A Society Can Be Judged By Entering Its Prisons.

California Governor Jerry Brown

Jerry Brown has my attention today.  He declared that the emergency conditions in California's prisons have ended. Brown credited realignment, which has basically meant shifting state prison inmates to the county jails, with reducing the scope of the problem. I've blogged about it previously, noting that the remaining portion of California's budget deficit can largely be explained by the requirement that 10,900 prisoners will be housed in out-of-state prisons in 2013, in order to deal with the overcrowding emergency. From a budget perspective, if Jerry Brown can get the federal courts to agree that the prison capacity crisis has ended, and allow the Governor to move those prisoners back into the State's prisons, he will have balanced the California budget this year. 

"Crime Rate at Historic Low"

Cal Facts 2013

California Legislative Analyst

available at http://tinyurl.com/a8paa6e

The problem Jerry Brown's discussing, while it is unlikely to be solved by the judges going along with his proposal, is one that it appears will be resolved as a result of other factors in the next few years.  The recent changes to three strikes, combined with realignment, have helped.  But the graph on the right is really what's driving the situation.  California, like the rest of America, faces continued declining rates of crime. As Richard A. Oppel, Jr. of the New York Times pointed out two years ago, no-one really knows why this is the case.  If anything, most experts had expected crime to pick up during the recent economic crisis, but the opposite actually occurred. I don't have any particular insight to why this has happened, aside from noting that whatever's causing it, the same phenomenon is occurring next door in Canada.

Brown's quotes are specifically interesting, though, because Jerry Brown almost certainly knows he's telling a whopping lie by saying California has "one of the finest prison systems in the United States." Brown is navigating through the last portion of what was a near-meltdown of California's government.  To paraphrase Viscount Snowden, truth is the first casualty in a crisis, and Dostoyevsky's observation that "a society can be judged by entering its prisons" is as true as it ever was.  California's prisons are institutions that, like the State, are stepping back from the precipice of an economic collapse. Things have gotten better, yes, but calling California's prisons the nation's finest is, rhetorically, almost certainly a bridge too far.

Dan Walters and Education Funding.

Dan Walters.

Dan Walters is a columnist for the Sacramento Bee.  While he's not exactly eye-candy to look at, his columns are a great resource for understanding what's taking place in Sacramento.  He's a bit iconoclastic and isn't beholden to any particular interest group, so I read him to get an idea where California's going politically in the next 12-24 months.

He's behind the curve right now, simply because the story has changed so much in the past two months.  But he's catching up.  His column today notes that the California budget situation has gotten much better (this after the Legislative Analyst reported the same two months ago), and that the new issues in the new year are, amazingly, going to revolve around how to spend revenue, rather than how to impose cuts.

"Significant Budget Shortfalls Since 2001"
Cal Facts 2013
California Legislative Analyst

available at  http://tinyurl.com/b6lw445

This will not be a small fight, particularly because, as he's noted over the past week, there are also serious and substantial efforts to revise Prop. 13.  Further, at the same time, Jerry Brown is attempting to change the funding formula for the educational system.  This would involve, crucially, increasing funding for ESL programs, which would be significant change for, at a minimum, schools facing a changing demographic profile. Dan points out these changes are possible because of the Democratic supermajority in the legislature (something that may not last long).

I bring it up to note that, for many Californians, the story regarding education has generally been nothing but cuts for a decade, perhaps longer.  This has led to fatigue -- the constant crisis has frustrated many, leading to a certain sense of defeatism concerning the ability of the State, ever, to provide adequately for K-12 education.

I sympathize with anyone that thinks that -- California politics have been anything but functional for thirty years and there's a sense that's crept in that the State will always be this way, and that serious change (let alone reform) is beyond the political's system's reach.  However, this time, it really does look like it's going to be different.

Finally, Dan's good at pointing to useful reference resources for people who are interested in governmental issues.  The graph at the right is one example of that, from the Legislative Analyst's "Cal Facts" publication.  For anyone who wants to get a foundational feel for these problems, the pamphlet is a good place to start, even if only for its explanation of the major propositions that affect (hamstring?) California's government ...

Regarding Word Shortcuts on the Mac ...

I'm a fairly heavy user of Office for Mac, and "Outline View" in particular.  For structuring a Table of Contents, it's essential.  One nice tool is the ability to promote or demote particular levels of the outline without taking your hands off the keyboard.  Because I can never remember the shortcuts to do so myself, I'm putting them here for my (and everyone else's) benefit.

Demote:     Tab.
Promote:    Shift+Tab.
Body Text:  Shift+Cmd+N.

iPhone backup, iCloud and local, at the same time.

Very handy tip from GigaOM.
available at http://tinyurl.com/cp3b2zm

If you're like me, backing up your iPhone is a big deal. I do it regularly, because I use "Missing Sync for iPhone" for its call log feature, which links up (after some scripting) very nicely with Timeslips (a common legal billing program), and which depends on a local backup to obtain the call data.

Since the advent of iCloud, I've started backing up using the service.  It's great -- I don't have to plug my phone in to my Mac to make sure I have daily backups.

However, I still need that local backup for call logs, and further, while iCloud is very useful for backups, restoring from it can be slow, and it only keeps one backup.  But using Time Machine on my Mac means that there are a lot of snapshots of the condition of my phone, which is good for rollbacks if necessary.

So, this advice today, on backing up to both iCloud and locally, is pretty useful.  Just right click on the iPhone icon in iTunes, and the option's right there. Nice! Thanks GigaOM!