Local Elections

Today Los Angeles had its local election for mayor and a couple of local offices and local measures regarding marijuana dispensaries.

Finally!

I’ll admit to having a severe case of voter’s exhaustion at this point. Starting a full eighteen months ago with the early presidential primaries, through last year’s California primary, last November’s national election, this spring’s mayoral primaries, and now the final mayoral election, we’ve had pretty much nonstop mailers, phone calls, billboards, and attack TV ads. The mud slinging in California and LA might not have sunk quite to the level of some of the more memorable campaigns from around the country, but they’ve been plenty bad. And nonstop, unrelenting. I’m seeing political campaign ads in my sleep.

At this point I really don’t care who wins. First of all, in the LA mayor’s race it’s pretty much six of one, a half-dozen of the other. Greuel would be LA’s first female mayor, Garcetti would be it’s first Jewish mayor. Other than that? I give it about a 99% chance that LA in four years will look pretty much the same either way.

District attorney? Again, who cares? The DA’s office here has a tradition to uphold and both of them will do just fine. OJ Simpson walked. Robert Blake walked. They couldn’t even get a decent set of convictions on the Bell “civic leaders” who were caught red-handed with their hands in the cookie jar all the way up to the shoulder. So someone new will be in charge of the department? Okey dokey.

Should we limit marijuana dispensaries, pot shops for “medicinal” marijuana? Sure, works for me. There are upscale parts of town here (Encino, Woodland Hills, Tarzana, Sherman Oaks) where there are pot shops on every block. In the less upscale parts of town (Van Nuys, Pacoima) there are two or three of them in every single teeny tiny strip mall. Is that too many? Probably.

We’ve gone days at a time with our home phone off the hook because we’re getting robocalls three, four, six, eight times a night, once an hour during the day. Isn’t it great that the politicians who wrote the “Do Not Call List” law exempted themselves from being subject to it? They said that it was to preserve democracy, to make sure that everyone’s political views could be heard, to not limit free political speech. What a crock of shit! And yet, when politicians say that sort of thing with a straight face, they still aren’t capable of understanding why the average American is disillusioned and wouldn’t trust a politician, ANY POLITICIAN, to give them the time of day.

I give a week before the first ads for the next state propositions and fall governor’s race start.