Right Thinking - rightthinking's Blog - Bakersfield.com

Say yes to Prop. 8 and no to PG&E

When you're king, or a fat-cat near-monopoly like PG&E, it's OK to goose your subjects, then pooh-pooh the protests.

Or so PG&E apparently thought in July, when it donated $250,000 to the campaign to crush Proposition 8, the November ballot initiative that protects traditional marriage.

Secure in the knowledge it's got its customers right where it wants them, PG&E paid out the big bucks to advance its pet political cause, then barely acknowledged the outcry that followed.

It was an arrogant move and, like the California Supreme Court's decision to legalize gay marriage, a breach of trust.

The thing is, PG&E customers aren't quite as stuck as they might think.

While it's true that PG&E's 200,000 or so Kern County customers have little choice in regard to the electricity they use, they do have some say about natural gas. Though most of the state's “core customers” — small commercial and residential customers like you and me — buy their gas from regulated utilities like PG&E and Southern California Gas, they do “have the option to purchase natural gas from independent, unregulated natural gas marketers,” according to the California Public Utilities Commission.

Which means, if PG&E's natural gas users want to goose the king a bit, they can.

Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute, and a tireless defender of traditional marriage, was in Bakersfield this week spreading the word and encouraging PG&E natural gas users to shop around.

Dacus was even able to offer a solid alternative for PG&E customers, one he says met stringent criteria before meriting the institute's recommendation. The end result is a “no-brainer for people who believe in traditional marriage.”

“We did our research,” Dacus says. “We wanted to find a natural gas provider that did both commercial and residential, one that wouldn't suddenly support a cause divergent from what mainstream Californians would support and one that is, year-to-year, lower in cost than PG&E.”

After an exhaustive search, the institute found what they were looking for in Tiger Natural Gas, an independent company that services 20 different states and customers like IBM and the U.S. Postal Services.

Johnathan Burris, manager of business development for Tiger, says the company takes no public stand on Proposition 8 or any other political issue, but only offers itself as an alternative supplier.

“The majority of people in California have no idea they have options about who they can buy their natural gas from,” Burris says. Now they do.

PG&E customers who feel they've been forced to support an unsupportable cause, may visit www.NOtoPGE.com for more information on how to switch to Tiger. Contact information for independent natural gas marketers can also be found on the utilities' Web sites, according to the CPUC.

Switching natural gas providers isn't going to break a giant like PG&E, but it will send the message that the peasants will no longer roll over and take it when the king stomps on their deeply held convictions.

“PG&E thinks they've got everyone,” Dacus says. “We want this effort to be the Waterloo for PG&E and other companies who denigrate the consumer by compelling them to indirectly support causes they totally disagree with.”

Tilted Kilt should stay off the streets

I wasn’t going to talk about the Tilted Kilt.

I was going to ignore it and dismiss concerns over the pub's scantily clad servers with an if-you-don't-like-it-don't-go-there shrug.

Seems the pub’s servers — nubile young women clad in teeny tiny kilts and matching peek-a-boo bras — have been showing up in the oddest places. Like places other than the Tilted Kilt.

Owner Jeremy Helper said late Friday these visits were little more than an opening-month mistake, but still, children were subjected to the bosom blitzkrieg.

One young mother, 27-year-old Tami Prestridge, told me she was walking through the parking lot of The Promenade shopping center on Rosedale Highway when an official Tilted Kilt Hummer loaded with boisterous Tilted Kilt servers passed through. Naturally, this created quite a stir, with the girls spilling out the car’s windows, the sunroof and their bras.

Another mom, Kathy Dunham, reported she was shopping at Save Mart with her 10-year-old son when “an entourage” of several Tilted Kilt girls burst in, made a loud, look-at-me pass through the grocery store, then reboarded the Hummer for another parking lot tour.

Recently, some of the Tilted servers — management calls them “cast members” — showed up on local talk radio’s Ralph Bailey Show, where the girls characterized the pub as a family restaurant and invited listeners to “bring the kids.”

Really, they did.

Sure you can bring the kids, they said. Why not?

Well, let’s see. Maybe because it’s as much bar as it is restaurant and the servers wear as little as the health department allows.

Maybe because mom, dad and the kiddies might have to wade through dense clots of the pub’s predominantly male clientele to find a seat.

Or maybe it’s because Tilted Kilt’s official menus are peppered with clever names like Kamana-Wana-Lei-U pizza and delightful limericks kids can memorize and share with their friends at school. But only when the teacher’s not around.

Mostly, it’s because Bakersfield Police officers have been called to the pub at least 10 times in the 48 days since it opened to handle fights and “other peace disturbances,” including the recent stabbing of a security guard, Sgt. Greg Terry said.

Goodness. Who could ever have imagined such a thing?

Anybody who knows anything about beer, boys and boobs, that’s who.

Dave Washburn, a former high school counselor and director of Fellowship of Christian Athletes in Bakersfield, said such sexually charged marketing contradicts what he and other parents are trying to teach their children: modesty, self-respect and integrity.

“I’m sure they are all nice girls who work there, but I know from these outfits what they are meant to attract,” he said.

“Unfortunately, we’re already starting to see the end result of that marketing — right next to a neighborhood of families.”

How that ultimately plays out is between the pub’s owners and their neighbors.

The Tilted Kilt has every right to be there, but must it really take to the streets?

Apparently not, said owner Helper, who acknowledges that the promotion in the parking lots was an error in judgment on the part of a former manager, “and I apologize if we’ve offended anyone. We don’t want to be in anybody’s face.”

Great.

But that’s the risk you take when you use beautiful bodies to attract business or advertise something that’s not for sale. This is about making a parent’s job tougher than it has to be. C’mon Tilted Kilt, leave the Hummer, or at least the hotties, at home. For good.

Harvey Milk Day in public schools? No thanks, Governor

Up in Sacramento, awaiting the governor’s pen, is a bill that apparently doesn’t mean much to the mainstream media, but should.

News of the measure is making the rounds anyway, via the Internet, where some incredulous parents are actually checking urban legend sites to see if it could possibly be true.

Bad news, folks. It is.

In a vote split straight down party lines, the California Legislature approved AB 2567, a bill that would establish May 22 as Harvey Milk Day, to honor the San Francisco supervisor and homosexual activist who was murdered in 1978.

The bill — yet another convincing argument in support of home schooling — would “designate that date as having special significance in public schools,” and would “encourage public schools to conduct suitable commemorative exercises on that date.”

Since when were elementary school discussions of adult sexual matters deemed “suitable?”

They’re not. And for moms and dads still operating under the belief parents still have a say in their children’s sexual education, they never will be.

Still, teachers can expect to cover all the gender bases should Schwarzenegger sign the bill, which touts Harvey Milk’s life and political career as the embodiment “of the rise of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights movement.”

Like that’s something a 6-year-old should know.

Thanks to the rigorous demands of state testing, a lot of our kids have little or no time for music, science and other subjects essential to a well-rounded education, but, by all means, let’s make time for some annual sexual indoctrination.

Teri Goree, a former public school teacher, with four grandchildren in public school, rightly wonders how teachers will define words like “homosexual,” “bisexual,” and “transgender,” an unavoidable task when discussing Milk, since he’s remembered for little else.

“Just picture the spelling assignments,” Goree says. “Write each word 10 times, write the definition and use it in a sentence — it’s crazy, but there are a lot of teachers in the public system that would take great pleasure in putting those words on a spelling test.”

Presumably, there are a lot who won’t, but that won’t be their call to make.

Right now, that call goes to Schwarzenegger, who would do well to consider, if not the moral failings of such a measure, how much money our already financially strapped schools stand to lose should Harvey Milk Day become a reality.

Even those who support gay marriage may balk at this intrusive bill and join the thousands of parents who will surely keep their kids home on May 22, perhaps to study great Americans known for something greater than whom they chose to sleep with.

While it’s too late to express your angst on the local level, what with Sen. Dean Florez and Assemblywoman Nicole Parra voting to support the measure, there’s still time to share your thoughts with our governor, who promised not to consider any new legislation until the budget crisis is over.

Rustlings from the Capitol indicate that may actually happen, so why not give the governor a ring? Call him at 916-445-2841 and ask him not to burden our young ones with this very adult information.

About 10 years ago, a liberal colleague informed me that what goes on behind closed doors was nobody’s business. I couldn’t have agreed more.

Unfortunately, what goes on behind closed doors is heading for the classroom. Now, it’s everybody's business.

Lifesaving marrow donation something we all can do

Joel Payne is a young man of very few words, so when the Department of Defense called asking for him, his parents weren’t sure what to make of it.

Joel Payne of Bakersfield, a sophomore at West Point, is donating bone marrow in hope of helping a a 55-year-old woman suffering acute lymphocytic leukemia. (Photo courtesy of the family)

Home in Bakersfield for the summer after a grueling first year at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, the 19-year-old former plebe forgot to tell his folks he’d registered with the DOD’s bone marrow donor program.

As it turns out, Payne was a possible match, said the DOD voice on the phone.

To Payne’s mom, Brenda, “possible” sounded more like “a done deal” and a risky one at that.

“After it sunk in, I asked Joel if he were sure this was something he wanted to do,” Brenda Payne said. “He told me, ‘Mom, why would I not try to save someone’s life?’”

End of discussion.

It's not easy taking time off from school when that school happens to be West Point and you're up to your chin in classes like physics, calculus and German, but when there's a life on the line — in this case the life of a 55-year-old woman suffering acute lymphocytic leukemia — you just do it.

Which is why Payne and his mom flew to Washington, D.C., this week, to a scary-sounding place called the Fairfax Pathology Apherisis Center, for the five-day donation process.

Fortunately for Payne, the center isn’t all that scary and donating isn’t as invasive as it used to be, at least for most donors. Payne received five days of injections to stimulate blood cell growth before the “collection,” during which blood is removed from one arm, passed through a machine that separates the blood stem cells, then returned through the other.

While it’s hardly a fun way to spend a week, there’s little risk to donors, who generally feel only a little achy once it’s over. But that hardly diminishes the selflessness of the act, says Fairfax Nurse Manager Karen Plewacki.

“Here's a guy who’s giving a person a chance at life, a person he doesn’t know from Adam,” Plewacki says. “By the time the recipient gets to this point, they’ve run out of options — bone marrow donors are their last chance.”

Last chances are big in the Payne household, where Joel’s dad, Mike set the early example, donating blood as often as possible.

Now, at age 47, Mike is one of the more youthful members of Houchin Blood Bank’s 16-gallon club; Joel’s younger brother Jordan made his first blood donation on his 17th birthday.

Brenda Payne is amazed by her son. I am, too. The thing is, there are a lot of us who could fall into the amazing category, but few in Kern County — a pitiful 3 percent of eligible residents — choose to donate blood. And even fewer seem to know that Houchin also serves as a bone marrow donor registry center.

In Houchin, there’s a chance at “amazing” for each of us. So what are we waiting for?

•••

Speaking of Houchin, I have an update on the trailer stolen from the blood bank in May. The field trailer, a critical tool in Houchin’s relentless pursuit of blood donations, was never found.

But Houchin staff are out and about once more thanks to the donation of a bigger, better field trailer from California Truck Accessories, Inc. whose owner, Marsha Pell has a hero’s heart, but zero tolerance for the end of a needle.

“My dad is working on his 18th gallon, but I’m very squeamish about needles,” Pell says. “Giving this trailer was something I could do.”

30 kids in kindergarten? WAY too many.

It’s gonna be a heck of a year. And not in a good way.

At least not for kindergarten teachers of the Rosedale Union School District, where the kindergarten class-size reduction program is kaput, thanks, in part, to our Legislature’s stubborn inability to balance the budget.

One veteran teacher tells me her kindergarten class, like others in the district, has 30 students, including several 4-year-olds.

With only one part-time aide and few parent helpers, she’s operating in survival mode. Last year there were 65 kids and four kindergarten teachers, but now there are 60 kids and two kindergarten teachers.

She said by the time the kids go home, she’s brain dead.

Of course she is. Most of us grown-ups would be whipped after a morning spent with just a few 5-year-olds, even if the tots were perfectly behaved. Throw a 4-year-old into the mix and we’d be toast before 10 a.m.

But thanks to a dried-up well of reserves, one of the lowest revenue limits in the county and a truly horrid budget crises, Rosedale officials are asking their kindergarten teachers to go where the bravest fear to tread — into a room packed wall-to-wall with wiggly, giggly, fidgety 5-and 4-year-olds.

I’m exhausted just thinking about it.

It makes some parents, like Rosedale mom Sheri Eckard, with a child in the fifth grade and one in kindergarten, more than a little angry.

“Why was Rosedale so quick to give that up?” Eckard said of the class reduction program. “My frustration is, why wasn’t someone working on this a long time ago?”

Eckard said parents and teachers weren’t given enough notice or allowed enough input on the district’s decision to cancel class size reduction in kindergarten classes, but Rosedale District Superintendent Jamie Henderson said staff and parents were asked for their input at not one, but two meetings early this year, both of which were in-depth and widely advertised.

“Based on the governor’s budget we found we were going to do everything we had the year before, but with $2.1 million less,” he said. “We had to make hard choices and we wanted input.”

Henderson defends the district’s call, saying revenue limits — the amount of money schools receive for each student — were locked in decades ago, when the area was much more rural and land was considerably cheaper. Only legislation, he says, can change that now.

Because of those low revenue limits — Rosedale ranks 35th of the county’s 36 elementary school districts — the district must spend 85 percent of its budget to retain the first-rate teachers it’s known for.

It’s money well spent, Henderson said.

“If you want to spend less on teachers to save money for a rainy day, that’s one choice,” he said. “We choose to hire the best teachers we can.”

Eckard makes no argument there, saying “we have very good, very seasoned teachers.”

So far, the Rosedale District is the only large district forced to drop its kindergarten class-size reduction program, though the program is still in force for first, second and third grades. For Rosedale and other districts, like Norris School District, retaining class-size reduction programs is a year-to-year decision.

“There’s a dollar incentive, but it just does not pay for itself,” said Norris Superintendent Wallace McCormick. “If the state does not make some fundamental changes in how it finances education, I don’t know how long we can keep these programs.”

So what can parents do?

We can start by taking McCormick’s advice and encourage our lawmakers to rethink how we finance our children’s education. We can relieve a bit of the kindergarten teacher’s burden by NOT enrolling our 4-year-olds, who, though they may be smart and loving and the most all-around wonderful children ever born, are likely not mature enough to keep up with their 5- and 6-year-old classmates.

Mostly, we can encourage our state lawmakers — go ahead, get snotty — to get off his or her duff and pass a state budget.

After all, isn’t finishing what we start something we learn in kindergarten?

Cops on cell phones? It's part of their job

A friend was sitting at a red light the other day, chatting on her cell phone, when she glanced up to lock eyes with a police officer in the next lane.

Eyebrows raised in warning, the officer motioned for her to hang up the phone, which she did. Apparently satisfied, the officer then turned his attention back to the conversation he was having on his cell phone.

The incident led my friend to ask the question a lot of folks have posed since California’s new hands-free phone law kicked in July 1.

“Why does he get to talk on his cell phone when it’s illegal for me to talk on mine?”

Because you don’t drive a police car, that’s why.

According to the new law, police officers and other “operators of emergency vehicles” may chat with impunity because they are exempt.

But there are limits.

“Our policy is that officers will comply with the law, absent an emergency circumstance,” says Sgt. Greg Terry, Bakersfield Police Department spokesman. “Then you have to consider what constitutes an emergency, which isn’t always red lights and sirens.”

BPD officers often use their cell phones to call “reporting parties to obtain information as they’re responding to a call,” Terry says.

“Depending on the nature of the call, that information can be helpful to them in coordinating their response.” (Really, that’s how he talks.)

Officers also use their cell phones in lieu of car radios when trying to sneak up on bad guys — who are as able as anyone to own police scanners — or to avoid us nosy media types.

Most agencies have similar policies, so when we civilians spot a police officer on his cell phone, perhaps we shouldn’t just assume he’s chatting up his girlfriend (a compelling, but impossible-to-prove suspicion), especially since officers have been pretty busy lately.

Bakersfield police wrote just under 300 citations in July for cell-phone law violations that don’t include text-messaging, which, unbelievably, adults may still legally do while driving. Seems that lawmakers somehow forgot to include the technology in the cell-phone law, but this week sent a bill banning behind-the-wheel texting to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s desk.

According to a study by the Public Policy Institute of California, the cell-phone ban is supposed to save some 300 lives a year, though blabbing on cell phones hasn’t proven to be any more distracting than, say, snacking, applying lipstick or driving around with a van full of squirming soccer players.

But somebody has to take the kids to soccer and Lord knows we’re not about to give up our French fries. And the cell phone is a high-profile frustration, especially for drivers nearly killed by yakking dimwits afflicted with what the National Safety Council calls “inattention blindness.”

So turn off the phone, buy a Bluetooth or pay a $20 fine, it’s your choice.

And don’t worry so much about who the police and firefighters are talking to. It could be you.

McCarthy won't quiet down, luckily

Some people just don’t know when to shut up.

Fortunately, U.S. Rep. Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield is one of them.

McCarthy, a champ of a talker, was an early instigator behind a burgeoning House energy protest, now heading into its third exhilarating week.

In case you missed the story — and if you blinked you probably did — McCarthy was one of about 50 Republicans who took to the House floor Aug. 1 to protest Congress’ failure to vote on an energy bill before the five-week break.

Dozens of Republicans, including McCarthy, were scheduled to make floor speeches that day on gas prices and related energy issues, but were abruptly silenced when Democrats pushed an adjournment resolution that passed by a single vote.

The adjournment infuriated McCarthy and his fellow Republicans, who decided they’d have their say with or without the blessing of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who, until recently, refused to allow a vote on legislation that would permit new offshore oil drilling.

Lights, cameras and microphones were systematically shut off, but McCarthy and Co. talked on, speaking in the dim light and without amplification to tourists who found their way into the gallery.

Two weeks later, they’re still talking. They promise to keep talking until the speaker calls everyone back.

Dems and their media pals continue to pooh-pooh the protest as a cornball publicity stunt, but McCarthy, who was home in Bakersfield this week rustling up support for Republican efforts, said it was a call to action.

“If America was energy independent everything about our lives would change,” McCarthy says. “We’d certainly have a much different foreign policy. So let’s have the debate.”

Yes, let’s.

Let’s talk about a truly comprehensive bill that, along with tax breaks and consumer tax credits for businesses and consumers who adopt energy saving measures, includes pro-drilling amendments that will open up current restricted areas — which are about 85 percent of the areas off America’s coasts — and increase domestic oil and gas production.

Let’s consider all our options, including nuclear, which has powered our Navy for decades, McCarthy says. And let’s be a lot less timid about an environmentally friendly exploration of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

“I went to Alaska and ANWR,” McCarthy says. “Every year we don’t explore there our resources are depleted by 15 percent. We know where the resources are and we can do this in an ecologically friendly way.”

There are definite signs that Pelosi may be willing to start the debate, saying on “Larry King Live” this week she would consider a vote on offshore drilling if it were part of a broader package.

I phoned Pelosi’s office to see what could have possibly inspired such a turnaround, but was assured by a Pelosi staffer (Madame Speaker is busy with a book tour) that the Republican protest “had nothing to do with it.”

Sure it didn’t.

“I’d have to ask her what transpired in that one week to change her mind,” McCarthy says. “We had to put the pressure on — one thing I’ve learned in Washington is that nothing moves without pressure.”

McCarthy’s visit home was short; he’s heading back to Washington shortly to take another turn on the House floor.

It’s too bad the lights are out. Such democracy in action is something we’d all like to see.

Vegas' plan to run good news all around

Here’s a bit of sunshine for those of you who think we in the media only write about bad news.

Chad Vegas, pastor, educator and rabble-rouser, will run for another term on the Kern High School District board of trustees.

I can just hear the separation-of-church-and-state folks retching over their Corn Flakes, but Vegas’ decision to run again is good news for a lot of reasons.

It’s good news for Vegas’ fellow board members, some of whom tell me the Vegas frequently vilified in the opinion page is not the man they work well with on education reform.

It’s good news for our high school students, particularly those struggling to meet basic academic standards and for whom college is not an option.

And it’s really good news for the local media, whose obsession with Vegas may be second only to The Canyons project and the Hillside Ordinance.

It’s good news that almost didn’t happen. Until recently, Vegas was convinced he would not run again, telling his 150 or so church members “my life would be far easier, my schedule less cluttered, my emotional energies stronger and my reputation far less under attack if I dropped out of politics all together.”

Then came the California Supreme Court decision to legalize gay marriage and Vegas was back in the battle. After considerable prayer and the ardent support of his family, he’s decided to run again and on the same “platform of moral responsibility” that got him elected the first time around.

“As much as I want to focus on just the education issues, the onslaught of garbage coming from the California legislature is going to require a pushback on morality issues,” he says.

Legislation passed just this week, he says, include only the most recent examples of the onslaught.

No kidding. On Tuesday, the Senate approved a bill that would establish May 22 as Harvey Milk Day. The bill, now awaiting the governor’s signature, seeks to honor the assassinated San Francisco supervisor with a special day during which, among other things, public schools would be encouraged to “conduct suitable commemorative exercises.”

Just who decides which “exercises” are “suitable,” I’m not sure, but I’m betting it won’t be the parents of the participating students.

Also on Tuesday, the Senate passed another astonishing bit of legislation that, should Schwarzenegger sign it, will no longer allow schools to fire teachers for belonging to the Communist Party and will allow Communists to use public school property for their meetings.

You know, just as long as they’re not plotting to overthrow the U.S. government or anything.

Even with the judicial high jinks, Vegas promises he will focus most of his time on education reform — just as he always has.

“The media gave excessive attention to In God We Trust, but very little to the fact we put in place freshman retention,” he says. “There’s been lot of press over my homosexual comments, but very little over the boot camps we started to help incoming freshmen get up to grade level.”

Fellow trustee Joel Heinrichs says Vegas can, at times, be divisive, but typically agrees with his fellow board members on most “education reform-type issues.”

“We do spend some amount of time on these social issues at the board meetings, but rarely, frankly, outside of them,” Heinrichs says.

Vegas makes no predictions on the outcome of the election, but says he felt led by God to run again. And if he loses?

“It’s because God wants me to,” he says.

Win or lose. For Vegas, it’s all good news.

The people will decide the same-sex marriage issue

Looks like voters will still have a say on a same-sex marriage ban in November, thanks to the California Supreme Court’s decision to keep the measure on the ballot.

Mighty kind of the Court, don’t you think?

This is, after all, the same court that just two months ago basically told Californians their opinion on gay marriage didn’t count, that the one-man-one-woman definition approved in 2000 by 61 percent of the voters was unconstitutional.

That decision on Wednesday no doubt inspired gay marriage supporters to try and shanghai the democratic process with their bid to keep Proposition 8, the California Marriage Protection Act, off the ballot. The effort was over the top even for our Supreme Court, which unanimously and without comment refused to hear a challenge on the initiative. If it passes, Proposition 8 will overrule the Supreme Court decision in May.

The pro-gay-marriage people are right to be nervous about leaving this decision where it rightfully belongs — with the people — but, really, what does it say about a cause when its supporters must circumvent democracy in order to uphold it?

Answer: A lot, and none of it very nice.

It also brings to mind Gov. Schwarzenegger’s recent remarks in regard to his support of the Supreme Court ruling.

“I personally believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman. But at the same time I think that my, you know, belief, I don’t want to force on anyone else, so I think we should stay with the decision of the Supreme Court,” he said.

So who’s forcing beliefs here? Could it be the folks frantically trying to keep the amendment off the ballot?

Yes it could.

The Supreme Court’s decision was, this time at least, appropriate, despite lame claims by gay rights groups that the signature petitions used to put the proposal on the ballot were “misleading.”

Misleading? Please. When it comes to defining marriage, Californians are historically succinct and to the point. Signature collectors certainly didn’t have any trouble getting the message out, quickly collecting more than 1.1 million votes in time for the November election.

There is strong support for a marriage-protection amendment, but just how much support depends on whose poll you’re reading.

One Bay Area newspaper reported “a recent Field Poll showed a majority of voters support the right of gay and lesbian couples to marry in California,” though a host of others show most Californians actually want the amendment. A very recent Los Angeles Times poll showed that “54 percent of those polled supported the Amendment, while only 35 percent opposed it.”

Whatever the correct ratio is now, come November, it’s going to be close.

When declaring his support for the Supreme Court ruling, Schwarzenegger said there are “more important issues” to address in California and trying to pass “this initiative is a waste of time.”

A waste of time? The governor can pooh-pooh the issue and his constituents if he wants, but protecting traditional marriage and family is about as important as it gets.

Thankfully, Californians will have at least one more chance to say so.

Fireworks lovers are their own worst enemy

On a pleasant July 4th back in 1979, my brother-in-law gathered a fistful of sparklers, bound them with duct tape, stuck the wad into the grass and lit it.

Nearly thirty years later, the ensuing explosion— the blinding white flash, the compression of the blast wave against my chest — remains one of the more vivid memories of my young adulthood.

I'm reminded of that explosion every July, when the annual debate over a fireworks ban in Bakersfield roars to life.

I'm generally opposed to bans, believing most to be intrusive government meddling in decisions we're perfectly capable of making on our own. But this Independence Day, it became clear to me why a fireworks ban is inevitable.

In a word: guys.

Guys and their innate and uncontrollable urge to tweak and toy with fireworks. To turn a satisfactory blast into one that shatters windows; to modify a “safe and sane” firework to the degree its detonation will cause small children to shriek and pets to run for cover. Not to mention guys' hankering for fireworks of the illegal variety.

I can hear you guys now. “Well of COURSE we like 'em loud,” you're saying. “The bigger the bang, the better. And those “safe and sane” fireworks? About as thrilling as lighting candles on a birthday cake.”

True. But that relentless tinkering and those illegal fireworks have brought us to the brink of a ban. When it comes to fireworks, we as a community — including those of us gals who applaud the guys' efforts — are our own worst enemy.

Local elected officials have long resisted declaring a ban on fireworks, but flagrant disregard for laws governing their use and the cost to enforce them, may finally force their hand. Maybe it should.

There's no maybe about it, says City Fire Battalion Chief Garth Milam, who, thinks allowing personal fireworks in the city and county is “foolishness.”

“It's lawless behavior and we've winked at it,” Milam says. “This year we had to add about 30 additional staff just to enforce the law and deal with the consequences of the fireworks.”

The city charges fireworks vendors $200 over and above their usual fees to help off set extra costs, but that amount doesn't touch the cost of consequences like the “home lost on Lomita Drive,” several smaller property fires and a number of injuries, Milam says. Alcohol, of course, was a factor in a number of the incidents, including one where a partyer threw a bucket of water on uniformed police officers.

“We even had one person launch a bottle rocket that went right through the window of a neighbor's home, hitting and burning a woman inside,” he says. At the City's Animal Control office, staff saw an increase of 10 to15 lost and frightened animals per day the week of the Fourth, says Resource Management Director David Price.

“This fireworks thing is a problem,” Price says. “Whether this is something the community is willing to sustain in order to keep the practice is the question.”

It's a good question.

The most obvious, cost effective, animal-loving, house-saving answer is, of course, a ban. A ban on personal fireworks in the city and county. A ban that, hopefully, will act as a catalyst for public, professional fireworks shows.

Shows that beat safe-and-lame fireworks any day.