California Roundup: Plastic Bags and Government Golf Cart Drivers Are Up; Illegal Immigration, Bad Surfers Are Down

* Bankrupt city to make sure every golf cart driver is a government employee: The City of Los Angeles, after spending seven years negotiating the golf cart concession for its seven!!! (7!!!) public courses, drops the private company and decides to get into the golf cart business itself. "I would recommend that someone put a bullet in their head before they try to get a contract with the city," jilted Ready Golf President Michael Bernback tells the L.A. Times' David Zahniser.

* California is objectively anti-turtle: State assembly throws out plastic bag ban AB1998.

* Survivors will envy the dead: First debate between Sen. Barbara Boxer (D) and Republican challenger Carly Fiorina happens tonight.

* Now who do we blame? Pew Hispanic Center reports illegal immigrant population is dropping sharply in California and the rest of the country. Full report [pdf].

* Public art and waveriding form: Cardiff-By-the Sea Botanical Society, noted earlier by Matt Welch, puts up a sculpture showing the "the joy, and awkwardness, of learning to surf," but locals focus on the awkwardness. Art vandals wage a campaign of détournement putting the "Cardiff Kook" in a tutu, a clown costume, and the mouth of a shark, to name a few. But do we hate the Kook's bad form or our own? "I'm sure I look like that," one of the pranksters tells the Wall Street Journal. "That's why everybody is so down on it. They like to think they don't look like that, but they do."