Reading the Brown Transcripts

The transcripts of media interviews recorded by Attorney General Jerry Brown’s former spokesman Scott Gerber (and related emails) run to 93 pages. The PDF is here.

If you can only read one thing, check out the transcript of the interview of Brown by Beth Fouhy of the AP. This is the real Brown: cagey, canny, and candid. His media method, as I learned in reporting a story on Brown recently for the American Prospect, is to seize control of the interview by asking reporters as many questions as they ask him. The best adjective for this method is Socratic.

A bit of news: Brown makes plain in this AP interview, conducted in April, that he’s a candidate for governor. He hadn’t spoken that plainly at that point about his intentions (he’s still playing a “will I or won’t I?” game), though his candidacy has been widely considered a certainty.

He also talks more straightforwardly than he has in other interviews about his intentions for the state. Brown’s overarching view is, as a character famously said in the film The Candidate, “politics is bullshit.”

A Budget Reform That the People Might Like? Celibacy

Here’s the core of the fix California is in. Californians hate the way things are in their state government. But they don’t want to do anything – change taxes, change the budget process, reform the constitution – that might fix the system.

Instead, as a recent USC-LA Times poll shows, they prefer scapegoats: “special interests”, big-spending legislators, and population increases that they blame on illegal immigrants.

The problem is: when voters look at these scapegoats, they’re really looking in the mirror.
When it comes to the power of interests, it is voters who have empowered such interests by electing candidates promoted by those interests and passing ballot initiatives written by those interests.

When it comes to big-spending legislators, voters have a point. But voters themselves are big spenders, passing billions in bonds and other spending programs without identifying money to pay for their priorities. And California’s legislators all have voted for budget cuts; voters haven’t.

Joe Mathews for Lieutenant Governor

It’s sad to hear reports that, despite the huge popular groundswell behind my bid to be appointed lieutenant governor, Abel Maldonado may be the governor’s choice. Before any final decisions are made, I urge you to read my argument for myself in today’s Los Angeles Times. That story is here.

Here’s one issue I didn’t raise in the piece: It’s important that I be appointed and confirmed quickly. If the governor and the senate delay, I could lose $29,000.

Here’s why. The California Citizens Compensation Commission has mandated 18 percent cuts in the salaries of elected officials, but those cuts do not go into effect until Dec. 7.

So, if my term as lieutenant begins on or before Dec. 6, my salary will be the current higher number, $159,134. If I’m not confirmed until Dec. 7 or later, my salary will be only $130,490.

Earl Warren on Water

During a recent research trip to the state archives, I came across a speech that Gov. Earl Warren gave to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco in September 1949

It was a tough time in the state. Unemployment had reached 12 percent a few months earlier, though it was beginning to decline.. There had been a serious drought the previous year. Warren outlined major challenges for the state: terrible traffic, schools in shambles, overcrowded prisons. But what worried him most was water.

“As we look forward to the next century and to the next 10,000,000 who will certainly come here [Note: he underestimated; California’s population was just over 10 million at the time], there are certain problems that we must solve.

“The first, in my opinion, is the problem of water.

“Every person added to our population adds to our need for a water supply. It has been that way since the beginning of civilization in California.

“It will probably always be our greatest problem.”

The Terrible Law That Tripped Up Brown Aide

While reporting a magazine piece on Jerry Brown this summer,
I talked a few times to his spokesman Scott Gerber, who resigned Monday after
reports that he recorded phone calls with reporters without their knowledge. We
don’t know which reporters Gerber taped. If I’m one of them, I don’t feel at
all violated.

Here’s why: the state law that
Gerber may have violated with his secret recordings is a terrible statute. In
fact, under federal law and the law in 38 states, what he did is perfectly
legal. (Those states have one-party consent laws; if one party to a
conversation knows it’s being recorded, then the recording is legal). The irony
of the Gerber case, the first "scandal" of the Brown campaign is this: the supposed
victims of Gerber – journalists and the public they serve – are the people who
suffer most under the law.

Would Con Con Be a Revolt of the Locals?

If you strongly believe that California’s local governments
need more power and discretion, you probably should get behind the
constitutional convention.

It’s
hard to predict how an event that may never take place might work. But the
just-filed initiative to call a convention, considered in the light of history,
offers some clues.

Here’s
what jumps out: the method of delegate selection all but guarantees that the
views of cities, counties and school districts will be extraordinarily well represented.
It’s possible to imagine the locals dominating the convention.

How’s
that? The exact number of delegates that would be selected by local governments
(either through county selection committees that include county supervisors,
mayors and a school board representative, or by city councils in the state’s
three largest cities) is not yet known because it would be based on population.
The locals would get one delegate for every 175,000 residents (every county is
guaranteed at least 1 delegate). Assuming California’s population is 38 million
people next year, that’s 217+ locally appointed delegates. That’s not a
majority, but it’s a big minority.

Instant Cliff Notes on the Constitutional Convention

After two readings, here’s my cliff notes version of what’s
in the proposed initiative to call a constitutional convention.

Aren’t
there two initiatives?

Yes. There are. The first is easy to understand. It changes the constitution to permit the voters to call a convention directly – thus paving the way for the second initiative, which sets out how such a convention would be put together. There are a couple pieces of news here: Any limits placed on conventions by the initiatives calling them would be “judicially enforceable.” And the people would have to wait 10 years after the last convention before they attempt to call another.

What’s the stated reason for
fixing the constitution?

Coded Messages

Believe what you want, but I think the governor is getting a bad rap on this coded veto message thing.

Let’s stipulate that the governor of California has a bawdy Austrian’s sense of humor.

And that he does use bad words every once in a while.

Maybe more than every once in a while, OK.

Except it’s hard for me to imagine that he himself would ever do something as sophomoric as embedding a nasty phrase in a coded veto message. It’s such a hack trick, used by bored and desperate writers, to say something with the first letter of each line or paragraph of a piece.

Time to Make Initiative Signatures Public Records

California’s government code says that, in general, initiative petitions aren’t public records. That should change – if the U.S. Supreme Court doesn’t get in the way.

The court recently – and unwisely – stepped in and blocked the release of the names of those citizens who signed a Washington state referendum petition to reverse a law granting more rights to registered domestic partners there. The court’s 8-1 decision was temporary, but the court won’t fully revisit the issue until after this November’s election is over.

Gay rights groups, seeking to put public pressure on those who signed a petition to limit domestic partner rights, have sought the public release of the petitions. Gay rights opponents (who are Referendum 71’s supporters) have fought the release, saying that it would subject the signers to harassment and worse.

A few thoughts:

Defy the Judges, Governor

What happened to the action, governor?

For two straight days, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has whined about judges, especially federal judges, who are challenging the authority of state government. He’s complained about a recent U.S. district court judge who imposed a preliminary injunction blocking cuts that he and the legislature agreed to make in home support services. He railed against other federal judges that have demanded the state spend more on prisons. And he took a shot at the federal judiciary for imposing restrictions on water delivery. He even criticized previous state court rulings that limited some of the furloughs he’s ordered to save money.

“The big problem, as you know, we have is the federal judges… makes it very difficult to run the state,” he said in a press conference Wednesday. “We have a limited amount of revenues coming in and therefore we can only spend what we have. There are a lot of cuts that we made that we hate, that we don’t like.”