The tension has been on broad display in recent days as law enforcement unions and police chiefs react angrily to a new law signed by Gov. Jerry Brown that is driven by the assumption that officers routinely act in racially biased ways:

For civil rights activists, Brown’s action was a big step toward protecting minorities from racial profiling.

 

For many in law enforcement, the measure creates a massive new bureaucratic headache that will do little to illuminate the question of whether police treat minority groups fairly.

 

“It’s a terrible piece of legislation,” said Lt. Steve James, president of the Long Beach Police Officers Assn. and the national trustee for the California Fraternal Order of Police.

 

Written by Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, D-San Diego, in response to fatal police shootings of unarmed black men and other people of color, the legislation will require officers to collect data on anyone they stop, including “perceived” race and ethnicity, the reason for the encounter and whether arrests were made.

That’s from the Los Angeles Times’ account of the uproar over the new law. It is certain to be contentious going forward, especially given the likelihood that some departments will simply ignore it and say they don’t have the resources to spare.

Vergara suit based on claims of poor treatment of minorities

A potential for an even bigger rupture lies with the Vergara v. California lawsuit. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Rolf Treu ruled in 2014 that five state laws protecting veteran teachers’ rights were unconstitutional because they had the net effect of funneling the most troubled teachers to poor minority communities. Treu said this amounted to a de facto segregated school system but stayed his decision pending an appeal.

The deadline for filing “friend of the court” briefs in the appeal was Sept. 16, and the prominence of those who chose to do so reflects the high stakes in the case:

Parties filing in support of the two teacher unions, the California Association of Teachers and California Federation of Teachers, and the state, which are all co-defendants, were Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, Equal Justice Society, Education Law Center, Southern Poverty Law Center, and Advancing Justice-LA, according to a press release from CTA. …

 

Joining a list of education chiefs from around the nation, student groups, business organizations and others who filed briefs supporting the student plaintiffs was [Arnold] Schwarzenegger and [Pete] Wilson, who wrote, “At stake in this case is not only the future of California’s students, but also the future of California,” said the former California governors, both Republicans. “As students who learn from grossly ineffective teachers face lifelong setbacks, by extension, California’s future economic and social success is similarly impacted.”

That’s from L.A. School Report. What’s noteworthy is the absence of Latino groups either supporting or opposing Treu’s ruling, even though its most sweeping findings were largely based on the treatment of Latino students in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Former state Senate Majority Leader Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, has been an outspoken critic of how public education works in California. She has long asserted that Latino state lawmakers are scared of taking on the CTA and the CFT, especially if they hope to end up in leadership positions. Whether that’s true or not, few Latino politicians beyond Romero and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa have taken on the unions.

Black lawmaker leading Democratic critic of teachers unions

Instead, the most prominent Democratic critic of teachers unions is the same African American lawmaker who wrote the police profiling bill. Weber introduced a measure this spring that would have required teacher evaluations to include student performance. It was quickly killed in committee, prompting Weber to sharply criticize her fellow Democrats and their union backers.

A Los Angeles Times poll earlier this year showed support for the sort of changes sought by Weber and other reforms, in particular having teacher layoffs be determined by classroom performance, not seniority.

Weber and the California Legislative Black Caucus have also expressed concerns about the implementation of 2013’s Local Control Funding Formula, a state law championed by Gov. Jerry Brown that was supposed to directly help struggling students by providing them with more resources and attention. A January Legislative Analyst’s Office report looked at 50 California school districts, including the 11 largest, and found none had adequate safeguards in place to prevent LCFF dollars from going to teacher compensation or other uses.

The appeals trial in the Vergara case is expected to begin later this year with oral arguments. Plaintiffs have said they expect the appellate ruling by January.

Katy Grimes: Voter fatigue is no longer an factor this election cycle because thoughtful voters appear instead to be tuning out entirely to media and polls, and instead tuning into reality television. There’s an irony.

“It’s getting much harder for pollsters to get people to respond to interviews,” wrote Michael Barone, in a National Review Online story today. “The Pew Research Center reports that only 9 percent of the people it contacts respond to its questions. That’s compared with 36 percent in 1997.”

Barone said that of that 9 percent of respondents, is is likely that the sample is not representative of the much larger voting public.

Duh… ya think?

He explained that everything from the decreasing number of landline phones, to implausible party identification, impacts poll numbers today.

“I don’t believe that any of the media pollsters have been tilting their results in order to demoralize Republicans, although I do look with suspicion on the work of some partisan pollsters,” Barone said.

Case in point: the abominable exit polls the night of the game-changing Wisconsin recall election. Media outlets claimed that the exit polls were so close, that everyone was in for a long night and a tied race between Republican Gov. Scott Walker and Democratic challenger Tom Barrett.

But less than an hour after the polls had closed, the race was called in favor of Walker. Apparently, the exit polls were grossly wrong, and the race, won by Walker, was not close at all. Walker even won the recall election by a greater margin than he had in the general election.

Many news outlets and reporters just glossed over the inaccurate exit polls as if no misconduct took place.

Many in the new media say that the same tactics are being used in this Presidential election. “Even after the election, many media outlets are using the exit poll numbers on Obama-Romney as if they have credibility, without even mentioning the inaccuracy of the same poll in the recall race,” Matthew Sheffield of NewsBusters wrote.

Sheffield said that liberal bias has some role “in why exit polls continue not to be given the skepticism they deserve, but there are other likely reasons that feed into it.”

“Money is also a factor. The nation’s largest media organizations have a lot invested in their exit polling machinery,” Sheffield wrote. “It’s so expensive, in fact, that they’ve all actually teamed up to split the costs through a service called the National Election Pool (NEP). ABC, Associated Press, CBS, CNN, Fox News, and NBC are the only members.”

Part of the problem, according to Barone, is that Democrats have traditionally been more willing to fill out an exit poll. The other issue is interviewer error, with many of the biggest discrepancies in exit polls and results in precincts where interviewers were female graduate students.

Like, OMG… really?

I know this to be true, first hand. Right after voting in the 2000 Presidential Election, a pollster asked my husband how he had voted. My husband answered that he was a Green Party member and said he had just voted for Ralph Nader. As if. The pollster, a young female, said “cool,” and checked a box on her clipboard.

“Whatever,” I said, as I rolled my eyes and elbowed my husband. We had a snicker.