Author: SacBee — Opinion

Try to save nature center

Re “Effie Yeaw Nature Center may be felled by budget ax” (Page B1, Feb. 12): Thank you, Sam Stanton, for reporting about the Effie Yeaw Nature Center being exposed to closure with very little advance notice to the public.

It’s an outrage to think the county parks administration would spring this on the supervisors without showing anything but absolute determination to make the center a priority, along with adequate funding for park rangers.

The center is a national model for outdoor education and habitat preservation in an urban area, already operating on a minuscule budget. The county can gouge Effie Yeaw for operating expenses and repairs, then imply it’s too expensive to keep open in a recession. Where is the leadership from county parks on this matter? Do they really want to erase one of the most distinctive attractions in the Sacramento area and destroy the vision of one of this country’s finest educators?

I urge everyone to contact their county supervisor and investigate ways to pledge support for more time and resources to preserve this center’s mission.

– James Cooper, Sacramento

Easy to find all the facts

Re “CalPERS needs to be honest,” (Editorials, Feb. 7): You state that the CalPERS Web site is dishonest about the amount of the average retirees’ pensions and mostly rely on a single example to support your position to refute a statement by the CalPERS board president.

I believe that you are referring to the “Facts at a Glance” report prepared each month by CalPERS. It has always been my understanding that this document is intended to be a general compilation and readers are invited to call CalPERS with questions and comments. If The Bee had asked, you would find there is a great deal of additional information that CalPERS would provide that could be insightful.

If The Bee had obtained a copy of the CalPERS actuarial report for the state and schools (which is produced every year and is distributed to the Legislature and governor), under the tab Summary of Participant Data there is a host of tables that detail the number of state and school employees (both safety and non-safety) by length of service and age, in addition to other useful data. If you compare one year’s report with previous years, it is possible to get a pretty good idea of the facts surrounding the pension issue.

– David Christianson, Sacramento

Health care is government role

Re “Government presumes too much” (Letters, Feb. 10): It appears that some health reform naysayers do not recognize the responsibility of Congress to tax and spend in support of the general welfare.

Letter writer John Paul does not remember that the U.S. Supreme Court in two 1937 decisions (Steward Machine Co. v. Davis, 301 U.S. 548 and Helvering v. Davis, 301 U.S. 619, upheld the legality of the 1935 Social Security Act, based on the “tax and welfare” clauses in the Constitution (Article I, Sec. 8); the need for unemployment insurance and old age insurance benefits were recognized by Congress as national problems requiring national solutions.

Currently, the lack of access to health care for 47 million, out-of-control health care cost inflation, and unscrupulous practices in the for-profit health insurance industry are national problems that require national solutions.

The “individual mandate” gives people a choice; the commerce clause in our Constitution permits taxes to cover the loss due to those who elect not to participate in the “individual mandate” for health insurance.

If they join the insurance risk pool, they do not have to pay the tax. If they do not join the risk pool, they raise the cost for others in the insurance pool; they are required to pay the tax so the insurance pool can recoup some of the loss.

It is not a transfer of value from one group to another group; rather, it is a tax to cover one’s responsibility in the risk pool. When those who do not buy insurance get sick, they rely on the emergency room, their family or friends or community clinics. The cost of their care is transferred to others; see for example, the U.S. Supreme Court holding in Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111 (1942).

– David F. Humphers, Sacramento

Law favors insurance profits

Re “Dems hammer health care hikes,” (Business, Feb. 12): When Sen. Harry Reid bemoans that “greedy insurance companies” place more value in profit than people, he speaks with expertise.

And why not? Federal law allows Medigap insurance providers to make between 25 percent and 35 percent gross profit. Don’t believe that? Check out Chapter 8, page 10 of the Medicare Handbook for 2010.

That’s right, federal law allows it. Harry Reid knows that, but pretends otherwise. By comparison, Exxon makes about 12 percent gross profit. Bank of America about the same. CVS drugstores make half that.

I’ll tell you what I’m tired of: politicians who sniff the wind, then bluster about deplorable behavior and pretend they have no connection or responsibility for how the issue became bad. C’mon Harry, just admit you helped drive the public wagon into a ditch. It’s right there in the statutes you helped pass.

– D.W. Collum, Folsom

Make Congress buy insurance

Re “Dems hammer health care hikes,” (Business, Feb. 12): To make health care affordability a level playing field for all Americans, I feel that House and Senate representatives should become independent contractors for the government and work as 1099 tax-exempt employees. They shall be compensated by receiving commission on the viability and quality of legislation passed.

They further should have to purchase their own health care by negotiating with providers like Anthem Blue Cross and others to experience the horror and dismay of denial, rejection and exploitation.

I know for a fact that many of our country’s decision-makers wouldn’t have access to a policy because of pre-existing conditions. This plan indeed will get bipartisan cooperation to regulate the atrocity of spiraling health care abuse by insurers.

– Tom Marsh, Rancho Cordova

Abolish the Assembly

Re “Nominee battle turns bizarre” (Page A1, Feb. 12):

As potholes widen, people starve on the streets and the budget deficit expands, one must wonder about state government. With the census and redistricting approaching, the obvious priority of both parties is to save their jobs.

As has been mentioned before, the sensible thing would be to abolish the post of lieutenant governor. Maybe back in the days of wooden ships and iron horses it was necessary, but not in this century.

A further step in returning the government to the people would be to abolish the Assembly. As much as most people will not admit it, the people are overrepresented.

Just think – a leaner, more accountable government that actually might do something and at less expense.

That’s why I am “decline-to-state,” as I do not feel represented by either party, particularly in these economic times.

– Andrew Mattson, Sacramento

California’s economic woes are undisputed. But dire fiscal times do not justify dishonorable deeds and the breaking of commitments.

This state, its governor and this Legislature have entered into tribal-state gaming compacts with 66 California tribal governments. Each compact includes a provision clearly specifying that only federally recognized Indian tribes can offer “gaming devices” to the public.

This provision is consistent with the direction given in an overwhelming vote by Californians in 2000.

Now, however, lawmakers are talking about authorizing poker playing on Internet-connected devices in direct violation of those agreements with tribes. Their apparent rationale? A $20 billion state budget deficit and the chance to turn back the red tide with an Internet poker tax.

Lawmakers could lose far more than they gain for California by making such a move. Since 2004, tribal gaming compacts have required tribes to make hefty payments to the state general fund. Even in a down economy, tribes are pumping hundreds of millions of dollars a year into the state, and that sum is only expected to increase as the economy recovers.

All told, it means billions of dollars between now and when the compacts expire in 2030.

If the state allows a non- Indian business to offer gaming devices, the compacts spell out a clear result: The tribes will stop making those payments to the general fund. In addition, much of the money distributed through revenue-sharing payments to tribes that don’t have casinos would also be withdrawn.

Internet poker can be played by one person at home. Or it can be played on banks of Web-connected devices lined up at a downtown card club. Proponents of Internet poker may argue that these devices aren’t illegal slot machines under the Penal Code. Or they may seek a Penal Code exemption for the devices, just to make sure. They might also argue that such an operation wouldn’t violate the California Constitution.

But one thing they can’t do is alter the terms of the compacts. Those compacts very clearly define a “gaming device,” and that definition very clearly includes the play of poker on an Internet-connected electronic machine.

Let’s look more closely at that definition: A “gaming device” includes any electronic device that allows an individual to place a bet, play a game of chance or skill, and view notification of any winnings. It doesn’t matter if the game is “house banked” or whether the winnings come from the bets made by the players, as is the case with poker.

What matters when we talk about breaching the tribes’ exclusive right to offer “gaming devices” is that the electronic device permits a player to connect to a system, make a bet, play the game, and view his entitlement to any winnings.

That includes a personal computer in a private home. And it includes a bank of Internet-connected computers in a card club, which is exactly why four such clubs are behind legislation that was proposed last summer and appears to be resurfacing now.

Card clubs have been down this road before. In 2004, they asked voters to authorize 30,000 slot machines in their urban casinos. The four clubs behind last summer’s Internet poker bill spent $12 million on the 2004 initiative, but it failed when nearly 84 percent of the voters rejected the idea.

Now the card clubs are trying to use the back door to get the same slot machine deal they couldn’t get through the front door six years ago.

One California tribe, the Morongo Band of Mission Indians, has cut a deal with these card clubs, giving the tribe the sole right to operate an Internet poker site. Card clubs must be heartened by the testimony of Morongo’s tribal attorneys minimizing the extent of tribal exclusivity in the operation of gaming devices.

Card clubs, it should be noted, do not contribute anything to California’s general fund. Their payments to the state cover only the cost of regulation. Some operators are tempting lawmakers with offers of a 10 percent tax on future Internet poker winnings. Sounds nice, but why not apply that same tax to their current earnings? They grossed $889 million in 2008, a sum that would yield some handsome tax revenue for the state.

Proponents of Internet poker have made some big promises about what kind of cash such operations would cough up for our cash-hungry state. Such predictions are just that – predictions. What’s certain if the state breaks the compacts and authorizes Internet poker is the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in annual payments from tribes.

In December and January, two more compacts were inked. Both of those compacts have exclusivity clauses. Also recently, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeal upheld the tribal exclusivity provision and dismissed a lawsuit brought by a card club challenging the 2004 tribal compacts.

Do the honorable thing, California. Don’t break your commitment with tribes that negotiated with you in good faith. Find another answer to the state’s budget dilemma. Keep your word.

Lately, financial news has been dominated by reports from Greece and other nations on the European periphery. And rightly so.

But I’ve been troubled by reporting that focuses almost exclusively on European debts and deficits, conveying the impression that it’s all about government profligacy – and feeding into the narrative of our own deficit hawks, who want to slash spending even in the face of mass unemployment, and hold Greece up as an object lesson of what will happen if we don’t.

For the truth is that lack of fiscal discipline isn’t the whole, or even the main, source of Europe’s troubles – not even in Greece, whose government was indeed irresponsible (and hid its irresponsibility with creative accounting).

No, the real story behind the euro mess lies not in the profligacy of politicians but in the arrogance of elites – specifically, the policy elites who pushed Europe into adopting a single currency well before the continent was ready for such an experiment.

Consider the case of Spain, which on the eve of the crisis appeared to be a model fiscal citizen. Its debts were low – 43 percent of GDP in 2007, compared with 66 percent in Germany. It was running budget surpluses. And it had exemplary bank regulation.

But with its warm weather and beaches, Spain was also the Florida of Europe – and like Florida, it experienced a huge housing boom. The financing for this boom came largely from outside the country: There were giant inflows of capital from the rest of Europe, Germany in particular.

The result was rapid growth combined with significant inflation: Between 2000 and 2008, the prices of goods and services produced in Spain rose by 35 percent, compared with a rise of only 10 percent in Germany. Thanks to rising costs, Spanish exports became increasingly uncompetitive, but job growth stayed strong thanks to the housing boom.

Then the bubble burst. Spanish unemployment soared, and the budget went into deep deficit. But the flood of red ink – caused partly by the way the slump depressed revenues and partly by emergency spending to limit the slump’s human costs – was a result, not a cause, of Spain’s problems.

And there’s not much that Spain’s government can do to make things better. The nation’s costs and prices have gotten out of line with those in the rest of Europe. If Spain still had its old currency, the peseta, it could remedy that problem quickly through devaluation – by, say, reducing the value of a peseta by 20 percent against other European currencies.

But Spain no longer has its own money, so it can regain competitiveness only through a slow, grinding process of deflation.

Now, if Spain were an American state rather than a European country, things wouldn’t be so bad. For one thing, costs and prices wouldn’t have gotten so far out of line: Florida was freely able to attract workers from other states and keep labor costs down, and never experienced anything like Spain’s relative inflation. Florida’s housing boom has gone bust, but Washington keeps sending the Social Security and Medicare checks.

But Spain isn’t an American state, and as a result it’s in deep trouble. Greece, of course, is in even deeper trouble, because the Greeks, unlike the Spaniards, actually were fiscally irresponsible.

Greece, however, has a small economy, whose troubles matter mainly because they’re spilling over to much bigger economies, like Spain’s. So the inflexibility of the euro, not deficit spending, lies at the heart of the crisis.

None of this should come as a big surprise. Long before the euro came into being, economists warned that Europe wasn’t ready for a single currency. But these warnings were ignored, and the crisis came.

Now what? A breakup of the euro is very nearly unthinkable, as a sheer matter of practicality. As UC Berkeley’s Barry Eichengreen puts it, an attempt to reintroduce a national currency would trigger “the mother of all financial crises.” So the only way out is forward: To make the euro work, Europe needs to move much further toward political union, so that European nations start to function more like American states.

But that’s not going to happen anytime soon. What we’ll probably see over the next few years is a painful process of muddling through: bailouts accompanied by demands for savage austerity, all against a background of very high unemployment, perpetuated by the grinding deflation I already mentioned.

It’s an ugly picture. But it’s important to understand the nature of Europe’s fatal flaw. Yes, some governments were irresponsible; but the fundamental problem was hubris, the arrogant belief that Europe could make a single currency work despite strong reasons to believe that it wasn’t ready.

As one snowstorm spilled into another in the nation’s capital, and cabin fever struck my house, a friend suggested I let my 13-month-old watch cartoons.

“She shouldn’t have school today. It’s a snow day!”

The remark about “school” was a teasing reference to my practice of reading to my toddler every day, trying to teach her the alphabet and keeping her away from TV. Those practices are pretty standard among middle-class American parents; they’re the same ones my parents used to rear their children.

Middle-class child-rearing habits – which usually include other enriching activities, such as the zoo, museums, the aquarium – show up in school achievement. It’s no big secret why the family income level is the best predicter of a kid’s success in school, or why middle-class suburban schools have higher test scores than poor urban ones.

For decades now – at least as far back as the 1960s and the creation of Head Start – educational activists and reformers have tried to find a way to close the learning gap between middle-class kids and poor ones. George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind was another well-meaning attempt, but it hasn’t had much success, either.

Instead of closing the gap, No Child has led to a test fetish and, unfortunately in some cases, cheating on tests. Georgia’s public schools are enmeshed in a cheating scandal in which adults are suspected of changing answers on the state-mandated Criterion-Referenced Competency Test, thereby raising the scores used to measure a school’s academic performance. Many of those schools are in lessaffluent Atlanta neighborhoods.

A cheating scandal reinforces U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s oft-stated claim that students, especially those in poor neighborhoods, are frequently “lied to” about the effectiveness of their educational preparation. But as the Obama administration readies its own remedies for closing the achievement gap between the poor and the middle class, it’s worth asking: Can it be done? Does anything work? Should the nation even try?

Educating all of our children, including those from poor and dysfunctional homes, is clearly in the national interest. In a globally competitive market, and with nations like China and India emphasizing high-quality education, we simply cannot afford not to educate everybody.

And it does no good to point fingers at parents – some of them busy trying to make ends meet, some of them functionally illiterate, some of them simply irresponsible. No child chooses to be born into a home without the obvious advantages.

I’ve heard from too many public school teachers who blame their students’ poor performance on their parents’ failures. That suggests to me those teachers don’t have much faith in their students’ ability to learn or in their own ability to teach them. It’s no wonder, then, that some educators might resort to cheating to raise test scores.

But children from poor households can succeed, as innovative schools around the country have already shown. One of those schools is Washington’s SEED Public Charter School, a boarding school built in 1998 in a down-at-the-heels, crime-scarred neighborhood on the southeast side. According to its founders, more than 90 percent of its graduates go on to college.

Another is Atlanta’s private Ron Clark Academy, which came to national attention when a group of its students performed during Obama’s inauguration. While its student body encompasses varied socioeconomic backgrounds, half of its students come from homes earning less than $28,000 a year, according to Clark, the founder. Yet, Clark says, test scores are “through the roof.”

What do those schools have in common? Teachers and administrators are convinced the children can learn. “The more we expect of kids, the more they achieve,” Clark said.

He said choosing teachers “is the most important decision we make.” He looks for teachers who are “excited, passionate teachers, who love the kids.” If Duncan, the education secretary, is to have a shot at closing the achievement gap, he’ll have to find a way to replicate that passion and excitement in poor neighborhood schools around the country.

Rep. Tom McClintock, a Republican who represents the congressional district that stretches from Sacramento to Lake Tahoe and from the Sierra Nevada to the Oregon border, has been nothing if not consistent on earmarks. These are funds that members of Congress request for specific projects. McClintock signed a “no earmarks” pledge in 2008, and he has kept to that.

But rather than reform the process, he would prohibit all earmarking. This is extreme. Local members of Congress know their communities better than anyone else in the nation’ capital; they are best positioned to request federal projects (such as flood control, roads, wastewater treatment, research facilities, etc.).

As President Barack Obama has said, “Done right, earmarks have given legislators the opportunity to direct federal money to worthy projects that benefit people in their districts, and that’s why I’ve opposed their outright elimination.”

The problem, as McClintock and Obama have observed, is that some projects, in Obama’s words, get “inserted at the 11th hour, without review, and sometimes without merit, in order to satisfy the political or personal agendas of a given legislator, rather than the public interest.” That is what needs fixing.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama pledged to return earmarks to 1994 levels. That was the year Republicans won a majority in Congress and earmarks began to explode. According to Citizens Against Government Waste, earmarks went from 1,318 in 1994 to a peak of 13,997 in 2005.

The number of earmarks dropped in 2006 and 2007 to 2,658, after Democrats took control of Congress promising to reform the earmark process. They eliminated anonymous earmarks, requiring that requests be posted online. That helped – some.

In 2008, however, earmarks went back up to 11,610, dropping only slightly in 2009 to 10,160. Certainly, the nation’s economic crisis has been a contributing factor – members of Congress have sought projects in their districts that save or create local jobs.

The bottom line is that Congress remains far from Obama’s goal of reducing earmarks to 1994 levels. In his January State of the Union address, Obama called on Congress “to publish all earmark requests on a single Web site before there’s a vote, so that the American people can see how their money is being spent.”

Rep. Jackie Speier, D-San Mateo, has a bill that would do just that (HR440). The fact is that lawmakers, while following the letter of new rules, still find ways to bury earmarks in hard-to-find corners of their Web sites. And these items often turn up too late for the public to have a chance to weigh in at public hearings.

Speier’s bill would require committees to “maintain a searchable online database of members’ earmark requests” and require that each earmark be posted online within 24 hours of its request.

Her bill recognizes that some earmarks – identified in time for public scrutiny before a vote – can be wise investments in local infrastructure. And sunlight itself should reduce abuses – such as out-of-district earmarks and projects without federal significance, like the infamous “bridge to nowhere” in Alaska. McClintock’s “any-earmark-is-a-bad-earmark” view is too rigid.

When word went out that Bill Clinton had been rushed to the hospital, the prospect that he was in danger made me wish that President Barack Obama had spent more time learning lessons that only Clinton can teach.

Yes, Clinton put his presidency at risk over a sex scandal, and his infuriating moments around the 2008 South Carolina primary disheartened even his most loyal supporters.

But Clinton remains one of the most talented politicians in our history, and it’s not simply because he feels people’s pain or speaks so well that you sit in your driveway to hear the rest of his speech when he’s on the car radio.

Above all, he understands how hard it is to be a progressive politician at this time in history. He appreciates how difficult it is to construct a durable Democratic majority. And he knows how focused Republicans get on regaining power whenever they find themselves on the outside.

And so before we got the happy word that Clinton was OK, I realized what a great loss it would be if he and Obama were deprived of a chance to spend significant time together comparing crises and problems. When you look at Obama’s political troubles after a year in office, it’s remarkable how much they have in common with those Clinton faced at the same juncture of his presidency.

Consider first that Clinton, like Obama, started out as a unifier who disdained ideological quarrels and saw himself as a problem-solver. There is not a dime’s worth of difference between Clinton’s war on “the brain-dead politics of both parties” and Obama’s insistence that “there is not a liberal America and a conservative America, there is the United States of America.” Both sought to occupy the middle ground of American politics. Both believed that they could win over Republicans. Both were sure they could govern differently.

During an interview with Obama back in the fall of 2007, I was struck by just how much he sounded like Clinton when he spoke of the importance of wringing “the excesses of the ’60s” out of the Democratic Party. Then, unprompted, Obama added that “Bill Clinton deserves some credit for breaking with some of those dogmas in the Democratic Party.” Remember, Obama was running against Hillary Clinton at the time.

But Republicans (and in retrospect, you can say this was shrewd politics) understood in 1994, as they do in 2010, that allowing these talented icon smashers to govern differently and draw in members of their own party would be fatal to a GOP comeback.

So in Clinton’s case, Republicans voted to a person against his economic recovery plan that – combined with the first President Bush’s deficit-reduction moves – put the nation on the road to budget surpluses. Remember those? And then they killed Clinton’s health care plan.

Under Obama, Republicans have used precisely the same tactics without facing any criticism for a lack of originality. Obama’s stimulus bill got three Republican votes in the Senate, none in the House, and GOP lawmakers rail against it even as they claim credit for projects financed by a bill they opposed. And Republicans are doing all they can to make sure that Health Care 2.0 is ruined by the same political viruses that infected Health Care 1.0 under Clinton.

Confronting the highly disciplined Republicans, Obama and Clinton both had to rely on a Democratic Party whose ranks, especially in the Senate, include a lot of people ready to abandon the battlefield at the first sign of bad poll numbers.

And the two men share a major weakness: Both believe so devoutly in their capacity to convert adversaries and to get lions and lambs to lie down together that they spend more energy trying to win over their enemies than in rallying their friends. This leaves them helpless when the lions continue to devour the lambs.

I am pleased that after the scary tidings, Bill Clinton is doing well. And it may turn out to be providential that he burst into the news at precisely this point. It’s hard to escape the sense that a young and promising Democratic president is too closely replaying the opening act of another young and promising Democratic president – and that Republicans need only recite the same lines they came up with 16 years ago.

Obama needs to rewrite the script. And as a script doctor, Bill Clinton has no equal.

Yvonne Walker

The Bee’s editorial “Dems must bend on state payroll” (Feb. 2) is promoting Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s misguided plan to slash state employee compensation by 15 percent – which would harm thousands of local families and eliminate $683 million in economic activity in the Sacramento region. This is an attack against state employees using a misleading mix of myths, misconceptions and mathematical errors to justify its position.

Let’s start with the misconception about what the editorial board calls the “dysfunctional” collective bargaining process. The fact is that collective bargaining does work during tough times, as well as good times, as long as both sides enter into good-faith negotiations in an effort to reach agreement.

Last year, when the recession pushed the state into crisis, SEIU Local 1000 stepped up and negotiated a contract with the governor’s representatives, which included a 5 percent pay cut, and would have saved the state more than $350 million annually and $1 billion if applied to all state workers. Then Schwarzenegger broke his word and refused to sign the agreement he negotiated.

Now we are stuck with the governor’s furlough mess, court challenges all over California and a state in shambles.

In addition to the huge contract cost savings we agreed to, we offered recommendations for another $1 billion in annual savings. These include collecting unpaid corporate and income taxes, ending overpriced vendor contracts and implementing legally mandated prison reforms.

The Bee also missed the math in Schwarzenegger’s proposed salary reduction – it’s 15 percent. The first 10 percent is a direct pay cut (which drops to 5 percent if President Barack Obama magically provides a $6.9 billion bailout) with 5 percent more of our paychecks moving from salary to retirement contributions.

On employee compensation, look at real numbers – not myths. Our median salaries are down to $43,000 annually. And the median pension of our members is $2,300 a month.

The Bee’s positions are puzzling and inconsistent. The editorial opposes staff cuts at agencies such as the DMV that receive no state general fund money. Why then, support pay cuts at these very same agencies? Neither cost-cutting method at these non-general fund departments would trim a dime from the general fund deficit.

If anything, the editorial highlights the need for all concerned parties to work together on difficult, but realistic, solutions instead of relying on overblown rhetoric and half-baked ideas.

Money – not justice or traffic safety – is at the heart of the squabble between the state and cities over traffic fines.

A half dozen cities are taking advantage of provisions in state law that allow municipalities to enforce minor traffic violations – infractions such as failure to yield, or rolling through stop signs, committed within city limits.

These cities – Roseville is one – have interpreted the law to mean that they can issue city tickets or administrative citations and collect the fines. That means the state doesn’t get its cut as it would if Roseville police had issued regular tickets. It also means that drivers get a break.

Roseville has set its fine at $100 and collects all the money. If police issued a regular ticket, the minimum fine plus penalty assessment would cost an errant driver $201, of which the city would get just $31.50. The rest would be distributed to the state, the county, courts and various other government funds. The violation would also go on the driver’s DMV record and probably lead to higher insurance rates.

The squabble over who collects the fines raises a separate issue – that state traffic fines have become wildly disconnected from the actual violations involved.

A $201 ticket for rolling through a stop sign or making an illegal left turn is excessive. Failure to carry proof of insurance carries a $300 fine. Illegal parking in a handicapped zone costs violators $950.

For someone struggling to pay rent, such fines can be economically devastating.

State Sen. Jenny Oropeza, D-Long Beach, has introduced legislation to stop cities from issuing their own tickets.

She argues that the state is being deprived of “legitimate revenue,” and good drivers are subsidizing insurance rates for bad drivers whose violations never get reported to the DMV.

Oropeza is right, but until state traffic fines are scaled in a fair way that reasonably matches the offense to the penalty, most drivers and voters will want cities to take the Roseville route.

Former federal prosecutor Jonathan Shapiro is entitled to his opinion of FBI Director Robert Mueller (“Mueller’s record makes him unfit for FBI,” Viewpoints, Feb. 7). But claiming he is unfit to continue as director is absurd.

Mueller is nearing the end of his tenure – 10 years – as set by Congress after the death of J. Edgar Hoover. He will reach that point in September 2011.

That he took over the FBI a week prior to the 9/11 attack was unfortunate, as he never really had a chance to settle in to the position; to learn the ropes of heading the nation’s premiere law enforcement agency with its ever-expanding responsibilities at home and abroad.

On the other hand, the urgency of the moment allowed him to rebuild and reorganize the FBI without facing headwinds from the usual congressional and internal traditionalists. Whether or not the new FBI has been the best outcome for America is still an open question. But make no mistake, the FBI and Mueller were fighting for their very survival in the weeks and months following 9/11. Why?

To answer that question, one must understand life within the Beltway.

In the months prior to 9/11, the FBI was beset by a number of very public missteps which generated an equal number of independent reviews of its policies, practices and procedures. Not the least of these incidents was the arrest on espionage charges of FBI Agent Robert Hanssen. The list is long: Mishandling some documents concerning the investigation of Timothy McVeigh and the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building; the review of FBI counterintelligence operations; missing laptop computers and firearms.

All of these were distractions and, in the end, meaningless, but they diverted the bureau’s focus from investigation to introspection.

Meanwhile, on the streets of America, the FBI was expected to perform as it always had – with unquestioned dedication and attention to detail to an ever-expanding list of criminal statutes thanks to hyperactive members of Congress.

The more Congress demanded of the FBI in the years preceding 9/11, the more the FBI’s expertise was diluted and its focus clouded from core national security and criminal issues to dealing with less serious criminal matters – most, if not all, redundant to existing state law.

Former FBI directors William Sessions and Louis Freeh did nothing to resist this expansion, as it often brought additional resources and funding – prized bureaucratic booty. But the downside to all of this was that as the FBI’s jurisdiction grew, so did the need for specially trained FBI agents to handle the administration, training and deployment of these new assets. The days of the totally capable FBI agent, one who could work any criminal case, were numbered. In their place grew smaller, specialized cadres to support the specialized work environment dictated by Washington.

Remember the “peace dividend”? This was the term Congress applied to newly-liberated funding that was previously dedicated to our faceoff with the former Soviet Union. Part of that largess was felt in the rank-and-file of the FBI, where several hundred experienced counterintelligence agents were immediately shifted to criminal work. Never mind that the learning curve for a counterintelligence agent is much longer and steeper than one associated with criminal work.

Congress and the White House said that the Cold War was over. The Soviet empire was no more, so there was no need for the FBI to maintain existing levels of counterintelligence resources.

But somebody forgot to tell that to our adversaries.

Their names might have changed and their demeanor is friendlier – charming even – but the reality continues to be that America’s military, economic and political secrets are at risk. While we are courting yesterday’s enemies as today’s trade partners, they are still very actively and clandestinely seeking our deepest secrets by any means available.

All of that greeted Mueller as he was sworn in on Sept. 4, 2001. He had one week to digest the old FBI before the events of 9/11 forced him into survival mode – his and the FBI’s.

Except for a handful of FBI executives over the years who thought otherwise, the counterintelligence and counterterrorism programs were never viewed as “real” FBI work. And except for the relatively few dedicated agents who chose to work these programs, most agents were assigned there as a result of management decisions opting to “hide” less capable performers.

Having worked or supervised every investigative program within the FBI during my career, I can tell you that none taxes an agent’s intellect, patience and persistence like counterintelligence or counterterrorism. All of that aside, today’s Federal Bureau of Investigation has become more of a Federal Bureau of Intelligence.

The FBI collects massive amounts of information – intelligence – from all kinds of open and classified sources. The FBI is expected to sift through mountains of data every day and to make the right call every time. It has to digest it all, make sense of it all and, where warranted, act on it. This is really an impossible task but no one seems willing to acknowledge that reality – no one in Congress, the administration or the FBI.

Instead, we live with the illusion that our national security agencies are on the job and that every threat will be identified and neutralized. Keep dreaming.

Although the FBI has made great strides under Mueller to be more of an intelligence collection and analysis agency, it still has a tremendous challenge dealing with criminal investigations.

Criminal investigations took a back seat, understandably, post-9/11, and Congress was among the many voices supporting the FBI’s reorganization away from criminal matters to create its intelligence directorate. Now you can hear those same congressional voices clamoring for the FBI do something about serious criminal activity like corporate fraud and mortgage scams. I guess we have this terrorism thing under control.

There has been a lot of discussion whether a new domestic intelligence agency needs to be created – the so-called MI-5 option. A separate counterintelligence and counterterrorism agency would lift those responsibilities from the FBI and allow the bureau to focus entirely on criminal investigations.

I support such a new creation, and I believe that it would allow the FBI to return to its former status as the unequalled criminal investigative organization in the country – maybe on the planet.

Whether or not the MI-5 plan is adopted, what is certain is that all of the political realities that forced Mueller to reorganize the FBI in the months and years after 9/11 will remain with us. They never ebb. And while old FBI hands and new may argue over how the FBI has evolved, all will agree that Congress is responsible for a lot of it.

Mueller will likely remain as FBI director until the end of his statutory term. While he might not be all things to all people, he has tried to do what is best for the country and the FBI while operating within the law and respecting the limits of power established by the Constitution.

Shapiro’s comment that “for the good of the country and the integrity of the FBI, it’s time for Robert Mueller to go” simply demonstrates just how little Shapiro really knows about Mueller, the FBI or integrity.

Frank G. Scafidi

Dear Sarah Palin:

I hear you’re pondering a run for the White House in 2012. Last week, you told Fox News it would be “absurd” to rule it out.

I’m writing to ask that you rule it in. I very badly want you to run for – and “win” – the Republican nomination for the presidency.

I know you’re waiting for the punch line. Maybe you figure I think you’d be a weak candidate who would pave the way for President Obama’s easy re-election.

That’s not it. No, I want you to run because I believe a Palin candidacy would force upon this country a desperately needed moment of truth. It would require us to finally decide what kind of America we want to be.

Mrs. Palin, you are an avatar of the shameless hypocrisy and cognitive disconnection that have driven our politics for the last decade, a process of stupidification creeping like kudzu over our national life.

As Exhibit A, consider your recent speech at a so-called “tea party” event, wherein you dismissed the president as a “charismatic guy with a teleprompter.” Bad enough you imply that teleprompter use is the mark of an insubstantial man, even though you and every other major politician uses them. But what made the comment truly jaw-dropping is that even as you spoke, you had penned on your left palm, clearly visible, a series of crib notes.

Mrs. Palin, if Obama is an idiot for reading a prepared speech off a teleprompter, what are you for reading notes you’ve inked on your hand like a school kid who failed to study for the big test?

In the Fox interview, you scored Obama for supposedly expecting Americans to “sit down and shut up” and accept his policies. But when asked when the president has ever said that, you couldn’t answer. Obama, you sputtered, has just been condescending with his “general persona.”

I found that a telling moment. See, ultimately what you represent is not conservatism. Heck, I suspect that somewhere, Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan are spinning like helicopter rotors at the very idea.

No, you represent the latest iteration of an anti-intellectualism that periodically rises in the American character. There is, historically and persistently, a belief in us that y’all just can’t trust nobody who acts too smart or talks too good – in other words, somebody whose “general persona” indicates they may have once cracked a book or had a thought. Americans tend to believe common sense to be the exclusive province of humble folks without sheepskins on the wall or big words in their vocabularies.

I don’t mock those people. They are my parents, my family elders, members of my childhood church. I honor their native good sense, what Mom called “mother wit.” But if it is insulting to condescend to them, it is equally insulting to mythologize them.

More to the point, something is wrong when we celebrate mental mediocrity like yours under the misapprehension that competence or, God forbid, “intelligence,” makes a person one of those “elites” – that’s a curse word now – lacking authenticity, compassion and common sense.

So no, this is not a clash of ideologies, but a clash between intelligence and its opposite. And I am tired of being asked to pretend stupid is a virtue. That’s why I’d welcome the moment of truth your campaign would bring. It would force us to decide once and for all whether we are permanently committed to the path of ignorance, of birthers, truthers and tea party incoherence you represent, or whether we will at last turn back from the cliff toward which we race.

If the latter, wonderful, God bless America. If the former, well, some of us can finally quit hoping the nation will return to its senses and plan accordingly. Either way, we need to know, and your candidacy would tell us. If you love this country, Mrs. Palin, you can do it no greater service.

Run, Sarah, run.

Foster child Amariana
Crenshaw died in
Tracy Dossman’s care.

The unsolved death of Amariana Crenshaw raises many disturbing questions. Here is one of the most immediate: Why is Tracy Dossman, Amariana’s foster mother, still caring for five other children, even during renewed investigations by police and state and county child welfare officials?

The official answer: She hasn’t been charged with a crime.

The state Department of Social Services says that until it completes the inquiry it reopened after a series of stories in The Bee, and unless it then finds Dossman in “noncompliance,” it won’t move to decertify her as a foster parent. Only then would the department require the private agency that certifies Dossman to remove the other children.

“We’re not there yet,” says DSS spokeswoman Lizelda Lopez, who said it’s not clear when a decision will come.

Here’s the troubling part: When a foster parent is certified by a nonprofit agency, there’s no provision under state law to suspend a certification during an investigation, even when there are serious doubts about the parent’s fitness. There should be.

DSS already has such authority if a foster parent is directly licensed by the state or a county. That distinction makes no sense, especially when the private foster family agencies place the more needy children.

While it’s an imperfect analogy, think of situations where police officers are put on administrative leave after shooting someone. Such suspensions are routine procedure, even if there’s no proof of wrongdoing.

This is only one issue facing the state’s sprawling foster care system, which includes about 22,000 providers and is responsible for about 70,000 children. Leaders of this system face numerous trade-offs and hard decisions. When there is a death or serious injury in a home, officials must determine whether there’s any imminent danger, then weigh what’s in the best interest of each child: Would it be more nurturing in a new home? Or would it be more traumatic to start over with a new parent?

At the same time, years of budget cuts have hollowed out the system so that there is far less supervision of foster parents. While the state investigates complaints, county social workers monitor the children, and counties contract with private agencies to check and certify foster parents. It’s a multi-layered system that can lead to lack of communication and accountability.

All those considerations come into play in Dossman’s case.

She became Amariana’s foster mother when the girl was 2. Amariana was 4½ in January 2008 when she was found in Doss-man’s rental home near South Natomas, burned beyond recognition. Dossman was cleared as a suspect within 24 hours and the children were returned to her. Although officials still harbored some concern about their welfare, they say they didn’t have sufficient cause to suspend Dossman as a foster parent.

That isn’t the case now.

The series of stories by The Bee’s Marjie Lundstrom has uncovered strong evidence that Amariana may have been abused or severely neglected for some time, and might have been killed before her body was burned by at least one Molotov cocktail.

According to medical records obtained by The Bee, Amariana was reportedly hurt at least 11 times in Dossman’s care, including unusually similar cuts and bruises on her face. When she died, she weighed only 29 pounds and had gained only 1 pound in three years. Twice, state regulators found the refrigerator locked in the home.

Several people close to Dossman have been in trouble with the law.

A foster parent to nearly 50 kids since at least 2003, Dossman has jumped from one private agency to another – getting certified by six in all since 1995.

After the series, Sacramento police pledged anew to find Amariana’s killer, and DSS and Sacramento County’s Child Protective Services both said they were taking another look at the case.

We may never know everything that happened leading up to the discovery of Amariana’s charred remains inside the house on Sweet Pea Way. But we know that this tragic case gives officials the opportunity to take a hard look at how to fix problems with the foster care system.

Finding a reasonable way to suspend foster parents while they’re under investigation for serious wrongdoing – and thus safeguard the children – would be a good place to start.

In her long and mostly distinguished career, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein has championed many environmental causes. At times she has also challenged environmentalists to consider interests other than their own.

That’s good. Feinstein’s independent streak is one of her assets as a U.S. senator and a leader of California.

Feinstein, however, also has been known to take reckless stands. She is doing so now, with plans to amend a fast-moving jobs bill to reduce Endangered Species Act protections for fish, including salmon, in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

Feinstein’s amendment, if enacted, would increase Delta pumping to benefit certain farms in the San Joaquin Valley. Those agricultural operations, ranging from small farms to lucrative corporate empires, have seen their irrigation supplies drop due to drought and court decisions involving Delta smelt and other fish.

In a statement Thursday, Feinstein said she was seeking this amendment because, in so many words, water is being wasted. “Water has been gushing past the canals and into the oceans while farms on the west side of the valley are likely to receive a very low percentage of their water allocations,” she said.

Feinstein is grossly oversimplifying the water situation in the Delta and the valley.

At certain times of the year, juvenile salmon and other fish need adequate flows to reach the ocean or to avoid being sucked into the giant pumps that deliver water to Southern California, the Bay Area and the San Joaquin Valley. Feinstein’s amendment threatens those fish. It could be especially harmful to California’s salmon runs, which shrank to record low numbers in 2009, according to a report last week by the Pacific Fisheries Management Council.

Feinstein’s action poses other threats. For the last two years, moderate environmental groups have been working with water exporters on a conservation plan for the Delta. This coalition helped pass water legislation last year and is studying plans for a canal, tunnel or other form of conveyance for the Delta. That could possibly reduce conflicts over fish and produce more reliable water supplies for exporters.

Yet if Feinstein’s amendment were to pass, it would likely end this delicate detente and lead to years of more litigation and fighting over the Delta.

Feinstein should be smart enough to know this. The question is: Is she smart enough to acknowledge that she’s made a serious error in judgment?

Vegetation on public land near River Bend Park was reduced to stumps by vandals.

The American River Parkway – stretching from the confluence of the Sacramento and American rivers to Folsom Lake – is threatened by people acting as if the parkway is their private property and not a public asset.

While people decry habitat destruction caused by illegal camping by the homeless, the parkway has long suffered from illegal tree and brush cutting by residents who live in multimillion-dollar homes on the bluffs above the river.

Those trees and other vegetation provide habitat for wildlife, including shade for salmon. They are part of the natural beauty and complex ecology of the parkway – and they screen houses from the view of visitors in the parkway. They help make the parkway a prized natural, scenic, recreational and ecological resource.

That’s why it is important to investigate and prosecute those who vandalize the parkway by slashing trees. At a minimum, they should face fines and the cost of restoring the habitat.

Unfortunately, the exclusive River Bend area is in the news again.

Back in 1992, Judy and John Reynen, a well-known developer in the region, reimbursed Sacramento County $4,100 to replant 140 cottonwood and willow trees in a 100-by-150-foot swath of land they had their gardeners clear between their home and the American River. Ironically, at the time Judy Reynen was an active member and fundraiser for the Sacramento Tree Foundation.

In another high-profile case 10 years later, Sacramento Superior Court Judge Peter J. McBrien pled guilty to cutting trees near the Effie Yeaw Nature Center in Ancil Hoffman Park. McBrien was charged with felony vandalism for “unlawfully and maliciously” damaging oak trees in the public parkway. He agreed to a misdemeanor plea bargain, was fined $500 and agreed to pay $20,000 in restitution to the nature center.

So we come to 2010 and yet more trees and brush have been cut in the River Bend area. Where exactly? One spot is an area 30 by 150 yards in front of the Reynen home. Another spot is on a nearby island in the American River.

So far no one has stepped forward to admit the vandalism (as in the 1992 Reynen case) or as a witness to it (as in the 2002 McBrien case).

Ultimately, the integrity of the public parkway depends on the ethical sense of the people who visit or live near it. Anyone who has information about the cuttings at River Bend should call park rangers at (916) 875-7275.

At the time of the 1992 tree-cutting incidents, then-county ecologist Jeffrey Hart said, “This is a good opportunity to educate the public about the value of the parkway, that the trees provide a lot of habitat for wildlife and that the parkway gives people a sense of nature in the city, and that is what they love about it.” Nearly 20 years later, that lesson is worth repeating.

The medical students who wrote the commentary “UC sets poor example for med students” (Viewpoints, Feb. 2) and I agree on quite a few things.

The state of California, thanks to the Legislature’s wild spending, has brought about draconian cuts to many state services, including higher education. The fees that medical students must shoulder are much greater than just a few years ago. While the bonuses to hospital executives may have been part of the contract negotiations for meeting certain goals, the timing was awkward, and perhaps these bonuses could have been delayed until the general state financial picture cleared.

Nevertheless, some of the students’ statements were incorrect. The UC Davis Medical Center no longer has a contract with Sacramento County for indigent care, not because of reduced funding, but because the county is no longer willing to pay anything for these services. The medical center never turns away urgent cases from their emergency room, despite the lack of reimbursement that continues.

As to the costs of campus construction, the new hospital pavilion at the medical center will provide much-needed expanded and modern emergency room facilities that a Level 1 trauma center needs and deserves for proper patient care. The new operating rooms will relieve a chronic lack of space for urgent as well as scheduled cases, and additional intensive-care beds will allow the hospital to expand its care for Sacramento and neighboring communities.

As an interventional neuroradiologist, I sometimes encounter full intensive-care units with no room to accept referral patients from other counties for specialized care of brain vascular disorders. The new Telehealth Education Center, to be built on the Sacramento campus, is partly funded by federal grants. This center will expand the capabilities of the medical center to provide routine as well as specialty diagnostic services to underserved rural communities.

Finally, most of the physicians are not “tenured.” The latter positions get some funds from the school of medicine, from the UC regents and the state, but the majority of monies for salaries come from revenue that the medical center brings in the door. Our salaries are about average for California universities but are much below the private community rates. Still, professors stay at the medical center in order to enjoy the teaching and research atmosphere that this medical center offers.

The opinion piece “UC sets poor example for med students” (Viewpoints, Feb. 2), written by three rather courageous medical students, is timely and, except for several minor points as seen from my perspective, should be applauded.

While encouraging students to think for themselves about bioethics and social justice issues, I’ve often had doubts about our success – that is, that our contribution makes a particle of difference except to those who are already sensitive to what the profession truly entails. We teach medicine to students to provide them with the necessary tools to deal with their patients’ problems. We teach ethics to students to give them the intellectual tools to take care of ethical problems.

Hopefully the courses I teach help fledgling physicians to be more sensitive to ethical problems and to realize that the practice of medicine is more than just alleviating their patients’ physical symptoms. They need to be aware of the growing social inequities in our system that not only complicate their patients’ lives but can too often make the practice of good medicine either impossible or heroic.

As for one of my minor points of disagreement with the students’ opinion: The medical center does need a new ER, as it often provides the physician of last resort. As such, it is badly located and immensely overcrowded. It is news to me that UCD has refused some low-income patients, albeit that I am not surprised, given the peculiarities of financing medical care in this country today. One would hope, however, that the top priorities would continue to be the teaching of medical students and the care of patients. At a college of medicine, these two cannot be separated because unless we practice cutting-edge medicine we cannot, in truth, teach.

But when students see the university simultaneously raising tuition, selectively reducing access to patients and approving millions in bonuses to its hospital executives, they quickly get the message: “We talk the talk, but we do not walk the walk.” This makes a mockery of what we try to teach.

I admire these students for their courage. Even though people will say that their letter fails to change things, it may awaken people sufficiently to act together. Should medical schools across the country speak with one voice to tell the nation that we cannot under current financial circumstances teach medical students and, therefore, would not matriculate any further students after a particular date, our acting together may wake up some of our legislators.

‘Assembling California’

Book by John McPhee

As part of my crash course on California before joining The Bee’s editorial board at the start of the month, I read several books on history, politics and public policy.

But the one that sticks with me the most is John McPhee’s “Assembling California,” a literary tour of the state’s geology. And the most affecting passages were his telling of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.

“On Summit Road, near the Loma Prieta School, a man goes up in the air like a diver off a board. He lands on his head. Another man is thrown sideways through a picture window,” McPhee writes.

“At the University of California, Santa Cruz, three first-year students from the East Coast sit under redwoods on the forest campus. As the shock waves reach them and the trees whip overhead, the three students leap up and spontaneously dance and shout in a ring. Near the edge of town, a corral disintegrates, horses run onto a highway, a light truck crashes into them and the driver is killed. Bicyclists are falling to the streets and automobiles are bouncing.”

The 6.9-magnitude quake – the first major one on the San Andreas Fault since the 1906 San Francisco quake – killed more than 60 people, injured some 3,700 and caused nearly $6 billion in property damage. While big, McPhee explains, it was not the dreaded “Big One.”

When I told people I was thinking of moving to California, they invariably said they envied the weather. A few, however, gave that nervous laugh and mentioned earthquakes.

While McPhee’s book dates to 1993, it’s still a compelling read on how precarious life in California truly could be. For me, it’s not so much scary as a reminder of the need for common-sense seismic precautions – and of the wisdom of making the most of every day. You never know when the real Big One will come.

– Foon Rhee

‘On the Brink: Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Economic System’

Book by Henry M. Paulson Jr.

The title of this book is perfectly descriptive. Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson describes how essential it was to rescue the financial system. This was not about “bailing out banks” but having a workable credit system not only in the United States but around the world. Without the rescue, he makes clear, it would have been 1933 all over again.

The book also has very revealing – and riveting – details about presidential character. Paulson has a blow-by-blow description of the meeting between President George W. Bush and the two presidential candidates, Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama – with the leadership of the House and Senate and Vice President Dick Cheney also in attendance.

Obama “sketched the broad outlines of the problem and stressed the need for immediate action.” He “spoke without notes – much less a teleprompter – and spoke eloquently.”

McCain, who had called the meeting, held a single note card: “He glanced at it quickly and proceeded to make a few general points.”

Paulson’s conclusion: “McCain’s comments were anticlimactic, to say the least … when it came right down to it, he had little to say in the forum he himself had called.”

There’s more about how “the room descended into chaos as the House and Senate members erupted into full-fledged shouting around the table.” Paulson said he’d “never seen anything like it before in politics or business.”

The larger point: This country needs a president who has some understanding of economics and the political savvy to get above the dysfunctional fray in Washington.

– Pia Lopez

Dawn Clark-Netsch

In 1970, Illinois held a constitutional convention. We needed it badly. Our 1870 constitution was not only horse-and-buggy, but it was actually holding down the development of a modern and efficient state and local government. Despite the tumultuous times – 1969-70 – we were successful in writing and gaining voter approval of a constitution which was relatively short and straightforward, dealt with the basics of government and has served us well for almost 40 years.

As delegates to the 1970 Illinois State Constitutional Convention, we know that if we could do it then, California can do it now.

Starting broadly, the right of a people to change that government which no longer serves them is the philosophical underpinning of the Declaration of Independence and, by extension, the United States itself. Therefore, we strongly endorse both the right and capacity of the people to faithfully execute positive constitutional reform through the constitutional convention process.

Next, the question becomes whether or not that government has indeed ceased to serve to the ends for which it is supposed to serve. The verdict is ultimately up to the people of California, who will have the chance to weigh the question in the upcoming campaign.

However, Californians can expect the arguments against a constitutional convention to mirror those made in Illinois a generation ago. Defenders of the status quo will say that a convention “will open Pandora’s box,” or “it will cost too much money,” or “it will become a spectacle.”

These arguments, it seems to us, simply don’t hold for California in its present situation – as they didn’t for Illinois in 1970.

On the concern of opening a Pandora’s box: First, constitutional conventions can be, and have been in the past, successfully limited in scope. If anything, California’s could be the most intensely focused convention ever, since the “limiting” would be done by the voters themselves and not by an outgoing and unpopular legislature. Second, the slightly condescending Pandora’s box scenario never materializes for the simple reason that Americans actually like their freedoms and they are not interested in curbing them.

On cost, the question is comparative. How does the cost of indefinite committal to the status quo compare to the cost of having a one-time convention?

On the “spectacle” argument, nothing could be further from the truth. Since constitutional convention delegates don’t run for re-election, they are motivated not by the fund-raising and politicking that drives regular politicians into partisan circuses, but by finding common ground and common good. That was an important component of our success in Illinois in 1970.

For a similar reason, delegates have no electoral incentive to cower from important decisions. Take Illinois as an example. At the 1970 convention, we were able to allow for greater regional autonomy within the state, which helped keep taxpayer resources closer to where they are actually consumed as services. This “home-rule” principle makes it easier for voters to keep a watchful eye on their dollars and enjoys continued popularity in Illinois.

But constitutional conventions are important for another reason. They are the purest opportunity for a people to deliberate the principles that unite them. At 4,500 words, the meaning of the U.S. Constitution is easily within the grasp of the average citizen, and it enshrines the values which unite an entire nation. It is no wonder then, that at 80,000 words and 512 amendments, California’s constitution unites few, is understood by fewer and has created a government the citizens yearn to reform.

As delegates to the Illinois convention, we tried our best to follow in the footsteps of the nation’s founders. We debated proposals on the merit of the moment and by the facts on the ground.

California’s drive for a constitutional convention faces some hurdles. Repair California, a group seeking a ballot initiative for such a convention, confirmed Friday it was temporarily suspending its campaign, citing a lack of funding.

But we have no doubt that the Golden State, still beaming with talent and potential, has what it takes to become a national leader once again. California can do better. A new 21st century constitution would serve you well.

James Gierach

“Don’t cut Medicare. The reform bills passed by the House and Senate cut Medicare by approximately $500 billion. This is wrong.”

So declared Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House, in a recent op-ed article written with John Goodman, the president of the National Center for Policy Analysis.

And irony died.

Gingrich was just repeating the current party line. Furious denunciations of any effort to seek cost savings in Medicare – death panels! – have been central to Republican efforts to demonize health reform. What’s amazing, however, is that they’re getting away with it.

Why is this amazing? It’s not just the fact that Republicans are now posing as staunch defenders of a program they have hated ever since the days when Ronald Reagan warned that Medicare would destroy America’s freedom. Nor is it even the fact that, as House speaker, Gingrich personally tried to ram through deep cuts in Medicare – and, in 1995, went so far as to shut down the federal government in an attempt to bully Bill Clinton into accepting those cuts.

After all, you could explain this about-face by supposing that Republicans have had a change of heart, that they have finally realized just how much good Medicare does. And if you believe that, I’ve got some mortgage-backed securities you might want to buy.

No, what’s truly mind-boggling is this: Even as Republicans denounce modest proposals to rein in Medicare’s rising costs, they are, themselves, seeking to dismantle the whole program. And the process of dismantling would begin with spending cuts of about $650 billion over the next decade. Math is hard, but I do believe that’s more than the roughly $400 billion (not $500 billion) in Medicare savings projected for the Democratic health bills.

What I’m talking about here is the “Roadmap for America’s Future,” the budget plan recently released by Rep. Paul Ryan, the ranking Republican member of the House Budget Committee.

Other leading Republicans have been bobbing and weaving on the official status of this proposal, but it’s pretty clear that Ryan’s vision does, in fact, represent what the GOP would try to do if it returns to power.

The broad picture that emerges from the “road map” is of an economic agenda that hasn’t changed one iota in response to the economic failures of the Bush years. In particular, Ryan offers a plan for Social Security privatization that is basically identical to the Bush proposals of five years ago.

But what’s really worth noting, given the way the GOP has campaigned against health care reform, is what Ryan proposes doing with and to Medicare.

In the Ryan proposal, nobody currently under the age of 55 would be covered by Medicare as it now exists. Instead, people would receive vouchers and be told to buy their own insurance. And even this new, privatized version of Medicare would erode over time because the value of these vouchers would almost surely lag ever further behind the actual cost of health insurance. By the time Americans now in their 20s or 30s reached the age of eligibility, there wouldn’t be much of a Medicare program left.

But what about those who already are covered by Medicare, or will enter the program over the next decade? You’re safe, says the road map; you’ll still be eligible for traditional Medicare. Except, that is, for the fact that the plan “strengthens the current program with changes such as income-relating drug benefit premiums to ensure long-term sustainability.”

If this sounds like deliberately confusing gobbledygook, that’s because it is. Fortunately, the Congressional Budget Office, which has done an evaluation of the road map, offers a translation: “Some higher-income enrollees would pay higher premiums, and some program payments would be reduced.” In short, there would be Medicare cuts.

And it’s possible to back out the size of those cuts from the budget office analysis, which compares the Ryan proposal with a “baseline” representing current policy. As I’ve already said, the total over the next decade comes to about $650 billion – substantially bigger than the Medicare savings in the Democratic bills.

The bottom line, then, is that the crusade against health reform has relied, crucially, on utter hypocrisy: Republicans who hate Medicare, tried to slash Medicare in the past, and still aim to dismantle the program over time, have been scoring political points by denouncing proposals for modest cost savings – savings that are substantially smaller than the spending cuts buried in their own proposals.

And if Democrats don’t get their act together and push the almost-completed reform across the goal line, this breathtaking act of staggering hypocrisy will succeed.

Michael Ault

Ask 10 people if Sacramento needs a new entertainment and sports complex and you’ll likely get 10 opposing viewpoints and even more opinions that follow.

For the Downtown Sacramento Partnership, there is no question that our region needs – in fact, deserves – such a facility. We believe this because over and over again, we’ve seen the economic, cultural and social benefits such a complex can deliver to a metropolitan area.

It should be no surprise that we believe a Sacramento facility should be located downtown. Downtown complexes anchor regional economies and make good business sense.

Sacramento’s arena saga has peaked many times, only to die and be revived all too often. We see today’s debate not as a sequel to an old story, but as an essential opportunity for our region. However, Sacramento risks missing an opportunity to develop a facility without direct taxpayer subsidies if we don’t move forward with a feasible project quickly. We applaud Mayor Kevin Johnson for reinvigorating attempts to bring a world-class entertainment and sports complex to our city.

Such a complex would serve as a regional venue, drawing year-round performances, arts and cultural programs, family attractions, and amateur and professional sporting events on a scale that we are unable to attract today.

Further, when located in the heart of a region, a sports and entertainment complex can take advantage of a wealth of existing infrastructure.

Not everyone supports a new arena and of those who do, some aren’t convinced downtown is the right location. We believe there are strong arguments for downtown.

Throughout the nation, there are many examples of entertainment facilities, centrally located, that have given new life to urban centers and the surrounding region. Think about Boston, New York, Chicago, Toronto, Denver, San Francisco and Baltimore.

If you’ve been to Wrigley, Fenway or Coors Field, you know what I mean. Less iconic examples, but catalysts all the same, include sports and entertainment facilities in Phoenix, Los Angeles, Charlotte, Salt Lake and Indianapolis.

Less than 10 years after the opening of Phoenix’s US Airways Arena, over $2.5 billion in additional private investments occurred. Downtown arts and cultural venues saw a 20 percent increase in attendance.

Since the construction of the Staples Center in 1999, a blighted area of downtown Los Angeles benefited from more than 5.6 million square feet of new retail, residential, hotel and performance space.

Yet, with plenty of successes to point to, we still find ourselves stuck with the aging and substandard Arco Arena.

Worse, we still sit in the midst of a political stalemate despite diligent and well-meaning attempts over recent years by the city of Sacramento, the NBA, the business community and many local leaders and neighborhoods.

Today, we are encouraged by the number of proposals submitted to the Sacramento First Task Force. We are optimistic that current discussions will stay cooperative, clear and focused on the key issues. These include the project’s financial viability, the optimal site location, and the potential for job creation and economic stimulus.

Without question, the whole region stands to lose if the issue gets mired down in discussions around the complex’s primary tenant, the Sacramento Kings. We could all lose in a fight that creates friction between neighborhoods or ties up an already complicated project in exhaustive political debate.

For this reason, we appreciate efforts to accelerate the deadline of the mayor’s volunteer task force. We commend the City Council for directing staff to start work on the major policy, financial, legal, legislative and entitlement measures needed so Sacramento can move on a preferred plan as quickly as possible.

Imagine you are an elderly person with Alzheimer’s, recovering from a stroke or suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. You are grateful for access to a four-hour-a-day program at an adult center.

Then you get letter from the state, dated Feb. 1, that begins in big, bold letters, “Notice of Change in Medical Necessity and Eligibility Criteria for the Authorization of Adult Day Health Care Services.” For someone in your condition, that’s pretty scary.

What does it mean? The letter explains: “The changes in the law are reflected in the Welfare & Institutions Code. On March 1, 2010, new laws will become operative reflected in sections 14522.4, 14525.1, 14526.2 and 14550.6 of the W&I Code. In addition, section 14525 will become inoperative and sections 14522.3, 14526.1 and 14550.5 in the W&I Code will become inoperative and will be repealed on March 1, 2010.”

This is utterly incomprehensible gobbledygook.

Then there’s the kicker: “You may also talk with your personal health care provider to find services that meet your medical needs.” Not unreasonably, some folks freaked out, believing they were being bumped from the program.

This letter went out to more than 49,000 people – though an estimated 8,000 to 16,000 will be affected by the changes. The department needed to send a letter only to those who would actually be terminated from the program. In short, the department unnecessarily frightened tens of thousands of frail people.

To add insult to injury, days later these 49,000 people received a second letter telling them that the previous letter “mistakenly included your Social Security number in your address that was printed on the outside of the envelope. We are providing you this notice because it is possible that someone could use your information to commit identity theft.”

That letter then tells people to call one of the three credit bureaus and “immediately place a free fraud alert on your credit files.” What?

Medical professionals who care for these people received no advance notice of either letter. But they have received panicked calls from people who don’t know what to do.

How did this happen? Someone at the Department of Health Care Services sent the Social Security numbers along with names and addresses to a mailing vendor. The department admits the error in this case, but says that it routinely sends out Social Security numbers to vendors who use Social Security numbers to identify their patients. What?

This incident reveals a number of flaws that need to be remedied immediately:

• Don’t use Social Security numbers as identifiers and don’t allow vendors to do so.

• Write letters in plain English that the ordinary person can understand.

• Notify providers in advance of letters going to frail people so they can help them.

Most important, the department needs to hold somebody accountable for the privacy breach. The person who sent out the Social Security numbers should be fired. Beyond that, it’s clear that this department, headed by David Maxwell-Jolly, is utterly disconnected from the elderly people it serves. This department needs a major culture change in the way it conducts business.