Author: SacBee — Opinion

So, Barack Obama can lose his temper without a teleprompter. And we have the supremely aggravating Bibi Netanyahu to thank for that.

During a week that features St. Patrick’s Day, we wouldn’t want to think that our president did not know how to pick his donnybrooks.

The American government did unfortunately apologize to Col. Moammar Gadhafi, who got mad when a State Department spokesman correctly observed that the Libyan leader doesn’t always make sense.

But in the case of Israel, the White House has not yet retreated into its usual compromising crouch.

Obama is so unpopular in Israel that he has nothing to lose by smacking our ally for its egregious treatment of the vice president. Joe Biden, the great champion of Israel, was humiliated when Israel used the occasion of his visit to defy America and announce a plan for 1,600 more homes in the disputed East Jerusalem area.

Israeli conservatives figured the American Eagle was toothless, given that Obama had already backed down once on settlements. The president has a lot to gain with Arabs who are disillusioned with the failure of the pre-emptive Nobel Prize winner to make good on his vaunted Cairo promise to resolve the Palestinian issue.

There is no love lost between the Israeli prime minister and Obama’s aides, Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod – ever since Bibi obnoxiously labeled them “self-hating Jews” last summer.

The president and his inner circle are appalled at Israel’s self-absorption and its failure to notice that America is not only protecting Israel from Iran, fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also dealing with a miasma of horrible problems at home. And Israel insults the Obama administration over a domestic zoning issue that has nothing to do with its security? “That’s not how you treat your best friend,” said one Obama official.

During the campaign, Obama told The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg that “being a friend to Israel is partly to hold up a mirror and tell the truth,” to save them from themselves when they mindlessly let settlement gluttony scuttle any chance of peace.

After it was reported two weeks ago that Israel planned 600 other homes in East Jerusalem, Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, warned that Israel’s ultra-conservative religious groups were “killing every option that comes out that has peace in its objective.” For the fundamentalist rabbis who run Israel’s working-class, ultra-Orthodox Sephardic Shas Party, the new houses represent earmarks. But it’s one thing to put earmarks in the budget and another to foment a crisis between Israel and its benefactor over them.

“It’s not entirely clear to me that the Shas Party knows who Joe Biden is or cares,” Goldberg told me. “They have very narrow theological interests that don’t conform to the theological interests of American Jews.

“The high-tech entrepreneurs of Tel Aviv relate to the Shas Party about as well as the Jews of the Upper West Side relate to the tea party. The Shas Party is not overly attuned to the American-Israel relationship or the peace process.”

Goldberg also points out that “what most right-wing Israelis don’t understand is that even American Jews – especially the nearly 80 percent who voted for Obama – disaggregate what is in the best interest of Israel from what is in the best interest of the settlers.” Obama knows that Jews no longer speak with one voice. That gives him enough room to keep the heat on Netanyahu.

But the president’s smackdown also obscures the fact that the administration has no real strategy for peace.

In his Atlantic blog, Goldberg suggests that Obama’s ulterior motive is to drive out the ultra-conservatives and force a rupture in the governing coalition that will make it necessary for Netanyahu to take Tzipi Livni’s Kadima Party into his government, thus creating a “stable, centrist coalition” that could work for peace.

While Netanyahu takes his time-out, perhaps he will have the good sense to realize the Biden insult was a bit more than “regrettable,” as he tepidly put it. He may remember that the two most important things to Israel should be a security doctrine that prevents a neighboring adversary from getting a nuclear weapon and cherishing the relationship with America.

The Iranian mullahs must be laughing at the Americans and Israelis arguing about who insulted whom, while they are busy screwing their nuclear bombs together.

Three-day-a-month furloughs of California state workers have run their course as a response to an immediate cash-flow problem. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed to end them June 30.

It’s about time. Although furloughs were preferable to layoffs in dealing with California’s financial crunch last year, they haven’t produced cost savings that many anticipated.

As The Bee reported last week, the state paid civil service and California State University workers about 4 percent less in 2009 than in 2008. But many furloughed workers put off vacations, meaning that the state faces deferred costs.

California can’t continue with its practice of borrowing from the future. Solving the state’s budget woes will require new revenue, and selective and permanent cuts in the size of state government, including payroll.

As California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office has said: “With a budget gap as large as the one now facing the state, it is almost impossible to imagine a budget solution that does not involve some level of reductions in state employee costs.”

With furloughs coming to an end, Californians are back to two choices – layoffs or straight reductions in pay for state workers.

This page initially supported furloughs (up to two days monthly) as a way to reduce labor costs quickly. It’s easy to forget today that California literally ran out of cash last July and had to delay payments and issue IOUs to county agencies, small businesses and taxpayers.

With a precipitous drop in state revenue and little prospect of returning any time soon to pre-bubble revenue, the governor and lawmakers have made cuts. Spending from the general fund went from $103 billion in 2007 to $86 billion in 2009.

But that’s not the end. The reality is that the state expects a $21 billion shortfall for the 2010-2011 year – and $20 billion a year through 2014-2015.

Our population today is 38.5 million and the state has 356,000 state workers providing services to Californians – 9.3 state workers per 1,000 population. The 30-year low was 8.4 workers per capita; today, that would give us a state work force of 323,400 (a cut of 32,600).

But making changes means tackling state priorities, not simply whacking all departments across the board. The Legislature and the governor need to decide which programs are lower priority and reduce spending in those particular programs.

They need to prioritize positions, too, by varying the size of payroll reductions for each of the state’s 21 bargaining units. The Dill Act gives the Legislature that authority and lawmakers should use it. Bargaining alone will not accomplish the task.

The reality is that the big jump in state employment from 1980 to present has been in the prison system – from 13,100 to 65,600 employees. The number of state employees working in health and human services actually dropped during that period – from 43,300 to 32,500.

As the LAO has said, there is no way that California can avoid reprioritizing its finances: “In the coming years, major state spending programs will have to be significantly reduced. Policymakers will also need to add revenues to the mix.”

If you haven’t already received one, you’ll soon get a rather nondescript official envelope in the mail.

Don’t toss it in the trash.

It’s the 2010 census form, and it’s not only your civic duty to return it, it’s in your financial best interest.

The form, one of the shortest and simplest versions in recent memory, asks very basic questions – name, age, ethnicity – and will take only a few minutes to fill out.

That small chore, however, has huge consequences. The once-a-decade population count will determine how nearly $450 billion a year in federal assistance – nearly $1,500 a person, according to a new Brookings Institution study – will be divvied up for everything from school lunches and health care for the poor to road construction.

In 2000, only 55 percent of Sacramento households mailed back their forms, far less than the 70 percent return rate statewide. That means more than 13,000 Sacramentans went uncounted, a gap that cost local governments and school districts millions in lost federal funds over the decade.

This time, in the middle of a deep economic downturn, Sacramento has to do better.

Sacramento County is one of 13 “hard-to-count” counties getting special attention from the California Complete Count committee created by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The list, which also includes Fresno and San Joaquin counties, includes those that had the largest undercounts in 2000 and that have large numbers of people most at risk of being missed: the poor and non-English speakers.

While California’s return rate was slightly higher than the national average in 2000, an estimated 523,000 Californians were missed, PriceWaterhouseCoopers said in a study to Congress.

That cost the state more than $15 billion over the decade, money that would have come in handy during this budget crisis.

If you don’t send in the form, a census taker will most likely be knocking on your door early next month. It would be much easier on everyone – and cheaper for taxpayers – if you just mail it in.

Ben Boychuk

A standardized national curriculum wouldn’t make California’s kids smarter or well equipped to compete in the global economy, or even better citizens. But a national, one-size-fits-all curriculum would be highly political, beset by special interest lobbying, and almost certainly diluted by teachers unions and education bureaucrats unaccountable to parents and voters.

Yet President Barack Obama, Education Secretary Arne Duncan, 48 governors – including Arnold Schwarzenegger – and a host of education “reform” groups are rushing headlong to embrace the Common Core State Standards Initiative. The coalition of state governors and state school superintendents last week released its draft reading and math standards for kindergarten through 12th grade.

The standards are billed as “voluntary,” but that’s a joke. The Obama administration has already announced plans to make $14 billion in federal Title I funds and another $15 billion in future Race to the Top grants contingent on states adopting the national standards. In short, the standards would be as “voluntary” as reporting personal income to the IRS, regulating the drinking age or maintaining the speed limit. Just try to opt out and see what happens.

The standards are also supposed to be “flexible,” but it’s difficult to see how. The draft reading and math requirements include detailed, year-by-year prescriptions for every child, regardless of ability. A student who struggles with reading, writing or arithmetic would have an even tougher time keeping up, as teachers would face mounting pressure to cover all the material in federally sanctioned lesson plans.

Of course, that assumes the final standards won’t be homogenized and dumbed down to the point they would be considered “high standards” in name only. Judging by history, that’s probably a bad assumption.

One thing’s for sure: Transforming common core standards into a common curriculum would turn an already contentious policy issue into a brawl as bruising and divisive as the fight over health care reform. Where health care is about our bodies, education is about our children’s minds.

Texas provides an idea of how the fight over a national curriculum might play out. The Lone Star State happens to be the second-largest textbook market in the United States. Thanks to California’s budget woes, which preclude the state from buying new textbooks until at least 2016, Texas is poised to reshape the content of U.S. history books for the next decade or so. The State Board of Education, bitterly split along ideological lines, has been overrun with demands from every interest group imaginable to render history into a politically correct mishmash.

Ironically, Texas was one of two states that refused to join the CCSSI. (The other was Alaska.) Texas also sat out of the competition for a slice of the $4 billion in Race to the Top grant money. “Our states and our communities must reserve the right to decide how we educate our children and not surrender that control to a federal bureaucracy,” Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican, said in January.

California could learn something from Texas’ declaration of independence from the ever-widening federal dictates over education policy. When arguments about curriculum are hashed out at the state level, at least somebody can be held accountable.

Federal government education bureaucrats and teachers union officials aren’t accountable to voters or taxpayers.

An honest effort to create good standards would allow for extensive public input. Instead the CCSSI has given the public until April 2 to comment on the draft language and math standards.

What’s the hurry? Could it be the standards’ authors fear that a long public conversation would lead to changes reflecting the public’s concerns?

Truly voluntary national standards would let states reject them without fear of punishment or sanction. Why should California, which has exemplary mathematics standards, submit to a document that puts political consensus above educational excellence? Why should Massachusetts, which experts generally acknowledge as having the best standards of any state, have to settle for less?

The problem with the proposed national standards is the same thing that bedeviled No Child Left Behind and nearly every reform since the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965: The remorseless needs of bureaucracy always trump the needs of children. Educators, parents and children deserve choices, not uniformly dismal dictates from Washington.

Bill Hauck

With another campaign season already under way and 2 million Californians out of work, it’s no surprise that the four-letter word on the lips of most politicians these days is “J-O-B-S.” Politicians on the left want to step up spending to create jobs. Their counterparts on the right want regulations scrapped in the name of – you guessed it – creating jobs.

Let’s stipulate that both approaches may have some merit. But if the folks in Sacramento are really serious about getting California’s economy on track, their first order of business – from either side of the aisle – should be reforming the state’s budget process.

That may sound strange, especially coming from the business community. But the jobs bill we need most is budget reform.

Why? Because California businesses – both large and small – can’t thrive in an atmosphere of uncertainty. And right now, our state’s budget process makes doing business in this state about as confidence-building as a trip with Alice to Wonderland:

• The ink is barely dry on major changes to the way the state calculates business losses – approved in one budget – and already there are efforts under way to change them in the next budget.

• The gas tax – a major expense for many businesses – is either going up or down, and may or may not be replaced by a fee.

• Businesses may have to start withholding taxes for independent contractors, or they may not.

It’s enough to make an accountant’s head spin, and it goes on each year as the state lurches from crisis to crisis, never thinking about the impact on those who work outside the state Capitol.

That’s why a number of business leaders, myself included, have joined the nonpartisan group California Forward to make common-sense fiscal reforms part of our state’s constitution.

Here’s what we’ve proposed:

Plan ahead on spending: Require the state to think long-term about spending priorities by reviewing a two-year spending plan and a five-year fiscal forecast before approving the budget every year. The plan also strengthens requirements for quick action when the budget goes off track.

Results and oversight: Require clear goals for every program to be spelled out in the budget and requires lawmakers to focus on reducing waste, improving oversight and providing accountability for results.

Performance review: Require the Legislature to oversee major expenditures and examine every program at least once every 10 years, looking for ways to improve efficiency and reduce waste.

Reduce debt when revenue spikes: Create a process for identifying occasional spikes in revenue for one-time uses, such as tax rebates or paying down debt.

Pay-as-you-go: Require major new or expanded programs proposed in the budget or legislation to identify a specific funding source such as savings or cuts to other programs before taking effect.

No tax-fee bait and switch: Require a two-thirds vote for any new fees that replace a tax.

No budget, no pay: All lawmakers would forfeit their pay and per diem when the budget is late.

The plan also includes – in combination with these fiscal reforms – allowing the state budget to be approved by a majority vote, while retaining the two-thirds vote requirement to increase taxes.

This last provision could prove to be a sticking point. While Democratic leaders have embraced the proposal, Republicans have objected to giving up their leverage over the budget process.

That’s understandable. There’s room for negotiation and compromise. But both sides should keep in mind that neither is playing a winning hand.

The current system doesn’t work for anyone, least of all for Californians trying to compete in a global economy.

For all its setbacks of the last few years, our state remains the envy of the world. And as the credit crisis that crippled the economy begins to thaw, many of California’s businesses are poised to capitalize on the rebound in growth.

Finally, getting our state’s finances in order would hasten that process, and put every company in the state on a more stable footing. California’s politicians have a tremendous opportunity to contribute to that process, and they should take advantage of it.

After all, the first jobs they save may be their own.

Hector De La Torre

“Our major obligation is not to mistake slogans for solutions.” – Edward R. Murrow

The purpose of state government is to serve people – workers, business owners, patients, students, litigants, consumers and most importantly our taxpayers. Under our current circumstances, we all understand that the recession has drastically cut revenues and that some services must be reduced accordingly.

In the past year, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger put up a “no service” sign to California residents by locking state employees out of their jobs despite their willingness to serve the public. The governor imposed three furlough days per month – closing down hundreds of agencies and departments and forcing a dramatic reduction in vital state services that make it hard for everyone to do business and get anything done.

Several dozen state agencies are either federally funded or fee-funded, not from the state general fund. The governor’s executive order declares an emergency based upon the budget deficit in the state general fund, but the furloughs are thoughtless and apply to virtually all state employees, without regard to whether the furloughs result in any actual state general fund savings. Furloughing the employees of these agencies creates no state general fund savings, making the furlough a simple political statement.

Furloughs are forcing longer wait times for services. The Department of Motor Vehicles provides services most Californians use regularly. As a result of the furloughs, the average wait time for a walk-in customer has increased to 45 minutes at the DMV.

In addition, backlogs increased significantly this year on many license applications, investigations and audits. The DMV’s funds come almost entirely from vehicle, driver’s license and other fees paid by motorists, as well as from the federal government, not the state general fund.

Furloughs delay patient care. There is already a physician shortage in California. The governor’s furlough order has created a backlog of physician license applications because the Medical Board of California cannot keep up with current licensing demand.

As a result, communities are waiting even longer for new doctors while qualified physicians who are ready and able to practice medicine sit idle. The sole source of funds available to the Medical Board comes from physician license fees and other user fees mandated for Medical Board purposes. The Medical Board does not rely on the state general fund.

In this historic recession, furloughs are delaying unemployment checks to Californians. The Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board has a record 82,500 pending appeals, and the furloughs have increased the waiting time for unemployment benefits from seven weeks to three months. Both the Employment Development Department and the Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board are federally funded and use no state general funds.

Furloughs are increasing unemployment. State construction jobs help increase employment and pump money into the state economy.

Furloughs are increasing the state general fund deficit. The state’s two largest tax agencies – the Franchise Tax Board and the State Board of Equalization – will lose more than $700 million in revenue because of the furlough order. Specifically, the furloughs have harmed both agencies’ ability to audit returns and collect money owed by taxpayers. These cuts mean less outreach to taxpayers to explain tax rules, lost audit opportunities due to expired statutory deadlines and postponed or missed collection efforts. The Board of Equalization and the Franchise Tax Board generate revenue for California, providing funding that helps the state general fund.

Common sense dictates that you only cut programs and services to yield savings. In an effort to stop this downward spiral, I introduced Assembly Bill 1215 to keep state employees working when the furloughs do not yield state general fund savings. The bill requires that when employees are funded by sources other than the state general fund, they cannot be furloughed. If enacted, the bill will help maintain services that meet the day-to-day needs of California residents, including unemployment checks and DMV registration, and create new job opportunities.

California residents are struggling in so many ways. We need innovative solutions to help fix this state. Shutting the door on state government to make a political point is counterproductive – it punishes California residents and businesses, and it absolutely does not fix the state general fund deficit.

Late last month, an Alameda Superior Court judge ordered back pay for state employees in positions funded by sources other than the general fund. This ruling affirms the reasoning behind Assembly Bill 1215 and Senate Bill 29 (8X), both common-sense measures to protect our state workers. In this difficult budget crisis, we need to have serious discussions about real savings and solutions and move beyond simple political ploys. The recent court ruling should help persuade Gov. Schwarzenegger to start these discussions right away.

HECTOR De La TORRE | Special to The Bee

As Democrats consider shoving health care reform through the House with a process known as “deem and pass,” it is helpful to return to square one and ask: What, again, is the rush? A year ago, when reform work got under way, Democrats were hell-bent on passing legislation before year’s end. Because? There was no way, Democrats believed, that they could accomplish such sweeping reform in an election year.

The Senate bill, which still doesn’t have enough votes in the House to pass, barely met the do-or-die deadline, squeaking through on Christmas Eve.

Now the new deadline for a final package is Easter break. This time the thinking goes: If Congress doesn’t get a bill to the president before politicians head home, there will be no health care reform for 10 more years. Come April, their energies are needed on other pressing concerns, such as re-election.

Meanwhile, the zoo in the living room demands attention. If the bill is so unpopular that it must be passed long before Election Day, could there be a problem with the legislation? If health care reform as proposed were so good for the nation, why wouldn’t legislators prefer to run on rather than away from that record? If you can’t run on the strength of the laws you pass, then either you shouldn’t be running or you shouldn’t be passing.

Yet, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is considering new ways to allow House members to pass the Senate bill without actually voting for it so that vulnerable Democrats can deny responsibility for a bill they don’t like and don’t support. Is this sane? More to the point, is it constitutional? Some experts say yes; others say no. A thorough vetting would consume this space, but basically, the “deem and pass” maneuver accomplishes the same thing as if the House had approved the Senate bill with tweaks through the reconciliation process. Rather than voting on the Senate bill, the House passes a package of changes to the bill.

Thus the bill is “deemed” to have passed. Got that? The benefit is that House members who don’t want to vote for the bill are granted plausible deniability. Come election time, they can say, “Hey, don’t look at me, I didn’t vote for it.” And voters, whom lawmakers apparently deem mentally challenged, will give legislators a pass. This is called implausible optimism.

Deem and pass – or sneak and sprint – may be legal, but is it right? It’s right only if your goal is to beat a deadline and pass something – anything – regardless of how imperfect the result. Even the majority of Americans who oppose the bill don’t know the half of it, because almost no one does.

What they do know is that health care reform reeks of maneuvering and the kind of compromises that involve sacks of cash. The latest proposed strategy merely underscores the past year’s by-hook-or-by-crook legislative approach.

Even recent attention to “sweetheart deals” has failed to improve the product. President Barack Obama initially said he wanted state-specific deals removed, but now the White House has backed off, saying that if more than one state theoretically could benefit from a deal, then the program is OK.

Theoretically, that could cover just about anything and everything. Certainly, such an approach helps justify sweeteners such as the so-called “Frontier States” amendment that raises Medicare reimbursements for some rural states at a cost of $2 billion over 10 years.

The deal was added to the Senate bill between its exit from the Finance Committee and the Christmas Eve vote. Coincidentally, it just happens to benefit two powerful Democratic committee chairmen – North Dakota’s Kent Conrad (budget) and Montana’s Max Baucus (finance).

Other states deemed worthy of special treatment according to what is essentially an artificial creation – half of each state’s counties must have six or fewer persons per square mile (and bite their fingernails?) – are Wyoming, South Dakota and Utah. Just 51 hospitals will receive the entire $2 billion, according to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services data.

A sweetheart deal is a sweetheart deal by any other name.

Given the procedural complications, the clear lack of House support, and a raft of dubious deal-making, slowing down wouldn’t be the worst thing to happen to health care reform.

There’s no dishonor in admitting that one was in too big a hurry.

But rushing to do the wrong thing is, in a word, idiotic.

The financial meltdown – triggered by incompetence, greed and outright fraud on Wall Street – has slammed the Sacramento region like few other places in the country. Families forfeited their homes. Retirees saw their nest eggs evaporate. Thousands have lost their jobs. And the pain isn’t nearly over in the deepest downturn in decades.

So the region has a personal stake in an overhaul of financial regulations to ensure that this never happens again. The crisis that started in the fall of 2008 was made worse because regulators, who were supposed to protect investors and taxpayers, looked the other way or were powerless to intervene.

Nearly two years after the crash, there’s finally renewed momentum in Congress on a package that would pull back some of the deregulation that Congress aided and abetted during the high-flying 1990s.

After failing to win any Republican support, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd put forward legislation on Monday that would be a big step forward.

The 1,336-page bill would give the federal government more power to look for systemic risk and to seize companies whose collapse would precipitate another crisis. It would regulate hedge funds and derivatives markets. It represents the most sweeping change to financial regulations since the Great Depression.

Even Dodd would concede, however, that it is not as robust as a version the House passed in December, particularly when it comes to protecting consumers.

The Connecticut Democrat gave up his earlier push for an independent Consumer Financial Protection Agency, which is supported by consumer advocates but strongly opposed by the banking industry and business groups.

The House bill calls for such a separate agency whose mission would be to stop unscrupulous practices by financial services companies, including predatory lenders who peddled the subprime mortgages that caused the collapse of the housing market.

Instead, Dodd proposed a new consumer protection bureau, which would be housed inside the Federal Reserve and whose director would be appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. The bureau’s decisions could be vetoed by a two-thirds vote of a new nine-member council of federal regulators if they decided that a rule would put the banking system at risk.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Barack Obama both praised Dodd’s move, but also made clear they prefer the House bill. They should stick to their game plan.

But to get to a conference committee to hash out the differences between the House and Senate measures, the Senate must pass a bill first. And with a threatened GOP filibuster, that won’t happen without the support of at least one Republican.

The siren call to let Wall Street get back to business as usual to boost the economy might be tempting – especially when it’s softened with big-dollar campaign contributions. But lawmakers need to listen instead to the vast majority of Americans. Their livelihoods and futures seem at the whim of financial behemoths who want taxpayer bailouts but not the accountability that should be part of this bargain.

April showers bring May flowers. Or so goes the old saying – one likely invented by an Easterner.

Here in the Central Valley, everything starts and ends two months earlier than most everywhere.

April showers? We’ll be lucky to get even a few raindrops by then.

That makes March a pivotal month for farmers and backyard gardeners. For those of us who toil the soil, it’s a month of high risk and high reward.

Farmers especially.

As of the last survey, the Sierra snowpack was close to normal. If it keeps storming through March and into April, most farmers can be assured of healthy water allotments – enough to get them through the growing season. They can take chances in the amount of acreage they can plant and not worry so much about pumping groundwater.

Yet March is a fickle month. It can unleash torrential rains, hailstorms and deep freezes, or it can bring spring weather like that of recent days. It can also be a month when Mother Nature turns off the spigot, turning a healthy water year into a dry one.

For backyard gardeners, the financial risks are minuscule compared with those of farmers.

Yet nonetheless, we have our own bets to be waged.

Consider the tomato. I like to eat tomatoes in June, and maybe even late May. If I plant now, I have a chance of wowing my friends with sumptuous BLTs before summer officially arrives.

That’s why I spent last Sunday stooped over my plot at the community garden, planting a pair of young tomato seedlings – an Early Girl and a Sweet Gold.

I only planted two, wanting to hedge my gamble against a late frost or hailstorm.

The plot next to mine is worked by a young couple who recently moved here from Tennessee. As I planted my tomatoes, they looked at me with a mixture of alarm and curiosity.

Tomato planting in March? Undoubtedly I was affirming their view that Californians are a reckless bunch.

There was nothing scientific about my decision. I hadn’t consulted an almanac or extension agent.

All I knew was that it felt like spring, and the weatherman had predicted a week of warm weather.

I wonder how many farmers operate similarly on instinct. Probably a few.

As a farmer once told me, planting crops is like proposing marriage. It’s a leap of faith, and you know when the time is right.

– [email protected]

What would be the consequences if Sacramento fails to build an arena? To comment on this issue, please use our forum.

Ever since Gregg Lukenbill sneaked into Kansas City one night about 25 years ago and made off with that town’s NBA franchise, finding a home for the Sacramento Kings has been pre-eminently about real estate development, secondarily about franchise profitability and only incidentally about the interests of the team’s fans.

Back then, Lukenbill and his partners deftly used the palpably urgent need to build a suitable home court for the team on available land in Natomas as political leverage in obtaining official acquiescence to develop large tracts of housing in a floodplain defended by some of the most fragile levees this side of New Orleans.

Recently, an even more audacious development plan has been proposed that would not only entail the construction of a sports arena and entertainment facility in downtown Sacramento but a land swap that would send the state fairgrounds to the Arco Arena site in return for 350 acres at Cal Expo for real estate development.

That plan, proposed by developer Gerry Kamilos, has gained the support of the NBA and the team’s owners, even though it rivals a Rube Goldberg contraption in complexity and the number of moving parts.

On Thursday, Mayor Kevin Johnson’s Sacramento First task force, charged with evaluating seven different arena proposals, shortened the list to three but signaled its support for the Kamilos plan – as long as the arena is integrated with a transportation hub, which was proposed in the plan from Thomas Enterprises, the company handling the vast railyard development project. Under the plan, the arena would be built in conjunction with the intermodal transportation depot adjacent to Sacramento’s train station.

When they convene on Tuesday to evaluate the various proposals still on the table, City Council members should ask what any household would prudently ask when facing a major purchase or investment: Can we afford it?

The answer may not be the one we want or expect to hear.

The checkbook argument

Even if construction of a new arena is entirely financed by private investment (which is unlikely to be the case), the task of repaying lenders and bondholders – not to mention generating the revenue to cover the arena’s maintenance and operations costs – will fall largely on individual ticket-buyers and those local businesses still able to lease luxury boxes.

It should come as no news to elected officials struggling to balance budgets that the Sacramento region is a much less affluent place than it was just three or four years ago. And no amount of civic cheerleading – or exceedingly optimistic economic impact studies – can obscure the fact that we are staring at several years of sluggish, if not jagged, economic growth in this region.

Janet Yellen, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, delivered a decidedly downbeat assessment of California’s economic prospects in a speech last month. According to her analysis, the state’s real estate market remains in flux and sustained economic growth is not likely to kick in before 2013. Recovery may be even more delayed in the Sacramento region, where government employment has long played an outsized role.

In all likelihood, it will be years before Sacramento households have as much discretionary income as before housing prices collapsed, credit disappeared and unemployment soared. All those fashionistas who have become frugalistas know this instinctively. So should public officials.

But this would not be the first time that a sober economic analysis would be trumped by the emotional lure of professional sports. So even if city and county leaders decree that we can afford a new arena, there is still the question of whether downtown Sacramento is the best location for it.

If the interests of the team’s fans were given top priority in choosing a site for a new home for the Kings, a decision would have already been taken to build right next to the team’s existing facilities in Natomas. Arco Arena may be in sad shape, but area fans know how to get there and know there will be ample parking then they arrive.

Of course, fans don’t come first. Property developers, team owners and a determination to revitalize downtown Sacramento take precedence. So that’s why consideration of a new arena is limited to a downtown location.

Which brings us back to the proposal that the task force endorsed Thursday – the Kamilos land swap plan.

A complicated puzzle

The deal requires the state of California to sell the 350 acres on which Cal Expo sits to Kamilos and his development group at today’s market value. In exchange, the state would receive title to the 185-acre parcel at Arco Arena where the state would build a new fairgrounds. In addition, the developer is offering the state 25 percent of future net profits when his development team eventually sells parcels at the Cal Expo site.

Before that happens, though, the Kamilos group would build a new sports and entertainment complex in downtown Sacramento. Only after the new arena opens and the Kings move in would Cal Expo be able vacate its current site. And only then would the Kamilos group be able to transform the Cal Expo site into a mixed-use community. And getting to that stage is crucial since profits from development of the Cal Expo property are what float the entire deal.

At first glance, the Kamilos proposal appears to serve several beneficial goals. It promises to reinvigorate Cal Expo by compelling that organization to reinvent itself at a different location, presumably with new buildings better suited to current needs. The plan would also provide housing and offices as well as a host of amenities for thousands of Sacramento residents in a manner consistent with the smart-growth policies being promoted by the Sacramento Area Council of Governments. Not least, it would provide Sacramento with a modern arena for professional sports and other events. And integrating it with a regional transportation center would enable fans to use light-rail and Regional Transit buses to travel to and from events at the arena.

So what’s not to like about the plan?

By itself, the Kamilos proposal leaves a lot of questions unanswered, not only about its financial and political feasibility but also about whether a new arena is really in this region’s best interests at this time.

A plan this complicated offers multiple chances for things to go awry, with a high potential for things to come unglued only after huge sums of money have been invested and public policy agendas have been reordered.

Hitching the Kamilos proposal to the transportation hub Thomas Enterprises has been trying to build, as the First Sacramento task force has recommended, would effectively handicap what is already a long shot. Thomas Enterprises, whose notion of a public-private partnership evidently is that it will provide the circus if taxpayers provide the bread, has been unable to turn a single shovel of dirt on the depot project for years, unless first handed a check drawn on a federal stimulus funds or state transportation bonds.

Perhaps the most immediate concern about the Kamilos plan’s viability is its need for the Legislature to authorize sale of the Cal Expo site before land values in the area begin rising. To make the plan work, the developers must be able to buy the land while the local real estate market remains depressed and to sell the land at much higher prices in the future.

If the sale does take place while real estate values are still low, how much potential profit would a revenue-starved state government forego in order to let this deal proceed? Wouldn’t a quick sale be interpreted by some as a direct subsidy to wealthy private investors?

Then there are issues surrounding the move of Cal Expo to Natomas. How much will it actually cost to build the new fairgrounds? How certain are state officials that the Kamilos group would be able to follow through on its financial commitments to Cal Expo when the time for the move to Natomas comes? After all, the downtown arena would be getting first dibs on whatever financing the Kamilos group is able to secure.

In the likely event that the project experiences more than the usual delays and cost overruns, who is to say that enough money would be left to get Cal Expo off the site whose subsequent redevelopment helps finance the deal?

Pulling off this swap requires an enormous amount of financing. Buying the Cal Expo site, building the downtown arena, moving Cal Expo to Natomas will require a huge financial commitment that will eventually have to be paid off with interest. Generating the funds to repay those obligations will depend fundamentally on an appreciable increase in the value of the Cal Expo site. That, in turn, will hinge on how fast the regional economy – and especially its real estate market – recovers from the recession.

Dots remain unconnected

On the downtown front, would it really jump-start development in the old Southern Pacific railyard? So far those dots have not been convincingly connected.

Would an arena in the railyard be profitable? As Stockton residents have come to understand, a spiffy new sports and entertainment center can turn into a white elephant if economic circumstances are less than ideal.

Although sports and entertainment complexes do attract some visitors from outside the area, the vast majority of ticket-buyers are local residents opting to spend some of their limited disposable income to attend a Kings game or a rock concert at an arena rather than on a dinner or movie closer to home in Roseville or Elk Grove. So instead of appreciably raising the level of entertainment spending in the region, an arena largely just redistributes it from one jurisdiction to another.

That part of it is a zero-sum game. With a downtown arena, downtown gains, while Folsom and other communities lose.

But what is almost never mentioned in the typically upbeat economic impact studies commissioned by arena proponents is the leakage factor. Does anyone really think that all or even most of the nearly $70 million in salaries paid to Kings players this year will stay in Sacramento? Add to this the huge fees earned by all those rock stars, figure skaters and other entertainers who regularly breeze through town. Then tally up the portion of ticket receipts and luxury box rents that are earmarked for repaying the various bondholders and investors who helped finance the arena’s construction.

So, far from being the unalloyed engine of local economic growth its proponents vigorously claim, a sports and entertainment center can be an even more efficient engine for draining vast sums of money out of the area’s economy.

At a time when public officials should be preoccupied with finding ways of bringing new wealth to town, it’s regrettable that so much of our public agenda in Sacramento is being misshapen by bold visions grounded in economic illusions.

Thomas Enterprises

County clerks in California in the 1980s promoted the idea of consolidating odd-year school board elections with even-year statewide elections. That made sense. Holding school elections with more visible statewide elections could lead to increased voter turnout and spread out costs. So lawmakers changed state law to allow school boards to move board elections from odd-numbered years to even-numbered years.

But to accomplish the shift, the law contained a major flaw, allowing school board members unilaterally to lengthen their own terms to longer than four years.

The most recent case is in the newly merged Twin Rivers Unified district, in north Sacramento. Board members last week voted to hold their election with the statewide primary in June 2012 – seven months after their scheduled November 2011 election.

It didn’t matter that the State Board of Education in 2007 specifically called for new Twin Rivers Unified board members to have a four-year term with a November 2011 election – or, alternatively, a three-year term with a November 2010 election.

It didn’t matter that the Sacramento County Registrar of Voters recommended last April that the board consolidate with the November 2010 election. It didn’t matter that the League of Women Voters of Sacramento County urged a November 2010 election.

All other school districts in Sacramento County will hold November elections this year. By selecting June 2012 election, Twin Rivers board members not only lengthened their terms by seven months, they put themselves on a different election cycle from other districts. This was a bad decision from beginning to end – and state law allowed it.

Sen. Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley, and Assemblyman Paul Fong, D-Cupertino – the chairs of the Senate and Assembly elections committees – should work with their members to draft a fix to the law. Incumbents unilaterally adding seven months or a year to their own terms is just plain wrong. The law, instead, should allow boards to shorten their terms to three years to consolidate with even-year elections.

California’s cities can’t afford to wait for the state to fix the medical marijuana mess. The plan in the works in Sacramento is a reasonable local solution to a no-win situation.

The proposal outlined last week at a City Hall hearing would cap the number of marijuana dispensaries at 12; keep them away from schools, parks and neighborhoods; and charge fees to cover the cost of regulation.

Sacramento and other cities find themselves in this predicament because the compassion that voters showed in 1996 by approving the medical use of marijuana has been completely corrupted.

First, the Legislature allowed a very generous interpretation to Proposition 215. Then in February 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration would no longer raid dispensaries in states where medical marijuana is legal. For good measure in January, the California Supreme Court wiped out state limits on how much pot medical marijuana patients can grow or possess.

Through all the fog, it is increasingly clear that the system is unworkable. It has been exploited by growers, unscrupulous physicians and sellers looking to make a buck, and by people with no plausible medical need looking to get high. With so much cash to be had, dispensaries have been popping up in some cities far beyond the needs of legitimate patients seeking medication.

There are moves afoot to legalize marijuana entirely, or to tax dispensaries statewide, but there’s no consensus either in the public or among politicians on what to do.

Left in the lurch, California cities are seeking the right balance – enough dispensaries so that those who truly need marijuana to ease their pain have access, but not so many that they are out of control. There’s no exact science to how many dispensaries a city needs, but a dozen in Sacramento – one for every 35,000 to 40,000 residents – is in the ballpark with other cities with regulations.

Now, there are 39 dispensaries registered with the city, but there are likely others, many of them often fly-by-night operations that move from one storefront to the next. In choosing the legal dispensaries, the city could weed out the ones with the most complaints from neighbors or ones that have come to the attention of law enforcement.

Dispensaries and some patient advocates complained at the hearing Thursday that the proposal is too restrictive, but any limit would be reconsidered after a year, so could be adjusted if experience shows that necessary.

The plan calls for fees – there are none now – for applications, permits and annual renewals. The amounts have not been determined, but would be set high enough to cover the cost of regulating the dispensaries. Friday, Los Angeles officials recommended fees totaling about $1,200 for an existing dispensary. The fees are closer to $13,000 in San Francisco. Sacramento’s proposal does not include a tax like that in Oakland, where voters last year approved a first-in-the- nation levy under which the four dispensaries pay the city $18 for every $1,000 in sales.

Sacramento’s moratorium on new dispensaries and expansions expires July 13, but could be extended as long as another year. It would be better for the City Council to act before then to bring some common sense to the chaos.

A federal district court in California recently ruled that the Poway Unified School District in San Diego violated math teacher Bradley Johnson’s constitutional rights when it ordered him to remove two patriotic banners from the walls of his classroom because they “overemphasized” God.

Not only did Judge Roger T. Benitez expose the increasing discrimination against Judeo-Christian symbols and speech on the altar of a valueless “diversity” that elevates all cultures but our own, he also pummeled the pervasive contemporary myth that the Constitution forbids religious expression on public property.

For 25 years, a red, white and blue banner with “In God We Trust,” “One Nation Under God,” “God Bless America,” and “God Shed His Grace On Thee” had hung on Mr. Johnson’s classroom wall at Westview High School. A second banner, displayed for 17 years, included the words, “All Men Are Created Equal, They Are Endowed By Their Creator.” The wall also displayed numerous photographs of nature scenes and national parks, and posters of calculus solutions.

On Jan. 23, 2007, after one teacher raised a question about the banners, the school board voted to remove them. The school principal then ordered Johnson to tear them down “because they conveyed a Judeo-Christian viewpoint.” Yet teachers in other classrooms had hung a 35-to-40-foot-long string of Tibetan prayer flags; a large poster of John Lennon and the lyrics to the song “Imagine,” including “Imagine there’s no heaven. And no religion, too”; Mahatma Gandhi’s “7 Social Sins”; a poster of the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan Buddhist leader; and a poster of Muslim minister Malcolm X.

Squelching Johnson’s “patriotic and religious viewpoint while permitting speech promoting Buddhist, Hindu and anti-religious viewpoints,” the ruling stated, “clearly abridged Johnson’s constitutional free speech rights.” Federal and state constitutions, he wrote, “do not permit this one-sided censorship.”

To the argument that the banners ran afoul of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,” Benitez stated the obvious: “There is no realistic danger that an observer would think that the Poway Unified School District was endorsing a particular religion or a particular church or creed by permitting Johnson’s personal patriotic banners to remain on his classroom wall.” Especially, he added, in light of the other religious and anti-religious messages.

Benitez’s ruling was followed by a March 11 decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that went against Sacramento atheist Michael Newdow. The appeals court held that a school-led Pledge of Allegiance to “one nation under God” does not violate a citizen’s right to be free of state-mandated religion.

Both rulings, and especially Benitez’s, have brought badly needed clarity to reconciling our country’s religious heritage with the constitutional prohibition against government endorsement of a particular religion.

The Constitution, in fact, “permits government some latitude in recognizing and accommodating the central role religion plays in our society,” the U.S. Supreme Court concluded in County of Allegheny v. ACLU. “Any approach less sensitive to our heritage,” it stated, “would border on latent hostility toward religion,” as it would require government to acknowledge “only the secular, to the exclusion and so to the detriment of the religious.”

To the argument that the banners might make an Islamic student uncomfortable – the principal speculating that an Islamic student might “feel like, Wow, I’m not welcome,” Benitez responded: “Of course, student comfort is not a constitutional test.”

“More to the point,” he stated, “an imaginary Islamic student is not entitled to a heckler’s veto” on a teacher’s expression “about God’s place in the history of the United States.”

Could this man please run for president?

District administrators, he pointed out, did not ask whether a Muslim student might feel uncomfortable with the anti-religious lyrics from “Imagine” or whether a Jewish or Christian student might feel uncomfortable “sitting under a string of Tibetan prayer flags inscribed with Sanskrit and an image of Buddha.”

Ironically, he stated, in attempting to foster diversity, the school district apparently “fears that students are incapable of dealing with diverse viewpoints that include God’s place in American history and culture.” Judge Benitez then ordered the school “to permit Johnson to immediately re-display, in his assigned classroom, the two banners at issue in this case.” Johnson returned the banners to his classroom that same day.

On March 8, the school district voted to appeal. The case will now go to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

While the Poway Unified School District apparently cannot accept Judge Benitez’s clear and common-sense ruling, other school districts throughout the state should post it in every classroom so students can learn what the Constitution really means.

Tensions are rising over Chinese economic policy, and rightly so: China’s policy of keeping its currency, the renminbi, undervalued has become a significant drag on global economic recovery. Something must be done.

To give you a sense of the problem: Widespread complaints that China was manipulating its currency – selling renminbi and buying foreign currencies, so as to keep the renminbi weak and China’s exports artificially competitive – began around 2003.

Today, China is adding more than $30 billion a month to its $2.4 trillion hoard of reserves. The International Monetary Fund expects China to have a 2010 current surplus of more than $450 billion – 10 times the 2003 figure. This is the most economically distorting exchange rate policy any major nation has ever followed.

And it’s a policy that seriously damages the rest of the world.

Most of the world’s large economies are stuck in a liquidity trap – deeply depressed, but unable to generate a recovery by cutting interest rates because the relevant rates are already near zero.

China, by engineering an unwarranted trade surplus, is in effect imposing an anti-stimulus on these economies, which they can’t offset.

How should we respond? First, the U.S. Treasury Department must stop fudging and obfuscating.

Twice a year, by law, Treasury must issue a report identifying nations that “manipulate the rate of exchange between their currency and the United States dollar for purposes of preventing effective balance of payments adjustments or gaining unfair competitive advantage in international trade.” The law’s intent is clear: The report should be a factual determination, not a policy statement. In practice, however, Treasury has been both unwilling to take action on the renminbi and unwilling to do what the law requires, namely explain to Congress why it isn’t taking action.

Instead, it has spent the past six or seven years pretending not to see the obvious.

Will the next report, due April 15, continue this tradition? If Treasury does find Chinese currency manipulation, then what? Here, we have to get past a common misunderstanding: the view that the Chinese have us over a barrel, because we don’t dare provoke China into dumping its dollar assets.

What you have to ask is, What would happen if China tried to sell a large share of its U.S. assets? Would interest rates soar? Short-term U.S. interest rates wouldn’t change. They’re being kept near zero by the Fed, which won’t raise rates until the unemployment rate comes down. Long-term rates might rise slightly, but they’re mainly determined by market expectations of future short-term rates. Also, the Fed could offset any interest-rate impact of a Chinese pullback by expanding its own purchases of long-term bonds.

It’s true that if China dumped its U.S. assets, the value of the dollar would fall against other major currencies, such as the euro. That would be a good thing for the United States, since it would make our goods more competitive and reduce our trade deficit.

On the other hand, it would be a bad thing for China, which would suffer large losses on its dollar holdings. In short, right now America has China over a barrel, not the other way around.

So we have no reason to fear China. But what should we do? Some still argue that we must reason gently with China, not confront it. But we’ve been reasoning with China for years as its surplus ballooned and gotten nowhere: On Sunday, Wen Jiabao, the Chinese prime minister, declared – absurdly – that his nation’s currency is not undervalued. (The Peterson Institute for International Economics estimates the renminbi is undervalued by between 20 percent and 40 percent.) And Wen accused other nations of doing what China actually does, seeking to weaken their currencies “just for the purposes of increasing their own exports.”

But if sweet reason won’t work, what’s the alternative? In 1971, the United States dealt with a similar but much less severe problem of foreign undervaluation by imposing a temporary 10 percent surcharge on imports, which was removed a few months later after Germany, Japan and other nations raised the dollar value of their currencies. At this point, it’s hard to see China changing its policies unless faced with the threat of similar action – except that this time the surcharge would have to be much larger, say 25 percent.

I don’t propose this turn to policy hardball lightly. But Chinese currency policy is adding materially to the world’s economic problems at a time when those problems are already very severe. It’s time to take a stand.

In one proposal to build a new sports arena, Cal Expo would be given to a developer and the State Fair would move to Natomas.
RANDALL BENTON [email protected]

When Mayor Kevin Johnson speaks of Sacramento’s arena plans, he states that his No. 1 priority is to protect the city’s taxpayers. As chair of the Cal Expo Board of Directors, I can tell you: We agree.

The most important priority of the Cal Expo board is to protect the owners of Cal Expo: you, the taxpayers of California. We take very seriously our fiduciary responsibility to protect your investment, your equity and the cultural heritage created by 40 years at this site and 157 years of the California State Fair.

The recent “convergence” proposal cited as the preferred alternative of the NBA and the mayor’s task force may provide an unprecedented opportunity for all parties in the construction of a new NBA arena and in the construction of a new California State Fair. While the proposal may be referred to as a “three-legged stool,” it is clear to all parties that the strongest and most essential leg, and the engine for financing the proposal, is the 350 acres of prime commercial land located at Cal Expo’s current site.

Essentially, we are being asked to part with 350 acres of strategically located and fully developed real estate, and forgo $2 million in annual revenue generated from horse racing activities.

Now the obvious question is, “What do we get in return?”

Cal Expo is visited by more than 2 million people a year who generate an annual economic impact of more than $250 million to this region.

Forty years ago, the development of Cal Expo helped create one of Sacramento’s prime business districts and fulfill a historic mission as a State Fair that spotlights California’s history, people and innovation.

Will the convergence proposal and a new State Fair facility at Natomas honor that mission?

Will it serve the citizens of California for years to come?

The Cal Expo board understands the motivation of the City Council and the mayor’s task force to move quickly. But our allegiance and primary responsibility is to protect California taxpayers’ equity and the legacy and cultural heritage of the California State Fair.

The cost and complexity of the convergence plan, as pointed out in the March 12 Sacramento Bee article, raises valid issues. But only after a thorough analysis of all the options for the future of the State Fair, can this board have the necessary information to maintain the public trust and ensure that its actions will result in the greatest economic return to Cal Expo and the people of California.

We welcome the opportunity to hear from developers, the City Council and, most important, our constituents – the people of California. As we evaluate this proposal, and any other alternatives authorized by the board, rest assured we will be diligent in protecting the state of California.

California’s taxpayers deserve no less.

Charles Murray, chairman of the Citizens Compensation Commission, made his point loudly last November when he and the commission pared legislators’ salaries by 18 percent, and cut their living expenses and car allowances.

Legislators’ pay had been $116,208, and fell to $95,291. He announced last week that the commission is contemplating another 10 percent cut, which would bring them down to about $85,762.

Too often, legislators live down to our lowest expectations of them. Their standing among voters cannot get much worse. It sat at 16 percent in the most recent surveys by the Field Poll and the Public Policy Institute of California.

But a salary of $95,000 is reasonable for a senator who represents roughly a million Californians, and an Assembly member whose districts include almost 500,000 people.

A further 10 percent would be punitive. The commission supposedly is independent. But Murray’s timing is such that it seems clear he’s following the lead of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who appointed him.

Murray, a Los Angeles insurance agency owner, announced the proposed cut as Democrats sought to undermine a June ballot measure to create an open primary system in California. Lawmakers and Schwarzenegger agreed to place the measure on the June ballot as part of last year’s budget deal.

The announcement also followed Schwarzenegger’s veto of legislation that Democrats said would shave the deficit, but which Schwarzenegger dismissed. He called on lawmakers to “act on actual spending reductions that will address California’s fiscal emergency.”

Schwarzenegger, worth hundreds of millions, takes no salary as governor. But California has no House of Lords. We need to encourage people to serve who are smart, accomplished and savvy. We do not want to reserve what should be public service solely for rich people.

More than two months have passed since Thailand forcibly returned 4,500 Hmong refugees who had fled from Laos. For Hmong in Sacramento and elsewhere in the United States who have family there, the plight of these refugees has been excruciating, and frustrating.

The U.S. government protested the forced repatriation and some members of Congress made noises about “reviewing” U.S. military aid to Thailand, but the evictions took place nonetheless.

A U.S. Embassy official in Laos on Feb. 26 finally was allowed to visit the Laotian village where the Hmong have been housed since their expulsion from Thailand – but scripted events with Laotian officials ever-present are unlikely to produce a true picture of conditions.

“You have the State Department saying the Hmong are fine, then you have the Hmong community hearing from their families in Laos about mistreatment,” says Nancy Ly of Sacramento, a member of the Hmong Leadership Steering Committee, a collaboration of 12 groups in five states.

The State Department, she notes, wants hard evidence. But how do you get that when Laos and Thailand will not allow international groups to independently monitor or investigate conditions?

The United States has a special responsibility in helping these refugees. It was, after all, the United States that recruited the Hmong to fight in the Vietnam conflict in the 1960s. When communist-backed forces took over Laos after the United States left in 1975, this country did accept Hmong refugees. Today, nearly 250,000 Hmong live in this country. The top cities for settlement are Minneapolis-St. Paul (44,000), Fresno (25,000) and Sacramento (22,000).

At a minimum, our members of Congress and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton ought to fight persistently for the following:

• Some consequences to Thailand for the forcible return of refugees to Laos, which sets a terrible example internationally.

• Unhindered and continuous access by the U.N. High Commission for Refugees and other humanitarian organizations to monitor the treatment of the Hmong and to conduct proper screening of the Hmong for internationally recognized refugee status.

• Allowing refugees who qualify to resettle in third countries – including the United States, where the Hmong have family connections.

One sign of hope is that the U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, who is on a regional tour of Southeast Asia, stopped in Laos for two days of wide-ranging talks on U.S.-Lao relations last week. The Hmong refugee issue should be a priority in high-level diplomacy with Laos and Thailand.

Welcome back to California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

We’re so glad you could make it.

There are a few matters in your in-box for your consideration.

You started the year by unveiling a budget that called for $6.6 billion in cuts, and you rightly urged legislators to quickly deliver cuts in the current fiscal year.

“I wish we could just sit down for the next two weeks and work that out very quickly,” you said in releasing your proposed budget

That was on Jan. 8. Since then, you’ve been gone from California no fewer than 20 days. You’ve spent some of that time seeking federal aid in Washington, D.C., but certainly not all.

We know about your skiing in Sun Valley, Idaho.

We also know you made your yearly excursion last weekend to Columbus, Ohio, for the Arnold Classic, the bodybuilding, mixed martial arts and dietary supplement extravaganza.

We are not sure where you spent this past weekend, but it wasn’t in California.

Everybody needs some down time, but this is a crucial moment for California. There are bills on your desk related to transportation funding and gas taxes. There are legislative leaders who must be stroked and pressured to strike a deal.

We understand: You may be waiting for April 15 tax receipts to get specific about possible cuts to the budget. But if you are going to spend your time complaining about lawmakers being unfocused on California’s multiple troubles, the least you could do is stay in the state.

Could Prime Minister Gordon Brown become the Harry Truman of British politics? For many long months, Brown and his Labor Party were written off as sure losers in this year’s election, likely to be called for May 6.

David Cameron, the young, energetic and empathetic Conservative Party leader, was all but handed Brown’s job by the chattering classes, so consistent and formidable had been his lead in the polls.

But suddenly, Cameron doesn’t seem quite so inevitable. One recent poll showed Brown’s party within two points of Cameron’s. While other surveys show a larger Conservative lead, it is no longer an absurd idea that Brown could push his way into an unexpected new term in office. Truman won the world’s most famous upset over Tom Dewey in 1948. A Brown triumph this year would be of a comparable magnitude.

Just to complicate matters further, there is another possibility: that neither major party would win an outright majority. This would create a hung Parliament in which the Liberal Democrats, a middle-of-the-road progressive party, would hold the balance of power.

The leader of the Lib Dems, Nick Clegg, has been coy as to whom his party would back for prime minister, and for good reason: To get into the kingmaker role, his party needs to beat the Conservatives in some parliamentary contests and Labor in others. While an alliance with Labor would seem more natural, Clegg cannot afford to alienate potential allies on the near right, so he keeps his options open.

How has Brown engineered his comeback? For starters, it’s been hard for the 43-year-old Cameron to maintain his spiffy image as the next new thing, given that he has now been the Conservative Party leader since December 2005. “Imagine campaigning the way you would in the United States for four years,” said James Purnell, a retiring Labor member of Parliament who has been an internal critic of Brown.

Cameron has also had to engage in an intricate balancing act on policy, and he has lately wobbled on the high wire. Cameron has tried to emphasize that his new Conservatives are not hostile to public services, that they are now a tolerant and compassionate party. By voting for the Tories, the country could give itself new leadership without taking a big risk. “Vote for Change” is the Conservatives’ all-encompassing slogan.

Yet in light of large government deficits, his party has also said that substantial cuts in public expenditure will indeed be necessary.

Brown pounced on this, and Cameron has been trying to clean up the inconsistency between his party’s promise of a sunny future and its dour pronouncements on spending.

Purnell, who despite his dissidence is supporting Brown, said in an interview that the Conservatives are suffering from “not having worked out their policy,” partly because Cameron’s emphasis has been more on improving “communications” than on working out an alternative approach to governing.

Brown, in the meantime, has finally found a role he seems to enjoy: that of the seasoned fighter coming from behind. Voters may not be wild about him, Brown tacitly admits, but “with me, what you see is what you get.” With Cameron, his argument goes, they can’t be sure what they’ll be buying.

The prime minister – take note, Barack Obama – is also casting himself as a leader who got Britain through a very dangerous economic time. Character, he said in a speech last week, is about “the courage to take the tough decisions and stick to them without being blown off course.” He’s also carefully picking out groups who might put his party over the top. Brown’s latest targets (remember America’s “soccer mom” craze of the 1990s?) are “middle-class mainstream mums,” whom he says would be hurt by Conservative spending cuts.

One other potential Brown advantage: Because Cameron will rack up huge majorities in core Conservative districts, his party could emerge with a plurality of the popular vote and still not win a majority in Parliament.

Britain’s bookies, often better electoral prognosticators than the pollsters, are not yet convinced by the Brown comeback story and they still give decent odds to Cameron. For his part, the Conservative leader has reason to count on public exhaustion with Brown, and also with a Labor Party that has held power 13 years.

So, yes, an outright win by Brown still seems a long shot. But then Harry Truman was supposed to lose, too.

If your impression of an Afghan woman is of a shapeless, frightened form engulfed in yards of heat-trapping fabric, you haven’t met Shafiqa Quraishi.

Make that Colonel Quraishi, who earned her title as one of 900-plus female members of the Afghan National Police.

Quraishi, who today is director of gender, human and child rights within the Afghan Ministry of the Interior, was one of nine women in Washington, D.C., to receive the International Women of Courage Award from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

She and fellow Afghan award recipient Shukria Asil sat down Thursday for lunch and conversation with members of the U.S.-Afghan Women’s Council to discuss ways to help women and children struggling for rights and security.

Whatever you think you know about Afghanistan, the reality is probably far better – and far worse. And though burqas are still worn by many, they are less visible these days as women assume new roles.

The two women reiterated a dominant theme that was repeated over and over during several days of events honoring brave women around the world:

“We are not victims.”

Yes, many have been victimized by brutal regimes in some cases, or by cultural forces, or by men who have hijacked religion to justify actions that would be treated as crimes in our part of the world. But these women are not seeking restitution; they are seeking empowerment.

This is a crucial distinction that underscores the courage they display in the routine machinations we call everyday life. Female judges kiss their families goodbye in the mornings and make peace with their maker just in case they don’t return. Parents send their daughters to school despite incidents such as the acid attacks on schoolgirls in 2008.

I heard the “not victims” refrain a day earlier from another group of women – from Bahrain, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kenya, Brazil and Haiti – here to be honored by Vital Voices Global Partnership, a nongovernmental organization that works to empower female leaders and social entrepreneurs around the world.

Vital Voices, which grew out of the U.N.’s Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995, focuses on advancing women as a U.S. foreign policy goal. Translation: Empowering women will lead to greater prosperity and world peace.

One cannot sit and talk with these women and escape inspiration. On one end of the spectrum is Afnan al Zayani, a CEO from Bahrain who leads the Middle East and North Africa Businesswomen’s Network. On the other is Rebecca Lolosoli, matriarch of Kenya’s Umoja Village, an all-women’s community she created to support women, girls, orphans and widows who had been abandoned by their families or were fleeing domestic violence, forced marriage or genital mutilation.

It sort of puts that bad hair day in perspective, doesn’t it?

But, again, they refuse to be victims.

Roshaneh Zafar, who founded the first microfinance organization in Pakistan focusing on low-income women, is adamant on this point. She doesn’t want to be rescued (nor does she have any interest in apologizing for her religion).

“Like all women everywhere, we want to be empowered.”

That means jobs, money and security and government protection. But before women can become professionals of any sort, they have to be educated. From people like those who comprise the U.S.-Afghan Women’s Council and Vital Voices.

If you can spare a dime, you could save a girl. Save a girl, save the planet.