Last week could be remembered as a turning point for California criminal justice as state Attorney General Xavier Becerra

Becerra did so with his announcement that he would not challenge a state appellate court ruling that ordered a new bail hearing for a retired shipyard worker in San Francisco who had been held in jail for more than eight months, unable to raise $350,000 bail. Kenneth Humphrey was accused of threatening a neighbor and stealing from his apartment.

The appellate panel held it was unacceptable to set bail so high for a defendant who appeared to not be a public threat. Becerra agreed with the finding and going forward essentially encouraged public defenders to routinely challenge bail they found unjust by saying his office would no longer defend heavy bail or bail that was imposed by local judges without a consideration of flight and safety risks or bail alternatives.

The state’s harsh bail practices were the target of legislation meant to end the “money” bail system that Sen. Bob Hertzberg, D-Los Angeles, and Assemblyman Rob Bonta, D-Alameda, introduced in late 2016. Senate Bill 10 would have in many cases eliminated bail, based on assessments of the accused’s flight risk and danger to the public. It also would have directed judges to consider the ability of accused individuals to raise bail.

The Hertzberg-Bonta initiative was in response to complaints from civil rights groups that heavy bail destroyed lives by costing the accused their jobs or their ability to attend school and preventing them from becoming productive individuals. More than half of those in county jails in California are there because of an inability to make bail, not any convictions.

Governor, chief justice negotiating final reform plan

The measure made some progress last year until it was abruptly pulled on Aug. 25 with an announcement from Gov. Jerry Brown that he and state Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye would work with Hertzberg and Bonta to fine-tune their measure before bringing it back to the Legislature this year.

“I believe that inequities exist in California’s bail system and I look forward to working this fall on ways to reform the system in a cost-effective and fair manner, considering public safety as well as the rights of the accused,” the governor said in a statement.

Brown is looking to carve out a late-career legacy on criminal justice reform, playing a key role in the adoption in 2016 of Proposition 57, which makes it easier for those accused of nonviolent and some violent crimes to win parole. Crime experts have long pointed out that crime is largely a young man’s game and that nations with relatively few prisoners in their 40s or 50s are at least as safe as the United States.

But the strength of the case for bail reform so far is somewhat murkier in the United States. While some local governments report success – notably in New Orleans – a bold bail reform law that took effect on Jan. 1, 2017, in New Jersey at the behest of then-Gov. Chris Christie has proven controversial. It uses algorithmic tools to determine whether cash bail should be assessed.

While the new law is credited with reducing New Jersey’s jail population 19 percent in its first five months, one of the algorithm’s decisions didn’t work out. The tool recommended the release last April of a Bridgeton, New Jersey, man named Jules Black, 30, after he had been arrested on suspicion of being a felon in illegal possession of a firearm. Days later, Black allegedly killed Christian Rodgers, 26, a neighborhood adversary, after shooting at him 22 times.

Rodgers’ mother, June, is suing Christie, the inventor of the bail assessment tool and others, seeking wrongful death damages and an injunction preventing further use of the bail algorithm.

Gage Skidmore / flickr

Presidential candidates in both parties have found challenges and opportunities in responding politically to the recent terrorist attacks in San Bernardino, California.

In the wake of Tashfeen Malik’s attack, carried out with her husband Syed Rizwan Farook, controversy and criticism has centered around the way federal officials screen foreign immigrants for entry into the U.S. “In the aftermath of terrorist attacks in San Bernardino and Paris, this screening process has been singled out as a major vulnerability in the nation’s defense against terrorism,” the New York Times observed. “Lawmakers from both parties have endorsed making it harder for people to enter the United States if they have recently been in Iraq or Syria.” President Obama himself “has ordered a review of the K-1 visa program, which allows foreigners like Ms. Malik to move to the United States to marry Americans, putting them on a pathway to permanent residence and, ultimately, citizenship,” the paper added.

But San Bernardino has given presidential candidates in both parties more of an occasion to sharpen their disagreements than to play up their common ground. While Republicans shared their disappointment over the rare Oval Office address delivered by President Obama to calm the nation’s nerves, they split dramatically over how to respond on the campaign trail.

Donald Trump had already heightened the debate by pushing against stricter gun controls in the wake of the terrorist attacks on Paris. “You look at Paris, no guns — nothing. And you look at California, no guns. I can tell you one thing, if I’m in there and had a gun, we’re going down shooting. We’re going to knock them out, okay,” he said on “Face the Nation” on CBS, according to the Washington Post.

Offense and defense

After the San Bernardino attacks, he called for an immediate freeze on the entry of foreign Muslims, leaving several rivals to attempt what the Los Angeles Times called “the difficult balance of rebuking Trump while still trying to copy some of his appeal.” Jeb Bush, for instance, told ABC’s “This Week” that Americans shouldn’t “target the religion” of Muslim immigrants. “We just have to target those that have co-opted the religion and make sure that we’re fully aware of the radicalizations taking place, not just here but all around the world,” he said, according to the Times.

In New Hampshire, Bush tried to shift the issue’s center of gravity away from national security toward foreign policy, less divisive this year but still politically salient. “If this is a war, and I believe it is since they have declared war on us, we need to declare war on them,” he said, Reuters reported.

Candidates in both parties have found campaign value in denigrating Trump’s approach. Chris Christie, for instance, flatly ridiculed Trump’s proposal. “You do not need to be banning Muslims from the country,” he said, echoing Democrats’ criticisms; in a Tweet, Hillary Clinton called it “reprehensible, prejudiced and divisive.” The Clinton camp appeared to make some calculations similar to Bush’s campaign, shifting the weight of her rhetoric toward America’s response to extremist Islam beyond U.S. borders. “Clinton has been speaking about combating terrorism at length since terrorists killed 130 people in Paris and 14 in San Bernardino,” CNN noted, although, more recently, “the former secretary of state argued that she is the ‘only candidate that’s been outlining a specific plan’ to defeat ISIS.”

A shifting mood

Nevertheless, the psychological fallout from the San Bernardino attacks has been strong enough to shift public opinion further in Trump’s direction than many might care to admit. “From the Capitol to the campaign trail, from Mr. Trump’s childhood neighborhood to the suburbs near the Islamic State-inspired killing of 14 people in San Bernardino, Calif., voters acknowledged, almost despite themselves, the gnawing sense of insecurity that has fueled Mr. Trump’s vision and persistent appeal,” the New York Times concluded from a series of interviews with Americans conducted in and around New York City and early-primary states.

BELMAR, N.J. — Pension reform is going to involve breaking some promises, including reducing benefits that public employees were counting on for their retirement, Gov. Chris Christie acknowledgedduring a town hall event in Belmar Wednesday.

It was an exchange with Jean Toher, a technology teacher at at Shark River Hills Elementary in Neptune, that drew the governor into the heart of the pension debate that he has reignited in recent weeks.

“When I started working, I started at a salary of $12,800,” said Toher, who’s been paying into the pension system since 1980. “Part of the reason a lot of us accepted those low salaries all those years is because we had a benefit and we negotiated that benefit all those years.”

Christie, earlier invoked the D-word (“Detroit”) to demonstrate how dire the situation is, saying that he doubted taxes could raise enough revenue to cover the state’s future pension obligations. They must reduce benefits, he said.

“There’s a lot of emotion that goes along with this issue, but the facts are pretty simple,” he said. “The facts are that this pension will go bankrupt if we don’t make significant changes to it.”

In California, even Gov. Jerry Brown admits the state’s unfunded pension liability is $354 billion. The Legislative Analyst pegs it at $340 billion.

The market value of the assets of the California Public Employees Retirement System was $300 billion on July 31. But in April, CalPERS admitted it was 52 percent underfunded. It’s like a guy who owns a $1 million house saying he’s rich even though he owes $2 million in debt.

Recently, both Stockton and San Bernardino caved in to CalPERS pressure and took reducing pensions out of negotiations over the cities’ bankruptcy proceedings. But that’s just a stopgap. Vallejo did the same thing after its 2008 bankruptcy. But now it’s teetering on the brink of another bankruptcy. As CNN Money reported:

The California city of Vallejo emerged from bankruptcy just over two years ago, but it is still struggling to pay its bills.

The main culprit: Ballooning pension costs, which will hit more than $14 million this year, a nearly 40% increase from two years ago.

As a result, Vallejo continues to dole out large sums of money for retirees. Except for new hires, Vallejo’s police and firefighters can retire at age 50 with as much as 90% of their salary — for life. Public safety workers who retired in the last five years have average annual pensions of more than $101,000.

And the pension costs are expected to continue to rise, with a projected increase of up to 42% over the next five years.

Christie is right — for the Garden State and for the Golden State. The pensions will not be paid in full.

Since then, three cities in the Golden State have either entered bankruptcy or on the verge of it because of massive pension costs — Vallejo, Stockton and San Bernardino. I’m not aware of any other state with more than one such afflicted city, and most states don’t have any.

But are other states learning from California’s mistakes? Evidently not. On Monday, there were reports that New Jersey was copying the screw-up that San Diego elected officials made beginning in 1996:

“Gov. Chris Christie’s move to reduce New Jersey’s pension payment to help close a mid-year budget gap has Moody’s Investors Service concerned that the state is approaching the limit of steps to trim spending.

“The second-term Republican is cutting $694 million of spending to balance the budget for the year through June. That includes $94 million from recalculating the required pension contribution as a result of revised actuarial assumptions, Baye Larsen, a Moody’s analyst in New York, said in a report last week.

“While the fix will help balance budgets through fiscal 2018, pension costs will be higher in later years as a result, according to Moody’s.”

This is crazy. It’s especially crazy from a guy who likes to criticize President Obama for fiscal recklessness. But it’s also super-mega crazy for a politician who takes shots for his doughy appearance to be making like Wimpy of Popeye fame when it comes to indiscipline and the need for instant gratification.

This post has been updated below.

Yesterday, two states located thousands of miles from California elected new governors. And although the elections won’t directly affect the Golden State, California Republicans hoping to reverse their recent fortunes in statewide elections will be observing the results closely.

In Virginia, scandal-plagued Democratic moneyman Terry McAuliffe narrowly defeated Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli. With 99 percent of the precincts reporting, McAuliffe held a 2.5-point lead. Given McAuliffe’s shady business dealings, lack of experience and past as an aggressive Democratic fundraiser, the race was Cuccinelli’s to lose. Although polls and analysis in the media predicted that Cuccinelli would lose by at least 7 points, his Republican predecessor Bob McDonnell won by double digits.

Political commentators have explained his loss by pointing to McAuliffe’s financial advantage, Cuccinelli’s focus on social issues, Cuccinelli’s unlikeable personality, a divided Virginia Republican Party, a surprisingly popular third party candidate and Cuccinelli’s ties to Virginia’s current governor, who is caught up in his own scandals. The government shutdown — which damaged the Republican brand especially hard in a state filled with federal workers — didn’t help either.

However, it’s likely that the narrow loss — unseen in polling — was a result of Obamacare backlash. As the rollout become more problematic, Democrats took heat from angry voters who felt lied to. Should Obamacare’s problems persist or worsen, the law could drag down numerous other Democrats in 2014.

Meanwhile, in a much more Democratic state, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie won re-election in a landslide, 61-38, with 99 percent of precincts reporting. His opponent, unlike McAuliffe, was solid, if uninspiring. Barbara Buono was a progressive state legislator whose political views aligned greatly with her average citizen in her state. But Christie still won an historic victory. And now Christie will be able to point to the huge margins he ran up in the blue state as a reason to nominate him in 2016, as George W. Bush did with his 1998 reelection in Texas going into the 2000 election cycle.

Lessons

What gives?

Some of the reasons for Christie’s success can’t easily be duplicated in other states. His handling of Superstorm Sandy last year, and his likeable personality, make him uniquely popular in New Jersey. (The strength of his likeability, for instance, garnered him an endorsement from NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal.)

Some of the reason for Christie’s success, though, can be duplicated in other blue states — states like California.

Business Insider’s Josh Barro has been covering the final days of the Christie race and has presented several explanations for Christie’s success. He explained one message that was particularly effective:

When Christie yelled at that teacher yesterday about how education spending levels will “never be enough” for New Jersey’s teachers’ unions, he was doing so in a state that spent $19,291 per pupil on K-12 education last year — more than any state except New York and Vermont and 74% more than the national average. New Jersey’s educational outcomes are excellent, but Massachusetts achieves slightly better outcomes while spending 20% less.

New Jersey residents feel overtaxed because they are; depending on how you measure it, the state is at or near the top in state and local tax burden in the U.S., and Christie’s ire toward groups that demand ever-higher taxes and spending is popular with the electorate. Christie’s demands for school spending restraint, even (successfully) urging voters to reject local school budgets en masse in 2010, have been popular.

Given that California has similar problems with overspending and overtaxing its residents, conservative politicians could feasibly use these sorts of arguments against the excesses of Jerry Brown’s first four years. The egregious prison guard contract, for instance, would be an effective talking point.

But that’s only half of Christie’s replicable success: Christie has also done an excellent job of picking his battles. Although Christie opposes gay marriage, he has effectively conceded a court ruling to legalize it, knowing that fighting it would only anger potential supporters to his left.

California and New Jersey are not the same state, but they are blue states. And Republicans have had success in both in the past. If California Republicans want to start winning again, they might find some lessons in Christie’s victory. Republican state assemblyman Tim Donnelly, who officially kicked off his gubernatorial campaign yesterday, would be especially wise to take note.

—

Update: Barro took issue with a point in this article in an e-mail to CalWatchdog. He wrote:

California has very high income tax rates on high earners. But tax collections as a share of personal income are close to the national average. Per-pupil spending on K-12 education in California is actually 17% lower than the national average. Teacher salaries in California are high, but staffing ratios are low, and as a result class sizes are extremely large, second only to Utah.

Because of its lower level of public expenditure, California is able to maintain much lower levels of tax on middle-income residents than New Jersey. Property taxes in California are low; in New Jersey, they are the highest of all 50 states. Income taxes are also low for middle-income California residents.

Because of the different fiscal circumstances, the politics of anti-tax-and-spend policies are very different in the two states, and less likely to be fruitful in California than New Jersey.

The passage of Jerry Brown’s tax increase referendum, including a broad-based sales tax increase, reflects that Californians are not as likely as New Jersey residents to align with the view that the government is overtaxing and overspending. This isn’t surprising given that spending in California is not especially high.

To which I responded:

I should have written:

Conservative politicians could feasibly go on the offense against the nature of some spending in California.

Though California politicians might not be able to point to the same spending levels, there are myriad examples of billions of dollars being misspent. The WSJ piece on excessive prison guard contracts touches on that point. California spending per teacher is extremely high, thanks to unions that also win contracts that occasionally result in terrible things like this happening. California’s expensive high speed rail project, for which spending has spiraled out of control, is another example.

He attacked potential opponents, meaning especially Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, with being out of touch with voters. “”I think we have some folks who think we have to be college professors,” he said. “For our ideas to win we have to govern. And if we don’t win we don’t govern.”

Except that his potential opponents — Paul, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindahl, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, etc. — all are as much “winners” as he his.  They won their last elections.

We don’t know yet what the key issues will be in 2016. Look back to 2005 and remember what the issues were then, compared to the actual issues of the 2008 election: the Hurricane Katrina relief disaster, the economic collapse of Sept. 2008, the slide downward of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, etc.

But Christie already is on the wrong side of what almost certainly will be a key issue in 2016: What I call the Stasi SuperSnooper State. The revelations of NSA violations of our Fourth Amendment rights against “unreasonable searches and seizures” just keep coming. Even as Christie was speaking, the Washington Post revealed new information from whistleblower Edward Snowden on how the NSA’s own internal audits revealed pervasive abuse of personal privacy “thousands of times.”

Yet the issue Christie currently is best known for is defending the NSA, while attacking Paul for defending privacy. Christie, acting as if he were at the 2004 GOP convention, even brought up the specter of 9/11. Unless every American is spied on relentlessly, he held, we could be attacked again by terrorists. Put another way: Only by destroying our freedoms can we remain free.

Winning platform

But as Paul understands, the winning platform is to embrace restoring our Fourth Amendment protections. A “strange bedfellows” coalition has formed to do just that, including libertarian conservatives like Paul and left-wing progressives like the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald, who broke the original Snowden revelations and so much more. Dating back to the Bush regime, Greenwald has been America’s most stalwart journalistic defender of the Bill of Rights.

On the other side are the Establishments of both parties, who consider Snowden a traitor: On the Left, there’s President Obama, obviously, who wants to extradite Snowden and put him in a cage, along with Attorney General Eric Holder and many Democrats and “progressives.”

On the Right are Christie and the GOP leadership in Congress. Former Vice President Dick Cheney branded Snowden a “traitor.”

Yet Americans are on Snowden’s side, according to a Reuters-Ipsos poll. And in particular, the young people the Republicans say they want to attract — and whom they obviously need to win future elections — think Snowden is “some kind of Jason Bourne,” as even the anti-Snowden Sen. John McCain conceded.

The 2016 Democratic nominee almost certainly will have to side with President Obama and against Snowden. Although Obama’s popularity has been dropping nationally, he remains wildly popular among most Democrats. Bucking him in 2016 on this issue would be difficult.

So Republicans have a ready-made issue for them: Backing the restoration of the Fourth Amendment and opposing the Obama police state.

Because Christie is a on Obama’s side, the governor will go noplace fast in the GOP primaries.

Meanwhile, at the state level, the GOP is in about as good shape as it has been in decades. It controls 30 of 50 governorships and the legislature in 26 of 50 states, with de facto control in a 27th state (Virginia); Democrats control 19 legislatures. This GOP surge isn’t just in traditional GOP and swing states. In Michigan — Michigan, the birthplace of the belligerent trade union movement — the state has of late adopted right-to-work laws.

As National Public Radio analyst Achy Obejas — a die-hard liberal — puts it, Republicans have “a surprisingly healthy farm team network.”

Surveying this landscape, what does a veteran Los Angeles Times political reporter conclude? The Republican Party is in danger of falling apart. Doyle McManus actually had an op-ed over the weekend headlined “Is the GOP self-destructing?”

Strife-ridden GOP’s popularity a verdict on Obama

McManus’ thesis is that the battle between what might be called the Ted Cruz/Rand Paul and the Mitch McConnell/Chris Christie wings of the Republican Party is so acute that it has the party, at least in Congress, in constant chaos — unable to agree on how much to challenge President Obama and how far to go on such issues as raising the debt ceiling, undermining Obamacare, etc.

But this strife, while paralyzing GOP efforts to operate coherently in Washington, is interesting for a far different point than the one put forth by McManus: It makes the party’s state-level strength and 2014 prospects are all the more remarkable.

The hard numbers show that after four and a half years of Barack Obama, the Republican Party is in generally strong shape at the state level and doing all right in Congress — despite a lack of coherence on really big issues, and despite a bigger fissure than ever between libertarians who don’t care about social issues and cultural conservatives who want a never-ending war over these issues. Sen. Paul has also illustrated the party’s militarism is by no means uniform in 2013.

So the Republicans have all these headaches — yet they are still doing well by every measure of elected officials outside of the presidency.

That certainly points to a deep dissatisfaction with the Obama status quo.

I am not a Republican. I’ve voted for the GOP nominee twice in the last 24 years, preferring protest votes. But I certainly buy the Republican critique that the media is in the tank for Obama. That’s why we see stories that suggest the GOP is falling apart because of its mass internal dissension when the far more accurate and interesting story is that the party is doing fine in the most crucial stat of all — elected offices held — despite its semi-civil war.

By Ed Ring

The San Francisco Bay Area is one of the most liberal metropolitan areas in America. Democrats are typically favored over Republicans in elections by margins up to 50 percentage points. The SF Bay is also perhaps the wealthiest region in America, with a GDP of over $500 billion, and more than 10 percent of the nation’s billionaires. Not least, as the global center of information technology, attracting top talent from around the world, the SF Bay region probably has one of the smartest populations in America.

So when are they going to take on their public sector unions?

One of the Silicon Valley’s newest billionaires is Facebook Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who burnished his liberal credentials a few years ago by hosting President Obama at a town-hall meeting at Facebook headquarters. But earlier this year Zuckerberg committed to raising funds for embattled New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who has vaulted to the national stage because of his refusal to bow to the demands of public sector unions.

Could it be that public sector union reform is a bipartisan issue? A lot of Democrats agree with that thought, mostly in private; but they aren’t billionaires, and they aren’t raising funds for Gov. Christie.

It’s important to reflect on what this could represent, because Silicon Valley has been relatively absent from politics until recent years. As a source for political fundraising, it is probably the biggest ATM machine in the nation, but in terms of aggressively lobbying to influence policy in California, it’s been punching way under its weight. At the risk of being presumptuous, one might argue the two primary reasons the Silicon Valley leadership are almost all Democrats is because they are social liberals, and because they have never encountered serious attempts at union organizing at their companies. But unions are alive and well in the Silicon Valley in the public sector and the high-tech billionaires are starting to take notice.

Education

The first example of this is public education, where the teachers’ unions exercise veto power over virtually any innovations affecting education policy in California. This has already led to clashes between teachers’ unions and members of the business community, nearly all of them faithful Democrats, who want a better trained workforce.

The second example is more recent, and concerns the troubled finances of local governments. Public sector unions have been unrelenting in their push for higher tax revenues to sustain services, which in turn is calling attention to the pay and benefits of unionized civil servants. Here are calculations from a recent California Public Policy Center study showing the median total compensation for San Jose city employees, using detailed data provided by their payroll department:

San Jose police officer, 2011 median total compensation = $189,411
San Jose firefighter, 2011 median total compensation = $205,557
San Jose other city employees, 2011 median total compensation = $120,092

By contrast, the average 2010 household income in San Jose was $76,495.

A veteran firefighter who (taking into account vacation) works two 24-hour shifts per week before overtime, and makes more than $200,000 per year in total annual compensation, may not seem extraordinarily well compensated to a billionaire. But to a self-employed veteran of Silicon Valley start-ups, who enjoys no job security, has no pension, struggles to maintain continuity of health insurance and pays (including “special assessments”) property taxes at a rate of 1.5 percent on homes that cost over $500 per square foot — it is unfair, extravagant, expensive overkill.

The billionaire business leaders of Silicon Valley are smart enough to know it is economically impossible to pay every skilled worker total compensation averaging between $150,000 and $200,000 per year. And the information technology industry is itself living testimony to the power of innovation to lower the cost of living. The irony is real; if public sector employees made less, and if their unions didn’t ceaselessly lobby for inefficient work rules designed to increase headcount, they could afford to make less. Implementing measures to lower the cost of living through increased private sector competition and more efficient government is the solution — and a big part of doing this requires confronting public sector unions.

Success and failure

Mark Zuckerberg parlayed world-class talent, a brilliant vision, hard work and fortuitous timing to build one of the most spectacular success stories Silicon Valley has ever seen. But for every start-up entrepreneur and the employees who join them to achieve such glory, there are thousands more whose ventures languish or fail. This is the harsh but necessary essence of Silicon Valley culture, the rich innovation ecosystem that the world tries to emulate.

For Silicon Valley’s wealthiest citizens not to confront the public sector unions who control our cities and counties is to turn their backs on the vast majority of workers who helped get them to where they are today.

Forming a coalition to reform public sector unions will not be easy. In California’s current political landscape, consultants who take on anti-union campaigns risk being blacklisted. Donors risk harassment at their homes and businesses. Companies risk being targeted with a “corporate campaign,” where the unions launch a multi-pronged attack directed at employees, shareholders, clients, vendors and the media. In private meetings, union operatives openly threaten the leadership of business associations to follow their agenda. But even California’s all powerful public employee unions cannot withstand a sustained and determined reform effort led by Silicon Valley’s elite.

For Democrats, advocating for union reform is problematic. Unions provide much of their financial support, even in the wealthy, Democratic Silicon Valley. But reform is inevitable because without it, schools will continue to deliver sub-optimal results and more cities and counties will go bankrupt. Democrats are destined to be as bitterly divided over the public sector union question as Republicans currently are over social issues.

Along with declaring his support for Christie, Zuckerberg has formed a political organization to promote education reform, immigration reform, increased spending on research and economic growth. He may wish to consider adding to his political list public sector compensation reform, and public sector union reform. It is an innately bipartisan imperative on which liberals and conservatives alike may find common cause.

Ed Ring is the executive director of the California Public Policy Center, and the editor of UnionWatch.org

By John Seiler

To quote the late, great comedian Chris Farley, “I have what doctors call a little bit of a weight problem.” But with one exception, I don’t mind fat jokes.

After all, my favorite comedians are Farley, John Belushi, Jackie Gleason, John Candy, Lou Costello, Cedric the Entertainer and — the ultimate funnyman — Curly of the Three Stooges. Nyuk! Nyuk! Nyuk!

The exception is when far-left, ultra-politically correct politicians insult those of us who are — in P.C. parlance — “svelte deprived.”

If you’re not, P.C., then no problem. Joke away. I’ll laugh, too.

But if you’re a P.C. person, then I demand that you be P.C. toward everybody, especially the one P.C. minority to which I belong.

Brown just attacked our oppressed minority: “I’m flying Southwest and I oftentimes take the middle seat. I don’t think Christie is taking the middle seat. So I’m doing my part for austerity.” He was referring to Republican Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who’s about my size.

What an insult. Brown should apologize immediately to those of us in the diet-challenged community!

Like any oppressed minority, we also demand special privileges. No, I don’t want anybody’s tax money. I’m not a robber. Rather, we should have special tax breaks. How about no sales tax for fat people at restaurants?

I’ve also come up with a new diet, I call the Tax Cut Diet. One problem I have is that, whenever I even think about taxes and the gigantic amount of money stolen from me by Brown and other P.C. anti-fat bigots, I get nervous and drive down to the local Royal Donut and Bakery and enjoy one of those round delights until I’m slightly less unhappy about being robbed.

The solution is obvious: Cut my taxes and I won’t take as many trips for donuts! I’ll slim down.

Brown could take a weight off the shoulders — and everywhere else — of us pound-challenged Californians. But noooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

By John Seiler

I watched the Republican National Convention speeches yesterday evening the only way possible: by sipping bourbon. It was obvious the whole thing was scripted to project a TV image of the GOP as cuddly reformers.

I also got dizzy, and not from the bourbon. Behind the podium the GOP architects erected giant flat-screen TVs that projected swirling images, usually the red and blue parts of the American flag. It was like a psychedelic, tie-died light show from a 1960s rock concert, although with one disorienting color instead of many.

The first part showed that the GOP also includes minorities. Sensibly, they put up candidates with a good chance of winning: Mia Love, a black woman running for the U.S. House of Representatives from Utah and Ted Cruz, a Latino running for U.S. Senate from Texas, whom I’ve written about. Both had immigrant stories, Love’s family from Haiti and Cruz’ from Cuba. Both were pretty good, although I had to flip the TV channels to hear them because some of the broadcasts skipped these speeches. Media bias? Perhaps.

Ann Romney’s speech was supposed to “humanize” her husband, Mitt. Most pundits said she succeeded. It didn’t matter to me because, like Ann and Mitt, I’m from Michigan and grew up with his father, George — who eerily resembles his son — as governor in the 1960s. I’m still ticked off that George dissed the great Barry Goldwater at the 1964 Republican Convention in San Francisco.

Ann was supposed to close the “gender gap” her husband has with women supporting President Obama more than him. But why don’t the media also talk about the the other “gender gap,” the one where men support Romney more than Obama?

Gov. Chris Christie then gave a speech more about his own story than about Mitt, whom he got to only after the speech was half over. But Christie had a good story about political courage, challenging the government-worker unions, cutting spending and slashing taxes. He also joked about his weight earlier in the day. He may have gained some pounds from earlier.

Platform

The GOP platform also is finished, and runs to 54 pages, which is way too long. The U.S. Constitution is six pages. It starts out talking about “The American Dream.” Which reminds me of the late George Carlin’s quip that it’s a dream because, “You have to be asleep to believe it.”

The platform’s title is “We Believe in America,” which is similar to the Romney campaign slogan commanding “Believe in America,” also the title of his 150-page campaign book. Who said Republicans didn’t believe in recycling? But it reminds me of that old X-Files poster, “I Want to Believe.” Only the belief isn’t in flying saucers and little green men, but that Republicans can cut spending, end inflation and restore prosperity — instead of doing the opposite as they did the last time they ran the show under Bush and the Republican Congress.

Except behind the scenes donating cash, Californians were unseen in the presentation at the convention. What a change from the Nixon-Reagan era, when Californians ruled the roost. Maybe if the party stopped putting up candidates like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Meg Whitman for governor it might be taken more seriously.