Beware the Truth About the Facts

You’re better off figuring out what the news is saying than what the people in the news are trying to tell you.

Concerned that it is becoming a training ground for higher-paying counties, the Ventura County District Attorney’s office is asking the county for more money. With county prosecutors paid less than those in seven other California counties, the district attorney’s office is worried about having so many young, inexperienced attorneys in its ranks, even though it boasts a 92% felony conviction rate.

But you have to wonder if elected officials really have any concerns about saving money.

The California health-care industry had to grovel before Gov. Gray Davis the other day for a little of the money the state is getting from the lawsuit against the tobacco industry. This is especially ironic considering that the whole reason the state went after “big tobacco” in the first place was to recover the costs it incurred treating smokers.

In other tobacco news, a UC San Francisco professor has come out with his third tobacco-related report in five years. To hear him assert that California’s smoking bans have in no way hampered tourism is no surprise considering the vendetta he has carried out while “teaching” at UCSF. It seems unfair that California taxpayers have to pick up the tab for his university salary while he milks the federal study-grant machine for all it’s worth.

In this same questionable-study realm, the Pesticide Action Network released a report about birds and fish that it claims die as a result of pesticide ingestion. According to the news article, “the network studies the consequences of pesticide use.” This may very well be true, but more often than not single-interest groups like this (and the professor) conduct studies not so much to enlighten anyone as to back up a preconceived point. When they do, pertinent details and contradictory data tend to resemble so much dust swept under the rug.

When journalists mistreat such obviously one-sided stories, ordinary people cannot avoid getting worked up over problems that don’t exist. A case in point is a recent report about the Salton Sea.

For decades the public has been led to believe this inland sea was a casualty of pesticide-laden runoff from neighboring farmland. The latest battery of tests shows no pesticide contamination whatsoever; scientists attribute the perils befalling this accidentally created body of water to its inability to desalinate itself. A human blunder created the Salton Sea and now we are going to spend millions of dollars “cleaning up this fragile ‘ecosystem.’ ”

Interesting stories all. They show what can happen when good intentions compel an unwitting public to let the wrong people make all the rules.

Read your news carefully.

Taking into account FBI reports that say crime is continuing to decrease, some people might think the county would be wise to contract its prosecutorial services out on an as-needed basis and save taxpayers some money.