“SACRAMENTO, Calif. — As billions of dollars in unexpected tax revenue pour into California, Democratic lawmakers have proposed all kinds of ways to distribute the windfall after years of recession-era budget cuts.

“Just don’t call it spending. In recent weeks, Democrats have been using a more palatable and fiscally responsible term to characterize their individual priorities.

“Instead of spending the taxpayer surplus, they want to invest it.

“Last week, Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, opened up a joint legislative budget committee hearing by saying she hopes the state will make ‘meaningful and strategic investments in early and higher education, in health care access and closing that opportunity gap.'”

Meet linguistics guru George Lakoff

But there’s a very specific history to this ploy that AP doesn’t seem to know about. I wrote about it in 2008:

“A few years ago, the theories of George Lakoff, a UC Berkeley linguist, were all the rage. He argued that Democrats were then in the doldrums because they were inept at framing issues.

“One of his main suggestions: Dems should describe government spending as an ‘investment’ and spending decisions as choices on where to ‘invest.’

“This is a joke, of course, a severe and misleading twist on the traditional meaning of invest and investment. Salaries and benefits paid to government employees are not ‘investments.’ Transfer payments to poor people are not ‘investments.’

“Given the fact that experts say there’s no correlation between school spending and student performance, it’s also absurd to call education spending an ‘investment.’ But all’s fair in politics, so it made sense for Dems to use this ‘frame’ to make their case.

“But why would journalists — unless they also had an agenda designed to change the way voters thought about government spending?”

Most enthusiastic user of ‘invest’ euphemism was a journo

What’s funny is what my 2008 research turned up:

Which brings us Los Angeles Times’ Sacramento-bureau reporter Evan Halper. Look at the shameless way he employs Lakoff’s “framing” technique in his ostensibly straight news reporting:

“September 21, 2008: Come winter, emergency cuts will probably be needed. Proposals to invest in — or merely maintain — the state’s roads, schools and healthcare facilities will be put on the shelf again.

“August 16, 2008: Some needs of government are unpredictable, and placing strict formulas on how the state spends its money could ultimately squeeze schools, healthcare services, the prison system and other government programs that polls suggest voters want the state to invest in.

“August 16, 2008: Assembly Budget Committee Vice Chairman Roger Niello … defended the GOP formula, saying it allows for enough spending growth to steadily increase investments in education and healthcare.

“January 11, 2008: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s ambitious policy agenda collided with fiscal reality Thursday as he rolled out a proposed budget that threatens to unravel his investment in schools, healthcare and criminal justice programs.”

Six years later, AP’s Sacramento bureau thinks this is a heavy-handed semantic game. Back in 2008, the LAT’s Sacramento bureau chief thought it was an appropriate use in straight news reporting.

Draw your own conclusions.

Mostly because of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s dithering and pandering,  nothing seems to be changing in the Empire State, where a fracking moratorium is looking more and more permanent.

But Europe is having second thoughts about its green energy policies.

First came the stories about the crushing economic burden facing Euro nations because of the forced shift to renewable energy. This, of course, has deep implications for California and its AB 32 experiment.

Now comes along another story with implications for the Golden State and its nascent efforts to regulate fracking and bring the Monterey Shale’s vast oil wealth into our economy. A once-deeply skeptical British government now says fracking is safe. This is from Reuters:

“The risks to public health from emissions caused by fracking for shale oil and gas are low as long as operations are properly run and regulated, the British government’s health agency said on Thursday.

“Public Health England (PHE) said in a review that any health impacts were likely to be minimal from hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which involves the pumping of water and chemicals into dense shale formations deep underground.

“Environmental campaigners have staged large anti-fracking protests in Britain, arguing that it can pollute groundwater and cause earthquakes. …

“Since there is currently no fracking in Britain, the PHE report examined evidence from countries such as the United States, where it found that any risk to health was typically due to operational failure.

“The currently available evidence indicates that the potential risks to public health from exposure to emissions associated with the shale gas extraction process are low if operations are properly run and regulated,” said John Harrison, director of PHE’s center for radiation, chemical and environmental hazards.”

It’s just another dirty-but-manageable heavy industry

Which brings us to another angle with implications for California. British regulators consulted with U.S. regulators. And surprise, surprise, the Obama administration experts said what they’ve said for years: fracking is just another dirty heavy industry that can be made tolerable with basic regulations.

The angle for California here? The astounding newspaper blackout in the Golden State of the fact that the Obama administration considers fracking safe.

Here’s a look at egregious “analysis” by the Sac Bee’s Tom Knudson.

Here’s a look at the staggering breadth of Obama-fracking-view-omitters on the staff of the L.A. Times.

Here’s a look at the single most stunning example of California media disinformation on Obama and fracking, which contrasts how the L.A. Times covered a press conference on fracking with Obama’s commerce secretary with how the New York Times covered the same event.

Bias in reporting rarely is easier to document than this: The vast majority of CA reporters covering fracking never even mention that the administration of the greenest president in history thinks that it is safe.

Hey, newsrooms of California, isn’t that news?

Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?

This is the maddening question that should hang over all the stories depicting Jerry Brown as some sort of genius governor. David Siders of the Sacramento Bee today became only the latest journalist to treat political process achievements as tantamount to real progress and successful stewardship:

“Praise for California and its governor, Jerry Brown, has drifted in for months now from the East Coast, ever since Brown and state lawmakers enacted a balanced budget this summer.

“The accomplishment followed years of deficits and budget standoffs at the Capitol. Coupled with the Legislature’s relatively frictionless action on issues ranging from education funding to gun control and immigration, the statehouse found itself comparing favorably to dysfunction in Washington, D.C. …

“Brown, the lunchtime speaker at the event, argued one reason for this success is that, through a series of ballot measures, Californians “broke a decade of dysfunction and laid the foundation for a government that actually works.”

Evan Halper of the L.A. Times also today accepts the narrative that political process achievements are tantamount to real progress:

“'Three years ago California was called a failed state,' [Gov. Brown] said. 'They were virtually chortling in the conservative venues.'

“Brown credited California’s turnaround to a series of ballot measures. The measures allowed a state budget to get passed with a simple majority of lawmakers, put an independent commission in charge of voting boundaries, and raised taxes by billions of dollars.

“'The people themselves through the initiative actually broke a decade of dysfunction and laid the foundation for a government that works,' he said.”

The rest of the story that Siders, Halper skip

How is it good journalism to accept uncritically the idea that California is doing better because its political process is less contentious?

How is it good journalism to focus on Brown's self-serving claims instead of the fact that California has the highest effective poverty rate in the nation? That California has the second-highest rate of people unable to find full-time work? Don't mass poverty and mass unemployment count as news?

I honestly don't know how Siders and Halper can't understand the flimsiness of equating process success with real-life progress. Nor do I understand why mass economic misery is a non-story. But here's what one veteran Sacramento watcher told me the last time I expressed frustration with the reporters covering the state:

July 1, 2013

By Chris Reed

The Sacramento Bee has joined the reporting staff of The Los Angeles Times and the Ventura County Star’s Timm Herdt in the Fracking Disinformation Hall of Shame. Bee reporter Tom Knudson has a lengthy, often alarmist look at hydraulic fracturing, its long history in California and the possibility that it could trigger a huge economic boom in Golden State.

But while dwelling on fracking’s purported dangers, what Knudson’s article never does is mention the Obama administration’s extensively documented position on fracking: namely, that it is just another heavy industry that can be made safe with good regulations. Instead, Knudson offers up this sort of passing observation as fact: “fracking’s risks to groundwater remain unknown.”

All the president’s men (and women) disagree

Hey, Tom! I know you’re a Pulitzer Prize winner and all, and that therefore you shouldn’t be subject to questioning or editing, but when writing about fracking, aren’t these facts relevant?

— The president’s first energy secretary, Steven Chu, said: “We believe it’s possible to extract shale gas in a way that protects the water, that protects people’s health. We can do this safely.”

— The MIT physicist Obama chose to succeed Chu, Ernest Moniz, described the risks to water posed by fracking as “challenging but manageable.”

— The president’s first Environmental Protection Agency director, Lisa Jackson, told a House committee that she was “not aware of any proven case where the fracking process itself has affected water.”

— Sally Jewell, the president’s secretary of the interior, at a May 17 news conference announcing the release of fracking rules for public and Indian land, declared the following: “I know there are those who say fracking is dangerous and should be curtailed, full stop. That ignores the reality that it has been done for decades and has the potential for developing significant domestic resources and strengthening our economy and will be done for decades to come.”

Or just for fun, Tom, maybe you could quote the president himself. The photo atop this post of a recent Huffington Post story shows how he feels.

Maybe Tom Knudson got in the green tank for career reasons

The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times both covered Interior Secretary Jewell’s May 17 news conference. The contrast in their coverage is pretty amazing.

“The L.A. Times’ account put in the ‘fracking is safe and has been around forever’ context by quoting an oil industry trade association spokesperson. The NYT quoted THE SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR!

“Quite a gigantic difference. But than the LAT’s Neela Banerjee and Wes Venteicher and their editors can’t have Times’ readers knowing the Obama administration likes fracking, can they? It doesn’t fit the West L.A.-Marin County-NRDC narrative.”

Maybe that explains the Sac Bee’s Tom Knudson not mentioning the Obama administration’s view on fracking. He’s angling for a job at the L.A. Times.

Sheesh. If any member of the California journalism corps can offer a logical explanation as to why the environmental and political reporters who cover fracking never mention the position of the greenest presidential administration in history, I will be happy to pass it along.

But that won’t happen, because it is impossible to come up with such an explanation.

Paging Dan Walters, paging Dan Walters

The best explanations are the simplest one: 1) All these political and enviro reporters are in the green tank. They’d rather not get blowback from the people they cover, so they don’t mention an angle so powerful it makes the fracking-is-dangerous crowd look like fools. 2) They’re green activists pretending to be impartial journalists.

On fracking, I look forward to Dan Walters eventually fulfilling his periodic role of pointing out the stupidity of the media party line, like he has this year on budget happy talk and like he did back in late 2006 when reporters actually bought the idea that Arnold Schwarzenegger had figured out to make Sacramento functional.

Dan probably won’t name/shame Knudson, but I’ll settle for any improvement on the Sierra Club fracking propaganda we’ve been seeing masquerade as news and “analysis.”

By Chris Reed

The new Los Angeles Times poll showing sharp skepticism among Californians about hydraulic fracturing — the newly improved oil-gas drilling process that has triggered a brown energy revolution — should trigger fierce pride among Times reporters Neela Banerjee, Evan Halper, Julie Cart, Wes Venteicher, Bettina Boxall, Shan Li, Michael J. Mishak, Kathleen Hennessey, Amy Kaufman, Kenneth Turan, Nicole Sperling, Ronald D. White, Tiffany Hsu, Ruben Vives and Michael Hiltzik.

A Nexis hunt shows that over the past year, each of these L.A. Times’ reporters has written about fracking WITHOUT EVER MENTIONING THAT THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION DISMISSES ENVIRONMENTAL CRITICISM OF THE PROCESS.

Why do I uppercase this? Because it is literally incredible that journalists for an important, powerful newspaper think that the position of the greenest president in the history of the nation is irrelevant to one of the most pitched public policy debates in the nation.

Energy and interior secretaries, EPA chief, task force all call it safe

To recycle some of what I’ve written before:

— A task force commissioned by the Obama administration’s Energy Department concluded in a 23-page report issued in November 2011 that fracking was just another heavy industry, one with significant but manageable pollution concerns.

— The president’s first energy secretary, UC Berkeley’s Steven Chu, said: “We believe it’s possible to extract shale gas in a way that protects the water, that protects people’s health. We can do this safely.”

— Chu’s replacement, MIT physicist Ernest Moniz, said the risk that fracking posed to water supplies was “challenging but manageable.”

— The president’s first Environmental Protection Agency director, Lisa Jackson, disputed claims that fracking, which occurs 5,000 feet below the surface, had polluted water tables which are usually less than 1,000 feet below the surface. She testified before a House committee that she was “not aware of any proven case where the fracking process itself has affected water.”

Neela Banerjee: Serial factual omitter

The single most graphic example of the fact that there is a calculated decision made to not mention the Obama administration’s views comes from a recent article by Neela Banerjee — who has written more than any other LATer about fracking — and Wes Venteicher. Published on May 17, it dealt with Sally Jewell, Obama’s interior secretary, and her announcement of new federal fracking rules for drilling on public and Indian lands.

Banerjee and Venteicher noted the controversy over fracking and turned to an industry spokesman to offer the context that fracking has been around decades and hasn’t been the devil.

“‘States have been successfully regulating fracking for decades, including on federal lands, with no incident of contamination that would necessitate redundant federal regulation,’ said Kathleen Sgamma, vice president of government and public affairs for Western Energy Alliance, a Denver-based trade group.”

The New York Times covered the same press conference and, like Banerjee and Venteicher, also quoted Jewell. But while the LAT offered mushy generalities from the interior secretary, veteran NYT reporter John M. Broder believed it was somewhat more significant that she said this:

“Anticipating criticism from environmental advocates, she said: ‘I know there are those who say fracking is dangerous and should be curtailed, full stop. That ignores the reality that it has been done for decades and has the potential for developing significant domestic resources and strengthening our economy and will be done for decades to come.’”

Fracking safety: NYT cites Obama Cabinet member, LAT quotes flack

How does Banerjee sleep at night, slanting things this dramatically? When trying to steer the public toward an opinion on fracking’s safety, she quotes an oil industry flack. The New York Times quotes OBAMA’S SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR. And it’s a quote the LAT reporter could have used but chose to ignore.

I rest my case.

By Chris Reed

If you had to fashion a nut graph to explain why so many local California governments are in deep fiscal trouble, here’s my nominee for an honest generic overview:

Over the past 20 years, the city/county/district’s political leaders have often acceded to union demands for higher benefits and pay, including retroactive increases in pension formulas and automatic annual raises typically granted just for accumulating years on the job. When the economy is strong and revenues increase, the policies are costly but sustainable. When the economy is weak and revenues level off or fall, the city/county/district is forced to reduce services or fight with powerful unions to impose layoffs. This often leads to budget gimmicks and/or questionable uses of bond funds — policies that protect public employees’ interests over the public’s.

Here’s a boiled-down version of the usual generic overview from California’s mass of mediocre journalists:

It’s the fault of the failing private-sector economy. It didn’t create enough tax revenue to keep the status quo going.

So now we have San Bernardino’s bankruptcy unfolding — with big court decisions possible this year —  and which journalistic outlet is doing the best job at giving a comprehensive, smart analysis of what’s going on, one that doesn’t buy the lazy dishonesty of overview no. 2?

Oddly enough, it’s Reuters, the international wire service that generally hasn’t particularly shined in its U.S. coverage.

This is from a March 19 story:

“LOS ANGELES, March 19 (Reuters) — The bankrupt city of San Bernardino, California, approved over $1 million in pay increases for police and firefighters despite claims it can barely make payroll, let alone afford the salary hikes.

“Monday night’s pay increases, for a city that appears before a federal judge again this week to plead for bankruptcy protection, are a result of its charter. It mandates that pay for safety workers must be tied to salary levels for 10 similar-sized California cities, all of which are wealthier than San Bernardino.

“The bankruptcy of the city 65 miles east of Los Angeles is a national test case on whether the pensions of government workers take precedence over other payments in a municipal bankruptcy. It is a high-stakes issue for pension plans and their beneficiaries, and for Wall Street bondholders who lend money to governments.

“Moves to have the city charter overturned, so the city can set its own pay levels, have failed to get the majority needed on the city council in the past year.”

Police morale at ‘low ebb’ — oh, the humanity!

This if from a Feb. 12 story:

“RIVERSIDE, Calif., Feb 12 (Reuters) — San Bernardino’s police and firefighters unions will ask a judge later this week to let them sue the bankrupt city over pay and benefit cuts, arguing that officials have abused bankruptcy laws to impose concessions on safety workers.

“A lawyer for the city’s police union, Ron Oliner, on Tuesday told the federal judge overseeing the case, Meredith Jury, that after recent cuts to police pay, pension benefits and staffing levels, morale in the force was at a ‘low ebb’ and they had no alternative but to try to sue the city in state court.

“An attorney for the stricken city’s firefighters union, Corey Glave, said they would do the same, in coordination with the police union.

“The large and growing burden of public pension debt, in addition to salaries and overtime — particularly for San Bernardino’s safety workers — has become a prominent issue in the city’s bankruptcy as it seeks to cut costs.”

This is from Reuters’ magnum opus, a Nov. 13, 2012, story that dug up all the bodies:

“The city’s decades-long journey from prosperous, middle-class community to bankrupt, crime-ridden, foreclosure-blighted basket case is straightforward — and alarmingly similar to the path traveled by many municipalities around America’s largest state. San Bernardino succumbed to a vicious circle of self-interests among city workers, local politicians and state pension overseers.

“Little by little, over many years, the salaries and retirement benefits of San Bernardino’s city workers — and especially its police and firemen — grew richer and richer, even as the city lost its major employers and gradually got poorer and poorer.

“Unions poured money into city council elections, and the city council poured money into union pay and pensions. The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (Calpers), which manages pension plans for San Bernardino and many other cities, encouraged ever-sweeter benefits. Investment bankers sold clever bond deals to pay for them. Meanwhile, state law made it impossible to raise local property taxes and difficult to boost any other kind.

“No single deal or decision involving benefits and wages over the years killed the city. But cumulatively, they built a pension-fueled financial time-bomb that finally exploded.

“In bankrupt San Bernardino, a third of the city’s 210,000 people live below the poverty line, making it the poorest city of its size in California. But a police lieutenant can retire in his 50s and take home $230,000 in one-time payouts on his last day, before settling in with a guaranteed $128,000-a-year pension. Forty-six retired city employees receive over $100,000 a year in pensions.

“Almost 75 percent of the city’s general fund is now spent solely on the police and fire departments, according to a Reuters analysis of city bankruptcy documents — most of that on wages and pension costs.”

Reuters offers striking contrast with LAT’s Halper, Skelton

Have you ever seen anything in the L.A. Times as succinct as the Reuters’ copy quoted above in the Times’ coverage of California’s various local and state fiscal meltdowns?

Nope. The fish rots from the head down. Instead, you see Sacramento bureau chief man Evan Halper use the rhetorical tricks of a Democratic propagandist in writing about budget policies. And you have the incomparably compromised Sacramento columnist George Skelton, both the embodiment and the tool of the state’s intertwined political/media establishment, writing that he’s never met anyone who didn’t think higher taxes were the answer to California’s woes.

Too bad Reuters doesn’t cover Sacramento with the vigor it covers San Bernardino.

By Chris Reed

The Los Angeles Times reported over the weekend that public employee unions are suing to block some of the pension reforms that Gov. Jerry Brown got through the Legislature last fall.

“Advocates for the changes said the cuts were necessary to help reduce California’s mounting bills for retirement benefits, which are expected to cost many billions more in coming decades than the state and local governments have set aside for them. The pension law signed by Brown last year affects retirement systems at the city, county and state level.”

But the lengthy L.A. Times article — incredibly — fails to mention that the Brown administration is trying to block pension reform in San Diego, courtesy of Brown’s appointees to the state Public Employment Relations Board.

The reporter, Chris Megerian, is not someone whose track record I am familiar with. He’s not Evan Halper, employing the language issue-framing tactics recommended by a liberal professor, or Tiffany Hsu, butchering easy stories with lame interpretations.

But whatever Megerian’s background, isn’t it, yunno, news, that Jerry Brown’s adminstration whines about some lawsuits targeting pension reform while it pursues others?

Of course.

By Chris Reed

It’s not just money from Proposition 30’s sales-tax and income-tax hikes that is being used to provide for teacher pay raises and to allow continuation of “step” pay policies that give teachers raises most years just for time on the job and to maintain “column” pay policies that give teachers raises for meaningless accumulation of graduation school credits.

It turns out that the other tax-hiking measure that won approval in 2012 — Proposition 39 — is also a vehicle to that end. The measure blocked multistate corporations from getting to pick where they paid their taxes on revenue generated in California. It is expected to yield about an extra $1 billion a year to the state treasury. It’s long been anticipated that some of the money would be used to increase energy efficiency in school districts.

But instead of distributing the money to schools with the most needs, Gov. Jerry Brown is instead proposing to base its distribution on “Average Daily Attendance,” the same basic method that is used to determine how much money the state gives school districts — and to do so with relatively little oversight. Districts, which stand to get $2.6 billion over the next five years, would basically self-report on their compliance.

This has already triggered complaints from early sponsors of Proposition 39 and criticism from the Legislative Analyst’s Office. Both say that spending should be targeted.

A clandestine way to divert money to teacher compensation

But this is even more of a scam than is understood. The problem isn’t just that the spending isn’t prioritized to get the money to where energy efficiency is the biggest concern. It’s that the language of Brown’s proposal appears to allow districts to spend their Prop. 39 funding on energy-related items in their operating budgets. This would free up more funds for employee compensation, which consume more than 90 percent of the regular budget in many districts.

School districts have been caught lying about attendance, stealing school lunch money, and misusing billions in bond funds — all so as to free up money to keep the automatic raises going to teachers. Diverting Prop. 39 funds would be a relatively minor sin on this front.

All of which brings me back to Reed’s Law, which I wrote about here last month. That law: Whether in the Legislature or in local school districts, the top priority is always freeing up or increasing revenue to allow tenured teachers to receive the automatic “step” raises that typically are provided for 15 of their first 20 years on the job — just for showing up.

Understand this, and California politics becomes demystified and uncomplicated.

Understand this, and it’s no surprise that a ballot measure that’s ostensibly about ending a tax loophole and promoting energy efficiency ends up being one more stealth measure to preserve automatic teacher raises.

The conventional wisdom about the California Teachers Association being a powerful player in Sacramento doesn’t come close to describing the truth. The CTA’s push to protect the pay and tenure of veteran teachers is so powerful, intense and unrelenting that it distorts policies in areas that seem to have little overlap with education.

I look forward to the day that “investigative journalist” Evan Halper points this out.

By Chris Reed

As I noted in a CalWatchdog post last week, the California media are covering the state government’s aggressive attempts to lead the nation in the early implemenation of Obamacare without bringing up its immense fundamental problems.

“Beginning next Jan. 1, most companies with at least 50 full-time employees have to offer health insurance. But if they don’t, the fine is a pittance -– $2,000 per employee per year –- compared with the cost of providing health insurance. This creates a gigantic incentive for businesses to drop health coverage and push their employees toward getting insurance though government-run exchanges set up by Obamacare. If a struggling company could swiftly become a prosperous one by offloading 70 percent or more of the cost of providing health coverage, many thousands are going to do it. Some might face shareholder suits if they don’t.

“Also beginning next January, individuals without employer-provided health insurance will face fines under an income-based formula that mandates a penalty of less than $1,000 for those making under $40,000 a year. That $40,000 is significantly higher than the median household income for adults younger than 35, a subset that’s much healthier than older adults. All adults will have an incentive to only buy health insurance when they get sick; under Obamacare, they can no longer be rejected for pre-existing conditions. But these young, healthy adults will have a gigantic incentive.”

Now the fact that this law is the worst piece of legislation since the Indiana legislature voted unanimously for a bill to change the numerical value of pi is beginning to sink in with a Democratic interest group that was one of its hugest supporters: labor unions. This is karma on many fronts, and vindication for the many who said the law was larded with regulations that would have unanticipated negative implications.

It will ‘make union workers less competitive’

This is from the Wall Street Journal:

“Union leaders say many of the law’s requirements will drive up the costs for their health-care plans and make unionized workers less competitive. Among other things, the law eliminates the caps on medical benefits and prescription drugs used as cost-containment measures in many health-care plans. It also allows children to stay on their parents’ plans until they turn 26.

“To offset that, the nation’s largest labor groups want their lower-paid members to be able to get federal insurance subsidies while remaining on their plans. In the law, these subsidies were designed only for low-income workers without employer coverage as a way to help them buy private insurance. …

“Contacted for this article, Obama administration officials said the issue is subject to regulations still being written … .

“Top officers at the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the AFL-CIO and other large labor groups plan to keep pressing the Obama administration to expand the federal subsidies to these jointly run plans, warning that unionized employers may otherwise drop coverage. A handful of unions say they already have examined whether it makes sense to shift workers off their current plans and onto private coverage subsidized by the government. But dropping insurance altogether would undermine a central point of joining a union, labor leaders say. …

“The Teamsters’ Mr. Hall said his union has no plans to eliminate workers’ insurance. Instead, he worries employers will have an incentive to drop coverage in collective bargaining if they can’t tap the subsidies.”

Some of the policies that unions object to may actually be defensible for forcing an acknowledgment of how the heavy cost of health care escapes compensation taxation, which encourages higher spending on health care. But the larger gripe of unions, the idea that they had no idea how sweeping this would be and how it would rock their world, is hilarious in context. Obamacare’s critics weren’t just ideologues. They were serious policy people. And on nearly every front, their warnings are being validated. But supporters aren’t being held to account for their willing blindness.

When will the ideologues who pretend to be neutral Sacramento journalists point this out?

The over-under is May 1, 2018.

When George Skelton sets the agenda, the real world is ignored.