Mickey Kaus Is An Uninformed Idiot, Pt. 4,425

Mickey Kaus, last seen publishing the contents of a private email list for his own amusement, has now come up with a new idea (he gets one a year that have nothing to do with "let's destroy teacher's unions"); he wants to see a newspaper covering the Westside of Los Angeles. It actually starts off rather good:

Over a million people live here. Affluent people. People semi-obsessively concerned with local issues like crime, traffic, development, city and state politics and ill-served by the magisterial L.A. Times in far off downtown, which has to cover all of Southern California and seems to think paying attention to the West Side is somehow elitist, if not racist. ... You could hire five reporters--cheap, these days--and you'd have about four more reporters covering the area than the Times has. If they're the right reporters it shouldn't be that difficult to steal the Times' richest readers and the advertisers who want to reach them. (Many of those readers already get the New York Times for its national and international coverage. You would be the local supplement.)

There's no question that the LA Times is too big and too poorly mismanaged to pay proper attention to the many communities of Southern California. And it's also true that cuts to staff at local papers leave the country open to political trickery at the local level. So there's a lot to like about a niche-marketed local paper serving a fairly well-off community that would pay for the privilege. Instead of newspaper bailouts, fostering increased competition at the local level makes sense.

Which leads us to what Mickey Kaus, a guy who is somehow a paid writer, thinks is a good use of local resources for a new newspaper:

We want to know whom Mayor Villaraigosa is dating, and we want to see her picture. And if John Edwards visits his mistress at the Beverly Hilton and gets chased into a bathroom by National Enquirer reporters--hey, you know, maybe that's a story! (The LAT didn't think so.) By covering politics in a way that got at least a few hundred thousand readers to pay attention, you could take the first, big step toward changing the apathetic culture of Southern California (the culture that lets Democratic interest groups fill the void and call the shots).

That's right, Mickey's conception of a paper that would change the apathetic culture of Southern California is one that is essentially a tabloid with a selective bias toward people Mickey Kaus hates. Amazingly, he thinks that would be a big seller! I'd bet they could call it "The Things Mickey Kaus Obsesses Over Tribune" and print tens of copies! What a well-informed citizenry that would engender! Maybe a free pair of panties (perfect for sniffing) could come with every edition!

Since Kaus apparently Googles his name repeatedly and has emailed me in the past when I've called him out on his nonsense (and a guy who links to random Tumblr pages on his own site seems to have a real sensitivity to this kind of thing), I'll repeat to him what he said to Ezra Klein: "All communications are on the record."

Where Are The Spending Cut Calculators?

In both the Friday and Saturday editions of the Los Angeles Times, right on page A1 above the fold, there was a graphic of a "tax calculator," which projected the additional taxes an individual would pay based on certain factors like income, number of dependents and values of vehicles. They have a corresponding tax calculator on their website where users can type in the data and get the precise tax hit coming to them. The Sacramento Bee has the same thing. Talk radio was having a field day with these calculators over the past couple days, getting people to call in and disclose their statistics and telling them how much money they will owe. This led to perverse complaints like the lady making $126,000 a year ranting about an $800 tax increase.

In my life, I have never seen a "spending cut calculator," where someone good plug in the services they rely on, like how many school-age children they have, or how many roads they take to work, or how many police officers and firefighters serve their community, or what social services they or their families rely on, and how much they stand to lose in THAT equation. Tax calculators show bias toward the gated community screamers on the right who see their money being piled away for nothing. A spending cut calculator would actually show the impact to a much larger cross-section of society, putting far more people at risk than a below 1% hit to their bottom line.

But of course, people who are perceived to depend on state services probably don't log on to the LA Times and the Sacramento Bee websites very often to calculate their tax burden. In reality, we all depend on the state for roads and law enforcement and libraries and schools and county hospitals and on and on. And in Los Angeles County, one in five residents - almost 2.2 million people - receive some form of public aid. So wouldn't it make sense to portray the real cost of spending cuts in the same way that tax increases are portrayed?

Contra Dan Walters, it is completely untrue that "liberal Web sites" are unilaterally condemning cuts to education and health & welfare spending. We fully understand that a $42 billion dollar hole cannot be filled by revenue alone. We certainly condemn corporate tax cuts at a time of massive deficits, or counter-productive actions like selling the lottery, which will produce net losses in the long-term. But there is no question that the media mentality is to highlight the tax side of the equation over the spending side, and dramatically portray the tax increases - splashed across the front page - while relegating the spending cuts to further down the page. It feeds the tax revolt and distorts the debate. And it's completely irresponsible.

The Incredible Shrinking Local Media

Under the stellar leadership of Sam Zell, the LA Times is cutting another 300 jobs and eliminating the California section:

Editor Russ Stanton said in a second memo that the cuts will include a 70-position reduction across the editorial department, or 11 percent, in the coming weeks.

Hartenstein said the paper will reduce the number of sections on March 2, folding the California section into the front section, which includes local, national and international news, while keeping Business, Sports and Calendar as daily fixtures.

The feature section lineup, including Health, Food, Home, Image, Travel and Arts & Books, will remain unchanged, he said.

Good thing there's nothing special happening in the state that would require coverage.

Anyone who thinks that the Times will continue to cover California in the same way by folding the section into the front page is delusional. The staff cuts will certainly come from the local beat. Keep in mind that this is the biggest daily in the state.

We have 38 million residents and maybe 10 full-time reporters making sense of Sacramento.

Let's not wonder why nobody will have good information on why they're getting IOUs in the mail in a few weeks instead of their tax refunds and public assistance checks.

$63 Billion?

Not sure where the LA Times is pulling this figure from.

A $5-million plan to replace 78 wood piles that support the pier is among the hundreds of California projects that stand to benefit from the federal stimulus measure. In fact, the first major initiative of the Obama administration could deliver as much as $63 billion to the state.

Some of the money would help ease California's budget crisis, although officials in Sacramento say it would cover only one-quarter of the nearly $42-billion deficit [...]

The $63-billion projection for California -- provided by the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank with ties to President Obama -- includes about $44 billion to help pay for things such as infrastructure projects, healthcare for the poor and increased unemployment benefits.

The remaining $19 billion would cover the cost of the individual tax cuts to Californians.

To be fair, the story does make clear that state and local government relief would only directly impact about 1/4 of the budget hole. But I think it's dangerous to throw around $63 billion when there's still going to be a need for tough solutions on revenues and cuts in the budget. That number throws in the kitchen sink - it includes tax cuts to individuals and businesses, unemployment insurance extension, food stamp benefits, everything. The fact that more people have money to spend may positively impact the bottom line if California catches some of that cash in sales taxes, but the story - and really the projection by CAP - makes it sound like California will be handed a $63 billion dollar oversized novelty check. This will only serve to aid the radical Yacht Party agenda, allowing them to say that California just got a bailout so there's no need for tax increases. Every sane person knows that the federal windfall will help but not fix the budget, and talk of $63 billion like it's a sugar plum fairy really hurts the ability to make that fix happen.

For example, when citizens all over the state don't get their tax refunds in the coming months, with taxpayers on the low end of the income scale feeling the greatest effect, and they read stories about $63 billion flowing to the state, who do you think they're going to blame? And I'm sure the Yacht Party will be around to direct that blame, too.

It's fairly irresponsible to headline "$63 BILLION!" when we know only $10 billion of that will directly hit the budget.

Our Political Media Crisis and the Disclosure Problems Of The LA Times

I've noticed a strain of thought which believes that all that is needed to achieve Democratic goals in the state is better framing and messaging, because that can get into the media and convince more Californians of the need to restore sanity to the budget process and reform state government. This assumes that there's any kind of substantial political media to begin with. There's shockingly little on local news and radio, and even the newspapers have scaled back their local political coverage. What is currently out there reaches at most 1% of the electorate, and cuts to Capitol bureaus in Sacramento have decreased that gradually over the last year. No media outlet is willing to carry information to the public, a dangerous scenario for a state in crisis.

And because of this breakdown, this provides an opportunity for those with an agenda, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and right-wing think tanks (or even the false equivalent nonsense of a California Forward) to pursue their goals under the cover of "news." They infect what little coverage there is and provide ready-made content in the form of editorials for papers to print. A sorry example of this showed up in yesterday's LA Times, when Bret Jacobson wrote a screed about Hilda Solis' choice as Labor Secretary.

Solis regularly sides with organized labor's demands, including the biggest of them all: union leaders' desperate campaign to boost their membership by getting rid of secret ballot elections. That privacy allows millions of American workers to vote their conscience when deciding whether to start paying dues to a union boss. Consequently, it's easy to see why union bosses prefer "card check" -- a dubious method that requires employees to sign a legally binding card stating their preference in a way that would allow anyone to know if they are pro-union or not.

The fight over card check has already been a precarious affair. And this week, with the announcement of Obama's pick of Solis, the situation got even stickier. Solis has a hypocritical history of demanding secret ballots for herself but not for working Americans.

I don't think I have to go too much further with Jacobson's propaganda. As I've argued elsewhere, what he calls a "secret ballot" is actually a flawed system of union elections that needs to be fixed. If labor elections were legitimate, there wouldn't be the need for legislation. Instead, think of it as your "secret ballot" Presidential election marred by: mandatory pro-McCain training sessions held across the country, mandatory meetings where "Obama is a Muslim" propaganda is foregrounded, threats to take away your job if you vote for Obama, and threats to close your workplace entirely if Obama wins. There is nothing democratic about these one-sided farces characterized by intimidation and harassment. That's why we need a new system for determining whether workers want to collectively bargain, and majority signup is simply the best practice out there.

But that's not my biggest beef with Jacobson's argument. It's that, at the bottom of his editorial, the LA Times credits him by writing "Bret Jacobson is founder and president of Maverick Strategies LLC, a research and communications firm serving business and free-market think tanks." What they don't say is that he has a long history of union-busting, partnering with the man who is leading efforts to fight the Employee Free Choice Act. Matt Browner Hamlin discloses the lack of disclosure:

Here’s what the highly-informative BretJacobson.com has to say:

"Prior to founding Maverick Strategies, Bret co-founded the Center for Union Facts, overseeing that organization’s research activities, guiding its communications, launching its new-media capabilities, and helping plan its strategic national advertising and earned-media campaigns."

And just for those not paying attention at home, here’s Sourcewatch:

"The Center for Union Facts is a secretive front group for individuals and industries opposed to union activities. It is part of lobbyist Rick Berman’s family of front groups including the Employment Policies Institute. The domain name www.unionfacts.com was registered to Berman & Co. in May 2005." [...]

In short, the Center for Union Facts is the key organization in Big Business efforts to stop the progress of labor in America, most notably through fighting against the Employee Free Choice Act. One of their co-founders, Bret Jacobson, was given license to push the Center’s anti-union, anti-worker agenda in an op-ed against the nominee for Labor Secretary, while the Times failed to disclose the only informative part of his biography. He’s the founder of a research firm? What is that supposed to tell the Times’ readers? Pretty much every person I know who works in politics does some level of consulting. The most important piece of Jacobson’s biography - his professional connection to one of the biggest anti-union groups in America - is left out of a column that specifically pushes the Center’s agenda. In an AP article three days ago, a spokesman for the Center attacked President-elect Obama’s pick of Solis for Labor Secretary (though, amazingly, the AP cited the Center as “a group critical of organized labor”).

Matt works for the SEIU. There, I just disclosed that. Congratulations to me for having more integrity than the Los Angeles Times!

The Employee Free Choice Act is a national issue. But when you have a corporate-run media (the LA Times editorial board has a history of anti-worker pontificating) combined with a nearly invisible political class so that Californians have no base of knowledge about their government, the ease with which propagandists can place their beliefs into what little political media exists is frankly breathtaking. There is plenty of blame to go around in California's current crisis, but the lack of any responsible (or even present) certainly contributes to it.

The Newspaper Endorsement Primary

I don't think newspaper endorsements have the kind of resonance they did before the media landscape exploded and most Americans received their news from television. Still, I have to admit that it's notable that The Washington Post, an editorial board which is aggressively center-right and still supports the war (!), endorsed Obama. The LA Times, which is very right-wing economically and which hasn't endorsed a Presidential candidate in 30 years, endorsed Obama. And the Chicago Tribune, which has NEVER endorsed a Democrat in their history, endorsed Obama.

And if you read the endorsements, they have precious little to do with policy, but with their personal comfort level with Obama's leadership. I actually think that's tragic, but the key to this is a profound disappointment with how John McCain has conducted himself in this election. He has taken his base, the media punditocracy, and showed them the hollowness, anger, and dishonor that many of us have seen for years.

Ultimately, the problem for Obama is going to be getting out of this box that these type of endorsements want to put him in, as a talented and educated man who would surely not take us to extremes like providing health care for all Americans or creating a new energy economy. The question is whether Obama wants to break out of that box.

LAT: No On 8

Big news today that the LA Times has come out No on 8, which, given their reach and their tendency to be something less than liberal in worldview, is very significant.

But it was Ronald M. George, chief justice of the California Supreme Court, who cut through to the essence of the issue in the May 15 opinion he wrote: "[A]ffording same-sex couples only a separate and differently named family relationship will, as a realistic matter, impose appreciable harm on same-sex couples and their children, because denying such couples access to the familiar and highly favored designation of marriage is likely to cast doubt on whether the official family relationship of same-sex couples enjoys dignity equal to that of opposite-sex couples."

In other words, the very act of denying gay and lesbian couples the right to marry -- traditionally the highest legal and societal recognition of a loving commitment -- by definition relegates them and their relationships to second-class status, separate and not all that equal.

Good for the LAT ed board, especially with their framing as a civil rights issue, which it is.

We're going to win this thing.

UPDATE: The new site for the marriage equality folks fighting this initiative is NoOnProp8.com.

The California Report

Here are a few links for you.

• It's two days until the kickoff of Netroots Nation, and among the many luminaries attending will be Gavin Newsom, who is introducing green jobs expert Van Jones at the Sunday morning keynote. The fact that he's running for Governor has nothing to do with this, I'm sure.

• The final numbers on the June election were miserable, with a record low (for a regular election) 28.2% turnout. A ridiculous amount of voters cast ballots by mail - 58.7%, also a record. VBM is far stronger in Northern California than in the Los Angeles area, and not surprisingly turnout is higher up there as well. This is really changing how elections ought to be conducted, as we move to a VBM state. Campaign operatives need to understand this quickly.

• Hey, we had a bank run at IndyMac yesterday. Fun! The FDIC insures up to $100,000, so consumers should be fine for the most part, but what you're going to see is eroding confidence in regional banks as the financial crisis widens.

• Another leader at the LA Times is out, this time publisher David Hiller. I'm sure Sam Zell and his team can make loads of money on the paper if they just fire everybody and go to robot reporters.

• AB 97 cleared the legislature yesterday, which would ban trans fats at California restaurants and bakeries. It now goes to the governor. He did sign a ban on trans fats in school cafeterias last year.

What Future For Journalism?

There was an extremely disturbing editorial in yesterday's Washington Post by Harold Meyerson, who used to be the executive editor of the LA Weekly, and thus understands the journalism scene here in Southern California. What is being done to the flagship newspaper, the LA Times, by real estate magnate Sam Zell, is nothing short of a dismantling of the biggest print outlet in the state and one of the biggest in the country. Zell was not the only owner willing to buy the Times last year; in fact, Eli Broad and Ron Burkle wanted to purchase it, spin it off from the Tribune Company, and return local ownership to the Southland. Instead, the Chicagoan Zell made the deal, and he's taking apart the newspaper bit by bit. It's a familiar story we've seen as the print journalism industry struggles through a disruptive time, and its top managers are responding in all the wrong ways.

During his first year in journalism, Zell has visited the city rooms and Washington bureaus of a number of Trib publications to deliver obscenity-laced warnings and threats to employees that whatever it was they were doing, it wasn't working. There was too much coverage of world and national affairs, he told Times writers and editors; readers don't want that stuff. Last week, the company decreed that its 12 papers would have to cut by 500 the number of pages they devoted every week to news, features and editorials, until the ratio of pages devoted to copy and pages devoted to advertising was a nice, even 1 to 1. At the Times, that would mean eliminating 82 pages a week.

As the company prepares to shed more reporters, it has measured writers' performances by the number of column inches of stories they ground out. It found, said one Zell executive, that the level of pages per reporter at one of Zell's smaller papers, the Hartford Courant (about 300), greatly exceeded that at the Times (about 50). As one of the handful of major national papers, however, the Times employs the kind of investigative and expert beat reporters not found at most smaller papers. I could name a number of Times writers who labored for months on stories that went on to win Pulitzers and other prizes, and whose column-inch production, accordingly, was relatively light. Doing so, I fear, would only put their necks on Zell's chopping block. So let me instead note that if The Post's Dana Priest and Anne Hull, who spent months uncovering the scandalous conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and whose reporting not only won a Pulitzer but caused a shake-up in the Army's treatment of wounded veterans, had been subjected to the Zellometer productivity index, they'd be prime candidates for termination.

Which is precisely, unfortunately, what's been happening at the Times. Voluntarily or not, large numbers of highly talented editors and reporters have left. The editorial staff is about two-thirds its size in the late 1990s, with further deep cuts in the offing. A paper that is both an axiom and an ornament of Los Angeles life, that helps set the political, business and artistic agenda for one of America's two great world metropolises, is being shrunk and, if Zell continues to get his way, dumbed down.

This is really hideous, and ultimately this will reduce even further the level of coverage on our state and its politics at this crucial juncture, in the midst of a housing crisis, a widening budget gap, and soaring energy prices. There are numerous problems here - bringing a businessman unused to the rigors of journalism in to run a newspaper, the effective elimination of the concept of the public interest, the commercialization of that which informs a citizenry, and all the rest. Conglomerates which control what news is disseminated and how it is presented not only interfere with the truth (really, read that Ruth Rosen article about her time on SF Chronicle editorial board in the run-up to war), but they have little ability to even manage the situation by their own narrow standards and turn a profit. Again and again we see major cuts to newsroom staffs, reductions in space for news, shrinking column inches, and the only result is that readers are turned off to the product and they drop their subscriptions.

We in the blogosphere slam the news media early and often, but we actually can't do what we do without them. And the electorate can't make the decisions in their political and personal lives that lead to progress when their sources of information are being chopped one column inch at a time. Sam Zell is a cancer on the body politic.

The California Report

Here are a few tidbits on this GOTV weekend!

• Obviously everyone is going to be working hard for their causes and candidates, so it may be a little quiet around here. I'll be out walking all day tomorrow. Oh, and don't vote for the racist guy, Bill Johnson, as a Judge of the Superior Court (Office number 125) in LA County.

• Yesterday was the deadline for bills to get passed out of their chamber of origin, and the Assembly passed major subprime mortgage legislation, without help from Republicans (6 of them abstained despite being seated right in the chamber). This bill has some good homeowner assistance elements that will allow people to restructure their financing before foreclosure. A mortgage bill has also passed the State Senate, so some form of legislation will hopefully get to the governor post haste.

• One of the biggest problems with the housing crisis is that, as home sale prices lower, homeowners are reassessing their value and getting their property tax lowered, decreasing state revenue yet more.

• Sticking in the shiv before riding off into the sunset, Fabian Nuñez writes a puzzling op-ed in the Sacramento Bee approving of the Governor's horrible idea to borrow against future lottery revenue. Considering that the only sustainable solution to the permanent crisis mode that we have in our budget is to reorganize the tax structure instead of constantly borrowing, I have no idea why any Democrat would veer so far off message and undermine the new Speaker's ability to move forward. What's more, lotteries are regressive taxes on the poor.

• One spot where there will be a lot of action on Tuesday is in Ventura County, where Democrats now outnumber Republicans and which could have contested elections in the Assembly, Senate and US Congress. However, the LA Times shows its political acumen by writing:

One of the more closely watched contests on Tuesday will be the Democratic primary in the 24th Congressional District. Insurance agent Mary Pallant of Oak Park; Marta Jorgensen, a Solvang educator; and Oxnard businesswoman Jill Martinez are running.

Marta Jorgensen quit the race over a month ago and endorsed Martinez. Way to go, LAT.

• Excellent news out of Los Angeles: there's been a $1 million dollar settlement with Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center for their dumping homeless patients on Skid Row. They will also be monitored by a US Attorney for five years. This unethical practice has reached a reasonable conclusion. Hollywood Presbyterian deserved punishment.

• Trying to get rid of marijuana grow houses in Arcata is like trying to get rid of the Pacific Ocean on the California coast.

Enjoy!

SD-15: Media Failure In California Hits A New High

We've been talking a lot today about the media whitewashes and their failures to properly inform the country in the run-up to war, due to corporate dictates or budget constraints or sheer laziness. That has a residual effect everywhere. The same problems we see with the media at the national level are magnified at the local level, where money is even tighter and cluelessness abounds. I had to do a double-take when I read the LA Times' paean "GOP maverick" Sen. Abel Maldonado, supposedly in the context of his re-election "campaign" for State Senate.

SANTA MARIA-- -- Sen. Abel Maldonado crouched to desk level and, with a mischievous smile, enlisted the help of sixth-grader Michelle Grahame to sweat the governor over the state's looming budget cuts.

The 12-year-old was immersed in her computer animation project, an Earth-like blue sphere hovering behind a curiously grown-up message: "Please don't cut Education."

Maldonado, on a tour of Ralph Dunlap Elementary, persuaded her to tweak it to read: "Please don't cut Education Arnold." He left with a printout he promised to deliver to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is hashing over ways to close the state's estimated $2-billion budget gap.

"We're in some challenging times, but I've made a commitment not to cut education," Maldonado, a Republican, told school officials and PTA members after the tour. "We're going to have to get creative."

It was a gentle jab at Schwarzenegger, but Maldonado has crossed the governor and his party leadership before, earning the scorn of conservatives and Republican loyalists. One party official writing on a conservative blog declared that the senator, one of the few Latino Republicans in Sacramento, "is not one of us."

Those same maverick traits, however, have intrigued party moderates who are struggling to make the GOP more appealing to the fastest-growing segments of the California electorate: Latinos and independents.

I'm flummoxed at why you would publish this glowing profile, which reads like it came right out of Maldonado's press office, without revealing some information that people might find helpful. To wit:

• There is a fleeting reference to a "write-in campaign organized by Democrats," but absolutely no mention of Dennis Morris and his quest to offer the voters in the district an actual choice to the as-of-now unopposed Senator. Mark Buchman of the SLO County Dems is quoted blaming Don Perata for the lack of an opponent to begin with, but even though Buchman is Morris' acting campaign chair, the story never allows him the opportunity to mention the write-in hopeful.

• There is NO MENTION AT ALL of the fact that Maldonado has crossfiled to run as a write-in candidate on the Democratic ballot in an effort to short-circuit that campaign organized by those scheming Democrats, no mention of the effort to run on both sides of the ballot.

• There is no mention of Maldonado's actual record on anything but the 2007 budget, like his vote against the Global Warming Solutions Act, for example.

• There is a mention of Maldonado's signing on to a plan even more far-reaching than the Governor's, to SELL the California Lottery, a shortsighted and ridiculously stupid idea that amounts to borrowing against the future yet again, but there is no independent analysis of that proposal; it's just stuck in there as the midpoint between two supposed extremes and therefore teh awesome.

This is just an abandonment of actual reporting in exchange for a gauzy personal profile. And considering there's an election coming up in less than a week, it's an abdication of responsibility.

Now, the LA Times doesn't have much of a presence in the 15th Senate District, they don't have many full-time reporters covering California politics, so they stumble into these half-hearted attempts to inform before election time, and this is what they come up with - a hagiography of a guy who's running as a Democrat and a Republican to shut down any efforts to challenge him.

This is the media we have in 2008.

Recounts And Recent History

As you may know, I'm actually spending the weekend out in New York City for a wedding and am largely off the grid, but I did want to mention one thing before HBO unveiled its cinematic account of the Bush-Gore Florida follies Recount tonight, which is getting excellent reviews.

In my day job, I'm a freelancer in the LA area, and this past week I spent some time in a new office that I hadn't been to in some time. Immediately, I noticed something new gracing the wall; the front page of the Los Angeles Times from the day after the Supreme Court decision in Bush v. Gore and Gore's concession from the race. I don't know how it got there or who put it up, but I'm glad they did, for as an artifact of the state of the world from the eye of the media at the close of the election, it's pretty fascinating.

The subhead from the top headline reads "President-Elect Calls For Reconciliation After Gore Concedes Defeat in Longest Contest in a Century." There was an analysis from Times Washington Bureau Chief Doyle McManus titled "Bush's Vow To Unite Encounters a Great Divide," and the beginning of the story (only the front page was on the wall) talked about how Bush campaigned as a "uniter, not a divider," and how this would now be tested by those angry Democrats, who Bush planned to reconcile with in order to calm the waters. Here's a sample:

Bush sought to send a message of soothing bipartisan conciliation in his first statement as President-elect.

"I am optimistic we can change the tone in Washington, D.C.," Bush said. "I believe things happen for a reason, and I hope the long wait of the last five weeks will heighten a desire to move beyond the bitterness and partisanship of the recent past."

Bush actually invoked Lincoln in that speech, saying that "Our nation must rise above a house divided," and how he was elected to serve one nation and not one party.

There was an analysis by Josh Getlin about how the nation was ripped asunder by this recount battle and scars were still showing and how wonderful it was that the "national shouting match was ending."

And there was an vaguely sourced story about how Gore's lawyers wanted to keep fighting after the Supreme Court decision (they apparently found some glimmers of hope in the opinion), but Gore finally called it to an end after exploring all avenues.

So the prevailing opinion on one of the country's more respected newspapers on this day was, basically, that George Bush was this conciliatory figure, Al Gore was scheming right up until the very last second and even after to overturn the election, and the public was just glad it was all over and now America can get on with the business of healing and bipartisanship.

Let that marinate in your mind, and bathe it in the knowledge of what actually took place over the past eight years.

Of course, this is the rhetorical angle that Bush used outwardly during the recount battle, that the counting was over with and now is the time to "bind up the nation's wounds" and move forward. What's a little shocking is how quickly and directly the major media figures came to the same conclusion. The seeds of how the media treated the Bush Administration over the bulk of his first term are all here, particularly the amplification of the main message coming from Ari Fleischer on any given day. And this was all done for our benefit, in the spirit of ending bitterness and changing tone and overcoming the rancorous partisanship. A time for healing.

Except we all know where that partisanship flowed from. And how it continued from the moment Bush II entered office. I don't know if this is explored in "Recount," but it should be in the background of any story which recreates that time period.

Annals of Los Angeles Times Journalism

I know that the traditional press is experiencing budget cuts and staff shortages, but there's never a good reason to use Debbie Schlussel, the low-rent Ann Coulter, as a source. However, Peter Wallsten of the LA Times did just that yesterday in a smear of Barack Obama. Schlussel is someone who blamed Pakistanis for the Virginia Tech massacre. She's a fearmonger of the rankest kind who is so unhappy about her position in the sewers of the pro-hate insaneosphere that she routinely emails cable news outlets daily reminding them of her availability. She should not be within 100 yards of anything that makes its way into respectable newsprint. And yet she was a source for this terrible Wallsten article.

The evidence Wallsten presents is scant and hardly alarming: Obama said nice things about Rashid Khalidi at a going away party for the respected Palestinian scholar, who moved from the University of Chicago to the Columbia University; he attended a speech by the late Palestinian expert Edward Said in 1998; he occasionally made statements supportive of Palestinians to Palestinian activists he knew in Chicago.

Yet the implicit tone of Wallsten's article suggests that Obama is not to be trusted on matters relating to Israel. Left aside is the fact that one can be pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel (at least in Chicago). Or the fact that the majority of Israelis support a two-state solution to the conflict, the same position held by Obama. MJ Rosenberg brilliantly parodied the gist of the Times' article in a blog post at Talking Points Memo today: "LA Times Today: Obama Not To Be Trusted, Doesn't Hate Arabs!!"

I used to work for Sen. Carl Levin, a Jew and a strong supporter of Israel, who is a close friend of the Arab community (in part, because he represents more Arab Americans than any other senator). I've seen Carl at Palestinian dinners (last year I saw him at one with Condi Rice). In fact, Joe Lieberman, not exactly an enemy of the State of Israel, has always gone out of his way to keep an open door to Arab-Americans, Palestinians and others.

In other words, this article is utterly bogus. Yes, Obama has empathy for Palestinians, just as he has empathy for Israelis. The man is naturally empathetic which will help repair some of the damage inflicted to our country's image by the current xenophobic administration.

If Arab-Americans and Palestinians trust Obama and think he plays fair, he will have considerably more leverage with them than either of the other two candidates who are not perceived that way. As Congressmen Bob Wexler and Steve Rothman, both Obama supporters, like to say, an American President who can speak to and be heard by Arabs can do a much better job in helping Israel and the Palestinians achieve peace and security than a President who is considered utterly unsympathetic to their concerns.

This is something to pay attention to and not dismiss, because the "Obama is an anti-Semite rhetoric has been amped up as we approach the general election. It's foul nonsense, and Peter Wallsten, along with the LA Times' editorial staff, ought to know better. Of course, they believe people off the street who tell them that P. Diddy killed Tupac, so I guess this isn't all that surprising or unbefitting of their editorial standards.

Blue Cross Backs Down - And What The Legislature Can Do Now

This is why we have a fourth estate:

Facing a torrent of criticism Tuesday, Blue Cross of California abruptly halted its practice of asking physicians in a letter to look for medical conditions that could be used to cancel patients' insurance coverage.

In a statement issued about 6 p.m., the state's largest for-profit insurer said, "Today we reached out to our provider partners and California regulators and determined this letter is no longer necessary and, in fact, was creating a misimpression and causing some members and providers undue concern.

"As a result, we are discontinuing the dissemination of this letter going forward."

The Los Angeles Times occasionally earns its moniker of the Los Angeles Dog Trainer, but they have covered the many Blue Cross issues with a great deal of honor and professionalism. And they can be proud of the results.

Meanwhile, as comprehensive health care reform goes out the window in California for the coming year, Ezra Klein has a couple ideas about how to make the current private insurance system work a little better. He's right that making insurers compete to offer better care is actually counter-productive, because the costs incurred would outweigh the new memberships. But government can play a role to force insurers to compete in ways positive to both their bottom line and the welfare of their consumers, through some mandated steps:

Universality: Insurers cannot compete effectively unless everyone is in the pool. If the healthy can leave, insurers cannot compete to offer better care. They'll have to compete to attract the healthiest, which means offering the lowest costs, which means insuring the fewest sick people. The system has to be universal.

Community Rating: Insurers cannot be allowed, before offering insurance, to use demographic subslicing to cherrypick the market. That means no more preexisting histories, no complex formulas around age and income and race and region. They offer insurance to anyone who wants it for the exact same price. No exceptions.

Risk Adjustment: Merely having everyone in the system won't be enough, and nor will forcing insurers to do away with their most delicate cherrypicking tools. Insurers will just become sophisticated at advertising on G4 Tech TV, and in snowboarding magazines, and in urban centers -- in places, in other words, where the young and the healthy gather. So atop the universal system, atop the community rating, you need risk adjustment, which means either that insurers are reimbursed more for taking on sicker patients, or, my preferred method (and the one used in Germany), insurers with particularly healthy pools pay into a central fund that redistributes to insurers with less healthy pools. At the end of the day, it has to be as profitable for an insurer to insure a sick person as a healthy one.

Information Transparency: It needs to be easy for individuals to compare insurers on plan comprehensiveness, price, outcomes, etc. That means we need a marketplace where folks can go to shop for insurers, and they need to have standardized comparisons, or non-partisan rating authorities, providing information they can use.

One Market: This is contained in the last point, but there needs to be a singular place, or set of them, where individuals can shop around for insurance. This is hard stuff to find, and harder yet to understand, and real effort needs to go into constructing an easily accessible marketplace that customers can effectively navigate.

And the legislature can absolutely go through the incremental steps to implement these policies and make the current broken system a little more fair and more beneficial. The last two could arguably pass right now.

A little imagination from our leaders in the Legislature can at least improve what we have now.

LA Times To Endorse Obama

Again, I question the value of newspaper endorsements, but the LAT has chosen for the first time in a very, very long time. And they "strongly endorsed" Barack Obama.

With two candidates so closely aligned on the issues, we look to their abilities and potential as leaders, and their record of action in service of their stated ideals. Clinton is an accomplished public servant whose election would provide familiarity and, most important, competence in the White House, when for seven years it has been lacking. But experience has value only if it is accompanied by courage and leads to judgment.

Nowhere was that judgment more needed than in 2003, when Congress was called upon to accept or reject the disastrous Iraq invasion. Clinton faced a test and failed, joining the stampede as Congress voted to authorize war. At last week's debate and in previous such sessions, Clinton blamed Bush for abusing the authority she helped to give him, and she has made much of the fact that Obama was not yet in the Senate and didn't face the same test. But Obama was in public life, saw the danger of the invasion and the consequences of occupation, and he said so. He was right.

Obama demonstrates as well that he is open-eyed about the terrorist threat posed to the nation, and would not shrink from military action where it is warranted. He does not oppose all wars, he has famously stated, but rather "dumb wars." He also has the edge in economic policy, less because of particular planks in his platform than because of his understanding that some liberal orthodoxies developed during the last 40 years have been overtaken by history. He offers leadership on education, technology policy and environmental protection unfettered by the positions of previous administrations.

Go read the whole thing. It should be noted that, due to budget cuts, the LA Times Sunday Opinion section is kind of hidden. It's in tabloid format and tacked on to half of the Book Review section. Because of the significance, it's possible they will put it in a more prominent place.

California Notes

Here are some notes from a few stories I'd been meaning to get to all week.

• Frank Russo had a good recap of the initial hearing from the three-judge panel charged with finding a solution to California's prison crisis. This panel may result in the early release of thousands of prisoners to reduce overcrowding. The panel does not appear to be able to be swayed by political expediency (unlike the Legislature for the past 30 years), saying "This is a judicial and not a political process." It is clear that the torturous conditions in California jails and the inability to deliver even basic medical care violates the Constitution and will be dealt with swiftly. Even the Correctional Officers union has come around to the point of view that reductions in the prison population are needed. Only a cowardly, leadership-challenged political class refuses to face reality.

• Here's a fun tale of health care at the Tribune Company, parent of the LA Times and local TV station KTLA:

The Tribune Company has come up with a new tactic to cut costs and annoy the hell out of its employees — again. It seems that everyone on the staff at the L.A. Times (and so I assume KTLA) has to prove that their spouses and children really are theirs, and thus eligible for medical benefits. Though wasteful and mildly insulting it sounds easy enough, but apparently it's not. They call it a "Mercer Audit" and its demands have some staffers in an uproar.

They're demanding documentation (a birth certificate or marriage license, I guess) with a deadline of days from actually giving employees notice. I'm sure in the boardroom this is considered "sound business sense."

• At our Calitics Quarterly event, I talked with Digby about her contention that the GOP is targeting California as the big blue state where Rudy Giuliani can break through and get the paradigm-shifting win they need. It's true that the big hitters in the state have all come out for him - although the Pete Wilson endorsement garnered all of three reporters to the announcement.



• Continuing on this theme, a new SUSA poll shows head-to-head general election matchups for all of the top three candidates on either side, and in California, it shakes out like this: against Romney or Thompson, all the Democrats win by between 15 and 33 points. Against Giuliani, Clinton beats him by 20, but Obama wins by only for and Edwards by only 2. Wow. Of course, Giuliani is still riding the name ID coattails. However, his clear penchant for wanting to be competitive in California is evidenced by the fact that the mystery fundraiser for the dirty tricks initiative was the chairman of Giuliani's northeast fundraising operation.

• Rik Hertzberg had an interesting footnote to the possible demise of the dirty tricks initiative:

Why would Schwarzenegger want to shoot down a proposal that has the potential of delivering the White House to his party next year?

My guess is that he isn’t losing any sleep over the probability of a G.O.P. Presidential rout, which would make him the indisputably most important Republican in America. His current port tack, on issues like health care and climate change, suggests that he knows which way the wind is blowing. Doubtless he would rather be swept along than swept away.

Then there’s this. Anybody remember the first Republican debate, on MSNBC back in May? I’ll bet Arnold does. He was in the front row at the Reagan Library when Chris Matthews asked the ten candidates if they would support changing the Constitution ever so slightly to make naturalized citizens eligible for the presidency. The vote onstage was eight to one against. (The one was Giuliani; McCain said he’d “seriously consider it,” which I count as an abstention.) Eight to one, in other words, in favor of crushing the ultimate and perfectly legitimate dream of the distinguished Governor of California.

If I were Schwarzenegger, I wouldn’t lift a finger to help these bozos.

• Finally, tonight at midnight, the UAW Local 2865 contract runs out. While the United Auto Workers settled their contract dispute with GM, Local 2865, which covers over 12,000 academic student employees at UC campuses (TAs, for example) has made little headway with UC. You can read all about it here. The whole idea of student employee unions gets lost in the shuffle, but they are being royally screwed, and are planning to file lots of unfair labor practices charges, in addition to keeping negotiations going and reserving the right to strike. We ought to support their efforts.

The LA Times and the Working Class

I have a conflicted relationship with the LA Times. On the one hand, they still do a stellar job covering international news; I would put the paper's Iraq reporting up with any other news organization in the world. But on the editorial side, the paper has taken up the neoliberal consensus with a vengeance, and turns a blind eye to vital issues to this community, like inequality and poverty. Nancy Cleeland, an excellent writer, has decided to leave the paper for just this reason:

It's awkward to criticize an old friend, which I still consider the Times to be, but I think the question of how mainstream journalists deal with the working class is important and deserves debate. There may be no better setting in which to examine the issue: The Los Angeles region is defined by gaping income disparities and an enormous pool of low-wage immigrant workers, many of whom are pulled north by lousy, unstable jobs. It's also home to one of the most active and creative labor federations in the country. But you wouldn't know any of that from reading a typical issue of the L.A. Times, in print or online. Increasingly anti-union in its editorial policy, and celebrity -- and crime-focused in its news coverage, it ignores the economic discontent that is clearly reflected in ethnic publications such as La Opinion.

Of course, I realize that revenues are plummeting and newsroom staffs are being cut across the country. But even in these tough financial times, it's possible to shift priorities to make Southern California's largest newspaper more relevant to the bulk of people who live here. Here's one idea: Instead of hiring a "celebrity justice reporter," now being sought for the Times website, why not develop a beat on economic justice? It might interest some of the millions of workers who draw hourly wages and are being squeezed by soaring rents, health care costs and debt loads.

Go read the whole thing, this is an important article. You would think that it would be easier and more cost-effective for the Times to cover what's happening in its own backyard. Of course, the Times was first part of a corporate-owned media collective, the Tribune Corporation, and now Sam Zell, a multi-millionaire. The top editors and senior staff aren't affected by the real issues impacting working people, and it shows in where they place their emphasis.

I remembered the workers who killed chickens, made bagged salads, packed frozen seafood, installed closet organizers, picked through recycled garbage, and manufactured foam cups and containers. They were injured from working too fast, fired for speaking up, powerless, invisible. I saw that their impact on all of us who live in the region is huge.

Now, like hundreds of other mid-career journalists who are walking away from media institutions across the country, I'm looking for other ways to tell the stories I care about. At the same time, the world of online news is maturing, looking for depth and context. I think the timing couldn't be better.

I would suggest that Cleeland would always be welcome on the blogosphere. There is a market for understanding the complex issues of class and inequality.

UPDATE: I would add that proof of the LA Times' relationship to the poor can be easily gleaned in this BS hit piece on John Edwards by Jonah Goldberg, someone who doesn't live in California but is hired to write lazy smear jobs based on two-week old stories without merit.

Out of the Ashes, Election Reform?

The LA Times gets downright progressive about voting reform, in the wake of the horrible turnout for Tuesday's school board runoff, where $9 million dollars in voting infrastructure and campaign expenditures yielded a 6% turnout.

A much better solution is to use instant runoff voting, an electoral method that elects a majority winner in a single election.

Here's how it works: Voters rank the candidates in their order of preference instead of just picking one candidate. If a candidate wins a majority of first rankings, the election is over, just like now. But if no candidate wins a majority of first rankings, voters' other rankings are used to determine the winner instantly. The candidate with the fewest first rankings is eliminated, and voters who ranked that candidate first can now have their second choice counted. All ballots are recounted in the "instant runoff," and the process of dropping the last-place candidate continues until one candidate has a majority of the votes [...]

Because this method of voting would save millions of tax dollars, part of that money could be used for an expansion of Los Angeles' public financing system, which might produce more candidates and more competition — which could induce higher voter turnout.

Los Angeles also could change to an all vote-by-mail system. Oregon votes this way, as does Burbank, and it has led to higher turnout in non-November elections. It also saves tax dollars by avoiding the high costs of setting up polling stations and hiring election workers.

Maybe it takes a disaster like the school board election to make people see the light. Of course, IRV and vote by mail and public financing have been around for decades. They were seen as flaky Birkenstock ideas at one point; only some hippie commune like San Francisco could use Instant Runoff Voting, right? But if the staid LA Times can figure out that IRV is efficient, smart and leads to better campaigning.

I am very hopeful that this work will get done in Los Angeles to make voting more in line with the 21st century. Now there's one more hurdle to clear. We just need the Governor to sign the National Popular Vote bill that would reform the electoral college by eliminating the outdated and anti-democratic idea. The Governor has taken no position on the bill this year. He ought to be urged to sign it.

Reporting the Real News

In a week with more historic votes on Iraq (in Washington and in Baghdad), with a potential free trade "deal" that looks like a possible betrayal, with wildfires burning up most of Southern California, &c., apparently it's crucial for the L.A. Times to devote a big chunk of its editorial page today to what characters Marvel will spin off into movies now that all of its top-tier heroes are used up. Written by, I believe, the Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons.

On a similar topic, here's what they've got John Stossel going all in-depth on over at ABC:

Can a Penny Dropped From a Building Kill a Pedestrian Below?

John Stossel Tackles the Killer Penny Myth

After that he's going to "tackle" the Jolt-Cola-and-pop-rocks scenario that has folks staying awake at night. Then he'll actually make bread while convening a circus and hand the bread out to people.

Sigh. A media, a media, my kingdom for a halfway decent media.

Is There Anyone Left To Run The LA Times?

Weird story as Andres Martinez, the head of their editorial page, quits because he didn't disclose a relationship to someone in Brian Grazer's production company, and Grazer's guest-editing the op-ed page this Sunday (or was, until this happened). Martinez appeared to be mad that the Publisher would go over his head and cancel the Grazer edition of the op-ed page because of the appearance of impropriety, calling it a "vote of no-confidence."

So let me get this straight... the guy who ran one of the most anti-worker editorial pages in the country quits because his boss made an executive decision and usurped his authority?

Classic.

Much more (possibly too much more) from Kevin Drum here and here. Who the hell cares if Brian Grazer guest-edits the op-ed page, no matter the reason why? Why is that suddenly a crime?