Author: SacBee — Opinion

Sacramento has a new proposal on what to do about homes built in violation of federal rules in the high-risk flood zone of the Natomas basin. It doesn’t pass the laugh test.

The city proposes to paint sealant on 10 illegally built homes to make the walls watertight up to 5 feet and have temporary shields available to install on doors and windows.

The problems with this proposal are numerous. The Army Corps of Engineers considers the “seal and shield” method to be practical only where “flood depths are low (no more than 2 to 3 feet).” Why? Because of water pressure on walls and from underneath the foundation, “walls may collapse, floors may buckle, and the home may even float.”

Further, painting on sealant up to 5 feet has no relation to actual flood depths expected in the Natomas basin. With a levee breach, a flood would put the basin under 20 to 25 feet of water.

For obvious reasons, the “seal and shield” solution does nothing to reduce flood insurance premiums. In the high-risk Natomas AE zone, the city estimates it would cost about $87,500 a year for premiums. The city is proposing that the builder take out private insurance for nine of the 10 homes that are occupied.

The other option is to elevate the homes about 16 feet – dropping the cost of insurance premiums to $400 a year.

The cost to “seal and shield” the 10 homes would be about $12,400 per house; elevating them would cost about $285,500.

A cheaper solution, not considered in the city’s report to FEMA, might be for city and builder to work out a deal to buy back the nine occupied houses (which ranged in price from $249,000 to $302,500), sealing the unoccupied homes until levee upgrades are done.

It should be the city and the builder who bear the burden of the violations, not the homebuyers. The city says it has fixed the building permit process to prevent future violations in the flood zone. Now it needs to find the right solution for the people living in nine houses that never should have been built. These folks deserve something better than a “seal and shield” fiction.

In a recent editorial (“Nullify health law? Good luck with that,” March 28), The Bee stated that the recent lawsuits filed by 14 state attorneys general challenging the constitutionality of President Obama’s health care bill are “frivolous lawsuits that are more about policy differences or symbolic gestures than constitutionality.”

The Bee’s editorial board needs a primer in constitutional law.

There are two principal arguments raised by the state AGs, and both have merit. The first involves Congress’ power to regulate commerce among the states. The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that this power has limits; that it only permits Congress to regulate the channels or instrumentalities of interstate commerce or economic activity that has a substantial effect on interstate commerce.

Our health insurance system is state-based, so the interstate component necessary for congressional authority is lacking. Nor is an individual’s decision not to purchase a government-approved health insurance policy an activity that has a substantial effect on commerce – it is the absence of activity. Of course, the regulations themselves will undoubtedly have a substantial impact on interstate commerce – just witness the billion-dollar write-offs taken last week by some of America’s leading corporations – but the Supreme Court has never before allowed Congress to bootstrap its way into Commerce Clause authority by relying on the impact of its own regulation.

The second challenge to the constitutionality of the individual mandate is that it amounts to a direct tax, not tied to income, which must be (but is not) apportioned among the states according to population, as required by Article I, Section 2, Clause 3 of the Constitution.

Even if the rate of compliance with this overreaching mandate were somehow identical in every state, the fact that illegal immigrants and incarcerated felons are exempt means that the direct tax will not be tied to state population in the same way representation is.

Ironically, the Obama administration’s Census Bureau has defended its decision not to identify legal immigration status in its census questionnaire by noting that the Constitution requires an enumeration of all persons, not just citizens, for purposes of determining representation in Congress, yet the same clause also applies to direct taxes.

Obama’s health care reform bill violates that important constitutional requirement. It would be nice if we had an attorney general here in California who knew something about the Constitution and would add California’s voice to the litigation debate.

Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, proclaimed last month that no one could have predicted the housing bubble. “Everybody missed it,” he said, “academia, the Federal Reserve, all regulators.”

But that is not how I remember it. Back in 2005 and 2006, I argued as forcefully as I could, in letters to clients of my investment firm, Scion Capital, that the mortgage market would melt down in the second half of 2007, causing substantial damage to the economy.

My prediction was based on my research into the residential mortgage market and mortgage-backed securities. After studying the regulatory filings related to those securities, I waited for the lenders to offer the most risky mortgages conceivable to the least qualified buyers. I knew that would mark the beginning of the end of the housing bubble; it would mean that prices had risen – with the expansion of easy mortgage lending – as high as they could go.

I had begun to worry about the housing market back in 2003, when lenders first resurrected interest-only mortgages, loosening their credit standards to generate a greater volume of loans. Throughout 2004, I had watched as these mortgages were offered to more and more subprime borrowers – those with the weakest credit.

The lenders generally then sold these risky loans to Wall Street to be packaged into mortgage-backed securities, thus passing along most of the risk. Increasingly, lenders concerned themselves more with the quantity of mortgages they sold than with their quality.

Meanwhile, homebuyers, convinced by recent history that real estate prices would always rise, readily signed onto whatever mortgage would get them the biggest house. The incentive for fraud was great: The FBI reported that its mortgage fraud caseload increased fivefold from 2001 to 2004.

At the same time, I also watched how ratings agencies vouched for subprime mortgage-backed securities. To me, these agencies seemed not to be paying much attention.

Betting on the downturn

By mid-2005, I had so much confidence in my analysis that I staked my reputation on it. That is, I purchased credit default swaps – a type of insurance – on billions of dollars worth of both subprime mortgage-backed securities and the bonds of many of the financial companies that would be devastated when the real estate bubble burst.

As the value of the bonds fell, the value of the credit default swaps would rise. Our swaps covered many of the firms that failed or nearly failed, including the insurer American International Group and the mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

I entered these trades carefully. Suspecting that my Wall Street counterparties might not be able or willing to pay up when the time came, I used six counterparties to minimize my exposure to any one of them. I also specifically avoided using Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns as counterparties, as I viewed both to be mortally exposed to the crisis I foresaw.

What’s more, I demanded daily collateral settlement – if positions moved in our favor, I wanted cash posted to our account the next day. This was something I knew that Goldman Sachs and other derivatives dealers did not demand of AAA-rated AIG.

I believed that the collapse of the subprime mortgage market would ultimately lead to huge failures among the largest financial institutions. But at the time, almost no one else thought these trades would work out in my favor.

During 2007, under constant pressure from my investors, I liquidated most of our credit default swaps at a substantial profit. By early 2008, I feared the effects of government intervention and exited all our remaining credit default positions – by auctioning them to the many Wall Street banks that were themselves by then desperate to buy protection against default.

This was well in advance of the government bailouts. Because I had been operating in the face of strong opposition from both my investors and the Wall Street community, it took everything I had to see these trades through to completion. Disheartened on many fronts, I shut down Scion Capital in 2008.

Greenspan’s blinders

Since then, I have often wondered why nobody in Washington showed any interest in hearing exactly how I arrived at my conclusions that the housing bubble would burst when it did and that it could cripple the big financial institutions.

A week ago I learned the answer when Al Hunt of Bloomberg Television, who had read Michael Lewis’ book “The Big Short,” which includes the story of my predictions, asked Greenspan directly. The former Fed chairman responded that my insights had been a “statistical illusion.” Perhaps, he suggested, I was just a supremely lucky flipper of coins.

Greenspan said that he sat through innumerable meetings at the Fed with crack economists, and not one of them warned of the problems that were to come. By Greenspan’s logic, anyone who might have foreseen the housing bubble would have been invited into the ivory tower, so if all those who were there did not hear it, then no one could have said it.

As a nation, we cannot afford to live with Greenspan’s way of thinking. The truth is, he should have seen what was coming and offered a sober, apolitical warning. Everyone would have listened; when he talked about the economy, the world hung on every single word.

Unfortunately, he did not give good advice. In February 2004, a few months before the Fed formally ended a remarkable streak of interest-rate cuts, Greenspan told Americans that they would be missing out if they failed to take advantage of cost-saving adjustable-rate mortgages. And he suggested to the banks that “American consumers might benefit if lenders provided greater mortgage product alternatives to the traditional fixed-rate mortgage.”

Within a year, lenders made interest-only adjustable-rate mortgages readily available to subprime borrowers. And within 18 months, lenders offered subprime borrowers so-called pay-option adjustable-rate mortgages, which allowed borrowers to make partial monthly payments and have the remainder added to the loan balance (much like payments on a credit card).

Subprime’s biggest booster

Observing these trends in April 2005, Greenspan trumpeted the expansion of the subprime mortgage market. “Where once more-marginal applicants would simply have been denied credit,” he said, “lenders are now able to quite efficiently judge the risk posed by individual applicants and to price that risk appropriately.” Yet the tide was about to turn.

By December 2005, subprime mortgages that had been issued just six months earlier were already showing atypically high delinquency rates. (It’s worth noting that even though most of these mortgages had a low two-year teaser rate, the borrowers still had early difficulty making payments.) The market for subprime mortgages and the derivatives thereof would not begin its spectacular collapse until roughly two years after Greenspan’s speech.

But the signs were all there in 2005, when a bursting of the bubble would have had far less dire consequences, and when the government could have acted to minimize the fallout.

Leaders abetted the bubble

Instead, our leaders in Washington either willfully or ignorantly aided and abetted the bubble. And even when the full extent of the financial crisis became painfully clear early in 2007, the Federal Reserve chairman, the Treasury secretary, the president and senior members of Congress repeatedly underestimated the severity of the problem, ultimately leaving themselves with only one policy tool – the epic and unfair taxpayer-financed bailouts.

Now, in exchange for that extra year or two of consumer bliss we all enjoyed, our children and our children’s children will suffer terrible financial consequences.

It did not have to be this way. And at this point there is no reason to reflexively dismiss the analysis of those who foresaw the crisis.

Greenspan should use his substantial intellect and unsurpassed knowledge of government to ascertain and explain exactly how he and other officials missed the boat. If the mistakes were properly outlined, that might both inform Congress’ efforts to improve financial regulation and help keep future Fed chairmen from making the same errors again.

In 2007, well before the economy tanked, before home values started to plummet and before his adjustable-rate mortgage was set to increase, Zachary Norris of Oakland began seeking a loan modification.

After repeated phone calls and faxes and struggling to make sporadic payments, the Norris family received a notice of default, even though officials at Litton Loan Servicing had yet to either make a loan modification offer or tell Zachary Norris why they hadn’t.

Sadly, the Norris family’s story is not unique. While specific data is hard to come by, lawyers and housing counselors from across the state tell the same stories of homeowners who lost the roof over their heads while they were trying to honor the debt that paid for it.

Recently, the federal government announced changes to the “Home Affordable Modification Program,” otherwise known as HAMP, aimed at preventing loan servicing companies from initiating foreclosure on a homeowner when a loan modification is in progress or under negotiation.

The Norris family story suggests those changes do not go far enough. Servicers make mistakes. Borrowers fall through administrative cracks that shouldn’t exist. Homeowners who lose their homes due to errors by loan servicers have no remedy.

Fortunately, California state Sens. Mark Leno and Darrell Steinberg have a modest and common-sense proposal to address this problem. Their legislation, Senate Bill 1275, would include some provisions similar to the new HAMP changes, like prohibiting the start of the foreclosure process when a homeowner is pursuing a loan modification. But it would also go further. It would provide borrowers with a backstop if they face foreclosure because of mistakes by a loan servicer.

This is a critical void that HAMP alone cannot address. It’s unfair that when homeowners play by the rules, but servicers don’t, the only party that pays the price is the homeowner.

It’s also not fair that the same rules don’t apply to all servicers. Even as the Obama administration has made significant changes to HAMP that both complement SB 1275 and underscore the need for policies that prevent as many avoidable foreclosures as possible, SB 1275 will go even further by making sure that all servicers doing business in California, whether they are participants in the voluntary HAMP program or not, must abide by the same foreclosure-initiation provisions.

Consistency is critical, and no California homeowner should be foreclosed upon because their servicer doesn’t participate in the federal loan modification program. All of the program fixes in the world won’t help those homeowners whose servicers aren’t HAMP participants.

The need for improvements to HAMP, as well as to California law, has been abundantly clear for months.

We are now two years into our foreclosure crisis and mortgage servicers simply have not delivered a sufficient volume of loan modifications: Federal data released last month showed that only 35,000 California homeowners had received permanent modifications through the end of February 2010, compared to the more than 200,000 completed foreclosures that occurred in 2009. If a homeowner gets turned down for a modification, or worse, loses a home to foreclosure, it shouldn’t be because a loan company is understaffed or can’t keep up with its faxes. Leno, Steinberg, the Obama administration and growing numbers of policymakers now recognize this.

It’s true that there are many California homeowners who probably won’t be helped by any legislation, fixes to HAMP or tweaks to the foreclosure process. We cannot prevent every single foreclosure. But we must work to prevent the ones that we can, and certainly no one should lose their home while they are in the middle of trying to save it.

A definition of demagoguery is when a politician knows something isn’t really true or fair, but continues to exploit it anyway.

So will Republican gubernatorial candidates Steve Poizner and Meg Whitman step up and admit they’re misleading California’s voters about college students who are also illegal immigrants?

Both have been bashing the students as a financial burden on taxpayers to prove their tough-on-illegal immigration bona fides to the party faithful. They both want to repeal Assembly Bill 540, which grants in-state tuition to some non-residents, including some illegal immigrants.

But as The Bee’s Susan Ferriss reported last week, those students represent a tiny fraction – 1 percent or less – of all students in all three of the state’s higher education systems. On University of California campuses, for instance, there were fewer than 2,000 students who were not state residents but were paying in-state tuition in 2007-08 – and UC says only as many as 400 were illegal immigrants.

So the savings from rescinding AB 540 would be far less than the candidates suggest, a minuscule portion of the higher education budget.

Many of the students were brought here as young children by their parents; even to be eligible for in-state tuition, they have to graduate from California high schools and must have attended for at least three years. And many of them will stay in California, so the state has a real stake in their education and future.

Poizner, in particular, isn’t letting the facts get in the way in his desperation to catch Whitman. He also wants to change federal law to bar the public school doors to illegal immigrant children. In a TV spot promising to end taxpayer-funded benefits for illegal immigrants, he rails against “years of liberal failure.”

“We all know California is heading right over a cliff,” Poizner says in the ad, as a car falls off a precipice. “Politicians have lacked the guts to tackle the problem.”

Whitman is no innocent on the issue, either. She says in her policy agenda pamphlet that she wants to ban illegal immigrant students from attending the University of California, California State University and community college systems. In their only debate so far, she went after Poizner on immigration when he criticized her for opposing Proposition 187, the draconian 1994 ballot measure that denied many public services and benefits to illegal immigrants.

This is a good test of the candidates’ character that voters can judge: Will Poizner and Whitman face up to the truth and engage in a serious discussion about immigration? Or will they continue to ignore the facts and appeal to voters’ worst instincts?

The early indications are not promising. We asked both campaigns if they would reconsider their stance in light of Ferris’ report. The answer was no. “Steve Poizner feels we must end taxpayer-funded benefits for illegal aliens, including in-state tuition,” replied Poizner’s spokesman, Jarrod Agen.

Politicians try to game the system. California’s secretary of state needs to stop the games by enforcing truth in advertising for how politicians identify themselves on official ballots.

Secretary of State Debra Bowen was prepared to allow state Sen. Tom Harman to call himself a “prosecutor/attorney/senator” as he seeks the Republican nomination for attorney general, even though Harman has never prosecuted a case.

Fortunately, Superior Court Judge Allen Sumner blocked it. The matter should never have gone to court.

There are many other examples of politicians using the official ballot to trick voters.

Republican Steve Poizner calls himself “businessman” rather than insurance commissioner in his run for governor.

Republican Ted Gaines calls himself “small business owner,” rather than insurance agent or Assembly member.

Alberto Torrico, a Democrat running for attorney general, calls himself “workers’ rights attorney,” apparently thinking that title will appeal to Democratic primary voters.

He was a labor lawyer before winning his Assembly seat and in February joined a labor-law firm. But he should own up to the fact that he is a member of the state Assembly.

Then there is Sen. George Runner, a GOP Board of Equalization candidate and a fixture in the Capitol. Rather than call himself what he is – a state senator – he got away with “taxpayer advocate/senator,” thanks to Bowen.

The secretary of state needs to require officeholders to own up to their occupation as elected officials, and prove they have spent at least a year in a post before they list it. She must insist that candidates list their “principal” occupation, meaning how they earned the bulk of their income, and not permit three separate occupations, as Harman sought.

If this proves to be too difficult, the state should end the charade and deny the use of any occupational designation, as most states do.

Cities, counties and school boards, increasingly desperate for money to operate, have been using ever-more-sophisticated methods to persuade voters to approve ballot measures.

California’s Fair Political Practices Commission recently responded by approving a regulation to control such activities.

The conflict is coming to a head at an FPPC hearing on Thursday.

Lawyers for the League of Cities, California State Association of Counties and California School Boards Association have filed petitions contending that the commission has overstepped its authority and should modify or repeal its regulation.

The FPPC needs to stand firm. Governments legitimately can provide a fair and objective analysis of the impact of the passage or failure of a measure. Local officials have a First Amendment right and an obligation to tell voters where they stand.

But too often, government authorities, working with campaign consultants, have used public money to mail glossy brochures with loaded words that do everything a private campaign does, except for expressly advocating for or against ballot measures.

In 2008, voters in Galt approved a sales tax hike after receiving a campaign-style mailer signed by the police chief ominously stating that there are “150 known active gang members and associates in Galt” and assuring voters that “Measure R includes tough fiscal accountability provisions.” Also in 2008, Los Angeles County voters were subjected to campaign-style ads touting a sales tax to expand transit, fix potholes, and “make neighborhood streets and intersections safer.”

Government needs tax revenue to operate. But no matter how righteous the cause, government should not use the people’s money to wage slick campaigns. The FPPC should exercise its expertise and authority to ensure that there are consequences when local governments overstep their authority.

Toward the end of the health care reform battle, a beleaguered Obama staff member sent me an e-mail that ended with the words: “Sisyphus was a sissy compared to what we’ve been through!”

Yes, the fight for health care reform seemed very much like the Greek myth: Every time the White House found itself on the verge of rolling the health care stone up the hill, some event – say, Scott Brown’s win in Massachusetts – would force it to start over with a new strategy.

Alas for President Barack Obama, this will not be the last moment that invites comparisons to Sisyphus. His health care victory marked the beginning of a new phase in the administration’s political struggles, not a final triumph.

It is still, of course, an enormous achievement, and it alters the political terrain in ways that are favorable to Democrats. By creating new facts on the ground, health care reform complicates the Republicans’ task.

Already, the GOP’s early calls to repeal the bill look problematic.

The insurance reforms in the bill are widely popular, and even its tax increases (a large share of which hit the very wealthy) are tied to benefits that would flow to Americans in the middle- or lower-middle range of incomes.

In addition, Republicans concede a great deal by saying they would “replace” the plan and not simply return to the pre-reform status quo.

Their slogan makes clear that all future arguments about health care will be premised on a more active government role. The debate will never be the same.

Moreover, the Democrats’ ability to hold together and pass health care reform may encourage some Republican senators to seek compromises on other issues rather than stand aside yet again and thereby limit their impact on final outcomes.

But the outlines of the next phase of this year’s election argument are becoming visible.

Sophisticated conservatives have begun to argue that Democratic proposals across a range of issues are designed to make the United States more like Europe. Without shouting the word “socialism,” they claim that programs to guarantee greater economic security (such as the health care reform) and to impose more stringent rules on finance and banking would make the American economy less entrepreneurial and less inclined to take risks.

Countering these arguments will require progressives to insist their program is entirely within the American tradition, an effort to restore some of the security and predictability that defined the economy before the erosion of employer-provided benefits that began in the 1980s.

They will also have to make a strong case that the new rules on finance are not aimed at reducing genuine private risk-taking. Their purpose is to end a system that allowed a small number of financiers and firms to make fortunes by taking enormous risks in full knowledge that taxpayers would ultimately be forced to cover their losses. Reform is designed to reduce the exposure of taxpayers and those outside the financial system, not to create a risk-free private economy.

The trickiest political problem confronting the administration and its allies is rooted in rising concern about the deficit. Here, Republicans will be able to engage in their own kind of risk-free politics. As the party out of power, they can condemn deficits, attack “big government” in the abstract, and oppose tax increases – all at the same time, and without facing the consequences of how their policies would work in practice.

And because any plausible policy for dealing with long-term deficits will necessarily involve tax increases of some sort, Obama and the Democrats are looking at an unpalatable election-year choice. Endorsing substantial tax increases now would be politically suicidal, but failing to do so opens Democrats to charges from deficit hawks that they are not serious about the red ink.

In the short term, Democrats can argue reasonably that raising taxes or slashing programs before the economy recovers would be bad policy, and can assert that the panel Obama has named to grapple with the deficit will clarify trade-offs between tax increases and program cuts.

This, in turn, will open the way for a more rational argument on deficits.

It would be nice if things worked out this way. But a coming election campaign is likely to be characterized more by anger than reason, and is one in which the opposition has the advantage of not being in charge at a moment of great discontent.

Sisyphus would understand. And Obama will have to get used to it.

What should California do with state prison inmates who are bedridden and immobile? Or who have dementia and are incapable of independent movement, speech, or bladder control? Or who have end-stage disease and are too weak to exist outside of a skilled nursing setting?

One clear answer: California no longer can afford to do what it is doing. It is keeping these inmates, who pose no threat to public safety, within the prison system at huge cost to taxpayers.

For example, California has 21 inmates who are comatose, in a persistent vegetative state or at end-stage Alzheimer’s disease. They require care in nursing facilities or hospitals outside of prison at an average per-year cost of $1,973,252 each. That is more than $41 million from the state’s general fund.

A lot of that cost comes from rules that require prison guards to double-guard these incapacitated inmates who pose no threat to anybody – 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Here’s just one example from 2008: The six-month cost for a prisoner in a persistent vegetative state was $421,000 for medical care and $410,000 for double-guarding him as he lay immobile in his hospital bed.

Just whom does this serve? Do Californians, struggling to figure out how to pay for schools, roads and parks, benefit? No. Do crime victims benefit when the state pays two guards to stand over an incapacitated prisoner in a community hospital? Or from having an immobile prisoner shackled to a prison medical bed? No.

This is utterly irrational and unjustifiable given the state’s dire budget situation.

There is a better option: medical parole. Federal prison health care receiver J. Clark Kelso is sponsoring such a bill, Senate Bill 1399. Lawmakers and the governor should get behind it.

This would not be a “release,” but placement in a specific medical facility under supervised parole. It could be revoked if the prisoner became a threat to public safety. Third-strikers, death-row inmates or those sentenced to life without parole would not be eligible.

Not only would medical parole save the cost of guarding incapacitated prisoners who pose no threat to the public, it would allow the state to tap federal funds for Medicare and Medi-Cal health services.

This provides fiscal savings without reducing public safety.

Under the bill, Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation doctors would refer a prisoner to the parole board for medical parole if two conditions were met:

• A prisoner had a “significant and permanent condition, disease or syndrome” that makes him or her “physically or cognitively debilitated or incapacitated.”

• The prisoner posed no threat to public safety.

Sen. Mark Leno, chairman of the Senate Public Safety Committee and the bill’s author, says his intention is the board would be required to grant parole if a prisoner met the two conditions.

Corrections officials are analyzing 750-plus inmates who cost more than $100,000 a year for medical care who would potentially be eligible for parole under the bill.

The bill’s language, however, is weak. Though it says prisoners “shall be granted medical parole” if they meet the two conditions, how will that be enforced? Previous laws attempting to require the Board of Parole Hearings to release terminally ill and permanently incapacitated prisoners have been a dismal failure.

It should be a no-brainer to identify the costliest infirm inmates who no longer pose a danger to society and place them on parole. But a law will need teeth – or the same expensive nonsense will continue.

The two sides are so close now, it would be a shame not to reach the finish line on one of Sacramento’s most important infill projects.

The City Council on Thursday night did the right thing, moving ahead with Curtis Park Village, a proposed collection of houses, apartments and shops on 72 acres of a former railyard near Sacramento City College.

The council’s 9-0 vote to approve the project’s environmental impact report sent some clear and worthy signals. First, council members take neighborhood concerns seriously. While certifying the EIR, they simultaneously passed a resolution that puts on paper several key concessions won by Curtis Park neighborhood leaders.

Second, the council does want contaminated soil buried under a proposed 6.8-acre park.

The state Department of Toxic Substances Control needs to take that direction to heart as it approves an updated plan for nearly 170,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil on the site.

And third, the council supports infill development. Several members talked about how the fate of Curtis Park Village would set a precedent – for good or ill.

Developer Paul Petrovich and the Sierra Curtis Neighborhood Association deserve credit for giving ground to get this far. Kudos also go to Lauren Hammond, the district’s council member, and Mike McKeever, a Curtis Park resident and executive director of the Sacramento Area Regional Council of Governments, for their shuttle diplomacy over the past week.

Those negotiations produced compromise or near-agreement on nearly all the outstanding issues. For instance, Petrovich agreed to limit any retail tenant to 65,000 square feet, effectively ruling out big-box stores, and to cap the total commercial space in the initial development at 170,000 square feet.

Petrovich agreed to add more secondary streets, and also agreed to grant the city an easement for a pedestrian bridge linking the project with City College. All the changes move the project closer to the traditional neighborhood center that many residents want.

And most significantly, Petrovich is now pledging, if he gets the DTSC’s blessing, to bury the toxic soil first under five acres to be developed later, then under a village green and lastly under the park, if there is still more to bury.

There is time for further negotiations before the council votes on rezonings for the project, probably in September.

After nearly four hours of debate Thursday night, Hammond was so relieved that she sang a few bars of “Amen,” that old spiritual. It’s not quite time for everyone to break out in celebratory song. But if Petrovich and neighborhood leaders keep talking – and city officials keep nudging – that time could come soon.

This is how a station at Heavenly Ski Resort in South Lake Tahoe might look if California builds a high-speed rail network.

Re “High-speed rail: Don’t penalize the poor” (Viewpoints, March 30): There’s no question that Californians should be concerned about resources for public transportation, but Lisa Schweitzer’s worries about high-speed rail missed the mark.

Protections for taxpayers were built into the law voters approved as part of Proposition 1A. It specifically requires California’s high-speed trains to operate without a state or local subsidy. The very burden Schweitzer is concerned about is forbidden by law.

What’s more, the California High-Speed Rail Authority is committed to financing the project through a combination of sources, which includes significant private capital investment.

The recent award of $2.5 billion in federal stimulus funds to California – the largest award in the nation – signals a strong administration commitment to the project.

But it’s even more important to recognize that high-speed rail, despite its costs, actually represents a more cost- effective transportation alternative than expanding our already crowded freeways and airports.

The high-speed train is a critical piece of the state’s future mobility and environmental responsibility, and must be fully integrated with robust local transit systems. The High-Speed Rail Authority is working in collaboration with transit agencies throughout the state to ensure the project succeeds on all levels.

California has a chance to build a high-speed rail system like the ones enjoying great success around the world, bringing with it the jobs and opportunities our residents need and deserve.

Judges have been in the news again, and not always for the right reasons. Concerns about impartiality and judicial conduct have come from both ends of the political spectrum as courts decide questions that ignite political passions.

These cases, and fights about judicial elections and appointments, shine a spotlight on the way decisions are made, and the backgrounds and biases of those making them. Take a few recent examples:

• Questions about the integrity and objectivity of Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughan Walker, the federal judge who will decide the case about whether to overturn Proposition 8, following a Washington Post story in February that Walker is gay;

• The Supreme Court’s 2009 Caperton decision involving a West Virginia appellate court judge’s failure to recuse himself in a case where he cast the deciding vote in favor of a coal company whose CEO had contributed $3 million to that judge’s state Supreme Court election campaign, more than all other donors combined;

• The firestorm during confirmation hearings last June about Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s comments in a 2001 speech at Berkeley that a “wise Latina with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

What should we expect of judges? To represent our views, or to be impartial arbiters of the issues and facts in cases coming before them? Does appointment or election to the bench mean leaving personal, professional, moral or political identity behind?

Codes of conduct for judges don’t always have the answers. The American Bar Association’s Model Code of Judicial Conduct directs judges to “uphold and promote the independence, integrity and impartiality of the judiciary” and to avoid “impropriety and the appearance of impropriety.” A rule tells judges to perform their duties “without bias or prejudice.”

But, as Sotomayor said during confirmation hearings, judges aren’t “robots … who don’t have feelings.” Back in that 2001 speech she wondered whether “achieving that goal (of impartiality) is possible in all or even in most cases.”

So, is it more important that Walker is reportedly gay or that he was appointed by a Republican (the first President Bush)? Should it matter that Sotomayor is female, a Latina, or appointed by a Democrat? If we permit West Virginia Supreme Court Justice Brent Benjamin to accept a huge campaign donation from the CEO of a company appearing before him, should we be surprised if he votes in a particular way?

Even trying to deal with overt bias or prejudice is complex. California Chief Justice Ronald George formed the 88-member California Commission for Impartial Courts in 2007 following perceived threats to the independence of state judiciaries across the country. The commission’s December 2009 final report contains 71 recommendations to “strengthen our court system, increase public trust and confidence in the judiciary, and ensure judicial impartiality and accountability for the benefit of all Californians.” They deal with conduct by judicial candidates, regulation of judicial election campaign financing, public information and education about the judiciary, and improvements in the methods for selecting and retaining judges.

So far, only three have been approved by the California Judicial Council. Others – like Recommendation No. 22 prohibiting judicial candidates from seeking or using endorsements from “political organizations” – will spark fierce debate.

The Supreme Court didn’t provide much guidance about what to do with judicial election financing, even though it held in Caperton that the West Virginia judge was clearly over the line. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the 5-4 majority that “(N)ot every campaign contribution by a litigant or attorney creates a probability of bias that requires a judge’s recusal, but this is an exceptional case.” He said that a court should look at “the contribution’s relative size in comparison to the total amount of money contributed to the campaign, the total amount spent in the election, and the apparent effect” the contribution had on the election’s outcome.

As long as there is money in the mix, there is the risk donors to judicial campaigns believe they can “pay to play.” Seven of the 71 California commission recommendations grapple with striking the right balance between permitting donations and ensuring against favoritism.

Dealing with implicit bias is even more problematic. Judges make decisions based not only on reflection and deliberation, but also on quick impressions. Social science research over the last 20 years has tried to gauge how much implicit bias – based on life experience, beliefs and attitudes – influences the ways people think. Having an open and candid discussion about how to deal with bias and judicial ethics – and the 71 California recommendations – is a place to start.

Strident politics shouldn’t preclude that necessary dialogue. With Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens widely rumored to be stepping down soon, we will likely be treated to the spectacle of partisan judicial confirmation proceedings in Washington yet again. Whoever is nominated can expect scrutiny of his or her judgments, speeches, writing – and, like Sotomayor, even shopping habits – for clues about bias or intentions. With any luck we’ll learn more about expectations – for judges and for ourselves – in the process.

CANTEYVILLE, S.C.

If thy name is Incumbent, you might want to start packing up those D.C. tchotchkes.

November is likely to be a cruel month.

That, at least, is the view from “Canteyville,” which you won’t find on a map. There is no town by this name in South Carolina, though there ought to be. Canteys are as common as front porches in this part of the country.

For these purposes, Canteyville is a state of mind, a late-night invention born of spirited conversation at a sporting clay club in the state’s unfortunately dubbed “Midlands.”

This particular Cantey – yet another Joe – is famous in certain circles. Most recently, that would be among the gun-toters so often feared and misunderstood by urban and coastal dwellers.

Cantey’s fame stems primarily from his having been a six-time world champion clay shooter. Before he was a shooter, he was a renowned thoroughbred racehorse trainer (including Belmont Stakes winner Temperence Hill). Before that, he was bound for the Juilliard School on a scholarship when an automobile accident ruined his trumpet lip.

What’s all this got to do with incumbency? Consider the following a local anecdote presented in the service of a larger lesson.

The biographical sketch is meant as a reminder that not everyone with a gun rack in the back of his truck is a racist, gay-bashing, Confederate flag-waving redneck. That said, if anyone were entitled to take pride in the old battle flag, it would be Cantey, whose forebear James Cantey was a brigadier general in the Confederate army. A legislator in civilian life, he also served valiantly with the Palmetto Regiment in the Mexican-American War.

This is familiar history to locals, but not because Cantey ever mentions it. He isn’t the sort to toot his own horn, earlier talents notwithstanding. He is the sort to invite neighbors, clients, friends – and their canine companions – to open-air vittles on Wednesday and Sunday nights at his 1,500-acre Hermitage Farms just off Tickle Hill Road in Kershaw County.

The scene: A long, winding road leads through a walled gate into a clearing with two structures. One is the clubhouse, featuring a kitchen and walls crammed with shooting awards. A large bison head presides.

The other structure is an open-sided pavilion with a dozen picnic tables and an array of outdoor cooking equipment. A plaque reads: “Canteyville, Population 4.” Several tables are filled with men and women, talking quietly over paper plates filled with chicken, mashed potatoes, salad and biscuits. Dress code: jeans and camouflage.

Smoking allowed; drinking not discouraged.

Also in attendance are seven or eight dogs of the highway variety, the smallest of which perches on an empty tabletop.

A city slicker happening upon this scene might imagine hearing the strains of “Dueling Banjos” from the movie “Deliverance.” Said slicker would be mistaken, as earlier bio confirms. The Southern sportsman is as likely to make an appearance at a black-tie dinner dance as at a Joe Cantey cookout, though he’d undoubtedly prefer the latter.

Nevertheless, it is probably safe to say that this is not Obama country, even though plenty of Cantey’s clients and friends voted for the president. These days, most think Washington doesn’t have a clue.

They think the tea partiers might.

The evening’s conversation circled recent events – health care, spending, etc. – which may be summarized as follows: “Do they have any idea up there what’s going on out here?” one fellow asked me.

“Nope.”

“Wasn’t Scott Brown a hint?”

“Shoulda been.”

Heads shake.

Then it was my turn: “Do you guys see the November election as a big turnout day?”

“You better believe it.”

There’s something grounding and instructive about sitting in the woods on a cool spring night, away from the green rooms and talk shows. It is important to touch the bare, unmarbled earth now and then, something too few inside Washington do often enough.

At the risk of sounding patronizing, the camo-boys at Canteyville are the “ordinary Americans” that pundits and politicians love to invoke while utterly ignoring them. The resulting anger recently on display is not only political theater. And the conversation at Joe’s pavilion isn’t rare.

The Obama administration and the Democratic-controlled Congress have acted on the conviction that they know best and that citizens eventually will come around. This may sometimes have been historically true, but here’s another truth: If you can’t convincingly explain the beauty of a policy to the educated, hard-working people of Canteyville, you might have a policy problem.

Incumbency will tell.

You will be furious when you finish this column. Fair warning.

In March 2006, a 20-year-old Marine, Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, was killed in a motor vehicle accident in Iraq. His family probably thought that the most painful blow imaginable. Truth is, their pain was only beginning.

Cpl. Snyder’s death, you see, came to the attention of Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan. Westboro, for those who do not know, is no more a church than is your average gas station toilet.

According to published reports, it claims about 75 members, most of them kin to its leader, Fred Phelps. And Phelps preaches a “gospel” of anti-homosexuality that is grotesque even by the standards of fundamentalist hate.

It is his thesis that because America has embraced “fags,” God is punishing the nation. God’s instrument of choice? Dead soldiers.

“Thank God for dead soldiers,” he says. Phelps has taken to spreading this message at the funerals of service men and women – noisy, hateful protests that grieving families are forced to endure on one of the worst days of their lives.

So in March 2006, Westboro protesters showed up at St. John’s Catholic Church (“St. John’s Kennel” in their formulation) in Westminster, Md., for Snyder’s funeral, reportedly carrying signs depicting male anal sex and slogans like “Semper Fi Fags.”

Are you furious yet? This isn’t even the bad part.

For the record, no one – Westboro included – has accused Matthew Snyder of being gay – not that that should matter. But the church’s bizarre argument is that the death of “every” dead service person should be celebrated as God’s punishment of a gay-tolerant nation.

Cpl. Snyder’s father, Albert, sued the “church” for disrupting his son’s funeral. In October 2007, he won a $10.9 million verdict. In September, an appeals court tossed that verdict out.

Nor is even that the worst of it. No, the worst is that the court recently ordered Albert Snyder to “pay” “Westboro’s legal bills.” You heard me. Snyder, who makes $43,000 a year, must pay $16,500 to the people who made a circus of his son’s funeral.

“You can do the math,” says his attorney, Sean Summers.

Snyder has been forced to seek donations online (www.matthewsnyder.org). Westboro says it will use the money to give the same treatment to another grieving family.

Take it as a reminder that what is legal is not necessarily right. I admit being conflicted. I am a strong believer in the First Amendment and in the principle that freedom of speech means nothing unless it is protected for the vilest among us: even the flag burner, even the anti-Semite, even, as in this case, the intellectually incontinent. On the other hand, the protections are not absolute: there is no First Amendment right to threaten or to libel.

So surely we could carve out some reasonable exception that would keep a Fred Phelps from intruding upon the solemnity of a private funeral. Of course, those are legal questions and I am content to leave them to legal minds.

I am consumed with a “human” question: How addled by hatred do you have to be, how niggardly of spirit, shriveled of soul, and just plain “crazy,” to do what these people have done? To use one of my mother’s favorite expressions, these “Christians” are going to knock the bottom out of hell.

While we await that lovely day, this case is bound for the Supreme Court, where Summers will continue representing Albert Snyder for free. I asked the attorney why, and he told me that he’s a veteran and has a brother doing a third tour in Afghanistan.

“I would be appalled if someone did something like this at my funeral,” he said.

You’d like to think that’s unimaginable. But we live in a country where it’s anything but. For better – and some days, for worse – those are the rights people like Matthew Snyder die to defend.

Indonesian Roman Catholics take part in a Palm Sunday Mass in the mountain forest among the trees in Magalang, Central Java, last week.

Celebrations around the world during Holy Week retrace the steps of Jesus nearly 2,000 years ago.

According to the Bible, Palm Sunday marks the day Jesus rode into Jerusalem, greeted by cheering crowds bearing palm fronds. It marks the start of Holy Week, which concludes with Easter today.

This year the Roman Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox churches mark Holy Week on the same dates. The Orthodox Church uses a different calendar from the others, but they coincide every few years.

A Christ figure in Vejer de la Frontera, a Spanish hilltop town in the province of Cadiz, Andalusia, is prepared for one of hundreds of processions throughout Spain during Easter Holy Week.

In my line of work, I am accustomed to hearing people say: “I am spiritual, but I don’t believe in organized religion.”

At times I am tempted to flippantly reply, “The only religion I know is disorganized; when you find one that is organized, let me know. I’d like to join.”

This Easter Sunday an increasingly large segment of the American public will register its dismay, or disgust, or pure boredom with organized religion by staying home.

Anyone who follows the news can list the reasons for this alienation, including but not limited to the continuing pedophile scandal in the Roman Catholic Church. The slow and inept reaction from the Vatican hierarchy should concern not just Catholics, but the leaders of every faith, because it paints all religious institutions with the brush of indifference.

Just as corrosive to a life of faith are stupefying religious practices that make little sense, except to insiders, and lack a connection to the lives of people where they dwell spiritually, emotionally and physically.

Yet religious leaders, and their critics, would be mistaken if they view alienation from human religious institutions as alienation from God. There is a deep yearning across our land for a connection – a relationship – with God. Religious institutions fail when those who lead them fail to recognize the authenticity of that yearning.

I am frequently struck by how many people have no life raft when something goes terribly wrong in their life. It may be the loss of a job, or the end of a marriage, or a chronic illness, or the death of a loved one.

Such moments of crisis often leave people out-to-sea, bereft of dry land to stand upon to make sense of the senseless.

In such a crisis, some people grasp for dimly remembered religious teachings from their childhood. Yet those memories are so distant that they are often useless, and into that vacuum can come fatalism and isolation.

In the movie “Angels and Demons,” a cardinal asks Tom Hanks, who plays the hero sleuth professor, if he “believes” – if he has any faith at all.

“Faith,” Hanks replies, “is a gift I have yet to receive.”

In the biblical tradition, faith is seen as a gift, not an achievement. But the biblical tradition also presents faith paradoxically; people go to great efforts to find the gift of faith. Sometimes the gift is right beneath their nose, and they don’t see it.

In the Gospel of Mark 9:19-29 there is a story that captures the paradox well. The father of a sick child cries out to Jesus: “I believe; help my unbelief!”

That cry – “help my unbelief!” – brings people into communities of faith.

Why would anyone want to do any of this alone? The deepest questions of life, death, God, salvation, heaven and hell, are so large, so universal, so infinite none of us is capable by ourselves of finding fully meaningful answers.

Into that comes the legitimate purpose of “organized religion.” Together, in a community of faith, people have a chance to find the strength for the crisis that comes with life. Even monastics who live as solitaries come together regularly to support each other, sometimes only in silence.

Our American culture presents a bewildering smorgasbord of religious practices to choose from. In our multicultural society, there is a growing tendency to mix religious practices from the banquet table, with people taking a dollop of Holy Communion on Sunday with a side of Buddhist meditation on Monday, readings from Rumi on Tuesday and a yoga class on Wednesday and a kabbalah lecture on Thursday.

Certainly we can enrich our own spiritual life by learning about religious practices not our own, and there really is nothing to fear in that. But sampling is only a taste, and the sampler is missing the depth that comes from exploring a faith tradition grounded in a community of faith over a long period of time. I’ve been practicing Christianity for more than a half-century, and I am still finding corners to explore I never knew existed.

Inquiry, analysis and the tools of reason are gifts from God, and can yield truths and doubts beneath surface readings of religious texts and doctrines.

We also should give the benefit of the doubt to each other and other faiths. Can we refrain from assigning evil motives when we hear something we don’t like, or don’t understand, or don’t agree with? Giving the benefit of the doubt can break down walls of isolation and create islands of kindness so that each of us can grow as God would have us grow.

Isolation is not the only enemy of faith. Fear of doubt is an enemy to faith. Doubt can be a tool of faith by propelling us to ask hard questions and compelling us to not settle for easy answers. Communities of faith that leave no room for the expression of doubt can become self-destructive cults.

There is one final element to the life of faith sometimes overlooked by religious intellectuals and fervent evangelicals: The call to action by giving feet to our prayers.

A spirituality that never goes outside the church walls or beyond the inner life becomes self-indulgent. It is not a new danger.

One of the first leaders of the Church, Jesus’ brother James (a Greek rendering of the Hebrew name Jacob), was much concerned with how the early Christians were turning so inward that their faith had become hollow. The Apostle James wrote a letter, now in the New Testament, much overlooked by many modern Christians, that goes straight to a point that ought to be universal for all religions:

“If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and in lack of daily food,” he wrote, “and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what does it profit? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.

“Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith.”

Religion – organized and disorganized – is capable of great good and great evil in this world. The gift that can come to each of us is an infinite God who will show us the difference through faith.

Let’s say you’re a political consultant. You’re sitting there in your West Hollywood lesbian bondage club with party donors picking up the tab, and, of course, you’re thinking about what a great country this is. Swept up in the spirit of gratitude, you decide you’d like to give back. You’d like to solve the country’s looming fiscal catastrophe.

The heart of the problem, you figure, is that unlike yourself, Americans have grown complacent and careless. For 200 years, they lived precarious lives. There were boom and bust economic cycles, devastating epidemics and natural disasters that came without warning. These conditions instilled a sense of prudence. The thought of running up excessive debt filled them with moral horror.

But over the past years, life has become secure. This has eroded the fear of debt, private and public. In 1960, the nation’s personal debt amounted to 55 percent of national income. By 2007, it had risen to 133 percent of national income.

In 1960, a politician would have been voted out of office if he had allowed the federal debt to double in a decade. Now politicians are likely to get voted out of office if they try to prevent it.

These days, voters want low taxes – about 19 percent of GDP. And they want high spending – over 25 percent of GDP by 2020. As a result, federal debt, which stood at 41 percent of GDP two years ago, is forecast to balloon to 90 percent of GDP in 2020, according to the Congressional Budget Office. By that time, interest payments on the debt alone would be $900 billion a year.

This whole mess, you repeat to yourself, is caused by democracy and moral decay. What’s needed is a moral revival. And who better to lead it than you? God put you on this earth to manipulate voters for the good of the country.

First, you need to change social norms. The financial crisis has helped to teach people the dangers of excessive debt, but there’s probably going to have to be a public crusade – like the ones against littering and smoking – to hammer the point home. Think Warren Buffett TV spots. Think Oprah. Think Tom Hanks. Somebody has to remind the country that excessive debt is selfish.

Second, the whole deficit-hawk brand needs a makeover. Those people are a bunch of schoolmarms: “You’ve been bad. Eat your broccoli. Accept a lower standard of living.”

This is still a Billy Mays nation, thank God. The message has to be: “America can be richer and shinier!” Debt reduction has to be about renewal and prosperity, not pain and sacrifice.

That means deficit reduction has to be embedded in policies that produce growth. Michael Graetz of Columbia University has proposed replacing the current awful tax code with a value-added tax of 14 percent, cuts in the corporate tax rate and a fair income tax with two simple brackets kicking in over $100,000. Many people have ideas to streamline the welfare state. The message has to be: We can afford to have a thick safety net, if it is more efficient.

Then you have to mobilize the political class. Now some people think their elected officials are so rotten that only an unelected commission can save us. Snobs. The history of commissions is the history of failure. Stuart Butler of the Heritage Foundation and Henry J. Aaron of the Brookings Institution argue compellingly that it is simply impossible in a democracy to rewrite the social contract without popular consent. Commissions are fine, but they have to be embedded in a broader democratic process.

The way to do that is to break free from the polarized committee structure. Invite a dozen handpicked senators and House members and stick them in a room three times a week for six months.

After they’ve come up with a debt-reduction plan, have them send it up in secret to the presidential deficit commission, which President Barack Obama was smart enough to create.

Obama hasn’t been recklessly brave on this issue, but he’s fought against powerful political pressure for a series of mechanisms, which, though riven with loopholes, at least have the potential to control spending – things like the Medicare payment commission and the pay-as-you-go rules. If he had some support, he’d do the right thing.

So once the secret congressional plan is passed to the White House, the deficit commission can unveil the thing as if it were the product of nonpolitical expertise. That would give the legislators some political cover, and all the Johnnies at the editorial pages and the think tanks will go into ecstasy. You’ll persuade the tea-party types that it will make government less intrusive. You’ll persuade business that it will be simple. You’ll persuade liberals that the rich will bear the biggest burden. Everybody will pay something, but everybody will see some benefit.

If you can do that, you will save the country. If not, it’s the decline of Rome, and you might as well just stay in the nightclub.

MARJA, Afghanistan

Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was sitting cross-legged on a red carpet under a hastily erected tent in the dusty Afghan agricultural district of Marja, which had been “cleared” of Taliban by thousands of U.S. Marines and Afghan soldiers over the previous seven weeks.

He was surrounded by four dozen bearded men in black-and-gray turbans, who wanted to know if the U.S. troops would remain, and whether they would destroy the poppy crops in the area. Marja is in Helmand province, the opium poppy capital of the world, and the Taliban use the crop to finance their operations.

Mullen had flown in from Kabul to see how things were going in Marja and check on plans for the next stage of the U.S. operation in the Taliban heartland: the campaign to clear the militants from their spiritual home, the city of Kandahar.

But Mullen’s meeting with this shura (council of elders) touched on the biggest question that confronts U.S. efforts: Can Afghans who turn to the Taliban out of frustration with government corruption be convinced that they can get a better deal? The U.S. military chose to clear Marja before Kandahar because it was easier terrain and offered a chance to change the perception that the Taliban were winning. It also provided an opportunity to cut poppy production. And, unlike many other Afghan provinces, Helmand has a competent governor, Gulab Mangal.

But now that Marja has been cleared, its residents have to be convinced that their lives will improve, or else the Taliban may make a comeback. So Mullen and Mangal were sitting on that carpet, listening to the locals air their grievances.

This was only one of many shuras that U.S. officials have been encouraging local leaders to convene in Helmand and Kandahar provinces to give Afghans the sense that their views matter. One senior U.S. military official expressed hopes that the coalition members could “shura their way to success.” Mangal, in a black-and-silver turban and black vest, urged his constituents to take advantage of “our opportunity. The international community is giving money for schools and agriculture. If they leave, bad guys will blow up our roads and bridges.”

“Let us work to hold a huge shura and bring everyone together,” Mangal urged. “We will consult it on all decisions. Then I can tell my good friend Admiral Mullen, ‘Your troops can go.’ But if they leave now, we lose.” Mullen told the group, “It is for you to lead and for us to support you.”

One younger man, in traditional gray tunic, loose pants, and knotted turban, stood up and said, “We need your help for good security.” Another insisted, “Don’t bring us the local police,” whose corruption has driven many into the Taliban’s arms. The coalition has had to bring in special, Western-trained national police while it continues the daunting task of trying to retrain the local force.

Then the requests from the group came fast and furious: for a hospital (Marja has none), for schools and paved roads, for the cleaning of irrigation canals. “I know poppy is bad,” one farmer said, “but the reason I do it is that I have no other means.”

Mangal promised that he would give them seed and fertilizer for alternative crops if they destroyed their poppy crops, and that he would pay them to do so. “Next year, no one should cultivate poppy,” he warned, “or they will go to jail.”

Yet it was clear that these Afghans were not fully convinced – that they were wary of unfulfilled promises and hungry for speedy results.

“I didn’t come with any magic formula,” Mullen cautioned. He knows that, despite a large monetary infusion from abroad and new cash for work programs, the Afghan government’s lack of capacity will slow down the process of change.

Indeed, the key to success in Marja (and in Kandahar) may be whether Afghan President Hamid Karzai develops the same sense of urgency about delivering jobs and services to the provinces as Mullen and Mangal show. Few people I’ve spoken to believe President Barack Obama’s dead-of-night visit with Karzai earlier this week will change the Afghan leader’s behavior.

But U.S. officials are hoping that a multitude of shuras will have an impact. Meanwhile, the elders of Marja will be waiting warily to see if their lives improve.

No doubt there will be several official reviews into this week’s shooting death of mental health patient Linda Carol Clark. Administrators at Placerville’s Marshall Hospital will be asked why they don’t have a locked psychiatric unit at their facility or why Clark wasn’t adequately monitored or restrained.

The El Dorado Fire Protection District will review why its ambulance, the one Clark took, was not better secured.

Placerville police will spend time and money reviewing aspects of their slow chase. The officer who shot Clark will face hard questioning.

However appropriate those inquiries may be, they must not be allowed to hide the real culprit in this tragic, senseless death – the state’s collapsing mental health infrastructure.

As the state and local government budget crises deepen, elected officials have chosen to cut already inadequate mental health services. When public clinics close, cut back hours or restrict access, more and more mentally ill Californians wind up wandering the streets, in police custody or crowded into expensive hospital emergency rooms.

Because of privacy laws, it’s impossible to know the details of Clark’s interaction with the mental health system, but she fits the profile of countless numbers of untreated mentally ill people in our region.

According to Folsom police, Clark had summoned them to her home six times between November and February. The calls were bizarre. One involved a complaint about an alleged prowler who was trying to cut off her legs; another was about being electrocuted while wearing her headphones.

Sacramento County cannot confirm if Clark was ever a patient at one of its facilities. However, in the last year, the ability of seriously disturbed people like Clark to access mental health services in Sacramento County has been severely curtailed.

Over the last three years, the county’s mental health budget has taken a $48 million hit. Sacramento closed its mental health crisis unit on Stockton Boulevard last year and cut inpatient beds for the acutely mentally ill from 100 to 50. Four county-funded private nonprofit mental health clinics reduced patient loads from 2,000 to 900.

El Dorado County, where Clark was killed, has cut its mental health budget 30 percent, laid off 34 workers and tightened criteria for access to service. The county serves only 1,000 severely mentally ill patients today, a third less than a year ago.

The mental health system is as vital a part of the public safety network as police and fire protection. If something is not done to protect and rebuild it, more people will end up like Linda Clark.

Before a friendly audience in Fresno on Tuesday, Karl Rove, former senior adviser to President George W. Bush, continued his campaign to rewrite history about whether Bush misled the country about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction. Now Rove claims Bush led the nation into war on the basis of the same intelligence that Democrats saw when they decided to support the war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

We shouldn’t be surprised that Rove, the master of political spin, is using his book tour to confuse the public about what occurred in the Bush White House as operatives ramped up public opinion in favor of invading Iraq seven years ago. Weapons of mass destruction were never found in Iraq, and now Bush loyalists are trying to explain their way out of the administration’s decision to lead us into war.

But Rove’s utterances shouldn’t go unchallenged when they are at odds with the facts. The nation must understand what happened as we charged into war in Iraq, and Rove’s revisionism isn’t offering clarity to the discussion.

Rove spoke at a fundraiser Tuesday for Fresno County Supervisor Debbie Poochigian and was also touting his book, “Courage and Consequence.” In his Fresno speech, Rove said that if Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction, so did Democrats who saw the same intelligence as Bush and reached the same conclusion. That’s just absurd.

The Democrats – and the rest of the nation – saw the intelligence information on Iraq that had been manipulated by the Bush administration.

This intelligence didn’t stand on its own, but came with the administration’s political campaign about WMDs. It had a predetermined goal of invading Iraq.

It would be one thing if the Bush administration had simply offered flawed intelligence and the nation’s leaders then made unwise decisions based on that that bad information. But it was much worse than that. The faulty intelligence on Iraq was then whipped up by the Bush White House, especially Vice President Dick Cheney, as a pretense to invade Iraq.

Later, after the war was in full bloom and it was clear to everyone there never were any weapons of mass destruction, Rove, Cheney and company continued to change the purported reasons for invading Iraq. The new, improved rationale included “removing a dictator” and “spreading freedom.” These “reasons” were not stated when the administration initially sold the war to Congress.

Instead, we were led to believe Saddam Hussein was a serious threat to world peace because he either possessed or was developing nuclear weapons. We now know that the Bush administration chose to ignore evidence that questioned or refuted such claims.

A version of this editorial originally appeared in the Fresno Bee.