But is 2010 too soon? Should same-sex couples wait longer than they expected for marriage quality? It's a sordid thing for a straight man like myself who cares deeply about this issue to say to gay men and women. Their quality of life is at stake, not mine, and it's completely unfair for them to have to spend any more of their remaining lives as second-class citizens. But when the focus shifted from domestic partnerships to the M-word, conservative activists (and yes, I'm lumping in those of you who say you tilt left but oppose equality) dug in and fought hard -- and, I would say, unfairly.

The question doesn't have an easy answer. As The Times wrote in its Nov. 5 editorial on Maine voters' rejection of same-sex marriage:

-- Paul Thornton

(Full disclosure: I've been happily hitched since 2007, and I wouldn't hesitate to "renew" my marriage license under such a scheme. As for divorce, my parents split when I was 3 years old -- a move that, on reflection, was in everyone's best interest.)

-- Paul Thornton

Photo credit: Los Angeles Times

Republican State Sen. Abel Maldonado was chosen by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last week to fill the  lieutenant governor's post vacated by Democrat John Garamendi.

Maldonado visited with The Times' editorial board before the Thanksgiving holiday to discuss the appointment and, more generally, his views of what ails the perennially crisis-mired California government.

The roughly half-hour-long conversation is divided up by topic into shorter audio segments below. The Times staffers questioning Maldonado are Robert Greene, Susan Brenneman and Dan Turner.

Click on a button to listen to Maldonado's remarks on:

Partisan gridlock and the open primary

Being lieutenant governor

Budget cuts and taxes

Moderates in the GOP

A state constitutional convention

Offshore drilling

His pick for the 2010 governor's race

Redistricting and the open primary

Why California voters are angry

Pick your metaphor for California budget stupidity. We're eating our seed corn. We're destroying California in order to save it. Any parallel to self-destructive behavior will do.

Now it's recycling centers. California wisely charges customers a few cents' refundable deposit on those plastic and glass bottles we otherwise toss away so blithely, which is the same as tossing nickels and dimes away, because that's what they're worth at recycling centers.

[I was just in Arizona, a state which refuses to charge people a refundable deposit, with the result that its roads and public spots can look like a Third World refuse heap -- actually, I take that back. The Third World is too poor to be as wasteful as we are. I hope some forthcoming issue of Arizona Highways includes all the potentially recyclable trash that appears alongside those scenic roadways.]

California's program has been very successful in keeping hundreds of millions of bottles out of landfills and off roadsides. Too successful, it seems. After about two decades of profitable recycling that's given jobs to young people who need the money and the work, not to mention keeping California tidy, the state scooped nearly a half-billion dollars out of the prosperous recycling fund to try to fill its own pathetic budget hole. Recycling centers are closing, and the jobs for those young people are going with them. Once again, the state's inability to deal with its own finances mean another promising program gutted.

Here's my colleague Shane Goldmacher's story about the whole sorry mess.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-recycling30-2009nov30,0,34531.story

Now, Gov. Schwarzenegger says he means to refill the fund next year, yeah, yeah, yeah, but this is the same governor who vetoed raising the deposit fees on those 5 billion California containers -- yep, billion. He wants wine and liquor bottles to be included in the deposit fees, too. So do I, but the chances of certain elements of the Legislature standing up to the rich, rich liquor lobby are probably about the same as the alcohol content in water -- to wit, zero.

Well, Christmas is coming. Let's all ask Santa to give Sacramento a new spine, shall we?

-- Patt Morrison

That's $26,000 for a single year at a University of California campus, not the four usually needed to graduate. The UC Board of Regents voted today to increase basic education fees for undergraduates by 32% to more than $10,000 for the 20010-11 academic year. Throw in the roughly $16,000 per year required for room, board and books, and the UC system fees approach $30,000 per year -- and feel a lot like the cost of an Ivy League education with few of the perks. (None of this is to say, mind you, that the regents won't be forced to raise fees again in 2010, with the state facing a massive budget deficit of $21 billion over the next year and a half.)

My days as a UC Berkeley undergraduate, from 2000-05, saw a series of fee increases, spurred in part by an agreement in 2004 struck between then-university system President Robert C. Dynes and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The so-called compact (it wasn't a contract, much to Sacramento's benefit) promised long-term, predictable increases in state funding for the UC system in exchange for annual student fee hikes. I'll admit that fees when I started school in 2000 seemed generously low (they were less than $4,000 per year), so when they started going up a few years later there was some mild resistance by students but a consensus nonetheless that most of us could afford to pay more. With each fee increase came the mantra that UC was still very much a bargain for students, a contention that rang true at the time.

But I wonder: With fees having doubled in less than a decade, is a UC education still a deal? Is there a student-fee ceiling at which it isn't? I'm interested in hearing your views, especially if you're a student at a UC campus or a parent of a student. Feel free to post your thoughts below.

-- Paul Thornton

Photo: UCLA students protest student fee hikes on Wednesday at UCLA. Credit: Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times

The California Energy Commission unanimously approved a proposed regulation today capping the power consumption of televisions sold in California, starting in 2011. Although the Consumer Electronics Assn., which represents the world's largest TV makers, was apoplectic about the ruling, The Times' Marc Lifsher reports that one faction -- the LCD TV Assn. -- was all smiles. The reason? LCD sets are less power-hungry than plasma TVs. In other words, as so often happens when the government regulates products, it favors one technology over another -- and manufacturers know it, even if the regulators insist otherwise.

(We on the Times' editorial board had also urged the commission last month not to adopt the rules, warning that they could inhibit innovations that might do more for the environment in the long run.)

The real bite in the regulations won't come until 2013, when the caps are reduced and, potentially, the rules are extended to larger TVs. Representatives of the CEA struggled at a news conference this afternoon to cite specific examples of new, feature-laden TVs that couldn't meet the 2011 cut-off -- after a bit of research, they offered one 50-inch Samsung plasma set, although more examples are likely to be forthcoming soon. But they warned that few if any of today's models would meet the tougher limits.

Granted, this is an industry that innovates rapidly and has been particularly good in recent years at lowering power consumption. On the other hand, this is also an industry that regularly loads new features into its products to try to restore the profit margins that erode quickly in the brutal competition for buyers. At the moment, manufacturers are racing to present digital TVs that can present 3-D pictures, a task that requires either a high screen-refresh rate or polarized glass. The former drinks power, the latter drinks dollars. Manufacturers are also integrating more robust Internet capabilities into their sets, which also can demand more power.

The CEA fears that the new regulations will kill that kind of innovation and feature-expansion, as well as blocking new technologies that, like plasma and LCD, enter the market as relatively inefficient users of power only to become significantly better at managing their electricity use as they mature. It's certainly true that the rules would hold technologies off the market until they're efficient enough to meet the new standards; the question is whether manufacturers would be willing to develop generation after generation of products they can't sell just to get to that point.

One other caveat: California's new rules may have little effect on the market if no other state follows California's lead. In that case, the main losers would be California retailers, who wouldn't be able to offer as full a selection of products as online merchants in other states.

The energy commission insisted that the regulations would benefit consumers because the new TVs they buy will use less power -- an average of $30 per year. That seems overstated, however, because it ignores the improvements the industry has been making on its own. And even if $30 is the right number, that's chicken feed compared with the higher prices shoppers may have to pay to get a more efficient set with the performance they want.

The commission didn't seem to recognize that not all TVs are created equal. Just because consumers can find a more efficient model that's the same size as a power-hungry TV they like, that doesn't mean they can find one with the same picture quality in the same price range. Of course, exceptional TV picture quality isn't a birthright, and conserving energy is good for public health and the environment. But the commission asserted that its rules would be all gain, no pain, and that's a quixotic view of the market, to put it kindly.

-- Jon Healey

So Californians may yet again endure the letdown of an electoral battle royal that never was. In 2002, it was supposed to be Riordan-Davis; in 2010, the "what if" may be Fiorina-Boxer. The outcome of a Boxer-DeVore match (the latter, as Weigel reports in his article, has expressed Obama birther sympathies) would seem a foregone conclusion. After all, when asked to choose between a far-from-the-mainstream partisan and an incumbent with limited legislative accomplishments, Californians in the past have sided with the bland over the bracing.

-- Paul Thornton

Left photo: U.S. Sen. Barabara Boxer. Credit: Michael Reynolds / European Pressphoto Agency.
Right photo: GOP Senate hopeful Carly Fiorina. Credit: Michal Czerwonka / Getty Images.

A Rasmussen Reports poll released Tuesday seems to confirm a point The Times made in an editorial last month on a California regulation that would ban large-screen TVs from being sold because they consume too much energy: Leave it up to the market to catch up on electricity-inefficient televisions. An excerpt from the Rasmussen summary:

Conservation-minded folks (this bike and bus commuter considers himself one) may be discouraged by the majority opinion that most people feel being able to buy whatever mega-screen television they darn well please is more important than saving energy. But the energy-unregulated TV market is working in conservation's favor: Nearly the same percentage of people -- 54% -- say efficiency is important enough to them that would pay more for televisions that use less electricity.

As The Times' editorial pointed out, the new regulation would actually hamper the innovation already underway in the industry. The Rasmussen poll adds another point: California's action may deprive consumers of the energy-efficient entertainment they'd pay a premium for.

Hat tip: Katherine Mangu-Ward and Reason's Hit and Run.

-- Paul Thornton

Photo credit: Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times

After signing up for the 2010 L.A. Marathon early this morning and studying the course map -- which was unveiled today -- I remembered a piece on the 2007 race by then-Times Deputy Editorial Page Editor Michael Newman, my boss at the time. After finishing the marathon, Newman panned race organizers for ignoring L.A.'s best asset (the ocean) in routing runners from Universal City through Koreatown, Boyle Heights and other inland neighborhoods on their way to downtown L.A. Newman garnered his share of provincial scorn for declaring, based on his race experience, that "much of L.A. isn't very pretty."

I thoroughly agreed with Newman at the time -- that much of L.A. is ugly -- and I still do. But having actually signed up for the 2010 L.A. Marathon, my thoughts on the "stadium to the sea" route are mixed; perhaps bipolar would be a better way to put it. As a first-time marathoner, I look forward to the beach finish providing a major psychological boost to those of us pounding our feet on pavement for 26.2 miles. But putting on my lifelong Southern Californian hat -- which comes with a deep "warts and all" affection for Los Angeles -- the new route strikes me as ... just not right.

Despite its Hollywood-inspired reputation, Los Angeles has always struck me as a city unafraid to put its gritty face forward. Past marathon routes -- which started and ended in downtown L.A. -- reflected this attitude. Sure, runners would bisect tonier neighborhoods such as Hancock Park and Larchmont Village. But this is L.A., a city whose wealthy enclaves are often adjacent to or surrounded by working-class neighborhoods. Running in Hancock Park and Larchmont Village practically requires passing through Koreatown or the yet-to-be gentrified areas of Hollywood.

Looking at the route closely, and how magnetically it seems to abut the Hollywood Hills and Santa Monica Mountains for much of the race, it's hard not to come away with the impression that race organizers deliberately avoided areas some may not consider "nice" (Rodeo Drive -- really?). You can call this the Los Angeles Marathon if you want, and come race day, I'll gladly run. But I won't be surprised if, for much of the race, some Southern Californians viewing the event from home on March 21 wonder what marathon they're watching.

-- Paul Thornton

Photo: The start line at the 24th annual Los Angeles Marathon on May 25, 2009. Credit: Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times.

This won't take long to spell out. How long it'll take to fix, I don't know.

Spinning around the radio dial Wednesday, I alighted on a news story about the water deal reached in Sacramento. The announcer said something to the effect that the deal balances both ''human and environmental'' concerns.

What? Stop! When are we going to get it through our still-insufficiently evolved craniums [crania, if you like] that environmental concerns ARE human concerns, that we are only as healthy and as likely to survive as are our fellow species and the land and water and air on this planet?

For years, we've been shoved into accepting the false, manipulated choice of jobs versus the environment; now there's the insidious manufactured either-or of "us versus them,"'  the `"them'' being a balanced water system and the habitat and creatures that are part of it. Well, here's some breaking news that should be old news: We ARE them.

-- Patt Morrison