All news from the lemonade stand is cheery

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher’s “Winter Newsletter” arrived last week. I’m glad to be on his mailing list and look forward to his newsletters because they always provide some good chuckles and creative writing.

His skill -- or that of whoever writes his newsletter -- is especially adroit in converting political lemons into lemonade. The one that just arrived held up this tradition admirably.

Example: “Earlier this year we had some good news. The level of deficit spending by the federal government was decreasing due to an increase in government revenues most likely a result from the 2001 tax cuts.”

Translation: What we have to do here is avoid at all costs mentioning the $314-billion deficit we’ve run up by the Iraq adventure and cutting taxes for the wealthy and talk only about the $54-billion bite, spread over five years, we plan (hope?) to take out of the deficit -- thus leaving our grandchildren only $260 billion in debt when the next administration takes over.

Example: “The goal (of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005) was not to cut programs but to modestly curtail the growth in spending on various programs. Many of the most expensive mandatory federal programs are running on decade-old models which have not been fundamentally updated since their creation.”

Translation: We must stick to message about the need for updating to negate such comments as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities that this bill “would ask low-income families to shoulder a large share of the budget cutting burden” by -- in Rohrabacher spin -- “modestly curtailing” Medicaid, food stamps, student loans, child support enforcement and similar needs of the have-nots in our society. And also to counter the likelihood that the budget cuts might not be used to reduce the deficit at all but rather to help pay for new tax cuts.

And so it goes. Awash in all this lemonade, it occurred to me that the congressman failed to mention three of his recent activities that earned attention in the local media and would seem to be of interest to his constituents.

First, there was the Los Angeles Times story about Rohrabacher selling a frequently rejected screenplay to an alleged movie producer, whom he then gratefully introduced around to his associates in Washington. The producer induced some of them to invest in a television project -- the FBI regards that as fraudulent. Last we heard, the producer had been arrested and was facing a 23-count indictment.

We hope the congressman will keep us posted on the producer’s fate in future newsletters, as well as the status of his screenplay.

Then there was Rohrabacher’s entry into our Costa Mesa City Council immigration skirmish. You may recall in the chaotic aftermath of Mayor Allan Mansoor’s introducing his proposal to involve local police in identifying illegal immigrants, the congressman poured a little extra gasoline on the fire by telling a Pilot reporter: “It’d be a terrific example for other cities, and it’s a terrific message that Costa Mesa would be sending to illegal immigrants, and that is, don’t come to our city.”

And, finally, there was the FOJ (Friends of Jack) line-up, also in the Times, in which seven members of Congress who had dealings with lobbyist Jack Abramoff -- who has admitted to three felonies -- were pictured under the headline “Lobbying or a Crime?” Rohrabacher was No. 7. (To put this in perspective, some 130 members of Congress took contributions from Abramoff or his clients.)

Rohrabacher explained to the Times that he had gone to college with Abramoff and accepted his gifts as an old friend and not a lobbyist. Nevertheless, he returned a campaign contribution from Abramoff, while saying he refused to “kick a friend when he’s down” and that he “didn’t know Abramoff was doing anything illegal.”

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While we’re skating around the subject, it occurs to me that in all the verbiage in the Pilot about Mansoor’s illegal immigrant proposal, one critical point has been passed over much too lightly.

There can be and should be debate about whether such a program is in the best interests of the residents of Costa Mesa. But there should be no debate at all on how this question should have been presented to the City Council.

The chaos that has followed Mansoor’s proposed effort to make Costa Mesa the first city in the nation to train its police to blow the whistle on illegal immigrants suspected of local crime was totally predictable. You can’t stick your thumb in the eye of one-third of Costa Mesa’s residents and their supporters without creating fierce resistance. And that, perhaps, couldn’t have been prevented, but it assuredly could have been tempered.

There is a system for bringing a highly volatile issue to a vote by the City Council. It passes through a series of study sessions in which proponents and opponents alike can express themselves.

That doesn’t mean there would be any less zeal or passion in the discussions. But at least it would have provided a forum to consider the effects of the proposal, and time to explore the possible consequences.

Mostly, it would have restrained some of the anger that exploded when Mansoor presented the proposal as a fait accompli.

This is the style of the tough guys in government, the guys who know what is good for us and who see no reason to waste time on mindless discussion and debate. That can only delay the inevitable, so let’s get on with it before the opposition can form.

The Bush administration is offering a model for this sort of behavior, and Mansoor and his pals have embraced it.

As long as he has those three votes, there will be more of the same. At least until November.

RELATED STORY

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher speaks about his relationship with Jack Abramoff.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column appears Thursdays.

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