🚀 go-pugleaf

Patrick J. Chicas (pjc@aloha.net) wrote:

<snip>

: It would be very interesting to know what the same pollsters predicted 
: before the last Republican landslide.  As it stands in history, the bill 
: was presented for *years* without success.

Re: Polls - I wish I could be as confident as everyone else that "polls don't
matter", "polls are frequently wrong", "polls mean nothing", and so forth.
Polls predicted that Kathleen Brown would lose almost 2-1 to Pete Wilson, and
she did.  Polls predicted that Michael Huffington and Dianne Feinstein were
roughly neck-and-neck, and they were.  In my small experience, polls are a
better guess - not perfect, but a better guess - than anything else, and are
frequently quite meaningful - particularly when a trend holds up over time
(and "issues" polls tend to be more stable than "people/politician" polls
anyway).

Re: My Spin on History of the CDPA - First Pete Wilson, and then John Seymour,
were instrumental in blocking the CDPA for so many years.  They listened to
the anti-CDPA crowd, for better or worse; and if the polls are correct, they
got away with it IMHO for the same reasons that the environment is usually
(for better or worse) at the bottom of the Top 10 of public concerns: public
apathy, un-informed-ness (pardon my butchery of the English language), and 
complacency/contentedness.  The polls suggest that, when informed of the CDPA 
particulars, most people supported it; it appears that most people simply 
weren't informed, or motivated enough, to let Wilson's and Seymours anti-CDPA
positions be politically dangerous.

You are correct in stating that it passed on the efforts of Feinstein and 
Barbara Boxer.

: Democrats soundly lost the vote in the affected regions in the most recent 
: elections.

Riverside County, San Bernardino County, etc. are conservative regions of the
state where (I believe) Democrats have lost for years, for reasons entirely 
apart from land conservation.  No Democratic incumbent Representative lost in 
the California Desert, because there were none.  The re-election of Republican
representatives therefore does not necessarily imply anything in particular,
one way or the other, about public esteem for the CDPA in Riverside and San 
Bernardino Counties.

Certainly, the most visible sentiment in the California Desert, on one side
or the other, was anti-CDPA, I'll grant you that.  Regarding the hearings
you mentioned, I'm not surprised by the large numbers on the anti-CDPA side,
for that reason.

As federal lands, though, local opinion is only one factor.  I realize you
disagree that this is the way it ought to be, but that's another topic.

: What was the last acerage count?  6,000,000 to 7,000,000 million I 
: believe... Some areas so vast that *no man* would ever see the interior. 
: Why so much?

You're roughly correct on the acreage counts.  The California Desert (Mojave,
Colorado, and southern Great Basin portions) occupies over 25 million acres
of the state, though.  The CDPA amounts to roughly 1/4 of the desert, which
isn't too much in my book.  Why so much?  "To ensure an enduring resource
of wilderness..."

Scott
All opinions are my own.