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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JohnM who wrote (10453)	10/2/2003 8:57:14 PM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793706

Oh, the trials of Public service! A lot of California Democrats will soon be back in the unemployment line. ___________________________ Political appointees dust off their resumes Actor's pledge to clean house worries staffers Mark Martin, Chronicle Sacramento Bureau Thursday, October 2, 2003 ©2003 San Francisco Chronicle \| Feedback URL: sfgate.com/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/10/02/MN267369.DTL Sacramento -- Firing the 192 state employees who work directly under Gov. Gray Davis will cost taxpayers $600,000 in vacation buyouts. That's the kind of calculation going on in state buildings across Sacramento as Davis appointees cling to hope but dust off their resumes. Angry and angst-ridden, Davis staffers are walking precincts and working phone banks in their off hours in hopes the recall can be defeated. Along with Davis, more than 3,000 workers appointed by the governor -- from the head of the California Highway Patrol to Davis' personal secretaries -- soon could be out of work three years before they anticipated. Transitions between governors have typically been cordial in California. Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown re-painted the governor's offices just before Republican George Deukmejian moved in, and GOP Gov. Pete Wilson's administration compiled 100 thick dossiers on important topics for Gray Davis' administration as Davis took over. This transition, if polls showing Davis losing and Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger winning hold true, might not be so smooth. "It's like in a football game, when the running back is pushed out of bounds onto the other team's sidelines," said one Davis appointee when asked about a potential transition to an Arnold Schwarzenegger administration. "Is the other team there to help catch his fall? Not really. They just step out of the way, and if he runs into a wall, he runs into a wall." Most Davis appointees remain publicly confident. "No one should be measuring the drapes yet," said Davis Press Secretary Steve Maviglio. But signs are everywhere that the polls are having an effect. Officials at the California Environmental Protection Agency issued a 16- page report to reporters touting the Cal-EPA's accomplishments the day after Schwarzenegger hinted he might favor gutting the agency. Davis himself has acted like a governor on the way out: he has made 15 judicial appointments in the last 13 days -- an unusually quick pace, said Gerald Uelman, a Santa Clara University law professor who tracks legal appointments. It's already been a tough year to be a bureaucrat. The state's budget mess has many employees fearing mass layoffs. "No matter who becomes governor, state government is going to get slashed," said Scott Clark, who was eating lunch on the lawn outside the state Capitol Wednesday. Clark is not an appointee; he's a civil servant who has 11 years of state service and works at the Deparment of Health Services. But the recall has added a whole new tension for appointees at a time of year when kids have started school, and no one was planning to have to move, several said. Emotions have ranged from rage at Schwarzenegger -- who has vowed to come to Sacramento to clean up the mess -- to disappointment in Davis for not doing a better job of connecting with the electorate. In the meantime, Davis staffers have adopted many of the same catch-phrases Democrats are using to defend the governor, decrying the recall as a Republican coup attempt. "Davis has stood up to Washington on so many environmental issues," said Bill Rukesyer, assistant secretary of communications for Cal-EPA. "I can't believe that all could end." Even though they're angry at what one appointee dubbed a "hostile takeover, " appointees pledged no dirty tricks should Davis lose. "Nobody will be taking the 'S's' off of the keyboards," promised Maviglio, referring to allegations that staffers for President Clinton removed the "W's" from computer keyboards in the White House the night before George W. Bush became president.

To: JohnM who wrote (10453)	10/2/2003 9:30:55 PM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793706

No wonder conservatives feel like outcasts in newsrooms ... where they may be misunderstood 12:01 AM CDT on Wednesday, October 1, 2003 By ROD DREHER / The Dallas Morning News Several years ago, a newspaper colleague paid me what for her was a sincere compliment: "For a right-winger, you're actually OK." What do you say to a patronizing comment like that? "Thanks, hon, and for a fat girl, you don't sweat much"? Actually, I took it in the spirit it was offered: as a fellow reporter's admission that she had been wrong to prejudge my character and abilities based on my politics. My writing and my professional conduct had won her over. I tell that story to conservative journalism students as an example of the kind of prejudice they will face if they pursue media careers and as a suggestion for how to deal with it. Any conservative, especially a religious conservative, who chooses journalism as a vocation should understand that he or she is entering hostile territory. That, of course, isn't news. It is a cliché to say the news media are liberal, but it is the truth, as a number of independent studies and surveys have confirmed. That is especially true on social issues. And reporters are overwhelmingly secular. It isn't simply that coastal media elites skew survey results. In 1994, The Orlando Sentinel's Peter Brown commissioned a survey of journalists and readers from five medium-sized media markets and one large middle-American media market: Dallas-Fort Worth. The poll found that in terms of worldview, most Dallas area journalists have more in common with their colleagues at The Washington Post than with the people who read their newspapers and watch their telecasts. What does that mean for the conservative new to a newsroom? For one, she will be astonished by not only the pervasive groupthink but how little awareness there is of the narrowness of thought present. Indeed, the paper may pride itself on its commitment to diversity. It rarely seems to occur to editors that a newsroom filled with a demographic cornucopia of journalists who think more or less the same way may benefit institutional self-esteem but not coverage. For another, she will be struck by the gap between what journalists actually know about conservatives and what they think they know. Reporters and editors, like most people, assume their own frame of reference is normative. The conservative in the newsroom will be assumed by many to be a Bible-thumping, race-baiting, gay-hating bigot until proved otherwise – because that's what many journalists, who rarely if ever socialize with conservatives, think we all are like. Moreover, they believe that's how rational, fair-minded people see the world. Sooner or later, the folks who run the media will realize they would stop losing readers and viewers if they would hire more conservatives and thereby present a more balanced, better informed and more interesting product. Until that day, journalism needs young conservatives to be pioneers. As Catholic historian Paul Johnson said to potential church converts, "Come on in, it's awful!" Journalism isn't awful for conservatives, not by a long shot, but to succeed, they have to be cleverer, tougher, harder-working and more patient than liberal colleagues. As a conservative journalist, you will have to distinguish yourself by the strength of your writing and reporting. You have to love journalism for its own sake, not because it gives you a platform for your views. You will have to be a journalist first, not an ideologue who lets his convictions blind him to facts. You will have to pick battles carefully and never, ever give in to the romance of self-pity. A chip on your shoulder is a weight that will sink you. Finally, a sense of humor will keep you grounded. Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby once told me why he admired Ken Chandler, a fellow conservative who was then publisher of The New York Post. "Ken's the only man I know at that level who stays in journalism for the same reason everybody gets into it in the first place: Because it's a hell of a lot of fun." Rod Dreher is an editorial writer and occasional columnist for The Dallas Morning News. His e-mail address is rdreher@dallasnews.com. Online at: dallasnews.com