Results tagged “opinion”

With their counterparts in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) staging sit-ins to protest pink slips yesterday, Glendale Unified School District (GUSD) teachers are whining about smaller things in today's LA Times. Smaller things as in small kitchen appliances.

The Daily News opined yesterday on the higher parking rates (from $1 to $4/hour): "Let's give credit where it's due. Los Angeles officials might not do a very good job of providing services, maintaining the integrity of city government, or enhancing the local quality of life, but they excel at siphoning taxpayers' money for the bottomless pit that is the city treasury... The new meters are just the latest in a long litany of City Hall's money-grubbing schemes. But they're small potatoes compared with, oh, the city's practice of overcharging residents for water and power, then transferring the profit to the general fund. Or multiple garbage-fee hikes that were supposed to go entirely to hiring new cops, but instead ended up funding sundry other political priorities." Yesterday, the LA Times found that the extended hours (now beyond 6 p.m.) and a 2-hour limit are hurting local theatre companies in the NoHo Arts District.

       

West Hollywood Mayor Jeffrey Prang chimed in on LAist's Sarah Palin effigy post yesterday. Like 99.9999% of everyone else, he's not cool with it.

Shocked by the horrific road raging motorist vs. cyclists incident on Mandeville Canyon Road this past holiday weekend, the cycling community has rallied in the last four days to fight for justice and to ensure that Los Angeles city leadership, law enforcement and the judicial system respond to incidents such as this.

The Silver Lake reservoir has been drained for sometime now due to rare photochemical reaction that created carcinogens. In June, the Department of Water and Power plans to fill it back up, but its use as a place to hold drinking water is being phased out -- it will now become purely eye candy by 2015 (as well as the nearby Ivanhoe Reservoir). So if the water aspect has no functional use and takes up plenty of real estate in a city that is in desperate need of urban parkland, why not make some changes? USC journalism teacher and blogger Sara Catania has an idea:

Earl Ofari Hutchinson, author, blogger and president of the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable was the man behind the dream of the 40-hour murder moratorium that Los Angeles County and City put into place this past weekend. He defends his idea in the LA Times, the very same paper, who in an editorial, lambasted the proposal:

Since the perk of giving Hybrid owners a free ride when it comes to Los Angeles city parking meters has been in the news lately, the always fiscally conservative Daily News opined on the issue today: "The right thing is for the council to kill the hybrid car perk."

After the Daily News' story on the Culver City based RateMyCop.com, the LA Times comes out with an editorial opinion on the site when talking about the hypocrisies of police accountability. "Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton tends to honor it in the breach -- he proclaims the department accountable, then decries those who scrutinize its work," the opinion with no author reads. "Critics of the LAPD demand transparency but sometimes fail to take advantage of it. Leaders of the city's police union insist that they believe in it but often work to undermine it." And as to rating your cop, the Times digs it:

Dear Tony Kornheiser,

Last Friday, Sarah Miller's Open Letter to Barack Obama in the LA Times Opinion section caught my eye. Got me thinking. Had me nodding my head. I'm not the only one, as the comments on her letter are getting heated. As an Obama supporter, she raised some concerns about his seeming inability to be concrete and clear about how he is different from Hillary Clinton. In short, Sarah Miller asked Obama to be specific so that people could know why they were behind him, other than wanting radical change in how our country is run.

Hope is an empty diversion without substantive, original arguments on issues. When will you discuss rebuilding New Orleans? Can you offer creative thinking on the Iraq war as it currently exists, instead of just reminding people you opposed it years ago? Why don't you demonstrate a respectful, nuanced view of the Middle East instead of referring to the "the terrorists," as you did in a recent debate? How do you envision the United States' role in Africa's many dire problems and conflicts? How do you plan to fix our decrepit infrastructure and invigorate the economy in just and environmentally responsible ways? Will you argue for the value of a well-regulated, domestically produced food supply, favoring produce over commodity crops, for our safety and environmental health? What are your positions on international trade agreements? Do you have creative ideas for generating more affordable housing in our cities? And how will you handle the responsibilities of the presidency when you can't unite and persuade, as will inevitably happen sometimes?

An Op-Ed follow up to this morning's news...

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In a preemptive move, the Director's Guild of America (DGA) announced yesterday that they'd made a satisfactory deal with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), giving them a new contract and therefore eliminating the need to strike once the current contract ended. So what does this mean for striking writers and the likelihood of an impending end to their current three-month-old strike?

Gearing up for another War on Christmas, combative conservative columnist David Horowitz and the College Republicans are calling out to their hate squad and killing Halloween (not to mention a week of breast cancer awareness month) with what they've dubbed "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week." Ann Coulter, recently listed as charging a $25,000 speaker fee by the Premiere Speakers Bureau (and now "call for fee") will speak in the name of Islamo-Fascism Awareness tomorrow night at USC....

- Is is scarier that a homeless man was walking around downtown with a glock and pointing it at people while saying Bang - or an undercover cop? - Opinion LA - Nettie Berkson, 91, will attend her 50th consecutive home opener today at Dodger Stadium - Daily News - She's 102 years old, she's from Chico, and this weekend while you doing nothing, she hit a hole-in-one - Seattle Times - Third bald...

Stopping just short of demanding abstinence from its Opinion column contributors, the LA Times most likely paid a pretty price to scrounge together today's "Current" section.

Will someone please start putting some cameras in the LA Times building?

A long time ago in a peninsula far far away (if a 90 minute drive is far), there was a college newspaper so good that Matt Welch's only regular writing assignment was the two or three sentences in the Weather box. Though this was late-'80s Santa Barbara and the weather for an entire year was Sunny and Mild (we were in the midst of a year-long drought), somehow Welch's Weather box was one of...

Opinion by Henry David Everyone loves making fun of Tommy... except me. Yes, I know, Tom Cruise is crazy, but that doesn't mean I can't love him. Who in Tinseltown isn't a nut? And I'm not saying he's crazy because he's a Scientologist. My parents always used to make a point that any person's beliefs are just as deranged as our own. They would then engage the child safety lock and hold me hostage...

Hmmm, what better day to start what will probably become our weekly look around the local blog soap operas than the morning after The Huffington Post/Yahoo!/Gawker Media love fest that was billed as a night celebrating Defamer's Mark Lisanti but really was to celebrate and launch the syndication agreements between the three parties. While we generally hovered next to the go fug girls, the Mister Zero you don't want to !@$* with, Defamer's Employee of the Month and Marissa of Terra Non Firma, we did spend a little time with the boys of Martini Republic and several Yahoo! content kids who are transitioning from the bay area to the West side and were very serious about getting some In-N-Out burgers before heading back to the Viceroy for the after party.

As The Times reminded us this morning (and with on-going opinion series), today marks the 40th Anniversary of the Watts Riots. The oral history today, particularly the words of arresting officer Lee Minikus, provide some compelling perspective on the incident that sparked the outrage. NBC's Furnell Chatman did some investigative reporting of his own while Long Beach remembers how the riots reached them. The Weekly reviews two recent documentaries on the event.

In an admirable show of editorial restraint, Kinsley spiked his very first column for the Times, in which he gave an "ironic reflection" on the decapitation murder of screenwriter Robert Lees. Kinsley's old New Republic buddy Andrew Sullivan offers some friendly comments.