Governor makes politics local
Mike Parham, an Irvine Unified School District trustee, is the man in the blue shirt sitting next to Schwarzenegger in a television commercial as the governor touts his ideas as essential to the state's financial health.

Wendy Bokota, who chairs the Irvine PTA's legislative action committee, criticized the governor in Newsweek magazine after attending a rally at the Arrowhead Pond of Anaheim to denounce the governor's plan to alter the equation for school funding.

And when Parham dined in March with Schwarzenegger as a guest at an Irvine fundraiser, Bokota stood outside in the rain with 2,000 other protesters shouting, "Shame on you!" Her sign read, "Protect Prop. 98," an initiative passed by voters in 1988 that set aside 40% of state revenues for schools.

Schwarzenegger is proposing to change those minimum-funding guarantees, one of three proposals his allies have sent to the secretary of state for placement on a ballot.

Usually, the political machinations of crafting and adopting laws play out among the professionals in Sacramento. But by unilaterally drafting his ideas as initiatives, the governor shifted the debate from the Legislature to local communities, a strategy that has caused both sides to take to the streets.

Spending Plans Fall Victim to Politics
-Democrats appear set on killing budget items that might win the governor points with the public.
By Evan Halper, Times Staff Writer

The plan to partner the state with local farms to get fresh fruit on school breakfast trays hardly seemed controversial, and it wouldn't have cost much.

But it apparently had a fatal flaw: It was championed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The Legislature swiftly rejected the $18.2-million program in budget hearings this month, leaving the nonprofit group that pushed for the project stunned.

"We didn't see this coming at all," said Ken Hecht, executive director of California Food Policy Advocates. "We were shocked."

Some Democrats even suggested that the governor's inclusion of the food program in his budget plan was a political stunt, an effort to obscure an overall strategy that leaves schools without funding for basic services.

Administration officials have said repeatedly that such programs represent creative thinking and are part of their push to find new ways to improve conditions in schools.

The fresh fruit project was one of several advocated by the governor and caught in the political crossfire between him and Democrats in recent weeks.

Democrats are so angry at Schwarzenegger over a number of his policies that they appear especially determined to block items that might win him points with the public as he tries to boost sagging approval ratings.

"The relationship between Democrats and the governor is at an all-time low," said Democratic strategist Darry Sragow. "You have to view these budget issues in the context of everything else going on in Sacramento, including what appears to be an impending special election. Anybody who is trying to get their program funded is going to have to deal with those cross-currents."

The Democrats have targeted a few big items, like the governor's plans to spend $100 million reducing class size in low-performing schools and to boost the pay of teachers in those schools. Major school groups had criticized them as window dressing to divert attention from much larger education needs they say are unmet in Schwarzenegger's budget, and Democrats were quick to agree.

But grass-roots groups were taken aback to see the Democrats dismiss so many of the smaller initiatives the governor sprinkled into the proposed budget he released May 13, such as the plan to bring fruit to schools.

Among other programs that have fallen by the wayside as the political tussle intensifies are a measure to help seniors get affordable prescription drugs, a nurse training initiative at community colleges and an expansion of vocational education classes for seventh- and eighth-graders.

It's All Newsweek's Fault
IN the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Fareed Zakaria wrote a 6,791-word cover story for Newsweek titled "Why Do They Hate Us?" Think how much effort he could have saved if he'd waited a few years. As we learned last week, the question of why they hate us can now be answered in just one word: Newsweek.
"Our United States military personnel go out of their way to make sure that the Holy Koran is treated with care," said the White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, as he eagerly made the magazine the scapegoat for lethal anti-American riots in Afghanistan. Indeed, Mr. McClellan was so fixated on destroying Newsweek - and on mouthing his own phony P.C. pieties about the Koran - that by omission he whitewashed the rioters themselves, Islamic extremists who routinely misuse that holy book as a pretext for murder.

. . . . Just since the election, we've witnessed the unmasking of Armstrong Williams and Jeff Gannon. We've learned - thanks to Newsweek's parent publication, The Washington Post - that the Pentagon went so far as to deliberately hide the circumstances of Pat Tillman's friendly-fire death from his own family for weeks, lest the truth mar the P.R. advantages to be reaped from his memorial service. Even as Scott McClellan instructs Newsweek on just what stories it should write to atone for its sins, a professional propagandist sits as chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting: Kenneth Tomlinson, who also runs the board supervising Voice of America and other government-run media outlets. He's been hard at work meddling in the journalism on NPR and PBS.

This steady drip of subterfuge and news manipulation increasingly tells a more compelling story than the old news that Newsweek so egregiously botched.

Salazar and the Compromise
There seems to be a lot of progressive grousing this morning about Colorado Senator Ken Salazar giving in on the nominations of Priscilla Owens and Janice Brown in return for Republicans dropping their attempt to ban a filibuster.

In one sense, the progressives have a point. The point behind the filibuster is to prevent judges you don't want. If you give in on the most heinous of appointments, you might as well give up the filibuster.

However, the point behind the compromise was to live to fight another day. What Salazar did was, effectively, preserve Harry Reid's (D-Nevada) veto over any potential Supreme Court nominee, assuring that the nominee will be a moderate. Because the filibuster was preserved, some Democrats, indeed, some pro-choice Democrats, will be needed to confirm the new Justice.

Lessons for Iraq From Gettysburg
By David Ignatius
....The Civil War, like the invasion of Iraq, was a war of transformation in which the victors hoped to reshape the political culture of the vanquished. But as McPherson tells the story, reconstruction posed severe and unexpected tests: The occupying Union army was harassed by an insurgency that fused die-hard remnants of the old plantation power structure with irregular guerrillas. The Union was as unprepared for this struggle as the Coalition Provisional Authority was in Baghdad in 2003. The army of occupation was too small, and its local allies were often corrupt and disorganized.

Alot. This arose because of the library fines. You see, I would take out a book and really enjoy it. Hand it to a friend and say, "This was great, give it a read, and we can talk about it." So they'd read it and then we would haggle over what it meant and then the finer points and then . . . . I would pay the fine for turning the book in weeks late. Then there was the time I took a bunch of books out to read on vacation. I stayed longer than I thought I would, and had to pay the maximum fine of $10 per book. I had over a dozen books out . . . oops.

Really, its just cheaper to buy them in the first place.

Bought new: American Gods by Neil Gaimon. Which I have read and really enjoyed. There was that bag full of stuff I bought at Paperbacks Unlimited. I think a bunch of murder mysteries, including Michael Connelly's latest "The Narrows". It's the sequel to his book, "The Poet". The bad guy in "The Poet" is Robert Backus. Which is funny, because my father was Robert Backus - he was the epitomy of the ultimate good guy, so I think he might have found humor in having a bad guy named after him.

This is a difficult question since I read several books concurrently. Good Omens, by Neil Gaimon & Terry Pratchett, though is the last one I finished. But somewhere in the middle I read Final Account, by Peter Robinson, and Hard News, by Seth Mnookin.

Now, Chuck thought this was an easy question. I think its really hard, because (being Liberal, I am tolerant and inclusive), I want to list ALL the books I love. We could be here for weeks. OK, so I would be here and you would be asleep.

5. Sketches New and Old, by Mark Twain. My copy was published in 1922 and came from my grandfather's library. Be sure to read the story, "Political Economy", since it explains alot about life in general and is screamingly funny.

“First Victim in Judicial Fight: Congress's Image

. . . . “But she shares the view that, at the moment, the general public does not like what it sees from either side.

"Voters have been fed a steady diet of Terri Schiavo, judicial wrangling and basic bickering," Ms. Walter said. "It is a pox on both of them."

Backing her view, a poll conducted May 11-15 for the Pew center found that 64 percent of those surveyed believed that Congress was bickering more than usual, a level approaching public sentiment found in similar surveys during the budget battle that led to the government shutdown. Federal services were cut off for a total of about four weeks when a Republican-controlled Congress forced a stalemate with President Bill Clinton. And a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released this week found that 51 percent of those surveyed disapproved of Congress's performance, the highest level since 1994, when voters swept Democrats out of power.

. . . . Another factor in the public perception, according to some current and former lawmakers, is that Americans have little personal stake in a rules fight and can reach the conclusion that Congress is not looking out for them on pocketbook issues but is instead caught up in self-serving power struggles.”