L.A.’s new city attorney Carmen Trutanich stopped by The Times on Thursday to speak with the editorial board about his first few months in office. Trutanich received the editorial board’s endorsement in the March election, in which he defeated then-Los Angeles City Councilmember Jack Weiss.
The meeting lasted for about an hour. Below is a link to a recording of the conversation; as always, feel free to leave a comment.
--Kevin Patra
In my e-mail inbox on Monday was a press release about a rally today at the U.S. Capitol by "hundreds of supporters of Sonia Sotomayor," the Supreme Court nominee whose confirmation by the Senate is as much a sure thing as future "Larry King Live" segments about Michael Jackson. At the top of the release was a phrase that strikes terror into the hearts of newspaper assignment editors: "photo opportunity."
I've reported on plenty of rallies and demonstrations in my newspaper career, beginning with an "anti-rat" march in a rodent-infested Pittsburgh neighborhood. (Not sure whether the rats got the message.) More recently, I've covered protests outside the Supreme Court which, if the justices were true to their oath, had no influence on their decisions.
Like the Sotomayor rally, those protests were only nominally an exercise of the right guaranteed by the 1st Amendment "peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." The not-so-ulterior motive was publicity.
But at least anti-abortion or pro-medical-marijuana demonstrators are seeking a result that is not a sure thing. The pro-Sotomayor campaigners are demanding that the Senate do what it's going to do anyway. They won't take yes for an answer.
A journalist shouldn't bite the handout that feeds him, but demonstrations like this give media events a bad name. Next week: A rally to demand more earmarks.
Photo: Sonia Sotomayor appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee on July 16. Credit: J. Scott Applewhite / AP.
Here's something that leftish Democrats talked about a lot -- but only quietly, over drinks in back rooms -- when they were trying to decide whether to back Judy Chu or Gil Cedillo to replace Hilda Solis in Congress when President Obama picked Solis for labor secretary.
If we go with Gil, they said, we can hand-pick some reliable Democrat to replace him in the state Senate. But Gil's gone sort of moderate. So maybe we should go with more reliably leftish Judy. Oh, but wait, that will mean Schwarzenegger would appoint her replacement on the state Board of Equalization, and he'd choose someone who's gone sort of moderate.
Well, they went with Chu in the special primary, and she won. Today Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed moderate Democrat Jerome Horton to the Board of Equalization, and if he's confirmed, it's a major defeat for leftish Democrats. Even though Horton's a Democrat. Which raises some questions:
Q: What the heck is the state Board of Equalization?
A: It's the nation's only elected tax body. It's in charge of collecting sales and property taxes, and is not to be confused with the Franchise Tax Board, which collects income taxes. We need a separate, elected BOE because -- um, because -- well, because California needs more elected officials. Also, without a BOE, termed-out legislators who aren't yet ready to run for statewide office but who can't get appointed to the Waste Management Board would have no power base and limited fund-raising opportunities. The BOE keeps them in the game.
Q: Horton's a Democrat. And there's nothing wrong with being a moderate. So what's the big deal?
A: In tax policy circles, "moderate" is code for business-friendly, which changes the balance on the five-member board. The state is divided into four districts: 1st (representing the entire California coast, from Oregon to Santa Barbara; automatically a Democratic seat); 2nd (cow counties, tax revolt counties, the desert portion of L.A. county: Republican seat); 3rd (San Diego, Orange, Inland Empire; in other words, Republican seat); and 4th (the non-desert portions of L.A. County. Democrat). The tie is broken by the state controller, who is Democrat John Chiang. But Horton would be expected to mix things up by voting, sometimes, with the Republicans. And those tax policy votes will make a far bigger difference to California, in the short run at least, than anything Chu could possibly do in Congress.
Q: Wait, didn't Chu beat Horton in the last BOE Democratic primary?
A: Indeed she did: Chu got 49.7% of the vote in the 4-person field; Horton got 31.5%. So should we say that Schwarzenegger is flouting the choice of voters, who had a chance to pick Horton and overwhelmingly said no? Or should we say that Schwarzenegger is doing the voters' will by giving them their back-up choice?
Q: Is Horton even qualified for this job?
A: No, unless you count his two-decade career at the BOE, his six years as a state assemblyman, and his four years on the Inglewood City Council. Some Democrats who oppose Horton likely do so because of his pro-business approach on taxes and his penchant for avoiding Assembly votes to keep lobbyists on both sides courting him until the last possible moment.
Q: What about Chu's husband, Mike Eng? Doesn't the state Constitution require Eng to always succeed Chu in any elected position?
A: No, although it's understandable why someone might think that. Eng succeeded Chu on the Monterey Park City Council, as Monterey Park mayor, and as member of the Assembly from the 49th District.
Q: Is Horton going to be confirmed by the Legislature?
A: Not without a lot of angst and political saber-rattling. If he's not confirmed, and no follow-up appointment is confirmed, a former Chu staffer will fill in until the BOE election next year. Bet you can hardly wait.
Q: If the BOE board is supposed to represent the entire state, how come four of five members come from the L.A. area?
A: District line-drawing at its finest.
Photo: Robert Durell / LAT
In the same Nov. 4, 2008 election in which Barack Obama was elected president, Los Angeles voters defeated (but just barely) a $36-per-property parcel tax measure to fund youth and anti-gang programs. Measure A was spearheaded by Councilwoman Janice Hahn; as a local tax, it had to pull in two-thirds, or 66.67% of the vote to win. It got 66.27%. Times endorsements may not have the clout they once did, but I think it's safe to say that our opposition helped make a difference on this one.
Hahn wants to try again, and wants to know what it would take to win us over this time. Fair question.
The subject came up at Tuesday's City Council committee hearing, at which Deputy Mayor Jeff Carr reported on the last six months of the city's still-new Gang Reduction and Youth Development programs.
When the Times called for a "no" vote on Measure A, we said the city had not shown it was ready to use new tax money properly. We explained that Los Angeles had floundered with anti-gang efforts for years, throwing money at programs without knowing whether they were working or even defining what they were supposed to accomplish. Just months earlier, the city had scrapped L.A. Bridges and authorized the mayor to take charge of gang programs and to establish standards and evaluation methods. Carr was a newcomer. It was too early to tell whether the city had improved. Here's a snippet, in case you don't want to click on the link and wade through the while thing:
Monday's Los Angeles Times Opinion pages feature Palestinian parliament member Mustafa Bargouthi, who calls on President Obama to be firm in his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Don't be like Clinton, Bargouthi writes, and don't be like Bush:
I am increasingly convinced that if Obama fails to speak out now, it will doom the two-state solution forever. Further fiddling in Washington -- after eight years of it -- will consign Jerusalem, the West Bank and the two-state solution to an Israeli expansionism that will overwhelm the ability of cartographers to concoct a viable Palestinian state. Bargouthi was runner-up to Mahmoud Abbas for president of the Palestinian Authority in 2005 voting. He has written for the Times opinion pages before, here and here. A quite different view is offered by Netanyahu's former ambassador to the United Nations, Dore Gold, who argues that -- two-state solution aside -- the U.S. and Israel are on the same page. Dore says the Israeli prime minister wants something, if not statehood, for Palestine: The reality is that although Netanyahu has not embraced this formula, he has stated that Israel does not want to rule over the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. He has added that he wants the Palestinians to have all the power necessary to rule themselves, but none of the power to undermine the security of Israel. What that means is that if a Palestinian state were to arise, it would have to be demilitarized and could not sign defense pacts with, say, Iran, allowing it to receive a contingent of Iranian Revolutionary Guards (as Lebanon did in 1982). Dore Gold, who heads the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, was in the Los Angeles Times opinion pages in 1998. More Obama: The editorial page applauds the U.S. reversing a Bush policy and joining the United Nations Human Rights Council. Now, how about setting a human rights agenda, and following it at home? Obama administration decisions last week to withhold photographs of detainees being abused and to continue Bush-era military commissions for prosecuting terrorism suspects cast doubt on the president's commitment to cleaning house. So too does a threat to halt intelligence-sharing with Britain if a British court makes public details of interrogation techniques used against a former Guantanamo Bay prisoner. More torture: What did Nancy Pelosi know, and when did she know it? And, oh yeah, elections. Again. Gregory Rodriguez checks out tomorrow's election day and says enough is enough. And it's true, enough is enough, but that doesn't stop us from telling you how we think you should vote. Photo: AP Photo / Amar Awad / pool
With today's visit to Jerusalem by Pope Benedict XVI, Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center leads off the Op-Ed page with a look at past papal visits, with a smattering of missteps and snipes. Things are better today, Hier says:
On the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of World War II, Jews around the world need to acknowledge that the Catholic Church of 2009 is no longer the same institution it was under Pius XII. Jews and Catholics may have their differences, but Benedict XVI's pilgrimage to Jerusalem confirms that the Catholic Church, once a main source of anti-Semitism, is today an important voice in validating the Jewish people's right to fulfill a historic and spiritual destiny.
Author Arthur Allen walks through some of the known unknowns about the flu, swine and otherwise. And columnist Gregory Rodriguez ponders the role of Latinos as President Obama considers his Supreme Court choice.
On the editorial page, the ed board compares California to a gas-guzzler nearly out of fuel, and the May 19 ballot measures to a gas station:
California must get on a different road, change its political dynamic and perhaps its political structure, but it can do that only if it can move. And to move, voters must pass the ballot measures. There is little point in arguing over the next turn if the discussion takes place in the back seat of a rusted-out hulk.
The board also calls on the Long Beach City Council to ignore the false environmental objections and give the go-ahead to the Middle Harbor project, the port's first major construction effort since 2002:
The piers would have clean cargo-handling equipment and would allow container ships to plug in to shore-based power while docked, so they wouldn't have to keep their engines running during loading and unloading. That would cut a tremendous amount of diesel pollution, as would rules imposed on ships using the new terminals -- they would have to switch to low-sulfur diesel fuel when within 40 miles of the port, and slow down to about half their normal speed.
And the board calls for the confirmation of Indian University law professor Dawn Johnsen to head President Obama's Office of Legal Counsel.
Credit: Jonathan Twingley For The Times
During the week ending May 2, The Times received 736 usable letters, 282 of which were in our Top Five Topics. A pair of Op-Eds critical of Barack Obama's first 100 days in office -- one written by perennial mail magnet Jonah Goldberg -- received more mail than any other subject.
How the Top Five is tabulated: Each week, your letters maven receives thousands of e-mails, dozens of letters through the good old U.S. postal service, and even a few faxes here and there.
After she cuts out spam, obscene mail, letters addressed to more than one recipient, letters that seem to be the fruit of letter-writing campaigns and letters with attachments (which gum up our computer systems,) she is usually left with several hundred eligible items, represented in the Letters Top Five tally. From these, she selects the somewhere around 100 that get published in the newspaper. Faxes and snail mail are not reflected in the chart.
Starting next week, the Letters Top Five will take a brief hiatus, resuming this summer.
For more on The Times' letters process, visit our Letters FAQ.
President Obama does not fare well on today's Op-Ed page. James Kirchick, assistant editor of the New Republic, says his "feckless" apologies for past U.S. behavior in international forums is "paving the way for America's decline." And columnist Jonah Goldberg says Obama has "helped set the tone for the unfolding riot of liberal hubris."
Former state treasurer and 2006 gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides weighs in on a closer-to-home issue, Proposition 1A, which will appear on the May 19 state ballot. Angelides believes it would do nothing to solve the structural budget deficit, and would actually worsen the state's budget woes by forcing destructive spending cuts.
The May 19 election is also top of mind for the Times editorial board, which says voters might just as well pull the lever for Proposition 1F -- it may not help much, but at least it won't hurt. The measure would bar members of the Legislature and statewide officials from receiving pay raises when the state is experiencing a budget shortfall. That won't stop the commission that sets pay levels from giving people a raise the following year, or even doubling raises to make up for lost time. But if it helps assuage some voter anger by appearing to impose discipline on unruly lawmakers, so be it.
We also tweak L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa over his plan to seek a vote of property owners to quadruple their storm water cleanup fees. And we're saddened over the furor created by Polish pianist Krystian Zimerman, who infuriated many by announcing during a concert at Disney Hall that it would be his last performance in the United States because of the country's military policies overseas.
... and other things to get your mind off swine flu.
In today's editorial pages, The Times editorial board examines President Obama's attempt to triangulate on torture. Our conclusion: We can't close this chapter in history without reading it first.
It's now clear that if the country is to move beyond what the president called a "dark and painful chapter in our history," there must be a credible and comprehensive accounting of what went wrong and a serious study of whether the architects of the Bush policy violated the law. Equally important is the need to move strategically to secure two sometimes conflicting goals: punishment for any official who knowingly broke the law and accountability to the public.
On another front, the board builds on its Sunday endorsement of five of the six measures on the May 19 special election ballot by drilling down into Proposition 1C, which would revamp the California Lottery and get some cash out of it without waiting for the state's numbers to come up.
We're not enthusiastic about giving lawmakers the power to borrow against every penny of lottery revenue in perpetuity, because we fear that's what they will do. But if the spending caps in Proposition 1A work as advertised -- admittedly, a big if -- there will be less financial pressure on the state to sell another round of lottery securities after the first one is paid off.
On the Op-Ed page, we're back to torture, this time in a piece by author and KNBC news producer Frank Snepp.He knows what he's talking about. Snepp was a CIA interrogator in Vietnam during the war, and by his own account he put his soul "at extreme peril." He draws a link between his actions and those of the Bush administration at Guantanamo.
Controlled brutality is a slippery slope, and once you pass through the moral membrane that should contain our worst impulses, it becomes so very easy to rationalize another step, and yet another, in the wrong direction.
Also in Op-Ed today: Molecular biologist Henry I. Miller chides government for standing in the way of what he claims is one rational and useful response to drought -- gene-splicing. And columnist Gregory Rodriguez takes apart Texas Gov. Rick Perry's flirtation with secession.
Photo of Camp V at Guantanamo Bay by Paul J. Richards / AFP / Getty Images
Making their pitch for the six measures on the May 19 special election ballot, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and four state lawmakers visited the Times editorial board Tuesday.
With the governor were Assembly Speaker Karen Bass of Los Angeles and Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg of Sacramento, both Democrats; Assembly GOP Caucus leader Mike Villines of Clovis; and immediate past Senate Republican caucus leader Dave Cogdill of Modesto. Cogdill's fellow Republican senators ousted him from his leadership post on Feb. 18 rather than back his support for the deal that created the state's current spending plan and shaped the special election.
Here is a partial transcript of the introductory remarks from the five. We'll post more of the discussion -- our questions and their answers -- later this week.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger: Again, thank you very much for your time, and I want to thank my friends, the legislative leaders, for being here today with us. This is without a doubt I think the first time in history that you see the Big Five together and all in sync. I don’t think that you will remember any time in the past. So, obviously this is very important to all of us, which is that to make those various different initiatives pass, the six of them that will be on the ballot May 19.
I think that we have done an extraordinary job together working over a period of several months working on this budget and these various different initiatives. But that's always half of the job, because the other half is obviously making it pass by the people. And it's no different than our infrastructure initiatives in 2006, where it was a bipartisan kind of an effort, the Democrats and the Republicans went up and down the state and they joined together in fund-raising activities, joined together also in campaigning for the initiatives. And because of that the people of California felt comfortable that both parties are working together and they won with overwhelming majority.
We hope this is the same case here. I think that budget reform is extremely important for the state of California because we didn't have it in place for so long – for decades. Every governor has gone through a huge ... crisis, if it is from Pat Brown to Ronald Reagan to Deukmejian, Pete Wilson, Gray Davis and now myself, where you always run out of money because the economy is going down, because we don't have a rainy day fund, because we always spend too much money when the revenues go up. So I think here we have a chance to fix this once and for all and have a rainy day fund for the first time in 60 years. I think that it's very important that these initiatives pass and we're basically here to just talk to you about it, answer your questions and get you to endorse the initiatives, because endorsements from major papers, especially the L.A. Times, is extremely important in supporting it to make it pass. {I'm going to] open it up, if my colleagues want to say something about any of that please feel free....
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