A DEALBREAKER ANSWER AND A BROWN ACT VIOLATION: NOT YOUR TYPICAL CANDIDATE FORUM.

Summary: last night’s Cathedral City candidates’ forum provided two interesting spectacles.  First, candidate Theresa Hooks, the designated heiress of outgoing lame-duck Mayor Kathleen Joan DeRosa, managed to disqualify herself by one simple response to a question posed to her.  Second, the media moderator and media panelists, who clearly had not done their due diligence, managed to lead every single candidate into a violation of the Ralph M. Brown Act, California’s 65-year-old open meeting law.  While many low information residents and voters may not have noticed, a number of us who were in the audience were clearly aware of what happened.

Candidate fora tend to be much of a muchness, often stupefyingly boring repetitions of platitudes, pablum, and canned talking points.  Few, if any, truly undecided voters actually have their minds made up by what they see or hear at a candidate forum.  To that extent, candidate fora are largely exercises in marketing the message to the base and providing useful soundbites that can be quoted in the local media.  It’s rare under such circumstances that a candidate disqualifies herself by giving an answer that turns out to be a complete dealbreaker, but sometimes it happens.  It happened last night with Theresa Hooks. 

As rare as it is for a candidate to disqualify herself with one single response, it’s also rare for a moderator and the media panel to manage to lead the candidates into a fairly serious violation of California’s open meeting law, but both such events occurred at last night’s Cathedral City candidates’ forum.

Candidate Theresa Hooks managed to disqualify herself by her dealbreaker response to a question to all the candidates whether a candidate’s or councilmember’s private financial affairs were a legitimate subject of public scrutiny and comment.  Candidates Fausto Ascencio, Mark Carnevale, Sergio Espericueta, Shelley Kaplan, and Gordon McGinnis all said “no.”  Hooks said “yes.”

 Hooks’s response was exactly the sort of response one should expect from a mentor and essential political clone of outgoing lame-duck Mayor Kathleen Joan DeRosa.  DeRosa has a reputation for prying into the private financial affairs of her political rivals and then spoon feeding that information to credulous reporters at the Desert Sun with a generous dose of spin intended to harm whichever political rival has been targeted.

In the spring of 2013, DeRosa spoonfed sometime Desert Sun reporter Tamara Sone a whole series of private financial tidbits about councilmember Greg Pettis.  With DeRosa’s assistance, Sone (who had some significant financial skeletons in her own closet, skeletons which later led to the reporter’s swift and unceremonious departure from the employ of the Desert Sun.) produced a breathless hatchet piece essentially accusing the long-serving councilmember of all manner of financial improprieties.   

Yet, no evidence has ever emerged to corroborate many of the more outlandish inferences and assumptions contained in that article.  Moreover, by failing to follow the traditional two-source rule, and by failing to vet some of the more obvious lies told to her by DeRosa and by former Councilman Charles “Bud” England, Sone managed to produce an article that was tainted by, to use the Supreme Court’s language from its New York Times v. Sullivan opinion, “actual malice” and “reckless disregard for the truth.”

By suggesting that a candidate’s or councilmember’s private financials are a legitimate subject of public scrutiny, Hooks also implies that a candidate’s or councilmember’s financials should also be available to such a person’s political rivals.  Clearly, Hooks is playing from Kathleen DeRosa’s playbook, looking for an opportunity to try to dig up some dirt on potential council rivals and use it against them.

As noted before, Hooks’s position is disqualifying.  It is disqualifying because it is exactly the position taken by one of the most unethical and divisive mayors in Cathedral City’s history, Kathleen Joan DeRosa.  DeRosa has a long history of trying to dig in to the private lives of those who she considers enemies, and to spoon feed whatever unflattering information she can find to overly credulous and inexperienced reporters for our local Gannett newspaper, which has always been unseemly eager to carry her water. 

We cannot afford to have a councilmember following in Kathleen Joan DeRosa’s unethical footsteps.  

We cannot afford to have a councilmember who believes that it’s okay to use private information to try to blackmail her political rivals or embarrass them with a view to diminishing their effectiveness in local or regional public service. 

We cannot afford to have a councilmember who will predictably hold others to much higher standards than she holds herself.

Moreover, Hooks’s willingness to play a rather cynical gender card, proclaiming that inasmuch as she is the only woman in the race, voters should select her XX chromosome rather than selecting a more qualified holder of XY chromosomes, is clearly designed to appeal to two kinds of voters.  First, it is intended to seal the deal with the right wing Christian base which she has inherited from DeRosa.  Second, it is clearly intended to play to the white liberal guilt of otherwise progressive voters who may not be well informed about Theresa Hooks’s unfortunate record of bigotry and homophobia. 

Indeed, Ms. Hooks’s position with respect to Cathedral City’s substantial queer community is rather clear.  She does not much care for us, and would doubtless prefer to see us vanish.  Indeed, in a breathless letter to the editor of the Desert Sun dated September 23, 2006, Hooks came eagerly to the defense of Focus on the Family, an anti-gay hate group, quoting the Genesis “male and female” creation narrative to justify discrimination against LGBT people.

Someone who is willing to be guided by Kathleen DeRosa’s political playbook to the extent of being willing to use financial information to harm her political rivals, and who is as obviously unfriendly to queerfolk as Theresa Hooks, is simply not the right choice for our city Council.

But if Theresa Hooks is the wrong choice for our Council and showed it last night, we may also fault the moderator and media panel at last night’s debate for creating a serious and obvious Brown Act violation.
California’s open meeting law, the Ralph M. Brown Act of 1949, forbids members of an elected body from reaching prior or advance consensus as to action outside of the context of duly noticed public meetings.  A quorum or majority of a council or of a governing board may not get together, either directly, through intermediaries, or through communications such as telephone calls or emails, to arrive at what amounts to a pre-consensus before a formal public meeting is held and a decision is taken in the open where the public can see it and hold its representatives accountable.  The Brown Act also applies to candidates.  Liability under the Act attaches to both declared and qualified candidates.

Thus, last night, when one of the panel asked the candidates how each candidate intended to proceed when filling the Council seat Stan Henry will vacate when he becomes mayor, and each candidate expressed his or her intention, a potential quorum of the new council effectively had a meeting to decide a course of action well outside of what the Brown Act defines as permissible.  Each candidate, by participating, violated the Act, and the media panelists and moderator Brooke Beare (from the local CBS affiliate,) made themselves accessories the violation.  Now, it may be the candidates were legitimately unaware of the provisions of the Act, not having been educated as to its provisions and requirements. 

I do not know whether, on the unbelievably lackluster watch of the current mayor, Cathedral City has abandoned its former practice of providing some basic orientation to Council candidates about the responsibilities under California’s political ethics laws, but I do remember that during my own victorious council campaign in 2002, I received just such an orientation.  Had I been a candidate at a forum at which such a question was asked, I would have respectfully declined to answer on the grounds that the Brown Act was being violated.

Of course, when I brought the issue up to the panelists and the moderator after the forum, I was pooh-poohed.  Nobody likes to have their egregious errors pointed out to them, even by somebody who does so politely.  Perhaps my next step may well be to bring this matter to the attention of the District Attorney.  After all, the Brown Act has been with us since 1949, and after 65 years, there is simply no good reason why debate moderators or panelists should not be aware of the rather stringent requirements of the Act and conform their conduct to it. 

The rule of law suffers when it is ignored, as it has been too often in Cathedral City of late.  I don’t think Theresa Hooks has the first idea of what the rule of law is, or she would not be so eager to go digging into the private lives of her political rivals, trying to find the same kind of dirt on them that her political mentor, Kathleen Joan DeRosa, has been trying to find on the numerous people in Cathedral City she considers enemies.

I know whom I will support in this election, I also know whom I will not, and Theresa Hooks is at the top of my “do not support” list.

AN OPEN LETTER TO DESERT SUN PUBLISHER MARK WINKLER AFTER BEING BLACKLISTED

SUMMARY: what follows is the text of an open letter from me to Mark Winkler, publisher of the Desert Sun.  In it, I address the unwillingness or inability of his newspaper to bear the slightest accent of criticism or reproof.  I also address the extent to which the corporate culture of the desert sun appears to be driven by personal antipathies.  Moreover, at a time when the mainstream media are embracing an ethic of transparency and responsiveness to differences of opinion, the desert sun has been marching steadfastly in the opposite direction, embracing a Fox News ethic of “cutting off the microphone,” so to speak of any critic or dissenter.  When I had the effrontery to express views differing from those of the Desert Sun’s staff, I was blacklisted from either commenting on articles the Desert Sun or participating in the Desert Sun’s “You’ve Got Issues” Facebook group.  I’ve written to the publisher of the Desert Sun because the buck has to stop somewhere; I’ll post in this blog any response I might actually get from a newspaper that has never felt the need for either an ombudsman or a public editor.


Mark Winkler
THE Desert Sun
750 North Gene Autry Trail
Palm Springs, CA 92262

RE: AN OPEN LETTER CONCERNING THE DESERT SUN’S UNWILLINGNESS TO TOLERATE DIFFERING VIEWS AND OPINIONS; BLACKLISTING OF DISSENTERS


Daar Mr. Winkler:

At a time when increasing numbers of mainstream media outlets are adopting a culture of responsive transparency to reader concerns and expressions of differing views and opinions, The Desert Sun appears to be marching steadfastly in the opposite direction.  Apparently, your so-called community conversations staff have preferred to take instruction from Fox News, and to suppress expressions of opinion, particularly from the undersigned, that they appear to find uncongenial.

More disturbing even than The Desert Sun’s apparent inability to bear the slightest accent of disagreement or reproof is the almost aggressively defensive posture of the newspaper when it is caught out in grave and serious error.

Your newspaper’s inability to bear the accent of criticism or reproof has been expressed in an apparent decision from one or more members of your staff to disable the undersigned’s ability to comment on any of your articles, and in the undersigned’s exclusion and blocking from the so-called “You’ve Got Issues” Facebook group which The Desert Sun apparently regards as being an adequate substitute for having either an ombudsman or a public editor.  In short, the undersigned has been effectively blacklisted.  Because your newspaper has neither a public editor nor an ombudsman, the undersigned addresses his correspondence directly to you, the accountable manager with whom the buck must stop. 

A couple of examples of The Desert Sun’s unwillingness to tolerate the expression of differing or alternative views will suffice.

THE UNDERSIGNED’S EXPRESSION OF CONCERN RESPECTING HIGH SCHOOL FOORBALL COVERAGE

Recently, the undersigned, commenting in The Desert Sun’s much vaunted “You’ve Got Issues” Facebook group, expressed concerns about the tone and amount of Desert Sun coverage of local high school football.  Given the tone and tenor of the national conversation about high school football and the social paradigms it enables, to say nothing of the serious medical consequences it can, and frequently does, and gender, my expression of concern was well within the national mainstream of discussion. 

But James Folmer, your “Community Conversations Editor,” was having none of it.  With all of the zealous vigor of orthodoxy stamping out heresy, Mr. Folmer responded to the undersigned that high school football was a “big deal” in the Coachella Valley, and that notwithstanding any expressions of concern from the undersigned or others, The Desert Sun would continue to treat high school football as a “big deal.”   

The tone of Mr. Folmer’s comments was such as to indicate to the undersigned that he was absolutely unwilling and unprepared to acknowledge even the slightest degree of merit to the undersigned’s concerns.  (Though Mr. Folmer appears not merely indifferent, but hostile, to the undersigned’s concerns, it is worth noting that the cover story of the September 29, 2014 number of Time magazine deals with the football-related death of 16-year-old Chad Stover, of Tipton, Missouri, and showcased the very real and rising concern among parents, physicians, and political leaders about the medical risks associated with the “big deal” that The Desert Sun apparently considers high school football to be.) 

The undersigned also expressed concern that The Desert Sun’s apparently uncritical and even breathless coverage of high school football tended to shortchange the achievements of high school students whose talents are not expressed on the gridiron, and that such coverage also tends to reinforce often dysfunctional social paradigms in our secondary education system.  The undersigned also noted that in secondary school social paradigms such as those Mr. Folmer apparently considers normative and optimal, varsity football players and cheerleaders often enjoy a kind of tacit permission to engage in transgressive behaviors which would call down a world of hurt and punishment on students outside the relatively small, select circle of the varsity football program.  Again, Mr. Folmer was having none of it.

THE “GENERAL ASSEMBLY” MISNOMERS

The other major issue with respect to which your staff and of the undersigned have found themselves in disagreement is the fairly serious blunder The Desert Sun made recently when your interactive media staffer, Rob Hopwood, constructed an interactive feature designed to show which candidates were seeking office in any given election.  Mr. Hopwood, who had worked for Gannett in North Carolina before relocating to California six years ago, referred to our California Legislature as the General Assembly (as it is in North Carolina).  The undersigned called Hopwood’s attention to the error.  When Hopwood acknowledged that he had been resident in California for six years prior to constructing the interactive display, the undersigned expressed some degree of surprise that so much time would pass without Hopwood acquainting himself with California’s public institutions of self-government.  Though Hopwood corrected the error, he felt it necessary to cast himself as some kind of victim, and quickly personalized the issue.

This is not the first time that The Desert Sun has erroneously referred to our state Legislature as the General Assembly.  Shortly after coming to The Desert Sun, James Folmer made the same error in his self introduction column, asking “how did the General Assembly do?”  Though the error is plain for all to see in the cloud and in print in back numbers of The Desert Sun, Mr. Folmer indignantly denied to the undersigned that he had ever done such a thing.

When the undersigned suggested that referring to California’s Legislature by the name of a foreign jurisdiction’s parliamentary body sent a non-recommending message about the extent to which this newspaper and its staff are engaged with and invested in this community, that was apparently the last straw.  It now appears of the undersigned that a decision appears to been taken, perhaps in consultation with a number of Desert Sun staffers, to blacklist the undersigned and to exclude any of the undersigned’s expressions of opinion from any so-called community conversation of which The Desert Sun is a part

To the extent of The Desert Sun wishes to treat the undersigned is a nonperson, it is free, like Fox News or Pravda, to do so.  However, the undersigned will continue to offer alternative points of view through the vehicle of the undersigned’s independent blog.  Among those alternative points of view, the undersigned will not be at all hesitant to raise the issue of the extent to which The Desert Sun seems to be abandoning an emerging journalistic ethic of inclusive, responsive, responsible transparency.  

If, as the undersigned sadly suspects to be the case, decision-making at The Desert Sun is being driven by personal antipathies and an unwillingness to entertain viewpoints that differ from your own, then you will have only ourselves to blame when others in the community begin to call you out for the one-sided perspective that inevitably attaches itself to a newspaper that believes itself to be the only game in town. 

The undersigned trusts you will have the courtesy to look into the matters the undersigned has raised, and to tender to the undersigned a thoughtful, non-dismissive, merits-based response, addressing the issue of whether blackisting differing opinions comports with basic canons of journalistic ethics.  The undersigned does not seek a personal confrontation with you; however, as the undersigned has observed hereinabove, you are the publisher, the head shot-caller; the buck does stop with you, and you, as publisher, are ultimately responsible and accountable for the corporate culture of your newspaper. 


LAW OFFICES OF PAUL S. MARCHAND

/s/
By: Paul S. Marchand

PSM:

A WIN FOR EDMUND BURKE: THOUGHTS ON THE FAILURE OF SIX CALIFORNIAS AND THE SCOTLAND SECESSION REFERENDUM

Summary: the failure of the Scots secession referendum and of Tim Draper’s so-called Six Californias initiative should not surprise us.  What should disturb us is the extent to which California Democrats simultaneously opposed “Six Californias” but cheerled for Scots secession, often for intellectually shoddy reasons.  Instead of pouring scorn on the Unionist majority in Scotland’s secession referendum, California Democrats should thoughtfully knowledge that both Unionist voters in Scotland and California Democrats who rejected Six Californias were drawing from a common wellspring of the principled conservatism first articulated by the great Irish statesman and political philosopher Edmund Burke, who postulated that institutions which are working well should not be lightly or frivolously abolished or materially altered.  While SNP leader Alex Salmond and bloviating billionaire Tim Draper may be the big losers, Edmund Burke seems to have been the real winner.

In the last several days, two efforts to break up long-established, substantial bodies politic have been tried and found wanting.  In California, Tim Draper’s Six Californias initiative failed to qualify for the November, 2016 ballot.  It looks as if the conservative Silicon Valley billionaire’s effort to blow up the state of California and replace it with six smaller, squabbling jurisdictions has failed for the foreseeable future.  In Scotland, in a referendum that commanded a larger voter turnout than any in Scottish history, 55 percent of the Scots electorate rejected the Scottish National Party’s bid to have Scotland secede from the United Kingdom.

Here in California, opposition to “Six Californias” was almost a litmus test issue among California Democrats.  We correctly saw the effort as being largely Tim Draper’s ego trip, and we set our collective faces against what Draper had tried to market as a “reboot” of California.

But as much as California Democrats rejected partition for themselves, many were prepared to eagerly embrace the sundering of a British Union that had functioned more or less successfully since 1707.  Some California Democrats offered thoughtful, principled arguments for Scots secession.  Others poured forth word salads that leaned heavily on such undefinable left-wing jargon as “neoliberal neocolonialism” or its apparent fellow traveler “neoliberal neoimperialism,” couching their arguments in nothing more than some kind of reflexive, ostensibly progressive desire to pound a stake into the last home island remnant of the once vast British Empire.  Finally, a disturbing number, perhaps even a plurality, of California Democrats couldn’t resist the temptation to see Scots secession as an ethnic revolt -a national liberation struggle, even- against the Sassenach English, as some kind of real life, 21st-century remake of Braveheart, with that sedevacantist idiot Mel Gibson daubing his face with woad and bellowing “they’ll never take our freedom!”

The disappointed reaction of Scots secession-supporting California Democrats has been predictable.  The usual expressions of disappointment have traveled hand-in-hand with the almost standard “stupid voters” reaction so often felt by those on the losing side of a hard-fought election.  Indeed, some California Democrats even found themselves Moscow’s fellow travelers, uttering rather Republican-sounding, conspiracist claims that the election had been tainted by voter fraud.  Only one foreign government, that of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, has made such a claim, presumably to delegitimize the Scots secession referendum result in the service of Moscow’s evident desire to poke a huge hole in the northern flank of NATO. 

Yet, in the end, Moscow’s claims of Scots voter fraud are risible.  Britain has a long and honorable history of conducting squeaky clean, aboveboard elections at every level, while Russia has a long and dishonorable history of conducting elections so obviously marred by fraud and vote rigging, and so obviously fraudulent on their face, as to be unworthy of the slightest credence.

Pot, meet kettle.  

California Democrats should run, not walk, away from any bullshit Muscovite claim that the Scots secession referendum was vote-rigged, presumably by the Sassenach English.

Yet, as long as disappointed California Democrats have seen fit to open up vials of wrath on the Scottish electorate because Scotland didn’t vote the way certain ostensible progressives in California would have had them vote, California Democrats fail to recognize a reality that links them far more powerfully to Scotland’s “No” voters than many California Democrats might feel comfortable with.  For, when all the sound and the fury are over, both the California and Scottish electorates have behaved in remarkably similar ways.

In most Anglo-American bodies politic, influenced in many ways by the thinking of the great Irish statesman and political philosopher Edmund Burke, there is a strong streak of what can best be described as Burkean conservatism.  Even those of us who identify as progressive often find ourselves confronting an existential Burkean paradox.  We embrace progress, but not ungoverned, undisciplined, unthoughtful progress.  We tend to look at existing institutions and prefer to conserve them as long as they are functioning reasonably effectively.  While we stand for change, we tend to be skeptical of headlong alterations of tried and tested civic institutions.  Maintaining a workable civil society is as important to progressives as it is to those who call themselves conservative, if not more so.  Just saying “no” to all change has never been a workable option for progressives.

And this has been what distinguishes Anglo-American progressivism from typical American conservatism.  Though Edmund Burke himself acknowledged the ineluctably and importance of change, an awful lot of American conservatives find themselves embracing the Falangist conservatism of men like the late William F. Buckley, Jr., who once famously declared that "a conservative is a fellow who is standing athwart history yelling 'Stop!'".

It might be easy for certain California Democrats to belabor the Scots electorate with being reactionary, stick in the mud Buckleyan conservatives.  Yet as tempting as such a characterization might be, it only serves to demonstrate a kind of willful myopia about the profoundly Burkean reality of the process by which 55 percent the Scots electorate reached its decision to remain within the United Kingdom.

There has been substantial coverage in British and international media and in the Scots and non-Scots blogosphere about the careful, thoughtful nature of the secession debate within the northern kindgom on both sides of the issue.  Now the Scots have a reputation for being thoughtful, canny people, and for being heirs of world-famous Scottish Enlightenment, so it’s perhaps not surprising that the run-up to the referendum should have provided Scotland with an opportunity to think things out, and discuss the question of the utility of the Union in a considerate way we Americans can only envy.  While the referendum was certainly accompanied by soundbites, snappishness, and all the angst and agita that accompany a hugely consequential election, it does seem to have been accompanied by a thoroughly civilized, thoroughly adult, very Scottish thought process.

Indeed, the Scots' discussion of the Scots secession referendum would have done Edmund Burke himself proud.  Burke had an abiding faith in the power of rational debate to form sensible and cogent policy.  At the same time, Burke also reprehended the kind of undisciplined, revolutionary enthusiasms he saw taking place in France.  Burke may well have been right on that score; the history of France and her five Republics has been a history of an ongoing effort by the French people to develop and perfect strong, rational institutions for civil society.  Yet, in more Burkean conservative societies in the Anglo-American world, we have been largely free of the hiccups and convulsions that have so marked the history of France since 1789.

The voters of Scotland were not looking to repeat 1789 in the streets and squares of Edinburgh, along the Royal Mile or in Holyroodhouse.  What is relatively safe to infer is that Scots voters, whether supporters or opponents of secession, wanted to send a very clear message to Westminster that, whether in or out of Union, Scotland was no longer prepared to tolerate being treated as the negligible quantity Margaret Thatcher and the Tories had so long regarded Scotland and northern England as being.

To the extent that California Democrats rejected Six Californias and the Scots electorate rejected secession, both tapped deep into the ineffably Burkean wellsprings of much of our own political thinking.  Much of Burke’s philosophy can indeed be summed up in the homely aphorism “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” and in Bill Clinton’s equally homely aphorism “mend it, don’t end it.”  For progressives, the real fight has often been defining how dysfunctional an institution must be before it can be considered broken. 

Our fight has also been determine the degree to which we can mend before we must end.  In both California and Scotland, both of which tend to break progressive in their political thinking, voters made a thoughtful determination that neither California nor the United Kingdom were so broken as to need radical alteration.  Both bodies politic were felt to need nothing more than some routine mending to keep them functional well into the foreseeable future.

Advocates of radical change should consider carefully the extent to which Burkean thought is in many ways the default setting for an awful lot of political thinking worldwide.  Instead of seeking to blow everything up, our natural tendency is to embrace the philosophy enunciated by the late Adm. of the Fleet of the Soviet Union Sergey Georgiyevich Gorshkov, who used to express his disdain for overengineered weapons systems by declaring “good enough is best.”  For all of our dysfunctions and complaints, we and the Scots seem to have accepted Adm. Gorshkov’s pragmatic view that “good enough [really] is best.”

Moreover, in taking a “good enough is best” view, the canny Scots have arguably performed a uniquely clever bit of political jujitsu on the posh toffs down in the sweltering, Sassenach subtropics of London.  Given that David Cameron’s Tory Government has apparently been frightened into promising to devolve even more extensive powers to the Scots Government at Holyroodhouse, Scotland now enjoys a unique faculty of taking credit for that which goes well in the northern kingdom, while shunting all blame for that which does not work well onto the sleazy, Sassenach politicians at Westminster.

At all events, the failure of Scots secession and Six Californias may yet have the prophylactic effect of forcing many of us who identify as progressives to confront our own internalized Burkean conservatism.  For, when the sound and the fury are over, we can safely say that Scottish National Party leader Alex Salmond and bloviating billionaire Tim Draper were the losers, but that Edmund Burke was very much the winner.

WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH THE DESERT SUN?

Summary: The Desert Sun’s inability to do basic due diligence, let alone its inability to delink its editorial positions from its news reporting, and the almost pathological defensiveness of its editorial staffers and reporters leaves a lot of us wondering what is wrong with our local newspaper.  Apparently, the Desert Sun is having difficulty accepting the ineluctable shift in the Valley’s political demographic from reliable Republican redoubt to purple oasis, while at the same time continuing to provide a reliable platform for psycho-guano conspiracists, climate change denialists, and Obama Derangement Syndrome sufferers.  Something is very wrong with the Desert Sun that can only be cured by a comprehensive, prophylactic change its personnel.

Our local Gannett newspaper, The Desert Sun, seems to have both a credibility problem and a defensiveness problem.  Its staff seem to have difficulty getting their facts straight and often get remarkably defensive when faced with even the slightest accident of reproof.


In the online edition of today’s newspaper, there appeared an interactive graphic detailing the political races that would be on the ballot in the November election.  To access the races for the California Legislature, one had to click on a button labeled “General Assembly.”


While a large number of states call their parliamentary bodies General Assemblies, California does not.  California has a Legislature, and has had one since 1850.  It’s not a hard thing to find out; a simple Google search should presumptively enable anyone wanting to know about California’s political institutions to ascertain what our parliamentary body is called.


On TDS’s Facebook group entitled “You’ve Got Issues,” I pointed out the error, and suggested, as I have in the past, that such an error is harmful to the newspaper’s credibility, and supports a growing public sense that TDS is increasingly out of touch with its readership.


Oh, that certainly didn’t sit well with the folks up on Gene Autry Trail. 

The Desert Sun’s Rob Hopwood posted Saturday afternoon a reply to my admittedly somewhat reproving comment.  Metaphorically slapping his fist down on the table, he insisted that it had been just a mistake on his part because he had once covered politics in North Carolina (which has a General Assembly) for Gannett and that he had simply slipped into a habit pattern.  What I found troubling about Mr. Hopwood’s comment was his acknowledgment that he had lived here in California since 2007.(!)
Seven years ought to more than enough time for even a Gannett employee to have done some basic learning about the state in which he resides.  Given that Desert Sun editorial-page editor James Folmer had been caught out in a similar gaffe several years back, when he, too, had referred to our Legislature as the General Assembly, one might think that Desert Sun staff, even the large number of them who are recent transplants to California from elsewhere, would remember to do some due diligence rather than appear to be fundamentally lacking in knowledge about the politics of their own state of residency.

Unfortunately, not only did Mr. Hopwood resent being called on his error, but he also continued to insist that I was somehow wrong for having called him on it, and that I allegedly knew nothing about him that would give me any rights to criticize him for making the error he did.

Now let us recall that this was an egregious error that was immediately obvious to any digital user of TDS’s website; it displayed to such users a strong indication that TDS had not done due diligence.  It also reinforced the growing public perception that our local Gannett newspaper is increasingly out of touch with an increasingly Democratic-leaning and increasingly well-informed readership that often turns to larger metropolitan newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times, or even to the Gray Lady herself, the New York Times, for its information.



I certainly default to the Los Angeles Times for any serious coverage of the political and other issues of the Golden State.  Mistakes like the one this Gannett newspaper made this morning are large part of why I get my information from the Los Angeles Times, the Sacramento Bee, and other larger newspapers throughout California.  If I want to know what’s happening elsewhere, I will default to the Gray Lady or to the Washington Post, or even to foreign sources such as Asahi Shimbun or the South China Morning Post.  But never to The Desert Sun.  I just don’t see these other news sources making the kind of fairly gross, entry-level errors that cause me to doubt their basic credibility and trustworthiness for covering the news.

Unfortunately, unless something truly spectacular happens in our local Desert that causes reporters in New York City or Los Angeles or elsewhere to take notice, I must perforce rely for local news on our Gannett outlet.

And what disturbs me about relying on the Desert Sun for news is how untrustworthy I know the newspaper really is.  Its staff don’t seem to be of the take any form of criticism very well.  Recently, I suggested, again in the “You’ve got issues” Facebook group that the Desert Sun would do well to stop overhyping high school football in this Valley. 

That criticism also engendered an angry, defensive response from the Desert Sun.  I got a very defensive —even fist-pounding— response from James Folmer to the effect that high school football in this Valley is a “big deal,” and that our local Gannett newspaper would make sure that it remains a “big deal.”  In short, the Desert Sun will continue to feed the poisonous paradigm that elevates high school football to a privileged position far above any other form of secondary school activity, implying in every column inch of its coverage that other high school sports or activities are simply not as valuable as high school football.

As much as the Desert Sun seems to think that high school football is the only worthwhile activity in which our secondary schools and our secondary school students engage, the Desert Sun also eschews any form of political neutrality, eagerly participating in the political infighting that naturally occurs in a Valley that is in the throes of an ongoing political realignment.

Barely a generation ago, the Coachella Valley was a reliable Republican redoubt.  At every level of government, local electorates could be relied upon to send registered Republicans to city councils, school boards, special districts, the Legislature, and Congress.  Today much of that has changed.  Our Valley is now represented in the House of Representatives by Democrat Raul Ruiz, M.D., and in the 56th Assembly District we continue to be represented by Democrat Manuel Perez.  At the local level, a substantial number of Democrats now sit on local school boards and city councils.  This development cannot be welcome to the Desert Sun, which has routinely describes itself as “socially liberal and politically conservative.”



Our “socially liberal and politically conservative” newspaper seems to have spent much of the last several years raging against the dying of the Republican light and the ineluctable passing of GOP dominance in this Valley.  In both 2008 and 2012, the Desert Sun ran racially tinged endorsements of the GOP’s standardbearers for President.  In both cases, the Democratic nominee was Barack Obama, the first African-American ever elected President of the United States.  One might have thought that even a “socially liberal and politically conservative” newspaper such as the Desert Sun might have thought better than sneaking racial dog whistle rhetoric into its editorials supporting John McCain and Mitt Romney.

But, when the Desert Sun decides it wants to carry any particular politician’s water, discretion has never gotten in the way.  Not only has this Gannett newspaper routinely slanted its news coverage to jibe with its editorial position, but it has also allowed itself to become a platform both for political vendettas and also for simple Obama Derangement Syndrome whack jobs pushing whatever psycho-guano conspiracy theory occurs to them or which they’ve managed to pull off of right-wing Internet scream sites.

Certainly, the Desert Sun has been no stranger to carrying water for individual politicians throughout the Coachella Valley whom it has decided it will support, even at the cost of harming its own credibility.  This Gannett newspaper’s unquestioning, uncritical, ill-concealed support for outgoing, lame-duck Cathedral City mayor Kathleen DeRosa has become almost a stuff of a cynical telenovela, as DeRosa cultivates Desert Sun executive editor Greg Burton, with whom she apparently plays golf on a regular basis, and spoon feeds ill-informed Desert Sun reporters (many of whom have been in this Valley for less than the year, and who do not know their beats at all) with scurrilous material intended to attack her political rivals.

Early last year, the Desert Sun carried DeRosa’s water to the extent of running two lengthy attack pieces targeting Cathedral City councilmember Greg Pettis.  Much of the information was based on half-truths or outright lies, and Desert Sun reporter Tamara Sone soon found herself facing a pushback from the community that led to her departure from both the newspaper and from a community that, in rallying to Mr. Pettis’s defense, unequivocally let it be known that Ms. Sone was persona non grata to whom no one would be willing to give any information.  Readers should take a look at Palm Springs blogger Bond Shands’ careful coverage of the way in which the Desert Sun actively worked against Mr. Pettis’s 2008 Assembly primary campaign.

Of course, even the Desert Sun’s editorial board has not been above wading into political infighting in Cathedral City.  Full disclosure, the Desert Sun’s editorial board has seen fit to attack me on DeRosa’s behalf in print on more than one occasion, while also providing a platform for letter writers to do much the same thing.  Indeed, when DeRosa referred to me publicly in nasty, homophobic terms, the Desert Sun saw fit to run a “Thumbs Down” editorial attacking me for allegedly "overreacting" to the slur.  By all means Desert Sun, exalt the bully and attack the victim.  Way to stay classy.

Of course, the Desert Sun’s tendency to provide a platform for whack jobs and nut cases is well documented.  While an increasing number of other mainstream print media outlets, such as the New York Times or Los Angeles Times have followed the lead of the British Broadcasting Corporation and declared a policy of not publishing climate change denial letters, the Desert Sun continues to publish them, along with all manner of other letters invoking various forms of conspiracy theory, usually involving some kind of scurrilous, race-based attacks on President Obama.

A number of years ago, I called the Desert Sun’s editorial board on the issue, and encountered fairly defensive pushback that the Desert Sun felt it had to give a platform to haters in order to bring them “out of the woodwork.”  Such reasoning was specious then and speeches now.  By giving haters a platform, the Desert Sun has simply enabled other haters to gravitate around them, helping to create a critical mass of nastiness and hatred.  By printing hateful, scurrilous letters, the Desert Sun doesn’t bring haters out of the woodwork where they can be criticize, it simply gives them a kind of spurious legitimacy and credibility that they do not deserve; The Desert Sun is, to all intents and purposes, an enabler of Obama Derangement Syndrome.

What’s the matter with the Desert Sun?  Clearly the Desert Sun is a newspaper out of touch with its readership and on the wrong side of history.  That’s what’s the matter with the Desert Sun; perhaps it’s time for readers to find other news sources and perhaps it’s also time to find reporters and editorial staff who will be willing to do due diligence and who won’t throw defensive temper tantrums at the slightest sign of criticism.

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THE HIDDEN RACISM/CLASSISM OF CATHEDRAL CITY'S MINIMAL COUNCIL COMPENSATION

Summary: More than ten years after the last one, Cathedral City is contemplating a pay raise for its council.  Despite sensationalistic headlines about a 47% increase, the total amount in controversy is roughly $22,000.  In fact, the entire council’s pay per annum is less than the pay of a single cop or firefighter.  In her typical pandering way, outgoing Mayor Kathleen DeRosa (who pulls down I handsome pension from Southern California Edison) is attempting to oppose the increase.  Opposing adequate pay for city Council members is both racist and classist.  If only the white and the well-off can afford to serve in elective public office, it sends a message to Cathedral City’s Latino majority that “no Latinos need apply.”  This position, apparently held by both DeRosa and outgoing New Yorker councilmember Sam Toles, does not reflect well upon our community.  While the screamers and low information voters may try to make an issue of this, more reasonable residents should understand that councilmembers, like anybody else in the workforce, deserve to be adequately compensated.


After more than a decade, the issue of a pay raise for Cathedral City’s astonishingly ill paid council is back on the agenda.  Because there has been no salary increase for council members and Cathedral City in that lengthy time, the proposed increase — which simply accounts for inflation — is approximately 47%.

Almost immediately, the comment threads on social media networks lit up.

Gratifyingly, many of the comments from within Cathedral City were supportive, well thought out, and articulate.

Of course, nonresidents and the occasional resident Tea Partisans, including well-debunked perennial council wannabe Jens Mueller, were quick to weigh in with predictable attack talking points lambasting the “greediness” of the council.

Also weighing in against the salary increase was outgoing, lame-duck, so-called Five-Star Mayor Kathleen Joan DeRosa.

That DeRosa would weigh in against the salary increase is not surprising.  Her reputation for pandering to her base, a group of low information voters often referred to as her “Flying Monkeys,” has become almost legendary.  Yet, DeRosa’s opposition to the salary increase says as much about the pervasive streak of racism in her character as it does about any concern she might have for fiscal discipline.

 For indeed, the fiscal discipline argument essentially goes nowhere.  The total increase in salary outlay for the Council comes to a little bit more than $22,000.  The total salary burden for the city is less than that which the city bears to write paychecks for one single cop or firefighter.  Let me say that again.  The city pays less for the entire council per annum than it does for one single cop or firefighter.

Because, when it comes down to it, Cathedral City, like many other cities, premises the highest levels of its municipal governance on a series of assumptions that are both racist and classist.

Traditionally, elected representatives of the public were either unpaid or were paid nominal stipends.  One commentor, casting his two cents in on The Desert Sun’s comment thread, urged that councilmember should be paid a single dollar per annum.  The problem with paying no salary or nominal stipends is simple.  It automatically restricts elective service to the white and the well-off.

Cathedral City is roughly 55% Latino; it is also a working city, many of whose residents cannot afford to take on the added burden of service on the Council unless service on the Council pays enough to make it worthwhile.

Having served eight years as a city councilmember, I can attest to the fact that service on the Council comes close to being a second full-time job.  In addition to having to represent the city on numerous regional boards and commissions, councilmembers are expected to read about, learn, and be able to cast an informed vote on a whole variety of issues that come before the Council in the course of its duties.

And here is where DeRosa’s objection to the Council raise becomes so blatantly racist and hypocritical.  DeRosa has made no secret of her disdain for Cathedral City’s substantial Latino population.  Indeed, in a city that is roughly 55% Latino, the Council musters only one member with a Latino surname.  DeRosa prefers it that way, and knows that if Council salaries are kept low, many otherwise qualified Latino candidates will be deterred from running.

The record of the other New Yorker on the Council, lame-duck Sam Toles, is no better.  At seemingly every Council meeting in which he was actually personally present to participate, Toles would deliver himself of a self-congratulatory monologue to the effect that his six-figure private-sector job spared him from having to accept the city’s benefit package.  Toles would also break his arm patting himself on the back to remind his constituents that he, well compensated as he was in the private sector, gave his municipal salary away to charity.

 Aside from being noblesse oblige bullshit, Sam Toles’s message to the community was also just about as dog whistle racist as he could have made it.  In effect, what Sam Toles was saying to our Latino-majority constituency was “I am far too wealthy and far too entitled for the likes of you.  You should be grateful that I, the White Knight from New York, am here to govern you.  No Latinos need apply.”

As racist as the DeRosa position may be, it’s also classist.  Now history teaches us that traditional policies of restricting elected public service to non-stipendiary or nominal salary status were largely intended to ensure that only “the best people” were able to serve.  The so-called progressive movement of the early twentieth century adhered to the notion that society’s best people were also its best off people.

Even today, many low information voters continue to believe that the wealthier you are, the more incorruptible you are.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Much always wants more, and the empirical evidence of generations of experience tells us that independent wealth is no guarantee that an elected public official will not be corrupt.  Every now and again, a corruption scandal involving conspicuously affluent members of Congress or a state legislature erupts to remind us that your probity is not a function of the depth of your pocketbook.

Indeed, we should not even assume that the DeRosa position on the salary increase is the result of anything more than craven political calculation.  Of course, DeRosa pulls down a handsome pension from Southern California Edison, and her presumptive successor, former police chief and now-councilmember Stanley Henry, pulls down a PERS pension in excess of $17,000 a month, all of it paid for by us, the taxpayers of Cathedral City.  Moreover, a number of declared Council candidates, several of them DeRosa Flying Monkeys, have spouses who are also compensated in the six-figure range by other employers.  (More on that as the campaign moves forward.)

Thus, we should view with a very jaundiced eye any claims or comments DeRosa has to make on this issue, and we should also reject out of hand any statements Sam Toles may utter in opposition to the salary increase.  Neither one of them has a legitimate thing to say. 

The laborer is worthy of his hire.  Luke 10:7.  So is a Cathedral City city councilmember.  The salary raise will probably pass on a 3-2 vote, and the screamers will try to make a campaign issue.  The rest of us should not allow dime wise and dollar foolish thinking to carry the day.

Bob Silverman - An Appreciation

It’s easy to take somebody’s presence for granted.  Until they’re gone.  Then you realize there is an indefinable gap, a sense that things are not as they had been, a sense of dwindling.

Long time Desert Stonewall Democratic stalwart Bob Silverman passed away last week.  Bob was one of that small original cadre of us who were present at the creation and in the earliest days of Stonewall here in the Desert.

I cannot remember Desert Stonewall without Bob, because there never was a time when Bob was not an integral, crucial member of Desert Stonewall Democrats.

Some activists tend to be high-maintenance; such people are often quick to take offense, excruciatingly politically correct, ready to duke it out with friends and allies, and inclined to push for the perfect at the expense of the good.  Bob was not this kind of activist.

But if Bob was not a prima donna, Bob was a rock solid, committed Democrat who had the quiet courage of conviction and rocklike constancy that are at the core of all that is good and true and praiseworthy within the Democratic Party.  He was also pragmatic, urbane, and considerate of others.

The institutional life of Desert Stonewall Democrats will continue, but for a good long while at least, it will to some degree be impoverished in the wake of Bob Silverman’s going from us.  I shall miss him; may he rest in peace.

SAM TOLES, GO AWAY

Summary: The unexplained absence of council carpetbagger Sam Toles from last night’s city council meeting caused the Council to deadlock two to two on the question of whether to allow marijuana dispensaries in Cathedral city.  This is an issue that has been percolating since long before carpetbagging Sam Toles was ever on the Council.  Yet he couldn’t be bothered to attend, even to phone it in.  We are not receiving honest services from Sam Toles, who flaunts in the face of Cathedral city voters his non-residence in the city he was elected to serve .  Maybe it’s time federal and state prosecutors took a look at our New Yorkers on the Council, whose bona fide residency in Cathedral city continues to be a subject of speculation.


Sam Toles, it’s time for you to get off the city Council in Cathedral City with what little dignity you have left and hope that your behavior does not give federal and state prosecutors a certain incentive to make an example of your wrongful conduct.

The misbegotten political career of councilmember George Samuel Toles reached its predictable, ineluctable low point last night when his absence in New York City caused the Council to deadlock two to two on the much-discussed issue of whether to end Cathedral City’s ban on medical marijuana dispensaries, an issue that has been percolating in our community since long before George Samuel Toles carpetbagged his way onto the Council in 2010.  Toles was not in Cathedral City to do the work the voters of this community had elected him to do.  Instead, carpetbagging nonresident Toles was in New York on the job he took knowing that he had a prior responsibility to the people of this community.

Thus, predictably, the four council members present split right down the middle.  Not surprisingly, lame-duck Mayor Kathleen Joan DeRosa chose to pander to her low-information religious right constituency by voting “no.”  Presumptive mayoral nominee Stan Henry, a former police chief, pandered to his police union by also voting “no.”  The two yes votes were Mayor pro tem Chuck Vasquez and councilmember Greg Pettis.  Sam Toles couldn’t be bothered to show up.

Now Toles has already submitted a resignation to the Council, but his actual departure date is a matter of some speculation.  If being a no-show (after having assured his colleagues that he would be present by teleconference) is how Sam Toles thinks he gets his job done, then we wonder how long he can be expected to last in his new job in New York.

At all events, it really is time for Sam Toles to get off the Council and stop insulting the voters of Cathedral City by “phoning it in.”  Of course, Sam Toles, who carpetbagged his way on to the Council after living in Cathedral City for less than two years, never really had any commitment to the people of this community.  Instead, he traveled extensively outside the United States for his private-sector employer.  Worse, while Sam Toles should have been doing the job we in Cathedral City elected him to do, he was busy looking for other lucrative employment on the other side of the country.

We have not received honest services from Sam Toles, and that ought to be a matter of some interest to the United States Attorney for the Central District of California; “honest services fraud” by a public official is a federal crime.  Moreover, we have also been victimized by Mr. Toles ostentatiously moving to New York while trying to hold on to his council seat here.  California law on the subject is very clear: you must reside in your constituency.  Failure to do so has gotten a number of politicians, including Democratic state Senator Roderick Wright and Los Angeles councilmember Richard Alarcon into some fairly serious hot water.  Wright has already been convicted, and oddsmakers predict that Alarcon will also be found guilty.

If prosecutors can have the hardihood to go after Roderick Wright and Richard Alarcon, then surely prosecutors in Riverside County can have the hardihood to go after Sam Toles.  Of course, both of our New York-born councilmembers, Toles and lame-duck mayoral incumbent DeRosa, find themselves confronting swirling rumors about their residency.  Already, Facebook chatter has begun to produce sharp speculation about the extent to which DeRosa really maintains a bona fide residence in Cathedral City.  If the rumors are correct, and DeRosa actually primarily resides elsewhere, she, too, may potentially be subject to prosecution for non-residency. 

To the extent that both Toles and DeRosa have residency issues, such issues also raise a legitimate question about the extent to which they may also be potentially subject to prosecution for honest services fraud.  Do we not, as honest to God Cathedral City residents, have a right to expect that we will receive honest services from elected officials who actually live in this community?  Apparently, with the New Yorkers on the Council, the answer may be “no.”

The question of medical marijuana dispensaries has been before the Cathedral City electorate for years.  After much hemming and hawing, to-ing and fro-ing, and a great deal of handwringing by drug warriors peddling outdated and indefensible notions, the matter finally was before the Council for an up or down vote.  Yet Buffalo native and Cathedral City nonresident Sam Toles could not even trouble himself to phone it in and permit a legitimate, up-or-down vote.  Such conduct is reprehensible.

Sam Toles, it’s time for you to get your ass off the Council and don’t let the door hit you on the way out.  You might also want to start looking for a competent criminal defense lawyer.