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:

The Times editorial page today comes to the end of the first year at Los Angeles Unified School District's troubled Locke High School under charter school operator Green Dot Public Schools and finds progress, disappointment and hope. And change:

What makes Locke different under Green Dot...isn't that the charter operator has the magic formula for successful schools. It's that the people in charge don't spend years obfuscating, defending and delaying when things don't work. They do something to fix it.

The Times has been following the Locke Green Dot experiment closely. See reporter Howard Blume's articles from earlier this week here, here and here, and the editorial page's year-long series, A Year at Locke, here, and its earlier editorials like this one at the birth of the Green Dot experiment here. And don't miss editorial writer Karin Klein's many blog posts, including yesterday's post from the graduation, with its chilling quote:

 "It's happy, but it's also sad," [a parent said]. I waited for the predictable next words - happy because his child had grown up, sad because...well, his child had grown up. Instead, he continued, "Because you know after today some of these kids are going to die. Some will go down a bad path and get taken out too young."

In Op-Ed, this just in from calbuzz.com's Jerry Roberts and Phil Trounstine: California government is hard to handle. The two bloggers probed and have discovered that the problems include Proposition 13, voter initiatives, gerrymandering, term limits, a volatile tax structure, and the two-thirds rule for adopting budgets and taxes. Who knew? And guess what? It turns out some people are calling for a constitutional convention.

They made me look up the word bibulous, and now I'm embarrassed I didn't know it before, so I deny it.

Roberts, by the way, is the former political editor, editorial page editor and managing editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, and was the embattled editor and publisher of the Santa Barbara News-Press before his well-chronicled battle with owner Wendy McCaw. He wrote about one episode here.

He and Trounstine last wrote for the Times Opinion page here in March on whether Dianne Feinstein would run for governor.

Trounstine is former political editor of the San Jose Mercury News, communications director for California Gov. Gray Davis and founder and director of the Survey and Policy Research Institute at San Jose State University.

Elsewhere in the page, filmmaker Todd Darling writes in favorof the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act, but says it's not enough. By the way, catch the trailer from his film, "A Snow Mobile for George," on YouTube here.

And columnist Meghan Daum wonderswhat the deal is with J.D. Salinger, who went to court to block publication of a book in Sweden about his Catcher in the Rye character Holden Caulfield. Say what you will about Salinger, who Daum points out has dabbled in (gasp) Zen Buddhism. But even at 90, he's no phony.

Photo: Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times

And you thought you were through with elections for a while. No such luck, at least for voters in several fairly wealthy Los Angeles County communities. School districts in South Pasadena, Palos Verdes, La Cañada, West Covina and adjacent areas are going to the ballot this month with parcel taxes to make up for deep state cuts to education.

They are following in the wake of tiny and tony San Marino, which conducted a mail-only vote that began in April and concluded May 5. Voters there agreed overwhelmingly to a whopping $795 tax on each parcel of property. Measure E needed two-thirds of votes cast to pass; it got more than 71%.

South Pasadena voters have already begun sending in their ballots on Measure S, which would impose a $288 tax on parcels, or $95 a unit on multi-unit parcels. Deadline for returning ballots is June 16.

Voters in the four cities on the Palos Verdes Peninsula that make up the school district there face a parcel tax of $165 (for four years only); deadline for Measure V ballots is June 23. In La Cañada, it's Measure LC, $150 per parcel for five years, with a deadline of June 30. Same deadline for the Rowland Unified School District's Measure E, a five-year, $120 parcel tax covering property in West Covina, Rowland Heights, La Puente and City of Industry.

In each of these communities, Republican registration is high (for Los Angeles County) and anti-tax sentiment is strong. But they also have some of the best public schools in the state, and residents like it that way. It's a good bet that they will follow the lead of their San Marino counterparts and tax themselves to ensure that state cuts don't undermine their educational achievements. Note the restrictions on most of the ballot measures -- there is a citizen oversight panel,  the money may not be used for administration and the tax comes up for review periodically (in Palos Verdes, this would be a third tax renewal).

Expect to see this model repeated across California, especially in communities where trust in state government is low but regard for high-quality education is high. The problem is that, as rich districts support themselves, poor ones are left with their diminished state funding. Now, layered on top of the complex and bizarre school finance structure is the prospect of a widening education and achievement gap.

Could this be the coming model for other city services as well? More local control, more local decision-making on taxing and spending? And, perhaps, more segregation of wealth and poverty?

Photo: David McNew / Getty Images

The United States is the only nation in the world in which a child can be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. California has more than 200 inmates who were sentenced to remain behind bars forever for crimes they committed before they became adults. Under a bill that passed today on the Senate floor, they would get a chance to petition the court to have their sentences converted to 25-years-to-life. That wouldn't guarantee parole or eventual release; it would simply give them a chance at a hearing.

The Times editorialized in favor of SB 399, which now moves to the Assembly. It's authored by Leland Yee, D-San Francisco. Read our editorial here, and a follow-up blogpost here. Here is a support blog and site.

This is a worthy bill and deserves to pass and be signed into law. Support is not based on naive or romantic notions about innocent children wrongly locked up for life. This is not a movie. The dozens of people the bill would affect were convicted of committing serious and often brutal felonies. Yes, many were following the lead of criminal adults, and many others were too scarred or traumatized by violent families or neighborhoods to fully grasp the horror of their actions. But punishment makes sense.

Life without parole, however, does not -- at least, not in every case. Under this bill, many, perhaps most, of the California inmates sentenced for crimes committed in their youth would remain in prison for life and will eventually die there. But for some who can demonstrate that as adults they have grown, repented and reformed, they may be able to look forward to the possibility of a portion of their adulthood outside prison bars. 

Photo: Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press

The Times published an editorial April 30 criticizing life sentences without parole for California juveniles as young as 14 and supporting a bill by state Sen. Leland Yee that would permit such inmates to eventually seek parole – after they've spent at least a quarter century in prison. The editorial cited the case of South Los Angeles resident Antonio DeJesus Nuñez, who may be the only person in the world sentenced to life without parole for a crime he committed as a minor in which no one died or was injured.

That's not an overstatement. The New York-based Human Rights Watch asserts that the United States is the only nation in which minors are sentenced to life in prison without parole; we have 2,571.

A 2007 report from the University of San Francisco did find some youth outside the U.S. sentenced to life without parole: a grand total of seven of them, all in Israel. [*UPDATED: See below.]

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child bans life without parole for youth, but the United States is one of only two U.N. member nations that have not signed it -- the other being Somalia.

Nuñez was 14 at the time of his arrest. He was convicted of a frightening and brutal crime – kidnapping a man for ransom. And, by the way, he shot at police officers when they gave chase. Prosecuting him made sense. Imprisoning him made sense. But life? With no chance of parole? For a crime he committed when he lacked the judgment and maturity, in society's view, to drive a car, vote, honor a contract, marry without parental consent, join the military or go to an R-rated movie? Should he never get a second look, once he grows up and we can see whether he studied in prison, behaved, repented? Do we believe that some youths are simply irredeemable, and that in our wisdom we can look them over at age 14 and know which ones can be salvaged as adults and which can't?

The same day the editorial ran, California's Fourth District Court of Appeal granted Nuñez's habeas corpus petition and threw out his life without parole (the legal jargon is LWOP) sentence, ruling that it violated constitutional strictures against cruel and unusual punishment and ordering the trial court to resentence the inmate, who is now 22. Read the court's opinion here.

For those who believe it's too costly, too cruel and just plain too bizarre to sentence a teenager to LWOP (more jargon – JLWOP, with the J standing for juvenile), the ruling was good news. But only sort of.

When I was young and not yet 20, I used to mock my elders for their antique vocabularies. My mother called the refrigerator the "ice box." The aged nun who taught me seventh-grade math referred to automobiles as "machines."  One of my grandmothers used the words "authoress," "poetess" and (more offensively) "Jewess" and "Negress."  The other admitted that she was born in the year Nineteen-aught-eight.  Older relatives who grew up in a German neighborhood in Pittsburgh called taverns "beer gardens."

Now middle-aged, I find myself bemused by what I consider ugly neologisms. I'm not talking about computer abbreviations (lol) or teenage lingo. "Proper" English has taken on weird new forms.   In my youth, the word "behavior" was singular, "partner" was not a verb and you "referred to" something. Today, the behaviors of well-educated people include partnering with stakeholders (not the villagers who chased Dracula) and "referencing" an event or article.

I'm especially agitated by the use of "reference" as a verb. I suspect it originated in business English, whereas other atrocities ("behaviors," "role models') have the odor of the sociology classroom. Whatever its origin, the verb  "reference"  has established itself even in The New York Times, or at least on its baseball blog.   The other Times' Josh Robinson noted that the first pitch at the Mets home opener was thrown by Tom Seaver. Robinson continued: "Asked if he was surprised that the Mets had invited him back, Seaver referenced his own special status in Mets history. He is, after all, their only Hall of Famer."

Language changes and crankiness are occupational hazards of growing old (or becoming, ugh, a "senior"). But linguistic behaviors like "referenced" and "behaviors" ought to be put on ice.

In Wednesday's Letters to the editor, readers express concern -- and some tough love -- for today's kids.

Martine Singer of Los Angeles, executive director of Hollygrove, a nonprofit focused on child welfare, defends a computer system Los Angeles County uses to help determine when children should be removed from their homes:

By portraying Structured Decision Making, or SDM, as a Big Brother-ish computer that dehumanizes social work, The Times' article fails to place this tool in the context of enlightened child-welfare practice.

Far from replacing human judgment, SDM enhances it -- because social workers no longer rely on instinct or bias when deciding whether to put kids in foster care. Across the county, everyone uses the same methods and plays by the same rules.

Beyond guiding crucial decisions about whether to detain children, SDM also prompts workers to find community-based mental health and family-supportive services to treat drug abuse, domestic violence and other serious issues that often lead to child abuse.

SDM ensures consistency and transparency. That's good news for L.A.'s kids and families.

But Thomas H. Wolfe, of Anaheim, shows little empathy for young adults facing a difficult job market:

Only a bunch of hand-wringers would let this recession "define" them. I lived through bad times in the '70s and '80s -- but they did not define my life or my generation.

Stop feeling sorry for yourselves. Go out and buy some lunch or dinner or fix up your house -- that will speed up the end of this problem. This too will pass.

The page features letters about Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), a dispute over water and power in Inyo County, and low-key philanthropist Bruce Lindsay, too.

Photo: Mother must surrender her child to county authorities.  Credit: Los Angeles Times

Eye-colored eyes, a McGough family feature

The Times' oped page ran a compelling article today questioning an offer by the Los Angeles-based Fertility Institutes to allow prospective parents to choose the "eye color, hair color and complexion" of their offspring. Using in vitro fertilization technology to ensure that your kids look like "The Boys from Brazil" is pretty creepy. But what struck me about the pitch for designer babies was the priority given eye color.

I have struggled for years to understand why the color of someone's eyes -- especially if it's blue -- looms so large in journalism, fiction and poetry. Sometimes blue eyes are a synonym for "Caucasian," as in "blue-eyed soul." More often, blue eyes are pulled out of the feature writer's tool box (a disturbing image) to tug at the heartstrings of readers....

What's in a name? Maybe a criminal record. A  study by economists at Shippensburg University in my native state of Pennsylvania found that adolescent boys with the least popular names were more likely to commit crimes. I took special pride in this summary of the study by London's Daily Telegraph:

"David E. Kalist and Daniel Y. Lee compared the first names of juvenile offenders in one US state with the first names of young males in the general population of that state.

"They assigned a popularity-name index (PNI) for each name based on how common it is among the general population and how unlikely it is to be associated with criminal behavior. Therefore for Michael, the PNI is 100 while for David, it is 50. For names such as Alec, Ernest, Ivan, Kareem, and Malcolm, however, the PNI came out around one."

I have wriiten before about my discomfiture with the popularity of faddish boys' names such as Ethan, Jared, Kyle, Joshua and Ryan. But if those trendy names continue to proliferate, the day may come when little Ethan will be less "at risk" (as sociologists like to say) than little Mikey.

Even if that occurs, some names will remain so unusual that  -- if the researchers are right --  parents still might want to think twice about naming their son "Steeler Gerard" (as some Pittsburgh football fans did) or "Seven," George's preferred name for his imaginary child on "Seinfeld."

What isn't clear is why oddly named boys disproportionately gravitate to the dark side. The study suggests two possibilities: These unfortunate kids “are treated differently by their peers, making it more difficult for them to form relationships . . Or  young people with unpopular names may “act out because they consciously or unconsciously dislike their names.”

But maybe being saddled with a bizarre name is a mixed curse. In the hit song "A Boy Named Sue," the eponymous narrator attacks the father who saddled him with the S word. But Dad has a comeback:

And he said: "Son, this world is rough
And if a man's gonna make it, he's gotta be tough
And I knew I wouldn't be there to help ya along.
So I give ya that name and I said goodbye
I knew you'd have to get tough or die
And it's the name that helped to make you strong."

Certainly for Johnny Cash "Sue" was a winner. I don't think he would have scored with "A Boy Named Mike." "

Michael Steele, the new chairman of the Republican Party, declared in his acceptance speech that it was "time for something completely different," but the Times editorial board wonders what he meant; other than the fact that he's a different color (Steele is the first African American ever to lead the GOP), he's pretty much a cookie-cutter Republican who sticks close to the party line on most issues. That makes him a safe choice for a party that realizes it needs to change but is conflicted about how to do it. "Along with a new messenger, the GOP might consider a new message," the editorial concludes.

The board also considers, and rejects, AB 103, an attempt by state Assemblyman Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles) to make up for the perceived unfairness of Proposition 8 (California's ban on same-sex marriage) by extending Proposition 13's property tax benefits to any two people who own a house together. That's an extension that goes too far. And we urge more guidelines and oversight of the fertility industry as increasingly troubling questions arise over the birth of octuplets in Bellflower to a divorced mother who already had six young children. "She and her family will live with the consequences, happy or not. That's their business. Curbing the potential for medical abuse, though, is a matter of public concern," the editorial states.

Over on the Op-Ed page, former Times religion reporter William Lobdell praises U.S. Atty. Thomas P. O'Brien's attempt to hold Cardinal Roger Mahony accountable for his role in the priest sex abuse scandal. The federal grand jury probe of Mahony raises hopes, Lobdell says, that "there will finally be justice." Author Matt Bai, meanwhile, offers his take on the text messages President Obama is sending from his famous Blackberry (Sample message to Hillary Clinton: "I'm sprawled out on the Oval Office rug, just luxuriating. Thought u'd like to know. LOL.")

Speculation over the health of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il prompts Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow Paul B. Stares to warn that the U.S. government should have a contingency plan in place in case of Kim's sudden demise. And columnist Jonah Goldberg decries Democrats' hypocrisy in moralizing about the righteousness of paying taxes while staying quiet about tax-cheating members of their party such as Timothy F. Geithner and Tom Daschle.

* Photo of President Obama and his Blackberry by Getty Images