The silence of Democratic lawmakers up and down the Golden State on the landmark ruling is striking. Gov. Jerry Brown even gave a speech last Friday to the convention of NALEO (the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials) that talked about Latino needs in California that didn’t mention Vergara, according to media coverage.

But one outspoken liberal won’t bite his tongue. George Miller — the 39-year congressman from the Bay Area who is considered Nancy Pelosi’s most trusted lieutenant — agrees with the Vergara ruling’s bleak assessment of how minorities are treated in California schools.

This is from his op-ed in the Contra Costa Times:

“It is time for the next generation of teacher policies. The first step must be to create a working environment that fits today’s professionals. Teachers must be provided with the opportunity to be creative and respond to the needs and learning styles of their students. The system must recognize their talents and efforts and provide them with targeted support, including guidance from mentor teachers. … Teachers also need fair evaluation systems and rights at work that allow them to continue to grow, while staying focused on whether students are learning.

“Educator-preparation programs must be part of our next-generation approach. … Prep programs must have high standards for who enters and graduates from their programs.”

Ruling can trigger needed change

But Miller didn’t just stick to generalities. The ranking Democrat on the House education committee called on California’s leaders to accept Judge Rolf Treu’s insights and to act on them:

“Vergara provides the opportunity for this vital evolution. This is not the time for playing politics or for quick legislative patches. Now is the time for a thoughtful, deliberative process that first asks what is in the best interest of students, and then develops policies with the needs of our children in mind.

“In his decision, Judge Treu pointed to the state’s responsibility to protect children’s rights to constitutionally mandated equal educational opportunities. … Anything short of that standard will turn the conversation away from the classroom and back to the courtroom.

“The policies challenged in Vergara clearly were not supporting students … . [California needs] new teacher policies that guarantee children their right to an equal education and that will enable teachers to be the highly effective professionals they desire to be and that we so desperately need.”

Now Miller doesn’t directly mention the CTA or CFT, but he hardly has to; everyone knows why teachers have such extreme protections. Namely, because Sacramento might as well be a protection racket, it’s so overtly shady. The teacher unions buy their special treatment.

If a Pelosi confidant will essentially admit this concentration of power hasn’t been good for minorities, what about Pelosi herself? Or the governor? Or state Senate President Kevin De Leon?

Will national media beat Sacramento pack on this angle? Maybe

The failure of the Sacramento media to probe this angle yet is beyond amazing. I wouldn’t be surprised if the N.Y. Times, the Wall Street Journal or Politico covered the teachers vs. minorities overtones of Vergara before the Sacramento pack does.

As I wrote a few weeks ago, the same reporters covered the Dem intraparty rift over retaining Prop. 209, which pits Asian members vs. Latino and black members.

Now they won’t cover the looming rift between Latinos and teachers unions. This isn’t just odd. It’s inexplicable.

Here’s more on Rep. Miller — a Merc-News editorial on his pending retirement that illustrates Miller’s stature among California and national liberals.

No way, as illustrated by a new report from state Auditor Elaine Howle on “high-risk” government programs that got cursory coverage from the Capitol press corps. The state teachers’ pension system, the prison system, emergency preparedness, computer systems and public health efforts are all found wanting. Those are some pretty crucial categories of government operations.

Here’s a sample of Howle’s warnings:

“The funding status of the Defined Benefit Program of the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS) has not improved, and it remains on the high-risk list. … The inability to adjust contributions, as well as poor investment returns due to economic recessions, have caused the funding ratio of the CalSTRS Defined Benefit Program to decrease from 98 percent in 2001 to 67 percent in 2012, well below the 80 percent considered fiscally sound. At the current contribution rate and actuarially estimated rate of return on investments, the Defined Benefit Program’s funding ratio will continue to drop and assets will eventually be depleted. Similarly, the State’s estimated accrued liability of $63.85 billion related to retiree health benefits is almost completely unfunded and continues to increase. …”

“We have added the 2011 realignment of funding and responsibility between the State and local governments as a new high-risk issue. Realignment shifts the funding of and responsibility for many criminal justice and social services programs from the State primarily to county governments. The funding for these programs totals approximately $6 billion. The State does not currently have access to reliable and meaningful data concerning the realignment. As a result, the impact of realignment cannot be fully evaluated at this time. Even so, initial data indicate that local jails may not have adequate capacity and services to handle the influx of inmates caused by realignment.”

Infrastructure, workfore prep, emergency records all weak

“Maintaining and improving the State’s infrastructure remains on our list of high-risk issues. The State’s investments in transportation and water supply and flood management infrastructure have not kept up with demands. The California Transportation Commission estimated that the State faces a funding shortfall of more than $290 billion to adequately maintain its transportation infrastructure for the 10-year period from 2011 through 2020. Similarly, the State’s water supply and flood management infrastructure requires significant investments. …”

“The State continues to face challenges related to its workforce and succession planning as the proportion of employees approaching retirement age increases. While state agencies we reviewed had generally developed workforce and succession plans to ensure continuity of critical services, we identified notable exceptions. Further, with the recent reorganization combining the State Personnel Board and the California Department of Personnel Administration into the California Department of Human Resources, the State faces the general risk associated with this type of structural change.”

“The State’s emergency preparedness remains an area of high risk. Two key California agencies that oversee statewide emergency management — the California Department of Public Health (Public Health) and the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES) — lack fully developed strategic plans to guide their emergency preparedness efforts. “

Home to Silicon Valley still a joke on IT front

Then there’s the hardy perennial: the state’s computer klutziness.

“The high costs of certain projects and the failure of others continues to make the State’s oversight of information technology (IT) projects an area of high risk. As of July 2013 the California Department of Technology (CalTech) reported that 46 IT projects with total costs of more than $4.9 billion were under development. In our August 2011 high risk report, we discussed four large IT projects that would have a major impact on state operations — the State Controller’s Office’s 21st Century Project, the Judicial Branch’s California Court Case Management System, the California Department of Finance’s Financial Information System for California, and Corrections’ Strategic Offender Management System. With this update, we examined the status of these projects, as well as the California Department of Motor Vehicles’ IT Modernization Project. We found that three of the five IT projects experienced major problems that require either part of the project or the entire project to be suspended or even terminated. “

“Finally, Public Health and the California Department of Health Care Services (Health Care Services) remain on the list of agencies exhibiting high-risk characteristics. Public Health continues to face challenges and weaknesses in program administration and is slow to implement audit recommendations with a direct impact on public health. Its unresolved recommendations have increased from 20 to 23 in the past two years. Many of these recommendations have a direct impact on public health and safety and, if not implemented, could adversely affect the State.”

This doesn’t exactly paint a picture of a well-run government. Somehow I doubt The New York Times or any of the other Jerry Brown fans in East Coast newsrooms will get around to mentioning any of this.

“Just two years ago, the idea that California could be a global model for anything was laughable. When Brown took office, the state was staggered by double-digit unemployment, a $26 billion deficit and an accumulated ‘wall of debt’ topping $35 billion. California was a punch line for Republican politicos – a cautionary tale, they said, of the fate that awaits the nation should it embrace Left Coast-style economic, social and environmental liberalism. On the campaign trail in 2012, Mitt Romney joked that ‘America is going to become like Greece, or like Spain, or Italy, or like . . . California.’

“But in astonishingly short order, America’s shrewdest elder statesmen blazed a best-worst way out of California’s economic morass. With a stiff cocktail of budget cuts and hard-won new taxes, Brown has not only zeroed out the deficit, he’s also begun paying down the debt. ‘Jerry Brown’s leadership is a rebuttal to the failed policies of Republicans in Washington,’ says Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress. ‘California is proving you can have sane tax systems, raise revenues, eliminate structural deficits and have economic growth.’

“Fed up with the state’s own obstructionist Republicans, California voters have even given Brown a Democratic supermajority in the state legislature. As a result, the Golden State is now reasserting itself as a proving ground for the kind of bold ideas that Republicans have roadblocked in Washington – including a cap-and-trade carbon market, high-speed rail and education-funding reform.”

Sigh. Did Jerry Brown write this himself?

Drum roll, please

The real Cali story is infinitely darker. It’s time for The Top 7 Things The National Media Always Ignore About Jerry Brown.

1. California has the worst poverty rate of any state. Worse than Mississippi. Worse than West Virginia. Worse than Nevada. So much for the narrative of Jerry Brown as Mr. Economic Growth.

2. California’s unemployment rate may be down from its past high, but that’s not because of any broad economic rebound at all, it’s because part-time jobs are growing and hundreds of thousands of residents have stopped looking for jobs. In the Labor Department’s U-6 category, measuring the percentage of adults who want full-time jobs but can’t find them, California has the second worst rate in the U.S. About 19 percent of these workers — nearly one in five — can’t find work.

3. The idea that the state’s finances are in good shape depends on really aggressive cherry-picking. Here’s what I wrote in June:

This is from a U-T San Diego editorial I wrote:

“The decision of two recall proponents — land-use consultant Michael Pallamary and gay activist Stampp Corbin — to combine their efforts to oust Mayor Bob Filner is good news for those who believe in direct democracy.

“That is the system established in California in 1912 to allow voters to use signature-gathering campaigns to directly enact laws and remove lawmakers. In recent years, it’s been subverted on many fronts …. .

“The monkey-wrenching has been led by political forces who want to preserve the status quo that is targeted by signature-gathering campaigns for initiatives or recalls. Initially, it looked like that was Corbin’s goal. As 10News reported, Corbin told Susan Jester, head of the local Log Cabin Republicans, that he intended to sabotage the recall.

“But Corbin insists that he was joking. On Friday, he promised to work constructively with Pallamary in gathering signatures of San Diegans who are tired of Filner’s mistreatment of women, his bullying of everyone and his ethical breaches.”

Filner’s temperament was well-known

In another piece, I took on the goofy idea from the East Coast media that Filner was protected by a fawning media. Just because that’s how D.C. treats the president doesn’t mean that’s the norm for how a big-city mayor is treated on the other side of the nation:

“As the national media descend on San Diego to cover our sexist caveman of a mayor, some wonder how career politician Bob Filner could have made it to age 70 without being exposed as a serial cad. The answer, of course, is that until last month, no woman was willing to come forward with public accusations. The idea that his behavior was covered up by a fawning media is absurd. Filner’s temperament was a constant focus of the 2012 campaign.

“[This is why no one] in local media and political circles is surprised by Filner’s scandal. He has a long history of thuggishness — one that has led to brushes with law enforcement and endless tales about his insolent belief that the normal rules of conduct and decorum simply don’t apply to him. It’s no surprise that this thuggishness leads Filner, in his word, to act like a ‘monster’ toward women.”

His misconduct extends far beyond this

“This thuggishness has been on ample display in his eight months as mayor in other areas besides his dealings with women. He has thrown tantrums at City Council meetings, both in public and in closed session, including once using his security force to eject a representative of City Attorney Jan Goldsmith on spurious grounds. He has been caught in lies about his possibly criminal efforts to force a developer to give $100,000 to his pet causes before getting a key project permit. He has used a silly cover story as a pretext to force out the head of the city employees’ pension board. Why? Because the official didn’t want to go along with what he saw as the Filner administration’s attempts to resume the pension underfunding that got San Diego into such terrible straits in 1996 and 2002.

“Filner’s arrogant contempt for anyone who gets in his way is reflected by his staff. Officials simply refuse to comply with state openness laws. His chief of staff, Lee Burdick, appeared to be interfering with sex-harassment investigations by interviewing potential witnesses. She also makes the bizarre claim that since she is an attorney, her communications with the mayor are privileged — though she’s not the mayor’s attorney.”

Recall invokes several scandals — dubiously

The mayor’s broader history of corruption, malfeasance and contempt for the law is cited in official declarations filed by lead recall proponent Michael Pallamary. I think that is a big mistake. Some of the other scandals can and will be depicted by Filner and his allies as him standing up to a city status quo that protects downtown business interests. That produces a Pavlovian response among progressive voters, who can’t believe a longstanding Democratic registration advantage has yielded a relatively tight-fisted government that has pushed big reforms on benefits, pay and provision of services, led by former Republican Councilman Carl DeMaio, a libertarian.

Just focusing on the sex harassment would have been a much easier sell. But I don’t buy the conventional wisdom that a lot of money will be needed for the recall to win. The disgust with Mayor Headlock is broad and deep, and tens of thousands of people aren’t going to need persuading to sign a recall petition.

By Chris Reed

Last week’s New Yorker features a well-reported but conflicted article that tries to depict China’s all-out push to become the world leader in bullet trains as a vast fiasco of corruption, incompetence and hubris without noting any of the similarities to California’s — or the Obama administration’s — lie-filled push for bullet trains.

Reporter Evan Osnos concludes the July 23, 2011, disaster on “the world’s largest, fastest, and newest high-speed railway” exposed the “ugly underside” of China’s pell-mell race into bullet trains. This paragraph made me snort:

“The Wenzhou crash killed forty people and injured a hundred and ninety-two. For reasons both practical and symbolic, the government was desperate to get trains running again, and within twenty-four hours it declared the line back in business. The Department of Propaganda ordered editors to give the crash as little attention as possible. ‘Do not question, do not elaborate,’ it warned, on an internal notice. When newspapers came out the next morning, China’s first high-speed train wreck was not on the front page.”

In California, our Department of Propaganda doesn’t just include the California High-Speed Rail Authority. Instead, its stars are the news and opinion pages of the Sacramento Bee and the Los Angeles Times.

Given the stakes and the money involved, this may be hard to believe. But these basic facts have never been reported by the Bee and the Times, the most powerful in California:

There was no solid factual underpinning for almost any of the claims made in 2008 about ridership, pollution reduction, job creation and total cost that persuaded Californians to narrowly approve Prop. 1A and provide $9.95 billion in bond seed money for the project.

What’s more, a number-cruncher determined exactly how predictions of immense ridership — 50 percent higher than for all of Amtrak, which operates in 46 states — were manufactured.

As I wrote for City Journal …

“Elizabeth Alexis, a Palo Alto finance expert and co-founder of Californians Advocating Responsible Rail Design, delved into the methodology and discovered, among other things, that the rail authority assumed that the future cost of gasoline would top $40 a gallon. Alexis also noted that the public-opinion polls that bullet-train backers crafted to gauge potential passenger interest were heavily biased. For example, 96 percent of commuters surveyed were already train riders. But unlike commuters in other states, only a tiny percentage of Californians rides the train.” 

If this happened in the private sector, the SEC and the FBI would be on the warpath. But in California, this amounts to an official secret kept from the public by the Times and the Bee. This amounts to irresponsible incompetence on a grand scale.