The Editor's Desk

Over at Reason, one of the litigators for the now-famous eminent domain Supreme Court decision describes what has happened three years after the court ruling.

The house at the center of the case has been moved. And the project that the city used to justify taking it under eminent domain practices … is pretty much dead.

You know, that’s another argument against eminent domain abuse that didn’t even occur to me. Private projects and developments change all the time. Sometimes they die entirely. Keeping eminent domain confined to an identifiable public need — like a courthouse or school — doesn’t guarantee a project’s completion, but it is certainly more likely than a huge complicated private development.

Imagine if the City of Barstow had used eminent domain to get the land for one of these proposed housing developments that haven’t and maybe won’t come to pass. People forced to move and buildings bulldozed. And then, the developers don’t have enough money or can’t actually complete the project.

That’s something to keep in mind when a municipality defends its eminent domain abuse for economic development projects. There’s absolutely no way of truly knowing whether the project will ever come to fruition.

My staff is cheating!

You may or may not have noticed some slight changes to the way the current Desert Dispatch looks. As we’ve been putting together the various elements and features that we’ll be using in the redesigned newspaper, they’ve been quietly showing up in the current version. A couple of new items — a stat file display and a “Did you know?” box — were used in Saturday’s paper.

We’ve started practicing designing the new pages to see how much work it will be once the redesign launches in July.

Just to make things clear, though, the redesign is actually fairly modest. We’re not really changing our content that much. We hope to make it easier to find important information and details in the way we present the news so that busy readers can quickly get what they need.

I had a very interesting conversation with a reader Tuesday. He had been an irregular reader of the Desert Dispatch but had recently started a full subscription. He had called because he was concerned that our opinion page “leaned” conservative. He had read one of Richard Reeb’s commentaries, but hadn’t yet seen one of Carol Jensen’s Monday pieces.

I explained to the caller that actually, my intent with the opinion page is to promote libertarian political views, while at the same time, accommodating other views as well.

There was one particularly illuminating moment in the conversation. Because he was more progressive, he was concerned that too much conservative opinion on the page, unchecked by an equal amount of progressive commentary, might influence people to believe in conservative politics.

In other words, he was concerned that we were encouraging people to believe in things that he didn’t want people to believe.

It was a real learning moment for me, because in my mind, of course the commentaries are trying to influence people to believe in the writer’s views — that’s what they’re for. The entire point of an opinion page is to influence and challenge what people believe.

But that’s not how the caller felt, and I should have probably known better. The rise of our pundit-based opinion culture has created a country where people believe the purpose of commentary is to validate what they believe. To tell them that they’re right and those other people are wrong. The purpose of running commentary from the “other side” is not for “balance,” like they want to believe. It’s so that they have somebody to be indignant about and prove wrong. The idea that there might actually be a third side (let alone a fourth or fifth) seems alien to people these days. Because Freedom Communication editorial writers have a libertarian perspective, we’ve been accused of being part of the “liberal media” when we write about individual rights and then accused of being “right wing pawns” when we write about property rights and support capitalism. There are people who really cannot perceive that there’s anything else out there.

The larger result has been bland, toothless opinion pages in other newspapers across the country, where editorials read like they’re written by a focus group and are designed to appeal to the pre-existing beliefs of the majority of the readership, not to actually influence anybody at all.

But I’m hopeful for change over the next 10 years. The fragmentation of the political parties might help. The increasing number of voices encouraging the Republican to turn back to a small-government mentality adds a new side to the discussion. Blogs have changed the dynamic in many ways — some just add to the pundit echo chamber, but a lot of them add nuance to the discussion, dissecting and pushing at the foundations of what we believe.

I will continue to try to challenge what people believe on our editorial page, and I don’t apologize for my — or any of my writers’ — efforts to actually influence people’s beliefs.

Premium finally hit $5 this week and reporter Abby Sewell put together a story. I’ve gotten a couple of calls and requests saying that the Desert Dispatch should report the cheapest gas prices in the community on a daily or weekly basis.

The biggest problem with such a plan (assuming we had staff members who could take the time to go around checking gas prices, which we don’t) is that the information would be collected one afternoon and then published the next morning. By this point the information is obsolete and would likely be incorrect. It simply wouldn’t actually be as useful as some people think it would be.

The solution to this problem is the easily updateable Internet, but even there we found a problem. A couple of weeks ago we a briefly added a widget from gasbuddy.com that allows people to search gas prices by Zip code. But the problem turned out to be that only a very small number of local gas stations participated — four or five if I recall. We did not get a good enough cross-section of gas prices for the tool to be useful or reliable. Ultimately, we took it off our site.

However, Gas Buddy also allows users to essentially join the site and contribute by reporting gas prices. If Barstow residents were willing to do so, we could develop a more reliable price check system so folks can better choose where to fill up the gas.

Damon Root over at Reason Magazine analyzes why Proposition 98 failed and Proposition 99 passed and came to the same conclusion as me and other eminent domain observers: We need a proposition that limits eminent domain and does nothing else.

My editorial for Wednesday is about the wasteful spending behind the state’s seat belt public safety campaign. Paying officers overtime to check to see if folks are wearing seat belts? Really? Is this really a smart way to spend tax money?

I had my own experiences with this program last month. While I was driving down to Ontario to catch a flight, I was pulled over by a CHP officer for apparently no reason other than to see if I was wearing a seat belt. I was. Fortunately I always make sure to give plenty of padding time to get to the airport, given the potential bottleneck of the Cajon Pass, and it was just a slight nuisance.

Then, toward the end of May, I returned back from another trip on a Friday and of course got caught up in crawling traffic on Interstate 15 heading toward Cajon Pass. I wondered if this was just typical holiday traffic (Memorial Day weekend) or if there was an accident or problem up ahead. My car slowly crept along the highway, approaching one of those big signs they put in place to warn about traffic conditions or Amber Alerts. Maybe it would tell me what was going on?

Nope. Instead, it read: “Click it or Ticket.” That’s it. The sign’s intended use was subverted as well for some wasteful campaign.

The 76 just across from Barstow Station has been holding at $4.99 per gallon for premium since last week. Gas prices went up over the weekend as oil prices went up, but they’ve managed to hold the line on premium. As a result, their mid-range gas is only four cents cheaper per gallon and I think their regular unleaded is about a dime less.

Keep an eye on them to see when we break that next threshold. I’ve asked reporter Abby Sewell to try to put together a story this week about the possibility of breaking $5 a gallon here in Barstow.

We tend to try not to use too many state wire stories about gas prices in California because quite frequently their declaration of the most expensive gas prices tend to be off in a way that’s very visible here. Their “most expensive” gas price tends to actually be cheaper than prices in Barstow.

So while everybody is ranting now about $4-per-gallon gas prices, I’m noticing that premium gas in Barstow is now well into $4.80 per gallon. Will we hit $5 soon?

A press release that arrived yesterday:

SAN BERNARDINO - San Bernardino County Supervisors Dennis Hansberger and Josie Gonzales are hosting a free workshop this week to help local non-profit organizations secure dollars from major foundations.

The “Meet the Funders” forum, featuring a panel of grant-making foundations, will be held Friday, June 6, from 8:15 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. in the Board of Supervisor’s Chambers located in the County Government Center, 385 North Arrowhead Avenue, San Bernardino.

Representatives from major funding institutions, such as the Bank of America Foundation, the California Endowment, James Irvine Foundation, Verizon Foundation, and the Washington Mutual Foundation will meet face to face with local non-profits primarily serving the County’s third and fifth district residents.

Daniel Foster, Chief Executive Officer of the Riverside Arts Museum, will lead a panel discussion to educate local organizations on how to effectively approach these foundations for funding focused in the areas of health and human services, homeless, education, youth, and the arts.

That’s right, folks in county government are going to help non-profits learn how to turn to private foundations to try to get money for programs instead of begging for public money. Kudos! Brad Mitzelfelt should join them, but then he wouldn’t have press releases to send out crowing about his involvement in getting funding for High Desert organizations.

I was the only person at Cora Harper Community Center voting this morning when I stopped by before work. Back in February I actually had to stand in line and wait.

Whether this bodes good or ill for local Assembly candidate Bob Smith I have no idea. His chances depended on getting his name out in the other parts of the district anyway — Barstow is just a tiny part.

I’d say it definitely bodes poorly for Prop 98. I can only hope Prop 99 is defeated as well and somebody crafts a more robust eminent domain protection bill that doesn’t have any other elements that can be used to campaign against it.