COVERITLIVE.COM

12:00

Chris Reed - Welcome. I'm ready for your questions. I will even talk about Mark Sanford!

12:04

Chris Reed - This is quite a run for East Coast governors -- Spitzer, McGreevy, now Sanford. The West Coast is lagging. There's quite a sleaziness gap between the coasts.

12:07

SignOnLiveChatModerator - Chris, what do you think about L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's announcement that he won't run for governor? On a recent cover of Los Angeles Magazine the word Failure was written over an image of the mayor. Is that a widely held opinion of him?

12:09

Chris Reed - Some people think the cover was too harsh and suggest Villaraigosa hasn't been that bad. He's also given plusses for trying to take over L.A. Unified, as other big city mayors have done with their rotten school districts.

But there's no question he could have been hammered for his management as mayor. L.A. has been drifting for years, unwilling to confront its fiscal problems, and Villaraigosa did little about it until the revenue crisis forced his hand this year.

12:14

[Comment From J]
Think the media is being fair to Sanford?

12:18

Chris Reed - Too early to say. But he's brought a lot on himself. And it's only going to get nuttier from here. I'm sure the Enquirer has already got a reporter and photog on a flight to Buenos Aires, and we'll soon know all about Sanford's girlfriend.

Who knows? Other weird stuff could turn up soon. Sanford's leaving the country amounted to a political suicide trip. Who knows what he is capable of?

Well, the Enquirer, perhaps by its July 1 issue.

I once had an article published in the Star, the Enquirer's arch-rival. It was a 1986 story about a shark eating a boat off the Island of Hawaii and the fisherman floating to safety on his tackle box. It appeared opposite what may have been the first Elvis-is-alive story in a tabloid.

12:19

Chris Reed - It was completely rewritten. I wasn't bitter. $300 was/is good pay for a freelance piece.

12:20

[Comment From David]
What's the first thing you would cut from the state's budget?

12:23

Chris Reed - I would go after prisons. Studies show crime is almost entirely a young man's game. For us to warehouse older inmates who are non-threats is idiotic.

This doesn't apply to sex offenders and con men. But just about every other category of criminal, it does.

Especially when you consider it costs well north of $40,000 a year to house an inmate in California -- far higher than the national average --- and that the $40k doubles for inmates over 60, it's nuts to let our desire for retribution bankrupt us.

Risk management should be the guiding principle in prison management. Not retribution.

12:23

[Comment From Gabriel]
There is always talk about fairness and balance. But what are journalists doing that is good, bad and what could be better?

12:25

Chris Reed - Journalists, IMO, have done a really, really bad job on state finances forever. Two weeks ago, Reuters had an analysis piece that talked about how difficult it was to cut the state budget because of the power of public employee unions. This is a simple, obvious fact. But last summer, the L.A. Times' had a front-page "analysis" on the reasons for budget woes that DIDN"T EVEN MENTION UNIONS. Instead, it focused on the "process" argument -- the fact taxes can only be raised and budgets approved by the Legislature on a two-thirds vote.

12:26

SignOnLiveChatModerator -

Chris, N.Y. Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned due to a prostitution scandal. President Bill Clinton was impeached over his affair with Monica Lewinsky. Now, Sanford's political career appears dead due to this latest scandal. These men all had a few things in common. They were highly intelligent, ambitious men with bright futures. Do you have any thoughts on why these types of men sometimes seem to do the dumbest things and self distruct?

12:27

Chris Reed - This creates the impression California has unrealistically low taxes. No, it doesn't. As I detailed in a recent National Review article ...

California has the nation's highest sales and gasoline taxes, the first- or second-highest income tax (depending on how it's measured), and the highest business taxes in the West.

12:30

Chris Reed - That was in response to previous question. As for the question about self-destructive pols, I think Clinton, Spitzer and Sanford are all slightly different cases.

As David Maraniss' wonderful bio of Clinton pointed out, he'd gotten away with affairs forever and thought he was invulnerable. Spitzer took huge and elaborate measures to hide his rendezvouses, only to be caught because his money transfers made the feds suspect he was taking bribes or embezzling. Sanford is the weirdest of all. By going to Argentina, it's like he wanted to be found out.

12:30

[Comment From Gabriel]
Just a follow up from my earlier question. What can reporters do better? As for not writing about unions, is that the reporter's fault? editors? The whole industry?

12:31

SignOnLiveChatModerator -

If you would like to read it, here is the National Review article Chris just mentioned

12:31

SignOnLiveChatModerator - Blame the Unions: The real reason California is in such bad shape

12:33

Chris Reed - I think reporters can do better first by taking remedial math classes. When every budget story treats a cut in a proposed increase in spending as a real-world, hard-dollar cut, it distorts the public's understanding of the budget.

They also need to fight hard against groupthink, which is amazingly prevalent in Sacramento.

Consider the story broken by a trade publication about the air board's interest in rules so tough they would have been a de facto ban on black cars. Instead of digging in and finding out the truth -- the air board really was looking at such rules -- the Sacramento pack accepted the air board's insistence it was all a hoax.

Why? Digging would have yielded a great story. But not, the pack decided it wasn't, and no one broke with the pack.

12:34

[Comment From Jason]
What are the running odds of California going to a judge/receivership to get its budget in line? Is that the only way we the taxpayers are going to get give-backs from the unions?

12:34

[Comment From Jason]
Hi Chris, love your blog.

Page 1 Next >