The city of Los Angeles is in the process of building a brand new war memorial named the Eugene A. Obregon Congressional Medal of Honor Memorial, which is to honor all those who have won the medal.

Okay, so far so good.

As the San Jose Mercury News reports:

Crews have nearly finished the first stage of the memorial, which consists of a 30-foot long, 5-foot-high plaster wall covered with tiles bearing the names of nearly 3,500 medal recipients.

The memorial’s sponsors also plan a 20-foot high pyramidal monument paying tribute to the medal’s 40 Hispanic recipients.

A statue atop the stone structure would depict the memorial’s namesake, Marine Pfc. Eugene A. Obregon, coming to the rescue of a comrade during the Korean War. The 19-year-old Obregon died during the rescue.

What could be wrong with that?

Well, it turns out—a lot.

Civil Rights Attorney Robert Garcia, who is counsel for and president of The City Project, plans to file an injunction this morning, Friday, to stop the construction. He is joined by a list of other organizations, including the state-chartered Native American Heritage Commission and the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California.

According to Garcia (who rarely does not have all his legal ducks in a row), the memorial project “has not received proper legal review and approval by government agencies and the public, in violation of state and federal laws and principles, including protections for parks and the environment, historic preservation, equal justice, Native American sites, transparent government and the rule of law in a democratic society.”

Other than that, it’s fine.

Here’s the deal: For reasons that now seem profoundly illogical, the memorial is being built in the one acre grassy expanse that is Father Serra Park, which happens to be smack in the middle of El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historic Monument—in other words, the site of the birthplace of the city of LA, not to mention the site of a historic village of the Gabrieleño indians, and the site of Old Chinatown, and the site of the so-called Chinatown massacre, where 19 Chinese men were killed in 1871.

Put another way, it’s a little like deciding to build a Vietnam memorial in the middle of the Alamo—if the Alamo was also the site of the Dome of the Rock. (Or something of that nature.) No one would dispute the importance of the Vietnam memorial, but that particular location ain’t where it should be.

On Saturday, the mayor and other city officials are supposed to attend a press conference unveiling the tile-covered wall, that is the first stage of the memorial project.

Awk-ward.

Garcia and company say there are plenty of other far more appropriate places to honor Medal of Honor recipients—including “the Western Gateway at the 16 acre Los Angeles National Veterans’ Park and the 115 acre Veterans’ National Cemetery on the mile long Veterans’ Parkway across from the U.S. Army Reserve Center on Wilshire Boulevard—and about five other alternative locations.

It is worth watching to see how this turns out.

One should not miss Lindsey Hoshaw’s gruesomely fascinating article in Tuesday’s NY Times, about the vast garbage islands in the Pacific.

Most of us had heard about these giant floating garbage collections, but somehow Hoshaw has gone the needed distance to make us feel how impossibly and fantastically awful these land masses of refuse in the ocean really are.

She writes:

ABOARD THE ALGUITA, 1,000 miles northeast of Hawaii — In this remote patch of the Pacific Ocean, hundreds of miles from any national boundary, the detritus of human life is collecting in a swirling current so large that it defies precise measurement.

Light bulbs, bottle caps, toothbrushes, Popsicle sticks and tiny pieces of plastic, each the size of a grain of rice, inhabit the Pacific garbage patch, an area of widely dispersed trash that doubles in size every decade and is now believed to be roughly twice the size of Texas. But one research organization estimates that the garbage now actually pervades the Pacific, though most of it is caught in what oceanographers call a gyre like this one — an area of heavy currents and slack winds that keep the trash swirling in a giant whirlpool.

Scientists say the garbage patch is just one of five that may be caught in giant gyres scattered around the world’s oceans.

In addition to its content, the story is also interesting because of the fact that the primary funding for the research and the writing of the article, did not come from the NY Times, but from David Cohn’s innovative “crowd funding” model Spot.us, where anybody who wanted could give a few bucks toward Hoshaw’s month=long, $8000 reporting adventure.

Go here to Spot.Us to find out how it all came about.

Spot.Us is launching in LA soon (It’s got a nominal site up now), and we’ll be hearing a lot more about the model in the near future.

Meanwhile, many people I know are nattering on about the London Time’s Ben Macintyr’s column about how the Internet is killing narrative,—to which I say piffle.

The delivery system is changing, but good storytelling is not going away.

Photo: Mario Aguilera/Associated Press

“Can you believe it? We’re in the middle of a drought, and the water commissioner drowns. Only in L.A.” Chinatown

Except in our case, we’re in the middle of a drought and a budget crisis, and our fired—excuse me—recently resigned head of the DWP, David Nahai, is not drowning in the least. Instead he’s swimming happily in our public money.

Yes, Nahai is still leaving the job, David Zahniser reports at the LA Times, but he’s getting a big, yummyparty favor as he goes out the door in the form of a “consulting fee,” that happens, coincidentally, to be the exact same dollar amount as his former salary—namely $27,000 and change per month. He will receive said amount weekly until the end of the year. The only difference is that Nahai he no longer has the irksome task of actually running the DWP to earn his monthly $27,000.

“There’s nothing nefarious about it, nothing complex about it. This is a reasonable business decision, nothing more than that,” [DWP commission President Lee Kanon Alpert] said. “David’s resigned, and we need his institutional knowledge for the next few months.”

News flash, if you have to keep the departing head of a public agency on salary for a ridiculous rate because he’s the only guy who’s got the requisite “institutional memory” to know where to find the executive restroom keys, or whatever, what does that say about the former exec’s management style?

(HINT: Nothing good.)

Later on in the conversation with Zahniser, Alpert further clarified the reasons for shoveling money Nahai’s direction:

“He may have knowledge we want to pick his brain on,” Alpert said.

Oh, okay, well, now that explains everything!

Ron Kaye broke this story over the weekend, and is in high dudgeon about Nahai’s golden handshake—with good reason.

Meanwhile, on other priorities-challenged fronts, Meg “I-don’t-need-to-vote-in-elections-because-Sonny-Bono-didn’t-vote-either” Whitman, has announced plans to fire at least 40,000 “selfish and arrogant” state workers when she’s governor (excluding the prison guards, naturally). George Skelton has some choice words about that.

photo from the Jewish Journal

ARNOLD STEPS IN TO SAVE STATE PARKS—BUT MAYBE NOT FOR THE REASON HE SAYS

This past Friday, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger jumped into the budgetary breach with a plan to miraculously rescue 100 state parks from closing (the same 100 he had personally and unilaterally elected to close, but okay. A niggling point).

The story is that the governor brought out his budget crunchers and told them to go forth and find enough savings elsewhere to be able to keep the parks open with minor cutbacks and partial closures to a few parks. Not a perfect solution but much better than shuttering 100 of California’s precious public wildland spaces. That, Arnold! Such a problem solver!

But what, one wonders caused this sudden change of heart?

Could it maybe have been the looming threat of nasty lawsuits and the possible loss of millions of dollars in federal grants?

Yep. Looks like it. In another one of his excellent essays on state and national parks, civil rights lawyer and City Project head, Robert Garcia, pointed out rather presciently, just before Arnold had his come-to-Jesus cost cutting session, that it had been recently been brought to Schwarzenegger’s attention that closing the parks would cost a hell of a lot more—in legal bills and funding losses—than keeping them open.

Here’s a clip:

[The National Park Service] told the governor in June that state park closures would violate the contracts the state signed to receive $286 million in federal funds for 67 parks under the Land and Water Conservation Fund, and could jeopardize hundreds of millions more in future funds. The land for another six state parks could also revert to the federal government. (Read the NY Times article.)

Months after the plan to close state parks was announced, the department’s lawyers finally got around to analyzing the law earlier this month in a memo that was promptly leaked and posted on the Internet. (Read the Mercury News Article on the memo.)

The memo outlines about eight reasons why closing state parks would raise serious problems under contract, property and environmental laws…..

[Here's the rest of Garcia's essay. And here's the memo.]

PS: Try to catch Ken Burns series on the National Parks before it’s over. It’s fantastically good.

THE SUPREMES CONSIDER THE CONSTITUTIONALITY OF LWOP KIDS WHO DID NOT COMMIT MURDER

In Monday’s LA Times, David Savage gave a preview of the case that the Supreme Court will consider in November to determine whether or not life without parole for minors who didn’t kill constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.

At issue is whether it is cruel and unusual punishment to imprison a minor until he or she dies when the crime does not involve murder.

According to Amnesty International, “The United States is the only country in the world that does not comply with the norm against imposing life-without-parole sentences on juveniles.”

Nearly all of the estimated 2,500 U.S. prisoners serving life terms for juvenile crimes, the group said, were guilty either of murder or of participating in a crime that led to a homicide. But 109 inmates are serving life sentences for other crimes committed when they were younger than 18.

[SNIP]

The question will be an early test of whether Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a former prosecutor, will align herself with the court’s tough-on-crime conservatives or join with its liberals to strike down prison policies perceived as going too far.

Here, by the way, is a past look at California’s LWOP kids.

UC PRESIDENT MARK YUDOF TO ALL UNDERLINGS: YOU’RE DEAD TO ME

Okay, he didn’t say those words exactly, but in last week’s NY Times interview, University of California president Yudof said some things that were a bit flip sounding given how drastic the cuts have been at the state’s UCs.

For instance there was this:

….Being president of the University of California is like being manager of a cemetery: there are many people under you, but no one is listening. I listen to them.

(”…like being a manager of a cemetery?” Okay, so faculty and staff are either dead to him—or the undead. Hard to tell.)

And, regarding his salary (Yudof makes $540,000 plus $228,000 a year toward his pension plan, plus an annual $120,000 housing allowance, totaling: $888,000 a year), when asked what he thought about the suggestion that no administrator at a state university needs to earn more than the president of the United States, ($400,000), Yudof said:

Will you throw in Air Force One and the White House?

Yudof may or may not be good for the UCs (there are a lot of people lately weighing in on the NOT side of things)—but, given the hits the university system, its employees and its students are taking, a little diplomacy would go along way, dude.
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THINKING OF STAFON JOHNSON

This isn’t a social justice issue, but many people—myself included— are sending positive thoughts the direction of USC running back, Stafon Johnson, who went though 6 hours of surgery Monday after a weight room accident in which a weight bar fell on his throat.

The fate of the California state parks is still up in the air. 100 out of the state’s 279 parks are slated to be closed to help shore up the budget gap. Park funding was yanked by Governor Schwarzenegger in a unilateral move when the legislature refused to pass the cuts he thought were necessary.

When and if the drastic shuttering takes place, Arnold Schwarzenegger will be the first governor in California history to close a state park in order to save money.

This week State Parks officials said that they aren’t exactly sure which 100 parks will be closed as making that list has turned out to be more complicated then anyone quite realized.

Yet there is a ballot measure that will go on the November 2010 ballot. If passe it will raise vehicle license fees $15 to raise $400 million a year, and fully fund the parks and then some, reports the San Jose Mercury News.

Environmental organizations such as the Nature Conservancy, National Audubon Society, Trust for Public Land, Save-the-Redwoods League and others have raised nearly $1 million and conducted months of polling toward getting the measure on the ballot.

In a serendipitous bit of timing, to remind us of the importance of our public open spaces, Ken Burns’ new documentary “National Parks: Americas Best Idea,” premiers this month on PBS and KCET. It was filmed over a period of six years.

To help focus attention on the series, California civil rights lawyer, Robert Garcia, who is also the Founder and Executive Director of The City Project, will be guest blogging for KCET about the importance of our region’s national, local and—of course—our imperiled state parks.

There are few in the state more knowledgeable on the issue, or more impassioned.

Here is an opening clip from his first essay.

Wallace Stegner, the Stanford writer and historian, famously wrote national parks were “the best idea we ever had.” “Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst.” National parks continue to diversify what it means to be American and democratic.

You can read the rest here.

The above photo is of kids from the Anahuak Youth Sports Association hiking in Franklin Canyon as part of a project called Transit to Trails.

Using the poorly named “line item veto,” Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger managed, with the stroke of a pen, to make a series of unilateral budget cuts that bypassed legislative approval.

They include an additional $6.2 million cut from the state parks budget, which according to Bob Cruickshank at CALTICS will likely cause as many as 50 more parks to be closed—or 100 total, which is potentially 1/3 of California’s State Parks.

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UPDATE: Here is a letter from California State Parks Foundation president Elizabeth Goldstein:

“This is a dark day in the history of California’s state park system. At a time when Californians are most in need of their low cost, accessible state parks, the gates are being slammed in their faces. At a time when local businesses, particularly in rural communities, most rely on tourism and park visitation for their own economic stimulus, the doors are being shut to them. In the context of an $85 billion General Fund budget, the $14.2 million in “savings” that would come from closing more than 100 state parks is truly a drop in the bucket. But it’s a small drop that will have a ripple effect, then a tsunami, for park visitors and local economies.

Closing more than one-third of the state park system cannot be done without real consequences to Californians. Although CSPF and other park partners are already trying to identify ways to keep some parks open, it will simply not be possible for the state to walk away from 100 parks and expect others to fully substitute for its public responsibility. California’s state parks have been teetering on the brink of a funding cliff for several decades, this action now pushes them over the edge. California cannot afford for its state parks to be a political football every year. Our state parks desperately need a dedicated funding source to protect them from these now- annual budget actions.”

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CALTICS also reports:

• Elimination of state funding for community health clinic programs

• $80 million cut to child welfare services

• Total of about $400 million in health care cuts, including further Healthy Families cuts

• Elimination of funding for the Williamson Act programs to preserve farmland from development

• Deeper cuts to HIV/AIDS programs,

The only fallback position is a veto override.

About that: Fat chance.

But, hey, let’s make sure we keep that 1.2 billion in corrections. (More about that tomorrow. I have some new thoughts about early prisoner release. HINT: It’s not at all what you think.)

God help me, I’m beginning to think we should revisit oil drilling. I’m serious. (If you disagree and are not driving a hybrid, I don’t want to hear about it.) (Or a VW, or other cunning non-gas guzzler.]

Photo by Gary Valle, Sierraphotography.com

Last October, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to wade into the battle over whether then president George Bush should be able to override a federal judge after that judge ruled that the US Navy would have to modify its use of sonar in training exercises held off the Southern California coast because of compelling evidence that the sonar did harm to whales.

Yet, despite mounds of data showing that sonar was causing whale deaths, in a 6 to 3 decision, the Supremes decided for the Navy and against the whales, the most recent version of centuries worth of conflict between whales and humans.

Still, in the view of many naturalists, the fact that the Supreme Court had been willing to hear the case at all was a welcome step forward. Moreover, after the decision the Navy agreed to do more to protect the whales when conducting its exercises.

Now, says Charles Siebert, writing for the NY Times Magazine, some biologists are beginning to believe that whales might be rewarding the more benign attitude that our species has had toward theirs in the past string of decades by consistently seeking us out in a way that seems…..relational. The huge creatures seem to want contact.

The phenomenon is most notably occurring, writes Siebert, in a particular area of Baja California.

I should note that Siebert occasionally tends to romanticize the great cetaceans that are considered to be among the planet’s most intelligent non-human mammels. But the story he tells of biologists perplexed by this suddenly friendly whale behavior is nonetheless fascinating.

Here are a few clips.

Scientists have now documented behaviors like tool use and cooperative hunting strategies among whales. Orcas, or killer whales, have been found to mourn their own dead. Just three years ago, researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York discovered, in the brains of a number of whale species, highly specialized neurons that are linked to, among other things, the use of language and were once thought to be the exclusive property of humans and a few other primates. Indeed, marine biologists are now revealing not only the dizzying variety of vocalizations among a number of whale species but also complex societal structures and cultures.

Whales, we now know, teach and learn. They scheme. They cooperate, and they grieve. They recognize themselves and their friends. They know and fight back against their enemies. And perhaps most stunningly, given all of our transgressions against them, they may even, in certain circumstances, have learned to trust us again.

[HUGE SNIP]

“I don’t anthropomorphize,” [marine mammal behavioralist named Toni Frohoff] told me. “I leave it to other people to do that. What I do is study gray whales using the same rigorous methodologies that have long been used to study the behaviors of other species and interspecies interaction. Those who would reject out of hand the idea that whales are intelligent enough to consciously interact with us haven’t spent enough time around whales.”

[BIG SNIP]

I thought of another bit of interspecies cooperation involving humpbacks that I recently read about. A female humpback was spotted in December 2005 east of the Farallon Islands, just off the coast of San Francisco. She was entangled in a web of crab-trap lines, hundreds of yards of nylon rope that had become wrapped around her mouth, torso and tail, the weight of the traps causing her to struggle to stay afloat. A rescue team arrived within a few hours and decided that the only way to save her was to dive in and cut her loose.

For an hour they cut at the lines and rope with curved knives, all the while trying to steer clear of a tail they knew could kill them with one swipe. When the whale was finally freed, the divers said, she swam around them for a time in what appeared to be joyous circles. She then came back and visited with each one of them, nudging them all gently, as if in thanks. The divers said it was the most beautiful experience they ever had. As for the diver who cut free the rope that was entangled in the whale’s mouth, her huge eye was following him the entire time, and he said that he will never be the same.

It is worth reading the rest of this enchanting article.

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UPDATE: Both Siebert and biologist Toni Frohoff are interviewed by Terry Gross on today’s Fresh Air. The audio just now went up. I’m listening as I type. Give yourself a treat when you have time. It’ll cheer you up, I promise.

Hearing about members of two different species reaching out to each other makes the world and all of its problems seem like a slightly more manageable place.

The now familiar tango continues in the California state capitol in which the governor threatens hideous actions if the lawmakers don’t get their collective acts together and come up with a viable budget by a certain deadline, the lawmakers miss the deadline, and the governor re-calibrates his threat.

One of the worst of Arnold’s previous threats is, I believe, about to be yanked off the table, and that is the proposed closing of 220 of California’s 279 state parks.

While the parks’ hours may be shortened to save money, the threatened closures will not happen for the following three reasons:

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1. The Park Closures Aren’t Legal.

For one thing, Robert Garcia of the City Project says it isn’t legal to close the parks—and he said as much in a detailed letter citing plenty of case law that he sent this week to Arnold Schwarzenegger and the rest of the big five, namely Senate President pro tempore Darrell Steinberg, Senate Minority Leader Dennis Hollingsworth, Assembly Speaker Karen Bass and Assembly Minority Leader Sam Blakeslee.

Since Garcia is arguably the smartest environmental justice lawyer in the state, I tend to believe him on such things, the five would be wise to believe him too. (Since otherwise he’ll sue their sorry butts and likely win. Here’s a link to the letter.)
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2. If We Close the Parks, the Feds will Take Them Over

Well, not all the parks. But as of Wednesday, National Park Service Regional Director Jonathan Jarvis said that if Schwarzenegger goes ahead with the closures he threatened last month, that the Feds are legally empowered to seize the state parks that are located on Federal land, which include the Big Sur area, Point Magu, and four of California’s other big parks. To make things worse, we will lose millions in federal grants. And….by all accounts, Jarvis is willing to make good on the threat.

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3. Closing the Parks Was Always a Stupid idea, Fiscally Speaking.

Exactly a month ago, advocates pointed out that the revenue generated by visitors to the various state parks, exceeds their cost. But no one seemed to be listening.

Then in early June, Sacramento State University released a study that verified the fact that the cost/benefit ratio does not favor shuttering the parks at all. In other words, closing the parks would ultimately result in losing money, not gaining it.

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Certainly, the legislature and governor have demonstrated repeatedly that logic is not always their strong suit. But this logic is inescapable.

Ugly Secret: They never were free

If it were up to me, trucks and solo drivers would be banned from all L.A. freeways during rush hour. Carpools would not be two people; they would be a driver and at least two passengers. Buses would be free for all. Fares would be low for light-rail and subways. We would be happy to pay higher taxes because the 20,000 premature deaths blamed every year on air pollution would drop.

Believe it or not, we’re headed there–slowly, and in very small steps. For the next couple weeks, the public will be weighing in on a congestion pricing program that will allow solo drivers to pay to drive in carpool lanes on stretches of the I-110 and I-10. Ladies and gentlemen, you can deal with it. The revolution has not begun.

Of course, foes abound. I suspect that L.A. Times’ columnist Tim Rutten represents the thinking of many people as he tried to tear apart the plan this week. He was not particularly well-informed and chose either to ignore important elements that address low-income drivers, public transit, the environment and health benefits, or maybe he didn’t read the entire plan. But fully weigh his views, particularly his demeaning example of a fictional mom working downtown who is rushing to care for her sick child at a Westside daycare. Here’s his column.

Make sure you read this overwrought line about the poor mom:

A society that can rationalize the imposition of such pain doesn’t need to worry over how to define equity; it needs to worry about its soul.

Note to Rutten: Rework the soul scold after doing some research on ultrafine particle pollution and learning how millions of microscopic specks that can fit on a nailhead find their way into lungs, hearts and brains of Los Angeles residents. These particles contribute to the respiratory ills that sicken and kill thousands every year. No society can allow this to continue.

Rutten’s screed got the attention of the public affairs department at Metro. Score one for Marc Littman and Rick Jager. They posted a response to Rutten’s shallow and misleading arguments on Metro’s Web site today.

They shot down his arguments by addressing the full range of alternatives offered by the program:

This program provides the single mother with additional choices, some of which may be preferable to her. Through the $200 million in transit improvements along with the creation of the ExpressLanes, one new choice would be to take better and more reliable transit to avoid the highway traffic. Another choice based on the program would be to enter the toll lanes and save essential time. That choice could be made easier if she uses credits that she has built up by using transit, an element we’re including in the program specifically for lower-income commuters.

Mr. Rutten seems to suggest single moms will have difficulty making decisions when facing traffic congestion. Single moms respond every day to changing circumstances and choices that are far more complex. Traffic doesn’t have to be like the weather. We may not be able to transform it altogether, but we can have choices to make it better – for everyone. That’s the point of this program.

Pick a side, any side, and show up at a public hearing, starting Saturday. Here’s the schedule.

FISCAL BLOWBACK: BEFORE SHUTTING STATE PARKS….PLEASE DO THE MATH

There were committee hearings yesterday on Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s plans to close 223 of California’s State Park, Beaches and Recreation Areas, with the park gates being padlocked as soon as Labor day. Those proposing the closure say that shuttering the parks could save $70 million in park costs through June 30, 2010, plus an additional $143.4 million during the 2010-2011 fiscal year.

(Look at the list. It’s pretty startling. Morro Bay. Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park. Parts of Lake Tahoe. Malibu Creek, Point Mugu, the Humboldt Redwoods, the Anza-Borrego Desert and the Salton Sea—plus 215 more.)

According to park advocates, however, in addition to the ghastly loss to the state’s sense of well being that park closures represent, shutting down the state’s parks may be fuzzy-headed thinking from a fiscal perspective too.

Annually, 80 million people visit California’s State Parks and, in addition to paying park fees and the like, those visitors also mean substantial amounts of money to the surrounding economies.

The Sierra Sun, which covers the region that includes parks in such areas as Truckee and Tahoe, reports:

In a survey done in 2002, state parks brought $6.5 billion in revenue to private businesses across the state from tourism, said Pam Armas, California State Parks Sierra District Superintendent, and the Truckee-Tahoe area is particularly influenced by park visitors.

And according to the SF Chronicle:

[Elizabeth Goldstein, president of the California State Parks Foundation] said that, for every dollar spent, the state parks generate $2.35 in tax revenue from economic activity in the local communities surrounding the parks. That means the state could potentially see a [LARGE] reduction in revenue by closing the parks.

In this morning’s editorial, the LA Times points out that closing the parks may not just be loss of revenue, park shutdowns may cost the state big bucks in terms collateral damage and unexpected payouts.

Closing parks doesn’t mean that people won’t use them. It means that law-abiding people won’t use them. Among those who will: meth lab operators, marijuana farmers, the homeless, taggers, poachers, rogue mountain bikers and off-roaders, as well as just plain campers who think the rules don’t apply to their personal visits. Wildfire danger would increase from illegal, unsupervised campfires, sparks from off-road vehicles and drug operations. The cost of a single catastrophic fire could wipe out most of the savings from closing parks. Crime could turn the parks into expensive public nuisances.

[SNIP}

Though details haven’t been worked out, so far the proposal calls for putting up to 220 parks on “caretaker” status, which means turning off the water and power, boarding up the windows and sending regional patrols in every now and then to look for damage that needs immediate attention. This isn’t a workable scenario. Imagine trying to “close” the 600,000-acre Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in San Diego County.

Like any homeowner who moves but has a legal responsibility to keep the vacant property in decent order, the state cannot simply lock the gates of state parks and walk away. Nor is this a long-term solution to the state’s budget crisis. Californians expect to see these treasured resources reopened within a couple of years, and they must be maintained with that in mind, not as potential lots for the auction block. The state is hurting badly, but it is not for sale.

Math is your friend, people!

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BLOWBACK FROM CUTTING SUMMER SCHOOL

Another worthwhile LAT Op Ed is by Gisselle Acevedo, president and chief executive of Para Los Niños. She writes from personal experience about how, slashing the district’s summer school programs means that many parents will be “forced to choose between feeding their children or protecting their children. ”

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BLOWBACK FROM “RHETORICAL RECKLESSNESS”

Somewhat contradicting yesterday’s unpleasantly lecture-laden LA Times editorial about how those of us pro-choice people should just chill on the subject of inflammatory anti abortion rhetoric, Times columnist Tim Rutten comes down rather differently on the subject. Here’s how he ends his column:

….It’s fair to wonder whether any of those who have rhetorically insisted that voluntarily terminating a pregnancy and shooting an abortion provider are equally murder, or that a Planned Parenthood clinic and Auschwitz are in any fashion analogous, now are willing to entertain the possibility that verbal extremism — however effective as argument — has consequences.

In the American debate over abortion, the extravagance of the moral argument and the intemperance of its expression have had consequences — and we have the graves to prove it.