Scandal ‘boring’? Arrogant Jerry Brown drinks his own Kool-Aid

Feb. 6, 2013

By Chris Reed

Sacramento is still buzzing over a bizarre and obnoxious scandal in which state parks officials hid $54 million while pressing to close 70 parks, and along comes another scandal in which Cal Fire hides millions of dollars while successfully pushing for a new fire-protection “fee,” and what does Gov. Jerry Brown do?

Put the scoop down. “I find it a relatively boring story, to tell you the truth,” Brown told reporters Tuesday.

Brown has been described as brilliant, eccentric,  unique, worldly, weird, etc. But here’s what he’s been since winning passage of Prop. 30 in November: as arrogant as any California politician in a long, long, long time.

The governor dismisses people with sensible criticism of the problem-plagued bullet train project as “defeatists.” Yo, Jerry, does your putdown also hold for the Washington Post editorial page and The Economist, which think the project is nuts?

The governor acts as if temporary sales and income tax hikes have transformed California into a strapping model of robust governance. He completely ignores CalPERS and CalSTRS underfunding, the $10 billion plus the state owes the federal government for borrowing to pay unemployment benefits when the state program went broke, and the fact that another retirement benefit for state employees — health care — is $60 billion-plus underfunded.

Bullying those who don’t parrot his happy talk

California is not on firm ground. Jerry Brown has created a narrative that holds that it is, and he’s gotten journalists from the East Coast to buy the myth. The numbers, however, just don’t add up.

But challenge his narrative of the state being in a new, golden era, and he’ll mock you at a press conference, as he did with Brian Joseph of The Orange County Register. Raise questions about whether the state is as well-governed as he pretends, and he’ll belittle you, as he did the reporters on the Cal Fire scandal by calling their findings “boring.”

He used to be Gov. Moonbeam. Now he’s Gov. Insufferable Know-It-All.

Great, just great.