For a while, a bunch of liberals in California seemed to have a hard on for Joe Mathews due to his work on California Crackup. But it’s time to end that love affair. It seems that Mathews is intent on claiming the role of Mickey Kaus as the world’s biggest concern troll. (Of course, Mickey will wait until he’s 75 to retire because that’s what he thinks is good for everyone else.)

The best I can figure is that Mathews feels that he needs to attack unions and Democrats in order to get “credibility.” You know, centrism, bipartisanism, all of that good stuff that the press loves but everyone else hates.

Last fall, he fell down the rabbit hole with the L.A. Times’s crusade to blame teachers for the problems in education with its ridiculous lynchmobish publication of teacher scores and then accused a University of Colorado study of being nothing but a piece of union propaganda (remember: in the concern troll world, unions are corrupt, but billionaires’ philanthropies poo smells like roses, and corporations are totally on the up-and-up all the time).

So, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that he penned this editorial that blames our budget woes on teachers’ unions. You see:

Which is why it’s unfair that Republicans get so much blame for protecting the two-thirds vote requirement for taxes.

This brand of tired “pox on both your houses” nonsense is how the GOP constantly escapes with its hide after every disaster they bring about. You see, it’s not the two-thirds threshold for raising taxes that matters. Heck no! It’s the teachers’ unions and their hypocritical love of Prop 98 that’s doing it.

Joe: could it be that public education is the biggest expense because it’s something that virtually everyone uses? or is that just a coincidence?

And, also, Joe: how many times has each Democrat in the California Legislature voted to suspend Prop 98 over the last several years? What’s that you say? They all have every time? And how many Republicans have voted to raise taxes? Wait, say again? The absolute minimum to do anything?

Yes. It’s ridiculous. But it’s what it takes to make your name in the “liberal media” these days.