But this tactic and/or genuinely aggrieved reaction is being fine-tuned as the years go along. The first time this occurred to me was in early 2001 when auto-racing superstar Dale Earnhardt Sr. was killed in an awful wreck at the Daytona 500.

The New York Times’ amused, condescending front-page story about the emotional reaction to Earnhardt’s death in the South and some other parts of the nation led conservative intellectual journalist Christopher Caldwell to suggest the story should have been headlined “Inexplicably Treasured Cracker with Mustache Immolated in Bizarre Folk Ritual.”

Now Slate does this sort of analysis/satire all the time [with a liberal slant, unlike Caldwell]. So do lots of other folks.

But perhaps it’s time for this sort of pointed, judgmental angle to emerge in California coverage of the latest scandal involving Contra Costa County. Public uproars over stories involving generous public-employee compensation in the wealthy county are a staple of Bay Area commentary and news coverage. Here’s the latest example from Dan Borenstein of the Bay Area News Group:

In their pursuit of a ridiculous 33 percent salary increase, two Contra Costa supervisors may have violated county workers’ civil rights and, possibly, crossed a criminal line.

The FBI, state Attorney General Kamala Harris and the county grand jury should investigate. Contra Costa voters deserve to know what happened and whether Supervisors Karen Mitchoff of Concord and Mary Piepho of Discovery Bay are fit to continue holding office.

A federal civil rights lawsuit filed Tuesday alleges the two supervisors threatened to retaliate against union backers of a referendum drive to block the raise. A television interview with Mitchoff buttresses those claims.

As referendum backers on Jan. 2 turned in nearly 40,000 signatures, far surpassing the 25,407 needed, Mitchoff, speaking with reporters from ABC7 News and KTVU, issued a warning to labor leaders.

“As I’ve told them many times, you may have won the battle, but I’m not sure you won the war.” Asked what she meant by the war, she replied, “We’re going to be going into contract negotiations over the next few years.”

The explicitness of this is unusual even in California hardball politics. Based solely on what is already in the public record, it seems awfully likely that were this to happen in a Third World country covered by U.S. media, the judgment would be harsh, with cliches about “Banana Republics” run by greedy despots.

On the other hand, despite the decline of newspapers, there are arguably more people looking for government wrongdoing than ever before. This could lead to an even-more cynical public that sees government officials trying to enrich themselves using their official powers as the norm in rich countries — not just those in the Third World.

MENLO PARK (KCBS) — A deadly mosquito that hasn’t been widely seen in the Bay Area since the 1970s has been detected in San Mateo County.

It’s called Aedes aegypti and it was found in January at the Holy Cross cemetery in Menlo Park.

HOW TO SPOT THE YELLOW FEVER MOSQUITO: Look For Distinctive White Markings (Photo)

It’s the mosquito that spreads yellow fever, chicken fever, the dengue fever and other diseases. Officials call it “one of the worst most effective vectors of disease around the world.”

The mosquito is tiny and its bite is hardly noticeable. Unlike other mosquitoes, it bites during the day.

Another yellow fever mosquito was also discovered in Menlo Park last August.

Officials are asking homeowners in the area to check their yards for containers of standing water, including bird baths, so it can be eradicated quickly.

SECRET SPOTS MOSQUITOES BREED: What To Check In Your Yard

I checked the symptoms of Yellow Fever. According to the Centers for Disease Control:

• The initial symptoms include sudden onset of fever, chills, severe headache, back pain, general body aches, nausea, and vomiting, fatigue, and weakness. Most persons improve after the initial presentation.
• After a brief remission of hours to a day, roughly 15% of cases progress to develop a more severe form of the disease. The severe form is characterized by high fever, jaundice, bleeding, and eventually shock and failure of multiple organs.

No need to worry. Obamacare will take care of you.

By Chris Reed

Well, that didn’t take long.

Bob Filner — a paleoliberal former Democratic congressman who was elected mayor of San Diego in November — is embracing the same sort of ridiculously generous public-employee compensation policies that led to his city’s immense fiscal crisis a decade ago. That crisis amounted to an early warning of the now at-hand pension tsunami afflicting local and state governments around the nation. It was so severe that it led to San Diego being called “Enron by the Sea.”

However, since 2005, seven years of prudence from Republican Mayor Jerry Sanders have actually left San Diego in far better shape than many other California cities. But Filner is determined to change that:

“City politicians already have voted themselves the richest pension benefits of any city employees, but under a new proposal by Mayor Bob Filner, city politicians will have even more to look forward to once they leave office.

“Mayor Filner is asking the City Council to pass an extraordinary law this month to allow former city politicians to “double dip” by collecting full city pensions while being eligible to be rehired by the city with full salaries simultaneously. …

“Filner’s proposal for ex-City Council people is not the only effort to expand pension ‘double dipping’ at City Hall.

“In December 2012, the city’s pension system announced that city employees could retire, start collecting a full pension, and return to work at City Hall on a full salary – provided that they simply wait six months.

“The city’s pension system formulated this policy to help retired city employees thwart IRS efforts to impose a pension penalty tax of 10 percent on government employees who retire and then return to work at the same government agency.”

That’s from Thursday’s U-T San Diego column by former San Diego Councilman Carl DeMaio, a libertarian Republican who lost narrowly to Filner in November.

Buyer’s remorse is likely to set in soon. When Sanders left office, he was very popular.

But despite Sanders’ endorsement, DeMaio was effectively demonized by public employee unions as a radical. Still, it’s doubtful that many of Filner’s voters wanted him to re-embrace the city’s old ways.

A city with a pothole problem that reminds many residents of life in the Third World doesn’t want to see the further enrichment of already well-paid public employees.