 The Times endorses an unusual idea being considered today by the L.A. Unified School Board: allowing assorted groups inside and outside the district to operate 50 newly built schools over the next four years. Yes, there are pitfalls to this idea, but it's still the most intriguing experiment to reinvent local education to come along in years.
The ongoing crisis in Honduras, meanwhile, is starting to look like it won't be resolved without some "superpower pressure" from the United States, The Times opines. It's time to impose sanctions on those behind the coup that ousted the country's rightful president, Manuel Zelaya, and take other actions aimed at restoring democracy. "Failure to return to constitutional order would send a signal to the rest of Latin America that once again political problems can be solved with an old-style coup."
And we celebrate the nomination of Regina Benjamin as surgeon general. This "angel-like" figure, known for her work bringing clinics to rural areas, rebuilding health centers devastated by Hurricane Katrina and leading medical associations, "has the potential to be one of the strongest voices in public health in decades."
On the Op-Ed page, columnist Jonah Goldberg raises an eyebrow over a recent comment in the New York Times from Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg:
'Frankly I had thought that at the time [Roe vs. Wade] was decided,' Ginsburg told her interviewer, Emily Bazelon, 'there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don't want to have too many of.'
Goldberg lists other prominent abortion backers, including former Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes and Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, who appeared to think that abortion was necessary to cull undesirable elements -- like the poor and minorities -- from the population. He'd like to see more questioning of such attitudes in the media.
Jesselyn Radack of the Government Accountability Project says the Obama administration is breaking its promise to bring transparency to government surveillance programs. The administration is reportedly proceeding with a Bush-era plan to use the National Security Agency to screen government computer traffic on private-sector networks, a program known as Einstein 3 that has no intrinsic security value -- but will allow spooks to read e-mail communication between the government and private citizens.
And Deborah Doctor of Disability Rights California challenges Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to document all the fraud he claims to have identified in the state's In-Home Supportive Services program, a quarter of whose funds he says are wasted. The governor not only hasn't proven the accuracy of that figure, he has proposed fixes that could well cost more than they would save.
 In today's pages: reform. Reform of the health care system, reform of immigration policy and reform of fire retardant laws. Let's start with health care.
The editorial board today takes a look at how to improve medical care while lowering costs in a reformed health care system, and suggests three ways to do so: invest in primary care, develop treatment standards for medical professionals and promote information technology that tracks patient care. One encouraging thing about healthcare reform, however, is that
improving the quality of care can help slow the debilitating increase
in costs. It's good for all. And although the changes required won't be
easy, they're essential to the crucial third piece of the healthcare
reform puzzle, which is providing coverage to all Americans.
The board is perturbed by the El Pueblo de Los Angeles historical landmark, and the businesses that are affiliated with it on Olvera Street. The site, which claims to be the location where Los Angeles was founded, has been costing the city money instead of paying for itself. The rents on the merchants' stalls along the back alley are much lower than market rate, and the board calls for the city to reset the rents and make this historical landmark cover its costs. On the op-ed side of the pages, health care again! Phil Lebhertz, director of the Foundation for Health Coverage Education, points out that many health care programs exist for lower-income folks, but many just don't know about it: If such a government health insurance option is implemented, will
people who are uninsured sign up for it? The question is valid because
one-third of the 47 million uninsured people in the United States --
that's 15 million people -- are eligible for government coverage plans
already in place but not signed up....
Perhaps a first step in fixing the current healthcare delivery system
is to create legislation that mandates an effective communication
system for any new program as well as the programs already in place.
And reform is again the word of the day, as Jeb Bush, Thomas F. McLarty III and Edward Alden
broach the issue of immigration policy and the outcome of a Council on Foreign Relations Task Force they recently headed. Encouraged by President Obama's call for change of the immigration system, the three politicians propose to make it easier for some illegal immigrants to gain citizenship, reward businesses that use programs such as E-Verify to check applicants' immigration status, and align immigration policy with America's competitive interests. Russell Long, vice president of Friends of the Earth, urges California to stop requiring that fire retardant chemicals be used on baby products. Long says the chemicals are not proven to be fire-proof, and instead could be dangerous to the infant's, and their parents', health: Making matters worse, California's law has meant that baby products are
often treated with the chemicals even in states that don't require such
treatment. To avoid manufacturing two separate lines, one for
California and another for other states, many manufacturers make their
products sold in other states to California standards.
Finally, columnist Gregory Rodriguez tries to find a link between the recession and the declining divorce rate. His conclusion? Our society has yet to find (or create) a marriage model that incorporates all of society's changes and the choices both men and women have: This fits right into the fact that we're divorcing less in hard times.
In the context of this recession, we have fewer choices, and fewer
choices means we're back to a good fit with the marriage model of old.
Still -- and a little paradoxically -- the fact that there are
untraditional marriages may also be helping husbands and wives
withstand some of the emotional and financial stress of economic hard
times. During the Depression, the ego blow to a man who lost his job
caused marital problems. Today, if a man loses his job -- and his wife
is the breadwinner -- it's less likely to create as much unhappiness.
Photo: U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden (C) speaks as Health and Human
Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius (L), and President and CEO of
Catholic Health Association of the United States (CHA) Carol Keehan (R)
listen as Biden makes an announcement on health care at the Eisenhower
Executive Office Building of the White House July 8, 2009 in
Washington, DC. Credit: Alex Wong / Getty Images
Here's a look at the blogosphere's reactions to the work of the Times'
Opinion Manufacturing Division this week: The Real Clear World blog responds to Andrew Bacevich's op-ed on the White House's overlooking of strategy in Afghanistan and Iraq in favor of tactics: These commitments, and the expectations they produce both at home and
abroad, have successfully bound three post Cold War administrations and
look to be binding a fourth. They inherit a grand strategy by default.
Musings, a blog discussing culture, politics, and education, took offense at the Opinion L.A piece about Amnesty International's recent report that accused Israel of "wanton destruction" and Hamas of "war crimes" in the December conflict in the Gaza Strip. The writer disagreed with the post's assertion that both sides were blamed, saying that the report's full text put much more blame on Israel for the war. The Oy Vay blog, featuring the voice of a self-proclaimed Jewish conservative on various issues, liked Patt Morrison's post on her disgust with the cash-strapped city of Los Angeles' commitment to using taxpayer money to pay for the security detail for Michael Jackson's funeral. And the Opinion L.A. poll urging fans to boo Manny's return to Dodger Stadium on July 16 made it onto the Major League Baseball's Fanhouse blog: As for Manny, I'm sure there will be some Dodger fans who boo him when
he comes back to Los Angeles, but I'm pretty sure the vast majority of
them will welcome him with open arms. The fact of the matter is that
steroids and performance-enhancing drugs are just a part of what
baseball has become these days, and with all the players who have been
outed as "cheaters" in recent years, nobody is very shocked by it.
Pamela Geller's Atlas Shrugged blog praised John Bolton's op-ed piece that stated the only way to fix Iran is to institute regime change in the country: Back when sanity was in order, fine, decent men governed. Today they
stand on the sidelines, hoping against hope that free men will wake up
and heed their words of caution, much like Churchill when he too was
cast into the wilderness. John Bolton wrote such words yesterday in the
LA Times in his exceptional op-ed: The only answer for Iran is regime change.
The War Victims Monitor blog re-posted, sans comment, Ahmed Rashid's op-ed on Pakistan's more serious commitment to getting rid of the Taliban and its influences, and the need for strong international support to complete a successful campaign against the militants. Ron Radosh of Pajamas Media was not a fan of the L.A. Times' coverage of I.F. Stone, both in the op-ed section and the book reviews, implying that the paper overlooked the unsavory parts of the journalist and radical's past. The Los Angeles Times proved to be the most sycophantic. First, it ran an op-ed
by Guttenplan himself heralding Stone as one of America’s greatest
journalists and radicals. Guttenplan charges that the news that Stone
was a Soviet agent between 1936 and 1939 was based “on the flimsiest of
evidence” and that he has been a “hate figure to the far right.” To
those who understand the past, Guttenplan writes, “he remains a hero.” The Guardian UK's Haroon Siddique included Michael Carey's op-ed on the beginning of Sarah Palin's end in a wrap-up of skeptical articles regarding the Alaska governor's motives for resigning abruptly. Finally, a few blogs picked up on Jonah Goldberg's column about the Washington Post salon, which charged $25,000 a ticket for dinner at publisher Katharine Weymouth's home and promised networking with top Obama administration officials and the Post reporters who cover them. The Open Secrets blog linked to Goldberg's piece in their rehashing of the Post's response that claimed they would amend any business practices that weren't clear. And Chicago Boyz, a blog composed of many different voices, said the following about WaPo after linking to the column: This sort of thing is done all the time by newspapers with their foot in
the White House press room door. But this time around it was just a bit
too blatant to pass the smell test. The wage slaves in the WaPo’s very
own bullpen, the ink stained wretches that are never invited to any of
the best shindigs because they are “gray people”, screamed bloody
murder. No one had asked them, they claimed. HA! Like anyone who spends their days in a newspaper’s board room on the top floor would ask what a reporter thought when bucks were on the line!
 The Opinion Manufacturing Division squeezes one more piece out of the Michael Jackson Farewell Tour: columnist Tim Rutten's rumination on celebrity. He contrasted Jackson's recent treatment with that of Sarah Palin (Jacko and "Caribou Barbie" in a single piece: double columnist gold!), arguing that the alleged sins of the former were washed away even as the latter was overwhelmed by the scrutiny. My own sense is that Jackson's death actually led to two competing lines of commentary about the man: he was a genius (the sentimental meme), and he was a pedophile (the "you can't libel the dead" meme), as famously enunciated by Rep. Peter King). That's not washing away sins, it more like carving them into his grave marker -- albeit underneath the "King of Pop" banner and the silhouette of Jackson hovering on his toes.
Elsewhere on the Op-Ed page, columnist Doyle McManus says don't hold your breath for another economic stimulus package. And economists Alan J. Auerbach and William G. Gale fret about the fiscal problems that are likely to be caused by the growing federal budget deficits:
The deficits projected over the next 10 years will accelerate our arrival at a debt-to-GDP ratio that for most countries would signal impending fiscal collapse. Indeed, Britain, with a debt-to-GDP ratio not appreciably worse than ours, was just warned by Standard & Poor's that its creditworthiness might be downgraded. The United States has traditionally enjoyed a favored status in this regard, as the supplier of the dollar, the world's reserve currency, and as a perceived haven in times of financial stress. But for how long?
In the editorial stack, the board expresses chagrin about the recent return to prominence of Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party, whose corrupt dominance of Mexican politics in the 20th century were so damaging to that country. (And by the way, how can you be both "institutional" and "revolutionary"? By advocating change so gradual, no one notices?) It urges the new General Motors, which may emerge from bankruptcy this week, to take lessons in openness and innovation from the computer industry. And it suggests a simple solution to the funding problem at the Maxine Waters Employment Preparation Center in Watts, which has run afoul of a new House Appropriations Committee dictum against grants for projects named after sitting members of Congress (in this case, Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters of Los Angeles): the center should drop Waters from its name.
A name change would involve some cost and inconvenience, but the investment would qualify the jobs center for funding now and in the future, while preserving a congressional rule that sets reasonable limits on pork. When Waters retires from public office, the program can honor her permanently.
Credit: Patrick O'Connor / Special to The Times
 Today's memorial service for Michael Jackson at the privately owned Staples Center reminds The Times editorial board of a sad fact of life in Los Angeles: It's a city without a public square. Though the backers of LA Live once promised that the downtown entertainment mall would become L.A.'s version of Times Square, the fact remains that it's a private space whose owners can bar the public anytime they choose.
We also weigh in on President Obama's trip to Russia, which isn't expected to accomplish much -- but even a small thaw in relations between the two countries, and the modest improvement represented by the nuclear weapons pact concluded Monday, is better than the chilly status quo.
And we ponder the lessons to be learned from the example of former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, who died Monday at 93. Though many see parallels between the mistakes made in Iraq and the mistakes made by McNamara in Vietnam, we think the larger lesson is that using yesterday's solutions to today's problems is often the pathway to failure.
Over on the opposite page, columnist Jonah Goldberg thinks all the sturm und drang over the canceled "salons" by the Washington Post, in which lobbyists were invited to pay heavily to attend get-togethers with the newspaper's journalists and top politicians, amounts to little more than posing. After all, many publications offer similar meet-and-greet opportunities, Goldberg says.
The hand-wringing over genetically modified foods, meanwhile, reminds author Tom Standage of another food-related hysteria from a few centuries ago -- over the potato. When the tubers were first discovered in the New World, Europeans feared they were a dangerous, unholy poison. They got over it, just as they'll probably eventually get over their irrational fears about improved crops.
And psychiatry professor Sander L. Gilman cautions against jumping to conclusions about Michael Jackson's cosmetic surgery. True, the King of Pop clearly was fond of surgical reshaping, but that doesn't necessarily indicate self-loathing.
* Illustration by Bob Daly / For the Times
 On the Op-Ed page today, Paul VanDevelder, author of "Savages and Scoundrels: The Untold Story of America's Road to Empire Through Indian Territory," discusses an impending ruling by U.S. District Judge James Redden in Oregon that may determine the fate of salmon in the Columbia and Snake rivers. VanDevelder argues that dam removal is the best option for the salmon's survival, but it's also the most politically turbulent:
The Columbia-Snake corridor is the salmon's only option for survival,
and Redden is probably their last hope. He is the one person in this
entire drama who is legally obligated to use science and the law to
protect the fish from extinction and from the whims of politicians. If
the law and science are unable to trump politics to save this fishery
-- a fishery that was the most productive in the world just two
generations ago -- how will we ever meet the towering challenges posed
by global climate change?
Read on »
 Here at the Times' Opinion Manufacturing Division, we like to check in on how our editorials and Op-Ed articles are doing -- and where they are going -- in the blogosphere. What follows is a sampling of blogs that have picked up our opinions and generated opinions of their own.
Jerry Roberts' and Phil Trounstine's Op-Ed listing six factors that are at the root of California's inability to be governed caught the attention of several blogs this week. The Housing Chronicles Blog linked to a post about its own theories on California's detrimental changes: When it changed, it just wasn't due to Prop. 13, although that was the
start of it. I remember joining my family to protest the proposition
(my first foray into politics), and when a cigar smoke-smelling Howard
Jarvis waddled by and told my brothers and I, "Why don't you go home
and learn to read?" I'm sure he didn't realize that home schooling
would become the savior for many of today's families.
Bob Burnett of the Huffington Post linked to the piece in his take on California's growing troubles and who's to blame: Nonetheless, while California's decline can be blamed on Governor
Schwarzenegger, the legislature, and the size and complexity of the
state, the primary responsibility falls on the voters.
On FarmPolicy.com, a blog dedicated to news about the farming industry that took particular interest in the climate change bill passed by the House of Representatives last week, linked to The Times' editorial that supported the bill. It seems the farm industry, based on the blog's long and varied list of supporters and naysayers, is quite conflicted on this issue. The Harvesting Justice blog came out slightly more strongly against the editorial's favorable position on the bill, offering this comment (which I believe is meant to be sarcastic?): The Los Angeles Times agrees in an editorial about the inordinate power that leads to "the theory that heading off
global catastrophe is only worthwhile if agribusiness can profit from
it." Another
example of the excesses of the "greedy growers," as former Wyoming
Senator Alan Simpson used to say. We poison the environment and our
farmworkers and agribusiness continues to lobby for the ability to
continue to do so, while getting paid subsidies not to do so.
On June 26, The Times ran an Op-Ed by former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John R. Bolton -- a controversial figure in the world of diplomacy -- that encouraged the United States to support regime change in Iran. Not surprisingly, several bloggers had a lot to say in response. The Citizens blog said Bolton's argument is a veiled call for war:
What is a "policy" of regime change about? The answer, of course, is
exactly what it was in Iraq: confrontation, building a "case" for war,
then invasion. The imposition of our will on Iran. Sure, Bolton and
others will talk about "support" for pro-democracy movements and such -
the same sort of "support" that has been so successful in Cuba this
past half century. But they mean war. They just are too cowardly to
openly say that they see military force as the only option. So let's
call them on it.
The UN Dispatch blog offered a similar reaction, and added that the target of Bolton's attack was clearly the Obama administration, and even worse, offered no real solution to his goal. It was written for a partisan purpose and little else, the blog said.
Gregory Tejeda, a Chicago-area freelance writer and former UPI reporter, took issue with Zev Chafets' Op-Ed, in which Chafets argued that Latino baseball players are being singled out by the Hall of Fame for their use of steroids. Tejada said he knows just as many non-Latino ball players who were disgraced by their drug use: The same people who now are getting all worked up in saying that Sammy
Sosa’s 600-plus home runs (and three seasons of 60 or more) are no
longer good enough to include the one-time Chicago Cub in the Hall of
Fame seem to get equally vehement in their opposition to either Bonds
or Clemens getting baseball’s version of immortality.
And finally, Noel Sheppard on the NewsBusters blog was quite taken aback by Karen Bass's statement during an interview with Patt Morrison that Republican radio talk-show hosts were "terrorizing" their fellow Republicans in the California legislature.
Photo: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger addresses a joint
session of the state legislature in Sacramento on
Tuesday, June 2, 2009. Schwarzenegger urged state lawmakers to act
quickly to close a $24 billion deficit that opened in the state budget
because of the worst U.S. recession in half a century. Credit:
Ken James/Bloomberg News
 On the Op-Ed page today, John P. Hannah, security adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney during President George W. Bush's second term, evaluates whether Iraq is ready for the looming withdrawal of U.S. troops from its cities. His conclusion is that President Obama is effectively giving up on Iraq before the job is done:
Under Obama, Bush's commitment to winning in Iraq has all but vanished.
Convinced from the start that the war was a mistake (a conviction
fortified by the Bush team's post-invasion bungling), Obama has for
years been the salesman in chief for a narrative of failure: Iraq is
seen as a colossal disaster -- a senseless distraction that drained
U.S. resources while alienating the rest of the world. While
recognizing a vague obligation to help Iraqis forge a better future,
Obama's bottom line comes through loud and clear: The war was a
strategic blunder, and the sooner the U.S. can wash its hands of it and
re-focus on our "real" priorities in the Middle East, the better.
While Hannah argues that Obama's focus in the Middle East has shifted to Iran and he'd rather be done with Iraq, isn't the pulling out of troops and the handing of power to a government we helped build part of getting the job done? Even Bush was not planning on staying in Iraq forever, but that's the track we've been on since the 2003 invasion. Retreating our troops so the Iraqi police can take over the security of Iraqi cities may be the right step to the conclusion for which Hannah is calling. Criminal Justice Professor Eric J. Williams writes to another aspect of the Bush administration's legacy: Guantanamo Bay. Williams specifically responds to the surprise expressed by many Republican politicians over a myriad of rural towns asking for the Gitmo detainees, as prisons have become an economic remedy for such towns that have lost staple industries. The two other Op-Eds today offer more hopeful ruminations.
Read on »
The Op-Ed page revisits the turmoil in Iran, with Stuart A. Reid, an assistant editor at Foreign Affairs magazine, endorsing President Obama's "muted response" to the regime's blatant election-stealing. Reid's piece offers a counterpoint to yesterday's Obama-torching column by Jonah Goldberg, but he appears to have been overtaken by events -- note how the president sharpened his rhetoric Tuesday, possibly after considering Goldberg's ever-helpful words of advice. Meanwhile, columnist Tim Rutten writes about the "hybrid journalism" coming out of Tehran, i.e., the blend of grass-roots reporting and professional analysis. It's a perceptive piece about the impact of new technologies for gathering and sharing information, especially coming from a guy who neither blogs nor Twitters.
Elsewhere in Op-Ed, journalist Harold Meyerson promotes the indefensible position that the federal government should bail out California:
The feds should approach California as they did General Motors -- demanding a fundamental restructuring of state finances as a condition for loans. In return for proffering, say, $8 billion in loans, the White House should demand $8 billion in tax hikes and $8 billion in cutbacks. It should also demand changes to the state's Constitution that would upend California's dysfunctional system of finances, sweeping away the two-thirds requirement for passing budgets and raising taxes, restoring local governments' ability to fund themselves through property taxes and putting a stop to budgeting by initiative. The feds' loan could be conditional on the state's voters ratifying these changes in November.
Jeez, where to start? Do we really want the Treasury Department deciding the appropriate mix of tax hikes and spending cuts? Should Tim Geithner hold an $8 billion gun to the head of California voters, insisting they abandon the major provisions of Proposition 13 as well as the potential for future initiatives about government funding? And if this is such a good idea, shouldn't Meyerson be just as comfortable if a Republican administration in Washington were setting the terms? (For the record, the Times' editorial board has already weighed in against even a limited a federal bailout.)
Finally, baseball historian Zev Chafets sees trouble ahead for the Baseball Hall of Fame in the eligibility of numerous star Latino ballplayers who've been tarnished by steroid allegations.
On the editorial page, the Times board blasts a bill in Sacramento to increase the maximum payday loan from $300 to $500, and bemoans how a dispute over gun control has derailed a bill to give the citizens of Washington, D.C., a voting member in the House of Representatives. It also welcomes the full attention of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa back to our fair city (for the second day in a row!), just in time to deal with a thorny budget problem and an electorate that wants more for less cost:
Three out of four Angelenos polled rated the city's budget difficulties as a serious problem, but majorities oppose slowing down police hiring, laying off city workers or raising fees for city services. Two-thirds oppose a tax hike to pay for fire services, and nearly 60% oppose increased taxes for other services.
But hey, that's why they pay the mayor the big dollars.
Photo: AP/ Jim Buell
The editorial board applauds Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's decision to stay in Los Angeles and forfeit a gubernatorial run (in 2010, at least), calling the decision a second chance for both the newly re-elected mayor and the city of Los Angeles to "prove they were right for each other":
Voters elected Villaraigosa in 2005 in the belief that he would do that. They reelected him -- a smattering of them did, anyway -- this year in part because their mayor was so skilled at getting the most viable challengers not to run. The city now wrestles with a palpable disappointment in Villaraigosa, not just because of budget woes or bad schools but because of his failure to live up to expectations that he helped to inflate. That's a hard way for a mayor to enter a second term. Still, we credit him for deciding to enter it with both feet, instead of one pointed toward Sacramento.
The editorial board also supports President Barack Obama's continued prudent response to the increasingly violent Iranian protests and his refusal to make any strong statements toward the government or the opposition:
A fraught U.S.-Iranian history argues against more direct intervention, starting with the U.S. role in overthrowing elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953, and including U.S. support for the shah over the revolutionary forces that brought the Islamic government to power in 1979. Add in the subsequent hostage crisis, plus decades of mutual hostility over regional conflicts and nuclear weapons, and it becomes clear why more forceful action from Obama could backfire. He must continue to protest the bloodshed, but he cannot hand Iranian hard-liners a stick with which to beat the opposition.
And the board welcomes the U.S. Supreme Court's upholding of a key provision in the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the notion of pre-clearance, meaning that states and localities with a history of abridging the right to vote must get clearance by the federal government before changing their election laws.
On the Op-Ed side of the fold, one finds a different take on many of the same issues. Politico-turned-academic Dan Schnur, while not surprised by Villaraigosa's decision not to run in the governor's race, said he expects the mayor to run for the U.S. Senate in 2012. Columnist Jonah Goldberg argues that Obama cannot win with his stance on Iran and must give up his "ideological" approach:
As an unnamed Iran expert in contact with White House officials told Foreign Policy's Laura Rozen, "Obama is dedicated to diplomacy in a manner that is almost ideological.... He wants to do some stuff in the Middle East over the next eight years. He may not be able to achieve half of them unless he gets this huge piece of the puzzle [Iran] right."
Finally, author Greg Critser warns of the dangeous effects of air pollution not just on heart and lungs but also on brain and fetal development. A solution? Researchers are working on it, Critser writes, but in the meantime, government should enforce the new regulations on truck exhaust as well as those that require improved filtering systems in schools, and map "emissions hot spots" in Los Angeles so people know which areas to avoid.
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