To decipher the governor’s real message, read the first letters of each line of the two main paragraphs.

I long for the day we have a grown-up person in the governor’s office.

Rebecca Cathcart, writing in today’s NYT about Gov. Schwarzenegger calling for a study of legalizing marijuana in California, says:

Sales could raise $1.2 billion to $1.34 billion in annual tax revenue, some estimates say.

But that would be little salve for the state’s deficit, which could reach $20 billion in 15 months if ballot initiatives proposed by the governor do not pass….

But surely the economic consequences of legalizing marijuana are more complex that just straight tax revenue on direct sales. Two consequences that come immediately to mind:

• Increase in tourism dollars. Isn’t that what happened in Amsterdam?
• Decrease in prison expenses. Aren’t most of our prisoners incarcerated for drug offenses?

This is why the governor is acting sensibly (for once) in calling for a study.

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image via celebrity-cash.com.

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Image from Dawn Endico’s photostream

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Take Caroline Kennedy, who looks like she’s in line to get Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Senate seat in New York. If she goes to the governor, David Paterson, and tells him, “I’m Caroline Kennedy, and I have distinguished myself. And I am able to raise a ton of money” – and he appoints her – is there a quid pro quo if she then goes and raises money for him?

I’m not sure. But I do know that those are the kinds of things that come up in discussions about whether a politician will or won’t appoint someone to a job.

It’s surprising that Brown professes to be so unclear on the ethics of political appointments after his long political career. In the example he presents to explain his apparent uncertainty about this, a potential appointee offers the ability to raise money not for an individual’s personal gain but for a political campaign. Is this a gray area? Maybe. But calling a possibly off-white area gray does not make a completely wrong one right. Yet Brown maintains of Bragojevich’s actions that they are “all part of the democratic system. Whether Blagojevich went beyond that is open to question.”

Certainly legal guilt carries a greater burdon of proof than does guilt in the court of public opinion. But Blagojevich, if the transcripts that have been made public are accurate, appears to have be looking for money to go directly to himself and his family. It’s interesting that Willie Brown would attempt to blur the boundary between this and the Caroline Kennedy fundraising example above.

Brown has always appeared to have an uncomfortable relationship with President Elect Obama. Is it a coincidence that Zennie Abraham is saying at Oakland Focus that Obama outed Blagojevich?

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Yesterday I attended the Goldman Environmental Prize Awards, as I have done most years since sometime in the early 1990s. The event is held in the city’s beautiful War Memorial Opera House, with a reception afterward at City Hall. The award honors grassroots environmental activists from around the world with a cash prize of $150,000. According to Nancy Pelosi, the award is “on a par with the Nobel Peace Prize in terms of its recognition of courage and brilliance in protecting our environment.”

This year two of the winners were lawyer Pablo Fajardo Mendoza and community organizer Luis Yanza, both of Ecuador, who are suing Chevron to clean up oil contamination in the Amazon rain forest. This region is one of the world’s most contaminated sites, and residents report a large number of health problems and deaths that appear related to the contamination.

But the selection of the Ecuadorans for the prize has again highlighted the journalistic deficiencies of our local daily, whose declining circulation can be no surprise. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, in an article headlined (not very grammatically) “Controversy Mires Choice for Goldman Prize,” recognition of the Ecuardorans has created “a raging controversy.”

Which is the Chronicle‘s way of saying that Chevron held a press conference to express opposition to the activists who were suing the corporation. After all, according to Chevron general counsel Charles James, even if the environmental activists win in Ecuadoran courts “their ability to enforce this is going to be very limited.”

Well, sure it’s going to be limited. If Chevron was a country it would be much bigger and more powerful than Ecuador. So I guess the message is might makes right, no matter what the human and environmental consequences.

Is this really a “raging controversy”?

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SAN FRANCISCO — Tibetan immigrants protesting Chinese control of the Himalayan region vowed on March 10 to make San Francisco, the only U.S. city to host the Olympic torch relay, the focal point of American demonstrations against the Beijing Games.

The protesters chanting “Olympics in China, Torture in Tibet” and “Truth is our only weapon,” and some wiping away tears while singing the Tibet national anthem, also called on Mayor Gavin Newsom to reject the April 9 torch run and urged city officials to pass a resolution calling on China to improve conditions for Tibetans in their homeland.

Newsom’s spokesman, Nathan Ballard, said the mayor was deeply concerned about human rights in Tibet, but believed the Olympics was not the forum to address political issues.“It’s important to remember that the Olympic spirit is one of international harmony and goodwill, and it transcends politics,” Ballard said. “In this spirit, San Francisco is proud to be the only North American city to host the Olympic torch relay.”

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The American political system needs a period of reprieve and renewal.

It needs a reprieve from a White House that draws power from fear, sneers at any science that gets in the way of corporate or theocratic missions and stubbornly adheres to policies that leave the nation sinking in debt and mired in war. It craves a reprieve from the politics of bloodsport that prize clever calculation over courage, winning over principle, party label over national interest.

The renewal must come from a president who can lead by inspiration, who can set partisanship aside to define and achieve common goals, who can persuade a new generation of Americans that there is something noble and something important about public service.

There is no doubt about the Democrat with the vision and skills to bring that period of reprieve and renewal. It is Sen. Barack Obama.

As is often the case in a heavily contested primary, the relatively modest policy differences among the candidates have become magnified and inflamed beyond all due perspective. For example, Obama, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sen. John Edwards have pledged to expand health coverage, albeit with somewhat different approaches. Obama’s is certainly the most cautious, though perhaps the most realistic, considering that any overhaul of the health care system would require buy-in from at least some Republicans and myriad business interests that would be affected by such landmark federal regulation.

All three have vowed to phase out the U.S. military presence in Iraq. Obama, however, stands alone in his opposition to the invasion at the outset. Clinton and Edwards each voted to give President Bush the authorization to use military force against Saddam Hussein. Edwards acknowledges his mistake, Clinton parses the meaning of the resolution. It was Obama’s instincts that proved sound.

Clinton, who arrived in the U.S. Senate four years before Obama, has tried to make experience the issue. As senator, she has proved skillful at representing diverse New York interests and working with Republicans. But if she wants to highlight her White House experience as a defining difference, then it’s only fair to point out that two of the projects she was most deeply involved with produced a debacle (health care) and scandals (fund raising). Especially in recent days, her campaign has shown the sharp elbows that evoke the ugly underside of the Clinton years, and the (Karl Rove inspired) Bush years that succeeded them: the reflex to scorch the Earth, to do what is necessary to vanquish political adversaries … all is justified if you are left standing at the end.

America deserves better than these cycles of vengeance and retribution. Its possibilities are too great, its challenges too daunting, for partisan pettiness.

In a Jan. 17 meeting with our editorial board, Obama demonstrated an impressive command of a wide variety of issues. He listened intently to the questions. He responded with substance. He did not control a format without a stopwatch on answers or constraints on follow-up questions, yet he flourished in it.

He radiated the sense of possibility that has attracted the votes of independents and tapped into the idealism of young people during this campaign. He exuded the aura of a 46-year-old leader who could once again persuade the best and the brightest to forestall or pause their grand professional goals to serve in his administration.

Of all the candidates who talk about change, Barack Obama has made the case most forcefully and most convincingly. He gets our endorsement for the Democratic nomination.

The donors receive tax breaks because their donations are made to an organization with nonprofit status. According to the Los Angeles Times, “the governor’s aides and the foundation say the arrangement takes a financial burden off taxpayers while allowing Schwarzenegger to serve as an ambassador for the state. Watchdog groups contend it has the potential to allow moneyed donors to wield undue influence without public scrutiny.”

Among the donors whose names were recently revealed is Don Fisher, founder of the Gap clothing stores, who is attempting to create a museum in San Francisco’s Presidio for his personal art collection.

LINK:
Donors to secret nonprofit named – Los Angeles Times