But when you try to make people live by these ideals, a lot of them don’t like it — including those normally sympathetic to the left. This very much includes the young people inspired by America’s first nonwhite president, whose 2008 and 2012 campaigns evoked idealism and devotion to the greater good.

I appreciate the “tyranny of the anecdote” theory that holds that vivid personal experiences shouldn’t lead someone to exaggerate their relevance. I have to a degree discounted my exposure to how much students and parents don’t like how their local school districts are following an Obama administration edict to make school lunches more healthy.

But ever since the L.A. Times had a story in late 2011 in which students compared their lunches to “dog food,” I’ve paid close attention to the reaction around the nation. Recently, when I did a Google search of such stories, I was struck by their uniformity.

The lead paragraph is almost always about a really meager, unappetizing portion that a school district is offering, with the accompanying photo showing what the gripes are about. The second is usually about a district official defending the lunches and/or saying the Obama administration left it no choice.

And the third paragraph? Usually, it’s a student declaring the lunches were ridiculously small or unappetizing or both.

Journalism convention would be to later return to the question of student perspective and cite a student who defends the Obama policy. But that only can take place if such a student exists.

I’m now read 100-plus stories about school lunch complaints, and I’ve never seen one student defend the administration.

A think tank that likes the Obama policy says evidence suggests complaints are dwindling. But I still haven’t heard a parent or a student stick up for the policy.

This just might have long-term political effects. Consultants from the mid-1960s to 1972 used to say there was nothing like the military draft to focus the the attention of high school kids. Just about nothing since has caught students’ attention as the Selective Service System has faded from relevance.

Obviously, the stakes aren’t comparable in the student lunch fight. It isn’t about kids possibly dying in a pointless war. But people who focus on the size of the stakes don’t understand how even issues that seem minor can generate intense feelings. There are people who have literally no complaints about Obama besides how their kids hate lunch. There are also people who have no strong feelings about politics but hate the Obama lunch policy because of what their kids say.

Their children seem unlikely to be future voters who will have good feelings about Barack Obama and the Democratic Party.

When I was a student at a well-regarded public high school, there was nothing we griped more about than lunch. The pizza was so awful it seemed like a personal violation. If I thought it was Jimmy Carter’s fault, I would have soured on him sooner than I did.

“Many drivers may have confused the gas and brake pedals a problem that may account for ‘the vast majority’ of the unintended acceleration incidents the agency investigated, NHTSA deputy administrator Ron Medford said at Tuesday’s NHTSA press briefing.

“‘What mostly happened was pedal misapplication where the driver stepped on the gas instead of the brake or in addition to the brake,’ Medford said.”

What quickly pointed to the likelihood that there was no real scandal? As I’ve noted before, here are the ages of the drivers involved in the incidents that led to major media coverage: 60, 61, 63, 68, 71, 72, 72, 77, 79, 83, 85, 89.

The lead story on the top right of the page was a news account of President Obama’s Tuesday “victory lap” press conference in which he said that the fact that 7.1 million Americans had allegedly enrolled under the Affordable Care Act was proof that he was right and everyone who criticized the ACA was wrong. The headline pushed readers to accept this view; the subhead made the case that only selfish people opposed the law.

In the story itself, the first half by David Lauter and Christi Parsons of the Times’ Washington bureau gave no larger context at all — it was all “victory lap.” Among the 40 relevant things it didn’t mention, most significant was the fact that it chose not to say that so many past claims about Obamacare proved wildly in error. Nor did it emphasize that it appears that there were more people signing up for the ACA through government exchanges because they lost their coverage due to ACA rules then there were of people who previously had no health insurance.

The whole point of Obamacare was supposed to be to get health insurance to the uninsured — not to create churn among the insured that pushed them into having to use government alternatives. Yo, David! Yo, Christi! Isn’t this, yunno, news?

‘Trust the prez’ side-by-side with ‘Don’t trust the prez’

But the patheticness of this cheerleading for Obama was triply underscored because just underneath the story was another piece that also had as a core element the question of whether the White House could be trusted: LAT reporter Brian Bennett’s detailing of the dishonest way the Obama administration had reported deportation numbers to buy it political cover. The (pathetic) headline: “Figures Skew Numbers Obama Deports.” Not “Obama Skews Numbers Of Deportations.”

However painfully biased the headline was, the story made plain the duplicity of Obama’s White House:

“WASHINGTON — Immigration activists have sharply criticized President Obama for a rising volume of deportations … But the portrait of a steadily increasing number of deportations rests on statistics that conceal almost as much as they disclose. A closer examination shows that immigrants living illegally in most of the continental U.S. are less likely to be deported today than before Obama came to office, according to immigration data.

“Expulsions of people who are settled and working in the United States have fallen steadily since his first year in office, and are down more than 40% since 2009.

“On the other side of the ledger, the number of people deported at or near the border has gone up — primarily as a result of changing who gets counted in the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency’s deportation statistics.

“The vast majority of those border crossers would not have been treated as formal deportations under most previous administrations. If all removals were tallied, the total sent back to Mexico each year would have been far higher under those previous administrations than it is now.

“The shift in who gets tallied helped the administration look tough in its early years …”

So next to an article that says Obama grossly manipulated the numbers for years for political advantage on a huge national issue is an article that says the numbers Obama cites on another huge national issue somehow offer confirmation that he’s right and others are wrong.

The Los Angeles Times has never looked dumber.

As I wrote at the time …

“The Transportation Department, parent to the FAA, has a $73 billion annual budget. Of course Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood could find another way to make his department’s share of budget cuts required by the March 1 sequestration of funds.

“Another word for this is ridiculous. The same Transportation Department has sent $3.5 billion to California for our bullet-train boondoggle.”

Soon after, Congress figured this out and ordered transportation officials to prioritize.

Uncritical regurgitation of Obama talking points

Now along comes a California example of the Obama administration’s attempt to make the sequester as bad as possible — and it finds an accomplice in Ventura County Star columnist Timm Herdt, who in a 700 words doesn’t even raise the possibility that the White House may be to blame for failing to prioritize federal spending or demand smarter decision-making from Army engineers:

“If there is any place in America where one can take a photograph of the obtuse federal process known as sequestration, it is in a small coastal community in Southern California.

“In the city of Port Hueneme, a beach that is typically as wide as a football field has disappeared. The Pacific Ocean is encroaching. It has already wiped out an outdoor shower used by beachgoers and undermined a sidewalk. It is threatening to breach a city street called Surfside Drive. Beyond that are homes, condominiums and public facilities. …

“‘We’re not a beach-resort community,’ says Mayor Ellis Green. ‘We are a humble town.’

“The winter is approaching, which will bring with it storms and higher tides. The seawater is creeping toward what Green calls a ‘catastrophe’ that could cause tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.

“If this happens, it will not be a natural disaster. It will be a super storm brought about by federal budget paralysis.”

Later on, Herdt more specifically blames “leadership in the House” for refusing to ride to the rescue of the Army Corps of Engineers and fund needed work.

Never mentioned: Army Corps’ budget has gone up

Does he mention that the Army Corps of Engineers multibillion-dollar civil works’ budget is higher this year than last year, which certainly suggests what we’re seeing in Port Hueneme is sequester theater?

No.

Does Herdt mention that the sequester was the White House’s idea?

No.

Does Herdt mention the reports that lots of agencies that feared doom and gloom quietly prioritized spending and felt few effects from sequestration, as the Washington Post, Reason and many other publications have repeatedly reported?

No. Hey, Timm, even the Canadians  have figured out sequestration isn’t what it was billed. And note that an L.A. Times report insinuates this is all theater as well.

But in California, if you’re an opinion columnist, your default position is usually to find a way to blame everything on evil conservatives.

And so you conclude that the federal government — which had a $3.5 trillion budget last year and a $3.5 trillion budget this year — can’t handle its customary Port Hueneme protection responsibilities because of House Republicans.

Feel free to groan. And groan. And groan some more.

By Chris Reed

As hard left as it can seem, even the Obama administration isn’t as doctrinaire as the leftists who dominate Sacramento.

As I have written about several times for Cal Watchdog, state Democrats and even many of their allies in California’s media refuse to acknowledge that the White House sees fracking as just another heavy industry, not hell on Earth. To quote Obama’s secretary of the interior, Sally Jewell …

“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.”

Who does President Obama tap as his top economist? Wal-Mart’s top defender

Now we see another entertaining contrast between the Obama White House and Democrats inside the Capitol. Both the following items were reported this week.

This is from Capital Public Radio on Monday:

“Big-box stores like Walmart may be known for low prices, but, increasingly, they’re also known for generating controversy. A bill up for a vote in the State Assembly this week brings that controversy front and center. It would require some big-box stores to pay for an economic impact report before moving into an area.”

This is from Slate on Wednesday:

“People are reporting today that Jason Furman, a longtime Obama administration official currently serving as a deputy on the National Economic Council, will be tapped to chair the Council of Economic Advisors.”

So just who is the academic tapped by the president to be his point man on economic policy? A guy who thinks critics of Wal-Mart are deluded. What follows is a recycled, slightly modified take on Furman that I posted previously.

Big-box king ‘especially important to poor and moderate-income’ families

Sebastian Mallaby of the Washington Post wrote about Furman and Wal-Mart in 2005:

“Furman advised [John] Kerry in the 2004 campaign and has never received any payment from Wal-Mart; he is no corporate apologist. But he points out that Wal-Mart’s discounting on food alone boosts the welfare of American shoppers by at least $50 billion a year. The savings are possibly five times that much if you count all of Wal-Mart’s products.

“These gains are especially important to poor and moderate-income families. The average Wal-Mart customer earns $35,000 a year, compared with $50,000 at Target and $74,000 at Costco.

“Moreover, Wal-Mart’s ‘every day low prices’ make the biggest difference to the poor, since they spend a higher proportion of income on food and other basics. As a force for poverty relief, Wal-Mart’s $200 billion-plus assistance to consumers may rival many federal programs. Those programs are better targeted at the needy, but they are dramatically smaller. Food stamps were worth $33 billion in 2005, and the earned-income tax credit was worth $40 billion.”

Furman’s and Mallaby’s anti-anti-Wal-Mart case doesn’t end there:

“Wal-Mart’s critics also paint the company as a parasite on taxpayers, because 5 percent of its workers are on Medicaid. Actually that’s a typical level for large retail firms, and the national average for all firms is 4 percent.

“Moreover, it’s ironic that Wal-Mart’s enemies, who are mainly progressives, should even raise this issue. In the 1990s progressives argued loudly for the reform that allowed poor Americans to keep Medicaid benefits even if they had a job. Now that this policy is helping workers at Wal-Mart, progressives shouldn’t blame the company.”

Anyone who doubts Wal-Mart is good for poor people should go to one and compare the cars in the parking lot with the cars one sees at Ralphs, Vons or Albertsons. Poor people believe Wal-Mart is good for them.

Assemblyman Roger Hernandez puts bull’s eye on ‘ordinary families’

More from Mallaby with specific pertinence to the efforts to block Wal-Mart “Supercenters” in California:

“Companies like Wal-Mart are not run by saints. They can treat workers and competitors roughly. They may be poor stewards of the environment. When they break the law they must be punished. Wal-Mart is at the center of the globalized, technology-driven economy that’s radically increased American inequality, so it’s not surprising that it has critics.

“But globalization and business innovation are nonetheless the engines of progress; and if that sounds too abstract, think of the $200 billion-plus that Wal-Mart consumers gain annually.

“If critics prevent the firm from opening new branches, they will prevent ordinary families from sharing in those gains. Poor Americans will be chief among the casualties.”

Yet this is just what Democrats in the Legislature, led by Assemblyman Roger Hernandez, hope to do. But a single Wal-Mart store in an impoverished area does more to truly help the poor than all the Democratic lawmakers in Sacramento combined.

By Chris Reed

We’ve seen some very good reporting about the bullet-train fiasco from around the state. The two best recent examples are stories outlining the chicanery in the bidding process for the contractor for the first segment and describing how the California High-Speed Rail Authority has lost support from key early advocates of the project.

But what’s needed is for someone to focus like a laser on the funding prospects for the second segment of the bullet train before we spend billions on the first. A U.S. Government Accountability Office report in December said that $39 billion more in federal funding would be needed for the project to complete its San Francisco to Los Angeles route, with $20 billion specifically to complete the first segment.

However, as I noted in today’s U-T San Diego editorial, hopes for such federal largesse are now pretty much dead:

“The congressional directive to the FAA to end air traffic controller furloughs strongly suggests the demise of the president’s contention that the March 1 budget sequestration requires proportional cuts across a vast range of departments instead of smart, focused cuts that establish and reflect national priorities. …

“This in turn suggests that we have just begun an era of relative frugality in Washington, D.C., after years of the federal government spending 40 percent more than it took in.

“And what does that mean specifically for California? That the state bullet-train project looks more futile than ever. Discretionary domestic spending is going to pretty much disappear in the post-sequester era. What does a December Government Accountability Office report on the bullet train say will be needed to build the second segment of California’s project after the $13.4 billion in committed state and federal funding is used up? Billions of dollars in federal funding –- i.e., discretionary domestic spending.”

Media ignore link between sequester fight, bullet train

Yet nobody in the California media besides the U-T has made the link between last month’s federal budget showdown and the state bullet train project. If they did, then this would be the conclusion that everyone but rail cultists would come to:

“The California High-Speed Rail Authority has attracted no private investors because such investors want revenue guarantees the state cannot legally offer. The federal government -– or some unlikely foreign benefactor –- is the authority’s only hope for funding to build its grand project. If the federal option is gone, should we really spend billions on an instant white elephant in the Central Valley?

“The answer is, no, of course not. But as long as Gov. Jerry Brown is in denial on bullet-train realities –- starting with but not limited to the death of the federal funding option -– here comes a boondoggle for the ages.”

John and Ken’s preferred shorthand for the project — the Browndoggle — should be what we call the white elephant that’s soon to rise in the Central Valley. Our alleged savant governor is the opposite of a genius on this topic. We’ll soon see a multibillion-dollar monument to his obliviousness.

By Chris Reed

It’s bad enough that the media consistently depict hydraulic fracturing as new when it’s been around for 60-plus years. But what’s also amazing is that the California media covering the state government’s ongoing attempts to develop “fracking” regulations — including occasional contrarian Dan Walters — never mention the fact that the Obama administration has basically said full speed ahead. The U.S. Energy Department accepts the consensus of regulators over the past 40 years that fracking to access oil and natural gas reserves is just another heavy industry — one that’s fairly dirty but manageable.

I made this point in a U-T San Diego editorial which noted fracking’s immense potential to create an economic boom in the Golden State:

“What few seem to understand, and what the media have rarely emphasized, is that the Obama administration dismisses [environmentalists’] alarmism about fracking … .

“This is why 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.’

“This is why the MIT physicist the White House recently nominated to succeed Chu, Ernest Moniz, described the risks to water posed by fracking as ‘challenging but manageable.’

“This is why 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.’”

Have you seen this context in any MSM story about California’s regulation of fracking?

Nah.

The same pathetic bunch that ignored the downside of AB 32 until this year has ignored the fact that fracking has Obama’s blessing.

Pretty amazing.

By Chris Reed

The fallout of the sequester continues to be widely discussed, with the conventional wisdom being that President Barack Obama and his political team made a rare and serious miscalculation with their attempts to panic the American public over a 2.4 percent cut in a gigantic, bloated federal budget.

But here in California, there has been no analysis that I’ve seen that notes what post-sequester politics could mean for the MOAB (Mother Of All Boondoggles) that is the California bullet-train project.

In the national press, I have seen several stories that accept as a given that the president won’t try to fight to have the $85 billion in cuts restored with new revenue. Instead, there will be small-ball efforts to change the sequester cuts to make them smarter. And there will be a big-picture focus on trying to craft the old “grand bargain” on entitlement changes paired with tax reform and tax hikes.

Senate Democrats accept spending restraint as given

But having blinked on the sequester, the White House is unlikely to keep fighting for big discretionary domestic spending on stimulus-type (alleged-stimulus-type) programs like federal funding for the California High-Speed Rail Authority’s adventure in the Central Valley. That inclination to spending restraint extends to the Senate. This is from today’s Washington Post:

“Senate Democrats said they were ready to pass a spending measure to pay for day-to-day federal operations through September. The measure would impose automatic cuts of 5 percent to domestic agencies and 7.8 percent to the Pentagon.”

Obviously that is a ploy to get House Republicans to the table because the cut is harsh for their beloved Pentagon. But it implicitly accepts as a given that going forward, domestic spending isn’t going up.

So after the present $3.5 billion in committed federal funding is spent, bye-bye Uncle Sam as source of cash. In the looming, overdue era of budget austerity, lawmakers from 49 states aren’t going to want to print tens of billions of borrowed dollars to help out California.

And since Uncle Sam is the only source of money for the project after California blows through its $9.95 billion in bond funds from the 2008 ballot measure, we’ll have a white-elephant first segment in the Central Valley and nothing more.

Unless, of course, Gov. Jerry Brown finally figures out how insane his beloved project truly is.