Opinion: In today’s pages: Billboards, Eichmann and EPA’s carbon quest
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Today’s Editorial Page weighs in on a Los Angeles billboard ordinance being considered today by a City Council committee, offering The Times’ prescription for how the city could best fashion enforceable and effective sign restrictions. But we’d have more faith that the council could pull off such a feat if it hadn’t failed so dismally in the past:
Before the city permits any new billboards or draws any new districts, it must demonstrate its ability and its will to enforce current law, cite and dismantle illegal signs and complete and publicly post its sign inventory. Absent that showing of good faith, over the course of a year or two, no Angeleno can be expected to see any new law as anything other than further concessions to the billboard industry.
We also discuss the Screen Actors Guild’s tentative deal with the Hollywood studios, pointing out that SAG’s efforts to negotiate a better deal in new media was undermined by the willingness of other unions to accept less. Next time around, the union might want to increase its leverage by negotiating jointly with the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and the Writers Guild of America, whose contracts will expire at about the same time as SAG’s.
Over on the Op-Ed page, columnist Jonah Goldberg says the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision last week to regulate greenhouse gases should be disturbing to ‘people who believe in democratic, constitutional government.’ That’s because the agency is taking on sweeping powers to regulate nearly every sphere of economic activity, powers that were never put before the voters.
Neal Bascomb, author of a recent book on the hunt for Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, points out that the fledgling nation of Israel’s pursuit and prosecution of the notorious operational manager of the ‘Final Solution’ exposed his crimes to the world and served justice against a man who might otherwise have gone free. That’s worth noting as the world works on systems, like the International Criminal Court, for trying others who have committed crimes against humanity.
And Dean Florez, chairman of the state Senate Committee on Food and Agriculture, points out the folly of some California pistachio growers, who thought the nuts’ thick shells and the methods used to process them would protect them from bacteria. That mistake was exposed when about 3 million pounds of pistachios from a Terra Bella plant had to be recalled because of salmonella contamination. Florez has introduced a bill that he says will reduce the risks.
All that, and Letters, too.
*Photo of Adolf Eichman by Associated Press