Here's something that leftish Democrats talked about a lot -- but only quietly, over drinks in back rooms -- when they were trying to decide whether to back Judy Chu or Gil Cedillo to replace Hilda Solis in Congress when President Obama picked Solis for labor secretary.

If we go with Gil, they said, we can hand-pick some reliable Democrat to replace him in the state Senate. But Gil's gone sort of moderate. So maybe we should go with more reliably leftish Judy. Oh, but wait, that will mean Schwarzenegger would appoint her replacement on the state Board of Equalization, and he'd choose someone who's gone sort of moderate.

Well, they went with Chu in the special primary, and she won. Today Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed moderate Democrat Jerome Horton to the Board of Equalization, and if he's confirmed, it's a major defeat for leftish Democrats. Even though Horton's a Democrat. Which raises some questions:

Q: What the heck is the state Board of Equalization?

A: It's the nation's only elected tax body. It's in charge of collecting sales and property taxes, and is not to be confused with the Franchise Tax Board, which collects income taxes. We need a separate, elected BOE because -- um, because -- well, because California needs more elected officials. Also, without a BOE, termed-out legislators who aren't yet ready to run for statewide office but who can't get appointed to the Waste Management Board would have no power base and limited fund-raising opportunities. The BOE keeps them in the game.

Q: Horton's a Democrat. And there's nothing wrong with being a moderate. So what's the big deal?

A: In tax policy circles, "moderate" is code for business-friendly, which changes the balance on the five-member board. The state is divided into four districts: 1st (representing the entire California coast, from Oregon to Santa Barbara; automatically a Democratic seat); 2nd (cow counties, tax revolt counties, the desert portion of L.A. county: Republican seat); 3rd (San Diego, Orange, Inland Empire; in other words, Republican seat); and 4th (the non-desert portions of L.A. County. Democrat). The tie is broken by the state controller, who is Democrat John Chiang. But Horton would be expected to mix things up by voting, sometimes, with the Republicans. And those tax policy votes will make a far bigger difference to California, in the short run at least, than anything Chu could possibly do in Congress.

Q: Wait, didn't Chu beat Horton in the last BOE Democratic primary?

A: Indeed she did: Chu got 49.7% of the vote in the 4-person field; Horton got 31.5%. So should we say that Schwarzenegger is flouting the choice of voters, who had a chance to pick Horton and overwhelmingly said no? Or should we say that Schwarzenegger is doing the voters' will by giving them their back-up choice?  

Q: Is Horton even qualified for this job?

A: No, unless you count his two-decade career at the BOE, his six years as a state assemblyman, and his four years on the Inglewood City Council. Some Democrats who oppose Horton likely do so because of his pro-business approach on taxes and his penchant for avoiding Assembly votes to keep lobbyists on both sides courting him until the last possible moment.

Q: What about Chu's husband, Mike Eng? Doesn't the state Constitution require Eng to always succeed Chu in any elected position?

A: No, although it's understandable why someone might think that. Eng succeeded Chu on the Monterey Park City Council, as Monterey Park mayor, and as member of the Assembly from the 49th District.

Q: Is Horton going to be confirmed by the Legislature?

A: Not without a lot of angst and political saber-rattling. If he's not confirmed, and no follow-up appointment is confirmed, a former Chu staffer will fill in until the BOE election next year. Bet you can hardly wait.

Q: If the BOE board is supposed to represent the entire state, how come four of five members come from the L.A. area?

A: District line-drawing at its finest.

Photo: Robert Durell / LAT

In the same Nov. 4, 2008 election in which Barack Obama was elected president, Los Angeles voters defeated (but just barely) a $36-per-property parcel tax measure to fund youth and anti-gang programs. Measure A was spearheaded by Councilwoman Janice Hahn; as a local tax, it had to pull in two-thirds, or 66.67% of the vote to win. It got 66.27%. Times endorsements may not have the clout they once did, but I think it's safe to say that our opposition helped make a difference on this one.

Hahn wants to try again, and wants to know what it would take to win us over this time. Fair question.

The subject came up at Tuesday's City Council committee hearing, at which Deputy Mayor Jeff Carr reported on the last six months of the city's still-new Gang Reduction and Youth Development programs.

When the Times called for a "no" vote on Measure A, we said the city had not shown it was ready to use new tax money properly. We explained that Los Angeles had floundered with anti-gang efforts for years, throwing money at programs without knowing whether they were working or even defining what they were supposed to accomplish. Just months earlier, the city had scrapped L.A. Bridges and authorized the mayor to take charge of gang programs and to establish standards and evaluation methods. Carr was a newcomer. It was too early to tell whether the city had improved. Here's a snippet, in case you don't want to click on the link and wade through the while thing:

South Pasadenans say "tax me." In the latest in a string of mail-only votes in relatively well-to-do school districts in the Los Angeles area, voters in South Pas apparently have adopted a parcel tax to pay for schools. The ballot deadline was yesterday; votes were counted almost immediately and the finally tally gave Measure S just over the 2/3 supermajority it needed to pass.

The Pasadena Star-News reports that there are still a few absentee ballots to be counted, so the results aren't final. I'm waiting to hear back from the usually responsive L.A. County Registrar-Recorder's Office on this; seems to me that if it was a mail-only election, all ballots are absentee and would have been counted at the same time. I'll update you when they update me.

*UPDATE: The Registrar-Recorder's Office explains that these figures do not include ballots received yesterday, either by mail or dropped off in person. There are enough of those that they could make a difference in the outcome. A fuller tally is expected after 5 p.m. on Friday.

This is a property tax, sort of. Instead of an assessment based on the value of the property, a parcel tax generally bills the owner of each piece of property the same amount. In this case, that's $288 for most parcels, residential and commercial alike, except for multi-unit parcels, which are $95 per unit.

Here are the still-unofficial results: Yes, 3,991, or 67.26%; No, 1,943, or 32.74%.

See our June 2 post on school parcel taxes here. See Times staff writer Seema Mehta's comprehensive June 15 story here.

San Marino approved its school parcel tax proposal last month. Ballots are due Tuesday in the Palos Verdes school district and the following Tuesday in school districts in La Cañada Flintridge and Rowland, which covers all or parts of the cities of Rowland Heights, West Covina, City of Industry and Walnut.

The Times' editorial page today takes President Obama to task for his back-and-forth pronouncements on the destructive practice of mountaintop coal mining. We say the president merits "quiet applause" for new restrictions, but we also note that they come on the heels of approval of two-dozen new projects.

The best approach to mountaintop mining would be to ban it completely. It's cheaper and less labor-intensive than underground mining, but not worth the environmental cost. At a minimum, Obama should address some other highly destructive rule changes imposed by the Bush administration -- a good place to start would be restoring a regulation that forbade mining within 100 feet of a stream, and disallowing the use of mine waste as "fill" material in waterways.

The editorial board also scolds the president about his exception-filled "paygo" plan and the rest of the decisions that may show how comfortable Washington is getting with deficit spending. Growing the debt may have had some merit as a way to stimulate the economy, but where are the plans to restore fiscal balance?

And we take another look at the difficulty in firing bad teachers, and the role that unions play in elevating teacher job security over the welfare of students. The new secretary of Education wants teachers to be paid based on how well their students learn. California isn't close to that, or any other objective measure.

Here, it is considered revolutionary for a school board to beg for relief from a tortuous, money-wasting teacher termination process that is nearly doomed to failure anyway.

On the Op-Ed page, Ben Ehrenreich calls on the U.S. to get down off its high horse on torture. It isn't new, he argues, and it isn't a thing of the past either.

Despite our protestations, we have little to be surprised about. The Bush administration's great act of hubris was not to allow torture -- that was nothing new -- but to attempt to shelter it within the law. Now, when President Obama vows that "the United States does not torture" and spars with the former vice president over details, he crosses his fingers behind his back and saves himself a loophole. Via "extraordinary rendition" -- a Clinton administration innovation -- our government is still free to outsource torture and claim it doesn't know.

Ehrenreich last wrote for The Times in April, when he reviewed "News From the Empire" by Spanish novelist Fernando del Paso.

Author Craig Childs is friends with and lives among private collectors who grab pot fragments and other archaeological artifacts, robbing the bits and pieces of much of their historical value. He opposes the practice -- but describes the mixed feelings he has about recent raids that resulted in the arrest of some of his friends.

Childs last wrote for The Times in February, when he discussed what a recent finding of chocolate in an ancient New Mexico jar has to say about pre-Columbian North American civilization.

And Times columnist Gregory Rodriguez wonders whether the recent murderous attacks on an abortion doctor and the Holocaust museum in Washington mean we have entered the era of the angry old man.

Photo credit: Jeff Gentner / Associated Press

Today's editorial about the new SAG contract tried to summarize more than two years of Hollywood labor talks in a single sentence, a high-risk move that, ahem, was not completely successful. Here's the sentence:

By "residuals intact," we meant that the new contracts didn't change the residuals already established for TV and other traditional outlets. "Albeit less generous" was a reference to newly created residuals for online programming that were minuscule in comparison to the ones paid for TV reruns. But our words didn't necessarily get these points across, and AFTRA National Executive Director Kim Roberts Hedgpeth sent me an e-mail registering her protest:

She's right on all accounts. I would add, though, that many writers and actors don't view the new residuals for programs streamed on Hulu and other online sites as being "more generous" than what they've relied on for years in television. Nor are there any residuals to be paid when a program made for the Internet is resold to other new-media outlets.

The ad-supported streaming provisions of the contracts are the real flash-points, because many union members see Hulu and its ilk taking the place of reruns on TV. In their minds, they are trading hefty TV residuals for parsimonious Internet ones. There's no question that the networks are airing far fewer reruns, and that more people are catching those repeats online than before. But it's also true that, at least so far, the shows that air on Hulu et al aren't generating nearly as much revenue for the networks as their reruns used to.

So, that's what we meant by "less generous." Now if only the newspaper offered as much space as the Opinion L.A. blog....

The United States is the only nation in the world in which a child can be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. California has more than 200 inmates who were sentenced to remain behind bars forever for crimes they committed before they became adults. Under a bill that passed today on the Senate floor, they would get a chance to petition the court to have their sentences converted to 25-years-to-life. That wouldn't guarantee parole or eventual release; it would simply give them a chance at a hearing.

The Times editorialized in favor of SB 399, which now moves to the Assembly. It's authored by Leland Yee, D-San Francisco. Read our editorial here, and a follow-up blogpost here. Here is a support blog and site.

This is a worthy bill and deserves to pass and be signed into law. Support is not based on naive or romantic notions about innocent children wrongly locked up for life. This is not a movie. The dozens of people the bill would affect were convicted of committing serious and often brutal felonies. Yes, many were following the lead of criminal adults, and many others were too scarred or traumatized by violent families or neighborhoods to fully grasp the horror of their actions. But punishment makes sense.

Life without parole, however, does not -- at least, not in every case. Under this bill, many, perhaps most, of the California inmates sentenced for crimes committed in their youth would remain in prison for life and will eventually die there. But for some who can demonstrate that as adults they have grown, repented and reformed, they may be able to look forward to the possibility of a portion of their adulthood outside prison bars. 

Photo: Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press

In today's Los Angeles Times opinion pages, the editorial board says it's time to sell the picturesque state-owned castle, pictured at right, perhaps for condos. The castle, by the way, is the prison at San Quentin.

Selling San Quentin and building homes or businesses in its place would boost the state's economy, lower prison operating costs and possibly provide a one-time cash infusion to the general fund, all without costing taxpayers a dime. Lawmakers should get it done, even if it won't solve the budget crisis.

The board also ponders the diminution of the Sixth Amendment right to counsel after a recent Supreme Court opinion, penned by Justice Antonin Scalia, in the case of Jesse Jay Montejo. The ruling overturns a 1986 precedent and blurs what ought to be a bright line: that once a suspect has a lawyer, questioning should stop unless the lawyer is present.

And then there's sexting, the practice of young teens, usually girls, of sending naked and other personal photos of themselves to boys -- who, too often, forward them to the rest of the school, the neighborhood, and all of cyberspace. So are we dealing with sex crimes? Child abuse? The Times calls on everyone to pause and take a breath:

By sexting, to quote one expert, teens are giving themselves "cyber tattoos" for life. So although it may be necessary to bring charges in the most egregious cases, that shouldn't be the rule. Education and attentive parenting will go further toward addressing this worrisome trend than new laws and tough prosecutions.

On the Op-Ed side, historic preservation comes to the moon. No, really. Louisiana State University School of Art graduate student Jill Thomas and professor Justin St. P. Walsh say we should worry about space tourists messing with the Apollo landing sites.

The sites of early lunar landings are of unparalleled significance in the history of humanity, and extraordinary caution should be taken to protect them. Armstrong's iconic footprint and the American flag placed by the astronauts may yet be intact -- there is no wind or rain on the moon to damage or destroy them.

Election law maven, blogger, and Loyola Law School professor Richard Hasen calls for Al Franken to be seated in the U.S. Senate. Democrat Franken led incumbent Republican Norm Coleman by 312 votes after a lengthy recount in Minnesota, but Coleman has appealed to the state Supreme Court and may not stop there.

If, as expected, the court rejects Coleman's challenge and confirms Al Franken as the winner, the U.S. Senate should be ready to seat Franken provisionally, even if Coleman vows further legal action and even if the state's governor refuses to sign Franken's election certificate.

And columnist Gregory Rodriguez takes up the Latino-ness of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, who is of Puerto Rican descent.

Because the media and the political elites make no distinctions among Latino groups, Mexican Americans may find themselves waiting a very long time for one of their own to be nominated to the Supreme Court.

Photo: Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

When I was a summer intern at The Times' editorial page in 2004, I expressed some surprise to an editor that, nearly a year after Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected governor and Sacramento seemed to have passed the peak of its 2003 budget crisis, the state was still in a bad enough spot for the paper to continue publishing editorials under its "Reinventing California" tagline. The editor smiled and replied, "Ah, the naivete of our youth," implying that I was wrong to have ever expected the state's fiscal nightmare to end with the election of a new governor.

How right she was. Nearly five years later, the state's situation remains so dire that many prominent voices have re-calibrated their criticism of the people and interests that control Sacramento, taking aim instead at the very Constitution that sets the rules for governing California. The state needs a constitutional convention, they say, and the Times' editorial board endorsed the idea last week:

There have been calls for months now to convene a state constitutional convention and, in essence, start over. It's a good idea. The state Constitution runs to two fat volumes in print and is padded each year by new voter initiatives or legislative propositions. In the end, it's just a document. It's not the enemy. But retooling is one necessary step to make the state function better....

No convention -- in fact, no statewide fix -- will work if it consists simply of one interest group's shopping list. The Times has made no secret of its position against the two-thirds legislative threshold for tax increases and budgets, and we will keep pushing to overturn it. But the point is to get more ideas on the table.

Prepare for the season of reform and reinvention. A tax reform commission is to release its report in July. Political parties and candidates will focus on next year's gubernatorial election. It's not time to back away from government; it's time to engage it, and change it. Over the coming weeks and months, this page will not be shy about asking questions and offering suggestions. Bring on the ideas. Bring on the convention.

UC Irvine law school Dean Erwin Chemerinsky took to our Op-Ed pages this week to throw some cold water on the idea:

My experience as chairman of a similar convention -- an elected commission created in 1997 to propose a new Los Angeles city charter -- makes me skeptical that a constitutional convention can provide a solution to the serious problems that face the state.

It's not that I disagree about the roots of the crisis. The California Constitution is deeply flawed and desperately needs revision....

But is a constitutional convention the best path to a solution? Even if there is a constitutional convention, and even if it does come up with a coherent and meaningful package of proposed changes, it's uncertain that that package would ever be adopted. There are countless controversial issues that could doom it. For example, if the revised constitution protects a right to marriage equality for gays and lesbians, a significant number of voters will oppose it on that basis alone.

Fellow Anteater Bernard Grofman, a UC Irvine political science professor, suggested in his May 27 Blowback that Californians should be given the chance to vote on ballot measure to repeal "all special-interest budgeting in one fell swoop." In last week's Dust-Up, Tom Campbell and Daniel J.B. Mitchell floated their ideas to end the state's perpetual financial crisis. Forbes columnist Peter Robinson today called for a constitutional overhaul:

Jim Wunderman, president of the Bay Area Council, a business group, has begun calling for a constitutional convention. The current constitution, Wunderman argues, is so long, convoluted and encrusted with amendments that Californians ought to toss it out and start again from scratch.

To keep the political class from taking over the convention, Wunderman wants to choose delegates from the state jury pool. Does that sound like placing trust in chance? If so, you've got the idea. Ordinary Californians, redesigning the entire state government.

William F. Buckley Jr. once said, "I would rather be governed by the first 400 names in the Boston telephone book than by the faculty of Harvard University." Me? I'd rather be governed by a few hundred jurors from Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, Irvine, San Diego, Bakersfield, Fresno, Modesto and Stockton than by all the lobbyists and union officials in Sacramento.

It is, as I said, a beautiful idea.

Never let a good crisis go to waste, as the saying du jour goes, and ideas for fixing California are indeed flowing. Be a part of this conversation by leaving a comment below, taking our poll or both.

Photo: Attorney Gloria Allred writes in the phrase "except for gays and lesbians" on a posterboard showing a portion of the California Constitution Declaration of Rights (Robyn Beck / AFP/Getty Images).

Never mind that Geithner guy -- California Assembly Speaker Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles) predicted this morning that Congress would help California with its cash-flow problems. But Bass wants one thing to be perfectly clear: Washington isn't going to bail the state out of its larger budget mess, and the state isn't asking it to. And before the state can expect any help, Bass said, lawmakers will have to close the multi-billion-dollar budget gap with a mix of cuts and revenue increases.

Here's the background. California typically has to borrow money in the summer because tax and fee revenue lags. It pays off these short-term loans later in the year, when tax receipts hit their peak. But this year, the credit crunch and the state's burgeoning budget gap have made it hard for Sacramento to find a cheap source of short-term cash. The state needs roughly $10 billion to solve its cash-flow problem, and if it has to borrow the money at market rates, it will wind up spending hundreds of millions of tax dollars more on interest payments instead of health care, schools and other services. State Treasurer Bill Lockyer appealed to Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner earlier this month to help the state by guaranteeing its short-term borrowing, but Geithner told a congressional panel that he doesn't have the authority to do so.

Bass said that Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, told her he expects Congress to pass a bill authorizing federal guarantees for loans to states with cash flow problems. Such guarantees would dramatically cut California's costs, and because the state would be borrowing against future tax revenues, the risk to federal taxpayers is minimal. Still, as the Times editorial board noted Tuesday, any move by Congress to help Sacramento would send a dangerous message after a) legislators made such a mess of the state's budget, and b) voters overwhelmingly rejected a slate of tax increases and program cuts. To wit, it would tell lawmakers and voters in other states that they didn't have to make tough decisions on their budgets because Uncle Sam would ride to the rescue regardless. Bass may be right when she says the state never asked for a bailout, but the distinction between California's long-term and short-term financial problems is too fine....

One thing missing from the debate over California's budget problems has been the debate. Back when lawmakers were struggling to come up with a plan, the Democratic leadership offered proposal after proposal for closing the yawning budget gap, and Republicans countered with little more than a statement of governing philosophy. With a budget so grossly out of balance, we needed a healthy partisan wrangle over the services the state provides, its relationship with local governments, its approach to taxation -- big, weighty topics that get to the heart of the Sacramento's role in its residents' lives. Unfortunately, we got nothing of the kind, probably because it would have taken too much political courage. And now that the public has to vote on key parts of that plan, foes on both sides are offering little more than outrage.

The latest example of this comes from the Wall Street Journal's editorial board, which welcomed the train wreck that will ensue from the almost certain defeat of Propositions 1A, 1C, 1D and 1E. In addition to getting the substance of most of the measures wrong, the board joined in the chorus of superficial analysis from pundits and pollsters, saying that voting down the propositions will send an important message to lawmakers about the need for lower taxes and less spending. No, it would send an all-too-familiar message that compromising is for losers.

The Journal's right about some of the roots of the budget mess, particularly the ministrations that lawmakers have paid to public employee unions and the broken tax code. But its ideas for solutions are laughable. It's facile to say that the state should "cap total spending" and "add a flat-rate income and sales tax" that are significantly lower than the current ones. The problem today is the chasm between what the state takes in and what it spends, which means making some non-facile decisions about what the state does with its money. Where are the meaty suggestions for $21 billion worth of cuts in the state's budget (more than 10% a year in this year and next)?  The only suggestion for bridging that chasm is "drilling for oil offshore," which is the kind of short-term thinking that the Journal ridicules.

I don't like the deal that legislators struck, either -- it's rife with penny-wise, pound-foolish choices. I'm confident that there are better ways to close the gap. But rather than just denouncing tax hikes (or teacher layoffs or cutbacks in mental-health programs or any other favored cause), we need to see some credible alternatives. That means moving past vague exhortations to "rein in spending" or "eliminate waste, fraud and abuse," and getting serious about the state's duties and the most efficient way to fulfill them.