Deregulator: Alive since '85!

The Grey Lady* shows her true colors The LA Times announces another opinion page shakeup. The major sackings: lefty columnist Robert Scheer and Pulitzer Prize-winning conservative cartoonist Michael Ramirez. (Nuts and bolts of the deal are here .) Scheer and Ramirez are both syndicated, so they'll be OK. Can't say the same for the Times's readers. This post by the LA Weekly's Marc Cooper nails it: The Times has decided to sanitize its op-ed pages and lose two major local voices. (Cooper's a lefty, and can't stand Ramirez's politics, but he did offer a SoCal-based vision that nationally synidicated toonists -- who don't live here -- will not replicate.) For metropolitan dailies to continue to survive (if not flourish) in the changing media market, they have to offer unique local commentary from recognizable voices. Saving a few thousand (or maybe even $100k) by using freelancers rather than staff writers is no way to build readership. *of the West Spea...

Huh? On KNBC-TV Channel 4 just now, the insufferable Sherry Bebitch Jeffe said the special election also signaled a rejection of ... George W. Bush. This was the only way voters could express their displeasure with the war, energy prices, yada, yada, yada. I don't buy this for a second. The debate here was framed long before gas prices started soaring, back when MSM reportage on Iraq wasn't as negative as it is now. Besides, Schwarzenegger has consciously distanced himself from Bush this year, snubbing the president when he came to California for a fundraiser late last month. This election was intensely local, driven by state issues and not national concerns. If Jeffe is right, though, California voters are dumber than I thought. UPDATE: Howard Kurtz agrees, more or less. What journalists often fail to appreciate is that state and local races turn on state and local issues and personalities. There may be voters who would back Jerry Kilgore because Bush visited the state, but...

It is better to look good than it is to feel good Use the cliche you prefer about style trumping substance in California. Pundits may spin the defeat of all the reform proposals as a personal rejection of Arnold Schwarzenegger. But the state's structural problems persist, and in my view, Schwarzenegger has a freer hand to be even more recalcitrant with the Legislature. (Arnold sent signals along those lines in the closing days of the campaign when he hinted that he would not endorse a tax increase, even if the initiatives failed.) Prop 76 would have loosened the straitjacket of spending formulas that denies policymakers fiscal flexibility. Since that's kaput, Arnold can deny any new legislative spending schemes and say, "hey, my hands are tied." UPDATE: At NRO, Arnie Steinberg offers a fairly positive take on the results and sees Schwarzenegger returning to his former, wheeler-dealer persona. (It's worth a read.) If the gov can make headway with the Dems, great....

Conflict of Visions Tomorrow's special election might not be "Judgment Day," as plugged by Schwarzenegger on Sunday. (The guy just can't help himself.) But it is a big deal. And it's fascinating to see how the combatants have spun this vote. The governor and his allies have pitched this election as a matter of reform -- the only way to fix the wretched processes that leave the state constantly in debt and the Capitol in hock to special interests. The other side has made it a referendum on Arnold -- a beauty contest, if you will -- even though it's conceivable that Schwarzenegger will be busy making "Trues Lie 2" in 2007 rather than agonizing over the budget deficit. This battle over process (Arnold) vs. results (his opponents) is the theme of Thomas Sowell's A Conflict of Visions -- the book that may have most influenced my politcal thinking over the past two decades. I've previously written about Sowell's arguments here . Arnold's ...