One story from last October was, “Democrats divided on big issues in CA.”

George Skelton, the Los Angeles Times columnist and 50-year veteran journalist, just reported on the same thing in “All-powerful Democrats find new adversaries: each other“:

It’s the unintended consequence of one-party domination in California. Democrats have conquered Republicans. So they’re turning on each other in the struggle for political power.

He also accented something I have written about as long ago as 2012: That Latinos are wondering why their representation among 10 statewide offices — governor, attorney general, U.S. Senator, etc. — is so slim, even though all posts are held by Democrats. Just one Latino, Secretary of State Alex Padilla. And before last November’s election, their were none.

Skelton:

Latinos are demanding the political power that reflects their community’s population explosion — indeed, plurality — in California.

Nearly 90% of California’s population growth from 2000 to 2011 was Latino, according to the UC Davis Center for Regional Change. Latinos currently account for nearly 40% of the state’s population, roughly on par with whites and nearly six times greater than blacks.

So Latinos are 40 percent of the population — and an even higher percentage of the Democratic Party — but hold just one in 10 statewide offices.

That may change a little if, as CalWatchDog.com has been reporting, retiring Sen. Barbara Boxer’s seat is taken in 2016 by Rep. Loretta Sanchez or former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villariagosa.

But one thing for sure won’t change: fissures among Democrats. Politics is about strife. And if Republicans are too weak to cause much, then inevitably it’s Dem vs. Dem.

But a counter narrative is emerging that suggests the real problem is that all school districts are being unfairly tarred with skepticism over their bonds because of high-profile problems that Los Angeles Unified has had with its use of $1.3 billion in bond funds to buy iPads and laptops. George Skelton’s latest column — headlined “Don’t punish other districts for L.A. Unified’s problems” — makes this case.

However, those who pay attention to education issues (and/or Cal Watchdog) know that there are a wide range of scandals involving school bonds that go far beyond the controversial practice of using borrowed money to purchase short-lived technology. Here’s a short list:

Capital appreciation bonds

This is from a 2013 L.A. Times story:

In recent coverage of the Senate race to succeed retiring Barbara Boxer, talking heads on CNN and MSNBC have treated Villaraigosa, 61, as a formidable foe for Harris, 50. But they have been vague about what it is that might make him preferable to a Democratic rival who seems much more comfortable and appealing on TV and who has far more national patrons.

Given his mayoral record on issues of crucial importance to state Democrats — global warming, mass transit and disdain for cars — Villaraigosa has reasons for optimism. Billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer may adopt Villaraigosa as his stand-in after his announcement Thursday that he wouldn’t run for Senate.

This record is lauded in a June 2013 Los Angeles Times look back at his eight years as mayor.

Rail stations under construction on the traffic-clogged Westside attest to the billions of dollars in transit money he secured. …

And the Department of Water and Power established itself as a leader among utilities nationwide in shifting from coal-fired power plants to solar and wind energy. …

Villaraigosa took office amid rapid changes in the urban landscape of Los Angeles, most dramatically in the revival of downtown and Hollywood. He embraced those changes and tried to hasten the city’s transformation into a place that is more amenable to pedestrians, cyclists and public transit passengers. The city opened 149 miles of bike lanes and launched CicLAvia, a festive cycling event along miles of boulevards closed to auto traffic for the day.

By lucky timing, large-scale rail investments by his predecessors came to fruition on Villaraigosa’s watch. The Gold Line between Union Station and East L.A. opened, followed by the Expo Line linking downtown and Culver City.

But Villaraigosa made his own mark by leading the campaign for Measure R, a $35-billion transportation package passed by voters in 2008. Largely through that ballot measure, Villaraigosa reshaped the region’s notoriously inefficient transit system more than any mayor since Bradley, who got a subway line built between downtown and North Hollywood. Measure R produced much of the money now being spent to extend the Expo Line into Santa Monica, start construction on the new Crenshaw Line in South Los Angeles and bring the Wilshire Boulevard subway to the Westside. It also covers an array of other rail, bus and road projects across Los Angeles County, some of them coupled with zoning changes to concentrate new development around transit stops and draw people out of their cars.

“One of the things about Villaraigosa that is most impressive is that he actually did get it done, and the importance of Measure R cannot be overstated,” said Martin Wachs, an urban planning expert at the Rand Corp. …

Environmentalists welcomed the [city] utility’s growing reliance on renewables, along with the drop in truck pollution at the Los Angeles Harbor, synchronization of city traffic lights and installation of energy-saving LEDs in city streetlights. Evan Gillespie, a deputy director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign, called Villaraigosa’s record “phenomenal,” particularly in addressing climate change. “We now have a road map from the largest public utility in the nation for how you rapidly cut carbon pollution,” he said.

A politician who likes the ladies

But given the repeated tabloid headlines over his personal life during his time as mayor, Villaraigosa is also hugely vulnerable to attack ads. This George Skelton column only scratches the surface.

Actor Tom Hanks had a great line in the movie “A League of Their Own.” Playing the crusty manager of a women’s baseball team, he berates one member into tears and shouts: “There’s no crying! There’s no crying in baseball.”

That came to mind when I read last week that Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was asking for privacy, after admitting to an affair with a prominent TV reporter. To paraphrase Hanks’ character, Jimmy Dugan, there’s no privacy in politics.

There’s no privacy, at least, that a politician can ever count on, particularly at Villaraigosa’s level. He is, after all, mayor of the nation’s second-largest city, with his eye on becoming the first Latino to be elected governor of California since statehood.

Of course, Kamala Harris could face salacious attack ads as well. Her rise to power in San Francisco politics began when Assembly Speaker Willie Brown chose to groom her for a big future after she became the married politician’s girlfriend when he was 60 — and she was just 29.

Future historians might mark July 20 as the date when a full scale war broke out over California’s groundwater.

On July 20 in the Los Angeles Times, George Skelton, the dean of California journalists, said it was unfair to tell him he can’t hose off his driveway or water his lawn while farmers can use all the groundwater they want. And he called for a coalition to legally absolve state property and water rights law going back a century.

He quoted state Sen. Fran Pavley, D-Agoura Hills, who said:

“California property owners have the right to all the water under them.  That began in the Wild West.  And we haven’t adapted to modern times…. It’s competition between property owners who get the most water.  I call it a race to the to bottom.”

Pavley and Assemblyman Roger Dickinson, D-Sacramento, are sponsoring separate bills in the Legislature to increase state government control over groundwater.

Santa Barbara water rights advocate Andy Caldwell reacted on July 24 on a radio program on AM 1290. Caldwell said such an action scared him because agriculture is the mainstay of the economy of most central and coastal counties.

So this could turn out to be another state battle pitting farmers against city folk.

Wild West water shootout?

So what’s going on?

California does not have a groundwater permits process for groundwater use, instead preferring regulation by court adjudication and monitoring of groundwater basins at the local level.  

California Groundwater law goes back not to Wild West shootouts, but to a 1903 legal case, Katz vs. Walkinshaw. In that case, the California Supreme Court established the groundwater rights of the overlying landowner are paramount over rights of others for use outside a basin.

Any new regulation of groundwater in California likely would require ratification by the state Supreme Court, or possibly the passage a state constitutional amendment by the Legislature or voters. 

So agricultural groundwater is not regulated in California, but it is managed. After the passage of Assembly Bill 3030 in 1992 (Water Code Section 10750 et seq.), 200 water agencies and districts adopted groundwater management plans. The Department of Water Resources reports that groundwater is already monitored in 10,000 active water wells where most of the water is used.

The major difference between voluntary local government groundwater management and state regulation is that the state has the power to issue shutdown notices and compel compliance with law enforcement to conserve water. But is the latter necessary? In fact, water levels in aquifers have always rebounded, as shown in the above table.

There still are some areas of the state that have not adopted such management plans.  Liability issues, the high cost of adjudicating water basins, the ability of farmers to self-manage groundwater levels, the complexities of existing water rights, and the lack of legal conflicts over local groundwater usage have made groundwater regulation unnecessary in many areas.

Groundwater is not generally monitored in some 200 water basins where the population is sparse and groundwater withdrawals are typically low. Moreover, it is not possible to convey groundwater from isolated aquifers to George Skelton to hose off his driveway.

Never Let A Groundwater Crisis Go to Waste

President Obama’s first chief of staff, current Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, famously said, “You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”

Echoing that, Dickinson said about the drought (as quoted by Skelton), “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” As with the Emanuel, Dickinson meant using the crisis to increase government control.

According to Skelton’s analysis:

“Over the last century, the Central Valley has lost enough groundwater to fill Lake Tahoe — or enough to inundate the entire state by 14 inches. Between 2003 and 2009 alone, it lost enough to fill Lake Mead. The aquifer has fallen hundreds of feet in some areas, and not just in the San Joaquin Valley…. In the San Joaquin, land has been sinking with the aquifers.”

But again, as seen in the table above, water basins in the Sacramento, Delta, and San Joaquin basins never became depleted — even in the severe drought of 1977. The depletion of groundwater in the Central Valley is isolated to the Tulare Basin.

Even there, as of 2000 the Tulare aquifer had 390 years of remaining water storage left and was depleting at a rate of only 0.25 percent per year, according to a 2012 study conducted under the sponsorship of the National Academy of Sciences.

If California’s Water Wars really are beginning, it’s worth noting that groundwater in California is not part of a Wild West shootout, but a modern, mature system of management and adjudication.

Who is Piketty and why does he matter? His 700-page book, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” newly translated into English, is the best-selling book on Amazon. No largely academic book has ever achieved this distinction before.

Piketty’s central thesis is that the world has returned to its pre-World War I norms of extended periods of slow growth that will result in a further stratification of wealth in which the 0.1 percent fare better than everyone else. This is not because of the Occupy theory that the economy is rigged in an evil way to help them. It’s because of Piketty’s theory that during extended periods of slow growth, the mega rich will see their sophisticated investments in capital (stocks and other financial instruments) gain more share of a society’s wealth than everyone else accumulates through their earnings (salaries).

Many economists on the left love this thesis as providing a grand theoretical way to understand how the world has come to be the way it is — a way they don’t like. Paul Krugman leads the way, proclaiming, “This is a book that will change both the way we think about society and the way we do economics.”

It’s gotten respectful reviews from some free-market economists, and some pretty good takedowns, starting with Tyler Cowen’s essay. (Here’s a round-up of links.)

But whether you think it’s hooey or too high-falutin’ or just arcane, if you’re a believer in Proposition 13, Piketty’s emergence gives you fabulous ammo with which to shoot back at the George Skeltons, Peter Schrags and Harold Meyersons — all the lefty pundits who say it is the prime evil force driving California’s downfall. Piketty says states that have property taxes that penalize homowners if their homes increase in value are imposing what amounts to “America’s secret middle-class tax.”

Property taxes (outside of CA) a ‘secret middle-class tax’

This is from a Matt Yglesias piece in Vox:

“Piketty’s big point about the United States is that we actually do engage in substantial wealth taxation in this country. We call it property taxes, and they’re primarily paid to state and local governments. Total receipts amount to about 3 percent of national income. The burden of the tax falls largely on middle-class families, for whom a home is likely to be far and away the most valuable asset that they own. Rich people, of course, own expensive houses (sometimes two or three of them) but also accumulate considerable wealth in the stock market and elsewhere where, unlike homeowners’ equity, it can evade taxation.

“Piketty also observes that the current property tax system is curiously innocent of the significance of debt. A homeowner is taxed on the face-value of his house, whether he owns it outright or owes more to the bank than the house is worth.”

So the next time you face Prop 13 critics, call them “middle-class haters,” and say that’s the view of Paul Krugman’s favorite economist, too. If Piketty’s PR boomlet continues, you can just use his name and skip the Krugman framing.

With or without Piketty, noting that homes are the single biggest repository of reliable wealth for most middle-class families is a strong defense. But if Piketty proves to be the enduring “rock star” of the progressive community that many lefties think, that gives this pro-13 argument way more juice.

Doubt Piketty is the big deal that I say he is? Today’s NYT opinion page has both Krugman and David Brooks weighing in on his book.

Nexis shows no L.A. Times’ editorials on the topic for more than two years. The last one was the instantly infamous editorial from November 2011 — infamous for its juvenile take on a big issue:

This weekend’s column makes it clear that the LAT’s George Skelton is about to jump off the bandwagon. Skelton gets to the key question: Where’s the money to finish the initial 300-mile segment? Every other obstacle is at least possibly finessable, but not a huge cash shortage when there’s no good option to find the funding:

“It’s astonishing that a seasoned governor who fancies himself a prudent spender refuses to recognize the need to secure financing before embarking on the largest public works project in California history. …

“Brown equates critics of the bullet train with initial opponents of the transcontinental railroad, the Panama Canal, the Golden Gate Bridge, the interstate highway system and the State Water Project, among other ambitious endeavors. But that’s distorting history. Those projects were paid for by dedicated revenue streams — fuel taxes, water fees, bridge tolls — or the federal government.

“If European and Asian countries can build high-speed rail lines, the governor asserts, there’s no reason California can’t. But they’re countries. We’re a state. No state has ever created a bullet train. And unlike Washington, Sacramento can’t print money.”

Confident prediction: Morain to remain in tank for bullet train

But what will the other big wheel in the Sacramento pundit scene do, especially now that he’s more powerful than ever? I refer to Bee opinion columnist and now newly enthroned editorial page editor Dan Morain.

I say no way does he stop colluding with rail authority chair Dan Richard to spread the Kool-Aid that minimizes the project’s giant flaws and personally attacks critics. The Bee just had an astonishingly dishonest editorial on the bullet train’s court setbacks that didn’t even mention the financing nightmare cited by Skelton. And then there’s this specific insight into Morain’s thinking and values: In the middle of August, there were two provocative new stories out about the project.

The first was huge and continues to shape a new reality. It was Judge Michael Kenny’s initial ruling that the rail authority didn’t have a firm, adequate financing plan or sufficient environmental reviews for the first 300 miles of the project, as specified in state law. This angle is meaty and substantive.

The second was an insider’s story about Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Turlock, and how his attempt to create an obstacle to the project with federal regulators seemed about to backfire on him because it might let the state declare that its compliance with federal enviro rules meant it didn’t have to comply with the California Environmental Quality Act.

Morain wrote a lengthy column about the second angle that mentioned the first development in passing. This angle is juicy, to be sure, but the way Morain covered it amounted to amplification for the sneering Jerry Brown narrative that bullet-train opponents are both dumb and bad people.

Rep. Denham appears to get last laugh

As for Denham, he may have gotten the last laugh. The federal regulators he wanted to get involved — the Surface Transportation Board — last week refused the state’s request for quick approvals of the rail project’s first link, and the board’s vice president said the bullet train’s financial fitness must also be thoroughly evaluated.

If Morain thought Denham’s maneuvering was more worthy of comment than a judge’s actual project-blocking ruling, he’s plainly on Dan Richard’s and Jerry Brown’s speed dial.

But at least Skelton is no longer part of the disinformation campaign.

One statistic, from the Census Bureau, shows that once the cost of living is included, California has the highest poverty rate in the U.S., with nearly one in four residents stuggling from paycheck to paycheck — if they even have a job.

The second stat, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, shows that about 19 percent of Californians who want to work full time can’t find such jobs. Only Nevada has a worse rate.

One or both of these numbers were cited specifically or alluded to in Cal Watchdog stories or stories written by Cal Watchdog contributors or alums repeatedly throughout 2013.

Here’s one from Katy Grimes back in March. Here’s another from Katy in June. Here’s one from me a couple of months back.

CA’s mass poverty, underemployment finally judged to be news

So guess who’s decided to start pointing out that the allegedly Golden State has the nation’s highest level of poverty and nearly a fifth of its workers unemployed or underemployed?

Why, it’s the Sacramento Bee’s Dan Walters — as mainstream as it gets. Over the weekend, his column noted that California has “the nation’s highest level of poverty and nearly a fifth of its workers unemployed or underemployed.”

This came after a Walters’ column three weeks ago that had this observation:

“California’s official poverty rate of 16.5 percent is somewhat higher than the national rate of 15.1 percent, but under an alternative Census Bureau method of calculating poverty that includes cost of living, our poverty rate soars to – by far – the highest rate of any state. Nearly a quarter of Californians, 23.8 percent, live in poverty.

“This is, or should be, a matter of shame, especially for politicians who profess to represent society’s underdogs but who enact policies that raise their struggling constituents’ cost of living, or inhibit the creation of jobs that would lift poor Californians out of poverty.”

Welcome to the bandwagon, Dan.

The other Kool-Aid dispensers probably won’t come around

Now it’s time to wait for George Skelton, Dan Morain and the other dispensers of the Sacramento political-media establishment’s conventional wisdom to stop selling the Kool-Aid about the Golden State’s economic rebound.

But don’t hold your breath. Skelton, remember, is the guy who famously declared he didn’t know anyone who didn’t think the governor should break his promise and just raise taxes.

That remains the second-most telling opinion piece ever about the Sacramento media.

The first will never be topped. It was the childish tantrum of a Sacramento Bee editorial than ran after voters rejected higher taxes in the May 2009 special election. Its unforgettable opening:

“Good morning, California voters. Do you feel better, now that you’ve gotten that out of your system?

“You wanted to show the state’s politicians just how mad you are at them. And you did. Boy, did you ever.

“Proposition 1A with its taxes and its spending limit? Too much of one and not enough of the other, you said (or was it the other way around), and voted it down. Never mind that the taxes go into effect anyway. You showed ’em.”

This contempt for Californians is unlike anything I have seen from any newspaper. Normally it’s better hidden by the Skeltons and Morains of the world. They never notice the gap between dominant Dems’ noble rhetoric and what Dems use their power to do. And when voters figure it out, they react with vicious condescension.

Way to go, guys — good luck with the MSNBC interviews! You’ll fit right in.

The first has to do with its allegedly devastating effect on revenue.

It didn’t turn off spigot

There’s something about Proposition 13 that induces derangement among the political and media establishment in California. You can make an argument, as Joe Mathews has, that using direct democracy to shape key state policies is a formula for straitjacketed government. But then the argument should apply to lots and lots of props, not just 13, starting with 1988’s Proposition 98, which made permanent teachers unions’ dominance of state spending and budget decisions. Why should one result of direct democracy bear the blame for other exercises in direct democracy?

But to argue that capping one source of taxes has ruined the state, as the Peter Schrags and the George Skeltons of the world like to do, is bizarre. By any measure, tax revenue in California has gone up far faster than inflation plus population growth since Prop 13’s adoption in 1978. By any measure, California has among the nation’s highest sales, income and gasoline taxes and the highest corporate taxes in the West. Only in property taxes are we in the middle of the 50 states.

We have enough to live within our means. The only reason it sometimes seems like we do not is because of political decisions that place the interests of public employees ahead of the interests of the public, in pay, benefits, job protections and more.

This is pretty well understood among libertarians, conservatives and small-government advocates.

Not just about limiting taxes; it’s about protecting homeowners

But the second grounds for offering a vigorous defense of Prop 13 is often not appreciated enough by people across the California political spectrum — including its admirers. The measure was drafted and passed in a landslide for a very specific and powerful reason: to protect people from losing their homes or suffering financial disaster because of housing bubbles.

This is from a June 5, 1978, Newsweek story about the mood in California on the eve of Prop. 13’s adoption:

“Shaken homeowners and landlords wobbled out of the country assessor’s office in Los Angeles last week with rebellion in their eyes. In the suburb of Palos Verdes, Don Johnson, a certified public accountant who earns $25,000 a year, returned dumbstruck to his four-bedroom ranch home. When he and his wife, Ellen Ann, bought the home in 1959 — for $33,900 — their tax bill was $600 a year. But inflation ballooned the assessed value of the home, and by last year, the Johnsons’ taxes were $1,593. Last week, the tax man released the latest listings. Overnight the assessed value of the Johnson home has soared to $135,000 and the Johnsons’ taxes threatened to skyrocket to $4,139.

“At the assessor’s office in West Los Angeles, an ashen-faced husband emerged to give similar bad news to his wife, a woman in a matronly blue dress. ‘Sam, Sam, don’t tell me,’ she cried. ‘I’m going to have a heart attack right here.'”

Why can’t members of the political-media establishment (including occasional contrarians Joe Mathews and Dan Walters) grasp that we’d have seen a wave of such stories during the housing bubble from 1998 to 2006 without Proposition 13?

Home prices in some markets nearly tripled over that span.

Retirees, those living on fixed incomes and middle-class families with big mortgages would have been devastated  if their property taxes had nearly tripled. We’re talking about millions of people.

So while we are used to seeing Prop. 13 as an artifact from a distant era, we don’t realize it remains an enormous protection TODAY for current homeowners who can barely make ends meet and who would be ravaged by a huge tax hike.

This may not be central to the fight over whether businesses should be exempt from Prop 13’s caps on how fast property taxes can increase. But it should be central to the broad debate over whether Prop 13 is bad or good for California. During the latest housing bubble, as in all the housing bubbles that preceded it, Prop 13 did far more to protect regular Californians from financial disaster than any other single factor.

That should matter much more than it seems to.

This showed yet again Morain’s eagerness to replace the L.A. Times’ George Skelton, who is likely to retire in coming years, as the mouthpiece/stenographer for the Sacramento media/political establishment. This establishment’s goal: to advance the narrative that the biggest problems with state government have to do with the minority party in Sacramento, which has no power but which nonetheless must be blamed for everything, or at least trashed periodically as hypocritical/unconstructive so as to keep attention away from bigger stories.

Now comes along another egregious example that precisely parallels last week’s. Its implicit premise is that if an individual Republican lawmaker makes a mistake or at least a dubious decision, that somehow undermines his and other conservatives’ critique of generous public employee pensions.

“If McClintock were to quit Congress today – trust me; he won’t – his annual state pension would be $77,472, eight times more than what he implied it would be. He also would receive yearly cost-of-living increases, plus an additional pension from Congress, where his pay now is $174,000 a year.”

Why does Morain think McClintock’s alleged hypocrisy is a bigger story than, say, the insane lies told by CalPERS to prop up the pension status quo?

Because he covets George Skelton’s seat so badly. Because he likes the attaboys he gets from the Sacramento establishment when he targets establishment critics.

And, really, what is his point?

If McClintock is shown to be a hypocrite, does that hurt in any way the broad conservative critique of pensions that are dictated  by political influence and not employee retention needs or anything else?

Of course not. But Morain isn’t interested in that big picture. Just in pleasing his political and media pals.

He might as well be Steve Maviglio. Talking points! Three for a dollar! Get ’em here!