Author: SacBee — Opinion

In theory, it makes a lot of sense for Sacramento: An independent budget analyst would be an aggressive watchdog, sniffing out pork and guiding taxpayers who want to see how their money is spent.

If Sacramento ever transitions to a strong-mayor system, it will need a budget analyst.

While auditors scrutinize existing programs for waste and fraud, the analyst – like the well-regarded state Legislative Analyst’s Office – would help nip bad ideas in the bud.

But the City Council is in a rush to get a budget analyst on the cheap.

The Sacramento treasurer studied the issue and concluded the analyst office would need at least three staffers and an annual budget of $500,000 to properly do the job. But the council voted unanimously last week to pursue less expensive options.

Even if an analyst is necessary, the council’s decision to skimp threatens to undermine the effectiveness. If an analyst were to spike just a few bad proposals, the office would pay for itself and then some.

Here’s a better game plan for the council: Signal its support for the analyst if Sacramento does get a strong mayor, but hold off on any other decisions.

For now, the council must place the analyst proposal on the June 8 ballot. It doesn’t need to decide any other issues.

The council could see what voters say, the fate of the push for a strong mayor, and how tight the budget is before deciding how much to spend on the analyst and how to fund it.

The proposal emerged as a package deal with Mayor Kevin Johnson’s plan to grant the mayor broad new power, including more authority over the city budget. The analyst would help the council act as a check on a strong mayor.

The strong-mayor initiative, however, is headed nowhere fast. A Sacramento judge blocked it from going before the voters, ruling that only elected officials or a charter commission could make such a sweeping change. The 3rd District Court of Appeal refused to delay that ruling, making a June vote highly unlikely.

The budget analyst initiative, on the other hand, is still on track. It is still “absolutely” worthwhile even without a strong mayor, Johnson argues. Tom Hiltachk, the lawyer for Sacramentans for Accountable Government, the Johnson-backed force behind both ballot initiatives, insists that one good analyst could make a big difference for taxpayers.

But it’s an open question whether the post is necessary without a strong mayor. The city manager, who can be hired and fired by the council, already is supposed to weed out bad spending ideas.

In addition to using the Legislative Analyst’s Office as a model, proponents looked to San Diego, which has had a similar budget analyst for four years. San Diego’s need for reform was greater after a pension scandal. But as in Sacramento, the idea was tied to a strong-mayor push. Voters approved both in 2004.

The San Diego office has received generally high marks. Voters there have made it permanent, regardless of whether the strong-mayor form of government continues past the end of this year. The office has a staff of 10 and a budget of more than $1.4 million a year.

San Diego’s budget is about three times larger than Sacramento’s. But analyst Andrea Tevlin says it would be “really tough” for an office of even three people to be effective. She questions whether the office makes sense without a strong mayor.

Sacramento’s council would be wise to heed those warnings. If council members decide an independent budget analyst is truly necessary, they should take the time to get it right.

I will be voting “no” to confirm state Sen. Abel Maldonado to the second-highest constitutional office in California, a heartbeat from the governor, that of lieutenant governor.

Much has been made of his congenial personality, his friendly demeanor and his one vote to increase the minimum wage. But in order to take Sen. Maldonado’s true measure, you need to examine over 150 votes on issues of great significance to all Californians – laws that impact farmworkers, health care, civil rights, labor, women, consumers, seniors and the environment.

Sen. Maldonado voted no on proposals to provide farmworkers with necessary payroll information so they could better pursue employers who failed to appropriately calculate their pay. He voted no on a proposal to extend penalties against bosses who engaged in unfair labor practices and no on a measure to fairly calculate piece rate and rest periods for farmworkers.

He voted no on a measure to secure maternity services for women and, even though medical bills have been the largest reason for personal bankruptcies, no on single-payer health care coverage.

While President Barack Obama is encouraging change in the military practice of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” Maldonado voted no on a resolution urging Congress to abandon the policy, no on the Harvey Milk Day resolution and no on an effort to curtail negative campaigning based on sexual identity.

If you are a working man or woman in California and suffered wage discrimination, Maldonado voted no on extending the time you could seek justice for having been wronged. He voted no on regulations to control indoor heat illness, and no on overtime protections for nurses.

He voted no on programs to prevent teen pregnancy, no on federal funds for prenatal services, and refused to vote for a resolution asking the president and Congress to uphold Roe v. Wade.

In spite of the economic devastation suffered by California’s families because of foreclosures, Maldonado voted no on requirements that would have protected homeowners in trouble because of higher priced mortgage loans.

Despite the fact that there are 1 million residents in California’s mobile home parks, he voted no on a measure that would afford modest protection against mobile home park conversions where residents have the property sold out from under them, destroying local rent control.

His votes against environmental protections for Californians are almost too many to count. Here are a few: no on AB 32, California’s landmark global warming legislation; no on the Solar Water Heating and Efficiency Act of 2007; no on reducing exposure to the toxic effects of fire retardants; no on cargo fees for pollution mitigation; no on requiring fuel efficiency and alternative energy for state and local motor vehicle fleets; no on protecting state parks boundaries; but a resounding yes on a CEQA exemption for the construction of a football stadium.

I, too, am the child of immigrants. My father came to this country with a strong back, no money and big dreams.

My mother’s family came here to escape the violence of the Mexican Revolution. Through hard work, sacrifice and belief in the American dream, I have been able to achieve a modest measure of success.

But I have never wandered from my obligation to embrace and encourage the aspirations of those who continue to struggle, those who harvest the food we eat, those who fight against all odds to realize their dreams, too. I will be voting “no” on Sen. Maldonado’s confirmation because I refuse to compromise the American ideal.

Sacramento was a very different city in 1921 than it is today. Yet the last major redrafting of the Sacramento city charter occurred way back then, when the city’s population was 66,000.

Today, with nearly 500,000 residents, the current charter – which vests “all powers of city government” in the City Council and delegates executive powers to an unelected city manager – no longer meets the city’s needs. Sacramento’s mayor, the only citywide elected official, has weaker powers than the mayors of other large American cities.

That’s why, despite recent setbacks in the courts, Mayor Kevin Johnson and his supporters should not give up on the push for reform. It is too important to drop.

But they should shift gears.

The mayor and council still have very different ideas about reform. The mayor wants a stronger executive role, perhaps too strong; the council appears to favor reforms that update the charter but pretty much leave the current balance of power as is.

The courts have made it clear that residents have two paths for reform under state law and the California Constitution:

• The council may propose a charter and submit it to the voters, or

• Voters may elect a charter commission. As in a recall, voters first vote on the question: “Shall a charter commission be elected to propose a new charter?” Secondly, they vote for candidates to serve on the commission. If the first question receives a majority of votes, the top 15 candidates are elected to the charter commission. Any registered voter can be a candidate. By law, the commission has two years to submit a revised charter to voters.

As they ponder a course of action, strong-mayor supporters should look at the Los Angeles experience in the late 1990s. That city successfully overhauled its 1925 charter, creating a strong-mayor system in a 1999 vote.

That city had similar differences between mayor and council. And as in Sacramento, the council in Los Angeles appointed a charter commission and wanted recommendations to get council approval before going to voters. The mayor rejected that and wanted an alternative route for charter reform.

But the similarities end there.

Unlike Mayor Johnson, Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan pursued the route of an elected charter commission whose recommendations would go directly to the voters without prior council approval. He collected signatures to place an elected commission on the ballot, and a second commission was elected.

So two competing charter reform commissions went about their work.

Raphael Sonenshein, executive director of the council-appointed commission, has written: “Out of this nearly impossible tangle, reformers managed to knit a new city charter that greatly expanded institutions for citizen participation and addressed long-standing weaknesses in the role of the mayor.”

It worked because the two commissions ended up being independent of both the mayor and council; the leadership of both commissions realized that eventually the two commissions would have to come together and settle on a unified proposal, recognizing both would fail if separate proposals went on the ballot; and community groups came together to put the pressure on when the mayor had exaggerated ideas of what powers the mayor should have or the council tried to block any change.

Voters passed the new charter 60 percent to 40 percent.

While the two-commission process was less than ideal, in the end it worked because enough people recognized that a charter has to be a political document that is a product of compromise.

In short, there is precedent for working within existing options to achieve comprehensive charter overhaul in a highly charged political environment. And other California cities, not just Los Angeles, have shown that it is possible to achieve charter change. Fresno also comes to mind.

The goal in Sacramento is to get reasonable, thoughtful charter change. To that end, an elected commission remains an option that reformers should examine. The existing council-appointed charter committee, unfortunately, already has made it clear that it has little interest in real change.

When a city has many interests and political divisions, compromise is inevitable – and that should be the aim as civic leaders press forward.

Re “UC sets poor example for med students” (Viewpoints, Feb. 2): As a recent UC Davis residency graduate I want to assure the three medical students that you are receiving a medical education far better than you realize or appreciate. During my residency at UC Davis I provided medical care, both inpatient and outpatient, to fully insured patients, partially insured patients, indigent patients and undocumented patients, and the outstanding quality of the care delivered never deviated based on their ability to pay.

A large number of these patients provided no revenue to the University Medical Center yet consumed millions of dollars in resources. As exemplified by the hundreds of hospitals and emergency rooms that have closed in recent years due to insolvency, it should be obvious that negative cash flow is unsustainable and ultimately results in less availability of health care to everyone.

The commentary also criticizes UC Davis for embarking on the construction of a new emergency department. Let me assure you that the construction of this building is essential to the continued care of the ever growing number of patients who visit the ER. When I practiced in the UC Davis ER two years ago it was common to treat patients on gurneys in the corridors of the hospital or allow them to languish for hours in the waiting room for lack of space in the emergency room. This is not ideal patient care.

You further criticize the provision of bonuses to UC Davis Medical Center executives. It is important for you to understand that in all large, complex institutions it requires financial incentives to recruit and maintain the required managerial talent to guide and oversee the operation of the organization. Failure to competitively compensate the executives could compromise the very existence of the institution.

My message to you, doctors in training, is that although we would all like to learn and work in an ivory tower atmosphere, immune from the economic realities of the world, this does not represent an ideal medical education. To practice medicine without regard to economic realities has played a major role in the health care mess that we are currently battling on a local and a national level. You need to learn medicine through didactic training and clinical practice, and you also must be well aware that you are practicing medicine in an environment where resources are indeed limited and the sooner you embrace this notion the sooner you will be able to effectively practice medicine in the real world.

Black soldiers stationed somewhere in Europe prepare an Easter gift for Hitler on March 24, 1945. “For Love of Liberty,” a documentary on black U.S. military history, airs this month on PBS. It touches on the paradox of men defending ideals that were denied to them.

It is the enduring paradox of our centuries here.

It is the paradox that stood its ground at Bunker Hill, the paradox that made a doomed charge on Fort Wagner, the paradox that stormed San Juan Hill, advanced through the Meuse-Argonne, landed on Iwo Jima, liberated Seoul and was taken prisoner in Hanoi.

It is the paradox: Black men, will you defend America? Leave skin and blood in foreign lands, fighting for ideals that do not include you?

Ideals like, “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.”

And, “One man, one vote.”

And, “Liberty and justice for all.”

That paradox suffuses “For Love of Liberty,” a moving new documentary airing this month – Black History Month – on PBS. The program is a valuable compendium of black military history. Through narration and dramatic readings, a host of prominent actors – Halle Berry, Avery Brooks, Ice-T, John Goodman, Robert Duvall, Charles S. Dutton, LeVar Burton, Louis Gossett Jr., Susan Sarandon, Mel Gibson, Bill Cosby and many more – re-create the often incomprehensible bravery of black men and women who answered when their country called.

We get the runaway slave Crispus Attucks becoming the first person to die for American independence, and 5-foot-4 130-pound Pvt. Henry Johnson single-handedly driving off two dozen German attackers. We get Staff Sgt. Ruben Rivers, broken bone poking through his skin, refusing to be evacuated, refusing morphine, and leading his men against the Nazis in a battle that took his life. We get Pvt. Milton Olive throwing himself on a grenade in Vietnam. We get tombstones, reminding us that freedom bears a price.

But over, amid and above all that, we get the paradox.

One story paints the picture: It seems that during the Second World War, a group of nine African American Marines in full uniform were traveling by train through Louisiana. They were denied service in the dining area of a local cafe, given sandwiches and sent to eat them in a room off the kitchen. As they ate, the men watched through the window as German prisoners of war and the white soldiers guarding them entered the same dining area to be seated and served.

As one of the black men asked in a letter to a military magazine: “What is the Negro soldier fighting for? On whose team are we playing? I stood outside looking in, but could not help to ask myself these questions. Are these men sworn enemies of this country? Are we not American soldiers sworn to fight and die, if need be, for this, our country? Then why are the Germans treated better than we are?”

From time to time in this country, one hears people – sometimes implicitly, sometimes explicitly – question the patriotism, the “American-ness” of African American people. We heard this most recently during the racially charged campaign of 2008 when some said Michelle and Barack Obama and, by extension, those of us who look like them, were insufficient in their love of country, lacking in fealty to its highest ideals.

It is always … enlightening to be lectured on love of country by those whose heritage includes no paradox. One hopes a few of them will chance upon this program.

One hopes they will see the stories of valor, linger upon the tombstones, watch American Marines denied seating at a table to which even Nazis are welcome and marvel at the sheer love of country this bespeaks. Not love for the country as it is, but love for what it could someday be.

One hopes they will understand how much such love it takes to defy the paradox. Black men, it asks, will you defend America? Leave skin and blood in foreign lands fighting for ideals that do not include you? And always, the answer has been the same.

Yes.

A Molotov cocktail flew through the window of a North Natomas home in 2007, setting fire to the empty rental where 4-year-old foster child Amariana Crenshaw was found dead.

The foster mother, Tracy Dossman, was cleared as a suspect, but questions remained. Why was Amariana asleep on a floor in an empty rental home? Why had she gained only a single pound in the three years preceding her death?

Despite lingering concerns, Dossman continues to be a foster parent. Many in the community are outraged. I understand this outrage, but I also struggle with the vilification of yet another foster parent. In addition to concern over the suitability of Dossman, this tragic case illustrates broader problems within the foster care system, including what I believe to be a growing obstacle to meaningful reform: the shortage of qualified foster parents.

A study released by the Child Welfare Directors Association in 2007 reported the number of licensed foster homes statewide dropped 30 percent over the previous 10 years. This number was even higher in Sacramento County: 45 percent to 50 percent.

This shortage has dire consequences for children. First, it creates an environment in which agencies are unable to be choosy about who is licensed: a foster parent must only pass a background check and meet minimal requirements. The county is also less likely to decertify a parent – even when that parent comes under incredible scrutiny, as Dossman has – if it is in desperate need of the six beds that home provides.

Less obvious, but just as harmful, is the effect this shortage has on foster placements. Dossman considered herself an expert in adolescent care, but was “apprehensive” about mothering young children. Yet Amariana was placed in her home. Placements such as this – in which the foster family and child are not well matched – increase the likelihood a placement will fail. Failed placements correlate with increased trauma for children.

As new foster parents, my husband and I experienced this firsthand. Recently married and idealistic, we became foster parents, requesting one school-age child. The children we received, after a series of pleading calls from social workers, were sisters ages 3 and 13. We were wholly unprepared. As full-time working professionals, we had to put the toddler in private daycare, which cost hundreds of dollars more per month than we received from the county. The sisters were sweet and loving. They also suffered medical problems that made their care far more intense than we anticipated. Finally, we made the hardest decision of our life: we gave notice. The girls were removed from our home. We failed.

I do not blame the system for our failure – but I do believe that a system desperate to make a placement, regardless of fit, makes it difficult even for foster parents with good intentions to succeed. As a society, if we are serious about helping youths in foster care thrive, more families need to become foster parents, and we need to help these foster parents be successful.

This will happen through responsible placements, more support services and increased reimbursement rates.

It will also happen when those of us who have resources, support and perseverance to reform the failing system start within our own families. It’s easy to critique a government system: journalists investigate injustices, policy-makers write legislation and philanthropists write checks. All of this is necessary and good. But it is only part of the solution. Reforming the system must include these same people – professionals with a passion for young people – opening the doors of their homes to foster children. It is essential that the professional class shoulder its share of the burden that falls heavily on lower-income families.

It may seem I am calling on people to sacrifice, but I know this from experience: When you fall in love with a child, what I am asking is not a sacrifice.

After our initial failed attempt, my husband and I were given a second chance to be foster parents, this time to a teenage boy. Tre’von Lyle was a freshman at Sacramento High School, where my husband is the principal. Tre’von was a perfect match for our family, and while foster parenting – like parenting of any kind – is never easy, we received support from the entire Sac High community. In the past three years, no one has brought us more joy than Tre’von. He is everything a parent could wish for: honest, smart, hardworking and kind. Last fall he applied to college, and we will support him wherever he goes. We love him as if he were our own son.

My husband and I do not take credit for Tre’von’s success. He was as bright and ambitious when he came to us as he is today. But we know that Tre’von is exactly the kind of child foster home shortages hurt most – adolescent, male and African American. Young men like Tre’von, no matter how bright, are placed in group homes in shocking numbers.

Currently, 2 percent of emancipated foster youths go to college. Fifty percent experience homelessness or incarceration.

It is in our hands, as individuals and as a community, to improve outcomes for foster youths.

In California’s Westlands Water District in the San Joaquin Valley, a sign in a dried almond crop blames Congress for a “Dust Bowl.”

“Famously hypertensive.” That’s how Matt Jenkins of High County News describes Sean Hannity, who blamed the San Joaquin Valley water shortages on the Endangered Species Act (“Tapping into Anger”; Forum, Jan. 31).

What’s really “hyper,” however, is the ESA dictates themselves: By starving farms and communities of water, they’re hyper-outrageous.

Federal regulators ordered dramatic cuts in pumping from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to Central and Southern California, in a strategy to keep the endangered Delta smelt afloat. At least 500,000 acre-feet of water (163 billion gallons) were withheld last year. More pumping restrictions were proposed for other ESA-protected fish.

Jenkins points to precipitation levels as a major culprit in the state’s water woes; environmental rules, he writes, account for only a quarter of reduced Delta water exports, if that much. Still, where’s the sense in intentionally holding back water when people are already struggling with a natural drought? Isn’t that like applying leeches to a patient who’s losing blood?

The article frames the legal and policy dust-up over water as mainly a showdown between the feds and the Westlands Water District. This might surprise the scores of other water districts and water agencies that have also been seared by the regulatory drought.

For instance, Stanislaus County farmer Jim Jasper, who is represented by Pacific Legal Foundation attorneys in a challenge to the smelt regulations, is a member of the Del Puerto Water District. If ESA water restrictions aren’t lifted, he fears his 60-year-old family farming business won’t survive. Nearly 150 employees would be jobless.

Meanwhile, a “Delta smelt tax” is being levied on millions of Southern Californians who are served by the Metropolitan Water District. The district increased water charges to member agencies by nearly 20 percent in 2009, in large part due to the pumping restrictions.

Can we take solace from knowing that the fish-before-people regs at least help the environment? Only by ignoring awkward facts. The dust from dry fields may be dirtying the air, and land has sunk as more groundwater is tapped. “How could this not affect the human environment?” asked Fresno-based Federal Judge Oliver Wanger, who is presiding over the Delta smelt lawsuits. “It has had catastrophic effects.”

Oh, yes – the Delta smelt aren’t recovering, either, according to state surveys.

Whatever you think of Sean Hannity, give him credit for highlighting a side of the “green” agenda that is often ignored: It can turn lush fields brown and plow jobs under.

Should the judge uphold or overturn the ban on marriage for same-sex couples? To comment on this issue, please see our forum.

The first phase of what will be a long legal battle about the constitutionality of California’s Proposition 8 will soon come to an end. For the past month, a bevy of talented lawyers in a federal district courtroom in San Francisco have argued about whether the U.S. Constitution permits the voters of California to limit the institution of marriage to heterosexuals, while relegating California’s gay and lesbian couples to an alternative regime of “domestic partnerships.” While the California Supreme Court last year upheld the constitutionality of Proposition 8 under its interpretation of state law, the current case, Perry v. Schwarzenegger, challenges Proposition 8 under the federal Constitution.

Republican-appointed federal Judge Vaughn Walker insisted on having a trial, requiring each side to present evidence to support its contention. Previous cases considering whether it was constitutional to exclude same-sex couples from marriage were decided on the basis of the legal arguments made by the respective sides, without trial or live witnesses.

As a result, over the past few weeks, Walker required the parties to put on testimony to address the question of what, if anything, justifies a heterosexual monopoly on marriage.

In reviewing the evidence, Walker will be guided by U.S. Supreme Court precedent. Notably, in Romer v. Evans, that court struck down an initiative that was handily approved by Colorado voters on the ground that the real basis for the initiative was anti-gay animus. This, the court said, was not a constitutionally acceptable or sufficient justification for singling out lesbian and gay people for differential treatment.

Thus, one of the core questions presented by the Perry case in California is whether there is any justification for the exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage other than animus.

The testimony at trial was telling.

Those arguing that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional went first. Among other things, marriage-equality supporters gave powerful testimony about the ongoing discrimination against gay and lesbian Americans as well as about the harms to lesbian and gay adults and their children caused by Proposition 8. They also presented evidence that the children of lesbian and gay people are just as well adjusted as the children of heterosexual couples.

The proponents then had their opportunity to explain what, other than animus, justifies the exclusion of lesbian and gay people from the right to marry. To the surprise of many on both sides of the issue, the proponents put on only two witnesses. The first testified, not very convincingly, on a technical issue – the level of political power gays and lesbians purportedly possess.

The only other witness – the proponents’ star witness David Blank- enhorn – addressed the alleged harms caused by same-sex marriage. As many of us remember, during the months leading up to the vote on Proposition 8, the proponents (the Yes on 8 side) spent large amounts of money – about $40 million dollars – trying to convince the voters that unless Proposition 8 was approved, terrible harms would befall children. For example, the ballot argument in support of Proposition 8 summed up with the line: “Voting YES protects our children.” Similarly, one of the campaign’s official advertisements closed with the written message: “Protect Children. Restore Marriage.”

Blankenhorn, president of the New York-based Institute for American Values, an organization “whose mission is to study and strengthen key American values,” had the opportunity to explain exactly how it is that Proposition 8 protects children, or to offer some other justification for stripping lesbian and gay people of the right to marry.

In a nutshell, here’s what Blank- enhorn had to say: Marriage, he testified, is being “deinstitutionalized” or weakened. The “manifestations” of this “deinstitutionalization,” Blankenhorn said, are the purported increasing rates of divorce and the greater numbers of children being born outside of marriage.

Even assuming one agrees that marriage is being “weakened,” the question the court must ask is: What is the relevance of marriage for same-sex couples to this process? Did lesbian and gay people cause marriage to become “deinstitutionalized”?

It turns out that the answer to that question is “No.” Blankenhorn readily admitted that lesbian and gay people did not cause this process to begin. Rather, Blankenhorn testified, “heterosexuals … did the deinstitutionalizing.”

So, lesbian and gay people did not initiate or instigate this process but, Blankenhorn asserted, if California permitted same-sex couples to marry they might contribute to this deinstitutionalization.

And what is the evidence of this?

“It’s impossible to be completely sure about a prediction of future events,” Blankenhorn admitted. But he justified his prediction by stating: “If you change the definition of the thing, it’s hard to imagine how it could have no impact on the thing.”

At this point, one might ask, what about the children? It turns out that the only specific harms to children that Blankenhorn identified were the harms caused by Proposition 8 to the children of lesbian and gay couples. Specifically Blankenhorn testified that excluding same-sex couples from the right to marry “almost certainly” denies benefits to their children.

In short, given a full and fair opportunity to present any evidence supporting the view that permitting same-sex couples to marry causes harm, the proponents of Proposition 8 were unable to do so. Accordingly, as the Supreme Court concluded in Romer v. Evans with regard to Colorado’s initiative, Proposition 8 “seems inexplicable by anything but animus towards the class it affects” and cannot withstand constitutional scrutiny.

What is the likely outcome of this litigation?

It’s not easy to predict. But in light of Walker’s insistence on a trial and because the plaintiffs put on such a compelling case, especially compared with the weak one put on by the defense, many predict an initial victory for the plaintiffs.

Even so, it is not easy to know on what grounds the court will rule or how far-reaching the ultimate decision will be. It would be monumental if the judge issued a sweeping ruling holding that the U.S. Constitution prohibits states from banning gays and lesbians from marrying. More likely, the decision will be decided on narrower grounds, focused on unique circumstances in California.

The ultimate resolution is many months and possibly years away, as the judge’s opinion will not be rendered until later this year, well after closing arguments in March at the earliest. Whatever the judge rules, the decision will surely be appealed, perhaps all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

After taking the witness stand for the side seeking to overturn Proposition 8, San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders, left, hugs his daughter Lisa as her wife, Meaghan Yaple, watches after a news conference in San Francisco on Jan. 19.

Courtney G. Joslin

Lawrence C. Levine

The California Public Employees’ Retirement System has launched a public relations campaign intended to tone down the rhetoric in the increasingly raucous debate over public employee pensions.

Speaking at the first of two Cal-PERS sponsored “California Retirement Dialogue” forums, pension board President Robert Feckner said the goal is to “separate fact from fiction.”

But the facts CalPERS has trotted out so far do more to distort than clarify the issue. For example, CalPERS’ official Web site says the average pension for all fund retirees is $2,101 a month, or a modest $25,212 a year.

That’s a dishonest figure.

It includes an unknown number of local, state and school district employees who worked as few as five years in public service, the minimum number of years required to be vested in the CalPERS system. It also includes employees who retired before 1999, when the Legislature passed Senate Bill 400, the bill that substantially boosted benefit levels retroactively and prospectively for all state workers and pegged those benefits to a worker’s single highest year’s pay.

Local governments adopted similar enhancements. In many cases, those were even richer than the state benefits.

Any honest effort to separate fact from fiction would separate obligations for post-1999 retirees from pre-1999 retirees. It would also separate pensioners who worked full careers in public service – 30 years or more – from those who worked just five or 10 years.

An honest appraisal would also separate the public safety retirees – police, firefighters and prison guards – from all other categories of workers. Public safety workers enjoy the most generous pensions of almost any government workers in the country. Most retire in their early 50s with 90 percent of pay.

The average annual pension for all prison guard retirees is $36,000 a year, almost 40 percent higher than the $25,212 average for all CalPERS pensioners. California Highway Patrol retirees collect $59,000 a year on average, more than twice the average.

An honest appraisal of public employee pensions would include a discussion of the actuarial assumptions, particularly the 7.75 percent rate of return on investments that CalPERS predicts. David Crane, the governor’s economic adviser, says that assumption is overly optimistic. Speaking at a seminar last August, CalPERS chief actuary Ron Seeling said, “We are facing decades without significant turnarounds in assets, decades of unsustainable pension costs.” Seeling was not among the panelists chosen to speak at the CalPERS forum. Why not?

Rob Feckner is right. It’s time to separate fact from fiction but to do that, Cal-PERS needs to facilitate an honest dialogue with real numbers.

FBI Director Robert Mueller appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Jan. 20 to talk about
the attempted Christmas Day terrorist attack. The FBI had warnings about the would-be bomber.

Despite a pattern of abuses and failures under his watch, FBI Director Robert Mueller enters the 10th year of his tenure with the support of the White House.

Not since J. Edgar Hoover has a bureau director enjoyed this enviable or mysterious a job security. And that should give Americans pause.

Consider Mueller’s own admissions over the course of the last month.

Faced with a preliminary report from the FBI inspector general, Mueller conceded that senior agents under his supervision illegally collected thousands of private telephone records over a four-year period in violation of federal and state criminal law, as well as the U.S. Constitution. Senior FBI agents directly under Mueller tried to cover up these violations by falsely claiming that the records were part of terrorism investigations.

FBI officials have been vague as to what Mueller knew of these acts, or when he first learned of their commission. But this is hardly the point. As a former federal prosecutor and chief of the Department of Justice Criminal Division, Mueller understands criminal procedure and basic due process. As FBI director, it is his statutory responsibility to ensure that the agents under him comply with the law. That Mueller failed to do so is arguably grounds for his removal. Yet no one in the Obama administration or anywhere else has yet dared to even raise the possibility.

This is perplexing, especially in light of the FBI’s failures in regard to the Fort Hood shooting rampage. Mueller has conceded that the FBI had reports that Maj. Nidal Hassan was in contact with foreign terrorists and therefore posed a danger to his fellow soldiers. Yet for more than six months, Mueller’s agents did nothing. It was only after Hassan murdered 13 Americans that Mueller called for a secret internal review to examine how such clear warnings could have been missed.

Mueller certainly can’t blame a lack of resources. In 2002, Mueller shifted 500 agents to counterintelligence and anti-terrorism from drug enforcement and other criminal investigations such as white-collar crime. Mueller’s personnel shift has cut the number of agents available to combat drug-cartel violence here and across the Mexican border, or the massive growth in white-collar financial fraud on Wall Street and beyond. By shifting the bureau’s focus and resources, Mueller has managed to make us less safe.

Finally, there are Mueller’s missteps and failures in the handling of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the suspect in the attempted airliner bombing on Christmas Day. While President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have been criticized for the matter, the buck stops with Mueller and so should the blame. It was he and his agents who were responsible for the confusion that continues to swirl around the case.

To appreciate why, some context is in order:

In 2004, the FBI was made legal custodian of the nation’s terrorism watch list. Its specific responsibilities include combing all relevant intelligence databases from other government agencies and updating the watch list with names of those who should not be allowed to board U.S. flights.

The FBI has botched the job. In May 2009, the Department of Justice released the results of an audit that identified a number of terror subjects that should have been on the list but were left off. That this posed a clear and present danger to the country was made explicit in a DOJ report that accompanied the audit:

“Because the consolidated terrorist watch list is used by government frontline screening personnel to determine how to respond when a known or suspected terrorist requests entry into the United States, the failure to place appropriate individuals on the watch list, or the failure to place them on the watch list in a timely manner, increases the risk that these individuals are able to enter and move freely about the country.”

The report noted that a number of terror suspects who should have been on the watch list but were not had already attempted to cross U.S. borders.

Members of the U.S. Senate chastised the FBI for mishandling the list, and Mueller’s spokesman John Miller promised that the bureau would do better. Yet seven months later, Abdulmutallab was allowed to board the plane he would later try to blow up, because his name was not on the watch list. It should have been.

The State Department had given the FBI Abdulmutallab’s name as a terror threat based on highly credible information provided by the young Nigerian’s father. Mueller has yet to give a complete or credible explanation for this oversight.

Only luck and Abdulmutallab’s incompetence thwarted the attempted murder of more than a hundred airline passengers. Yet even when fate delivered the suspect into their hands, Mueller and his agents still managed to mishandle the investigation.

Last year, the Obama administration ordered Mueller to create a High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group, or HIG. Made up of representatives from various intelligence-gathering agencies and led by the FBI, the HIG is to gather actionable information from terror suspects like Abdulmutallab quickly, efficiently and legally.

The HIG is a good idea. It seeks to cut through bureaucratic turf battles to ensure the gathering and free flow of important terror leads. More important, by establishing clear procedures and protocols over whether or when to Mirandize suspects like Abdulmutallab, the HIG seeks to take the politics and posturing out of the war on terror.

It might have worked, too. Unfortunately, Mueller never bothered to carry out Obama’s orders.

Before a congressional hearing into the attempted bombing, Mueller admitted that he has yet to make the HIG operational. Instead, the FBI carried out its own haphazard interrogation of Abdulmutallab. No other intelligence-gathering or law enforcement agency personnel were present. No set procedures regarding whether or not to Mirandize the suspect were followed.

Rather than concede FBI dereliction, Mueller has gone into spin mode. He has selectively released information about the interrogation to bolster claims that his agents handled the suspect effectively. He has encouraged leaked reports suggesting that the suspect is cooperating and providing useful information. Conflicting reports as to who exactly decided to Mirandize the suspect continue to cloud the issue. Until full transcripts of the interrogation are released, which is highly unlikely, the public will just have to take Mueller’s word for it.

That Obama publicly castigated all the relevant law enforcement agencies for mishandling the Christmas Day case seems both scattershot and unfair. As the longest-serving member of the intelligence gathering community and the one responsible for leading the investigation, Mueller deserved special blame.

Nor has he been taken to task for his involvement in other recent failures:

• The political corruption conviction of U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens was thrown out because prosecutors and FBI agents hid evidence that should have been turned over to the defense.

• Murder charges against Blackwater guards for the slaughter of Iraqi civilians were thrown out because prosecutors and FBI agents violated the suspects’ Fifth Amendment rights.

• While the anthrax mailing case remains unsolved, Mueller’s unjust treatment of an innocent man – Steven Hatfill – offers a chilling insight into the director’s stubborn refusal to acknowledge mistakes.

After years of investigation, Mueller’s agents exonerated Hatfill. Yet the director refused to clear the man’s name and has never apologized for his role in one of the worst injustices committed in post-9/11 America.

I served under Mueller when he was chief of the criminal division of the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. As a lowly trial attorney, I only spoke with him a few times. The lantern-jawed ex-Marine and Vietnam vet is undeniably charismatic, intelligent and impressive. His work in high-profile cases against John Gotti and others is admirable, as is his devotion to public service. If Mueller were the head of any other agency, failures under his watch might be forgiven. But the FBI is a special case.

The nation’s oldest and most powerful domestic investigative agency has both a proud and sordid history. Its founding director abused the legal system to maintain control for decades. The public only now knows the extent to which Hoover broke the law in order to maintain his power, wiretapping those he deemed dangerous and ignoring wrongdoing when it suited his personal agenda.

Members of Congress, some in the media and many U.S. presidents knew of Hoover’s crimes. But they did nothing. Perhaps they feared what the director had in his rumored private files. Perhaps they feared appearing soft on crime. Whatever the reason, Hoover’s job was secure even if the Constitution was not.

In post-9/11 America, fear is commonplace. We often fail to grasp how it affects our judgments toward those in charge of protecting us. No director since Hoover has been guilty of more violations of civil rights than Mueller. No director has had to admit as many failures in handling information as Mueller. Blind support of Mueller from our political leaders and media constitutes more than a lack of oversight. It shows an ignorance of the FBI directorate’s own troubling history. For the good of the country and the integrity of the FBI, it’s time for Robert Mueller to go.

Jonathan Shapiro teaches federal criminal law as an adjunct professor at the USC Gould School of Law.

Rick Braziel is Sacramento’s chief of police.

Many questions have been raised by the series of articles surrounding the horrific murder of 4½-year-old Amariana Crenshaw (“Who killed Amariana?”; Page A1, Jan. 24-26). This tragic event has devastated her family, the community and the Sacramento Police Department. On behalf of the agency charged with the investigation, I can assure you that we have, and will continue to investigate this case. We will not give up until those responsible are brought to justice.

Amariana’s murder is an open investigation and will remain so until someone is convicted. Even though transparency is vital to the relationship between the Police Department and the community, in any open investigation it is not prudent to release information that may jeopardize our ability to apprehend those responsible.

In all investigations, especially high-profile cases, significant time is spent by the investigators strategizing what information, if any, should be released to the public. Holding back certain details, including the investigative steps that have been taken, is often critical for a successful investigation and later prosecution. This tried and true investigative strategy unfortunately has left some readers wondering about the thoroughness of our investigation.

The Police Department will continue to follow up on every available lead in Amariana’s case. Although the articles in The Bee may have left questions in readers’ minds about the investigation, there is much more to this investigation than what was written about in the articles. It is my hope that the articles will generate conversation in the public resulting in someone coming forward with information that will allow Amariana’s family, the community and the Police Department to have closure.

Is it possible that the contest among the Super Bowl commercials has become more riveting to the masses than the actual contest?

I’m starting to think it is. And this year there are even more decibels to the buzz, thanks to two controversial spots that have created a stadium-sized controversy. They push the buzzer on hot- button issues in a way that no Super Bowl advertising in recent memory has done.

The first contretemps swirls around a pro-life message that comes to us courtesy of the group Focus on the Family.

For years, advocacy advertising of any kind was commercial non grata in the Super Bowl. None of the networks wanted to interrupt America’s ecstasy of wings and nachos with anything that was politically charged. No discomfort was permitted to enter the domed bubble of the massively hyped event. But CBS accepted the spot, and we don’t know why. Was it financially driven, did CBS officials feel the culture was finally ready, or were they convinced that the commercial itself wasn’t an incendiary trigger-point?

The advertising features football star Tim Tebow and his mother, Pam. She recounts the story of Tim’s difficult, high-risk pregnancy and the choice she made to go through with it.

Love it or hate it, from a purely communications point of view it succeeds in delivering its message with an emotional wallop. Tim is a living, breathing and successful example of her ultimate decision.

And it’s a clever angle. It doesn’t take the conventional route of the young single girl who could carry to term and then deliver the baby to loving parents who can’t conceive on their own. Rather, it uses a more complex situation – potential health risks to the mother and the fetus, a medical question. The pro-life crowd comes across as less ideological and more thoughtful.

The other controversial spot is for ManCrunch.com, a gay dating site. CBS rejected the spot, which is no doubt the best thing that could have happened to the company. Millions of dollars in free publicity, and millions saved on Super Bowl advertising.

CBS has put itself in a curious and, I think, fundamentally indefensible position by letting the issues-driven “Focus” spot crash the Super Bowl party but not allowing a gay dating site to air. And the timing is ironic: President Barack Obama just said he will reverse “don’t ask, don’t tell” policies. Is CBS’ policy “don’t ask, don’t date”?

Even without those two debacles, each year the media’s fascination with the advertising angle seems to start earlier and grow more frenetic. The game becomes a 30-second Rosetta Stone for reporters looking to decode the latest American hieroglyphics.

It’s an economic indicator: How much a 30-second spot costs is a proxy for how strong the economy is. (It’s reported that a commercial on CBS costs somewhere between $2.5 million and $2.8 million, slightly less than the $3 million NBC raked in a year ago.)

It’s a gender indicator: How women are portrayed – as objectified objects of desire or “empowered” females – is a measure of ongoing battles.

It’s a brand indicator: Who has pulled out – Pepsi – is contrasted with who has the cash to jump in.

It’s a cultural indicator: The visual and thematic elements of the spots are a window into our present state-of-mind. Are they absurdist, ha-ha funny, schmaltzy? What do the anthropomorphic frogs, aliens, rodents or aardvarks tell us? Are we dazzled by escapist fantasies? Those packed 30-second sonnets telegraph volumes.

So Super Bowl commercials are a chance for the nation to come together, watch a bunch of big companies trying to sell us stuff, and then vote for our favorites Monday morning. It’s nothing less than the capitalist Oscars.

Nukes & Spooks

Posted by Warren Strobel

Vice President Joe Biden went a bit off message Tuesday, virtually predicting the collapse of the Iranian regime during an interview with Andrea Mitchell at MSNBC news.

Leaders of the theocratic regime in Tehran “are sowing the seeds of their own destruction,” Biden said – he used that phrase twice – “in terms of their ability to hold on to power.” He also opined that “the people of Iran … they’re thinking about regime change.”

The vice president seemed to be saying that the violent crackdown by Supreme Leader Ali Khamanei is boomeranging badly, spurring on the “Green Movement” – as the opposition is known – and further delegitimizing Iran’s current leaders.

Fair ‘nuf. But Biden’s comments mark a departure from the Obama administration’s generally cautious approach to the political turmoil inside Iran. President Barack Obama has been careful not to completely embrace the Iranian opposition (which could tarnish their image as a home-grown movement). And the words “regime change” have not escaped any White House officials’ lips. Indeed, senior U.S. officials say an offer to negotiate with Tehran over its nuclear program is still on the table whenever Iran wants to pick it up.

Was Biden signalling a policy shift? Voicing his own opinion? Engaging in wishful thinking? Unclear.

Iraq, Iran, IRAM

Middle East Diary

Posted by Hannah Allam

Militants launched another IRAM attack against a joint U.S.-Iraqi compound in the southern Iraqi city of Amarah, near the Iranian border, according to the U.S. military. No one was injured.

A couple weeks ago, I wrote a story about the reappearance of the IRAM, or Improvised Rocket-Assisted Munition, a rarely used weapon that U.S. intelligence officials say is connected to Iran.

Sometimes called “flying IEDs,” IRAMs are a potentially deadlier incarnation of the garden-variety IEDs in Iraq and Afghanistan – they’re short-range projectiles that catapult toward unsuspecting targets.

In the latest incident, militants launched three IRAMs toward Camp Sparrowhawk, a joint Iraqi-American base in Amarah, according to a U.S. military statement with few details of the attack. Most IRAM information is classified as the U.S. military studies the device’s components and origins.

There were no casualties and no major equipment damage. Lucky for them, because if you want to know what an IRAM can do, just listen to this American soldier who survived one and was awarded the Purple Heart.

“I’d never heard of it – not before it blew up on us,” said Spc. Robert B. Walsh, 27, of Venice, Fla., who survived an IRAM blast last summer at the same place as the latest attack.

Walsh, who’s still in Iraq, said he was on duty in a guard tower on the American side of the joint outpost at 6 a.m. last June 30, which was supposed to have been a day of celebration as the new U.S.-Iraqi security pact took effect.

Walsh said his only clue before the blast was “a poof sound.” In the seconds before impact, Walsh used his radio to alert other soldiers to possible incoming fire.

The IRAM zipped over the wall “like a big bottle rocket,” Walsh said. It passed his guard tower and blew up next to a kitchen and barracks where American troops were sleeping.

Two other Purple Heart recipients suffered shrapnel wounds when windows and doors blew into their quarters, cutting their faces and hands. Several vehicles were damaged or destroyed, and the force of the explosion cracked the foundation and shifted the roof of the concrete building.

“It threw me about three or four feet and knocked me unconscious,” Walsh said. “When I woke up, everything was on fire and there was debris all over the ground. It left a hole with a 15-foot radius, and it was 4 1/2 feet deep.”

The U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are edging up on Vietnam – which lasted eight years and five months – as the longest wars in U.S. history.

But there’s a difference.

In Vietnam we had a draft, and most soldiers served one tour in combat, limited to a year. U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq not only are serving multiple tours of duty, but much longer tours – as long as 18 to 24 months.

Facing repeated deployments with little down time at home, some soldiers and their families are struggling with stress, depression, marital problems, financial woes and alcohol and drug abuse.

And it gets worse from there. An increasingly high number of these active-duty soldiers, upon returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan, are taking their own lives.

“Of the more than 30,000 suicides in this country each year, fully 20 percent of them are acts by veterans,” retired Army Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, U.S. secretary of veterans affairs, said recently. “That means on average 18 veterans commit suicide each day.”

In California, suicide rates among 18- to 24-year-old veterans are four times higher than rates of non-veterans of the same age.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger squarely addressed the problem in his January State of the State address.

“Many have served tour after tour after tour and as a result, some have lost homes, spouses, limbs and even their lives,” he said in that speech.

“Too often our soldiers bring back the enemy with them in their heads. We are seeing and hearing all about a lot of post-traumatic stress syndrome. The suicide rate is disturbingly high. I mean, this country cannot continue to live in denial about those things. Those men and women need help.”

California, he noted, has more returning veterans than any other state – about 30,000 a year. So Schwarzenegger acknowledged this state’s special responsibility to them.

He’s setting aside $20 million in one-time special funds to launch “Operation Welcome Home.”

This program seeks to hire 300 combat veterans who will personally connect with each and every returning combat veteran through nine regional centers – at least three times in their first year home – to link them with a full array of services from jobs to health care to education.

He’s also launching a California Veteran Corps of volunteers to help in the transition to civilian life.

Schwarzenegger is right. Even as California struggles through huge budget difficulties, it still owes veterans a proper welcome home.

Their struggles, inextricably tied to two lengthy wars, underscore the need to bring these wars to a close.

Nearly a half-century ago, a New York Times article stunned Americans. It began, “For more than half an hour, 38 respectable, law-abiding citizens in Queens watched a killer stalk and stab a woman in three separate attacks in Kew Gardens. Not one person telephoned the police during the assault; one witness called after the woman was dead.”

One witness said: “I didn’t want to get involved.”

That March 1964 incident galvanized a nation. Studies lamented, as one put it, “the inability of local communities, to realize the common values of their residents or solve commonly experienced problems.” In the end, it seemed to be less about callousness than people simply not knowing their neighbors and not knowing enough about what was going on around them to be able to identify things out of the ordinary.

It was in this climate of shock at “bystander apathy” that neighborhood watch groups were born.

Today, those groups are receiving renewed attention in our region as large numbers of foreclosures and high levels of joblessness are taking a toll on the stability of our neighborhoods. At the same time, strained government finances are hurting law enforcement, after-school programs and other community institutions. And in a state with a wide range of races, ethnic groups and languages, neighbors may not interact much with each other.

Volunteerism – residents working together to solve community problems – is more important then ever to break patterns of fragmentation and isolation. As The Bee’s Chelsea Phua reported on Tuesday, people are launching new neighborhood watch groups and rejuvenating already existing ones.

These should not be seen only as a tool to fight and prevent crime – and they have been proven effective at that. Neighborhood Watch groups also provide a way for people of different backgrounds to interact with each other and find common ground – building relationships among neighbors to make more livable places. Out of these groups can come social events, trash cleanups, painting over graffiti, restoring playgrounds.

Neighborhood Watch is not about vigilantism, people acting as pseudo-police officers. It is not about 24-hour “Big Brother is watching you” spying. It is not about gossiping busybodies.

It’s about neighbors looking after neighbors.

Reduced crime is merely a byproduct of people banding together to reclaim an old-fashioned sense of community.

Ronald D. Rotunda

We all think that more is better than less. Too much of a good thing is a good thing. The law often requires disclosure of campaign contributors because voters want to know if a major contributor will have special access to the elected official.

Yet too much disclosure can be a bad thing if it imposes costs that outweigh benefits. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, but too much sun causes skin cancer.

Right now, a federal judge in San Francisco is deciding whether the U.S. Constitution creates a right to gay marriage. However the judge decides on that issue, the Supreme Court will also decide another issue: May the court televise the proceedings when the video enables viewers to harass or harm the witnesses?

A similar issue is present in a case against the California Fair Political Practices Commission called ProtectMarriage.com v. Bowen. I am a commissioner and technically a defendant in that lawsuit. Needless to say, I only express my personal view. In both the gay marriage case and Bowen, the contributions go to a cause, an issue, not to a candidate. Courts are concerned when disclosure will lead to harassment of the contributors.

In Bowen, the plaintiffs are two committees that supported Proposition 8 – a ballot measure that bans gay marriage. The issue in Bowen relates to free speech, not gay marriage. California law requires these committees to disclose the names of individuals who donated $100 or more to support Proposition 8, and also their street address, occupation and name of employer. The committees resist disclosure because their donors have said they will not contribute in the future because of the harassment they have already received because of prior disclosures.

People have a constitutional right to support (or oppose) Proposition 8. Yet some have urged their followers (as one Web page put it) to “take action against those who want to deny us our equal rights,” and “fight back.” Sadly, some people have taken this request literally. Donors who already have been disclosed have suffered threatening phone calls and e-mails, sometimes accompanied by death threats. These death threats are even more intimidating because of the compelled disclosure of the donors’ street addresses.

Donors have seen their pro-Proposition 8 signs stolen, windows broken and property vandalized with spray paint, cars keyed. Employers who did not contribute to Proposition 8 have been blacklisted because their employees contributed. In some cases, employees have been forced to resign their jobs.

One threat said a minister “will be meeting his maker sooner than expected.” As for his congregation, “If you thought 9/11 was bad, you haven’t seen anything yet.” Two Mormon temples and a Knights of Columbus facility received envelopes containing a white powdery substance. A Mormon church found adhesive poured on its doormat and keypad.

Buckley v. Valeo (1976), the granddaddy of all modern campaign disclosure laws, warns that compelled disclosure can seriously infringe upon First Amendment rights of belief, privacy and association. The government must not require disclosure if the parties “show only a reasonable probability that the compelled disclosure of a party’s contributors’ names will subject them to threats, harassment, or reprisals from either Government officials or private parties.”

In 1982, the Supreme Court said it was unconstitutional for Ohio to mandate disclosure of donors to the Socialist Workers Party, because the organization presented evidence of threatening phone calls, hate mail and harassment. The state requires disclosure to prohibit corruption, but the appearance of corruption “simply is not present in a popular vote on a public issue,” the court states in a 1978 case, First National Bank v. Bellotti. Campaign contributions may buy special access to a politician, but no contribution gives anyone special access to Proposition 8.

In late January, in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the court says that corporations have a First Amendment right to distribute a movie highly critical of Hillary Rodham Clinton. The court then adds an important caveat. Compelled disclosure “would be unconstitutional as applied to an organization if there were a reasonable probability that the group’s members would face threats, harassment, or reprisals if their names were disclosed.”

And that brings us back to the San Francisco judge who wants to televise his trial on gay marriage. The Supreme Court overturned his change in the court rules. Many commentators presented this case as a trial judge not following the correct procedures in changing court rules. But the Supreme Court did more than that. It referred to news reports of threats and harassment faced by those who have publicly opposed gay marriage. That is the same argument that the defendants raise in their opposition to compelled disclosure of donations to support Proposition 8.

If government-compelled disclosure results in private parties harassing those who have a different view of gay marriage, then the First Amendment steps in. It prevents the government from aiding those who disagree in a most disagreeable way.

Dr. Stephen Maxwell

As a lung surgeon, I encounter the corrosive damage of smog in my patients on a daily basis. Smog burns lung tissue, making these essential membranes red and inflamed.

As a physician I know the human costs are too high to delay reducing this threat any longer. Smog shortens the lives of people like my patients. Smog hits the most vulnerable people especially hard, including infants, children and teens, as well as adults with lung disease.

As a Californian, I applaud the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s proposal to tighten the limits on ozone “smog” pollution.

Here in the Sacramento region, we experience the sixth-worst air quality in the nation. Smog is an unwelcome intruder in our daily lives. The onset of summer means more than just swimming and sunscreen for my patients and the hundreds of thousands of Sacramento-area residents who suffer from asthma or other chronic lung illness.

For them, summer ozone simply makes it harder to breathe. They cough and wheeze; they gasp for air. They are rushed to the emergency room and admitted to the hospital.

Aside from the personal trauma of these emergencies, the additional medical needs add a tremendous burden to our already overstretched health care system and additional costs to family budgets.

Fortunately, it does not have to be this way. The EPA is considering stronger ozone standards that would better protect the public from the serious toll ozone smog imposes. If the EPA adopts a stronger limit on ozone, it would mean cleaner air for our state and greatly improve the health of all Californians.

Smog remains one of the most widespread and dangerous air pollutants across California and the country. In fact, according to the American Lung Association State of the Air report, six of the 10 most polluted cities for ozone in the United States are in California, threatening the health of millions of our fellow residents. We need to tell the EPA that we need a stronger standard now.

Here in California, we’ve led the nation in adopting the cutting-edge pollution controls needed to meet these tighter standards. While we have much more work to do, California has demonstrated that we have real and proven strategies to cut pollution and provide more protection for people like my patients.

In 2008, the EPA’s independent science experts unanimously recommended the standards proposed now. Then, the EPA ignored its scientists and set a standard that allowed much more ozone pollution. It disregarded the strong body of research on ozone that clearly demonstrates that the weaker standard failed to meet the requirements of the Clean Air Act. It discounted the evidence that the weaker standard put millions of people at risk for health emergencies.

Fortunately, they have reconsidered. EPA is now proposing a much stronger standard between 60 and 70 parts per billion, a level that would result in substantial improvements to the public’s health.

The EPA’s proposal is a prescription for a healthier nation and longer lives for future generations. That’s why the American Lung Association and other health and medical organizations are urging the EPA to adopt the most protective standard when the EPA makes its final decision in August: 60 parts per billion. Californians also demonstrated strong support for these tighter standards at a recent EPA hearing in Sacramento.

My patients need this protection. And so do I. There’s evidence that even healthy adults like me experience decreased pulmonary function – meaning, our lungs don’t work as well – when we breathe ozone while exercising. This is true even if ozone levels are much, much lower than the levels we regularly experience here in the summer in Sacramento.

I strongly encourage the EPA to follow the science and prescribe the most health-protective ozone standards for our national air quality. It is good medicine and we will all be healthier because of it.

These days it’s hard to pick up a newspaper or turn on a news program without encountering stern warnings about the federal budget deficit. The deficit threatens economic recovery, we’re told; it puts American economic stability at risk; it will undermine our influence in the world. These claims generally aren’t stated as opinions, as views held by some analysts but disputed by others. Instead, they’re reported as if they were facts, plain and simple.

Yet they aren’t facts. Many economists take a much calmer view of budget deficits than anything you’ll see on TV. Nor do investors seem unduly concerned: U.S. government bonds continue to find ready buyers, even at historically low interest rates. The long-run budget outlook is problematic, but short-term deficits aren’t – and even the long-term outlook is much less frightening than the public is being led to believe.

So why the sudden ubiquity of deficit scare stories? It isn’t being driven by any actual news. It has been obvious for at least a year that the U.S. government would face an extended period of large deficits, and projections of those deficits haven’t changed much since last summer. Yet the drumbeat of dire fiscal warnings has grown louder.

To me – and I’m not alone in this – the sudden outbreak of deficit hysteria brings back memories of the groupthink that took hold during the run-up to the Iraq war. Now, as then, dubious allegations, not backed by hard evidence, are being reported as if they have been established beyond a shadow of a doubt. Now, as then, politicians and the media have bought into the notion that we must take drastic action quickly, even though there hasn’t been any new information to justify this sudden urgency. Now, as then, those who challenge the prevailing narrative, no matter how strong their case and no matter how solid their background, are being marginalized.

And fear-mongering on the deficit may end up doing as much harm as the fear-mongering on weapons of mass destruction.

Let’s talk for a moment about budget reality. Contrary to what you often hear, the large deficit that the federal government is running right now isn’t the result of runaway spending growth.

Instead, well more than half of the deficit was caused by the ongoing economic crisis, which has led to a plunge in tax receipts, required federal bailouts of financial institutions, and been met – appropriately – with temporary measures to stimulate growth and support employment.

The point is that running big deficits in the face of the worst economic slump since the 1930s is actually the right thing to do.

If anything, deficits should be bigger than they are because the government should be doing more than it is to create jobs.

True, there is a longer-term budget problem. Even a full economic recovery wouldn’t balance the budget, and it probably wouldn’t even reduce the deficit to a sustainable level. So once the economic crisis is past, the U.S. government will have to increase its revenue and control its costs. And in the long run there’s no way to make the budget math work unless something is done about health care costs.

But there’s no reason to panic about budget prospects for the next few years, or even for the next decade. Consider, for example, what the latest budget proposal from the Obama administration says about interest payments on federal debt; according to the projections, a decade from now they’ll have risen to 3.5 percent of GDP. How scary is that? It’s about the same as interest costs under the first President George Bush.

Why, then, all the hysteria? The answer is politics.

The main difference between last summer, when we were mostly (and appropriately) taking deficits in stride, and the current sense of panic is that deficit fear-mongering has become a key part of Republican political strategy, doing double duty: It damages President Barack Obama’s image even as it cripples his policy agenda. And if the hypocrisy is breathtaking – politicians who voted for budget-busting tax cuts posing as apostles of fiscal rectitude, politicians demonizing attempts to rein in Medicare costs one day (death panels!), then denouncing excessive government spending the next – well, what else is new? The trouble, however, is that it’s apparently hard for many people to tell the difference between cynical posturing and serious economic argument.

The fact is that thanks to deficit hysteria, Washington has its priorities all wrong: All the talk is about how to shave a few billion dollars off government spending, while there’s hardly any willingness to tackle mass unemployment. Policy is headed in the wrong direction – and millions of Americans will pay the price.

For all the rosy talk, California’s new “green” jobs now account for less than 1 percent of the state’s work force. Certainly we need these jobs and should be doing everything we can to nurture them. But pretending that they alone will pull California out of our current economic bog is naive. Growing thousands of green jobs while driving away hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs won’t recapture our state’s economic glory. We need both to reignite our economy.

California’s manufacturing sector provides high-wage jobs for millions of middle-class families while generating billions of dollars in tax revenue for schools, infrastructure and other public services. But these jobs are disappearing. We aren’t talking about old “smokestack” industry jobs, but aerospace, high-tech, biotech and other skilled positions that pay on average $20,000 a year more than service-sector jobs. This month, our last auto manufacturing plant is closing.

Manufacturing and other companies are leaving California or failing to expand, in large part, because of the state’s notoriously expensive and uncertain regulatory environment. Businesses are afraid to invest here because the rules keep changing while the cost of compliance spirals ever higher.

“It’s difficult for most employers to make a solid case for starting up or expanding a business in California,” observed Trends Magazine recently. “Government regulations seem perversely aligned to discourage people from doing business there.” Last year, one California company told the Legislature it had been inspected by regulators 165 times in 2008, nearly every two days, and that inspections had increased another 26 percent in 2009. Reports like this scare other companies away.

Since 2001, California has lost nearly a third of its manufacturing base, a 32 percent decline in just eight years.

The impact has been devastating: 600,000 lost jobs, $75 billion a year in lost wages and $5 billion annually in lost tax revenue, money that once helped balance the state’s budget.

If we’re serious about reversing California’s reputation as a lousy place to do business, we need to get serious about regulatory reform. We don’t need to dismantle environmental, worker or consumer protections to improve California’s regulatory climate.

But we do need to remake the system so it’s lean, efficient, predictable and accountable, with common-sense rules that are fairly applied. It’s a smart way to begin repairing our image (and our economy) because it can be accomplished quickly and without cost. Moreover, the benefits will be felt almost immediately, as it will send a powerful message to the business world that we genuinely want their jobs and the revenue they provide. Very quickly, we’ll once again be competitive with other states.

To achieve this, three things need to happen.

First, the Legislature needs to restore its authority over the state’s regulatory bureaucracy. Unelected officials now have sweeping powers to impose new regulations, with no requirement that these regulations be reviewed or approved by the Legislature. This creates an uncertain and unpredictable regulatory climate that can easily be fixed by requiring legislative approval for each new regulation proposed by the bureaucracy.

Second, there needs to be a system that accurately measures the potential impact of proposed regulations on jobs and the state’s economy, so informed decisions can be made about whether the benefit of a new regulation is worth the cost.

Requiring the Legislative Analyst’s Office to complete an unbiased, independent economic impact report for every major regulation that’s proposed will achieve this.

Third, to begin trimming California’s regulatory thicket, the Legislature should review every regulation already on the books, and require periodic review for all new regulations adopted in the future. Doing so will ensure that regulations are working as intended, and rid the state of regulations that are outdated, ineffective and redundant.

Clearly, other steps must be taken to fully revive California’s economy and stop the exodus of jobs and tax revenue. But regulatory reform is a good place to start because it provides tangible and immediate proof to wary investors and company decision-makers around the world that California is back in business.

Here’s a dirty little secret: Most inmates in California state prisons and county jails eventually get out and return to communities.

Here’s another dirty little secret: For years, overcrowded county jails have been releasing 9,100 pretrial inmates a month. They’ve also been releasing 9,300 sentenced inmates per month before they complete their sentences.

Something’s got to give.

Before a new law took effect on Jan. 25, California had a system of good-time credits that allowed inmates to shave time off their sentences for good behavior and for participating in certain work, education and drug or alcohol programs. The aim is to encourage good behavior and reward self-improvement efforts, as well as reduce overcrowding in prisons and jails.

Last year, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a law that would expand good-time credits, a long-overdue reform. It took effect Jan. 25. Crime victims groups and others, however, already are stoking fears of a massive new crime wave.

Here’s a reality check.

No state prisoners have yet been released under the new law, not one. Credit enhancements for state prisoners only began to accrue on Jan. 25. And, for state prisoners, release will take place only after intense review of each prisoner. The state expects 6,500 prisoners will be released early in a trickle over time.

A hullabaloo ensued, however, when 21 counties, including Sacramento, interpreted the new law as allowing them to apply expanded good time retroactively to jail inmates. Given budget constraints and overcrowding, they jumped on this opportunity without preparing adequately for it.

The predictable result: One Sacramento jail inmate who was set free 16 days early made his way to a drop-in mental health program for homeless people, allegedly lunged at a worker and was arrested on a charge of attempted rape. Unfortunately, the usual groups that oppose the new law are using this incident to discredit it.

If this inmate had been released 16 days later, would it have made a difference? Not likely. What might have made a difference: The Sacramento Sheriff’s Department should have given a heads-up to city police and others. This didn’t happen. Sheriff John McGinness acknowledges the error.

Sacramento County released about 50 more people in a single day than it would have under the old law, a number that officials expect to flatten out over time.

As McGinness told us, “This is not a humongous difference. … The good people of the Golden State ought to get used to the idea of reduced rate of incarceration for lawlessness, because the cost is becoming prohibitive.”

Californians need to make better use of cost-effective alternatives to incarceration, such as work release, electronic monitoring, drug court intensive supervision and day reporting. It’s time to get smart on crime instead of resorting to alarmism.