Biting the boss

Ralphing on Gore: Be warned, brothers and sisters, the conspiracy runs deeper than Bites imagined, infiltrating even the editorial pages of this very newspaper. How else can anyone explain the Sacramento News & Review’s endorsement of Al Gore for president?

Bites was shocked, SHOCKED!, to read that the SN&R was passing over Ralph Nader—the most intelligent, articulate, honest and progressive candidate in the race—for just another compromised minion of the powers-that-be. It’s disgraceful! Worse than disgraceful, it’s a betrayal of all the principles and ideals regularly espoused on the very editorial page that carried the endorsement.

Once upon a time, the “alternative press” was an alternative to the diversionary mainstream claptrap, propaganda and talking-head nonsense that passes for news coverage these days. Now it appears we’re simply an alternative to mindless Republican dolts like Dubya, which isn’t nearly good enough for Bites.

Lemme say this, loyal readers: had Bites known about this endorsement before it came out, it wouldn’t have happened, even if it meant laying bodies across the printing presses or sneaking in late at night to scribble “Nader” all over the endorsement page with a purple crayon.

That kind of reaction is probably why the publisher and editors here keep Bites locked in the belfry of the SN&R building, instructing security guards to shoot to kill if Bites is ever found wandering the halls again, a standing order since the so-called “hostage incident” of two years ago. But Bites doesn’t want to rehash that old yarn.

The point is, Bites is in no way, shape or form responsible for the Gore endorsement, or anything else in the SN&R. Hell, these people would have fired Bites years ago if not for my extensive collection of compromising photos and a fear of the populist mob that would burn this place to the ground.

So do the right thing Nov. 7. Vote your conscience. Vote for Nader. And if we end up sending George W. Bush to the White House, at least that will ensure four years worth of incredibly biting columns in this space. Grrr!

Republican impersonator: Bites did bust out of the belfry last week to catch Gov. Gray Davis’ press conference on cutting the California sales tax rate, a rare question-and-answer session with our increasingly unaccountable Compromiser-in-Chief.

Not that his little 20-minute parade wave allowed for very tough scrutiny, but at least one hack asked him whether this $1.1 billion sales tax cut and another $3.3 billion in other tax cuts that Davis pushed through this year might have been better spent on much-needed programs.

It was a good question for the governor of a prosperous state that still has high poverty rates, underfunded social programs and a crumbling infrastructure, but which is targeting tax cuts mostly at the businesses that have been reaping all the rewards of these boom times.

“I’m trying to chart a prudent course that keeps us somewhere in the middle,” droned Davis.

Yeah, right in the middle of Centrist Hell, where demons like Davis pat the average citizen on the head right before stabbing him in the back. The whole reason this tax cut occurred—triggered as it was by a 1991 GOP scheme to lower taxes when reserve funds start overflowing—is that Davis this session vetoed $4 billion in needed social spending for everyone from the uninsured to poor foster children.

“But Bites,” all the Democrat apologists out there are now whining, “sales tax cuts help the poor people.” Yeah, right, that $61 in average annual savings that this cut represents is really going to put a chicken in every pot.

Whoops, or at least it might have if Pacific Gas & Electric hadn’t announced the very next day plans to pass costs on to consumers that would average $240 per customer next year, just the latest fallout from the Legislature’s deregulation of the electricity markets.

With a few sympathetic words and masterful sleight of hand, the centrists giveth and the centrists taketh away. But if you’re content with the magic show, go ahead and support the Republicrats again.