Up Here in Tahoe, People Are More Concerned With Sewage Spill Than State’s Special Election

Lake Tahoe —  “Hearing any talk about politics?” I asked the bartender at my favorite Tahoe watering hole, a timbered relic on a pier that dates back to Mark Twain.

“Only about how bad a president we’ve got,” replied Scott, a trusted local source.

Anything about the governor?

“People up here, they’re on vacation. You don’t hear anything about Arnold. Or whether we really need a special election.

“Except out-of-staters,” Scott continued. “They say, ‘You don’t like him now, how come you elected him?’ ”

And the Californians’ answer? “They say he’s better than Gray Davis. Davis was the worst governor in history.”

We could have a long bar discussion about that.

*

Sitting on a barstool, gazing eastward across an immense, deep-blue lake, it’s hard for even a political junkie to think beyond prevailing breezes, classic motorboats and Mackinaw bites.

But the war tugs on the mind because, even on vacation, there’s no escaping TV’s daily death counts and a preaching president’s pledges to “stay the course.”

Stay the course? With more than 1,800 American soldiers dead, total war costs exceeding $300 billion and terrorists bombing London? Why not change course and go all-out to win this thing?

We’re in a global war against fanatical terrorists. And how are we fighting it? By lowering taxes ($1.35 trillion over 10 years). By recruiting poor kids as our mercenaries. By backing them up with ill-equipped National Guard troops who should be home protecting our airports and harbors.

Where’s the national sacrifice? American flag and “Support Our Troops” car decals won’t cut it.

We should be raising taxes to finance the war. Stop running $400-billion annual deficits that force up mortgage rates. And we ought to seriously consider reinstituting the draft.

If Americans think that raising taxes and spreading the combat burden are too much sacrifice, then maybe there’s not a real national will to fight this war.

Presidential leadership is required.

Watching President Bush continually vow victory on TV reminds me of a scene from the golf movie “Tin Cup.”

Golfer Roy McAvoy (Kevin Costner) has been smacking ball after ball into the drink, but insists to his disgusted caddy, Romeo Posar (Cheech Marin), that he still can reach the green.

“Well, do it then,” the caddy demands. “Stop mucking around.”

Or words to that effect.

*

More on golf:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger should be taking a mulligan on his special election. Letting it go and hitting another ball.

A mulligan is a second-chance shot for a weekend hacker who has whacked his ball out of bounds or into the tall rough. Our novice governor has been misplaying shots for months, ever since he embarked on his special election round.

Vacationing Californians may not be talking about it, but polls show they don’t want a special election in November that would cost them $50 million-plus. The governor’s so-called reforms could just as easily be placed on next June’s regular ballot at no extra charge to taxpayers.

Schwarzenegger’s latest errant shot was caused by his side not playing by the rules while trying to qualify a political redistricting initiative for the ballot.

First, it mistakenly circulated to voters for their signatures a different initiative version than was submitted to the attorney general for official title and summary. That’s illegal. Then it covered up the mistake until the falsely circulated initiative had been certified for the ballot by the secretary of state. An appellate court Tuesday upheld a lower court’s decision to yank the measure off the ballot. The state Supreme Court will have the final say.

The governor is in dense woods with a very tough lie, going for his “year of reform.”

Earlier, he blew his shot at public pension reform by backing an initiative so flawed it had to be withdrawn. If there’s no redistricting measure, he’ll be left with only a controversial spending cap -- which also reduces school funding guarantees -- plus a Mickey Mouse change in teacher tenure.

Maybe Schwarzenegger can drive this beat-up ball to the green. But it’s more likely he’ll knock it into a Democratic trap.

*

Up here in the Sierra, few people are directly touched by the war. Sacramento’s on another planet. But there is a local story that has affected many and had them grousing this summer. It’s the raw-sewage spill.

Yes, 120,000 gallons of raw sewage spilled into this pristine lake -- described by Twain as “surely the fairest picture the whole earth affords” -- when a pier builder struck a 14-inch main line that runs along a north shore beach. Vacationers were barred from beaches and water for 10 days through the town of Kings Beach, costing merchants their season’s profits.

“A chain of errors,” read a Sacramento Bee headline. Not only by the contractor but by several government entities. A Placer County bureaucrat mistakenly deeded a valuable public beach to two private property owners, or they’d never have been entitled to build the pier in the first place, the Bee reported.

There apparently was no government map showing the sewer line. The contractor was supposed to check with local utilities, but didn’t. The pier was authorized by the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency -- the environmental watchdog charged with protecting the lake’s famous clarity -- but it gave no thought to a possible sewage spill.

So what does all this have in common: the president, the governor, sewage? I won’t wade into that.

But I will quote that 19th-century Tahoe vacationer, Mark Twain: “Government is organized imbecility.”

George Skelton writes Monday and Thursday. Reach him at [email protected].