It’s time to talk a little about Governor Arnold and his special election for some ballot initiatives which his staff has written to reflect his position on some issues which apparently are a little more important to him than to the Legislature. One of these days we’ll scorch the airwaves with a discussion of California’s initiative process, but today, just a brief history lesson.

I’m told that Governor Hiram Johnson started the ball rolling for taking it to the people, and many other states have adopted some form of ballot initiative since then. The idea is to let the people participate directly in the legislative process by designing and voting on their own laws, but unlike what the Legislature concocts, ballot initiatives don’t require the governor’s signature to become law. What we’re seeing, now, is the governor using the resources of his office to act, not as the governor, but as the people.

Over the years, California’s voters have taken it upon themselves to do some interesting things with the initiative process. Prop 13 limiting property taxes comes immediately to mind. But it takes a lot of money and a lot of politicking in a state this big to get something on the ballot and sell it to the voters. What was intended as a way for ordinary people to make law has become just another political process that eludes the reach of ordinary people. The governor already has spent obscene amounts of money just gathering the signatures. Now he’ll spend even more promoting his agenda to the voters.

Although a ballot initiative promoted by the governor is a new wrinkle on the process, Arnold gets credit for one good deed. Recent years have seen a lot of really confusing ballot initiatives designed to confuse and trick the voters, things where yes means no and vice versa. Arnold’s ballot initiatives are pretty clear. His political sense is not so clear. First, he’s taking a lot of heat about spending a bunch of the state’s money on a special election, especially when the things he’s proposing are things normally addressed in the legislative process, and he could just as easily have shown a little patience and tacked them onto the ballot in the next general election. That’s a fair criticism, but a little misleading. Most of the cost estimates being flashed around include the paychecks of the public employees who work on elections. We’d be paying these people to be doing something even if there weren’t a special election, so it’s not really a new line in the budget.

More interesting is that the governor seems to be banking his political future on this little adventure, something which looks like an unnecessary gamble. If the voters don’t buy his program, he’s toast. Even if they do buy it, he’s not exactly on top of the world, because these aren’t exactly the sexiest issues in the state these days. Here’s what Schwartzy wants us to do: First, make it harder for public school teachers to achieve tenure. The people have a vague idea that teachers may not be cutting it, and they probably believe high school graduates can’t even read, but it still looks like the governor has a lot more gripe with the teachers than the voters have.

Then, he wants us to take the reapportionment of legislative districts out of the hands of legislators. Okay, the people probably will go for that, but it’s hardly the kind of thing on which political careers are based. Then Arnold wants us to stick it to the kids again by limiting the state budget for education, and he wants you, as a working person, to give your specific permission every time your labor union takes a political position. Arnold’s anti-union fixation is wearing a little thin. He doesn’t seem to recognize that a lot of people who voted for him once actually belong to labor unions. Finally, there’s the parental permission for underage girls to abort a pregnancy, popular with the Christian right but not too high on the list for a majority of California voters.

By doing this as a special election, Arnold is banking that his little slate of B-list issues will bring out his fans while everyone else stays home, but even if that strategy works, it isn’t likely to restore the action hero persona. For that, a little hand-to-hand combat can’t be beat. Maybe we can talk the governor into enlisting for a tour of duty in Iraq. I hear the Army is having a hard time getting people to sign up.

A lot of people in public office, even some Republicans, are embarrassed enough by reports of mistreatment and torture of prisoners at Guantanamo that they’re publicly calling for the US to shut the place down. I think they’re missing the point. Guantanamo is the place, obviously, because it’s isolated but nearby. You can’t very well hold a protest march outside the gate, but closing it down won’t help. If the US government wants to hold prisoners without charges and administer torture, I’m pretty sure a place can be found even if it’s not in Cuba. Incidentally, how many of those mysterious prisoners have you heard about being convicting of any terrorist crimes? The government says half of them, but the Washington Post reports it’s only 39 out of 400. The rest of the convictions about which the government brags are for petty crimes unrelated to terrorism.

Remember Howard Dean? He’s the guy who once looked like he had the Democratic Presidential nomination in the bag before he got a little too emotional in public about winning a primary. The press turned on him; said he was too unstable to be President, and the donkeys ended up running Kerry instead. Now, Dean is the national chairman of the donkey party, and he’s still emotional. He dismissed the Republicans as a bunch of Christian white guys, and that pissed off the Christian white guys. Dick Cheney, one of the world’s foremost Christian white guys, says Dean is "over the top" and not the kind of guy you want representing your political party. That’s a pretty impressive endorsement for any Democrat. As near as I can tell, Dean is the only Democrat in the country right now with anything remotely interesting to say about the condition of the political condition.

Finally, the editor of the Grass Valley Union, Pat Butler, wrote last Saturday that the reason his paper hasn’t published a word about the Downing Street memo is that he can’t find anything about the story in the Associated Press or the LA Times. I guess you must be right, Pat. If those guys don’t report it, it must not have happened.