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CHARTERING THE FUTURE - it's interesting that the 'Keep Davis Davis' crowd seems to be pushing this charter city proposal, which implies that we've been doing things wrong for some time now - otherwise, I presume, we'd have been a charter city all along - funny, because if you look at Davis - and you overlook all the goofiness - these same people would claim we have a much better place to live than just about any other city in California - and they'd have 64,000 of their fellow citizens in full agreement with them -

So why the rush to change things? - do we want to be 'innovative' just because it's different? - why not stick with what works? - rather than institute choice voting, those council members who feel their election did not fulfill the will of the voters should simply resign - and if they feel they were legitimately elected, then let's leave well enough alone -


SPEAKING OF CHARTERS - as my friend Jon Li - one of Davis' astute political observers - noted in a recent letter to the editor, those pushing choice voting in this town never explain why in a race where three seats are open, you get to have your vote for only one candidate counted under their system - maybe you'd better read that last sentence again - yes, indeed, just one vote counts - not much choice if you ask me, especially when three seats are up for grabs - I like the current system where I get to vote for three candidates and all three of my votes count equally - why anyone would willingly give away two bites at the apple and call it 'choice' is a mystery to me -


EXPERIENCE BE DAMNED - I don't know about you, but it gets awfully tiresome every time an election rolls around to hear people trot out the 'experience' card - experience is a wonderful thing unless, of course, you're on the wrong side of the issue - if you believe in universal health care, you won't be impressed with the candidate who has been experienced at opposing universal health care throughout his or her political career - if you don't like the war, you're not likely to vote for a general who plans to keep it going -

If experience is the only qualification you have, you're not offering us much - the reason Lois Wolk is such an attractive candidate is because of her judgment and intelligence, not her experience in elected office, even though she is, indeed, experienced - after all, if we're always supposed to be impressed with experience, how will we ever get new blood into government? -

In our upcoming City Council election we have a candidate who is 26 years old and full of promise, even though she is nowhere near as experienced as those she will be running against - it remains to be seen if she has a chance, but I'd be willing to bet that very few of us will make up our minds about her based on her lack of experience in elected office -

Lamar Heystek did not have experience as a City Councilman until he was elected - he has proved it is possible to learn on the job -


THE UN-DEMOCRATIC PARTY - it's nice to see that superdelegate Mike Thompson, who doubles as this area's representative in Congress, plans to cast his convention vote for Hillary Clinton since Barack Obama won by only a 'plurality' in his district - true, true, but Hillary didn't win anything, plurality or otherwise, in the same district - apparently, the long-standing notion that the guy with the most votes wins is out the window these days -

Then again, Mike Thompson clearly knows better than the citizens of his district when it comes to these very important matters - he, after all, is a superdelegate, so mature he can see past the passions of the unwashed masses and use his superior intelligence to pick a candidate the rest of us overlooked - the will of the people be damned - peasants, return to your fields, the superdelegate is here to save you from yourselves -

- Reach Bob Dunning at bdunning@davisenterprise.net. Comment on this column at www.davisenterprise.com.