Front Page  »  

Maldonado appears unAbel to win

November 3, 2010

Former Central Coast state Senator and current California lieutenant governor Abel Maldonado appears headed for defeat in his bid to keep the second most powerful political position in the state. [San Francisco Chronicle]

Maldonado’s opponent, San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom declared victory early Wednesday morning.

“I want to thank Californians from every corner of the state and every walk of life for believing in this campaign and the important work ahead,” Newsom told his supporters. “If we want the great state of California to get back to business, we must change the way Sacramento does theirs.”

With 61 percent of the vote counted, Newsom was leading Maldonado 48 to 41 percent.

Gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown proclaimed victory earlier in the evening, giving the Democrats the top two seats in state government.

Maldonado is expected to concede sometime on Wednesday. The moderate Republican was appointed lieutenant governor by Arnold Schwarzenegger and confirmed just last spring.


Loading...
Subjects:     
Related:


22 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

How can anyone believe that any governor or government for that matter CREATES jobs, unless you’re talking about government jobs?

Government DOES NOT CREATE WEALTH. Government provides services and uses tax dollars to do it. Tax dollars that are earned by you and me.

If jobs were created during any politician’s tenure, that’s great. But the actual person in power has little to do with it.

If you’ll recall, when Brown’s last term was ending (1984) it coincided with the beginning of the economic juggernaut that was the rise of the personal computer, which used to be made in Silicon Valley.

Ronald Reagan rode this same wave of technology driven economic engine that made the 1980s an era of relatively good growth that a lot of people were able to cash in on.

By the time Bush Sr. became Prez the growth was leveling out and in fact started declining because companies like HP and others moved their manufacturing centers overseas to Asia. Clinton and Pete Wilson rode the wave of the dot-com/Internet and later, the housing boom which crashed in 1999 and a few years later for the housing bubble.

If jobs were created during Brown’s time in office, that’s great but don’t give him credit for it. It’s the private sector that creates wealth and jobs, not government.

For us to get out of this economic morass we’re in now, we need another PC-like technological marvel. Perhaps green energy technology will do it, I don’t know. It seems to me to be our best bet right now. However, China and the other Asian nations aren’t behind the ball this time. The next big technological boom to the economy will most likely have China as a full partner, so those jobs may or may not be created here.

That’s why Prop 23 was so interesting. the oil companies said AB 32 will kill jobs and they’re probably right. It will kill certain kinds of jobs like oil well drilling. But the Eco-folks are also banking on the new technology to be the catalyst to creating jobs.

As with the solar farms in Carizzo Plains, I just hope that we haven’t backed ourselves so far into a corner with environmental protections that the green energy wave gets smothered under a mountain of red tape.


0

“unAbel” would appear to be the new “Nobama” in name maligning.


0
1 2