… Vince Vaughn plays a shady businessman with a plan to build a high speed rail system through California — only to see one of his business partners (a city manager) mysteriously turn up dead. Colin Farrell, Rachel McAdams (she smokes a vape!), and Taylor Kitsch play cops who will investigate the murder.

 

Writer Nic Pizzolatto based this season’s plot on the very real and very corrupt city of Vernon — an industrial town just a few miles south of Los Angeles. In 2009, long-time Vernon mayor Leonis Marburg was convicted of voter fraud and city administrators were found to have spent millions of public funds on trips and other personal expenses. A former finance administrator even turned up dead in 2012 after an audit found that he didn’t perform up to the standards of his million dollar salary. (His death was later ruled an accident).

Supporters of the real-life California bullet train would aggressively challenge the idea that it could be the inspiration for a TV drama plot involving corruption. But as the Los Angeles Times reported last year, an engineering firm says it was asked to issue a deceptive report that would have hidden a nearly $1 billion cost over-run.

It is also of note that California Attorney General Kamala Harris refused to challenge a Sacramento Superior Court judge’s ruling that the California High-Speed Rail Authority didn’t have a legal business plan that properly identified future funding sources for the $68 billion project.

Pop culture shapes memories of history

Whether or not pop culture representations of real-life events are honest or fair, they have a long history of influencing how those events are recalled. For one example, Tom Wolfe’s 1979 best-seller “The Right Stuff,” and the 1983 film based on the book, put a cynical gauze over the simple, patriotic narrative that had usually been invoked in describing the rise of NASA and America’s space program. Oliver Stone’s 1991 film “JFK” has made history buffs and Americans in general more skeptical of the official narrative of a lone gunman assassinating President Kennedy in 1963. (Stone is now routinely treated as an expert on the topic.)

In his 2005 book, “The Dream Life: Movies, Media, And The Mythology Of The Sixties,” veteran Village Voice film critic J. Hoberman offered examples of how Americans’ memories of some events and movements are shaped as much by popular films as by the actual historical record.

Hoberman notes how in the late 1960s, movies romanticized the student protesters who took on the conservative establishment, and then in the 1970s, treated as heroes the fictional cops and vigilantes who took on the liberal establishment for allegedly coddling protesters and criminals. To Clint Eastwood’s surprise, many film critics saw his role as “Dirty Harry” as rationalizing police violence and placing it in a highly favorable light.

The odds appear long that “True Detective,” season two, will prove an American pop culture landmark. But it could have some resonance in national perceptions of the bullet train and California politics. Season one was considered a significant cultural event, and season two was the subject of a huge media buildup in recent weeks.

The second episode of the second season aired Sunday night.

After them, the percentages fall off fast to single digits.

Only two Californians made the list: Clint Eastwood at 7th place for men, with 1 percent. Dirty Harry still makes a lot of people’s day.

And former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in 6th place for women, with 2 percent; she long has been associated with Stanford University.

Angelina Jolie, with Brad Pitt, apparently owns one of her many homes in California, but spends most time in France. That might change with that new 75 percent top French income tax rate kicking in. Angie ranked 8th on the most admired list, with 1 percent.

Mitt Romney, although he apparently is spending a lot of time at his $12 million La Jolla beach house, was nominated for president last year from Massachusetts, so he’s still not yet a surfer. He garnered just 1 percent of the “most admired” votes, finishing in 9th place.

Conspicuous by his absence was Gov. Jerry Brown. His insistence that California is “back” apparently didn’t catch on much beyond media pundits.

Also missing were former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the last Republican nominee for governor, Silicon Valley billionaire Meg Whitman.

How soon people forget.

By John Seiler

Except for a hilarious Clint Eastwood stand-up routine, last week’s Republican convention in Tampa featured hardly any Californians. At their convention this week in Charlotte, Democrats are showing off their powerful California delegation.

The Democratic schedule seems less firm than the Republicans’ was on the first day of their convention. But over the next three days, the expected speakers will include these Californians:

* Convention Co-chair Actress Eva Longoria, although from Texas, now is a Hollywood star, so she’s a Californian in the view of fans. She’s the Dems’ Hollywood answer to Clint Eastwood. As a creative person, she won’t imitate Dirty Harry’s schtick of mocking the other party’s nominee not sitting in an empty chair. But I’m hoping she’ll make reference to Clint’s performance, perhaps critique it.

I’ve never seen her in anything. But I know she starred in “Desperate Housewives.” Aren’t Democrats supposed to be feminists? I don’t know. To paraphrase Jack Nicholson in “Chinatown,” “Forget it, Jake, it’s Hollywood.”

Let’s just hope it’s fun.

* Ex-President Bill Clinton. Although technically not from our state, he always has been considered an “honorary Californian” for all his trips out here. Remember when he raised some cash, then spent a couple of hours with Air Force One on the tarmac at LAX, allegedly tying up flights, as he got a hairdo? Media Matters, the pro-Democratic group, says the tying up flights part is “a myth.” But Air Force One always ties up air traffic, as we see every time President Obama comes here trolling for cash.

Anyway, Clinton is the only even semi-successful president in the past 24 years, since Reagan left office. The Bushes and, so far, Obama have been abject failures. Clinton, by contrast, left office with — get this, young people — actual budget surpluses. True, Republican House Speaker New Gingrich insisted on them, as did Republican majorities in the House and Senate. Still, Clinton’s name was on the budgets. And Obama also has to face a Republican Senate.

If it weren’t for that Monica business, then Clinton perjuring himself over it and getting impeached, he would be at Reaganesque levels of adulation. As it is, Democrats will be cheering as he were the return of JFK.

Clinton was known as president for his 80-minute stemwinder speeches. Let’s hope this one is a lot shorter. But Slick Willie always could gave a great speech, so this one should be good. Some Democrats have feared that Clinton will overshadow Obama. But Obama is an astute enough politician to understand that he needs every vote he can, and if that means letting Clinton rule the roost, then that’s just fine. Winning a second term is all that counts. Losing turns you into Jimmy Carter.

* Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is the chair of the convention. He governs a city on the verge of bankruptcy — in a state with a Democratic governor and overwhelming Democratic majorities in the Legislature, with a country run by a Democratic president and Democratic U.S. Senate. Republicans only control the U.S. House.

Why can’t he get some Big Bailout Bucks for his city and the state?

* House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. She’s the real author of Obamacare. And as the House speaker for four years — two wild spending years under Republican President Bush, then two more under President Obama — she’s as responsible as anybody for the $16 trillion debt. A difficult person to listen to even if, like me, you get paid to do it.

Ironically, her successor as House speaker, Republican John Boehner, hasn’t made thing any better. Maybe the whole system is just so rotten it’s about to collapse like a cheap card table.

* Rep. Xavier Becerra of Los Angeles. The Dems are featuring a lot of Latinos to counter the Republicans’ A-list of Sen. Marco Rubio, New Mexico Gov. Susanna Martinez, Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval, Senate candidate Ted Cruz, etc. Becerra is vice-chair of the House Democratic Caucus. First elected in 2002, he sits on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee. So I’m eager to hear how he explains the $16 trillion debt he helped run up, especially when Democrats ran the whole show — presidency, Senate and House — from 2009 to 2010.

Ex-Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, although born in Canada and the ex-governor of another state, grew up in the Bay Area. Now she’s a Distinguished Practitioner of Law and Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. Having wrecked Michigan, which under her had 15 percent unemployment and two bankrupt auto giants — GM and Chrysler — taken over by Obama, now she’s grabbing Californians’ tax money.

Like ex-California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, she started out acting in Hollywood. He should put her in one of his “comeback” movies.

Expect a dull speech. Time to hit the fridge for a beer.

*  California Attorney General Kamala Harris is the most activist AG the state ever has seen, and a governor-wannabe. I’m hoping Gov. Jerry Brown runs for a fourth term just to tick her off and make her wait another four years. Her worst action so far was manufacturing a biased “title and summary” for a pension reform initiative, which because of that was pulled by its authors. As Steven Greenhut wrote on our site:

“California Attorney General Kamala Harris’ recent misuse of power to provide a dishonest ballot title and summary for proposed pension-reform initiatives, which she opposes, comes right out of the totalitarian playbook, where those wielding power recognize no rules of decency or fairness.”

About the time she becomes governor in 2019, the whole state pension system will collapse, with no government retirees getting anything. Think she’ll talk about that tonight? Of course not. It’ll just be about imposing her utopia on the rest of us.

* Rep. Barbara Lee of Oakland is my favorite Democrat. She long has criticized the Iraq and Afghan wars as misguided policy. Boy was she right on that. On foreign policy (not domestic), she’s a Democratic Ron Paul. She even attacked Congress for being “missing in action” by not taking seriously its constitutional obligation to either declare war when necessary, or prevent the president from declaring war on his own. The last actual declaration of war was in World War II, but we’ve been at war almost continually ever since.

I hope Lee criticizes President Obama for continuing the unconstitutional wars. In 2009, she opposed his troop “surge” in Afghanistan — something that, during the Vietnam War years, was called an “escalation.” But I doubt she will.

Conclusion: Both parties for two decades now have staged highly scripted imitation reality TV shows. Spontaneity has been snuffed out — except for Clint’s performance last Thursday. Nobody wants to do anything to scare the “undecided” voters into jumping to the other party.

Things were better with riots, as with the 1968 Dem convention. Or contested conventions, as for the Reps in 1976 and the Dems in 1980.  When Obamacare gets into full swing, instead of prescribing Ambien to insomniacs, they’ll pass out DVDs of the Rep and Dem 2012 convention speeches.

By John Seiler

In the great Clint Eastwood Western “The Outlaw Josie Wales,” the Yankee Terrill says, “Doin’ right ain’t got no end.”

So it is with busybodies everywhere. They just won’t leave us alone.

The California Center for Public Health Advocacy just sent out a press release:

“The City of El Monte’s City Council unanimously voted to put a soda tax measure on the November ballot at their meeting last night.

“With this vote, El Monte becomes the second city in California, after Richmond, to propose taxing soda and other sugary drinks as a way to counter their unprecedented childhood obesity crisis. El Monte has the ninth highest rate of childhood overweight and obesity out of 250 cities in California, according to a recent study released by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and the California Center for Public Health Advocacy (CCPHA).

“Overweight and obesity affect more than half (50.2 percent) of the children in the city of El Monte.”

The tax would raise $7 million a year. That’s assuming city serfs don’t trek to neighboring cities to slake their soda cravings.

Of course, it’s just a coincidence that the city has financial problems because, reported the L.A. Times:

“El Monte has also awarded generous benefits to some of its top employees. Former Police Chief Thomas Armstrong, who retired in May 2011, collected nearly $430,000 in his final year with the city through a combination of salary and payouts for unused time off. Armstrong and two other former police chiefs now receive yearly CalPERS pensions of more than $200,000.”

So the real bloat in the city is the obese compensation — salaries and pensions — given to unionized government workers. To pay for that, they’re going to loot kids and their parents even more.

After all, the cops and firefighters have huge bills for donuts.