On occasion, Skelton’s villager columns get it dead wrong.  And on occasion, he nails one.  And then there’s the columns that have you nodding your head in agreement until you smack dab into one of his Villagisms. That’s where he’s at today.

Today, he starts off on a tear, ripping into Arnold’s arbitrary distinctions between “special interests” and “partners.” Other people know these two groups as “people who oppose Arnold” and “the business lobby”:

But Schwarzenegger’s pattern — the pattern of most politicians — is to use the tag “special interest” as a synonym for “enemy.” Schwarzenegger refers to allies as “partners.” Several special interests are Schwarzenegger partners, notably the state Chamber of Commerce and the California Business Roundtable.

His current enemies include Health Access California, a liberal advocacy group that detests the spending cap offered by the budget package’s linchpin, Proposition 1A, and the conservative Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn., which staunchly opposes 1A because it would extend temporary tax increases an additional year or two. (LA Times 3/23/09)

Health Access California is, of course, a friend of this blog. They have the temerity to fight for the “special interests” of children’s health care and equal access.  How dare they fight to improve Medi-Cal? And the audacity of reducing health insurance? Screw those jerks!  

(Although, I’m with Arnold on HJTA.)

Skelton’s argument continues with what any keen observer of California politics knows: the special interests know how to wag the dog of California. He even got one of them to go on the record with how he subverted democracy:

David Ackerman, a highway construction lobbyist, acknowledges that he relied on the two-thirds budget vote to leverage passage of some hotly debated bills. They softened diesel emission requirements for construction equipment, exempted some highway projects from environmental hoops and — over the opposition of Caltrans engineers — allowed some road projects to be designed by the builders.

“These probably wouldn’t have happened in a ‘functional’ legislature,” Ackerman concedes. (LA Times 3/23/09)

This won’t surprise anybody who saw more than 20 minutes of the last budget battle, but Republicans and conservative use the fact that we have a broken system.  I know, how very cynical, but it happens.  Gasp! But, at least Skelton said it.  It needs to be said in one form or another regularly, so that Californians understand just how messed up Sacramento really is.  So, right on Mr. Skelton.

And there I am, at the very end of the article, and all content to be like Amen. And then, Skelton had to, just had to close with David Brooks-ian nod to the mushy middle about Prop 1A.

Prop. 1A will help control spending. But it will take a lot more than that to make the Capitol once again functional.

Well, that’s the understatement of the year. Not only will 1A not make the Capitol functional, it will do just the opposite. It will permanently set the state backward, block any sort of permanent investment in our labor or physical infrastructure. Forget about health care reform, forget about improving our K12 education.  Flush it all down the toilet.

I guess, with Skelton, you take the good with the gross understatement.