To: (insert fun and in no way dated Communist Party reference here) Comrades Phil Trounstine and Jerry Roberts
From: Dave
I read with interest your dripping-with-contempt response to my criticism of your reports on the Parsky Commission. Actually, 4/5 of the article concerned the Commission itself and not you, but I am reminded of the words of Carly Simon:
You’re so vain
You probably think this song is about you
As a regular reader of Calbuzz, I admire your sources, if not your willingness to string an entire article together based on two politicians standing next to one another smiling, as well as an over-emphasis on horse-race politics and narratives. But clearly, you have a bit of an inflated view of your clear-eyed mission of “journalism,” and the assumed objectivity that goes with it.
Allow me to be blunt: Calitics has been writing about the Parsky Commission since December of 2008, before there was such a thing as Calbuzz. We have followed up time and again, in particular when two weeks ago, Susan Kennedy tipped the hand of how this commission would go by stating that “Our revenue stream is way too progressive.” So it was not exactly some kind of amazing scoop to report on a commission that has open meetings and presents all their material in public, which is why plenty of contemporaneous reports were written, based on the documents posted on the Internet that the Parsky Commission presented in anticipation of their open meeting.
Unlike you, I don’t pretend to hide my opinions on the very clear economic and tax policy implications of the Commission’s report behind some false veil of objectivity. Most of my comments were directed at the report itself, and the way in which a flat tax would quite obviously shift the burden of taxation to the middle class and the poor; but I couldn’t help but notice clear language like…
the impending bankruptcy of state government should be sufficient to show players at every point of the political spectrum not only that sweeping change is needed, but also that everyone will have to compromise to keep California from sinking into the 9th Circle of Hell
…which certainly allows people, in my view, a window into how you determine the best policy, defined as the midpoint between whatever pleases those hateful hippies and the ranters on the right. That may be a nice and quick methodology, but it’s anything but rigorous, and I’m pretty sure it’s an apt description. After all, wasn’t one of you the communications director for Gray Davis, who was not above bold expressions of centrism and a fear of the spectre of “The Left”?
(How did pumping out that daily message for ol’ Gray turn out, by the way? What did that guy do after his two successful terms were up? Just curious.)
I mean, I’m very sorry for bringing up the inconvenient fact that so-called “objective” journalists can frame a story in such a way that they put their own thumbs on the ideological scale. You claim that your job is to “ferret out the facts” of the policymakers, you know, like hard-hitting reporting on an email to supporters and what one Republican said about another Republican in a press release, but it’s fairly clear from the above-mentioned article that you view flat taxes and eliminating corporate taxes as pretty sensible and down the middle, and it colored your coverage. I should probably just have shut up about it and gone back to my Communist Party self-criticism sessions, which by the way is a hilarious and timely joke. Here’s another one: In Soviet Russia, television watches you! You can use that!)
So this notion that I should just say thank you for illuminating a public document seems to me to be a bit too self-regarding, and your lashing out at me for pointing out the not-so-hidden biases in that particular article a bit too “the lady doth protest too much.” But of course, I have an infantile disorder.
Which brings us to this criticism about the Barbara Boxer press conference and certain bloggers clapping at the end of it, something of a hobby horse for you folks. I am not going to speak for anyone in the room but myself, but I know quite for certain that I didn’t clap, and I know what I asked. See, based on my notes (yes, I took them, just like a real live reporter) I know that I followed up a series of queries about torture (yours was some process question about how the Obama Administration “rolled out” the torture memos released a week before) with a specific question about a resolution before the state party seeking the impeachment of Jay Bybee for his role in authorizing torture, to which she answered “I’m very open to that,” reminding those assembled that she voted against Bybee’s confirmation as a federal judge. Now, at the time, I was involved in securing thousands of signatures from across the state endorsing this resolution, and when it came before the resolutions committee, I would argue that having Sen. Boxer’s agreement that calling for the impeachment of someone who helped authorize torture was a reasonable request actually helped get that resolution passed. In other words, it was a combination of what the netroots community does best – using citizen journalism and activism in tandem to effect progress on progressive issues.
Which I personally think is more of a relevant bit of work than asking a federal legislator about a state issue.
I’m just sayin’.
p.s. In the cited post, I used variations on the word “fetish” once, in a 1,400-word article. But it made for a smashing joke about therapists, so points for you!
thank you, david. right on and all that.
and without too much shielded anger and a look over your bank book to make sure that they people who hire you as a consultant arent going to be upset.
by the way, readers should go over to calbuzz and read the first comment. If young moderate democrat isn’t a sock puppet, I will eat my marionette, strings and all.
best.
I would have thought such Lions of “Journalism” (even if one was a flack for a governor) would be above this kind of petty silly lashing out, one reserved for a community college newspaper making fun of the townies or some such nonsense.
I was kinda liking Calbuzz but now, they’ve come off as thin skinned and as silly. Reminds me of when Garry South was “blogging” and would spend hours refuting every single comment that wasn’t praising his greatness 1000% with longwinded attacks.
I’d much rather have just read something at Calbuzz that teaches me something about what’s going on – not a poorly snarked piece that didn’t do a thing to change my opinion of Calitics but did change my opinion of Calbuzz.
Ah, internets.
On balance, I’ve been pleased by the arrival of Calbuzz, where they’re building a coterie of veteran journalists, who have the type of background in state politics that moves them far beyond the patient stenography and lack of any historical perspective that we get from most California “journamelism”.
At least these guys have the background, and not just in journalism, to go beyond splitting the middle. The right wing long ago learned how to play the laziness of most journalists by realizing that they could tell any lie they wanted to, and the rules of journalism didn’t bother to do anything more than frame a two-sided story with sound bites. Having reporters who actually know something and don’t hesitate to call partisan hacks on their bullshit is really refreshing.
But reading through the Calbuzz article on the Parsky commission, I had to ask how they missed asking what I considered the central question.
What happened to all the other proposals that were discussed, including this set of conclusions and recommendations from the Citizens for Tax Justice presented at the April meeting?
What happened to the most reasonable proposal for fixing the unfairness of the property tax system by gradually ending the limit on assessment increases? Why is this not on the table?
To me, that’s the central question, and the one that guys as good as Phil and Jerry might have asked. If the goal is to reduce volatility, why not even discuss the property tax?
And by the way, I recommend that folks follow the links above and read the Santa Clara assessor’s comments on the difficulty of establishing a split role for corporate properties. Turns out they are picking up reappraisals on change in corporate ownership very effectively, with some occasional exceptions, and doing reappraisals of corporate properties on an ongoing basis is a complex and expensive process that might not produce the results some project.
Meanwhile, thanks for the dialogue. If it weren’t for the mutual criticism, I wouldn’t have taken the time to go back to the original documents of this commission. There’s some great stuff there.
Mandatory disclosure: Phil Trounstine sat next to me in eighth grade English until our talking exiled me to a dunce’s seat behind the teacher.
I love me nothin more than a smart, sharply worded smack down. Nicely done.
Focusing on where Caltics, Calbuzz, and Flashreport line up on a political spectrum misses the point entirely. The point is not the type or intensity of ideology; it’s the degree to which Caltics has let its ideology override thoughtfulness and just good sense. Look at the first Calbuzz-pertinent paragraph in the first post at issue:
“Useful idiots like the folks at Calbuzz prefer not to actually take sides on an issue when just splitting the difference between left and right automatically provides the best practice every time. Their somewhat illuminating article about all of this betrays a bias toward that wise “sensible centrism” that ends up orienting toward crazed right-wing solutions every time.”
The hyperventilating doesn’t really begin though until here:
“This is “the midpoint between two points always works best” pop politics masquerading as serious thought, and what else would you expect from a duo who can spin a whole article out of a picture of two politicians smiling. Somehow, “lefty groups” arguing against the literally insane idea of a flat tax has the same moral and intellectual equivalency of business groups trying to wiggle out of a way to pay their taxes.”
Calbuzz makes a point about the political reality of what it would take to get these reforms actually passed – both in the commission and in the legislature. How does that create a moral equivalency between flat taxes and “business groups trying to wiggle out of a way to pay their taxes?” Calbuzz’s point is clearly instrumental. But no even that is too much. Clearly anything that will come out of the commission with a chance of passing in the legislature will require bipartisan support. And clearly left-leaning and right-leaning people on the commission understand its power and see an opportunity to actualize their political preferences on the tax code. So there’s some centrifugal forces going on. But Caltics apparently finds that proceeding from this fairly obvious idea is some sort of centrism gone wild.
I mean it really takes a special kind of arrogance to claim to know the exact impact of essentially every policy you discuss and what actually should be done. Seemingly every blog post you guys write about programs on the chopping block goes through the same song and dance about the program’s indispensable positive economic impact – as if it all came down to a single multiplier effect. The thing that really pisses me off, though, is I think you guys at Caltics think because you got the last word that you’re somehow vindicated. Your entire argument can be synthesized within Calbuzz’s.
1) You guys make a point about how there was other coverage of the tax commission. But that doesn’t respond to Calbuzz’s point that they were offering analysis of the commission from an insiders perspective. You were confusing what appeared to go on in the commission – the map – with what actually went on – the territory.
2) “Unlike you, we don’t pretend, to ourselves or anyone else, that we know enough about economics, tax policy or public finance to lecture our readers about such matters or tell them What Is To Be Done.” Just read your original post. You disproved conclusively flat taxes, neoliberalist economic policy, and the 2/3 budget requirement – just to name a few. That’s of course neglecting the extensive normative presuppositions underlying all of your statements. Again, a special kind of arrogance.
3) You guys act like such children. You intermix insults into your analysis with an impressive insouciance. It’s like it’s all the same to you. Reading you guys freak out about one proposal after another makes it seem that way. I think you could replace the titles of half your posts with “Aaaaah the Progressive Sky is falling.” But that would make you guys Chicken Little, and we can’t have that.
I’m just so tired of this disgustingly self-righteous scream fest in California politics – from you guys and the right (the center to for good measure). It’s interesting and enlightening to note the references you guys and Calbuzz bring up. They quote Engles and other serious thinkers. You guys quote a non-applicable song (clearly it became about them when you called them idiots). I’m all for pop-references, but it just seems that you guys at Caltics just don’t have perspective – experiential or otherwise. It’s evidenced by your hyperbole, by the shallowness of your analysis, and by the extreme confidence you place in your suggestions. I have hope for you guys, though. You are entertaining and occasionally do good work. So I suggest that you guys take a break, take a deep breath, and read some good theory (I would suggest Rawls but perhaps that would date myself; so maybe Sen’s Development as Freedom or Nussbaum’s Frontier’s of Justice) before coming back to blogging.
And to preempt certain criticisms: I am not a sock puppet; I’m just a concerned citizen who’s tired of this bullshit rhetoric being considered political discourse in my beloved home state.