Opinion: In today’s pages: Propositions, the Pope and Prejean
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The Opinion Manufacturing Division continues its lonely and, well, half-hearted advocacy for the propositions on the May 19 ballot, with columnist Tim Rutten writing that voters are correctly (if cynically) viewing the measures as the product of special-interest lawmaking. But voting ‘no’ would only make matters worse, Rutten argues:
The problem here is that even though voters are drawing rational conclusions about Sacramento’s incompetence and malfeasance, the reaction they’re choosing is self-destructive. After these measures fail and Schwarzenegger and the Legislature begin to hysterically close a looming shortfall of more than $20 billion, they won’t eliminate the obscure board that regulates Shasta County beekeepers and provides comfortable incomes for their old political cronies. They’ll go after the programs that fund local government services, because what Sacramento does best is pass the pain.
Elsewhere on the Op-Ed page, frequent contributor Max Boot offers a surprising appraisal of President Obama’s retooling of the war effort in Afghanistan: he’s impressed. (For those who don’t remember Boot from his previous columns, he’s a conservative senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.) And American Prospect editor Harold Meyerson, a fan of the labor movement, bemoans the internecine battling between factions at the SEIU and Unite Here.
Over on the editorial page, the Times editorial board urges the L.A. Unified School District to slow down on the new downtown arts school, which is slated to open in September even though it has yet to hire staff or develop a curriculum:
L.A. Unified needs to prove it can run a marquee school without the usual top-down, politically shaped agenda. That means taking the time to hire the best faculty and giving them the time and authority to plan a curriculum and play a role in selecting the students.
The board also weighs in on Pope Benedict XVI’s trip to the Holy Land and Donald Trump’s skillful exploitation of the controversy surrounding Miss California USA, Carrie Prejean.
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