Opinion: In today’s pages: Budget bust! Racism! And thicker, longer lashes!
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In Wednesday’s Los Angeles Times opinion pages, California finally has a balanced budget! Sort of. OK, not really. Fine. Not at all.
That sort of delayed reckoning and outsourced accountability should not be portrayed as forward momentum. The state should not try to take credit for solving the budget problems when in fact it has merely foisted its problems onto local governments. There is no separation, in the minds of voters or in the pangs of those most in need, between state and local government. We’d prefer a little more honesty from both the Capitol and the many city and county halls, all of which should acknowledge that their budget woes are but two sides of the same worn coin.
Editorial writers also take note of the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr., a black man who was trying to break into the home of a famous Harvard scholar, best-selling author and professor. Good thing they caught him. The professor’s name was ...let’s see, it’s here somewhere... Oh. Oops. It’s Henry Louis Gates Jr. The editorial board writes:
The police say Gates asked if the officer knew ‘who he was.’ That may sound arrogant, but many a black man in the same position has asked a similar question. It means: ‘Can you see who I am, not just what I am?’ Because regardless of their achievements, wealth or status, they are vulnerable to the universal black male experience -- finding themselves in handcuffs first and charges dropped later.
Times columnist Tim Rutten has a preview of Thursday’s MTA board vote on whether to contract out Metro car construction to Italian firm AnsaldoBreda. David Wise catalogs the CIA’s attempts to assassinate foreign leaders and perceived nuisances, and discovers that our spooks aren’t very good at bumping people off. Finally, author Christopher Lane walks us through the changes in direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising, which have given us, among other things, Brooke Shields shilling for a liquid to combat the horrors of eyelash hypotrichosis.
But that’s just our Opinion.