Author: SacBee — Opinion

July 28, 2003 This is my favorite photo from my decade under the Capitol dome. Speaker of the Assembly Herb Wesson had ordered a lockdown; nobody could leave the Capitol until a budget was passed. I was there too, stuck in the press bay until an agreement was reached. During one of my late-night walks out on to the nearly vacant floor, I caught a faint whiff of cigar smoke. Through a window, I could see smoke rising from the second-floor portico – the unofficial outdoor lounge. I grabbed the longest lens I had, left the Capitol and found a vantage point in a nearby parking garage to see who was on the deck: a group of Assembly members – Democrats and Republicans together – taking a recess and enjoying cigars and scotch.

CBS war correspondent John Laurence once said that of all media, it is the craft of still photography that comes “closest to showing the truth.”

As a photojournalist, this belief resides in my DNA – and wielding a camera to capture moments of truth in our state Capitol should have been a far easier task than working in a war zone. Or so my editors thought more than a decade ago when the Los Angeles Times shipped me to Sacramento.

My mission was clear: Give newspaper readers an unvarnished look at the legislative process, conveying the figurative hand-to-hand battle between Democrats and Republicans, North and South, the Coast and the Valley.

My colleagues took bets I’d grow bored and return to L.A. for the exhilaration of covering run-and-gun breaking urban news. And they had a point. It’s hard to make a scintillating photograph of people talking – and waiting – in a place where the few visual opportunities tend to be contrived affairs.

From Day One, I hitched myself to one constant guidepost: authenticity – seeking to capture in even the most staged event an unscripted moment or shard of history. The photos in a free public exhibit opening in the Capitol on Monday reflect some of those moments.

Over the years, I watched our state Capitol morph into an ever more tightly scripted venue, testament to a Hollywood governor, the sophistication of polling and handlers, and the seismic jolt to the media landscape known as the Internet. Politicians are increasingly guarded, fearing anything they say or do could spread virally on the Web to haunt their political careers.

Perhaps my most chilling image from 10 years covering the Capitol is one depicting the notebooks and hands of a dozen reporters surrounding a speakerphone for a conference-call news conference. It was the ultimate staged event without even the need for a stage, and a precursor to today’s epidemic of Web statements and e-mail interviews.

Yet the political instincts behind these thoroughly vetted exchanges run counter to the veracity the public craves. Corporate America, nonprofits and other organizations already have begun to recognize that authenticity is an asset – not a liability. Outside of my ongoing photojournalism work, I am constantly amazed at the lack of scripting in assignments from the larger world beyond the Capitol. Often I am asked to shoot things as they truly are. Period.

My decade under the dome was a time of great change, with turnover sped up by term limits, the historic recall of a governor and a feast-to-famine budget. I feel privileged to have documented this era through authentic glimpses of our democracy in action.

Photo exhibit

“Decade Under the Dome: A Photojournalist’s Quest for Authenticity in the People’s House” is open to the public March 1-15 in the Capitol’s basement rotunda from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekends.

April 15, 2004 I call it the Magic Marble Path, the 100-foot corridor that connects the Governor’s Office to the press conference room, 1190. This pathway always offered a sense of visual anticipation and possibility. The governor’s security detail would block off the area 20 minutes ahead of time, tourists would gather sometimes 10-deep behind the velvet ropes, and the governor would emerge this day with Danny DeVito and Clint Eastwood, who were named the newest members of the California Film Commission.

Over the past year, the Westlands Water District and other irrigation districts in the San Joaquin Valley have engaged in a dangerous campaign of misinformation.

They brought in Fox News’ Sean Hannity to spout his claim that farmers in California “are losing their land, their crops and their livelihood all because of a 2-inch fish.”

They’ve portrayed the San Joaquin Valley as a “dust bowl.” And they’ve tried to sell the public on the idea that a “man-made drought” is harming farmers, not the low precipitation of the last three years.

It makes for great propaganda, but lousy policy. Sen. Dianne Feinstein and various other politicians are falling over themselves to further divert water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to help corporate farm operations to the south. They are doing this even though there’s scant evidence the valley’s west side has been significantly harmed by federal efforts to protect the Delta’s crashing stocks of salmon and smelt.

As the Los Angeles Times reported earlier this week, farm jobs in Fresno County actually rose last year. Statewide, the number of farm jobs fell less than half a percent from 2008 and 2009. Outside of health care providers, farm owners “are probably No. 2 in terms of dodging the worst impacts of the recession,” said Jeffrey Michael, director of the Business Forecasting Center at the University of the Pacific in Stockton.

Feinstein could help provide clarity, yet sadly, she has only added to the murk. In an op-ed in The Bee last Saturday, she painted a picture of farmers hacking down almond orchards even as reservoirs were brimming with water. Really? Folsom Reservoir and Lake Oroville – two of the workhorses that provide the Delta with water – are at less than half their capacity. Orchards? The state has more acres of bearing almond trees than ever.

No doubt, some farmers on the valley’s west side are being hurt by the drought and endangered species protections. Yet even this needs to be kept in perspective: Westlands and other nearby districts lack the water rights of more senior water users. Inevitably, they get cut back in lean times so senior users can get their water.

Given their status, you might think that west side farmers would be prudent and rely on field crops instead of orchards that are vulnerable to water cutbacks. Instead, they’ve done the opposite. From 1998 to 2008, almond acreage in Fresno County increased from 46,968 acres to 120,400 acres, much of it on the west side of the valley.

With much at risk and much to be gained by accessing extra government water, Westlands’ leaders have put their energies into cultivating friends in Washington and Sacramento and punishing perceived enemies.

This month, the irrigation district pulled its membership from the Association of California Water Agencies. Why? All because ACWA Director Tim Quinn dared speak the truth: That the Delta Stewardship Council created by last year’s water legislation should have been given “more authority to enforce its views.”

By using these tactics of intimidation and misinformation, Westlands has been able to win small victories, such as extra water allocations the Obama administration announced Friday. Yet it does so at enormous cost to its reputation.

Westlands needs reliable water deliveries, and that can only occur if it works within the water community of California on long-term fixes. By bullying and burning bridges, Westlands risks becoming a pariah in the water world. Over the long run, that will only hurt the farmers of this district and the business and farmworkers who depend on it.

One sign of a thriving profession is the eagerness of its practitioners to be regulated.

Dentists, pharmacists, farmers – all in the past have tried to limit access to their trade, thereby allowing them to charge higher prices.

Thus, it should come as no surprise that one of Sacramento’s fastest-growing professions wants to be regulated.

We are speaking, of course, about tattoo parlors.

As The Bee’s Anna Tong reported Friday, Sacramento now has 255 body art shops. By contrast, Santa Clara County has 60.

Some local artists think the business is oversaturated. That’s why they eagerly attended a meeting Thursday with Sacramento County officials, who discussed plans for a body art ordinance the supervisors will discuss in May.

While it is doubtful the supervisors have much experience with tattoos, it’s possible they could enact a worthwhile ordinance.

Artists using tattoo equipment should have basic training to prevent the spread of hepatitis and HIV. Sanitation is essential, even for people who want images of their dogs tattooed onto their backs.

But will such regs actually slow down the local growth of the tattoo business? It’s doubtful. Body artists are rock stars in this town. How their customers feel in 30 years, however, remains to be seen.

Luis Santana

As states and school districts focus on the president’s “Race to the Top” initiative, it’s important to remember why some children languish at the “bottom.” These are children such as Sergio and Jovani in Fresno.

When I first met these two 9-year-olds, their biggest fear was getting called on to read aloud in class.

Embarrassed by their inability to read, the two boys didn’t like going to school. They had fallen behind and, according to the odds, reached a critical fork in the road – with one path leading to dropping out, gangs and prison.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, nearly half of California’s fourth-grade students are below basic proficiency in reading. And if students have not learned to read by the fourth grade, only one in 10 ever will.

The majority of illiterate students drop out and live on public assistance at some point. They are the most vulnerable targets for gang recruitment, will have minimal job skills, and many will develop substance abuse problems.

These are all factors leading to crime and incarceration for years – or life – and this comes at a high cost that our cities and state simply cannot afford. The cost in lives is even more heartbreaking.

Two years ago, Sergio and Jovani were at a crossroads, but today both are on the path to success. How did this turnaround happen? Put simply, they learned how to read. But the “how” is the real lesson learned.

Ten years ago, I founded Reading and Beyond in Fresno. After working with poor children in Brazil and Colombia, I learned firsthand that reading was a door out of one life and into another, more prosperous one.

So I created an organization that took into account some of the unique factors that prevent many children from succeeding in school. For example, agencies, teachers and school administrators told us that children failed in school because they could not read and because parents were not involved. In a community where many parents speak little English and have minimal access to transportation, solving the problem was going to take some creativity.

If getting kids to tutoring is a problem, having multiple, convenient locations in the community is the solution. The children began trickling into our sites at schools and churches to read with our tutors, and today 70 percent of those who participate for six months improve at least one grade level in reading. Jovani improved two grade levels.

But reading wasn’t the only challenge. To empower parents to become more involved, we began classes and workshops – in the parents’ native languages – about navigating the school system, working with teachers, and creating a home environment conducive to learning. We secured funding for a recreational vehicle outfitted with tables and chairs. We parked the RV at supermarkets, apartment complexes, churches, and schools – convenient places for parents.

To date, nearly 17,000 parents have participated. One of those was Sergio’s mom, who learned how to continue at home what her son was learning at tutoring and school. Sergio is now reading above his grade level.

But for every success story like Sergio’s and Jovani’s, there are more children who fall through the cracks, leading to a devastating waste of potential, lives, and money.

“Race to the Top” certainly promises more money for schools – and results – but students and schools will always struggle if we do not find creative ways to ensure that literacy takes root at a young age.

Cost-effective tutoring programs and multilingual parent information and outreach are simple investments that will save our state money and, more importantly, mean a brighter future for our children – at the top.

Reaction to the horror at SeaWorld, a nightmare seldom seen outside Peter Benchley’s imagination, has run the exhausted gamut.

“Kill. The. Fish.” was one talk-radio host’s suggestion. “Save the whale” has been the sentiment of animal lovers, including the victim’s family. So goes life in the Land of Twitter.

Mostly people want to know: What was the whale thinking? Why did he do it? The truth is probably less interesting than our anthropomorphizing minds might wish. Most likely, Tilikum the Killer Whale simply had a “seeing red” moment. He lost control – and then it was over.

Sometimes the Discovery Channel eats Disney.

This, more or less, is the considered opinion of a former whale trainer and scientist, Heidi Harley, who happens to be my cousin.

Naturally, upon hearing the news of Tilikum, I called Heidi, a former whale trainer and orca-rider at Miami’s Seaquarium. She now teaches comparative cognitive psychology at New College in Sarasota, Fla.

Basically, Heidi is a dolphin shrink, though she wouldn’t put it that way, and probably wishes I wouldn’t. She remembers fondly her days in the 1980s riding a killer whale named Lolita, which she describes as “exceptionally good-natured.” Heidi is an intractable scientist, resistant to even a cousin’s urging to summarize and opine. Data-dependent, she declines to presume anything beyond the observable and provable. She does, however, offer a few objective observations that are relevant and, therefore, interesting.

First, she notes that the whale that mauled and drowned trainer Dawn Brancheau had a history of aggression and probably should not interact with humans in the future except under extremely controlled circumstances. That is obvious in retrospect and doubtless will be the case henceforth. But toward theories of humanlike motives (premeditation, for example, as one “expert” suggested), she is highly skeptical.

For the record, Heidi is no run-of-the-mill dolphin shrink. Her accomplishments include teaching dolphins to sing the theme song to “Batman” and creating an alphabet that allows dolphins and humans to “speak.” The idea that a whale could premeditate presupposes what science cannot prove, says Heidi. Sea mammals have many amazing characteristics, including the ability to communicate within species and to form long-term relationships. But there is no evidence that they can imagine a different world and act to produce that alternative reality, as humans routinely do.

Such “thinking” requires sophisticated cognitive functioning that data do not support. Meanwhile, only a whale knows what a whale knows.

This is in part a function of our willingness to love and protect whales. They’re so valued as performers that they’re difficult to access for research, according to Heidi. That’s good for visitors to SeaWorld, but not so good for scientists who can’t pursue study that might provide answers.

What is known – and what is more surprising than “killer whale kills trainer” – is that so few such incidents occur. It is really quite remarkable that humans ever should feel comfortable, and statistically safe, sharing a tank of water with a behemoth creature that – for the most part – exercises significant self-control.

“There’s something remarkably restrained about the animals. That this happened is a tragedy,” says Heidi.

Even when whales and dolphins give signals of aggression, slapping their tails or nodding heads, they are really demonstrating their self-control. When they “see red,” as humans often do (crimes of passion), they simply lose it. No plan, no strategy, just a very bad moment.

What sets off a whale in such circumstances could be any number of factors unrelated to the trainer. Often the spark may come from anger toward another in their group. “You’re the pathetic swimmer in the group, and so they may come after you,” says Heidi.

The question that inevitably arises in these rare instances is, should whales be in captivity and exploited as circus acts? That, ultimately, is a values question. Should we have zoos? Eat meat? Drive SUVs? Whales born and raised in captivity can’t safely be delivered to the open seas. Meanwhile, arguments can be made that interaction between pampered animals and humans ultimately raises awareness that leads to protection. Not long ago, commercial fishermen used to shoot killer whales on sight.

But if we want to understand more about what causes a massive male predator to destroy a human being in a sunny Orlando pool, we may have to protect whales a little less and make them more available to researchers.

Or else leave them to their own devices, possibly elsewhere.

If we’re lucky, Thursday’s summit meeting will turn out to have been the last act in the great health reform debate, the prologue to passage of an imperfect but nonetheless history-making bill. If so, the debate will have ended as it began: with Democrats offering moderate plans that draw heavily on past Republican ideas, and Republicans responding with slander and misdirection.

Nobody really expected anything different. But what was nonetheless revealing about the meeting was the fact that Republicans – who had weeks to prepare for this particular event, and have been campaigning against reform for a year – didn’t bother making a case that could withstand even minimal fact-checking.

It was obvious how things would go as soon as the first Republican speaker, Sen. Lamar Alexander, delivered his remarks. He was presumably chosen because he’s folksy and likable and could make his party’s position sound reasonable. But right off the bat he delivered a whopper, asserting that under the Democratic plan, “for millions of Americans, premiums will go up.” Wow. I guess you could say that he wasn’t technically lying, since the Congressional Budget Office analysis of the Senate Democrats’ plan does say that average payments for insurance would go up. But it also makes it clear that this would happen only because people would buy more and better coverage. The “price of a given amount of insurance coverage” would fall, not rise – and the actual cost to many Americans would fall sharply thanks to federal aid.

His fib on premiums was quickly followed by a fib on process.

Democrats, having already passed a health bill with 60 votes in the Senate, now plan to use a simple majority vote to modify some of the numbers, a process known as reconciliation. Alexander declared that reconciliation has “never been used for something like this.” Well, I don’t know what “like this” means, but reconciliation has, in fact, been used for previous health reforms – and was used to push through both of the Bush tax cuts at a budget cost of $1.8 trillion, twice the bill for health reform.

What really struck me about the meeting, however, was the inability of Republicans to explain how they propose dealing with the issue that, rightly, is at the emotional center of much health care debate: the plight of Americans who suffer from pre-existing medical conditions. In other advanced countries, everyone gets essential care whatever their medical history. But in America, a bout of cancer, an inherited genetic disorder, or even, in some states, having been a victim of domestic violence can make you uninsurable, and thus make adequate health care unaffordable.

One of the great virtues of the Democratic plan is that it would finally put an end to this unacceptable case of American exceptionalism. But what’s the Republican answer? Alexander was strangely inarticulate on the matter, saying only that “House Republicans have some ideas about how my friend in Tullahoma can continue to afford insurance for his wife who has had breast cancer.” He offered no clue about what those ideas might be.

In reality, House Republicans don’t have anything to offer to Americans with troubled medical histories. On the contrary, their big idea — allowing unrestricted competition across state lines – would lead to a race to the bottom. The states with the weakest regulations – for example, those that allow insurance companies to deny coverage to victims of domestic violence – would set the standards for the nation as a whole. The result would be to afflict the afflicted, to make the lives of Americans with pre-existing conditions even harder.

Don’t take my word for it. Look at the Congressional Budget Office analysis of the House GOP plan. That analysis is discreetly worded, with the budget office declaring somewhat obscurely that while the number of uninsured Americans wouldn’t change much, “the pool of people without health insurance would end up being less healthy, on average, than under current law.” But here’s the translation: While some people would gain insurance, the people losing insurance would be those who need it most. Under the Republican plan, the American health care system would become even more brutal than it is now.

So what did we learn from the meeting? What I took away was the arrogance that the success of things like the death-panel smear has obviously engendered in Republican politicians. At this point they obviously believe that they can blandly make utterly misleading assertions, saying things that can be easily refuted, and pay no price. And they may well be right.

But Democrats can have the last laugh. All they have to do – and they have the power to do it – is finish the job and enact health reform.

Sacramento County supervisors did what they had to Wednesday, cutting another $14 million and laying off more than 100 employees in a midyear budget fix. Even more pain is in store for the budget that kicks in July 1, when they will likely need to find another $118 million in savings.

But in crisis, there is also opportunity. It’s time for supervisors – and local officials across California – to get past short-term patching and to look at bigger and bolder ways to provide services at less cost.

One promising area for savings is consolidation – combining agencies or departments that are doing the same job, even if they are in different local governments.

It’s encouraging that consolidation is on the agenda for both interim County Executive Steve Szalay and Gus Vina, who today becomes Sacramento’s acting city manager. With financial gimmicks and easy solutions used up, their elected boards also appear interested.

Over the next weeks, Szalay plans to ask supervisors for permission to start studying a series of potential consolidations. During the budget hearings this week, Supervisor Don Nottoli insisted the county needs to aggressively seek partners in the public, private and nonprofit sectors.

Vina, who is facing a shortfall of between $35 million and $40 million for 2010-11, plans to wrap consolidation ideas into the recommended budget he must bring forward by May 1. He believes there are significant savings by getting rid of redundancies and overlap, though he said action might have to wait until next year.

One obvious candidate for possible consolidation is animal care, which is commonly provided by one combined agency. This fiscal year, the city is spending $3 million on animal care, while the county is spending about $5 million and last October opened a state-of-the-art $23 million animal shelter. Like other agencies, both have taken their share of budget cuts (county animal care lost four more positions in this round).

The sooner some ideas can come to fruition the better. Even if California’s economy does start rebounding by next year, local officials can’t pretend they can return to business as usual.

Both Szalay and Vina seem to accept that fact. “We have to be poised for when there’s a turnaround to find different ways to do business,” Szalay says.

“If we find smart consolidations, we should do them, regardless of the economy,” agrees Vina.

Instead of chipping away at programs and laying off workers year after year, city and county elected officials would best serve taxpayers by ending the needless and costly overlap of city and county services.

Seeking an example of government waste? Look no further than 2006 legislation to build a fence along the 2,000-mile U.S.- Mexico border.

A “virtual fence” of cameras and sensors predictably has been a massive failure. As the Los Angeles Times noted in a story this week, the virtual fence “will probably not be completed for another seven years – if it is finished at all.” Why? It doesn’t work.

The cost of this chimera is outrageous. In 2006, the total was expected to be $2.5 billion. By 2007, however, it had gone up to $8 billion, with the inspector general estimating the cost could be $30 billion. That’s $15 million a mile.

Building virtual or real walls on the border is yet another instance of lawmakers hoping against hope that a technical fix will solve U.S.-Mexico migration problems for them.

The whole idea is rife with paradoxes.

As Douglas S. Massey of Princeton University notes, “On the one hand, we have joined with Mexico and Canada to make arrangements for the free cross-border movement of goods, capital, information, and services. On the other hand, we have acted unilaterally and with increasing militancy to block the movement of labor.”

And as Susan Gzesh of the University of Chicago points out, congressional attempts to improve immigration laws in 1965, 1978 and 1986 had the ironic effect of turning what had been a large-scale legal flow of Mexican immigrants into a large-scale illegal flow.

Then, there is the human toll. Confronted by walls built in San Diego and El Paso in the 1990s, illegal border crossers have attempted to enter the country across deserts. That led, predictably, to an increase in deaths, the subject of a new book: “The Death of Josseline: Immigration Stories from the Arizona-Mexico Borderlands” by Margaret Regan. The title refers to a 14-year-old who died crossing Arizona wilderness trying to join her mother in the United States.

Regan described this on National Public Radio as a moral issue: “When we have families being separated like this and children dying along the way, I think we have to look at changing something.”

To begin, the billions being wasted on a fence might be better spent on aiding economic development in Mexico.

We know from our history that migration from Mexico rises and falls with the demand for labor. This country needs a realistic immigration policy, so we can focus on true border threats – such as drugs and illegal firearms.

President Barack Obama promised that immigration would be a top priority, along with health care and energy. The multibillion-dollar fence boondoggle brings that issue to the fore, again.

Dr. Kay Judge

Donny Phillips died last month. Quietly, desperately, sadly.

Donny was a 35-year-old man, sick for most of his life, with a disease that health insurance does not acknowledge or reimburse for. At the end of his life, Donny could not get out of his bed. His body was too weak to hold him up, his lungs powerless to oxygenate him, his heart too worn out from overwork. He died without hope, a prisoner in his body, having spent the last six months in a hospital.

He knew he was dying. He looked into my eyes and said, “Don’t let me die here, Doc. Everyone else has given up on me, don’t you give up on me too.”

I was his new doctor. I, too, failed him in the end.

Donny was big. Really big: 800 pounds. Semantics, blame and political correctness surround the issue of obesity. But, historically, the health care and insurance industry by and large have not paid for obesity to be effectively prevented.

There was no early intervention for Donny growing up. There was no patient or community outreach. He ballooned gradually. He got sicker and sicker. There was no medically reimbursable program available to help him lose weight. He got fatter and fatter.

He went from doctor to doctor and received standard-of-care medicine. He received medications, lab work and a series of hospitalizations for each new medical condition. But he never had his underlying cause – obesity – addressed. Why? Because that is what we Western-trained docs do – we treat the acute illness. It’s how we are taught and what we are reimbursed for. His overall care cost the system millions of dollars. Yet the few thousand dollars for weight management that might have prevented it all was not a covered expense.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and former President Bill Clinton held a summit Wednesday on the state’s obesity crisis. It helped shine a spotlight on a national epidemic.

Ten times more people are obese in the United States than in Japan. The three leading causes of death are heart disease, stroke and diabetes. Obesity is related to all of these. Excess weight and obesity affect an estimated 97 million Americans and are the second-leading cause of preventable death in the United States. Health insurance pays for the treatment of heart disease, diabetes and strokes, but not for obesity.

We are in the midst of a passionate and politically charged national debate over health care. Donny had no political affiliation and had lived through multiple presidencies, but all existing health care coverage policies failed him in the treatment of his obesity. He paid for that with his life.

It’s not that we are not spending on obesity. Obesity-related costs place a huge burden on the U.S. economy: In 2003 the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention estimated the direct health care costs attributable to obesity at $75 billion in 2003.

But, ironically, we do not spend our money treating obesity. Instead, we pay for all the escalating and expensive conditions it causes.

Obesity is not a treatable diagnosis, except bariatric surgery for severe obesity in medically approved cases. We are shutting the barn door after the horse has run out.

What can we do about it? We can make the field of primary-care medicine palatable to graduating students, so we have a strong focus on and adequate reimbursement for preventive medicine in our country. We can empower health systems with the creation of and reimbursement for strong obesity prevention and treatment programs that are easily accessible within a health system.

At this time, medical options for weight loss are pretty much limited to diet pills and supplement-based programs that patients pay for out of pocket. But hospitals and health systems could treat obesity as a continuum of disease, with early intervention, disease management including nutrition and behavioral and exercise counseling, multi-specialty intervention, patient tracking and quality-improvement incentives.

We can create a “health care system,” instead of a “sick care system,” in which our resources are directed toward effective disease prevention (obesity) instead of a focus on sick patient management (all the diseases obesity causes).

We are a fortunate nation, with access to the latest technology and medical advancements. It has been said we excel in “resurrection medicine” – we fix things once they are broken. Open-heart surgery, lung transplants, the latest and greatest pharmaceuticals – we are the best.

But we don’t expend enough on efforts to prevent obesity. Resurrection medicine could not save Donny. It will not help more than two-thirds of Americans, who are overweight or obese. We need to shift health care policy and reimbursement toward effectively treating obesity – which is at the root of much of the ill health in our nation.

Let’s make it so we have no more deaths like Donny’s.

Early release of locally jailed prisoners is probably as old as the criminal justice system in the United States. The original concept underlying early release was simple: If you behaved well and followed the rules behind bars, you could earn credits for early release.

The theory was that these “good time-work time” credits encouraged prisoners’ good behavior while in custody, reduced incidents, and provided additional protection for correctional officers.

Early release has been the law in California for a very long time. It is codified in Penal Code Section 4019, which applies to most crimes. (It does not apply to violent crimes, which are governed by a different section of the Penal Code.) Last month, the application of Section 4019 was thrown into some confusion when a new state law, Senate Bill 18, went into effect. Since that time, there have been differing opinions statewide by county sheriffs, probation officials, courts, district attorneys, defense counsels, local county counsels and the attorney general’s office as to the effect of SB 18.

Up until Jan. 25, the application of “early release” for county jail inmates under Section 4019 was clear and governed by formula.

Here is how it worked: If an inmate had been sentenced to the county jail for, say, 150 days, he or she could accumulate “good time-work time” credits while in custody. After 100 actual days in custody, he or she may have accumulated 50 days of “good time-work time” credits for a total of 150 days.

As a result of the time actually spent in custody and the credits accumulated, this inmate would be considered to have served 150 days and would be released.

In addition, most counties, like Yolo County, allow people convicted of some crimes to participate in alternative programs – such as the sheriff’s work project – if they have 90 or fewer days of custody time.

So, inmates who have been sentenced to 90 days of jail time could do the alternative work program and serve no time in jail. Those who are serving time in jail (say, with a sentence of 150 days) are eligible for the alternative program when – after serving time in jail – their remaining jail time comes down to 90 days.

The formula for calculating credits changed with the passage of SB 18. Under the new statute, credits are awarded one day for every one day served in jail. In the example previously given, the defendant who has served 75 days in jail is now entitled to 75 days of “good time-work time” credits for a total of 150 days, and would be released early when he or she hits the 75-day mark of days actually served.

The dilemma is that the new state law did not explicitly state whether the changes to Section 4019 were to be applied retroactively or prospectively only. Many counties interpreted it one way, and many interpreted it the other. Ultimately, an appellate court will straighten all this out, or the Legislature will amend the statute to clarify the point.

The change to Section 4019 seems to have caught almost everyone in the criminal justice system flat-footed. Defense lawyers, prosecutors, probation officers, county counsels, sheriffs and judges were not aware of it, partly because it was buried in a mound of legislation. Frankly, I suspect that many members of the Legislature who voted for the change may not have been aware of it.

Apparently, state leaders enacted the new law with the intent of reducing overcrowding in prisons and jails. A number of officials and citizens have since expressed concerns for public safety by early release of prisoners.

While these concerns are real and legitimate, one should not forget that early release is the law in California and has been for generations. SB 18 only changed the formula for calculating “good time-work time” credits – it did not create early release all by itself.

Eventually, all prisoners (except those incarcerated for a life term) are released from custody. Even if “good time-work time” credits were completely eliminated, prisoners would be released at some point in time into the community.

For the criminal justice system, an overriding issue is how to equip these inmates with sufficient skills, training, knowledge and supervision to function and be productive once back in society.

Amazingly, the congressional hearings on Toyota were relatively civilized. Apart from some inevitable theatrical hectoring, the questioning was generally respectful, the emotions controlled.

This was all the more remarkable given the drama of some of the testimony, such as that offered by a tearful Rhonda Smith, who recounted how, in her runaway Lexus, she had called her husband because “I wanted to hear his voice one more time.”

Such wrenching and compelling stories might impel you to want to string up the first Toyota executive you find. But the issue here is larger and highly complex.

Industrial society produces an astonishing array of mass- produced products – cars, drugs, medical devices – that are at once wondrous and potentially lethal.

The wondrousness sometimes eludes us. Even the lowliest wage earner has an automobile that conveys him with more luxury, more freedom, more comfort than any traveling king ever experienced in all the centuries before the 20th. And modern medicines – why, vaccines alone – have prevented more suffering, more debility and more death than anything ever conceived by man.

But these wonders can be lethal. And sorting out the endless complaints about these products is maddeningly difficult – though sort you must, otherwise every complaint would require shutting down the factories, and we’d have no industrial society at all.

The question is: How do you distinguish the idiosyncratic failure from the systemic – for example, the single lemon that came off the auto assembly line vs. an intrinsic problem inherent in that model’s engineering? How do you separate one patient’s physiology producing a drug side effect vs. an intrinsic problem with a drug that makes it unacceptably dangerous?

Consider the oddity of those drug commercials on television. Fifteen seconds of the purported therapeutic effort, followed by about 45 seconds of a rapidly muttered list of horrific possible side effects. When the ad is over, I can’t remember a thing about what the pill is supposed to do, except perhaps cause nausea, liver damage, projectile vomiting, a nasty rash, a four-hour erection and sudden death.

Sudden death is my favorite because there is something comical about it being a side effect. What exactly is the main effect in that case? Relief from abdominal bloating? And how many sudden deaths does it take until we say: “Enough,” and pull the drug off the market?

It’s not an easy calculation. Six years ago, Vioxx, a powerful anti-inflammatory, was withdrawn by the manufacturer because it was found to increase the risk of heart attack and stroke from 0.75 percent per year to 1.5 percent. The company was pilloried for not having owned up to this earlier, but some rheumatologists were furious that the drug was forced off the market at all. They had patients with crippling arthritis who had achieved a functioning life with Vioxx, for which they were quite willing to risk a long-shot cardiac complication. The public furor denied them the choice.

And don’t imagine that we do not coldly calculate the price of a human life. In 1974, the speed limit was lowered to 55 mph to conserve oil. That also led to a dramatic drop in traffic fatalities – approximately 3,000 lives every year. This didn’t stop us, after the oil crisis, from raising the speed limit back to 65 and beyond – knowing that thousands of Americans would die as a result.

The calculation was never explicit but it was nevertheless real. We were quite prepared to trade away a finite number of human lives for speed, and for the efficiency and convenience that come with it.

This is not to let Toyota off the hook simply because all products carry risk. Toyota executives have already admitted that they had underplayed the reports of sticking accelerators. They seem finally to have made a very serious, almost frantic, effort to correct what can be corrected – the floor mat and sticky accelerator problem – while continuing to investigate the more elusive possibility (never proved, perhaps never provable) of some additional electronic glitch.

But it is no disrespect to the memory of those killed, and the sorrow of those left behind, to simply admit that even the highest technology produced by the world’s finest companies can be fallible and fatal, and that the intelligent response is not rage and retribution but sober remediation and recognition of the very high price we pay – willingly pay – for modernity with all its wondrous, dangerous bounty.

The Sacramento County Planning Commission on Monday made a wholly unnecessary and harmful decision to approve a new public airport on land adjacent to the Cosumnes River Preserve, 20 miles south of Sacramento. The Board of Supervisors should reverse it.

The Cosumnes River is the only remaining free-flowing, undammed river running from the Sierra Nevada to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The 46,000-acre preserve, created in 1987, is a critical stop on the Pacific Flyway for migrating and wintering birds and considered a “globally important bird area.” It has the highest bird species diversity in the Central Valley – with more than 250 species of shorebirds, waterfowl, raptors, songbirds and others. In the winter alone, the area supports 20,000 to 40,000 birds.

With seven federal, state and local government and nonprofit partners, the preserve is considered a model in innovative ecosystem restoration. It gets about 60,000 visitors a year. Busloads of people visit every November for the sandhill crane season.

Here’s the issue: A hardly used runway at Mustang Airport, surrounded on three sides by the preserve, had a permit for a “privately owned, personal use” airport from 1990 to 1997. With about two flights a week, it didn’t conflict with the preserve.

Now, however, the owner wants to convert it to a “privately owned, public-use airport.” The expanded airport would have a wider, longer runway, 100 hangars and 25 tiedowns (allowing 125 aircraft to be based at the airport). A similar-sized Oakdale Airport in Stanislaus County, with 96 based aircraft, gets 18,000 flights a year. The Sacramento County Airport System estimates a conservative low range of 15,200 flights a year or about 40 a day at the proposed new public airport.

Can tens of thousands of birds co-exist with this many flights? Hardly.

According to Sacramento County planning staff, “if a determination is made that the existing Cosumnes River Preserve constitutes a bird hazard within any of the safety zones, it will be considered an existing incompatible use.” That means the preserve might have to fill in wetlands and remove crops, trees and shrubs that attract wildlife.

This is not just a hypothetical possibility. When the Rancho Murieta airport sued to have surrounding dedicated habitat removed, citing air safety concerns, the county lost and had to cut down more than 100 trees.

The public-private partners in the preserve, including Sacramento County, already have spent more than $150 million buying lands in the Cosumnes River basin for the specific purpose of attracting wildlife.

A new public airport is unnecessary. Adequate alternatives exist – such as Executive Airport, less than 20 miles away, or Franklin Field, 6.5 miles west. Executive Airport has dozens of tiedowns available and plans to add 100 hangars. Franklin Field also has a dozen tiedowns available and room to add up to 30 more.

The county Board of Supervisors, which will receive an appeal of the Planning Commission decision next week, should deny the permit. A proposal to put a public airport on land surrounded on three sides by the Cosumnes River Preserve, with one of the highest bird concentrations in the state, makes no sense at all.

Ever eager to cast themselves as defenders of the little guy, politicians are in constant search of evildoers they can pummel, preferably in front of TV cameras.

For politicians in California, the bad guy du jour is Anthem Blue Cross, which proposed – then put on hold – a rate hike of up to 39 percent for holders of individual policies.

Anthem deserves scrutiny. Yet there is a right way and wrong way to go about investigating its actions. The Assembly on Tuesday demonstrated the wrong way.

Assembly Health Committee Chairman Dave Jones, a Sacramento Democrat running for insurance commissioner, spent the better part of an hour denouncing Anthem’s rate increase and questioning Leslie Margolin, Anthem’s president, and James Oatman, an Anthem vice president and an actuary. Margolin easily fended off questions by claiming ignorance, declining to answer, or promising to get back to lawmakers with answers.

Jones concluded his questioning by pointing to the millions of Californians who have lost jobs amid huge profits for Blue Cross.

“Have you no shame?” he demanded. He may have hoped for a dramatic crescendo, but came off as desperate.

Fortunately for Democrats, Henry Waxman, chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, put on a show with some substance in Washington on Wednesday. He and other Democrats released documents from WellPoint Inc., the parent of Anthem, revealing that the company expected its 39 percent rate increase to “return California to a profit of 7 percent.” That seemed to contradict claims by Anthem executives Tuesday that the company’s profit was no higher than 5 percent.

The documents also suggestion that Wellpoint paid 39 of its executives more than $1 million each and spent more than $27 million on 103 lavish executive retreats.

Californians worried about health insurance rates need this kind of background info. Waxman helped unearth it Wednesday. State lawmakers, by contrast, made themselves look like bit players.

Pastor Charles A. Warner

As clergy involved in the group Sacramento Area Congregations Together, we’ve worked long and hard over the past year to ensure that federal health insurance reform legislation translates into more affordable coverage for the hardworking Americans to whom we minister.

We’ve traveled to Washington, D.C., on several occasions to participate in large-scale lobbying days with other people of faith in the PICO National Network, an alliance of 1,000 congregations nationwide.

We have met with our representatives, both on Capitol Hill and here in Sacramento, to push the issue of affordability for working families. We have helped organize prayer vigils, press conferences and even a nationwide conference call with President Barack Obama.

Throughout, we’ve had an opportunity to see up close the messy process of creating a single piece of legislation that can pass through a body composed of 535 legislators, each with his or her own unique interests at stake.

After all of this, we can say without a doubt that the health reform bill that is so close to passage in Congress, while not perfect, stands clearly on the side of hardworking Americans. And that failure to pass this bill will be a serious blow to tens of millions of families and small businesses, who will continue to see their health care bills rise, as well as to the nation’s economic future.

Every day that goes by, more and more families and small businesses in our communities lose the ability to afford health coverage and thousands continue to suffer and die unnecessarily.

The bill before Congress would guarantee coverage that families can count on, coverage that can’t be taken away. The bill would rein in insurance companies that amass huge profits by denying Americans access to the care they need. It would not only ban insurance companies from denying people care due to pre-existing conditions, it would also prevent them from the egregious practice of raising premiums if they fall ill.

The bill would help small businesses by offering subsidies to provide health care for their employees, thereby freeing up money to allow owners to invest more in their businesses and create new jobs.

In short, the bill before Congress would place government on the side of the American people, and put an end to the days when insurance companies make all the rules and take too many of our hard-earned dollars.

While many people are understandably frustrated with how long and complicated the process of passing reform has been, they recognize that action is still urgently needed. What is now needed is faith that our government can and should rein in profit-driven insurance companies that put the bottom line ahead of the health and wellness of individuals.

In just the past year, our government has provided 4 million more children with health care, invested in and expanded the care and services provided by rural community health centers, and guaranteed that families who suffer the loss of a job and thus health insurance would maintain affordable COBRA coverage.

That’s the kind of government that works for and delivers to its people. And that’s what we can expect if health reform passes.

What we need now is the moral leadership that can cut through the politics, call out the narrow self-interests of those who wish to kill reform, help the American people understand clearly what reform will do for them, and ensure that we do not let politics get in the way of protecting what’s in the best interests of our country as a whole.

Unless the sun rises in the West, today’s health-care reform summit will yield no bipartisan concord. Congressional Republicans remain unalterably opposed to health reform; the ideas they’ve advanced – which the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says would insure no more than 3 million of America’s more than 45 million uninsured – barely reach the level of piddling.

But unto themselves, the Democrats have the votes to enact comprehensive reform. And – what is new – they finally have a plan on which the president has put his stamp.

The plan that the White House released Monday strongly resembles the compromise proposal that House and Senate Democrats have been negotiating. It is a more politically sustainable synthesis than the Senate’s original offering; the Achilles’ heels and banana peels in the earlier bill have been scrapped. The subsidies that the president’s plan offers low- and-middle-income shoppers on the new health insurance exchanges are more generous.

It raises the threshold for the excise tax on high-cost insurance policies so that only a relative few policyholders will be nicked. It restores the progressivity of the House bill by extending the Medicare payroll tax to the interest, capital gains and dividend income of the wealthy. Instead of the federal government picking up only Nebraska’s new Medicaid expenses – Ben Nelson’s stinkeroo of a deal – it will now pick up the new Medicaid expenses for all states, easing the plight of America’s chronically beleaguered state governments.

The Obama plan also creates a federal authority to regulate the rates that private insurers charge their customers. To hard-right purists, this constitutes government intrusion into the marketplace, but if that’s what they believe, they should also demand that the 25 states (a number of them conservative and Southern) that currently vest that authority in their insurance commissioners should forswear this power as well.

So why are some Democrats still hanging back? There’s anger in the land, no question, but a recent poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation makes clear that that anger is directed more at congressional dithering than at the actual elements of the Democrats’ plan. More than 70 percent of Americans support the establishment of the exchanges, the extension of coverage, and the elimination of lifetime limits on overall coverage and of the “doughnut hole” in Medicare drug coverage. Fifty-eight percent say they’d be angry or disappointed if Congress threw in the towel on health reform.

Still, a number of congressional Democrats – a small number, but enough to imperil the bill’s passage, particularly in the House – believe that giving up the fight may be politically prudent. They couldn’t be more wrong. House Democrats who voted for the bill last year but are now having second thoughts, says California Democrat Henry Waxman, one of the bill’s authors and a keen reader of electoral tea leaves for the past 40 years, “are asking for the worst of all possible worlds” if they don’t vote for it again.

“The Republicans will attack them for their first vote; some of their Democratic supporters will blame them for their second, if they vote no.”

Some House Democrats are also balking at the process required for passing the bill, which is for them to pass the Senate bill and then trust their Democratic Senate colleagues to make the agreed-upon changes in a subsequent reconciliation vote.

I bow to no one in my lack of admiration for the Senate – its abolition as a body would be a boon to humankind – but for health reform to perish on the altar of bicameral mistrust would compel all future historians of this process to conclude, “These guys were jerks.”

Finally, for Democrats who question whether now is the time, I suggest they go back and read Harry Truman’s November 1945 message to Congress calling for national health care. “The principal reason why people do not receive the care they need is that they cannot afford to pay for it,” Truman said. At the time, the cost of health care accounted for 4 percent of the nation’s income.

Truman didn’t get his plan enacted, of course; no plan for universal care has been enacted since. The principal reason people don’t receive care remains its unaffordability, but the aggregate cost of health care has since risen to 16 percent of the nation’s income.

Absent a universal plan, it will keep rising.

Truman sent his message to Congress 65 years ago. The debate over national health care is old enough to collect Social Security. The question for timorous Democrats is: “If not now, when?”

Today’s health policy “summit” comes at a moment when, as happens with metronomic regularity, Washington is reverberating with lamentations about government being “broken.”

Such talk occurs only when the left’s agenda is stalled. Do you remember mournful editorials and somber seminars about “dysfunctional” government when liberals defeated George W. Bush’s Social Security reforms?

The summit’s predictable failure will be a pretext for trying to ram health insurance legislation through the Senate by misusing “reconciliation,” which prevents filibusters. If the Senate parliamentarian rules, as he should, that most of the legislation is ineligible for enactment under reconciliation, the vice president, as Senate president, can overrule the parliamentarian. This has not happened since 1975, but liberals say desperate times require desperate measures.

Today’s desperation? Democracy’s majoritarian ethic is, liberals say, being violated by the filibuster that prevents their enacting health legislation opposed by an American majority.

Some liberals argue that the Constitution is unconstitutional, for two reasons, the first of which is a non sequitur: The Constitution empowers each chamber to “determine the rules of its proceedings.” It requires five supermajorities (for ratifying treaties, endorsing constitutional amendments, overriding vetoes, expelling members and impeachment convictions). Therefore it does not permit requiring a sixth, to end filibusters.

The second reason filibusters are supposedly unconstitutional is that they exacerbate the Senate’s flaw as “inherently unrepresentative.” That is, the Founders – who liberals evidently believe were dolts or knaves – designed it to represent states rather than, as the House does, population.

Liberals fret: 41 senators from the 21 smallest states, with barely 10 percent of the population, could block a bill. But Matthew Franck of Radford University counters that if cloture were blocked by 41 senators from the 21 largest states, the 41 would represent 77.4 percent of the nation’s population. Anyway, senators are never so tidily sorted, so consider today’s health insurance impasse: The 59 Democratic senators come from 36 states containing 74.9 percent of the population, while the 41 Republicans come from 27 states – a majority — containing 48.7 percent. (Thirteen states have senators from each party.) Since there have been 50 states, Republicans have never had 60 senators. There were 60 or more Democratic senators after seven elections – 1960 (64), 1962 (66), 1964 (68), 1966 (64), 1974 (61), 1976 (62) and 2008 (60, following Arlen Specter’s discovery that he is a Democrat, and the protracted Minnesota recount). But both parties have been situational ethicists regarding filibusters.

In 2005, many Republicans, frustrated by Democrats blocking confirmation votes, wanted to ban filibusters of judicial nominees.

They said such filibusters unconstitutionally prevent the president from doing his constitutional duty of staffing the judiciary. But this is not just the president’s duty; the Senate has the constitutional role of consenting – or not – to nominations.

“Great innovations,” said Jefferson, “should not be forced on slender majorities.” Hence President Barack Obama recently embraced a supermajority mechanism: The 18-member commission he created to recommend measures to reduce the deficit requires that any recommendation be endorsed by 14 members.

Filibusters are devices for registering intensity rather than mere numbers – government by adding machine. Besides, has a filibuster ever prevented eventual enactment of anything significant that an American majority has desired, strongly and protractedly? Liberals say filibusters confuse and frustrate the public.

The public does indeed mistakenly believe government is designed to act quickly in compliance with presidential wishes. But most ideas incubated in the political cauldron of grasping factions are deplorable. Therefore, serving the public involves – mostly involves – saying “no.”

The Bill of Rights, like traditional conservatism, effectively pronounces the lovely word “no” regarding many possible government undertakings – establishment of religion, unreasonable searches and seizures, etc.

The fiction that government is “paralyzed” by partisanship is regularly refuted. Presidents Reagan, Clinton and Bush reached across party lines in 1986, 1996 and 2001 to pass tax reform, welfare reform and No Child Left Behind, respectively. The $700 billion TARP legislation and the $862 billion stimulus were enacted with injudicious speed.

Liberals are deeply disappointed with the public, which fails to fathom the excellence of their agenda. But their real complaint is with the government’s structure. And with the nature of the politics this structure presupposes in a continental nation wary of government and replete with rival factions.

Liberals have met their enemy and he is the diminutive “father of the Constitution,” of whom it was said that never had there been such a high ratio of mind to mass: James Madison.

On health care reform, the strategy of President Barack Obama and Democratic congressional leaders is psychologically understandable – as well as delusional.

It is easy to imagine the internal dialogue: “Well, they voted for me, overwhelmingly. I didn’t hide my views on this issue; I highlighted them. If they actually knew what was in the plan, they’d support it. If I don’t believe in this, I don’t believe in anything. Sometimes you just have to lead.”

But there is a problem with this reasoning: After a year of debate, Democratic leaders – given every communications advantage and decisive control of every elected branch of government – have not only lost legislative momentum, they have lost a national argument.

Americans have taken every opportunity – the town hall revolt, increasingly lopsided polling, a series of upset elections culminating in Massachusetts – to shout their second thoughts. At this point, for Democratic leaders to insist on their current approach to health reform is to insist that Americans are not only misinformed but also dimwitted.

And the proposed form of this insistence – enacting health reform through the quick, dirty shove of the reconciliation process – would add coercion to arrogance. Majority Leader Harry Reid has declared that “everything is on the table” – as though Senate Republicans and Democratic moderates were the domestic equivalents of Iran. This is the political context that Democratic leaders have set for their historically “transparent” health summit – a threat as transparent as a horse’s head in a senator’s bed.

Obama now approaches the Rubicon. The Senate is in disarray. Its procedures frustrate his purposes. Before crossing the river with his army, Julius Caesar is reported to have said, “Let the dice fly high!” For what stakes does Obama gamble? First, the imposition of a House-Senate health reform hybrid would confirm the worst modern image of the Democratic Party, that of intellectual arrogance. Parties hurt themselves most when they confirm an existing, destructive public judgment. In this case, Americans would see Democrats pushing a high-handed statism. It is amazing how both parties, when given power, seem compelled by an irresistible inner force to inhabit their own caricatures.

Second, this approach would almost certainly maintain conservative and Republican intensity through the November elections. In midterm elections, it is intensity that turns a trend into a rout. It is one thing to pour gasoline on a populist bonfire. It is another thing to pour gasoline on a populist bonfire while one is already being roasted.

Third, this action would undermine Obama’s own State of the Union strategy, which seemed like a shift toward the economy and away from health care reform. The White House finds it impossible to settle on a strategy and stick with it. Democrats keep being drawn back into debates – Reid is now proposing the return of the “public option” – that they have lost decisively, as if one more spin of the roulette wheel will recover their losses.

Fourth, a reconciliation strategy would both insult House and Senate Republicans and motivate them for future fights. The minority would not only be defeated on health reform, their rights would be permanently diminished – a development that would certainly be turned against Democrats when they lose their majority. Each side would have an excuse for decades of bitterness, creating a kind of political karma, in which angry spirits are reincarnated again and again, to fight the same battles and suffer the same wounds.

Fifth, Obama would manage to betray many politically vulnerable members of his own party, proving himself a party leader of exceptional selfishness. Because the legacy of his presidency is at stake, or because of his pride, or because he is ideologically committed to an expanded public role in health care, Obama is pressuring Democratic members to join a suicide pact. When a president doesn’t care about his party, his party eventually ceases to care about him.

Democratic leaders respond: Since we have already taken the damage for proposing health reform, we might as well get the benefit for passing something. But there is always more damage to be taken on a self-destructive political path. And, in this case, there is a respectable alternative: approve and take credit for incremental reforms while blaming Republicans for blocking broader changes.

Obama’s decision on the use of reconciliation will define his presidency. If he trusts in his charmed political fortunes and lets the dice fly, it will raise the deepest questions about his judgment.

Delaine Eastin

The children of California didn’t create the budget mess in Sacramento, nor did they push state government to the brink of insolvency. It is the politicians, who have been unable to make hard decisions and say no to special interests, who have brought our great state to the edge of fiscal ruin.

All the same, that hasn’t stopped Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger – yet again – from proposing to balance the budget on the backs of California’s young children.

The state faces extreme financial difficulties. The huge, festering budget deficits are more in character for a failed Third World country than what was once the most prosperous, forward-looking state in the Union.

This extraordinarily grave situation calls for boldness, judgment, thoughtfulness and innovative thinking. As Abraham Lincoln said during his own time of crisis, “We must think anew, and act anew.”

Instead, Gov. Schwarzenegger has hauled smoke and mirrors from the storage closet and is recycling last year’s discredited gimmicks.

Among these is a proposal to narrow the budget deficit by hijacking more than a half-billion dollars in revenue from the Proposition 10 tobacco tax.

If you have the feeling you’ve heard this song before, it’s because you have. In May, California voters overwhelmingly rejected Proposition 1D – an almost identical proposal to divert Proposition 10 revenues into the black hole known as the state’s general fund.

Voters recognize what has escaped the governor’s grasp: First 5 Commissions that allocate Proposition 10 revenues are doing critical work, and the programs they fund concretely benefit the young children in every California county.

The governor’s proposal, like the defeated Proposition 1D from which it is cloned, will rob funds from vital local health and education programs for young children. If enacted, it will eliminate health services for 285,000 children and dental care for 70,350.

It will wipe out quality preschool and other school-readiness programs for more than 230,000 children and take more than $32 million annually from public health departments and $60 million from hospitals and clinics.

Such carnage is the tip of the iceberg and would be inflicted on California’s youngest, most vulnerable residents.

And yet, hijacking Proposition 10 revenues will do nothing to solve a budget crisis that stems from the shortsightedness of politicians and the failure to enact structural reforms to place state government on the road to financial stability.

Sixteen times the Legislature was asked to raise tobacco taxes. Sixteen times it failed. It should not be allowed to steal the tobacco tax money that it lacks the courage to raise. The voters passed this law, and that is why the governor must ask for permission to steal it.

It’s difficult to see how much clearer California voters can be when it comes to Proposition 10 tobacco taxes and the First 5 Commissions they fund. Voters approved Proposition 10 in 1998 and two years later overwhelmingly rejected the tobacco industry’s initiative to repeal it. Only eight months ago, 66 percent of California voters said “no” to Proposition 1D. This is a waste of time and money.

The governor is fond of fostering his image as the “green” governor, but that should not extend to recycling an ill-considered raid on Proposition 10 revenues that will degrade the environment in which California’s youngest children live and learn.

Nearly a year after the 9/11 attacks, a pair of government lawyers produced memos that gave cover to the Bush administration’s subsequent use of waterboarding and interrogation techniques widely considered to be forms of torture.

Those documents – and the damage they caused to America’s standing in the world – should never be forgotten. Sadly, there’s a real chance of such a memory lapse following a decision last week by the Obama administration.

Late Friday, the U.S. Justice Department closed its books on John Yoo and Jay Bybee, concluding that the two attorneys should not be held legally responsible for writing the “torture memos” in 2002 and 2003. The Justice report reversed the recommendation of its own ethics officials, who had slammed Yoo for purposely violating his duty to provide “objective and candid legal advice” and Bybee for acting in “reckless disregard” of his responsibilities.

Before the two slink off scot-free, the relevant disciplinary boards – in Pennsylvania in Yoo’s case, the District of Columbia in Bybee’s – should take a hard look at their transgressions and decide whether to revoke their law licenses.

That’s what the ethics officials recommended for these two lawyers. (Yoo since has returned as a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Bybee was appointed by then-President George W. Bush to the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.)

With the Justice Department taking a pass, senior members of Congress should not let this go quietly. Some are not.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California occupies a particularly influential position. She sits on the Judiciary Committee and as chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee knows only too well that waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques did the country more harm than good.

An opportunity comes Friday at a hearing called by Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy of Vermont, who argues that Bybee never would have been confirmed as a federal judge had senators known about his role in the torture memos. The senator says “the right thing to do” would be for Bybee to resign.

The House Judiciary Committee, which has nine California members, also plans a hearing, as yet unscheduled.

Rather than focusing on Yoo and Bybee, however, Congress can be most constructive in figuring out the right way to comprehensively show to the American people what went astray in the war on terror. Several civil liberties and human rights groups are calling for a special prosecutor or a nonpartisan commission, or both, to look into the use of torture.

To his credit, President Barack Obama spoke out forcefully against torture and ended its use almost immediately after taking office. But he is eroding that bold stand by not holding to account those who let it happen. Over and over, he has said he wants to look forward, not backward, including at Bush war-on- terror tactics such as domestic eavesdropping and the treatment of suspected terrorists.

Sometimes, however, you have to correct past wrongs before truly moving forward. The lawyer disciplinary boards can – and should – hold Yoo and Bybee accountable for some of the worst disgraces to occur in the aftermath of 9/11.

The Fair Political Practices Commission is aggressively pursuing legislators and lobbyists who fail to report gifts handed out to lawmakers, as required by law. That’s commendable.

But while they are at it, FPPC commissioners need to close a long-standing loophole in regulations implementing the 1974 Political Reform Act.

Under current rules, lobbyists cannot spend more than $10 per month on a single state official. Back in the middle 1970s, $10 would to buy two hamburgers and a coke, as Jerry Brown famously stated when he pushed the initiative that created the 1974 law. Legislators and lobbyists also generally are required to disclose the “gifts” in reports that are available to the public for the asking.

But under the regulatory loophole, there is no cap on what lobbyists can spend if they host receptions for lawmakers at their homes, hire high-end caterers and pour fine wine. Nor are lobbyists or legislators required to disclose these events in a public filing.

Similarly, the Political Reform Act permits lobbyists’ employers and presidents of trade organizations to spend up to $420 spread over a year on a single legislator. However, there is no maximum or reporting requirement if these lobbyist employers fete lawmakers at their homes.

A minority of lobbyists use their homes for such events. But for some, it’s another tool in their toolkit for influencing the political process.

At its most recent meeting, commissioners tightened the rule, but only slightly. They made clear that lobbyist employers and heads of trade groups cannot host events if they write them off as business expenses on their tax returns or are reimbursed for any expenses. The commission put off discussion of further rules until April.

Legislators gain many privileges when they are elected. One is that they suddenly become the new best friends of lobbyists. It makes no sense that lawmakers must disclose it when their dear friends buy them a $10 burger at a restaurant, but not when they are served filet mignon at a lobbyist’s home.