Jeff Pelline's Sierra Foothills Report

The S.F. Giants are now one win away from a World Series championship after beating the Texas Rangers 4-0.

•Twenty-something Madison Bumgarner won tonight’s game, making him the fourth youngest pitcher to win a World Series game.

•”Rosey Posey” — a shoe-in for Rookie of the Year — hit a home run.

•And “I’ll Huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down” — Aubrey Huff —hit a home run too.

I don’t know about you, but as a native Californian, I’m getting tired of people trashing our Golden State. In our area, for example, we live in historic gold-rush towns, our schools are good, and Lake Tahoe — a national treasure — is an hour or so up the hill. In west Texas, they play golf on packed sand for putting “greens.”

I’m starting to think that the whiners here are the ones who couldn’t make “ends meet” here as professionals, who can’t afford senior home care or whose politics are not “in sync” with the Golden State. May I suggest Nevada, Idaho, Indiana or Kentucky? “California, love it or leave it.”

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“California is poised once again to compete for the crown as the nation’s leading graveyard for business superstars trying to make the jump into politics,” writes Michael Hiltzik of the L.A. Times.

The commentary is here.

Why do big-time CEOs — Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, for example — make such terrible politicians? Much of it has to do with their failure in the “very special business of democracy,” as he puts it.

•”Engagement in democracy starts with participation in the ballot box. That’s the real significance of Whitman’s and Fiorina’s well-documented failures to vote over the years,” Michael writes.

•Neither has served a public apprenticeship as well.

•Government isn’t a business. “These include caring for the penniless; maintaining common amenities such as parks, schools, and universities; and creating infrastructure with broad value but unspecific beneficiaries, such as freeways and the Internet,” Michael writes.

I would add another key point: If you don’t get your way, you can more easily be “fired” by the voters than the other way around. After all, it’s a democracy.

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A Tea Party Patriot tries to explain how our freedoms are in jeopardy. Though a little longer than the normal clip here, this is an interesting discourse.

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In Sunday’s New York Times, Frank Rich does a good and humorous job of pointing to the cabal (such as Rupert Murdoch at Fox News and The Journal, as well as Pollster Scott Rasmussan) that has “been arduous in promoting and inflating Tea Party events and celebrities to this propagandistic end.”

We’ve discussed it on this blog too. Rich’s article is here.

The real mettle of the Tea Party will be tested when it locks horns with the GOP as 2012 approaches.

Our small rural county will be tangentially involved, too, whether we like it or not: We elected Tom McClintock, one of the Tea Party’s biggest cheerleaders, to be our Congressman. Tea Party co-founder Mark Meckler lives in our county as well. (Don’t expect any tangible benefits, however. We just provided the geographic “cover” for them in our left-leaning state; a lot of right-leaning retirees in one of the state’s most lily white districts).

“The tempest, however, will not be contained within the tiny Tea Party but will instead overrun the Republican Party itself, where Palin, with Murdoch and Beck at her back, waits in the wings to ‘take back America’ not just from Obama but from the G.O.P. country club elites now mocking her,” Rich writes.

“By then — after another two years of political gridlock and economic sclerosis — the equally disillusioned right and left may have a showdown that makes this election year look as benign as Woodstock.”

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“What’s wrong with being an advocate?” asks Bruce Brugman, the longtime editor and publisher of the Bay Guardian. “Advocating for the First Amendment, sunshine laws, for public power – what’s wrong with that?”

Bruce is profiled in Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle. The profile is here.

“The mainstream press looks down from the top of the Transamerica Pyramid. We look up from the street. And guess what? That’s where the action is. So that’s why we’re there,” he states in the interview.

I knew Bruce well for the 11 years I worked at The Chronicle, his nemesis at the time. Now his nemisis is the S.F. Weekly, another alternative newspaper.

We sat on the board of the Society of Professional Journalists’ chapter in S.F. Sometimes we agreed to disagree but one thing was certain: The Bay Guardian was more profitable than The Chronicle, at least in recent years.

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Barron’s cover story this week is titled “Bears, Beware!” It reads: “America’s money managers say stocks are cheap and the economy will keep growing. Why they’re bullish on tech, bearish on Congress.” The article is here (subscription required).

The results of a Barron’s money manager poll are below. I’m more bullish than the poll that Obama can move toward the center, as Clinton did, by 2012. Money managers are very predictable that way. And here’s one that reflects a New York-New Jersey myopia of Wall Streeters: Four percent think Chris Christie will become the Republican candidate for President.

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Our local newspaper is a Tom McClintock lapdog (again), running an other voices “Continuing on the road to ruin.” It is a retread of the same canned editorial that ran in stellar publications, such as Rocklin Today, back on Sept. 21. Click on “retread” and “running” you’ll see what I mean.

Congressional P.R. people send out canned editorials like this, hoping newspapers will just republish them — without providing context or counter-points on the Op-Ed page.

There is no counter-view this time, either, just four days before the election, from opponents Clint Curtis, Ben Emery or anybody for that matter. It is lazy journalism.

There was never any questioning of the Congressman: for wanting to get rid of a “left wing” clerk recorder; for bashing the federal stimulus program in a supposed letter of support for broadband (a bid that failed); or for being a “no show” at two candidate forums in our district while attending a hard right pow-wow in Newport Beach instead.

The Sacramento Bee has done a better job of being a McClintock “watchdog” instead of a lapdog:

•McClintock’s refusal to consider budget earmarks hurts his district is here.

•McClintock crosses a wide Rubicon — now on to Auburn is here.

•The Auburn Journal has raised questions too such as here.

We did, however, learn this weekend that two restaurants in Nevada City are closing — something that was reported here weeks ago. Tip: The Deer Creek Inn is planning to close at year-end too.

The Internet is changing the media landscape. This blog broke last month’s record for traffic four days ago and continues to grow every month. We are in unchartered territory.

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Here’s an article being shared on the internal employees network of the county. Let’s hope the county is more successful in its labor negotiations with the employees’ union than it was the last time around. For all the crowing about our fiscal conservatism, the county and the supervisors could have held a harder line with the unions the last time around, as I’ve written before. The unincorporated county faces many problems in upcoming years, I would argue: declining revenue, a moribund real estate market and increasing costs, such as how to deal with disposing of sewage. Here we go (again):

This past Tuesday we presented a fiscal report to the Board of Supervisors outlining the results of the 2009/10 fiscal year, an update on the 2010/11 fiscal year budget and early estimates for the upcoming 2011/12 fiscal year. I want to share this report with all of you as it is important for you to understand the financial pressures the County team faces as we try and deliver sustained services to our citizens.

Our last fiscal year results once again reflects positive operating results and improved the beginning General Fund fund balances by $788,000. Our budget last year for the General Fund was $63 million so we had a positive operating result of approximately 1.25%. Thank you for your efforts to helping to live within our means.

As you will see when you review the report the County’s property taxes are estimated to decline by 7.5% this current fiscal year. This is significantly more than the 4% decline we assumed when the 2010/11 budget was adopted. The additional 3.5% decline represents a loss of $1,175,000 in General Fund revenue. Thankfully we have experienced some known positive offsets that will keep the budget balanced for 2010/11.

Unfortunately, our property taxes and frankly virtually all revenues throughout the County services have been declining and there is no clear cut signal of economic recovery. This sets up a twofold problem.

First, the decline in revenues will force us to reduce expenditures once again in 2011/12 and second there is no new revenues to pay for cost increases, the largest of which is salary and benefits, which will cause us to reduce expenditures even further in 2011/12. You will see in the report that in the General Fund alone we are now estimating a $5.5 million budget gap for 2011/12.

I have recommended a combination of three tools to address this gap: continued staffing reductions, labor discussions which have already begun with your labor unions, and use of fund balance reserves.

Decisions for the past three years have been difficult. I know we have and will continue to impact individual employee’s lives and incomes.

This upcoming budget year, and the next several, will also be very difficult given the economic environment. Thankfully Nevada County has made some prudent preparations, but the fact is that we did not anticipate the length or breadth of this economic recession.

Once again, thank you for your continued vigilance in keeping the Nevada County government fiscally sound. Together we will weather these times.

Richard A. Haffey
County Executive Officer

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Watch as a 1,200 pound pumpkin is dropped on a Pontiac. Only in America.

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