In today's pages: Fixing the California budget, biking along the Los Angeles River and debating abortion
Here at the Opinion Manufacturing Division, we've got our minds on our money and our money on our minds. In particular, that would be our state tax dollars. On the Op-Ed page, Timothy A. Hodson, head of the Center for California Studies at Sacramento State University, urges lawmakers in Sacramento to take a more realistic approach to power sharing in a divided but still largely Democratic state:
Many Republicans declared the defeat of Proposition 1A as the triumph of "tea parties" and the return of the anti-tax spirit of Proposition 13. Good spin; lousy analysis. It's fantasy to think that voters in San Francisco, Santa Monica and other liberal and Democratic strongholds who overwhelming voted against 1A did so for the same reasons as Republicans.
The editorial board, meanwhile, says the state may need to close some parks temporarily, but that's not as great a money-saving opportunity as it seems:
The state must patrol and minimally maintain the parks with or without visitors or it almost surely will incur worse expense, not just long term but in the immediate future. Closing parks doesn't mean that people won't use them. It means that law-abiding people won't use them. Among those who will: meth lab operators, marijuana farmers, the homeless, taggers, poachers, rogue mountain bikers and off-roaders, as well as just plain campers who think the rules don't apply to their personal visits.
Rounding out the editorial stack, the board calls for the Organization of American States to readmit Cuba, and editorial writer Dan Turner lambastes the multi-billion-dollar plans to restore the Los Angeles River. Back on the Op-Ed page, columnist Tim Rutten argues that the murder of a late-term abortion provider in Kansas illustrates the need for both sides in the abortion debate to "break with the rhetorical recklenssness of the past." And Michael Siegel, a professor and tobacco-policy specialist at the Boston University School of Public Health, blasts a proposal in Congress to give the Food and Drug Administration purview over tobacco products, saying it would create "the appearance of regulation without allowing actual regulation."
Credit: Signe Wilkinson / Philadelphia Daily News
Presidents Speech was ...
Diplomatic
Compassionate
Patriotic
Forthright
Balanced
Idealistic
Generational … younger Muslims
Inclusive of Middle East’s Religions
There will be the usual allegations from the right and Neo-Conservatives that will accuse the President as being unpatriotic, apologetic, made us less secure, pro Islam at the expense of the United States, traitor, angry, arrogant and more. There will be those that say the President wasn’t strong enough when he talked about human rights and freedom.
There are those that say the President shows his weakness by dropping the terms … “Terrorist or terrorism” from his war vocabulary. There are those that say the President has let Israel down.
To the skeptical Neo-Conservatives I say to you, your insecurity illustrates why we have had a dysfunctional foreign policy of “My Way or the Highway”, “You are either with us or against us”, for the last eight years. Your above concerns that I listed, and heard you talk about on this day …6-4-9 … can be answered as follows:
First … I remind the Neo-Cons that in the Presidents speech he quoted Thomas Jefferson … An increase of Power must be accompanied with an increase of Wisdom. We are the most powerful country in the world on many fronts. We must show wisdom and strength through our abundance of other diplomatic strategies.
Second … The countries and people around the world know what positive contributions and sacrifices the United States has made for all people around the world and in particular the Muslims around the world. We are not so insecure that we must continue to talk about our wonderful deeds of the past. The entire world is very aware of all our labors. That was the past.
Third … Who is the United States of today? What the people of the Middle East want to know is “Who is this new leader of the United States”? As the new leader of the most powerful country on the face of the earth the President had a limited amount of time to introduce himself and what he believed. The President of the United States made his introduction, while his Presidential Seal clearly stated what country President Barack Obama represents.
Posted by: Daily News Comments | June 05, 2009 at 12:43 PM
Mr. Hodson, People with one iota of common sense know the leglislature did them to us with their insane and irresponsible spending.
Here is what I suggest: STOP all government help to illegals and their children! It makes me very angry when CITIZENS who REALLY need help, and who have PAID THEIR TAXES all their lives (the elderly, the homeless, etc) must do without because our STUPID legislature wants to give all kinds of benefits and entitlements to foreigners simply because they gave birth on our soil! It's INSANE!
Leglislatures if you are reading this: YOU have cause suffereing now because of your wanting to give and give and give to foreigners BEFORE citizens! You had NO BACKBONE whatsoever...and now citizens who REALLY need help won't get it because you are TOO WEAK. SHAME ON YOU!!! Because they refuse to put on any boundaries, including illegals, so many truly helpless must suffer. You did it, not us because you have no common sense, no sense of responsibility, just your heads up in the clouds. Makes me sick.
Posted by: Soliel | June 05, 2009 at 10:25 AM
California is bankrupt because it spent more than it collected for too long. People just seem to think they can have a socialist society without the outrageous confiscatory taxes that go with Socialism. California has become the model for the federal government....bankrupt.
Posted by: Ballen | June 05, 2009 at 04:53 AM
Why does the LA Times ignore the murder of a soldier by a terror camp trained American while putting an abortion doctor's murder on the front page?
Posted by: Ballen | June 05, 2009 at 04:51 AM
Government workers feel they are entitled to a pension, healthcare and a guaranteed job when the rest of us are left to fend for ourselves.
Posted by: thecanimal | June 03, 2009 at 02:26 PM