….as a partisan hack.

Quite a while ago, I criticized him here and here for his belief that the sole remedy to the structural fiscal crisis in California – caused by legislators who spend like drunken sailors and taxpayers who want services but no related costs – was to raise taxes, as he suggested in two columns.

We corresponded, and I appreciated the notion that a journalist was reaching out to critics, and I resolved to look at his efforts with a more open mind.

He’s recently begun a blog for the Times, and reading it moved my opinion of him back to Square One. He’s a reliable source of Democratic talking points, which ought to be OK with me (I’m a Democrat, after all) but isn’t because the Democratic Party as constituted in California is headed off a cliff. The only thing saving it has been gerrymandering, the huge amounts of money available from the blue regions on Los Angeles and the Bay Area, and the fact that the California Republican Party is functionally retarded.

A few weeks ago, I popped over and read his blog; I don’t recall the post, except that it – as noted – kicked me back to “he’s a press agent for the Teacher’s Union.”
I did note his blogroll with amusement (here it is as of today)…

Blogroll

* Political Animal
Washington, D.C., meets Irvine, CA: Progressive reporting and analysis from the indispensible Kevin Drum.

* Talking Points Memo
Joshua Micah Marshall assembles the goods on Social Insecurity, Plamegate, and the infamous Gulf Coast Wage Cut.

* L.A. Observed
Kevin Roderick. Can’t say it better than this: “Los Angeles media, news, and sense of place.”

* James Wolcott
Vanity Fair’s best writer: Edgy, direct, hilarious take on media, culture, and politics.

* California Stem Cell Report
The go-to site for the latest on California’s boondoggle-in-the-making.

* Brad DeLong
From Berkeley, first-class economic and political analysis, and proof that I didn’t take his negative review of my PARC book personally. (See below.)

* Radosh.net
Found items from all over.

And today, he takes on Patterico, and by extension, defends the Times.

I’ll let Patrick handle the heavy lifting, but I’ll suggest two framing points in response to his:

Hiltzik says:

None of these critics appears to be genuinely interested in correcting factual errors or improving this newspaper’s, or any newspaper’s, performance as a journalistic institution—which are certainly legitimate goals. Their main purpose is to hunt down deviations from a political orthodoxy that they themselves define.

That – in the case of Patrick – is simply not true.

Patrick offered (and I’m talking off the top of my head, so I’m sure there are others) substantive corrections to factual errors by the times as regards – among other things – the three strikes law, “imminent threat”, the Sgrena shooting, and local stories such as the shooting of Devin Brown.

I’ll note in passing Michael’s attempted takedown of Patrick’s criticism of the Sgrena shooting, and suggest that he misses the core point – yes, all the later information suggests that the car was approaching the checkpoint at ~50mph. The point of the controversy over incident was that the car was approaching the checkpoint at high speed – hence the shooting – and the only point of information that suggested that in the original story was the excised line. So yes, cutting that line did change the entire sense of what happened, and the culpability for it.

Patrick wrote one of the first (and few) “Outside the Tent” pieces – and what was it about?

The Correct Way to Fix Mistakes

Has anyone ever said something about you that wasn’t true? Something that, if people believed it, would significantly damage your reputation? How would you feel if you saw that falsehood printed on the front page of the Los Angeles Times? Would it make things right if the paper later retracted the false statement — with a brief correction buried inside the paper?

In this published piece (disclosure: I looked it over when he was writing it), Patrick takes the Times to task for its reluctance to publicly correct what it acknowledges are errors, and for the manner in which it does so when it finally decides it has to.

So, Michael – how is Patrick not “interested in correcting factual errors or improving this newspaper’s, or any newspaper’s, performance as a journalistic institution”?

I’ve criticized the Times as well, during the recall elections:

And here’s my point. As someone who reads the Times every day, along with a lot of other media, the clear tilt of the paper couldn’t be more transparent to me.

I’m not going to go too deeply into the news portion, although I’ve started saving clips. But it took me about 30 minutes last night to go through all the columns available on the Web. I’ve got links and clips below, but let me give you a summary count (methodology was simple: I went to the Times web site, clicked on ‘columns’ in the left bar, and went through each of the listed columnists and pulled anything that had to do with Davis, Arnold, or the recall. Note that ‘balanced’ doesn’t mean pro-Arnold or pro-recall; it means looks at both sides and tries to present analysis):

Al Martinez: 1 column, violently anti-Arnold and recall.

Ronald Brownstein: 1 column, balanced.

Patt Morrison: 10 columns, 8 violently anti-recall and anti-Arnold, 2 moderately anti-recall and anti-Arnold.

Dana Parsons: 1 column, mildly anti-Arnold

Tim Rutten: 7 columns, 6 mildly anti-Arnold, 1 anti-Bustamente

David Shaw: 4 columns, 2 mildly anti-recall and 2 mildly anti-Arnold

George Skelton: 10 columns, all balanced

Steve Lopez: 9 columns, 4 violently anti-Arnold, 1 moderately anti-Arnold, 3 anti-recall.

In my same post, I talked about another encounter that was eerily preminiscent of Hiltzik’s column:

Then I went to Brian’s party, and met a journalist (sadly didn’t get his name or affiliation).

I’ll skip over his arrogance and rudeness; he was in a hostile environment, and maybe he was nervous. But watching the discussion, I realized something that brought the Times issue into clearer perspective for me.

In the discussion, I had substantive issues with his points, which were essentially that journalism is superior to blogging because it has an editorial process which drives it toward ‘fairness’ (he felt that objectivity was impossible and not necessarily even desirable), but a fairness informed by the moral sensibilities of the institution (I’m pulling a short argument out of a long and somewhat rambling discussion). Bloggers obviously don’t.

I tried to make the suggestion to him that individual blogs weren’t necessarily good at driving toward fairness, but that the complex of blogs – the dialog and interaction between blogs – was, and might in fact be better than mainstream media, isolated as they are from feedback. (Note that Perry from Samizdata got this point before I finished the sentence).

And what was interesting to me was this – that while I have (violently at times) disagreed with other bloggers in face to face discussions, I always had the feeling that there was a discussion going on, a dialog in which two people were engaged and trying to understand each other’s points, if for no other reason than to better argue against them. But in dealing with The Journalist In The Hat, no such dialog took place. He had his point to make, and very little that I said (or, to be honest, that others who participated, including Howard Owens, who pointed out that he had worked as a journalist) was heard or responded to. He had his points, and he was going to make them over, and over, until we listened.

Or until we said ‘bullshit’ too many times and he walked away in a snit.

Sadly, Hiltzek seems to be fitting himself for a hat.

I’ll suggest that he listen to Jeff Jarvis, and begin to understand that news is now a dialog; and that the kind of conversation-ending comments Hiltzek makes – that obviously, without a deep understanding of the journalistic process (which I assume can only come from working as a journalist or studying journalism) no criticism of journalistic practice and outcomes is possible.

Riiight.

I’ll make a simple suggestion to Michael – stop thinking of yourself as a West Coast James Wolcott; he’s a laughable buffoon – kind of an Oscar Wilde with the words but not the wit. Start thinking about how to encourage dialog with your audience.

[forgot to give a hat tip to ex-Timesman Kevin Roderick at L.A. Observed]

I’ve blogged for a while about voting machines and my concern about the mechanics of our democracy. The issue is best expressed to me by Tom Stoppard’s great quote from ‘Jumpers‘:

George: Furthermore, I had a vote.

Dotty: It’s not the voting that’s democracy, it’s the counting, Archie says.

Which is, of course, a rehash of Josef Stalin’s insight:

“It is not the votes that count, but who counts the votes.”

Today the L.A. Times had an article on voting machines, and it descends into a fine, Patterico-worthy, mess.The article opens:

Five years after the vote-counting debacle in Florida suspended the election of a new U.S. president, California and other states are embroiled in a contentious debate over how voters should cast their ballots.

The maligned punch cards that snarled the 2000 count are all but gone. But with electronic machines under attack as unreliable and vulnerable to hackers, there is little consensus about what the new technology should look like.

That has left many counties nationwide in turmoil as they struggle with unproven technology while state regulations remain in flux and the federal government offers minimal guidance.

In some places, voters are facing their third balloting system in five years.

Note that the story simply states the claims that the systems are unreliable and vulnerable to hackers…classic “he said, she said” journalism.

The problem is that the vulnerabilities are real, well documented, and put forth by serious people whose claims have not been meaningfully refuted. The article just flat skips over this point…bad writing, or bad editing?

Adding to the difficulties was the unexpected emergence of security as a central issue in the modernization debate.

Soon after 2000, a cadre of activists and computer scientists began raising alarms that electronic systems could be breached by hackers who could change election results with just a few keystrokes.

Critics focused much attention and suspicion on Ohio-based Diebold, the industry leader, whose chief executive had written in a fundraising letter that he was committed to helping President Bush carry Ohio in 2004.

Many elections officials and manufacturers initially dismissed the activists, arguing that the new systems were more reliable and tamper-proof.

“There was a level of trust with vendors, who said, ‘Don’t worry; it’s a computer,’ ” said Pam Smith, nationwide coordinator for the Verified Voting Foundation, one of several advocacy groups.

“It would have been good for people to recognize that these were computers. And as such, they were subject to all the glitches and errors and vulnerabilities,”

To date, there has been no verified tampering with an electronic voting system during an election. But the controversy has had an effect.

Two years ago, California’s then-secretary of state, Democrat Kevin Shelley, announced that electronic voting machines would be required to produce a paper record of each vote. Today, more than half the states require such records, according to Verified Voting.

It would have taken the reporter – Noam Levey – about an hour with Google to find reputable computer scientists who have legitimate, profound concerns about the state of voting machine technology, as well as a core set of concrete recommendations about how to fix them.

Take Avi Rubin, of Johns Hopkins (pdf).

Or Douglas Jones from the University of Iowa.

Or Bruce Schneier.

I could go on, but breakfast is waiting…

There’s an interesting post on what this shows about the media in general, but I’ll leave that for Jeff Jarvis. There’s an interesting post on what this shows about the Times, but I’ll leave that for Patrick.

The real issue here is that the Times has laid out the problem with e-voting as though it was a simple issue of diligent government workers facing competing interests, rather than making any effort to dig into the facts.

I do computer stuff for a living, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that no business accounting system with the kind of vulnerabilities documented in a variety of e-voting systems – not just Diebold – could be used for corporate finance or controls, because the officers involved would have major liabilities under Sarbanes-Oxley.

And we want to run our country with this stuff?

Here’s a shameless advertisement (sorry, fellow WoC’ers…).

I’m a fan of all kinds of music – as long as it’s interesting and well-performed. I’m a big fan (disclosure: also a board member) of the Long Beach Opera, a regional avant-garde company that has done some incredible work in the last few years.

This year, they are putting on a “chamber Ring” – as in “Wagner’s Ring” not “the-VCR-that-kills-people-Ring.” This is the Birmingham Opera version, and it’s ten hours over two days (as opposed to fifteen hours over five days).

I’ve been to some rehearsals, and it looks and sounds damn cool. Our Siegmund stood in for Placido Domingo in the L.A. Opera’s Parsifal a few weeks ago, and got some great reviews.

It’s a full weekend of music – an immersion in fantasy – and you can read about it (and, more important, order tickets) at the LBO website.

A few things you ought to read while you’re recovering this morning.

Patterico has his magisterial year-end conservative critique of the Los Angeles Times up. You should read it.

As a non-right winger (I know, you’re shocked) I support virtually every point he makes. Why, you ask? because people are smart enough to see empty shilling for what it is, and the Times cheapens liberal positions and makes them less credible through its empty shilling.

It also ossifies liberalism and keeps it from changing to meet new social and political realities – thus weakening it further and making for an inflexible, unimaginative liberalism which has a harder and harder time being competitive in the marketplace of ideas.

The Times isn’t alone in this.

Over at MyDD, Matt Stoller is waxing wroth at Barack Obama for being sensible and smart.Obama said:

“I do agree that the Democrats have been intellectually lazy in failing to take the core ideals of the Democratic Party and adapting them to circumstances,” he says.

He says the Democrats should “take it big instead of making it small” as they speak about globalization, the need for a tough foreign policy and the importance of faith and family.

“It’s not just a matter of sticking in a quote from the Bible into a stock speech,” he says.

And was quoted in an Illinois paper as saying:

“I do agree that the Democrats have been intellectually lazy in failing to take the core ideals of the Democratic Party and adapting them to circumstances. … It’s not just a matter of sticking in a quote from the Bible into a stock speech.”

And Stoller then blogs:

Barack Obama is one of the true progressives in the Senate. His voting record, and his political priorities – Avian Flu and Genocide – suggest that he knows we’re all in it together.

So why does he have to reinforce right-wing ideas?

To Stoller – and the Times, it would appear – any statements that don’t lay rose petals on the path of the current Democratic Party are right wing talking points, heresy, and anathema.

Suicidal lemmings, meet the cliff.

It’s an election year, and while it’s possible that sense and sensibility will break out in the Democratic Party in the next ten months, if I had to make a prediction I’d say that we’ll get smacked in November, and can only hope that leads to people like Stoller looking at Obama and saying “OK, now I get it.”

Kind of the way one wakes up on Jan 1 with a hangover and a sour stomach and resolves to party a little less aggressively next year…

And I hope that for each of us it will be a good one.

I’m not sure why, but this New Years feels like the moment when you’re suspended over a long drop on a roller coaster – like things are going to suddenly accelerate.

Here’s hoping it’s all in a good direction!

So, as noted, we were away and offline for a week, skiing at Mammoth Mountain here in California. All three boys joined TG and I, and it’s interesting – for those who have older children – to go through the dynamics of changing roles as children come visit and become guests.

All in all, a wonderful time, and I got to read a bunch of books, some of which will be the basis for posts over the next week or so. I also got to think a bit about what I want to do – what direction I want to take – with my blogging. Note that these plans last about long enough for events or new information to push me in new directions…

Here’s the reading list and then some ideas:
Two fiction books: “The Secret Society of Demolition Writers,” a short story collection, and “Two Trains Running,” a modern take on Dashiell Hammet’s great “Red Harvest” by Andy Vachss.

A couple of other books: “Run the Other Way,” by Wellstone/ Ventura/ Nader adman Bill Hillsman; “The Creation of the Media,” by Paul Starr; “From Oslo to Iraq,” by Edward Said, and “Critical Mass,” by Philip Ball.

I rescanned “Fourth Turning” as well.

They were all interesting and worth reading. As time permits, I’ll blog about them over the next little while.

I also thought a lot about what I wanted to do here for the next little while, inspired in part by the juxtaposition of Vachss’ picture of a corrupt, declining Midwestern city being fought over by rival gangs, and Hillsman’s sniping at what he calls “Elections Inc.” in his (admittedly self-serving) book on campaigns and advertising.

I think and have frequently said that the Democratic Party is as interested in maintaining the status quo as is the GOP; a status quo that simultaneously involves greater power for the state increasingly exercised on behalf of the powerful. The sociology of our political system is a part of the explanation of it; Schumpeter explains much of the rest.

This is not the only thing one could say about it, but it is, I believe a core truth. If it is true, the chorus of partisan hype raised by folks like Atrios, Yglesias, Armstrong and Kos is arguably as much about getting a seat at the table – becoming part of the well-paid machine – as it is about changing outcomes.

I think there is an audience for a different story, and a different future for the Democratic Party (the GOP, too, but that opportunity for change will have to wait until they are out of power for a while). I’d like to noodle a bit about what that future might look like and how we might get there.

One of the issues we will have to address head-on is the rise of virulent anti-Western action and belief, both within the West and outside it.

Part of it involves addressing the arguments that are launched by the Saids and Juan Coles of the world, and presenting counter arguments that are solid enough to survive and thrive in the ecology of ideas. I think I (and others) have presented glosses on those arguments, but haven’t yet drilled deep enough into history and ideas and brought the arguments up to the light of day.

So that’s the plan…I’m interested in folks’ thoughts and comment, as always.

Our bad.

It happened that we ran out of bandwidth (in large part because of the popularity of Bill Roggio and Marvin Hutchin’s Flash presentation on Al Queida’s attacks) in a week when both Joe and I were offline.

Sorry about that.

Skiing was great, by the way. It will be a few days before my quads are working again…six straight days of skiing with no crowds until the last day. I need to get into better shape.

Tomorrow at 0-dark-30 we’re out to celebrate polluting the world by taking a family road trip to the mountains and skiing (and in one case, boarding); I’m spending some of my Pajamas gelt on a week in Mammoth with Tenacious G and all three of the boys. I’ll miss all you folks, but I’d miss it even more if my sons grew up without me and my wife met me at the door and asked who I was.

Have a wonderful holiday – whether Chanukah, Christmas, Eid or Kwaanza (or any other I may have left out, including feed-Cthulu-day and the Pastafarian Holiday). Enjoy your family and friends, and remember that while all the stuff in the world is damn serious, so is your daily life. It’s just plain hard to save the world if your own life is in the toilet.

See you in the New Year, and best to all of you – especially the men and women sleeping on cots in far away lands.

It’s a bit premature to draw any conclusions about the results of the elections in Iraq, but I’m obviously following the news from there as closely as I can.

And yes, it does look like the secular parties haven’t done as well as some folks (me) might have hoped. But to be honest, I’m not panicked. The issue isn’t whether people we like get elected; the issue is – broadly – whether the government of Iraq will behave within – again, broadly – acceptable boundaries in its foreign and domestic policies. And vastly more important, whether the people of Iraq will be able to review the government in a few years’ time and change it if they choose to.

If what results is a true mullahocracy as in Iran, where candidates must be approved by the ruling religious figures before they can run, then the Juan Coles of the world can stick their chests out and crow a bit.

I said in the past that it was unlikely that Baghdad would approximate Irvine any time soon, or that the Rotarians would be likely to wind up running things in the next decade (note that I don’t see having Rotarians running things as a bad thing). One step at a time, and in this case, the step is simple – governments get established – and changed, if the people so choose – freely at the ballot box. We’ll work on the other stuff later.

A famous U.S. politician once said “The people have spoken, damn them.” Here’s hoping that Iraqi politicians are saying the same thing in the next few years. Meanwhile, let’s watch and wait, let the process work, and spend less time on the Isle of Conclusion.

Commenter Ron Wright got shut out of the comment thread on the NSA below (what happened to you folks, anyway? One person pisses in the punchbowl and suddenly everyone lowers their standards…sheesh!) with a long comment he’s posted up at HSPIG where he opens with:

Moderator’s Note: This is a work in progress. I’m posting it here to generate discussion on this topic. If we are to be the “boots on the ground here,” we must know the rules by which to play.

It’s worth going over and discussing.