EDITOR'S NOTE: This is a sampling of political writer Josh Richman's blog, The Political Blotter. Read more and post comments at www.ibabuzz.com/politics.
Dec. 2
I felt some major dj vu this morning as I read the news release Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger sent out from the National Governors Association conference he's attending in Philadelphia, where he's hobnobbing with his peers as well as with President-elect Barack Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden. He was urging Obama to make a big, immediate national investment in infrastructure both to kick-start economic growth through job creation and to lay groundwork for future decades of global competition.
"Since I took office I have been passionate about infrastructure, about rebuilding California and rebuilding America," he said in this release. "Infrastructure investment is not only necessary for long-term economic growth and global competitiveness — but it will also create jobs when Americans, and Californians, need them the most."
He went on to say that over the next 20 years, California will have more than $500 billion in infrastructure needs, and right now has more than $28 billion in projects that would be ready to break ground or place orders within four months of Obama taking office. Nationwide, more than $136 billion in projects could break ground and create jobs within two years. "This would quickly Advertisementstart to boost the economy with orders from U.S. factories for steel, cement, asphalt and other materials — creating jobs now and laying the foundation for future economic growth."
Why the dj vu? Because just a little more than a month ago, I heard U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., say almost the exact same things at an event in San Francisco.
So Schwarzenegger's plan and this part of the Democratic playbook for economic recovery are one and the same. That's not to say he hasn't been calling for infrastructure investment for a long time — for he certainly has — but it's interesting to see how divergent roads have led to the same place.
Hey, there's no shame in it. Remember, Republican Gov. Earl Warren helped lay the groundwork for California's postwar infrastructure boom, leaving Democrat Pat Brown to run with the ball. Of course, it was Republican Ronald Reagan who started applying the brakes"...
But this need not be a partisan smackdown. The long and short of it is that we need to repair, replace and expand roads, water projects, schools and so on in the decades to come if we're going to remain a viable economic power. And we need jobs right now. So what's the problem?
Dec. 4
Former Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez has joined that small, sad fraternity of elected officials whose children stand accused of heinous crimes.
Esteban Armando Nunez, 19, and three others were arrested in Sacramento on Tuesday and charged with murder and assault with a deadly weapon in connection with the Oct. 4 slaying of a college student from Concord in San Diego. According to the arrest warrant, "Nunez said whatever happens, he would take the rap for it" and that "hopefully his dad would take care of it and could get them off on self-defense."
It's heartbreaking, in so many ways — first and foremost for the family of Luis Santos, the young man killed in the incident. There can be no true, full justice for the loss of a child.
But you've got to feel for Fabian Nunez too, just as so many must've felt for Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums, whose son, Michael, has repeatedly been denied parole from his 15-to-life sentence for murdering a reputed drug dealer in 1979. Or for Oakland City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente, whose namesake son is serving 14 years in prison as a serial rapist.
You'd have to feel for any parent who sees his or her child stand accused this way, to understand the doubt and dismay inherent in pondering what went so terribly wrong. Whether or not the parent had a close relationship, or any relationship at all with the child, seems to matter little when you know the person up there in jail togs and chains is your blood. As a courts reporter, I used to see that horror in parents' eyes all the time; as a parent, I imagine I feel it every time I read a story like Dellums' or De La Fuente's or Nunez's.
Even those whose kids stand accused of lesser crimes — think Jeb Bush's Noelle, or Al Gore's namesake son — must feel this pain, though they need not take upon themselves the pain of victims and their families.
Any parent of any defendant must feel this way, but I'd imagine that to endure it as an elected official means a certain sort of amplification: The public has chosen you to represent its interests, and now it sees your child as the very boogeyman you were elected to protect against. There will be no privacy for you during this painful process; all the eyes that watched your work will now watch your personal pain as well.
Then again, it could be so much worse. Just ask former state Senator and Secretary of State Bruce McPherson.
You don't have to agree with a politician's politics to empathize with him or her as a human being, as a parent. So think a good thought for Fred and Kathy Santos of Concord as they grapple with the tragic loss of their son, but think one as well for Fabian Nunez as he grapples with how and why his son got so far away from him.
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