Embracing State’s Cultural Diversity Via Feng Shui

In an inadvertent gift to the talkers of the late-night and wacky-right variety, Assemblyman Leland Yee, a San Francisco Democrat and speaker pro tem, has asked the state to make its building standards code promote and publish “feng shui principles.”

Feng shui, Yee says, is an “earth science that examines mathematics, physics, geology, astronomy and architecture, among other sciences,” along with the “concepts of balance and harmony.” It also is used to position mirrors, furniture, fountains and other features but has not yet become a spinoff of the home-decorating show “Trading Spaces.”

Feng shui as a design principle has been embraced by westerners for homes and offices, and by the corporate likes of Merrill Lynch and Citibank, Yee pointed out. A recent L.A. County Fair offered feng shui exhibitions, and Sausalito citizens decided that a proposed new police and fire building was out of scale and possessed bad feng shui. A few California towns have drafted tree-cutting ordinances to counter the feng shui principle that a tree in front of a door is bad, which had prompted the felling of many trees, some legally, some not.

Officially promoting the principles wouldn’t cost a thing, Yee said, and it’s about “respecting the diversity of cultures here in California and providing a positive work environment for our employees.”

The Capitol’s own less-than-positive work environment has generated much brow-furrowing by political thinkers. Yee’s Assembly mate, Republican leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield, in a speech to the California Newspaper Publishers Assn. in Sacramento, used the measure as an example of the Legislature’s underlying difficulties.

Yee, he said, has introduced a resolution “to ask California architects that any time you design a building, you now have to do it with feng shui in mind.” The audience -- all those liberal media folk -- laughed.

“Now, I thought, I’d better look at the date and be fair,” McCarthy continued. “Was this prior to the recall? Because feng shui, I guess, along with bird-weaning and cross-dressing, was a big issue prior to the recall. This was introduced Jan. 5, 2004.” (The bird-weaning measure, by Assemblywoman Ellen Corbett of San Leandro, became law and prohibits pet shops from selling unweaned pet birds, as they already were banned from selling unweaned puppies.)

“Now if we’re more worried about feng shui in the buildings of the state than we are about the state of the state,” McCarthy said, “then we’d better focus more on this stuff.” (“Stuff” is a technical word much favored by the new governor -- it means, well, anything he wishes it to. In this context, it probably means the budget and stuff.)

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State Capitol Marks 10 Years in Cyberspace

Happy e-b-day, base-10 style. Ten years ago this month, cyberspace came to the state Capitol, when then-Assemblywoman Debra Bowen, a Marina del Rey Democrat, persuaded her colleagues and Gov. Pete Wilson to go along with the notion of putting voting records, bills, analyses and more on that newfangled thingamajig, the Internet, so that Californians could consult them all, free.

The state that midwifed Silicon Valley was the first to go cyber, and now, as Bowen says, “my dog has his own e-mail address.”

The Capitol’s main website, www.leginfo.ca.gov, has bumped up its hit rate and that of Leg-related sites from 50,000 a month in the first year to 11.4 million a month last year. That looks really good until you find out that the new governor’s website is getting nearly half a million hits a day.

Bowen, now a state senator, said back then, in the dark ages of cyber-living, “to most people [in California], Sacramento may as well be Mars.”

And with the White House plan to explore the angry Red Planet, the Bush administration may get to Mars before it gets to Sacramento.

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Longtime GOP Chief Being Pointed to Door

The big hand and the little hand are ... on the doorknob. The 20-year reign of Orange County Republican Party chief Thomas Fuentes, the longest serving local GOP chief in California, is ticking down to the last months ... maybe weeks.

It’s a door that party insiders have been trying to nudge Fuentes through for several years; he’s been sized up as too prickly, too ideologically rigid for the Big Tent boys [and girls].

Heck, no, he’s said -- he can’t go because there was no one ready to take his place. Now there is: Scott Baugh, a former Assembly speaker and now a lobbyist. Baugh is filling a vacancy on the county central committee this year and should get a full term in March. Some elected leaders want Baugh to take over before Fuentes’ term ends next January.

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Points Taken

* The office of Huntington Beach’s GOP Rep. Dana Rohrabacher said it got a death threat last week after a New York radio station criticized a Rohrabacher bill that would limit free healthcare for immigrants. Rohrabacher assistant Kathleen Hollingsworth said many calls were expletive-laden and that callers misunderstood the bill, which wouldn’t deny emergency care to immigrants or foreign visitors but limit hospital care for immigrants who can’t pay the bill. Police are investigating; House policy required aides to report the call.

* The e-invitation to this Saturday’s Hollywood Palladium awards party for Rock the Vote -- the crusade to register 18-to-24-year-olds to vote -- says guests “must be 21 to enter.”

* After This Space reported last week that the Schwarzenegger “Armageddon” budget cuts extend to pleated paper water cups in many state offices, someone at the Stanley Mosk Courthouse in Los Angeles said that while law clerks are being laid off, paper-cup dispensers have just been installed next to water fountains. Aren’t water fountains designed not to need cups in the first place?

* The students of the YMCA Model Legislature will hit Sacramento next week for its 56th annual session, bearing legislation to, among other things, legalize same-sex marriage, assisted suicide and marijuana, ban handguns as well as lift restrictions on semiautomatic rifles, and allow minors to get tattoos and abortions without parental consent.

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You Can Quote Me

“Of course, all your tastes are much too sophisticated for cop shows on ABC, but we’re still recommending you check out Channel 7 this Sunday night at 8 p.m.”

Staff memo from the office of Los Angeles City Councilman Eric Garcetti, who had a cameo on the show “10-8” as the council member hosting the L.A. Peace Officers’ Charity Ball

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Patt Morrison’s columns appear Mondays and Tuesdays. Her e-mail address is patt.morrison@latimes.com. Her earlier columns can be read at www.latimes.com/morrison. This week’s contributors include Times staff writers Noam N. Levey, Jean O. Pasco and Nancy Vogel.