be start of trend *** CARACAS - The recent abduction of a former state governor opposed to President Hugo Chávez has sparked a controversy amid fears that it could be the first political kidnapping in Venezuelan history.
Sergio Calderón, the former secretary general of the COPEI party, has not been heard from since he was abducted July 25 by five gunmen who wore hoods covering their heads but not their faces. The snatching of the popular opposition leader known as ''El Cura'' -- the priest -- has sparked fears that it signals a critical turn in Venezuela's 16-month political crisis.
Recall vote in Venezuela stalls - Chavez pokes fun at drive***''It seems there will be a referendum soon. Yes, in the United States there will be a referendum soon,'' Chávez said in a speech this week, poking fun at the drive to recall California Gov. Gray Davis. ``Didn't you see the news?''***
Bump!
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