SquareState - Curtis Hubbard

Fair Taxation and Sensible Democratic Solutions lead to budget surpluses in California

Zappatero — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 00:19:14 GMT

[A] series of tax cuts, combined with the ailing economy of the Bush years and the bursting of the tech bubble led to massive structural deficits in California in recent years.
But unlike other states, where the majority party in the state legislature can actually govern the state, California was different: it took a two-thirds supermajority of both houses of the legislature to pass just a budget, much less raise taxes.
This allowed an ever-increasing extreme band of Republicans, who controlled more than a third of at least one house during this time, despite their deepening unpopularity, to hold the state hostage seemingly every year until they got even more cuts to the social safety net.
These Republicans would even use their hostage-taking power to extract corporate tax cuts for big businesses, further deepening our fiscal nightmare.
(Sound familiar, anyone? - z)
Eventually, the progressive California electorate got tired of this. Even as a tea party wave swept the nation in 2010, California's Democrats increased their legislative majorities and swept all statewide offices. We passed a ballot measure ending the supermajority requirement to pass a budget.
And in 2012, after over 30 years of anti-tax orthodoxy dating back to the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978, Californians voted to tax themselves to stop the crushing damage done to our schools by decades of low-tax neglect. Even better, redistricting reform has allowed Democrats to win even more seats, finally claiming a supermajority in the legislature and rendering the Republican Party structurally irrelevant in every meaningful way.

Pointless Post Editorial pines for Bipartisanship...and Unicorns

Zappatero — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 20:18:23 GMT

How difficult it must be to belong to the group of self-proclaimed centrists who believe there's a happy medium between today's Radical Republicans (many of whom hold elective office), their Tepid Democratic peers (many of whom quake at the sight of their own shadow), and Leftist Socialist Democrat Marxists who tilt at windmills via Cheeto-stained keyboards from the safety of their mom's basement.

Curtis Hubbard voices his angst in today's Denver Post without making the plain and simple point that he could (well, if Dean Whatzizname weren't his boss). Curtis begins by quoting Governor John Hickenlooper:

"While Washington struggles with fiscal cliffs and partisan fights, Colorado demonstrates there is still room for compromise and moderation.".
There are 32 fresh faces in the 100-member legislature who may not remember it, but last year's session ended on an acrimonious note when the governor called a special session in hopes of forcing a vote on a civil unions bill essentially killed by Republicans in the waning hours of the 120-day General Assembly. In overtime, they killed it again.
Eight months later, Hickenlooper wants us to believe that politics in the statehouse is all unicorns and bunnies, where Democrats and Republicans walk hand-in-hand gazing at mountains and rainbows.

Republicans pulled a bunch of crap during the last legislative session to kill a bill that will make the inevitable closer to reality and that was sure to pass in the very near future:

With Democrats back in control of both chambers this year, the civil unions bill is expected to be among the first signed into law. On Wednesday, every Democratic lawmaker had signed on as a sponsor. Contrast that to one Republican - Rep. Cheri Gerou, R-Evergreen.

Democrats must be bad because they brought the bill to the floor, or something...

But Hickenlooper is the fulcrum on which bipartisanship must balance, and he must be at the halfway point, no matter that halfway between both sides has moved to halfway to Mars, for there to be bipartisanship and the guaranteed praise of Hubbard and the Post:

The governor is trying to play it somewhere close to the middle.
He may have to fend off fellow Democrats as he seeks to boost the state's reserves, confront legislation aimed at rewarding organized labor and support rules on oil and gas drilling that many in his party think are tilted in favor of the industry.
On the flip side, Republicans are likely to view with suspicion plans to expand Medicaid, stricter controls on guns and talk of tax increases for education.
"They're setting us up where the only option is to put a tax increase to the vote of the people," Waller said. "That's what's going to happen here."
It's not all Kumbaya in the Capitol.

Is there a reason it's "not all Kumbaya"? Hubbard pretends not to know.

Is raising taxes to invest in education a good policy? In Hubbard's world that's a tough question, even as Colorado's schools are mired in mediocrity.

Are Republicans and Democrats equally responsible for the inaction of government? Colorado's voters spoke clearly this November. Hubbard won't, or can't, say who has the more responsible policies and political capital to implement them.

He's too busy looking for unicorns......and bipartisanship.

Hubbard says he didn't block Sirota's tweets due to Harper's article

Jason Salzman — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 17:22:24 GMT

Denver writer and radio-show host David Sirota claimed in a tweet Friday that Denver Post Editorial Page Editor Curtis Hubbard blocked Sirota from the Denver Post Twitter:

David Sirota‏@davidsirota
Following my @harpers piece, @DenverPost editor @CurtisHubbard blocked me on Twitter. Dear lord, that's friggin' hilarious.

He followed that tweet up with this one:

David Sirota‏@davidsirota
Can't say I blame @curtishubbard - he knows Dean "Citizen Kane" Singleton signs his paycheck and is watching...

You wouldn't expect Hubbard to block Sirota over one article, even if it comes down hard on The Post. Hubbard gets hit constantly.

So I asked Hubbard if it was true, he wrote:

"No, it's not true.
I tried to unfollow him several months back. For some reason his tweets kept coming through, so I blocked him. My guess, and I'm not going to waste any time researching it, was that it was in the spring or early summer. It's nothing personal."

In the Harper's piece, Sirota argues that big-city dailies, even in their weak state, wield as much power over civic life or more than they did in their heyday. Hence the article's title, "The Citizen Kane Era Returns."

There's no question The Post is a major force in Colorado politics, and Sirota's argument has some validity, and it's fun to read, especially with so many local media observers quoted.

But Sirota gets carried away at times, for sure. He doesn't prove that the Post is pushing a conservative agenda in its news section.

For example, in trying to prove that The Post's conservative bias ushered Michael Bennett into the U.S. Senate, Sirota writes:

Considering that a mere 14,200 votes would have changed the outcome of the race, the Post's omissions and evasions almost surely helped secure the Senate nomination for Bennet. They also serve as a smoking gun in a larger journalistic crime against voters.

In particular, Sirota thinks Bennet's financial deals as Denver Public Schools Superintendent, should have gotten more play in The Post, which would have sent shock waves throughout other Denver media and to the public.

I think the story was indeed underplayed in The Post, and it should have been reported earlier by the newspaper, but to assert that it was a game changer? No way.

Actually, conservatives can make a stronger argument that the McInnis plagiarism story was overplayed by an inordinately powerful Denver Post and resulted in the election of Hick. This might have better proven Sirota's point about the staying power of newspapers.

But neither side can prove bias at The Post, which is largely owned by venture capitalists, not Singleton.

No doubt Singleton likes power, but he doesn't get his way like he wants to, as described in Sirota's article:

"He fancies himself an oldfashioned power broker-publisher," says former Rocky Editor John Temple. who is now a managing editor at the Washington Post. "He loves the idea that he can call people into his office and be in the center of everything."

So overall, with respect to the part of Sirota's piece that focuses on The Post, Sirota is right that the paper, even in economic decline, has more power than it deserves, and in some ways as much or more influence on politics, due to its influence on elites, as it ever had.

But as for a conservative agenda, beyond cultural norms, I don't see it, overall, though you can point to anecdotes, just like righties do.

But you should read Sirota's article yourself.

As for Sirota's tweets, I, unlike Hubbard, like receiving them, even if Sirota goes stetches things a bit sometimes.

Denver Post opinion pieces: Left, Right, or Nonpartisan?

Jason Salzman — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 19:30:18 GMT

Last week Denver Post Editorial Page Editor Curtis Hubbard fired back at all those people who've said The Post's commentary pages favor right-leaning points of view over left-leaning ones, or vice versa.

Hubbard presented the results of a bean-counting project conducted during the first quarter of 2012. He categorized editorials and columns on the Post's commentary pages as being left of center, right of center, or "nonpartisan or centrist."

In his weekly column, Hubbard wrote that the majority of the opinion content was "nonpartisan or centrist" (43 percent of "local columns," 55 percent of editorials, and 54 percent of syndicated columns).

Partisan opinion content was found to be mostly left of center according to Hubbard's admittedly subjective count. Local columns were 32 percent left-of-center versus 25 percent right-of-center, editorials 26 percent versus 19 percent, and syndicated columnists 29 percent left-leaning versus 18 percent right-leaning.
In his column, Hubbard claimed that he had all the data in a spreadsheet.

Great, I thought, he can just shoot it over to me.

So I asked him for it, because media bean-counting is fun to audit, for me. And it can provide an excellent starting point for debates about the media.

"I hadn't considered making it available for public review," he emailed me.

This was a surprise to hear from an outfit that wants Mitt Romney to release his tax returns for public review. I trust Hubbard more than I trust Romney, but I like to verify what both of them say. Plus the ensuing debate about categorization would be educational. I hope, after due consideration, Hubbard releases his spreadsheet.

I asked Hubbard if he'd share his "local-columnist" data starting from the date of the departure of Mike Littwin. Last year, I showed (with bean counting) that the Post's local columnists were fairly well balanced on the left-right scale. But with Littwin gone, I worried the opinion page would veer right with no in-house columnist to counter Vincent Carroll.

Hubbard wrote that "23 columns were published since Littwin's departure [March 20], including work by Rosen, Hubbard, Carroll, Quillen, Andrews, Ditmer, and Barnes-Gelt."

Of these 23 local columns, six were categorized as from the right, six as from the left, and 11 as non-partisan or centrist, according to Hubbard.

My audit of the same sample of columns showed them to be mostly right-leaning: seven centrist, six left-leaning, and 10 right-leaning. And my tally is only that close because I categorized four of nine columns by Vincent Carroll as "left-leaning." That won't happen typically, I'm guessing, but I could be wrong. (Worth noting is the fact that Carroll wrote 9 of 23 "local columns" that appeared in The Post during the first three-and-a-half weeks since Littwin left.) I'm happy to share my tally with anyone who wants to see it, by the way.

I asked Hubbard if he'd evaluated the political cartoons on the commentary page, and he replied that he had not done so but would start to do it going forward. That's a good thing because my impression is that they lean right. But impressions are the worst kind of media criticism.

Hubbard wrote that readers' feedback about his own bean counting had given him an idea, which sounds intriguing and innovative to me: add an interactive feature to the opinion section of The Post's website that would allow site visitors to evaluate content (editorials, local columns, etc.) on a political scale. In other words, let readers count beans too.

Hubbard would like to "display for readers a feature that says something like 'our grade' of where a piece falls on the political spectrum and then allows them to vote. Ideally, it would be something that would keep a sort of running score sheet."

Hubbard doubts that The Post has money to develop this Left-Center-Right feature, but he suggested that "if any of your astute readers would be interested in developing that piece of technology as a public service, I would be willing to discuss being their beta test site."

It's a great idea, and it would indeed be a public service. (And I'm not saying that just because he called you astute.)

And so, I extend the invitation. Do you, or does anyone you know, have the expertise to aid in developing and implementing this feature? If so, contact Hubbard at The Post as soon as possible. (Any project in the newspaper industry these days is urgent.)

In any case, Hubbard wrote in his column that he plans to keep his internal spreadsheet up to date "to better inform our work moving forward."

"Not only will it help to refute the charges of readers and campaigns in a highly charged election year, it will help us in our goal of producing opinion pages that are reflective and worthy of this great state," he wrote in his column.

That's true, especially if he can find a way to get readers involved and share his bean counting with us.

Post Editorial Page Editor promises "Battleground" panels will be fair in the end

Jason Salzman — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 19:52:54 GMT

The Denver Post's latest "Battleground Colorado" panel is stacked against Democrats, but Post Editorial Page Editor Curtis Hubbard tells me that things will be fair in the end, as Dems will outnumber Republicans on a future panel.

The Post's "Super Tuesday" panel, the second in election-season series that promises to be interesting, in part because of the different levels of interaction with the community, features the following folks, according to The Post:

Former state chair Dick Wadhams, Jessica Peck of Henley Public Affairs and Arapahoe County Commissioner Susan Beckman for Republicans; Former House Speaker Terrance Carroll and political strategist Leticia Martinez of Project New West for Democrats; analyst Eric Sondermann of SE2 communications; and special guests former GOP congressman Tom Tancredo and Colorado College professor Tom Cronin.

Sometimes it takes me days of bean counting to show unfairness. But here, The Post does the counting for me. Two for the Dems. Three for the GOP. That's a stacked deck!

My progressive friends will hate me for it, but I'll accept Sondermann as a centrist here, as The Post defined him in its first panel Feb. 10. Cronin looks to be left-leaning. And Tancredo is way right, but overall a partisan Republican.

So what gives? Why create a panel with a 4-1-3 split in favor of the conservative agenda?

In response to that question, Post Editorial Page Editor Curtis Hubbard emailed me:

The makeup for the first panel was 2-2 between Ds and Rs, with me and Sondermann serving as referees.
Given the attention that's being paid to women's issues, I wanted to add voices of suburban women for our second panel on March 7. But I don't want the panel to get too unwieldy. So, for next Wednesday's discussion, where much of the focus will be on the Republican primary and the conversation largely focused on Romney vs. Santorum, I opted to bring in an additional Republican woman for broader context of what's happening and how her friends and neighbors see it shaping up.
As we move closer to November, you can look for some panels to tilt toward Ds, more participation from unaffiliated voters, and additional guests who bring experience that is under- or unrepresented on the panel (young voters, rural voters, retirees).
I'm also eager to hear from readers in hopes of providing information that they're interested in for future panels.

Hubbard also informed me that Beckman will be part of the panel going forward, and one more Democrat and independent will be added "hopefully by April or May."

The Howard Beale Index?

Jason Salzman — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 15:49:08 GMT

From one side of The Denver Post Wed., Political Editor Chuck Plunkett told me that The Post doesn't like to "cry in public about having a rough time getting someone to talk to us."

Then, from the darker side of The Post, Editorial Page Editor Curtis Hubbard, wrote on The Post's Spot blog, that he has a "hunch" that FOX 31's Eli Stokols' strategy of calling Mitt Romney out for avoiding the press in Colorado will pay off. Hubbard wrote:

Eli throws a bomb: I don't know that I've ever seen a reporter publicly criticize a campaign for their media strategy/declining interview requests. Fox 31′s Eli Stokols didn't hold back in his criticism of the Romney camp today. Just a hunch, but I bet his strategy pays off.

So I asked Hubbard, via email, why he didn't use Stokols' tactic, when he had Plunkett's job.
I also asked whether Hubbard expected more journalists to be inspired by Stokols and call out hiding politicians more often, and whether he'd give it a try himself, on the commentary page. Hubbard replied:

It's an interesting discussion, but my job (whether it was in the newsroom or in this position) is not to be a media critic. As the editorial page editor I certainly have more leeway to comment on media coverage, but I try to keep in mind that more of our readers care about news than how the sausage gets made.
I commented on Eli's post yesterday because, in my nearly 20 years in the news biz, I couldn't recall a reporter doing anything like it. Eli has demonstrated through his strong work on the beat that he shouldn't be ignored, so it's probably a pretty safe bet on his part. Then again, a thin-skinned campaign or a cut-throat competitor, might very well use it against him.

The trouble is, the line between the news and how it's made isn't so clear. In the case of Romney ignoring Denver journalists, the two are one and the same. It's a news story that Romney is ignoring the press in favor of conservative talk-radio hosts. (Or at least it deserves a mention in a news story.)

But my takeaway from Hubbard's blog post is that he thinks the tactic could work. I'd love to see him try it. (And if it backfired, I'd love to see The Post blow up the retribution.)

Hubbard (or Plunkett) could create a little chart showing which candidates actually take questions from journalists when they pass through town.

It could be called the "Howard Beale Index."

Each time the Howard Beale Index is updated, a short Eli-Stokols-type letter could be published.

If I'm a Post subscriber, and I am, I'd be proud of my newspaper for going after those candidates, and trying to hold them accountable publicly.