Tag: opinion columns

A duck hunter fires a shotgun in hopes that at least one of its many pellets will strike a fast-moving bird. A deer hunter fires a rifle to send one bullet toward his stationary prey, hoping to score a quick kill.

When responding to perceived crises, California’s politicians often take the scattergun approach, implementing multiple programs in multiple agencies hoping some will work, rather than carefully aiming a solution at a clearly defined problem.

One example of the syndrome is the many programs governors and legislators have implemented to bolster the state’s economy during downturns. Once created, the programs take on lives of their own, continue operating long after the economy has recovered and are rarely compelled to justify their existence.

Another is the state’s seemingly countless efforts – both legislation and administrative decrees, scattered among a plethora of agencies – to reach the holy grail of carbon emission neutralitywith little or no evaluation of their cost-effectiveness.

California’s current crisis d’jour is the ever-increasing number of men, women and children who lack homes, many of them living in squalid encampments on sidewalks and in urban greenbelts.

Polling has found that homelessness is consistently listed among Californians’ most pressing concerns. Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature have repeatedly promised to deal with it and they have, as usual, enacted a stream of costly programs with catchy names they hope will have some positive impacts. Some provide housing and others purporting to treat the underlying issues, such as substance abuse and mental health, that force people into the streets.

The question, of course, is whether any of the efforts have made a difference.

In macro terms, the answer is no. The number of homeless Californians has increased by 50% in the last decade and 20% since Newsom became governor in 2019, despite the state’s spending about $20 billion on the various anti-homelessness programs during the last five years.

Those data come from a new and sharply critical report on homelessness programs by State Auditor Grant Parks, following up on a 2021 auditwhich found that a “lack of coordination among the state’s homelessness programs had hampered the effectiveness of the state’s efforts to end homelessness.”

The 2021 audit’s criticism rang true even though the state had created the California Interagency Council on Homelessness in 2017 to coordinate homelessness activities. After the 2021 audit and under pressure from the Legislature, the agency adopted an “action plan” with specific goals to achieve and orders to report on results.

However, the new audit, which was released Tuesday, said the homelessness council has been tardy in reporting on outcomes, “has not aligned its action plan for addressing homelessness with its statutory goals,” and has not collected accurate data on the many specific programs.

“Until Cal ICH takes these critical steps, the state will lack up‑to‑date information that it can use to make data‑driven policy decisions on how to effectively reduce homelessness,” the audit said.

What did the president know, and what did Bob Woodward tell him?

In this case, the president is Donald J. Trump, and what legendary journalist Bob Woodward told him is a story in itself.

In 2019, Woodward began a series of recorded interviews with then-President Trump for a book that was scheduled to be published before the 2020 presidential election. The book, eventually titled “Rage,” may have been planned as a history of the Trump foreign policy, but when COVID hit, Woodward’s tape recorder captured both what the president was doing and what people were telling him to do.

Surprisingly, one of the people telling him what to do was Bob Woodward. Framing his questions as simply relaying the concerns of “people I’ve talked to,” Woodward sounds like a messenger for the permanent government bureaucrats, intelligence officials and national security “experts” that Trump derided as incompetent during his 2016 campaign and his presidency.

It’s all on tape, or rather, on a set of CDs called “The Trump Tapes.”

When Trump talks about his good working relationships with the leaders of North Korea, China and Saudi Arabia, Woodward lets Trump know that “people I’ve talked to” object to the president’s “shadow communications system.” This system appears to be simply a telephone, used without the permission of the people who work for him.

In another call, Woodward badgers Trump to apologize for the phone calls with Ukraine’s President Zelensky that led to his first impeachment. “I did nothing wrong,” Trump tells the journalist, but Woodward doesn’t let up. “I’m going to tell you from experience — if Nixon had gone on TV and said ‘I apologize,’ it would have gone away.”

“I wouldn’t apologize if I did nothing wrong,” Trump said.

“It would go away,” Woodward insisted.

“It would be a disaster,” Trump said. “I did nothing wrong.”

But the wildest call in the collection is a recording from April 5, 2020, about the COVID pandemic. Woodward leads into it with a voice-over recorded later, a device he uses repeatedly to add context, argue with Trump’s assertions and share his low opinion of the former president.

Woodward tells his audio audience that he spent weeks interviewing the “medical experts,” including Anthony Fauci, and it was apparent that Trump “was not listening.” Therefore, this could not be a “regular interview,” Woodward said, because he “had a personal responsibility beyond just being a reporter.”

On the recorded call, Woodward begins by asking Trump, “Are we going to go to full mobilization? People, at least that I’ve talked to, say they want the feeling of full mobilization.”

Then Woodward asserted that the federal government should take over COVID testing, but Trump told him that testing is a state responsibility.

“Still,” Woodward responded, “a lot of people are saying we need a Manhattan-like Project.”

That’s a reference to the government, scientific community and military working together in secret to build the atomic bomb.

During the call, Woodward urged Trump, “If you come out and say, this is full mobilization, this is a Manhattan Project, we are going, pardon the expression, b**** to the wall, that’s what people want.”

“We’re doing a great job,” Trump said. “No matter how good a job I do, I’ll never get credit from the media and I’ll never get credit from Democrats who want to beat me desperately in seven months.”

“If you go out and say this is full mobilization, we are in a Manhattan Project state,” Woodward began, “the medical supply chain. The people I talk to say they still aren’t satisfied with it.”

At this point you can hear Trump exhale with exasperation.

“They wonder if you’re going to federalize it,” Woodward said. “Is that possible?”

“We’re getting very few complaints,” the former president answered.

Woodward asserted that “people I’ve talked to” want to know if there’s a system for unemployment benefits. Trump said he’s “totally opposed” to distributing the money “the way Democrats wanted it,” through the unemployment offices. “Many of them have 40-year-old computers,” he said.

Trump was certainly right about that.

“I’m just telling you as a reporter,” Woodward said, that the country needs “a national order” to shelter in place, federal control of the food supply, a person who will be the “focal point of coordinating with all the other countries ,” “a national definition of ‘essential worker,’” a ban on airline travel and the shutdown of China’s wet markets. He said something also needs to be done about near-empty airline flights and “small government Republicans.” And the country needs a “vaccine antibody czar.”

Woodward asked Trump if he was meeting regularly with his CIA Director, Gina Haspel. “Do you feel you know what’s going on in the world?” he asked.

“Better than any president has known in 30 years,” Trump answered.

Woodward reminded Trump that he has been interviewing presidents for 50 years.

“I know, I’m listening to every word you’re saying,” Trump said.

But at that point it sounds as if Trump has reached a conclusion about the conversation. He tells Woodward that he has “people waiting downstairs” in a meeting, but asks him to read out “the list of the things you said.”

SACRAMENTO – If you think debates about tinkering with election rules are vicious, then you need to turn your attention to the endless battles between baseball’s traditionalists and reformers. The former treat America’s pastime as something almost sacred – a bastion of timeless and slow-moving beauty in an ever-changing world. Unlike professional football, which is forever tinkering with its rules, baseball should, in their view, cling to the past.

“I have observed a creep towards instant gratification in a game whose best quality was that it challenged us to be patient,” wrote traditionalist Noah Gittell. But after seeing the results of Major League Baseball’s recent changes that are designed to speed up the game (e.g., adding a pitch clock), he decided that the tweaks are OK. This isn’t the first time the league has changed rules, he noted.

Columnist George Will, who wrote a book celebrating the culture of the game, rejoiced at the new rules. He believes the latest rule adjustments restore the spirit of the past, when fast-moving games were common and athleticism was more important than analytics (see Moneyball). They might also restore attendance levels. Sometimes the best way to energize an institution is to adjust the way it operates.

At the last Giants game I attended, I nearly fell asleep from boredom, so I’m not the best person to pontificate about balls and strikes, but I see parallels with our election system. For years, reformers have tried to re-energize the democratic spirit by endlessly changing and adapting the voting process. They are responding largely to low voter turnouts.

Unlike their counterparts in baseball, America’s politicians haven’t come up with the right formula yet – perhaps because most of the people proposing rule changes have a vested interest in the outcome of the specific contests (unlike MLB officials, whose interest centers on the game itself.) It is clear from Tuesday’s primary election, however, that the latest “big” California primary rule change is a bust.

In 2010, California voters approved Proposition 14, which created a “top two” primary for every election except president, central committee and nonpartisan elections such as boards of supervisors and superintendent of public instruction. Under the old system, Republicans would choose their candidate and Democrats theirs. They would face off in November. Under the new rules, everyone runs against each other. The top two vote-getters face off in the general election, regardless of their party.

Supporters made grandiose promises about how the new system would reduce partisanship and force candidates to moderate their positions by campaigning for all voters rather than the party faithful. It was going to increase voter participation and strengthen democracy. “It’s time to end the bickering and gridlock and fix the system,” according to Prop. 14’s “yes” ballot argument. Supporters claimed it would force politicians to work together for the good of the state.

One needn’t be a cynic to realize that “top two” didn’t usher in an era of peace and goodwill. California’s elections are more vicious than ever. The state Republican Party has largely faded away, but the result is nastier battles among Democratic factions. The Legislature and state constitutional offices are now filled with progressive ideologues. Tuesday’s turnoutwas low. One can’t blame Prop. 14 for everything, but it hasn’t lived up to its billing.

“Top two” created a new set of rules that ambitious politicians can game. Consider the race for U.S. Senate. In the past, Democrat Adam Schiff would have debated his Democratic opponents in a primary that focused on which candidate appealed best to Democratic primary voters. Republican Steve Garvey would have debated his GOP opponents in an effort to woo GOP voters.

Instead, Schiff used reverse psychology by running ads attacking Garvey in conservative media as a means to bolster support for Garvey. It was a clever ploy to keep his main opponents, Democrats Katie Porter and Barbara Lee, out of the final runoff. The end result is the same – the leading Democrat squares off against the leading Republican in November, with Schiff almost certainly winning. But who can claim this goofy process has reduced bickering and cynicism?

Tuesday’s primary results in Michigan exposed a major weakness for incumbent President Joe Biden in a key swing state that could adversely impact his chances come November. In the state’s GOP primary, former President Donald Trump projected a level of strength that underscores recent polling woes, showing him with a clear, albeit narrow, lead in the general election.

As of Thursday, President Biden had captured slightly more than 8-in-10 (81%) Michigan Democratic voters. The only issue for the president is that a non-candidate – the ‘uncommitted’ vote came in second, with 13% of the vote, or roughly 100,000 votes.

Put another way, Democratic primary voters in Michigan, a group who is generally deemed older, whiter, more politically-active, and further-left, are not committed to voting for their party’s leader – who also happens to be the sitting president – come November.

To put this in context, in 2012, then-President Barack Obama lost out on 11% of voters who chose ‘uncommitted’ on their ballot. The difference, however, is in the numbers. Where Obama’s ‘uncommitted’ vote totaled just 18,000, Biden’s is almost six times that.

The effort to boost the ‘uncommitted’ vote was driven by the organizing group Listen to Michigan. Backed by the anti-Israel Democratic Representative Rashida Tlaib (MI), the group hopes their efforts will deter Biden’s support for Israel in the aftermath of Hamas’ October 7th attack and Israel’s response, which has seen nearly 75% of the Gaza Strip conquered by Israeli forces and, according to Hamas, 30,000 fatalities. 

In preparation for what they knew would be a large protest vote, these groups hedged expectations, reporting their goal as 10,000 ‘uncommitted’ votes to Politico. However, it doesn’t take a genius to know this story would receive far more media attention if they were seen as blowing their own “expectations” out of the water.

But what do Michigan’s results really portend? Nate Cohn’s The Tilt succinctly analyzed the results as a risk the Democrats don’t want to take. The harsh truth is that the Arab American and Muslim vote only represents 3% of Michigan’s electorate. That being the case, there is a substantial amount of voters who don’t fall into that group that also voted ‘uncommitted’. This is where Biden finds himself facing an uphill challenge. 

While turnout in Tuesday’s Democratic primary was low – just 763,000 voters turned out for Democrats compared to 1.1 million voters in the state’s Republican primary – Trump eclipsed Biden’s total by almost 140,000 votes. To put this in context, Biden only beat Trump by 154,188 votes in Michigan in 2020.

To make matters worse for Biden in terms of the general election, Trump is polling very well in virtually every Super Tuesday state. He’s winning states like Vermont where Independents may play a bigger role by almost 30-points, purple states like Massachusetts by 35-points, and deep red Republican strongholds by margins as high as 75-points. 

Further, Biden’s approval rating remains dismally low. Not even 1-in-4 (39%) voters approve of the job he’s doing as president. Moreover, Biden is somehow seen as less favorable than the indicted former president 41% to 44%. This strongly suggests that Biden has a tougher road ahead than Trump to win November’s election.

Regardless of Tuesday’s results, Biden’s bottom line remains the same. He has to walk the tightrope of appeasing ‘uncommitted’ voters while not totally alienating supporters of Israel, which happen to be particularly prevalent in major swing states such as Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Arizona.

On the Republican side, Trump won slightly more than two-thirds (68%) of the vote, his strongest margin to date over Nikki Haley, who squeaked out barely one-quarter (27%) of the vote. While Haley’s survival to this point is impressive, having outlasted former-GOP darlings like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, she has virtually no conventional path to the GOP nomination and high-profile donors like the Koch’s have taken note, recently halting their donations.

Looking ahead, Trump is likely to continue dominating through Super Tuesday, and will almost certainly win the majority – if not all – of those states by double-digits, all but ending the GOP nominating process.

As NBC’s Steve Kornacki described, Haley’s base of support through the first couple of states has been almost entirely powered by Republicans casting their own protest votes against Trump. And while she has proven that Trump’s near-domination of the GOP is not yet fully complete, she has failed to make her own significant mark on the party. 

If one thing is clear for Republicans after Michigan, it is that their primary contest is over. Haley is losing by larger and larger margins, even in states with open primaries where Independents can vote. 

In August 2008, Crain’s Detroit Business published a tongue-in-cheek obituary for voting machines.

“Electronic Touch-Screen Voting Machine, beloved stepchild of the 2000 Presidential Election and loving father of Insecurity, Confusion, and Delay, peacefully went home to be with his maker in 2007. There will be no memorial services. Interment will be in various warehouses around America,” wrote Alan Baker.

After Florida’s “hanging chad” problem in the very close Bush-Gore contest, a great deal of money was spent nationally buying electronic voting machines to replace paper ballots. “Voting machine problems soon followed,” the obituary noted, “vanishing votes, breakdowns, malfunctions and increasing evidence that the devices were vulnerable to hackers.” Beginning in 2007, California, Ohio and Florida “abruptly ordered election officials to mothball their electronic machines,” Baker wrote.

By 2020, however, election officials had found a way to spend your money to buy machines again. The hook this time was that the machines would generate paper ballots. “You can’t hack a paper ballot,” then-Secretary of State Alex Padilla told the editorial board of this newspaper.

One such system is in use in Los Angeles County, designed and manufactured by Smartmatic to the custom specifications of Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan. The machine is a “ballot-marking device.” After the voter makes choices on the touchscreen, the device prints out a ballot with human-readable text and a machine-readable QR code. The voter can check the text for accuracy, but it’s the QR code that is read by scanners and contains the vote data that is actually tallied.

In the state of Georgia, a trial is underway over the accuracy of similar devices manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems. The plaintiffs in the case, described by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution as “liberal-leaning Georgia voters and activists,” argued to U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg that she should order the state to abandon the use of the machines and switch to paper ballots instead.

Back in November, Judge Totenberg suggested a compromise to avoid this trial. She recommended eliminating the QR codes and adding more election audits and cybersecurity measures. But the plaintiffs said the court had essentially confirmed that “Georgia’s status quo is far too risky” and insisted on hand-marked paper ballots. The executive director of the Coalition for Good Governance, one of the plaintiffs in the case, said, “We look forward to prevailing at trial as we demonstrate why touchscreen BMDs (ballot-marking devices) cannot be used safely.”

And that’s exactly what their expert witness, University of Michigan computer scientist Alex Halderman, proceeded to do in the courtroom. Right in front of the judge he used an ordinary pen to press a reset button on the touchscreen device that allowed him to change the results of a hypothetical election over Sunday alcohol sales. He programmed a fake voter card to flip the winner of an election between George Washington and Benedict Arnold. He used a $100 USB device and a cable connected to a printer to reprogram the machine to print out as many paper ballots as he wanted.

In response, Georgia election officials gave the judge their assurances that this did not actually happen in a Georgia election.

Is that the best they can do?

In all procedures related to voting, it’s critical to prevent vulnerabilities before someone exploits them to cheat in an election. After the election, it’s too late. Court challenges are slow, and the winners are certified fast.