Gorbachev far from evil to UCI crowd

Alicia Robinson

They weren’t swords, but former weapons did make up the unusual award

received by former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev at UC Irvine

Tuesday.

The first-ever UC Irvine Citizen Peacebuilding Award, made by art

professor Gifford Myers from the barrels of guns, was given to

Gorbachev for his contributions to world peace and improving the

environment.

“It is a very important symbol,” Gorbachev said through an

interpreter. “Instead of swords, let’s have plowshares.”

Gorbachev also gave a speech peppered with applause, and he gave

lengthy, considered answers to audience questions about the conflict

in Chechnya, Russia’s political situation today, and the global

energy crisis.

One questioner charged that more than 100 million people had died

as a result of communism and added that Ronald Reagan once called the

USSR “the evil Soviet empire.”

Gorbachev’s response brought him warm and hearty applause.

“I started perestroika in order to rid my country of the Communist

model that existed there,” he said. He also allowed the countries

that splintered from the Soviet Union to make their own decisions

about what kind of government they wanted, he said.

Asked how he came to give up leadership voluntarily, Gorbachev

said, “I behaved, in fact, like a Democrat. I had some other options

available to me but I could not take that road, that very dangerous

road that could have resulted in strife and bloodshed.”

Feedback of a different color

If he’s been called worse, we haven’t heard it.

State Assemblyman John Campbell informed constituents in a

newsletter sent Friday that he was referred to as an “impotent,

dull-brained Republican” and compared with Osama bin Laden because of

a bill he proposed that would reduce from 14 to 12 the number of paid

holidays state employees get each year.

Campbell has said the bill would save the state more than $21

million a year. Since the assemblyman detailed the purpose of the

bill in a weekly newsletter to constituents, feedback has gone from

overwhelmingly negative to positive, Campbell spokesman Matt Back

said.

“Once the nonstate employees have been made aware of the bill,

they absolutely are supportive of the measure,” he said.

Campbell said last week he doesn’t expect the bill to pass, and

Back echoed that doubt Wednesday.

“Certainly we have an uphill battle because it is a

Democrat-controlled legislature that [is] supported by state employee

unions,” he said.

Back said this is the most feedback Campbell has received on any

bill. But some of it he probably could have lived without, like the

comment that “Your photo on your website appears to me as just

another white man in a suit with power and lust for money,” or the

person who asked, “What is next? Do you want the gold from my teeth?”

Paying the price for less ethanol

California’s federal legislators, including Rep. Chris Cox, backed

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s request that the Environmental

Protection Agency waive a Clean Air Act mandate requiring ethanol or

MTBE in the state’s gasoline.

California has banned MTBE, a gas additive, because it can pollute

ground and surface water. This requires heavier use of ethanol, which

critics say will jack up gas prices for consumers and make it harder

for the state to meet federal ozone standards.

A statement from Cox’s office late last week said 52 of the 53

members of California’s congressional delegation urged EPA

Administrator Michael Leavitt to grant the state a waiver for the

ethanol and MTBE requirements. State legislators have been fighting

the requirement for more than a decade, the statement said.

No jokes, Mr. Mayor

Wednesday morning at the Newport Beach Police Appreciation

Breakfast, Mayor Tod Ridgeway told one joke during his brief remarks,

which mainly conveyed the City Council’s support for the department.

The joke went something like: I got invited, I was told, because

I’m a warm person. And I thought, that’s a pretty nice thing to hear.

But then I looked up “warm” in the dictionary and it said, “not so

hot.”

Yes, yes, that joke isn’t going to score Ridgeway a hosting gig at

the Academy Awards. But it wasn’t the real point of his humor.

No, Ridgeway was tipping his hat to his performance at last

month’s annual Mayor’s Dinner. There he told a joke that, he said,

he’d been warned not to let see the light of day.

This time everyone at his table had checked his speech, and all of

them had said, “No jokes.”

But he had to tell just one.