Opinion: In today’s pages: Fed transparency, frightening candidates, forgotten strikes
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On the op-ed page, writer and producer Daniel J. Blau remembers the little-known writers strike of 2006:
The night before the strike began, after a long, tense meeting at the guild offices, we were taken into a conference room where the Reality Organizing Committee gave us a standing ovation for our bravery. The moment played out as great theater, but it was as meaningless as it was absurd. In fact, most of the committee members were hearing about the ‘Top Model’ strike for the first time, as it effectively ended their deliberative, years-long efforts. More odd, it was the first time most of the ‘Top Model’ writers had ever heard of the Reality Organizing Committee. The next morning, July 20, in front of our production offices in West Los Angeles, I read our statement to about 100 supporters and the news crews, officially launching our strike.... The last week of September, we all received letters notifying us that our jobs had been eliminated, the entire story department abolished.
Columnist Jonah Goldberg explains why Mike Huckabee is scarier than Ron Paul. John Rogers and Jeannie Oakes, co-directors of UCLA’s Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access, argue that California’s focus on a racial gap in schools ignores egregious overall test scores.
The editorial board says that as talks resume between writers and producers, both sides need to embrace innovation to avoid past failures. The board praises Ben Bernanke’s decision to expand economic reports from the Fed, and says a recent court case shows that tighter fuel economy standards are long overdue.