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

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.

Public option, shmublic option. If you really want to get people worked up about healthcare reform, start talking about whether it should cover abortions and illegal immigrants. Today, the editorial board tackles both those issues, saying that abortion opponents are looking to "extend federal prohibitions into private pocketbooks. By restricting coverage offered through the exchange, they hope to make abortion coverage so unattractive that insurers eventually stop offering it in the market for individual and small-group policies." Healthcare reform thus should not restrict those who receive subsidies from buying extra coverage for abortions. And it's an odd healthcare policy that would eliminate all possibility for illegal immigrants to participate in subsidized care, but require them to purchase their own coverage regardless of their personal finances, the board argues.

"Extraordinary rendition" is just a dressed-up word for kidnapping in the editorial board's eyes, and it praises Italy for recognizing that fact, if mainly symbolically, by convicting 23 Americans and two Italians in absentia for grabbing an Egyptian cleric in Milan six years ago.

On the other side of the fold, the author of a book on the Cold War argues that former President  Reagan's seemingly bold words to Mikhail S. Gorbachev --"Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." -- were for the most part a cover intended to build popular support for the president while he worked on effective diplomatic relations with the then-Soviet president.

And writer Joe Mathews raises his hand for the job of lieutenant governor. It's not that he has ambitions to run anything, he says, and that's exactly what qualifies him for the job. Meanwhile, think of all the spare time he'd have for blogging.

-- Karin Klein

Photo: People stroll by the giant dominoes set up at the site of the Berlin Wall, part of a gala celebration of its toppling. Credit: Fabrizio Bensch / Reuters

Let the speculation over recently reelected L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's gubernatorial ambitions resume, beginning with this blogpost. He already said he wasn't interested in the job (at least this time around), but that was before San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom dropped out of the race today, leaving former governor and California Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown as the last man standing in the Democratic Party field. Villaraigosa has a few natural advantages; namely, he would be the only nonwhite candidate and the only hopeful from Southern California in the field (Republicans Meg Whitman, Steve Poizner and Tom Campbell are all from the Silicon Valley, and Brown emerged from political exile as mayor of Oakland before becoming attorney general).

Back before Villaraigosa announced his non-candidacy in June, former state Sen. Tom Hayden predicted in a Times Blowback piece that Villaraigosa would run but that his chances in a two-man race against Brown weren't good:

Hayden was responding to a Feb. 27 Op-Ed article in The Times by Marc Cooper, who made the case against a run by the mayor:

What do you think? With Newsom out, should Mayor Villaraigosa take a shot at becoming Gov. Villaraigosa? Take our unscientific poll, leave a comment or do both.

-- Paul Thornton

Photo: San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom on Oct.11. Credit: David Cannon / Getty Images.

  In today's editorial and opinion pages, the Times editorial board gives former Assembly Speaker Fabuan Nuñez a shout-out for being cleared of ethics charges arising from his lavish spending, and then gives him a shout-down for the underlying actions. No, he's not a crook. But he still relied too heavily on the largesse of donors with issues to press in Sacramento.

And we pair a shout-down of Philadelphia Eagles player Michael Vick's dogfighting operation with a shout-out to Wayne Pacelle of the the Humane Society of the United States -- for going on a, pardon the expression, dog-and-pony tour with Vick to educate communities about stopping cruelty to animals.

And shoutouts and shout downs abound for the food industry's Smart Choices program.

Columnist Meghan Daum weighs in on farming-chic, and two folks sack Sacramento's recent move to waive environmental laws to hasten construction of a football stadium in Los Angeles or, rather, the City of Industry. Sen. Alan Lowenthal (D-Long Beach) worries that the Legislature "opened the floodgates" to future exemptions to the California Environmental Quality Act. And sports author Dave Zirin sees just the latest in a series of sweetheart deals between unwitting taxpayers and tycoon team owners.

Photo: AP/Nick Ut

The police commission picked three finalists in its search for Los Angeles' new police chief, and the editorial board says each possesses many of the qualities needed to succeed atop the LAPD. Just so there won't be any confusion on that point, the board also describes what those qualities might be. The board also notes that two proposed ballot measures are due to be submitted today to enable and call a state constitutional convention, and it all but endorses them in a near-desperate plea for functional governance in California.

On the Op-Ed page, Raphael J. Sonenshein, former executive director of the city's charter reform commission, accuses rookie City Atty. Carmen Trutanich of not understanding what a city attorney is supposed to do in this town. Columnist Tim Rutten gives a highly nuanced defense of the push to reveal who is contributing to efforts in other states to put Prop. 8-style bans on gay marriage on the ballot. Musing about the Northwest Airlines flight that overshot its destination by 150 miles, Peter Garrison, a pilot and contributing editor to Flying magazine, reveals just how boring it is to fly a modern airline jet. And columnist Doyle McManus dissects the Obama administration's decision-making process on whether to send more troops to Afghanistan:

Credit: Ted Rall / For The Times

-- Jon Healey

Departing Police Chief William Bratton prods immigration culture warriors today with an op-ed explaining why the LAPD doesn't, and shouldn't, participate in the controversial 287(g) program, which gives local law enforcement officers the powers of federal immigration agents. Turning police into de facto Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents harms community policing and discourages witnesses who might be illegal immigrants from coming forward.

Also on the Op-Ed page, columnist Jonah Goldberg argues that trying to limit carbon emissions to fight global warming is a pointless waste of money because it can't solve the problem; better to invest in technological solutions and adjusting to a warmer world. And think tank scholars Leo Michel and Robert Hunter argue that U.S. allies are already doing plenty of heavy lifting as part of the NATO contingent in Afghanistan, so American officials should do less lecturing and more listening if they want more cooperation.

Speaking of Afghanistan, the Editorial page says the country can't be pacified simply by sending more troops. That has become abundantly clear in the face of increased suicide bombings in Iraq, which like Afghanistan has been slow to build a credible government.

We also send a rare love note to the California Legislature, pointing out two genuinely worthwhile bills that will help cities make better use of water, an increasingly precious resource in this dry and crowded state. And we weigh in on Operation Gatekeeper, the federal effort started in 1994 to tighten border security in a five-mile stretch from the Pacific Ocean to San Ysidro. Though the program has been successful in reducing crossings in that area, it has had an unintended consequence that must be addressed: Deaths of people trying to cross the desert farther to the east have skyrocketed.

Editorial cartoon by Tom Toles / Washington Post

This, apparently, is how to win a parks award: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger sided with the toll-road agency and against San Onofre State Beach, supporting plans to build a freeway through the length of the park.

Then as soon as the budget got incredibly bad, one of his first ideas was to close a couple hundred state parks, even though the savings were relatively paltry. He backed down on that only after an analysis showed that it could be more expensive to close the parks than to keep them open because of the potential for vandalism, fires and illegal use.

On Thursday, the governor will receive an award from the National Park Trust for his record of supporting and protecting parks. This is a little befuddling, to say the least. Oh, wait, there was that moment when he told the federal government that he wanted California's road-free areas in its national forests to remain road-free.

If this is how awards are given out, we could have fun imagining similar honors. Nadya "Octomom" Suleman for the Zero Population Growth Award? The possibilities are endless.

-- Karin Klein

Photo: Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

What's not to like about a proposed fee on California hospitals? The hospitals themselves support it, because it would bring in billions of dollars in federal funding to repay the hospitals and other health care providers for the medical care they give to poor people. The Times editorial board urges Gov. Schwarzenegger to see the logic and sign the bill to make it happen.

They call it overdraft protection, but there's little to protect the consumer from the multibillion-dollar flow of money to banks that charge a fee over and over and over again to debit-card users whose accounts can't cover their purchases. Often the fee is bigger than the purchase, but the customer simply doesn't realize the account is overdrawn. The Times calls on the Federal Reserve to fix this with rules that require better consumer information, a choice for customers who don't want the so-called protection and notification for the customer before that costly but unaffordable purchase is made.

And the board calls on Honduras to allow the return of President Manuel Zelaya -- with limited powers -- until the Nov. 29 election, though it also calls on the international community to make sure Zelaya understands he should not attempt to stay in power.

Let's admit this openly: Tuna aren't as awe-inspiring as whales. They don't spout in the middle of the ocean or do a slow dive that ends with the farewell wave of a giant tail. Nonetheless, they need protection after drastic overfishing, writes Joshua Reichert of the Pew Environment Group. On the Times Op-Ed page, Reichert argues that fishing caps haven't worked and that nothing but endangered-species status will save the Atlantic bluefin tuna.

Finally, energy journalist Richard Nemec writes that Los Angeles has been playing political musical chairs in determining leadership for the Department of Water and Power instead of hiring the experts it so desperately needs.

Photo: Gavin Newman / Greenpeace International / EPA

-- Karin Klein