Michael Hiltzik used his “business” column in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times to make another over-the-top attack on Governor Schwarzenegger and the fall initiatives.

In a meandering piece that closed with Hiltzik comparing Schwarzenegger to Joseph McCarthy, he cites “fake,” “shameless” “low blows” and “baldfaced lie(s)” with examples that mysteriously only include Republicans.

“I expect to spend the summer in a hammock under the elms,” he writes, “while ripe nuggets of electoral hypocrisy fall upon me from the skies, like pellets of guano.”

It turns out that the guano isn’t falling on Hiltzik — he’s producing it.

He writes in the piece that one of the initiatives is “A redistricting reform proposal that can’t reasonably be implemented before 2010, according to Schwarzenegger’s handpicked secretary of state, Bruce McPherson.”

But that’s not what McPherson said. We turn to the more-reliable Sacramento Bee and find that McPherson did not think 2006 was achievable, but that lawsuits — not implementation — would be the problem in 2008:

“There’s no way we can make it by next year,” he said. “It’s questionable if we could make it by 2008, and we probably could do it by 2010 …”

… McPherson said a timeline to create new political districts for the 2008 or 2010 elections would allow time for legal issues to be resolved before voters cast ballots.

In the same paper, columnist Dan Walters confirms:

“McPherson expressed an opinion that if the measure were to pass, there’s “no way” that new districts could be drawn in time for the 2006 elections, and that because of near-certain post-election lawsuits, it’s questionable whether they would be in place by 2008 – pretty much what Schwarzenegger’s own aides have been saying.”

Normally, of course, after a census districts are redrawn in time for elections two years later. There’s no reason to think the new process would be any more complicated.

So if there is a problem with implementation beyond two years, it will be Hiltzik’s own anti-reform allies causing the delays. And that’s all the more reason to pass the initiative ASAP, so the legal process can run its course and the state can move forward.

Perhaps by then Hiltzik will have figured out who’s really producing all that guano on his lawn.

(Mickey Kaus says “Michael Hiltzik works himself into the same paroxysm of anti-Arnold rage he worked himself into three weeks ago” here.)

(Independent Sources is your one-stop shop for coverage of bias at the Los Angeles Times, and Michael Hiltzik drives us nuts)

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Pajamas Media readers: Read the comments by “nofanofcablecos” — aka Michael Hiltzik — on this post to see what got Patterico curious and Hiltzik’s blog suspended from the LAT.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 17th, 2005 at 12:05 am by A Senior Administration Official and is filed under 2005 Initiatives, California Schemin', LA Times' Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, Media, Nemesises ... Nemesi?. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.