If you’ve read this blog at all, you’ve noted my disdain for what I call the “SkyBox” political culture we’ve created.
Moxie saw a taste of it Tuesday night, at the victory party for Gray Davis:

Davis’ speech was really very gracious and all the poor homeless folks they let into the hotel really seemed to enjoy the balloon drop and ice sculptures.
But really — while I had a good time — I wasn’t overly impressed.
What *would* have impressed me is if the Dems had said, “oh no….we’ll forego the 15 ice sculptures of the California bear.”
One would have been more than enough to satiate the public’s craving for an out-of-style yet opulent party decoration. Seeing more than a few on every floor of the Democratic HQ’s really bothered me. I would have been very impressed indeed had Gray Davis said, “Take that money and donate it to a social service. If we can’t find one of those have your assistants round up some homeless guys. Take them for dinner at Sizzler and put ’em up at a Holiday Inn for a night. We’re for the poor after all.”
And that’s what struck me most.

My first job out of grad school was as a legislative aide in Sacramento. It was just what I thought I wanted to do, and to be sure I learned a lot and actually got to do some cool stuff. There are several laws in CA that are there because I thought them up and made them happen.
I’d pretty much planned on politics as a career through most of college; I speak well, people seem to like me, and I desperately wanted to make the world a better place.
Oh, and I wanted to have my name written on that better place as well.
Working in politics was exhilarating. Powerful people would take my call … me, a young, inexperienced kid right out of grad school. I got to sit in front of legislative committees and argue with older, powerful people, and sometimes win.
And I was immersed in a community of people just like me. I had a team, even if we were sometimes rivals and even opponents.
And I could have stayed there in all the intervening time, going from administration to administration, from legislator to legislator, occasionally stepping out to work in a think tank or lobbying firm, and maybe, if I was good at it and played my card right, stepped up and ran for office myself.
And many of my peers did just that.
Thomas Kuhn wrote a groundbreaking book a number of years ago…The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in which he examined the sociology of science; the ways in which ideas propagate as groups within the scientific community gain prestige and power.
What we need to do is to look at politics and policy in a similar light; a number of books have, and I’ll list some titles (and would be interested in seeing more). But here’s the short, Armed Liberal version:
Politics in the U.S. has always been interest-group driven. The power of the interest groups was checked, in part by the inefficiency and limited scope of government, which made very few fights worth taking on, and the cost of taking those fight on relatively high. For the most part, rational investors looked elsewhere.
But in the post-WW2 world, we began to see the scope of government expand; first in the military sector, and then in infrastructure, and then in healthcare, and so on until regulation began to interpenetrate the economy pervasively.
That made investment in government extremely profitable, and legal, in that instead of influencing procurement decisions (obviously illegal), businesses could profit by influencing policy and regulation.
The increasing complexity of laws, policies, and regulations meant that you needed a group of people who knew them and who could navigate the process of creating and interpreting them. They became professionals, and more so began to see themselves as professionals.
Socially, they became increasingly isolated, as professionals often do, because the work is involving and demanding and to a large extent social – it demands interaction with others, so your social and professional lives begin to blend and become indistinguishable.
And suddenly we have a political class, often self-selected as college students or younger, who have structured their entire adult lives around the demands of this system and their hopes to succeed on its terms.
Please note that what I’m describing is ‘content-neutral’; it applies to Rockefeller Republicans, Blue Dog Democrats, and everyone in between. The investments may be made by individuals…Howard Hughes was a huge investor in this sphere, and profited from it…or by corporations, here ADM is a good current example…or by labor unions or environmental groups.
But you need to think of our government as investor-driven, and management-driven. Obviously, we the customers can force change. But while our power is great, it’s channelled by the managers and investors, who…among other things…manage us by choosing who we get to vote for.
I’ll add more later today, in two broad areas:
So what’s the problem with this?
So what can we do about it?

My first thoughts on looking at the election results this morning:
“Damn, Davis is still going to be Governor…it wasn’t a bad dream…” I’m working on two post-election posts this morning, one an open letter to Davis on what he can do to salvage his reputation, and one a look at what this means for party politics.
I’ll give you the lede for the party politics one:
There is only one political party today. It is the party of SkyBoxes, limos, and private planes.
I choose those as symbols…and they are both real manifestations of how the politically powerful live today as well as powerful symbols of what is wrong with the political system that empowers them. They manifest the continued isolation from anything resembling the real life lived by the rest of us.
Hillary Clinton’s limo can run toll booths and her entourage can bypass airport security, where they wait in VIP lounges. Bush Senior can’t run a supermarket scanner, because he hasn’t been to a grocery store in most of his adult life.
The issue isn’t simply one of social class and stratification…it is one in which the political class in this country, which has often run against and been a check on the economic upper classes, has been bought by them, and has been a good investment because as has been true for much of American history, and as Prop 50 shows, the course of government action is often diverted to put our cash in someone’s pocket.
This is as true of the Democrats as it is of the Republicans.
And the answer isn’t as simple as the class warriors would make it.

in case you don’t have better data yet…obviously I don’t have good data on which precincts have reported, hence what the projected outcome would be…but this is a lot closer than I predicted, and the GOP is doing much better than I anticipated.
Davis – 44.7
Simon – 46.9
Bustamente – 46.3
McPherson – 46.5
Shelley – 43.0
Olberg – 47.4
Westley – 41.7
McClintock – 50.5
Angelides – 46.3
Conlon – 45.5
Lockyer – 48.1
Ackerman – 45.3
Garamendi – 43.7
Mendoza – 45.9
O’Connell – 59.6
Smith – 40.4
46 – 54.7/45.3
47 – 54.0/46.0
48 – 75.1/24.9
49 – 53.9/46.1
50 – 50.6/49.4
51 – 43.1/56.9
52 – 38.3/61.7

New blogger ‘Martial’ is running a poll: How do you know a legitimate authority when you see one?
I can’t think of a more appropriate election-eve activity than to respond.
What is legitimacy to you? On what basis can the government legitmately make demands of you, or is the only demand that can be made @gun — at the point of a gun, as James Fallows once said.
I’d like to know how this comes out.

We had our pre-election dinner last night (turkey and beef enchiladas mole), where a bunch of us get together and argue our way through the ballot. Nothing really changed my mind on any of the votes, except that a friend who is an elementary school teacher explained that she was voting against 47 (school bonds), because she considers the various administrations she works for totally inept. So I voted “no” on that.
During dessert, she & I started talking about gun registration. She is a true moderate; doesn’t have a lot of issues with people owning guns, would prefer that they had some training and that they were checked for lunacy and stupidity. But she and I kept going back and forth on registration. She couldn’t see why I had a problem with it, and when I told her about the various go-rounds in which well-meaning SKS and other ‘bad gun’ owners in CA had registered, had their then-legal ownership retroactively made illegal, and then were targeted for confiscation under threat of felony conviction because they had registered, she began to understand my concern. She still favors it, though.
I wish I’d sent her over to this from the Instapundit, for an example of how a) ineffective and b) intrusive this becomes.
I believe that there ought to be a way for the authorities to know if a designated individual has guns, and it would be handy to know what guns s/he has. This would be useful if someone was convicted of a crime, or was under a restraining order, etc. etc.
But until some way can be determined to keep them from being used in small-scale fishing expeditions like these, not to mention large-scale confiscations, I’ll oppose centralized registration.
Don’t forget to vote; drag someone else and get them to vote, too.

Lt. Governor. This largely ceremonial job has only one real benefit…if Davis leaves the state to run for President, the Lt. Governor takes over. Mike Curb (of Lyle Lovett fame) was the Republican Lt. Governor when Jerry Brown was the Democratic Governor, and it definitely kept Jerry home.
To that end, although Cruz Bustamente was a great Assemblyman, my conviction that Gray “ATM” Davis will win the Governorship – albeit without my vote – and immediately start campaigning for President means that I’ll be supporting Bruce McPherson, a Republican in name only from my old stomping grounds at Santa Cruz, CA. Again, I consider Bustamente to be a good guy (as is McPherson), but the only benefit of the seat is that the national Dems will think twice about allowing Davis to even think of moving up in the event it would leave the state house in the R column.
Secretary of State. This campaign for two mid-level pols on the ladder is fairly dull. Neither one has much specific to say…they will both ‘modernize’ the polling process (as a technology professional, I can’t tell you how nervous that makes me…). Kevin Shelley, the Democratic candidate lists Handgun Control Inc. as his first endorsement, so I’m mildly inclined to vote against him. I’ll make this call in the voting booth.
Controller. Steve Westley was a professor of business who went to work for eBay at the right time and did a credible job. I’ve read some of his speeches, and he seems a cut better than most of the candidates. He has teamed up with Phil Angelides to advocate investment in infrastructure, while his opponent is touting his connections to the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, so the Democrat gets my nod.
Treasurer. I actually knew Phil Angelides a long time ago, and absolutely would have written him off as a grasping, unimaginative career politician until his election to the State Treasurer’s office. His conduct during the energy crisis, his emphasis on intelligent investment of the State’s funds, and his belief in investing in infrastructure put him far at the head of this group of statewide electeds. If he was running for Governor, I’d vote for him in a heartbeat, and he deserves a ride in this post until he can.
Attorney General. Bill Lockyer has been (with the exception of gun issues) a good AG for the state, and deserves another term.
Insurance Commissioner. Tough choice. Support the insurance companies, or the trial lawyers? I’ll go with the lawyers and support John Garamendi, the Democrat. He did a credible job in the office once before, and his Republican successor disgraced himself.
Superintendent of Public Education. I’ll go with Jack O’Connell, the Democrat, as he has been both a teacher and a school board member, and those are the two constituencies that this job needs to reach.

Someone’s sending a fair amount of traffic my way via my old site (http:armedliberal.blogspot.com), and I can’t get the referrer data to see who it is.
So if you came here via a link to there (how’s that for preposition use?) can you let me know and I’ll get the mysterious them to fix their link…

The other initiatives are:
46 (housing- YES) As I discussed here, the housing crisis is real, and while these bonds will get spent and won’t solve the problem, a few tens of thousands of people will be better housed because we spent this money.
47 (school bonds – NEUTRAL) I know that our public school infrastructure is decaying (I see it every day at my son’s schools, which are relatively good), but I’m uncertain about spending this money now. On one hand, the needs are real, as with housing above; on the other many of the school districts (L.A. Unified) haven’t done a very good job with the money they’ve been given already. I’m probably going to toss a coin tomorrow morning on this one.
48 (combine courts – YES) This makes ministerial changes to state law to reflect the fact that all 58 of California’s counties have combined their Municipal and Superior courts in an effort to streamline and cut costs. This simply changes the state law to eliminate references to ‘Municipal’ courts when there aren’t any.
49 (afterschool care –YES) As noted below this is about positioning Ah-nold to run for Governor (which I think would actually be kinda fun…he’s not an idiot), and incidentally may improve the lives of a few hundred thousand kids. So I’m for it.
50 (water bonds – NO) I’d support 2/3 of the projects in this (excluding the purchases of wetlands in a private and negotiated process from major developers), but the other 1/3 just isn’t palatable at a time when the budget is as crunched as it really is.
51 (‘transportation’ bonds – NO) This is a scam, and the people responsible (yes, Irvine Mayor Larry Agran, this means you) ought to be ashamed.
L.A. County A (Museum and Parks Bonds – NO) I’d love to see a cool new Rem Koolhaas L.A. County museum. Some group of rich people should get together and fund it. At a time when we can’t afford decent schools, police, or a health system, building monuments to high culture (or cathedrals, for that matter) ought to be on the back burner.
L.A. County B (Healthcare – YES) Vote early and often for this one, or in fact your children may die. It is not only my local Level 1 Trauma Center, it is one of three for the entire region. The health finance systems in this country are broken. We need to fix them. While we’re fixing them, we ought to keep the hospitals open. Period.

Below, I talk about ‘opening the eyes’ of the citizenry as a part of defending ourselves against terrorism. Sounds like someone’s ahead of me on this issue.
From my local paper, today’s Daily Breeze (article not online):

Locals asked to aid base security
Uncle Sam wants to enlist the help of South Bay residents in the war against terrorism.
In a move to increase security at Los Angeles Air Force Base, officials have created a program using residents as the front line of defense for the military installation in El Segundo.
Under the Eagle Eyes program, implemented at U.S. Air Force bases around the world since the 9-11 attacks, base personnel educate nearby residents to look out for possible terrorist-related activities and urge them to call in anything suspicious to the military installation via a hotline.
“Every act of terrorism given off some indicators and warnings people can see,” said Special Agent Randall Redlinger, who will oversee the Eage Eyes program at the base. “We want to engage all the Air Force resource and the community’s resources to catch those early indicators and warnings before a terrorist can strike.”

Now multiply this by a thousand, with the neighbors of power stations, hospitals, and airports all attentive and trained on what to be attentive for; add to that someone on the other end of the phone who won’t tell them they have called the wrong number and hang up, and you have the beginnings of a program that will empower the average citizen and leverage government resources without violating civil rights or risking vigilantism.
I believe that we could go further, but am confident that pretty much all parties…the NRA and the VPC…Ted Nugent and Paul McCartney…could agree on something like this.

N.Z. Bear is talking about ‘pack vs. herd’ mentality (hint: packs can protect themselves, herds can’t). His comments are general – the points he covers are:

First Aid training: Do you know how to deal with severe burns? How to stop major bleeding? Your local Red Cross most likely offers both introductory and advanced training in first aid . It is a near certainty that in future terrorist attacks, the first assistance available to victims will come from fellow citizens, not EMS. And of course, while the absolute probability that you will be on the scene at an attack is tiny, training in emergency medical techniques is a skill that would certainly be good to have even in a world totally lacking in terrorists.
Self-Defense: Being able to defend yourself doesn’t necessarily mean carrying a weapon. From women’s self-defense courses to full-blown martial arts studies, the options here are near limitless.
Firearms training: And yes, if guns don’t bother you, by all means, get trained on their proper use and (if your state permits it) obtain a concealed carry permit.

Now, here at Casa de Armed Liberal, we’re certainly not going to argue against first-aid or self-defense. But I think there are a few things to put into the hierarchy before we get there.
I’ll suggest that the most important civil-defense tool any of us can have, we already have…a cell phone.
What’s missing is two things: some work to help educate us what to look for; and someone on the other end who can answer the phone, filter and integrate the information into data and figure out how to act on the data.
Now this doesn’t preclude personal action – where sensible, or where there are few alternatives.
Had the Beltway shooters been discovered by an armed Gunsite grad who was out jogging, there would have possibly been a more positive end to the whole tragedy.
And the passengers on Flight 93 certainly had few options.
But there’s an old phrase in the self-defense business, which says that in most cases, vigilantism isn’t the answer…the answer is to retreat to safety and “be a good witness”.
We need more good witnesses, and systems to allow what they see to be used effectively.
I know this sounds suspiciously like operation TIPS. And while I had issues with this, I always felt stronger about the way this was being sold than what it was. I think that basic training in some things to look out for (I’ve always noted places near my kids’ schools where a shooter would logically be…and if I see someone hanging out there, I pay very careful attention…); and someone on the other end of the phone who can filter, understand, and act on the calls (note that if I saw someone with a gun covering one of my kids’ schools, my reactions might diverge from ‘being a good witness’…but not everyone has the tools and training that I do) would be damn useful.
Some obvious starters: Sadly, most of the ‘casual terrorists’ – the LAX and Beltway shooters included – have given plenty of warning of their attitudes and intentions.
Maybe if someone had called them in? Maybe if someone had taken the call, and done some preliminary investigation?
Gavin de Becker’s book The Gift of Fear points out that while the stunned neighbors interviewed after a spree killing almost always say “He was such a quiet guy…who knew?” But on investigation, there were a lot of reasons someone should have known.
The places we are vulnerable ought to be obvious.
The characteristic behavior of people we ought to be scared of ought to be obvious.
All we need to do is learn to look.
[Addendum: Just did a bit more surfing (between reading “The Phantom Tollbooth” with the Littlest Guy), and have to point to a few more posts: Patrick Nielsen Hayden, who says:

As Jim Henley has remarked, one wonders why, in urgent cases like this, the authorities don’t help us be — not a herd, but a pack.
The answer, of course, is that doing so goes against the institutional DNA of most law-enforcement operations and “security” professionals. Success, to their way of thinking, comes from having information that other people don’t. Of course, in the real world, success also often comes from adding your information to other people’s information. But when the chips are down, this idea doesn’t stick in the minds of law enforcemeent types, unless repeatedly administered with a very large bat.

Well…yes…but it’s not just here. We’ve ceded vast parts of our lives to professionals…we have trainers at the gym, career counselors, marriage counselors, social workers, etc. etc. The veneer of ‘professionalism’ hides some serious rot, and it’s a topic for a later discussion.
Jim Henley launched the metaphor, and takes it a few steps further down the road. A sample:

I see two problems that we need to think about. The first, obvious one, is vigilantism. Now, call me a fire-breathing right-winger (please!) but I’m not convinced that vigilantism is the unalloyed calamity Progressive Humanity considers it to be. At which point the reader demands, But what about the whole, abominable history of lynching in the Jim Crow South? What about mobs with pitchforks shouting “She’s a witch!” What about avengers gunning down acquitted molestation defendents on their front lawns?

And Instapundit takes off on it in a TechCentralStation column:

Regardless of whether or not the D.C. snipers count as “terrorists” under your particular definition (they do under mine, but the authorities seem to be shooting for a much narrower standard) there seems little question that in coming weeks, months, and years we’re going to be dealing with a lot of fast-moving, dispersed threats of the sort that bureaucracies don’t handle very well. (Every domestic-terrorism victory so far, from Flight 93 to bringing down the LAX shooter to spotting the D.C. killers was accomplished by non-law-enforcement individuals, after all). Rather than creating new bureaucracies, we need to be looking at ways of promoting fast-moving, dispersed responses, responses that will involve members of the public as a pack, not a herd. Even if doing so reduces the career satisfaction of shepherds.

Obviously, this calls for a more thoughtful expansion, but in the chance you haven’t read these, read them, and let’s see if I can’t add something to the mix later tonight or tomorrow.]