As I write this column, a lot of things are hanging in the balance.
The citizens of New Hampshire are voting in their primary, and we’ll have some answers by the time you read this column. Consulting my crystal ball (which is probably as cloudy as your crystal ball), I’d bet that Trump wins but by less than the polls show, that Rubio doesn’t make much progress after his recent bad debate showing, that Cruz is pretty much a non-starter since there aren’t that many Evangelicals in New Hampshire, that Jeb Bush is blah and is almost ready to throw in the towel, and that John Kasich will do much better and Chris Christie — well, who knows. What it all means is that after this primary, the Republican race is as mangled as it was going into the primary.
On the Democratic side, if it’s a blowout by Sanders over Clinton, all the Dems are going to get very nervous and start looking for a new standard bearer they think can win. I can understand the nervousness in the Clinton camp. After years of Hillary being a cutting-edge feminist, there is a new generation of young woman and all they know is “yes, but what have you done for us lately?” which is probably enough to make Hillary and Gloria Steinem start pulling out their hair. I’m not really surprised because I knew a bunch who were Freedom Riders at the height of the civil rights battle, which meant jail, fire hoses, police dogs, batons and all of that stuff for the right to vote. Two generations later, it’s their grandchildren who didn’t bother to vote because there was a sale at the mall and they didn’t have the time to get to the polls.
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This Wednesday, Feb. 10, the California Coastal Commission is going to meet at Morro Bay to decide whether or not they want to retain their executive director Charles Lester. The Coastal Commissioners, I think, wrongly figured that they had a right to pick their own staff, and that if they were unhappy with Lester, they could make a change. I suspect that many of them had absolutely no idea what they were stepping into and that there is a very large support network of environmental organizations backing the Coastal Commission staff with allied friends, politicians and journalists.
The enviros have done a good PR job of focusing this as an issue of preventing large development along the coast, but it more accurately is an issue of who is the Coastal Commission. Is it the executive director and the staff with the support of a web of politically sophisticated enviro organizations, or is it actually the appointed commission, appointed by the governor, the speaker and the senate pro tem?
I’m guessing that the commissioners are going to lose their nerve and retain Lester, and there is going to be a lot of face-saving talk about how they are going to fix all the operational problems, be more open and speed things up, but frankly it’s principally window dressing. After this battle, it’s probably going to be a very uncomfortable place to work with a lot of scores to be settled. If the commissioners retain Lester, you can expect some very contentious coastal meetings in the future and a staff that’s going to be looking over their shoulders, whatever they do.
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In the big local news of the day, our City Manager Jim Thorsen has decided to retire after 10 years at the helm of Malibu and 32 years in the public sector. That tells us two things: First, that Jim is very competent, and second, that he’s a glutton for punishment. Jim retires in May and he will be sorely missed. Jim has wonderful personal and political skills, and he has helped establish working relationships with many outside governments, including the Coastal Commission and the Regional Water Quality Control Board. After those two, Jim could easily go on to be a Middle East peace negotiator. In recognition of his contribution to Malibu, The Malibu Times added Jim to the list of Dolphin Award winners for this year.
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This past weekend, we took a trip with part of the family to visit Sacramento and see the other part of the family. We stopped at Pea Soup Andersen’s in Santa Nella to get gas, and 76, Chevron and Shell were all $2.95 per gallon. Two other stations, with less name brands, were $2.05 and $1.95, respectively. Now I can understand California gas being higher with our tougher environmental regulations but I fail to see why some stations are a dollar a gallon less since they all buy their gas from the same refineries. Conclusion: we are being ripped off.