In January 2008. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said that he backed state lawmakers’ push to revise strict term limits for a specific reason. In response to a question I asked him at an editorial board meeting, Arnold said he thought Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez and Senate President Don Perata deserved to keep their jobs because under their stewardship, they had kept the state in “a good kind of groove.”

Really? In what way? Both at the time and six years later, any “groove” is hard to discern.

Now we’re seeing another display of this from the Sacramento media-political establishment: the recent media boomlet promoting the idea that departing Senate President Darrell Steinberg has done such a bang-up job that he deserves another really big job after he is termed-out — as justice on the California Supreme Court.

Here’s what the Sac Bee’s Capitol Alert had to say about what Ventura County Star columnist Timm Herdt had to say:

Herdt makes the case that Gov. Jerry Brown should appoint Steinberg to fill one of two openings on the California Supreme Court. Herdt praised Steinberg as the “most productive legislative leader” since term limits were imposed, and argued for his broad expertise in state law and his skill as a consensus-builder.

Herdt wrote that Steinberg — who worked as an employee-rights lawyer and an administrative law judge before being elected to the Legislature — would be a “soberly creative” choice for Brown.

‘Productive’ in what sense?

Now I understand why folks might have been charmed by Núñez. He has a loose, funny, teasing manner, or at least he did in my several encounters with him. And I understand that many journos think well of Steinberg, who by most accounts is very smart and a very hard worker.

But just as back in 2008 I wondered what kind of groove Arnold was perceiving, with Herdt’s assessment of Steinberg, I wonder in what sense has the Senate leader been “productive.”

In the past dozen years, where are the big achievements that Steinberg has produced?

California has the highest poverty rate in the nation, and by far.

The great majority of counties have never emerged from the Great Recession.

California’s schools are clearly behind the nation’s other mega states when it comes to apples-to-apples comparisons of students by age and ethnicity.

The 2012 state pension reform measure is vanilla and doesn’t do remotely enough to help the local governments that are hardest hit.

The 2014 teachers pension bailout puts 90 percent of the burden on taxpayers and only 10 percent on teachers themselves. A key selling point of the 2012 state pension reform was that it would force employees to equally share in their pension costs. Never mind!

The state appears no closer to solving its intractable water problems.

This list could go on and on.

That’s all you got?

So what is behind the happy talk?

I think much of it has to do with the fact that Prop. 25 makes it easier to pass budgets and not have multi-month dramas summer after summer after summer.

And some of it also has to do with AB 32, the state’s landmark 2006 law forcing a shift to cleaner-but-costlier energy.

Journos never seem to remember that it was peddled with the claim that it would convince the rest of the world to copy California; that didn’t happen. Nor do they ever notice that in 2006, no one had the audacity to pretend it was a job-creation program, the present ongoing Lie No. 1 of public policy in the Golden State.

This rosy-scenario-itis isn’t a new problem, alas. Here’s an example from 2008.

The view from within a one-mile perimeter around the state Capitol sure is counter to the view in California’s other 163,000 square miles.

Nationally, this was most conspicuous with the furloughs of air-traffic controllers. But in California, there was also some specific obnoxiousness in Port Hueneme. I wrote about it here in August. The short version: the Army Corps of Engineers said its budget was so starved by sequestration that it couldn't afford to do dredging and coastal maintenance that are needed to prevent water damage to coastal neighborhoods.

Ventura County Star columnist Timm Herdt accepted this premise uncritically and wrote a piece about how evil House Republicans were to blame. Nice legwork, Timm. Great insight.

Does Timm bother to consider the possibility that this is sequester theater — another attempt by the Obama administration to make tiny cuts in overall federal spending hurt to build pressure on Congress to raise taxes? Does he consider the angle that the Army Corps could have made cuts elsewhere?

Nah. He’s got his glib, easy thesis and he’s sticking to it. Meanwhile, the Hill newspaper offers insight into why an agency that has a budget that has gone up may struggle to pay for things it used to handle:

“President Obama proposed a one percent pay increase for federal workers and military employees in a pair of letters to Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) sent Friday afternoon. …

“In a statement earlier this year, House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said Obama’s push for a pay increase was ‘not necessary to retain talented employees and just wastes taxpayer money.’

“’Federal employees have continued to receive promotions and within-grade pay increases over the past few years of the supposed ‘pay freeze,’ and voluntary separations from the federal government are near all-time lows,’ Issa said.”

Issa, a Vista entrepreneur and the most successful businessman in Congress, frames the issue in exactly correct fashion: If present compensation is so generous that federal employees almost never seek greener pastures, then pay and benefits are obviously perfectly adequate. Not only shouldn’t they be increased, maybe they should be cut.

But in Washington, as in Sacramento, such logic prompts expressions of horror from unions. Why? Because government’s primary role isn’t to provide services to the public. It’s to provide really good jobs. They’re not mad at Issa. They’re mad at Obama.

“Instead of holding to its promise to protect the middle class and the working poor, the administration seems determined to contribute to a worsening of living standards for federal workers, disabled veterans, and the elderly,”  American Federal of Government Employees president J. David Cox Sr. told the Alabama Media Group.

The common-sense observations of Issa remind me of one of my many gripes with how reporters cover government: They don’t see obvious issues that are right in front of them. If upper management benefits from the same sort of automatic “step” pay increases as the rank-and-file, that’s a huge conflict of interest that leads to pay hikes. Duh. But do you ever see this mentioned in coverage of government pay negotiations? Never.

There’s also this avenue of ignorance: We continue to witness a productivity revolution in the private sector driven by information technology that began two decades ago and is still transforming industries, white collar and blue collar alike. Shouldn’t this bleed over into the public sector? Of course. The respected McKinsey consulting group has been making this point for nearly a decade.

“The opportunity to improve government productivity is huge … [with] three classic management tools . . . organizational redesign, strategic procurement and operational redesign.”

 But do journalists ever bring this up? Nope. Duh.

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.

July 1, 2013

By Chris Reed

The Sacramento Bee has joined the reporting staff of The Los Angeles Times and the Ventura County Star’s Timm Herdt in the Fracking Disinformation Hall of Shame. Bee reporter Tom Knudson has a lengthy, often alarmist look at hydraulic fracturing, its long history in California and the possibility that it could trigger a huge economic boom in Golden State.

But while dwelling on fracking’s purported dangers, what Knudson’s article never does is mention the Obama administration’s extensively documented position on fracking: namely, that it is just another heavy industry that can be made safe with good regulations. Instead, Knudson offers up this sort of passing observation as fact: “fracking’s risks to groundwater remain unknown.”

All the president’s men (and women) disagree

Hey, Tom! I know you’re a Pulitzer Prize winner and all, and that therefore you shouldn’t be subject to questioning or editing, but when writing about fracking, aren’t these facts relevant?

— 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.”

— The MIT physicist Obama chose to succeed Chu, Ernest Moniz, described the risks to water posed by fracking as “challenging but manageable.”

— 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.”

— Sally Jewell, the president’s secretary of the interior, at a May 17 news conference announcing the release of fracking rules for public and Indian land, declared the following: “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.”

Or just for fun, Tom, maybe you could quote the president himself. The photo atop this post of a recent Huffington Post story shows how he feels.

Maybe Tom Knudson got in the green tank for career reasons

The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times both covered Interior Secretary Jewell’s May 17 news conference. The contrast in their coverage is pretty amazing.

“The L.A. Times’ account put in the ‘fracking is safe and has been around forever’ context by quoting an oil industry trade association spokesperson. The NYT quoted THE SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR!

“Quite a gigantic difference. But than the LAT’s Neela Banerjee and Wes Venteicher and their editors can’t have Times’ readers knowing the Obama administration likes fracking, can they? It doesn’t fit the West L.A.-Marin County-NRDC narrative.”

Maybe that explains the Sac Bee’s Tom Knudson not mentioning the Obama administration’s view on fracking. He’s angling for a job at the L.A. Times.

Sheesh. If any member of the California journalism corps can offer a logical explanation as to why the environmental and political reporters who cover fracking never mention the position of the greenest presidential administration in history, I will be happy to pass it along.

But that won’t happen, because it is impossible to come up with such an explanation.

Paging Dan Walters, paging Dan Walters

The best explanations are the simplest one: 1) All these political and enviro reporters are in the green tank. They’d rather not get blowback from the people they cover, so they don’t mention an angle so powerful it makes the fracking-is-dangerous crowd look like fools. 2) They’re green activists pretending to be impartial journalists.

On fracking, I look forward to Dan Walters eventually fulfilling his periodic role of pointing out the stupidity of the media party line, like he has this year on budget happy talk and like he did back in late 2006 when reporters actually bought the idea that Arnold Schwarzenegger had figured out to make Sacramento functional.

Dan probably won’t name/shame Knudson, but I’ll settle for any improvement on the Sierra Club fracking propaganda we’ve been seeing masquerade as news and “analysis.”

By Chris Reed

As I have noted many times in recent months, the Obama administration dismisses claims that hydraulic fracturing — the use of underground water cannons to free up oil and natural gas reserves — is an environmental nightmare. This has been true since the president’s first year in office. This is incredibly relevant to California, given that we could benefit enormously from “fracking” were it allowed to proceed and release the energy in the Monterey Shale.

But it took four years for this truth to finally appear in the pages of The Los Angeles Times — and even then it was in an op-ed, not in the news pages, which would rather not share with LAT readers the Obama administration’s gung-ho support of fracking’s safety.

Now it is time to start calling out California journalists by name for their refusal to provide the key context that the administration of the greenest president in history says fracking is just another heavy industry that can be made safe with proper regulation.

He writes about fracking safety, never mentions Obama stand

Meet Timm Herdt of the Ventura County Star. He’s written many times about fracking, which could soon be big in eastern Ventura County if state regulators don’t get in the way. His latest piece — the link is from the Contra Costa Times, which doesn’t have a paywall, unlike the Star — is about how fracking scare tactics have fared in California.

“There is evidence to suggest that Californians are not so different from New Yorkers in their apprehension over fracking. In fact, a USC poll of Californians last month and a Siena College poll of New Yorkers this month revealed nearly identical public sentiment: 45 percent opposition here, 44 percent opposition in New York, and 37 percent support in both states.

“‘In New York, we are winning,’ Mark Schlosberg of Food and Water Watch told the crowd in San Jose last week. He said activists there have made it clear to lawmakers that there are political consequences to supporting fracking and that they’ve also dogged Gov. Mario Cuomo to keep up the pressure to maintain the moratorium.

“‘In California, fracking is virtually unregulated,’ he said. ‘Gov. Jerry Brown could really make a big difference.’

“Except there’s this: When asked publicly last month about his thoughts on fracking, Brown’s response was that while there are issues to examine, it ‘could be a fabulous economic opportunity.'”

Context? Not from Timm. Federal views of fracking disregarded

But did Herdt mention the Obama administration’s upbeat depictions of fracking’s safety? Did he make the obvious point that this might be why Gov. Brown is sounding positive about fracking? Did he cite the stands of the president’s energy secretary, interior secretary and EPA chief, all of whom deride fracking alarmism?

Nah.

Timm Herdt, for whatever reason, has decided that’s just not relevant to his coverage of fracking in California.

Incredible.

By Chris Reed

In June, California voters rejected a hike on cigarette taxes to fund cancer research. The defeat of Proposition 29 strongly suggested that the general anti-tax beliefs of most of the Golden State electorate remained intact, no matter the lunatics they elected to the Legislature and statewide office.

But in November, voters backed Proposition 30, increasing the sales tax on everyone and income taxes on the wealthy, to the surprise of many pundits. And they also approved Proposition 39, which wiped out a corporate tax loophole in favor of a bizarre and dubious scheme to subsidize green energy projects, which have gone haywire over and over in similar federal subsidy schemes.

We know why Prop. 30 passed: Gov. Jerry Brown and a well-funded TV ad campaign framed it as a referendum on public education by linking its rejection directly to massive school budget cuts. But how did Prop. 39 succeed?  By threats to personally demonize the CEOs of the companies most likely to fund opposition. Timm Herdt of the Ventura County Star has the back story:

 “It was a story jointly written by a brassy political consultant whose style was forged while fighting off scandals in the Clinton White House, a billionaire Silicon Valley investor with a passion for public policy, and a dogged state senator who waged a three-year crusade to change a tax policy he believed was shortchanging California businesses and taxpayers. …

“The solution, [Democratic consultant Chris] Lehane believed, was ‘to change the value proposition’ for companies considering whether to finance a campaign to defeat Proposition 39.

“Because Sen. Kevin De León, D-Los Angeles, had fought for three years in the Legislature to change the tax formula, he knew what to expect.

“‘The multistate corporations were so effective in their lobbying. They killed every effort,’ De León told me. ‘I knew who the players were.’

“He knew that the most likely opposition to Proposition 39 would come from the out-of-state companies that had most aggressively lobbied against the idea in the Legislature: Chrysler, General Motors, International Paper and Kimberly-Clark.

“Full-page newspaper ads, featuring photographs of the companies’ CEOs, were purchased, asking them not to oppose the measure. De León sent a letter to the CEOs challenging them to a public debate ‘so voters can plainly see how devastating your efforts are to our state.’

“By Sept. 26, only GM and Kimberly-Clark were still holding out. The Proposition 39 campaign threatened to start running TV ads and to ‘unleash a relentless barrage’ of commercials calling out those two companies.

“Because venture capitalist Tom Steyer had deposited $21 million into the Yes on Proposition 39 campaign, potential opponents knew this was not an empty threat. And they knew it would be impossible to wage an opposition campaign on the cheap.

“‘Tom was not going away,’ De León says.

“By Sept. 28, all four companies had promised not to oppose the initiative. And in the end, the opposition campaign was almost nonexistent.”

Politics is not for the weak of heart. These tactics aren’t illegal. But the cause they helped is such a disaster that stories like this are disheartening. If only defenders of taxpayers could figure out ways to play such effective hardball.