On Friday, Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez came by The Times to give updates on his comprehensive health care plan, and to talk up his latest redistricting proposal for California. Some quotable quotes on the health care negotiations:

"I think we have ample time to put together a plan almost as significant as AB 32."

"I think we're on the verge of doing something huge."

"I think if we fail to deliver comprehensive heatlh care reform between now and Sept. 11 that we're going to set this country back, and I feel the weight of that responsibility."

"[The governor's] got a business issue, I've got a labor issue. and we're both going to have to figure it out. We're both going to have to be Nixon in China."

"The longer I serve as speaker, the more frustrated I become with the federal government and congress -- Democrat or Republican -- because they've done very little on the domestic front, and they haven't delivered for California. They've failed to do anything on heatlh care, they've failed to do anything on transportation. And then when the state doesn't do something, we get beat up for it."

Nuñez also reiterated his enthusiasm for a ballot measure dropping the budget-passing requirement from two-thirds of the Legislature to a simple majority:

"I think next year we run the risk of a very protracted budget battle. But I think that would probably be the last one. And it's going to set us up perfectly for the initiative."

"As long as we don't ask for a simple majority vote on raising taxes, I think the voters will be very amenable to allowing us to do a budget with a [simple] majority."

Tony Snow, who announced today that he's stepping down as White House press secretary, is well liked by reporters not only because of his grace under the pressure of serious illness, but also because he has been good copy and good video. He has star quality, which is what you want in someone in his position, which ought to be called "minister of Information." ("Minister of Propaganda" has unpleasant overtones, but it's also an accurate job description. Presidents need propagandists.)

There was more truth than jollity in President Bush's comment that "it's been a joy to watch him spar with you." Sparring with reporters while the cameras are on was Snow's primary job, and he did it well. He could be funny as well as argumentative, as witnessed by this exchange from a press briefing on Bush's commutation of Scooter Libby's prison sentence for perjury and obstruction of justice in the Valerie Plame case:

QUESTION: Are the American people owed some kind of apology from someone in this administration for the leaking of a CIA person's name -- personnel's name?

SNOW: Yes, it's improper to be leaking those names.

QUESTION: You say improper -- you say someone, someone in this administration owes the American public an apology.

SNOW: I'll apologize.

That's entertainment, but it's also a legitimate function for a press secretary, who in the era of televised briefings is essentially doing for the president what Robert Novak and Michael Kinsley used to do for "the right" and "the left" on "Crossfire." He's an advocate, a spinmeister, not a conveyor belt for information about the federal budget or troop levels in Iraq. It's a bonus if the talking head is also a thinking head, and Snow was.

Update: An earlier version of this post contained a photo credited to Carrie Devorah, which was used without her permission.

Our week-long Dust-up about Jerry Brown vs. insufficently environmental localities draws to a close today with a little proposal from Mike Spence:

Rick, next time I'm in Ventura I'll give you some sales tax money at a mixed-use project. That will be my contribution toward a sustainable Ventura. But like most Californians, I will come by car.

To which Rick Cole replies:

I hope you'll visit us often in Ventura to keep tabs on our efforts to revitalize older neighborhoods and recycle old oil fields for high-wage, high-value jobs (we're home to a growing number of green business leaders like Patagonia, Agromin and Stewart+Brown). I hope you'll consider coming by train (Metrolink or Amtrak), and, on arrival, that you'll enjoy our public transit choices. You can hop the No. 12 shuttle (a CNG-powered vehicle painted to look like a classic surf "woody") that runs on compressed natural gas between our downtown and harbor, serving all our major hotels.

Our goal is to be a model of environmental responsibility, thinking globally and acting locally. If you do come by car, I hope you'll consider a hybrid. I'd be happy to give you a tour in my Prius the next time you're in the neighborhood.

Would you buy a used car from George W. Bush? Maybe not, but in announcing plans to help homeowners threatened by the subprime mortgage slump, Bush made use of a euphemism often used by car dealers.

Bush said he would help the Federal Housing Administration “to reach families that need help, those with low incomes and less-than-perfect credit records or little savings.” 

When I hear “less than perfect credit” in a television or radio ad, my internal translation machine instantly renders it as “deadbeats.”  It’s the same apparatus that converts “at-risk youth” to “juvenile delinquent.”

Very few people have perfect credit, in the sense of not a single late payment sometime in their life. Very many people are high-risk borrowers whose business is still of interest to finance companies as long as the interest rate is commensurate with their, er, imperfection.

Let’s hope Bush’s use of this term doesn’t carry over into other policy areas. I don’t think Congress will be reassured, for example, if Gen. David Petraeus reports next month that the leaders of Iraq have made “less than perfect” progress toward a reconciliation that would allow U.S. troops to come home.

Columnist Rosa Brooks suggests we succeed in Iraq by withdrawing:

The honest (though not very satisfying) answer is that no one really knows what will happen in Iraq after the United States leaves. Interestingly, a poll in March found that a majority of Iraqis thought the security situation would improve immediately after a U.S. withdrawal. But things could also get worse -- and anyone who claims to have a crystal ball is lying.

We long ago squandered any capacity to guarantee a happy ending for the Iraqis. But, as several other recent Center for American Progress reports suggest, there are still steps we can take to minimize the chance that a U.S. withdrawal will make things worse for them.

Contributing editor Ian Buruma notes that Asians freed Asia, contrary to Bush rhetoric. Peruvian playwright Alonso Alegría points out how politics has intruded on quake relief efforts in his country. And columnist Joel Stein dreams the impossible dream -- of a home urinal.

The editorial board says long waits on death row don't justify sped-up executions. The board also examines the Bush administration's loosening of mining regulations, and Viacom's attempt to rebrand "South Park" through the web.

Readers respond to Tamar Jacoby's fears that new immigration rules will hurt the economy. Irving Moskovitz of Pacific Palisades says, "I guess the Confederacy was right. Without slavery, the entire agricultural (and industrial) economy will collapse."

Friday, Aug. 31 is the 100th birthday of Augustus Hawkins, groundbreaking Los Angeles politician, civil rights crusader and the oldest living former member of Congress. L.A. looks and feels as it does today in part because of Hawkins' work to reshape it, and in part because many of his efforts were overcome by time and shifting political winds. He imprinted his vision on the state and national scenes: lawyers, labor leaders and policy wonks who talk about the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act are referring to one of his landmark legislative accomplishments. He established the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. California's Rumford Act, mandating an end to housing discrimination, was introduced years earlier by Hawkins. It was overturned by voters but ultimately reinstated by the courts, and it set the stage for the end of racial restrictions in housing.

Hawkins, a New Deal (and later a Great Society) Democrat, was the second African American elected to the California legislature. He got there in 1935 by defeating the first, Republican Frederick M. Roberts (the great grandson of Sally Hemings and, Roberts claimed, Thomas Jefferson). He was elected to Congress in 1963, became a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus, and served until 1991, when he was succeeded by Maxine Waters.

Reading the transcripts of a 1992 oral history in which Hawkins speaks to interviewer Clyde Woods is an astonishing history lesson and imperative background for understanding Los Angeles, the state, and the national scene today.

It's hard to believe Hawkins is talking about Los Angeles. He discusses the battles of blacks just to be considered for jobs as streetcar janitors and describes Gilbert Lindsay, head janitor at the Department of Water and Power, whose office became a power center for black job-seekers. In the days when it was still impossible for a black person to be elected to city office, Lindsay and other aspiring African American leaders began to go City Council meetings each day, sit outside on benches, and vote on matters that came before the council. Lindsay, of course, ultimately was elected to the council.

Hawkins discusses the importance of Sargent Shriver — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's father-in-law — in getting Martin Luther King-Charles R. Drew Medical Center started. The discussion is, of course, particularly bittersweet when read today, given the hospital's recent closure.Today there is a park named for Hawkins that brings wetlands to South Los Angeles and a mental health clinic, still operating, on the campus of King-Drew hospital.

But despite his undisputed role he has not attracted the renown of leaders like Tom Bradley. That's a shame. Not knowing Augustus Hawkins is not knowing Los Angeles, or the history of labor, civil rights and equality under the law in the U.S.

Happy birthday, Augustus Hawkins.

Oil on canvas by Joseph Maniscalco courtesy: Collection of U.S. House of Representatives.
Photograph of Hawkins teaching courtesy: Dept of Special Collections/UCLA Library.

On Tuesday, the school board voted voted 5 to 2

to extend health benefits to more than 2,300 part-time cafeteria workers at an estimated annual cost of $35.5 million.

The move came over warnings from staff and Supt. David L. Brewer that no money was budgeted to pay for the benefits.

It also came over the objection of both the Editorial Board ("The district's budget is already in trouble, and neither the board nor administrators know where to find this money") and op-edder/LAUSD parent L.J. Williamson, who made a similar argument:

Part-time food service employees are seeking the same health benefits -- including coverage for their families -- that their full-time counterparts enjoy. Extending these benefits to cafeteria staff who currently work only three hours a day would cost an estimated $40 million a year, according to school board calculations. [...]

This is fat that the food service's too-lean budget simply doesn't have. If health benefits were extended to these part-time workers, the CFPA estimates it would mean that the per-plate meal budget would be reduced from 85 cents to 49 cents. Making healthy food available for that amount would take a miracle of biblical proportions. So we'd be improving the healthcare of nearly 2,000 part-time workers at the expense of the 500,000 children who eat in public school cafeterias every day.

But lefty bloggers, beginning with an uncharacteristically ranty Kevin Drum, smelled a heartless rat:

I would happily pay for universal healthcare just so I never had to read an op-ed like this again. It's not that Williamson doesn't have a point, it's just that this beggar-thy-neighbor attitude is enough to make me retch, and I see it all the time. I don't get dental coverage, so why should grocery workers? My copay went up last year, so why shouldn't everyone else's? I don't pay for healthcare for my housecleaners, so why should I pay it for school cafeteria workers? Our wretched private healthcare system has turned us into a nation of spiteful and small-minded misanthropes.

It's true that the growing gap between public workers and private workers is a real problem. In the past, there was something of a tradeoff: public sector workers generally got paid less than private sector workers but made up for it with job security and benefits. Today, though, public workers generally get higher salaries and better benefits and more vacation and earlier retirement and more lucrative pension packages compared to comparable private sector workers. And private sector workers are understandably annoyed by this. But their annoyance would be better directed not at the lucky public sector workers, but at the mahogany row executives and conservative politicians who pretend that the only possible use for the mountains of cash generated by decades of economic growth is to give it all to mahogany row executives and the billionaires who contribute to conservative politicians.

More where that came from, and a bit of a response, after the jump.

It’s been over a week since the release of rapper M.I.A.’s sophomore album and nearly a month since she played two nights to packed crowds at the Echoplex in Echo Park. (Grown men reportedly cried when turned away at the door.) A friend and I did make it inside and, when we weren’t being stepped or spilled on, we were amused by the crowd. Skinny underage white boys moshed alongside the stray South Asian American girl and Free Palestine kids waving kefiyas. The rapper, born Maya Arulpragasam, wore slim-fitting sequined pants and an oversized brown T-shirt that read “Darfur”.

It was a fitting image for M.I.A., with her loosy-lefty global politics and her hybrid beats and samples. She's rehabilitating the idea of world music and translating the hip hop boast to third world concerns. (“If you catch me at the border/ I got visas in my name/ If you come around here/ I make ’em all day,” she says on  “Paper Planes.”) But I was most surprised by her lyrics about Indian women, though they unfortunately appear on one of the worst tracks of the album, a sentiment I share with The Times’ music critic. Obviously, if M.I.A. weren’t a South Asian woman (Sri Lankan via London, to be precise), it’s the sort of thing that would get her into trouble....

For example, the slammed-together $42-billion bond package passed by voters last year. It included a hodgepodge of specific earmarks and vague categories that emerged out of Sacramento deal-making. Why not require cities and counties to work together on regional water, transportation and flood control plans and projects, instead of giving the governor and Legislature control over billions of dollars in pork? What if there was also a clear scoring system to ensure that regions that successfully focus on results would get bonus funding?

Requiring localities to cooperate with their neighbors to be eligible for statewide funding would be a great way to tackle greenhouse gas emissions. Today cities typically compete for sales tax revenue by subsidizing new retail development. That comes not only at the expense of their neighbors (and local taxpayers), it produces longer shopping trips and more congestion. If sales tax dollars were instead apportioned regionally and cities were given incentives for reducing vehicle-miles traveled, wouldn't they be more likely to promote shopping and workplaces closer to home?

We have over 35 million people in California. More people are being born. Life expectancy is increasing. More are immigrating here. Millions more. Tens of millions more. What do you do with all the people?

Marin County won't take more people. They don't fit its collective value system. There is a limit to how many "transit villages" can be built and sustained.

And this brings me to an issue no one raises in this "state versus local communities" debate. That is individual rights. It is just not the state that is micromanaging local agencies, it is government limiting the opportunities for families and individuals in their pursuit of happiness.

Today's Los Angeles Times cover photo and accompanying story about the return of the cupola to the top of former St. Vibiana's Cathedral on Main Street dredges up the sorry (and funny) story of the city's rush 11 years ago to tear the place down.

As reporter Bob Pool notes, the cathedral sustained damage in the 1994 Northridge earthquake. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles wanted to demolish it and build a grand new cathedral on the site, restoring lost luster to Main Street. City officials began to envision the street as a civic thoroughfare connecting the old Plaza north of the Hollywood Freeway with City Hall and, south to Second Street, a great public ceremonial plaza fronting the new cathedral.

So church officials started knocking St. Vibiana's down, beginning with the cupola. Quietly. On a Saturday morning, when the courts were closed. But the demolition was illegal, since the cathedral was listed on the city's register of historic-cultural monuments. Listing meant no demolition permit could be issued for six months, to allow preservationists to find a solution that would keep the building intact.

Under pressure from the archdiocese, every member of the City Council except for arts and cultural champion Joel Wachs voted to remove the cathedral from the list. The explanations were uproariously funny. See, the cathedral (built in the centennial year of 1876) was historic when the council first listed it back in the 1960s. But time had gone by, and it had gotten old — so it was no longer historic.

The Los Angeles Conservancy successfully challenged the delisting in court, arguing that the move required an environmental impact report. The archdiocese, meanwhile, argued that city preservation law didn't apply to churches under the First Amendment guarantee of free exercise of religion (the current flap over a synagogue in Hancock Park raises similar land-use-versus-First-Amendment issues). In oral argument at the Second District Court of Appeal hearing — although not in court papers — archdiocese lawyers invoked the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (which the Supreme Court later partially invalidated). Archdiocese lawyers and spokesmen also insisted that the church was beyond reproach on questions of art and preservation — and should be able to decide for itself whether the 19th-century building was a part of the city's heritage — since it was protecting so many priceless works in the Vatican and elsewhere around the world.

The Times editorial page warned that if Cardinal Roger Mahony wasn't allowed to demolish the old cathedral and replace it with a new one on the same site, "there will be little new development left to energize a downtown revitalization."

Yeah, too bad that downtown revitalization never happened.

The preservationists won, the archdiocese built Our Lady of the Angels on Temple Street, and the St. Vibiana's cupola lay on its side in the cathedral courtyard for more than a decade. Until yesterday, as reported by Pool.