So many candidates, so little time. In this week's recall roundup:
-- Among the myriad minor candidates is comedy writer Steve I. Young -- "I" for integrity, he says -- whose plan to raise money for the $3,500 filing fee has been thwarted. Young put his candidacy for sale on EBay, the winning bidder getting the next governor "at your service and in your pocket." EBay didn't see it quite that way, yanking his listing because, said EBay, it "contained gratuitous comments inappropriate for EBay listing descriptions." So it's on to Plan B: "working the freeway exit ramps (a bag of oranges for a donation and a signature)."
-- An Ireland-based Internet betting site called TradeSports.com has calculated the odds of Gray Davis' still being in office by the end of September -- a week before the recall election -- at about 35%.
-- The witticisms are coming thick and fast, including the one that if Austrian-born actor Arnold Schwarzenegger were to debate Greek-born political columnist Arianna Huffington, they'd need subtitles.
-- Recalls past: In 1915, L.A. Police Chief Charles Sebastian ran for mayor. Just before the election, someone fired two shots at him and just missed. On election day, Sebastian won -- and was promptly arrested and charged with framing a fake assassination to ensure his election.
-- The governor's race may not be to Schwarzenegger's liking, but with Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch proposing a constitutional amendment to allow nonnative citizens to run for president, the 1993 film "Demolition Man" becomes prescient. It's set in a future Los Angeles, where actress Sandra Bullock explains the presence of the Arnold Schwarzenegger Presidential Library with, "Even though he was not born in this country, his popularity at the time caused the 61st Amendment."
No More Heading West With Recyclables
It's really just dreary old SB 968, signed into law by Gov. Gray Davis.
But you could call it the "Kramer-Newman Prevention Act of 2003." State Sen. Debra Bowen is a Marina del Rey Democrat and a Seinfeld fan who remembered an episode in which the aforementioned characters head west with a truckload of bottles and cans from New York, which has no bottle deposit, to redeem in Michigan, which has a 10-cent deposit per.
You can stop laughing now: Schlepping hot recyclables into California from deposit-free states cost the state recycling program something in the low millions. Bowen's law allows the state to go after people for the money they made defrauding the recycling program. Among the 26 other items already on the forfeiture list: more than $100 worth of mollusks, kelp, algae, olives and avocados.
