For the next six months, California voters will be bombarded with election images. Among the sinister attack-ad voice-overs and the political arguments engulfing social media, voters may catch a glimpse of ”Birdee,” a plump, twinkly eyed red bird, one of several animated characters in California’s political wars.
Street art in Santa Barbara., August 2011. Philip Bird OPINION: Since 2003, California’s Governors and the Legislature have allocated $1.1 million annually to the Arts Council, the bare minimum necessary to qualify for a $1 million National Endowment for the Arts grant. This lack of foresight has put California dead last among all 50 states in per capita funding for its arts agency.
Photo: Mateusz KudłaEnder’s Game
Directed by Gavin Hood
A film that is “solid and entertaining,” but “humorless and overly serious.” (Photo:Mateusz Kudła)
Recent warnings about the dangers of overreliance on petroleum have come from an unlikely cast of characters, including former presidential candidate Ron Paul, business magnate T. Boone Pickensand even a Saudi prince (who warned against his nation’s over dependence on oil exports). If Californians want to disentangle our economy from oil and from the world events that can impact oil prices while cutting our greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2020—a goal given the force of law by AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act—we need to consider the surprising connections that drive our state’s dependence on petroleum.