Does Obama's proposed budget amount to class warfare against the rich?  Times readers are sharply divided.  Their mail on the subject led the Letters Top Five tally last week.

During the week ending March 7, The Times received 778 usable letters, 316 of which were in our Top Five Topics.

• "Class warfare": 140 letters, including mail about this news story and this Michael Hiltzik column, as well as letters responding to earlier letters on the subject;
• The Times' new format: 84 letters, mostly angry, commenting on this newspaper's decision to fold California into the main news section; 
• Drug wars: 45 letters, including reactions to this editorial;
• March 3 election: a relatively paltry 26 letters, reacting to coverage of last week's elections; and
• State-funded trips: 21 letters, responding to this investigative piece about California officials who charge what seem to be personal expenses to the state.

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.

The state Supreme Court heard oral arguments for and against Proposition 8 today, and although the editorial board strongly supports marriage equality, it hopes the court ignores the political and emotional heat on the subject and focuses squarely on whether Prop. 8 amends the Constitution, as its backers maintain, or revises it, as opponents aver. By contrast there was pathetically little public interest in Tuesday's elections. Even though Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa cruised to an easy victory, the board writes, the low turnout and lackluster support he garnered should tell him that voters aren't happy with City Hall:

Against opponents with little political experience, a dearth of funding and no political apparatus to match the machine he has constructed, the mayor ended up with a lower percentage of the vote than he had four years ago...That feeling--that Angelenos are bit players in a politician's personal story or a prize to be bargained for among parties to a political coalition--is back.

But if enthusiasm for the mayor has lessened, support for the Republican Party in California is in danger of disappearing entirely, writes Harold Meyerson over on Op-Ed. Demographic changes are giving a blue-tinge to once staunchly Republican districts, and if the GOP continues to oppose policies that its less conservative voters support then trouble is in the offing. Columnist Rosa Brooks writes that the memos released by the Justice Department  laying out the legal justification for overweening presidential power weren't just savage attacks on the Constitution, but  are also "outrageously bad" legal arguments.

Two other columnists take aim at structural problems with government: Patt Morrison says the California's budget disaster, term limits, redistricting and bad fiscal habits can only be fixed by a constitutional convention. George Kenney, a diplomat during the George H.W. Bush administration, calls for the Senate to change the supermajority rule requiring 60 votes to end a filibuster and force a vote. The nation's urgent business requires the smooth passage of legislation and the Dems shouldn't miss this opportunity.

Cartoon: Rob Rogers/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

In today's Times editorial and opinion pages, editorial writer Karin Klein drops in on the op side with a reflection on mothering in the era of Online LunchBox, Aeries and other tools for Big Mother.

Who needs the maternal instinct? Today, the school's online data systems tell me everything I need to know about my children's classroom performance. From my desk at home, or work via Wi-Fi, I can find out whether they turned in their homework, whether they cut class, what grades they got on the tests they said they didn't need to study for -- and, in a twist, how many cookies they had for lunch.

Columnist Gregory Rodriguez examines the millennial generation and wonders about their reaction to recession. Pepperdine faculty member Mark Nelson compares the Republicans of the New Deal era, like Federal Reserve chief Marriner Eccles -- who warned FDR he wasn't pumping enough money into the economy -- with the Bobby Jindals of today.

On the editorial page, the Times urges U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to focus on the bad guys.

We're not suggesting that ICE should look the other way when it finds illegal immigrants. Rather, we're arguing for a renewed emphasis on the most dangerous criminals.

The page also notes that the Obama administration has sent confusing signals on No Child Left Behind: Will it emphasize funding or accountability? Schools, and perhaps even the economy, could use federal funding, but "nothing will improve if the new money is spent in the same old ways."

We also recap our endorsements for Tuesday's Los Angeles city election.

The part of local and state election campaigns I always look forward to is the arrival of the slate mailers -- like a combination of the annoying holiday "dear friends and family" newsletter and an ever-hopeful chain letter.

This Tuesday's election didn't disappoint. There's a slate mailer called "Your Republican Voter Guide for Los Angeles," and every single candidate on it paid to get his/her name and mug on it. It doesn't list the candidates as Republican themselves -- I don't believe any of them is a Republican, and all of the offices they are running for are nonpartisan. But it tries to make them seem GOP simpatico. The mailer points out, for example, that Democrat Jack Weiss has been endorsed by "former Republican mayor Richard Riordan" -- who also endorsed Barack Obama for president last September.

"Your Republican Voter Guide for Los Angeles" is, says the teeny print, "prepared by Californians for Quality Healthcare, not an official political party organization."

Well, duh. When a "Republican" slate mailer recommends a "yes" vote on Measure B, the city's pro-solar and pro-labor initiative, you figure something is squirrelly. Especially considering that the San Fernando Valley Republican Club's own voter guide says "no" on B, and the Republican Party of Los Angeles County has declared its opposition to the measure.

Another purportedly Republican mailer with an all-starred cast (the asterisk indicates they paid to get on the mailer) also recommends a "yes" vote on B.

This one calls itself the "Los Angeles County Republican Leadership Voter Guide." It's mailed out of Laguna Niguel, which isn't in Los Angeles County. The "Republican Leadership" is apparently the political campaign consulting group Landslide Communications, whose website is illustrated chiefly with conservative and Republican clients.

This mailer, too, recommends a "yes" vote on Measure B. If you look closely, the most Republican thing about the mailer is a box trying to goad recipients to click on a cheesy anti-Obama website. The box shows a picture of a solemn Obama and a smiling Rush Limbaugh and exhorts people to "take the poll" about Limbaugh wanting Obama to fail. Clearly, this is about snagging web traffic and enlisting supporters.

The payoff for me was that the site amusingly compounded its right-wing wackiness by misspelling the name of one of the Obama staff it features prominently and unflatteringly -- White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.

There's still one more day's worth of mail before the March 3 election. Still time for anything to happen -- like the postman delivering a "Republican" slate mailer endorsing Antonio Villaraigosa!

Last week, President Barack Obama led the Letters Top Five tally.

During the week ending Feb. 28, The Times received a relatively paltry 549 usable letters, 283 of which were in our Top Five Topics. 

Maybe folks were busy looking for work.  Maybe they spent their free time watching the Oscars or "American Idol."  Whatever the case, they weren't writing us.

• President Obama: 107 letters, including reactions to his speech to Congress and his administration's work this week, including Hillary Clinton's trip to Asia and Energy Secretary Steven Chu's take on green energy;
• California's budget: 90 letters.  A budget may have finally passed, but many of you remain upset about the dysfunction in Sacramento; 
• March 3 elections: 47 letters, responding to our endorsement of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa for mayor as well as Police Chief William J. Bratton's endorsement of Jack Weiss for city attorney;
• Death Row: 24 letters, reacting to this news story and this editorial; and
• Eric Holder: 15 letters, reacting to the attorney general's comment that we are a "nation of cowards" when it comes to discussing race.

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.

Letters to the editor is already receiving responses to the lead letter that ran on today's page.  David Coffin, of Los Angeles, questions the infrastructure projects in the president's stimulus program and wonders how it will really put Americans to work:

This article's subhead shouts, "Unlike the marvels of FDR's New Deal, the stimulus is more about traffic, sewers and school repairs."

Grand projects or not, President Obama's stimulus plan seems to have missed the mark by a wide margin. How many of those people losing their jobs at Mervyns, Circuit City, Starbucks or even Lehman Bros. can put on a hard hat and find jobs repairing schools, building bridges or replacing aging sewers?

Very, very few, I suspect.

But that misses the point, many of you say.  This e-mail, received this morning from Doris Dent in Studio City, sums up the counterargument:

How short-sighted some Times readers are.  A letter writer wonders how infrastructure jobs will put people who work at places like Starbucks, Circuit City, Mervyns and even Lehman Brothers back to work.

These businesses depend on people who have money to spend.  People who have jobs have money to spend.  Put more people to work and watch our economy improve.

Back to today's page, readers also comment on Barack Obama and Bobby Jindal's performances on Tuesday night, on a recent court decision on autism, and on the contested election for Los Angeles City Council in district five.

The Times endorses candidates today for the four contested seats on the Los Angeles Community College District: Angela J. Reddock, Kelly Candaele, Jozef Essavi and Kurt S. Lowry. The editorial board also offers kudos to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for projecting a "nonconfrontational foreign policy" during her Asia tour, her first official trip overseas.

Over on the Op-Ed Page, Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid bemoans the concessions being made in Islamabad toward the Taliban, which is negotiating a deal that might allow the Swat Valley region to impose Islamic law -- a deal that Rashid calls "an unmistakable defeat in the country's losing battle against Islamic extremism."

Also, columnist Jonah Goldberg sees Barack Obama morphing into someone who resembles George W. Bush -- now that he has taken office, Obama is turning out to be a good deal more centrist than liberals or conservatives expected. "It's early yet, but I think we're seeing with Obama what happened with Bush," Goldberg concludes. "The chess master is really just a man who's figuring it out as he goes along. Sometimes he'll be right; other times, horribly wrong. But whether he's right or wrong, left-wing or centrist, liberalism will likely mean whatever Barack Obama says it means."

Finallly, oceanographer William Patzert and water board member Timothy F. Brick point out that higher temperatures are reducing mountain runoff even as other traditional sources of water for Southern California are in severe distress, leading to only one possible outcome: higher water prices and more rationing. That's something Californians are going to have to get used to.

Photo: Residents of Pakistan's Swat valley gathering to listen to an Islamic political party leader. Credit: EPA / Rashid Iqbal

The Times endorsed Wendy Greuel for controller in the March 3 Los Angeles city election, although our enthusiasm was not unbridled (see the editorial here). We believed, and believe still, that she is the best of the candidates for the job.

But we really didn't like her campaign TV commercial (watch the original version of the ad at Greuel's web site) that tried to generate voter outrage over a city Housing Department program. For one thing, she voted in the City Council to approve the program, as the Times' David Zahniser reported. For another, the department's management-building exercise was exposed not by Greuel but by the Times. And finally, the Housing Department is one of the better-run city agencies.

So after our endorsement ran, Greuel changed the commercial with which we took issue. The change? The addition, at the end, of the words, "Endorsed by the Los Angeles Times." Oh, Wendy. Oh, the irony.

*Photo: Annie Wells / Los Angeles Times

"We're asking the people to buy into the idea of DWP being a solar utility and using, first of all, the wherewithal that brought us low-priced electricity in this town, namely DWP ownership of the power plant, the use of low-cost municipal bond financing, the elimination of profit."

-S. David Freeman, city harbor commissioner and former general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power; Yes on B.

"We all agree that solar power is good for L.A. The issue that we have is Measure B. And ...there is a very good alternative to Measure B, and that's just a City Council ordinance, like they should have done in the beginning: Hearings, get some [Los Angeles Department of Water and Power] input, public input and just pass an ordinance."

-Jack Humphreville, Los Angeles ratepayer; No on B.

Charter Amendment B -- the solar power plan -- is by far the best-known and most controversial of the five measures on the March 3 city ballot, and the Los Angeles Times Editorial Board is putting in plenty of time poring over data and querying the yes and no campaigns before endorsing. We would prefer to have endorsed earlier, but that would have meant rushing through the information and arguments. And in fact, that's one of our biggest problems with the measure -- the degree of complexity and the very short turn-around time that the proponents and the Los Angeles City Council have foisted on the people of Los Angeles. We editorialized our dismay at the process here, here and here.

But we want to make our decision based at least in part on the substance of the measure, and we invite you to read comments from our meetings with proponents and opponents. Read the full transcript of the No on B meeting, which we held first, here, and the Yes on B transcript here. Audio links will follow in a separate post.

There are highlights below, but first, take a look at an outside opinion. Adam Browning of the Vote Solar Initiative writes about things you may never hear in either campaign -- things that are essential to Los Angeles' solar plans. His conclusion: Charter Amendment B may be a good thing for L.A., but only if the Department of Water and Power backs off plans to pursue legislation in Sacramento.

Confused? Let Browning explain. Also, see the multi-part Dust-Up between the Yes and No campaigns on Charter Amendment B. And for good measure here's the website for the Yes people and the one for the No people.

You have until Monday -- as in, the day after the day after tomorrow -- to submit ballot arguments for or against the five propositions on the May 19 state special election ballot. These are the ones made necessary by this week's state budget agreement.

Here are the measures:

Proposition 1A: Budget reform/spending cap, as proposed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and modified by the Legislature as part of the budget deal.

Proposition 1B: Education finance

Proposition 1C: California State Lottery -- sell the rights to future proceeds, allow "modernizing."

Proposition 1D: Children and Families Trust Fund -- take Prop 10 money for purposes not intended by voters, backfill programs for children.

Proposition 1E: Mental Health Services Act -- take Prop 63 money for purposes not intended by voters, backfill programs for mental health.

*Photo: Los Angeles Times