Thanks to a combination of profligate spending in the late 90s, the tech bubble and the refusal of California legislators to say "no" to the voters who continually want somehting for nothing, Californis is facing an economic crisis. The focus of voters' ire is, of course, Gov. Gray Davis, but people are beginning to raise some questions about frontrunner (in some polls) Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante.

Syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin, in a column last week, first brought the issue of Bustamante's membership in MEChA as a college student into the mainstream media. I know there was a chapter of MEChA on my college campus, but I never really paid them much attention -- I thought of it as more of a Latino social club.

Well, it's not exactly that. Check out SDSU's MEChA page here. Clicking on the El Plan de Aztlan, will get you this, which includes:

1. Awareness and distribution of El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán . Presented at every meeting, demonstration, confrontation, courthouse, institution, administration, church, school, tree, building, car, and every place of human existence.

2. September 16, on the birth date of Mexican Independence, a national walk-out by all Chicanos of all colleges and schools to be sustained until the complete revision of the educational system: its policy makers, administration, its curriculum, and its personnel to meet the needs of our community.

3. Self-Defense against the occupying forces of the oppressors at every school, every available man, woman, and child.

4. Community nationalization and organization of all Chicanos: El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán .

5. Economic program to drive the exploiter out of our community and a welding together of our people's combined resources to control their own production through cooperative effort.

6. Creation of an independent local, regional, and national political party. A nation autonomous and free - culturally, socially, economically, and politically- will make its own decisions on the usage of our lands, the taxation of our goods, the utilization of our bodies for war, the determination of justice (reward and punishment), and the profit of our sweat.

Sounds like something that could come out of a white supremacist site or Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam.

Hopefully Bustamante will feel compelled to disavow this sort of divisive racism, but don't hold your breath.

I was going to vote for Bustamante, for two reasons:

First, a Republican governor can do little more than a holding action against the Democrat-controlled legislature.

Second, it is better to allow the Democrats to really drive the state's economy into the ground and make the political climate more hospitable for all Republican candidates.

Now I'm re-evaluating my position. I cannot vote for someone with direct ties to a racist organization -- even if he is the type of governor California deserves.